Faith in Faith

I don't take faith, and a person's believing that they have faith, to be the same thing. Nor do I take unbelief, or being without faith, and doubting whether they have it, to be the same thing, but entirely different. 

- Jonathan Edwards

This is why, along with Stanley Hauerwas, we shouldn't take our subjectivity too seriously. Protestant spirituality is often driven by an anxious need to know that we know. Belief in God amounts to believing that we believe in God, even if we don't actually believe in God. We are consumed by our individuality. We are, in short, a community of solipsists, otherwise known as the church!

What I need instead is a community of people who know that I know, even when I don't know that I know. Or who know that I don't know, even if I don't know that I don't know.

Edwards and Malick

It is a strange country indeed whose first philosopher is a man who preached a sermon entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". And it is a strange blog post that begins a piece on Terrence Malick's new film with mention of Jonathan Edwards. To the Wonder is released today, though I won't see it until Tuesday.

But reading this passage on Jonathan Edwards made me think immediately of Terrence Malick, who, one could argue, is an American philosopher from the Edwardsian school. The proofs for that argument might make for an interesting dissertation, but for now I'll let the passage speak for itself:

In Edwards' view God's sovereignty was not an abstraction, but a description of God's active love. In his Dissertation Concerning the End for which God Created the World, for instance, he described how God's creation was an ongoing communication of his beauty and his love. Throughout Edwards's works he reiterated how rebellious humans, loving themselves, have refused to see this love. Conversion, then, is being given by the Holy Spirit new eyes to see; but the seeing is not just an intellectual apprehension. Rather it was an experiencing of the overwhelming beauty of the love of God, manifested in its most immediately transforming aspects in the sacrificial redemptive work of Christ. To recognize the beauty of this love is to have one's heart drawn to it. The transforming work is all God's doing, but it is not against anyone's will, since we are drawn to beauty voluntarily, even if we cannot help being so compelled by it. Edwards explicates such an understanding of freedom of the will, as being free to do what one wants, even though we cannot ultimately control our most essential dispositions.

I am unfamiliar with the theology of Jonathan Edwards, but if this is an accurate description of it then I'm beginning to see why he is not only America's first philosopher, but also widely considered its greatest theologian.

An Article

This is an article worth reading if political theology is your thing.

Nature and Grace

Conor Cunningham says that the relationship between nature and grace is at the centre of everything, from metaphysical debates to football. Having just watched The Tree of Life for the severalth time, the following was a timely video to supplement Terrence Malick's cinematic exploration of this ubiquitous relationship:

The Book of Job, from which Malick plucks a verse to launch his exploration, has an interesting perspective on this relationship: In response to the questioning of His grace, God responds with nature.

Any time nature and grace appear in a theological discussion it is always helpful to ask the question, What would Karl Barth say? He might say something along the lines of "Grace is the internal basis of nature, and nature is the external basis of grace." But more than that, he would point to Jesus. To talk about "nature" and "grace" outside of the incarnation is to talk nonsense as a Christian. In Jesus's human nature, through his concrete form, grace and truth are made known. In Jesus, nature and grace are seen to be not two things but one.

But there is a particularity about that sentence that is not always respected. Materialist theology -- or atheology -- tends to collapse grace into nature. Zizek, for example, sees the church not as the people of God in the belonging sense of the word "of" but in the sense of her now being the very being of God, the "community of the holy spirit" that continues on the life of the divine even after his death on the cross. The distinction between Creator and creature that the Bible -- and more importantly, Barth! -- is eager to maintain is erased. There is nothing outside of nature. In seeking to harmonise nature and grace we have equated totality with infinity. Christian theology cannot do this if it is to remain both Christian and theological.

To bring a contemporary cultural reference in to the mix, this is why it is misguided to quote approvingly the line "To love another person is to see the face of God" from Les Miserables. God is love, but love is not God. Much better to say (or sing) something like "To see the image of God in another is to begin to love them". The difference is subtle but crucial.

Lessons from Latin America

Public education becomes politicized indoctrination intended to form students into the "new socialist man." With other ecclesiastical offices, the bishops have warned that "the intention of government officials to politicize education and turn teachers into agents of indoctrination for a specific political model is unconstitutional and violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hence, it is unacceptable."

In an essay on Latin American politics and ecclesiology, this paragraph represents one of the "elements of the neototalitarian environment". There is a naivety to the bishops' warnings, however. Public education will always be politicized indoctrination. The real danger is when it is assumed by the public that their eduction is apolitical. That's when you know the matrix has you in its grip! Education is inherently formative. The warning that a school child in Latin America is being formed into the "new socialist man" can only be sounded on the grounds that you would rather that same child be formed into the "new capitalist man" or the "new neoliberal democratic man" or the "new fascist man". There is no educational space that lies outside of "a specific political model", and so there can be no warning from some neutral zone as the bishops suppose. Their warning comes from somewhere.

It is the task of the church to articulate that "somewhere", and to persuade citizens to convert and join them there. The problem, however, is that the people who think that education should be non-political are the same people who think that the church should be non-political. They forget that the task of the church is precisely "politicized indoctrination intended to form students (disciples) into the new socialist man." 

The warning from bishops, therefore, should not be that the government is violating human rights. The warning should be that the government is actually doing its job, whereas the church isn't.

Community Isn't Enough

Sociologist Peter Berger has a good post about humanist funerals (or lack thereof) over at his blog. It is worth reading in full, but here are the highlights.

The central question is this:

Why don’t people think of turning to [humanists] when seeking comfort in the midst of grief?

Greg Epstein, the “humanist chaplain” at Harvard, gives an answer:

It’s a failure of community….What religion has to offer to people—more than theology, more than divine presence—is community. And we [humanists] need to provide an alternative form of community if we’re going to matter for the increasing number of people who say they are not believers.

In today's Christian climate, this actually amounts to an orthodox answer. "Community" is the goal of Christianity, with the assumption being that we know what we're talking about when we talk about community - it's common sense. Chris Huebner think Christians should operate with a different assumption, however: "the church determines what we mean by community and not the other way around." Because this is so, we cannot divorce divine presence, or even theology, from community.

Berger goes on to give an excellent reply to Epstein:

Where is Epstein right? Yes, community helps people cope with grief—any community—even a few neighbors coming over with some hugs and a meal. Of course a group of humanists can serve the same purpose. But this will hardly make their message more plausible, though it may make a particular group of humanists more likable. Activity on behalf of a good cause can divert the mind from sorrow; there is nothing wrong with that. Also, it is possible for individuals without faith to face tragedy with stoic dignity. But one does not need a humanist church for that. 

Where is Epstein wrong? Yes, of course a religious community can offer comfort of the same kind as any other community. But religion offers something much more central than community in the abstract: It offers a community gathered around the message that death is not the final word about an individual life and nothingness not the final destiny of the universe. At any rate this is the message shared by the Abrahamic faiths that came to Newtown. Whether this message is true or not, humanism in the sense of “no faith” cannot offer a plausible alternative.

Pathetic Theology Part II

A few days ago I posted a piece that caused a veritable storm around the blogosphere. You literally could not count the amount of comments it got on one hand. (Granted, I was responsible for two of them, while one of them was simply a spelling correction.) It had to do with Pete Rollins' tragic theology. The feedback sparked a whole train of thought that I've been trying to get on track ever since.

One of the questions (and it is an extremely important one) was this: "Did Jesus really come to embrace brokenness in order to heal it?" (emphasis mine)

There were legitimate cries for this discussion to become more theological (by becoming more christological), and I think that it's precisely at this point that we can begin to make that happen. My short answer is Yes, Jesus really did come to heal brokenness. Luke places Jesus's manifesto at the beginning of his gospel:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

The joyous affirmation of brokenness (a term I would really like to clarify, if not replace with other more concrete terms) can be seen in this light to be a kind of bourgeoisie theology/politics that leaves social situations as they are. If we want to put flesh and blood on the presence of God, however, then we must take Jesus seriously. And to take Jesus seriously means that those who hunger and thirst for justice are not told that life's crap but to enjoy its crapness; they are told that their hunger and thirst will be satisfied.

The problem I have with Rollins's version of tragic theology is that it has a deficient christology and therefore a deficient ecclesiology. "Humanness" in the abstract is not beautiful. What is beautiful is the Human One that is Jesus of Nazareth. "Brokenness" as an abstract concept is not to be affirmed. What is to be affirmed is the One whose body was broken for us. Where our brokenness imitates that brokenness (which is really the only kind of suffering rejoiced over in the New Testament) then at the point we may discern the presence of God at work in the world.

What, then, of the mother and father who watch helplessly while their child suffers inscrutable pain? Where is the presence of God in this situation? Can beauty shine forth from such suffering? I think it can, but it will be a beauty whose movement is from mourning to hope, rather than a beauty that simply accepts the suffering as "mystery" (the book of Job would be instructive here). The church is called to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn, but to do so while hoping against hope in the God who doesn't affirm or accept death but who transforms it into life; the God who will shine his face on us even (perhaps precisely) at our weakest, most vulnerable moment. This is what it means for the church to be prophetic - we, together, are made capable of imagining a world that is radically different to the one we have been given. This isn't pie-in-the-sky theology. It is deeply political. Once again, yes, Jesus really did come to heal brokenness. "At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus..." and he promises us that he really is making all things new. The church, as body of Christ, is a foretaste and partner in that renewal.

Karl Barth wrote that "Every word in the New Testament presupposes the resurrection of Jesus" (or something like that). Every word and act of the church ought to do the same. We have tried demythologising the Jesus of the Gospels; we have tried depoliticising him; we have tried spiritualising him, we have tried not taking him too seriously; we have tried blatant unbelief. What if the church actually believed?

Is any of this linked to the impassibility of God? If I have taken Kevin's correction with due seriousness then hopefully it is, because, strange as it may sound, the impassibility of God is witnessed to by the obedience unto suffering of Christ and his church.

There is far more to write (and I think Yoder would be a good voice to bring into the discussion more explicitly), but that's all I've got for now. I guess I have come down on one side after all...at least for the moment, anyway.

Pathetic Theology

Idolatry of God from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

"Two things we want out of life are..." I'm postmodern enough to know that I shouldn't trust any sentences that begin like that.

Rollins talks about needing to "joyously affirm the brokenness of our lives". Why? Because the good news of Christianity is that "you can't be satisfied, life is rubbish, we don't know the secret." It would be wrong to say that Rollins is "unbiblical" at this point, because Ecclesiastes is in the Bible. Still, Qoholeth calls these pieces of news "absurd" or "vanity" or "meaningless" as opposed to "good".

This is a contemporary case of tragic theology, or pathetic (from the Greek pathos) theology. David Hart unleashes a stinging critique of it in The Beauty of the Infinite and in an essay entitled No Shadow of Turning. I don't know which side I come down on. One proclaims that God cannot suffer if He is to be God; indeed, that God's impassibility is integral to the good news of Christianity. The other proclaims that God must suffer if He is to be God, and that in this divine suffering lies the heart of the gospel. "God suffers with you" are the words of comfort offered to the grieving. This, it should be clear, is no abstract theological matter.

I don't know what deep suffering -- the kind of suffering that can't be made sense of -- feels like. But I'm sceptical about whether joyously affirming the brokenness of our lives is a sufficiently Christian response to it. In fact, I'm sceptical about whether "response" is even the right word, because it seems to give suffering the first word, with the Christian faith (its speech and practices) then being some kind of coping mechanism for the "human condition" (which is precisely the understanding of Christianity that Rollins wants to do away with). 

The problem I see in Rollins's theology is, ironically, the problem with much conservative theology: it does not know what to do with the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus didn't go around joyously affirming brokenness. He went around making it whole. He did embrace brokenness, but not as one who saw the good in it. He embraced it so as to heal it.

I watched a film called The Sweet Hereafter a few days ago. It is an exceptional piece of work, centred around the tragedy of a school bus crash in rural Canada. A lawyer is on the scene, looking to make sense of the tragedy by finding someone to blame and sue. He tries to rally some of the townspeople, and eventually gets around to visiting a father whose two children died in the crash.

MITCHELL: I'm here about your children, Mr.Ansel. My name is...  

BILLY: Mister, I don't want to know your name.

MITCHELL: I understand. 

BILLY: No you don't.

MITCHELL: I can help you. 

BILLY: Not unless you can raise the dead.

One can imagine that if this scene was in one of the Gospels, with Jesus playing the role of Mitchell, he would ask Billy where his children were buried, go to that place, and call them out of their coffins.

What is the church supposed to say and do in light of a Jesus like that?

The Antecedent Word

There is a brilliant passage by John Webster quoted over at Resident Theology. It has to do with that odd thing Christians call preaching, reminding us that the Word which is spoken and heard in church is the Word which created (and which now sustains) our world. It was there in the beginning and it is here now, longing to be heard by a community of faithful listeners with ears to hear.

[E]ntrusted with and responsible for the message of reconciliation, what does the preacher do? It is tempting to think of the task of preaching as one in which the preacher struggles to 'make real' the divine message by arts of application and cultural interpretation, seeking rhetorical ways of establishing continuity between the Word and the present situation. Built into that correlational model of preaching (which is by no means the preserve of the liberal Christian tradition) are two assumptions: an assumption that the Word is essentially inert or absent from the present until introduced by the act of human proclamation, and an assumption that the present is part of another economy from that of which Scripture speaks. But in acting as the ambassador of the Word, the preacher enters a situation which already lies within the economy of reconciliation, in which the Word is antecedently present and active. The church of the apostles and the church now form a single reality, held together not by precarious acts of human realization, but by the continuity of God's purpose and active presence. The preacher, therefore, faces a situation in which the Word has already addressed and continues to address the church, and does not need somehow by homiletic exertions to generate and present the Word's meaningfulness. The preacher speaks on Christ's behalf; the question of whether Christ is himself present and effectual is one which—in the realm of the resurrection and exaltation of the Son—has already been settled and which the preacher can safely leave behind.