Oliver O'Donovan does talk good sense about a lot of things, not least on the matter of punishment. He takes from Grotius the cue that punishment is 'ontologically native to God'. He repudiates some of the contemporary theology that denies this (namely that of Gorringe) in the name of dening that punishment of any kind is valid, but fails to do so coherently, or theologically.
He writes:
When we speak of God's own 'punishing' we are speaking of his judgement within the quasi-political context of his own covenant-faithfulness. Divine punishment...is God's disclosure of himself as our good, revealing the truth of our wrong. For this reason Christians have always found it necessary to speak of divine punishment in connection with the Atonement, for the Atonement is the supreme demonstration of God's covenant-faithfulness. Ways of Judgment, p. 107
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Charles Taylor on Salman Rushdie
For purposes of my thesis I was delighted to discover a comment by Charles Taylor on the Rushdie controversy of the late 80s. What Taylor rightly observes is that The Satanic Verses 'is a profoundly Western book', whatever its exotic subject matter.
In Rushdie's book, one has the comfortable sense that exactly the things which repel him from religion...are the things its devotees cherish. They experience exactly the same spiritual realities, and just reverse the sign. Rushdie's book is comforting to the western liberal mind, which shares one feature with that of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the belief that there is nothing outside their world-view which needs deeper understanding, just a perverse refection of the obviously right. To live in this difficult world, the western liberal mind will have to learn to reach out more.
Quite. But, can it? The western liberal mind always already has ordered views other than its own, either by means of a progressivist narration ('oh, they are so primitive, we got over that years ago') or by demonising it as 'intolerant'. So, why will the western liberal even see the need to reach out? Isn't it rather a matter of teaching the world to behave in the right way?
In Rushdie's book, one has the comfortable sense that exactly the things which repel him from religion...are the things its devotees cherish. They experience exactly the same spiritual realities, and just reverse the sign. Rushdie's book is comforting to the western liberal mind, which shares one feature with that of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the belief that there is nothing outside their world-view which needs deeper understanding, just a perverse refection of the obviously right. To live in this difficult world, the western liberal mind will have to learn to reach out more.
Quite. But, can it? The western liberal mind always already has ordered views other than its own, either by means of a progressivist narration ('oh, they are so primitive, we got over that years ago') or by demonising it as 'intolerant'. So, why will the western liberal even see the need to reach out? Isn't it rather a matter of teaching the world to behave in the right way?
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
MacIntyre and the failure of Culture
Every culture is characterised in part by what it conceals and obscures from view, by what its habits of mind prevent it from ackonwledging and appropriating. We err therefore in so largely, sometimes exclusively writing the history of ideas, of science, of art, of culture in general in terms of positive achievement. Culture is present also in failure and it can in crucial respects blind the educated to what needs to be seen. So it was with the failure to understand the work of Aquinas in the late Middle Ages. So perhaps it may be with us... . p. 169
This is a rather a gloomy - characteristically grumpy we might say - assessment of the state of intellectual enquiry! MacIntyre characterises the reception of Aquinas' grand synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine as a rank failure, with the usual suspects - Occam and Scotus - taking a beating on this. And in Meister Eckhart's sermons, the business of theological thinking becomes (for MacIntyre) separated from rational thinking: preaching becomes a matter of rhetorical effect, a 'mere rationalization of the preacher's processes'. This effect MacIntyre sees very much in evidence today.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Aussie theoblogians hard at work
Jason has started a great series on Names and the Name: catch the first two posts here and here.
Byron has just completed his momentous series entitled "Would Jesus vote Green?" and you can find the whole series linked to one post now.
Ben starts a new series on encounters with tradition today.
Rory has got some stuff to say about Atheism and Christopher Hitchens.
Marty has completed five terrific 'Postcards from Karl'
Moffatt's great ten-part series on the Spirit has finally come to a close, as well.
David Hohne is asking how to become 'A more apolegetic person', echoing sentiments found here on this blog.
And a visit to Michael Bird's site is never a waste of time, that's for sure.
Byron has just completed his momentous series entitled "Would Jesus vote Green?" and you can find the whole series linked to one post now.
Ben starts a new series on encounters with tradition today.
Rory has got some stuff to say about Atheism and Christopher Hitchens.
Marty has completed five terrific 'Postcards from Karl'
Moffatt's great ten-part series on the Spirit has finally come to a close, as well.
David Hohne is asking how to become 'A more apolegetic person', echoing sentiments found here on this blog.
And a visit to Michael Bird's site is never a waste of time, that's for sure.
Where the project is at the moment - any thoughts?
"Our intention in this thesis has been to give a theological (rather than, say, historical or sociological) account of Christian martyrdom and of at least some of the implications of that account. In particular the question of identity was raised as a matter on which an explication of martyrdom could potentially shed considerable light. The basic theological datum with which we began was the martyrdom in the form of witness (‘white’ martyrdom) was inseperable from the identity of the Christian, with bloody (or ‘red’) martyrdom as its ‘external representation’. Bloody matyrdom then is a sign of what the inner reality of the Christian life is like.
We hastened to recognise at this stage that discussions of martyrdom occur under pressure of a severe critique: it is certainly no longer a given that martyrdom is esteemed as a form of death just in and of itself. Rather, martyrs are accused of denying life and of perverting love, of resiling from their duty to do good, of neglecting the bonds of family and friendship, of extreme egotism of a destructive kind. The spectre of religious violence hangs always and already over any discussion of martyrdom in the modern setting. Martyrs are more likely to inspire fear than reverence. However, is it the case that Christian martyrdom really falls under this critique? Chapter one, then, examined two powerful and very different attempts to describe authentic selfhood in the contemporary world and asked whether either of them could be reconciled with an identity informed by the idea of Christian martyrdom. Of Charles Taylor it could be said that he was bending over backwards to make room for the possibility of Christian martyrdom, or something like it, in his account of authenticity; but is not firm enough about the potential for inauthenticity. Martyrs are not those who accept that their understanding of reality is just one amongst many, after all. Salman Rushdie, for his part, presents a far more irascible figure. He is vehemently opposed to martyrdom as a model for human self-identity: it is far too emedded in traditional ways of seeing the world that do not adequately understand the shifting and liquid conditions of the present order. It is insufficiently open to new experiences and corrupting of the love between individuals. It perpetuates the cycle of violence by preaching resentment and hatred, by viewing the subject as identifiable through his or her victimhood. It allows human beings excuses for not feeling and for not living as they might. It is the result of fideistic religion that cordons itself off from reason. However, Rushdie’s account is not without its own difficulties: it is hard to see that he has successfully escaped from the ‘self-determination’ problem that Taylor derides in his account. Furthermore, while his depiction of martyrdom may be valid for some Christian and other religious martyrdoms, it is certainly not the case that his criticisms of martyrdom in this guise fairly describe a Christian martyrdom that is true to its own sources – in the example of Christ himself, in the canonical Scriptures and in the ripening tradition.
In fact, what Rushdie seeks in a self-identity is in some ways quite similar to that which is described by Christian martyrdom. Rushdie seeks to free the individual from the matrices of the past: culture, religion, race, gender and so on. He applauds the embrace of ‘the new’, delights in unforeseen possibilities and the potential for boundary-crossing connections between human beings in the name of peace. However, the characters that Rushdie introduces are still masters of their own destinies and makers of their own images. They are paragons of freedom, above all.
Into this context we offered our reading of Christian martyrdom as generated by Eliot in his perceptive play. The meaning of the martyrdom is informed, as we watch the visitation of the Tempters to Thomas, by that which the martyr renounces. Many of things renounced are very good and worthy ways to be: they are all the more powerful as temptations for being so. These are promising potential selves, full of opportunity to be useful to society and fulfilled and powerful as an individual.
The First Tempter offers Thomas the chance to guard himself against the twists and turns of fate by persuing a life of ease and security; or at least, he offers him the yearning for the time when he had this life. Tranposing this temptation into the terms offered by Martha C. Nussbaum in her analysis of Greek tragedy, we saw how the management of luck and the securing of safety was (and remains) a crucial component of successful existence in a world fraught with chance. However, the martyr walks away from this potential for security. Discipleship of Christ is described as not a matter for looking back to home, or even looking around in the present for cover against whatever may come, but rather for looking ahead to the eternal city promised in the gospel of Jesus (as we discovered with Augustine’s help). The martyr steps out into risk knowing that there is no turning back and that the cost may be great. However, he or she is not merely a thrill-seeker, riding a wave of risk all the way to the shoreline; on the contrary, the risk is taken in the context of hope secured in the ascended Lord Christ. This risk-taking by the disciple also exposes the temporary nature of human fortifications against luck.
The Second Tempter, in a tactic pursued also by the Fourth, tries to catch Thomas in a double-bind. On the one hand he offers to him the chance to make peace with his (God-appointed) ruler so that the two may collaborate in performing the business of government: meteing out justice for the good of the people. The price? ‘A certain submission’ to the king. When Thomas draws back from this, appealing to the ‘power of the keys’, the Tempter accuses him of power hunger. We saw next in our discussion of John Rawls that this temptation is not unique to conditions of monarchy and papacy: in fact, even under contemporary forms of liberal order a version of this temptation will be on offer. Churches may be tempted to secede their distinctive speech in favour of being able to participate in the public square; or may be accused of sectarianism if they refrain. The response from Scripture and the tradition (this time chiefly Augustine, Tyndale and O’Donovan) was to advance the insight, revealed in the martyr’s renunciation, that power and authority have a singles source though a dual expression. This helps both to relativise the power of the imperium and to show it as circumscribed by divine authority at every point; and also to encourage the Church that in the gospel it has its own authority – though it is of a distinctively non-coercive and persuasive nature.
The Third Tempter on the other hand, also interested in power, offers to Thomas the option of rebellion against the king. There is a case to be made here: tyranny is worth fighting against after all. There may be more authentic and more just forms of government available. Surely the martyr, having renounced collaboration with the ruler must persue subversive and destabilising activity to be consistent. Again the case is made that this is the way in which more just outcomes for the English people can be persued. What is more, this is a path of action, of putting noble thoughts into concrete practice. Once more we see how this may be consonant with a powerful and comprehensive account of the good life in action, as we find it this time in (a Nussbaumian reading of) Aristotle. Yet again, the martyr must also refuse. The form that his resistance to power takes is loyal; he does not hold national identity as an absolute value by any means; and he refuses to assert himself by seizing at action that will achieve that end. In fact (as we saw with the assistance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer), he rather acts ‘passively’: which is to say, in a way that takes responsibility for others, that is prepared to suffer what may come.
In the Fourth Tempter we have the most surprising of the temptations and another one that takes a two-fold course: martyrdom itself is offered, first, with Thomas imagining how he will be remembered and honoured by posterity, and secondly with imagining the crown of heaven being placed on his deserving temple. The renunciations of the first three temptations runs headlong into this fourth: if Thomas imagines himself accruing heavenly merit and forcing the divine hand on account of his repudiation of the secured self, the powerful self and the active self, he is sorely mistaken. He must also set aside the martyred self. We find these temptations maintained first in the representation of the ancient ‘honour ethic’, with all its military trappings; and secondly, in the theology of heavenly rewards which is widespread in religious accounts of martyrdom including some Christian ones, admittedly. Both of these descriptions of martyrdom were proven to be problematically self-justifying. The insight given in the renunciation of this temptation is that, as Thomas is able to declare to his congregation in the Cathedral on St Stephen’s Day, martyrdom is itself an act of God. The making of martyrs is given to divine providence and not to human hands. As we saw, it was Augustine in particular who had to wrestle with this in the context of great enthusiasm for martyrdom in the church of his day. The Christian offers himself or herself in free obedience as a witness to the divine rule; the outcome is not for him or her to determine.
In chapter six our focus was drawn to the twin poles of temptation and providence. These themes had been constantly with us as we examined the four temptations – the move is the narrative is away from temptation and, not towards a construction of a new identity or self, but towards a vision of the providence of God: namely, faith. We asked ‘who killed the Archbishop?’, which is to do just as the play itself invites us. Using Riceour’s insights, we determined that peirasmoj – a concept inclusive of trail and temptation – is part of the ‘narrative logic’ of martyrdom. Peirasmos, we determined, was an inescapable condition for human beings; but it is not clear from within the human sphere by what strength a human being may overcome it. It is an inescapable and undefeatable given. There is no self, no identity that a person may put forward or construct in order to overcome and endure peirasmoj with any hope for success. What is more, peirasmos is so severe as to threaten the individual with her own disintegration as a person. By investigating the narrative logic of martyrdom, once again with the aid of the narrative structure provided for us by Eliot in his play, we determined that it is the Christian faith in the providence of God, consummated in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, which is the foundation for resistance and renunciation of peirasmos. Christ himself undergoes peirasmos as a trial and as a temptation, and is revealed as overcoming both.
In this last chapter we have attempted to bring our study to its consummation by returning – conveniently by means of critical discussion of Murder in the Cathedral in performance – to the question of whether martyrdom represents in fact the utter breakdown in communication between two competing views of the world. What we suggested by our discussion was that Christian martyrdom, as a testimony to truth, does not repell but rather invites. The dramatic form that martyrdom takes draws the observer into the narrative thought-world which is shaped by peirasmoj from the human side and providence from the divine side, and ultimately finds these two aspects conjoined in the (hi)story of Jesus Christ."
We hastened to recognise at this stage that discussions of martyrdom occur under pressure of a severe critique: it is certainly no longer a given that martyrdom is esteemed as a form of death just in and of itself. Rather, martyrs are accused of denying life and of perverting love, of resiling from their duty to do good, of neglecting the bonds of family and friendship, of extreme egotism of a destructive kind. The spectre of religious violence hangs always and already over any discussion of martyrdom in the modern setting. Martyrs are more likely to inspire fear than reverence. However, is it the case that Christian martyrdom really falls under this critique? Chapter one, then, examined two powerful and very different attempts to describe authentic selfhood in the contemporary world and asked whether either of them could be reconciled with an identity informed by the idea of Christian martyrdom. Of Charles Taylor it could be said that he was bending over backwards to make room for the possibility of Christian martyrdom, or something like it, in his account of authenticity; but is not firm enough about the potential for inauthenticity. Martyrs are not those who accept that their understanding of reality is just one amongst many, after all. Salman Rushdie, for his part, presents a far more irascible figure. He is vehemently opposed to martyrdom as a model for human self-identity: it is far too emedded in traditional ways of seeing the world that do not adequately understand the shifting and liquid conditions of the present order. It is insufficiently open to new experiences and corrupting of the love between individuals. It perpetuates the cycle of violence by preaching resentment and hatred, by viewing the subject as identifiable through his or her victimhood. It allows human beings excuses for not feeling and for not living as they might. It is the result of fideistic religion that cordons itself off from reason. However, Rushdie’s account is not without its own difficulties: it is hard to see that he has successfully escaped from the ‘self-determination’ problem that Taylor derides in his account. Furthermore, while his depiction of martyrdom may be valid for some Christian and other religious martyrdoms, it is certainly not the case that his criticisms of martyrdom in this guise fairly describe a Christian martyrdom that is true to its own sources – in the example of Christ himself, in the canonical Scriptures and in the ripening tradition.
In fact, what Rushdie seeks in a self-identity is in some ways quite similar to that which is described by Christian martyrdom. Rushdie seeks to free the individual from the matrices of the past: culture, religion, race, gender and so on. He applauds the embrace of ‘the new’, delights in unforeseen possibilities and the potential for boundary-crossing connections between human beings in the name of peace. However, the characters that Rushdie introduces are still masters of their own destinies and makers of their own images. They are paragons of freedom, above all.
Into this context we offered our reading of Christian martyrdom as generated by Eliot in his perceptive play. The meaning of the martyrdom is informed, as we watch the visitation of the Tempters to Thomas, by that which the martyr renounces. Many of things renounced are very good and worthy ways to be: they are all the more powerful as temptations for being so. These are promising potential selves, full of opportunity to be useful to society and fulfilled and powerful as an individual.
The First Tempter offers Thomas the chance to guard himself against the twists and turns of fate by persuing a life of ease and security; or at least, he offers him the yearning for the time when he had this life. Tranposing this temptation into the terms offered by Martha C. Nussbaum in her analysis of Greek tragedy, we saw how the management of luck and the securing of safety was (and remains) a crucial component of successful existence in a world fraught with chance. However, the martyr walks away from this potential for security. Discipleship of Christ is described as not a matter for looking back to home, or even looking around in the present for cover against whatever may come, but rather for looking ahead to the eternal city promised in the gospel of Jesus (as we discovered with Augustine’s help). The martyr steps out into risk knowing that there is no turning back and that the cost may be great. However, he or she is not merely a thrill-seeker, riding a wave of risk all the way to the shoreline; on the contrary, the risk is taken in the context of hope secured in the ascended Lord Christ. This risk-taking by the disciple also exposes the temporary nature of human fortifications against luck.
The Second Tempter, in a tactic pursued also by the Fourth, tries to catch Thomas in a double-bind. On the one hand he offers to him the chance to make peace with his (God-appointed) ruler so that the two may collaborate in performing the business of government: meteing out justice for the good of the people. The price? ‘A certain submission’ to the king. When Thomas draws back from this, appealing to the ‘power of the keys’, the Tempter accuses him of power hunger. We saw next in our discussion of John Rawls that this temptation is not unique to conditions of monarchy and papacy: in fact, even under contemporary forms of liberal order a version of this temptation will be on offer. Churches may be tempted to secede their distinctive speech in favour of being able to participate in the public square; or may be accused of sectarianism if they refrain. The response from Scripture and the tradition (this time chiefly Augustine, Tyndale and O’Donovan) was to advance the insight, revealed in the martyr’s renunciation, that power and authority have a singles source though a dual expression. This helps both to relativise the power of the imperium and to show it as circumscribed by divine authority at every point; and also to encourage the Church that in the gospel it has its own authority – though it is of a distinctively non-coercive and persuasive nature.
The Third Tempter on the other hand, also interested in power, offers to Thomas the option of rebellion against the king. There is a case to be made here: tyranny is worth fighting against after all. There may be more authentic and more just forms of government available. Surely the martyr, having renounced collaboration with the ruler must persue subversive and destabilising activity to be consistent. Again the case is made that this is the way in which more just outcomes for the English people can be persued. What is more, this is a path of action, of putting noble thoughts into concrete practice. Once more we see how this may be consonant with a powerful and comprehensive account of the good life in action, as we find it this time in (a Nussbaumian reading of) Aristotle. Yet again, the martyr must also refuse. The form that his resistance to power takes is loyal; he does not hold national identity as an absolute value by any means; and he refuses to assert himself by seizing at action that will achieve that end. In fact (as we saw with the assistance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer), he rather acts ‘passively’: which is to say, in a way that takes responsibility for others, that is prepared to suffer what may come.
In the Fourth Tempter we have the most surprising of the temptations and another one that takes a two-fold course: martyrdom itself is offered, first, with Thomas imagining how he will be remembered and honoured by posterity, and secondly with imagining the crown of heaven being placed on his deserving temple. The renunciations of the first three temptations runs headlong into this fourth: if Thomas imagines himself accruing heavenly merit and forcing the divine hand on account of his repudiation of the secured self, the powerful self and the active self, he is sorely mistaken. He must also set aside the martyred self. We find these temptations maintained first in the representation of the ancient ‘honour ethic’, with all its military trappings; and secondly, in the theology of heavenly rewards which is widespread in religious accounts of martyrdom including some Christian ones, admittedly. Both of these descriptions of martyrdom were proven to be problematically self-justifying. The insight given in the renunciation of this temptation is that, as Thomas is able to declare to his congregation in the Cathedral on St Stephen’s Day, martyrdom is itself an act of God. The making of martyrs is given to divine providence and not to human hands. As we saw, it was Augustine in particular who had to wrestle with this in the context of great enthusiasm for martyrdom in the church of his day. The Christian offers himself or herself in free obedience as a witness to the divine rule; the outcome is not for him or her to determine.
In chapter six our focus was drawn to the twin poles of temptation and providence. These themes had been constantly with us as we examined the four temptations – the move is the narrative is away from temptation and, not towards a construction of a new identity or self, but towards a vision of the providence of God: namely, faith. We asked ‘who killed the Archbishop?’, which is to do just as the play itself invites us. Using Riceour’s insights, we determined that peirasmoj – a concept inclusive of trail and temptation – is part of the ‘narrative logic’ of martyrdom. Peirasmos, we determined, was an inescapable condition for human beings; but it is not clear from within the human sphere by what strength a human being may overcome it. It is an inescapable and undefeatable given. There is no self, no identity that a person may put forward or construct in order to overcome and endure peirasmoj with any hope for success. What is more, peirasmos is so severe as to threaten the individual with her own disintegration as a person. By investigating the narrative logic of martyrdom, once again with the aid of the narrative structure provided for us by Eliot in his play, we determined that it is the Christian faith in the providence of God, consummated in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, which is the foundation for resistance and renunciation of peirasmos. Christ himself undergoes peirasmos as a trial and as a temptation, and is revealed as overcoming both.
In this last chapter we have attempted to bring our study to its consummation by returning – conveniently by means of critical discussion of Murder in the Cathedral in performance – to the question of whether martyrdom represents in fact the utter breakdown in communication between two competing views of the world. What we suggested by our discussion was that Christian martyrdom, as a testimony to truth, does not repell but rather invites. The dramatic form that martyrdom takes draws the observer into the narrative thought-world which is shaped by peirasmoj from the human side and providence from the divine side, and ultimately finds these two aspects conjoined in the (hi)story of Jesus Christ."
Phillip Jensen on Eulogies
An interesting take on the shifting shape of funeral services here. What a culture says and does at death is always evidence of what that culture understands meaning, identity and purpose to be. Diarmaid McCulloch often cites wills, for example, as evidence for the change from old Catholic to new Protestant beliefs during the Reformation period...
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The survival of the Cathedrals
Salisbury Cathedral Diarmaid MacCulloch reckons the synthesis of Reformed theology and Cathedrals makes for the distinctive, if paradoxical, nature of Anglicanism:
..there was nothing like the English cathedral close, with its round of regular liturgy involving a large staff of clergy and elaborat music sung by paid professionals, nothing of which seemed at the time to have much relevance to a Protestant Church. The English survival is a puzzle: a cynical view is that cathedral estates and offices could act as a reservoir of patronage for the powerful... But perhaps more important was the stubborn love of church choral music shown by that midwife of the Church of Englan, Elizabeth I. ...Strangely this exquisite sacred music...had virtually no effect on musical and devotional life in English parish churches from Elizabeth's reign to the time of the 'Oxford Movement'... the parishes sane metrical psalms in the manner of Geneva, at least until the major evangelical 'revival' in the eighteenth century popularised a new sort of hymn... Nevertheless the survival of the cathedral tradition had huge significance for the future of Anglicanism. It struggled through whatmight have seem unpromising Elizabethen years to reveal the potential for liturgical spleandour in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer (a development which, almost certainly, he would not have welcomed). Reformation, p. 511
This tension between parish worship and Cathedral worship is something that is still in evidence: not always a happy synthesis you would have to say.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Ricoeur on Narrative Theology
Harris Manchester College, Oxford.At the end of his article 'Biblical Time' Ricoeur, asserting that the strands of the OT combine to produce a very complex notion of 'time', critiques the proposal for a kind of narrative theology:
...the project of a merely narrative theology is a chimera. What it fundamentally fails to understand is first the primitive overlapping of narrative and law in the Torah, then the dialectic between the whole of tradition as prescriptive as well as narrative with prophecy and its eschatological indication. Next, a simple narrative theology misses the deepening of the transitory character of historical accomplishments through the immemorial time of wisdom, and, finally, and most important of all, the powerful recapitulation of all these figures of time in the 'today' of the hymn.'
See, the bible is not just a narrative: it's a musical. At one and the same time, you have a particular history, and a universal history of the world; you have action and commentary on that action; you have the past sung into the present, and the future promised. He's spot on, but I can't help feeling that Reformers knew this already. Certainly, my old teacher Graeme Goldsworthy has been saying this for years. Still it is nice to have someone with Ricoeur's street cred saying the same thing.
Ricoeur on Biblical Time
Ricoeur points out that the dichotomy between so-called Greek time (as circular) and Hebraic time (as linear) is facile and won't hold. He then goes on to describe 'biblical time' in terms of the intersection of the different literary genres within the scriptures and their perceptions of time. So:
The instruction issuing from the successive legislations, unified under the emblem of Sinai and Moses, colors the narratives themselves. These narratives, under the pressure of the prescriptive, become narratives of the march of a people with God under the sign of obedience and disobedience.
He calls this the 'narrativisation of ethics and the ethicisation of narratives'. What has this to do with time, especially? Well:
...the law qualifies not just the event of its giving but all the narratives in which this giving is encased, in such a way that the founding events become events that do not pass away but remain.
More words, for preachers
Oxford, at dusk: the Broad
1. Preaching is an honouring of the capacity of words to do their job: to offer praise to God
2. The task of the preacher is to take us to see the world with the eyes of faith…using only words. But words are capable of doing this.
3. The sermon is not a verbal technique, as if it is merely some aesthetic object. But, it can be beautiful, and moving. And artful.
4. Words, even in sermons - perhaps especially in sermons - can do tremendous damage. Handle with care.
5. Preaching begins with listening: it is attentive to the word (and the words) of God. This in a way is the only necessary skill, the only prerequisite for method.
6. Preaching is about transforming language because it is about transforming thought. Preaching teaches the church how to talk about the world, the real world as it is really is (as to how it appears). Preaching gives us the conceptual tools with which to see what we can’t by our nature see.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Andrew Cameron on the good life
H/T to Rory for this one:
"…Christian Ethics is best understood as a response to the way God's kindness bubbles over into every area of life. As such it is simply an extension of the gospel. Christians may therefore talk about life, and then even live it, in such a mesmerizingly beautiful way that those who see and hear cannot help but want to know more of Christ. It is in this sense that Christians are in the business of saying “Yes” to the world."Andrew Cameron, "How to Say YES to the World—Evangelical Social Ethics", RTR, 66:1 (April 2007), 24.
This kind of fits well with the whole David Bentley Hart thesis too...
"…Christian Ethics is best understood as a response to the way God's kindness bubbles over into every area of life. As such it is simply an extension of the gospel. Christians may therefore talk about life, and then even live it, in such a mesmerizingly beautiful way that those who see and hear cannot help but want to know more of Christ. It is in this sense that Christians are in the business of saying “Yes” to the world."Andrew Cameron, "How to Say YES to the World—Evangelical Social Ethics", RTR, 66:1 (April 2007), 24.
This kind of fits well with the whole David Bentley Hart thesis too...
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Words, for preachers
That's my brother, Lt David Jensen, 2RAR, setting the East Timorese straight. He's not a gorilla by the way.
With speech, humanity is a bit like a gorilla with a loaded pistol: the explosive weapon is in the hands of someone who has an uncertain control of it. While on the one hand we know that our words have immense power to harm or to do good, we are not always masters of what we say. The connection between words and things has become slippery: not because of some philosophical problem but because those who wield them are deceitful and prone, not just to experience human limitations, but to mistakes.
However, God chooses to use human words in his salvation of the world: not overcoming their creaturely limits, but sanctifying them for his purposes. The paradigm is the calling of the prophet Isaiah (in Isaiah 6): terrified by his vision of God’s glory and holiness, he is rightly a reluctant prophet. As he says: ‘I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips’. But an angel brings a burning coal to touch his mouth. God in calling him purifies his speech so that he can use it to address his people.
It ought not to be surprising then, that with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit after the ascension of Jesus, God enables people to talk about him with their limited human words. In fact, more than just talk about him: it ought not be a surprise that God uses the words of human beings to bring about his mighty purposes – to advance the redemption of the world and to give life to the dead. Pentecost is a miracle of redeemed human speech, a reversal of the divisions of Babel. The gospel of Jesus is a word of new creation with its own new grammar: it is a whole new language to learn.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Must reads?
So, help me out here: what are the must-read theological books that are coming out soon or have recently appeared?
I take many of my recommendations from Ben (or from people on his site) I must admit. I am looking to pick up Paul DeHart's The Trial of the Witnesses though it seem to be dealing with a meta meta discourse. Peer group pressure is a wonderful thing!
I still have much of The Beauty of the Infinite to deal with, too. Hmm.
I take many of my recommendations from Ben (or from people on his site) I must admit. I am looking to pick up Paul DeHart's The Trial of the Witnesses though it seem to be dealing with a meta meta discourse. Peer group pressure is a wonderful thing!
I still have much of The Beauty of the Infinite to deal with, too. Hmm.
Monday, May 21, 2007
The spectacle of Martyrdom
Martyrologists who exaggerate the details of the suffering and torture of the martyrs in order to increase the rhetorical impact of their work are in fact doing the martyr a great disservice. The risk here is that the martyr is painted as merely a victim, and the rhetorical impact of telling the story is then limited to pathos for the suffering of the victim. The content of their witness then disintegrates...The gospels show the way here: as we read of the death of Jesus, we may feel pity for the disciples, and sorrow for the role our fellow human beings played in his execution, and even disgust and outrage at the injustice perpetuated: but the evangelists do not draw us to pity Jesus. They do not dwell on the gruesome details of his torture and suffering (pace Mel Gibson); they do not portray him as powerless or voiceless; they do not depict the sadistic pleasure of his executioners. Jesus is no victim; events do not get out of hand for him at all – he is seen as always ahead of them. His innocence is not established merely so we can feel appalled at the miscarriage of justice, but so that we can understand the significance of his sacrifice in a theological matrix.
There were (and are) worse, more painful deaths; there certainly were (and are) more pitiable victims of injustice. Jesus is not, like some protagonist in a Greek tragedy, the victim of a twist in fate or the misalignment of the planets. An account that emphasizes the pathos of Jesus’ death quite misses the point – which is that the cross of Christ is the expression par excellence of the divine rule over all. It is the moment of the enthronement of Israel’s messiah in Zion and over the whole world. Likewise, a martyrology that dwells too luridly on the blood that flows is not a martyrology but a victimology. A death cast in these terms in the end witnesses only to itself as a death. The best of the early martyr-acts, for all their faults, do not lapse in this direction: Polycarp, for example, though of great age, dies in such a way that his captors look more pitiable than he. Events are not in their control (nor Polycarp's); but Polycarp's faith and asssurance makes it a triumph. Who could feel sorry for him?
Martyrdom as communicative act III
I am trying hard here to express a question that is bugging me a little... Martyrdom is an act of witness - which implies that it is an act which communicates a particular meaning or significance. Now, of course, if anyone recognises the divine agency at work in and the divine authority revealed by the act of martyrdom, it is because the Holy Spirit gives it to them to so recognise it. It is not the act in and of itself that communicates this: it is the Spirit testifying through it. Like the parables of Jesus, spiritual insight, given from above, is required to really understand in full.Now, not recognising this is a mistake Christians often make. We see this when they point to- and even focus on - the extreme suffering of the martyr, or to the pathos of their words, or to the miraculous signs that attend the martyrdom (these have been features of martyrology since the beginning). It was fascinating that, when the recent Turkish martyrdoms were first reported, the writer felt compelled to exaggerate the extent of the torture of the victims - something that a later (very wise) letter sought to correct. (This was of course the mistake made by Gibson in The Passion of the Christ - imaginging that he needed to focus on the torture as a device to move the audience with sympathy for Christ, as if that was the means by which the gospel would be best communicated. Wrong, wrong, wrong.)
BUT: it is not aside from or arbitrarily next to the drama of a martyrdom that the Spirit testifies. It is in the very structures of this particular action that he works. Which is to say: just because spiritual insight is needed to fully understand does NOT mean that what we have before us is otherwise unintelligible. Again, taking the parables as an analogy: the parables are not runes that need to be decoded only by the select few to whom has been given the secret key. Far from it: the meaning of the parables is available for public scrutiny. A martyrdom occurs in front of us and, we may say, it has terms on which it makes sense - though we may not accept those terms of course.
In sum: while affirming the sheer givenness and transcendence of the knowledge of God, I also want to affirm that revelation does not occur arbitrarily or outside of the ordinary world of speaking and acting, but rather through it and in it.
Thomas Aquinas on fortitude and martyrdom
Aquinas considers the issue of courage/fortitude and martyrdom: is it an act of fortitude? Certainly, the early martyrologies apply soldier-like qualities to the martyrs.
...it belongs to fortitude to strengthen man in the good of virtue, especially against dangers, and chiefly against dangers of death, and most of all against those that occur in battle. Now it is evident that in martyrdom man is firmly strengthened in the good of virtue, since he cleaves to faith and justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death, the imminence of which is moreover due to a kind of particular contest with his persecutors...
Two things must be considered in the act of fortitude. One is the good wherein the brave man is strengthened, and this is the end of fortitude; the other is the firmness itself, whereby a man does not yield to the contraries that hinder him from achieving that good, and in this consists the essence of fortitude. Now just as civic fortitude strengthens a man's mind in human justice, for the safeguarding of which he braves the danger of death, so gratuitous fortitude strengthens man's soul in the good of Divine justice, which is "through faith in Christ Jesus," according to Rm. 3:22. Thus martyrdom is related to faith as the end in which one is strengthened, but to fortitude as the eliciting habit.
Now, I am by instinct repelled by this, because the emphasis on 'courage' is misplaced I think. It places all the weight on the analogy between martyrdom and secular acts, and on the virtues displayed by the martyr. So, the witness of the martyr ends up being to his or her own fortitude rather than on to Christ himself. What might rescue this account for me is that Aquinas acknowledges this fortitude as a gracious gift coming from without and strengthening the person, rather than a matter of significant and impressive inner resolve. It is so abstract, though, isn't it? 'the good of Divine justice' is what we are strengthened in rather than in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... though technically they are the same thing I guess.
...it belongs to fortitude to strengthen man in the good of virtue, especially against dangers, and chiefly against dangers of death, and most of all against those that occur in battle. Now it is evident that in martyrdom man is firmly strengthened in the good of virtue, since he cleaves to faith and justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death, the imminence of which is moreover due to a kind of particular contest with his persecutors...
Two things must be considered in the act of fortitude. One is the good wherein the brave man is strengthened, and this is the end of fortitude; the other is the firmness itself, whereby a man does not yield to the contraries that hinder him from achieving that good, and in this consists the essence of fortitude. Now just as civic fortitude strengthens a man's mind in human justice, for the safeguarding of which he braves the danger of death, so gratuitous fortitude strengthens man's soul in the good of Divine justice, which is "through faith in Christ Jesus," according to Rm. 3:22. Thus martyrdom is related to faith as the end in which one is strengthened, but to fortitude as the eliciting habit.
Now, I am by instinct repelled by this, because the emphasis on 'courage' is misplaced I think. It places all the weight on the analogy between martyrdom and secular acts, and on the virtues displayed by the martyr. So, the witness of the martyr ends up being to his or her own fortitude rather than on to Christ himself. What might rescue this account for me is that Aquinas acknowledges this fortitude as a gracious gift coming from without and strengthening the person, rather than a matter of significant and impressive inner resolve. It is so abstract, though, isn't it? 'the good of Divine justice' is what we are strengthened in rather than in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... though technically they are the same thing I guess.
Vaughan Roberts on Daniel 7
Harlech Castle, Wales.Vaughan Roberts (of St Ebbe's C of E the rector) preached a terrific sermon on Daniel 7 today - one that rang all sorts of bells in my thesis addled brian. He started with the martyr question: if I was in the situation of having to chose life or martyrdom, what would I do? The right answer is, of course, 'I don't know'... Why? Because martyrdom is not within our human power; and because it isn't about exercising courage.
And this was the earth-shattering point: it is about vision, aka faith. That is, the vision we get in Dan 7 - the vision of the temporary state of the empires and the sitting on the throne of the ancient of days, and the handing of authority to the Son of Man - is visible to the eyes of faith. And it is this vision - a revelation that is given, of course - of the way things truly are that makes it possible for the Christian to say 'I can be none other than what I am'. This is a vision of the providential work of God worked out in Jesus, the Son of Man.
So, what makes a martyr distinctively Christian is this vision of the rule and authority of God in Christ Jesus. Without that vision: nothing. Martyrdom (contra Aquinas) is the result of faith.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
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