Noah: A Theological Review

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Allegory, Bible, Christian, film, Gregory the Great, Interpretation, Noah, Typology

The question of whether you like the recent Noah film will depend on what you are expecting. If you are expecting only to see what you find in Genesis – which is after all not very much – you will be disappointed. If you are hoping for something so “literal” it misses the point of the story – like the so many Jesus films that turn Christ into a saccharine idol – you will be disappointed. Yet I would suggest if you are looking for something that is thoroughly Biblical, you will find it here, in spite of the cries of the film’s many Christian critics. But all this hangs on what I mean by Biblical, and this in turn goes back to a difference between premodern and modern Biblical interpretation.

The best way I know of describing premodern Biblical interpretation is via Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. Does Gregory believe in the historical meaning of the text? Yes. But that is not what he is most interested in. What he is most interested in rather is the way the book of Job communicates within the matrix of Biblical and Christian tradition. At the end of the day, the book of Job is not really about the story of Job at all – the book becomes a touchstone whereby one enters via figural means the entirety of Christianity, understood in terms of Scripture and Tradition. For Gregory, the most interesting thing about the book of Job is the way it associates with all the other stories caught up in the narrative of Christianity.

And this, I argue, is precisely what the Noah film is doing. It is of course not as overtly Christian as Gregory’s Moralia, but then the original story of Noah is not overtly Christian either – it is Jewish first and Christian second. And though it does certainly supplement the story in various ways, the key to the genius of the film is the way it does this. Whereas some other attempts at capturing such stories on film try to simply write modern culture over the story – use it as a skeleton for a piece of modern art – Noah does roughly the same kind of thing that Gregory does. The film is not so much interested in a mimetic relation of the Biblical story as in the question of how that story can become a touchstone whereby we enter the polyphony of Biblical narrative.

How does this work? As one of my friends put it, it does this by cramming most of the span of the Genesis narrative into the tight space of the Noah story. We see the creation and the Fall. We see the Cain and Abel story. We encounter a scene resembling the horrible events described when the angels visit Lot in Sodom. Humans have the technology – and pride – of Nimrod, the hunter who is traditionally thought to have built Babel. The miraculous birth narrative, so present throughout the Old Testament and finding completion in the narrative of Mary, is here as well, and so is the Abraham and Isaac story. Pedantic details are not missed. I once had a Sunday school teacher who bothered to figure out all the ages of the people in the Bible, and who were contemporaries etc., and he discovered that in the narrative of Genesis, Methuselah dies at the time of the flood. This too is not missed. Even imaginative details have roots in some of the more cryptic of Biblical passages. To be sure, the partially fallen angels, the watchers, are apocryphal (from the book of Enoch) rather than Biblical, but stories from Genesis have always spawned mythical offspring who, if done right, may not be there literally but do represent the spirit of the text. Milton, for instance, peoples the first chapters of Genesis with many characters who do not appear in the Bible, and Beowulf imagines Grendel and his mother as descendants of Cain (or Ham, if you follow a certain line of interpretation). And though the watchers are more like these latter than Milton’s former, with an obscure metaphysics leaving more questions than answers, they are perhaps no more puzzling and distracting than Genesis’ own iteration of the mysterious Nephilim, who would seem to be the offspring of a union between humans and angelic creatures. This, then, is the technique of the film – not to represent the story of Noah, per se, but to use the narrative as a framework for entry into the broader Biblical narrative as a whole. The question then becomes one of gauging how the film conceives of this narrative, and I would suggest (as I argue below) that it does a decent job of this.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Perhaps the best way of getting at how the film works is to begin with the thing that worried me for the first third of the film: the problem of the absence animal sacrifice. This I considered a problem because I was worried that the film was simply going to divide humanity into a set of evil meat eaters and innocent vegetarians who escape on a boat. This all looked too hippy for me – not because I dislike hippies per se, but because their explanation of sin and salvation from it is too simplistic. The idea that we can so easily sail away from our sin, whether corporate or personal, greatly underestimates the power of sin. And this is precisely where the Old Testament sacrifice comes in. The point of this was to remind us that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Salvation is not cheap. And this is highlighted in the original Noah story, not only by the animal sacrifices made by Noah himself, but also by the fact that Abel’s animal sacrifice was pleasing to God whereas Cain’s sacrifice of vegetables was not. That the first murderer is associated with vegetables and the first victim associated with the slaughter of animals makes things slightly complicated for the film’s conception of a world where evil meat eaters are pitted against vegetarian protagonists. And the reason I harp on this is because it does remove one of the typological footholds whereby the Noah story is understood in relation to the sacrifice of Christ – where there are no sacrificial lambs, it is that much harder to conceive of THE Sacrificial Lamb.

Had this been the extent of the film – simply turning the story into PETA propaganda– I would not have been happy, but fortunately what the story takes away with one hand it gives back with the other. It does this in the form of an alteration to the story whereby Noah expects the human line to end with his family, and is faced with the discernment of whether God wills him to complete the destruction of humanity by killing his granddaughters, or to allow humanity to continue, sinful as it is. And it is in this dilemma that everything taken away by the absence of blood sacrifice is brought back – because the choice Noah faces is the conundrum that haunts humanity. It is clear enough in the film that dealing with evil is not simply a matter of easily shutting oneself up in a boat, and the figure of Tubal-Cain, who will be dismissed by some Christian critics as an unnecessary addition, is merely a type of the Original Sin that Biblically speaking is indeed carried through the flood and into the brand new world – righteous though Noah may be, there will always be those like Tubal-Cain and Ham – righteous though Noah may be, there will always be a part of him that participates in the sins of these characters. And the only way of ensuring the complete and utter destruction of sin is through the complete and utter destruction of humanity. Indeed, the scenario is very like the conclusion of Paradise Lost, when Eve proposes suicide – if the human race is fallen, why go forth and multiply, when this simply makes one a breeder of sinners?

The answer to this comes in the form of a mystery: it is only through such propagation and fruitfulness that humanity can be saved. The motif of miraculous childbirths out of situations of barrenness and complication permeates the Old Testament, pointing back toward God’s promise to Eve of salvation through a child who will crush the serpent, and pointing forward to Mary’s unconditional fiat. And all of these characters are collated in the figure of Illa, played quite perfectly by Emma Watson. Here, there is miraculous conception, the birth of twins (reminiscent of Jacob and Esau), and the looming threat of death faced by so many children in the Bible, particularly Moses and Christ. In this segment of the film, Noah’s character gestures toward all the figures that threaten children throughout Biblical history, whether protagonists such as Abraham, villains such as Pharaoh and Herod, or figures of ambiguity such as Jephthah. Noah finally chooses life, and eventually receives divine confirmation in this choice, but the problem – sin – survives along with the human race.

This, then, brings us back to the puzzle that animal sacrifice is meant to bring up – if sin is to die, humans also must die, and hence this is taken care of, if imperfectly and only provisionally, by the vicarious sacrifice of animals. But I would argue that, though this line of the story is not literally present, the puzzle it proposes is palpable in the film– as Milton memorably puts it concerning man, “die he, or justice must.” And, Biblically speaking, it turns out that Justice in fact must die – on a cross. The one who is the very embodiment of Justice steps in in some mysterious way beyond our imagination and does what Noah cannot – in Him, humanity dies, and in Him, it rises again, this time without sin. And this ultimately is what I like about the Noah film.

There are many little things to praise, including typological gestures toward creation ex nihilo, and a visual that evokes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in the form of a dove; it also is perhaps one of the best filmic representations of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body – the union of the unitive and procreative purposes of sex – that we are likely to see in a very long time. Similarly, there are many things one might nitpick about, and I won’t go into them here because I’m sure there are all too many other Christian critics happy to pick up slack in this matter. However, I, for one, am most glad that, through creative treatment, the story in the main “got” the most important point of the Noah story. This point is that sin is a problem; mass destruction is only a temporary fix, and salvation is not as simple as walling oneself up in a ship and riding out the storm. Something else is needed, and is answered in words conveying that mystery even deeper than sin: “To us a child is born…”

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Why Rob Ford needs our prayers, not our condemnation

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1 Timothy, Christian, cocaine, crack, drugs, leaders, mayor, politicians, politics, pray, pray for kings and all those in authority, prayer, Rob Ford, rulers, toronto

As Rob Ford’s life falls apart so dramatically on the world stage, I cannot help but feel sorry for the man. That doesn’t mean I approve of either his politics or his personal life, but it does mean I recognize him to be a fellow child of God—broken and sinful, like me, like all of us. May God give him strength to meet his personal challenges, and may Christ the Saviour of sinners be present unto him, offering the mercy and forgiveness he needs.

Let us remember St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy, that prayers should be made for “all people, for kings and all those in high positions.” And this isn’t just a prayer for our sakes—“that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way”—though it is for that too. St. Paul’s words continue: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” What God asks of us is not merely that we pray for our leaders to lead us well; we must also remember His individual desire for each of them—namely, that they would find salvation in His Son—and for this too we must pray. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

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How Love of Literature Makes Me a Bad Teacher

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Awkwardness, Christ, Christian, Holy Spirit, Literature, silence, Teaching

Common sense would seem to suggest that the more one loves one’s subject, the easier it should be to teach it to others. I imagine there are some people for whom this is true. However, I find it exactly the opposite. The more I love my subject, the more difficult it is to teach it to others.

Why is this? I think the best explanation is that when one loves something very deeply, one comes to marvel at it in its whole complexity, at least as far as one can understand it. For instance, if we were to compare, say, pieces of literature to ornate castles, the ones we love best would be the ones in which we are thoroughly familiar with the cracks, passageways, and secret catacombs – the normal, the anomalous, the beautiful, and the vulgar all lumped together; to see any part of it is to see the whole; even the smallest part is the mystic’s synecdoche, bringing before one’s eyes the entirety with which one is so familiar.

And this is exactly the problem for teaching. It becomes hard to remember what it was like to encounter the thing originally, piecemeal – a bit here, and a bit there – and so one forgets that newcomers need a tour. When so many parts of a great and complex work of literature strike one speechless with awe, one forgets that, without help, these parts might seem confusing or meaningless. Our deep love for the thing strikes us speechless, but from the outside, that speechlessness can look like ignorance or indifference. And so I find that those works I have studied most deeply and love most thoroughly come across in exactly the opposite way I intend. I stutter because I am in awe – because I do not want to meddle with the perfect complexity of the thing – but very often this comes across as confusion or disorganization. Poets often speak of love as a kind of madness, and here it is maybe true; deep love for something makes us bad teachers.

Conversely, it is far easier for us to codify and categorize those things we are less attracted to or know less about. For those things we know less about, we become students alongside our students and so make the journey together. For those things we are less attracted to, there may only be a few bits (if any) that are compelling, and so we find it easy to put these subjects in fairly simplistic boxes.

What has this to do with being a Christian? Everything, I think, and I think this because I am in love with Christ and His Word and His Church and the Tradition he has given her and the Holy Spirit etc. And this is precisely why I find it so hard to communicate my faith – the life of my Beloved – to others. It is not something that will be reduced so that it fits in a portable handbag that I can then shuffle off on others. Rather, it is in my flesh and blood, in my very bones. And to communicate it without stuttering and stammering – the thing that actuates my every breath – is as impossible an act as standing outside myself. I find myself in the dazzle of a dynamic silence that probably looks like boredom to those on the outside.

I should be clear; I do not say this with the pretense that this makes everything in my life lovely or bearable or joyful – it doesn’t. Even less do I mean to flaunt this as some kind of spiritual ideal that everyone is called to; different people are called to different things. What it does I hope help explain, maybe, is my awkwardness and silence. I do not speak when I ought to, and I sometimes speak at the wrong time, and it is all haunted by a deep and abiding clumsiness. If you have experienced this, please forgive it if you can as the awkwardness of one who loves deeply, abashed and in awe of Reality and the One who made it. And when you do not hear me shouting words of praise, it is not because I do not wish to praise – it is simply that words are inadequate.

The Heart Has Its Reasons

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Catholic, Catholic Church, Christ, Christian, Christian Church, Christianity, Invisible church, J. R. R. Tolkien, Obsessive–compulsive disorder, Protestant

For the next while, I will be stepping away from the Catholic/Protestant question, at least in the public forum of this blog. I will finish my post series on Giussani, and will still undoubtedly speak out of the broadly catholic tradition that so shapes my faith. But for the moment I would like to set aside the back-and-forth debate that I, admissibly, am responsible for – not because bad things have come out of this (far from it), or because my fellow interlocutors have been unfair or graceless, but simply because it exhausts me emotionally, and seems not to be what I am in need of right now spiritually. If you are thinking to yourself right now that this is very escapist of me, you are thinking exactly what I feel – I hate setting aside any question, and moreso because I have OCD, which insists that I should deal with such questions 24/7, if possible to the detriment of all other duties and responsibilities. So, yes, I too feel like it is escapist, but, as J. R. R. Tolkien wisely pointed out, sometimes those most concerned about escapism are the jailers.

I started this set of posts for two reasons. The first is that I feel like decisions like this neither can nor should be made in a dark corner. I appreciate Christ’s response when he is arrested, that he does not have some deep, dark secret conspiracy – if anyone had wanted to know his “secret” plans, they had only to listen to him when he taught publically. I have a deep respect for this kind of openness. Hiding in such cases may indeed mean one is hiding as much from oneself as from everyone else. And a decision made wisely should be able to stand up to external criticism.

But perhaps it is my second reason that has got me into trouble. This is that, having just moved to a new city, being painfully introverted, and in any case having a theological and spiritual past that makes Christian community difficult for me (I usually end up either saying nothing or rocking the boat), I figured I would spare those around me by blogging rather than making others talk about these things with me. In some ways this was necessary because it has constantly been hard to know who to talk to and how. But in others ways it has made things worse because the alchemy that occurs in writing – the transformation of thoughts and impulses into polished and sensible prose – leaves behind the raw emotion and pain that is behind much of this crisis. To be very, very clear, I do not in the least fault anyone for responding reasonably to my reasonably put arguments and musings – it is not fair to expect people to read the emotions behind arguments. But for my own sake – for the sake of a heart that seems inextricably woven into my brain – I need to step back. I cannot pretend to be arguing with disinterest, that the things I am saying are not in some way the lowings of a brazen bull.

Of course, I don’t know how well I will be able to maintain this stepping back process, because the particular difficulty is that for me everything is connected. My impulse is to say that I will on this blog turn my attention to more pastoral matters – such as, for instance, the Christian response to mental illness – but I feel that even this, like the most practical and simple good, cannot be talked about apart from doctrine. My response, I think, must differ, depending on what we think Christians are, and how we think about the visible and invisible church. My mind is a quaking bog – unsettle one bit and the whole body trembles.

This, of course, does not mean I am going to stop pursuing the questions I have been pursuing, or thinking about the Catholic church – I will. The difference, though, I hope, will be that I am more honest, and find communities in which to practice such honesty, and avoid the pretense that this is something that I can engage with anything less than my entire person. And so – as I did when I shared on Facebook my first post on this subject – I request prayer – I know not for what – I can only pray that the Spirit intercedes for me with groans, and that I somehow survive.

When the Riddles of God Are More Satisfying Than the Solutions of Man: Toward a (Hopefully) Irenic Response to Captain Thin

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Bible, Catholic, Catholic Church, Christ, Christian, Christianity, God, Israel, Too Dame Catholic

I have been mulling over Captain Thin’s response to my posts – very deeply in fact – and I finally think I may be able to respond. Let me preface this by saying that, in “real” life (as on this blog), Captain Thin has been a very supportive friend as I have been going through my sundry crises. This, of course, makes it all the harder to disagree with him, not only because I know how deep the ecumenical bonds between us are (and it pains me to focus primarily on the disagreement), but also because these matters cut to the very heart of us. For all the civilized tone that I hope we have been able to maintain here – in Christian charity – disagreement is still deeply painful, since the very fact of Christianity compels us to see the people we are arguing with as people rather than mere arguments; and even moreso when the people we are arguing with are some of our closest friends. All that being said, I would not for a moment expect a friend to agree with me simply for my sake, nor would I find it easy to be friends with someone who expected this of me – all that to say that, far from a distraction from our friendship, the theological debates and discusssions that Captain Thin and I have are part of the cement of our friendship; we have been known to get together to watch Dr. Who and end up being distracted from it by wonderful theological conversations; certain parties have also beaten us over the head with pool noodles on account of us continuing at length a good theological discussion when everyone else was ready to go out for coffee. All this to say that the disagreement I put forward here is a very painful thing and a very important part of our friendship all at the same time.

But let me proceed. From what I can tell, Captain Thin’s primary problem with the Roman Church is its close association of the church with an institution. This, in his argument, ignores the invisible church that exists both inside and outside institutional churches; moreover, it condemns many faithful believers to a set of anathemata announced at Trent. Quoting Donne, he notes that, since Trent, faith is become pricey and costs more, that is, things that people used to be able to get away with believing in an older, pre-tridentine church have now been codified and condemned. Quoting Luther, he situates the Church in her people, and not in her wood and stone.

On the anathema question, I am grateful to Louis Thomas, who posted a helpful link under Captain Thin’s post. Basically, this post clarifies that the anathemata put forward at Trent are not automatically put into effect; that is, the statement does not categorically apply to people, but only does so when matters have been investigated regarding the person charged, and when the church has formally charged them. Moroever, the state of anathema more or less is a description of excommunication (not necessarily saying anything about eternal salvation, but rather referring to one’s relation to the earthly Catholic church), and it would seem redundant to tell Protestants that they are not part of the Catholic church – one would imagine they already know as much, and that that by definition is what makes them Protestant.

Furthermore, as the Catechism makes clear (see sections 817-19), the Tridentine condemnation of Protestants it seems would not usually apply (except indirectly) to Christians who hold contrary beliefs in the present, insofar as their Protestantism is inherited rather than borne of open and deliberate rebellion against the church; indeed, such Christians are part of ecclesial communities and are recognized as fellow Christians by the Catholic church. Of course, what Captain Thin charges is that, while this is what the church might put forward in the present, its assertion is inconsistent with its beliefs about the deposit of truth in tradition; indeed, in his assessment, such a statement is not really a clarification of doctrine, but rather a clever manipulation that pretends that Catholics have always been saying the same thing when they really have not.

Frankly, I don’t feel I have quite enough knowledge and experience at the moment to be able to gauge on my own the degree to which the Catholic treatment of this matter is clarification and the degree to which it is manipulation – I feel that dealing with things like this is a very complex matter – but conversely, I’m not sure Captain Thin has given quite enough evidence to convince us of the contradictions with which he charges the church. The reason I say this is that I have encountered very similar arguments concerning the Bible. Skeptics will find little bits here and there and pit them against each other and make big deals of them etc., and the charge is usually that, since the Bible is internally inconsistent, it cannot be the word of God. In fact, it seems that the Bible itself even perhaps dares us to think about this, giving us as it does four different versions of Christ’s life (surely it would be easier for an authoritative holy text to only have one). But I have come to be glad of these alleged “contradictions,” precisely because the thing I trust least in the world is straightforward answers, because they fail to capture the complexity of the world. It would be much safer and simpler if, say, God had given us the four spiritual laws rather than a Bible. But it would not be a full response to the complexity of the human condition – a complexity in part created by God, and in part due to sin. This means that the conclusion to which I have come regarding life is not that I should seek the least contradictory and most internally consistent answers, but rather that I must seek the answers where the truth that I see of them is enough to convince me to trust the bits I don’t get, and where the complexity of the answer correlates to complexities we find in actual life.

Of course, all these things are value laden, and really all I can say about Cathoic tradition is that, what looks to Captain Thin like a clever dodge, looks to me like an attempt to reckon with a complexity that must be reckoned with by any Christian. I mean, as Christians, we do in fact believe we have a revelation from God – which one might simplistically equate with direct and unmediated access to the truth, not buffeted by the permutations of history. And yet somehow also the church very much is buffeted by history and is not simply given a truth that can pretend to be extra-historical. This, by the way, seems to me very much in keeping with the manner of a God who reveals himself through Israel (rather than directly through extra-historical illumination), and through the Christ who takes on flesh in history. In fact, in all these things, there are problems. When is Israel being (as it is) the chosen people, and when is it behaving in terms of its historical context (that is, should we recreate an Old Testament Judaism or not)? What bits of Christ’s life are pointers to direct Christian behavior, and what historically contextual (for instance, should we make a ritual of spitting and putting mud in the eyes of the blind to heal them in the same way we might promote the ethics of the sermon on the mount?)? These are complicated things, and one might dismiss them as internal inconsistencies in the Christian story (surely truth must be simpler than that?), except that we find our own lives reflecting the need for an answer this complex. Even the task of understanding what our selves are and how we might reconcile that with times when we seem to behave or think in different ways (cf. Romans 7) suggests that some version of such a complicated synthesis is working in us (whether we know it or not) as soon as we get up in the morning; If I had to respond to someone who charges that Christian faith is too complicated and casuist, I would not have him or her examine Christian doctrine, but rather examine him or her self, and then gauge whether the complexity of Christianity answers the complexity he or she sees in him or herself. This, I think, is what made classical philosophy such a wonderful prep school for Christianity, with the Delphic motto, “Know thyself.”

But to return to the question of the church: from my perspective – from what I have seen in church history, of the modern church etc. – the clarificatory aspect of tradition is not simply a clever dodge but an attempt to deal with the same complexities dealt with in Israel’s history and the life of Christ; what might it mean to communicate the eternal truth of God through finite forms, as God seems so bent on doing? Again, it would take far too long to outline what makes me see this in Catholic history, but that is okay; it has become clear to me that, whereas in Protestant circles one can maintain the illusion of a complete apologetic – a watertight proof – the Catholic church, by virtue of her largeness, catholicity, and bounty, cannot ever be singly defended. She is a large country with many borders, and one finds oneself able perhaps to defend the border by which one enters (if that), but also finds that one must trust by faith that the rest of the realm is in God’s care and is being defended as necessary.

Such, then is my response: the function of tradition in the Catholic church only looks like a dodge when one holds it up to an unrealistic expectation of “consistency” that neither reflects the complexity of Judeo-Christian history, the Bible, or life itself. I had meant also to write about some problems with giving the invisible church precedence over the visible – and why wood and stone, though perhaps not the defining materials of the church, are still an integral part of her. However, this post being too long already, I will leave that task for another time.

Is Christianity Without Tradition Another Way of Being Spiritual But Not Religious?

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Christian, Christianity, church, God, Lillian Daniels, Religion and Spirituality, Spiritual but not religious

Much buzz has gone on over the past few years regarding Lillian Daniel’s critique of people who are spiritual but not religious. Basically, her argument boils down to the suggestion that the spiritual but not religious label is in most cases a thinly veiled narcissism; the problems that so vex us in organized religion are not in fact the problems of such organizations per se, but rather problems common to humanity – in going off into our own private, self-pleasuring spiritualities, we are in fact refusing to love our neighbors. As Daniels puts it:

“Any idiot can find God alone in the sunset. It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you who not only voted for the wrong political party but has a baby who is crying while you’re trying to listen to the sermon. Community is where the religious rubber meets the road. People challenge us, ask hard questions, disagree, need things from us, require our forgiveness. It’s where we get to practice all the things we preach.”

While I would suggest that  things are perhaps much worse than this – many of us are too cynical even to see God in a sunset – I think the overall point is apt.  What I mean to do here is suggest that it is also applicable to another group of people, whom I will acronymize as CBNT – Christian But Not Traditional.

If you have frequented Evangelical/Protestant churches for a while, you will know what kind of people I mean.  Basically, such people recognize the history of the church – or a certain part of this history – as particularly embarrassing.  Yet instead of condemning the perpetrators as bad Christians – which I think is the Christian response – they assert that these perpetrators are or were not Christians at all.  Much as the sunset-seeker conveniently leaves behind the the complex humanity of his pew-neighbor for the much less “tainted” vision of the sunset, so such a Christian abandons the complex humanity of Christian sinners past.  Not only does this set up the illusion that one has found the “pure” church in the present, free from a benighted past, but the abandonment of past Christians makes it much easier to abandon other Christians in the present.  It also sets us up for a hard fall, for when we discover ours is not in fact the “pure” church – and that its corruptions are identical to the ones we thought we jettisoned with tradition – we will become disillusioned, and will cause others to become disillusioned.  In the worst cases, we cause people to walk away from the church (and therefore God) entirely, because we have catechised them such that they have learned that walking away is the only way of dealing with corruption. To further this irony, those espousing such an ecclesiology are very often the same people lamenting cultures of divorce and the lack of commitment in younger generations. You can rant and roar all you like about the evils of secular humanism, the Enlightenment etc., but bear in mind that these favorite bogeys may in fact be the bastards of our own illegitimate ecclesiologies, the scandals we have walked away from lest they should taint us.

Reflections on Luigi Giussani’s Trilogy, Part 2: At the Origins of the Christian Claim

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Christ, Christian, Giussani, God, Gospel, incarnation, Luigi Giussani, Pharisee, Religious Sense

They had Christ right there – with them – and they missed it. How could they not see? Why were they so blind? How could they not recognize him? It is typical in Christian circles to ask such questions, with the implied assumption that we, had we been there, would have recognized him right away. We, the good Christians of the twenty second century, would have flocked to him, praised him, where the stupid people in the Bible – the Pharisees, the Romans, the keepers of the law – failed.

But I have always wondered about this. Of course, we hope that our place in the story is with the disciples, those who recognized Him, but how can we know? When I look in my heart – and see the piles and piles of problems there – I certainly want to be one of those who would have recognized him, but find myself fearing; what if, instead of one of the “good guys,” I would have been one of the bad guys? I would after all make an excellent Pharisee, fastidious and proud as I am. I also see in myself the figure of Pilate, agnosticism hiding behind a sensible-looking but false neutrality. Moreover, even when one doesn’t account for these proclivities to evil, there are still questions. From the perspective of hindsight, we feel we can of course “see” the outcome – Jesus was of course the messiah – but one wonders if it can have been at all clear at the time. There were after all all kinds of pretenders to messianic claims around Christ’s time, and the correlation of the Old Testament prophecies with Christ’s life – while certainly not false – nevertheless often require a somewhat counter intuitive interpretation of such prophecies. Put another way, there was, I think, another reason besides hardheartedness that people expected a military messiah – left with just the prophecies, it would be very difficult to hypothesize without divine guidance a messiah that takes the form Christ takes.

I preface my reflection on Luigi Giussani’s At the Origin of the Christian Claim with these matters because it is exactly such questions Giussani deals with in his second book. What kind of encounter would it take to convince an ordinary person, with all his/her virtues and flaws, of the divinity and messianic function of someone one initially mistook for just another generally wise man? Put another way, what kind of encounter had to happen for those curious – encountering Christ in all his curiously simple complexity – to transform from ambivalent onlookers to disciples of Christ? This question – what Giussani describes as Christ’s pedagogy – is the matter of the second book, which seeks to demonstrate that Christ is a concrete answer to the questions and problems raised by the human religious sense, outlined in his prior book.

Anticipating critics who suggest that Christ’s incarnation hardly accords with the kind of tough questioning and seeking involved in pursuing the religious sense, Giussani suggests that no seriously proposed hypothesis should be dismissed as out of hand before it is considered. The problem that the religious sense will have with the Christian incarnation is that it is not something one can figure out or hypothesize on one’s own; the path of such searching, left to its own devices, leads perhaps to Socratic irony at best and sophistry at worst. But, as Giussani points out, that the Incarnation cannot have been “figured out” by human searching alone does not necessarily indicate its falsehood – it is after all unreasonable to exclude out of hand the possibility that God could take initiative and propose an answer to the religious sense that humans could not have come up with on their own. But in opening ourselves to this possibility, one raises the difficult question of determining how one might verify it – what rubric do we use to verify the claims of someone who claims in fact to be the source of any and every such rubric? Hypothetically speaking, if one were to appear on earth from a realm beyond worldly experience, this person would presumably defy what we consider reasonable in many ways. Yet how does one tell if this person is telling the truth – if their claims of beyondness are actually real – or if their incoherence is in fact something that should be judged false when gauged by human experience?

For Giussani, we are left with a problem. If Christ is the messiah – God-made-man – then his very confusion of our sense of rationality and common experience will in fact constitute part of the proof that he is Other to us. Yet such confusion might equally suggest that he is a pretender using obfuscation as a cloak to conceal a scam. Is he hard to grasp because he is beyond us, or because he is simply incoherent?

This for Giussani is where the issue of method becomes important, that is, the issue of determining means of gauging a phenomenon appropriate to that phenomenon. This may sound complicated, but it is really a very fancy way of saying something that Christians have always insisted upon – that the whole person matters, as does the entire capacity of his/her judgement, and the most fitting answer to the problems raised by human existence is not that which simply answers a single niche problem confined to a single experience or criterion. Rather, the answer will be that which holistically answers in a way that does not do violence to the understanding of human nature as a whole, defined as generously as possible to include reason, emotion, psychology, relationships etc. – in short, all that constitutes human experience.

Turning to the gospels, then, Giussani discusses the way we see Christ encountering humans such that these humans are brought to a point of crisis where they either must acknowledge Christ as who he is and trust him – even beyond their understanding at times – or must decide against him and turn away. For Giussani, it is of the utmost importance that Christ’s appearance is never coercive; there is enough about him to invite further those who are curious and freely choose to explore, yet belief in him is never absolutely compelled or completely incontrovertible, as might be the case, say, in a mathematical equation. Giussani sees this as God’s way of honoring the free will he has given humans. There is enough evidence to go on for those who seek truth. But God will not compel anyone to follow him by the violence of a too narrow syllogism – those who wish to reject him can, and do. God will not compel stubborn hearts.

The shape of Christ’s answer to human experience – what is invoked in humans by the religious sense – is thus the matter of the book, and the book’s burden is defining and nuancing this answer such that it is mistaken neither as simplistic or completely incomprehensible. In my prior post, I described Giussani’s conception of human existence as a great riddle to be solved by as many legitimate means as are available to us. Conversely, Christ, for him, is a divine riddle posed as an answer to the human riddle. As such a riddle, Christ gives his followers just enough of himself to keep them following him – just enough of himself that they can know he is trustworthy – but there is always a part of Him beyond the bit of Him they see and measure, the part that continually challenges them to open themselves to the mystery of heaven beyond themselves, toward which He is the way.

The rest of the book is a sketch of how this Divine Riddle that answers the human riddle interacts with those he meets in the gospel accounts. I say “sketch” because the intention is hardly to exhaust what could be said on this matter, but rather to offer tantalizing glimpses of this interaction and so invite readers to further consider these gospel accounts for themselves – an intention in which (I feel) the book succeeds admirably.

But the series does not end here, and this in itself is a significant thing. I could list off any number of authors who might have ended here; the first book introduces the human need, and the second book shows how Christ answers that human need. What more can remain? What in fact remains is the question of how Christ’s life- a life lived historically two thousand years ago – is mediated to us in the present. It is, after all, one thing to say that Christ was such that he was sufficient as an answering riddle to those in the first century, but their experiences are not ours – say what we will about our personal relationships with Christ, we cannot say – at least in the strictly literal sense – that we have put our fingers in the holes in his hands, or that our hearts burned within us while he talked to us on the road. But if we have not done these things, how can we in fact evaluate Christ’s answer, if that very answer is a person – in flesh and blood – rather than a proposition? How can we encounter One who has not been present – at least in the full physical manifestation described in the gospels – for the last two thousand years? Is there another way that we might encounter Christ, not as a detached idea or historical artifact, but as His full Person, the very Person proposed as the answer to the religious sense? Is there a way of encountering this Person, not secondhand through accounts written thousands of years ago, but in such a way that we can evaluate him via our own experiences and judgements? This question – whether Christ can be encountered in the present as in the past – will be the matter of my third review, dealing with Giussani’s Why the Church?

Organizational Chaos and Original Sin

Tags

Christian, church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Education, organization, organizational theory, pastoral theology, politics, René Girard, secular, social relations, social science, social theory, sociality, Theology

I preached yesterday on the Sunday Gospel lectionary text, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.  The passage concerns Jesus’ sending of the seventy-two into the various towns into which he intended to go.  While seeming to give them power to heal and exorcise, Jesus in fact sends them in total, vulnerable weakness, completely dependent on the mercy of the hospitality of the towns as they preach, ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’ At these towns (especially as Gerhard Lohfink has so perceptively pointed out), the seventy-two start in each town what comes to be known as the ekklesia, a healed and exorcised people assembled in the name of Jesus, gatherings that eventually became known as ‘the church.’ Because these gatherings bear witness to the fraudulent mode of existence prescribed by Satan that is premised on the taking of one’s own sovereignty in the knowledge of good and evil, the church’s formation in weakness, vulnerability, humility, and charity is itself an exorcism of Satan from the world. This ‘crisis’ of the powers, as theologian Karl Barth would have it, is in turn confirmed by the death of Jesus at the hands of the powers and in his vindication when he rises from the dead and offers his risen life in the sacraments to the church for the life of the world.

After I preached, a very perceptive leader in the congregation asked: why is it that most organizations in which I work, including churches, are plagued with power struggles? Not only was he affirming my exegesis, but he was also resonating with the experiences of ministry failure that I shared, in which I had illegitimately taken power in some ministry contexts, resulting in a series of debacles for my life and work. These (dy)catastrophes took place within Chinese Canadian evangelical churches, similar contexts from which my brother in Christ had also emerged. In other words, though he is older than me, we share similar backgrounds.

I answered along the lines of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, original sin, and how contemporary churches may have forgotten our ontological constitution by charitable communion. But I did not feel that my spur-of-the-moment answer was very satisfying, so I’d like to write a more sustained answer in the hope of being able to spur more conversation. This is largely because I feel that we may have been talking past each other, for my initial response was: ‘This question gets very close to the heart of what we call original sin.’ The Christian brother who had asked this question furrowed his brow; as it seemed to me, he was wondering whether this answer were a cop-out.  I’m sure that my later connection to Bonhoeffer may have also gotten lost in translation.

And thus, because I was very dissatisfied with my own answer, here’s another try:

The answer to this question really does get to the heart of what we call original sin. The trouble is, especially within the Chinese evangelical churches from which we emerge, the question of original sin is indeed a bit of a cop-out. For some strange reason that is worth further theological and historical reflection, we often read original sin in a similar way as American Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. For Niebuhr, a good look at what’s called our theological anthropology, that is, the way we exist before God as human beings, is also constituted by original sin. This means that we have to know that we are deeply flawed and that we can’t help our flaws. This conviction led Niebuhr to argue that in Christian ethics, we should only seek proximate justice, that is, that you can’t ever expect to be perfect or to have a perfect organization. So don’t try. Instead of being idealistic, we should instead be realistic, showing people grace when we see their flaws and expecting that every organization will just have to be imperfect. This, in a nutshell, is a view of Christian ethics that Niebuhr called Christian realism.

This in turn is why this brother in Christ furrowed his brow.  As soon as I brought up original sin, he was thinking that I was completely copping out of his question.  You’re an idealist, he heard. Be more realistic. We all have original sin. Get real.

The trouble is, Niebuhr is not my starting point for understanding original sin.

Instead, my take-off point for ‘original sin’ is heavily influenced by the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Of course, there are lots of traps by simply invoking the name ‘Bonhoeffer.’ For one thing, most of my evangelical brothers and sisters only know Bonhoeffer because he joined a plot to kill Hitler, got caught, and then was martyred way too young in life.

It’s nice that this is what Bonhoeffer is known for, but that says nothing about Bonhoeffer’s theology. Of course, lots of people have various takes on Bonhoeffer’s theology. For the evangelicals who have read Bonhoeffer, most enjoy his book Discipleship, which calls people to cast off ‘cheap grace’ in favour of a ‘costly grace’ that calls Christians to radical practices in Jesus Christ, and his short work Life Together, which makes a strong case for Christian community. In turn, most liberal theologians are fascinated by Bonhoeffer’s tantalizing description of ‘religionless Christianity’ in Letters and Papers from Prison, where Bonhoeffer hints that because Christ should be thought of as ‘the Man for Others,’ the church also exists for the sake of ‘others,’ which in turn means that the church should cast off its ritualistic trappings and actually engage the world in service. In this vein, liberal theologian Harvey Cox most famously argued that the church should be ‘the vanguard of secularization’ in his book The Secular City.

As theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas points out, both of these readings miss the point that Bonhoeffer’s major theological statement came from his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: a theological study of the sociology of the church. Bonhoeffer was attempting to deal with three things in this dissertation: social theory, sociology, and a sociology of the church. What he argues is that the sanctorum communio–the communion of saints–is a mode of social relations in which people are called out of their secular social relations which are focused on themselves and into the I-and-Thou of real human interaction. As Bonhoeffer contends, the church thus becomes quite literally Christ in the world, especially if Christ is understood as the one who perfectly lived his life for the ‘other’ in radically humble service. Bonhoeffer later develops these points in Creation and Fall, Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison where he argues that this self-giving service and love for the other becomes distorted whenever we try to appropriate for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil. This is sin because it re-orients us from the way that we were made–for a sociality based on love and service toward the other–toward a distorted mode of social relations, a sociality where we try to control and dominate the other based on our ideological vision of what is good and evil.

That’s what I mean by original sin, and it has devastating consequences for social relations, especially within organizations. But unlike Niebuhr’s reading of original sin, this is not the way that it’s supposed to be at an existential level. This appropriation of power is actually a distortion of our real ontological reality. As theologian James Alison puts it in his treatment of original sin, The Joy of Being Wrong, it’s really a mistake to think that there’s something ontological about sin. Instead, it’s really a distortion of how social relations should be conceived, but it’s such a serious distortion that it requires a conversion to be able to see social relations rightly. Alison draws from another theorist, René Girard, to make his point. Girard says that if you observe the myths and stories we tell ourselves and the rituals that we practice, they are often about what he calls mimetic rivalry, that is, they presuppose that our desire as human beings is always shaped by the other, wanting always what we see other people wanting. This cycle of envy breeds tension in our social relations, until we have to release that tension by scapegoating someone arbitrarily. This is often called an original murder that is at the heart of most civilizational founding myths: someone kills someone else, releasing social tension, and a whole society is founded in honour of that murder and ritualized in religious myths and liturgies. In Girard’s book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard argues that the Christian Gospel story exposes this whole cycle of mimetic rivalry when Jesus is scapegoated and then resurrected, throwing the whole system into crisis and marking societies influenced by Christianity by a concern for victims and scapegoats instead of premising social creation on scapegoating and victimizing someone. Jesus is thus a point of conversion: he draws us into true social relations founded on care for victims and away from the original sin of scapegoating our rivals.

What this all means is that if we see organizational infighting and rivalry, we are looking at original sin, not in the sense that we have sin but can’t escape it as a mark of our existential being, but in the sense that we are still living within the one distorted mode of social relations that we know and have not yet been converted. Unfortunately, the sorry state of many organizations that my brother in Christ pointed out is in fact due to this sort of theology becoming a sort of minority report in churches and Christian organizations. Instead of looking at the level of this sort of theological anthropology and then practicing prayer as a way of living within Christ’s mode of social relations, many churches and organizations that I’ve encountered are much more interested in importing secular organizational theory, leadership solutions, and ways to form community without critically interrogating what existential mode of social relations on which those theories are based. This was the stuff that I was given when I was in ministry–how to be a good leader, how to build a great growing church, how to use your members’ talents and spiritual gifts to build up the church, how to organize the church so that the machine runs efficiently, etc.  I wonder how much of this stuff is in turn premised on what Bonhoeffer and Girard would call original sin.

In turn, I think this is precisely why theological education is an absolute necessity for contemporary church leaders. On the surface, the stuff on leadership and organizational theory looks great and appears so easily importable into the church. But if my brother in Christ is right in his observations, he has seen many churches and organizations crumble as a result. This is because most people within churches and organizations are simply incapable of evaluating theological sociology and anthropology. They have no idea that there are different modes of social relations and that the Christian church is really premised on a radically alternative sense of what social relations are. In turn, this might mean that seminaries need to be training pastors and church leaders to read the social sciences as theology, to be able to understand social relations theologically, and this in turn might train their discernment into how the congregations that they pastor should be ordered. Moreover, this calls for a great deal more spiritual formation in Christian practice, where prayer needs to be re-oriented from asking God to give us power to get our agendas done toward coming into the I-and-Thou of Christian social relations where we exist in self-giving service toward God, neighbour, and enemy.

So there’s a more drawn out answer. I hope that helps, and I hope to engage in further conversation on this very perceptive observation.

What about angels?

Tags

angels, Catholic, cherub, cherubim, Christian, Lutheran, Martin Luther, Philipp Melancthon, Protestants, seraph, seraphim

Dore’s illustration of the “Heavenly Host” in Dante’s Paradisio.

If you’re anything like the vast majority of Protestants (and I include myself in this condemnation), you seldom think about angels. If pressed on the matter, most of us could no doubt offer up some fluff on what these beings are. But the idea that they are constantly at work in the Christian’s life—that we are, in fact, constantly in contact with these creatures today and yesterday and all the days of our lives—this is seldom a subject of thought. We do not emphasize the work of these creatures in catechesis or sermons, we do not seriously contemplate them during daily life, and it’s for this reason, I presume, that we believe so much cartoony nonsense about them.

It’s refreshing, therefore (and challenging) to read the words of our Christian forefathers. They were under no illusion as to the real and active work angels undertake on our behalf. I like to include in my prayers the conclusion of Martin Luther’s Morning and Evening Prayers: “Let Thy holy angel be with me,” he writes, “that the Wicked Foe may have no power over me.” There’s a spiritual battle that surrounds us, and we need the intervention of these servants of Christ. Indeed, it is for our sake—for the sake of Christians like you me—that these beings are sent out to work. “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). They are God’s servants and our help.

As you reflect on the role of angels in your faith and life, you may find helpful this hymn by Philipp Melanchthon. Rereading it last evening was, in fact, the occasion for my own such reflections in this post.

Lord God, we all to Thee give praise,
Thanksgivings meet to Thee we raise,
That angel hosts Thou didst create
Around Thy glorious throne to wait.

They shine with light and heav’nly grace
And constantly behold Thy face;
They heed Thy voice, they know it well,
In godly wisdom they excel.

They never rest nor sleep as we;
Their whole delight is but to be
With Thee, Lord Jesus, and to keep
Thy little flock, Thy lambs and sheep.

The ancient dragon is their foe;
His envy and his wrath they know.
It always is his aim and pride
Thy Christian people to divide.

As he of old deceived the world
And into sin and death was hurled,
So now he subtly lies in wait
To ruin school and Church and state.

A roaring lion round he goes,
No halt nor rest he ever knows;
He seeks the Christians to devour
And slay them by his dreadful power.

But watchful is the angel band
That follows Christ on every hand
To guard His people where they go
And break the counsel of the Foe.

For this, now and in days to be,
Our praise shall rise, O Lord, to Thee,
Whom all the angel hosts adore
With grateful songs forevermore.

As an aside, the translation above does not include all the verses, and is actually Cronenwett’s 19^th century English translation of Eber’s 16^th century German translation. While Eber’s translation and the English translations based on it rhyme, Melancthon’s original does not. See a full translation of Melanchthon’s Latin here. It’s the stronger translation, but I couldn’t include it here because it’s copyrighted.

———————

On ‘Taking Unpopular Positions’

Tags

Christian, collegiality, communion, complementarian, egalitarian, homosexuality, Karl Barth, logic, mystical theology, philosophy, popular, Pseudo-Dionysius, sexuality, Theology, thing, unpopular

I am taking another break from my Anglicanism posts. I can assure you that parts 4, 5, and 6 are all slowly forthcoming. Now that I’ve deconstructed Anglicanism in parts 1, 2, and 3, I’m sure that many readers are wondering what the hell I’m still doing styling myself as an Anglican. I have reasons, I can assure you, almost as good as the reasons that Albus Dumbledore consistently hides from Harry Potter throughout the series.

But with the recent rulings by the Supreme Court on gender-neutral marriage (here’s Windsor and here’s Perry), I am frankly annoyed by the way that the conservative arguments against gender-neutral marriage have been framed. In fact, I am also annoyed by the progressive side of things, but that’s another discussion. But to make my point clear, watch this interview that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer conducts with the Alliance Defense Fund’s Austin Nimocks. Sure, Nimocks gives some (deeply flawed) reasons as to why Proposition 8 is still the law of the land. But basically, his position is: my position is less popular than David Boies’s. So I’m probably right.

Here’s how the argument is framed: we (presumably evangelicals) are taking an ‘unpopular position’ and so we are being vilified.

That’s almost like saying: what makes a position right is that it is unpopular.

Um, no. No, no, no.

But I’d like to point out that this sort of ‘unpopular’ framing is oddly popular in my anecdotal experience with many evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic Protestants, whatever political or theological position they hold on the left or the right of the spectrum. It’s almost because something is unpopular that we hold to that view. And this is ironic, precisely because the same evangelicals, fundamentalists, and charismatics with whom I have interacted will say that truth is not a popularity contest. Because truth is not up to the will of the people–instead, it is objective–then it is often said that truth is about holding tight to a position known to be timelessly true.

And then always comes the punchline: I know that I am arguing for the unpopular position, so I will be persecuted.

Hm. Are we so sure that truth is not about a popularity contest when we say that? It seems like it still might be. It’s just that while everyone else might go for the ‘popular’ position when the contest is over, you’re going for the ‘unpopular’ position.

Note, then, that this ‘unpopular’ position logic is what works its way into so many glib evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic statements about truth. Most of these statements are pretty contradictory. Check this out:

Person A might say: I believe that homosexuality is a sin. I realize that that is an unpopular position to take, and I am wiling to face persecution for that. Of course, as I’m reading my Facebook news feed, I then see right underneath Person A the statement of Person B: I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin. I realize that that is an unpopular position to take, and I am willing to face persecution for that. (Of course, what’s really annoying about Person A and Person B is that they actually have a position on ‘homosexuality.’ What exactly are you taking a position on? On whether ‘homosexuals’ actually have a different sexual orientation? On how sexual orientation is constructed? On how modern sexuality owes a lot of debts to medical discourses circulating in the late nineteenth-century? On whether the disruptions to identity proposed by queer theory are a good thing? On what the Catholic Church’s ‘objective disorder’ language means? On whether they should be discriminated against in the workplace? On whether they should be allowed hospital visitation for their partners? On whether they should have to pay estate taxes if one partner dies? On whether they can get married? On whether they can adopt kids? Hm. Kinda complicated to have a ‘blanket position,’ no?)

Heh. But let’s move away from sexuality. I’d like to propose that this sort of diseased ‘unpopular position’ logic works its way throughout every evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic debate under the sun.

OK, let’s go to the neo-Reformed debate. Neo-Calvinist says: In today’s evangelical culture, Calvinism is not a popular position among the seeker-sensitive, emergent, and evangelical feminist stuff out there. I realize that my Calvinism is an unpopular position to take, and I am willing to face persecution for that. And then, coming right back at the neo-Calvinist is: In today’s evangelical culture that is totally saturated by the Gospel Coalition and all the cool neo-Reformed guys with so much certainty, my delight in mystery, my evangelical feminism, and my attempts to make the Gospel as relevant to seekers is an unpopular position to take, and I am willing to face persecution for that.

Ditto women’s ordination. Complementarian says: In today’s feminist culture, my belief that men and women have complementary roles where men are the leaders and women are the helpers is not a popular position to take, and I am willing to face persecution for that. Egalitarian comes back and says: In today’s ridiculously patriarchal and sexist culture, especially in the church, I support women’s ordination because men and women are created equally in the image of God and have the same gifts. I realize that that’s an unpopular position, and I am willing to face persecution for that.

Ditto parents trying to control youth groups more tightly because they oppose the youth pastor. Parents say: In today’s culture of disrespect, we want to have more control over our kids than the youth pastor, and I realize that that’s an unpopular position to take, and I am willing to face persecution for that. Youth pastor comes back: In today’s complete cultural disregard for the church, we need to have more tight-knit relations among youth in the church, and I realize that that will be unpopular with our parents, and I am willing to face persecution for that.

WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON???

It’s like, if you invoke the ‘I am holding an unpopular position, so I am going to be persecuted’ card, then that’s what’s going to take the cake.

I refuse to believe that this is how our conversation, collegiality, and communion as evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, progressive, liberal, catholic, and orthodox Christians has to work. If there is any point of diseased thinking in our churches that needs to be ruthlessly refuted, it is likely this piece of logic.

If this is how all of us do theology now, it can be fair to say that we are all failures as theologians. (Heh. In today’s anti-intellectual climate, I realize that using the word ‘theology’ is unpopular, and I am willing to face persecution for it. GAH.)

So let me give two suggestions. First, why don’t we stop this ‘unpopular position’ logic, and actually do theology as Christians? This would mean listening to someone like Karl Barth when he says that it’s simply inappropriate for dogmatic theologians to have theological ‘positions,’ as if that’s what theology is about. It is not. Christian theology happens to be about Jesus Christ who reveals God in the form of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Here’s an idea: why don’t we start there when we do theology? After all, that’s the way out of most of these ‘unpopular position’ loops. If we really do claim to believe in an objective reality as Christians, it’s not that what makes something objectively true is its unpopularity. It’s its relation to what Christ has revealed about the Father.

Second, if we really want a negative theology, maybe we should actually read some mystics. Check out Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology some time. It’s a lot of this negative theology–God is not this, not that–but he’s not doing it because he’s trying to find the most unpopular position possible and hold to that. Pseudo-Dionysius wants to raise us to the highest point of union with the Triune God, stripping us of our projections and wrapping us into the objective reality who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This, by the way, is why you’ll never find that we on A Christian Thing take ‘popular’ or ‘unpopular’ positions. It’s because if that’s the way that we do theology, then we will have betrayed our very existence as Christians, which means that it would be illegitimate for us to say that we have a Christian thing. We are Christians, and frankly, we couldn’t care less how popular that is. For all we know, it might be more popular than we’d like to think.