Stourhead in May

Thanks to the Exiled Preacher for recommending that we visit Stourhead in Wiltshire...

BB Warfield said one day:

'The Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church'.

Quite. This is what happens with thinkers with a legacy so enormous: it fissures, such that widely differing schools can both validly claim them as forebears.

Luther on the Eucharist

Sometimes it is nice to have a bit of Luther polemik in the morning, just to get your heart started:

Furthermore we note how seldom the Evangelists and Apostles make mention of the Eucharist, a fact that has led many to wish they had said more about it. On the other hand they ceaselessly emphasize, even to the point of weariness, the ministry of the Word. It is as if the Spirit had foreseen these coming abuses and errors of the shorn ones which would turn the heart from the Word of power and truth to that futile change of bread and wine, all through life clinging to these outward appearances while rejecting the marvelous light into which we have been called.

Martin Luther, Concerning the Ministry.

ahh...

Better 'n' coffee.

[H/T to Gordon Cheng for this one. Though of course, Luther was not an anti-sacramentarian - far from it...and neither am I.]

The blood of the martyrs...

Jason - the other 36 year old Anglican priest studying for an Oxbridge doctorate - reflects on the martyrs of Turkey in a post entitled: The blood of the martyrs...

Martyrdom as communicative act II

Cranmer at the stake, 1556. Note: he holds out his right hand to the flames - the one that signed his recantations.

What is it about martyrdom that communicates (if it does)? This question asks at a deeper level: what is it in martyrdom, coming as it does out of a precisely Christian understanding of the world, that is able to be meaningful enough in the terms of a world view that is at least at face value utterly hostile to it? The word of the cross is a skandalon – and so are its re-enactments. In the first instance this question must be answered by saying immediately and of course that it is nothing but only the Spirit of God himself that illuminates this enactment of the gospel of Jesus Christ as a testimony to the truth. This ought not be conceived narrowly: the effects of a Christian martyrdom include not only the conviction of the individual but also the transformation of the political and social order.



But it is also possible to speak on the human side of the question: the witness of the martyr occurs within the human sphere of speaking and listening, acting and observing. This question is addressed by Kevin Vanhoozer in his recent work entitled The Drama of Doctrine. Fittingly, he uses in the book the motifs of the theatre and performance with which to describe Christian speech and action as it is generated and responds to divine speech-acts. For Vanhoozer, martyrdom as an imitation of the cross of Christ is an embodiment by the church of the gospel it preachers. As such, nothing is more alienating to the world: by acting in this way the church ‘throws into question Everyman’s everyday assumptions about the meaning of life and the human good’. This has almost exactly been our contention throughout this thesis. But it is not only given a critical function: martyrdom is a dramatic performance of the doctrine of the atonement; it is the ‘quintessential form of prophetic action’. As Brad S. Gregory writes (of the Reformation period):



More dramatically than sermons, catechisms, or common worship, martyrdom trumpeted what was at stake in disputes over the content and practice of true Christianity.

As a drama, then – a narrative performed, or enacted – martyrdom invites the outsider to consider the truth to which the martyr testifies. In martyrdom, speech and action are spectacularly united

Rowan Williams on 'Being disciples'

Rowan Williams' talk given at the Fulcrum conference on 'Being Disciples" is here .

His particular theme is that being a disciple is not an intermittent business: it is rather a call to consistent and expectant listening to the master. But I also liked this closing paragraph:

...discipleship is indeed about traveling, and about growing. You can't begin to describe the life of the disciples in the New Testament without coming to grips with that dimension of traveling. Disciples were people called away from home because they must be where their master is. And that is never going to be comfortable; but perhaps it becomes intelligible when one realizes (something that again is writ large on every page of scripture) that the home where you will finally realize who and what you are is the home, the place prepared for you, by Jesus. And the disciple is engaged in a journey from a place that looks like a comfortable and manageable home towards a home that is eternal and that - as St Augustine says - doesn't fall away or fall into non-existence because we don't happen to be living in it at the moment. Discipleship is, paradoxically, a journey away from home, and a journey toward home. Just as the conversion that is the daily task of a disciple, is a break with what seems closest and dearest to us, and a cleaving to what is actually deepest and most natural in us.

Christian drama vs Greek drama

I would wish to argue that Murder in the Cathedral is powerful as a drama, certainly, at that immediate and surface level of the audience’s first encounter with it; but that this unusual and striking power is dependent on the Christian component of the play in a way in which the Greek tragedy is not in the same way dependent upon its religious world-view. (Or, it could be that the Greek experience of living in a world governed by a hidden fortuna is very similar to living in the contemporary secular world. The feeling of having to manage luck, as we have seen in our discussion of Nussbaum’s reading of Greek tragedy, is only to near to the post-Christian person. )

This is because the Christian gospel is itself of the form of a dramatic action. Christianity is not at all disconnected from the action of the play, inhabiting only the fringes of the script in abstruse religious forms; rather it everywhere and necessarily gives its actual form to the action of the play. The death of Thomas is so obviously and so insistently an imitation of the death of Christ; the form of the action of the play resembles in outline the temptation, passion and death of Jesus, without which it cannot bear its full meaning.

We could go further in taking up Emrys Jones’s point about the historical aspect of the play: the connection with historical events through imaginative and symbolic reconstruction is quite distinctively a Christian development. Granted, Greek drama and literature on occasion took its subjects from history, or from pre-history: but it turned them into types and showed no real interest in the correspondence of the action to the action in history. In the Christian imagination, historical events are traceable in direct line back from the present: and though clearly ‘fictional’ elements are added to the reconstruction of the event in order to make the dramatisation appealing within the conventions of literary forms, we see reminders to the audience everywhere that there are real historical events to which the action is intended to correspond, and of which the audience is meant to have a vicarious experience. Could it ever be said of a Greek drama, as Jones says of Murder in the Cathedral, that it ‘takes its strength from its fidelity to history’? As we have seen, and as Eliot demonstrates in his play, a Christian view of the world rests on an understanding of providentia dei, not fortuna; and so history necessarily takes on a different significance as a meaningfully continuous series of events.

Charles Taylor in Public Culture 18.2

Charles Taylor, insightful as ever, but not really understanding any but the most extreme of protestant hermeneutics I feel:

There is not one thing, called “religion,” which previously receded and is now coming back, like some raging tsunami. What we call secularization is a process that deeply destabilized and marginalized earlier forms of religion; but, partly as a consequence of this, new forms have arisen. The forms that are now “returning” in strength are thoroughly modern, and we cannot understand either them or modernity if we ignore this.

Ironically, the most obvious site of novelty lies in what are called, in the rough and rather confused language of media commentary, “fundamentalisms.” These are usually so called because they see themselves as harking back to earlier, purer forms of religion, beyond the recent compromises of modernism. So Protestant fundamentalism sees itself as returning to the purity of the Reformation sola scriptura (by scripture alone), which in turn saw itself as a return to primitive Christianity. Influential Islamicist Sayyid Qutb proposes to return to the principles alive in the first polity established by the Prophet and his companions. The irony and pathos here lie in the fact that precisely these attempts to return to purer forms are the sites of the most startling innovations; what is more, they feed on those innovations that are usually seen as quintessentially modern.

Thus the notion of literal Biblical inerrancy, with its clear distinction from and hostility to the figurative, is plainly part of the culture that has developed around modern positivistic science. Evolutionary theory has to be opposed by “creation science.” Augustine, one of the great reference figures for Western Protestantism, would be bewildered by this discourse, recognizing as he did many levels of meaning in the Biblical text. Protestant fundamentalists deviate from age-old Christian orthodoxy precisely in their wholesale acceptance of this modern positivist literalism, all the while loudly proclaiming their fidelity to the original pure form of Christianity.

What notion of 'literal Bibilical inerrancy', we may well ask, is this of which he speaks? But still, it is interesting to note the sheer modernity/postmodernity of fundamentalisms...

Brad S Gregory - Salvation at Stake

Quite the most brilliant account of martyrdom in the Reformation is Salvation at Stake by Brad S. Gregory. Two things he has said have caught my eye:

Firstly, this about the relation of the will to the martyr's 'act':

The voluntary nature of martyrdom was profoundly paradoxical: the martyr’s agency depended up relinquishing control, their strength upon a naked admission of their utter impotence and total dependence on God. p.132

This is an essential description of the role of the will in the Christian life, in fact. It is, yes, an exercise of will, but in the form of a submissive and obedient - a properly faithful - will.

Secondly, this, on the inability of the contemporary world to file martydom in a convenient part of its draws:

…the martyr’s own words and actions show that whatever utility the postmodern, New Historicist notion of Renaissance self-fashioning might have, it is inapplicable to them. Prison experience entailed not calculating agency and self-interest, but passivity in a double sense – both suffering and “being done unto”. Behind stone walls there were no courtly patrons from whom to curry favor, no theatrical poses to strike; the Lord saw behind every mask, including dissimulation of his truth. The only sensible course of action lay not in “constructing” a self, but in stripping away every pretense to acknowledge the self one was: a weak, enfleshed soul, created by and radically dependent on God. p.133

Properly understood on its own terms, then, the martyr's intentions cannot somehow be reduced by Foucauldian cynicism to 'self-fashioning', or the construction of a suitable posture for the self. In fact, rather, we see here an unselfing...

Parables

John Dominic Crossan Rowan Williams' and Paul Ricoeur's emphasis on the parable has got me to thinking further about parables, their nature and significance. Certainly, the impact of a parable is not found in a single acicular message, contra the assertions of Jülicher last century, but in what it suggests. The reader/listener has to fill in the missing referents.

Now, modern and post-modern critics have found fertile ground in this uncertainty. Much of the debate centres around the Sower parable of Mark 4:1-10, naturally enough given Jesus' statement in 4:13:

Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?

For John Dominic Crossan the very point of Jesus' parables is their polyvalence, their lack of closure. He says:

Since you cannot interpret absolutely, you can interpret forever.

Yet Crossan has painted himself into a corner by dismissing Jesus' interpretation in 4:13-20 as inauthentic. It suits his reading (and his view of Jesus as a hip post-modern dude) to do so! For Crossan, the interpretation is inauthentic by definition. It also happens to disrupt the 'serenity' of Crossan's beloved polyvalence.Or should that be “the polyvalence of his beloved serenity”- 'serene' being a ubiquitous Crossanism and a yardstick of virtue: "serenly multiple image". "startling and unnerving serenity"(!), "serene plurality"? [in his book Cliffs of Fall]

The general impulse of literary critics has been to agree with Crossan as to the open-endedness of the parables, but to re-insert them in their context: the narratives of the gospels. In his agnostic, agonistic but erudite reading of Mark, The Genesis of Secrecy, Frank Kermode despairs of finding meaning at all, with the Sower parable as "the great crux" - a promise of meaning never delivered. He too finds "the authorised allegory seems inept”. This only seems enticing to a post­structuralist critic like Stephen D. Moore, who in a virtuoso performance of high deconstruction bungee-jumps gleefully over the “cliffs of fall” that so daunt Crossan and disappoint Kermode:

Parabole unsettles speech. It inhabits the oppositions of inside and outside, speech and writing, but only that it might... shake the interpretative (bed)frames so as to keep the interpreters restlessly turning over.

Ironically, it is critics such as Moore, Kermode and Crossan have taken the teasing language of the parables too one-dimensionally. Just because they don't produce meaning as ordinary texts do, does not mean they are meaningless, or endlessly polyvalent, or impossible to confine. It merely indicates that other reading strategies have to be engaged to understand their importance.

Sir Frank Kermode

Rushdie and the Shi'ites at Hawkes Bay

More on the Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie:

The tragic confusion of good and evil is intensified in the novel’s 8th chapter ‘The Parting of the Arabian Sea’. Gibreel this time dreams of an ill-fated pilgrimage of the villagers of Titlipur lead by the mystical and mysterious girl Ayesha. The events of this part of the narrative are based on a real incident which occurred in 1983: thirty-eight Shi’ites marched into Hawkes Bay in Karachi, Pakistan at the instigation of their spiritual guide who had taught them that the sea would part as in the days of the Exodus, enabling them to journey to the holy city of Kerbala, in Iraq.[1]

In The Satanic Verses, Ayesha, strangely surrounded by butterflies which are interpreted as some kind of divine sign, determines to reach Mecca by marching through the Arabian Sea. Mirza Saeed tries to persuade his very ill wife Mishal to abandon the pilgrimage; but like most of the devotees, she will not be swayed despite her declining physical condition. Even the deaths of several elderly pilgrims have little effect: they are now called ‘martyrs’ by Ayesha. Increasingly, Ayesha’s fanaticism makes her more and more tyrannical and brutal, condoning the stoning to death of an abandoned baby as ‘the Devil’s Child’ out of religious fervour. Mirza Saeed can only look on helplessly as his wife and her companions stride into the sea and are drowned: or, at least, that is what Mirza himself witnesses. Others present, more devout than he, claim that the sea did in fact miraculously open as prophesied by Ayesha.

Rushdie, with his self-consciously postmodern narrative technique, appears to relish the ambiguity: the miracle both did and did not happen, and it ‘happened’ in a dream sequence in any case. But it is not the triumphalist, miraculous and religious version of events that we the reader are inclined to believe. The tragedy is as much the willingness of the faithful to ignore the death of the naïve and the innocent. It takes religious fanaticism – the ‘eyes of faith’ – to make a sign of divine benevolence out of such willful self-destruction; and Rushdie despairs of ever convincing those who look with such eyes on the world. Those who would be, and would have, martyrs are (as far as he is concerned) beyond the pale.

[1] The tragic story is told in Akbar S. Ahmed, "Death in Islam: The Hawkes Bay Case," Man 21, no. 1 (1986)

Emrys Jones reviews a production of Murder in the Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral: not quite as irrelevant as the last one.

Emrys Jones wrote an intriguing review essay of a production of Murder in the Cathedral at Stratford, published in 1993. In the essay he argues that (as Craig Raine explains) Eliot's play is highly dramatic - and that the drama, though helped by historical authenticity of the events staged and significantly enriched by directorial additions, is clearer because its religious appeal is now more or less defunct. Jones says 'it's a play not a theological or devotional discourse!'

I find this (naturally) a remarkable judgement, and the latter comment a false dichotomy. Removing the 'religious' component of the death of the Archbishop leaves you with what kind of death exactly? In what way is the death at all honourable or noble or admirable or representative if it is a secular martyrdom of some kind? In fact, Eliot makes sure that we cannot make precisely this move. There is no 'cause' for which he dies - he is no MLK or Gandhi, no secularised saint. In fact, Thomas resists at every turn secularising himself: that is surely the point! He does not even succomb to pride - unless you side with his murderers, who justify themselves (as he does not) by accusing him of delusions of spiritual grandeur. If the religious component is excised like that, is he not guilty of neglect of his duty, his people and his country? Is he not convicted of seditious action, or wilfully provoking the wrath of the king in order to secure his place in history? What comfort or lesson can modern audiences take from this?

Raine perceptibly ask whether the play can still work if there is this defunct core at the centre of it. Quite...

I think this is illustrative of the contemporary inability to come to terms with the martyr as anything but a pitiable and possibly dangerous figure. If the convictions that move Thomas do not convict the audience at some level, then I find it hard to know how the drama can have any purchase other than as a historical curio. That these events are historical is perhaps more significant than it at first seems: because these events are not invented as a morality tale of rather sentimental proportions, because these are representations of real people engaged in what was a well testified event locatable and date-able, then we are not afforded the luxury of dismissing them as somehow fantastical and inhuman. This is likewise true of the martyrs of the church: there they stand, as real people prepared to be unwavering in their conviction of the truth, such that we cannot deny them. Their flesh was burnt, and torn by wild animals, and pierced.

Jones also writes:

Robert Speaght has spoken as an actor of the difficulty he found at first in coming to temrs with the passivity of the protagonist.

This is something I have also noticed about the play and about Thomas, and it is quite deliberate on Eliot's part that it be so. Thomas is NOT a man of action; he is a man of passion.

Martyrdom as communicative act

Sydney's St Andrew's Cathedral.

I have been reading in MacIntyre about different, indeed rival, rationalities. In particular, he wants to show how incommensurate different rationalities are: how it is nigh impossible to understand one from the point of view of the other without translating it into terms that limit and distort it.

Now, what attracted me to martyrdom as a subject was partly the huge dissonance it revealed between two different 'rationalities' (or perhaps 'world views'): that is to say, for the secular liberal, Christian martyrdom can only be understood as a life-denying, futile and possibly violence-perpetuation act. For the Christian, we cannot really see what the secularists concern is. And, it is worth asking at this point whether martyrdom becomes the ultimate 'no' to further communication with the other point of view - 'I am ready to accept death rather than accept your terms of conversation, or to concede anything' seems to be the attitude, or it could be read as that I guess. It is a defiance of rational discussion, apparently. Is martyrdom then merely a point at which the two world-views are shown to be irreconcilable, and that's that? Is it merely a gesture of defiance against the alternate order of power?

But: martyrdom is a remarkably successful form of communication to the non-church world. We cannot forget: the martyrs of Jesus Christ overthrew a mighty empire from within! The note that Christian martyrdom strikes is dissonant to the extent that it exposes the futility of opposition to God. It testifies to the non-ultimacy of human political power - and it testifies to that power itself. Sometimes, it seems, even the rulers and the soldiers get the message. Remember the centurion 'when he saw how Jesus died' said 'surely this was the Son of God'...'The blood of the martyrs' as Tertullian said 'is the seed of the church'. Which is to say, the blood of the martyrs convinces outsiders of the need to become insiders, to say 'I'll have what he's/she's having'.

Question is: what is it about martyrdom that communicates so well? This question asks at a deeper level: what is it in martyrdom coming as it does out of a precisely Christian understanding of the world that is able to be meaningful enough in any world-view?
Is it an exhibition of remarkable courage, or endurance, or some virtue that is found nowhere else in these proportions? Or is the meaning - the story - that the martyrs and their brethren attach to their deaths?

Alasdair MacIntyre continues...

Well, I shoulda read the next chapter before posting! As MacIntyre tells it, Thomas Aquinas was uniquely able to reconcile Augustinianism and Aristotelianism in his thought. This was because he didn't imagine that he was translating one into the terms of the other - MacIntyre thinks this never works. What he was able to do was to inhabit both worlds of though in true bilingual fashion, and so produce a synthesis which was native to both.

MacIntyre doesn't give much detail as yet as to how this actually works out in Thomas' thought. How can he hold together a strong view of original sin and its noetic effects AND also have an Aristotelian rationality?

Alasdair MacIntyre on Augustinianism and its flaws

MacIntyre's analysis of the history of moral enquiry reaches charts the rise of the Augustinian tradition in the middle ages. Augustinianism, as he outlines it, on the one hand, has a strong centre: all knowledge coheres around the divine. Knowledge is only gained from giving oneself over, by an act of faith, to an authority. It is confessional. But (and it is a big but) knowing in human terms is deeply affected by sin's distorting and disrupting effects. Pure knowledge is not possible because of sin.

This might seem contradictory: it is certainly a tension in the heart of Augustinianism, and one that Calvinism (and for that matter Lutheranism) has struggled to resolve. Certainly, that is why Calvin and others give accounts of divine illumination being necessary for even basic knowledge of the world.

BUT: a huge challenge comes with the adoption of Aristotelianism into the Augustinian way of thinking, or the attempted adoption at least. Aristotelianism denies that there is a need for this fideistic first step: it has no account of the genesis of knowledge as an externally given thing. Augustinianism, after all, is Platonistic.

Can the two be reconciled? I await MacIntyre's further analysis: but in the meantime, let me just say this -

it is interesting that Aristotelianism was adapted in so wholesale a fashion by the 17th century Protestants when the roots of their movement were so markedly Augustinian. Could they really make this adaptation without betraying the true genius of Protestantism (as a particularly concentrated form of Augustinianism)?

Dairmaid MacCulloch on the Reformation

Dairmaid MacCulloch (whose name I now spell correctly!) has an interesting take on the theological/religious context into which the Reformation was addressed. Firstly, he stresses the importance, in Northern Europe in particular, of the doctrine of purgatory and prayers/masses for the dead. This was both an industry on a mass scale, and crucial to the inner spiritual self-conception of the whole culture. The whole bureaucracy and economy of the afterlife was written into the mentality of western Christianity. The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith called into question, then, not only ideas but whole systems and institutions of worship and daily life.

Secondly, he notes the waxing power of the papacy in Western Europe, which itself was a fairly recent phenomenon. The conciliarist movement of the fifteenth century had only lately failed to challenge the papacy for supremacy in the Church.

Matheson Russell on evil and the free-will defence

The problem of evil: is the free-will defence a failure?

A lecture delivered by Dr Matheson Russell, my good friend.

Here he is on the right enjoying a red wine.

So many jailed, and the key of compassion thrown away - Opinion - smh.com.au

So many jailed, and the key of compassion thrown away


An article by PF Jensen.

The clergy family and the Reformation

Diarmid MacCullough, the doyen of Reformation historians, writes this intriguing paragraph:

The clergy wife, from being abused and despised by conservatives in the parish, came to provide a new model for all the wives of Protestant Europe: she was now without any female rival for iconic status since nuns and achoresses had been banished from Protestant society. Following the Bucerian ideal, she was of course obedient to her husband, but she was also a calm and experienced companion, ready to give advice and help to parishioners - also to sustain the cheerfulness of her spouse and her children in a publicaly enacted life which made them all potentially rather lonely objects of the curiosity and envy as well as the emulation of others. And so the parsonage or the manse, not so well-supplied with spare cash as with books, high ideals and high thinking, negotiated its way through a social position which was continually poised self-consciously and uncertainly between gentry and people. It took its place as one of the great cultural forces in Protestant societies, both in the Old World and the New. In the upheavals of the Enlightenment and after, it produced some of the most eloquent and troubled voices to face up to doubt and unflinching reassesment of the family business: Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzche and Karl Barth were all the sons of pastors... p. 653-54

MacCullough can speak so acutely here because he, too, was a child of the vicarage! It has always been my contention that we clergy children have punched above our weight, for good or for ill. Here are some others:

Alice Cooper (rock musician)
Bob Hawke (Australian Prime Minister)
The Bronte Sisters (novelists)
Manning Clark (Australian myth-maker)

Not quite of the rank of the three already mentioned: can we suggest some others?

Raine, Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Raine comments on Murder in the Cathedral:

Eliot's coinage, 'Unreal city', [in The Waste Land] owes a great deal to Buddhist ideas of maya or illusion. Later it is assimilated to the Christian idea of this fleeting world. In Murder in the Cathedral, the chorus refers to Hebrews 13:14: 'for here we have no continuining city, but we seek one to come.' Or, in Eliot's play: 'Here is no continuing city, here is no abiding stay'. Religions have a way of slighting the temporal. p. 82

Is this what really happens in the play, and in Christian thought too? Is the temporal 'slighted'? The pressing urgency of the present is certainly reduced by Christian eschatology. But, on the other hand, you could easily argue that the temporal is given renewed significance: as Paul says, in light of the resurrection 'your labour in the Lord is not in vain'.

A new campus for Moore College?

The view is certainly spectacular, and the monks wouldn't get in the way too much...

Craig Raine, TS Eliot and Renunciation

Craig Raine of New College, Oxford, argues in his new book TS Eliot - Image, Text and Context that one of the central themes of Eliot's poetry is what might be termed 'the failure to live'. Which is to say, many of his poems speak of, or in the voice of, characters who, through fear, are unable to fulfill their own buried longings. They fail to live through failure to seize hold of either evil or good (even). They just refrain.

A significant shift occurs with Eliot's conversion, however: he begins to see that renunciation might not indicate a failure to live, but rather quite the opposite. Here is Raine:

The romantic Eliot regretted the buried feelings left unfulfilled and rued the cautious circumspection of our sluggish hearts. The ascetic Eliot, though, could see the virtue of renunciation - and its difficulty. He writes, therefore, about the failure of feeling in poems like 'Gerontion' 'Animula' and The Hollow Men. At the same time, in Ash-Wednesday, he shows us the worthy obverse of this position - the ascetic renunciation which chooses to turn its back on pleasure, on the temporal, on sensuous emotion, on the self itself, the better to embrace eternal verities. And finds that his will to renounce the temporary illusion of the temporarl is weaker than his helpless passion for the natural world.... p. 40

This feeds directly into Eliot's thinking about martyrdom, which might well be termed a 'failure to live'. But the problem comes with the will, doesn't it? Who can really honestly will his own martyrdom over against the natural world? Who is strong enough to renounce it on his own? Eliot himself later recognises that renunciation is not a triumph of the human will, but rather a free submission to the will of God...

(One of the other great virtues of Raine's book is a defence of Eliot from the charges of anti-semitism.)

The martyred body

The martyr with a visceral clarity allows his or her body to be open to God’s signification rather than keep it as a site of the assertion of the meaning one wants to ascribe to oneself. Christ’s resurrection body is given as a promise of that divine signification.

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)?