A Thinking Reed

Category: Interfaith

  • Out in Africa

    Philip Jenkins, who arguably knows as much about Christianity in the global south as any “Northerner,” has an article on the African churches’ controversies over homosexuality at the New Republic (may require subscription to read).

    Jenkins argues that it’s misleading to see the intensity of the conflict over this as merely an extension of debates that have taken place in the West. Traditional denominations in Africa living in a context of competition with upstart Pentecostalism and with Islam have a strong incentive to toe a morally conservative line. Jenkins recounts a story from the late 19th century where Christian courtiers rejected the pederastic advances of the king of Buganda, who had come under the influence of Arab slave-trades, and were martyred for it:

    That foundation story remains well-known in the region, and it intertwines Christianity with resistance to tyranny and Muslim imperialism–both symbolized by sexual deviance. Reinforcing such memories are more recent experiences with Muslim tyrants, such as Idi Amin, whose victims included the head of his country’s Anglican Church. For many Africans, then, sexual unorthodoxy has implications that are at once un-Christian, anti-national, and oppressive.

    The conservative stance can also be a way of burnishing African Christians’ anti-Western and anti-colonialist credentials, “making clear to their own members and their Muslim neighbors that they are not puppets of the West. Moral conservatism thus serves to assert cultural independence–a link that requires sexual immorality to be portrayed as a Euro-American import.”

    Of course, that doesn’t make it the right position, and Jenkins is quick to point out that there are more liberal elements on the continent, particularly in South Africa, where the ANC is not likely to be seen as toadying to the West. There is a plurality of voices there, not to mention in the rest of the Global South, and it is by no means confined to places like South Africa (“arguably one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world.”):

    But South Africa is not the only place where gay-rights movements have gained a foothold. An Anglican group called Changing Attitude claims supporters in both Nigeria and Uganda, and the director of its Nigerian chapter, Davis Mac-Iyalla, has earned some notoriety as a liberal foil to Akinola. Some years ago, when Namibia’s then- president declared homosexuality a “behavioral disorder which is alien to African culture,” activists responded by creating a fairly overt gay-rights movement, the Rainbow Project.

    Jenkins’ conclusion is that Westerners should resist the temptation of seeing the African churches’ positions through the lens of our own controversies. Just as liberals have sometimes been prone to romanticize the “Third World,” conservatives have of late tended to see Africa as a bastion of “traditional values” holding out against the decadent West. But Jenkins advises caution: “gays in Africa face very real barriers to acceptance. And we do them no favors by viewing Africa’s culture war over homosexuality as a mere extension of the battle we are witnessing here in the United States, rather than as a fight which raises questions unique to African history and politics.”

    One might criticize Jenkins here for lapsing into a kind of moral relativism. He does tend to talk as though the churches in many parts Africa simply have no choice but to go along with the anti-gay line. This would presumably be of small comfort to gay people on the receiving end of some of the more punitive policies supported by some African churchmen. Still, I think it’s helpful to see both the plurality and the particularity of the situation, rather than as another manifestation of some kind of global “culture war.”

    UPDATE: Here’s a transcript (via The Topmost Apple) of a presentation by Jenkins on this topic with questions from a bunch of journalistic big-shots (Ken Woodward, E.J. Dionne, Jon Wilson of Books & Culture, etc.); a lot of fascinating discussion ensues.

  • September reading notes

    Well, okay, the month isn’t over yet, but it sure is flying.

    Earlier I mentioned I was still working on Monbiot’s Heat. Well, I still am. Just haven’t been in the mood to read it. ‘Nuff said.

    Finished Jame’s Alison’s Raising Abel. I stand by my earlier claim that, while Alison has some absolutely brilliant insights, I don’t think his Girardian analysis does justice to the entirety of the biblical witness. I also feel like he has an allergy to metaphysics and is forced to account for everything Christ does for us in sheerly psychological terms, which seems reductionistic to me.

    Picked up a copy of Gerhard Forde’s Justification by Faith – A Matter of Death and Life for a quarter at a church yard sale. This is vintage Forde – pithy, direct and committed above all to the Reformation insight of justification by faith. Forde stresses the language of death and resurrection as a necessary complement to the more forensic “legal” language we often use to talk about justification. I also read Carl Braaten’s Justification: The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls wherein Braaten makes a surprisingly (to me, anyway) robust defense of justification by faith alone. I say surprisingly because of what appeared to me to be his move to a more “catholic” position in recent years. Taken together these two books provide a good picture of what commitment to the principles of the Reformation can look like in the contemporary theological and ecumenical scene.

    Right now I’m working on Reza Aslan’s No god but God, which is both a history of Islam and an argument for a more pluralistic understanding of Islam. Extremely informative and well-written, though at times one does get the feeling that Aslan is whitewashing a bit. He essentially shrugs off Muhammad’s military conquests with “that’s the way things were done then” and gives a rather idyllic picture of Christian and Jewish minorities under Islamic rule. Still, a very interesting book and I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes with his argument for why Islamic militants have Islam wrong.

  • Superiority complex

    Time blogger Joe Klein has produced a couple of posts purporting to identify the characteristics of “right-wing extremists” and “left-wing extremists.” LWEs hate America, capitalism, mom and apple pie, while RWEs think America and capitalism are never in the wrong, that universal health care equals socialism, etc. Determining to what extent these stereotypes match up with actual people who hold power and influence I leave as an exercise for the reader.

    However, another one of Klein’s marks of a RWE is that he or she “believes that there are inferior religions.” By this standard, virtually everyone in the world is a RWE. For instance, is there anyone, even atheists, agnostics, or whoever, who doesn’t believe there is more truth in Buddhism or Christianity than, say, Scientology? Maybe there are some who profess to believe that all religions are bunk through and through and that there is no meaningful differences between them, but this must be a rare breed.

    It’s also puzzling to claim that it’s a sign of “extremism” to hold that one’s beliefs are true and that the denials of those beliefs are false. While I’m certainly sympathetic to the view that the world’s great religions have more in common than is immediately apparent, it would seem rash to conclude a priori that there are no meaningful differences in the claims they make about reality. If a particular Buddhist denies that ultimate reality can be meaningfully described as a personal being, doesn’t she ipso facto disagree with her Christian friend who affirms this very thing? And isn’t she committed to the view that, in that respect at least, he religion is “superior” to her friend’s?

    Note that this is a different issue from whether one should respect the beliefs of others. I happen to take the view that a variety of positions about the nature of reality and human beings’ relation to it can be rationally held. That doesn’t mean they can all be true; where there are genuine incompatibilities, at most one can be right. But our epistemic situation appears to be such that we can’t publicly demonstrate the manifest superiority of a single view in a way that will convince all reasonable people. We can and should acknowledge the fact that reasonable people of good will and deep moral sensibility can come to conclusions different from ours. But none of that changes the fact that to believe x is to deny not-x, and that if I believe x, then I hold that to believe x is superior to believing not-x (since, other things being equal, it’s better to believe truth than falsehood).

    It’s interesting, and perhaps significant, that people apply standards to religious belief that they apply in virtually no other area. Take politics. Like religion it involves longstanding disagreements that are resistant to any lasting solution. And hopefully most of us would acknowledge that there are people who don’t share our political beliefs who are nevertheless just as thoughtful, morally sensitive, well-informed, etc. as we are (moreso in many cases!). And yet, recognizing that in no way commits us to being relativists about politics, does it? Does recognizing that there are smart and decent people who disagree with me about abortion, or the minimum wage, or single-payer health care or whatever mean that I would be wrong – and even extremist! – to hold that my views are “superior” to theirs? If I didn’t regard them as superior in what sense would they even by my views?

    True tolerance, it seems to me, doesn’t mean denying that we disagree about things. It means recognizing disagreement and finding ways to respect each other and live together anyway.

  • Pluralism and the work of Christ: 2

    In this post I suggested that there is a connection between one’s view of the work of Christ and one’s view of religious pluralism. My hypothesis was that holding a strongly “objectivist” view of Christ’s work tends to go with either an exclusivist or inclusivist position on other religions, while a more “subjectivist” account fit better with pluralist views.

    Thinking about it a little more, though, I think that might’ve been a bit simplistic. This is partly because it’s hard to cleanly categorize Atonement theories as either “objective” or “subjective.” Every account of the work of Christ has a “dipolar” character so to speak. There is the act on God’s part to effect Atonement and there is the response or appropriation of that work by human beings. It’s hard to see how an Atonement to which no one responded would in fact be atonement, or reconciliation at all. But no one denies that the initiative in reconciliation comes from God’s side. As Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes put it in the title of his book on the Atonement, it involves both a past event and a present salvation.

    Moreover, so-called subjectivist theories do create a “new situation” at least insofar as they understand the cross as the definitive revelation of God’s love and also of the horrors of human sin. This revelation makes possible reconciliation between God and humanity because the revelation of God’s love and its outpouring are taken to be two aspects of the same event. Part of the difference between objectivist and subjectivist theories is that they differ over who needs to be reconciled to whom. Is the problem that God needs to be reconciled to us, or needs to reconcile his justice with his mercy? Or is the problem that we have made ourselves God’s enemies and need to be reconciled to him? If the former, then Atonement will focus on payment, reparation, substitution and other related concepts. If the latter, then the focus will be on how God wins us back through the pouring out of his love and the revelation of our own self-centeredness. But “subjectivist” theories don’t deny the need for a new situation to be established in order to make reconciliation possible.

    However one comes down on this issue, I think both share equally in the view that reconciliation comes from God’s side. It’s not about the human ascent to divine truth by means of our own religious and/or ethical striving. Rather, God descends to us in order to restore the relationship broken by sin.

    Certain “hard pluralist” views, by contrast, which see all religions as the fruit of human spiritual experience, have a hard time coming to terms with a special action coming from the divine side in order to set the world to rights. Often the divine is viewed as almost inert, as a kind of ineffable sea of transcendence, which is more or less adequately limmed by the various beliefs and rituals of the world’s religions. Whatever can be said for this view, it seems to be at considerable variance from the living, dynamic God of the Bible, the “hound of heaven” who relentlessly seeks to win his faithless people back. The more important distinction, then, may be between a view which holds that the divine reveals itself to us, versus the view that we acquire saving knowledge of the divine by our own efforts.

    Even this distinction probably isn’t as hard and fast as it seems, though. For even our own best efforts to seek enlightenment can be seen as the fruits of prevenient grace. And a pluralist could accomodate the notion that the divine is active in seeking fellowship with us and still hold to a plurality of revelations. God may have many avenues by which he is seeking to reconcile the world to himself.

    So, I’m not sure how much ground we’ve really gained here. I’ve reconsidered the idea that a particular account of the Atonement will necessarily push one in a particular direction on the question of other religions. I then proposed a distinction between the idea that salvation is something initiated by God and one that holds salvation to be the fruit of human striving, but it seems that both views can be accomodated by exclusivists, inclusivists, and pluralists alike.

    Another thought, maybe to be taken up in another post: maybe it’s not so much differences over accounts of Christ’s work that are important, but over his person.

  • Pluralism and the work of Christ

    Any discussion of religious diversity and salvation (see last post) ultimately has to come to terms with what salvation means. It’s pointless to debate how people “get saved” if we don’t know what people are supposed to be saved from (or for).

    Following custom, I’ll distinguish between exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist views on religious diversity:

    Exclusivist: There is one correct religion, and in order to be saved, one must adhere to it.

    Inclusivist: There is one correct religion, but adherents to all religions can potentially be saved.

    Pluralist: There is no one correct religion; all religions (or sometimes all “higher” religions) are paths which can lead to salvation.

    (There is also a variation of pluralism which holds that “salvation” actually means different things in different religions, so they aren’t actually competing in providing the true path to salvation, but I’m going to ignore this option for the purposes of this post. In part that’s because I think it ultimately reduces to one of the other three options.)

    In Christian terms then, both the exclusivist and inclusivist hold that God in Jesus has accomplished something definitive for our salvation, where “salvation” means something like deliverance from sin and its consequences and communion with God which comes to ultimate fruition in the Beatific Vision along with the saints in heaven. How Jesus accomplishes this is, of course, a matter of great debate in the history of Christendom. But I think all traditional theories of the Atonement agree that there is an objective change in the situation of humans vis-a-vis God due to the life, passion, and resurrection of Jesus. The difference between the exclusivist and the inclusivist, then, is that the former holds that one must come into some conscious relationship with this event (in this present life) in order to be saved, whereas the inclusivist (or one kind of inclusivist) believes that it’s not necessary to be consciously aware of the work of Christ to benefit from it. As C.S. Lewis put it, to say that only Jesus saves doesn’t necessarily entail that only those who know him are saved by him.

    Contrast this with the view that says that Jesus simply reveals the nature of God, but doesn’t necessarily bring about some new state of affairs in the divine-human relationship. The God revealed by Jesus is what God has always been like: merciful, just, compassionate, etc., and the problem is that humans don’t sufficiently realize this. But, at least in theory, they could come to the same knowledge by routes other than the life and teachings of Jesus. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc. can come to a correct view on the benevolent nature of Ultimate Reality without believing in, or even being aware of Jesus. Salvation is the realization of the truth about the Divine along with the corresponding changes in one’s life from being self-centered to being “reality-centered” as the pluralist theologian John Hick likes to put it.

    This view can be given either an inclusivist or pluralist spin. An inclusivist can hold that the divine nature is best, or most clearly revealed, in Jesus while still holding that other religions can contain saving knowledge of the divine. The pluralist, meanwhile, can say that this knowledge is (at least potentially) equally present in all faiths, and whether any particular person finds that knowledge in a given religious tradition will depend on circumstances (such as their own upbringing, temparment, etc.).

    It’s worth pointing out, I think, that theologians who have a more subjective account of the Atonement also tend to lean more toward inclusivist or pluralist positions, whereas objectivist theories of the Atonement correlate with exclusivism and certain forms of inclusivism. And getting clear on religious diversity requires, I think, getting clear on what we think the work of Christ is and what it accomplishes.

  • Bishop Hanson on the salvation of non-Christians

    This is interesting: an ELCA blogger wrote to Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson about his take on Episcopal Presiding Bishop Schori’s controversial (at least in the hothouse of the blogosphere) remarks on the salvation of non-Christians (via I Am a Christian Too). And Bp. Hanson actually wrote back.

    Bishop Hanson’s reply is very sensible – you can read it here – and he expresses himself with a certain forthrightness and clarity that seem to have been lacking in some of Bp. Shori’s comments.

    But then again, Lutherans have always been better at theology than Episcopalians. 😉

  • Jesus and Judaism revisited

    Jason Byassee of the Christian Century has taken issue with the comments offered by several bloggers (including your scribe, in a previous incarnation) on this article by Professor Amy-Jill Levine, which sharply criticized the Christian church for “divorcing Jesus from Judaism” (via Marvin).

    Mr. Byassee is certainly right to oppose “shear[ing] Jesus of his Jewishness,” which he accuses us blogospheric malcontents of wanting to do. Of course, I’m equally sure that neither the Lutheran Zephyr, nor Derek, nor I intend any such thing (were it in our power to do so!). I wrote that “Prof. Levine is correct to warn against the kind of crypto-Marcionism that seems to be a recurrent temptation in the church. The Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament constitute the matrix out of which Jesus came and out of which our faith comes.” It’s also clear that there has been a deplorable trend in “historical Jesus” studies (especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries) to disregard Jesus’s Jewishness (though the pendelum seems to have swung the other way more recently, e.g. in the work of folks like E.P. Sanders and N.T. Wright). But I think my qualification stands: “the ongoing tradition and experience of the church isn’t necessarily bound by the details of the Judaism of Jesus’ day, anymore than contemporary Rabbinic Judaism has to ape the Judaism of the 1st century.”

    My point, in citing Luke Timothy Johnson, was not to downplay Jesus’ Jewishness, but that, as Johnson puts it, “historical reconstructions are by their very nature fragile and in constant need of revision. They cannot sustain the commitment of the human heart and life. … Christian faith as a living religious response is simply not directed at those historical facts about Jesus, or at a historical reconstruction of Jesus. Christian faith is directed to a living person” (The Real Jesus, p. 141, paperback ed.). All I take this principle to do is to block any simple deductions of the form “The ‘historical Jesus’ did x, therefore Christians should do x.” There’s nothing wrong, as a scholarly enterprise, with trying to get at “the historical Jesus” (though many such attempts appear driven by agendas other than that of pure disinterested scholarship), but the point is that these attempts cannot by themselves be normative for Christian faith, though they might inform it in various ways.

    Prof. Levine is certainly right that in order to understand the Jesus of the New Testament we have to understand the 1st-century Jewish context of his life and that the historical caricatures of Judaism perpetuated by the church are to be deplored. My questions about Prof. Levine’s article, which were genuine questions not simply rhetorical point-scoring questions, have to do with what she takes the implications to be for Christian faith and pracitce if they are to respect the Jewishness of Jesus. When she writes that “the New Testament mandates that respect for Jewish custom be maintained and that Jesus’ own Jewish practices be honored, even by the gentile church, which does not follow those customs,” it’s just not clear to me what this means in practice, which, in fairness, probably couldn’t be spelled out in the space of a brief article.

    None of that, of course, precludes a greater knowledge and appreciation by Christians of Judaism, both as it was practiced in Jesus’ day and as it’s practiced today, as well as a correction of the erroneous and vicious views about Jews and Judaism that Christians have often harbored. Such improved understanding is greatly to be desired. So, speaking only for myself of course, I happily agree with Byassee that “We gentile Christians certainly do not follow Jewish practices, as the Council of Jerusalem makes clear. We must, however, respect them, as we often have not. And we must recognize them in our Jewish savior, whose Jewishness is inscribed into his very Jewish flesh, now seated at the right hand of the Father.”

    One last point, though: Byassee writes:

    Levine’s piece is unique in the way it shows Christians on the theological and political left are not immune from the old, anti-Semitic habits that we pride ourselves for having left behind. Anyone who’s preached the sermon from Mark 6 will know what she means: Jesus is kind to the hemorrhaging woman and the dead girl, unlike the misogynist Judaism that kept women isolated and repressed. When I preach such passages in the future I will work to be clear that whatever is good in Jesus is also Jewish, and not anything he invented. “Jesus does not have to be unique in all cases in order to be profound,” Levine writes.

    What I wonder here is whether Jesus is ever to be allowed to be unique. Is it true that “whatever is good in Jesus is also Jewish, and not anything he invented”? I mean, in some sense this is true by definition. Jesus is/was Jewish, so everything about him is Jewish.* But is Jesus and/or the Christian church never to speak a critical word about Judaism or Jewish practices? And is their nothing in Jesus’ person or message that goes beyond the Judaism of his day, even if it would be preferable to see it more as its fulfillment rather than in stark opposition to it? If not, then the split between church and synagogue starts to look incomprehensible. Granted that the messages of Jesus, Paul and the early church have often been interpreted in polemically anti-Jewish senses, mustn’t there have been some important difference and critique implied? This is obviously a touchy subject, and it may be that given our shameful history Christians have simply forfeited the right to be critical of Judaism. But I don’t know that Christians can adopt that stance with theological integrity. After all, if everything good about Jesus is contained in Judaism, it’s not clear there’s much point in being a Christian.

    It may be that we still have a long way to go in understanding the proper relationship between the two faiths, in which case it’s salutary to be reminded that this tension exsits. Almost all contemporary Christians agree in repudiating supersessionism, but there’s much less agreement on what should replace it. Some Christians propose a “two covenants” theory whereby Jews are brought into God’s family through the Old Covenant and gentiles through the New, so no competition is implied. Others advert to a more general religious pluralism in which all the “great” religions are seen as roads to the same Truth. No doubt one of the major challenges for Christians in the 21st century is religious pluralism, but another is surely to reconnect with Judaism in ways that are historically and theologically appropriate.

    I’m certainly open to correction on any of this, and reader thoughts are welcome.
    ——————————————————
    *Leaving aside here the question about to what extent Jesus may have also been influenced by the Hellenistic and Roman cultural currents of his day. Or, for that matter, how 1st century Judaism(s) were so influenced.

  • Jesus the Jew and Christian practice

    UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Theolog! I have responded to Jason Byassee’s comments here.

    Lutheran Zephyr and Derek the Ænglican already have good comments on this article by Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Professor Levine argues for a stronger recognition of the essential Jewishness of Jesus by the Christian community, and sharply criticizes practices and rhetoric that define Jesus over against Judaism.

    She is certainly right, I think, that a lot of Christian talk still lapses into a lazy caricature of “Judaism” as Jesus’ foil. And, as Prof. Levine points out, progressives, feminists, and liberation theologians aren’t exempt from this. It’s obscene, for instance, when extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, which at times borders on the anti-Semitic, is served up in the name of Jesus.

    However, I also think LZ and Derek are both right that she seems to focus on the “Jesus of history” as normative for Christian faith in ways that are far from problem free. For instance, what are we to make of the claim that “preserving the fact that Jesus wore fringes [symbolizing the 613 commandmetns of the Torah], the New Testament mandates that respect for Jewish custom be maintained and that Jesus’ own Jewish practices be honored, even by the gentile church, which does not follow those customs”? Early on the church decided, for better or for worse, that keeping the Torah was not mandatory for Christians. So, it’s not clear what “mandting respect” for that practice would entail within the Christian community, apart from respecting the practices of our Jewish elder brothers and sisters in the faith.

    Or take Prof. Levine’s contention that “as for Jesus’ Jewish identity, neither he nor his Jewish associates would have mourned the loss of a herd of hogs—animals that are not kosher and that represent conspicuous consumption in that they cost more to raise than they produce in meat”? Does this mean that Christians, to take one of my personal hobbyhorses, are free to treat pigs and other un-kosher animals as having no dignity as creatures of God?

    What all of this gets at – and Derek, following Luke Timothy Johnson, highlights this point – is how difficult it is for Christians to simply take the “Jesus of history” (itself a problematic notion) as normative for their faith and practice in any straightforward way. First, as Derek also points out, the church has never confined Jesus’ influence to the example set by a historical figure 2,000 years ago, much less to the latest scholarly reconstruction. For Christian faith Jesus is first and foremost the living Lord whose Spirit continues to guide the church. Of course, that faith would be a mirage if the Jesus of history didn’t do and say the kinds of things recorded in the gospel accounts. But Christians aren’t committed to slavishly imitating all the details of Jesus’ life, even the religious details. That much was made clear at the Council of Jerusalem.

    This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ Jewishness is unimportant, and Prof. Levine is correct to warn against the kind of crypto-Marcionism that seems to be a recurrent temptation in the church. The Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament constitute the matrix out of which Jesus came and out of which our faith comes. But the ongoing tradition and experience of the church isn’t necessarily bound by the details of the Judaism of Jesus’ day, anymore than contemporary Rabbinic Judaism has to ape the Judaism of the 1st century.

    But, to say this also presents a challenge for contemporary Christians. Often the imitatio Christi is thought of in terms of simply copying the lifestyle of the historical Jesus (usually one favorite particular version), and this is sometimes presented as a superior alternative to the life of the institutional church. Or the Jesus of the gospels is treated as having ready-made answers to all of our moral dilemmas. If Christians believe in a risen Lord, though, attempting to mimic a 1st century Jewish rabbi, or wonder-working sage, or cynic philosopher, or whatever the Jesus du jour is, rather misses the point. One follows Jesus precisely by being incorporated into his body through partaking of the holy mysteries and hearing the Lord’s word. By being part of that body, we believe that we gradually, if haltingly, come to be formed according the pattern of Jesus, his life of self-giving service and love (again, I think L.T. Johnson is very good on this – see The Real Jesus and Living Jesus; both of these books had a big impact on me). In other words, why chase after a historical reconstruction when the living Jesus makes himself available to us here and now?