Category: Uncategorized

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, this is from the introduction to Rowan Greer’s Christian Hope and Christian Life:

The point I am trying to make is that a “here-and-now” Christianity, at least in my view, runs two risks–reducing the Christian life to a moralism of some kind and making the world of our experience ultimate and the only possible frame of reference. Let me say something more about the first risk. It has seemed to me that Christianity has always appeared historically as both a message of salvation and a way of life. It may well be that these two dimensions can never be perfectly balanced. In earliest Christianity, I should argue, the message of salvation often dominated the way of life. Yet, in our time the opposite would seem to me the case. We have all heard the argument that such and such a person, who never goes to church and has no obvious use for Christianity, is a “better Christian” than most of the regular church-goers. The implication is quite clear; it is moral character that defines a Christian. Even our contemporary preoccupation with spirituality drives in the same direction. Meditative techniques can sometimes appear as ways of managing stress and helping people live better. It is difficult to understand where the tendency to reduce Christianity to the moral life comes from. To be sure, the central place of the Atonement in Western Christianity places an emphasis on sin and forgiveness that can easily be understood largely in terms of this life. Moreover, late medieval piety, especially the devotio moderna, turned away from the purely contemplative life to the active life of virtue. Perhaps more important is the shift in religious thinking to be located at the end of the seventeenth century. The religious wars after the Reformation apparently taught many that ultimate questions were insoluble and that it made more sense to attend to our duties in this life, even our duties as taught to us by nature and reason. The emergence of a secular society, the empirical worldview espoused by modernism, and a post-Cartesian emphasis on religious experience may all be involved. Explaining the tendency to reduce Christianity to the moral life lies beyond my competence and my interest here. My only wish is to claim that in many ways the “here and now” of the Christian life has supplanted the Christian message of salvation. The issues that now divide Christians from one another tend to be moral ones. (pp. 3-4)

It’s often said, to the point of being a truism, that American Christianity is obsessed with personal salvation and life after death. But is this really true? Theologian Rowan Greer, in his book Christian Hope and Christian Life, disagrees. He says that, if anything, American Christians have lost their sense of an otherworldly hope, and that this is, in fact, bad, because it’s the hope of another world, a final consummation and redemption, that gives shape and motive to the Christian life. The rest of the book seeks to demonstrate this by showing how “Christian hope and Christian life” interact in the New Testament and in thinkers like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, John Donne, and Jeremy Taylor. Greer is looking to shed light on the question of how we relate the “there and then” to the “here and now.”

I think Greer’s on to something. On the Left we get Christians who tend to focus on this-worldly politics and dismiss otherworldliness as “pie in the sky by and by.” On the Right, and contrary to popular stereotype, there seems to be just as much a focus on politics (Focus on the Family, “Justice Sunday,” etc.), decrying the evils of popular culture, and/or an emphasis on a kind of Christianized (and I use that term loosely) self-help, enabling you to “live with purpose” and have “your best life now.” Leaving aside the Left Behinders and Pat Robertson types (who often are as focused on politics as anyone else anyway), where in American Christianity is Christian hope actually a lively and important part of present life?

James Bovard points out that it’s quite a pass we’ve come to when a secret court of political appointees that virtually never denies a request for a warrant is considered too restrictive of the President’s powers. (via Antiwar)

In Chapter 4, “Understanding Biblical Teaching about Salvation,” Keith Ward argues against a reading of the biblical witness that suggests that only a tiny number of elect are destined for salvation. Rather, he argues, the thrust of the biblical teaching is toward a cosmic vision of the salvation of all things. He takes his cue from texts like Ephesians 1:9-10: “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

The redemption of all things in Christ is rooted in their creation in Christ. As Colossians 1:15-20 says:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Ward thinks that this vision of the “cosmic Christ” is a key to understanding how all things can be said to exist “in” him (and to be redeemed in him). Just as the Church is said to be the Body of Christ, the whole of creation can analogously be said to be part of, or “in,” Christ:

According to Ephesians, the Church is part of Christ as his body, and according to Colossians all creation is part of Christ, since “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). It looks as though there is a very close relation between the church and the whole of creation, since in some sense both are parts of Christ. The relationship is rather different, since it is not true that all creation consciously attempts to subject itself to Christ, as the Church does, and most of creation may not even be aware of Christ. We might see the church as the frail and stumbling vanguard of the body that will be, when the whole creation shows forth clearly and unambiguously the being and activity of God. Then the creation and church will be co-extensive, for all things will glorify God, be the unambiguous objects of God’s delight, and enact the will and purpose of God. (p. 74)

To participate in the divine nature is to share in the being of God, which is love, to become instruments of that love, bound together in a community beyond ignorance and desire, suffering and sin, where “there will be no more death” (Rev. 21:4). That is the ultimate meaning of salvation. (p. 76)

Thus there are at least three senses in which we can say that all things exist in Christ. First, all things have their being rooted in Christ, who is the Wisdom of God and agent of creation. The universe is the “thought of God” and “to say that the universe is in Christ is to say that it is formed, sustained, and completed by the creative thinking of divine Wisdom, and is incapable of existing without the divine thinking activity by which it has being” (p. 77). Secondly, and more specifically, while the universe as a whole can be seen as a materialization of the divine Wisdom or Word, in Jesus the Word became flesh in a more concrete and personal way:

In a novel, there may be many characters and many statements, most of which do not represent the actual beliefs and character of the author, but there may be one who does. So in the history of this planet, many created persons do not represent the mind of the author, even though they are in one sense the thoughts of the author. Jesus is meant to represent the mind of the author, and to be the thought, the Word, which expresses, which is in human form the essential nature of the author. (pp. 77-78)

Finally, all things will be “in Christ” in the sense already discussed: the consummation of creation and the extinction of sin, death, and suffering.

But if all things exist in God, how did suffering and sin enter creation in the first place? We would traditionally divide this into the question of “natural” evil and “moral” evil. Regarding natural evil, Ward takes the view that it may be a necessary component of any world that God would choose to create. If we think of all possible worlds existing as thoughts in the mind of God, then the actual world is the one which God chooses to materially embody. But it may be that any world which contains finite, conscious embodied beings with whom God wishes to have a relationship also contains as a necessary concomitant pain, death, and suffering.

For instance, it’s difficult to imagine the evolutionary process that produced creatures like us without the suffering and death of billions of individual creatures leading up to it. This doesn’t make that suffering a good thing, but a kind of “necessary evil.” Ward seems influenced here by the Augustinian and Leibnizian view that evil can be “necessary” in that it contributes to the goodness of the whole.

On the question of moral evil, Ward takes a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, our evolutionary heritage has saddled us with particular drives (e.g. lust, aggression) that give us a propensity toward moral evil. (He seems to take the Eastern view that Original Sin means an inherited tendency to sin rather than inherited guilt.) On the other hand, he thinks that our primordial ancestors rejected a relationship with God, resulting in an estrangement for them and their posterity. The “death” that all die “in Adam” is the spiritual alienation from God, not physical death (which, as far as we can tell, was always part of creation). The loss of that deep unity between us and God has resulted in the perversion of our innate drives rather than their perfection. “If there were a deep and meaningful unity between divine and human nature, then lust would be, perhaps gradually…, moderated into loving desire and sensual delight in a fully personal relationship of love. Aggression would be moderated into the courage to face affliction and to compete with others without rancor” (pp. 106-107).

We might now say that at the beginning of the evolutionary leap to homo sapiens, those early humanoid beings had the freedom to turn to God or to turn away. They had the capacity to choose the way of life or the way of death. They chose death. And since that time, a time lost in prehistory, humans have lived “in Adam,” in the flesh, a purely natural existence alienated from the divine source of all life. (p. 107)

Salvation, then, is liberation from evil in the broadest possible sense: liberation from sin, from death, decay, and suffering for all of creation. The good news of the Gospel is “that God wills to save everyone” (p. 114). Jesus comes to reconcile us to God, to re-establish that realationship that has been ruptured, liberate us from bondage to sin, and give us the gift of eternal life. Ward, following an important stream in recent theology, doesn’t think that salvation is limited to those who explicitly confess Jesus, but that there can be an “implicit” faith or desire for God that constitutes accpeting God’s offer of salvation (see pp. 113-117).

Ward’s vision here is to see God’s will to save as maximally expansive, encompassing all of creation and drawing all things to himself. He contrasts this with the view that God is in the business of setting traps or making it as difficult as possible for people to be saved, much less electing to perdition the vast majority of humankind.

Geologist Alan Cutler says that the much heralded (or lamented) “war between science and religion” is largely a myth:

The historical relationship between science and religion has been as complex as any human relationship. There is no reason to think that this will change. The warfare thesis suits the polemical purposes of partisans in certain social and political debates. But it harms religion by portraying it as overly dogmatic and reactionary. It also harms science by portraying it as hostile or at least indifferent to the average person’s spiritual needs.

Read more… (via Dappled Things)

Anglican philosopher-theologian Keith Ward, recently retired professor of divinity at Oxford, has published a new book called What the Bible Really Teaches (about Crucifixion, Resurrection, Salvation, the Second Coming, and Eternal Life) that is a charitable but firm rebuke to fundamentalist readings of the Bible. Ward considers himself a “born-again” Christian, but says that fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture fail on the Bible’s own terms.

In Chapter 1, “Fundamentalism and the Bible,” Ward investigates the nature of the Bible and argues that it’s incompatible with the doctrine of verbal inerrancy as that is usually understood. He points out that the Bible itself nowhere claims to be inerrant, or that all its stories must be read literally. He contrasts that nature of the Christian Bible with that of the Koran; the latter purports to be a word-for-word dictation from God, while the former is a collection of writings from varied periods and viewpoints that represent a response to God’s self-revelation. Ward’s argument is that the Bible doesn’t even purport to be the kind of word-for-word dictation from God that fundamentalists tend to treat it as.

The oft-quoted text from the letter to Timothy that “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” is, Ward thinks, misinterpreted if taken as a proof-text for a doctrine of verbal inerrancy. Instead we should think of God’s Spirit inspiring the minds of the writers of Scripture in such a way that they “build up an authentic and trustworthy testimony to the loving-kindness of God, and to the divine plan to reconcile the world to the divine life” (p. 16). It is a misunderstanding of the Bible to think of revelation as primarily a set of facts or doctrines infallibly set down in the text, rather the Biblical meaning of revelation is “primarily an unveiling and knowledge of the reality of God, especially in the person of Jesus. It is not primarily a communication of true propositions” (p. 18).

In Chapter 2, “Understanding the Bible,” Ward offers six principles of Biblical interpretation that he thinks are truer to the nature of the Bible itself. The principles are contextualization, reading the biblical writings in a way that does justice to their history, setting, genre, etc.; consistency, treating like passages alike, e.g. not invoking certain Levitical laws as binding on modern-day believers while ignoring others; comprehensiveness, taking the biblical witness as a whole and allowing passages to illuminate each other; sublation, the idea that certain biblical teachings are superseded and yet fulfilled by later teachings, such as the lex talionis‘ replacement by Jesus’ command to forgive; the principle of spiritual interpretation, under which Ward subsumes the three traditional non-literal methods of interpretation: moral, anagogical (pointing to a future fulfillment), and allegorical; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Christ-centeredness, or seeing every part of the Bible as pointing us to Christ (was Christum treibet – that which conveys Christ, as Luther put it). Later chapters will see Ward applying these principles to particular doctrines like the Second Coming and salvation.

Though setting out to combat fundamentalism, Ward isn’t a debunker or revisionist in the mode of Bishop Spong. For one thing, he thinks that a fundamentalist approach to the Bible is actually an aberration in Christian history; he’s not setting himself up as a smasher of the tradition. And his ontological commitments clearly put him in the camp of a robust version of theism. He might be best seen as a kind of liberal broad-churchman who doesn’t see any inherent conflict between faith and reason, somewhat reminiscent of the Cambridge Platonists of the 17th century.

More to come…

p.s. for a sample of Ward’s thinking, check out this essay.

This is from Thomas Merton’s little book (and I do mean little; it clocks in at under 50 pages) Praying the Psalms, which I’ve been reading:

If there is one theme that is certainly to be found implicitly or explicitly in all the Psalms, it is the motif of Psalm One: “Blessed is the man who follows not the counsel of the ungodly…but his delight is in the law of the Lord.” If there is one “experience” to which the Psalms all lead in one way or another, it is precisely this: delight in the law of the Lord, peace in the will of God. This is the foundation on which the Psalmists build their edifice of praise. (pp. 25-26)

Merton follows St. Augustine in seeing the Psalms as a way of training us in the way of praising God:

St. Augustine adds that God has taught us to praise Him, in the Psalms, not in order that He may get something out of this praise, but in order that we may be made better by it. Praising God in the words of the Psalms, we can come to know Him better. Knowing Him better we love Him better, loving Him better we find our happiness in Him. … In them we learn to know God, not by analyzing various concepts of His divinity, but by praising and loving Him. … Hence, St. Augustine concludes, our eternal life of praise must begin here on earth in time. All our thoughts, our “meditation” in this life should center on the praise of God “because the eternal exultation of our future life will be the praise of God, and no one can be fitted for that future life who has not exercised himself in praise in this present life.” (pp. 12-14)

Merton says the layman may actually have an advantage over the priest who is obliged to pray the Office. While the latter may feel like he has to rush through the Psalter to fulfill his obligation, the layperson can take one or two Psalms each day and slowly and meditatively recite them, entering into their meaning.

The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Dick Polman has a good round-up of the debate in Washington over the Bush administration’s program warrant-less domesitc spying (“Executive Power: The controversy could become a hot political issue in ’06,” January 8, 2006 – can’t seem to find it online). Is it telling that even people who should be sympathetic are finding this tough to swallow? For instance, conservative lawyer Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, thinks that Bush has broken the 1978 law requiring presidents to obtain warrants. Fein says that “President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. … Congress should insist the President cease the spying unless or until a proper statute is enacted, or face possible impeachment.”

That seems to me to be the key point. If the administration thought that the existing laws were too strict, they should’ve gone to Congress to get that changed, rather than trying to justify it after the fact by a vague appeal to ill-defined presidential powers. I remember when conservatives used to insist that even the President is not above the law.

Polman also argues, persuasively – alas, that the Dems are probably too chicken to do much about any of this, afraid of being labeled “soft on terrorism,” especially with the mid-term elections coming up. We’ll see, I guess.

Good column by Jonathan Rauch on the Bush administration’s expansive (to say the least) understanding of executive power during wartime.

Key point here:

The Civil War, World War II, and, to a lesser extent, the Korean War were intense, acute conflicts. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman believed they were taking emergency measures during a conflict that they expected to be short. When it became clear that the Civil War would drag on, Lincoln went to Congress for the 1863 Habeas Corpus Act, formally legalizing his detention policy. Lincoln understood that he could not run a long war on a fly-by-night basis.

Bush, in contrast, seems determined to treat the war on terror as a permanent emergency. The administration says the 2001 use-of-force resolution allowed the government to collect battlefield intelligence here at home, superseding FISA. Invoked immediately after an enemy attack, that argument makes legal and strategic sense. Warrantless domestic surveillance and legal improvisation seem fine for four days, four weeks, or even four months.

But four years — with no end in sight? Bush seems to have had no intention of regularizing his surveillance program by building a legal framework for it. Instead, his plan apparently was to run a secret domestic spying program outside the boundaries of conventional law for, well, how long? Decades? Forever? (Read the rest…)

Eric has a great quote from theologian David Hart describing his political outlook in the course of recounting a session at the American Academy of Religion meeting discussing his book The Beauty of the Infinite:

I also had the joy of calling myself an “arch-conservative” in front of a room of people without then getting a chance to explain my ChesterBelloc-Wendell Berry-Dorothy Day-Bulgakov-feudalist-anarchist-monarchist anti-modernism.