Anglican + Calvinist

2007-06-03T02:57:00.000-07:00

ROMA!

Sitting in St. Peter's Square on a beautiful sunny day listening to the Holy Father give a catechesis on Tertullian and then his papal blessing - is there a better way to spend a birthday? I think not. This was my first (and hopefully not the only) visit to Rome and the Vatican and it was fantastic. Instead of describing it in detail I wanted to share a few pictures and some thoughts from the trip as well as a quote from Benedict himself, another one which was very important in my journey to Roman Catholicism. I was there with a few close friends for only a few days but being around buildings that are from the first century (and before) made even England's heritage seem young. The Colosseum and Pantheon were exceptional, as were all the old Roman ruins where Western civilization was being cemented and fully developed.

Another great moment was going through the Vatican Museum with some of the most impressive art work in the world. The Sistine Chapel was incredible; seeing it is the only way of experiencing the genius of Michaelangelo. But along the way to the Sistine Chapel there were numerous works which were brilliant in their own right. Two of them stood in juxtaposition for me in describing Catholicism's approach to reason.

First is Raphael's School of Athens:

This painting shows the two philosophical masters, Plato and Aristotle, in the center. Note Plato pointing to the heavens (world of Ideas) whereas Aristotle points to the earth (world of Forms). These two philosophers (as well as others in the painting) would provide the bedrock for St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers to develop the Christian Tradition in tune with the divine reason as well as divine revelation.

The second painting that struck me alongside this was one I don't know the name of (any help?) which signaled the supremacy of the Cross and Christ against idols of this world:

This reminded me of how Catholicism seeks to develop the best in natural and supernatural reason given to man but also fights and overcomes mere traditions and idols of this world. The dual focus and tension (as opposed to reason only of liberal Christianity and revelation only of evangelical Christianity) reminds me of the truth and power of Catholicism: affirming what is good in man and rejecting what is false for the sake of Christ.

One of the most moving moments was the experience of being meters from St. Peter's remains under the altar in St. Peter's.

I can't describe the feelings that were running through me as I looked on the remains of that great disciple, leader of the Twelve. We read and think so much about him in Scriptures and theological writings, but to be near his body was incredible; a reminder of the rootedness of Catholicism in the physical as well as spiritual realities of this world.

Finally, it goes without saying that the high point of the trip was the general audience with Pope Benedict XVI. We were able to get great seats and so ended up ten feet from him while he drove around greeting the people in St. Peter's Square. The experience of being so close to him was amazing and I will always remember it, especially since I got an incredible picture!

To end, I thought I would include the final words of Benedict's homily for his Inauguration of his Pontificate on April 24th, 2005. Whenever I am afraid or worried that Christ's calling is a negation of life this message reminds me of great Yes (or should I say Ja!) which overcomes any No (Nein!) of this world. I hope it brings you the same peace and courage as it does me.

'At this point, my mind goes back to 22 October 1978, when Pope John Paul II began his ministry here in Saint Peter’s Square. His words on that occasion constantly echo in my ears: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!” The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to let him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free. Yes, he would certainly have taken something away from them: the dominion of corruption, the manipulation of law and the freedom to do as they pleased. But he would not have taken away anything that pertains to human freedom or dignity, or to the building of a just society. The Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.'

2007-05-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Bernard Lonergan SJ and Christianity: "Proof"

Introduction

The existence of God is based on the intelligibility of the world. To follow this out we will examine the philosophy of the twentieth century Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan. This involves a discussion, however quickly of how we come to know something and then what that will mean. So first knowing, then God. After that we may have time for the problem of evil [basic sin] and then the solution to basic sin found in Christianity, philosophically. But let’s not set the bar too high!

I. Knowing and Lonergan’s cognitional dynamics

Lonergan asserts that knowing is a three part dynamic of cognition: knowing involves experience, understanding, and verification. To examine this theory we will take a simple example of knowledge and explore it: the law of gravity.

First, imagine you are walking through the park and notice a leaf which gets detached from a tree branch. You notice that it floats gently to the ground. This is an example of the experience component of knowledge. One experience is random and probably won’t spark your attention too much, but imagine that another leaf does the exact same thing, then another and another, etc. You might become suspicious that something is going on here. You might also notice that a cat has climbed up the tree and also becomes dislodged, falling to the ground. Inquisitive, you might also climb the tree yourself and hang on a branch, releasing your grip after a bit of debate and notice that you too, fall to the ground. All of these events are the experiential component of knowing reality; in and of themselves they are nothing but a collection of random events (seeing any one of them by itself may not spark anything in particular), but to an intelligent person the knowing process will start to hit the second stage: insight.

While in the hospital recovering from your own event you might try to ‘understand’ what was going on in all those events. You have a keen sense that the world is intelligible, that things make sense and so try to understand what could possibly connect these different, yet similar, events. Then you get an insight, a Eureka moment! What is it? You might say that whenever something detaches itself from a (or that) tree, a strong wind blows downward, forcing the object to the ground! This would be a systematic insight into understanding what was going on in those events. This is the second step of knowing, but it is important to realize that the process does not stop here. Right now all you have is a concept; the question which brings about knowledge is “Is this concept correct?” Clearly in this case the concept is not correct, but how do you know this? By the third step: judgment.

The final step in knowing is judgment, answering the simple question: ‘Is it true?’ Do answer this you must investigate your insight (in science we call this a hypothesis) by checking out reality. In the case of our insight, we might want to bring some device that measures the wind so we can see if our insight is indeed correct. Of course we will find that the wind is not blowing downward, but rather that we need a better insight (one which is true) in order to make sense of the situation. In this case of course the insight is that there is a law of gravity at work, whatever might be meant by that can be worked out by physicists. With this insight of the law of gravity we can now test it out and confirm that our grasp of reality is indeed true of the world: there is such a thing as gravity by which all objects are naturally directed towards the earth while falling.

The most important part is to realize that all three steps are necessary in coming to true knowledge. To be specific, we have come to what Lonergan calls the virtually unconditioned. This means that after reflection on our insight into experience we have answered all the questions we can ask adequately and so the fact is unconditioned. For finite minds however, it is virtually unconditioned because we must be open to the possibility of revision, as in science theories, without eliminating the truths which we have discovered.

As an example of this we can think of Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics; it is not that Newton was wrong so much as he was not completely right. His laws still explain reality but we have moved to a deeper understanding through Einstein’s general relativity which helps deepen our explanation of gravity; things still fall towards the earth according to Newton’s law of gravitation but this is seen as only a part of a wider geometrical system called general relativity.

Why is this three step process important, even essential? Because it is the grounding of all reality, and it is personal. First it is the grounding of all reality because knowing is correspondent to the known; we can only speak of the known world in so much as we can know the world. To speak of something means to know it, even if our known is what Lonergan would call a ‘known unknown’: we know there is something which we do not yet know. This is what spurs on a particular insight. In a sense the primary insight into the world is that there are known unknowns for this drives us to know them and allows us to believe that they (and the world itself) are knowable. We are confirmed in these ‘known unknowns’ because they quickly (usually) become ‘known knowns’ through the process of knowledge and cognition just discussed.

The second reason why this is important is that it makes all knowledge dependent on rational self-consciousness. To be known, to be true, there must be more than a concept floating in mid-air (the second step of the process, insight) but there must be a reflection made by a rational agent. For something to be true it must be known to be true, otherwise it just is as a collection of occurrences. The law of gravity is true because it has passed the reflection stage in verification; the law of downward blowing wind is not true because it hasn’t. Until there is rational judgment neither one nor the other can be called true. This may seem startling but it is a necessary fact given our cognitional dynamic.

So this lengthy excursus on epistemology (the study of knowing) is important because knowing is intimately and crucially linked to the known; reality is known by experience, understanding and reflection. In this sense, the notion of being, the definition of reality is that which is known by the questions asked and affirmed through the third stage of knowledge, rational reflection.

II. Existence of God

Okay, time to get to the real deal, the ‘proof of God.’ What I want to do here is discuss two preliminaries, two premises, and then one syllogism which the proof will consist of. So two preliminaries:

1. What kind of proof?

What kind of proof will this be? Well, it can be either a priori or a posteriori. The first is from causes to effects, the second is from effects to causes. The first would be the ontological argument (The necessary being exists necessarily), but this is an only a concept and does not move to existence in the three part process of knowing. So this must be an a posteriori proof. We have already seen how this works in our insight into the law of gravity. No one can find an existent thing which is gravity, but we know it exists from its effects, i.e. falling leaves, cats, and people. The insight and knowledge of God will consist in the same sort of argument, moving from some effects to a cause, moving from accidents to substance, in a sense.

2. Extrinsic Causality

The second preliminary which is important is the existence of something called ‘extrinsic causality’. This means a cause which is either efficient or final in the traditional set; or for our terms, a cause which is connected with the object but not intrinsic to it. Science (say physics) is concerned with internal causes as such, but metaphysics (or higher science) is concerned with higher causes, extrinsic causes.

This need not be abstract. For example, in building a bridge extrinsic causality is involved in the form of efficient and final causality. The final cause is the use of the bridge (what it is being built for) and the efficient causality is the men building it, external agents cause the bridge to be formed. Physics and chemistry (maybe biology) can deal with the material causality of the bridge (tensile strength, chemical composition) but there are certainly other extrinsic causes which make the bridge a bridge; examining the physical composition won’t tell you why this bridge exists in this place now.

So extrinsic causality is valid in specific cases, but since we are concerned with all reality, all being, which is what we are asking questions about, this extrinsic causality must also be valid for general or universal cases. This is obviously apparent since the bridge is a specific example of our general observation of extrinsic causality.

Note: We shouldn’t run to fast ahead here, we haven’t proved anything yet, far from it! If we want to have knowledge of God’s existence it must be done rigorously; right now were are just preparing the ground as it were and getting some definitions straight. In themselves they tell us nothing, they are rather the empirical residue as it were of a later insight and judgment which will end up with the affirmation of the statement ‘God exists’. But let’s not move too quickly!

Now that the two preliminaries are finished, let’s move to our two premises, which follow naturally from everything else we have been saying.

1. Being is intelligible

Lonergan says: “Because being is intelligible: it is what is to be known by correct understanding; by definition, it is the intelligible. Being has to be the intelligible to be what is to be known by correct understanding, because the intelligible is all that correct understanding knows.”

What this means is that being (all that is the objective of the pure desire to know, the correct answers to all our questions) must be the intelligible, the order. This means that nothing is ultimately random in being; it may appear random on some levels (subatomic processes) but when moving to a higher viewpoint (statistical laws; chemistry) then it has a reason. This reason is essential because to be known is to be understood and judged correct (steps two and three of knowledge) but randomness can ultimately not be judged correct because it can not be understood. So being (all that is) must be intelligible, able to be known through correct understanding.

2. Defects in intelligibility

But we know that we don’t know everything. We know a lot, but we can’t answer all questions when we move to higher viewpoints. Lonergan says: “You can explain it provisionally by saying this is because that is. But why is that?”

This is relevant to the pure and unrestricted desire to know in all of us: there are always more questions to ask than answers. In other words, each answer only leads to more questions.

We have just affirmed that being is intelligible, but “why should reality be intelligible? What is the ultimate ground of its being intelligible? Our minds are not that ultimate ground.”

Our minds (the three step process of knowing) tell us that the known (being) is intelligible, but they are not the cause of its intelligibility. For example, we know the moon is spherical because of the phases we see in the sky throughout the month, but the phases of the moon are not the ontological ground of the moon’s spherical shape. “Similarly, the structure of our minds is the ground of our knowledge that the real must be being and intelligible. But there is a further question: What accounts for the fact that the real is intelligible and being?”

If being is intelligible, which we have determined it to be by our cognitive structure (the basic position) then we cannot stop asking questions at some point. “Being has to be intelligible. But the intelligible is not something with respect to which I answer a certain group of questions and, for no reason whatever, refuse to answer further questions… There is no point where you can arbitrarily say, ‘No more questions – supply exhausted!’ To answer all of the questions that do arise de facto, you have to go beyond this world, and that means that some principle of extrinsic causality is universally valid [as discussed earlier].”

3. Finally, to complete the argument we meet the syllogism:

If the real is being (the intelligible) then God exists. (Major Premise)
The real is intelligible (being). (Minor Premise)
Therefore, God exists.

Minor Premise: The real is intelligible (being).

That the real is intelligible is nothing other than the basic position, what we know by the structure of our minds in knowing. If this is not true than being is unintelligible and therefore any questions cannot receive answers (how does one unintelligently distinguish which questions are intelligent and which are not?). So for anything to be intelligible the whole must be intelligible (at various levels, of course), otherwise there could be no knowledge. If being was not intelligible then you could not know it was not intelligible, therefore it must be intelligible.

Major Premise: If the real is being (the intelligible) then God exists.

Lonergan says: “Only if there is, at the root of all reality, an unrestricted act of understanding [all is known and intelligible] that freely creates everything else that is [being is existent through judgment, not just conceptual], and in doing so acts intelligently and reasonably – only if the whole of reality depends upon God, and God is absolute understanding – can it be true that the real is being, that the real is intelligible [by extrinsic causality].”

Only by having God [a Being who is absolute understanding in act – creation] is it possible that all further questions can have answers. “Only insofar as you posit the formally unconditioned, as not only intelligible [definition of being and reality] but also intelligent [act of correct understanding in extrinsic causality] – and all the other properties that can be deduced from that [simplicity, one, omniscient, a temporal, etc.] – can it be true that the real is being, that the real is intelligible.”

Thus since the major and minor premises are true, the conclusion must follow: Therefore, God exists.

Phew! We have come a long way and I assume by now your minds are pretty tired and worn out, maybe excited or just confused. That is fine; I don’t expect anyone to get the argument on the first try, like all things it must be slowly appropriated over time so don’t fell like it needs to jump out at you. But hopefully you will have the basic structure of it and can rehearse it for yourselves in your own time; remember knowledge only comes through personal understanding and rational reflection. Ultimately this means the hard work begins with you!

But all we have done so far is determine that there is a God, a transcendent Being with certain characteristics (intelligent, simple, one, omniscient, a temporal, etc.), we haven’t said anything about who this God is, which is what Christianity is all about. So in quick brushstrokes (since I know you are tired!) let’s have a crack at two questions which further arise (of course!) following the argument: the question of evil and the question of a solution.

III. Problem of Evil – Basic Sin

The Problem of Evil can be separated into three types of evils: physical evils, moral evils, and basic sin.

Let us call basic sin the fact that human beings (with free-will) often do not choose what is rationally obligatory but do choose what is repugnant in their courses of action. So basic sin is the fact that all of us at various times choose what is not reasonable [being nasty to a friend] and ignore what is reasonable [helping someone in need]. This basic sin leads to moral evils in that evils are committed by moral beings (us), but these are really secondary to the basic fact that these can be committed. Physical evils are the breakdowns in the natural process of world order, an order governed by probabilities as well as deterministic structures (quantum mechanics as well as classical mechanics). These are to be expected in such a nature, but moral evils cannot be explain in such a way because they involve intelligent (and hence moral – since to be moral is nothing other than to choose the Good which is also the True) brings.

Basic sin therefore is a fact which is in need to a solution; this is clear because being cannot be unintelligent (for we could not know it was unintelligent if it were so, see above), therefore there must ultimately be a solution to the issue of basic sin if everything above is correct, which we have been convinced of.

IV. Solution to the Problem – Christianity

It is in the solution to the problem where the world religions come in. Obviously any religion which does not see the problem of basic sin existing cannot be a true account of the world and God. This rules out any religion like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc., for which there is no basic sin or problem of evil. Easy enough!

Now there are three religions which meet the above two criteria (Existence of God and Problem of Evil), obviously there are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It is from these three (or some unknown religion?) which we must ultimately find the intelligibility of nature. So a short examination from back to front (by no means exhaustive!).

1. Islam – from my understanding of Islam (which is limited, I will admit) the concept of ‘free-will’ and therefore moral agents is not permissible. Islam’s doctrine of providence seems to allow only a form of either fatalistic determinism, or a form of theological compatibilism (free yet not free) which would have to be judged on its own merits (this is an intense area of philosophic dispute which I am not sure how to solve by itself!). Assuming that traditional Islamic doctrine does profess some form of theological determinism this would remove the reality of moral evils and therefore question basic sin in a serious way. A solution to this might be brought about, but I have yet to see or hear of it. So for me, Islam is not an option philosophically because of its commitment to some form of theological determinism (very different to say, Thomas Aquinas’ work).

2. Judaism – obviously I am not inclined to consider Judaism apart from Christianity since Christianity (and Jesus Christ) claims to be the fulfillment of Judaism; but just for fun let’s assume that Judaism can stand alone historically and theologically from Christianity. Does Judaism provide a solution to the Problem of Evil? It seems to me that it does not. Although it has some form of solution in the sacrificial system of the Mosaic covenant (remember, the solution must be physical because we live in a physical world; Gnosticism will not do!), it appears that this is non-existent today and deemed faulty in Jewish theology. Even in the Psalms of the Hebrew Scriptures we find passages discussing how sacrifices of burnt offerings is not what God desires, but rather a clean heart. But I don’t see anything in Judaism answering this demand; which is why ultimately I see Christianity as the necessary fulfillment of it.

3. Christianity – so out of all the world religions which have a shot at answering the Existence of God and the Problem of Evil, it appears to me (and hopefully to you) that only Christianity is capable of making sense of the world. This is not to say that there are no mysteries, mystery is an essential part of being, but these are known unknowns which will ultimately be known by God, of course. Since the solution must conform to the problem, Lonergan gives the basic structure of the solution: it must be one, universally accessible and permanent, harmonious continuation of the actual order of the universe, not add new genus or species [a new animal!], consist of a higher understanding [extrinsic causality] – a ‘supernatural’ form, must be dynamic, must respect free will and consent of men, accord with probabilities, willingness to conform will be charity, must effect the social order.

Remember at this point Lonergan has done nothing strictly ‘theological’, he has worked this all out from philosophy and his structure of being as determined by the structure of mind. But, as Hugo Meynell comments: “Where the shape of the hat is as closely specified as this, the identity of the rabbit which is concealed under it scarcely needs to be added. The actual ‘emergent trend and full realization of the solution’ are to be found, when the facts of history are scrutinised, in the history of the ancient Israelite nation and its culmination in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ [mainly cross and resurrection!].”

So Christianity is the only solution to the Problem of Evil (basic sin) which is philosophically capable, let alone historically verifiable, according to these principles, which we have built up from nothing other than the process we all know so well in coming to know something in the world.

2007-05-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI on the Church's Faith

Earlier today I was reading Ratzinger's Principles of Catholic Theology when a fellow student commented on the book. I said I thought he was great and she responded "Well, if you join the one True Church you can blame it on Ratzinger." I said: "Yes, I can."

That interesting interchange reminded me of how much I appreciate Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as I have been devouring his works in the last few months. He is truly a theologian's theologian. More than his theological sharpness though is his pastoral sense and heart. His writing, even in his more technical work, is always geared to the Catholic family, his two Papal works are incredibly readable and his homilies are inspiring. Don't take my work for it, check out some for yourself.

Continuing my conversion process I thought I would share a part of an essay on "Tradition and Successio Apostolica found in the above mentioned text. Just as a sample of why the Catholic Church is so wonderful:

"I venture to close these reflections with a personal comment...Today, many Christians, myself included, experience a quiet uneasiness about attending divine services in a strange church; they are appalled at the thought of the half-understood theories, the amazing and tasteless personal opinions of this or that priest that they will have to endure during the homily - to say nothing of the personal liturgical inventions to which they will be subjected. No one goes to church to hear someone else's personal opinions. I am simply not interested in what fantasies this or that individual priest may have spun for himself regarding questions of Christian faith. They may be appropriate for an evening's conversation but not for that obligation that brings me to church Sunday after Sunday. Anyone who preaches himself in this way overrates himself and attributes to himself an importance he does not have. When I go to church, it is not to find there my own or anyone else's innovations but what we have all received as the faith of the Church - the faith that spans the centuries and can support us all (283)."

I used to think that it would be great to be in the central pulpit of a Presbyterian church where FINALLY the true message and theology of Christianity could be preached! What arrogance! My journey to Rome has been in a large part due to the FACT of Rome, that it is the Church which has kept the faith (with some historical bumps along the way, of course) and is still keeping the faith today. No individual innovations without grinding through the machine that is the Roman curia. Roman Catholicism does not do innovation (on the whole, crazy priests and bishops exist, but then again, the Church is full of sinners, right?).

"To express that faith gives the words of even the poorest preacher the weight of centuries; to celebrate it in the liturgy of the Church makes it worthwhile to attend even the externally most unlikely liturgical service. Hence the substitution of one's own invention for the faith of the Church will always prove to be superficial, however intellectually or technically (seldom aesthetically) impressive this substitution may be (283)."

The beauty of the Roman Catholic Church is the fact that it is the Church, always has been the Church and always will be the Church. It requires no justification (unlike my entire Protestant life) and is bigger than anyone's imagination.

2007-05-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

John Henry Cardinal Newman on Conversion to Catholicism

“What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God, my dear brethren, that He has made us what we are! It is a matter of grace. There are, to be sure, many cogent arguments to lead one to join the Catholic Church, but they do not force the will. We may know them, and not be moved to act upon them. We may be convinced without being persuaded. The two things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you ought to believe, and believing; reason, if left to itself, will bring you to the conclusion that you have sufficient grounds for believing, but belief is the gift of grace. You are then what you are, not from any excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of God who has chosen you to believe. You might have {212} been as the barbarian of Africa, or the freethinker of Europe, with grace sufficient to condemn you, because it had not furthered your salvation. You might have had strong inspirations of grace and have resisted them, and then additional grace might not have been given to overcome your resistance. God gives not the same measure of grace to all. Has He not visited you with over-abundant grace? and was it not necessary for your hard hearts to receive more than other people? Praise and bless Him continually for the benefit; do not forget, as time goes on, that it is of grace; do not pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose it; and do your best to make others partakers of it.
And you, my brethren, also, if such be present, who are not as yet Catholics, but who by your coming hither seem to show your interest in our teaching, and you wish to know more about it, you too remember, that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, still God has brought you into the way of obtaining it. You are under the influence of His grace; He has brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to bring you further, He wishes to bestow on you the fulness of His blessings, and to make you Catholics. You are still in your sins; probably you are laden with the guilt of many years, the accumulated guilt of many a deep, mortal offence, which no contrition has washed away, and to which no Sacrament has been applied. You at present are troubled with an uneasy conscience, a dissatisfied reason, an unclean heart, and a divided will; you need to be converted. Yet now the first suggestions of grace are working in your souls, {213} and are to issue in pardon for the past and sanctity for the future. God is moving you to acts of faith, hope, love, hatred of sin, repentance; do not disappoint Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey Him. You look up, and you see, as it were, a great mountain to be scaled; you say, "How can I possibly find a path over these giant obstacles, which I find in the way of my becoming Catholic? I do not comprehend this doctrine, and I am pained at that; a third seems impossible; I never can be familiar with one practice, I am afraid of another; it is one maze and discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in despair." Say not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, trust in Him who calls you forward. "Who art thou, O great mountain, before Zorobabel? but a plain." He will lead you forward step by step, as He has led forward many a one before you. He will make the crooked straight and the rough plain. He will turn the streams, and dry up the rivers, which lie in your path. "He shall strengthen your feet like harts' feet, and set you up on high places. He shall widen your steps under you, and your tread shall not be weakened." "There is no God like the God of the righteous; He that mounts the heaven is thy Helper; by His mighty working the clouds disperse. His dwelling is above, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He shall cast out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, Crumble away." "The young shall faint, and youths shall fall; but they that hope in the Lord shall be new-fledged in strength, they shall take feathers like eagles, they shall run and not labour, they shall walk and not faint."

- Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 10: "Faith and Private Judgment"

2006-12-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

Scripture, Interpretation, and Joshua Hochschild

Note: This is in a sense an internal discussion in seminary, but I think everyone can gain something from it and please feel free to comment on my view!

There is always an inclination in evangelicalism (broadly defined, please) to bandy around the charge "That's not what the Bible says!" or to set up a opposition to "what the Church (Anglican, Roman, fill in the blank) teaches" and "what Scripture says." I think this perspective usualy betrays itself when someone frustratedly asks "Why can't we just get back to Scripture!?!"

Good question. We can't. But before you scream "relativist!" let me make it clear that we were never intended to "go back to Scripture" in the way this phrase claims. We aren't Muslims, we don't have some kind of original static divine speak in the Bible. If that were true we would all be learning Greek and Hebrew and even then we would never be sure about if we were right since our understanding of these ancient languages is not perfect. Check out a Greek concordance next time if you don't believe me. We as Christians believe that the Word of God is the inspired words of Scripture AS INTERPRETED BY HIS CHURCH. I think this bold part is essential and is the key to stearing clear of a lot of troubles. Let's look at this intepretation bit, then two examples of why it is important, and then get to the name in the title that you are all wondering about.

First, we shouldn't be scared of interpretation; we all do it all the time. There is nothing else in life, really. Just walking down the street today I was looking at cars - but I wasn't looking at cars as some detached object scientifically. I was looking at them AS moving things to be avoided. Looking out my window now I can look at a car AS something which collects rain, or AS something made of metal, or AS something I should key later. The important thing to notice is that I never look at "a car", I always look at a car AS something. My situtation, background, context, spiritual condition (yes!) all play a part in the Interpretive Framework in which I live and move. This is perfectly reasonable - we are embodied beings that are involved with the world around us. Dasein as being-in-the-world if you like Heidegger.

If you accept this (I can't imagine not accepting it once you think about it, really) then this should also apply to how we read Scripture. We always read it AS something: a source of doctrinal truth, a rule book on how to live life, a song to be sung, a poem to be awed by, etc. The possibilities are endless and that's what makes being a finite human so muke fun! We always move "further up and further in" as we meet God in Scripture, to quote C.S. Lewis (anyone know the reference?). But the important part here is that we are always interpreting Scripture within a framework. Let's make that clear: we never know Scripture as "plain Scripture", we only know and understand it inasmuch as we understand anything - within a certain framework which guides our understanding. Gadamer calls this "prejudice" in positive terms, Heidegger calls it "fore-understanding", I call it true.

What does this mean then? Well, it means that the claim "Scripture says" always has to be read as "Scripture, as I interpret it with _______ framework, says." Now this does not mean that Scripture can say anything you want it too truthfully; some frameworks have more claim to truth then others; but the essential point is we need to compare frameworks before we get to Scripture in heated debate. Roman Catholics are not "less" Scriptural than Protestants, they just interpret Scripture through a different hermeneutical key: the Magesterium. Protestants have their own hermeneutical key (well the best do, others are slaves to the newest wind of doctrine and misunderstanding) whether it is Westminster Confession, Luther's Works, 39 Articles and Prayer Book, whatever. Basically none of us comes to Scripture in a vacuum or free of an interpreted framework within which to read it; interpretative frameworks are essential to understanding itself! If you don't think you have an interpretive framework within which you read and understand Scripture there are only two possibilities: 1. You have a really shady and unexamined one (most likely), or 2. You are God.

Let's see how this works out in practice for a moment since theory gets boring (to some!). First an example from Church history, then a more recent version.

1. Arians! Okay, I imagine that everyone has a basic idea what these fellows said. Arius was a fourth century Bishop (!) who taught that Jesus was not of the same substance as God the Father, basically that God was the Uncreate, Jesus was first among creatures, still divine, but "unlike" the Father. Athanasius (a young deacon - who said they weren't important!) established the orthodox position at the Council of Nicea in 325. More than the historical struggle what interests me is why Arius was wrong. One of the things that he had going for him was that he took Scripture more "literally" than Athanasius did. He was fine with affirming Jesus as divine Son of God, more than humans and before the world existed; but he also took the Son terminology seriously and insisted that "there was a time when the Son was not." Athanasius and orthodoxy defended the co-eternality of Son and Father, but they did so with philosophical arguments rather than "Scripture alone." In fact, I don't think Scripture has a whole lot to say in any direct fashion about the eternal generation of the Son which orthodox Christians believe. So why did Athanasius triumph? Because the Church decided that his view was the best way to interpret the Scripture, even though it was not as "literal" as Arius and led to serious mysteries which Arius did not have. The Greek framework of Athanasius (and Gregory of Nyssa) beat out the Gnostic framework of Arius, even though his "made more Scriptural sense." So if you affirm the Athanasian position (and to be orthodox, you must) you have to realize that interpretive frameworks are essential in understanding Scripture; we can not do without them and would be in bad shape if we tried.

2. Jesus as Lord. To give a more modern interpretive example, take the statement: "Jesus is Lord (Romans 10.9)." What does that mean? Well, it depends on what framework you are using. The standard answer (?) is that Jesus is LORD in the Jewish God sense, or at least there is some claim to divinity and supremacy in this claim. Tom Wright however seem to think Paul was using it as a political polemic, as in "Jesus is Lord means Caesar is not!" My first inclination is to see it saying Jesus is Cosmic Lord as in providential control of the universe. Other people would see it as saying Jesus is Lord as ruler of my life choices. Which one is correct? Well, they all are! All of them are perfectly in line with Scriptural witness to Jesus and can fill out the meaning when Paul uses it. Did he have them all in his mind (or any of them?) when he wrote? Doubtful. Does that mean that I need to figure out what Paul thought in order to say I understand what "Jesus is Lord" means? Of course not! But I do need to realize that I understand it from within a particular framework, not in a vacuum. But we are doing this everytime we read and understand Scripture, so there is no problem.

Final Point: what I am saying here has almost nothing to to with the Roman Catholic discussion of Scripture vs. Tradition. The Protestant understanding of that is so muddled it would take a bunch of posts to get it clear! Everything I have been saying has kept only to the Scriptural principle echoed in the Reformation: sola Scriptura! There is no Scripture outside of interpretation, although some claim there is Tradition outside of Scripture (I am not so convinced, but enough for now). This has been a recent news event when Wheaton released their Medieval philosophy professor, Josh Hochschild, for converting to Roman Catholicism. Wheaton requires every faculty member to sign a statement of belief that includes sola Scriptura but when Dr. Hochschild signed it openly affirming the principle the college said he was not allowed to continue on. Wheaton is right in being able to release professors, but in this case the reason for release was his Roman Catholicism, not his inability to sign the statement! He could openly affirm sola Scriptura in the sense above because we all must if we understand what we do when we read Scripture.

So to sum up, this does not mean that God's word is falliable and that anything goes; it means that as Christians we trust God to enable his Church through the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture faithfully.

2006-10-23T08:06:00.001-07:00

Martin Heidegger: Helping Old Ladies Worship Jesus since 1927 AD

Mark 10:17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him (Jesus!) and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus said: "You must make a cognitive assent to something called substitutionary atonement so that you can sit and listen to 45 minute sermons about what is in the Greek and slowly gain more knowledge of Christian stuff."
And the man went away sad because it didn't make any sense to him.

Okay, so I am playing a little hard and fast here, but a question came to me earlier: "What it means to be a Chritian?" Take a moment and answer that for yourself. I have a certain answer but I am concerned that many evangelicals display or give off an entirely inappropriate one. For instance, does being a Christian ultimately mean gaining more theological knowledge or more exegetical skill in determing what the Bible says? Obviously not, for if this were so then the majority of the "Christians" in the world would be barely that. Then you have the problem of Christianity before the printing press, did God just let them off the hook? I don't think so.

The deeper issue though seems to be our attitude towards a certain type of knoweldge: that is knowledge of facts and assertions. Somehow or other the knoweldge of facts seems to have become the hallmark of certain parts of Christianity; you can't be a "good" Christian unless you know that you have imputed righteousness from the atonement applied by the Holy Spirit through various means except by your baptism. Confessionalism, which once was a way to mark boundries in churches, has become the hallmark of your relation to Christ; the more theological facts you know the better. But like the man in the story, to most of us this way of seeing the world doesn't make sense of how we live. Living is not about knowing facts, it is about being-in-the-world. And here is where Heidegger comes to the rescue of old ladies who go to church ever week without "knowing" what is going on in the Eucharist.

Heidegger sees a serious mistake in ontology which has been carried down through the history of philosohpy since Plato (!). I don't want to go in depth on this, if you are interested I encourage you to give Being and Time a go, it is well worth the effort! But back to Heidegger's thesis. He sees our metaphysics as something detached from life; we see objects and think about objects, and make theories about objects, all as subjects. Heidegger wants to scream Nein! to this whole notion of subject/object distinction because he says we are not beings seperate from the world, be are beings-in-the-world, or Dasein. He says that the way we normally see "knowledge" in this old framework is through objects being "present-at-hand", which to him is a derivative form of knowledge and existence. The more fundamental way of being in the world is involvement with the world as "ready-to-hand". When we are being fundamentally we are involved in the world, not speculating about it. This is the "everydayness" which Heidegger sees as most fundamental in ontology, whereas traditional ontology stepped past this mode of being to a detached and less "real" mode.

Okay, let's have an example or two just to get the feel of this. Take the case of writing a letter. There is a world of involvement in this little operation, but we will focus on the paper, the pen and the person (sounds like a Protestant sermon, eh?). Traditional metaphysics would want to break the whole situation down into its constituent parts, i.e. what the pen is doing, what the paper is doing, what the person is doing. We could then go deeper, say the person and look into their muscle interactions, then their neuro interactions, and then...well you get the picture. The problem is that in doing this "deconstruction" we have actually missed what is going on in the involvement whole of the activity. Heidegger says you can't break Dasein up like that becauce you can't seperate being from the world, hence the hypens in being-in-the-world. For instance, while you are writing it is absolutely imperitive that you have no "object" oriented knowledge of the pen at the moment. If you did recognize the pen as an object in this detached fashion you would not be able to write! The same goes for the paper and even the person. When something is happening (anything, even thinking?) there is a total involvement of the world which can not be seperated. It is in this case that Heidegger says object reflection is a second order form of knowledge.

Knowledge to Heidegger is more "knowing how" than "knowing what" about something. The second is derivative from the first, present-at-hand comes after a break down in ready-to-hand knowledge. Here is another example. I was practicing squash today, as I am wont to do sometimes, and I was trying to reflect on what I was doing. But when I tried to think about each shot and each motion, I was no longer able to play the game. In order to play squash I needed to be involved in the whole, not thinking in part. This goes for any sporting activity really, you can't think of every motion otherwise you won't be able to move! It is much like the story of the centipede being asked how it coordinates all its legs. When it tried to think about it it got all tangled up, but before being asked and having to reflect on it the centipede was happily able to walk along. In traditonal metaphysics this "non-reflective) stance has been called "unconsciousness", but not the negative attitude to it. It is not-conscious, and in that sense has the feeling of not being the right mode of being. Heidegger wants to turn this on its head by saying the involvement in the world pre-reflectively is the normal and primary mode of existence, reflection is always a secondary and detached way of existing.

So you are probably wondering how this all fits in with old ladies at church on Sunday? Well, the traditional evangelical understanding of the faith of these old ladies is that they are not as "good" at being Christian since they lack the requisite doctrinal or reflective knowledge of the faith. Most people will deny this implication, but I think they are just making excuses. You can find this out by asking if anything needs to be done for these old ladies as compared to me, the theological student. Evangelical answer: time for Alpha or Christianity Explored! But you can hopefully see that this understanding can be turned around by Heidegger's metaphysics since these old ladies do not have a deficient life in the faith; in fact they may be "more" Christian than many reflective evangelicals who do not attend church like the ladies. As a case in point, these old ladies do know a lot about the Christian faith; it is just a involvement and ready-to-hand form of the knowledge, which Heidegger says is the primordial form of being. When asked about Eucharist they will respond by saying "I go every week" or "I communicate every week." This is not a meaningless action. In it they are affirming in the strongest terms that they believe the Lord Jesus is here and alive today, and working in his people to those who recieve him. The liturgy itself is part of this Christian faith, it inculcates Christianity in not primarily reflection but in active involvement; which is the most important form of living, whether playing squash or worshipping Jesus.

So old ladies dutifully following the liturgy are not "less" Christian because they can't tell you how Justification by Faith works, they are more sure about Jesus and their relationship because they are involved in it. It is only on reflection that doubt can arise; while playing squash I never doubt my existence, but if I sit around long enough I can try and convince myself. In this sense it is the liturgy in its "pre-reflective" splendour which constitutes the Church; for the Christian faith is not about thinking, it is about living.

2006-10-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

Incarnational? What do you mean by that?

A certain term has been showing up more recently in conversation in certain classes here: incarnational. I am sure most people think they know what this means, but to be honest I am not sure they do understand the term. As far as I can tell this word is brandished as a weapon against people of a more hierarchical bent in applied theology. So when I ask what role a priest or theologian has in theological leadership and formation of the laity the classic response is they need to be "incarnational." This appears to settle the debate since if I disagree about this it is taken to mean that I don't like Jesus. Hmmm.... Can we take a moment to investigate how this word is used?

The Incarnation is the classic dogma of the Christian faith that discusses the union between the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus Christ. Two natures held together in a hypostatic union. If you want a quick summary, read here. So what is essential about the incarnation is that God has taken up human flesh, Divine Word has become man. Jesus has become "incarnate."

Now, if this divine and human hypostatic union is the definition of the incarnation, I think it is at least theologically and intellectually naive (and borderline blasphemous!) to appropriate this word in terms of a minister's role. How could a Christian minister possibly be "incarnational" in the truest sense of the term? Are all Christian ministers God incarnate or a hypostatic union of Divine and Human nature? Really?

The obvious answers to these questions is no, of course not! A much better term or phrase for what evangelicals mean would be "dwell among the people" or "tabernacle" or "be amongst them like Jesus." Minister's are supposed to be among the people like Jesus spent his time with the outsiders. But it is absolutely incorrect in my mind to view this action and role of Jesus as "incarnate" ministry. Jesus' incarnate ministry was becoming man, his "humble" ministry was to divest himself of any human royalties here on earth and be amongst the poor and lowly.

So why is it that evanglicals so often use this term "incarnational" when it appears to be blatantly mistaken? Well, I think it is not only a lack of theological awareness in most, but also a desire to have a trump card with a big name on it. Obviously since minstry is suppose to be just like Jesus and nothing like any development in the Church (like robes! or priests!) then everything that Jesus was needs to be imitated by the minister. That is authentic ministry!

But of course this only shows a lack of respect for Jesus' uniqueness and role in salvation history (interesting comparison with how evangelicals view the "cult of the saints". At least Catholic aren't claiming that saints are incarnate!). Only Jesus is incarnate because only Jesus is God. In one sense, only a Catholic can have an incarnational ministry, for the Sacrament of the Eucharist is exactly that: union of divine nature and human nature present on earth.

Now this immediately sounds alarms because then the bread and wine are seen as divine; but the fact is that there is no more incarnation, it is the incarnate Lord who is present again in the sacrament (no need to discuss how this is at this time, only to affirm that since the second century the Christian Church has taught "real presence"). There are no more incarnations, only the continual presence of the one incarnation, Jesus Christ the only divine and human being held together in hypostatic union. If evangelicals really want to have an "incarnational" ministry then they need to go to the incarnation, not to their desire to hang around with people "where they are."

So my main frustration is the way the Incarnation is thrown around today as if it is always available anytime you want it. It is not and could not be so; there is only one incarnation and Our Lord is pleased to make himself known in his incarnation if we so seek him. But this does not mean we are to label a "power to the people" ministry as incarnation, unless you want to baptise anything you think is important with the label of God. That sounds like idolatry to me, not ministry. So let's be careful about how we use that blessed word; words are important, especially the Word who became flesh to save us from our sin.

2006-10-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Calvin's Providence - puppets or people?

I think I have written on this before, and if you are tired of the debate don't worry about it, but providence to me is the most confusing and most exciting doctrine in Christian theology from my perspective (I know other people will favour Trinity and such, but I am a Calvinist in the 21st century so happen to be most oriented towards Providence). And I think this is a continuing issue of some importance since we all seek to be assured that God is in control and that He will triumph ultimately (even after such events as the Amish incident). What I want to do is stay away from emotive arguments such as "I don't like that kind of God (and world)" and keep to a more rational account, of course taking into account that just because something is rational does not mean it is right. All I want to do here is try and defend a Calvinistic form of providence against the objection "That makes us puppets with no free will!", a comment I heard just recently from a close friend. So on to the show!

A few words from Calvin first:

"For he is deemed omnipotent, not because he can indeed act, yet sometimes ceases and sits in idleness, or continues by a general impulse that order of nature which he previously appointed; but because, governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so regulates all things that nothing takes place without his deliberation." (Institutes, I.xvi.3)

"Let him, therefore, who would beware of this infidelity [grounding causality to motion of the stars] ever remember that there is no erratic power, or action, or motion in creatures, but that they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by him." (Institutes, I.xvi.3)

So what we have in Calvin is a total providence, such that nothing happens without God's positive control (whether that is willing permission or something else is left aside). God decrees or ordains all events in the most meticulous manner. The natural response to this is of course "Then we are all just puppets and free from all blame for our actions!" Now there are a number of ways to approach this objection, but let's have a go at it from the free will angle and see what we get.

Free will. Everyone knows (or should know) that we must have free will of some sort in order to make sense of what we all experience in everyday life. We all make choices and these are owned by us in such a manner that we can honestly say "I did that." No one, especially not Calvin, would dispute this. Free will, in some sense, is necessary for the doctrine of sin and atonement, along with other Christian principles, let alone mental satisfation that we lead meaningful lives. So no one in the Christian tradition should dispute the fact that we have free will.

The question is, what kind of free will is it? Here is where the debate begins. Calvin maintains that we have free will insomuch as our wills are not constrained. He does not believe we have free will in the sense that we can do whatever we like. Here is a trivial example of this: I have free will to jump in the air or not to jump in the air. I do not have the free will to jump 100 feet(probably even 2 feet, to be honest!) in the air. My free will concerning my desire to jump is constrained by my non-ability to jump a certain height. I could change this to a degree (say by practicing) but only to a degree (it is physically impossible for me to jump 100 feet without assistence). But it would be insane to say that I did not have free will when I chose to jump! The issue of free will then depends on how constrained the will is. Morally Calvin thinks the will is pretty constrained, but I want to focus in on the metaphysical constraints on the will because of a meticulous providence.

To focus down then, imagine coming to a fork in the road. For simplicity's sake let's assume there is an unclimable wall on all sides except these two paths before you and the one you came from (basically you are in a maze). When you come to the fork you have basically four options: go left, go right, go back, or sit and meditate. Now there are a ton of options that you can think of but are not allowed to do: climb the wall, go through the wall, jump over the wall, become a Blue Whale. But that does not remove your freedom, for your freedom is ultimately placed in the fulfillment of your desires - you always have a limited number of options and you are free insomuch as you own or desire a certain one. So eventually you will decide which one of the paths to take, but the most important part is not the fact that you chose between one from another, it is that you desired or made that certain on your own. In this sense the fact that other options are available is besides the point; only one options is really necessary to excercise free will in the basic level of accepting or desiring a path.

And I think this is exactly what the metaphysical constaint of Calvinistic (and traditional) Providence means: you only have one option based on God's decree but that does not mean your freedom is nonexistent; it may mean it is constrained to a great degree, but then all freedom is constrained. The fact is that we all make the option ours by owning it or desiring it. What this comes down to is that free will is defined by Calvin as the absence of coercion. In the above example, you would not have free will if someone forced you by spear point to go in a certain direction because you would always be able to say "I am not desiring this!" even as you moved. But since there is no physical (let's leave out non-physical coercion for now, please) external agency then you are free to do what you desire, even if there is only one thing to desire, as in the case of Providence.

So we have free will in the sense of not being coerced and can excercise this free will in the sense of being responsible even if there is no other choice. It is the element of coercion that destroys causal responsibility. But I hear someone saying "It seems like coercion is involved, because God is the ultimate determiner of all events!" Good point, let's investigate.

Calvin's classical response to this objection is to seek a dual causality or multiple causal levels metaphysics. Basically there are always two active agents in any causal choice (involving humans, that is): God and me. Both are necessary and sufficient. But who do these two work together so that we need not appeal to pure coincidence that all of God's choices are also our choices? Well, that's tricky, but we might have a shot of explaining it by desciribing the nature of the different levels. Let's have a simple description of a certain event as follows: God ordains and I choose to do something. The first part (God's ordaining) is rather straightforward and Scripturally sound, it is the second that is troublesome, for how can God's ordination allow me to "choose" something freely? Remember first that freely means without compulsion, so it means that I desire or own something. More specifically Calvin breaks down the human choosing into three components (following scholastic thought - which may not be perfect but can be helpful): the will, the habit, and the choice. The will is the function in man which allows us to choose something, and we have already said it is free in the Calvinist sense of non-coerced. The choice is the actual decision made which leads to action (at this point the outcome of the choice is irrelevant since we are focusing on choosing not whether we actually accomplish our choice). But the key point is that there is something between the will and the choice. Our will gives us the capacity to choose while the choice is the decision - but the background or "reason" of the choice is our habit, or our desire. Now as long as our desire is our own then we have chosen "freely". And this is where Calvinism finds its ability to reconcile God's ordination and our free choosing, in my mind.

In a simple way, all events could be described as follows: "God ordains that Adam wills to choose x." This is where the levels come in: God forms our wills in such a way that our desires are towards certain things (namely, whatever happens in the world, whatever choices we end up choosing), but it is our choice which is made based on our desires. This is not to make us free in a libertarian sense from God, it merely means that God has constrained our choices to one option (remember the one path taken) but it is our choice and our desire that chooses that option. Basically God desires that we desire to choose x. This means that God does not coerce us because coercion must occur at the choice level (we can desire something differently than what is choosen in coercion), not at the desires level. So God forms our will to certain desires, but it is our choices (based on our desires) which make the happenings of the world. That is why we must always have both God and man in any description of an event while discussing providence; God wills/desires/chooses that man desires to choose x.

To give an everday example of this (which will not be perfect but may ground the discussion a little better) we can think of a parent raising a child to desire a certain thing. This happens all the time. For instance, I was raised to desire to keep dry when it is raining. I didn't have to be, in some places (probably England, where rain is just a constant experience) this desire wouldn't be necessary because it would be impossible to fill or there was never rain (in Antarctica, for instance). But when it starts raining I do not feel forced to run inside or wear a rain coat, I am just choosing based on a desire implanted in my by my parents or whatever other place I got that desire from. I am totally free in my choice to run inside, but the choice is based on a desire I did not initially determine (it was given to me). It might be the same with God - except that we are still acting in the early stages of practicing choices since we are fallen creatures and a new kingdom is coming. God plants desires into us for a certain action and we choose based on that desire, but it is us who make the choice. We are therefore responsible for the choice and the action which occurs or doesn't occur, but the event was ordained by God at the earlier level.

It seems to me that this dual-causality Calvinist account allows some insight into how we can hold together consistently the two Biblical maxims: All things are ordained by God and at the same time we are free creatures responsible for oour decisions. This doesn't totally remove blame from God for the evil in the world - but then he is perfectly happy to take a certain amount of blame as seen in the death of his Son on the cross. This explanation does not answer the question of why God planted certain desires in us towards certain actions (Amish shootings, for instance), but that question is unanswerable according to Paul ("Who are you, O man?). This account does answer the more immediate question of how Calvin's providence does not make us puppets, and I hope this account of non-coerced free will and desired choice brings some rationality (not all, of course) to that answer.

2006-09-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Back in England - and feeling a sense of absolute dependency?

It is great to be back in Oxford, although there have been the usual transitions to make, what with the smaller food portions, bathrooms two flights of stairs away, and all the actual questions behind the questions. But the bigges transition and shock for me was getting used to my new theological label. I took this test for which theologian I am closest to, and here are the results:

You scored as Friedrich Schleiermacher. You seek to make inner feeling and awareness of God the centre of your theology, which is the foundation of liberalism. Unfortunately, atheists are quick to accuse you of simply projecting humanity onto 'God' and liberalism never really recovers.

Friedrich Schleiermacher: 87%
Anslem: 80%
Jonathan Edwards: 73%
John Calvin: 67% (I think they meant 100%)
Augustine: 53%
Martin Luther: 47%
Jurgen Moltmann: 47%
Paul Tillich: 47%
Karl Barth: 40%
Charles Finney: 0% (Is he really a theologian?)

Built on the foundation of liberalism? Really? I have been influenced by Heidegger and Rahner recently, but I didn't think to any serious extent. I mean, at least I didn't get Luther and all those zeros to questions like "You think God is going to start weird charasmatic revivals which have absolutely no substance and convict people of nothing" saved me from any Charles Finney contamination. Still I think the scale must be a bit off. What say you guys out there? Here are my guesses:

Charles = Paul Tillich
J. Morg = Jurgen Moltmann
Redness = Karl Barth
Josef = Martin Luther. Definitely Martin Luther.

Let me know how it goes and whether you think I am really that close to the "Father of Liberalism." Seriously.

2006-08-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Protestant Principle: Divide and Conquer

A little while ago during one of his teaching hours, my dean was using the word "Protestant" to describe a group of Christians opposed to his own position (which he continually called "Catholic"). At first I was a bit confused about this seeing that the Anglican Church has always been considered a Protestant Church, but the more I have come to think about it the more reticent I am to use the word Protestant because of what Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has called (and he is surely not the first) the Protestant Principle.

As far as I can tell the Protestant Principle is basically "divide and conquer." Actually it might be more appropriate to call it "divide and become insignificant." I mean when was the last time anyone outside the Baptist denomination cared whether they accepted literal 24-hour creationism? The whole ridiculousness of the Episcopal Church going on with homosexuality, liberalism, and female primates (linked?) might very well be seen as a last bid for some significance in a world that ultimately doesn't care what dividing churches do or say. On the other hand, can anyone honestly say that John Paull II did not have a significant influence on the world, let along on Roman Catholicism or Christendom? He may not have stopped communism single-handedly, but his pleas for social action and peace have changed the minds of many. But what is at the core of Protestantism which makes it so insignificant today?

I think Bishop Tom Wright was correct when he said that the Reformation was the religious version of the Enlightenment (in the first sections of The Challenge of Jesus). What principle was at the core of the Enlightenment, broadbrushing accepted? Autonomy of the individual soul or rather reasonable substance. It seems to me that there was a revolt against all things traditional in the early Reformation and this lead to Luther's theology of Protestantism as well as the anabaptist sects which revelled in iconoclasm of more than just stone. The Protestant motto seems to be "divide and conquer", taking every part of tradition and subjecting it to the rational substance we all have in order to weigh its merits. For Protestantism it seems that the whole is merely the sum of all its parts.

On the other side of the debate we have the Catholic tradition, something not subjected to mere opinion in the way Protestant doctrine is formed. This is not limited to Roman Catholicism (I don't think, yet...) because anyone can see the differences of method when they read Luther or Calvin. There is not a page in Calvin which does not go back to the Fathers for insight into the Christian tradition, something he wished to Reform, not remake. Some would make the case for Luther as well, but Protestantism as it stands today in America (at least) seems to have gone the Anabaptist route and seeks "personal" authority in every interpretation. Catholic tradition is something wholly different (pun intended) since the whole is more than just the sum of the parts. Tradition is not just the educated opinions of some men (and women) in the past, it is the living dialogue which the present part of the Church has with the past members. The Church is not a collection of just people, it is the living union of Christ with his bride. The role of the Church is to keep the "faith once handed down" from the apostles and Jesus, whereas Protestantism is to change the faith whenever something new comes up in the mind of an individual. In Protestantism a small group of people are the Church (if you can use the captial C) whereas in Roman Catholicism the Church is the Church. It is a living entity which is really the earthly prescence of the Lord Jesus to his people through Word and Sacrament. In this case the Roman Catholic Church is theocentric whereas the Protestant church is unduly anthropocentric. In the Protestant scheme "man is the measure of all things" whereas in the Catholic system the community of saints is the true rule.

As a case example of this distinction we can look at women's ordination. The majority of Protestant churches have accepted women's ordination as required by Scriptures even though there are no explicit passages commanding it (some would say quite to the contrary). It might be logically necessary that Protestantism accept women's ordination (despite the protests of PCA, LCMS, and others) because there is really nothing keeping them back. In the Protestant scheme one can pull a single issue (women's role in ministry) and focus on it indefinitely until the consensus over interpretation changes. The past does not matter or can be explained away as being "naive" or "biased" as if there were neither of those today! Thus taken to the extreme Protestantism seems to allow a continuously changing doctrine for the church, as seen in the Epsicopal Church as it redefines salvation, Jesus, God, ministry, humanity and everything else. But it does this by seperating one from all the rest, isolating each issue and pounding opposition into submissiong through emotive utterances.

The Catholic position is quite different because tradition and doctrine are "one seemless garment", not to be taken apart and examined seperately. Fr. Neuhaus comments that the present part of the Church is not allowed to change the issue of women's ordination because that ignores the majority of who makes up the Church: the traditional teaching of the fathers (and mothers). In the Catholic system doctrine is allowed to develop, but not to change because that denies the Holy Spirit's continuous work in his Church. This might sound like being handicapped to the past, but that is only because we are naturally inclined to see the past as something bad or wrong. C.S. Lewis called this "chronological snobbery", the idea that the newest things have a stronger truth claim then the older things. We must take seriously the thinking of the traditions and take very seriously the changing of teaching in areas like ordination. Some have compared the women in ministry issue to the African-Americans in ministry issue in America, but to do this is not only culturally self-centred but also historically naive. There was never a prohibition in the Catholic Church of people of different skin colour being priests or bishops (one need only think of the desert fathers - white skinned Europeans?), whereas the prohibition of female priests and bishops has been part of the tradition since the choosing of the twelve.

This example is not designed to argue for a distinct different in ministry roles between men and women but only to show that the understanding of the Church is vastly different between the Protestant and Catholic systems. One says "we need to listen to the whole Church" whereas the other says "I need to listen to myself (or the Holy Spirit, or the Bible, or whatever individualistic misunderstanding of enlightenment you want to put there)." The Protestant Principle is divide and conquer and this will lead to a conquering, but more a being conquered by ever false wind of doctrine.

So I am quite happy to reject the label Protestant as my Dean has. A tell-tale sign of Anglo-Catholicism was the rejection of the Reformation as a mistake, and insofar as it was based on the Enlightenment principle of individual autonomy and reason over thinking with tradition and "being-in-the-world", I am comfortable rejecting that as well. The real question in my mind is whether Newman's path is inevitable and whether a Calvinist would dare to swim the Tiber River.

2006-07-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Is The Episcopal Church really as postmodern as she thinks?

The main focus of the General Convention this year in the Episcopal Church was the issue of homsexuality and the Anglican Communion's response to America's lack of respect (or prophetic movements) concerning the election of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. It has become somewhat of a debate between liberals and conservatives (obviously there were cross-overs, but not many) and a debate between the "progressive" movement and the "traditional" movement. Interestingly enough the traditional side is always having to fight off charges of not being "with the times" or "postmodern" in its theology and philosophy because it is stuck on the old ways. I won't argue anything about the gay and lesbian issue nor why believing in the traditional position can be done by both "modern" and "postmodern" thinkers. What I thought was most interesting as a resolution showing how pathetically modern the Episcopal Church really is was a resolution on evolution. Here it is:

"A129 : Affirm Creation and Evolution
Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 75th General Convention affirm that God is Creator, in accordance with the witness of Scripture and the ancient Creeds of the Church; and be it further, Resolved, That the theory of evolution provides a fruitful and unifying scientific explanation for the emergence of life on earth, that many theological interpretations of origins can readily embrace an evolutionary outlook, and that an acceptance of evolution is entirely compatible with an authentic and living Christian faith; and be it further Resolved, That Episcopalians strongly encourage state legislatures and state and local boards of education to establish standards for science education based on the best available scientific knowledge as accepted by a consensus of the scientific community; and be it further Resolved, That Episcopal dioceses and congregations seek the assistance of scientists and science educators in understanding what constitutes reliable scientific knowledge."

To be honest, I like most of this resolution even though I do not affirm the classic Darwinian natural selection scheme, but it is the last part I want to draw attention to. Up until this point everything was going fine but, predictably, the classic modernist "gods of science" clause is brought in.

"Seeking assistance of scientists and science educators in understanding what constitutes reliable scientific knowledge."

Now I am not quite sure what scientists they are thinking about in this resolution, so I have to at least show a measure of charity here. If those in mind are the likes of Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and John Polkinghorne (all distinguished scientists as well as orthodox Christians) then I hearilty endorse this resolution. I wish Nancey Murhpy was deciding school educational content in the sciences! What I fear is that the "scientists and science educators" are the same autonomous group of "gods" who seem to be neutral and unbiased in their pursuit and command of absolute truth.

Give me a break. Has no one in the house of bishops or house of deputies being involved in the philosophy of science and knowledge in the last hundred years? Has anyone in their read or understood Michael Polanyi's work on the personal element to all knowledge, or the issues of warrant that Alvin Plantinga has been so keen to point out? Are there actually educated people out there who think there is a group of neutral scientists just searching for truth who can be brought in to adjudicate on whether something is "scientific" enough for school or most importantly in this context, church teaching?

Sorry, call me a Van Tillian, but the last thing I want is some atheist telling me what constitutes scientific knowledge and what doesn't. As Matheson Russell pointed out to me this year: "Scientists don't have any idea what they are doing [philosophically]." The myth of scientific neutrality keeps rearing its ugly head for some reason when it has been quite conclusively shown that there is no such thing. Everyone does their work from certain presuppositions and if they are not Christian ones, I don't care what subject you are studying, your opinion in what is true is just not that binding on the Church. Coming to recognize our own indebtedness to certain traditions and basic beliefs in our horizons is one of the greatest things about "postmodernity." The demon of objective absolutivity outside of a certain reference frame has been defeated, why do we still give him any says?

Everyone who knows me (or Van Til's philosophy) knows this does not mean relativism; it just means being honest about our presuppositions and how they govern our beliefs (scientific or otherwise). Just in case anyone doubts in the influence of "religious" beliefs on all scientific work, look at the case of consciousness in modern physics and science in general. Those who are committed to a non-Theistic or more pointedly, a reductionistic account of nature are really fighting the evidence of non-physicality in the mind over the brain, which has been quite seriously advocated by the likes of Kurt Godel, Roger Penrose, John von Neumann, and John Eccles, to name a few. No matter what evidence is shown for non-physical descriptions of the mind and reality, people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are going to continue to sing a different tune. But they would be naive to say they are singing only because of "objective" facts. Their own non-Theistic presuppositions are weighing in heavily in the determination of what is "scientific" and what is "supperstitious." Again, I am sorry but I have no time for someone who is deciding what is "scientific", or "true reality" when their basic conception or reality is so flawed (no belief in the Triune God).

I think the "scientists and science educators" bring certain things to the table of dialogue and search for truth that are important and so I appreciate their contribution in furthering the conversation of reality; but as far as deciding what is "scientific" in the broadest sense, no thank you. I will take someone who can to the research they can and has the right presuppositions with which to do it. Calvin needs to be remembered: you can't see the world aright unless you are wearing proper glasses. These people certainly aren't.

So I find it interesting that the Episcopal Church totes the label "postmodern" to its advantage in the gay and lesbian issue, but rejects it completely in the area of scientific research and education. Tom Wright's comments about the homosexual response seem to be continuously appropriate: "This sounds like a straightforward attempt to have one's cake and eat it [too]."

2006-05-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

Reformed Education: How do you teach Jesus in Calculus?

"Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

This is the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and I want to address the first portion of the answer in regards to education, something near and dear to my heart. Hopefully nothing radical will be seen here, but I think we need to re-envision our understanding of Christianity in the West in order to bring Christ back to his central place in our lives. So this is a first step in imaging what this might look like in practise.

Before the pragmatics we need to get a overall goal of education. In the Reformed tradition this can be nothing other than to bring glory to God.

"On the Reformed basis man from the beginning knew the goal of his life. God made all the facts that surrounded him. God made man in his own image. There was thus no fact within or outside of man which was not fully revelational of God. The nature or essence of every created fact lies in its function in the process of the divine self-revelation to man."

"The Reformed Faith frankly begins with the presupposition of the absolute truth of the Christian position. It is this that the teacher tells the pupil. As he has learned that the goal of human life can be known only from the authoritative revelation of God, so he knows that the criterion by which man must live can be found only in this revelation too."
- from Cornelius Van Til, Reformed View of Education

The goal of education, as in all else, is to reveal God to man and to bring glory to God by allowing man to recognize and acknowledge him. This means that there is absolutely no point in learning something which does not bring glory to God. Now defining what brings glory to God is obviously contentious and tricky, since it is to the glory of God to revel in man's abilities - so long as this reveling is given thanks to God for his creation. The ultimate point that needs to be kept in mind is the lack of neutrality in the world - nothing is neutral in God's kingdom, either it is serving him or not. It has been, in my view, thus a severe shortcoming of the standard educational theory which tries to keep God out of the classroom in one way or another. This leads to a generation of students who feel no need whatsoever for God, or only feel the need for him in certain "spiritual" areas of life. This must run counter to Christian teaching that God is sovereign over all life and there is nothing in creation that does not relate semi-directly back to him.

At this point the issue of public vs. private schools needs to be addressed. Living in the West where we value freedom of mind and conscience, it is an absolute no-starter to try and impliment any return of a Christian perspective within public schools. This is unfortunate, but if we are to avoid a total Christian state which forces all to believe (no matter how much we assert that it is for the best - which it is!) then the answer to education in the Christian perspective must be the private schools. I wish this were not so, but we do live in a world where many do not believe and we are not called to force others, but rather persuade them by the inherent wonder and truthfulness and everything else of the Christian message and life-system. Thus the private schools serve a evangelistic function as well, but from here on out it is important to notice that my comments must be restricted to private schools. (Being a Christian teacher in a public school is an entirely different issue, one which I find terribly difficult)

So our schools (private) are made to bring glory to God in all learning. This means that at some level every single subject must lead and reveal God's total rulership over this world. This is true in math as much as it is in biology, psychology, and english. Each will have a different way of playing out this mission, but the goal is the same: bring glory to the Triune God who rules and works in this world. I really think this is a key point: learning is absolutely useless unless it brings glory to God; unless the motivation for teaching something is to bring about a "revelation of God" there is no real reason for doing it.

But this does not mean all we teach is religion nor does it mean that everything taught (including exponential mathematical functions) is "directly" related back to God (say by a reference to Ephesians or something). This is to appreciate the difference between Scripture and the revelation of God. Although Scripture is the sure and true revelation of our Lord and Redeemer, he makes himself known in so many diverse ways - thus the doctrine of common grace in the Reformed tradition. Even the Scripture must have a goal in mind. There is no point to the question "What does this text mean?" unless you have in mind what the overall aim of interpreting Scripture (and life) is: to know God and our place within his universe. The text can mean any sort of thing but this is absolutely useless unless we all agree that we are trying to interpret the text for the purpose of knowing God better through this form of revelation. The same is true for his other works, say in science and mathematics and the humanities. We need education to stress the means element towards tne ends given us in creation: to know and glorify God. This does not mean that the "means" are unimportant and can be discarded; we would never say that about Scripture, why then about mathematics or any other subject? But the goal must never be lost in the means, as I feel it has in educational theory.

On a secular level this has been stressed by the fact that education is not just about learning facts but developing a person. Education is personal and therefore the idea of Matrix-like learnign via plug is repugnant because we all agree that education is about personal formation and growth as much as it is (or more) than about learning a specific subject. But as Christians we can go a step further and talk about the reason for this formation or the goal of it: to know ourselves and thus to know God, and in knowing God to then know ourselves and the world we live in (John Calvin, Institutes I.i.1). Formation is for the whole person to relate to God and thus better to his or her neighbour; we fulfill God's commandments by learning more about our world.

This is to say that we do not stop teaching calculus or modern physics or any other subject in particular, but that we aim that teaching explicitly at the larger goal of personal formation into the kingdom of God. In fact, if we do not make this aim of learning explicit in our classes, we are selling a lie to the students because we know that God is the author and sustainer of all sciences and subjects, and that the whole world is designed to bring glory to him and his Son, through the illumination of our minds among other things by the Holy Spirit. On the ground then I still teach integration by parts in calculus class, but I do so to explain the wonders of (1) creation in mathematical formulation, (2) the wonders of the human mind in reasonability and intellecutal assent, and (3) the wonder of God's thoughts through the mathematical principles. We are called to "think God's thoughts after him (Herman Bavinck)" and this is not done by arrogant humans but by people who believe in a God who reveals himself to us through diverse means and wishes for us to know him and thus ourselves and our world. It goes without saying that the final say on our view of him is governed by his Scriptural revelation, but we all know that is not a science book and so other education comes in to work within the Scriptural framework to seek God out where he is to be found. The principle of common grace comes in again for in seeking him we believe that we will find him, not because he is hiding, but because he is revealing himself to those who look with the eyes of faith, or as Calvin was found of saying, "the spectacles of Scripture."

The principle of education than is the seeking of a revealing God in all of creation, with the result of finding him, no matter how tentatively we frame that finding, bringing praise and glory to him in his revelation. We can "grieve the Spirit" in many different ways, and not revealing God is the main sin of education which a Christian understanding seeks to correct. Soli Deo Gloria!

2006-05-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Reformed Faith and Starbucks

Rick Warren will soon be on Starbucks coffee cups!

"As for the Sudan, I completely agree with you that we haven't had to go to the firing line for our faith lately. What should we do about that?" - Charles

This comment is only the latest to spur me on towards thinking about how American/Western Christians deal with the differences of life experience compared to African Christians. My struggle: getting whole milk instead of skim milk in my extra-grande-cupalicious-mocha-frappucinno-light. Their struggle: getting shot in the head while taking care of children. Does anyone else see a disconnect? Didn't Jesus say we would encounter persecution for our faith? Is Starbucks really the agent of that persecution? I doubt it.

So the question becomes "What do we do about it as good evangelicals in this situation?" I think the obvious answer which keeps coming up in most circles is to become a missionary so that you get shot in the head. The down side to this is that not many people really want (feel called?) to this from America, so instead we just feel guilty about going to Starbucks or whatever other Christian/Capitalist venture we support. I think both these solutions are really Satanic tricks to be honest and I have been struggling to find a good alternative that fits with God's personal call on my life (and others by extension) and the overall Biblical message of cosmic redemption. So this will be a short exposition on some conclusions I have come to and maybe a practical application or two. Yeah right.

I think the main problem in the West which leads into this mission/guilt complex is that we don't correctly understand our situation in the world. For some reason we (I) think that the West is as Jesus as it is going to get and this produces the uncomfortable position of not wanting to go on to something else (like Africa, which doesn't have Crispy Creme or Jesus). But this is absolutely false! I think in many ways American (and the West) is in worse shape as compared to Africa on the kingdom of God front. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that marytrs in Africa should be happy to be there as opposed to being stuck in a stipmall, but what I am saying is that Christianity and everything else is clear cut in Africa in many ways it is not in America, or at least this is what I hear from missionaries who have worked there. And that is what I think the majority of evangelican Christians in America are probably called to: get America to love Jesus. Seriously! I am not going to cart out the "back in the good old days" slogan appealing to Leave It to Beaver or any other sureal impression of America; that is not necessary. One only has to look around and think about our culture and it is immeadiately obvious that Jesus is not done with us yet so we shouldn't be resting on our laurels.

What then should America look like? Let me quote a bit from Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch prime minister who made a valiant effort at bringing a Western country under Christ:

"One desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. And sooner than that I should seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of life fail me. It is this: That in spite of all worldly opposition, God's holy ordinances shall be established again in the home, in the school and in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God."

Wow. Just re-read that passage about his driving goal and passion in life. Amazing. It is the "pseudo-Christian" attitude of seperation of Church and everything which has gotten us into so much trouble in the States, I think. We evangelicals have been afraid to stand up for the "holy ordinances" of Christ and have settled for more meager results. But that is not the vision of the Scriptures nor is it the vision of the Reformed Faith which finds a creed in another one of Kuyper's statements:

"There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

The Reformed Tradition, especially as seen through Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, and Van Til, gives us the necessary tools with which to make this nation and world God's kingdom. In this all embracing view there is no seperate space for anything but the Lordship of Christ. This whole progamme rests on the foundational principle that life and everything in it is not for man but for God alone. Listen to Cornelius Van Til:

"It is the Bible alone that speaks of such a God. And the Bible speaks of his absolute authority. This God always speaks with authority. This God of the Bible, who speaks authoritatively through his Word, is the presupposition of the intelligibility of human experience. He is recognixed in the Reformed Faith as the final reference point for all human predication. In this respect the Reformed Faith really stands squarely opposed to all forms of non-Christian thinking. Non-Christian thinking takes man as the final reference point in predication. It places man where the Reformed Faith recognizes God."

Now I am well aware that these all embracing claims will sound quite outdated and outlandish to "postmodern" ears which hate anything that smacks of totality, but I really think we need to get over the metanarrative phobia. The insight of recent philosophy is important and crucial to tear down man made structures of thought and imperialism; but if those places are not filled with the Sovereign God's imperialistic vision of the kingdom of God, we are really left with nothing but a jumbled mess. So I acknowledge the need to be careful with totalitarian language while at the same time being willing to concede that the Covenant LORD might actually have an overall plan which He is working in redemption history with us as key players in the effort.

So the question becomes: "What does this Reformed position look like on the ground?" Due to length of article I will have to leave some implications I have come up with until next post (particularly in what I see my calling to be: education. The "Christ in Math class" will be addressed!), which is good because I think this total vision of Christ's Lordship over all needs to seep into our Western minds. But as one quick implication, I think it means we need to read our Bibles (especially the OT) while sipping on our extra-mocha-grande-cupalicious-frappucinno with skim or whole milk.

2006-04-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Evolution and Calvin: A Speculation (but what isn't?)

I have been reading the amazing book by Michael Polanyi, a distinguished chemist and philosopher, called Personal Knowledge and came across this very interesting passage on the evolution of man:

"A further step was achieved by the aggregation of protozoan-like creatures to multicellular organisms. This enabled animals to evolve a more complex physiology based on sexual reproduction, a manner of propagation which greatly strengthened their personhood. The story of the Fall presents a strangely apt symbol of this event. For as one part of the body took over procreation and the animal ceased to survive in its progeny, lust and death were jointly invented. And as the achievement of metazoic existence established the rudiments of this tragic combination, a finite personal destiny arose to challenge the surrounding deserts of deathless inanimate matter." - Polanyi, emphasis added

Now my brother, being an evolutionary biologist, would be able to go further and such in explaing this significance, but what strikes me as theologically important is the "Fallability" of human (and all) nature which Calvin so aptly described in his sermons on Job. Being a Reformed Christian I happen to believe in a "historical, personal Fall" of Adam and Eve and how this reconciles with evolutionary theory and structure is well beyond the scope here; so I leave that fact as something you can either accept with me or allow you to call me a raving "hardcore fundamentalist." What interests me in this is that as a Calvinist it is always a hope that the requirement of the Fall will be made more clear since we affirm that it was ordained and superintended by God.

Calvin deals with this through Job by answering the question of how Job is "perfect" yet can still be righteously afflicted by God. He does this by making a distinction, almost three levels of perfection. The first is God's perfection and rightness, which is the definition and highest for of all perfection:

"There is also another kind of righteousnesse which we are lesse acquainted with: which is, when God handleth us, not according to his lawe, but according as he may do by right. And why so? Forasmuchas our Lord giveth us our lesson in his lawe, and commandaundeth us to do whatsoever is conteined there: although the same do farre pass all our power, and no man be able to performe the things that he hath commaunded us: yet notwithstanding we owe him yet more, and are further bound unto him: and the lawe is not so perfect and peerlesse a thing, as is the sayd infinite rightfulness of God, according as we have seene heretofore, that by that he could find unrighteousness in the Angels, and the verie daysunne should not be cleere before him. Thus ye see how there is a perfecter righteousnesse than the righteousnesse of the lawe. And so God listed to use that: although a man had performed all that is conteyned in the lawe: yet shuld he not fayle to be condemned." -Calvin, emphasis added.

What Calvin is saying is there is "Creator" righteousness and "creature" righteousness, and the latter is far from the former, even if the entire revealed law of God is followed. As Paul Helm says: "God's own perfect righteousness is a se, underived and maximal, while Job's own righteousness observance of the law is an instance of the creaturely righteousness of one who, though 'sound', is sinful and imperfect and who in any case has whatever goodness he has from God." So even if Job is righteous as accords to the law and human righteousness, he is still not perfect or righteous as compares to God, and never can be. Thus there is an intrinsic "unrighteousness" and "Fallability" in all of creation. Calvin uses the Angels as a perfect example because even though they have never been given the law, they are yet condemned outside of God's saving work:

"Paul calls the angels who stood in their uprightness 'elect' [I Tim. 5:21]; if their steadfastness was grounded in God's good pleasure, the rebellion of the others proves the latter were forsaken. No ther cause of this fact can be adduced but reprobation [!], which is hidden in God's secret plan." - Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Helm sums this line up by saying: "According to Calvin the righteousness of the unfallen angels is a righteousness for the continuance of which they are dependent moment by moment on the goodness of God for giving them that righteousness, or at least for not withholding it." Does this mean the creation was not "very good" as Genesis records it? Absolutely not! It just means that "very good" does not mean perfection in the fullest sense. The creation was "very good" but also inevitably "Fallable" in the sense that Calvin has outlined - it is good but not perfect.

Polanyi's discussion of the evolution of inanimate to animate creation seems to give us some specualtion on this - for the essense of life requires the essense of fall and death. There was immortality in lifeless creation until the reproductive aspect, or "lust as Polanyi calls it, entered the picture. But with this advance in the first signs of "personal" life came the existence of death, the final enemy of Christ in the Scriptures. So life as created is inherently "Fallable" in the sense that to achieve its original created righteousness it was outside of divine righteousness, and thus the Fall was inevitable and necessary to life itself as creation found itself with Adam and Eve. But this of course opens the door for the full redemption of creaturely righteousness with the "divinization" of the Christians in Christ. For we are now and will be finally clothed with righteousness and perfection in Christ and live in a new heavens and new earth. As John writes:

"Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." - Revelation 21:3-4.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Note: I am not supporting or attacking evolution in this article, only pointing out some interesting overlaps and implications. Reformed theologians have taken both sides of the debate; Calvin (a version of the theory was around in his day) and Alvin Plantinga denying evolution whereas B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge defended it.

2006-04-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Christomonic Radically Orthodox Ethic!

"Whoever wishes to take up the problem of a Christian ethic must be confronted at once with a demand which is quite without parallel. He must from the outset discard as irrelevant the two questions which alone impel him to concern himself with the problem of ethics, 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do good?' and instead of these he must ask the utterly and totally different question "What is the will of God?'"

Bonhoeffer's ethics is in line with the RO project in that he sees no 'secular' space for thought or being, there is only God. "The knowlefge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical refelction. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge." His project is a little different from RO in that he emphasises Jesus Christ in his incarnation as central to all life and knowledge whereas RO works with the Trinity, but this is a minor different as long as Bonhoeffer is understood to view the Trinity in his reconciliation of God and Man through Christ. What about Christ though?

"Jesus Christ said of Himself: 'I am the life', and this claim, and the reality which it contains cannot be disregarded by any Christian thinking, or indeed any philosophical thinking at all. This self-affirmation of Jesus is a declaration that any attempt to express the essence of life simply as life is foredoomed to failure and has indeed already failed."

Here we have a radical ethic, one which demands the Christian perspective first and foremost; no ethical thinking or speaking is possible unless one does so under the rubric of Christ. This is because for Bonhoeffer it is in Christ that life exists, and only in Christ. Through him the world was created, loved, condemned, and reconciled. Speaking of the world or man without Christ is speaking about something that does not exist. Because of the incarnation we are forced to speak of Christ when we talk about the world, life, or man; to do otherwise is to be speaking half-truth at best and a nihilistic lie at worst (thank you RO).

According to Bonhoeffer the entire reason for existence is to become "real men", which means nothing other than to correspond to reality - but not a 'secular' or 'neutral' reality, for reality is nothing other than the life of Christ; or more exactly Christ.

"Reality is first and last not lifeless; but it is the real man, the incarnate God. It is from the real man, whose name is Jesus Christ, that all factual reality derives its ultimate foundation and its ultimate annulment, its justification and its ultimate contradiction, its ultimate affirmation and its ultimate negation. To attempt to understand reality without the real man is to live in an abstraction to which the responsible man must never fall victim; it is to fail to make contact with reality in life."

Like Barth Bonhoeffer sees Christ as the "Ja" and "Nein" to all in the world; his incarnation brings condemnation and salvation, it declares the world bankrupt and broken but also restores and recreates it through the death and resurrection. Reality then is not some abstraction, it is the personal presence of Jesus Christ, or in RO terms the participation of the Triune God with his creation. This means that any thinking, especially ethically, does not come from the abstract but from the personal; ethics is responsibility, responsibility to God and man but lived in the life of Christ.

There can be no "abstract" ethic then if Christ is reality; ideologies will simply not do. "All ideological action carries its own justification within itself from the outset in its guiding principle, but responsible action does noy lay claim to knowledge of its own ultimate righteousness. Ultimate ignorance of one's own good and evil, and with it a complete reliance upon grace, is an essential property or responsible historical action. The man who acts ideologically sees himself justified in his idea; the responsible man commits his action into the hands of God and lives by God's grace and favour."

This is not to say that there are no moral "principles" in life; rather it is to say that they are all derived and will be found in the personal incarnation and life of Jesus Christ. All ethics is a following of him in the most serious sense. We do not live life according to abstract rights and wrongs, we live them in conversation and partnership with the real man, Jesus Christ. Ethics is personal - we are always making decisions for or against a person, not a principle. This is a truly radical ethics in that it denies the Roman Catholic principle of "natural law" and makes grace the only possibility. All our actions are done in shame and guilt, we depend on the grace and favour of Jesus Christ and his work to sanctify any.

Any action must go through and be done by Christ in order for it to be considered righteous. In Bonhoeffer then we have a truly Protestant ethic; one which demands the continual intercession and grace of Christ baptizing all our thoughts, words, and deeds. To do something outside of Christ is to fail in the sight of God, no matter what action is taken. To live outside of Christ is to live to yourself and ultimately only to damnation and condemnation, for you live to an abstraction and a nothing - nihilism in its ethical form.

To act ethically then is to act as Christ and nothing can be conceived of except in Christ - for the world only exists in his reconcilliation of it to God. This reconcilliation means a curse on all our deeds, for although they may be "reasonable" or "right" before man, they are always condemned before God. "Before other men the man of free responsibility is justified by necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience; but before God he hopes only for mercy."

Bonheoffer's ethics is both Protestant and Radically Orthodox - it both forces all action and life through the reconcilliation of God and Man by Jesus Christ and denies the existence of any "secular" reality. Reality is nothing other than Christ continually reconciling the world to God - his eternal priesthood and kingship until the final consummation of the new heavens and the new earth. "Behold, I am making all things new! (Rev. 21.5)"

2006-03-05T01:16:00.000-08:00

Social Contract or Covenant Community?

Introductory Comment: I am not a political theorist. I want to be up front about that as this post will have some political theory discussion in it and I am no expert in that area at all. So although I think there is some truth to the following statements (maybe a good deal of it!) I am also aware that I am alomst entirely out of my area on this, although the covenant word gives me some credibility. Okay, on with the post!

Liberal democracies (like the US and England) seem to be founded on the principle of "social contract." This was first set down in systematic fashion by John Locke and is the founding principle behind a good deal of our governments. But in dealing with issues of community and Trinitarian participation I am a little concerned that the notion of contract is not something we Christians should be buying into at all. Explaination:

Social contract seems to me to be set almost on entirely selfish principles. To give it a rough definition, social contract is the "deal" made between a group of individuals which allows for the maximum benefit of all parties as they co-operate together. This sounds reasonable at first and is unduly effective in the States, but the foundation must be examined. It is based on two principles: individualism and self-interest.

The social contract assumes that we all come as autonomous entities and run into each other, much the detriment of society. So in order to help progress and production, we all join in some contract together with certain stipulations and regulations because it will be in our best interest. It might be in the community as a whole's best interest, but this is only insomuch as it is in the best interest of the individual members of that community. First and foremost is the individual's needs, wants, and desires, his or her quality of life; secondly is the benefit to the whole. The reason individual's enter into contract with one another is not primarily to make society a better place, but to make it a better place for them, else why would they even bother? The root motion of the contract to me than is an inward pointing movement, the social contract brings benefits first and foremost to me. It happens that this also brings benefits to others like me, but that is secondary in the decision to enter. We enter the social contract so that we can live in a better society as individuals. Unless we had this we would always be running into each other and hurting one another. So in essense it seems that the social contract is a self-centered notion of community: it is based on individuals seeking their highest good which hopefully is also the highest good of the community as agregate.

If we are really not autonomous beings, if we are really all related in community and away from ourselves in our basic humanity as a continual particiaption with the Triune God, does this social contract make any Christian sense? I am inclined to say it is actually the antithesis of Christian community. So what is the alternative? Something that might seem quite similar at face value: the covenant.

"Let me conclude by characterizing an alternative Christian account of the social ontology of communities, drawing on early Calvinist theorizing rooted in a distinctive notion of covenant. On this account, covenant is seen as established among responsible human associates, directed toward a distinctive moral purpose rooted in created human nature, and entered into under God. A Calvinian covenantalism is profoundly different from the individualistic liberal contractarianism that was its secualarized offshoot." - Jonathan Chaplin (ICS)

The notion of covenant is not only supremely Biblical and Reformed (are the two identical?) but is other-centered instead of self-centered. I submit that this version of social community relatedness is a more Christian approach to society, namely because it opposes the two principles of contract: selfishness and individualism. The covenant is a basic relation in the economy of God, it starts out with the principle of relations. We are not a bunch of individuals who happen to run into each other and therefore need to set up some contract to exist. We are naturally and primarily in communion with one another: the covenant presupposes and establishes that community. It is therefore more basic and proper than the contract. But more importantly the covenant is other-focused. It is not an inward movement towards the individual's desires and goals, it is a responsibility to the other as outside and of significance to me own existence. The covenant is a promise to do to the other because it is the right way to relate, not because it will be beneficial to myself. The finish to the sentence "I will do this because..." is not "it does this for me" but "I am required to be." The covenant is about outward promises to all others, but primarily God as keeper and regulator of the covenant.

"The covenant is not merely a voluntary congress of autonomous individual persons, but is grounded upon supra-personal authority." - Graham Maddux

The covenant is then not something which is a decision to make after our existence, it is a requirement of our full humanity. If we want to be human in the fullest sense, we must enter into relationship with God and one another by means of covenant. We are beings in relation, in community as primary, not secondary. Social contract starts from the notion of individual existence and moves to community relations, though still focused on the individual. Covenant starts from relationships and seeks to bring them in proer order, not in the sense of bringing properity and benefits to individuals, but in the sense of restoring the image of God and the relationship with all parties.

"The common character of all associations in Calvinist political literature ... is neither individualist nor absolutist. It begins neither with the self-evident rights of individuals nor with the a priori authority of rulers. Rather it asks what is the vocation (or purpose) of any association, and how can this association be so organized as to accomplish this essential business. Authority (or rule) becomes a function of vocation." - Frederick Carney

Covenant is not based on individuals deciding what works best for them, nor on the idea of some absolute monarch - for even God is in covenant. It is based on the essential character of existence: relatedness with others. Covenant is therefore a much more Christian social understanding of relationships, one not based on the inherent individualism of humans but on the total relatedness of Creator and creatures. It is outward focused with a overarching purpose or teleology - the vocation of bringing the reign and rule of God to this earth. This Calvinian notion of covenant then finds its home in the Trinitarian understanding of existence as relationship - participation with God as three persons united by love and giving between them and with us involved.

Note: I am not advocating a form of socialism or the rejection of capitalism. I am not an expert in this field but do not see an absolute rejection of the latter in seeking the former. I am only questioning the secular conception of contract which we have so heartly accepted in liberal democracies. Capitialism and democracy are not (as far as I can see) at odds with covenant. They may need some reshaping and re-storing with the rest of social order, but they need not necessarily be thrown out. My only desire is to ask whether contract is allowable with a created for and in relationship understanding of existence - my contention is that it is not.

2006-02-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

Two questions: why is it so cold in here and why are we singing African-American spirituals seeing that everyone is English?

The following was my evening here in Oxford, an interesting combination of things you may or may not find on the other side of the pond.

1. Riding a bike in the rain - in Oxford no one really drives anywhere because pertol (gas) is too expensive even if the cars are the size of my shoe. Instead we ride bikes everywhere. This is quite a bizarre experience because I have never used a bike in any conditions which require multiple layers of clothing and winter gloves. Bike riding up until Oxford had been a summer occassion on a nice day and such. Here is is the main mode of transportation. This is especially fun and exciting when it is raining, which it does quite a lot here. Here's a picture of my bike:

So tonight I went to visit the church I am preaching at next week to scope out the surroundings and see what the congregation looked like. This meant a twenty minute bike ride in the dark in the rain, which was pretty cool to be honest. I haven't ridden much in the rain yet so it was new, but I imagine the novelty wears off and it becomes pretty wrecthed at some point. Hats off to the Wycliffe ordinands who do this every morning, I feel like I should make you guys a cup of tea or something.

2. Old English Parish Church - after ridding in the rain I had a nice cold and remote parish church to look forward to. It is always weird worshipping in a building that is older than the United States of America, but it seems to be holding together quite nicely. These old churches are great because apparently people in the 1600's had straight backs which fit quite nicely in these pews. And who said we don't have any signs of macro-evolution? So when the priest said "I want everyone to get comfortable" there was a restrained British laugh from the congregation. The service was really nice though, looked a lot like an American Episcopal Church with most of the congregation (about 25 people) a little over 25, shall we say. I felt pretty much at home there, especially when I heard the theme: Freedom. Here's a picture of the church. Imagine it dark and Englandy (how did that blue sky get in there?).

3. African-American Spirituals in an English Church? - so the theme of the service was Freedom and the music was mostly selected from African-American spirituals. Awesome! "Nobody knows the trouble's I've seen", and such. One slight problem though: the congregation is all older and British. Interesting. Spirituals take on a whole new meaning when "r's" are added to the end of words ending in "a" and when no one can sing lower than tenor. Imagine a chain gang breaking for a cup of tea and a biscuit and you just about have it. These people were born to sing Southern Gospel:

I shouldn't make a fuss about it though since I am sure it is just as weird to hear my Northern American accent pronounce the Old English of the Book of Common Prayer. I love the Old English but I am sure my friends here are doing everything they can to keep from putting their hands over their ears as I mutilate various english words, like "inestimable." Seriously, you try and pronounce it. It almost needs an English accent.

So it was an interesting experience, and after a nice windy bike ride back I settled down to the only way an American in England can finish the day: a Twix bar with a cup of tea.

2006-02-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

Is Nicea more important than Jerusalem?

In a way, yes it is. Or at least that is the thrust of Colin Gunton (in The One, The Three, and The Many) as well as David Bentley Hart (in The Beauty of the Infinite). Gunton's book is infinitely more readable than Hart's although Hart's is probably more impressive. So what's so great about Nicea? Simple: The Trinity

Gunton spends most of the book working out a theology of creation through the Trinity which will answer all of modernism's and postmodernism's questions of meaning. His thesis is quite simple: since Irenaeus we have lost a focus of the Trinity and so have either fallen into the fallacy of the one or the mistake of the many. Let's hash this out.

The one vs. the many is a ancient debate between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus said the root of everything is flux and motion - you can't step in the same river twice. Everything is different. Nietzsche is the Heraclitus of the modern period, although much stronger. Parmenides is the opposite, everything is composed of the One. This is pre-Plotinus, but you get the idea. The root of everything is unity in Parmenides whereas the root of everything is many in Heraclitus. But Christianity is the way between with a radical concept of ontology which neither of these systems stands a chance against: the Trinity. For in the Trinity we have difference and unity, we have relationality. Tri-unity: the concept that makes sense of the universals of reality but at the same time respects the particulars in creation. Christianity destroys both these previous systems and paves a way for real thought and relationship - in Gunton's words: reason, ethics, and aesthetics. All are expressly accounted for in a dynamic way by the doctrine of the Trinity and the Trinitarian creation of the world. Creator and creature enter into a relational dance since the basis of all reality is relational unity.

So what happened?

"My contention is that the distinctive failures of our era derive of due relatedness to God, the one, the focus of the unity of all things. That is the pathos of modernity."

"Modern relativism and scepticism are, then, in part the outcome of the failure of a doctrine of God, and particularly of a doctrine of God as creator.... In the process, the Parmenidean God of Christendom is replaced by the dispersed Heraclitean deity of individual human judgment."

What is the Parmenidean God of Christendom? It is the result of the fact that we went with Augustine on creation instead of Ireneaus. Ireneaus had a robust Trinitarian doctrine of creation, that all things were created with Christ and the Spirit acting, that each particular was important and related to the Trinity. All of creation is in participation (but not process or equality with) the God-head because he creates out of the free gift of his love. It is a particular and substantial creation, one grounded in the relational aspects of the Trinity. Man and Woman are made for relation, not just to themselves, but to each other and especially to the rest of the created order. There is a beautiful harmony of all things in God participating with each other because the essense of existence and being is the tri-unity of God: both unitive in purpose and love but dynamic in difference and relation. Irenaeus' creation is God breathed and sustained, upheld in the particulars because every part of it is important in realtion. We are not alone in life, all creation is involved in relation to everything else, and that is not a by product but rather the necessary component of creation - because it reflects the Creator who is dynamic and Trinity. Relatedness and relationship is what it means to be.

But this all changed when Augustine moved in the Platonic route, following his Manichean roots. The creation was no longer particular, but rather a reflection of the central ideas of God, a modified forms. Creation is no longer whole and substative in itself as participation, rather it is reflection of divine attributes. God is no longer creating out of relationality, but now because of a unitive will. "The root of the modern disarray is accordingly to be located in the divorce of the willing of creation from the historical economy of salvation." With Augustine we get 'eternal archetypes' and Platonic universals. "Not the particularlizing will of God, but general conceptual forms come into the centre." The move to Parmenides is on its way, no longer is God acting relationally and particularly in creating everything, rather he is setting down universal creational forms which creation can correspond too. Do you see where this is going?

Then we get a quick tour through modernity with Kant and the boys. Once God is displaced from the center as relational being (for in true Trinitarian theology nothing can exist outside their relation to him and his relation to them) we are making the way for autonomy and individuality. So Kant altogether displaces God from any involvement with creation and sets the mind in its spot. Now the subject is in control of all things, but this only makes sense once participation and relationality is lost. Once God is removed from his space as Creator, he will start looking more like creation (Ockham and Scotus) until finally he can be removed and his will is replaced by the rootless Kantian will. The human mind is now the One that Parmenides was looking for. But here is the problem: you can't stop there. Once immanentism is accepted (no transcendentals outside the mind - thank you Kant) then there is no reason to stop the disappearance of the will entirely. Instead of one unitive will called God (in Augustinian terms) we now have an infinite amount of individual wills called man. Isn't it interesting how Parmenides ends up at Heraclitus in the end? For with Kant and Niezsche who finishes the job we have a total fragmentation. Modernism tried to find a universal but in doing so ended up destroying the idea of anything universal. Without a gounded and participatory will Radical Orthodoxy is right: all you have is nihilism. The self grounded in itself is nothing at all.

The 'other' which was once related to creation and the Creator in meaning and participation and relationship is now something to be seen as outside, unwanted, redundant. This is modernism and hyper-modernism: individuality in the face of oppressive others. "Whereas modernism tried to come to terms with the 'other' by excluding it, postmodernism simply seeks to render it irrelevant. The underlying fear of it continues unabated. both forms of modern culture are unable to deal happily with the particular in its relation to other particulars."

So what to do? Get back to the Trinity. What does this give us?

1. Community - if creation is relation by nature, by definition, than we can actually learn to appreciate and relate to the other rather than running from them (i-pods?) or finding them irrelevant. We are not made individuals! We are made to be in participation with God, with humans, and with the created order. To not be so means we are not fully ourselves. "The human creation is what it is as a being in relationship." This is not some reflection of the divinity in some monist sense or Platonic forms sense, it is strictly participationist. We are related with others and creation, to hide ourselves is like chopping off limbs!

2. Particularity - because of the Irenean doctrine of creation, we are important as individuals in relation. We are not some reflection of the absolute mind of God, nor are we some fragmented and meaningless parts - we are important in difference and distinction, yet relationally. Again the Trinity is the model. It is a co-equality of being, but a seperateness of being. The hypostatic union is not about ontological subordiniation, but rather role subordination. There is an asymmetry involved in certain relationships - the Son is begotten and is under the Father while the Spirit is proceeding (from both?) and life breathing. Each has specific roles but they are only who they are in relationship. The Father is not the Father without the Son and the Spirit, same goes for all three. Their relationships bring the meaning and substance to their being. We in the same way. We are different from animals and rocks, there is a subordination but we are deamonic if we forget which side of the Creator/creature distiniction we are on. But subordination does not exclude equality, rather it gives meaning and fulfills being. Does this help with gender role issues at all? Maybe.

3. Church - to tie in with what I have been previously writing on, the Church is the supreme being of creation in this sense. The Church is the true relatedness of the whole cosmos to God, it is the presentation by Christ through the Spirit of the created order back to God the Father. "Social being, of the kind embodied in a true ecclesia, is the deepest expression of human reality." The Church as body is the only right participation in creation for humanity and the rest of the world. The Church is the rightly ordered society for community, the rightly ordered place of human being. One can not be fully human outside the Church because one is not related in the right way to God, humans, and creation. Since relationships are ontological and not simply phenomenological, define true reality and are not just another aspect of it, being related in the wrong way is to be less than human. Of course fallenness needs to be taken into account of all of this, but the fact that relations ground being means we need to take the community of the Church as a serious part of being creations.

Trinitarian thought and being is what makes us most distinctly different and Christian in this world, not just as cognitive concept but as participatory reality. Why have we let it slip? We need to reinvest our thoughts and life to the Trinity and re-evaluate how we relate to God, humans, and the world. Is Nicea more important than Jerusalem? It is a stupid question in a sense because Jerusalem is caught up in Nicea. The cross and atonement can make no sense outside of the Trinitarian life of God and his relationship with creation.

Maybe St. Cyprian didn't go far enough. Forget the idea of salvation outside the Church, there is no humanity outside the Church!

2006-01-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

"No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother"

- St. Cyprian Evangelical Catholics?

Provocative, eh? Let me quote John Calvin for you just in case you think this is a "Roman" thing:

“But as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels,(Matth. 22: 30.) For our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have spent our whole lives as scholars. Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify, (Isa. 37: 32; Joel 2: 32.) By these words the paternal favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.”

In fact Calvin has a ridiculously high theology of the Church in his Institutes, going so far as titling the fourth book "Means of Grace: Holy Catholic Church." So here's the deal - if you want to be an orthodox and traditional Christian, you have to have a high view of the Church as the "body of Christ." That's it. No way around it.

Continuing on then with my Evangelical Catholicism I think the issue of the Church is one of the most important notions that needs to change if we evangelicals want to serve Jesus. I was recently doing a study on Church discipline and was shocked to find out how low a view of the Church there was amongst my fellow ordinands. Let it not be true! I think we have been fed lies about what the Church is for the last two hundred years in evangelical circles and it is about time we found out what the Church is really about. First a discussion of the 'popular' conception of Church I find someplaces among evangelical Christendom and why I find there faulty, then a more positive view of the Church from an evangelical perspective. Important: I am not putting forth a uniquely Roman Catholic position here, I am defending the historic view of the Church as Mother which finds itself even in John Calvin, who was as Biblical as a theologian gets.

Evangelical conceptions of Church

I hesitate to even capitalize Church when using it in evangelical terms because most of us were taught to view Church in the same way as we view the sacraments: something we kind of do but we know nothing really happens. Are you serious? When asked what the Church is most evangelicals will probably have no idea what the question means. More appropriate is "who is the Church", not what. That's because they don't think it actually exists. I think this is a product of the incredible Enlightenment focus on the individual and loss of the sacramental union and presence of God on earth. So the Church is really just the name for a group of people who cognitively assent to certain ideas and who may (or may not) show up together to sing songs and listen to someone talk for an hour. The question of why you do this from an individualist evangelical perspective still needs to be asked, but I imagine it is the same as the aforementioned sacraments: "It's always been this way." But if you don't think there is a metaphysical presence and participation that is more than just a bunch of individuals, why bother? Some groups in America I think are realizing this and have decided to ditch the whole Sunday service thing ('service' way to make it meaningless) in favour of 'actually' doing something. Why sing hymns and listen to the Word when we could be doing something useful like feeding the poor or building houses? That question has to be asked by evangelicals who have lost the sense of a high theology of Church.

More to the point, I think this makes practical matters in the Church community impossible to deal with. The Church is seen not as an elect people of God trying to redeem the world through its own community that is centred on the presence of Jesus Christ, it is a bunch of likeminded people who are glad to have people show up and leave whenever they like. "Whatever gets them saved" is the cry of the day, but what does salvation mean if it is not an ingrafting into the body of Christ? And isn't that body defined totally by some cognitive facts laid out by Rick Warren in the evangelical framework? The idea of Church discipline (one of the traditional marks of the Church along with the Word and Sacraments) is nonsense because there is no such thing as 'the Church'. There is just an everchanging and never confident collection of people who assent to roughly the same things but don't know what to do about them. I'm I being unfair? I really don't think so.

Positive Aspects of the Church

So the question is then "What is the Church?" Well that is a insanely difficult question and a perfect definition is probably impossible to give in a fallen world, but something we could get our teeth on would be the same thing Calvin and St. Cyprian have been saying throughout Christian history: the Church is themystical union of Christ, the space where humanity participates with God through the mediation of the Holy Spirit, the community of God's faithful which is ever increasing and has the final goal of conquering the entire earth in the name of Jesus - through martyrdom and evangelism with the Holy Spirit. Working this out a bit, the Church is:

1. An actual reality which is more than just individual believers who assent to things; it is the presence of Christ on earth. When God set about restoring order after Gen 11 he didn't just go to individuals, he found Abram and started a nation, one which had a particular identity and physical embodiment. It is a lie of modernity that when Jesus came he gave up on Israel and decided to seek individual souls. He actually finally opened Israel to the rest of the world – the Church becoming the wider expansion of the nation of Israel. There is an organic unity here which says that the whole is more than just the sum of the individual parts. I think this is true of marriage as well - when two are united together it is more than two people - they are made one flesh, but it is a different flesh, with the creational participation in the goodness of God.

2. The Church is sacramental. We need as evangelicals to get back to the Church as sacrament (mysterious presence of Christ) and as the mystical body of Christ. Paul says this all the time - why don't we believe him! The Church is united not (just) by the cognitive assent to Creedal beliefs, but also in the union that comes about through baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are high mysteries where the Holy Spirit brings us into communion with the Lord Jesus and thus makes us one as he and the Father are one. I am tempted to say that if a 'Christian group' does not have the sacraments then they do not have Christ - this is the view of all Christian history up until the radical reformation, which somehow became the evangelical position! We are done with modernity's emasculating desire to render everything as cognitive truth, we can speak once again about participation and revelation, lets get back the physical and spiritual dimension to the Church, as opposed to the mental which we have been force fed for so long (you can try and argue that there was a spiritual dimension but it really came down to the Spirit giving you truth, not actually indwelling in you like Jesus says in John 14).

3. The Church is evangelical. That needs to be said. The Church is formed around the canon of Scripture and the Holy Spirit's witness in and through it. He makes us known to the Father through the Church but the Church is exactly what we find in the NT and the continuation of the nation Israel in the OT. You don't need to get rid of the Bible to be 'high Church.' In fact, you need it more than ever. The Church is supposed to transform the entire world, it is a community that is to draw the world into it by the Holy Spirit so that all may be one through the participation with Christ in worship of the Father. As I have said before, the personal relationship with Jesus is wonderful, but there is more to being a Christian than me and my Bible. I can never figure out why evangelicals are so scared of the high Church position. Have you read the Church Fathers? Do you know how highly they view Scripture? We got our committment to Scripture from them, not the other way around.

The Church is what Jesus initiated through his ministry and his death and resurrection. I am worried that we are turning our backs on him by denying his kingdom on earth in the form of the Church. The historic teaching has always been that there is no salvation outside of the Church - and they weren't talking about a social club that met on Wednesday evenings; they were talking about the physical and spiritual presence of Jesus Christ with his people in the prayers, the Word, and the breaking of bread. It definitely didn’t have Matt Redman.

2006-01-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

Evangelical Catholicism

"We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church" - The Nicene Creed

I was talking with another ordinand on Sunday who happens to be of the "lower" church persuasion and the subject of baptism came up. (Note: this post is not about baptism, so don't worry about infant vs. believer (what?) or regeneration or anything). I was pushing the more traditional view of baptism as a 'serious' sign of your Christian faith whereas he was pushing the 'discipleship' view of following Jesus. Fine. I think being a Christian means being a follower of Jesus and I think this entails having a personal prayer life with Jesus and all that good evangelical stuff. Wonderful. I hope I can keep growing closer to him in prayer and worship and through Scripture reading with the Holy Spirit. Here's the one problem though with taking that 'evangelical' view to town: it means that there are only about 40,000 Christians in the history of the world. Let me explain.

The problem is that 'personal relationship with Jesus' is a rather new term, coming from the Great Revival around the late 18th and early 19th century, and it has only been in the last 70 years (maybe) that this whole idea has taken real form. It is really a product of the individualism which hit the Western world around the Enlightenment and just kept getting more individual until we get sweet postmodern fragmentation even in ourselves. I am not even who I am now! The question is what about all the people who lived before the 20th century? I think this is the standard history of the Church according to 'evangelicals' (note: this is a characature, just humo(u)r me):

1. Before Christ: Old Testament people doing things they don't understand (putting blood on door-posts, taking Saturdays off, sacrificing animals) so that God can chastize them for not recognizing that Jesus was coming ("Oh! When Abraham met that weird king of Salem I was supposed to know he was like the God-man as high priest. How did I not get that!"). This shenanigans goes on for a while, and then...

2. Jesus comes! This means a few years when he is an adult were everyone was speaking in tongues and having intimate Bible studies and literally following around Jesus...doing something.
3. After Jesus: The apostles did alright since they had the Holy Spirit and formed Church plants and Churches in kitchens and all sorts of individual Churches were there were tons of speaking in tongues and healings and everything. Great!

4. After Apostles: Around the year 100 Christianity stopped being about Jesus and turned into the Anti-Christ religion, all about works and worshipping Mary and tons of non-personal relationships. I mean, where did the Bibles go? Did the bishops take them? Why weren't people having private devotions in the mornings with Scripture readings? This goes on for about 1800 years...

5. Billy Graham! Yay! Personal relationship time and giving your life to Christ and reading scripture in the morning and accountability and everything (maybe even tongues?).

Obviously you know that history is ridiculous, but I seriously think a lot of people believe something like it, although they might mention Martin Luther or someone and say they were an evangelical...who celebrated Mass. And believed in the sacraments and real presence of Jesus. So if you really push for the 'evangelical line' you end up with 1800 years of non-Christians. Now can you explain to me how in the world you can recite the Nicene Creed believing that? What is the catholic Church, and what is the communion of saints? John Stott when he gets there? So here are a few of my thoughts:

1. I do not want to throw away all that 'evangelical' stuff, I think it is really important. God has blessed us today with Bibles in every home (I have about 10 versions, I imagine you do too - what a privilege!) and the Church is allowed to meet without persecution of any real kind in the West. So we need to hold on to those things. But...

2. We evangelicals need to take seriously the old tradition, the one that birthed our faith. That's right. We wouldn't be evangelicals unless Thomas Aquinas had written the Summa Theologia or Augustine had preached original sin. The tradition which came before us was good and right and there is so much to be valued in it. We also need to have a better historical perspective. You can not demand that to be a Christian in those times you needed to have a 'personal' relationship with Jesus, let alone speak in tongues! They didn't think like that. Get out of your modern context for a few minutes! Being a Christian for 1800 years meant going to Church, hearing the Word, recieving the sacraments and confessing with the Creed. That isn't that bad. I think there would be less division in the Church if we got back to something similar to that.

3. So I am pushing for a more 'catholic' perspective, one that is wider than merely 'personal Jesus'. The integrity of the faith demands it. If we don't accept the orthodoxy tradition of the Church (the creeds, the liturgy, the theology) then we are throwing off almost all of Christianity. We have stripped off all the meat and there is just bone left. If you want to be part of a dry and bone like church that's fine, but don't call it Christianity. It is offensive to all the martyrs who died so you can sing praise songs. Think about that some time.

So I think the Christian Church needs both. I think in this time (21st century) and this place (West) we can 'raise the bar' with Christianity. More is to be expected from those who have been given more, and the Western Church has so much more than the early and medieval Church. We can talk about a 'personal' relationship with Jesus, prayer groups, guitars (?). But don't dare sell the rest of Christian history short. There is incredible wisdom in the old tradition. We are told to honour our father and our mother. Remember that one of the oldest expressions of the Church is as mother, how dare we dishonour her after all she has given us.

The Holy Spirit has worked in the Church throughout Christian history with stubborn, broken, and sinful people. We are just the same. Let's do much with the bounty he has given us, but let's value and respect the incredible things our brothers and sisters did before us with so much less. Or did that make it so much more?

2006-01-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

To Become What One Is - Dynamite!

I think Friedrich Nietzsche is the most life-affirming, positive philosopher in history. Seriously. He is attacked for being a nihilist and takes on the title "immoralist" but when understood in context Nietzsche provides a view of life that is so positive it almost puts Christianity to shame, or at least some versions of Christianity. What's his deal? Just a few thoughts on "immoralism" and "amor fati".

When you hear "immoralist" the first thing that comes into mind is probably Ivan Karamazov's idea of "everything is permissable", right? I think this is how the majority of people think of Nietzsche, someone who said "God is dead" so we can do anything we like. But this is exactly the opposite of what Nietzsche believes. He is an "immoralist" only in the sense of his hatred of external imposed virtues, particularly the "Christian" virtues he saw around him. Nietzsche through his works is trying to free man from external oppression not so might can make right, but so that real virtues can flourish. He is heavily influenced by the Greek virtues and Stoic philosophy, which I will come to later. Importantly though is that life is not something that needs external rules to get along for a while, but something that demands virtues because of the power of life itself. Let me explain.

Nietzsche is combative against Christianity because he thinks it is hindering people from becoming "who they are" in that it is denying reality and existence in the flesh. He eschews the idea that things are all screwed up here and we just need to follow some external rules alien to our nature until God ends the game and takes us to some spirit place. Nietzsche sees an inherent "goodness" in life as it is, he doesn't think people need to look outside of life to get their moral bearings and ideals. So he is an immoralist in the sense that he doesn't subscribe to some eternal moral system, but this doesn't mean he doesn't have a moral system. He was actually an incredible moral and upright man and encourages the virtues as the most important aspect of life. Nietzsche is the ultimate "Yes-man" in that he wants to affirm people in their lives without appealing to some outside standard.

Whom do you call bad? - He who always wants to put people to shame.

What is most human to you? - To spare someone shame.

What is the seal of having become free? - No longer to be ashamed before oneself.

Most importantly to my mind is that it is Nietzsche who wants to say Yes to another person, not some abstract standard. It is he who wants to be affirming, not the "norm" or "rule." For in "standard morality" it is the rule which is affirming, and we are affirmed in so much as we live up to it. Take feeding the poor for example. If Jones spends a day working at a soup kitchen and is commended by Fred for it, Fred's commendation is really secondary in that Jones is primarily commended for "doing good" or lining up with standard morality, which Fred agrees with. Fred is really saying "You did a good thing because..." but Nietzsche thinks this is impersonal and un-affirming. Nietzsche wants to affirm from himself, not forced by some external morality. No because. This view of personal affirmation is quite powerful to me, although I have some questions to be addressed later.

The second theme in Nietzsche is his life motto: "To become what one is" How is this done? Through the amor fati - the love of fate.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity, still less to dissemble it - all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity - but to love it!

I don't think you can get more positive about life than this view. To love everything that befalls us, not just accept it or be resigned to it, but to love it! To see it all as an important part of shaping who we are and loving who that is and everything that entails - you can't get much more positive than that! No more sad faces, for everything is to be seen as "good", everything is of value. Everything is loved, incredibly powerful language. Nietzsche goes beyond Stoicism here in not only accepting, but loving! How wonderful would life be if everything that we encountered could be loved in this world.

So paradoxically Nietzsche's two most important goals in life are to affirm and love it. This is where I find his view so positive, as marked difference from his mentor Schopenhauer, probably one of the most depressing philosophers of all time. I would really like to take his incredibly positive view of humanity and life on board, but I have a few questions:

1. Nietzsche's view of man is incredibly high. So high that although he doesn't believe in God he would say we are as close as it gets in the Ubermensch. If only we were freed from external compulsion true virtue would shine forth and man would become godlike. But this view of man iis radically different and almost incompatible with the Scriptural/Calvinist (I tend to think the slash is pretty small, you may disagree...) view of man as fallen creature in a corrupt and fallen world. We aren't that good and that is why God revealed himself to us through the Law and then through Christ. Left to our own devices I am not sure we could live up to this Nietzschian ideal, so this seems unreconcilable with Christian teaching. There might be a slight case with common grace and sensus divinitatis but that is really stretching it in order to live up to the Ubermensch.

2. I am not convinced that without some "external morality" you can affirm or justify anything like this. The idea of external morality is not too appealing and I would want to use language of Holy Spirit and indwelling to make it more incarnational, but there is certainly a "coming down" from heaven in the revelation to some extent. So I am not sure that Nietzsche can ground his Greek virtues in life itself. But the Greeks didn't really believe in transcendent gods, so it might be possible. I guess this brings up the question of the Fall again and how deep that is.

So as positive as Nietzsche is towards life and humanity, I am not sure we can follow him, no matter how much we may want to. Too bad really, I guess if Christianity weren't true Nietzsche would be the way to go.

Side note: If anyone says "Isn't amor fati just Calvinism?" I have only one thing to say: "It's time to start slapping people."

2005-12-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

Tom Wright and Scripture: part II

The Hebrew people loved to tell stories. The Hebrew Scriptures is nothing other than the collection of the great tradition of story telling which the people of God were involved in. But stories were not the same to the Hebrews as they are to us today. Most of us see stories as nice anecdotes or something you tell to kids before they go to sleep. No one takes them seriously though...

Tom Wright has done more than anyone in the field of the Biblical story, pointing out that the stories the people of God told were not just about conveying information, they were about changing lives. No part of the Old Testament is merely about information, everything that was taken down was done so to motivate action, everytime the Hebrews retold their story people were reminded they were part of the covenant God's role in redeeming the world. Even a cursory study of the Old Testament makes this obvious. For example compare the description of Manasseh in II Kings 21 and II Chronicles 33. In Kings the author portrays Manasseh as being entirely evil, whereas in Chronicles the author portrays him as middle of the road. Why the descrepency? Because Kings was written during the time of the exile when Judah had to be reminded of just how much they had broken their covenant with Yahweh and how just he was in punishing them with the exile to Babylon. In Chronicles we have a different situation. Judah is back from exile and now the people need to be reminded of Yahweh's faithfulness and the covenant faithfulness of his servants. Different contexts, different tellings of the same story. In the Hebrew mindset the Scriptures were not some static biography of God and his people, they were how God spoke to his people and to the world.

In the New Testament Wright points out that we find very much the same. "Paul expressed what the apostles all discovered: that this retelling of the ancient story, climaxing now in Jesus, carried power - power to change minds, hearts and lives." Or again "The apostles and evangelists believed that the power thus unleashed was God's own power, at work through the freshly outpoured Spirit, calling into being the new covenant people, the restored Israel-for-the-world. The 'word' was not just information about the Kingdom and its effects, important though that was and is. It as the way God's Kingdom, accomplished in Jesus was making its way known in the world."
Wright points out that we have forgotten about the context which the Scripture finds itself - the world yesterday, today, and forever. If as Christians we treat the word as a past event, we miss the point. The word of God is not just about a book we can hold and study, it is about the Kingdom proclamation that Jesus is Lord and Caeser (or any other worldly power) is not. We cannot seperate the reading and studying of God's word from his mission to the world.

"'The authority of scripture,' when unpacked, offers a picture of God's sovereign and saving plan for the entire cosmos, dramatically inaugurated by Jesus himself, and now to be implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church precisely as the scripture-reading community." Wright uses "reading" in a compact form for such things as liturgy, devotional reading, etc. The important point to note is that we don't stand outside of Scripture, we as Christians must see ourselves as part of it. We are explicitely included in the canon in such places as John 17 and 21, and also in the Book of Revelation, but certainly there is an implicit understanding that the Scriptures are the word of God to his Church, which we find ourselves in and from which we are to transform this world through the power of the Spirit.

The Scripture is the word of God because he still speaks through it with his Spirit and we are to use his word to change the world around us. It is not a collection of random stories, or even a story about understanding the world. Scripture is THE story which the whole world finds itself in whether it acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord of the world or not. This is not a personal story about individual believers, it is the revelation and speaking of God, through with the Church brings the world to Christ, that we call the Bible. How did the apostles see the Scriptures? They told the story of the covenant God and his final action through his Son Jesus. But this was not just a nice story to accept mentally, the story changed lives through the power of the Spirit. Check out Acts 2 and following to get a feel for the power of God's word. Now we have that same story written down to us, but it is still living and active because it tells the same story of Jesus and God working to reconcile the world. That's why Wright emphasises that it is not the inherent authority of scripture that is most important (if even meaningful), but the "authority of the triune God, excercised somehow through scripture."

For postmodernism this seems to have two particular advantages:

1. Continental (and to some extent analytic) philosophy has stressed the importance of language. In fact postmodernity can sometimes be summed up in the idea of the "linguistic turn" a fuller understanding of how we speak and think. Heidegger and Nietzsche do battle with language and one incredible philosopher even says "everything which can be comprehended is language." Language as ontology. Whether or not one follows this extreme, clearly language is one of the most important aspects to being in postmodernity and the strong empasis on God's word through scripture plays perfectly into this. God's main mode of revealing himself is through his word, speah-acts, and ultimately in the Word of God himself: Jesus the Logos. The Word of God made flesh is a field ripe for postmodern heremeneutics and RO has only barely touched the surface which Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa had tread so long ago.

2. The Enlightenment bequeathed to us the idea of a "neutral" history, among other things. Texts as only texts about facts. As modernity birthed and lost control of postmodernity this idea of neutrality was quickly ripped to shreds. But surely the Bible never intended to be read as a "neutral history" in the modernist sense? N.T. Wright, among others, has seen this as a perfect opportunity to emphasis the fact that the Bible is the story, not a metanarrative overarching all other smaller narratives, but the narrative which God has spoken and speaks, and which his people tell and retell until his return. This is not something to be dryly studied (although it requires quite a bit of study), but a story to be lived in because we find ourselves in it. The Scriptures are the living story of how God has and is acting to redeem and transform his world, starting with the hearts and minds of each reader and moving out to the entire cosmos.

The Scriptures are not some ancient book which a bunch of religious humans wrote at various times; it is the living and active story of God, the spoken word of how he is reclaiming his creation through his son Jesus Christ and it is the power by which he has spread the message of salvation and redemption in the first century as well as the twenty-first.

2005-12-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

Tom Wright: Biblical Scholar of the Year, Part I

The question of how to read Scripture and what authority it can have over anyone's life is a serious one, especially in the skeptical Western Church. The Enlightenment project of "pure reason" (eat it Kant) has ultimately failed and produced a child which has wrought its own destruction: postmodernism and deoncstruction. How do conservative Christians read the Bible in light of postmodernism and the Western challenge of reason alone? Tom Wright in his latest amazing book The Last Word takes on both of these challenges. I want to do two "short" entries on this book, part I here on his statements of modernity and postmodernity and Scripture, part II on his way out of both with the classic three-fold understanding of "Scripture, Tradition, and Reason" within the five act model (which looks suprisingly similar to covenant theology, Wright is a Calvinist!).

Modernity
Wright makes the interesting point that in modernity something which was once connected to an overall picture of reality all of a sudden sundered itself and was raised to the highest form of authority: reason. Not the similarities with this discussion and what Radical Orthodoxy has pointed out through univocity of being and Duns Scotus. The appeal to reason during modernity was "not as an insistence that exegesis must make sense within an overall view of God and the wider world, but as a seperate "source" in its own right." Reason is now somthing totally seperate from creation and guess where the seat of reason is found: man. So whereas up until the Enlightenment reason meant coherence in the creational and providential plan of God, a full blooded reality, reason has now been seen as the sole factor in determining truth.

Postmodernity
All of this absolute reason, something which has never existed and makes no sense in terms of a created universe with a transcendent Creator (how can anything in the creation be predicated with absolute when there is a transcendent God who cannot be identical to creation?) comes to a crushing halt as postmodernity, modernity's own child, points out exactly how far this "reason" can get us: barely out the front door. "Postmodernity, by unmasking the power interests latent in texts and movements, not least those of the last two hundred years, has offered a sustained ideological challenge not only to many ancient and modern texts but to modernism itself." This is all old hat, but the implications for Bible reading is something well highlighted:
"All we can do with the Bible, if postmodernity is left in charge, is to play with such texts as give us pleasure, and issue warnings against those that give pain to ourselves or to others who attract our (usually selective) symapthy." Postmodernity leaves us no way to decide on what text has any credence since it equal deconstructs all texts and ideas. The impact in the church is staggering: "Much criticism, both modern and postmodern, has thus left the church, after years of highly funded research in seminaries and colleges, less able to use the Bible in anything like the way which Jesus and the earliest Christians envisaged." Modernity started cutting the Bible down (as enacted by Thomas Jefferson and his "personal" Bible of just a bit of Luke and some other "true" pieces) and postmodernity finished the job by gutting the Bible entirely. Now it is up to you to decide which text is good and bad, no longer is the Bible a lion which cannot be tamed, rather it is a carcass ready to be scavaged. "All that deconstruction achieves is a nihilism in which the only relief is a kind of hermeneutical narcissism, taking one's pleasure with the text and letting the rest of the world go by unnoticed." The Bible is meaningless in the Western Church today because we have bought into this system.

But is this really where we want to be? We have allowed the Bible to be mutilated and finally totally tamed. In what sense is the Bible than to have authority over our lives? How is it ever to do the work which it so clearly seems to be set out to do? How can the Bible change lives? The only way this is going to happen is if we get rid of the man centred idea of reason vs. revelation and return to an uncompromising position of Bible first. This is the view of the Reformers, and we have even more tools in which to determine what the Bible says, but we have to admit that whatever it says is not to be judged as right or wrong by our standards, rather we are to be judged by it. But to make sense of the Bible from this perspective we can no longer see it as some isolated text among many: it needs to be central to the Church and to the world as the way in which God reveals and governs his world. Or to let Wright speak: "the phrase 'authority of scripture' can make Christian snese only if it is a shorthand for 'the authority of the triune God, excercised somehow through scripture.'" Now it is not a dead text, put a living revelation of the plan of God, active through the Spirit and made a part of our lives for the redeeming of the world.

2005-12-11T01:10:00.000-08:00

"Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind."

This passage is from Acts 26:24, it is the scene where Paul is telling King Agrippa and Roman procouncil Festus of his conversion. Right in the middle of it Festus stands up and shouts this line, which is my favourite verse from this semester. Here's why:

For the last day or so I have been fighting a bunch of Lutherans over the New Perspective of Paul and trying to convince them that N.T. Wright is not a heretic. If you want to get an idea of what the New Perspective is, check out John Zahl's blog on the right there and it is the second posting with the awesome sword fight. But this morning while reading the latest comments (which have shifted away from New Perspective because a "semi-Pelegian" found his way in - go to work you Lutheran thugs!) something came to my mind which for some reason hasn't shown up in a while: "Is theological training driving me out of my mind as far as the Gospel of Jesus is concerned?"

I mean, arguing about whether faith is a covenant marker for the community of Jesus or the "work" which brings righteousness by imputation is fine and good, but I think we theology students (and others) can get so lost in the details that we forget what is central: Jesus atonement on the cross. Because regardless of where you stand on the Calvinist/Lutheran thing or a whole load of other things, the message of Christianity needs to be about this:

1. We were created good by the Triune God.
2. We fell into sin which brought the curse of death, physical and spiritual upon us.

For some reason the rest of this post got cut off, so here is an amazing picture:

2005-12-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Nietzsche Knocks, Gregory of Nyssa Answers

Logic, are you serious?

I was just reading Nietzsche's The Gay Science (not what you think - it is really better as the happy science, a sarcastic title against knowledge as we know it) and I came across this amazing passage. Speaking of the origin of logic (the basis for all knoweldge), he says:

"The predominant disposition, however, to treat the similar as identical - an illogical disposition, for there is nothing identical as such - is what first supplied all the foundations for logic. Similarly, in order for the concept of substance to originate, which is indispensible to logic though nothing real corresponds to it in the strictest sense, it was necessary that for a long time changes in things not be seen, not be precieved; the beings who did not see things exactly had a head start over those who saw everything 'in flux'. The course of logical thoughts and inferences in our brains today corresponds to a process and battle of drives that taken seperately are all very illogical and unjust; we usually experience only the outcomes of the battle: that is how quickly and covertly this ancient mechanism runs its course in us. (Nietzsche, 112-113)"

I guess I would summarize this passage in three points (Is this a Presbyterian sermon?):

1. Logic is founded on the false idea that things are identical or can be seen as such.
2. Logic is founded on the false notion that things are constant or unchanging, i.e. substances.
3. Since these two foundations of our knowledge are incorrect, we should see logic as a cheap pragmatism which is nothing but a false construct of the world.

I think this is pretty powerful and quite explains why people see Nietzsche as bringing moderism to its knees even before the "postmoderns" arrive. His arguments to me seem rather convincing. Take the first one. This is easy to see in practice. Looking outside at all the leaves falling off of the trees it is obvious to me that my category "leaves" doesn't actually mean anything. No two "leaves" are the same, so how could I group them in such a fashion? Surely it is only because it is advantageous to do so, even though it is giving a wink to what is true. I think this is even more obvious when we are called by some group name, say "students", or "you". It is fine and good sometimes, but no one really wants to be called "student" all the time or "you", we are a particular person and we can not be defined by anything else but our name. Mental experiment for this: what makes you human? Two legs? What about those who don't have them? Ability to reason? What about those who can't? When you try and figure out a definition you see that there can be no one perfect categorical definition, because we are all different. Very interesting.

Secondly the flux questions is something postmodernism is keen to pick up on. Things are always changing. You are literally a whole different person some every five years when all the old cells die and are replaced. Physically we are all changing every nanosecond. Stability is again a wink at what is really happening. This is true emotionally as well. Nietzsche used this point to attack the notion of cause and effect as well.

"Cause and effect: there is probably never such a duality; in truth a continuum faces us, from which we isolate a few pieces, just as we always perceive a movement only as isolated points, i.e. do not really see, but infer. There is an infinite number of processes that elude us in this second of suddennes. An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum, not, as we do, as arbitrary division and dismemberment - that saw the stream of the event - would reject the concept of cause and effect and deny all determinedness. (Nietzsche, 113)"

We think in terms of static forms because that is how our mind best sees things, but that is not how the world is. Without going into how quantum mechanics starts playing around with cause and effect (although equally it does have a lot to say about quantization) it is easy to see how we lump a whole continuous stream into seperated events. If this is incorrect (which Niezsche argues for) then our whole linear thinking of knowledge is only a half-truth, maybe less.

So it seems to me there are two ways out if we concede Nietzsche's points (which we might have too - they seem fairly sound).

1. Admit some form of Platonism and confess that although nothing is "identical" or "stable" in this world, there are these principles in the divine mind which hold the world together. This world could then be a shadowy and fallen version of true life which we will one day inhereit in the recreation of the cosmos. This line of thinking has been the orthodox view of Christianity for quite some time now, I think. I am not totally disinclined towards it, but it does leave questions about what it will look like if everything is identical and what the form of human is in the redeemed creation. So let's leave this as a backup.

2. Follow the Eastern Church Fathers and stress the infinity of God, the inifinite difference that is involved in the Trinity and creation to Creator. I have mentioned Gregory of Nyssa before, I think he is one of the best at this understanding. This allows us to accept Nietzsche's claim of individuality and non-identity and say "Of course, if there is an infinite Creator then creation will be part of that infinite play we see all around us." And at redemption instead of all being brought back into the forms (I am not sure this is what orthodox Christian teaching really says, but it seems the logical outlook from the above view) we will be able to fully recognize our differences and find unity in participation with the divine Trinity. Sweet Trinity dance! And since He is infinite we shall have no problem with finding space within the divine recreation - it is always open to more and always fully with His already infinite prescence.

Why do I rock so much?

So I think Nietzsche is right, but I think Gregory of Nyssa (and the Capadocian Fathers) have already discussed this and realized that we are all different, but that this difference does not rise from chaos but the infinite difference of the Triune Creator and Redeemer.

2005-11-27T08:12:00.000-08:00

Why All Police Officers Should be Replaced By Dogs

Don't make us get dogs to do our jobs!

So this morning at about 5:00 am I was laying in bed and there is some noise outside, people talking. Knowing that this is a theological college and everyone should be in bed I looked out the window to check it out, and sure enough there were these two guys trying to steal my friends motorcycle! Unbelievable! So I tried to dial 911, but unfortunately that doesn't work here (it is 999, I guess), so I found another student here (who was in the Army) and got him to call while I went downstairs to scare them off (or something, I don't know what I was thinking, it was too silly and too early). When I got outside they had turned on the bike, but had moved a house down and were working on stealing a car. So my friend and I walked over to them (again, not sure why), came up the the car and my friend (Nick Stott) says "Bad night? It just got a lot worse." Perfect. So this guy is getting out of the drivers seat when the first police unit shows up. Now things get interesting. He makes a dash for it, I got after him running down the street. There are two police officers, a woman and a man. They start shouting and the guy catches up to me and grabs me while I am running after the other guy. Now I know I must have looked like I was fleeing the scene, but seriously? Instead of us catching the criminal, he has me pinned and is asking me all sorts of questions while the woman has given up on catching the other guy.

Interestingly enough my friend back at the car doesn't know the cops have come and just assumes I went after the guy, so after holding the second man (there were three total) for a minute he lets him go assuming the police won't show up. Then when he sees they are there he starts chasing after the guy he released but is stopped...you guessed it...by a woman weilding a baton. I am sorry I missed out on that fun, I was detained elsewhere. So all three guys got away and we were pretty ticked, although by now about fifteen police officers had shown up (apparently 5:00 am is a pretty dull time in Oxford). So they staked out the area and called in the K-9 unit (for what?) to help. I was pretty sceptical at this point and cold.

I guess they can fix cars too!

But the dog unit arrived and started going into the garden area of Wycliffe and I was thinking "this is exactly why this is useless, there is no way the guy stayed this close." Then I hear some noise and the police officer yelling "Get out of there" and they actually caught one of the guys! The just down the road the third guy was "waiting" for a ride at the bus stop, we identified him and off he went too! Two out of three, not bad Oxford Police Force! Another hour and a half was spent filling out witness forms and drinking tea. Awesome!

So here are some reflections on the event:

1. K-9 units do much better work than average police officers, we should replace the entire force.
2. Women shouldn't be on duty officers. The guy that got away (although they may have picked him up later) was definitely catchable except that the woman couldn't keep up with him and the other officer and I were having our fun.
3. We should cut the Gospel writers more slack on inconsistences in the Scriptures of eyewitness accounts. Nick and I were both given our statements and I was comparing the details of our stories, which were quite different (I said one guy was 5'10'' and he said 5'0' - no difference there!) and we definitely saw the same thing! So I think the resurrection narratives look pretty good in my book.
4. British people drink tons of tea.

And two final comments to conclude the episode:

1. When the officer asked me for "just facts" I immeadiately thought of telling him that there are no such things, but I decided to accept the rules of the language game we were playing and everything went along fine. Silly modernist police force! That's for you Charles.

2. After the dog had been loaded back into the police car after the successful catch, the trainer said "Good work you bitch." Sounded weird, but I mean, I guess he is right. Still kind of weird though. But at least the dog didn't try and arrest us (again - superiority of police dogs to police officers).

Crazy story, eh?

2005-11-22T08:11:00.000-08:00

Can 10 Pence Buy Happiness?

Yes! At least for today. I have been out riding around Oxford for the last two hours and it has been pretty dark and dreary this afternoon. I guess it was about time for it to start looking like England, but the sun has been great too. So I was in some more downscale areas of Oxford on my bike, avoiding cars and trying to figure out which side of the road to ride on and was getting a little bit pessimistic. I guess I really love the suburbs of America, but being in the less afluent areas of town made me kind of depressed - I was wondering if I would be called to serve in an area like this and if I could enjoy it there. I know it is a bit shallow, but run down houses and neighbourhoods are not totally my thing, and who knows where I will be ministering when I leave here? So everything was a bit blue.

Then I went to the post office, which is totally different than the States because they are more like local market stores. And me prefered one is on a street close to Wycliffe called North Parade (see below, the store is on the right).

The great part about this post office is that it feels more like an olde tymme corner store. There is always the same middle age friendly man working at the counter, really helpful and pleasant. Plus they have a ton of candy, including a lot of gummi ones you can buy individually or put a few in a bag. I went for a cola bottle (10 p) and imagined it was a nice summer day at the beach in Canada where I spent a bit of my childhood. Great. I guess I just needed to appreciate the little things more and know that no matter where I end up, there will always be something to cheer me up. Even for 10 p.

P.S. If you found this post vacuous, look out for an upcoming one on cessation of tongues. Big issue here!

2005-11-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

Covenant vs. Law/Gospel: Why Calvin Rocks and Luther Doesn't

I have been thinking about this Covenant hermeneutic vs. the Law/Gospel hermeneutic due to some discussions with a fellow ordinand here from the States (check out John Zahl's blog for the most distrubing song ever!) who is totally committed to Luther's method of sundering the Bible into Law and Gospel. Rough and ready definition of both:

"Have you accepted me into your heart yet?"

Covenant Theology: the Bible is made up of five covenants which hold the whole story together. First covenant to Adam and Eve, then after fall there is the Noahic covenant for stability (no more total death!), the Abrahamic covenant for setting up a nation and people of God, the Mosaic covenant giving these people a divine law and blessings with a land, the Davidic covenant giving this nation a king (royal covenant) and then finally the New Covenant establishing God's rule through his own kingship and redemption in Jesus Christ.

"How can I marry a nun..."

Law/Gospel: the Bible is made up of the two parts, the Old Testament (or most of it) is a preperation for Jesus Christ, the Law condemns people of their sin and forces them to see the need for a mediator in Christ. The Law forcefully proves to everyone that they can't earn God's favour by works, they need grace. Then the New Testament brings the good news in Jesus and he fulfills everything and releases people from that horrible and condemning Law. Free at last!

So here are three problems I find with Law/Gospel:
1. If the Law was supposed to point everyone to a Christ figure, how is it that no one figured this step out? I mean, don't you think after more than 2,000 years of works righteousness someone would have said "We need something totally different?"
2. More importantly, does anyone really think God had the old covenant around for such a long time just to show everyone they couldn't fulfill it? I mean, was he waiting around to see if someone might actually pull it off, then one day decided to give it a go himself?
3. So now that Christ abolished the Law, does that mean I can do whatever the heck I want? I mean, it is all fuliflled right? Nothing left but historical information, right? "Sin boldly?"

So the whole Law/Gospel thing just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. I think it makes the Bible too discontinuous, too ridiculous, and certainly doesn't much sense of the concept of Messiah as King. What is Jesus ruling over? He abolished his kingdom on the cross, right? Covenant Theology seems to hold everything together so much better, the Bible is the working out of God's intention to rule the earth as he does the heavens (read the first part of the Lord's prayer again). I think it is great to be free from any burden of the Law for salvation, but it seems that the whole idea of salvation by works is being questioned by Wright and others anyways. I mean, what part of works was the covenant of Abraham? The Old Testament is screaming grace the whole time, not condemnation. I think there is far too much continuity between Jesus and the Old Testament to say he did something so radical as Luther suggested. Think about it.

2005-11-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Irony vs. Sarcasm: the humour of the Brits

I wasn't aware that there was a real difference between sarcasm and irony, but over the last week it has become apparent to me and I will need to work on my irony skills if I want anything but strange looks. Example:

I am on a committee to 1) redecorate our student common room and 2) possibly add a bar to it. I find this rather interesting since I am 1) colour blind and 2) don't drink, but be that as it may, someone had to volunteer for this thing. Besides, who else would suggest pink as a theme colour? Also it should be noted that the committee is made up of three men. We are off to a good start. So I figured we should bring a woman on board who might be good at this sort of thing, or at least have a sense for matching colours. As another background insight we had just finished a student meeting setting up this committee and it was the most labourious process of motions and ratification, a process that needs to be done twice even if everyone is in agreement! Very interesting systems they have over here.

So I told one of the other members of the committee that I had invited this female student to join us and his response was "well, we will probably have to go through a search process and then have the requiste votes in the next two meetings before establishing her as a offficial or non-official member." I kind of looked at him funny and said "I don't think we need to do that, do we?" At this point he made it clear it was a joke, which I was confused about. Especially since he deadpanned it. So I guess that is British irony.

Now my main style of humour is either sarcasm or the non sequitur. The non sequitur works fine because no one is supposed to understand what is going on, but my sarcasm is almost completely useless here. An example:

That same evening we went out to a pub and were talking about evangelism and such. I forget how this came up but something about America's liberation of countries and the Gospel, and I said that deomocracy and the Gospel are two words for the same thing, emphasising that you can't have Jesus in Iraq unless we force them into a democratic government with our superior military strength (I think I cited the tank called "the new testament"). God bless George Bush! All I got was strange and uncomfortable looks, like they thought I actually believed that Bush's main motivation for Iraq was spreading the message of Christ.

So it has been a struggle for me here with my humour because I am always explaining my statements and reassuring people that I am using sarcasm, which I always thought was the same as irony, but apparently is quite different. I guess I am kind of disappointed because I really prefer sarcasm to irony, but then again the phoenix is always riding, isn't it?

As a side note, I just finished a postmodernism essay (which was fragmentary, unlegitimized and definitely a discourse of power) but found out I wrote it all in vain. Apparently there is an amazing site called the "Postmodern Essay Generator"(http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) which immeadiately cranks out postmodern essays when you click on it. My last two essay titles were "The Collapse of Discourse: Cultural posttextual theory and the subcultural paradigm of expression" and "Neodialectic theory and subcapitalist appropriation." Awesome.

2005-11-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Oxford Union Debate: Me vs. Gene Robinson.

And I won! Well actually, not totally, but check this out. We had a debate at the Oxford Union tonight, the foremost debate society in Europe with Gene Robinson and our ethics tutor here, Andrew Goddard, plus four other speakers. Any member of the university has a shot at participating in the debate, so after four of the six speakers made their cases, the floor was opened to six Union members, three for and three against. The resolution was "This House does not think a homosexual lifestyle should bar a person from becoming a bishop." At the start of the debate the president of the Union mentioned that the best speaker from each side would be rewarded with all this cool stuff, plus bragging rights, but I wasn't really listening because I definitely wasn't going to get up in front of 1,000 people and Gene Robinson and make a case! Not on my first time in the Union!
So the two speakers on the opposition side (against Gene) were making irrelevant arguments and we were looking pretty bad, so I figured "Why not give it a go." So I raised my hand, got selected by the president, got in front of this hall (see below) and gave the final speak before Gene and the opposing bishop spoke.

Imagine this thing full! Scary!

And I was selected as the best speaker! Totally awesome! So that was pretty cool, and I hope this gift package contains bath soaps and other such items. I will let you know when I get it. Also tomorrow I will post the results of the debate, we might have pulled it out. Anyways, just thought I would share the news. Awesome! I also got to shake Gene Robinson's hand and tell him that even though I don't agree with his lifestyle I love him as a brother in Christ. And that is true.

2005-10-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

What does Gregory of Nyssa have to do with preaching today?

So expository preaching is fine. I mean it is great to sit through an hour long sermon on Song of Songs chapter 4 and feel like you can atomize the whole thing to a person walking down Broad Street, but is it really that benificial? I mean, in a society that values image and emotion over word and reason (if it doesn't offend you, read "postmodern") should we really be doing this expository stuff all the time? I feel like the pastors should be wearing WWBRP (what would Bertran Russell preach) braclets. How should we preach? What is the most effective way of getting "the Word" out today?

I have been reading a bunch of Gregory of Nyssa for my essay due Monday (The influence of Plato and Plotinus on Gregory of Nyssa's conception of the soul - awesome) and one of the books Gregory wrote is called The Life of Moses. This book is amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a feel for this fourth century mystical theologian (the founder of mystical theology?). The book is a discussion of Moses' life centred around three key events - the burning bush, the Mt. Sinai experience, and God's passing by Moses in the cave (Exodus 3,19, and 33-34 respectively). Gregory takes us through these events historically but then goes into the "spitirual" meaning of all these things. This is what I want to discuss.

The "spiritual" interpretation of Holy Scripture is something very ancient in the Church, and something totally lost to us today except in some bootlegged form (above pastor saying the Song of Songs is about the Church). This was called the allegorical method of preaching, and I would like to make a short case for why it might be helpful to bring back to the Church today. First off though, it needs to be said that the allegorical interpretation is a difficult thing to do well. Just take a look at Augustine's interpretation of Genesis 1-2 or Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the Good Samaritan. Unbelievable. I think there is a right way to use this method and a wrong way. Gregory of Nyssa strikes me as the best example of the right way to do it. He clearly emphasizes the historical meaning of the passages, but he goes on to discuss its spiritual significance. I think this comes from his very healthy understanding of "overflow of Being." Gregory is a philosopher-theologian in the strongest sense and feels free to use Plotinus whenever the Scripture warrants it. His greatest achievement is the understanding (or lack thereof) of the Divine infinity. Gregory as a Cappadocian Father is clear about God being beyond finitude, beyond comprehension, beyond reason. This leads later theologians to the via negativa (we can only say what God is not) and also leads the Eastern Fathers to talk about God's essence and His energies (we can't know His essense, only His energies - His actions). I think this is incredibly realistic and not well understood by the Western tradition where we are confident in our reason's power over creation (and the Creator).

So Gregory uses this understanding of the Divine infinite to undergird his exegesis - there is always more to say about God then we can ever say. So for instance in the section of Moses going up the Mountain to see God and entering the "dark cloud", Gregory sees a perfect time to talk about God's essential "darkness" (cf. Isaiah 45, "the hidden God"), His unknowability and His being beyond comprehension. Did Moses intend to write about God's infinite and transcendent being when he dictated Exodus (or it was passed down or what have you, but no JEPD please)? I don't think so, but it is certainly part of the text. You can never say enough about God, you will never exhaust His meaning from the Scriptures. This is what I mean by "overflow of Being." There is more in the text than could ever be spoken about.

Another example: in the event of God passing by Moses He only lets Moses see his back side, for "You cannot see my face, for man cannot see me and live." On one level this is fairly straightforward - God is too Holy to be seen by mortals. But is there more? Gregory goes on to says the following

"Scripture does not indicate that this causes the death of those who look, for how the face of life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the Divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from ture Being to what he considers by sense preception to have being."

He goes on to say that "True Being is true life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge." Gregory is pointing us away from carnal desires and reasonable desires to contemplate and seek God by faith - to seek Him through the very gift He has given us to see His face - faith in Jesus Christ. Again, was this the purpose of Moses "writing" this story? Probably not, but clearly it is more than an application of this text. It is a true reading of the Holy Scripture.

Are there any practical reasons for using an allegorical interpretation (done well of course) today? I think so. Firstly, people are captivated by story, not straight fact telling. I think the allegorical method is a great way to display the truth of God's Word to those listening in an easy way to understand and remember. I bet that whenever you hear Moses' story of the mountain you will always be reminded of God's "beyond rationality, His unknowability and true life." Allegorical preaching may be a wonderful way to remind people of both God's eternal truth and also keep them close to the Biblical story (you can't talk about God's "cloud of unknowing" without being drawn deeper into the text of Exodus 19). Secondly, I think in an age of image over word, this method has a better ability to imapct people's minds. It is based on a deeper meaning, something that requires a inner vision of the story to keep it grounded. Anything that involves people's imaginations is bound to stick better than rote fact telling. It is much easier to paint a picture with the allegorical method than the expository method because it is itself totally about behind reality and pictures within a narrative. We see God's nature being revealed through another picture. Thirdly I think this approach is a Biblical one. Not just because Jesus taught in parables (alright, but not too powerful on my watch) but because it is very similar to what Matthew does in his Gospel.

A bit more on this. In Matthew we find tons of "fulfillment" of prophecy. But the serious issue is that most of these "prophecies" aren't prophetic at all. Take the Hosea one: "Out of Egypt I have called my son." (Hosea 11:1). This is a historical statement in the Old Testament talking about the exodus and reminding the people of God's kindness to those in exile (which at the time the nation of Israel was). What has Matthew done? Clearly he is not ignorant of the fact that this is not a prophecy, rather he is using the Rabbinical tradition of Midrash - using Scripture as a "jumping off point" to further truth. Matthew is using Hosea 11:1 to remind people of how God always works. No Jew would have though Jesus was fulfilling a specific prophecy in Hosea ("check Hosea 11:1 off the list, now on to Micah and Zechariah, etc"), but Matthew would have reminded them that just like when YHWH brought His people out of Egypt before, again He has brought His people out of exile, for in Jesus the whole nation of Israel is wrapped up - past, present and future. So allegorical interpretation is just like this, using the text as a spring board, a jumping off point to discuss something always true about the covenant and eternal God.

So I think there is someting rich in the allegorial tradition, something which might be important in the Church today. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to preach allegorically on divorce (my sermon coming up). Any suggestions?

2005-10-15T04:09:00.000-07:00

My Favourite Irishman

I tried to put this picture in the other post, but blogger was being stupid again. This is Fraser Hosford, and he is the greatest Irishman to live (even if he is Methodist, for now). Also, did you know that in "The Untouchables" Sean Connery is supposed to be Irish? Could he at least make an attempt at an Irish accent?

2005-10-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

So We Don't Wear the Mortar Board?

Today was matriculation for all Oxford University students, so there was a lot of pomp and circumstance. Part of the deal with Oxford is tons of ancient rituals, of which this is the oldest. Every new student had to go to the Sheldonian Theatre this morning to stand in line for a bit:

After waiting around, we were ushered in the Theatre and had to wait for the vice-chancellor of the University came in to speak to us. This speech was at firs tin Latin (of course) and then he gave a short talk to all the students about the importance of the day, how we needed to uphold the honour and academic standards of the University, and how we needed to respect everyone no matter what they believed or practiced. Fine.

After the ceremony (which lasted about ten minutes in total once it got started) we all went out to the local pub for some bacon and drink. I think the best part of the whole thing was getting to play dress up. We all had to wear these black semi-coats over a black suit with a white bow-tie and carry a mortar board. That's right, you must carry the mortar board, you are not allowed to wear it for three years until we graduate. Now the best part is that each May and September when we take our exams, we have to dress up again in the Oxford uniform, plus we get to carry the mortar board around. Why are we carrying the thing if we are not wearing it? Well that's tradition for you, I guess. It is pretty cool though to me a member of Oxford University now, even if it entails wearing silly things. This coming from a guy who will be wearing a cossack/dress for the rest of my life when I am ordained. And one more picture from the ceremony:

The five Americans at Wycliffe Hall this year: Erik, me, Borck, Pat, and Chris. Go free market capitalism! Now back to writing an essay on the causes and consequences of the exile of Judah. Very interesting.

2005-10-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Rowan Williams (!), Evangelical Liturgy, and Chapel Flowers

This last weekend was the conference between Radical Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodoxy, which was held in Cambridge (boo hiss!). Even though it was located there, I still attended to check out the sweetest combination of theologies ever! Cambridge is only about an hour away from Oxford as the crow flies, but the bus ride takes roughly three and a half hours, which is ridiculous. The participants at the conference included such notables as Archbishop Rowan Williams (the head of the Anglican Communion), John Milbank (head of radical orthodoxy) and Basil, the Bishop of Sergievo (head of looking like santa claus in a long black robe).

I was once again reminded of how rich the Orthodox tradition is, and how rich the Western tradition is though the likes of St. Augustine and St. Aquinas. One comment seems particularly appropriate here in Oxford: Liturgy shapes our theology. Let me explain.

To my incredible frustration, all the conservative and evangelical churches in the UK are really low in worship. They function very much like low Presbyterian churches, with a long sermon and no communion generally. They also tend to focus on praise songs (the kind you can replace the name of Jesus with your significant other and they still make sense) as opposed to hymns. This absolutely drives me crazy. I attened one of these evangelical churches last night and for two hours we sung about God making us good people, loving Jesus with (only?) our hearts and hearing a sermon on congregationalism which had nothing to do with the Scripture passage. The problem is that if I want liturgy, I have to put up with liberal theology and possible a homosexual priest. There is no church which has high liturgy and orthodox teaching. This is so bizarre to me.

From a radically orthodox prespective, how we worship is very important to how we conceptualize God and relate to Him. Going to a high liturgy forces you to be on your knees (literally!) in worship and contemplation of an Almighty God who is Trinity. The liturgy has been the expression of praise for the church of God for the last two millenia, and now we have this low church experience of "buddy Jesus." I think we need to seriously reconsider our worship practice and the effect it has on our theology. Liturgy says that God in Christ is ever present, so present that you actually recieve Him bodily in the sacraments, He is physically dwelling with His poeple. We truly are His temple, His Body and His Bride. Low church worship says (to me) that we need to get Him figured out with out minds, and make sure we rationally relate to God, plus maybe we can meet Him through some non-confrontational fluffy sing-song.
Another disappointment in England is that the evangelical movement is so interested in "making church relevant." This I think is the death blow to any worshiping community. The Church is not called to be relevant, it is called to be redemptive. Jesus Christ did not become incarnate to reconcile the world to Himself in order to let girls come to worship wearing low-rider jeans and worse. But if you don't use projectors and popular secular music how will you fill the pews? I think we should probably trust Christ and His Spirit to bring people to Him rather than shooting low for mass appeal. If anyone thinks that traditional "stuffy" liturgy and Church teaching doesn't appeal to youth then why did half a million young Catholics show up to World Youth Day to support the most theologically conservative pope in one hundred years? I think the Church can do better than merely being another venue or meeting place, it is called to be a seperate city, though imperfect, reconciling the world to Christ through His sacraments and His word.

Those are just some ramblings I suppose, but it is a frustration of mine that we can't have both liturgical and evangelical in the same sentence for a church over here. In other news, I was in charge of chapel flowers this week for Wycliffe Hall, and I think I did an okay job. You will have to be the judge, but it is harder than it looks.

Thumbs up or thumbs down?

2005-09-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University!

Alright, since I have had the day off from classes, I thought I would take some pictures of the hall and let everyone see where I am living and studying. So here is a brief tour. More from Oxford later probably, as I see new and cool things. These are just pictures from my college in Oxford.

Okay, the top picture is of the building I stay in, with my room being the one on the second floor, the window in the middle of the picture. It has a pretty sweet set-up from the outside, now I am working on making it the ultimate Oxford bachelor pad - suggestions? The second and third pictures are of the main building of Wycliffe Hall, where most of the activities like teaching and library stuff go on. My building and one other building make up the College, all right next to each other. Second picture is the back of the main building, walking from my room to it, and third is the front entrance.

Inside the main buliding: first is one of the lecture rooms where we take our lectures during the week. We don't have nearly as many lectures as in the States because most of the work is meant to be independent research. Interesting. To the right is the dinning hall where the entire college takes its meals. Every dinner is a more formal occasion, sitting down together and such, but we don't wear the gown like other colleges do. Then we have our chapel where we meet for worship everyday before classes start. It is amazing!

Well, it is having trouble putting in the pictures of my room, so you will have to use your imagination for now. Keywords you can work with: red, fire, dragon, ball-Z, Calvin, Not Drinking Water (yeah right), and $26 towel. Let me know what you come up with. Black and white sketches are fine.

So that is the place and everything is going great. We start classes on Monday for orientation week, and then off to the grind next week with real classes. Until then, cheers!

2005-09-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

I Can't Believe I Just Paid $26 For A Towel!

Okay, so this is my first post from Oxford (!), and I have to say everything has been pretty sweet so far. This place is unbelievable, and by unbelievable I mean expensive (or totally awesome). So I will list a few pros and cons so far, just to give you a taste of an American gone bloke (or broke?):

Pros:
1. Oxford is the most amazing town in the world. Learning and erudition is around every corner, especially in the Pubs (today I bought a fruit drink and I was told only women buy it. Here's to not drinking!).

2. My room is gigantic! I don't have internet in there yet or I would put a picture up, but it is great. Plus, the hall way right in front of my door always smells like powdered doughnuts. Ummm....doughnuts.

3. You get to call all the professors by their first names. Awesome. Alister? Sitting at the same lunch table? Plus, the Old Testament professor is going to teach me how to play squash. Sweet.

Cons:
1. Everything is twice as much if not more than what it costs in the states. The cheapest towel in Oxford costs £13, or roughly 5 billion American dollars. Unreal. I used my undershirt the first day, but I had to suck it up and buy one for long term use. I am still trying the find the diamonds hidden in the lining, they have to be there...

2. I only have to walk up two flights to go to the restroom and shower! Plus, all showers were designed in the 1200s when people were only 4 feet tall. All those pencil diving routines we did as kids are paying off big time.

3. Being friendly to a British person means not saying hi. Apparently when you introduce yourself you are not supposed to give your name, because that would be too arrogant of you. This leads to awkward starts of conversation with references to "you there" and "hotness."

So basically everything is really expensive and I almost run into people three times a day because I am walking on the right side of the sidewalk. But other than that Oxford is totally amazing and I am really excited to start my course of study (and squash) next week. Once I get my computer up and going I will add images, but I leave you with an image of the most expensive towel in the hsitory of the world:

Or not. Apparently blogger doesn't like UK pages. Blimey!

2005-09-07T00:39:00.000-07:00

Where Art Thou?

So Buffalo is home to one of the best modern art galleries in the country, The Albright-Knox Gallery, which is full of amazing pieces of art like this:

I mean, it is a bunch of doughnuts on a plate under a light. Wow! Inspirational! Outstanding! I don't think so. But it makes you think about the definition of art. What is art, anyways?

In one of the concluding passages of The Beauty of the Infinite, David Bentley Hart compares the "optics of the market" with the "optics of Christ", and one of the comparisons he makes is between "conceptual" art and "real" art. First a little background on the optics:

"To be drawn to the beauty of Christ is to encounter with joy the infinite intensity, resistance, and generosity of his form, its enduring and radiant particularity; but the market embraces only forms that can be dissolved, displaced, and replaced. Beauty, as such, is really not a marketable commodity, anyways, because it excites a love that is made perfect in dispossession, that requires distance, and that is awakened by the sheer gratuity of what is given."

DBH sees the battle between "the market" (or the materialistic culture the West finds itself in) and "the form of Christ." Both are competing for aesthetic sway, but from different ends of the spectrum. The market sells cheap goods, quick fixes, and finite materialism wheras the form of Christ offers eternal beauty in conforming to his image and accepting his gifts, being brought into relation with the Triune God. DBH finds this comparison particularly evident in art today:

"modern 'conceptual art' - that perfect coincidence of intellectual banality, technical incompetence, and gustative philistinism - answers the demands of the market(evanescence, intrinsic poverty of merit, insipience, vulgarity, imbecility, pomposity)as no other kind of 'art' possibly can."
"Real art, though, in its true nature, by virtue of its intricacy, craft, and splendid inutility, repeats the gesture of creation, its gratuity, its generosity, its character as gift; art proclaims a delight more original than simple function."

Art, under DBH's lens, is nothing other than the reflection of creation, a poor man's mirror, a childish attempt to represent and declare the artwork of the Master. Art is to be defined according to how well it displays the creation, which in turn displays the Creator in His Triune motion. Art is an adventure into the divine, a human representation of the analogy of being that God gives to creation. This is true art, reflecting the Creator's strokes. Modern art on the other hand represents nothing, signifies nothing but the carnal and man-centred desires of the creature. It raises up not creation (and therefore the Triune God) but rather the passions and emotions and desires of the creatures. Art should force us to see the aesthetic in life and contemplate the Glory of God, not play on our own sensual abnormalities or banal affections. I mean, which one do you think best represents "art"?

Secondly, why are the two kids in the lower right of Velasquez's painting so ugly?

2005-08-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

Gregory of Nyssa is available for pizza parties, tv commercials, and geometry classes.

"I said, 'Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.'" -
Psalm 82:6

"Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." - John 17:20-2o

"Gregory's grasp of the radical ontological disparity between God and creation is balanced by his understanding of the union of God with creation in the economy of salvation; and thus means what he says when he calls the practice of virtue participation in God and the presence of God to the soul: he means, in a word, deification." - The Beauty of the Infinite, DBH 198.

Deification: lets be honest, that is what it is all about. What is the future hope of mankind? What is the goal of salvation? According to Gregory it is nothing else than to participate in the Godhead.

"the entire thrust of the theology of eternal progress is precisely to show how it is possible to speak intelligently of deification, despite the ontological distance between God and creation: by showing that it is not an uncrossable abyss but a genuine distance, reconciled and yet preserved in the incarnate Logos, crossed from the divine side so that it may be crossed forever from the side of the creature." - DBH 199.

As Protestants we naturally recoil at such a notion. Sounds like some Buddhist or Mormanism, right? I mean either we are turned into gods or we become one with "the One" who is God. Either polytheism in a radical way or the drop in the water bucket anaology. Neither of these is acceptable from a Biblical perspective, so what is Gregory saying? I think he avoids both of these errors and transcends all other schemes of salvation because of his notion of the Trinity. Explaination:

The Trinity is an essential doctrine, maybe the most important part of the Christian religion: it is what makes us so different from all other religions or spiritualities. Only in Christianity do you have a combination of the one and the many in the divine. God is One, utterly unified and distinct for sure, but he is also Trinity. In that One we find a difference, a many in the three persons. Only Christianity allows for this distinction in the divine, all other religions either have one diety and substance, or have a bunch of seperate ones. But in Christianity we have both: the One God who is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This difference allows for so many things, but let us just look at the deification idea.

The Christian tradition is the only religion that allows for a participation in the divine and yet a distinction, because it is already "built-in." God is already a dynamic Trinity of being, He is already more than one person and so allows for participation and yet distinction. That is the story of salvation. Christ comes down to reconcile us so that we might become sons of God in Him, so that we might join Him in the "sweet Trinity dance" that goes on for eternity. Notice that this does not necessarily mean the beautific vision since Christ was fully God when He was on earth - so physicality is part of divinity as well. So when Gregory talks of deification, he is not talking about losing yourself into the divine ocean, he is talking about participating in the Godhead, in the divine dance of the Trinity as a active member, through Christ. Wow. I think this is the most beautiful thought I have encountered in a while. Let it sit for a while.

Maybe an example from mathematics would help (warning: not perfect analogy, but okay!). In geometry we have what are called systems of equations. These can get pretty complex, but lets keep it simple: we are just going to talk about lines. So y = x + 5. Okay? That is a line with a slope of one and a y-intercept at 5. So it is just a diagonal line. See it? Good. Now if we have two lines and we are looking for where they intersect (solutions) there are only three possibilities. Either there are no solutions, one solution, or an infinite number of solutions. So here we go:

Think of the no solutions as the atheistic position, there is no God, how can there be any deification? This is a set of parallel lines. Never cross. What about one solution? This would be what I call "silly monotheism": Islam, Mormonism, some forms of Buddhism, Christianity-and-water. There is only one contact point, so it is not possible to all live in the Godhead.

What about the inifinte solutions? That is the "Trinitatian monotheism" option: there can be an infinite number of equations and yet only one line. Example:

x + y = 2

2x + 2y = 4

It should be easily seen that these two form the same line, but they are distinct equations, distinct "beings." So there can be multiple "beings" in this one true being, as long as we have something other than "silly monotheism" or atheism, and we most certainly do. But let us press this image a bit further. A line is infinite in measure, extending on forever - much like God's Being. He is infinite and we are merely finite. Therefore, we who are "taken up" or "participate" in His divine being (through the Son and by the Holy Ghost - Trinitarian remember) do not become infinite ourselves. That would be blasphemous and more inline with Mormanism. Rather, we all as finite members of the body of Christ, form to make up part of our own line - the aformentioned body of the Son. We all fit in our own part and are drawn into participation - being deified through the Son and taking our place in the Trinitarian movement.

"God becomes ever more present to the soul through Christ in the Holy Spirit, who is the glory that the Son had with the Father before the world existed, God's own bond of unity, the light that draws us into the Trinity's own 'circle of glory.' The blessings of the incarnation are infinte, for God is infinte." - DBH 199-200.

Therefore, Gregory sees God's infinity as something to be seriously considered, as our participation in Christ as something more than an emotional feeling, but rather an ontological reality - we are to be as gods, we are to be in Him as He is in us, that we may all be one. This is more than a statement about ecumensim (although that is implied), it is a statement about the economy of salvation. We are destined for life "in Christ", which means in the Godhead, not becoming identified with either person, still distinct and finite, but taking our already set part in the dance that is the perichoresis of the Trinity - the dynamic dance of divine love which we are called to through Christ by the Holy Ghost in the Father.

So I guess the question is: why are we still Protestants? Is justification by faith alone the best we can come up with?

2005-08-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche is right...but sucks.

David Bentley Hart (DBH) may not be German, but he is definitely one of the the best (if not best) American theologians today. Of all time. Eternity? In his book (The Beauty of the Infinite - oh man!) he starts his dogmatics by addressing the postmodern condition through its founder and strongest protagonist - Friedrich Nietzsche. Following Milbank (DBH is a one man Radical Orthodox show - Monday thru Friday 6:30 pm to 11:30 pm) in defining postmodernity as an "ontology of violence", DBH contends that Christianity gives the only answer - an "ontology of peace." Check it out.

Nietzsche is the idol sounder (Twilight of the Idols) for modernity by pointing out the "Will to Power" which undergirds all action, thought, and deed. He is violently opposed to Christianity (althought not Jesus Christ, whom he understands about as well as quantum mechanics) because "Paul's gospel" is one of total transcendence - a denial of the world and all its glory. Nietzsche blames Christianity for destroying the goodness of the world even amidst all its suffering. Instead of the crucifed Christ, Nietzsche takes up Dionysus as his saviour, one who calls for violence in the name of true humaness. Nietzsche decries the "otherworldliness" of Christianity and calls it a "castration of existence." He proposes the new morality - a striving towards violence and "becoming who you are", a romantic (?) return to the warrior virtues of Greece. To him Christianity is nothing more than the slaves (poor souls) trying to will to power over those who have rightfully gained possession of life by their virtues. Christianity is nothing more than a child responding to a bully beating "It is better to have been beaten up because now I have suffering and he does not." Christianity is a poor loser to Nietzsche and should suck it up.

What say we? Well, in so many ways Nietzsche is absolutely right. If Christianity is what he says it is, then it is just a patheitic "ontology of violence", trying to gain mastery through some pansy way of one-upsmanship. Looking around this world and saying "I can't wait for Jesus to get back and fix this place" is pathetic (as well as too evangelical!). Pat Robertson needs not only to stop calling for assassinations (and lying about it), but also needs to rethink what kind of power he is willing on everyone - a power of pure violence, although in a more "soccer-momish" way. But, is Nietzsche right in his view of Christianity - the poor man's Platonism?

DBH says absolutely not. Through creation's pure "giveness" we find not some flight from diety but rather the participation of the Triune God. Christianity is not a "next-world" event, it is rather seeing this world through the lens of an "ontology of peace", best described as beauty. Even Nietzsche saw the power of aesthetics, but is not the aesthetics of peace much more desirable than the aesthetics of violence? Is not the image of the lion and the lamb laying together much more desirable (and truthful?) than the lion eating the lamb? Christianity agrees with Nietzsche - if everything is will to power alone, then violence and "nihilism" is the ultimate result of the geneology of history. But Christians proclaim a different story. This is the power of DBH's apologetic/dogmatic, we don't take on the pagan with reason (Pascal and Hume have shown that to be ineffectual outside of a priori agreement), we lay out the story of the Triune God and the story of the will to power. If radical immanence is correct (as Nietzsche saw it), then his story is the only acceptable one. But if we don't give him that (and there is no reason to) then the Christian story is infinitely more beautiful because of its Infinite source - the creational "giftedness" by the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Gospel of the Triune God might be a total affront to Nietzsche (and his followers, which are legion), but Jesus had no other intention. "Christ showed that the world was a dext that could be read differently: according to the grammar not of power, but of agape. (122)" Christ called and still calls us to throw off the sackles of power plays and demands the story of love to defeat all evil. Nietzsche, one so concerned with aesthetics showing truth, missed the true conclusion: peace is always more beautiful than violence.

"The most potent reply a Christian can make to Nietzsche's critique is to
accuse him of a defect of sensibility - of bad taste. And this in fact is
the last observation that should be made at this point: Nietzsche had atrocious
taste. (125)"

Ummm...eat it?

2005-08-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

Heidegger and Heisenberg: Is alethia another word for quantum theory?

The Germans. They might be the most intelligent race in the history of the world, or at least were up until the second world war. Case in point: Werner Heisenberg and Martin Heidegger. One is the leader of the quantum revolution with his matrix mechanics and uncertainty principle, while the other is one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Both totally challenged our thoughts about reality and both need tons of work in fully understanding the significance of their thoughts. Let me just scratch the surface with a juxtaposition of two related ideas of these two men.

Martin Heidegger, author of Being and Time changed the way Continental philosophy works by his concept of truth and being. Basically as I read him, his claim is that philosophy from Aristotle (and maybe Plato) onward has made a huge mistake: it has focused on beings rather than Being. What does that mean? Heidegger said we are all involved in a "forgetfulness of being", that we don't really understand reality because we look at beings (like hammers, forks, etc.) rather than Being (that thing which is undergirding reality). He calls this Being Dasein (lit. "there being"). Crazy. Heidegger maintains that Being is not something immediately available, but rather Being is about prescence and "disclosedness." Heidegger uses the Greek word alethia to describe reality - a reality that is as much about unveiling as veiling, unconcealing as concealing. Reality is mediated to us by Being, everytime we examine reality some things are disclosed to us (made manifest) but other things are not (hiddeness). If we focus just on the beings themselves (the hammer itself) we are only seeing part of the show - the disclosed part. But Heidegger says truth and reality are far more complicated, there is so much undisclosed or hidden, which gives as much meaning to reality as what is disclosed. Reality might be seen like a vending machine. Heidegger says that most of our thinking has been focused on the individual candy bars (different as they may be) themselves, whereas there is a mechanism that is "revealing" those candy bars: the vending machine itself. Not a perfect illustration, but gets to the point: there is something behind each individual beings, and all thought since Plato has forgot to take into account this Being - the veiling and unveiling of reality.

Now admittingly this doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the outset. It sounds ridiculously crazy and certainly doesn't have the mathematical rigour of analytic philosophy (Russel et al.). Or does it? I think this might be where Heisenberg comes along. Quantum mechanics says something just as ridiculous to the mind in positing the theory of wave function collapse. Example: an electron can be in different energy states in an atom, ground state, first excited state, second excited state, etc. This is high school chemistry. Up until quantum it was thought that if you had the power to examine an atom, we could just look and find which exicted state the electron was in. It has to be in one and only one, right? Okay. Quantum throws a gigantic spanner in the works. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that we can't know exactly which one it is in (its position or velocity independently) but not because our measurement changes one or the other (that is the standard idea - hitting the electron with light will knock it around, changing one or the other) but becase until we look at the atom, the electron is in all energy states at once! It is literally in a number of states, called superposition, until we make a measurement (what that means is a doctroal thesis in itself) and then one of the states (ground state for example) is "acutalized" or "revealed" and the others vanish. This is what physicists have been saying for the past fifty years, even though it doesn't make much sense - and they have experimental evidence to back this craziness up. Reality is a lot more complex than we ever imagined.

So here is the link. Is it possible that this "disclosedness" that Heidegger is talking about is the same "collapsing of the wave function" that Heisenberg is talking about? Does Heisenberg provide Heidegger with the mathematical formalism for alethia and Dasein? Does Heidegger provide Heisenberg with a philosophical framework in which to describe these discoveries? Heisenberg's Physics and Philsophy might be best summed up by "Platonism won" and it seems to me that he Heidegger might give us a glimpse of how that makes sense. Being is more than just individual objects, it is about the Being behind those observations, the "revealing" which is going on. What is this Being? How does it relate to the Christian conception of the Triune God whom reveals Himself and yet hides Himself (cf. Isaiah 45:15)? More to say about that later.

2005-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

RO delivers a death blow to Correspondence Theory of Truth

With the advent of postmodernism (hyper-modernism?) evangelical theolgians and philosophers have been scrambling to defend Biblical Christianity against the evils of postmodern theory. One of the most important grounds is the theory of truth. As read by evangelicals like Douglas Groothius, postmodernists like Rorty and Derrida demand that truth be relativized in a way that is repugnant to orthodox Christians. To defend against the relativism of postmodernity (note: I don't think "postmoderns" are demanding a totaly relativity, I think evangelicals are not up on their reading enough to undertand what Derrida and Rorty are saying - nod to Charles here) Groothius and others resort back to the vaunted Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTT), the saviour of all metaphysics and meaning. But is it?

Interestingly enough, RO claims that CTT is nothing but dressed up Modernism in its highest extent, which of course is nothing other than nihilism. Are they serious? Well, what are the claims of CTT?

"Truth is located in this [mirroring of the world] correspondence.
Insofar as these things simply "are" in the world, and thus accessible and ready
to hand for any finite perceiver, it is possible for anyone to apprehend
properly the truth of the world" (Smith, 159).

Working under the RO thesis, does anyone see what is wrong with this picture? That's right, CTT is nothing more than a robust for of "univocity" of being, the Scotus idea that we can seperate being from the Triune Being, where all meaning is derived. According to RO, there is nothing that is autonomous from the Triune God, therefore there is nothing to apprehend properly as correspondence. Without God we are literally left with nothing. How does RO destroy CTT? Through Thomas Aquinas, of course.

"Correspondence or adequation for Aquinas is not a matter of mirroring
things in the world or passively registering them on an epistemological level,
in a way that leaves the things untouched. Rather; adequating is an event
which realizes or fulfills the being of things known, just as much as it
fulfills truth in the knower's mind" (Truth in Aquinas, 5).

"For Aquinas, there is a sense in which truth resides in things:
'Truth is a property of things" such that 'a thing is true if it fulfills itself
and holds itself together according to its character and goal" (Smith,
159).

Again, RO makes the claim that there is no world independent of God with which to correspond to and that things are nothing in and of themselves, they only have substance and existence "gifted" by the Creator. Corresponding to the world means corresponding to nothingness, so according to RO, CTT does not yield truth, but rather gives nothingness. "Truth, therefore, resides in things insofar as things participate in God (Smith, 159)."

RO also uses its thesis to rework the discussion of faith versus reason. Since all things find their meaning and grouding in participation with the Triune God, reason is not seperate from faith in the dualist sense most people are used to thinking in. RO smashes these dualisms of modernity, especially this one with Aquinas' view of nature versus grace.

"the distinction between nature and grace is not one of kind but of degree,
in particular, the degree of intensity of participation in the divine (Smith,
160)."

Reason is not an autonomous human function as opposed to faith (spuernatural function?), they are both part of the participationist model of knowing, just different in level of intensity of knowledge. "Rather, reason is a reception of light, an operation of divine illumination (Truth in Aquinas, 11)." Nothing is autonomous for RO, even reason as the ground of existence in Descartes. Reason and faith are different parts of relating to divine illumination, one being the forerunner or less sophisticated version of the other. The important thing for RO is to recognize that reason and faith are not opposites, but rather different levels along the same chain of knowing: the divine illumination of the participating mind of man with the Triune God.

Once again RO takes no prisoners in its thorough assualt on modernity and hyper-modernity. RO demands that we see ontology as participationist with the Triune God through illumination and revelation, not casting reason aside (as can be found in Karl Barth) but rather seeing reason as a part of the knowledge given us by our intimate participation with the Creator and Sustainer God: the God who demands to be called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same breath.

2005-07-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

Radical Orthodoxy beats the crap out of Duns Scotus

RO is not as concerned about whether or not Kant and Descartes were modernists as it is about how a Kant or Descartes could show up on the scene at all. In this way RO follows Nietzsche and Foucault in putting forth a geneology of nihilism (mainly in the work of Conor Cunningham, University of Nottingham with daddy Milbank) which looks to find out where this idea of secualr reason (the core of modernity for RO) could be found. Who is the boy with the stolen chocolate all over his face (wierd movie coming out with Johnny Depp)? None other than Duns Scotus.

RO, following the tradition of Heidegger and other continientals, asserts that it is the question of Being (and being) which threw us into the nihilism we find ourselves (note: RO does not call this postmodernity, but rather hyper-modernity because it ultimately stems from modern secualr reason transforming into nihilism. RO claims it is doing truly postmodern work because it is divorcing itself from secular reason. Interesting claims). There are two main speakers involved: Duns Scotus and St. Aquinas.

RO claims (and seems to substantiate) that modernism and hyper-modernism stems from Scotus and his seperation of being from God.

"In contrast [to RO], Scotus asserts that "to be" is predicated univocally;
that is, both the Creator and the creature exist in the same way or in the same
sense. Being, now, becomes a category that is unhooked from participation
in God and is a more neutral or abstract qualier that is applied to God and
creatures the same way" (Smith, 97).

Or again:

"Duns Scotus, when considering the universal science of metaphysics,
elevated being (ens) to a higher station over God, so that being could be
distributed to both God and His creatures" (Ibid, Philip Bond).

So Scotus makes being some independent category with which we can discuss Creator and creation. The world is all of a sudden totally automomous, because we are no longer dependent on God for our being and existence. What is RO's response to this? A robust "theological metaphysics" will do nicely:

"For Aquinas, metaphysics - as an account of being - cannot be divorced
from theological considerations" (Smith, 97).

"[Being] is "read" in entirely theological terms as the site of the
internal fracture of creatures between their own nothingness and their alien
actuality which is recieved from God..."Being" - wholesale to a first principle,
God, which is the subject of another, higher science, namely God's own" (Word
Made Strange, Milbank, 44).

So RO argues that if we follow Scotus, metaphysics naturally leads to nihilism (hyper-modernity) because without God (who is Being and gifts us with being) we are literally nothing. So RO finds that nihilism is the only other option to the Christian story, since if you remove God's Being from a discussion of creation, you have nothing left to speak of. RO purposes to get back the Thomist (and Augustinian) notion of a "theological metaphysics." Is this justified? I think it is an incredible insight, one that resonants with St. Paul ("in him we live and move and have our being", Acts 17). RO continues to push the question of where do we get off excluding the Triune God from every aspect of creation? How could we possibly find meaning if we sunder the ground of meaning Himself?

In this project to reclaim the early Church notion of "theological metaphysics" as opposed to late medieval Scotist "univocity of being" I think RO provides a very radical critique of hyper-modernism. Not only does their geneology of nihilism explain well how we got into this metaphysical mess, but they provide an excellent way to get out of it: "Seek ye the Lord." Radical indeed, but thoroughly orthodox. Bravo.

2005-07-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

Doing A Radical Orthodoxy Dance: First Steps

So modernity is dead. What does that mean for theology, as well as the rest of life? It is the job of all theologians and serious Christians to engage with the continental philosophy and post-continental thought, bringing the Gospel to it and helping to dialogue with both. What is the approach we should take? Should be cling to modernity and put our hands over our ears screaming "It's not true, it's not true"? Should we go back to a uncritical pre-modern approach, maybe using Aquinas as our model? Both of these are options, but seem to leave things unsettled. How do we deal with postmoderns like Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault? I think the best answer resides in a movement called Radical Orthodoxy, lead by John Milbank of Nottingham.

What is Radical Orthodoxy (RO)? One of the basic claims of RO is:

"There is not a single aspect of human existence or creation that can be properly undertsood or described apart from the insights of revelation" (Smith, 70).
Or from John Milbank:
"Either the entire Christian narrative tells us how things truly are, or it does not. If it does, we have no other access to how things truly are, nor any additional means of determing the question" (Word Made Strange, 250).

Basically, RO makes a postmodern assault on what Modernity called "unaided, universal, reason." RO makes the claim that Modernity got it totally wrong because it made things that were particular universal, like morals and ethics. In good postmodern fashion, RO says that there is no "universal truth or morals" that can be know without a faith presupposition. RO is willing to sound out as many idols of universal reason as necessary to get it through to everyone that there is no such thing, it was an Enlightenment invention. RO speaks the language of continental thought and is happy to follow their program in destorying modernity and its so called metanarratives.

But RO does not go the troubling way of saying that there is no reason or true stories to tell. RO says that with a full conception of revelation (an inbreaking of the Divine among the world) we have a narrative, and it is local in the sense that it is mediated by its ministers, but it is also meant to be universal. Notice though that it will not be recognized by everyone (the liberalism the theology has been stuch with for quite sometime), but needs to be told, enacted, experienced. In this way, RO is very interesed in the sacraments and liturgy, the language of revelation throughout the Church's history.

RO makes the ridiculous claim that the Christian story is true, and that it commands attention. But it goes further. According to RO, there is no such thing as the secular. We live in a post-secular world where the Gospel must inform ever aspect of the cosmos. We can not to economics, politics, or philosophy without seeking to ground it in the Triune God and His revelation. RO is a all encompassing project which demands that we realize our faith presuppositions (postmodernism), but not as a weakness we need to apologize for, rather as our only guide in a Fallen world. Those who seek to have a "point of contact" with the world will critize the movement, but I think RO is the best step forward in a postmodern context.

So RO says we can't think outside revelation's framework and understanding, but the Triune God never intended us to do anything else.

2005-07-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

The Beauty of the Inifinite: I

David Bentley Hart has been called "the best living American systematic theologian" by John Milbank (leader of the Radical Orthodoxy school) and his magnus opum is The Beauty of the Infinite, a "systematic theology" for the post-post-modern times we live in. I would like to chronicle my reading of this incredible text, picking out points I found particularly profound or interesting. Thus my first comment about this text:

In discussing Butlmann's de-mystification of the Christian faith, Hart makes the following comment:

"Such a scheme [Bultmann's demythologizing] can allow no real distinictions; everything that does not fit - whether it is as fabulous as the story of Eden or as complex as the story of the incarnation - is shrugger off with equal impatience, leaving nothing behind but this closed continuum of causality - and causality, manifestly, does not save." (Hart, 22-23)

"Causality, manifestly, does not save." I don't think we talk enough about the lack of future that our universe gives us without the story of God in Christ (note: God in "itself" does not mean redemption of any kind for creation, only the Christian conception brings this robust meaning). I am reminded of a lecture Sir John Polkinghorne gave discussing the destiny of the universe. Physics tells us pretty plainly that there are two possibilities: either the universe will expand until everything is so far away that it is cold and dead, or the universe will crash back in on itself in a termenbous show of fireworks. Either way, the end is not pretty (although it might be beautiful).

This is what the non-Christian story tells us, and since the majority of people in the world are not Christians, they must admit to this fate, whether they like it or not. It may be far off (billions of years), but this notion of cosmic end must inspire a real sense of nihilism or a Stoic sensibility of fate. Spirit-redemptive religions (such as Islam or Buddhism as far as I can tell) might get past this, but the idea of leaving creation behind without us has to go against every serious human instinct: we are creatures, why should we be allowed to continue without something of creation? The responsibility to creation around us must have more than a temporary significance, if we are to be eternal, there must be a continuity with creation. How do we move forward?

I think this is one place among many where the Christian story can have more power (and beauty) than any other story. For creation is not destined to die, it is not ultimitely destined for cold or hot execution. We as Christians believe that the same God who set the stars in motion is also the one to redeem them; not just our "souls" but all of creation around us. This story seems to trump both the materialist end (does anyone really think we are randomly ridding on a rock for 90 years and then it is over?) and the spiritualist end (surely we are not alone in the future, what would that even mean?). I think we as Christians should be more vocal about our future redemption, one that redeems all creation, creatures high and low, then we are at present.

Causality truly can not save, but through Jesus Christ we have been reconciled to God, and the whole world with us. Soli Deo Gloria!