Books – Page 13 – A Thinking Reed

Friday links

– The new(ish) blog Women in Theology has been quite active lately, with recent posts on John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas garnering a lot of discussion.

– Scu at Critical Animal writes on books that have changed the way he thinks. And here’s the post that inspired his post.

– Jeremy recently had a good post on what it means when you pray for healing that doesn’t happen. And here’s the post that inspired his post.

– Russell points to this interesting post from Peter Levine, offering a “civic republican” quasi-defense of President Obama’s approach to politics. Russell follows up with some thoughts of his own on localism and communitarianism.

– A post on Lutherans and the “new perspective” on Paul.

– Nick Kristof: in comparing the U.S. to banana republics, I may have been unfair…to banana republics.

– Post-marriage America?

– Gateways to Geekery: The DC animated universe (I loved the ’90s Batman cartoons).

November 19, 2010

The great refusal: against the theology of glory

I recently started reading Douglas John Hall’s The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World, which is an application of the “theology of the cross” (see previous post) to the main topics of Christian theology. Hall begins with an introductory chapter that tries to identify just what the theology of the cross–as understood by Luther and others–is.

Hall proposes to do this by means of the via negativa–the theology of the cross can be understood in light of what it rejects. This is the “theology of glory.” Hall identifies the theology of glory with the triumphalist attitude characteristic of Christendom (i.e., the established status–both formal and informal–that Christian churches have enjoyed for much of Western history).

He defines triumphalism as “the tendency in all strongly held worldviews, whether religious or secular, to present themselves as full and complete accounts of reality” (p. 17). It leads to a sense of certainty and of having mastered reality by apprehending it through a neatly delineated conceptual prism. In theological terms, it translates into the belief that we have a complete and accurate theological system that limns the nature of God and provides a ready-made answer to every question. Because of the closed nature of such a system, doubt and outside perspectives need not be entertained (or, in extremis, even tolerated).

The theologia gloriae confuses and distorts because it presents divine revelation in a straightforward, undialectical, and authoritarian manner that silences argument, silences doubt–silences, therefore, real humanity. It overwhelms the human with its brilliance, its incontestability, its certitude. Yet just in this it confuses and distorts because God’s object in the divine self-manifestation is precisely not to overwhelm but to befriend. (p. 20)

In contrast, Luther’s theology of the cross takes the fragility of humanity with the utmost seriousness:

Though he was trained in the humanist tradition, as were Phillip Melanchthon, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin, [Luther] manifests a human and worldly orientation that is at least as profound as the humanists. I would even argue that it is more profound than most humanism, because it is grounded not in a vain boast of human potentiality but in a deep sympathy with human weakness and wretchedness….(p. 21)

“Because for Luther,” Hall continues, “human existence is a frail and uncertain business, divinity for him is not first of all sovereign omnipotence (as it was for Calvin) but astonishing compassion” (p. 22). God’s self-revelation is preeminently “in, with, and under” (to borrow terms Lutherans often apply to the Eucharist) human weakness and suffering. And God’s glory, in the perspective of the theology of the cross, is to effect the well-being and flourishing of God’s creatures. This is in sharp contrast to the triumphalism of Christendom, which tried to justify the claims of Christianity in terms of worldly power and glory.

Because of its dialectical nature, the theology of the cross is “anti-ideological.” That is, it is opposed to all closed intellectual schemes that try to fit reality into a set of a priori categories instead of facing it–with all its attendant evil and suffering–squarely. Theology must be submitted to the test of experience in that doctrine should not force us to lie about life. (Think, for example, of many popular theodicies.)

It is easy enough to devise theories in which everything has been “finished”–all sins forgiven, all evils banished, death itself victoriously overcome. But to believe such theories one has to pay a high price: the price of substituting credulity for faith, doctrine for truth, ideology for thought. (p. 29)

Hall concludes this chapter by proposing that we can understand the three classic theological virtues as each negating an aspect of the theology of glory. We walk by faith (not sight, that is certitude or straightforward knowledge), we hope for God’s final victory (but do not now experience that consummation in its fullness, either in our personal lives or in the world at large), and we love God, others, and creation (rather than exercising a dominating form of power).

The cross is the ongoing sign that God does not conquer through force majeure, but attracts through love and works to renew creation through participation in the world’s suffering. The theology of the cross calls disciples of Jesus “to follow the crucified God into the heart of the world’s darkness, into the very kingdom of death, and to look for the light that shines in the darkness, the life that is given beyond the baptismal brush with death–and only there” (p. 33).

November 16, 2010

Second thoughts on John Dominic Crossan

I had put J. D. Crossan in a kind of mental “bad liberal” box and so had mostly avoided reading him. (By which I mean I thought of him as someone whose project was strictly one of “debunking” traditional Christian claims.) But then I read Crossan and Marcus Borg’s The First Paul and liked it a lot! Oh no! Maybe Crossan’s not so bad after all! In retrospect, I think I have been overly influenced by L. T. Johnson’s The Real Jesus, which casts aspersions on the theological usefulness of “historical Jesus” research generally. I think Johnson makes some good points, but I think historical Jesus research has more relevance to faith than he allows. Which makes me wonder if there are other Crossan books I should read. Has anyone read his big historical Jesus book? Any thoughts?

November 9, 2010

Companions on the way

I meant to link earlier to Jeremy’s helpful post on Elizabeth Johnson’s book on the saints, Friends of God and Prophets. Johnson argues for a reformed, “companion” model of the communion of saints, as contrasted with the more traditional “patronage” model.

According to Johnson (per Jeremy’s summary; I haven’t read the book), just this kind of change was set in motion by Vatican II, bringing the Catholic understanding more in line with the critique made by the Reformation. Of course, whatever the Reformers’ revised understanding of the communion of the saints, actual practice in most Protestant churches has probably been to neglect the idea altogether. (Although, I do think that for a lot of Protestants, Old Testament figures actually function in a way similar to the saints.) In any event, Jeremy’s post made me want to read the book, which I think I’ll try and get from the library.

November 3, 2010

A better hope

In continuing to circle around the question of eschatology and look at it from different angles, I went back to Clark Williamson’s Way of Blessing, Way of Life. I wrote a short post on his eschatology here, but I thought it might be worth looking at it more in-depth. This is partly because I think Williamson avoids some of the pitfalls that Borg (et al.) fall into.

Williamson begins his chapter by noting that, according to Jewish theology, there are two topics for eschatology:

1. “The Day of the Messiah” – This refers to “that future state of this world when God’s intent with God’s creatures shall have been realized, when redemption shall have been accomplished” (p. 297). In short, a this-worldly utopia characterized by perfect justice in which the needs of all are met.

2. “The world to come” – This refers to “our ultimate resurrected life in God beyond history” (p. 297).

For Williamson, the key to an adequate eschatology is to hold on to both of these poles.

In his teaching and ministry, Williamson says, Jesus exhibited a tension between the soon-to-come and the already-present basileia (kingdom or rule) of God. God’s rule entails blessings (for the poor, etc.) and has as its ethical corollary “an inclusive, egalitarian movement that featured free healing, free hospitality, free and open eating, and free welcome to the stranger” (p. 301).

The trouble that Christian theology ran into is that with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, this promise of the kingdom remained largely a future promise. The early Christians (some of them, at least) expected Jesus to return soon to usher in the Day of the Messiah. However, as the second coming continued to be delayed, the tendency of the church was to downplay or deny any this-worldly element to eschatology and push it off the historical stage entirely (to a heavenly realm after death and/or a “last judgment” at the end of history).

Williamson contends that Christianity needs to recover the this-worldly element of its eschatology, which is intimately connected to Christology. “We may never properly separate claims about Jesus Christ from talk of that future redemption that remains to be accomplished” (p. 304). Christ is a foretaste of God’s reign, but there is more of it to be realized in this world; it’s not something simply postponed until after death.

Nevertheless, a number of contemporary theologians have fallen into the opposite error of confining salvation to liberation from this-worldly oppression. Williamson suggests that this may be in part because modern people find it more difficult to make sense of ultimate salvation than our forbears. But he offers three reasons why this isn’t a viable path:

– If salvation is for this world only, then we have to say that all those who died before the promised utopia is created are not saved. “All those who die without being liberated are not saved, but damned” (p. 311).

– Salvation thought of in strictly this-worldly terms is likely never to be realized because “on any realistic assessment of human history, we will never arrive at a utopian state of total liberation” (p. 311).

– When salvation is detached from an ultimate hope beyond history, our efforts at pursuing justice are likely to meet with burnout and frustration.

Thus any adequate eschatology can be characterized in this “two-poled” fashion:

Political eschatology – This means trying “to make incremental gains in justice, reconciliation, equality, liberty, and sustainability” (p. 312). Part of the mission of the church is to be a model community that can demonstrate the possibilities for greater justice and liberation in its corporate life.

Ultimate salvation – This refers to our ultimate destiny with and in God. Williamson warns against over-literalizing symbolic language (heaven, hell, judgment, etc.) Instead, we should recognize that statements about our ultimate destiny are, in the final analysis, “statements about God and God’s love for us” (p. 311). They are existential-theological affirmations based on “radical trust” that God’s loving grace will have the last word.

Eternal life is the gift of the God who is eternal, and hence the only One who can bestow such a gift on mortal creatures. (p. 316)

Williamson concludes with a suggestion that salvation will be universal in scope. The alternatives, he says, deny the freely given grace of God because they are either based on a works-reward scheme of some sort or because they make God’s grace capricious and arbitrary, as in some schemes of double predestination.

What I like about Williamson’s position is that it includes much of what I find valuable in, say, Borg and Crossan’s thinking. For them, Jesus’ mission and message was about creating an inclusive, egalitarian community under God that posed an alternative to Caesar’s imperial rule by violence and coercion. Thus, Jesus shouldn’t be seen as a strictly other-worldly figure who wasn’t interested in justice in this world. Williamson affirms all this. But he goes further and points out that this-worldly liberation isn’t enough and that ultimate salvation is something that can be given only by God.

November 1, 2010

Salt on Melville

Henry S. Salt, who I believe I mentioned in a recent post, was a 19th-century humanitarian reformer involved in causes ranging from socialism to pacifism to animal rights. Salt wrote a number of books, including books on social reform, animal rights, and vegetarianism, as well as studies of Thoreau and Shelley. (When Gandhi was living in England, it was Salt’s Plea for Vegetarianism that provided him with an ethical foundation for his vegetarianism, which he had previously been sticking to because of a promise he’d made to his mother.)

I recently ordered a used copy of Salt’s book Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress, and in searching for a little more information on him I came across this article he wrote on Herman Melville, published in the Scottish Art Review in 1889. Interestingly, Salt seems to consider Typee, Melville’s earliest novel, to be his best, though he does have some positive things to say about Moby-Dick.

October 29, 2010

Whose Jesus? Which eschatology?

(With apologies to Alasdair MacIntyre.)

I’m still reading Marcus Borg’s Jesus. In the scholarly arena, Borg is probably best known as a proponent of the “non-eschatological” or “non-apocalyptic” Jesus, and he addresses this controversy in chapter 9 of this book.

In Jesus, Borg offers a refinement of terminology. Instead of “non-eschatological” or “non-apocalyptic,” he now prefers to talk about “imminent eschatology” versus “participatory eschatology.”

Imminent eschatology refers to the perspective–pioneered by Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer in the 20th century and long considered orthodoxy in Jesus studies–that Jesus’ central message was one of apocalyptic expectation. That is, he believed that God was about to act decisively to usher in the Kingdom in its fullness by means of a supernatural intervention (with Jesus himself as, in some sense, God’s instrument). The unavoidable implication of this view is that Jesus was wrong, since the Kingdom manifestly didn’t appear in 33 A.D.

Borg, in contrast, argues for participatory eschatology. That is, the Kingdom is what the world would look like if God’s will really had its way–the poor would be fed, the naked would be clothed, nation would no longer war against nation, and people’s hearts would be centered on God.

[The Kingdom] is God’s dream, God’s passion, God’s will, God’s promise, God’s intention for the earth. God’s utopia–the blessed place, the ideal state of affairs. (p. 252)

In Borg’s view, for Jesus the Kingdom was something that people were to participate in here and now by turning to God and being converted to the ways of compassion and resistance to injustice–ways that are at odds with much of the conventional wisdom of the world. “Participatory eschatology…means that Jesus called people to respond and participate in the coming of the kingdom” (p. 259). Applying the categories of Calvinist-Arminian debate, we might say that Borg’s view is a synergistic one, as opposed to the monergistic one of the apocalyptic school. Borg sees the Kingdom as a reality that is, in some sense, already present and which we are invited to participate in.

Borg’s main argument for this position has both a negative and a positive aspect:

– First, he doubts that the more apocalyptic statements attributed to Jesus actually go back to him; instead he thinks it more likely that they refer to the early church’s expectation of Jesus’ second coming–expectations that were stoked by the Resurrection.

– Second, he argues that a participatory eschatology makes better sense of a larger swath of the gospel material; specifically, much of what Borg characterizes as Jesus’ “wisdom teaching” seems irrelevant if he thought the end was imminent.

Obviously I’m in no position to judge the details of the historical argument–which Borg only summarizes in any event. However, I do wonder if there is a religious reason for preferring one view over the other.

On the one hand, many Christians would be uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus was mistaken about the coming of the Kingdom–particularly if it was as central to his vision and mission as the proponents of imminent eschatology would have it. Orthodoxy can live with a fallible Jesus (he is fully human, after all), but can it live with a Jesus who fundamentally missed the boat with regard to the central theme of his ministry?

On the other hand, a view like Borg’s implies–at least to the extent that the early church entertained apocalyptic expectations–that the early Christian community was mistaken about what Jesus meant. This implication can maybe be softened a bit by arguing (as Borg does) that it was the Resurrection experiences that created, or at least intensified, this expectation (not unreasonably if the general resurrection was associated with “end-times” thinking in Judaism). Nevertheless, there is a potentially embarassing Jesus-versus-the-church conclusion looming at the end of this train of thought.

I guess to the extent that we think the “historical Jesus” is important for the life of faith–and not all Christians are agreed about this–Borg’s Jesus and his participatory eschatology seems to have the greater relevance. However, I’m also left less than fully satisfied by his sketch of eschatology. While he insists that it is God’s dream for the earth that human beings participate in or collaborate with, he doesn’t seem to leave much room for God’s action outside of human effort. In particular, the Kingdom of God has usually been taken to entail not just a perfectly just society, but a transformed created order where not only injustice, but suffering, sickness, and death are no more. Can Borg’s participatory model make sense of this?

UPDATE: This post seems relevant.

October 29, 2010

Faith and factuality revisited

When I was reading Marcus Borg’s Heart of Christianity, I expressed some dissatisfaction with his treatment of the Bible. I felt like he wasn’t clear enough about the relationship between the meaning of the text and the question of its historical truth.

Recently I picked up Borg’s newer book on Jesus, and I’m happier with his treatment of the issue there. Maybe this is because he’s focusing on the gospels rather than talking about the Bible in general, which allows him to be more specific and concrete.

Borg makes it clear that the gospels contain memory–that is, remembered events, words, etc. in the career of Jesus–but that these are typically overlaid or interpreted with a particular meaning. For example, Mark’s account of Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem isn’t just about Jesus going to Jerusalem; it’s also about the path of following Jesus.

Moreover, Borg says, there are other stories in the gospels that are probably sheer metaphorical narrative (Borg uses “metaphor” broadly to mean the more-than-factual meaning of a text) whose purpose is to comment on the significance of Jesus. Examples include, in Borg’s judgment, the wedding at Cana and the story of Jesus walking on the water. They also include the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, which Borg shows (convincingly, to me) provide a kind of “counter-imperial” theology that contrasts the claims made on behalf of Jesus with those made on behalf of the Roman emperor. (This is also a major theme in Borg and Crossan’s book on Paul.)

Borg’s point is this: whatever we say about the factuality of some of these stories, we can always (and should always) go on to ask about their meaning. The meaning is the testimony or witness of the early Christians to the significance of who Jesus was (and is).

I take it that the upshot of this view is that there is a historical “core” to the gospels, and this matters: if Jesus never lived, or wasn’t, broadly, the kind of person portrayed in the gospels, then Christianity would be based on a mistake. However, the meaning of historical events isn’t something that can simply be “read off” them. The New Testament is primarily about the meaning or significance of what theologians sometimes call the “Christ-event” (i.e., the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus). If we insist that the most important question about any particular story is “Did this really happen?” we often lose sight of the meaning the story is meant to convey.

October 23, 2010

The thorn in the flesh and the “weakness gospel”

I’m reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s book The First Paul, and it’s really good so far. I may have more to blog about the overall themes later, but for now I just wanted to note one interesting tidbit.

There has been a lot of speculation about the “thorn in the flesh” that Paul said afflicted him and from which he prayed to God to be delivered (unsuccessfully). (See 2 Corinthians, 12:7-10.) I’ve seen theories as to what exactly this was ranging from epilepsy to homosexuality.

Borg and Crossan speculate–and they’re clear that this is conjecture–that Paul may have been afflicted by bouts of malaria. First, they point out that Tarsus, Paul’s hometown, had an environment conducive to malaria:

Think for a moment…about that Cilician plain locked between the mountains and the sea. Think of its rich fertility and agricultural prosperity fed by three rivers that annually drained the melting snows of the Taurus range. Despite the best Roman drainage engineering, that environment also meant marshes, mosquitoes, and malaria. (The First Paul, p. 62)

Second, they suggest that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” refers to the same “physical infirmity” Paul mentions in his letter to the Galatians when he writes that “You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you; though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 4:13-15)

They propose that a chronic malaria fever, which would be associated with, in the words of Pauline scholar William Mitchell Ramsay, “very distressing and prostrating paroxysms” wherein “the suffering can only lie and feel himself a shaking and helpless weakling” (quoted on p. 64). If this is what Paul was experiencing when he was among the Galatians, we can see how it might’ve “put [them] to the test.”

Krister Stendahl, in Paul among Jews and Gentiles, has some interesting things to say about Paul’s “infirmity” and his theology of weakness. This humbling weakness, Stendahl argues, would have, in the ancient world, looked like evidence against the truth of Paul’s gospel, since salvation was closely associated with supernatural healing and immortality. However, for Paul, this “weakness” reflected the truth that God’s power is revealed in weakness:

[Paul] finds his weakness one of those things which makes him one with the Lord, and which makes his ministry a true ministry of Jesus Christ who was crucified in weakness…. In this weakness, the power of Christ’s resurrection spreads through the missionary message to the church and manifests itself. Paul’s sickness is a little–and perhaps not so little–Golgotha, a Calvary of his own. (Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 44)

Stendahl goes on to argue that, for Paul, this gospel of weakness resonates with what Luther called the theology of the cross–an anti-triumphalist message. “The theology of the cross,” Stendahl writes, “the theology of weakness, is really part and parcel of Paul’s deepest religious experience in a ministry related to his own weakness” (p. 47).