A Thinking Reed

Month: October 2011

  • Structural sin and the ways of death-dealing

    Christianity Today ran a rather silly article trying to undercut the claims of the Occupy Wall Street protesters:

    Occupy Wall Street protest signs seek to ignite a revolution of the 99 percent against the (richest) 1 percent, who are responsible for our troubles. Christians of course are forbidden from supporting this kind of worldview. The dissipation that exists in our country, unfortunately, has not been confined to 1 percent of the population. Christianity teaches us that all of us stand as imperfect, self-absorbed, broken people, each of us a contributor to the problems of the world in our own, creative way.

    Political action has often served in our country as a lazy shortcut around the harder work of evangelization. If we are unconvincing in changing people’s thinking, we attempt to control their behavior through the political process.

    What this misses, of course, is what both Catholic and Protestant theology refer to as “structural” or “social” sin. That is, there are institutional structures–economic, political, etc.–that create and reinforce unjust social arrangements. Simply calling people to individual conversion is insufficient to deal with these larger social forces.

    Clark Williamson has a useful discussion of social sin and what he calls “the ways of death-dealing” in his systematic theology Way of Blessing, Way of Life:

    A premise of all theologies that stand in the tradition of the social gospel, of the contemporary liberation theologies and of recent Roman Catholic social teaching is that existing forms of government, economy, and society “are neither divinely ordained nor naturally given but are historical products of the decisions of men and women in times past as to how their lives should be governed.” What human beings have created, human beings can change.

    […]

    As long as we understand sin in ways that privatize it, hold to a view of salvation that reduces it to an individualistic or otherworldly matter (ultimate or “otherworldly” salvation should undergird and empower Christians in their this-worldly tasks), and regard social transformation as occurring in some miraculous manner, thinking that if only individuals change, the social context will take care of itself, the church will fail to address “the weightier matters of the law” (Mt. 23:23) in our time. (p. 38)

    Williamson goes on to provide concrete examples of these unjust or sinful structures, or death-dealing ways: the unjust exploitation of nature, the unjust distribution of goods and services, sexism, racism, and militarism.

    The point is that these sins are not exclusively the result of individuals making bad choices. They are the outworking of social structures functioning according to the way they’ve been set up. And the only way to remedy them is by changing or reforming those structures, which requires, yes, political action. This isn’t a substitute for individual conversion, but a necessary complement.

  • “In the struggle between ‘labor’ and ‘capital,’ capital has basically won.”

    I haven’t blogged about the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” (and other) protests, but I did want to share a couple of recent pieces that I found helpful for putting them in context.

    Using a plethora of charts, this post at Business Insider lays out about as clearly as you could ask the problems with how our economic system is currently functioning. Or more accurately, how it’s failing to function for many, if not most, of the people in the country.

    The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation’s history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.

    In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between “labor” and “capital,” there has rarely—if ever—been a time when “capital” was so clearly winning.

    Read the whole thing, as they say.

    On a related note, here’s economist and author of The End of Poverty Jeffrey Sachs making a similar argument: “Occupy Wall Street and the Demand for Economic Justice.”

    There’s been a bit of hand-wringing among respectable liberals over the fact that the Occupy Wall Street protesters include–horrors!–anarchists, socialists, and other radicals who’d rather scrap American capitalism than reform it. But every protest movement has had its share of radicals–the anti-war and civil rights movements certainly did. And at its best, American radicalism has had a creative and fermenting effect on American liberalism. Radicalism without liberalism may stray into utopianism, but liberalism without radicalism is apt to become a complacent defender of the status quo.

  • The God of Israel and the King Jesus gospel

    Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed (the book and the blog) has a new book out called The King Jesus Gospel, which purports to recover the “original good news.” What does this mean? I haven’t read the book, but on his blog, McKnight says that the way we typically think about the gospel–as a scheme for individual salvation–is unfaithful to the witness of the New Testament. He calls this the “soterian” gospel. But the gospel as presented in the earliest preaching of the church is a “story gospel”:

    The soterian gospel and the apostolic gospel are framed differently; the soterian gospel frames everything by elements by elements in the doctrine of salvation. The apostolic gospel frames the gospel as Israel’s Story coming to fulfillment in Jesus as King (Messiah) and Lord who saves. Hence, one frames things as the plan for personal salvation; the other frames things as a Story come to its completion/fulfillment in Jesus who saves.

    The soterian gospel says that Jesus is fundamentally about how individuals “get right with God.” By contrast, the story gospel (which McKnight maintains is the original, apostolic gospel) is a more communal-corporate story about God’s plans for creation and how they’re fulfilled through the story of Israel; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and the calling of the church as a corporate body to witness to God’s kingdom.

    What strikes me here is the similarity between what McKnight is trying to do and R. Kendall Soulen’s reconstruction of the Bible’s “canonical narrative” in The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Like McKnight, Soulen is trying to re-frame the gospel as a story about God’s program of blessing-in-difference for all creation–a story in which individual sin and redemption play a subordinate role. And both shift emphasis from a supposedly “universal” scheme of human sinfulness and the need for redemption to the particular history of God’s covenant with creation and specifically with the people Israel as the means through which God’s purposes are realized. I’d be interested to see if there are further parallels or if McKnight is explicitly influenced by Soulen’s work here.

  • Mastodon, “Emerald”

    A cover of the Thin Lizzy classic.

  • God of Israel and Christian Theology: Wrap up

    Soulen is, in my view, largely persuasive in recasting of the scriptual meta-narrative as one of blessing and consummation, wherein sin and redemption plays a subordinate, though still important, role. Further, I think he’s right to avoid a certain kind of “Christocentric” reading of the Bible. If the churches are serious about overcoming supersessionism, then something like Soulen’s project seems to be necessary. He has demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that supersessionism isn’t simply an appendage that can easily be lopped off the main body of Christian tradition, but is more like a structural flaw in the foundation of the mainstream theological tradition. Of course, I’d already been largely convinced of that by Clark Williamson and Rosemary Radford Ruether. Soulen’s perspective also seems consistent with other recent trends in theology that have tried to emphasize God’s work as consummator of all creation and only secondarily God’s redemptive work. (I’m thinking of eco-theologies and some feminist theology.)

    Supersessionist readings of the Bible are deeply entrenched in the church, though, even among those who consciously reject supersessionism. It will take a good bit of detailed exegetical work, I think, to flesh this alternative narrative out and make it compelling. For instance, it requires a virtual paradigm shift in how churches have historically, and in many cases still do, read Paul on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. (Although, if I’m not mistaken, some of themes of the “new perspective” on Paul seem like they might provide support to this kind of project.)

    More challengingly, perhaps, I wonder whether Soulen’s proposed reading of the canon is consistent with the church’s christological and trinitarian dogmas, at least as those have been classicly expressed. Does the canonical narrative as Soulen has presented it demand a “high” Christology in the way that the traditional sin-redemption schema seemed to? I gather that this may be addressed in his new book, but I think it presents a potentially thorny issue for any Christian theology that seeks to be “post-supersessionist.” In what sense is Jesus unique and uniquely indispensable to God’s economy of blessing? Can Christians affirm Jesus’ unique role in God’s plan of consummation-salvation without, implicitly at least, courting supersessionism and exclusivism?

    This brings me to another point. I wonder if the theme of mutual blessing-in-difference is portrayed too one-sidedly here? Although Soulen emphasizes that the blessing between Israel and the nations is mutual, his narrative assigns the Gentiles to a distinctly secondary role, religiously speaking. They seem to be little more than second-hand beneficiaries of God’s revelation to and covenant with Israel. But if God really creates for mutual blessing, might gentile religious wisdom not also contribute to the faith of Israel? In fact, historically we know that wisdom from Greek and other cultures was assimilated into biblical religion. This opens the possibility of a greater appreciation of broader religious pluralism. (I’m thinking along the lines proposed by Marjorie Suchocki.) An appreciation of pluralism need not entail a naively “universalist” standpoint but can be rooted in an affirmation of particularity.

    As far as church practice goes, it’s hard to imagine what a church that was open to Jews as Jews would look like in the 21st century. Even granting that most Jews will continue to decline the Christian invitation to join the church, how would church life be affected if we took seriously Soulen’s contention that Jews could (should?) continue to observe the tenets of Judaism as members of the church? There are “messianic” Jews who to do this, but this seems like something that would make most mainline churches deeply uncomfortable. And should churches require continued Torah-observance of prospective Jewish members or simply permit it? What would that look like? How might such a “mixed” congregation be reflected in worship? The concept of a truly mixed Gentile-Jewish congregation raises a host of interesting and potentially difficult issues, I think.

    All that notwithstanding, Soulen has written a fascinating and important book. Hopefully more Christians will start to grapple with these issues.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far

    Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

    “There is neither Jew nor Greek…”

  • Somerset Maugham’s list of the 10 greatest novels

    The great 20th-century English novelist W. Somerset Maugham was once asked by an American magazine publisher to make a list of the ten greatest novels in the world. Maugham reluctantly agreed, recognizing that any such list was bound to be somewhat arbitrary. Eventually, he wrote a set of prefaces for the ten books, to be included in a series of abridged classics. An expanded version of the prefaces–which provide biographical sketches of the authors and Maugham’s discussion of what makes each book great–was eventually published as a book titled The Art of Fiction: An Introduction to Ten Novels and their Authors (1955).

    Here’s Maugham’s list:

    Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

    Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

    Stendhal, The Red and the Black

    Balzac, Le Père Goriot

    Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

    Flaubert, Madame Bovary

    Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

    Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

    Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

    Tolstoy, War and Peace

    Of these, I’ve only read Melville and Dostoevsky, but it looks like a pretty solid list. I’m currently reading Maugham’s chapter on Moby-Dick.

  • “There is neither Jew nor Greek…”

    Soulen’s interpretation of the gospel within the entire canonical framework allows him to characterize the life of Christian discipleship as cruciform–without negating the OT’s very this-worldly promises of blessing. “Jesus…frees his disciples to live in such a way that the blessing of others knows no bounds” (p. 167). This is consistent with the divine economy of blessing-in-difference, but in a world afflicted by sin, this lifestyle will inevitably invite suffering.

    Following Bonhoeffer, Soulen argues that the Christian doesn’t court suffering for its own sake. Rather, suffering is endured for the sake of the economy of mutual blessing. “The cross does not supersede the economy of mutual blessing; it establishes the outermost point of God’s fidelity to it on behalf of the estranged other” (p. 168). This is a healthy corrective to the sometimes morbid fixation on suffering as somehow meritorious in itself that characterizes some strains of Christian spirituality. God wants to deliver God’s creation from suffering, sickness, hatred, estrangement, and death. Moreover, Soulen says, the cross is not about “the denial or destruction of Israel’s national privilege” but is the means by which “God preserves the economy of mutual blessing through suffering love, to which Jew and Greek alike are called to be conformed” (p. 168).

    Following this, Soulen turns to the nature of the Christian community. The church is “the table fellowship of Jews and Gentiles that prays in Jesus’ name for the coming of the God of Israel’s reign” (p. 169). Soulen goes on to argue that the fellowship of the church “confirms rather than annuls the difference and mutual dependence of Israel and the nations” (p. 168). Rather than seeing itself as a “spiritual” fellowship that transcends “carnal” differences such as that between Jew and Gentile, the church should be “a table fellowship of those who are–and remain–different” (p. 168). He maintains that the distinction between Jew and Gentile is not erased, but realized in a new way, in the church. “What the church rejects is not the difference of Jew and Gentile, male and female, but rather the idea that these differences essentially entail curse, opposition, and antithesis” (p. 170). The church is the “social embodiment of the doctrine of justification”–the reconciliation between peoples. He notes that this view of the church is underwritten by the decision at the so-called Council of Jerusalem recorded in the Book of Acts. It was decided that gentile Christians were not bound to observe Torah, but that Jewish followers of Jesus would continue to observe it. “Hence obedience to Jesus is possible from either of two vantage points” (pp. 170-171).

    Further, the church must be mindful of its status as a provisional fellowship that anticipates God’s reign–it is not that reign itself. This is exhibited in part by the empirical fact that the church is overwhelmingly Gentile and that most Jews have declined the invitation to become part of the church’s fellowship. The church must simultaneously remember that it is a fellowship open to Jews and Gentile but also that gentile Christians do not have a mission to convert non-Christian Jews. This is a fine line to walk, but the church shouldn’t seek simplistic solutions as it lives in between the times.

    Finally, Soulen argues that Christians have no warrant for thinking that Jews will convert en masse to Christianity in some sort of end-times scenario, as is sometimes imagined. Citing Paul’s discussion of Israel’s destiny in Romans, he says that only a “trans-ecclesiological” free action of God will determine the final status of each person. The fate of the Jews is not mediated by the Church, but is rooted in God’s irrevocable promises.

    Summarizing, Soulen writes

    The unity of the Christian canon is not best unlocked by insisting that everything in the Bible points toward Jesus Christ. Such a construal of the canon’s unity systematically disregards Bonhoeffer’s admonition not to speak that last word before the last but one. What results practically is a Christian theology that is triumphalist in its posture toward Jews and latently gnostic in its grasp of God’s purposes for the earth and its history. More helpful for discerning the unity of the canon is the recognition that the Scriptures [OT] and the Apostolic Witness [NT] are both centrally concerned with the God of Israel and the God of Israel’s coming reign of shalom. (p. 175)

    I’ll save my own thoughts and questions for a subsequent post.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far

    Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

  • Jesus and the gospel of God’s coming reign

    I’ve been sick for the past week or so, which hasn’t left much extra energy for blogging. But I want to get back to (and hopefully wrap up!) my series on R. Kendall Soulen’s The God of Israel and Christian Theology.

    Previously, we’ve seen that Soulen tries to re-cast the biblical narrative as one of blessing-within-difference. In creation and in the covenant with Israel, God’s will for creation is a differentiation of existence which leads to mutual blessing precisely through that difference.

    So how does the gospel about Jesus fit in to all this? Soulen notes that the gospel is meant to be news–good news–but news about what? His answer: it tells us something about God’s coming reign. “News about God’s coming reign is good or bad depending on the outcome of God’s work as the Consummator of creation (p. 157).” The fact of evil suggests that this outcome is not assured–that God’s intentions for creation could be severely hampered, or even undone altogether. Will the outcome be one of blessing or one of curse? Or perhaps blessing for some and curse for others?

    The good news then is God’s “present answer to the eschatological question of whether God’s work as Consummator will prove ultimately victorious on behalf of all creation over the powers that destroy (p. 158).” Faith in the gospel of Jesus is ultimately faith in “the ultimate victory of blessing over curse,” a faith that is manifested in “cruciform discipleship” (p. 158).

    In his life and ministry, Jesus bears witness to a certain understanding of what God’s coming reign will look like. He “trusted God’s reign to consummate the economy of mutual blessing that God had initiated long ago through God’s promises to Abraham and Sarah” (p. 160) but also that this consummation would include the nations. Secondly, he trusted that God’s reign would consummate creation “in a manner that reclaimed, redeemed, and restored the lost” (p. 161). In short, God’s reign will be marked by reconciliation for mutual blessing, not a zero-sum victory of one group over another. Jesus’ displays a trust in the ultimate victory of mutual blessing, even in the face of the forces of “curse, violence, and enmity” (p. 162). Hence his commands to bless and pray for one’s enemies, which give a cruciform shape to the life of discipleship.

    In following this path ultimately to the cross, Jesus “became wholly identified with the lost whose cause he advocated,” but in the resurrection, God “vindicates the economy of mutual blessing over against all the destructive powers of sin, curse, separation, and death” (p. 164). This throws a new light on the cross, which we can now see as his point of “utmost solidarity with the lost” for the sake of “the whole house of Israel and for the whole earthly economy of difference and mutual dependence” (p. 164). The resurrection appearances are marked by reconciliation, feasting, and sending, and the risen Christ becomes a source of “power among the living until the day of the Lord’s return (p. 165).”

    So, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has provided a “victorious guarantee” of God’s “end-time fidelity to the work of consummation.”

    The gospel proclaims Jesus as victorious because through the resurrection God vindicates Jesus’ trust in the triumph of blessing over curse, life over death, communion over isolation. At the same time, the gospel proclaims Jesus as guarantee because while everything about Jesus pertains to God’s eschatological reign, Jesus himself is not that reign in its fullness. (p. 165)

    Jesus, then, is a foretaste, a prolepsis, of God’s coming reign. He is the down payment or promissory note that shows that the end will indeed be one of blessing, not curse. He is the sign that God’s program of universal blessing through the calling of Israel will be a reality:

    If Jesus is the proleptic enactment of God’s eschatological fidelity to the work of consummation, then Jesus is by this very fact the carnal embodiment of God’s end-time fidelity toward Israel and toward Israel’s future as the place of unsurpassable blessing for Israel, for the nations, and for all creation. By its very nature, then, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead anticipates a future event whose character as victorious fidelity can no longer be in doubt. That event is God’s intervention on behalf of all Israel in keeping with God’s promises, such that God’s final act of covenant faithfulness toward Israel redounds not only to the blessing of Israel but also to the blessing of the nations and all of creation. (p. 166)

    In the next post I’ll look at some of the implications Soulen draws from this for the life of discipleship and the shape of the church.

    Previous posts:

    Redemption for the sake of blessing

    Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    Supersessionism and the “deep grammar” of Christian theology

    Supersessionism and the flight from history

    Blessing and difference

    The story so far