Finished:
Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity
Jay McDaniel and Charles Pinches (ed.), Good News For Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being
Michael Ramsey, God, Christ and the World
Started:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Started but moved to the back burner:
Bill McKibben, Eaarth
John Haught, God After Darwin
To start:
Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal
Harvey Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
Added to the pile:
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
…the question of whether there is a point or purpose to the universe is not answered simply be reference to evidence for or against a designer. Purpose is a much wider notion than design, and it can live much more comfortably with chance, disorder, and the abyss of cosmic time than can the all too simple notion of design. Thus, it is not fruitful for a theology after Darwin to counter the sense of nature’s apparent absurdity simply by cataloging more and more apparent evidence of design.
–John Haught, God After Darwin (p. 106)
From Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ, and the World (p. 85):
So the righteousness of Jesus is the righteousness of a Godward relationship of trust, dependence, receptivity. It is a terribly hard kind of righteousness. It is sometimes hard because it involves the calls of sacrifice and self-renunciation which Jesus gives. But it is more often hard because of the shattering generosity of God, demanding an utterly childlike receptivity. To receive like a little child an unmerited gift and to be humbled in the receiving time and time again: such is the righteousness of the kingdom. It follows that in Christian ethics humility has a continuing place which throughout history secular forms of ethics find very hard to understand. It also follows that St Paul’s teaching about justification by faith, the doctrine of being right with God on the basis of God’s own gift, is in a true line with the ethics of Jesus.
There have been a couple of articles recently on the “slow reading” movement, one in Newsweek and one in the Guardain. Actually, “movement” may be a bit strong; it seems to be more of an impulse, or a reaction against our 24-7 ultra-connected, multitasking, information-saturated lives. (Where “we” are a relatively small minority of affluent elites, just to be clear.)
Slow reading is just what is sounds like: taking your time, really engaging with a text, not skimming or snacking on bits and pieces of information. The concerns of the slow reading movement echo those of technology writer Nicholas Carr, who in an Atlantic Monthly article from 2008 worried that Google was making us stupid. That is, re-wiring our neural circuitry to make it harder for us to pay sustained attention to a piece of writing, or an argument, or narrative. (Carr followed up his article with a book called The Shallows that has gotten a lot of attention.)
I think most of us probably sense that there’s something to this. I know that when I’m reading something online the urge to follow a link or open a new tab is almost irresistible. Rarely do I read anything of substantial length online from start to finish they way I might when reading, say, a long magazine article or a novel. It does seem to require more effort to pay attention.
If this is right, it has implications beyond reading. The ability to pay attention–to attend to some person, or thing that exists apart from (but also in relation to) us–plays a large role in the moral and spiritual life. The philosopher-novelist Iris Murdoch argued that the moral life begins in the ability to appreciate something–a part of nature, a body of knowledge, a person–for its own sake, independent of any benefit it may have for us. In other words, to pay attention. Buddhism teaches that the path to liberation is learning to pay attention to reality without the distortions imposed upon it by the chattering of our minds. Christian prayer involves paying intentional attention to God–the ultimate context of Being. So, if our minds are rendered incapable of sustaining that kind of focus (and, to be fair, not everyone agrees this is happening), what happens to us as moral and spiritual agents?
One of the chapters of God, Christ and the World is a critical appreciation of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann. (The earlier quote on demythologization was taken from the same chapter.)
Bultmann’s project of demythologization was tied to his desire to unearth the essential message – the kerygma – of Christian faith. He reinterpreted the language of the New Testament so that it could be seen to be about effecting a transformation of human existence. In part, this was because he believed that modern science excluded the possibility of divine action in the field of nature; divine action has to do, at least so far as we can know, exclusively with God’s relation to humanity. Drawing on Heidegger’s existentialism, Bultmann interpreted the symbols of the Bible as making it possible for us to move from inauthentic to authentic existence. It is not Jesus the man who provides a pattern for us to emulate, or the Atonement and Resurrection as cosmic events that make possible forgiveness and new life, but the proclamation of the possibility of authentic existence, realized in Christ.
Here Ramsey questions whether Bultmann’s “existentialist” interpretation of Christianity is adequate:
…while the existential element in the New Testament has, as we saw, an important place, so that an existential theology today is able to recapture it, there is also an ontological element in the New Testament as utterly essential for New Testament Christianity. In the experience of salvation existentialism may seem to suffice, for the Saviour is definable as ‘what he means to me’. But in the experience of worship the Christian was and is concerned with One who is. The worshipper forgets his own being and experiences in the adoration of One who is, and the ‘isness’ of deity is there, behind and before, now and for ever. The ‘isness’ of deity–prominent in the Old Testament–is reaffirmed when it is revealed that Jesus shares in it. St John shows that the glory of Jesus which men encountered in his life and death is the glory of deity in eternity. Is it that an exclusively Protestant view of Christianity as the religion of the Word, which misses the deep emphasis of Catholic Christianity upon adoration, causes Bultmann to suppose that an existentialist concept can convey the whole meaning of Christianity? Ontology, ‘isness’, ‘being’ is ineradicable from the Christianity of the New Testament. (pp. 56-7)
In retrospect, what seems to me most dated about existentialism–and existentialist interpretations of Christianity–is its excessive anthropocentrism. At the time, existentialism seemed like it offered an end run around the “scientific” worldview that seemed to preclude divine action in the world and to deny the possibility of human freedom. But the price paid was to erect a wall between humanity and nature which later thought has shown to be untenable. The human-divine encounter occurred only in the depths of the self and its transition from “inauthentic” to “authentic” existence. There was no room left for divine revelation through nature, or for the idea that nature might have its own inherent value or meaning. This dovetails to some extent with Ramsey’s concern that “existentialist” Christiantiy talks about God only as the power of salvation for human beings; this risks turning into an instrumentalist view of God and the death of true worship. A better cosmology and theology would allow that 1. human beings are fundamentally part of nature, 2. that God is revealed through all parts of the created order, and 3. that God’s purposes encompass more than human salvation.
See here for a summary of Bultmann’s thought.
More from Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ and the World (p. 78):
The Resurrection is something which ‘happened’ a few days after the death of Jesus. The apostles became convinced that Jesus was alive and that God had raised him to life. It is not historically scientific to say only that the apostles came to realize the divine meaning of the Crucifixion for them or that the person of Jesus now became contagious to them. Something happened so as to vindicate for them the meaning of the Cross, and to make the person of Jesus contagious to them. The evidence for a stupendous happening, which the New Testament writers mention, was the survival of the Church, the appearances of Jesus in a visible and audible impact on the apostles, and the discovery that the tomb was empty. The several elements in this threefold evidence no doubt had different degrees of evidential weight for different people, and they have such varying degrees still. As to significance, if it were the existential encounter of Jesus which alone mattered, then the empty tomb would have little or no significance. If, however, Jesus has a cosmic meaning with cosmic effects then the empty tomb has great significance, akin to the significance of the Incarnation itself.
From Ramsey’s* God, Christ, and the World (pp. 48-49):
Demythologizing was taking place in the apostolic age. In the teaching of Jesus there were pictures of a future coming of the Son of Man on the clouds and of the establishment of a divine kingdom described in vivid apocalyptic imagery with the details of a final judgment. In some of the sayings of Jesus these things were to happen within the lifetime of the disciples. But was it possible to expect things to happen on the scene of history just like that? Or were there underlying realities which the imagery conveyed to people in a certain setting of thought and culture in Palestine and which other imagery would have to convey to people in another setting of thought and culture? The teaching of the Fourth Gospel about the return of Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and about the realization of eternal life and divine judgment by the Christian in the here and now, may fairly be called a ‘demythologizing’ of the earlier imagery. Again, the spatial imagery of a local heaven to which Jesus was exalted at the Ascension was seen to convey realities altogether beyond space–the sovereignty and omnipresence of Jesus. It would be quite untrue to say that a single mythological frame dominated the thinking and teaching of the apostolic age. The records contain varieties of myth and varieties of demythologizing at work. Factual records, myths, demythologizing propositions and sometimes–as in the Apocalypse–‘remythologizing’ processes all had their part in the apostolic thinking, teaching and writing about Jesus Christ.
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*Ramsey was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, serving from 1961 to 1974. See here for more.
I have several books going now, and I always feel guilty if I don’t finish a book I’ve started. But I also have a bad habit of borrowing books from the library before I’ve finished other books I’ve started (or buying books at used bookstores, or from online vendors…).
Anyway, here are the books I hope to finish (or at least start!) by the end of summer:
Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity
Jay McDaniel and Charles Pinches (ed.), Good News For Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being
Michael Ramsey, God, Christ and the World
Bill McKibben, Eaarth
John Haught, God After Darwin
Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal
Harvey Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
And…casting its vast shadow over all of these, I’ve decided, inspired by Philip Hoare’s The Whale, to take a long-delayed crack at Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. I read it–or parts of it and superficially at least–when I was in college, but I want re-read it, really taking my time with it. They say that 20-year-olds aren’t really ready for Moby-Dick anyway. I imagine that’ll take me well into autumn (if not beyond!).
Maybe to keep myself honest I’ll update this post as I finish books on the list.
UPDATED July 19, 2010: Borg, McDaniel/Pinches, and Ramsey finished.
Marcus Borg made his name as a scholar (and popularizer) of the “historical Jesus,” so it’s not surprising that his chapter on Jesus has some rich material. (His book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is well worth reading, though hardly the last word on the topic.)
One common way to talk about the relationship between Jesus as a historical figure and as the object of the church’s confession has been to talk about the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.” Borg prefers to talk about the “pre-Easter” and “post-Easter” Jesus.
The pre-Easter Jesus is the man of Nazareth who lived, preached, healed, and taught in 1st-century Palestine; the post-Easter Jesus is Jesus as he has been experienced by Christians for the last 2,000 years–as the one who mediates the presence and Spirit of God.
Borg says–and here I have a hard time disagreeing with him–that the church’s Christology has tended to obscure the humanity of Jesus. This is despite the fact that in its creedal confessions the church affirms his true humanity along with his true divinity.
The problem, Borg argues, is that our picture of Jesus has been over-formed by a particular theological narrative: Jesus is the Son of God who came down from heaven, chiefly to die for our sins so that we could “go to heaven” after we die. When this is taken to be the sum, or at least the essence, of the gospel, the man Jesus and the life he actually lived tend to recede from view.
Part of the reason this happens, he says, is that we have over-literalized our Christological metaphors, particularly “Son of God.”
But “Son of God” is a metaphor like the rest [e.g., lamb, door, light, word, wisdom]. It affirms that Jesus’ relationship to God is intimate, like that of child to parent. To echo language from John’s gospel: the son knows the father, and the father knows the son, and son is the father’s beloved. This relational understanding of “son of God” is found in the Jewish world of Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, Israel is called son of God, as are the kings of Israel and Judah. Closer to the time of Jesus, Jewish mystics who were healers were sometimes referred to as God’s son. And “son” resonates with agency as well; in his world, a son could represent a father and speak with the authority of the father. To call Jesus “Son of God” means all of this. (pp. 87-88)
In essence, says Borg,
Jesus is, for us as Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life. As the Word and Wisdom and Spirit of God become flesh, his life incarnates the character of God, indeed, the passion of God. (p. 88)
So, what kind of life was that? What kind of man was Jesus? Borg sketches a portrait based on his work, which naturally will be at least somewhat contentious. In brief outline, Jesus was
– a Jewish mystic,
– a healer,
– a teacher of wisdom,
– a social prophet, and
– an initiator of a movement.
Most contentious in Borg’s portrait of Jesus is that he denies that Jesus thought of himself in any conscious way as “the Messiah.” I also wonder how essential the “Jewish” part of “Jewish mystic” is for Borg–is it an accidental feature, or does it condition Jesus’ mysticism in an essential way?
The larger point Borg wants to make, though, is that in over-emphasizing Jesus’ divinity–seeing him as a kind of Clark Kent figure who is really Superman underneath his disguise–we lose sight of what a remarkable man he actually was. In traditional language, his experience of God, his acts of healing, his teaching, and his passion for social justice–those things that captivated (or alarmed) his contemporaries–are properties of his humanity.
It has to be said that Borg has a “lower” Christology than a lot of us are comfortable with. But–this chapter helped clarify for me the value of his work. I see him as providing an entry point into the Christian tradition for people who can’t currently (and may never) accept all the metaphysical baggage associated with the creeds and confessions of the church (at least as articulated by a lot of theology). And, speaking personally, that includes me, at least part of the time.
After all, what more do we really want to require to be a Christian than to confess that Jesus is the revelation of God and to commit (in the same stumbling and halting way that we all do) to following him? I’ll give Borg the last word:
I do not think the church’s extravagant devotion to Jesus is a mistake, for the purpose of the church, of Christology, of the creed is to point us to Jesus. And then Jesus says, “It’s not about me.” He points beyond himself to God–to God’s character and passion. This is the meaning of our christological language and our creedal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God, the heart of God. He is both metaphor and sacrament of God. (pp. 98-99)
In chapter 4, “God: The Heart of Reality,” Borg continues his now tried-and-true approach of contrasting aspects of the earlier paradigm and the emerging paradigm. Here he discusses the nature and character of God.
Borg calls the earlier paradigm’s concept of God supernatural theism. This concept identifies God as a transcendent, personal being who created the universe and may occassionally intervene within it to engineer certain outcomes.
By contrast, the emergent paradigm embraces panentheism, a notion that has received a fair bit of attention in contemporary theology, from such diverse quarters as Jurgen Moltmann, thinkers associated with the science-and-religion dialogue, and process theology. In supposed contrast to supernatural theism, panentheism emphasizes the “closeness” of God to the created world (pan + en + theos = “all things in God”).
According to Borg, supernatural theism sees God as “out there,” as fundamentally separate from the world, which largely operates according to its own laws and nature. For God to have any influence on the world, God must “intervene” by “breaking” those laws. It also, he says, has contributed to an ecologically desctructive view of the natural world by minimizing the presence of God in the world.
Panentheism, on the other hand, emphasizes the immanence of God. God is the “encompassing Spirit… the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’” (p. 70). God is thus not absent from creation, but includes it, even while transcending it. Borrowing a phrase from Lutheran theology, God is “in, with, and under” creation, or a “presence beneath and within our everyday lives” (p. 67). Borg says that instead of using the language of “intervention,” panentheism uses terms like “divine intentionality” or “divine interactivity” to describe God’s relation with the world (see p. 67).
A critic of Borg might well say that his description of supernatural theism is a straw man. For instance, what proponent of traditional theism has actually denied the immanence (or omnipresence) of God? Relatedly, it’s not clear to me that panentheism solves all the alleged problems of classical theism, at least not without a great deal more fleshing out than Borg gives it here–and it may introduce new ones of its own. Nevertheless, with the popularity of the slot-machine God of “prosperity” preaching and the all-determining deity of neo-Calvinism, fresh thinking about God and God’s relationship to creation is definitely needed.
A Thinking Reed 