Ricoeur on the exegesis of Gen 1

Photo: Dunblane Cathedral, Scotland.

Ricoeur's essay on exegesis relies the planting of two poles of interpretation which he says are indispensible. First, there is the genetic approach of von Rad et al. Second, there is the structural approach of Schmidt. Ricoeur says that in the case of Gen 1 the structural approach actually draws attention to the genesis of the text: by observing irregularities within the structure the way in which previous texts have been incorporated into the work becomes evident. Interpretation then is the 'act of the text itself on itself'. Already in the text interpretation has begun. The notion of interpretation, says Ricoeur, is 'an act of the text insofar as the text has a direction, a dynamic 'sense'. To interpret is to place ourselves in 'its sense'. I find this emphasis on the text as opposed to the author or the reader extremely interesting, because it draws the exegetes attention to the right place.

All well and good: only his account of the genetic method (of discerning layers of sources and editing in the text - the bread and butter of biblical criticism for years) rests on speculation after speculation after speculation. Certainly, if we could say with confidence that such-and-such a formula represents such-and-such a tradition which the later author/editor has both critiqued and incorporated into this new text, then we may find ourselves enlightened. The basic fact is that there is no agreement amongst scholars as to the arrangement of the source material and the composition of the text. So how much use is it really?

Bach as theologian

David Bentley Hart writes:

Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians, the most inspired witness to the ordo amoris in the fabric of being; not only is no other composer capable of more freely developing lines or of more elaborate structures of tonal mediation (wheresoever the line goes, Bach is there also), but no one as compellingly demonstrates that the infinite is beauty and that beauty is infinite. It is in Bach's music, as nowhere else, that the potential boundlessness of thematic development becomes manifest: how a them can unfold inexorably through difference, while remaining continuous in each moment of repetition, upon a potentially infinite surface of varied repetition. p. 282-3

Choosing Bach of course presents Hart with fewer difficulties than Barth's choosing of Mozart: Barth had to admit that Mozart was not a good man, and probably not a very firm believer. So, he had to seperate the music from the man. Here, no such problem: the composer could not, would not have composed as he did apart from the knowledge of God that he clearly had.

I find it interesting that Hart the Eastern Orthodox exults Bach the Protestant when Hart is so anti-Protestant in general. And yet there is a Protestant plainness to Bach, even when he is writing music for Masses. This aesthetic, far from being evidence of a dour disposition, is I think one of Protestantisms great strength: it is in better taste than the alternatives within Christianity (think the saccharine ornateness of much Catholic and Orthodox art...). At least, that is a Hartian argument!

An Afternoon at the Cricket in England - a photo essay

1. The Worcester College ground is found by walking around the lake... ...over the bridge...
   ...under the trees...
   ...and there you are: an English cricket ground guarded appropriately by...four DUCKS.
   After five overs, our team was 2-34, and the rain started...
   ...early tea was taken, but it the end to no avail and play was abandoned for the afternoon.
   Better luck next week I suppose!
   

Rowan Williams linking judgment and parables again

Salisbury Cathedral cloister.

Mike Higton generously alerted me to this comment by Rowan Williams in an essay from the collection to be published very soon. It seems to me that Williams is always trying think about how we can talk about God and what we might say when we are doing it:

If Jesus is constitutive for Christian language about God and for the present reality of the believer’s relation to God, in such a way that what is said, done, and suffered is strictly unintelligible without continuing reference to Jesus in a more than historically explicatory way, doctrine will be an attempt to do justice to the way in which the narrative and the continuing presence (or presence-in-absence, if you want to nuance it further) of Jesus is held actively to shape present horizons, in judgement and in grace. The disagreement is not over whether doctrinal utterances are or are not to be received uncritically, but over whether any kind of critical method can settle the legitimacy of the distinctively doctrinal enterprise itself as generally conceived by Christians, an enterprise resting as it does on the conviction, variously and often very confusedly articulated in our primary texts, that our world of speech and corporate life has been comprehensively remade, so that new conceptualities are brought to birth. Kritik can look hard at those conceptualities, with a wide variety of suspicions; but not all Wiles’s reasoned eloquence should persuade us that it is in a position to disallow the underlying unsettlement of our thought: the question, ‘What is it that is true of Jesus of Nazareth that would make some sense of the Church’s commitment to new imaginings of God and humanity and of the possibility of new relation to God and humanity?’ I believe that this is in fact the question that arises from taking with full seriousness the notion of parable which Wiles finds so attractive – an event which interrupts us and compels us to take up new positions by showing us quite unexpectedly where and what we are in respect of an unforeseen reality set down before us; something more than an extended simile. Wiles is far from insensitive to this priority of krisis over Kritik; but how can his model of doctrinal criticism allow it its proper weight?

This thought appears again and again: the narrative of Jesus AND his continuing presence (Holy Spirit? Church?) shape and reshape our 'present horizons', by judgement - bringing them to a point of krisis - and grace. Our primary texts (scripture, in other words) are very confusing, and so the task of criticism is required: but this critical task (Kritik) ought to be secondary to the more self- and world-critical task of answering to the confrontation and interruption that we find in the teaching of Jesus and the gospel itself. That's Williams' problem with Maurice Wiles, who represents the old school liberal (and most certainly not orthodox) kind of scholarship that Williams defines himself against. How can Wiles have his critical cake and eat it too? Williams is unconvinced.

However, Williams sees the parables of Jesus as giving impetus and licence to 'new imaginings' about God and God-and-us. In this way, he is 'progressivist': he might well share Peter Carnley's self-description as 'Progressive Orthodox'. Williams is committed to the expectation that there will be new things to say about God, new encounters with him, new languages about him generated.

Thomas Weinandy asks 'Does God Suffer?'

Just dipping into Weinandy's book Does God Suffer? I am finding a penetrating and illuminating discussion of the 'problem' of the impassability of God. I noted this comment, on evangelism and the 'suffering God':

...it should be noted that inherent within a theology of a suffering God is a feeble theology of evangelization. Those who propose that God suffers in himself speak as if this gives consolation to those who suffer. This has been shown to be a deceptive consolation. Moreover, they speak as if everyone, regardless of whether one is a Christian or not, is equally consoled by a suffering God. Thus, there is no urgent need to preach the gospel. But this too is false to the gospel. The Father does wish to console everyone, and that is precisely why he sent his Son into the world. However, the Father can only fully console those who are in union with Christ for Christ is the Father's consolation. It is only in Christ Jesus that one can come to experience fully the riches of the Father's mercy.... p. 249

It is a telling critique if he is right.

Of course, martyrdom is inevitably part of a discussion of whether God suffers, even if briefly:

While one should not seek martyrdom, yet to suffer for the sake of the gospel and even to die for the name of Jesus is a Christian's supreme honour. It is the Christian's consummate boast. p. 280

[Weinandy also reminded me that John Paul II once said this cool thing:

Martyrdom, accepted as an affirmation of the inviolabilty of the moral order, bears splendid witness both to the holiness of God's law and to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created in God's image and likeness.]

Office politics - a musing

- vis a vis nothing in particular:

I have worked in several institutions, Christian and secular, and none it seems to me have been free of what we call 'office politics' - of which I have sometimes been an active participant, I confess. Which is to say, office politics are fairly ubiquitous feature of working life - and are often experienced with a high degree of unpleasantness and frustration. Especially, this is difficult when it occurs in a workplace which is explicitly Christian, because the expectation of a different set of working relationships can be set much higher, and thus the crash much greater. In addition, Christians have, I am afraid, a tendency to justify the office-political means by the spiritual ends.

Now, in one sense I think office politics are just a necessary feature of working with other people and needn't be always a bad thing per se. There is a strain in Christian piety which condemns politics of all kinds - but this seems to me rather gnostic, a denial of the body politic.

But, as a pastoral and spiritual issue: what can be said to and by Christian workers about office politics? Here are some further questions:

- To what extent is loyalty to the boss an absolute requirement of workplace virtue? over against, say, loyalty to the values and history of the organisation?

- Why are Christians so blind to workplace bullying in their own organisations? How can we change this? How can we be self-aware about our own personal tendencies to manipulative behaviour at work?

- How can we address the souring of workplace relationships, and prevent it?

Testimonies welcome.

'Too many Thomisms?' Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre introduces the 'third way' in his Gifford lectures Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: not encylopeadia or genealogy, but Thomism... The sample text is the Aeterni Patris of 1879, an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII.

How does this 'Thomism' differ? Well, it recognises that philosophy is a virtue-guided craft, in which the business of being a teacher and an apprentice is integral:

...there emerges a conception of rational teaching authority internal to the practice of the craft of moral enquiry, as indeed such conceptions emerge in such other crafts as furniture making and fishing, where, just as in moral enquiry, they partially define the relationship of master-craftsman to apprentice. p. 63

Partly what is interesting and helpful about this version of Thomism is that it ignores questions of epistemology which are ultimately so, well, boring...

Of course, as Thomism was received in Catholic teaching following the encyclical, this was not the case. So, in Jacques Maritain and others there is a much more epistemologically driven version of Thomism, one that doesn't reckon with Thomas's own dependence on divine revelation. As MacIntyre writes:

What Maritain wished to affirm was a modern version of Aquinas's thesis that every human being has within him or herself a natural knowledge of divien law and hence of what every human being owes to every other human being. The plain prephilosophical person is always a person of sufficient moral capacities. But what Maritain failed to reckon with adequately was the fact that in many cultures and notably in that of modernity plain persons are misled into giving moral expression to those capacities thourgh assent to false philosophical theories. So it has been since the 18th century with assent to a conception of rights alien to and absent from Aquinas' thought. For on Aquinas' view the rights which are normative for human relationships are derived from and warranted only by divine law, apprehended by those without the resources afforded by God's self-revelation as the natural law. Law is primary, rights are secondary. But for Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment modernity, human rights provide a standard prior to all law. p. 76

I find this fascinating, as I have heard Thomists crowing about the emergence of human rights as if this was proof of the obviousness of their reading of Thomism. Evidently, not.

Demonic influence - a pastoral issue

Can people who have become Christians still suffer the lingering effects of demonic or occult activity from their past lives? Certainly this is a real issue for many pastors.

I have traditionally said that the victory of Christ on the cross over the powers was so absolute that Christians have no reason to fear demonic influence or even to inquire after it. Additionally, I think the charismatic movement has had a disastrous and disgraceful influence in evangelical Christianity on this very issue, causing people to fear quite unnecessarily and to doubt the power of the cross of Christ and to become fascinated with the very things that they should not become fascinated with (with all due and sincere respect to my charismatic brothers and sisters many of whom would acknowledge these kind of excesses anyway). My goodness, some of the silly things I have heard about ancestral spirits and the freemasonry etc etc!

BUT: is this really all there is to say? Let me take an analogy: Christians are not to fear sickness and death anymore because of their hope in Christ. And yet of course we still experience sickness and death and have to deal with them. Or: I know several Christians who have depression. Becoming Christian did not alleviate them of their depression though in some ways it has helped them to be better at managing it and more determined to and they do have assurance that they won't carry their mental illness into the resurrection body.

Now: can we make a parallel with demon possession here? Is it possible that merely being reassured about the victory of Christ over the powers and principalities does not mean freedom from the influence of malignant spirits of whatever kind? Is there a place for the Christian to seek deliverance from a certain kind of influence in their life just as they might go to counselling in order to help them with an addiction they have brought with them into the Christian life? And: what kind of action would help?

Divine impassability?

The overwhelming consensus in twentieth century theology was that divine impassability had become an untenable doctrine. In the wake of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, it seemed impossible to believe in a God who is not sensitive, emotional and compassionate. Moltmann wrote:

The doctrine of the essential impassability of the divine nature now seems finally to be disappearing from the Christian doctrine of God.

While the tradition has fairly consistently taught impassibility of one form or another for 1900 years unbroken, there are of course good biblical grounds for questioning it at least. And Colin Gunton in his book Act and Being (which I think is one of his best) calls it a 'doctrine that damages as well as supports the gospel' (p. 125). It was the heresy of Nestorianism that taught the Eternal Son did not suffer, after all. Whatever account is given must incorporate a fully two-natured account of Christ on the cross, or Christianity itself is denied.

Gunton concedes in the end that

the doctrine expresses...the ontological integrity of God, his immunity from alteration in his being as the result of things done by creatures. It is linked with his moral consistency and integrity, as well as his sovereignty - the assurance that he cannot be deflected from achieving his purposes. p. 131

This sounds more than a little reluctant on Gunton's part. But, I think that while rejecting impassability fits in with the zeitgeist I am not sure it can be any way said to reflect orthodox teaching, not really. Trouble is, how to articulate it without depersonalising the deity... Perhaps Thomas Weinandy's Does God Suffer? will help.

Changing Photos: Mum didn't like the other one

The Trouble With Principle - Stanley Fish (review)

It must be hard to be liberal in a world full of extremists, hard-liners and fanatics. Liberalism – the ideological offspring of the eighteenth century Enlightenment – is the convictional pattern that today governs practically all public and intellectual discourse in the Western world. Liberals appeal to a set of principles that they hold to be incontrovertible, even “self-evident”: free speech, equality, tolerance, freedom of belief, democracy, the right of the individual to make independent and autonomous moral decisions. These are the dogmas of liberalism.

Yet every now and again the smugness and complacency of liberal thinking is exposed for the sham it is - usually when people whose rights liberals advocate won’t behave. For example, when indigenous or third world peoples speak against homosexuality, western liberals are quite plainly confused as to how to respond without appearing racist, as was the case with the Episcopalian bishops at the Anglican Lambeth conference in 1998. Likewise when David Irving, the historian who claims that the Holocaust was largely a hoax, sought permission into Australia, his right to freedom of speech was denied it because it was thought he might inflame racial hatred. Further, when novelist Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the Ayotollah Khomeini, this was deemed by Western observers as taking free speech too far. The principles of free speech and the tolerance and protection of minorities are plainly at cross purposes.
The trouble is, liberals appear to advocate a comprehensive tolerance when in fact they do nothing of the kind. They would advocate freedom of religious belief – so long as that freedom does not transgress its carefully proscribed limits. Religious belief, for example, should not be a matter for parliaments or courts, nor should it have any influence there. And yet for any person holding such a religious belief, this caveat will seem hilarious. How can any truly and firmly held belief be discarded as if of no relevance in one sphere of life?

This, in Stanley Fish’s words, is “boutique multiculturalism”. A boutique multiculturalist will “always stop short of approving other cultures at a point where some value at their center generates an act that offends against the canons of civilised decency as they have either been declared or assumed.” (p.56) A boutique multiculturalist suffers from an inability to take seriously the core values of the cultures he or she tolerates. He or she apparently enjoys diversity, but only when divergent cultures and views are presented in sanitised or tame versions.

A “strong multiculturalist”, on the other hand, makes a genuine effort: tolerance is stipulated as the first principle, and tries to accord all cultures a deep respect at their core. However, as Fish points out, strong multiculturalism founders when it encounters the very intolerance it loathes at the centre of another belief system. How do you respond to Muslim intolerance of Rushdie? You might tolerate it, in which case tolerance is no longer your core principle; or you might condemn it, in which case you turn out to be another boutique multiculturalist after all.

Stanley Fish’s aim in his book The Trouble with Principle is to unpick the rhetoric of liberalism and expose it as dishonest at the core. As he explains it, the really dangerous thing about the liberal appeal to principles is that it uses the rhetoric of neutrality and distance while being nothing of the kind. It takes the moral high ground, aloof from irrational evils like “dogmatism” and “fanaticism”, all the while being just as dogmatic, fanatical and irrational. It is “a wolf in reason’s clothing”. (p.187)

The strategy of liberalism is to clear a public space, free (allegedly) from ideological (and especially religious) concerns, and in which only agreed truths, such as “two plus two equals four”, may prosper. Other beliefs may be held, but only in private. The curriculum for a secular education, for example, should be absolutely free from religious influence. However, Fish points out that what is and what is not ideological is itself a matter of dispute: “Christ is risen” may be such a truth for some and not for others. In addition, in late twentieth century Western democracies, the values and ideology of liberalism are held to “go without saying”. The values and ideology of Christianity may only be held in a private way. They must be set aside in the public sphere.

The double standard of this seems obvious to me now that Fish has pointed it out! Whenever Christians enter into the public sphere as Christians they are exposed to ridicule and held to have transgressed the sacred boundaries traced by liberalism. David Marr’s book The High Price of Heaven is an example of just such a sustained and bitter attack on Christian interference in public affairs from an openly liberal perspective. He wears his boutique multiculturalism on his sleeve: he is completely – unashamedly - intolerant of Christian social policy in all its forms.

Stanley Fish is a delightful scallywag; but he is far more than that. Over four decades he has established himself as a world-class Miltonist, a philosopher of law, and a literary theorist. His books are always provocative and argued with an intense and vigorous logic. His texts are full of closely worked examples and case studies, where the implications are meticulously teased out. He does not like a snow-job: and he is happiest untangling and exposing them. Perhaps liberalism is the biggest snow-job of all.

Fish’s extensive study of the Christian poet John Milton has given him an understanding of what it is to believe. Indeed, he rightly sees that none of us is without “beliefs” – shaped by history and context and other beliefs - that stand prior to rationality. In fact, our beliefs actually condition our use of reason, more than we are conscious of. There is something deeply internal to true beliefs. They claim our souls and change our lives. Liberals, despite their rhetoric, want to hold all other belief systems at arms length – to admire, but not to really understand from within. They draw a wedge between “belief” and “reason”, and with extreme prejudice. Of course, this is all done by appeal to apparently neutral “principles”. The sleight of hand is obvious in the slow motion replays Fish allows us with his careful analysis: these “principles” are not neutral at all, but suit the vested interests of those who hold them.

The lessons to learn from Stanley Fish are many. We Christians have perhaps grown ashamed of our commitments and beliefs in the public sphere. We have perhaps bought the liberal rhetoric of neutrality too readily. We have perhaps hoped that we could easily shed our most deeply held beliefs when we needed to speak in public. We have perhaps allowed ourselves to be marginalised as “fundamentalists” and “fanatics”. We are perhaps embarrassed to cause a fuss and call the bluff of the liberals who sanctimoniously call on people with beliefs other than their own to hide them in public. What the rigorous analysis of Fish reveals is that the impressive edifice of liberalism is in fact a mirage; and that we need pay it far less deference than we do.

Like the Wizard of Oz, the very real power of liberalism rests on the illusion of substance.

Ricoeur on Manifestation and Proclamation

Ricoeur's article 'Manifestation and Proclamation' is a virtuoso performance, it must be said. The essay aims to deal with a polarity/tension between what he calls 'manifestation', which has to do with the phenomenology of the sacred, and arises from the study of religions; and 'proclamation', which is shaped by (largely Protestant) biblical scholarship whose project is demythologisation. Can a hermeneutic of proclamation extricate itslef from a phenomenology of the sacred? Can kerygma annihilate the sacred?

Put simply (I'll try!): on the side of manifestation, which refers to most religious experience and forms, the world is itself an enchanted place replete with symbols that correspond to our humanity. The sacred is experienced non-verbally, powerfully and mysteriously. Ritual is used not only to reflect the sacredness of the world but even to consecrate it.

On the other side, Ricoeur charts the Hebraic turn against the Canaanite cults and idols and toward the proclaimed word. In Hebraic faith the word outweighs the numinous: not that the numinous is absent (think Sinai etc) but just that it is secondary to the law that is given from that point. Ritual is also there, but loses its power of correspondence with the natural world. And there is a turn to the historical and ethical - no longer is the natural cycle of seasons the basis for the experience of time.

Of course, this kergymatic turn, with its polemic against religion, is consummated in the gospels and in the teachings of Jesus. Well, at least, you could read them that way...

Naturally, Ricoeur's Hegelian heart desires the mediation between these two poles. So, he reads the parables as reintroducing the sacred in a new way. While the modern scientific world is evidence of the victory of the proclamatory world view, for Ricoeur, 'humanity is simply not possible without the sacred'. It is possible that with the word comes a reaffirmation of the sacred? Is it not true that the evangelical message also comes with a manifestation, as the NT charts it? Ricouer quotes John's gospel - 'he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory...'. As he says: 'philosophy and evangelical preaching give a second wind to archaic symbolism'.

I am an iconoclast at heart: and yet, there is something insufficient about this that Ricoeur highlights. Having been challenged and overcome as idolatrous, the symbolism of the sacred is then resumed and transformed by the kerygma. The kerygma does not achieve a demythologisation, but rather a remythologisation. After all, it is a message about miracles! Ricoeur concludes:

In truth, without the support and renewing power of the sacred cosmos and the sacredness of viatl nature, the word itself becomes abstract and cerebral. Only the incarnation of the ancient symbolism ceaselessly reinterpreted gives the word something to say, not only to our understanding and will but also to our imagination and our heart; in short, to the whole human being...Must we not confess, therefore, that the hope to see the faith in the word outlive the religion of the sacred is really vain and that the end of the word as well as of the hearing of the word is bound to some new birth of the sacred and its symbolism, beyond its death...? [NB what a French way to end an article, with an aporetic question!]

While clearly prioritising the word, the Reformers notably saw ritual and ceremony as an accomodation by God to our humanity (though it was also potentially dangerous of course)...

Peter Jensen: Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical

A series recently given by the Archbishop of Sydney to a lay audience:



Why_I_am_Protestant

Why_I_am_Reformed

Why_I_am_Evangelical

Double Usefulness: Some Clarity Regarding Turkey's Martyrs

Double Usefulness: Some Clarity Regarding Turkey's Martyrs

Over on Andrew's site, a helpful clarification about the Turkish Martyrs. The earlier report which I posted on my blog was inaccurate as to the extent and horror of the torture.

Honour... and other catastrophes?

Is there a place for an ethics of honour in Christians conceptions of how to live righteously? Or does a notion of honour corrupt Christian ethics?

Critics of the honour ethic have a very ancient heritage indeed: Plato himself posited the citizen’s reason above the military value of honour as the ground for the highest kind of life.[1] The Stoics, too, spoke strongly against the desire for honour because they held that it put value in mere appearance. Since the Enlightenment, honour has largely been a suppressed discourse because it does not fit well with the romantic ethic of personal authenticity or the rationalist/utilitarian appeal to ‘reason’. That is, it would be allowing others’ opinions too much influence to speak of the self in terms of what is honourable. What is more, it is viewed as being undemocratic. It is an ethic of kings in an age of parliaments.

For his part, Charles Taylor argues that the modern notion of ‘dignity’ ought to replace ‘honour’ in modern democratic society. He argues that honour differs from dignity in that honour is what only exceptional men achieve, whereas dignity can be ascribed to all. It is the importance of the assertion of the will that the two hold in common.[2] Recognition is, for Taylor, absolutely vital and inescapable as a necessary constituent of identity; and a democratic society has no business recognizing some of its citizens more than others, which is what the honour ethic at least seems to promote.

However, honour does have its contemporary advocates, such as Sharon Krause[3] and Michael Walzer.[4] Walzer has argued that honour is not incompatible at all with a modern liberal democratic society, especially if it is viewed as a quality of character. On his account of honour, it would seem not corrosive of equal recognition at all if some, albeit fixed, concept of desert for honourable behaviour were to be held within a democratic society. In particular these standards could relate to particular types of activity, such as voluntary organizations – vocational and professional associations, political parties, advocacy groups and even families. These groups are vital sources of shared identity and by dint of their voluntary nature allow a domain appropriate for a code of honour. These groups are resources for inspiring honour: for motivating virtuous activity from which the whole community and indeed the political order benefits. Krause writes:

The power of honour lies in the fact that it is a mixed motive. It builds on the particular attachments and private desires that make us who we are and move us to act. It channels and directs personal ambitions, rather than suppressing them in the name of a comprehensive common good or a universal standpoint. Nor does it require the state to cultivate character, or submerge diverse identities into a homogenous collective one.

One problem for Krause and Walzer is that the 'fixed' codes are only arbitrarily fixed: honour, as they admit can be cruel or tyrannical if bound by the wrong code. Think of so called 'honour killings' after all...

[1] Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press., 1989), p. 20. Aristotle for his part saw honour as the goal and completion of the virtuous life: Nicomachean Ethics 1115b13.
[2] Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 46-7
[3] Sharon Krause, "The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience: Honor and the Defense of Liberty in Montesquieu," Polity 31, no. 3 (1999)
[4] Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Robertson, 1983)

The problem of heavenly rewards

That's me standing on the spot where Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were burned.

The NT is full of talk about heavenly rewards for those who are persecuted for the sake of Christ. Think Matt 5:10-12, where the persecuted are those who can count themselves blessed, because they get the kingdom of God - and more!

What begins as a word of comfort to those who are under the pressure of persecution and possible death, or to those who have lost someone in the arena becomes, under less pressured conditions, not merely an encouragement to endure but a motivation to seek out a martyr’s death in order somehow to guarantee God’s approval. If the promise of vindication and reward comes so surely to those who find themselves under trial, then it would follow that one ought to seek out trials, or even perhaps provoke them if necessary. This was in fact exactly what happened in the first centuries of the Christian era, and it was a problem that Augustine aligned himself against. Yet, to be fair, this is only the consequence of the notion of heavenly rewards gone awry. The notion of heavenly rewards – as we have seen, deeply embedded in the Christian scriptures and the subsequent tradition – is problematic not just because of its problematic effects. In the first place, if renunciation of life and its pleasures and comforts is motivated by expectation that this very act of renunciation will bring as a certainty eternal life and heavenly bliss, is it not then the case that the act is really a form of self-interest? And further: is it not affirming the paradigm of rewards that it seems at first to reject? Secondly, we can see here that this desire for a heavenly prize can certainly mean that the martyr dies in a way which denies or diminishes the goodness of the created order – including the other people in it. This was certainly a feature of Origen’s construal of martyrdom. It is hard to see how martyrdom is a genuinely loving act in this case. A third difficulty is perhaps even more serious: the one who wills for himself to become a bloody martyr becomes his own judge; or at least, attempts to force God’s hand, to trigger divine approval as an automatic right. The one who designates himself ‘martyr’ is presumably conscious of imitating Christ in his death; and yet, this martyr presumes that his own death secures the merit, at least for himself, that only Christ’s death secures for any human person. All three of these problems are, at base, evidence for the accusation leveled against martyrs of all faiths that the apparent denial of the self is really a complete fabrication. Martyrdom is egotism of the worst kind.

This applies to the having of martyrs too: the church that designates and then celebrates martyrs is with not much subtlety proclaiming its own blessedness, it's own God-favouredness over and against even other churches. It is not incidental that the cult of the martyrs sprang up in the fourth and fifth centuries, as the various sees of the empire jockied for position. The keeping of the relics of the martyrs and the veneration of their tombs and shrines threatened also to subvert the power of their witness to the work of Christ. We see here the temptation of supplanting the divine judgment once more.

Hart on impassability

At Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire, in the dead of winter...

The doctrine of the impassability of God has been something of an embarassment for modern theology. For Anglicans, it stands very prominently at the head of the 39 Articles: God is 'without body, parts or passions'. The suspicion is that this is yet another piece of Greek metaphysics entering into the doctrine of God, a metaphysics that should be scoured from its surface immediately and forthwith.

Not so fast, says David Bentley Hart:

...I should observe that the widespread impatience among theologians with the language of divine impassability, always fortified by the prejudice that such a doctrine represents an unreflective 'hellenization' of the gospel, has too often served to obscure the real question at issue, the doctrinal concerns that the teaching of divine impassablity answers, and the real philosophical revision - utterly consistent with itself and Scripture - that the teaching underwent in the hands of the greatest of the patristic theologians... p. 158

Which is to say, the 'oh, its Greek' accusation is far too simplistic. The doctrine protects us from imagining God as somehow dependent or interdependent on the creation. The absence of creation (says Hart) would no way alter God as God... Hart especially has a go here at the Teutonic Hegelianism of Moltmann, Juengel, Pannenberg and co. God, he says, does not require creation to fecundate his being or to determine his personality.

Hart on the sublime

I am somewhat frustrated by not yet reaching the theological sections of Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite. One of the problems was the section 'The Veil of the Sublime', which I found quite baffling. I still don't know really what is meant by 'the sublime' other than 'that which is unrepresentable'. For Kant, the subline 'is suggested to us in moments when, presented by an immensity, grandeur, or force that exceeds representation - because it requires of apprehension an 'infinite' activity that surpasses the power of comprehension, which is itself dependent upon the inward synthesis of the sense of time and hence finite - reasons must return from the realm of the sensible...' p. 45-6

Anyhow, why this matters is that Hart goes on to classify postmodern thought under four 'narratives of the sublime':

1 - the differential sublime, 'which might also be called the sublimity of exteriority'. Here he characterises Derrida's differance. Instead of order and classification, the sheer play of difference is celebrated.
2 - the cosmological sublime, 'which is the form the discourse of the unrepresentable can take when the Nietzschean impulse predominates', as it does with Deleuze, and then Foucault.
3 - the ontological sublime, represented by Heidegger
4 - the ethical sublime, whose chief figure is Levinas.

Hart is quite delightfully savage with some of these idols of our time. Chiefly, he attempts something very worthwhile, which is to sure why postmodern philosophers do not succeed even on their own terms. But, I am still left with that rather stupid feeling you get when you read what you don't understand...

Heavenly Rewards for Martyrs?

The notion of a heavenly reward for the martyr would seem to be necessary part of the theology of martyrdom: it represents a promise of divine vindication, and offers a motive for such action. It is certainly worth noting the very strong emphasis on heavenly rewards and honour in the Islamic construal of martyrdom. The classic Qur’anic text associated with the martyr’s reward is surah 3:169-70:

‘And do not think of those who have been killed in the way of Allah as dead; they are rather living with their Lord, well-provided for. Rejoicing in what their Lord has given them of His bounty, and they rejoice for those who stayed behind and did not join them, knowing that they have nothing to fear and that they shall not grieve.’ [quoted in Cook p. 31]

Though the blessings are not described, the life promised to the martyr, or to the one killed in jihad, is presented not urge further acts of martyrdom but rather to comfort the living. Though the blessings of heaven are frequently described, there is no sense in which the martyr is singled out for special treatment in the Qur’an. However, in the subsequent traditional writings, the hadith, the situation is completely transformed. The figure of the martyr becomes one who is carefully described as set apart from the common mass of Muslims. The rewards are described in much greater detail. What David Cook describes as ‘probably the most frequently cited tradition lisiting these rewards’ (p. 37) describes the food and drink of paradise reserved for the martyrs in the presence of Allah. In particular, there is a strong sexual theme associated with martyrdom. Much controversy surrounds this material of course, but the sexual imagery is undoubtedly present. Cook writes:

‘The rewards for the martyr described by the Muslim jihad literature are very lurid...no one who read the jihad and martyrdom literature can avoid the frequent and graphic descriptions of the sexual delights of paradise. Although it is impossible to be certain, the fact that this material is so well attested and descriptive suggests that along with the spiritual aspects of being a martyr, there was a strong sexual pull as well.’ David Cook, Martyrdom in Islam, Themes in Islamic History (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 2007), p. 37

It becomes more the case in the traditional material that these rewards are used more to entice other Muslims to follow the example of the martyrs so rewarded as well as a comfort for those who remain.

The promise of heavenly reward has long been used in the Christian tradition too. For example, in Origen’s Exhortation to Martyrdom he encourages the young men Ambrose and Protoctetus by reminding them of the promises of heavenly reward in the New Testament. In this beautifully crafted passage, he manages to cite nearly all the relevant texts from the Pauline epistles:

‘…if strangers to the language of the holy Scriptures should hold us in contempt or disparage us as either impious or fools, let us remember that the ‘hope upon hope’ to be given us in ‘yet a little while’ will be given ‘by the contempt of lips, through another tongue’. And who would not welcome ‘affliction upon affliction’ that he might immediately also welcome ‘hope upon hope’? He will consider with Paul ‘that the sufferings of this present time’ with which, as it were, we purchase blessedness ‘are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us’ from God (Rom 8:18). The truth of this judgment is apparent because ‘this light momentary affliction’ (2 Cor 4:17) both is and is said to be ‘light’ for those not burdened by present hardships, since it is quite outweighed by the greater and heavier ‘weight of glory’ it is ‘preparing for us’ (2 Cor 4:17). This will happen if, when our persecutors wish to weigh down our souls, as it were, we turn our governing mind from our sufferings and look not at the present sufferings but at the prizes kept for athletes who by their endurance of these tests compete according the rules in Christ by the grace of God (cf 2 Tim 2:5). He multiplies His benefits and gives as much beyond what the toilds of the contestant deserve as it is right for Him to give as the God who does not quibble about trifles and who in His munificence knows how to increase His gifts to those who have demonstrated they love Him with all their soul by despising so far as they are able their earthen vessel.’

So, must we then conclude that the promise of heavenly rewards is an inescapable feature of a theology of martyrdom? Doesn't the idea of a reward thwart the very nature of the martyr's act by rendering it self-interested however?

Alasdair MacIntyre: encyclopaedia and geneaology

Simon and a French goat. They seem pretty much the same as other goats.

MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry begins with a narrative about the creation of the Gifford lectures themselves - which is a brilliant, almost funny, self-referential move. The conceit is 'should these lectures really be given'? - which of course, MacIntyre undoes by, well, giving them.

The 19th C. Scottish academics with whom MacIntyre begins are exemplars of the 'encyclopedic' view of truth and knowledge. The genre that represents what they assumed best is the encyclopedia article - comprehensive, conclusive, prolix, 'scientific', based on facts, authoritative, 'expert'. This was not a discussion of authoritative texts, but rather was its own authoritative text.

The geneaologist on the other hand, of whom Nietzche is the supreme example, repudiated the very structures of knowledge and the institutions that produced it - and furthermore, the genres that represent it. So, Nietzche's personal journey led him away from the academy and into the Alps. His writing became prophetic, allusive, even self-contradictory, proverbial and with the appearance of incompleteness.

As MacIntyre points out: the geneaologist has (in his book) won a decisive victory over the encyclopedist in exposing his/her assumptions and pretensions. However, it is not clear how the geneaologist has escaped the charge that he has levelled at his opponent. Foucault, for example, undoubtedly a neo-Nietzchean, became more an icon of academic authority as his career went on, and did not dissuade his very deferential interviewers from their sycophancy, nor shatter his own idol once it had been built.

I have yet to read about the third rival version, namely 'tradition'. However, it strikes me that Kierkegaard could be an interesting mediating figure here, though perhaps on the geneaological side. It further strikes me that in Christian theology there remain those who take an encyclopedic approach and those who take a more 'geneaological' approach. They are as apparently incommensurate in this context as they are in philosophy...

Alasdair MacIntyre on disagreement

Simon and Sacha at Nantes Chateau, where the Edict of Nantes was signed (so they say).

Alasdair MacIntyre's Gifford Lectures Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry begins with an observation about the experience of delivering the lectures themselves: that the debate elicited responses that varied according to the rational systems deployed by the participants. As he notes:

...nothing is more striking in the contemporary university than the extent of the apparently ineliminable continuing divisions and conflicts within all humanistic enquiry ... p. 6

What we really experience I guess is more like a 'multi-versity', where the clash of theoretical commitments rings out accross the campus. Or, perhaps, as MacIntyre suspects, the only engagements that occur are between people who already share the same rational commitments. This might be accross disciplines - and the disagreements may run through individual disciplines. MacIntyre goes on:

Hence debate between fundamentally opposed standpoints does occur; but it is inevitably inconclusive. Each warring position characteristically appears irrefutable to its own adherents; indeed in its own terms and by its own standards of argument it IS in practice irrefutable. But each warring position equally seems to its opponents to be insufficiently warranted by rational argument.

And then, the interesting bit:

It is ironic that the wholly secular humanistic disciplines of the late twentieth century should thus reproduce that very same condition which led their nineteenth century secularizing predecessors to dismiss the claim of theology to be worthy of the status of an academic discipline. p. 7

This attack on theology still goes on of course...and yet, is political philosophy any different (for example)?

Peter Brown on the Cult of the Saints

In the third, fourth and fifth centuries there flourished on an amazing scale the practice of revering the relics and shrines of the martyrs. The care of the dead was a visible and shocking demonstration to the pagan world of Christian belief. Traditionally, historians have accounted for this as an adoption by Christians of pagan practices. Addressing this phenomenon, Peter Brown writes in his The Cult of the Saints - Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity -

...we must remember that the Christian church had risen to prominence largely because its central ritual practices and its increasingly centralised organisation and financial administration presented the pagan world with an ideal community that had claimed to modify, to redirect, and even to delimit the bonds of the kin. The church was an artificial kin group. Its members were expected to project onto the new community a fair measure of the sense of soldarity, of the loyalties, and of the obligations that had previously been directed to the physical family. Nowhere was this made more plain than in the care of the dead. p. 31

Christians began to have their own cemetries, and to note carefully the anniversaries of the deaths of martyrs and bishops. By the time of the Constantinian turn, with the growth in Christian belief amongst the wealthy elites, this meant for the appearance en masse of endowed shrines and cemetries all over the empire. As Brown writes:

What we have seen is not the growth of new beliefs within the Christian communities, but the restructuring of old beliefs in such a way as to allow them to carry a far heavier charge of public meaning... p. 48

The continuity was not with pagan popular religion, but in fact with Christian belief of the previous eras. This was not merely a feature of popular religion either, but was encouraged and sponsored by the lay and clerical elites. Noticeably, the reverence for the martyrs outlasted the persecutions which made them: the churches were insistent that this was a self-identifying practice of utter necessity for who they were as a group.

The three martyrs of Turkey

I received this email today. Kind of puts writing a doctorate on martyrdom into perspective:

A letter to the Global Church from The Protestant Church of Smyrna
Dear friends,
This past week has been filled with much sorrow. Many of you have heard by now of our devastating loss here in an event that took place in Malatya, a Turkish province 300 miles northeast of Antioch, the city where believerswere first called Christians (Acts 11:26).On Wednesday morning, April 18, 2007, 46 year old German missionary grandfather of three Tilman Geske prepared to go to his office, kissing hiswife goodbye taking a moment to hug his son and give him the pricelessmemory, “Goodbye, son. I love you."
Tilman rented an office space from Zirve Publishing where he was preparing notes for the new Turkish Study Bible. Zirve was also the location of theMalatya Evangelist Church office. A ministry of the church, Zirve prints and distributes Christian literature to Malatya and nearby cities in Eastern Turkey . In another area of town, 35 year old Pastor Necati Aydin,father of two, said goodbye to his wife, leaving for the office as well. They had a morning Bible Study and prayer meeting that some otherbelievers in town would also be attending. Ugur Yuksel likewise made hisway to the Biblestudy.None of these three men knew that what awaited them at the Bible study wasthe ultimate testing and application of their faith, which would conclude with their entrance into glory to receive their crown of righteousness from Christ and honour from all the saints awaiting them in the Lord's presence.

On the other side of town, ten young men all under 20 years old put intoplace final arrangements for their ultimate act of faith, living out theirlove for Allah and hatred of infidels who they felt undermined Islam.On Resurrection Sunday, five of these men had been to a by-invitation-onlyevangelistic service that Pastor Necati and his men had arranged at ahotel conference room in the city. The men were known to the believers as"seekers." No one knows what happened in the hearts of those men as theylistened to the gospel. Were they touched by the Holy Spirit? Were theyconvicted of sin? Did they hear the gospel in their heart of hearts?Today we only have the beginning of their story. These young men, one of whom is the son of a mayor in the Province ofMalatya , are part of a tarikat, or a group of "faithful believers" inIslam.Tarikat membership is highly respected here; it's like a fraternity membership. In fact, it is said that no one can get into public officewithout membership in a tarikat. These young men all lived in the samedorm, all preparing for university entrance exams.The young men got guns, bread knives, ropes and towels ready for theirfinal act of service to Allah. They knew there would be a lot of blood.

They arrived in time for the Bible Study, around 10 o'clock. They arrived, and apparently the Bible Study began. Reportedly, after Necati read a chapter from the Bible the assault began. The boys tied Ugur, Necati, and Tilman's hands and feet to chairs and as they videoedtheir workon their cellphones, they tortured our brothers for almost three hours

*[Details of the torture-* Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur's stabs were toonumerous to count. They were disembowelled, and their intestines sliced upin front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those bodyparts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths andes were sliced open. Possibly the worst part was watching as theirbrothers were likewise tortured. Finally, their throats were sliced fromear to ear, heads practically decapitated.]

Neighbours in workplaces near the print house said later they had heard yelling, but assumed the owners were having a domestic argument so theydid not respond.Meanwhile, another believer Gokhan and his wife had a leisurely morning.He slept in till 10, ate a long breakfast and finally around 12:30 he andhis wife arrived at the office. The door was locked from the inside, andhis key would not work. He phoned and though it had connection on his endhe did not hear the phone ringing inside. He called cell phones of hisbrothers and finally Ugur answered his phone. "We are not at the office.Go to the hotel meeting. We are there. We will come there," he saidcryptically. As Ugur spoke Gokhan heard in the telephone's backgroundweeping and a strange snarling sound.He phoned the police, and the nearest officer arrived in about fiveminutes. He pounded on the door, "Police, open up!" Initially the officerthought it was a domestic disturbance. At that point they heard anothersnarl and a gurgling moan. The police understood that sound as human suffering, prepared the clip in his gun and tried over and over again toburst through the door. One of the frightened assailants unlocked the doorfor the policeman, who entered to find a grisly scene.Tilman and Necati had been slaughtered, practically decapitated with their necks slit from ear to ear. Ugur's throat was likewise slit and he wasbarely alive.Three assailants in front of the policeman dropped their weapons.Meanwhile Gokhan heard a sound of yelling in the street. Someone hadfallen from their third story office. Running down, he found a man on theground, whom he later recognized, named Emre Gunaydin. He had massive headtrauma and, strangely, was snarling. He had tried to climb down thedrainpipe to escape, and losing his balance had plummeted to the ground.It seems that he was the main leader of the attackers. Another assailantwas found hiding on a lower balcony.

To untangle the web we need to back up six years. In April 2001, theNational Security Council of Turkey (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu) began toconsider evangelical Christians as a threat to national security, on equalfooting as Al Quaida and PKK terrorism. Statements made in the press bypolitical leaders, columnists and commentators have fueled a hatred againstmissionaries who they claim bribe young people to change their religion.After that decision in 2001, attacks and threats on churches, pastors andChristians began. Bombings, physical attacks, verbal and written abuse areonly some of the ways Christians are being targeted. Most significant isthe use of media propaganda. From December 2005, after having a long meeting regarding the Christian threat, the wife of Former Prime Minister Ecevit, historian Ilber Ortayli, Professor Hasan Unsal, Politician Ahmet Tan and writer/propogandist AytuncAltindal, each in their own profession began a campaign to bring thepublic's attention to the looming threat of Christians who sought to "buy their children's souls". Hidden cameras in churches have taken church service footage and used it sensationally to promote fear and antagonism toward Christianity.In an official televised response from Ankara, the Interior Minister of Turkey smirked as he spoke of the attacks on our brothers. Amid publicoutrage and protests against the event and in favour of freedom ofreligion and freedom of thought, media and official comments ring with thesame message, "We hope you have learned your lesson. We do not wantChristians here."It appears that this was an organized attack initiated by an unknown adult tarikat leader. As in the Hrant Dink murder in January 2007, and aCatholic priest Andrea Santoro in February 2006, minors are being used to commit religious murders because public sympathy for youth is strong and they face lower penalties than an adult convicted of the same crime. Even the parents of these children are in favour of the acts. The mother of the 16 year old boy who killed the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro looked atthe cameras as her son was going to prison and said, "he will serve timefor Allah."The young men involved in the killing are currently in custody. Today newsreported that they would be tried as terrorists, so their age would notaffect the strict penalty. Assailant Emre Gunaydin is still in intensivecare. The investigation centers around him and his contacts and they say will fall apart if he does not recover.

The Church in Turkey responded in a way that honoured God as hundreds ofbelievers and dozens of pastors flew in as fast as they could to stand bythe small church of Malatya and encourage the believers, take care oflegal issues, and represent Christians to the media.When Susanne Tilman expressed her wish to bury her husband in Malatya, the Governor tried to stop it, and when he realized he could not stop it, arumor was spread that "it is a sin to dig a grave for a Christian." In theend, in an undertaking that should be remembered in Christian historyforever, the men from the church in Adana (near Tarsus), grabbed shovels and dug a grave for their slain brother in an un-tended hundred year old Armenian graveyard. Ugur was buried by his family in an Alevi Muslim ceremony in his hometownof Elazig, his believing fiance watching from the shadows as his familyand friends refused to accept in death the faith Ugur had so longprofessed and died for.Necati's funeral took place in his hometown of Izmir, the city where hecame to faith. The darkness does not understand the light. Though the churches expressed their forgiveness for the event, Christians were not to be trusted. Before they would load the coffin onto the plane from Malatya,it went through two separate xray exams to make sure it was not loadedwith explosives. This is not a usual procedure for Muslim coffins.Necati's funeral was a beautiful event. Like a glimpse of heaven,thousands of Turkish Christians and mission aries came to show their lovefor Christ, and their honor for this man chosen to die for Christ.Necati's wife Shemsa told the world, "His death was full of meaning,because he died for Christ and he lived for Christ. Necati was a gift fromGod. I feel honoured that he was in my life, I feel crowned with honour. Iwant to be worthy of that honour."Boldly the believers took their stand at Necati's funeral, facing therisks of being seen publicly and likewise becoming targets. As expected,the anti-terror police attended and videotaped everyone attending thefuneral for their future use. The service took place outside at BucaBaptist church, and he was buried in a small Christian graveyard in theoutskirts Of Izmir.Two assistant Governors of Izmir were there solemnly watching the eventfrom the front row. Dozens of news agencies were there documenting theevents with live news and photographs. Who knows the impact the funeralhad on those watching? This is the beginning of their story as well. Prayfor them.In an act that hit front pages in the largest newspapers in Turkey,Susanne Tilman in a television interview expressed her forgiveness. Shedid not want revenge, she told reporters. "Oh God, forgive them for theyknow not what they do," she said, wholeheartedly agreeing with the wordsof Christ on Calvary (Luke 23:34).In a country where blood-for-blood revenge is as normal as breathing, manymany reports have come to the attention of the church of how this commentof Susanne Tilman has changed lives. One columnist wrote of her comment,"She said in one sentence what 1000 mission aries in 1000 years couldnever do."The mission aries in Malatya will most likely move out, as their familiesand children have become publicly identified as targets to the hostilecity.The remaining 10 believers are in hiding. What will happen to this church,this light in the darkness? Most likely it will go underground. Pray forwisdom, that Turkish brothers from other cities will go to lead theleaderless church. Should we not be concerned for that great city ofMalatya, a city that does not know what it is doing? (Jonah 4:11) When our Pastor Fikret Bocek went with a brother to give a statement tothe Security Directorate on Monday they were ushered into the Anti-TerrorDepartment. On the wall was a huge chart covering the whole wall listingall the terrorist cells in Izmir, categorized. In one prominent column were listed all the evangelical churches in Izmir. The darkness does not understand the light. "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also."(Acts 17:6) Please pray for the Church in Turkey. "Don't pray against persecution, pray for perseverence," urges Pastor Fikret Bocek. The Church is better having lost our brothers; the fruit in our lives, therenewed faith, the burning desire to spread the gospel to quench moredarkness in Malatya .all these are not to be regretted. Pray that we standstrong against external opposition and especially pray that we standstrong against internal struggles with sin, our true debilitating weakness.This we know. Christ Jesus was there when our brothers were giving their lives for Him. He was there, like He was when Stephen was being stoned inthe sight of Saul of Tarsus. Someday the video of the deaths of our brothers may reveal more to us about the strength that we know Christ gave them to endure their last cross, about the peace the Spirit of God endowed them with to suffer fortheir beloved Saviour. But we know He did not leave their side. We knowtheir minds were full of Scripture strengthening them to endure, as darkness tried to subdue the unsubduable Light of the Gospel. We know, inwhatever way they were able, with a look or a word, they encouraged oneanother to stand strong. We know they knew they would soon be with Christ.We don't know the details. We don't know the kind of justice that will orwill not be served on this earth.But we pray-- and urge you to pray-- that someday at least one of thosefive boys will come to faith because of the testimony in death of Tilman Geske, who gave his life as a missionary to his beloved Turks, and the testimonies in death of Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, the first martyrs for Christ out of the Turkish Church.

Reported by Darlene N. Bocek(24 April 2007)

Samuel Marsden - The Flogging Parson

I have long desired to explain to my non-Australian readers the derivation of the name 'The Blogging Parson'. Byron Smith suggested it to me first in an off-hand comment, and I just couldn't resist it as a blog-name.

It recalls the Rev Samuel Marsden, the second Chaplain to the colony of New South Wales, who has gone down in history as 'The Flogging Parson'. He acted as magistrate as well as Chaplain: and, according to the Irish (and Catholic) convicts, he inflicted more severe punishments on the misbehaving convicts than even other magistrates in the colony. He was not a popular figure - regarded as intolerant and argumentative even by his peers. The mythology of Marsden the monster was given further impetus by Australia's most famous (and now notorious) historian, Manning Clark, a child of the manse himself and an atheist. Clark's personal resentment of Christianity fairly oozes from his pages...

Of course, the truth is more complicated: in amongst this undoubted severity was also a great love for humankind and desire to see the gospel of grace preached. His life was in fact marked by many remarkable good works as well as the flaws. A Yorkshireman by birth, Marsden arrived in the colony in 1794 with his wife Elisabeth and their newborn daughter. He had had an early association with William Wilberforce, the anti-slave reformer. He was an extremely able - and eventually wealthy - man, and succeeded in shipping wool from Australia to England, and was reputedly the first to introduce sheep to NZ. But more importantly, he was also the first to bring the gospel to NZ, largely at his own expense. He was particularly fond of the Maori people. Interestingly he is remembered far more fondly in NZ than in Australia, where his name is used for schools and streets. You would never see that in Australia.

Let's not excuse the flaws: though I would have to say that it should be remembered that the colony of NSW was a prison camp in an alien environment, and that fear of convict mutiny must have been a daily companion, especially when the Irish rebels - ideological prisoners and not just petty thieves like the others - were sent in large numbers. But his determination to witness for Christ to the end of the earth - literally! - ought to be remembered and honoured, too.

More from Cook on Islam and Martyrdom

Cook writes:

Martyrdom in Islam is in general not a passive act on the part of the believer, but more of an active action in which the martyr seeks out the circumstances that will lead to his or her own martyrdom. One of the dominant themes, therefore, is the close relationship between martyrdom and jihad, rather than between martyrdom and missions, as in the case in other missionary religions such as Buddhism or Christianity...The fighting martyr is the type that stands out in the overall category of Muslim martyrdom. p. 166

Now this is interesting because it helps us remember how Christian martyrdom is different and to explain that this is so.

As a meta-discussion, though: what place might comparative religion have in the business of Christian theology?

Islam and the martyr's rewards

Photo: Nantes Cathedral

Frequently in media discussions of Islamic martyrdom rather shocked mention has been made of the prospect of heavenly rewards offered to those who are martyred in Islam. According to the account by David Cook called Martyrdom in Islam this description is probably not unfair: the Islamic tradition gives special prominence to the rewards reserved especially for martyrs. He writes:

The rewards for the martyr described by the Muslim jihad literature are very lurid. Althought it is popular in anti-Muslim polemic to concentrate upon the sexual rewards of the martyr - and there can be no question that these are important - it is interesting to note that probably the most frequently cited tradition listing these rewards is entirely devoid of such content...However, no one who read the jihad and martyrdom literature can avoid the frequent and graphic descriptions of the sexual delights of paradise. Although it is impossible to be certain, the fact that this material is so well attested and descriptive suggests that along with the spiritual aspects of being a martyr, there was a strong sexual pull as well. p. 37

The criticism that usually arises here is, does not the reward corrupt the very idea of martyrdom? Certainly, Augustine fought very hard against a similar tendency in Christianity (not the sexual nature of the rewards, but against the reward mentality). There is a prize that awaits us in heaven; but, our treasure is God himself. That changes everything.

Ricoeur on 'distanciation'

Paul Ricoeur, whose thought looms large in Rowan Williams' recent lecture on Scripture, offers this on hermeneutics:

A work of discourse, as a work of art, is an autonomous object at a distance from the authorial intention, from its initial situation.. and from its primitive audience. For this very reason it is open to an infinite range of interpretations. There is room for interpretation because the recovery of the initial event of discourse takes the form of a reconstruction starting from the structure and the inner organisation of the specific modes of discourse. In other words, if hermeneutics is always an attempt to overcome a distance, it has to use distanciation as both the obstacle and the instrument in order to reenact the initial event of discourse in a new event of discourse that will claim to be both faithful and creative.

So, this process, of both using and overcoming the hermeneutical gap, is generative of the new event of discourse, namely interpretation: which of itself, for Ricoeur (as for Williams), is potentially revelatory.

Just War and Atonement?

Over at Faith and Theology there has been a vigorous discussion after Ben invited nominations for the 'Worst Theological Invention Ever'. Everyone loves a gripe, me included!

Several of the contributors nominated Just War theory, with one of them actually noting a link between those who hold JW and those who hold to Penal Substitution.

This is just tendentious, and a bad reading of even the pacificist tradition. As Miroslav Volf points out in Exclusion and Embrace, many of the strongest pacificists in Christianity - in the early church and in the radical reformation - have also held to a vigorous account of the divine wrath against sin and sinners, and the need for a substitionary sin-bearer. It is precisely this account that enables there to be a meaningful pacificism.

Which leads me to a further observation: there are two types of pacificism. There is the one I have just described, which, though I think it has weaknesses, is orthodox and ancient (though it is a minority report). The other rests on a doctrine of God that is frankly novel, reading out of an ontology of God's peace that is exegetically and theologically unconvincing (in my opinion), owing more to Foucault than anything. Or at least, to put it less combatitively, if pacificism rests on such a doctrine of God then there are really two very different conceptions of the nature of God at play.

Christendom has also come under attack (again!), as if one could make meaningfully sweeping generalisations about a millenia of thought about this era in the history of the church! Christendom had its bad fruit, certainly, as it had its wonderful benefits for humankind and for the gospel; and I am not yet urging a return to it (as if I could) out of some Christian nostalgia: but the flaw was not in the idea of Christendom itself - at least not as it properly and accurately described.

Contra Hauerwas and others, martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. For Oliver 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.

What this means is that the churches of the martyrs could approach the moment of peace without necessarily losing its identity, deeply rooted as it was in the cross of Christ. As long as they remembered thier own testimony to the manner of the enthronement of the Prince of peace, it could regard the temporal ruler as diakonos soi eis to agathon. As long as they remembered that the authorization of human power on the earth by God included the authority given to the disciples of Jesus for their evangelical mission, then it need not remain in an attitude of defiance.
[1] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215

I have some doubts about Hart...

Photo: In Nantes Cathedral

Some further thoughts on DB Hart:

Hart mounts a defence of the ‘beauty to whose persuasive power the Christian rhetoric of evangelism appeals’[1] against the charge from contemporary philosophy that this Christian rhetoric of peace is in fact inescapably violent. As Hart writes:

Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a great, as an episode in the endless epic of power.[2]

If the gospel is merely an iron fist, even if placed in a velvet glove, then the Nietzchean/postmodern charge – and the Tempter’s charge against Thomas – is sustained. Hart closes his book with a chapter entitled ‘The Gift of Martyrs’, in which he shows well that the Christian practice of authority contrasts markedly in form from the exercise of governmentality (to use Foucault’s term) because it is different in nature:

...theology has no choice but to cling to its own peculiar practice of persuasion, in order to resist the temptations of power (and in a history governed by sin, these temptations inhabit every moment); Christianity can only return to its understanding of peace, its unique style of rhetoric, as the sole source of accord; it must always obey the form of Christ, its persuasion must always assume the shape of the gift he is, it must practice its rhetoric under the only aspect it may wear if it is indeed Christian at all: martyrdom…Theology must, because of what its particular story is, have the form of martyrdom, witness, a peaceful offer that has already suffered rejection and must be prepared for rejection as a consequence.[3]

Through its imitation of Christ’s manner of rule – which the martyrs exemplify – the Christian community shows itself to be ruled by such a servant Lord. Hart’s emphasis on the ‘renunciation of violence’ as the core meaning of the crucifixion to be imitated in the practices of the church takes the place that rightly belongs to ‘sacrificial love’.[4] However, what he rightly shows is that, in the very ‘clinging’ of the disciples of Christ to that mode of speech and life which is the only one consonant with the message of the gospel Christians are commissioned to preach, the ubiquitous temptations of power are to be evaded.

[1] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 1
[2] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 3
[3] Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, p. 441
[4] I would further complain here that Hart’s language of ‘theology must…’ is a dangerous abstraction which contrasts with the concrete experience of martyrs. Who is this 'theology'?

Martyrdom post-Christendom

Photo: where we had coffee in Nantes and it cost us 19 Euros.

One of the glaring questions for a discussion of martyrdom is something of the lines of 'what are we to do with those who died in sectarian violence between Christians?' That is: what of those who were executed for being Catholic/Protestant/Anabaptist? In what sense are they martyrs?

There are two obvious ways to analyse this question. First, you could take the traditional view and say that only the martyrs to my particular cause were truly martyrs because only they were dying for the truth. And, in addition, you might seek to take the high moral ground (as Foxe does) and show that Catholics burnt far more heretics than Protestants ever did. As Augustine said, not the suffering but the cause makes the martyr. He wouldn't have the Donatists as martyrs, and was quite happy to set the soldiers on them.

Or, second, you could take the view that in some sense martyrs of every hue were (at least potentially) true martyrs. Now to do this, you have to theorise that both Cranmer and Thomas More were in some sense witnessing to Christ - perhaps imperfectly, but equally validly. This isn't an easy route to follow, because you have clashing beliefs in force.

What won't do is to see the martyrs as merely witnessing against crown/church practices of execution. That is not what the martyrs saw themselves as doing! Take Cranmer for example - I don't think he would have denied Mary the right to execute heretics by burning, even if he would have disputed her criteria for selecting victims. He was quite happy to burn those he thought were heretics after all! Even the more radical reformers (say, the Dutch Mennonites) did not see themselves as dying for some principle like non-violence. They thought they were testifying to Christ.

I guess a third, and more secular, strategy would be to say that the whole martyrdom idea is dangerous when applied to this period because all it does is bolster sectarianism and its potential for violent conflict.

Hmm..

Bernd Wannenwetsch on the martyrs and violence

It is always good to read your own supervisor's work! So, I found this nice comment in Bernd Wannenwetsch's book Political Worship:

...it was actually the Church in the form of the martyrs, who refused to submit to the power of those who were stronger, which gave what was perhaps the most forceful political thrust towards the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as people withdrew from the political worship of the Empire. The effect of the Christian martyrs must, of course, not be interpreted to mean that the principle of non-violence proved superior to Roman violence. Their impact was not based on any ontological ascendancy of non-violence over violence. It was due to the fact that the refusal to go along with the worship of the gods of war, who represent the imperial claim to rule, pointed to the question about the authorization or empowerment for such action. If Christians found this empowerment in their worship, that worship did not merely reflect the impossibility of joining in the worship of Roman tyranny; it also showed the possibility of seeing this risky refusal through. Even today, the decisive constructive question of political ethics is the question about the formation of power. p. 113-4.

What he highlights here is that martyrdom was a question primarily of worship and not one of merely displaying a kind of action transferrable to perhaps different ideological settings.

Rowan Williams on Scripture

A few days ago Rowan Williams gave an intriguing lecture on Scripture in Canada. In the middle of the lecture he made an intriguing comment about Romans 1, the text at the centre of debates about homosexuality and the church:

Paul in the first chapter of Romans famously uses same-sex relationships as an illustration of human depravity – along with other ‘unnatural’ behaviours such as scandal, disobedience to parents and lack of pity. It is, for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in Scripture on the subject of homosexuality, and has understandably been the focus of an enormous amount of exegetical attention.
What is Paul’s argument? And, once again, what is the movement that the text seeks to facilitate? The answer is in the opening of chapter 2: we have been listing examples of the barefaced perversity of those who cannot see the requirements of the natural order in front of their noses; well, it is precisely the same perversity that affects those who have received the revelation of God and persist in self-seeking and self-deceit. The change envisaged is from confidence in having received divine revelation to an awareness of universal sinfulness and need. Once again, there is a paradox in reading Romans 1 as a foundation for identifying in others a level of sin that is not found in the chosen community.
Now this gives little comfort to either party in the current culture wars in the Church. It is not helpful for a ‘liberal’ or revisionist case, since the whole point of Paul’s rhetorical gambit is that everyone in his imagined readership agrees in thinking the same-sex relations of the culture around them to be as obviously immoral as idol-worship or disobedience to parents. It is not very helpful to the conservative either, though, because Paul insists on shifting the focus away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter 1 to the reading /hearing subject who has been up to this point happily identifying with Paul’s castigation of someone else. The complex and interesting argument of chapter 1 about certain forms of sin beginning by the ‘exchange’ of true for false perception and natural for unnatural desire stands, but now has to be applied not to the pagan world alone but to the ‘insiders’ of the chosen community. Paul is making a primary point not about homosexuality but about the delusions of the supposedly law-abiding.

The intriguing thing for me is that he is absolutely right - but that no-one taking the conservative position would ever deny that he was right. Of course Paul's rhetorical point in Rom 1 and 2 is meant to ambush the self-righteous. But as Williams himself appears to concede here, there is no question but that Paul and his readers would have agreed that same-sex sex was part of the distortion of the created order in the same way that idolatry and disobedience to parents is. The question is I suppose: what authority has that agreement between Paul and his readers? Can we really just sift it out as a mistake - and still claim any semblance of orthodoxy? Honestly now?

Goldingay and the OT

I have been reading John Goldingay's Old Testament Theology: Israel's Gospel which is the first of three volumes in a planned OT Theology. To my mind, every Christian theologian of whatever stripe ought to at least have OT theology as a hobby - bearing in mind that OT Theologies as such have only been written in the last century or so. And 'OT theology' is a far more fruitful and interesting approach to the OT than reading commentaries on individual books. For one thing, it shows just what a complex - and rich - entity the Hebrew scriptures are.

Anyhow, Goldingay writes a very interesting appendix to his first volume, on the matter of history and criticism. As he puts it:

Modern historical study has presupposed that we are in a better position to determine where the facts lie than the authors of premodern narratives were, as well as having the motivation to do that. The trouble is that the resuts of a historical approach to the First Testament narratives are disappointing... First, in the 2000s we know much less than we knew in 1900 or 1950 about the origin of most of the narratives. p. 866

Speculation, as Goldingay shows, has repeatedly become confident assertion in one generation only to be exposed and overthrown in the next. And the real business - of asking 'what are these texts actually saying?' becomes further obscured. Gerhard von Rad's work is an interesting example: I find his interpretations and insights almost always fascinating and helpful and he writes with rare power. But you have to pass over or take with some grains of salt his source-critical and historical material which has not stood the test of time.