Greatest Living Christian Rhetoritician?
July 16, 2009
In many circles of scholastic theology, the theological discourse can take on an entirely dry and mathmatical flavor. As if, in perfect neutrality and impartiality, one is disclosing the secrets of the world. However ‘true’ some of these types of treatise’s might be, it can be understandable that I might lose interest. I’m certain of the fact that had I been tested as a child I would have been diagnosed with ADD.
I myself enjoy bombastic rhetoric. Rhetoric need not imply sophistry or veiled-falsehood. It can be coupled with precise argumentation and imagination and it can put joy into reading scholarly works. This is why Gordon D Fee can be much more enjoyable to read than many other exegetes. The man doesn’t pull any punches.
In the theological/philosophical world of today we have been blessed with a movement bravely entitled “Radical Orthodoxy.” Feasting as they do on modern Continental thought and mocking the false safety of analytical philosophy, RO, and many who could broadly fall under its banner, have given us royal treats in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, Stanley Hauerwas and David Bentley Hart (among others).
But who among them can claim to reign supreme as lord of language?
There is of course Stanley Hauerwas. A feisty Texan-high church methodist (though I do believe he is Episcopalian these days) known for his powerful testimony against liberalism and for the Church. He has given us such treasures as
(in reference to “Atonement theories”)“If you need a theory to worship Jesus go worship your fucking theory” and
“Fighting violence with bombs is like screwing for virginity”
But I don’t think he can take the cake.
We might also point to the honorable ‘high-church Anglican’ John Milbank, student of the ABC Rowan Williams. Turning randomly into his “Theology and Social Theory” (an absolute must read) we can see him at work.
“Parsonian sociology attempts to conjoin the ‘liberal Protestant meta-narrative’ as articulated by Weber and Troeltsch. . . with the evolution of Herbert Spencer which was part of his English adaptation of Comtean positivism. In the Parsonian niew, society evolves through a process of gradual differentiation into separate social sub-systems: gradually art is distinguished from religion, religion from politics, economics from private ethical behaviour and so forth. The upshot of this process is (as for Weber) that it is now possible for something to be beautiful without being good or true, and possible for there to be a valid exercise of power without it having a bearing on either goodness or truth. At the same time, a realm of ‘pure’ science emerges which (as in Spinoza’s ideal of intellectual freedom) can pursue truth independently of coercive pressure, or of practical consequences.” TST, 2nd ed, Blackwell p128
But still he cannot out-maneuver the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. From his stunning “The Beauty of the Infinite” to his devestating “Atheist Delusions,” Hart, it is often complained, cannot be read without the Oxford English Dictionary as his vocabulary is composed of so many odd and normally unused words (not counting his own neo-logisms) that it takes ages just to get through a book. Be that as it may, he is never shy on vitrolic attacks on bad ideas and unbounded praise of the God who is God-in-Trinity. Here are two quotes taken at random from his “The Beauty of the Infinite”
“But Nietzsche also reminds theology how great is its rhetorical burden. The story of being that Christianity tells, of creation as a word of peace whose ultimate promise is also peace, looks so very frail standing alongside the imposing figures of “history” and “nature,” in their blood-dyed robes, trailing their clouds of contingency, cruelty, and ambiguity; the protological and eschatalogical tensions within the Christian story leave it vulnerable to the accusation of irresponsible idealism, or of an unwillingness to rein its narrative in when its messianic horizon threatens to engulf the clarity of “realist” thinking in a night of mythical abstraction (theology, not always unaware of this, even occasionally attempts to construct one or another kind of political “realism” of its own, even though this can be accomplished only through a series of tactical apostasies).127 – please note that that is one single sentence!
“What is truth?” – “If Christ, the eternal Word, is the Father’s “supreme rhetoric,” then the truth of his evangel is of a very particular kind. As soon as one ventures appreciably past the bounds of logic’s unadorned and uncontroversial claims (and sometimes before one gets that far), one finds that what is called truth is usually a consensus wrested from diversity amid a war of persuasions, the victor’s crown of laurels laid upon the brow of whichever dialectical antagonist has better (for the time being) succeeded in rendering invisible his argument’s own ambiguities and contradictions (has better, that is, concealed the more purely rhetorical moments of his argument in the folds of his apparently unanswerable “logic”); and into the tumult of history Christ comes as a persuasion among persuasions, a Word made entirely flesh, entirely form, whose appeal lies wholly at the surface…”331
Take up and read.
Just a reminder. . .
July 15, 2009
I’m still a ‘kid’
That is, I have had absolutely no theological training whatsoever. So most of the time I talk I am talking as one who is makin’ stuff up on the fly. I was reading through all our posts from the beginning of the blog and I feel that I’ve sometimes gotten progressively more serious. I’m not a fan. I want to return to being creative, whimsical and satirical once again.
Let’s let blog posts be blog posts and not dissertations. I will still try to be thorough and argue articulately, but I’m not trying to develop a system or defend dogma. I still expect the same level of discourse and challenge from fellow contributers and commentators, but let’s not expect too much from a bunch of kids who like to talk, drink and smoke. I’m just trying to write some ad hoc theology that meets challenges that the Church faces in our context.
Sorry for being an ass sometimes
Tony
p.s. Jen and I are having our second daughter, Marguerite (Margot) Beatrice Hunt on Friday morning, pray that all goes swimmingly!
Scripture Is Not Good Enough II
July 15, 2009
Wow, what a thread! It’s difficult to keep track of the various comments in a comment chain, so I’ve decided to post my comment as an entirely new entry.
Concerning the Original Post:
I should have clarified that this post is really just a raw copy and paste from a collection of stray notes that I originally never intended for anyone to read. A thought occurred to me a few weeks ago that this “you had to be there” notion might be a good way to present how I see Scripture to someone who’d grown up with Sola Scripture. Specifically, I thought this “Spirit of God” business as being especially effective for communicating to a Pentecostal. Thus, the goal of this post wasn’t so much to say something new, as to try out saying something I’ve said many times before in a new, more approachable way for a certain audience.
As Tony and Summer pointed out, some of my points were a bit confusing:
It almost goes off in a gnostic direction doesn’t it? What “really” happened becomes disconnected from words, so that words become an exercise in veiling the “real,” which seems to be “the experience.”
This was not my intention. I am not a gnostic.
Similarly, calling language a “mere human construct” implies that language is something forethought-out. Like the way we ‘construct’ a building.
The evolution of language is both intentional and unintentional. By saying ‘only language’ or ‘mere human construct’ I mean that the texts we read are descriptions of actual experiences–not the experiences themselves. Perhaps it would have been more helpful if I’d made that clear.
Rather, the foundation of our faith is always on the prior action of God. As Creator of the cosmos, as caller of Israel, as Jesus Resurrected, and Spirit sent. That is, the whole revelatory action of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Are you saying that scripture alone is not enough and needs to be coupled with the Holy Spirit in order to be a solid foundational basis for faith,or are you saying the Holy Spirit (and our shared experiences with him) is the foundation rather than scripture? (the first sentence of your post and the last sentence seem to state two different ideas).
This is indeed confusing and a good catch Summer. I do seem to contradict myself. I’ve altered the last sentence. Hopefully that clears it up.
Concerning the Episcopal Church:
Roger, speaking personally I am more fully convinced of Anglicanism than American Episcopalianism. Unfortunately, much of what Bishop Jefferts Schori says regarding theology has very thinly veiled political overtones. In this instance, I think the Presiding Bishop is saying as much about how welcome Evangelical Anglicans are in her Episcopalianism as she is about Soteriology. This is the political reality of the Anglican Communion at the moment which I am not particularly proud of.
It’s safe so say that many of the Anglicanish writers on this blog have been more influenced by the likes of N. T. Wright, C. S. Lewis, Rowan William, Marcus Borg and our Priest John Newton than we have by the Presiding Bishop or other polemical Episcopalians like John Shelby Spong.
(However, it’s important to note that we still very much affirm Bishop Jefferts Schori as an Anglican and fellow Christian. We may disagree with her, but we are committed to the same Church and thus she is our sister in Christ and our Presiding Bishop. This radical committment to unity is what drew many of us to Anglicanism to begin with.)
Concerning the Tone of the Comment Thread:
Aggresive Intellectual debate is desirable but I fear our tone has slipped into personal attack and bickering. I think this can as much be blamed on our tool (the internet) as on our dispositions.
Most of us who read and use this site claim to be Christian, and with this confession comes an expectation of conduct–especially to eachother. I have not always exhibited Christian charity on this blog either, so I do not judge when I say I am disappointed in what’s become of the discussion of my previous post.
I do not use this blog the most nor is it *my* blog. However, I do administrate it, I did most of its design and paid for the domain name. For the record, everyone is welcome to continue posting on theophiliacs, as Tony said. In my opinion, this is exactly what everyone should do. It would be too easy to simply give up and stop talking to each other. I hope we can find a way to forgive each other and continue in dialogue as this is the only hope for the future of the Church.
Scripture Alone Is Not Good Enough…
July 13, 2009
… because it is only language.
Have you ever had someone try to tell you a joke, fail, then defeatedly admit that, “you had to be there”? What exactly does this mean?
It means that two or more people came to an understanding of something—not through words, or language or any other so blatantly human construct but through a shared experience. No amount of mere writing (no matter how articulate) will recreate that event for you. Storytelling can not loyally reenact what *really* happened. All storytelling is inherently reimagination.
What does this mean for the Christian?
If Scripture cannot connect us to the ancients, why do we claim an Apostolic faith?
Because Christians are not People of the Book, but in fact, People of the Spirit. The Christian believes that the Holy Spirit is what connects us, both to each other and to the Saints from the past. Perhaps even more outrageously, Christians confess it is this Holy Spirit that mysteriously connects us to the Jesus Christ we claim to know personally, despite the very obvious fact that we’ve never actually met the man.
It is only the Spirit that can bring us the “you had to be there” moments that we proudly claim changed our lives. These are the events that go beyond words, beyond language (at least, those that we know) to bring us to that place of shared experience.
Scripture, then, is not our foundation for faith, but rather the language we use to talk about that foundation: our shared experiences with the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection.*
*EDIT: This sentence was edited on 7/15 at 9am in response to calls for clarification in the comments.
A New Direction For Me
July 11, 2009
Well, I’ve come to a crossroads in life. This post will serve as a sort of “Where I Stand” at the moment, as well as where I think I’m heading and what I’m leaving behind.
Truth be told, I’ve been carrying a lot of religious baggage, and it’s taken so much effort to maintain and defend that baggage it finally hit me that it just doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m tired of having that “What about this odd little scripture?” talk. If something is absurd, then tell it like it is. Let’s call a spade a spade. If the emperor is naked, he’s naked. End of story. Defending his beautiful new wardrobe choice is just too far fetched and laborious and I have better things to do with my time, especially if I’m ever to arrive a realistic idea of something divine. Something worth being called God.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
When I was in bible college, about eight years ago now, we learned all about the Jesus Myth Hypothesis. I heard about it at school and at church for a few weeks running. More to the point, what I actually got at church and at school was a five minute version of the weakest points of the theory, and then a ten minute rebuttal that made the entire thing look ridiculous and unacademic full of ad hominem attacks and snide, Christian-eze remarks about those foolish “historians.”
I felt good. Justified. I felt confident in my Jesus, in the historicity of his existence and miracles, and even if I didn’t get it completely, I had faith. I felt better than I ever had about this religion thing. Birds sang and dolphins kissed and the whole world seemed right.
But I inevitably began to encounter the non-watered-down elements of the hypothesis, the really hard stuff, so of course, my defenses had to be sharpened. I eventually allowed contradictory ideas to remain true when it suited me and the defense of my faith. Ideas like:
Jesus may have looked like an archetypal messiah figure [sharing similar elements with the 'myths' of Zoroaster, Krishna, Dionysus, Herecles, Glycon, Horus, Ishtar and even the Buddha, to name a few]; but this was all because God wanted to send what the people wanted and expected already. God didn’t need to be original, humanity had made the choices for him.
&
Jesus was despised and rejected and eventually crucified because he wasn’t what they wanted or expected.
The more “evidence” I was faced with, the more creative and nuanced my defenses had to be in order to cope with apparent reality. I’d seek out books that defended what I already believed, what I wanted to hold on to, and books that bashed those darn overly-historical pictures of history.
As if that’s not enough baggage to carry around….
I was watching afternoon TV once when it clicked with me what I was actually doing with the Old Testament. In defending an over-bearing, abusive, malevolent image of God in the OT, you know, just chalking it up to his sovereignty or inscrutability or whatever, I was acting like the stereotypical abused girlfriend in bad movies. The one who knows she needs to move on but just can’t, because as bad as her boyfriend has acted in the past, he’s changed, he’s different now, and he says he loves me and it won’t happen again. All that stuff he should rot in jail for, well, I forgive him. I mean, he says he loves me, even if he doesn’t act like it.
But inevitably, the girl is pushed to extremes and finally musters the courage to leave the guy, who then threatens her or chases after her, and you can choose your own ending from there.
Point is, I realized it was futile to defend such a mountain of evidence against this OT image of God. Taken one at a time, sure, I can wade through here and there and do a decent job of defending scripture, but on the whole, there is just too much crap.
The real kick in the pants, however, is when you start reading for yourself from differing viewpoints and find out guys like Origen and Augustine didn’t take much of the OT literally. And neither did the Jews. You know, God’s chosen people. I went to bible college to get an education about the bible and for some reason no one thought it would be a good idea to tell me that. I’ve gone on defending the historicity of myths like the conflicting versions of The Creation Story in Genesis 1 & 2, The Great Flood and Jonah and The Whale. I mean, a story can’t mean what it never meant. Fiction cannot become Non-Fiction just because it backs up a worldview I want to defend. If these are teaching stories and myths historically, then I must allow them to remain so.
But let’s push it one step further, in case I haven’t made my point perfectly clear. I also had to ask myself; Do I believe in witches, zombies or fire breathing dragons? Or how about curses in the name of the Lord that incite she-bears to maul dozens of children?
The simple answer is No. And I never could come up with satisfactory defenses of these scriptures, so I just turned my brain off and relegated them into the “I’ll just have to ask Jesus when I get to heaven” category. Well, my brain is on and it realizes that’s all just another load of baggage, too, and it’s time I get rid of it.
So I’m wiping the slate clean, as it were. Or… well.. I mean that literally, too. I’m starting up something called The Clean Slate Project. I imagine it will have a few posts like this in the beginning, to get it all on the table and identify what we need to get rid of and why. I’m really interested, first and foremost, with investigating the idea that we can’t be moral without God’s help. I don’t think that’s true because I see moral people as well as immoral people, but I don’t see God helping or intervening in any way. If some people are doing it, they’re doing it of their own volition in my mind.
But more to the mater at hand, when it comes to Theophiliacs, I have to be honest when I state that I am beginning to think debating theology is almost pointless. We’re basing so much on scriptures that often never meant anything remotely close to what church tradition has decided they mean now. We’re arguing with an arsenal of opinions and viewpoints and writings and polemics, all to further our own ideas that, when you boil it down, are based on one of two basic things; what we were raised to believe, or how we have reacted to what we were raised to believe.
I’m stepping out of that ring. I don’t care anymore. I’m concerned with how I should live my life and lead my family. If there is some good advice in the Proverbs or elsewhere in the Bible, good. If there is some good advice in the Koran or the Tao, bring it on. As for the rest of it, I’m doing what any rational person, what any good scientist does, when faced with contradictory ideas. If something is obviously wrong in the face of new evidence, you let it go and don’t look back. Doing so only hurts for a moment, which is a lot less than a lifetime spent not understanding and wishing things made more sense.
To use a term our friend George Wood has made me familiar with, my cognitive dissonance is being resolved through this process, and you know what? I’ve never felt better. Once again the birds are singing, dolphins are kissing, and who knows, I may even go for one of those long walks on the beach.
Peter Pan Syndrome
July 9, 2009
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I realized that being a child is way cooler”
Taking two weeks to sort out my mind, to meditate and pray, hasn’t resolved the world’s problems. I am shocked because I really thought that it would. What I have found is that I’m more motivated than ever to sell everything and move to a remote country farm and live the rest of my days off the grid of fossil fuels and fellow Christians; or myself, it’s hard to tell.
I like talking about God. I like talking period. That is probably part of the problem. To quote Yoda, “Rest I need. Yes, rest.” I try to keep pretty up-to-date on the Anglican woes. Who is saying what and why. Who’s a heretic and who’s not. Who is going to “win” – or more precisely who is going to lose?
Rest I need. Yes, rest.
The problem is that I have known since I was a little boy that God has called me to serve the Church. Some days that excites me – mostly it frustrates me. You see, I believe in “organized religion” – I believe in the Institution. I believe in bishops and accountability. I believe that there are good doctrines and bad, mutations of true belief and “orthodoxy.” But I don’t want to make those calls. I make them all the time yes, but I don’t want to anymore. I want Jesus back on the flannel board and out of the Creeds. At least I could talk to the Flannel Jesus. At least when I didn’t give a damn about theology I was sure of my own. I want a Christ Pantokrator! Who takes care of everything for me. Is there a flannel-board Pantokrator icon I can pray to?
Rest I need. Yes, rest.
I want to trust Christians again. I want to trust that we can believe in Jesus more than a book. I never want to have another conversation about 7-day Creationism or Women’s Ordination.
I want to trust that my faith won’t be slandered by cheap pluralism: “Christ is THE way” becomes “Christ is A way” becomes “Give it the ole’ college try” becomes “You believe that the atonement and resurrection are necessary parts of the Christian faith? They are just myths plastered over ancient archetypal fears of sexual repression“
I want to believe that Baptists and Papists are both Christians. Since most agree that they are, then I want to believe that we can take the Eucharist together, or minister together OR DO SOMETHING TOGETHER BESIDES A STINKING THANKSGIVING SERVICE!
Kyrie Elesion, Christe Elesion, Kyrie Elesion
Rest I need. Yes, rest.
Epilogue?
July 4, 2009
As a kid, I remember when I first ‘got’ David.
I was in middle school and I was struggling with the Psalms, which is exactly what made me keep coming back to them. It started with the famous twenty-third Psalm, which we had to memorize for something in church, and then I just kept reading. There was some confusion, however, when I came across these unsettling Psalms that didn’t seem to be very uplifting, didn’t seem to resolve. It’s like a lot of them start off very depressing and either end on a vaguely positive note, or just end. I didn’t understand poetry or literary critique at that age, all I saw was a guy who seemed very upset about half the time. I wondered, Why didn’t God just make him happy? He sounds pretty sincere, and that’s sort of what I’d learned in Sunday school was God’s goal, to bless those who bless and seek him. And yeah, I knew David had fouled up here and there, but I also knew he was trying to be better.
But then I got it. David was a real guy. As in, a real person with real ups and downs, real honest to goodness issues, and he was pretty open about them. He was constantly crying out to God for help or comfort, and he recorded a lot of that desperation in many of the Psalms. Then he would take heart in the old scriptures, often remembering back to how God came through for his forefathers and in those thoughts he found satisfaction.
I could relate to David an awful lot. I remember hearing my mom pray, and I don’t mean mealtime grace. I mean, when dad was on the rampage, mom was doing her spiritual warfare thing, and oftentimes it was hard to tell who God more likely to hear. As much trouble as I had with the inconsistencies I saw in my dad’s behavior and the anger and resentment it created in me, I saw the similarities between my mom’s desperation and what I saw portrayed in the Psalms. That was what I began to hold on to; desperation for God.
One thing that never really clicked with me, however, is that David was a classic manic depressive, and that is not healthy. I had become completely okay with my emotional ups and downs because I saw them reflected in the character of David. I never once thought I needed to make adjustments to myself in those areas.
And another thing that never clicked was, many other people I was around seemed to justify their behavior with biblical examples as well. Both my parents relied on the bible as a basis for their behavior; my mom in her praying for the family and my dad in his righteous anger at the family. I’m still not sure if my mom’s behavior was healthy or not, but I can be sure my dad’s wasn’t. He was a cranky, unhappy, grudge holding, bitter old man.
I’ve grown a lot since then, and so has my relationship with my parents, especially my dad. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how his character has pulled a total one-eighty. I’d hate to leave anyone reading this with the wrong impression. He’s a lot easier to get along with these days, and it’s taken a lot of effort to get to where he is, but for five or six years now at least, things have been pretty decent.
So where am I going with this, anyway?
Well, another thing that never really clicked with me was, God never actually responded to David or answered any of his pleas. David sort of cried out, then thought back to the good old days and tried to find solace in that. I was in the same boat, in some ways. I had rough times, but I had good times, too. So for years, I just tried to focus on the good times and ignore the crap that still went on. It was okay God never showed up in obvious ways, I sort of gave him credit post hoc for anything that went well and, though I don’t know why, I’d just learned to accept the things that went poorly as my own fault.
* * *
Recently I had a revelation; I can really only think of one person in the bible that God did respond to when questioned, which was Job, and boy did he have to earn that conversation. Even more surprising to me was how God really didn’t answer any of Job’s questions, either. He basically says, “Well, I’m God. Look at all the amazing things I’ve created. Do you dare question me in my awesomeness?” This scene is oddly reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her band address the Great and Powerful Oz and get put immediately in their place. Only Job never sees a man behind any curtain, never actually gets to have a real, civilized, sit down chat. I know, this is quite a stretch for some of you, comparing the Wizard of Oz with God, but it’s the best comparison I have at the moment. Any metaphor would probably be lacking.
But then it really hit me. With Job, God was actually just showing off to Satan, anyway. He allowed all manner of evil and pain, except death, to befall Job in order to satisfy a wager. And when Job calls him out in this injustice, God just pulls the same sort of I’m-awesome rhetoric, then gives Job his stuff back, in what I consider a tacit admission of guilt. (Argue all you want, the book of Job is just ridiculous if we insist it represents a loving and just God.)
Luckily, I’m not Job. I’m certainly happy for that fact, if not for my own sake then for the sake of my wife and daughter. I’d hate to get stuck in the middle of some cosmic wager and lose my family as a teaching lesson for Christians thousands of years from now.
So I’m not Job and that’s good, but I have been an awful lot like David, and it’s been this way for far too long.
The trouble is, David was not a healthy person emotionally, as the rest of his personal life and all its issues will easily attest. And neither was I for many years. The effects of that fact still occasionally spill over into my life and my relationship with my own family as I try to distance myself from the person I used to be.
Today, I’m no longer okay being David, riding out the ups and downs and waiting for God to show up. I simply don’t get comfort from old bible stories about all the great stuff God did, because that God seems to be away on business these days. And I certainly don’t want to earn that sort of conversation through Job-like trials only to be even more disappointed when God pops in for a quick muscle-flex, now-look-over-here move. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just letting go of the expectation that he might someday show interest in my life or well being. In my opinion, if he is God the way most Christians understand him, he’ll know where to find me when he decides it’s time.
And you also must realize, this only one facet in a very long and complicated process of researching biblical history, church history, scriptural tradition, theology, and many, many other factors. This has taken years of pushing God into a smaller and smaller corner as I learned more and more about the real world. In the real world, there are no miracles, and acts of God are, in fact, due to observable, natural phenomenon. I don’t need complicated, highly nuanced answers when science or nature provide me with more than satisfactory explanations that don’t ask me to suspend reason and don a helmet of credulity. God can still be God without old, facile definitions and worn out rhetoric.
I know this post may disappoint many of you, but you have to realize I’m at least equally disappointed, if not more so. Maybe my expectations were built up incorrectly and this is just one more step in disassembling those faulty presumptions before I am able to rebuild on a firm foundation. I don’t know. All I know is, for now at least, I’m done waiting around for something to happen.
ADJ
* * *
(P.S. I know this stance may preclude my involvement as a contributor to this blog, but I’ll leave that decision up to the rest of you guys. I still plan to stay involved in discussions, but I don’t want to be… oh what’s the term… unequally yoked?)
(P.P.S. Reading this again, I now realize I haven’t exactly stated where I do stand. I’ll let this be for now. The post is long enough already.)
reed
doshoe
adhunt
jhgharineh
jstambaugh
Anthony David Jacques
Shawn Wamsley
