A Thinking Reed

Author: Lee M.

  • Universalism

    I have to say this is something that I’ve never really felt the need to have a position on. Taking an definitive stance on either side (i.e. positively affirming that everyone will be saved or that not everyone will be saved) seems underdetermined by the evidence.

    There are more or less plausible theological arguments one can make, of course, such as “A God of love would not allow anyone to be consigned to hell” or “God won’t force anyone to love him,” etc. But none of them seem really convincing to me. The New Testament seems ambiguous on the matter. There are definitely universalist sounding passages in Paul’s letters, but, on the other hand, Jesus certainly talks about Hell as a real possibility. (Ironically, this is a place where the stereotype of mean old Paul versus easygoing Jesus seems to cut in the other direction!)

    I like what Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde said about universalism, and think it applies to anti-universalism as well. He called it “an attempt to tie God’s hands with an abstraction.” He thought that abstract arguments about something called “universalism” actually distract us from the concrete proclmation of the Gospel to specific people, which is what the church should be about. God doesn’t save people in general, he saves them through particular acts – baptism, the preaching of the word, etc. The church is the place where those acts happen and its job is to perform them, not propound theories about whether or not God is obliged to save everyone. But we also aren’t privy to how God may deal with people outside of the work the church has been entrusted with.

  • Ward on creationism and ID

    VI favorite Keith Ward has an article in The Tablet (registration req’d) on intelligent design and creationism (via). He distinguishes between belief that the universe was designed in the sense that all theists accept, namely that its existence and structure is the result of a purposive intelligence, and the narrower sense promoted by Intelligent Design theorists who point to specific features of the physical world which, they contend, cannot be the result of a natural process and require some kind of supernatural intervention to explain their existence.

    He also makes a good point about the bloody-minded literalism that can’t accept a creation account couched in mythic and poetic terms and the grandeur of the vision of the universe provided by modern cosmology, and laments the demise of a religious imagination which can’t see the words of the Bible as anything but purported accounts of physical fact. This same kind of literal-mindedness, I might add, seems to afflict many atheists who, once they discover a few contradictions in the Bible, think its value and truth have been decisively discredited.

  • Against Iran panic 2

    Good column from Fareed Zakaria.

  • Brunner on the Atonement

    Sorry for the dearth of posting around here lately; things have been pretty busy. Among other things, I’m starting a new job this week, so I can’t promise the same level of scintillating content that VI readers are used to. We’ll have to see how things go.

    However, this weekend I had the chance to read Reformed theologian Douglas John Hall’s Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of “Neo-Orthodoxy” (which I picked up for a song at the very excellent Massachusetts Bible Society bookstore in downtown Boston). Hall argues that North American Protestantism hasn’t really learned the lessons of neo-orthodoxy and instead remains caught between a shallow liberalism and an untenable fundamentalism.

    Each chapter profiles one of the major theologians of the movement. In particular, Hall commends the work of Emil Brunner, who today is perhaps best known as Barth’s sparring partner, but who was an important theologian in his own right. Brunner’s approach to revelation seems particularly promising. Unfortunately, according to Amazon, most of his books don’t seem to be in print.

    Doing a little research on Brunner I came across an excerpt from his little book Our Faith. Brunner gives a very concise, but in my opinion very good, account of the meaning of Christ’s cross:

    God will not wink at evil. He takes our guilt seriously. Even for Him it is nothing inconsiderable. He cannot and will not tear up the “manuscript.” He could no doubt do so, but for our sakes He will not. For we should then take guilt too lightly, and God desires to show us that what is written on the manuscript is correct. He will even carry out the judgment. But……over all stands His forgiving father love.

    He will not destroy the manuscript that testifies against us, but He will destroy its power by a higher power. He has “nailed it to the cross” that we might see both our guilt and His even greater mercy; the earnestness of His holy will and the even greater earnestness of His fatherly love. That is the message of Jesus Christ, the Mediator.

    Suppose a farmhand set fire to his master’s barn. The man is liable for the damages with all that he has. The master could take everything the servant has — shoes, clothing, money, and say, “All of this is only a small part of what my servant really owes me. And now let the scoundrel get out of my sight!” But the master does nothing of the sort, takes nothing away. He rather says to his faithless servant, “I will take everything upon myself; I will pay everything.” And then the servant opens his eyes in amazement; for he sees what a good master he has.

    God dealt with us in this way through Jesus Christ. He has taken everything upon Himself; He has Himself borne the curse of sin that we should have carried. Jesus went to the cross, because man could not have endured the presence of God. In permitting himself to be crucified Jesus both brought God nearer, and himself showed man more clearly his distance from God. The manuscript that testifies against us, is there displayed, legible to all, our death sentence. And at the same time it is destroyed, God loves you in spite of all. God’s son had to go through this shambles really to come near to us. All this was necessary that we men might see God and ourselves, God in His love, and ourselves in our godlessness. Apart from the cross on Golgotha we should know neither our condition nor the boundlessness of God’s love. God and man can there be seen together — human misery and perdition, and God’s presence and ineffable love. Jesus reveals both us and God on the Cross. And by that act he accomplishes the greatest thing possible: he brings man back again to God.

    He accomplishes “the atonement through his blood.” As a mother follows her lost child in all its misery, filth and shame, so, too, God in Jesus Christ came into our condition to be wholly with us. Thus Jesus, the crucified, is the promised “God with us” or “Immanuel” and Golgotha the one place in all the world where we may behold the mystery of divine Love. Who — we? I will say it more correctly — you, if you permit God to tell you by name that this was done because you need it, and because God loves you.


  • Against Iran panic

    A good analysis and collection of links from Matthew Yglesias.

    What I find so astounding is that many of the very same people who argued that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our security and that we must invade immediately are now arguing with straight faces that Iran … poses an imminent threat to our security and we must invade immediately! Forgive me if I seem a bit skeptical.

  • Why I’m rooting for the Democrats this fall

    This article argues that conservative evangelicals are unlikely to desert the GOP because of the hostility of the Democrats toward religious believers:

    The Democratic party elites cheer when regulators force Catholic charities to fund things the church considers immoral. They vote to curtail the freedom of conscience of pro-life pharmacists. They filibuster judicial appointees who do not hold to the interpretation of Ted Kennedy, senator, of the constitution-as-rubber-stamp for liberal causes. Worse, they compare religious rightists to Muslim terrorists (“Christianists”) and warn that we have entered a new Dark Age. Garry Wills, the popular historian, called the 2004 election the end of the Enlightenment on American soil, and meant it.

    The good folks who make up the religious right may not love the Republican party, but they know a threat when they see one. The modern Democratic party is hostile to their very existence. An embarrassment for the Deanified Democrats in the November mid-term elections would be a victory not for theocracy, but for enlightened self-interest.

    I think this is right to a ceratin extent. I wrote quite a bit about the great liberal flip out in the aftermath of the 2004 election (see the November and December 2004 archives if you’re interested). And yet, while I certainly have my differences with the Democratic Party, I think there are good reasons to hope for Democrats to make gains this fall.

    One problem is that so many people vote based on what the parties say they’re going to do or, even worse, what the voter thinks the parties would really like to do in their heart of hearts if they got the chance. What’s needed instead is a sense of what the parties will actually be able to do in office given the political constraints they face.

    For me, a vote for Democrats this fall (and possibly in 2008) would be, more than anything else, a vote for a check on the policies of the Bush Administration. The last six years have shown us what this administration will choose to do when virtually unconstrained by Congress. “Preventitive” war, highly questionable detainee policies, domestic spying of dubious constitutional provenance, and a more statist and authoritarian policy generally have been the result. In 2006 we’re talking at most about the Democrats increasing their ability to act as some kind of check on the administration, not the ability to implement some alleged secular humanist dream platform.

    Apparently, though, many conservative Christian supporters of the Bush Administration don’t share my evaluation of its policies, which is fair enough. But, if we’re going to appeal to “enlightened self-interest” maybe they should consider that, sooner or later, the Democrats are bound to regain power. And if they are as implacably hostile to faith as they’re made out to be, would you, as a conservative Christian, want them to be wielding the expansive powers that have been claimed by the Bush administration?

  • Can the center hold?

    Slate has an interesting article about the faltering of Conservative Judaism. As neither ultra-conservative like the Orthodox, nor ultra-liberal like the Reform branch, Conservative Judaism has, according to this piece, had a hard time negotiating the tensions between tradition and modernity from a principled position:

    Take the issue of the ordination of gay rabbis. It’s a no-brainer for Reform Jews, who allow it because they place precedence on personal choice above biblical mandates, and for the Orthodox, who bar it because they believe that the Torah strictly prohibits gay sex. But for Conservatives, it’s a crisis, because the movement lacks a clear theology to navigate between the poles of tradition and change, even as the gap between them becomes ever wider. As a result, the decision to admit openly gay rabbinical students to JTS [New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary] has been bitterly contested, tabled, avoided, and fought over for the last half-dozen or so years. [Outgoing chancellor Ismar] Schorsch has said in previous interviews that advocates for the ordination of gay rabbis are bending and manipulating Halakha rather than looking at it honestly. His despair over this issue surely motivated some of the ferocity of his speech.

    But Conservative Judaism has never adequately explained how its rabbis or congregants should decide which aspects of modern times are worth adjusting the law to, and which aren’t. The decision in 1972 to ordain women rabbis at JTS wasn’t advocated by the institutions’ Talmudic scholars but by a committee of lay people. They made many strong moral and ethical arguments for ordaining women, but they couldn’t ground their stance coherently in Jewish law.

    Still earlier, in 1961, the Conservative movement issued a ruling permitting driving on Shabbat—but only to synagogue. Orthodox Jews, by contrast, observe the prohibition against driving and build their neighborhoods around their synagogues and each other’s homes. There is something powerful about this decision: The foundation of the community is a countercultural value that requires some sacrifice in the name of a higher purpose. While it might be possible to read Jewish law to permit driving on Shabbat or ordaining a woman rabbi, both of those choices seem motivated by a reluctant acquiescence to the demands of the time rather than by a deep and reverent reading of the texts. Orthodox Jews also change the law—you won’t find any of them following the Torah’s injunction to forgive all loans every seven years, or to stone a rebellious child—but they do so in a way that has internal coherence.

    Though there are obvious differences, this strikes me as the same kind of dilemma that Christians of what could broadly be called “the center” are facing. A more liberal revisionist brand of Christianity sees no problem throwing over much of the tradition if it seems to serve the cause of inclusion, justice, or compassion. Meanwhile, traditionalists reject innovations like women’s ordination and birth control (much less the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of noncelibate gay people) on the grounds of continuity with and fidelity to the tradition. Christians of the center, meanwhile, have difficulty providing a satisfying and principled account of why they accept some innovations and reject others (for instance, retaining traditional language for God, a high Christology, and doctrine of Scripture’s inspiration while affirming women’s ordination or other “revisionist” moral positions). They can end up looking unprincipled and lukewarm to both their liberal and traditionalist coreligionists.

    The article concludes:

    Liberal denominations of any faith tend to make a religion out of tolerance and humanistic values. But this misses some of the point of faith. There is a sweetness, intensity, and pleasure that comes from religious practice that isn’t wholly rational.

    Earlier in this century, the common wisdom was that Orthodox Judaism would die out in America, outmoded and irrelevant. Instead, it’s the American Jewish center that’s eroding. Conservative Judaism, once the most popular Jewish denomination in the United States, has recently taken second place to the more clearheaded Reform movement. About 33 percent of American Jews affiliate with Conservative Judaism, down from 38 percent 10 years ago. And interestingly, as the Reform movement swells, to a lesser degree, so do the numbers of Orthodox. And as sociologist Samuel Heilman shows in his recent book, Sliding to the Right, the form of Orthodoxy that’s on the rise is the more extremist and isolationist sort—the congregations and movements that are deliberately at odds with American norms.

    The project of looking squarely at the demands of our time and Jewish texts is both true to Jewish tradition and badly needed at this particular historical moment, and I wish it didn’t seem to be faltering. People of all faiths who are trying to hold the middle ground need to get up a little more “nerve,” as Schorsch put it—some oomph, confidence, joyfulness. Although I don’t think he said it in the right way or at the right time, I hope some of Schorsch’s zeal makes it way to staid suburban synagogues.

  • Threat assessment

    Andrew Bacevich has a slightly different version of his “Islamic Way of War” article in the newest American Conservative. This merits being highlighted:

    What are the implications of this new Islamic Way of War? While substantial, they fall well short of being apocalyptic. As Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has correctly—if perhaps a trifle defensively—observed, “Our enemy knows they cannot defeat us in battle.” Neither the Muslim world nor certainly the Arab world poses what some like to refer to as “an existential threat” to the United States. Despite overheated claims that the so-called Islamic fascists pose a danger greater than Hitler ever did, the United States is not going to be overrun, even should the forces of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi insurgents, and Shi’ite militias along with Syria and Iran all combine into a unified anti-Crusader coalition. Although Israelis for historical reasons are inclined to believe otherwise, the proximate threat to Israel itself is only marginally greater. Although neither Israel nor the United States can guarantee its citizens “perfect security”—what nation can?—both enjoy ample capabilities for self-defense.

    What the Islamic Way of War does mean to both Israel and to the United States is this: the Arabs now possess—and know that they possess—the capacity to deny us victory, especially in any altercation that occurs on their own turf and among their own people. To put it another way, neither Israel nor the United States today possesses anything like the military muscle needed to impose its will on the various governments, nation-states, factions, and political movements that comprise our list of enemies. For politicians in Jerusalem or Washington to persist in pretending otherwise is the sheerest folly.

    It’s time for Americans to recognize that the enterprise that some neoconservatives refer to as World War IV is unwinnable in a strictly military sense. Indeed, it’s past time to re-examine the post-Cold War assumption that military power provides the preferred antidote to any and all complaints that we have with the world beyond our borders.

    In the Middle East and more broadly in our relations with the Islamic world, we face difficult and dangerous problems, more than a few of them problems to which we ourselves have contributed. Those problems will become more daunting still, for us and for Israel, should a nation like Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons. But as events in Iraq and now in southern Lebanon make clear, reliance on the sword alone will not provide a solution to those problems. We must be strong and we must be vigilant. But we also need to be smart, and getting smart means ending our infatuation with war and rediscovering the possibilities of politics.

    The mid-20th century anti-war journalist Garret Garrett once referred to American foreign policy as a “complex of fear and vaunting.” That is, alternately cowering in fear of a supposedly omnipotent foe and blustering about our own power to kick his ass. I think we’ve seen a fair amount of this in the last five years. You see this in the occassional call for desperate and extreme measures – also known as war crimes – as the only way to forestall the imminent victory of the “Islamofascists.” Only if the enemy is on the verge of wiping us out would such measures seem at all reasonable to most people. So the rhetoric describing the threat posed is ratcheted up to “existential.” A more sober evaluation of the threat, on the other hand, would demand a far differnt set of responses.

  • A shameful confession

    I can’t recite the Nicene Creed from memory. At our Lutheran church in Philly we usually recited the Apostle’s Creed and I pretty much have that down (praying the Rosary helps with this too). But the liturgy at the church we’ve been attending in Boston uses the Nicene Creed and I always have to refer to the Prayer Book to get it right.

    This week’s project: memorize the Nicene Creed!

  • Sunday notes on Monday

    We subscribe to the Sunday Boston Globe since it’s the only day we really have time to read the paper. I used to read the Philadelphia Inquirer every morning when we lived there, but a longer commute here in Boston means that’s not really an option.

    Anyway, there were several items in yesterday’s paper I found noteworthy:

    A story about ex-Red Guardsmen in China trying to come to terms with things they did during the Cultural Revolution.

    A piece on government support for – and suppression of – artistic expression in Venezuela. From the sounds of this article Chavez may be interested in a cultural revolution of his own. As a general rule I distrust any leader who feels the need to put giant pictures of his mug all over the country.

    Andrew Bacevich argues that the conventional military superiority the West has relied on to impress its will on the Middle East is being outflanked by the “Islamist way of war.” He offers a five-point alternative to the current strategy.

    And finally, an interview with British philosopher A.C. Grayling, who’s written recently on the morality of the Allied bombing campaigns during World War II.