A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • Consumerism and social justice

    Gaius makes a fair point: cries against “consumerism” can ring hollow when there are people who are genuniely struggling, even in the land of overstuffed plenty.

    But this doesn’t solve the problem, that, given resource and environmental constraints, an economy devoted to ever-expanding consumption is unsustainable. And “we the people” bear some responsibility for it.

    Individual virtue isn’t a substitute for political action, of course. Political change is necessary and can make it easier for people to alter their lifestyles. For instance, national health insurance could enable people to step off the getting-and-spending treadmill by working part-time or at a more fulfilling or service-oriented job, one where they might not traditionally get benefits. A carbon tax could direct resources away from wasteful consumption toward alternative energy development, creating “green” jobs. Better planned communities could cut down commuting time. Etc. Social justice and environmentalism shouldn’t be at odds and can work in tandem.

    I’m just trying to learn about this stuff, and I’m not going to pretend I know what all the answers are or that there aren’t trade-offs involved. But it seems to me that we need to think about it if all 7 billion of us living at the level of the American upper-middle class is going to wreck the planet.

    Meanwhile, those of us who aren’t struggling as much can think about parts of our life where we’ve let an excess of stuff take control. Modern research and ancient wisdom seem to agree that what both the New Testament and Plato call pleonexia is not only a vice, but it doesn’t make us happy either.

  • Consumerism, simplicity, and sin

    If Andrew Bacevich is right that our consumptive habits are the cause, not only of resource depletion and environmental degradation, but of our far-flung military adventurism, then the unpleasant conclusion seems to be that we need to start consuming less.

    Here’s an article (via Book Forum) about, among other things, a professor in Western Pennsylvania (just down the road from where I went to college at a less prestigious state school) who’s urging people to do just that. And he doesn’t mean just greenwashing our consumerism with “eco-friendly” products. He ties it in to an actual downshifting toward a simpler lifestyle and making it possible for people to choose less work in exchange for more free time.

    Having just re-read Reinhold Niebuhr’s Children of Light and Children of Darkness, I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about our ability to tame our appetites. Niebuhr points out that, unlike non-human animals, our appetites are virtually unlimited because of our ability to transcend our immediate experience. We don’t just want to be physically sated; we want prestige, power, and in some cases to dominate others. Niebuhr argues that it’s precisely because of our “spiritual” nature that we’re capable of great evil.

    The task of politics, Niebuhr thinks, is not to remake human nature, but to channel our self-aggrandizing impulses into socially beneficial directions. It may be that hard realities–energy and food prices, climate change, resource wars–will force us to change our behavior in ways that idealism alone can’t.

    At the same time, Niebuhr, who was so right on original sin, tended to give short shrift to redemption. The New Testament, by contrast, portrays a community of people who have been empowered to live differently–not grasping at worldly prestige and security because their worth and being are “hid with Christ.” Can our churches become communities like that? Places where people are fed with the bread of life and so don’t need to fill themselves with the world’s junk food?

  • Was this trip really necessary?

    In a comment to the previous post, Jeremy said:

    And if [the new creation] is “a brand new order of a completely different kind” then why didn’t God create it that way in the first place. If I recall, Keith Ward said that the universe as it exists may be the only kind in which we can have life as we know it. If we say that God can eliminate suffering and death in this universe as it stands in the age to come then that aggravates the problem of theodicy.

    This isn’t a question I have anything like satisfying answer to, but here’s an idea I’ve been kicking around: Maybe if God wants to raise human beings to blessedness, he has to create this kind of world.

    My reasoning is that, just as my personal history is an essential part of my identity, the history of the human species is an essential part of its identity. For God to simply create creatures like us in an immediate state of blessedness would not be to create human beings, but some other kind of creature (however much they might resemble us in certain ways).

    Consider: if God were to create a replica of me as I now exist in a state of blessedness, would it be me? I want to say no because who I am essentially includes my personal history. Even if the heavenly replica-Lee had all my memories, they would be false memories since he wouldn’t have actually lived through the experiences that they were memories of.

    By the same kind of reasoning, maybe the long evolutionary history of humanity is an essential part of us. Human-like creatures created in an immediate state of blessedness simply wouldn’t be human beings since they wouldn’t be the heirs of human biological history. If they were close enough replicas they might have the characteristics of humans, but those characteristics wouldn’t be the result of the same process that created us.

    So, I’m suggesting that for God to destine specifically human creatures for blessedness requires creating creatures who pass through the specifically human process of development. Anything else would not be human beings, however valuable they might be in their own right. And creating human beings requires a world in all essential respects like our world, since its only in a world like ours that specifically human beings could come to be. (Tradition obviously holds that God did create rational beings in blessedness, but they’re angels, not humans.)

    This is all highly speculative, of course. So, let me buttress the case a bit with some considerations from the Christian tradition. Christian theology has usually held that the condition of the blessed redeemed is superior to the original condition of Adam and Eve in the garden. Redemption is not simply a restoration of Eden, but a transition to a higher state. So it seems that humanity was always destined for a journey from a less exalted state to a more exalted one; going through a historical process is essential to our destiny.

    Another consideration: creation, in the opening chapters of Genesis, is said to be good, not perfect. This allows for a development or process toward better things, even if we recognize that at some point humanity went off the rails into sin and away from God’s intentions. (This is a more “Irenaean” picture of the fall than an Augustinian one.)

    Finally: a robust minority tradition in Christian theology has held that, even if there had been no fall, God would still have become incarnate to unite human nature to the Divine, and to manifest the divine love to creation. This also seems to imply that humanity was not created in an original state of perfect blessedness, but with a potential for that state – being united in the closest possible relationship with God.

    So, there are both theological and broadly philosophical reasons for thinking that some kind of process of development, some kind of journey, is essential to what it means to be human. This suggests that, if God wanted to create human beings and raise them to communion with the divine life, then it was necessary to create them as part of an unfolding, historical process rather than in an immediate state of static perfection. And that only after becoming the kinds of beings we are can we be raised to communion with the divine life. And it may further be that such a process inherently involves the possibility of suffering, death, and sin.

    Like I said: extremely speculative and not completely satisfactory.

  • I Am Legend, human extinction, and theodicy

    We watched this the other night and I liked it quite a bit more than I expected. I think using CGI zombies was a mistake, but other than that it was a taut sci-fi/horror thriller with some interesting themes (the fate of humanity, providence, the nature of heroism, etc.). Will Smith nicely toned down his usual wisecracking everyman to deliver a more credible character who is hopeful, determined, despairing, and paranoid at various points.

    The movie raised the interesting (to me, anyway) question of what stake God has in the survival of the human race. At one point, Smith’s character recites, in response to another character’s claim that God led her to find him, the statistics of the disease that has wiped out most of humanity: it’s killed 90% of the human race and the remnant is divided between bloodsucking nocturnal zombies and their victims. “There is no God,” he concludes.

    Now, this could be just a variation on the problem of evil–why would God allow so much pointless suffering?–but you can also interpret it as a claim of God’s existence being falsified by the (impending) extinction of the human race. And, given that we have pretty good reason to believe that the human race will become extinct at some point in the real world, does this count against belief in God?

    After all, science tells us that, as our sun dies out, the Earth will eventually become uninhabitable. Consequently, humanity will die off, assuming we haven’t already exploded, poisoned, cooked, or infected ourselves to extinction (or been destroyed by super-intelligent machines of our own creation) in the meantime. Does this mean that God’s project will be frustrated?

    It seems to me that theists can take a variety of approaches to this, with varying degrees of plausibility:

    1. God will supernaturally intervene before then to either whisk humanity away to heaven/hell or to remake the Earth prior to our solar system’s demise, effectively overriding the laws of nature as we know them;

    2. God will leave the universe to wind down into either a lifeless entropic state or a “big crunch” that will give rise to a new universe, but the souls of dead humanity will be preserved and/or resurrected in heaven/a “new earth” existing in some kind of parallel reality;

    3. the human race will, in fact, not go extinct, but will spread out into the universe, possibly becoming the kind of vast, artificial intelligences that believers in “the Singularity” like to talk about;

    or

    4. humanity will simply go extinct, there is no afterlife, and our existence will be one small part of the vast cosmic tapestry that, perhaps, adds some kind of value to God’s being, as in some forms of process theology.

    (There are undoubtedly other possibilities, but these are the ones that occur to me.)

    I lean toward something along the lines of option 2, but 4 intrigues me in its rigorously non-anthropocentric outlook. Christian theology, I think it’s safe to say, is still strongly anthropocentric, but how plausible is that? If humanity exists in only a tiny fraction of the space and time that makes up the life of the universe, are we supposed to think that the rest of it is entirely pointless?

    A book came out recently called The World Without Us that, according to the website, tries to describe “how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence.” I haven’t read the book, but the idea is worth thinking about: if we disappeared, the world would go on, and most of the universe would be entirely unaffected.

    I guess what I want to believe is that sentience does have a special significance and that God will gather in all his creatures–at least the sentient ones–into some final consummation. But, as H. Richard Niebuhr taught us, “radical” monotheism means seeing the world in relation to its Source, not in giving absolute value to any finite part of it, including us.

  • “The love of God in Christ Jesus” – but do we believe it?

    Today in church we heard a passage from Romans that contains one of my favorite couple of verses in the entire Bible (I imagine I’m not alone in this):

    For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)

    I’ve come to think of the Incarnation itself in these terms: Jesus is God’s love, manifested and enacted, and sent into the darkest depths of human experience. In Jesus, God identifies with humanity in all its suffering and its sin. There simply is no “place”–physical, moral, or spiritual–where we can escape from God’s love. The Reformed theologian William Placher writes:

    Reconciliation, then, is not about how Christ’s suffering appeases an angry Father. Our suffering has cut us off from God, and we can experience God’s love only as anger. God comes to be with us in the place of sin, as the way to bridge the abyss that lay between us, so that we can be in loving relation with God again. But coming into that place of sin is a painful business that costs a heavy price. It is a price that God, in love, is willing to pay. (Jesus the Savior, p. 141)

    But if this passage from Paul is a great comfort, it’s also a challenge. Reading about Paul’s confidence in God’s love in the face of (as he writes earlier) “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” highlights how weak my faith in that love is, even though my distractions, sufferings, and temptations are much more mundane. And I can’t help but think that if I had a more robust faith I’d be able to act more bodly, doing risky things in the name of God’s love.

    Part of the paradox of the Protestant notion of faith is that faith is supposed to be the ground for genuine good works–we are freed by God’s love to love our neighbors fearlessly–and yet we can’t will ourselves to have faith. Faith is a gift; though there is difference of opinion about the extent to which we can each prepare the soil to receive it.

    So the question is, how can we come to trust viscerally in the love that Paul is describing, in a way that makes a real difference? Is this where spiritual practices play their role? Do we learn to love God, and to perceive the love from which nothing can separate us, by learning to pay attention to God? Is that what prayer is for?

  • Ultimate ATR link

    Heavy metal monk. Awesome. (via my college pal Chris.)

  • Breaking news: Gene Robinson loves Jesus

    So reports Giles Fraser.

    Probably one of the more damaging criticisms made against the movement to recognize the equal standing of all baptized Christians is the notion that gay and lesbian equality must go hand-in-hand with a watered-down version of the Christian gospel. Interested observers have long known this isn’t the case. The writing of folks like James Alison, Eugene Rogers, Gareth Moore, etc.–not to mention the witness of countless gay and lesbian Christians in the pews–are ample demonstration of that. But it’s nice to read the report of Bishop Robinson giving what Fraser describes as “a fiery, almost revivalist, sermon, calling on Anglicans to take Jesus into their heart and to allow Him to cast out their fear.” The language of rights and justice has its place, but mainliners too often resort to it when they should be talking about Jesus.

  • Dogma and prayer

    I think I mentioned a week or so ago that I’d been reading Anglican theologian Austin Farrer’s Saving Belief. Well, I just finished another work of his called Lord I Belive: Suggestions for Turning the Creed Into Prayer, and it’s another great read.

    Farrer argues that “prayer and dogma are inseparable” (p. 9). To be a Christian is not just to coolly consider the truths of the faith, but to incorporate them into one’s innermost self. And the best way to do this is to incorporate the dogmas of the church into one’s prayer. The creed, as a summary of Christian belief, is the ideal guide for this, because it gives us an image of God and his dealings with us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

    Though God be in me, yet without the creed to guide me I should know neither how to call upon God, nor on what God to call. God may be the very sap of my growth and substance of my action; but the tree has grown so crooked and is so deformed and cankered in its parts, that I should be at a loss to distinguish the divine power among the misuses of the power given. Were I to worship God as the principle of my life, I should merely worship myself under another name, with all my good and evil. So I take refuge in that image of God which we have described as branded from outside upon the bark. Here is a token I can trust, for he branded it there himself; he branded it on the stock of man when he stretched out his hands and feet and shed his precious blood. The pattern of the brand was traced on me by those who gave the creed to me; God will deepen it and burn it into me, as I submit my thoughts to him in meditation. (p. 14)

    This strikes me as very Lutheran with its emphasis on the word that comes from outside ourselves, and in its emphasis on the importance of meditating on the creed. Luther, of course, commended this as one of the main parts of his Small Catechism.

    Farrer’s remaining chapters provide expositions/meditations of the various parts of the creed, each one culminating in a prayer. They show the mark of the same generous orthodoxy that characterized Saving Belief. Finally, there is a chapter on the Rosary called “The Heaven-Sent Aid,” where Farrer commends it as one of the best ways to meditate on the mysteries of our faith:

    If I had been asked two dozen years ago for an example of what Christ forbade when he said “Use not vain repetitions,” I should very likely have referred to the fingering of beads. But now if I wished to name a special sort of private devotion most likely to be of general profit, prayer on the beads is what I should name. Since my previous opinion was based on ignorance and my present opinion is based on experience, I am not ashamed of changing my mind. Christ did not, in fact, prohibit repitition in prayer, the translation is false; he prohibited gabbling, whether we repeat or whether we do not. Rosaries, like any other prayers, can be gabbled, and if they are gabbled, they will certainly not be profitable. Devout persons who take to the beads as a way of meditating are not likely to gabble, for their object is to meditate. (p. 80)

    Farrer’s book is a good illustration of what I was trying to get at in emphasizing the importance of dogma in yesterday’s post. The soul needs something concrete to feed on, and to lead it to God. Yes, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that our dogma and doctrine provide a blurred and incomplete picture of the divine nature. But we also trust that they’re reliable pointers that will lead us deeper into that inexhaustible Truth.

  • Thought for the day

    The issue before us is to discover or determine what we are, and what we are for. Traditional believers–among whom I count myself–suppose that there are answers to those questions, and that they can be found by prayerful examination of the Word of God in Scripture–and the world. Less traditional believers, reacting against the follies that have often been taught as gospel, believe instead that the answers are not for us to discover, but rather to decide. The question is not (for them) about our present world, but about the world to come, and its coming rests on human enterprise. Humanity is a bridge between the unmeaning world of brute biology and the future happy world of human artifice. I am myself less optimistic about the sort of world that human beings, unaided, will create, but also less enthralled by any present order than conservative believers are. It is precisely because I think our nature is imperfect that I distrust the plans of those who would remake it. Conversely, it is because I catch occasional glimpses of a redeemed humanity that I can believe we are not bound for ever within the circles of this world. — Stephen R.L. Clark, Biology and Christian Ethics, pp. 7-8

  • Affirming liberalism (and conservatism)

    There’s a newish Church of England group calling itself “Affirming Liberalism” that, I gather, is kind of like Affirming Catholicism, but not tied to a particular form of churchmanship.

    In any event, the webiste has some interesting articles, including this one from Keith Ward called (perhaps optimistically) “Why the Future Belongs to Liberal Faith.” Ward’s is talking specifically about holding the Christian faith in a liberal way, and he identifies seven marks of a liberal faith:

  • Christians enjoy freedom from the absolute authority of any written text, including the Bible
  • The church should include different interpretations of the Christian faith
  • People should be free to dissent from any human authority, including the church
  • The search for truth is best served by critical discussion and inquiry
  • Faith is a relation of trust in a person more than an affirmation of propositional truths
  • Religious belief may need to be re-evaluated in light of new knowledge from other areas
  • The church exists to serve the world and contribute to the flourishing of all creation, both material and spiritual

    • Now, I substantially agree with all these points, so why would I be uncomfortable describing myself as a theological liberal? I think it’s because, while I affirm the need for critical discussion, acceptance of diversity and dissent, and the possibility of revising traditional theological beliefs, I still think there is a core of orthodox Christian belief that retains, if not unchallengable authority, then at least a strong presumption in its favor.

    I don’t think Ward would necessarily disagree with this if his other writings are anything to judge by. But I think his article is nicely balanced by this passage from one by Mark Chapman at the same site:

    I want to begin with the bold claim that a certain amount of woolly liberalism is necessary for the functioning of a healthy Christianity. This is something that needs to be re-asserted in the contemporary church, particularly when there are so many who would like to confine Christianity solely to its more dogmatic and sectarian forms. And I would contend that the reason for this is extraordinarily simple and uncontentious: whatever else religion might be it is a human practice open to all the distortions of human sin which means it simply demands to be scrutinised and criticised. That is something that would be understood by the Hebrew prophets and virtually every reformer since. For the greater glory of God there is thus a responsibility to open up our practices and beliefs to critical scrutiny. This, I think, is where a dose of liberalism becomes necessary for all Christians. Liberalism is consequently far more an attitude of mind than a church party, and it can even look prophetic.

    Now, I would not want to belong to anything called a liberal party in the church. My religion is really quite traditional Anglo-Catholic, but my disposition and attitude is liberal. It doesn’t take much to reveal the ironies, hypocrisies and idolatries of Anglo-Catholicism. But at the same time the continued vitality of religion requires that it be practised, cherished and loved and approached with reverence and awe.

    The “liberal” and “conservative” dispositions, then, can be seen as complementary, and even necessary for one another’s health. A merely corrosive and critical liberalism will lack “reverence and awe.” But an uncritical conservatism will confuse religion with God, and ironically fail to revere the very God religion aims to worship.