A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • More papal linkage

    Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society has an appreciatvie post on Benedict’s public statements about our treatment of animals.

    E.J. Dionne on the Pope’s discomforting words for the Right and the Left.

  • The pope: still Catholic

    One of the puzzling things about the Pope’s visit has been the media’s mantra-like repitition of the fact that Benedict believes that Catholicism is the “one true faith,” as though this was something odd or eccentric. The obvious and snarky response to this astonished observation is that, well, he is the Pope.

    But more to the point, I bet if you actually asked Benedict if Catholicism is the one true faith he would say something a great deal more nuanced than that. Since, as anyone who bothered to look into it would know, one of the big concerns of all the major Christian denominations over the last, say, 50 years or so has been interfaith relations (both intra-Christian ecumenicism and relationships with non-Christian religions), you might think that Christian thinkers have given some thought to this issue.

    And you’d be right! Indeed, right there in the Catechism of the Catholic Church itself you can read that

    The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.” (843; the quoted portion is from Lumen Gentium)

    Like many Protestant churches, the Catholic Church recognizes that there is truth in other religions. To speak unqualifiedly of the “one true religion,” then, would be a mistake.

    Which doesn’t mean that Catholics and other Christians don’t think that Christianity contains important (indeed the most important) truths that other religions see only dimly, if at all. Above all, of course, it’s the revelation of God in Jesus that Christians see as the definitive disclosure of God’s will and purposes for the redemption of creation. If adherents to other religions deny that Jesus is the Son of God, then Christians, pretty much by definition, think that they deny an important truth. Likewise, faithful Muslims and Jews think that Christians get an important truth about God badly wrong when they assert that God became incarnate in a human being. These are real differences of belief about the divine nature: there’s no virtue in trying to believe a contradiction.

    But it’s a staple of much writing about religion in the popular media that religious belief simply can’t be a matter of truth, but is instead a matter of preference or, at most, an expression of an utterly ineffable spiritual experience. But this position, ironically, assumes a superior vantage point on the truth of the matter than that occupied by sincere religious believers themselves. If I say that all religious “truths” are merely preferences or symbols of a transcendent reality, then I’m claiming to have access to the truth about the matter that bypasses these religious traditions, a “god’s-eye view” of the situation. In saying that we’re completely incapable of speaking truthfully about ultimate reality, I’m in fact making a claim about the nature of ultimate reality (namely, that it resists truthful description), and so fall into self-contradiction.

    It turns out, then, that the Pope’s position is actually the more humble one. He adheres firmly to the truth as he sees it by his lights, but also recognizes that other religions participate, to greater or lesser degrees, in that truth.

    This isn’t to say, moreover, that some apparent conflicts between religions won’t turn out to vanish upon inspection. In many cases claims that seem incompatible on their face might, when properly understood, turn out not to be in conflict after all. For instance, it’s possible that claims made by certain Hindus about the impersonal nature of the divine which seem to contradict Christian views could turn out to be simply speaking about a different aspect of the divine being and ultimately be compatible with Christian belief (I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case, but it could be). This is something that can really only be discovered in talking with people of other faiths and trying to understand what they believe, not by sweeping all truth claims under the carpet of relativism.

  • Inerrancy

    I liked this post from Elizaphanian.

  • The holiness people

    Jeremy has a fascinating post (a re-post from his first blog, actually) about growing up in the Pentecostal Holiness Church and eventually converting to Lutheranism.

    As someone who was raised in a household that could best be described as moderately observant sometimes-Presbyterian, the kind of all-encompassing religious subculture that Jeremy describes is pretty hard for me to imagine.

  • Poetry and liturgy

    I’m with Christopher on this.

  • Sex and the modern Lutheran

    You may not have noticed that the ELCA has released a draft of a new social statement on sexuality, which you can read here. The Journal of Lutheran Ethics has several responses here. After a period of comment and feedback, the social statement will be taken up for official endorsement at the 2009 churchwide assembly.

    I haven’t read the whole thing closely, but on a first read-through it strikes me as pretty good, especially for something that I assume was written by committee. In particular I like how it roots our sexual ethics in incarnation and justification rather than creation alone. I also appreciate the way it develops the themes of neighbor-love and trust, which are hallowed Lutheran themes that have nevertheless taken a backseat in Lutheran social thought to other concepts like “orders of creation.” The statement does lose its focus at times and almost turns into a bit of a laundry list, but overall it’s not bad.

    Of course, the most scrutinized section will be the one on same-sex relationships, but the statement doesn’t break any new ground here. It recognizes that there isn’t consensus in the church, but upholds the principle of welcoming people of all sexual orientations into the church and of advocating for their legal rights. It also recognizes the facts on the ground – that pastoral responses to to gay and lesbian Christians will vary. This all strikes me as a pretty accurate picture of where the ELCA currently is.

    Moreover, I don’t know how much value there would be in engaging in a lot of political manuevering to get a resolution through the churchwide assembly that would radically alter the status quo. Until there’s consensus in the church, a relatively decentralized, laissez-faire approach seems best. Though, I realize this doesn’t address the question of LGBT candidates for ordained ministry, who will have to rely on “extraordinary” calls until the church changes the policy on ordination. If I were to advocate for a change at this point it would be there.

    Another thing: as much as I’m tempted to bash the ELCA at times, the church, more than some other mainline denominations perhaps, remains very Christocentric in its theology and in its social and ethical thought. For all its occasional PC excess, I’ve never seen in the ELCA much of a thirst for Spongian flights of theological fancy. Of course, it’s possible I haven’t been looking hard enough. (Or maybe it’s because being a Lutheran bishop has never been as sexy as being an Episcopal one, so there’s no point in staying on board if you don’t really believe this stuff.)

  • True patriotism

    I’m reading Walter Wink’s book The Powers that Be, an abridgement of sorts of his “powers” trilogy, and came across this quote, which seems somewhat appropriate in the wake of the Obama/Jeremiah Wright flap, but also of more general application:

    I love my country passionately; that is why I want to see it do right. There is a valid place for sensible patriotism. But from a Christian point of view, true patriotism acknowledges God’s sovereignty over all the nations, and holds a healthy respect for God’s judgments on the pretensions of any power that seeks to impose its will on others. There is a place for a sense of destiny as a nation. But it can be authentically pursued only if we separate ourselves from the legacy of the myth of redemptive violence and struggle to face the evil within ourselves. There is a divine vocation for the United States (and every other nation) to perform in human affairs. But it can perform that task, paradoxically, only by abandoning its messianic pretensions and accepting a more limited role within the family of nations. (p. 62)

  • An end to sacrifices

    I just finished reading James Alison’s Undergoing God, and the more I read of him the more I like him and think he’s onto something important. Alison, to recap, is a student of anthropologist/literary theorist Rene Girard, who has proposed a rather daring new interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross.

    For Girard human selves and human desire are structured by what he calls mimesis, which means that we learn to want things by seeing other people want them. The problem is that mimesis all to often takes a rivalrous form: I want what you want which creates competition and potentially conflict.

    This conflict can threaten to unravel the fabric of human society, but societies have found a way to defuse that conflict, at least in the short run. They do this by means of what Girard calls the scapegoat mechanism. When rivalrous conflict gets out of hand, the members of a group will settle on someone who becomes the focus of the group’s “wrath.” This someone – the scapegoat – is “expelled,” often murderously, and this expulsion restores harmony by creating the feeling that the source of conflict has been banished.

    What Girard argues is that the history of myth and religion repeatedly display attempts to cover over these expulsions of the innocent. The myths and rituals of sacrifice to appease god or the gods invest the scapegoat mechanism with sacred legitimacy. Thus we invest the victim with sacred power and authority, since the expulsion is that which reestablishes harmony. We cover up our crime of killing the innocent by turning it into a “necessary” part of a divinely ordained order.

    However, says Girard, the Bible “unmasks” this sacred lie by presenting the victim as unambiguously innocent. The death of Jesus, as recorded in the gospels, most clearly reveals the mendacity of the scapegoat mechanism. When the Roman and Jewish authorities come together to kill Jesus the gospels leave no doubt that it’s an act of murder, even though it’s rationalized by various parties as a means of restoring order (see especially Girard’s excellent I See Satan Fall Like Lightning).

    Alison elaborates Girard’s line of thought in more explicitly theological terms. He contends that Jesus’ death and resurrection defeat the powers of violence and scapegoating by displaying those powers’ ultimate impotence. God, who comes to us in Jesus, is completely “other than” the death and violence according to which we have structured our life together. Jesus’ death, for Alison, doesn’t satisfy God’s wrath, but shows a God of unconditional love who is willing to occupy the place of utmost shame and weakness in order to break down our stony hearts. He absorbs our wrath.

    One of the reasons I find Alison’s approach is so appealing is that it shows the gospel as something genuinely new and radical. God isn’t caught up in the same economy of payback and tit-for-tat that we seem to be. He has nothing to do with that retributive scheme. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are an intrusion of a fundamentally different order into the one we have built for ourselves. And this intrusion, which is followed by the gifting of the Spirit, allows us to learn to participate in this new way of being.

    Jesus, who comes to us as the “forgiving victim,” enables us to live in a way that doesn’t depend on defining ourselves over against others. And doesn’t depend on sacrificing others to our desire for security. When we live with the understanding that God is unconditionally for us, we can gradually learn to let go of the fear that makes violence and sacrifice seem necessary in the first place.

    As an anthropologist and student of texts, Girard seems to see the implications of his theory being primarily for human society, ethics, and politics. And Alison more or less follows him here; the “new creation” that we’re being invitied to participate in seems chiefly characterized by transformed relationships between human beings. As a gay Catholic, Alison deploys these insights to powerful effect in thinking about how the church has victimized gay people but also about how all Christians can begin to live together in ways that don’t depend on defining “in” and “out” groups.

    Important as this work is, I’d also like to see this line of thought developed in a way that takes into account our relationship with the non-human world. After all, if God is the creator of all that is, his redemptive action presumably has implications for the entire world, not just us. Moreover, it’s no secret that the victims of sacrifice have often been our non-human fellow creatures. The scapegoat was originally, after all, a goat. Is there good news for him here too? And for us with respect to our felt need to dominate the non-human world?

    It’s more than a little ironic that we in the “enlightened” modern world subject animals to suffering and death on a scale that might well have made priests of the most blood-soaked cults of the ancient world blush. For us, animals have long represented both the “base” part of our nature (instinct, lust, violence) and, paradoxically, pure unspoiled nature. Consequently, we project both our fears and desires onto them, investing them with a kind of mythical power. At the same time we reduce them to commodities in our industrial systems of food, entertainment, and science. On a Girardian reading, we inflict violence on them because it’s what we think we have to do to get by in this world, to suppress our fears of our own violence and to assuage our fears of death and of being victimized.

    But if Girard and Alison are right, then the death of Jesus shows us that there is no “necessary” violence. Because God loves us unconditionally, and because that love has the last word in a universe seemingly characterized by confict, enmity, and the struggle to get ahead and be on top, we can learn to let go of the need to secure our place in this world by means of violence. We don’t need to sacrifice animals to the “gods” of appetite, safety, health, and science. We can trust that God will hold us in being and that we can even occupy the “place of shame” without losing ourselves. Moreover, as the theologian Stephen Webb has argued, we can be free to make friends with the animals. Just as Jeus is the agent of reconciliation among humans, he is the agent of reconciliation between humans and the rest of creation.

  • Thoughts for Good Friday

    “Christ’s death on the cross and his descent into Hell … reassure us that we can never wander so far astray as to be outside the humanity with which Christ has identified.” – William Placher

    “Jesus came to forgive sin unconditionally for God. Our sin, our unbelief, consists precisely in the fact that we cannot and will not tolerate such forgiveness. So we move to kill him. There is nothing for him to do then but to die ‘for our sins,’ ‘on our behalf,’ ‘give his life as a ransom for many.’ For him to stop and ask us to ‘shape up’ would be to deny the forgiveness he came to give, to put conditions on the unconditional. Thus he must ‘bear our sins in his body’—not theoretically in some fashion, but actually. He is beaten, spit upon, mocked, wasted.” – Gerhard Forde

    “Sin and death are brought to submission by the persistence of Christ’s love. All their forces are spent upon him, but he carries on loving. In the end the voices of the thief asking to be remembered in God’s kingdom, the forgiven soldier at the foot of the cross recognizing by Christ’s death that he is the Son of God, witness to love’s triumph.” – Stephen Cottrell

    “The single central thing is the conviction that for us to be at peace Jesus’ life had to be given up. It isn’t that a vengeful and inflexible God demands satisfaction, more that the way the world is makes it unavoidable that the way to our freedom lies through the self-giving of Jesus, even to the point of death. In the kind of world that you and I inhabit, the kind of world that you and I make or collude with, this is what the price of unrestricted love looks like.” – Rowan Williams

    “And what is this Gospel? It is nothing less than the conviction and experience that God loves the whole world. What we see in Jesus is the revelation of an inclusive, all-embracing, generous loving. A loving that washes the feet of the world. A loving that heals individuals from oppression, both physical and spiritual. A loving that takes sides with the poor, vulnerable, diseased, hated, despised, and outcasts of his day. A loving that is summed up in his absolute commitment to love at all costs, even in extreme suffering and death. As Sydney Evans once wrote, ‘What Jesus did on the Cross was to demonstrate the truth of what he had taught: he showed a quality of love—such that the worst that evil could do to such love was to give such love ever fresh opportunities for loving.’” – Andrew Linzey

    “The kenosis, or self-emptying, of Jesus, which expresses in historical time the kenosis, the long-suffering of God, is the sacrifice which makes possible the theosis, or raising to God of human life, enabling it to share in the eternal life of a God of limitless love.” – Keith Ward

    “God in Christ crucified cancels the curse of human vulnerability to horrors. For the very horrors, participation in which threatened to undo the positive value of created personality, now become secure points of identification with the crucified God. To paraphrase St. Paul, neither the very worst humans can suffer, nor the most abominable things we can do can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:31-39).” – Marilyn McCord Adams

    “The cross of Christ was not an inexplicable or chance event, which happened to strike [Jesus], like illness or accident. To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus’ constantly reiterated free choice. He warns his disciples lest their embarking on the same path be less conscious of its costs (Luke 14:25-33). The cross of Calvary was not a difficult family situation, nor a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt, or a nagging in-law; it was the political, legally-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society.” – John Howard Yoder

    “That God, out of love and concern for us, would so humble Godself as to unite Godself with not just lowly humanity but humanity in the most dire straits—that is the sacrifice, made by God in Christ on our behalf, in death as over the course of Jesus’ whole life.” – Kathryn Tanner

    “God’s forgiveness is indiscriminate. That’s the bedrock conviction of the Christian faith. ‘One has died for all,’ wrote the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:14). That simple claim has immense implications. All means all, without exception. There are no people who are sufficiently good so that God doesn’t need to forgive them and Christ didn’t die for them. There are no people who are too wicked for God to forgive them and for Christ to die for them. And there are no people whom God, for some inscrutable reason, decided not to forgive.” – Miroslav Volf

    “The taking on of the servile and sinful human condition, as foretold in Second Isaiah, is presented by Paul as an act of voluntary impoverishment: ‘For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ has been: He was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). This is the humiliation of Christ, his kenosis (Phil. 2:6-11). But he does not take on the human sinful condition and its consequences to idealize it. It is rather because of love for and solidarity with others who suffer in it. It is to redeem them from their sin and to enrich them with his poverty. It is to struggle against human selfishness and everything that divides persons and allows there to be rich and poor, possessors and dispossessed, oppressors and oppressed.” – Gustavo Gutierrez

    “Because Jesus is at once the ‘yes’ of God to humans in fidelity and also humanity’s ‘yes’ to God in faith, we are lifted into a higher life than we could ever imagine, a sharing in the life—and the eternal dance of gifts given and received—of the triune God.” – Luke Timothy Johnson

    “[W]hat was really exciting to Paul was that it was obvious from Jesus’ self-giving, and the ‘out-pouring of Jesus’ blood,’ that this was the revelation of who God was: God was entirely without vengeance, entirely without substitutionary tricks; and that he was giving himself entirely without ambivalence and ambiguity for us, towards us, in order to set us ‘free from our sins’—‘our sins’ being our way of being bound up with each other in death, vengeance, violence and what is commonly called ‘wrath.’” – James Alison

    “Because [Jesus] died for us, we never die alone without representation, without hope for personal identity beyond the grave. We will never have to die alone on a Godforsaken hill outside the gate. We can die in a communion of his love, in the assurance of the forgiveness of sins, with undying hope for resurrection and eternal life. Because Jesus died the death of the sinner as the sinless one, assuming our lot by his love, he can be our representative. Because he died the death under the law as the man of love, full of life to share and taking time for others, he can be our representative. He can be our representative because, in being raised from the dead, he was approved by God as having the right credentials to be the ambassador of the human race. — Carl Braaten

    Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
    Guilty of dust and sin.
    But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
    From my first entrance in,
    Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
    If I lacked anything.
    A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
    Love said, You shall be he.
    I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
    I cannot look on thee.
    Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
    Who made the eyes but I?
    Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
    Go where it doth deserve.
    And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
    My dear, then I will serve.
    You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
    So I did sit and eat.
    —George Herbert

  • Why resurrection?

    Slate has a pretty decent article on why resurrection, rather than the immortality of the soul, is the key Christian belief about life after death. Though I do sometimes think these two notions are needlessly set in opposition. It seems to me that the insistence of bodily resurrection qualifies a too spiritualistic idea of human life, but on the other hand, the NT, Paul in particular, is keen to qualify a too physicalistic notion of resurrection.