Stanley Hauerwas asserts with no small vigour the view that by ‘taking up Rome’s project’ and making it their own, the Christians were bankrupting themselves of their own witness.[1] In accepting the power of Rome as a weapon for their own armoury, the church was conceding its own identity to the world against which the martyrs had so successfully fought. Martyrdom stood as a sign against Rome’s attempt to victimize Christians. Though the refusal to obey Caesar was (it seemed to the pagans) an irrational act, it witnessed to a higher rule; and by doing so, undid that rule’s claim to absoluteness:
‘The church – exactly because it does not seek to rule through violence, though it necessarily manifests God’s rule – triumphs by remembering the victory of the Lamb through the witness of the martyrs.’[2]
The new offer of a share in Rome’s rule was an understandable temptation, because Christians had always proclaimed the ultimacy of God’s politics; and here was a chance to exercise that politics – to demonstrate in practice the truth of the claim. For the ancient Christians so for the Christians of today: the temptation of collusion with rule threatens to dim the light of the church’s witness to the risen Lord of all. Hauerwas sees the issue as being ‘how we [i.e. the church] can witness to God’s rule through church without ruling’.[3] In other words: no matter how friendly and peaceable the offer of co-operation be, the answer for Hauerwas will always be ‘no’.
For Oliver O’Donovan, however, the victory of the martyrs is to be understood somewhat differently. He finds Hauerwas’s version of Christendom to be historically doubtful, for Hauerwas too readily assumes that the Christians who applauded the conversion of Constantine did so because they wanted to pursue the growth of the church by means of the apparatus of the empire. In fact, the picture is more complex: there were those who warned about the dangers, and those who declared no more than that the ruler had submitted to the rule of Christ. They were not ‘taking up Rome’s project’. This is not collaboration with coercion, necessarily. Rather, the very hope of vindication for which the martyrs yearned had, in part and temporarily, come to pass. Yet, under the ministrations of a Hauerwas, this same hope comes to look like a temptation! Rather, for O’Donovan:
…since true martyrdom is a powerful force and its resistance to Antichrist effective, the church must be prepared to welcome the homage of the kings when it is offered to the Lord of the martyrs.[4]
It is not surprising – indeed it makes good theological sense – that the rule of God should manifest itself in history though not yet absolutely. Martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. As such, it can be faithful witness to say yes as well as no. Hauerwas’s martyrs die shouting ‘they make take our lives, but you will never take our freedom’ just as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace did. And yet, as Augustine himself said ‘it not the punishment, but the cause, that makes a martyr'.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), p. 39
[2] Ibid., p. 38
[3] Ibid., p. 43 Hauerwas’s somewhat surprising ally is Augustine (or at least, his re-reading of Augustine).
[4] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215
Friday, September 15, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker is perhaps the most influential exponent of what became known as ‘Erastianism’ in the Anglican tradition. The eighth book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, published posthumously from notes he made rather than from a finished text, seeks an alternative to the apparent disloyalty of Allen’s papalism and Cartwright’s separationism. After all, as he argued, in Elizabethan England the Church and the Commonwealth could not be distinguished by differences in membership:
‘We hold that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the Commonwealth, nor any man a member of the Commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England, therefore as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the selfsame line, is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: So albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a Commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given unto a multitude, yet one and the selfsame multitude may in such sort be both and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other.’ (VIII.i.2)
What the rather clumsy metaphor of the triangle illustrates is that for Hooker it is the ‘properties and action’ and ‘qualities and functions’ that distinguish church from commonwealth, not the membership. It is, firstly, a matter of looking at the same thing from different angles, and, secondly, of discerning different actions carried out by the same people. As Hooker understands it, the church is after all that society which maintains the true religion as Israel had done of old. He will happily admit that prior to Constantine, the church of Rome and the commonwealth of Rome were two different societies. However, when the state embraced Christ, that separation could not be maintained:
‘The Church and the Commonwealth therefore are in this case personally one society, which society being termed a Commonwealth as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law and regiment, a Church as it hath the Spiritual law of Jesus Christ, forasmuch as these two laws contain so many and so different offices, there must of necessity be appointed in it some to one charge and some to another, yet without dividing the whole and making it two several impaled societies.’ (VIII.i.4)
The theological lynchpin of Hooker’s account of church and state is his direct unmediated comparison of the ‘Commonwealth of the Jews’ with the ‘Commonwealth of England’. He asks:
‘If therefore with approbation from heaven the Kings of God’s own chosen people had in the affairs of Jewish religion supreme power, why not Christian Kings the like power in Christian religion?’ VIII.iii.4
Like David, Asa, Jehosaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah before her, the Christian monarch could assume supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs – calling together general councils and the making of church laws. Futhermore, kings were to be exempt from subjection to Ecclesiastical Courts. For Hooker, the complete overlap between the commonwealth and the church meant that the analogy with Israel was obvious and decisive.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Constantinianism, continued...
If on the one hand John of Patmos accentuates the bestial aspect of the imperium, it is a tone moderated by the refusal of Paul to see the powers as falling outside of divine providence. For both, the expectation was that hostility to those bearing the Messianic name would be a feature of the new age. This is as it turned out, although sporadically rather than consistently in the first few centuries. For some Christians, the lack of hostility was problematic, so accustomed had they become to identifying with the idea of martyrdom. The longing for a martyr’s death was so strong that Augustine, for one, spent not a little effort in reminding Christians that martyrdom was not to be invited. Origen in his Exhortation to Martyrdom falls just short of recommending Christians provoke it where it is not on offer. Stories are told of Christians presenting themselves for martyrdom at the local governor’s door, much to his annoyed surprise! The martyrs had been so exalted that it was hard to think of martyrdom as not the norm; and Origen (for one) had declared it a sure path to heaven.
Thus the conversion of Constantine, which itself almost immediately followed a period of intense persecution (that of Diocletian), was not an eventuality for which there were obvious theological resources. As O’Donovan writes ‘[T]here was no revealed political doctrine in the New Testament, prescribing how the state was to be in Christ.’[1] The Christians were as unprepared for the peace as they had been prepared for the war. Where it had been the tendency prior to 315 to demonize the imperium as implacably hostile to the kingdom of God (forgetful of Romans 13), in the new dispensation it was perhaps rather the tendency to sacralize the emperor. The temptation was to see this as the moment of victory – that here was an end to the need for mission because the mission had apparently been accomplished.
[1] Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 219
Thus the conversion of Constantine, which itself almost immediately followed a period of intense persecution (that of Diocletian), was not an eventuality for which there were obvious theological resources. As O’Donovan writes ‘[T]here was no revealed political doctrine in the New Testament, prescribing how the state was to be in Christ.’[1] The Christians were as unprepared for the peace as they had been prepared for the war. Where it had been the tendency prior to 315 to demonize the imperium as implacably hostile to the kingdom of God (forgetful of Romans 13), in the new dispensation it was perhaps rather the tendency to sacralize the emperor. The temptation was to see this as the moment of victory – that here was an end to the need for mission because the mission had apparently been accomplished.
[1] Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 219
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
A Rushdie of Blood to the Head
The act that begins the action of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is a sadly familiar act of religious terrorism. A group of Sikh fanatics have hijacked an airliner and its passengers, the Boeing 747 Bostan. Tavleen, their female leader, is heard saying to her colleague as she executes a hostage:
Martyrdom is a privilege…We shall be like the stars; like the sun. (p. 86)
Even though her fellow-terrorists fight her, in the end it is Tavleen who explodes the bomb as they fly over the English Channel, ‘and the walls come tumbling down’ (p. 87): she herself is killed and the plane destroyed; and frenetic and bizarre narrative is strangely propelled as the two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha fall towards the earth.
It is of course somewhat old hat to say that Salman Rushdie’s fiction both represents and expresses the clash of religious and secular world-views in an unprecedented way. His 1989 book The Satanic Verses provoked outrage from Muslims which culminated in the Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa. Ironically, the book itself was a thinly-veiled attack on the kind of murderous religious fanaticism that it provoked. Though Rushdie took aim at the excesses of Sikhs and Christians in the book (and has attacked Hindu extremism in others of his works), Muslims were right to feel that they were its chief target, especially given the extended passages that related to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed (called ‘Mahound’ by Rushdie).
However, it would be a mistake to characterize Rushdie as merely an anti-religious zealot. Discussion of religion naturally emanates from the discussions of identity-politics that are more deeply entrenched in his work. Rushdie is witness to a world in which personal and communal identities are constantly shifting against a backdrop of massive and rapid historical, cultural and political change. The drawing of borders on maps has enormous – sometimes enormously destructive – consequences for individuals on the ground and how they identify themselves (the partition of India in Midnight’s Children being but one example). It is a world of immigrants and exiles, no longer at home and yet deeply homesick. This fluidity of identity is experienced with delight by some Western individualists; yet is easy to see how this ‘freedom’ is frequently experienced as anxiety. Those who are in situations where they are (or feel themselves to be) on the outer as a minority or a perhaps a disempowered majority struggle to find the capacity to assert their identities alongside those given more easy access to a satisfactory identity. The question that Rushidie’s characters - who are frequently thrown in to new situations that make their former understandings of themselves impossible to sustain - continually ask of each other, themselves and even of God, is ‘what kind of idea are you’?
Martyrdom is a privilege…We shall be like the stars; like the sun. (p. 86)
Even though her fellow-terrorists fight her, in the end it is Tavleen who explodes the bomb as they fly over the English Channel, ‘and the walls come tumbling down’ (p. 87): she herself is killed and the plane destroyed; and frenetic and bizarre narrative is strangely propelled as the two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha fall towards the earth.
It is of course somewhat old hat to say that Salman Rushdie’s fiction both represents and expresses the clash of religious and secular world-views in an unprecedented way. His 1989 book The Satanic Verses provoked outrage from Muslims which culminated in the Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa. Ironically, the book itself was a thinly-veiled attack on the kind of murderous religious fanaticism that it provoked. Though Rushdie took aim at the excesses of Sikhs and Christians in the book (and has attacked Hindu extremism in others of his works), Muslims were right to feel that they were its chief target, especially given the extended passages that related to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed (called ‘Mahound’ by Rushdie).
However, it would be a mistake to characterize Rushdie as merely an anti-religious zealot. Discussion of religion naturally emanates from the discussions of identity-politics that are more deeply entrenched in his work. Rushdie is witness to a world in which personal and communal identities are constantly shifting against a backdrop of massive and rapid historical, cultural and political change. The drawing of borders on maps has enormous – sometimes enormously destructive – consequences for individuals on the ground and how they identify themselves (the partition of India in Midnight’s Children being but one example). It is a world of immigrants and exiles, no longer at home and yet deeply homesick. This fluidity of identity is experienced with delight by some Western individualists; yet is easy to see how this ‘freedom’ is frequently experienced as anxiety. Those who are in situations where they are (or feel themselves to be) on the outer as a minority or a perhaps a disempowered majority struggle to find the capacity to assert their identities alongside those given more easy access to a satisfactory identity. The question that Rushidie’s characters - who are frequently thrown in to new situations that make their former understandings of themselves impossible to sustain - continually ask of each other, themselves and even of God, is ‘what kind of idea are you’?
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Edict of Milan (315) - when the Empire Christianised officially (or thereabouts) - was the surprising vindication of the martyr’s cause, it seemed. Even the New Testament itself does not foresee a triumph of this scale. It is scarcely imaginable for Paul as he pens the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Romans that the Imperator might in fact invite the active participation of Christians in his government and offer them a share in his rule. The obedience of the believer to the superior authority (13:1) is in surprising recognition of the divine source of the exousia This is not the default position in the New Testament by any means, and certainly it was not the experience of the early Christians, who could point rather to their experience of unjust rejection at the hands of the rulers who seemed to have set their faces determinedly against the Almighty and his Holy One. In fact, the church had its existence from the fact of Jesus’s sham trail and execution: it knew of itself from this moment of victimization. Its earliest narratives testified to its angularity to the government and citizens of the Empire.
Two remarkable things are salient in Paul’s thought here. First, the apostle does not lapse into a dualism at this point and comfort the believer by pitting Caesar’s regime holus bolus against Christ’s. He is consistent to his own statement of the unity of the power of God, his earlier theme. God has no favourites: the gospel is for all, Jew first, then Gentile. His judgment is similarly universal in scope; that the ruler is his unwitting agent in judgment is not as surprising as it might initially sound. But what is more: 'he is the servant of God to you for good' ! The ruler is the servant of God for the good of the Christian! There is a stern warning to not to resist the authority; which is to say that the superiority of the authority of God does not obliterate the operations of human authority.
Second, Paul refuses to cast the Christian in the role of the victim seeking vengeance. The comfort comes not from knowing that one is rightly a victim and so justified in seeking reprisal, but rather from the controlling hand of providence. The ruler – even the vain and idolatrous emperor – was unwittingly the servant of God, doing the business of a deity he did not even acknowledge. These were not his ancestral gods, but the God of a very minor group indeed – not even of a nation. Yet their insignificance was not evidence of the impotence of their God.
Two remarkable things are salient in Paul’s thought here. First, the apostle does not lapse into a dualism at this point and comfort the believer by pitting Caesar’s regime holus bolus against Christ’s. He is consistent to his own statement of the unity of the power of God, his earlier theme. God has no favourites: the gospel is for all, Jew first, then Gentile. His judgment is similarly universal in scope; that the ruler is his unwitting agent in judgment is not as surprising as it might initially sound. But what is more: 'he is the servant of God to you for good' ! The ruler is the servant of God for the good of the Christian! There is a stern warning to not to resist the authority; which is to say that the superiority of the authority of God does not obliterate the operations of human authority.
Second, Paul refuses to cast the Christian in the role of the victim seeking vengeance. The comfort comes not from knowing that one is rightly a victim and so justified in seeking reprisal, but rather from the controlling hand of providence. The ruler – even the vain and idolatrous emperor – was unwittingly the servant of God, doing the business of a deity he did not even acknowledge. These were not his ancestral gods, but the God of a very minor group indeed – not even of a nation. Yet their insignificance was not evidence of the impotence of their God.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Constantinianism, anyone?
Oliver O'Donovan is often accused of 'Constantinianism', especially by the likes of Stanley Hauerwas and his followers. In fact, at a recent conference I am lead to believe that this accusation was given quite an airing - though not in his presence! What I think they mean is that he does see some positive place for state-craft, and a requirement for the church to be at least attuned to it, or in conversation with it, especially when providence delivers a repentant 'king'. What were the Christians supposed to do come the Edict of Milan 315 AD? Say to Constantine, 'thanks, but no thanks'? Does the church really insist that the state return to its former persecuting ways and undo its gesture of repentance? I suppose it is easier to live with a hostile state because we all know where we stand!
Of course, the Constantinian arrangement has produced some rather rotten fruit: medieval papalism on the one hand, and Erastianism on the other. One makes the church into a (parallel?) secular power (the pope having armies for example) to which kings must give allegiance; the other makes the church merely the puppet of the state (as with the German Christians in the 1930s). Strangely, in both cases there is an exchange of evangelical authority for the instruments of earthly rule. In the case of papalism, a misapplication of the doctrine of the keys from Matthew 16 is brought forward: 'binding' and 'loosing' become acts of judgment and punishment in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities. The context of Peter's declaration of Jesus as Messiah is eclipsed...
Today in the West (at least in the US and Australia - Christians in the UK seem politically toothless) a resurgence in the political power on offer to Christian groups appears as a temptation for them to forget their primary task of preaching the gospel and instead pursue what are actually secular ends by secular means. The terrible danger is that we think we are building the kingdom of heaven by engineering a 'Christian' government. But that does not necessarily mean that the repentant politician or the political party which wants to know what Christians would like to see should be left swinging in the wind.
Martyrdom, as ever, provides an interesting point of divergence between the two views. O'Donovan sees martyrdom as a possibility latent in the Christian experience but at times not a necessary path to pursue, when the ruler appears to be genuine in his/her desire to submit to the authority of God. Hauerwas would ask at this point 'why isn't anybody killing us?' and seek to emphasis the points of divergence to such a degree as to produce a violent reaction against the church... While I am attracted to Hauerwas' radicalism, I am also disturbed by it!
Of course, the Constantinian arrangement has produced some rather rotten fruit: medieval papalism on the one hand, and Erastianism on the other. One makes the church into a (parallel?) secular power (the pope having armies for example) to which kings must give allegiance; the other makes the church merely the puppet of the state (as with the German Christians in the 1930s). Strangely, in both cases there is an exchange of evangelical authority for the instruments of earthly rule. In the case of papalism, a misapplication of the doctrine of the keys from Matthew 16 is brought forward: 'binding' and 'loosing' become acts of judgment and punishment in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities. The context of Peter's declaration of Jesus as Messiah is eclipsed...
Today in the West (at least in the US and Australia - Christians in the UK seem politically toothless) a resurgence in the political power on offer to Christian groups appears as a temptation for them to forget their primary task of preaching the gospel and instead pursue what are actually secular ends by secular means. The terrible danger is that we think we are building the kingdom of heaven by engineering a 'Christian' government. But that does not necessarily mean that the repentant politician or the political party which wants to know what Christians would like to see should be left swinging in the wind.
Martyrdom, as ever, provides an interesting point of divergence between the two views. O'Donovan sees martyrdom as a possibility latent in the Christian experience but at times not a necessary path to pursue, when the ruler appears to be genuine in his/her desire to submit to the authority of God. Hauerwas would ask at this point 'why isn't anybody killing us?' and seek to emphasis the points of divergence to such a degree as to produce a violent reaction against the church... While I am attracted to Hauerwas' radicalism, I am also disturbed by it!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Wrestling with the Mystery
Ever since I read Peter Carnley's version of Anglican Orthodoxy - which was so counter to everything I had ever thought - I have been struck by the place of mystery in Christian theology. It is important for Rowan Williams, too: though for these theologians who place great emphasis on the apophatic and mystical traditions in Christian theology I think there is a lack of a corresponding affirmation of a positive revelation. In the negative theology there is a hidden arrogance I think: that they can somehow see beyond the revelation to say that God is not like that. That is to say, they seem to claim for themselves a privileged position from which they can see and interpret the true reference of theological statements. It is its own form of speculation...
But they have highlighted something very important, to be fair, someting that evangelical theologians are prone to forget. That is, that mastering speech about God is never a possibility for human beings; that in the revelation of God in Christ which we encounter in the Bible we are still met by something beyond us. The trinity is the great example - God is revealed to us as trinity, but in this revelation he still retains his difference from us, his mystery (we might say).
Karl Barth writes:
Theology means rational wrestling with the mystery. But all rational wrestling with this mystery, the more serious it is, can lead only to its fresh and authentic interpretation and manifestation as a mystery... C.D. 1.1.368
This is surely no more than what Paul had in mind when he exclaims in Romans 11: 33-36
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35 "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Of course, we need to place this in the context of all that Paul has affirmed theologically in the preceding chapters. But still, there is a line that even the apostle himself refuses to cross. It's a question of tone, in part, isn't it? As the preacher mounts the pulpit, does he do so with trembling knees and stammering tongue?
William Tyndale - Martyr of the Month
Well the dangers of starting a 'series' are obvious (remember the 39 Articles?)... but here goes with the Martyr of the Month series.
William Tyndale is a great way to start us off. Of course, he was renowed as a bible translator, and it was for pursuing this illegal activity that he was caught by the authorities, tortured and burnt in 1536.
I think Tyndale knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that the scriptures in translation were political dynamite. In the hands of a people well-versed, the word of God would transform everything. The Authority of the Word would itself relativise the power of the Pope and the power of the King. And yet, he did not counsel insurrection, but rather obedience to Kings and princes.
His work The Obedience of a Christian Man is a remarkable piece of English Lutheranism - a withering critique of Papal absolutism and a muscular statement of the sole authority of Christ in his Word. It was because - and insofaras - the scriptures themselves testified to Christ the Lord that they a power to challenge thrones and popes.
Hear him addressing his enemies, in full knowledge of what they could and as it turned out did do to him:
Christ is the cause why I love thee, why I am ready to do the uttermost of power for thee, and why I pray for thee. And as long as the cause abideth, so long lasteth the effect even asit is always day, so longas the sun shineth. Do therefore the worst thou canst unto me: take away my goods: take away my good name: yet as long as Christ remaineth in mine heart, so ong I love thee not a whit the less and so long art thou as dear unto me as mine own sould, and so long am I ready to do thee good for thine evil, and so long I pray for thee with all mine heart. For Christ desireth it of me and hath deserved it of me. Thine unkindness compared unto his kindness is nothing at all, yea it is swallowed up, as a lottle smoke of a mighty wind, and is no more seen or thought upon. Moreover, that evil which thou doest to me, I receive it not of thine hand, but of the hand of God, and as God's scourge to teach me patience and to nurture me...
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Violence: what is it?
Following on from our lively discussion of smacking - there was some dispute about the use of the word 'violent' (that is, that this word implied an unwarranted aggression). I know online sources are a bit unreliable, but Wikipedia's definition is interesting:
"Violence is deliberate behaviour resulting in physical injury to other human beings, or more broadly to other animals as well, and is often, but not necessarily, associated with aggression. Some forms of violence are socially and legally sanctioned, others are crimes. Different societies apply different standards relating to approved and non-approved forms of violence.
Forms of violence include:
Assassination
Assault
Boxing
Corporal punishment
Domestic violence
Drive-by shooting
Dueling
Genocide
Judicial execution
War
Martial arts"
This is a more neutral definition of violence - in which case smacking is most certainly violent. It is just a sanctioned form of it.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Balthasar on the Ernstfall
Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a very special book called The Moment of Christian Witness (Ernstfall = decisive moment). I like it because it is biblical, theological and exciting. In part the book is an attack on the 'anonymous Christian' idea of Rahner - that somehow, acts of true Christian love can be meritoriously performed by those who are not expressly or openly Christian. Balthasar writes:
The love of Christ is not only the inner core, and the blood of Christ is not only the outer skin; faith is founded on the unity of the two. And for this reason it is not possible to shelve or postpone the decision to an assent of faith. (p.100)
That is, you cannot split away love as if it has not relation to the cross of Christ. The anonymous Christian on the other hand is dispensed from the criterion of martyrdom...he or she can disown or never own Christ and yet still be 'Christian', it would seem... Balthasar shows by his analysis the indispensibility of martyrdom for thinking about Christian identity.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Trying to get a handle on my project...
Some people seem to be able to trot out their complete doctoral thesis outline at an early stage.
This is not me. My work seems to be more evolutionary... I am try not to lose my nerve over this of course! The worst moments are when someone asks you 'so, what is your thesis on?' and nothing much coherent or convincing comes out of your mouth. Arghh!
However: here is an attempt to get my thoughts together at this stage, almost a third of the way through (!). Please feel free to chip in your two cents worth, and please excuse the academic-ese:
What kind of self is a Christian martyr? This dissertation seeks to explore and expound Christian identity via the motif of martyrdom. Martyrdom is the possibility latent in the Christian identity, for all Christians are called to the ‘witness’ or ‘testimony’ (martyrion) that might result in bloody martyrdom.[1] As Balthasar writes:
…this does not mean that every single Christian must suffer bloody martyrdom, but he must consider the entire case as the external representation of the inner reality out of which he lives.[2]
Christian baptism is a symbol of the offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as an identification with Jesus Christ. It is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with its act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil.[3] The martyr ‘externally represents’ the church’s way of understanding both the world and the situatedness of the self in that world. It is an understanding which the martyr shows is not merely theoretical, for in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction it is revealed as concrete. At the point of the sword, the testimony of the martyr to another reality intersects – fatally – with the material world. An analysis of martyrdom thus suggests itself as a way to understand Christian identity, both on its own terms and in comparison with alternatives.
However, we must surely be aware of how dissonant this witness is with non-theological conceptions of human meaning and purpose. Part of this dissonance lies in the inevitable association of martyrdom with the spectacle of horrendous religious violence that is the signs of our times. As the suicide bomber shows, the line between killing and dying for a cause is all too thin: to the secular mind the two are barely distinguishable as species of insanity.[4] The association of martyrdom with fanaticism, religious violence and the spectacle of suffering complicates discussion about the meaning of martyrdom as a self-narration. It is a problematic and contested discourse – perhaps supremely so. How might a discourse characterized by the notion of the ‘authentic’ self (for example) accommodate the possibility of self-abnegation to the kind and degree that the martyr demonstrates? Martyrdom – even the possibility of martyrdom – seems to be the enemy of human potential. True, it may be freely determined (though only as a form of suicide), but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of ‘truth’ which has fallen into disrepair...
In order to elucidate martyrdom as a way of seeing the self, this study makes use of T.S. Eliot’s martyrological drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935) as a lens by which to focus the theme. In the instance of Eliot’s literary creation Thomas we are given an imaginative reflection on martyrdom in the Christian tradition as a whole.
[1] See e.g. Mt 10:18f.
[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, Communio Books (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), p. 22
[3] Origen makes the connection between the baptismal promises and the test of martyrdom explicit in his Exhortation to Martyrdom. Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom; Prayer; First Principles, Book Iv; Prologue to the Commentary on 'the Song of Songs'; Homily Xxvii on 'Numbers', trans. Rowan A. Greer, The Classics of Western Spirituality. (London: S.P.C.K, 1979), iii.17, p. 157-8
[4] As Salman Rushdie puts it:: ‘Only fanatics go looking for martyrdom.’ Salman Rushdie, Step across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002 (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 240
This is not me. My work seems to be more evolutionary... I am try not to lose my nerve over this of course! The worst moments are when someone asks you 'so, what is your thesis on?' and nothing much coherent or convincing comes out of your mouth. Arghh!
However: here is an attempt to get my thoughts together at this stage, almost a third of the way through (!). Please feel free to chip in your two cents worth, and please excuse the academic-ese:
What kind of self is a Christian martyr? This dissertation seeks to explore and expound Christian identity via the motif of martyrdom. Martyrdom is the possibility latent in the Christian identity, for all Christians are called to the ‘witness’ or ‘testimony’ (martyrion) that might result in bloody martyrdom.[1] As Balthasar writes:
…this does not mean that every single Christian must suffer bloody martyrdom, but he must consider the entire case as the external representation of the inner reality out of which he lives.[2]
Christian baptism is a symbol of the offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as an identification with Jesus Christ. It is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with its act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil.[3] The martyr ‘externally represents’ the church’s way of understanding both the world and the situatedness of the self in that world. It is an understanding which the martyr shows is not merely theoretical, for in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction it is revealed as concrete. At the point of the sword, the testimony of the martyr to another reality intersects – fatally – with the material world. An analysis of martyrdom thus suggests itself as a way to understand Christian identity, both on its own terms and in comparison with alternatives.
However, we must surely be aware of how dissonant this witness is with non-theological conceptions of human meaning and purpose. Part of this dissonance lies in the inevitable association of martyrdom with the spectacle of horrendous religious violence that is the signs of our times. As the suicide bomber shows, the line between killing and dying for a cause is all too thin: to the secular mind the two are barely distinguishable as species of insanity.[4] The association of martyrdom with fanaticism, religious violence and the spectacle of suffering complicates discussion about the meaning of martyrdom as a self-narration. It is a problematic and contested discourse – perhaps supremely so. How might a discourse characterized by the notion of the ‘authentic’ self (for example) accommodate the possibility of self-abnegation to the kind and degree that the martyr demonstrates? Martyrdom – even the possibility of martyrdom – seems to be the enemy of human potential. True, it may be freely determined (though only as a form of suicide), but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of ‘truth’ which has fallen into disrepair...
In order to elucidate martyrdom as a way of seeing the self, this study makes use of T.S. Eliot’s martyrological drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935) as a lens by which to focus the theme. In the instance of Eliot’s literary creation Thomas we are given an imaginative reflection on martyrdom in the Christian tradition as a whole.
[1] See e.g. Mt 10:18f.
[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, Communio Books (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), p. 22
[3] Origen makes the connection between the baptismal promises and the test of martyrdom explicit in his Exhortation to Martyrdom. Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom; Prayer; First Principles, Book Iv; Prologue to the Commentary on 'the Song of Songs'; Homily Xxvii on 'Numbers', trans. Rowan A. Greer, The Classics of Western Spirituality. (London: S.P.C.K, 1979), iii.17, p. 157-8
[4] As Salman Rushdie puts it:: ‘Only fanatics go looking for martyrdom.’ Salman Rushdie, Step across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002 (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 240
Monday, August 28, 2006
Rowan Williams on 'Judgement'
One of the most prominent themes in Rowan Williams' theology is that of 'judgement'. He means the word in all of its senses - discretion or discernment, criticism, and in some senses, the 'final' judgement that lies ahead.
This quote is fairly typical:
part of my thesis is that the interpretation of the world ‘within the scriptural framework’ is intrinsic to the Church’s critical self-discovery. In judging the world, by its confrontation of the world with its own dramatic script, the Church also judges itself: in attempting to show the world a critical truth, it shows itself to itself as Church also.
On Christian Theology p. 31
What he has in mind by this term is the inexhaustible critical function that the narratives of Jesus have over the world and the church. In this sense there is a call for judgement by the church, but only insofar as it involves a self-criticism that involves giving attention to the pattern of life that was Jesus's and a recognition of the provisionality of our speech about God and its tendency to serve our ideological ends.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Slavoj Žižek Again - he's kinda fun!
Žižek writes:
Christianity introduced into this global balanced cosmic Order a principle that is totally foreign to it, a principle which, measured by the standards of pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion: the principle according to which each individual has immediate access to universality...I can participate in this universal dimension directly irrespective of my special place within the global social order. The Fragile Absolute, p. 120
Z applies this to our thinking about human rights (so-called): a set of universal principles that all of us imagine we have access to in some way. This is Christianity's idea secularised... under the Christian way of thinking, it is that which transgresses and upsets the primordial balance of things that is holy: not the ways things are as we find them. It is not our place in the global order of things that matters but rather that which undermines said order - ie, the gospel of Christ, he who calls on us to hate our mother and father etc. A funny version of 'family values', isn't it?
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Kevin Vanhoozer 'The Drama of Doctrine'
This book represents a landmark in genuinely reformed evangelical thinking about the theological task.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, who is currently Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is well known for his work on questions of fundamental theology (First Theology) and hermeneutics (Is There A Meaning in This Text?). As usual, in The Drama of Doctrine he manages to combine real creativity and a remarkable knowledge of contemporary debates with faithfulness to conservative evangelical orthodoxy – which ultimately of course means faithfulness to the scriptures themselves.
This work is occasioned by the calcification of contemporary evangelical theology and the unwillingness of church pastors to pay any attention to it at all out of suspicion and/or boredom. In answer to serious cultural, intellectual and theological challenges, evangelical theological voices have certainly been more loudly raised; but they have not been persuasive in the debate or attuned to the pastor’s weekly task of proclaiming the gospel to contemporary people. Evangelical scholars have either retreated further into fortress of Enlightenment rationalism (Carl Henry, Wayne Grudem) or given craven concession to postmodernism (Stanley Grenz). The situation into which The Drama of Doctrine is written calls for a reinvigoration of the theological task in a way which avoids both of these dire pitfalls.
The purpose of this work is to present Vanhoozer’s vision of a ‘canonical-linguistic’ theology organized around the metaphor of dramatic performance. Doctrine is not merely a set of flat propositions, but rather a dramatic direction to be performed by Christians, individually and collectively. That is to say, it is a gospel to be lived! The exposition of his theme falls into four parts. In the first, “The Drama”, Vanhoozer shows how theology responds and corresponds to the words and deeds of God and serves as ‘direction for the church’s fitting participation in the drama of redemption’ (p. 31). It is rooted in the gospel itself as its first premise. Second (“The Script”), Vanhoozer addresses the place of Scripture and tradition and how they should relate. Against the post-liberals who make scripture merely subject to the church, he wishes to affirm sola scriptura. However, he is receptive to the insight that these doctrines of scripture do describe and prescribe ecclesial practices of scriptural reading. This is the real strength of the book, in this reviewer’s opinion: Vanhoozer has offered a way forward from the intractable battles about the doctrine of scripture without conceding its constitutive and authoritative place for the church’s life. Here is at last an evangelical doctrine of scripture which does not ignore ecclesiology. With John Webster, Vanhoozer also argues that Scripture has less an epistemological than a soteriological function.
Part III (“The Dramaturge”) fleshes out the role of the theologian in the ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach to theology following the theatrical model. Vanhoozer coins the term ‘post-conservative’, a move which nods to the emphasis on communal practices in post-liberalism and yet preserves an authoritative canonical script. The theologian engages in both practices of scientia in interpreting scripture and sapientia in reading and engaging with the contemporary cultural context. The aim of the theology is to enable Christians to better ‘perform’ the Christian life as disciples of Jesus by ‘improvising’ on the script(ures). Vanhoozer here proposes a move beyond both propositionalism and foundationalism in theological method while affirming the place of propositions and foundations as necessary to theology.
The fourth part (“The Performance”) extrapolates the task of theology in its congregational and pastoral setting, using the doctrine of the atonement as a case study. Doctrine is something that we are invited to live out in the church and the world: “The direction of doctrine…enables us…to render the gospel public by leading lives in creative imitation of Christ” (p. 32). One of Vanhoozer’s favourite themes – martyrdom – here emerges as a disturbing sign to the church of what imitating Christ might mean. It is a rare piece of systematic theology that can address the Christian walk so concretely. Under this schema, and with his ears attuned to postmodern currents, he is able to emphasise the need for action without losing the theological reason for it. Doctrine and ethics flow seamlessly together - as of course they should.
Some features of the book serve to dampen my overall enthusiasm. First: the guiding metaphor of ‘drama’ is a well chosen development on the insights of narrative theology; but it does at points feel stretched further than it will go. In particular, the pastor as ‘director’ (Part IV) feels like a poorly chosen equivalence and smacks somewhat of clericalism. Surely it is the Spirit who directs the church. Second, Vanhoozer’s incessant quotation of other authors impedes the smooth flow of his text; and at times appears forced. He seeks congruity in quotes but not in arguments; but when he quotes someone – say, Geoffrey Wainwright on the role of the sacraments (p. 412) - who is diametrically opposed to his conclusions, it is less than convincing as an appeal to authority. Third, Vanhoozer tends to state rather than argue his case. He articulates his point with great clarity and even aesthetic flair. This is a deliberate and self-consciouslessly postmodern strategy of depending on the explanatory power of the ideas themselves to convince his readers rather than leaning on some evidence external to the subject matter. With that I have much sympathy: however, this reader felt that there may have been more for Vanhoozer to offer by way of argument. I am surprised he spends so little time, for example, on showing how the scriptures themselves demonstrate his case by presenting a word that demands performance from its readers.
However, these shortcomings should not deter potential readers. This is a courageous and timely book that exemplifies theology taking mission seriously; and should be read by pastors, students and teachers who are like-minded. Vanhoozer does not ignore or side-step the toughest questions of postmodernism. Most salutary is the call of this book for the churches to renew our communal practices. Vanhoozer shows what an evangelical theologian can achieve if he or she is truly attentive to the task of serving the church. His vision is to recapture the reformed vision of deep theological reflection as belonging to pastors and lay people, not the preserve of the academy. Here is no brittle orthodoxy; rather, we have in The Drama of Doctrine an imaginative reiteration of evangelical truth.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, who is currently Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is well known for his work on questions of fundamental theology (First Theology) and hermeneutics (Is There A Meaning in This Text?). As usual, in The Drama of Doctrine he manages to combine real creativity and a remarkable knowledge of contemporary debates with faithfulness to conservative evangelical orthodoxy – which ultimately of course means faithfulness to the scriptures themselves.
This work is occasioned by the calcification of contemporary evangelical theology and the unwillingness of church pastors to pay any attention to it at all out of suspicion and/or boredom. In answer to serious cultural, intellectual and theological challenges, evangelical theological voices have certainly been more loudly raised; but they have not been persuasive in the debate or attuned to the pastor’s weekly task of proclaiming the gospel to contemporary people. Evangelical scholars have either retreated further into fortress of Enlightenment rationalism (Carl Henry, Wayne Grudem) or given craven concession to postmodernism (Stanley Grenz). The situation into which The Drama of Doctrine is written calls for a reinvigoration of the theological task in a way which avoids both of these dire pitfalls.
The purpose of this work is to present Vanhoozer’s vision of a ‘canonical-linguistic’ theology organized around the metaphor of dramatic performance. Doctrine is not merely a set of flat propositions, but rather a dramatic direction to be performed by Christians, individually and collectively. That is to say, it is a gospel to be lived! The exposition of his theme falls into four parts. In the first, “The Drama”, Vanhoozer shows how theology responds and corresponds to the words and deeds of God and serves as ‘direction for the church’s fitting participation in the drama of redemption’ (p. 31). It is rooted in the gospel itself as its first premise. Second (“The Script”), Vanhoozer addresses the place of Scripture and tradition and how they should relate. Against the post-liberals who make scripture merely subject to the church, he wishes to affirm sola scriptura. However, he is receptive to the insight that these doctrines of scripture do describe and prescribe ecclesial practices of scriptural reading. This is the real strength of the book, in this reviewer’s opinion: Vanhoozer has offered a way forward from the intractable battles about the doctrine of scripture without conceding its constitutive and authoritative place for the church’s life. Here is at last an evangelical doctrine of scripture which does not ignore ecclesiology. With John Webster, Vanhoozer also argues that Scripture has less an epistemological than a soteriological function.
Part III (“The Dramaturge”) fleshes out the role of the theologian in the ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach to theology following the theatrical model. Vanhoozer coins the term ‘post-conservative’, a move which nods to the emphasis on communal practices in post-liberalism and yet preserves an authoritative canonical script. The theologian engages in both practices of scientia in interpreting scripture and sapientia in reading and engaging with the contemporary cultural context. The aim of the theology is to enable Christians to better ‘perform’ the Christian life as disciples of Jesus by ‘improvising’ on the script(ures). Vanhoozer here proposes a move beyond both propositionalism and foundationalism in theological method while affirming the place of propositions and foundations as necessary to theology.
The fourth part (“The Performance”) extrapolates the task of theology in its congregational and pastoral setting, using the doctrine of the atonement as a case study. Doctrine is something that we are invited to live out in the church and the world: “The direction of doctrine…enables us…to render the gospel public by leading lives in creative imitation of Christ” (p. 32). One of Vanhoozer’s favourite themes – martyrdom – here emerges as a disturbing sign to the church of what imitating Christ might mean. It is a rare piece of systematic theology that can address the Christian walk so concretely. Under this schema, and with his ears attuned to postmodern currents, he is able to emphasise the need for action without losing the theological reason for it. Doctrine and ethics flow seamlessly together - as of course they should.
Some features of the book serve to dampen my overall enthusiasm. First: the guiding metaphor of ‘drama’ is a well chosen development on the insights of narrative theology; but it does at points feel stretched further than it will go. In particular, the pastor as ‘director’ (Part IV) feels like a poorly chosen equivalence and smacks somewhat of clericalism. Surely it is the Spirit who directs the church. Second, Vanhoozer’s incessant quotation of other authors impedes the smooth flow of his text; and at times appears forced. He seeks congruity in quotes but not in arguments; but when he quotes someone – say, Geoffrey Wainwright on the role of the sacraments (p. 412) - who is diametrically opposed to his conclusions, it is less than convincing as an appeal to authority. Third, Vanhoozer tends to state rather than argue his case. He articulates his point with great clarity and even aesthetic flair. This is a deliberate and self-consciouslessly postmodern strategy of depending on the explanatory power of the ideas themselves to convince his readers rather than leaning on some evidence external to the subject matter. With that I have much sympathy: however, this reader felt that there may have been more for Vanhoozer to offer by way of argument. I am surprised he spends so little time, for example, on showing how the scriptures themselves demonstrate his case by presenting a word that demands performance from its readers.
However, these shortcomings should not deter potential readers. This is a courageous and timely book that exemplifies theology taking mission seriously; and should be read by pastors, students and teachers who are like-minded. Vanhoozer does not ignore or side-step the toughest questions of postmodernism. Most salutary is the call of this book for the churches to renew our communal practices. Vanhoozer shows what an evangelical theologian can achieve if he or she is truly attentive to the task of serving the church. His vision is to recapture the reformed vision of deep theological reflection as belonging to pastors and lay people, not the preserve of the academy. Here is no brittle orthodoxy; rather, we have in The Drama of Doctrine an imaginative reiteration of evangelical truth.
Friday, August 18, 2006
www.youbook.blogspot.com
I need your help. I am planning to write a book (I hate saying that). The book is entitled YOU, and it is about being a human being but put theologically, or christianly. It is aimed at the 'popular' end of things, so it is meant to be easy to read but provocative as well. I want my readers to be challenged about who they are and what their lives are on about. And ultimately to commend Christ as the concrete example of human life well lived. Without it being a brainstrain to read...
Anyhow, this is the plan - a bit of an experiment that mightn't work at all. I am going to publish parts of chapters at www.youbook.blogspot.com and then open it to your input and comments. Don't just sit there! Chip in your 2 cents worth! The caveat is that in doing so you assign your comments over to me to shape and use in creating a readable discussion for the purposes of the book. (I will observe every courtesy in doing so.)
And also, it is meant to be a book open to a broad readership: so you could invite people you know would disagree with it to drop by and comment. That'd be grand.
(do it NOW!)
Anyhow, this is the plan - a bit of an experiment that mightn't work at all. I am going to publish parts of chapters at www.youbook.blogspot.com and then open it to your input and comments. Don't just sit there! Chip in your 2 cents worth! The caveat is that in doing so you assign your comments over to me to shape and use in creating a readable discussion for the purposes of the book. (I will observe every courtesy in doing so.)
And also, it is meant to be a book open to a broad readership: so you could invite people you know would disagree with it to drop by and comment. That'd be grand.
(do it NOW!)
Slavoj Žižek: Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek makes an audacious defence of Christianity - since he is an atheist! He argues that the core radicalism of Christianity is sorely needed in the Europe of today to overcome violent tribalisms. He seems to get how perverse Christianity is.
‘…it is love itself that enjoins us to ‘unplug’ from the organic community into which we were born – or, as Paul puts it, for a Christian, there are neither men nor women, neither Jews nor Greeks…No wonder that, for those fully identified with the Jewish ‘national substance’, as well as for the Greek philosophers and the proponents of the global Roman Empire, the appearance of Christ was a ridiculous and/or traumatic scandal.’
The unplugging of the Christian (and her ‘replugging’ into the community of the Spirit) diminishes the demand of duty to the ‘natural’ communities to which she belongs – to the bewilderment of the natural community were such demands are absolute.
Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute - or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? ed. Slavoj Žižek, Wo Es War (London; New York: Verso, 2000), p. 121
‘…it is love itself that enjoins us to ‘unplug’ from the organic community into which we were born – or, as Paul puts it, for a Christian, there are neither men nor women, neither Jews nor Greeks…No wonder that, for those fully identified with the Jewish ‘national substance’, as well as for the Greek philosophers and the proponents of the global Roman Empire, the appearance of Christ was a ridiculous and/or traumatic scandal.’
The unplugging of the Christian (and her ‘replugging’ into the community of the Spirit) diminishes the demand of duty to the ‘natural’ communities to which she belongs – to the bewilderment of the natural community were such demands are absolute.
Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute - or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? ed. Slavoj Žižek, Wo Es War (London; New York: Verso, 2000), p. 121
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Craig Slane
Craig Slane's interesting book "Bonhoeffer As Martyr" makes the case that Bonhoeffer was indeed a martyr (surprising I know, the title kinda gives it away I guess...).
This isn't obvious of course. Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed not for his explicit testimony to Christ, but for his part in a plot to kill Hitler. He was guilty in other words of attempted tyrannicide.
However, it is hard not to have sympathy with his course of action given that Hitler was exceptionally bad as a tyrant. But does he then fit the pattern of martyrdom?
Slane argues that in the 20th Century, martyrs have become 'political' - by which he means, they have often died because of their intervention in political affairs. They have testified to Jesus not by their words so much as by their actions. They have risked and accepted death for the sake of others. Thus, Bonhoeffer's case fits this expanded pattern.
But there is a certain circularity here: Bonhoeffer's case has been central to this suggested redefinition of martyrdom; and yet by this redefinition according to B's case, Slane tries to judge his case. So, of course Bonhoeffer is a martyr by these terms...
This isn't obvious of course. Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed not for his explicit testimony to Christ, but for his part in a plot to kill Hitler. He was guilty in other words of attempted tyrannicide.
However, it is hard not to have sympathy with his course of action given that Hitler was exceptionally bad as a tyrant. But does he then fit the pattern of martyrdom?
Slane argues that in the 20th Century, martyrs have become 'political' - by which he means, they have often died because of their intervention in political affairs. They have testified to Jesus not by their words so much as by their actions. They have risked and accepted death for the sake of others. Thus, Bonhoeffer's case fits this expanded pattern.
But there is a certain circularity here: Bonhoeffer's case has been central to this suggested redefinition of martyrdom; and yet by this redefinition according to B's case, Slane tries to judge his case. So, of course Bonhoeffer is a martyr by these terms...
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Smacking: some summary thoughts
Well: thankyou everyone for the discussion! I thought I would just post a concluding reflection, trying to draw the threads together somewhat. I offered the debate without claiming to be a particularly successful or expert parent: I think I am just as frustrated and bewildered and delighted as everyone else by the whole experience!
I guess I knew already that this would be a controversial issue. Almost anything to do with parenting is. I think this is partly to do with the universality of the issue – we have all experienced the parenting of our parents, and many people are or are potentially parents. But also, it is because of the dearth of guidance available as to how to do the really difficult job of parenting. We could add to this the fact that we have so much of ourselves invested in our children: our whole vision of what it is to be a human being, or ought to be. And, we do love them, and we don’t want to think we have erred in bringing them up. It is even more sensitive than sexuality, I venture to say.
It is worth saying that this is true of this issue in the wider community, and not just amongst Christians. If you check the pages of parenting magazines you will find some of the most passionate and articulate debate about what it means to be human going around.
I raised the issue of smacking. We don’t do it, though I am not opposed to smacking per se. For me, it was a practical as much as philosophical decision. (I need to add that none of the opinions expressed in this blog are necessarily those of my wife!) I think that the following debate was marked by some confusion, because some of the proponents of smacking equated non-smacking with non-disciplining. This is far from the case: however imperfect our system might be, we certainly do discipline and rebuke our children.
The issue of the bible was raised: smackers claimed that there was ‘clear biblical evidence’ in favour of smacking and noted how little scripture was forwarded by the other side. There certainly are some strong statements in Proverbs about discipline that appear to relate to corporal punishment, for example:
Proverbs 13:24 24 He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
Proverbs 23:13-14 13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. 14 Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.
However, it was in my view rightly answered that the verses refer to discipline per se and not necessarily to the method of discipline. Further, to take the verses literally would mean investment in rods, which pro-smacking parents haven’t seem by and large to have done. On the other hand, there is no missing the very strong affirmation of the value of discipline for the child here. So: I think that corporal punishment is permitted, but not demanded at this point. (Which I think was all you were arguing for CraigS, right?)
This lack of biblical evidence leads me to another observation. On many issues on which people are looking for direct guidance, the Bible offers little or piecemeal advice. The bible is not meant to be comprehensive in these matters. But our tendency is sometimes to overstate the advice the bible gives. I think this is true on gender issues – we just don’t get that much information on being a man or a woman in the Bible, but we keep looking for it. Sure there is some guidance: but not as much as you would think, given the way we keep talking about it. Within the Bible’s teaching there are many many ways to be a man or a woman.
Likewise with parenting. One of the worst things about some Christian parenting manuals is the way in which what amounts to practical wisdom is given a quasi-scriptural authority - you know, ‘this is growing children God’s way’ and all that. You’d think Genesis was actually all about routine feeding of babies. Strangely, it isn’t. One of the worst examples of this is the way in which the life of Israel is used as a direct example for the life of Christian families without any differentiation in terms of the gospel. The notion of covenant is particularly misused in this regard.
Christians ought to be good at life wisdom, and do have the foundation for knowing all sorts of things about the world that secular people might be blind to see: but wisdom is a broad and flexible category of knowledge about the world. (This is why Solomon’s botanical manuals didn’t end up in the Bible, I imagine… though a piece of his erotica did, didn’t it?)
Which is all by way of saying: there just isn’t that much information about the issue of smacking in the Bible on which to make a dogmatic statement about it.
However: it does seem to me that a number of theological/philosophical/ethical issues have been raised by our discussion that would definitely feed in to a discussion of parental discipline.
1 - There seemed to be some differences as to what the point of parenting should be and then the role of discipline within that.
2 – Coupled to that: was childhood a thing to be enjoyed for its own sake, or is it to be seen as a preparation for adulthood mainly? Is the exuberance of childhood to be celebrated or curbed?
3 – What is the relationship between anger and punishment in the parent-child relationship? In fact, what IS punishment?
4 – What is violence? Is smacking violent?
5 – How does all this relate to the character of God the Father and his chastisement of Christians for their good? I am thinking of Hebrews 12:7-11 :
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it
I guess I knew already that this would be a controversial issue. Almost anything to do with parenting is. I think this is partly to do with the universality of the issue – we have all experienced the parenting of our parents, and many people are or are potentially parents. But also, it is because of the dearth of guidance available as to how to do the really difficult job of parenting. We could add to this the fact that we have so much of ourselves invested in our children: our whole vision of what it is to be a human being, or ought to be. And, we do love them, and we don’t want to think we have erred in bringing them up. It is even more sensitive than sexuality, I venture to say.
It is worth saying that this is true of this issue in the wider community, and not just amongst Christians. If you check the pages of parenting magazines you will find some of the most passionate and articulate debate about what it means to be human going around.
I raised the issue of smacking. We don’t do it, though I am not opposed to smacking per se. For me, it was a practical as much as philosophical decision. (I need to add that none of the opinions expressed in this blog are necessarily those of my wife!) I think that the following debate was marked by some confusion, because some of the proponents of smacking equated non-smacking with non-disciplining. This is far from the case: however imperfect our system might be, we certainly do discipline and rebuke our children.
The issue of the bible was raised: smackers claimed that there was ‘clear biblical evidence’ in favour of smacking and noted how little scripture was forwarded by the other side. There certainly are some strong statements in Proverbs about discipline that appear to relate to corporal punishment, for example:
Proverbs 13:24 24 He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
Proverbs 23:13-14 13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. 14 Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.
However, it was in my view rightly answered that the verses refer to discipline per se and not necessarily to the method of discipline. Further, to take the verses literally would mean investment in rods, which pro-smacking parents haven’t seem by and large to have done. On the other hand, there is no missing the very strong affirmation of the value of discipline for the child here. So: I think that corporal punishment is permitted, but not demanded at this point. (Which I think was all you were arguing for CraigS, right?)
This lack of biblical evidence leads me to another observation. On many issues on which people are looking for direct guidance, the Bible offers little or piecemeal advice. The bible is not meant to be comprehensive in these matters. But our tendency is sometimes to overstate the advice the bible gives. I think this is true on gender issues – we just don’t get that much information on being a man or a woman in the Bible, but we keep looking for it. Sure there is some guidance: but not as much as you would think, given the way we keep talking about it. Within the Bible’s teaching there are many many ways to be a man or a woman.
Likewise with parenting. One of the worst things about some Christian parenting manuals is the way in which what amounts to practical wisdom is given a quasi-scriptural authority - you know, ‘this is growing children God’s way’ and all that. You’d think Genesis was actually all about routine feeding of babies. Strangely, it isn’t. One of the worst examples of this is the way in which the life of Israel is used as a direct example for the life of Christian families without any differentiation in terms of the gospel. The notion of covenant is particularly misused in this regard.
Christians ought to be good at life wisdom, and do have the foundation for knowing all sorts of things about the world that secular people might be blind to see: but wisdom is a broad and flexible category of knowledge about the world. (This is why Solomon’s botanical manuals didn’t end up in the Bible, I imagine… though a piece of his erotica did, didn’t it?)
Which is all by way of saying: there just isn’t that much information about the issue of smacking in the Bible on which to make a dogmatic statement about it.
However: it does seem to me that a number of theological/philosophical/ethical issues have been raised by our discussion that would definitely feed in to a discussion of parental discipline.
1 - There seemed to be some differences as to what the point of parenting should be and then the role of discipline within that.
2 – Coupled to that: was childhood a thing to be enjoyed for its own sake, or is it to be seen as a preparation for adulthood mainly? Is the exuberance of childhood to be celebrated or curbed?
3 – What is the relationship between anger and punishment in the parent-child relationship? In fact, what IS punishment?
4 – What is violence? Is smacking violent?
5 – How does all this relate to the character of God the Father and his chastisement of Christians for their good? I am thinking of Hebrews 12:7-11 :
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it
Monday, July 31, 2006
corporal punishment
My wife and I are non-smackers of our children.
This is a reasonably controversial thing to be amongst Christians. And, I have to say, most people who were adults now (in Anglo-Saxon countries anyhow) were smacked as children - and most without any ill effects.
Our 'philosophy' is really just pragmatic: we think it is more effective not to smack and to discipline by other means. So, we are happy to say smacking might work for someone else but not for us. I have to say it is really useful to have such a policy in place for those times when you really get mad...
Any thoughts?
This is a reasonably controversial thing to be amongst Christians. And, I have to say, most people who were adults now (in Anglo-Saxon countries anyhow) were smacked as children - and most without any ill effects.
Our 'philosophy' is really just pragmatic: we think it is more effective not to smack and to discipline by other means. So, we are happy to say smacking might work for someone else but not for us. I have to say it is really useful to have such a policy in place for those times when you really get mad...
Any thoughts?
A more attractive photo of Freya!
I realised that that first photo had a kinda squashed look. She really is prettier than that!
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Still more on Article II
It is worth pointing out that the Article - along with many creeds of course - omits any reference to Jesus' life and teaching - his obedience and his prophetic office in other words.
And yet there is a significant biblical emphasis on this aspect of Jesus' work - even in Paul, who seems to emphasise the cross/resurrection more.
Is this indicative of tendency in the tradition to instrumentalise the humanity of Jesus - ie to make it a matter of utility , that he is purpose built (purpose-driven?) for the passion?
And yet there is a significant biblical emphasis on this aspect of Jesus' work - even in Paul, who seems to emphasise the cross/resurrection more.
Is this indicative of tendency in the tradition to instrumentalise the humanity of Jesus - ie to make it a matter of utility , that he is purpose built (purpose-driven?) for the passion?
Monday, July 24, 2006
More on Article II
Though both approaches to the person of Christ - from above and from below - can claim scriptural warrant, their deficiencies are significant. Is there some alternative approach? It seems to me that thinking exclusively from above or from below is unsatisfactory, and not quite a reflection of the Biblical record. The important insight is that if we see the work and the person of Christ as a unity we will perhaps avoid the difficulties that beset the two positions.
TF Torrance writes:
the proper theological procedure we adopt in Christology is not to understand the Person and work of Jesus Christ by approaching him either from below or from above, but from below and from above at the same time, for it is in the light of what we learn from below that we appreciate what derives from above, and in the light of what derives from above that we really understand what we learn from below […] we apprehend both together.
Further, we might ask whether the whole assumption on which the “above/below” debate rests is a good one; namely, that there is a sharp gulf between time and eternity. We could certainly conceive of other ways of relating the two.
TF Torrance writes:
the proper theological procedure we adopt in Christology is not to understand the Person and work of Jesus Christ by approaching him either from below or from above, but from below and from above at the same time, for it is in the light of what we learn from below that we appreciate what derives from above, and in the light of what derives from above that we really understand what we learn from below […] we apprehend both together.
Further, we might ask whether the whole assumption on which the “above/below” debate rests is a good one; namely, that there is a sharp gulf between time and eternity. We could certainly conceive of other ways of relating the two.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Article II: Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man
The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.
The identity of Jesus of Nazareth is an issue of continuing interest and controversy, both within and without Christianity. As NT Wright puts it: “who was Jesus?” and “so what?” - these remain challenging questions to answer. In the contemporary context of pluralism, traditional Christology comes under particular assault because of the scandalous suggestion that he might be so related to the God of the universe at the level of being that he represents the only real opportunity of knowing the true God. How can he have been genuinely God and genuinely human at the same time without either of these descriptions being compromised in one way or another? Can we say with Paul “God was in Christ”; and what might we mean by it?
The problem is twofold. Firstly, the human, historical Jesus has been the subject of frenetic scholarly argument over two centuries. It remains a real question to challenge us: what can we know, if anything, of Jesus’ earthly life, and how should we understand his mission? Some have decided, given the plethora of reconstructions of the life of Jesus, that there is no way to access the real Jesus, no knowing the truth about his human life. Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1906, after reviewing a century of scholarship that the best we could hope for in Jesus is a subjectively experience of one unknown:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the task which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
A.Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, p.401
Rudolph Bultmann wrote in 1926:
I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus…
R.Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, p.8
Secondly, there is a philosophical problem: if we start, as most modern theology has done, with what we know of the human Jesus, how can we begin to speak meaningfully of the eternal Christ, the Son of God? The problem runs the other way, as well: if we start with statements about the eternal or transcendent, how can we proceed to connect those to the temporal and immanent? Since the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in the late 18th Century, this issue has deeply vexed theologians.
The identity of Jesus of Nazareth is an issue of continuing interest and controversy, both within and without Christianity. As NT Wright puts it: “who was Jesus?” and “so what?” - these remain challenging questions to answer. In the contemporary context of pluralism, traditional Christology comes under particular assault because of the scandalous suggestion that he might be so related to the God of the universe at the level of being that he represents the only real opportunity of knowing the true God. How can he have been genuinely God and genuinely human at the same time without either of these descriptions being compromised in one way or another? Can we say with Paul “God was in Christ”; and what might we mean by it?
The problem is twofold. Firstly, the human, historical Jesus has been the subject of frenetic scholarly argument over two centuries. It remains a real question to challenge us: what can we know, if anything, of Jesus’ earthly life, and how should we understand his mission? Some have decided, given the plethora of reconstructions of the life of Jesus, that there is no way to access the real Jesus, no knowing the truth about his human life. Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1906, after reviewing a century of scholarship that the best we could hope for in Jesus is a subjectively experience of one unknown:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the task which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
A.Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, p.401
Rudolph Bultmann wrote in 1926:
I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus…
R.Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, p.8
Secondly, there is a philosophical problem: if we start, as most modern theology has done, with what we know of the human Jesus, how can we begin to speak meaningfully of the eternal Christ, the Son of God? The problem runs the other way, as well: if we start with statements about the eternal or transcendent, how can we proceed to connect those to the temporal and immanent? Since the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in the late 18th Century, this issue has deeply vexed theologians.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
A prayer for a new child
Sent to me by a friend:
O God, who dost renew all life on the face of the earth and dost reveal to human parents the mystery of thy creative work in the birth of a child, enable this couple, and all who found families where children grow, to express the tenderness of divine love, the innocence of divine community and the authority of divine instruction; that each new generation may have wherewith to seek thee, and all history resound to thy praise, until the coming of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.
O God, who dost renew all life on the face of the earth and dost reveal to human parents the mystery of thy creative work in the birth of a child, enable this couple, and all who found families where children grow, to express the tenderness of divine love, the innocence of divine community and the authority of divine instruction; that each new generation may have wherewith to seek thee, and all history resound to thy praise, until the coming of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Values continued
talk of ‘values’ is reductive and selective, inevitably. ‘Values’, as we have seen, tends to indicate a conservative expression of conformist and traditional aspirations: diligence, ‘a fair go’, self-reliance, integrity and so on. However, the set of values labelled as ‘Christian values’ very rarely includes the kind of challenge to the status quo that Jesus himself modelled, as the Old Testament prophets had before him. There is nothing prophetic, we might say, about ‘values’ (which is where Brendan Nelson’s use of the word ‘comfortable’ should set off alarm bells). Cultural critic Guy Rundle writes:
The elite schools are multimillion-dollar educational entrepreneurs, whose attachment to the religion is now simply a form of thematic branding, a bit of spiritual swoosh.
He is speaking of the Melbourne scene, where various high-priced schools have doggedly fought off the intervention of the churches in their affairs while retaining a nominal link – a keeping up of appearances. His comment would not be fair to the schools I know in Sydney. But it is true that talk of ‘values’ tends to reduce the Christian affiliation of schools to a mere badging of middle-class aspirationalism. The language of ‘values’ robs the gospel of its counter-cultural edge. Though it will be popular with potential customers/parents, it offers an emaciated moral vision. Parents want their children’s selves realised, fulfilled and actualised; but Christ calls us to die to our selves.
The elite schools are multimillion-dollar educational entrepreneurs, whose attachment to the religion is now simply a form of thematic branding, a bit of spiritual swoosh.
He is speaking of the Melbourne scene, where various high-priced schools have doggedly fought off the intervention of the churches in their affairs while retaining a nominal link – a keeping up of appearances. His comment would not be fair to the schools I know in Sydney. But it is true that talk of ‘values’ tends to reduce the Christian affiliation of schools to a mere badging of middle-class aspirationalism. The language of ‘values’ robs the gospel of its counter-cultural edge. Though it will be popular with potential customers/parents, it offers an emaciated moral vision. Parents want their children’s selves realised, fulfilled and actualised; but Christ calls us to die to our selves.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Freya Louise Jensen!
Freya Louise came into the world 7/7/06 at 7.5 lbs!!
She caught us by surprise being two weeks early!
Mother and baby well.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Rowan Williams on Theological Integrity
I find Rowan Williams a fascinating if frustrating figure. He is capable of some of the most conceptually rich and stimulating theologically thinking I have read - but yet, his starting assumption seems to be that there is no speech FROM God available, and certainly not in Scripture.
Here: a couple of interesting comments from an essay called 'Theological Integrity':
'Having integrity...is being able to speak in a way which allows of answers'.
'Religious practice is only preserved in any integrity by seriousness about prayer; and so, if theology is the untangling of the real grammar of religious practice, its subject matter is, humanly and specifically, people who pray.'
Here: a couple of interesting comments from an essay called 'Theological Integrity':
'Having integrity...is being able to speak in a way which allows of answers'.
'Religious practice is only preserved in any integrity by seriousness about prayer; and so, if theology is the untangling of the real grammar of religious practice, its subject matter is, humanly and specifically, people who pray.'
Thursday, July 06, 2006
1. Faith in the Holy Trinity (continued)
The articles could have started in a different place. It is interesting that they do not begin with a statement about revelation. They do not first give an epistemological grounding of the knowledge of God before moving on to substantive expressions of what that knowledge is. Neither do they start with Christ and the incarnation, or the gospel, and work out from this point (as a 20th century theological statement might have).
However, starting with God in this way reflects the order of reality, not the order of knowledge. The starting point is the God who is the source of all things, not the nature of our access to him - even the Son is here first introduced as ordered to the Father. Jesus does not exist in or for himself - there is a priority of the Father over the Son. The Son's orientation is towards the Father.
There is no question but that this statement employs terms that are Platonic rather than distinctively Christian, as the Cyberpastor noted. Christian thinkers have since very early on found platonic terms a congenial way of expressing what they found in the OT. These terms are especially useful in speaking of God's absolute transcendence - his sheer infinity.
The question is: is this use inappropriate? Does it fatally distort the doctrine of God? If you take the first article in toto, we do see that there is in place a dialetic between God's oneness and threeness which we could certainly read as heavily qualifying those Greek terms in a distinctively Christian way. That is, the article does not stop at God's infinite distance from us, but also by speaking of Father, Son and Spirit, implies his nearness to us: and flows on into the second article, which more properly announces the coming of the Son of God into our midst.
However, starting with God in this way reflects the order of reality, not the order of knowledge. The starting point is the God who is the source of all things, not the nature of our access to him - even the Son is here first introduced as ordered to the Father. Jesus does not exist in or for himself - there is a priority of the Father over the Son. The Son's orientation is towards the Father.
There is no question but that this statement employs terms that are Platonic rather than distinctively Christian, as the Cyberpastor noted. Christian thinkers have since very early on found platonic terms a congenial way of expressing what they found in the OT. These terms are especially useful in speaking of God's absolute transcendence - his sheer infinity.
The question is: is this use inappropriate? Does it fatally distort the doctrine of God? If you take the first article in toto, we do see that there is in place a dialetic between God's oneness and threeness which we could certainly read as heavily qualifying those Greek terms in a distinctively Christian way. That is, the article does not stop at God's infinite distance from us, but also by speaking of Father, Son and Spirit, implies his nearness to us: and flows on into the second article, which more properly announces the coming of the Son of God into our midst.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
39 Articles on the 39 Articles: 1. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity
At this tumultuous time for the Anglican Communion (or is it now 'Federation'?) I thought it would be good to revisit our classic statement of faith: The Articles of Religion. So, today I begin a series of um, 39 Articles on the 39 Articles. For an intro you can see my earlier post 'The 39 Articles'.
Article I: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
We begin with the radical monotheism of the Old Testament. It is easy to forget just how outrageous the claim that there is but one God is. Surely in the vast universe with all its diversity and array and all its flux and change there is room for a variety of gods. In fact, why should we believe that the tumult and struggle we encounter about us does not correspond to a divine tumult and struggle: that there isn't a chaos of gods with their special interests and foibles?
There are other spiritual beings. But none of them is divine. The one-ness of God means that all of reality has a unity too: a unity in him. It is all connected, however distant or discordant it seems: in him. His oneness also means that no religious tribalism is possible. Even as this God chose for himself a special people, he reminded them of his oneness: they could not hold him as their possession or talisman. The election of Israel was based on God's election of Adam.
The Articles emphasise the sheer transcendence of this deity and his freedom, matched by the three-fold cord of his classic attributes of power, wisdom and goodness. That he is without passions is most controversial to contemporary readers - but what this terms is meant to convey is that he is not prey to his emotions or whims. He is not irascible or moody, a victim of his own nature.
(to be continued...)
Article I: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
We begin with the radical monotheism of the Old Testament. It is easy to forget just how outrageous the claim that there is but one God is. Surely in the vast universe with all its diversity and array and all its flux and change there is room for a variety of gods. In fact, why should we believe that the tumult and struggle we encounter about us does not correspond to a divine tumult and struggle: that there isn't a chaos of gods with their special interests and foibles?
There are other spiritual beings. But none of them is divine. The one-ness of God means that all of reality has a unity too: a unity in him. It is all connected, however distant or discordant it seems: in him. His oneness also means that no religious tribalism is possible. Even as this God chose for himself a special people, he reminded them of his oneness: they could not hold him as their possession or talisman. The election of Israel was based on God's election of Adam.
The Articles emphasise the sheer transcendence of this deity and his freedom, matched by the three-fold cord of his classic attributes of power, wisdom and goodness. That he is without passions is most controversial to contemporary readers - but what this terms is meant to convey is that he is not prey to his emotions or whims. He is not irascible or moody, a victim of his own nature.
(to be continued...)
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's linguistic theory...
"All language is metaphorical, and if we insist that particular words have only one meaning and the way we understand those words is the only possible interpretation, we have elevated that text to an idol..."
Well I am not unhappy with language being metaphorical and all... but where's the logic in the accusation of idolatry? Of course, if you undermine the authority of texts, then all you have left is... the tyranny of the bishop.
I think this is the case of someone who thinks they are being all postmodern-hip not really understanding the pomo thing anyhow.
Weird.
Well I am not unhappy with language being metaphorical and all... but where's the logic in the accusation of idolatry? Of course, if you undermine the authority of texts, then all you have left is... the tyranny of the bishop.
I think this is the case of someone who thinks they are being all postmodern-hip not really understanding the pomo thing anyhow.
Weird.
"Values"
This is from a document entitled:
National Framework
for Values Education
in Australian Schools 2004
National Framework
for Values Education
in Australian Schools 2004
In the Glossary it defines "values" by giving two quotations without any explanation:
• “… the principles and fundamental convictions which act
as general guides to behaviour, the standards by which
particular actions are judged as good or desirable.’”
(J Halstead, J and M Taylor, ‘Learning and teaching about
values: A review of recent research’, Cambridge Journal of
Education, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2000, pp 169-202);
• “the ideals that give significance to our lives, that are
reflected through the priorities that we choose, and that
we act on consistently and repeatedly” (Emeritus Professor
Brian Hill), keynote address, first National Forum on Values
Education, Melbourne, April 2004.
What is interesting here is relationship in both quotations between 'principle' and 'action', and the relationship between both of these and 'judgment' or 'significance'. What kind of moral universe does this reflect?
My gut reaction as a Christian is that 'following Jesus' doesn't really work with either of these, because it is not an 'ideal' or a 'principle' - though it is more like the former than the latter.
Of course, the question that is begged by all of this is: 'which 'values' '? Or better, 'whose'?
Friday, June 30, 2006
If Christian schools were really Christian, would anyone want to send their kids there?
I have been asked to write an article about the 'values' education debate in Australia and other Western countries.
It seems, conservative minded liberal politicians are looking enviously over the school railings at Christian/church schools and their popularity/success and wondering why it is that it is so hard to replicate in a state-run system. Left-wing liberals of course jump to the defence of the secular schools by saying, 'no, they do teach a set of common values: tolerance for example. And, um, tolerance. And compassion, perhaps.'
Two observations: the first is that the conservatives have sensed rightly that a secular vision of the state which tries its utmost for the neutrality of all public spaces is unlike to be able to find a vision of the good that can sustain a coherent education system. However: it is pretty hypocritical of them to be harping on this, since it was the economic rationalist version of liberalism that tended to promote a greed is good ethos in any case. If 'values' have disappeared, can conservative liberals really blame radical liberals?
But on the other side (second), the left has it right, too - at least they acknowledge that no neutrality is really possible. So, secular liberalism has to find a persuasive vision of the good to go with its vision of the right. However, they are always going to struggle to do this, since the crucial component of their whole understanding of human life is personal liberty from another's vision of the good.
All the while, the state seems to be looking at the church's schools and saying 'I'll have what they're having' - it seems that we know how to train children to become the members of society that others want to become.
But this is a moment of great danger for the churches and their schools. Because we will always have to ask (and I fear we don't have the courage to) - are our 'values' really Christian, or are they just blandly middle class? Are we just perpetuating the idea that Christian discipleship = a fairly acquisitive politically quiet and socially invisible suburban lifestyle? Are we enjoying providing our culture with exactly what it wants as a market and not actually promoting Christian discipleship?
If Christian schools were really Christian, would anyone (other than Christians) want to send their kids there? I think we should at least ask that question!
It seems, conservative minded liberal politicians are looking enviously over the school railings at Christian/church schools and their popularity/success and wondering why it is that it is so hard to replicate in a state-run system. Left-wing liberals of course jump to the defence of the secular schools by saying, 'no, they do teach a set of common values: tolerance for example. And, um, tolerance. And compassion, perhaps.'
Two observations: the first is that the conservatives have sensed rightly that a secular vision of the state which tries its utmost for the neutrality of all public spaces is unlike to be able to find a vision of the good that can sustain a coherent education system. However: it is pretty hypocritical of them to be harping on this, since it was the economic rationalist version of liberalism that tended to promote a greed is good ethos in any case. If 'values' have disappeared, can conservative liberals really blame radical liberals?
But on the other side (second), the left has it right, too - at least they acknowledge that no neutrality is really possible. So, secular liberalism has to find a persuasive vision of the good to go with its vision of the right. However, they are always going to struggle to do this, since the crucial component of their whole understanding of human life is personal liberty from another's vision of the good.
All the while, the state seems to be looking at the church's schools and saying 'I'll have what they're having' - it seems that we know how to train children to become the members of society that others want to become.
But this is a moment of great danger for the churches and their schools. Because we will always have to ask (and I fear we don't have the courage to) - are our 'values' really Christian, or are they just blandly middle class? Are we just perpetuating the idea that Christian discipleship = a fairly acquisitive politically quiet and socially invisible suburban lifestyle? Are we enjoying providing our culture with exactly what it wants as a market and not actually promoting Christian discipleship?
If Christian schools were really Christian, would anyone (other than Christians) want to send their kids there? I think we should at least ask that question!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
John Milton 'On his Blindness'
‘God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.’
We moderns understand ourselves as acting subjects. What do you do?
The damaging consequences of this view of the acting self are numerous: from an instrumentality in human relationships, to a removal of the dignity of those who cannot act, who are limited in their ability to act (the disabled and the elderly in particular). Even Aristotle’s more moderate vision of a subject who is both responsive and active falls under this critique; for Aristotle cannot envisage a truly good human life without the expression of virtues through action.
But Milton, going blind, sees an alternative in Christian patience; and has 'Patience' say these words above to him.
Serving God is not restricted to the busy.
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.’
We moderns understand ourselves as acting subjects. What do you do?
The damaging consequences of this view of the acting self are numerous: from an instrumentality in human relationships, to a removal of the dignity of those who cannot act, who are limited in their ability to act (the disabled and the elderly in particular). Even Aristotle’s more moderate vision of a subject who is both responsive and active falls under this critique; for Aristotle cannot envisage a truly good human life without the expression of virtues through action.
But Milton, going blind, sees an alternative in Christian patience; and has 'Patience' say these words above to him.
Serving God is not restricted to the busy.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Rowan Williams on Anglican Identity..
"The different components in our heritage can, up to a point, flourish in isolation from each other. But any one of them pursued on its own would lead in a direction ultimately outside historic Anglicanism The reformed concern may lead towards a looser form of ministerial order and a stronger emphasis on the sole, unmediated authority of the Bible. The catholic concern may lead to a high doctrine of visible and structural unification of the ordained ministry around a focal point. The cultural and intellectual concern may lead to a style of Christian life aimed at giving spiritual depth to the general shape of the culture around and de-emphasising revelation and history. Pursued far enough in isolation, each of these would lead to a different place – to strict evangelical Protestantism, to Roman Catholicism, to religious liberalism. To accept that each of these has a place in the church’s life and that they need each other means that the enthusiasts for each aspect have to be prepared to live with certain tensions or even sacrifices – with a tradition of being positive about a responsible critical approach to Scripture, with the anomalies of a historic ministry not universally recognised in the Catholic world, with limits on the degree of adjustment to the culture and its habits that is thought possible or acceptable."
Hmm... interesting.
Hmm... interesting.
nationalism again...
Nationalism is a temptation to which the Christian churches are often prone in the modern era. Bonhoeffer locates the rise of modern nationalism in the era of French Revolution: ‘[T]he nation is a revolutionary concept’. This is hardly a novel reading: however, he makes the provocative assertion that revolutionary nationalism, which is openly hostile to God, arose partly in reaction to the political theology of Catholic Church (lacking the ‘two-kingdoms’ theology of Luther) which was unable to prevent the loss of ‘the unity created by the form of Jesus Christ’.
In the Anglo-Saxon world – and this relates directly to the situation of Archbishop Thomas in this very Anglo-Saxon of plays – the problem has been rather ‘a collapse of the church into the world’. In other words, though there is in the Anglo-Saxon world the phenomenon of a democracy based on a Christian foundation, this has not prevented severe secularization. There is a temptation to blur the distinction between ‘the offices and kingdoms of the state and the church’, a temptation to which modern Protestant Christianity has certainly (for Bonhoeffer) succumbed.[1]
In the Acts of the Apostles, the idea of national identity is not dissolved even as the Gospel spreads to the nations. The symbolic key is Pentecost. This miraculous sign comes not to Gentiles, granted, but to Jews dispersed among the nations and who are speakers of many languages. At this moment they are gathered in Jerusalem for the festival. The tongues of flame lead to the speaking in many tongues: the apostles are given the gift of speaking in the languages of those present. There is not one language that all are given to hear – the miracle is in the apostles’ mouths not just in the hearers’ ears. Peter, for his sermon on the event, takes as his text the ancient prophecy of Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ (2:14). If there is a reversal of Babel here, it is not in terms of a restoration of a primordial universal language. The Spirit, which makes possible the hearing of the gospel of the Son, is the unificatory principle in this event: the message, not the language, is what is held in common. Though dispersed Israel is addressed here, the rest of the narrative of the book shows how this invitation is extended to the Gentiles as well. Interestingly, Luke’s Paul does not renounce or deny his Roman citizenship and is in fact happy to use the fact that he was born to this status to gain a hearing (Acts 22:25-29).
The inauguration of the church does not therefore mean the dissolution of the nations. This is how the promise to Abraham that ‘all nations will be blessed through you’ (Gen 18:18; Gal 3:18) comes to pass in preaching of the apostles. This means an engrafting of the nations into Israel: an offering of membership in the people of God extended to the whole globe (Rom 9-11; Eph 2). John of Patmos seems to imply that nations maintain their identity even in the eternal vision, where they bring their glory and honour (21:26), and receive healing from the leaves of the tree of life (Rev 22:2). Around the great throne is gathered a multitude visible to the seer as ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’, singing the song of the salvation of the Lamb (Rev 7:9). However, insofar as the nations (and their kings) are ranged against the Lord and his Son, they are utterly defeated (Rev 19:15-16; see Psalm 2). The martyr, therefore, does not witness against all national or tribal identifications per se, but to their relative, penultimate significance.
Thomas Beckett is actually given back to England as her martyr (or at least to Canterbury) – and seen as a focus of national pride. Eliot's play itself is a demonstration of English ownership of this martyr, even in the 1930s. This is an ambivalent side of the story: the ‘having’ of martyrs and saints by various locales perhaps fosters the very kind of tribalism that the martyr dies to avoid. However, there is a sense in which Thomas’ rejection of Englishness as an absolute makes a godly pride in Englishness possible. In addition, the telling and re-telling (or rather, re-enacting) of the martyr’s tale stands as a rebuke to a certain form of nationalism – as evidence of its self-destructive consequences.
This is of course in marked contrast to the use of martyrology as a way of establishing the rightness of my cause and my identity as a victim: this is what suicide bombers do...
[1] ‘Heritage and Decay’ in Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 103-33
In the Anglo-Saxon world – and this relates directly to the situation of Archbishop Thomas in this very Anglo-Saxon of plays – the problem has been rather ‘a collapse of the church into the world’. In other words, though there is in the Anglo-Saxon world the phenomenon of a democracy based on a Christian foundation, this has not prevented severe secularization. There is a temptation to blur the distinction between ‘the offices and kingdoms of the state and the church’, a temptation to which modern Protestant Christianity has certainly (for Bonhoeffer) succumbed.[1]
In the Acts of the Apostles, the idea of national identity is not dissolved even as the Gospel spreads to the nations. The symbolic key is Pentecost. This miraculous sign comes not to Gentiles, granted, but to Jews dispersed among the nations and who are speakers of many languages. At this moment they are gathered in Jerusalem for the festival. The tongues of flame lead to the speaking in many tongues: the apostles are given the gift of speaking in the languages of those present. There is not one language that all are given to hear – the miracle is in the apostles’ mouths not just in the hearers’ ears. Peter, for his sermon on the event, takes as his text the ancient prophecy of Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ (2:14). If there is a reversal of Babel here, it is not in terms of a restoration of a primordial universal language. The Spirit, which makes possible the hearing of the gospel of the Son, is the unificatory principle in this event: the message, not the language, is what is held in common. Though dispersed Israel is addressed here, the rest of the narrative of the book shows how this invitation is extended to the Gentiles as well. Interestingly, Luke’s Paul does not renounce or deny his Roman citizenship and is in fact happy to use the fact that he was born to this status to gain a hearing (Acts 22:25-29).
The inauguration of the church does not therefore mean the dissolution of the nations. This is how the promise to Abraham that ‘all nations will be blessed through you’ (Gen 18:18; Gal 3:18) comes to pass in preaching of the apostles. This means an engrafting of the nations into Israel: an offering of membership in the people of God extended to the whole globe (Rom 9-11; Eph 2). John of Patmos seems to imply that nations maintain their identity even in the eternal vision, where they bring their glory and honour (21:26), and receive healing from the leaves of the tree of life (Rev 22:2). Around the great throne is gathered a multitude visible to the seer as ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’, singing the song of the salvation of the Lamb (Rev 7:9). However, insofar as the nations (and their kings) are ranged against the Lord and his Son, they are utterly defeated (Rev 19:15-16; see Psalm 2). The martyr, therefore, does not witness against all national or tribal identifications per se, but to their relative, penultimate significance.
Thomas Beckett is actually given back to England as her martyr (or at least to Canterbury) – and seen as a focus of national pride. Eliot's play itself is a demonstration of English ownership of this martyr, even in the 1930s. This is an ambivalent side of the story: the ‘having’ of martyrs and saints by various locales perhaps fosters the very kind of tribalism that the martyr dies to avoid. However, there is a sense in which Thomas’ rejection of Englishness as an absolute makes a godly pride in Englishness possible. In addition, the telling and re-telling (or rather, re-enacting) of the martyr’s tale stands as a rebuke to a certain form of nationalism – as evidence of its self-destructive consequences.
This is of course in marked contrast to the use of martyrology as a way of establishing the rightness of my cause and my identity as a victim: this is what suicide bombers do...
[1] ‘Heritage and Decay’ in Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 103-33
Monday, June 26, 2006
Is Australia a Christian Society?
TS Eliot wrote this rather odd book (did he write any other kind?) called 'The Idea of A Christian Society' just before WWII. He saw that English society could choose to become entirely secular (which it has) or actually try to become a 'Christian' society in some way. He meant this in that the society's faith would shape its rhythms of daily, weekly and annual life and its laws and its practices. Sunday rest, for example, would probably be evidence of a 'Christian' society...
The thesis of the book has added and surprising relevance given the current challenge of Islamic theocracy.
In Australia things are of course different. In one sense we have always been secular in psyche. In another sense, you could say that our secularism is a very Christianised secularism, and that the 'mainstream' churches still have a greater hold than they do in Canada, Europe and Britain and even the US. What ever vision of the good remains in Oz in any unified sense is a baptised one. It is the prodigal child of a Christian one. "Compassion" for example, a commonly cited virtue by secular Australians - yet I heard Prof Edwin Judge once argue that compassion was unthinkable without Christianity. Compassion, generosity, forbearance and humility have been taught to us from Christian sources.
The ongoing popularity of faith schools is intriguing too: there is a general recognition from the general public that you can't educate merely out of a sense of 'right' only - you must have some sense of the good, and the neutral secular space can't offer it without becoming what it can't be. Secularism cannot deliver a compelling vision of the good that we are happy to hand on to our children.... [This despite the terrible memories that many people seem to have of Church education!]
Which doesn't really answer the question - but suggests that Australia is still only a generation away from the Christian society it may have once been.
The thesis of the book has added and surprising relevance given the current challenge of Islamic theocracy.
In Australia things are of course different. In one sense we have always been secular in psyche. In another sense, you could say that our secularism is a very Christianised secularism, and that the 'mainstream' churches still have a greater hold than they do in Canada, Europe and Britain and even the US. What ever vision of the good remains in Oz in any unified sense is a baptised one. It is the prodigal child of a Christian one. "Compassion" for example, a commonly cited virtue by secular Australians - yet I heard Prof Edwin Judge once argue that compassion was unthinkable without Christianity. Compassion, generosity, forbearance and humility have been taught to us from Christian sources.
The ongoing popularity of faith schools is intriguing too: there is a general recognition from the general public that you can't educate merely out of a sense of 'right' only - you must have some sense of the good, and the neutral secular space can't offer it without becoming what it can't be. Secularism cannot deliver a compelling vision of the good that we are happy to hand on to our children.... [This despite the terrible memories that many people seem to have of Church education!]
Which doesn't really answer the question - but suggests that Australia is still only a generation away from the Christian society it may have once been.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Flying the flag?
Hey, it is great that we made it through to the next round of the world cup. I have even bought me a cheeky gold Aussie shirt to wear in amongst the St George crosses that have swamped England.
Should I wear it to church?
(This is a 'serious' question in that I am asking 'is it appropriate to go meet with one's brothers and sisters in Christ flying the symbol of another - and divisive - allegiance'?)
Should I wear it to church?
(This is a 'serious' question in that I am asking 'is it appropriate to go meet with one's brothers and sisters in Christ flying the symbol of another - and divisive - allegiance'?)
Matthew’s gospel (4:1-12) reverses the order of the second and third temptations as you find them in Luke. In Dostoevsky’s famous discussion of the temptations in ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ from The Brothers Karamazov, this temptation (placed second) is read more with an emphasis on the miraculous aspect. Christ’s refusal of the third temptation, i.e. to bow down to Satan himself, makes the Grand Inquisitor angry because the Church has had to make up the power difference for humankind by intervening.
Barth’s reading differs markedly in that he points out that the scene is not played out on a public stage but has only the two actors. The temptations for him are more about Jesus and his fitness for his task than they are about what humanity will observe.
As if to underscore the invitation to intertwine the holy with the secular, the setting of the third temptation is given as the temple of God in Jerusalem: he stands upon its pinnacle, looking down. In this temptation, Satan plays at piety by quoting the words of Psalm 91 to Jesus. What he invites Jesus to do, apparently, is merely to trust the God in whose name such words of confident hope were uttered. To step off the peak is to pitch headlong into the promise of God himself; but to do so in a very curious way. Taking this step would be an attempt to take with his own hands of what God has promised. It is the making of faith into something which forces the hand of God. As Barth writes:
In an act of the supreme piety…He would have betrayed the cause of God by making it His own cause, by using it to fulfill His own self-justification before God.
It is ‘supreme piety’ perhaps, but this supremely pious leap would have been a leap away from the will of God. This temptation is rejected by Jesus on the grounds that it is a putting of God himself to the test.
It is treating divine power as the wheel that must turn your way, if only you can act upon it with the right amount of force...
Barth’s reading differs markedly in that he points out that the scene is not played out on a public stage but has only the two actors. The temptations for him are more about Jesus and his fitness for his task than they are about what humanity will observe.
As if to underscore the invitation to intertwine the holy with the secular, the setting of the third temptation is given as the temple of God in Jerusalem: he stands upon its pinnacle, looking down. In this temptation, Satan plays at piety by quoting the words of Psalm 91 to Jesus. What he invites Jesus to do, apparently, is merely to trust the God in whose name such words of confident hope were uttered. To step off the peak is to pitch headlong into the promise of God himself; but to do so in a very curious way. Taking this step would be an attempt to take with his own hands of what God has promised. It is the making of faith into something which forces the hand of God. As Barth writes:
In an act of the supreme piety…He would have betrayed the cause of God by making it His own cause, by using it to fulfill His own self-justification before God.
It is ‘supreme piety’ perhaps, but this supremely pious leap would have been a leap away from the will of God. This temptation is rejected by Jesus on the grounds that it is a putting of God himself to the test.
It is treating divine power as the wheel that must turn your way, if only you can act upon it with the right amount of force...
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
some themes in theology...
Being away from home is a good time for self-reflection. So: what would I like to see in a Sydney Evangelical Anglican theology? What themes (and how) have emerged (for me at least) as important and perhaps distinctive - what are the great benefits of theology the way I have learnt it from Moore and Sydney? What themes might appear as correctives to our tradition? Here is a short list:
0 - something about the Trinity. David H. will help me here!
1 - A high view of scripture's authority but coupled with a robust and flexible doctrine of scripture. What this means is not an abstractly drawn doctrine of scripture, but rather a commitment to prioritise the content of scripture. A plain reading of scripture, but not a literalistic or wooden one... Biblical Theology has taught us that the big picture, the grand narrative sweep of the bible is where the action is. (This is why inerrancy is not at all emphasised even by those who would hold it.).
2 - 'the gospel of Christ' as a prominent theme and not just 'Christ' abstracted from the message about him.
3 - the huge importance of eschatology: not pre-mill or post-mill or any of that guff, but as a biblical/theological theme conditioning all the others, and helping us not to fall into speculations or abstractions. (we are not much interested in 'decrees', or causes, or any of that palaver...).
4. A very positive and full doctrine of creation (and new creation) - which leads to a commitment to the world. The resurrection as a sign of this.
5. Sin and evil are radical both individually and globally and so:
6. GRACE (via the cross) is an absolute... it is the start and end of the Christian life - the great reformation cry of justification by faith alone!
7. Yes, penal substitutionary atonement, but as conditioned by the Trinity, and as seen in the context of the other descriptions of the atonement in the scriptures and certainly with an emphasis on the willing obedience of the Son turning aside God's wrath.
8. the priority of the local church as 'the church' as opposed to the denominations. But at the same time a commitment to 'the church/es' in the whole world... no particular church polity has precedence: in fact overemphasis on particular church polities is usually silly.
9. Sacraments are effectual signs! And we ought to dig them! but they are enacted words, so ordered to the Word of God.
10. Oh yeah, God is sovereign, but LOVE is his supreme 'attribute' conditioning all the others. This is actually point 0 I think!
It's a draft. It's a beginning. We could say more....
Please feel free as a non Syd Ev. Anglican to comment!
0 - something about the Trinity. David H. will help me here!
1 - A high view of scripture's authority but coupled with a robust and flexible doctrine of scripture. What this means is not an abstractly drawn doctrine of scripture, but rather a commitment to prioritise the content of scripture. A plain reading of scripture, but not a literalistic or wooden one... Biblical Theology has taught us that the big picture, the grand narrative sweep of the bible is where the action is. (This is why inerrancy is not at all emphasised even by those who would hold it.).
2 - 'the gospel of Christ' as a prominent theme and not just 'Christ' abstracted from the message about him.
3 - the huge importance of eschatology: not pre-mill or post-mill or any of that guff, but as a biblical/theological theme conditioning all the others, and helping us not to fall into speculations or abstractions. (we are not much interested in 'decrees', or causes, or any of that palaver...).
4. A very positive and full doctrine of creation (and new creation) - which leads to a commitment to the world. The resurrection as a sign of this.
5. Sin and evil are radical both individually and globally and so:
6. GRACE (via the cross) is an absolute... it is the start and end of the Christian life - the great reformation cry of justification by faith alone!
7. Yes, penal substitutionary atonement, but as conditioned by the Trinity, and as seen in the context of the other descriptions of the atonement in the scriptures and certainly with an emphasis on the willing obedience of the Son turning aside God's wrath.
8. the priority of the local church as 'the church' as opposed to the denominations. But at the same time a commitment to 'the church/es' in the whole world... no particular church polity has precedence: in fact overemphasis on particular church polities is usually silly.
9. Sacraments are effectual signs! And we ought to dig them! but they are enacted words, so ordered to the Word of God.
10. Oh yeah, God is sovereign, but LOVE is his supreme 'attribute' conditioning all the others. This is actually point 0 I think!
It's a draft. It's a beginning. We could say more....
Please feel free as a non Syd Ev. Anglican to comment!
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Antigone and tragic choices
As Nussbaum notes, the strategy of conflict elimination as a solution to the problem of bad luck was a prominent theme in 5th Century tragedy; but has also a modern counterpart. The claim is that ‘the human being’s relation to value in the world is not, or should not be, profoundly tragic…that it is, or should be, possible without culpable neglect or serious loss to cut off the risk of the typical tragic occurrence.’ Sophocles' Antigone is a play, which, in Nussbaum’s reading, examines two attempts to achieve the kind of simplification of the structure of an agent’s commitments and loves that will head off conflict and promote security. This is one vision of eudaimonia achieved by two possible routes.
The plot revolves around the dispute between Antigone and King Creon over the unburied corpse of her brother Polynices, who had been killed attacking the city of Thebes. The religious obligation to bury the corpse (which Antigone desires) is in apparent conflict with the civic duty to leave it unburied as the body of an enemy. Creon does not appear conflicted, however, because he narrows his vision of practical reasoning to include only civic values. As the play opens, he seems to have succeeded in keeping the problem of misfortune at bay. His strategy, however, fails him as the plot unfolds: as he mourns for his dead son he repents of his inadequate practical reasoning that led him into such entanglements. Though it is generally agreed that Antigone’s vision is morally superior to Creon’s, Nussbaum argues that her moral vision is similarly limited. She likewise makes a simplification in her concept of the good: family bonds (and so, the religious duty to care for the dead bodies of family members) for her are the trump card. Nussbaum’s Antigone is at least able to recognize the contingent factors that impinge upon her: that her conception of value is vulnerable to some sets of circumstances. Her vision is ‘the more humanly rational and the richer of the two protagonists: both active and receptive, neither exploiter nor simply victim’.
Neither of these two responses is ultimately satisfactory, however. Antigone also eliminates conflicting obligations by means of a simplification of the world of value. Her subservience to duty makes her cold to other values and leads to her destruction. She is an agent who is more than ‘half in love with easeful death’; and blind to the true nature of piety. However, as Nussbaum shows, an optimistic Hegelian harmonization of the two responses is an option that the play countenances and rejects as well. Rather, she finds in the play
…a practical wisdom that bends responsively to the shape of the natural world, accommodating itself to, giving due recognition to, its complexities…To be flexibly responsive to the world, rather than rigid, is a way of living in the world that allows an acceptable amount of safety and stability while still permitting recognition of the richness of value that is in the world…
So: Nussbaum would argue (and in later pieces she makes these thoughts more explicitly her own) that Antigone shows that the avoidance of conflict is not only impossible: it is also undesirable for the eudaimonistic life. Practical wisdom actually demands that we acknowledge our own finitude and our vulnerability to external factors even those we might call ‘luck’. The conflict-free life would be reduced in value and beauty next to the life which is open to the possibility of conflict. For Nussbaum, managing risk is a matter of being ‘flexibly responsive’ to risk rather than eliminating it. This flexible posture towards the world involves using a specifically practical reason – a reason that does not imagine itself mastering the world and its circumstances but rather reflectively interacting with them.
The plot revolves around the dispute between Antigone and King Creon over the unburied corpse of her brother Polynices, who had been killed attacking the city of Thebes. The religious obligation to bury the corpse (which Antigone desires) is in apparent conflict with the civic duty to leave it unburied as the body of an enemy. Creon does not appear conflicted, however, because he narrows his vision of practical reasoning to include only civic values. As the play opens, he seems to have succeeded in keeping the problem of misfortune at bay. His strategy, however, fails him as the plot unfolds: as he mourns for his dead son he repents of his inadequate practical reasoning that led him into such entanglements. Though it is generally agreed that Antigone’s vision is morally superior to Creon’s, Nussbaum argues that her moral vision is similarly limited. She likewise makes a simplification in her concept of the good: family bonds (and so, the religious duty to care for the dead bodies of family members) for her are the trump card. Nussbaum’s Antigone is at least able to recognize the contingent factors that impinge upon her: that her conception of value is vulnerable to some sets of circumstances. Her vision is ‘the more humanly rational and the richer of the two protagonists: both active and receptive, neither exploiter nor simply victim’.
Neither of these two responses is ultimately satisfactory, however. Antigone also eliminates conflicting obligations by means of a simplification of the world of value. Her subservience to duty makes her cold to other values and leads to her destruction. She is an agent who is more than ‘half in love with easeful death’; and blind to the true nature of piety. However, as Nussbaum shows, an optimistic Hegelian harmonization of the two responses is an option that the play countenances and rejects as well. Rather, she finds in the play
…a practical wisdom that bends responsively to the shape of the natural world, accommodating itself to, giving due recognition to, its complexities…To be flexibly responsive to the world, rather than rigid, is a way of living in the world that allows an acceptable amount of safety and stability while still permitting recognition of the richness of value that is in the world…
So: Nussbaum would argue (and in later pieces she makes these thoughts more explicitly her own) that Antigone shows that the avoidance of conflict is not only impossible: it is also undesirable for the eudaimonistic life. Practical wisdom actually demands that we acknowledge our own finitude and our vulnerability to external factors even those we might call ‘luck’. The conflict-free life would be reduced in value and beauty next to the life which is open to the possibility of conflict. For Nussbaum, managing risk is a matter of being ‘flexibly responsive’ to risk rather than eliminating it. This flexible posture towards the world involves using a specifically practical reason – a reason that does not imagine itself mastering the world and its circumstances but rather reflectively interacting with them.
Nussbaum: The Fragility of Goodness
Nussbaum describes her book as
…an examination of the aspiration to rational self-sufficiency in Greek ethical thought: the aspiration to make the goodness of a good human life safe from luck through the controlling power of reason.[1]
Human practical rationality is not a game played on a smooth playing surface, but rather one with surprising bumps and hollows.[2] Nussbaum finds in the philosophical and literary sources of ancient Greece two ‘normative conceptions’ of how would-be moral agents can respond to this condition. On the one hand, the agent can assert control through uninterrupted, pure activity and through emphasis on the rational aspect of human being over against the merely physical. The eudemonistic life envisaged here is solitary, unimpaired by reference to others. Plato in particular articulates a version of this response, though not uncritically.
On the other hand, the moral agent can be seen as sharing both active and passive components, with the recognition that there are external sources of power that inevitably limit the control one may reasonably expect to have over events. Under this conception, the eudemonistic life is lived alongside and with the cooperation of friends and loved ones.[3] Nussbaum’s Aristotle gives expression to a version of this second normative conception (which Nussbaum herself clearly favours).
A third way? What could a Christian version add?
[1] Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 3
[2] Nussbaum’s suspicion that the problem of luck - and so, risk – is one keenly felt by contemporary people is confirmed by Anthony Giddens, who argues that the culture of late modernity can be regarded as a ‘risk’ culture. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991), p. 109-43
[3] Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, p. 20-1
…an examination of the aspiration to rational self-sufficiency in Greek ethical thought: the aspiration to make the goodness of a good human life safe from luck through the controlling power of reason.[1]
Human practical rationality is not a game played on a smooth playing surface, but rather one with surprising bumps and hollows.[2] Nussbaum finds in the philosophical and literary sources of ancient Greece two ‘normative conceptions’ of how would-be moral agents can respond to this condition. On the one hand, the agent can assert control through uninterrupted, pure activity and through emphasis on the rational aspect of human being over against the merely physical. The eudemonistic life envisaged here is solitary, unimpaired by reference to others. Plato in particular articulates a version of this response, though not uncritically.
On the other hand, the moral agent can be seen as sharing both active and passive components, with the recognition that there are external sources of power that inevitably limit the control one may reasonably expect to have over events. Under this conception, the eudemonistic life is lived alongside and with the cooperation of friends and loved ones.[3] Nussbaum’s Aristotle gives expression to a version of this second normative conception (which Nussbaum herself clearly favours).
A third way? What could a Christian version add?
[1] Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 3
[2] Nussbaum’s suspicion that the problem of luck - and so, risk – is one keenly felt by contemporary people is confirmed by Anthony Giddens, who argues that the culture of late modernity can be regarded as a ‘risk’ culture. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991), p. 109-43
[3] Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, p. 20-1
Monday, June 19, 2006
Life is/as good ...
The vision of the life of Israel as the covenant people presented in the OT has its hedonistic side. It is not presented as a denial of this-worldly goodness but rather as a fulfillment of it. haretz(‘the land’) in Deuteronomy is characterized by its fruitfulness and by the enjoyment of its good pleasures (e.g. 7:12-18). The land is set aside, as Eden had been, for the activity and delight of the people of God together with him.
However, the warning that comes insistently and repeatedly to the people in Moses’ exposition of the law is not to forget the giver of the gifts in the midst of such luxury (e.g. 8:11ff). The peril of the easeful life is that of distraction from worship of Yhwh. The Sabbath was given prominence in the law as a means by which to avert the forgetfulness of the people. It was a celebration of both creation (Ex 20:11-12) and redemption (Dt 5:12-15) and consecrated to Yhwh as its originator.
In Deuteronomy’s version of the commandment, the memory of ceaseless slave-labour under Pharoah is invoked. By contrast, life for all in the land - including even livestock – is to be regulated by the divine rest. Here a rhythm of work and ease is built into the community’s life together as a signal of their identity. Rest is blessed as an activity that Yhwh himself enjoys; and it is also construed as an act of worship so that the delight in the pleasures of the created order and the benefits of redemption at Yhwh’s hand might not descend into mere hedonism and a corresponding neglect of the needs of the more vulnerable members of the community. The Sabbath is to be ‘an enactment of peaceableness that bespeaks the settled rule of Yahweh’.[1]
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 185
Oops: just realised I posted this thing a few days ago... not that anybody seemed to notice! Thanks guys!
However, the warning that comes insistently and repeatedly to the people in Moses’ exposition of the law is not to forget the giver of the gifts in the midst of such luxury (e.g. 8:11ff). The peril of the easeful life is that of distraction from worship of Yhwh. The Sabbath was given prominence in the law as a means by which to avert the forgetfulness of the people. It was a celebration of both creation (Ex 20:11-12) and redemption (Dt 5:12-15) and consecrated to Yhwh as its originator.
In Deuteronomy’s version of the commandment, the memory of ceaseless slave-labour under Pharoah is invoked. By contrast, life for all in the land - including even livestock – is to be regulated by the divine rest. Here a rhythm of work and ease is built into the community’s life together as a signal of their identity. Rest is blessed as an activity that Yhwh himself enjoys; and it is also construed as an act of worship so that the delight in the pleasures of the created order and the benefits of redemption at Yhwh’s hand might not descend into mere hedonism and a corresponding neglect of the needs of the more vulnerable members of the community. The Sabbath is to be ‘an enactment of peaceableness that bespeaks the settled rule of Yahweh’.[1]
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 185
Oops: just realised I posted this thing a few days ago... not that anybody seemed to notice! Thanks guys!
Friday, June 16, 2006
Nussbaum's method...
Martha Nussbaum uses a very interesting method of doing philosophical reflection. She does not write abstract pieces, but rather interacts with the dramatic and narrative texts of the classical period and also the modern novel. Literature, in other words.
She does so because 'speculative prose' is not the mode best suited to ethical thinking - something she says the Greeks recognised. This is not just a matter of form either: the choice that Plato made not to write in a literary form was a statement of what he thought he was doing as a philosopher.
As she writes:
Our Anglo-American philosophical tradition has tended to assume that the ethical text should, in the process of inquiry, converse with the intellect alone; it should not make its appeal to the emotions, feeligs, and sensory responses. Plato explicitly argues that ethical learning must proceed by seperating the intellect from our other merely human parts...The conversation we have with a work of tragic poetry is not like this. Our cognitive activity, as we explore the ethical conception embodied in the text, centrally involves emotional response. We discover what we think about these events partly by noticing how we fell; our investigation of our emotional geography is a major part of our search for self-knowledge.
I think what she says here could apply to much theological thinking, which proceeds as if the intellect must be seperated from our other merely human parts... And yet the major texts of Christianity - ie the Bible - do not come to us in that form... What would theology look like if it proceeded by a more Nussbaumian method?
She does so because 'speculative prose' is not the mode best suited to ethical thinking - something she says the Greeks recognised. This is not just a matter of form either: the choice that Plato made not to write in a literary form was a statement of what he thought he was doing as a philosopher.
As she writes:
Our Anglo-American philosophical tradition has tended to assume that the ethical text should, in the process of inquiry, converse with the intellect alone; it should not make its appeal to the emotions, feeligs, and sensory responses. Plato explicitly argues that ethical learning must proceed by seperating the intellect from our other merely human parts...The conversation we have with a work of tragic poetry is not like this. Our cognitive activity, as we explore the ethical conception embodied in the text, centrally involves emotional response. We discover what we think about these events partly by noticing how we fell; our investigation of our emotional geography is a major part of our search for self-knowledge.
I think what she says here could apply to much theological thinking, which proceeds as if the intellect must be seperated from our other merely human parts... And yet the major texts of Christianity - ie the Bible - do not come to us in that form... What would theology look like if it proceeded by a more Nussbaumian method?
Nostalgia and the Exile...
When we speak of longing for home as a theme in the OT, things are somewhat different in the Exilic period.
Rather than being called out from slavery towards a new life of freedom with Yhwh, she now found herself re-enslaved and outcast. The laments of exile exhibit a powerful tone of disconnection and longing characteristic of the nostalgic vision:
By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4) (stop thinking of disco music...)
The memory of Zion is invoked with all the pain of its bitter loss – and a song about the end of singing. The circumstances are very different from those of the Exodus: here is the forced removal of a people from their homeland and the attempted destruction of their identity as a people through enslavement (as had certainly happened to the tribes of the North).
Nostalgia might be forgiven a people in those conditions. Yet the Hebrew Scriptures – many of which date from this period or after – most assuredly do not present a nostalgic vision of the past. The climax of the narrative of the Former Prophets in the David-Solomon era is not presented merely as some Golden Era to which Israel should return with all haste. The prophetic call to restoration came with recognition that the old order was even at its height not yet all it could have been. Jeremiah, for example, envisioned a ‘new covenant’ surpassing the Exodus covenant because the torah would now be internalized by the people and not just mediated through the writing on stone tablets (31:31-34). Ezekiel’s great temple (Ez 40-48), described in such extraordinary detail, clearly exceeds the former temple in its globally significant dimensions and in its overflow of the divine glory (43:1-12). In the book of Haggai, the rebuilt temple is compared unfavourably to the old one; but the divine promise is that ‘the latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former’ (Hg 2:9). The rise of apocalypticism in the latter half of Daniel and Zechariah suggests that longing for a mere repetition of Israel’s past was a cul-de-sac. On the historical horizon, no redevivus was possible. The consolation of Israel’s lament could not - would not - come in the form of a return to the past. Her previous faithlessness stood in the way of this; if the covenant were to be re-established, it would have to be on a new footing. Israel was to remember the past with tears; not those of longing but rather those of sorrow and confession, in preparation for the coming of Yhwh’s comfort and restoration (cf Is 40:1ff).
The scene which encapsulates this tension in the historical experience of Israel is found in Ezra 3:11-13. When finally the foundations of the new temple had been laid with the permission of Cyrus the Persian, there is described a scene of great celebration and joy. And yet, intermingled with this is the sound of the older generation – who had seen and now remembered the first temple – weeping aloud at the sight of the foundations. The result is a sound which is ambiguous:
…the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away (Ez 3:13)
The sorrow and joy blend so as to become indistinguishable. The text does not elevate one noise as the appropriate response to the moment over against the other here. The elders realize perhaps that the ‘Zion’ of their longings is not a matter merely of laying bricks in the ground. The new generation has on the other hand discovered in this moment not a new identity but the foundations of a new identity.
Rather than being called out from slavery towards a new life of freedom with Yhwh, she now found herself re-enslaved and outcast. The laments of exile exhibit a powerful tone of disconnection and longing characteristic of the nostalgic vision:
By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4) (stop thinking of disco music...)
The memory of Zion is invoked with all the pain of its bitter loss – and a song about the end of singing. The circumstances are very different from those of the Exodus: here is the forced removal of a people from their homeland and the attempted destruction of their identity as a people through enslavement (as had certainly happened to the tribes of the North).
Nostalgia might be forgiven a people in those conditions. Yet the Hebrew Scriptures – many of which date from this period or after – most assuredly do not present a nostalgic vision of the past. The climax of the narrative of the Former Prophets in the David-Solomon era is not presented merely as some Golden Era to which Israel should return with all haste. The prophetic call to restoration came with recognition that the old order was even at its height not yet all it could have been. Jeremiah, for example, envisioned a ‘new covenant’ surpassing the Exodus covenant because the torah would now be internalized by the people and not just mediated through the writing on stone tablets (31:31-34). Ezekiel’s great temple (Ez 40-48), described in such extraordinary detail, clearly exceeds the former temple in its globally significant dimensions and in its overflow of the divine glory (43:1-12). In the book of Haggai, the rebuilt temple is compared unfavourably to the old one; but the divine promise is that ‘the latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former’ (Hg 2:9). The rise of apocalypticism in the latter half of Daniel and Zechariah suggests that longing for a mere repetition of Israel’s past was a cul-de-sac. On the historical horizon, no redevivus was possible. The consolation of Israel’s lament could not - would not - come in the form of a return to the past. Her previous faithlessness stood in the way of this; if the covenant were to be re-established, it would have to be on a new footing. Israel was to remember the past with tears; not those of longing but rather those of sorrow and confession, in preparation for the coming of Yhwh’s comfort and restoration (cf Is 40:1ff).
The scene which encapsulates this tension in the historical experience of Israel is found in Ezra 3:11-13. When finally the foundations of the new temple had been laid with the permission of Cyrus the Persian, there is described a scene of great celebration and joy. And yet, intermingled with this is the sound of the older generation – who had seen and now remembered the first temple – weeping aloud at the sight of the foundations. The result is a sound which is ambiguous:
…the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away (Ez 3:13)
The sorrow and joy blend so as to become indistinguishable. The text does not elevate one noise as the appropriate response to the moment over against the other here. The elders realize perhaps that the ‘Zion’ of their longings is not a matter merely of laying bricks in the ground. The new generation has on the other hand discovered in this moment not a new identity but the foundations of a new identity.
Martha C Nussbaum and Transcending Humanity
Martha C. Nussbaum wonders what to do with the yearning we all have to 'transcend' our humanity. "Human beings want to be immortal and ageless", she writes, and she's right. (This is what wrinkle cream is for, isn't it?) But the problem is when we find non-human, or humanity-denying solutions to this in an attempt to leave our humanity behind. What she yearns for is a way of transcending humanity ('internal transcendence') that at the same time affirms our humanity, in its bodily finitude and its dependence on others, its 'situatedness' (to borrow Benhabib's term). She rejects as incoherent the aspiration to leave behind altogether the constituitive conditions of our humanity and to seek for a life that is really the life of another sort of being.
Fair enough.
But she is sharp enough to realise that Christianity offers something entirely different to this in its vision of transcending humanity:
'what a profound response to the problem is embodied in Christianity...For Christianity seems to grant that in order to imagine a god who is truly superior, truly worthy of worship, truly and fully just, we must imagine a god who is human as well as divine, a god who has actually lived out the non-transcendent life and understands it in the only way it can be understood, by suffering and death.'
Her problem seems to be that she cannot see how the Christian ideal avoids lapsing into an 'external transcendence' of a non-human kind... She would prefer that we turn our longings for transcendence to this-worldly and humanity-affirming activities, striving for human excellences and to extend the capacity of human beings.
I would have thought that in Christ we have a both-and...
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
'Rest' and relaxation in Israel
The vision of Israel presented in the OT has its hedonistic side. 'ha-eretz' (‘the land’) in Deuteronomy is characterized by its fruitfulness and by the enjoyment of its good pleasures (e.g. 7:12-18). The land is set aside, as Eden had been, for the activity and delight of the people of God. The warning that comes insistently and repeatedly to the people in Moses’ exposition of the law is not to forget the giver of the gifts in the midst of such luxury (e.g. 8:11ff).
The peril of the easeful life is that of distraction from worship of Yhwh. The Sabbath was given prominence in the law as a means by which to avert the forgetfulness of the people. It was a celebration of both creation (Ex 20:11-12) and redemption (Dt 5:12-15) and consecrated to Yhwh as its originator. In the Deuteronomic version of the commandment, the memory of ceaseless slave-labour under Pharoah is invoked.
By contrast, life for all in the land - including even livestock – is to be regulated by the divine rest. Here a rhythm of work and ease is built into the community’s life together as a signal of their identity. Rest is blessed as an activity that Yhwh himself enjoys; and it is also construed as an act of worship so that the delight in the pleasures of the created order and the benefits of redemption at Yhwh’s hand might not descend into mere hedonism and a neglect of the needs of the more vulnerable members of the community. The Sabbath is to be ‘an enactment of peaceableness that bespeaks the settled rule of Yahweh’.[1]
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 185
The peril of the easeful life is that of distraction from worship of Yhwh. The Sabbath was given prominence in the law as a means by which to avert the forgetfulness of the people. It was a celebration of both creation (Ex 20:11-12) and redemption (Dt 5:12-15) and consecrated to Yhwh as its originator. In the Deuteronomic version of the commandment, the memory of ceaseless slave-labour under Pharoah is invoked.
By contrast, life for all in the land - including even livestock – is to be regulated by the divine rest. Here a rhythm of work and ease is built into the community’s life together as a signal of their identity. Rest is blessed as an activity that Yhwh himself enjoys; and it is also construed as an act of worship so that the delight in the pleasures of the created order and the benefits of redemption at Yhwh’s hand might not descend into mere hedonism and a neglect of the needs of the more vulnerable members of the community. The Sabbath is to be ‘an enactment of peaceableness that bespeaks the settled rule of Yahweh’.[1]
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 185
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