A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • A rare post on abortion

    In this editorial, the Christian Century articulates a middle-ground approach on abortion that I find largely persuasive:

    Over the years, mainline Protestants have expressed their own reservations and qualifications. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for example, declared that “the strong Christian presumption is that . . . all life is precious to God [and so] we are to preserve and protect it.” Therefore “abortion ought to be an option of last resort.” Voicing a similar position, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America urged the church to “seek to reduce the need to turn to abortion as the answer to unintended pregnancies.” Churches that backed legalization did not want abortion to be a routine means of birth control.

    On those Christian grounds, it is good news that abortion rates in the United States dropped 5 percent in 2009 (the latest year of reporting) to the lowest rate in 40 years—15 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. Rates have generally trended downward since 1981, when they peaked at 29. Health officials attribute the recent drop to more widespread use of contraception, especially by teens, and the use of more effective types of contraception.

    U.S. abortion rates remain high, however, compared to other countries where abortion is legal. In Belgium and Germany the rates are below 10 per 1,000 women, and in the Netherlands, where abortion is freely available up to 21 weeks, the rate is 5, the lowest in the world. The Dutch have achieved that low rate through widespread education about family planning and easy access to contraception and by inculcating a general understanding that abortion is an irresponsible means of birth control.

    The editorial concludes that this “nuanced position on abortion may not bring people to the barricades, but it points to a coherent, responsible policy.”

    I think this is basically right, but it’s worth noting how this differs from the more absolutist pro-life position found among conservative Catholics and evangelicals. If you believe that abortion is morally comparable to killing babies, then nothing short of legal prohibition really makes sense. That’s why there’s a certain logic to not making exceptions even in the case of rape: why should an innocent child be killed because of the crimes of its father?

    But the position sketched by the Century rests on a different view of of the value of pre-natal life–though one that also differs from a pro-choice position that assigns zero value to it. (I doubt this view is as widespread among pro-choicers as pro-lifers sometimes seem to think, but there probably are people who hold it.)

    What this more moderate view presupposes is that pre-natal life has value, but that its value is not equivalent to the value of a newborn baby (or a 2-year old, a 5-year old, an adult, etc.). Moreover, it generally presupposes that this value increases as the pregnancy progresses: a very early abortion is less serious, morally speaking, than a very late-term one. To say, as the PC(USA) does, that “all life is precious to God [and so] we are to preserve and protect it” seems to allow for these kinds of distinctions.

    I think that this kind of “gradualist” position makes sense of many people’s common moral intuitions. Most parents or would-be parents, I think, would say that a miscarriage at a very early stage of pregnancy would be a less grievous blow than one at, say, 7 or 8 months, much less the death of a newborn or older child. In other words, we generally act like the embryo or fetus is not, morally speaking, a fully realized person. Or to take another thought experiment: if you could save either a Petri dish full of fertilized embryos or a single child from a burning building, wouldn’t the right choice clearly be to save the child?

    Now, just because many people have these intuitions doesn’t mean they’re right. And one problem that has always bedeviled the gradualist view is that it’s hard to draw bright lines demarcating the various stages of fetal moral considerability. By contrast, the hard-core pro-life view can point to such a bright line, namely conception. (Though even this is a bit fuzzier than people sometimes think: does it refer to fertilization? Implantation? The appearance of the “primitive streak” that determines whether an embryo will develop into one or two distinct beings?)

    In my view, the clarity that comes from drawing such bright lines is purchased at too high a price if it requires treating a newly fertilized embryo as morally indistinguishable from a baby. It seems to me undeniable that nascent human life has value, but also that its value is less than that of a baby or child. Given this, a policy that places some value on fetal life while also recognizing that importance of women’s bodily autonomy makes sense and would aim at the “safe, legal, and rare” regime the Century recommends.

  • For what it’s worth

    Consider this a kind of postscript to the last two posts. My personal view is that consciousness and mind are perfectly “natural” in the sense that no supernatural intervention was necessary to “insert” them into the process by which life developed. I take it that they emerged once living organisms became sufficiently complex, even though how this happened is still very incompletely understood. But at the same time, I think they are real features of the world and shouldn’t be explained away as mere epiphenomena. The temptation to treat them as such arises when theories or concepts are taken to be exhaustive descriptions of reality rather than abstractions that only capture certain aspects of it. So because consciousness, say, doesn’t lend itself to the kinds of measurement and quantification that have given theories in the physical sciences so much of their explanatory power, scientists (or more commonly philosophers and popularizers of science) sometimes dismiss it as somehow “less real.” What we need then is not an appeal to the supernatural to make room for mind, but an understanding of “nature” that is sufficiently rich to accommodate all the parts of our experience.

    More specifically, I don’t think Christians have any theological stake in viewing mind or consciousness as somehow separate from nature. Even though most mainstream churches have made peace with evolution to some extent, there is still a tendency to make an exception for human minds. For instance, some theologians still insist that each human soul is directly created by God at the moment of conception. This not only seems to wreak havoc with the unity of the human person, but it undermines the observed continuity between humans and other animals. I think it’s preferable (and arguably more biblical) to see human beings as unitary organisms with both physical and mental aspects. Moreover, it seems more credible to think of God as creating a universe that already contains within it the seeds of consciousness and mind rather than as having to add them after the fact.

  • God made Himself small for us

    The Christ had to suffer and die, because whenever the Divine appears in all its depth, It cannot be endured by men. It must be pushed away by the political powers, the religious authorities, and the bearers of cultural tradition. In the picture of the Crucified, we look at the rejection of the Divine by humanity. We see that, in this rejection, not the lowest, but the highest representatives of mankind are judged. Whenever the Divine appears, It is a radical attack on everything that is good in man, and therefore man must repel It, must push It away, must crucify It. Whenever the Divine manifests Itself as the new reality, It must be rejected by the representatives of the old reality. For the Divine does not complete the human; It revolts against the human. Because of that, the human must defend itself against It, must reject It, and must try to destroy It.

    Yet when the Divine is rejected, It takes the rejection upon Itself. It accepts our crucifixion, our pushing away, the defence of ourselves against It. It accepts our refusal to accept, and thus conquers us. That is the centre of the mystery of the Christ. Let us try to imagine a Christ Who would not die, and Who would come in glory to impose upon us His power, His wisdom, His morality, and His piety. He would be able to break our resistance by His strength, by His wonderful government, by His infallible wisdom, and by His irresistible perfection. But He would not be able to win our hearts. He would bring a new law, and would impose it upon u by His all-powerful and all-perfect Personality. His power would break our freedom; His glory would overwhelm us like a burning, blinding sun; our very humanity would be swallowed in His Divinity. One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made Himself small for us in Christ. In so doing, He left us our freedom and our humanity. He showed us His Heart, so that our hearts could be one. — Paul Tillich, “He Who Is The Christ,” The Shaking of the Foundations, pp. 147-8.

  • The Bible as a laboratory notebook

    To use an analogy that comes naturally to me as a scientist, the Bible is not the ultimate textbook in which one can look up ready-made answers to all the big questions, but is more like a laboratory notebook, in which are recorded critical historical experiences through which aspects of the divine will and nature have been most accessibly revealed. I believe that the nature of divine revelation is not the mysterious transmission of infallible propositions which are to be accepted without question, but the record of persons and events through which the divine will and nature have been most transparently made known.  — John Polkinghorne, Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible, p. 1

  • Election 2012: A victory for Christian values

    Some religious conservatives have been near-apocalyptic in their predictions of a second Obama term, insisting that he’s leading the country away from Christian principles and down the road to perdition. But from my perspective, last night’s election was a triumph (albeit a partial one) for Christian values.

    –In rejecting the Romney-Ryan plan to dismantle the welfare state and repeal Obamacare, voters reaffirmed the principle that the government has an indispensable role in caring for the most vulnerable members of society and ensuring universal access for basic goods necessary to a flourishing life.

    —Victories for marriage equality in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and, hopefully, the state of Washington suggest that Americans are coming around to the idea that all God’s children deserve equal rights and respect.

    –The “Maryland Dream Act” will allow undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities and access financial aid,  upholding the principle of “welcoming the alien and the stranger.”

    –Although it barely rated a mention during the campaign, a second term for Obama opens the possibility for meaningful action on climate change, an urgent part of our calling to care for God’s creation (not to mention our survival as a species).

    –President Obama has reaffirmed that we’re in this together and that we are each other’s keeper, in contrast to the rhetoric of economic individualism from the Right.

    I admit this is a partial and somewhat one-sided list. The election didn’t allow for a dramatic choice against a hyper-militarized foreign policy, for instance. And religious conservatives would likely take issue with how I’ve characterized these election outcomes. But as far as I’m concerned, care and respect for the vulnerable fellow citizen, the immigrant, and the earth are core Christian values, and they gained some significant headway last night.

  • Thinking about the nature of religion with Schleiermacher

    Although I don’t agree with Schleiermacher on everything, I do think his overall approach to religion is a fruitful one. To get clear on what this is, it’s helpful to think of his position as occupying a middle ground between two unpalatable extremes. On the one hand, it’s possible to think of religion as a purely theoretical undertaking: “God” is a hypothesis that is purported to explain various features of the world or human experience, or is the conclusion of an abstract argument. On the other hand, it can be thought of as a purely practical endeavor whose purpose is to guide human life but which makes no truth-claims or ontological commitments. (Such “non-cognitivist” views of religion were popular during the heyday of logical positivism in the early 20th century.)

    Schleiermacher rejects both these extremes. In insisting that the essence of religion is a “sense and taste for the Infiinte” (in his speeches on religion) or a “feeling of absolute dependence” (in The Christian Faith), he’s clearly at odds with a purely theoretical understanding of religion. He allows that “speculative” theology may be a valid enterprise, but it’s distinct from dogmatic theology. Christian theology is a reflection on religious experience, particularly the experience of redemption in Jesus. But contrary to how he’s sometimes interpreted, Schleiermacher is also not an non-cognitivist–that is, religious language has more than just a pragmatic purpose. Religious experience has an implicit referent–the Infinite, or God–and the propositions of theology are reflections on the nature of that reality to the extent that it’s disclosed in experience. The propositions of dogmatic theology set out what the experience of redemption in Christ implies about God, the world, and humanity.

    So for Schleiermacher, the goal of religion is to evoke and strengthen the experience of redemption. But this experience is rooted in a Reality that transcends the finite, created world–and this Reality is the object of religious devotion. Unlike “pure” philosophy or science, the goal of religion is not disinterested theoretical understanding of the world, but it does bring us into contact with a reality that exists independently of us. Theology describes this reality insofar as it is discernible by its effects on us, particularly in being the source of our redemption. Religion is a practical, existential undertaking, but it also makes claims about the nature of the world.

    There are a couple of things to be said for this broad view. First, it seems to me to home in on what most religious traditions consider to be the essence of religious life: namely, redemption, or salvation, or liberation. That is, religion is neither purely theoretical nor purely practical but is fundamentally about bringing human beings into a correct orientation toward an independently existing ultimate reality (or a right relationship with God, to put it in more explicitly Christian terms). This captures both the subjective and objective aspects, or poles, that seem essential to religion.

    Second, a broadly “Schleiermacherian” account of religion can potentially make sense of religious pluralism: the experience of redemption/salvation/liberation never occurs “neat,” but is always conditioned by its social and historical context. Thus, theological reflection will be conditioned by these historical and cultural factors, resulting in a legitimate (and possibly unavoidable) epistemic pluralism. (Schleiermacher himself, it should be noted, clearly thought Christianity was the “highest” religion, but at the same time he was clear that this judgment was made from within a commitment to the Christian community.)

    Finally, this view helps explain why our theology needs to be open to re-thinking and revision. Since it constitutes reflection on the experience of redemption, theology itself shouldn’t be considered “revealed” or infallible. It has to be tested and refined in light of ongoing experience and new knowledge about the world (e.g., scientific discoveries), while remaining faithful to its original source. (The Christian Faith itself is a model of this approach, even if, like me, you sometimes disagree with Schleiermacher’s particular conclusions.)

  • Schleiermacher on the authority of the Bible – 2

    The New Testament writings, Schleiermacher says, are the first in the ongoing series of presentations of the Christian faith, but they are also normative for all succeeding presentations. He writes, “all that has approved itself in the way of oral presentation of Christian piety in later ages of the Church has kept within the lines of these original forms, or is attached to them as an explanatory accompaniment” (§129.1). But, he asks, if redemption is being “ever more completely realized in time,” then how can these first writings retain their normative status? Might they not be replaced by newer, fuller insights? This is true in a limited sense: when we compare the apostolic age as a whole with later ages. For during the apostolic age there was a variety of Christian writings that possessed uneven quality in terms of how clearly they expressed the essence of Christian piety. However, those testimonies that “stood near[est] to Christ”–for instance, narratives of his words and deeds–exerted a “purifying” influence on the church, allowing it gradually to separate the wheat from the chaff. Thus the writings existing at the time were later divided into the apocryphal and canonical. So, in that sense, later ages may have an advantage over the apostolic.

    The influence of apocryphal elements was bound to diminish, Schleiermacher says, precisely because of the purifying influence of what later came to be recognized as the canonical witness. These writings were the ones that contained memories of those who actually knew Jesus. And those testimonies constitute an irreplaceable source and norm of Christian faith. The Church “could never again reproduce the canonical, for the living intuition of Christ was never again able to ward off all debasing influences in the same direct fashion, but only derivatively through the Scriptures and hence in dependence on them” (§129.2). The New Testament is authoritative because it contains memories of the historical Jesus and the testimonies of those who first came to have faith in him. So, later ages may have the advantage over the apostolic in having been purged of certain competing influences; but they can never side-step the authority of the canonical scriptures.

    He goes on to say that not every part of the New Testament enjoys this authority–only what pertains to the central message and not “side-thoughts.” Nor is all later Christian thought to be confined to simply repeating what’s in the New Testament. “For since the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, no age can be without its own originality in Christian thinking” (§129.2). Yet all Christian thought has to be tested for its harmony with the canonical writings, and no later writing can provide the same kind of yardstick.

  • Schleiermacher on the authority of the Bible

    According to Schleiermacher, the authority of the Bible cannot be the foundation of Christian faith. The notion that it is, he says, is more often implied than asserted, for instance by how books of doctrine and confessional documents present the doctrine of Scripture. Nevertheless, we need to get this misconception out of the way. So, he asks, if faith in Christ is to be established on the basis of the Bible’s authority, how is the authority of the Bible itself to be established? It can’t be by rational demonstration, for two reasons. First, such an approach would introduce an inequality in how Christians come to faith: there would be a class of Christians who are themselves capable of following the chain of reasoning that demonstrates the authority of the Bible, and there would be those who have to accept its authority on trust. But this would be “incongruous with that equality of all Christians which the Evangelical [i.e., Protestant] Church proclaims, and would, as in the Church of Rome, demand from the laity an unqualified and submissive trust in those who alone have access to the grounds of faith” (The Christian Faith, §128.1). Second, even if a proof of Scripture’s authority was forthcoming, the resulting faith would “not be a genuine, living faith at all” because someone could possess it without feeling the need for redemption or being in “living fellowship” with Christ.

    Furthermore, if there can be no distinctions between classes of Christians in terms of how they arrive at their faith (in order for it to be the same faith), this principle applies across time too. In other words, the way that contemporary Christians come to faith can be no different, in principle, from how the first Christians came to have faith in Christ. And, clearly, their faith was not based on the authority of Scripture since the New Testament didn’t exist. (S. considers and rejects the possibility that the first Christians’ faith was based on the authority of the Old Testament in that they perceived Christ to be the fulfillment of the OT prophecies. Rather, he says, they came to believe in Christ first and then went back to the Scriptures and found that they foretold him.) The first disciples’ faith originated in the personal encounter with Jesus himself. It “sprang from Christ’s preaching of Himself, [and] so in the case of others faith sprang from the preaching of Christ by the Apostles and many more” (§128.2). Therefore, Christian faith is not of necessity bound up with the belief that the books of the Bible posses a special status; this faith “may rest on any other sort of witness that is accomplished by real perception of Christ’s spiritual power–may rest, that is, simply on oral tradition” (§128.1).

    “Thus,” he says, “in order to attain to faith, we need no such doctrine of Scripture, and the attempt to force unbelievers into faith by means of it has had no success” (128.2). It is only when we already have faith in the message about Jesus that we properly come to ascribe a special status to the New Testament witness.

  • The Bible as fallen and redeemed

    Kenton Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture cuts to the heart of how Christians understand revelation and the truth of the Bible. This is a more popularly pitched version of an argument that Sparks, a professor of biblical studies at Eastern University, made in his book God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. The issue is: How can the Bible be a revelation from God and normative for Christian faith and practice when it contains passages that depict God in morally horrifying ways and ethical commands that seem downright evil, not only by modern standards, but by standards embedded in the Christian tradition itself?

    Sparks argues, correctly I think, that this presents a more difficult issue than biblical “errancy” regarding history or science. It’s relatively easy to make peace with the idea that the Bible did not adhere to modern standards of historical accuracy and that it was not meant to teach scientific cosmology or biology. However, the “texts of terror” threaten to undermine what Christians claim is the central message of the Bible: a revelation of God’s gracious character, will, and purposes for humanity and the world.

    The touchstone example Sparks uses is the story of the Canaanite genocide recorded in the book of Joshua. How can the God who commands Joshua to slaughter men, women, and children be the God of limitless compassion that Christians claim to believe in? Some of the church fathers dealt with these passages by adverting to allegorical interpretations: they should be interpreted as referring to our internal spiritual warfare against our sins, for example. Sparks argues (again, correctly, I think) that such readings will seem strained to modern readers. Instead, he says we should frankly admit that such passages are not part of God’s word, at least not directly.

    To articulate his position, Sparks draws an analogy between the “problem” of the Bible and the problem of evil as it’s usually discussed in the Christian tradition. Briefly, theologians–however much their specific approaches may differ–have generally maintained that creation is good but fallen and that the source of sin and disorder is in humanity not God. The Bible, Sparks says, is part of the fallen creation–it is not perfect or inerrant but reflects human sinfulness. “Scripture is a casualty of the fallen cosmos” (p. 66). But just as God uses fallen human beings to advance God’s purposes, God uses the Bible–taken as a canonical whole–as a medium for revelation. The Bible is both human and divine discourse.

    The inevitable question, though, is how we are supposed to distinguish the divine message from those parts of Scripture that reflect human error or sin. Sparks offers several responses to this: first, Scripture sometimes corrects itself, as in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where he relativized certain parts of the Mosaic law; second, we should read individual passages in the context of the whole sweep of the biblical narrative and message; and third, we need to read the Bible in light of the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of God in the natural world, the Christian tradition, and our own experience. Sparks emphasizes that most passages of the Bible admit of a surplus of meaning and we should be cautious in thinking we’ve arrived at the one true interpretation. He also points out that a key test of Christians’ Bible-reading is whether it leads to Christ-shaped lives.

    Sparks identifies, at least to some extent, as an evangelical, and much of what he says may not seem particularly controversial to mainline Christians, who generally admit that the Bible is a humanly conditioned document. But mainliners have not always been clear on what their positive doctrine of Scripture is; Sparks’ book clearly articulates a position that is honest about the text while also maintaining a “high” view of the Bible’s authority. Such a position should in principle be acceptable to a fairly broad swath of Christians, from fairly conservative to fairly liberal. My one complaint is that Sparks is vague (as he himself admits) on how he understands the Bible’s inspiration, as well as the closely related concept of revelation. For example, is the medium of revelation the text itself, an overall message or regula fidei derived from the text, or the events that the texts witness to? But on the whole, I’d recommend this book as a sane and balanced approach to a difficult topic.

  • Sympathy for the damned

    Most interesting of Schleiermacher’s arguments against hell is his deeply felt conviction that the blessedness of the redeemed would be severely marred by their sympathy for the damned. This is precisely the opposite of the conviction of many earlier theologians that the blessedness of the redeemed would be actually enhanced by their contemplation of the torments of the damned. The latter view has a kind of reason on its side: Those who are wholly at one with God’s will should rejoice to see His justice done. But it has largely disappeared from the doctrine of hell since the seventeenth century, and the modern Christian’s instinctive sympathy with Schleiermacher’s contrary view places him on Schleiermacher’s side of a great transition in the history of attitudes to suffering. With Schleiermacher we now feel that even the justly inflicted suffering of other men roust be pitied, not enjoyed. Schleiermacher’s argument is typically modern in its appeal and is one element in the increasing popularity of universalism since his day.

    –Richard Bauckham, “Universalism: A Historical Survey“