Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography IV
July 31, 2010
Be it the gripping Torture and Eucharist, the insightful Mystical Theology or the symphonic On Christian Theology, books in the Blackwell series “Challenges in Contemporary Theology” have yet to not drastically shift my worldview after reading, and Graham Ward’s Christ and Culture is no exception (I can’t wait to read the rest in the series).
Despite the fact that this is a collection of previously released and delivered essays, there is a certain deep similarity in theme, style and content between them. These pick up on all the collective themes of Christology; “incarnation, atonement, the economics of the Trinity what it is to be human [and] the Church” (23) but do so in a manner steeped in discourses very distant to the sort of christology of predication that I’m used to reading such as hermeneutics, metaphysics and cultural theory. Topics like embodiment and the operation of desire also play a large role. (23)
Yet all revolve around very close readings of Scripture. Ward pays particular attention to St. Mark’s Gospel but Scripture is used thoroughly and uniquely all throughout this book. Even if one were to disagree with all of Ward’s conclusions, many of which are controversial, this book is hugely important as I see it for its christological and exegetical method(s).
Ward builds off Aquinas where in the Summa he says, “God is not known to us in His nature, but is made known to us in His operations. (Summa Theologiae, I.Q13.8). Therefore Ward asks not “who is the Christ or what is the Christ [but] where is the Christ” (1) … and I might add, “what is Christ doing?”
The introduction alone is worth the price which not only concisely lays out his own vision but offers a substantive and wide ranging critique of Karl Barth, especially his christological dialectics which as Ward sees it, makes of Christ “either the absolute subject or the absolute object.” (12) (This seems not too unlike to some of Rowan Williams’ critique of Barth, cf. – “Barth on the Triune God,” Wrestling With Angels, pp.106-149) Briefly summing it up, Ward lays it out like this:
“Barth’s dogmatic approach to Christology (a) all too thinly defines the economies of salvation in which the gracious love of Christ finds a responding desire; (b) this finds expression in the thinness of his account of mediations (c) such that his mediating christology remains tied to specific cultural assumptions about the subject and nature; (d) this binds christology to the logic of dualism, itself a product of a certain cultural heritage in modernity; (e) this logic and these assumptions, on the basis of which we develops his dialectical method, render him unable to reflect upon his own cultural production of christology. The world is so lost, so secularized, so ignorant of God that both Christ and subsequently a theology of Christ operate above and beyond such a world, in contradistinction to it.” (14-15)
Of the Ward books I’ve read, this and his Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice were the ones that really captured my imagination. It is important in its own right (or seems like it to me at least) but also in that it renders such criticisms as “RO doesn’t deal with Christ or the Bible or discipleship seriously enough” in need of more evidence. And it also disrupts the all too common saying I hear, that Ward is some sort of exception to RO, “Ward I can take, Milbank I can’t.” Nevertheless, Ward would not want to be holed up on a “side” in contemporary theology.
I can’t wait to reread this one…hopefully I’ll make more strides toward comprehending the details.
On Troubles in Public Education
July 29, 2010
Between posts, I thought I’d throw up this outstanding video which is getting spread all over the internet, or at least a really nerdy part of the internet. Professor von Dossow teaches here at the University of Minnesota in the Classical and Near Eastern Studies department…my department. It is in reference to the way that the U of M is spending money. It is indicative of how many public universities are acting these days. More proof that you don’t screw with Classicists.
I
“One early evening in winter I was walking alone through the woods toward a town which I could already see and where I wanted to find lodging. Suddenly a big wolf came upon me and jumped at me. I had the woolen prayer rope which had belonged to my late starets in my hands, and in my attempt to defend myself with it the prayer rope slipped out of my hands and lodged around the neck of the wolf. The wolf jumped away from and got caught in a thorny bush with his hind legs and with the prayer rope on a branch of a dry tree. He tried desperately to free himself but was unable to because the prayer rope was choking him. With faith I blessed myself and went to free the wolf and especially to get my precious prayer rope, for I feared that the wolf would run away with it. And, sure enough, the moment I approached the wolf and touched the prayer rope, he broke it and ran away without leaving a trace. I thanked God for His help in retrieving my prayer rope and remembered my late starets. Then I happily reached the town and stopped at an inn to ask for lodging…
The clerk [of the inn] looked at me and asked, “Were you making prostrations so earnestly that you even broke your prayer rope?”
“No, it was not I who broke it; it was a wolf,” I said.
“Really? Do wolves pray?” asked the clerk.”
From The Way of a Pilgrim, trans. Helen Bacovcin
II
The famous Russian hermit and starets St. Seraphim of Sarov was one day visited at his hovel in the woods by an enormous bear. As his daily rations had recently arrived, the holy man, who was known to be a fastidious observer Christian hospitality, offered half of his food to his guest, . The next day the bear returned and St. Seraphim again shared his food. This happened throughout the winter and on into the spring. The bear prefered to eat at the saint’s table rather than hibernate. Soon, it was time for Great Lent. At that time, it was customary for the monk’s rations to be cut in half for those 40 days of fasting and repentance. So, when the bear continued to visit, St. Seraphim began giving the bear all of his rations, leaving nothing for himself. One day while this was going on, the Abbot visited St. Seraphim, and was astonished and frightened to discover a bear being fed and gently spoken to by the venerable old monk. When St. Seraphim explained that he had been giving his Lenten rations to the bear all along the Abbot got angry.
“You ought not to be doing this, and during Lent of all times!” he chided.
To which St. Seraphim replied, “But, Abbot, the poor bear does not know that it is Lent.”
What is your favorite story involving saints and animals?
I’ve been wanting to reflect on blog writing for some time, especially in the wake of reading the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lost Icons: Reflections On Cultural Bereavement, and David Horstkoetter of the blog Flying Farther inspired me finally to do so. Consider this a reply to his post.
It is impossible for me to reflect on blog writing without it simultaneously being a reflection on learning to think theologically. The blog has now been running for two years and we’ve topped 400 posts just recently. In these two years, especially the last one and half, I’ve just begun to read academic theology (see this post for an account of that reading). So though the original contributers and I started right off the bat talking about various theological topics, I had (and still have) no sufficient ability even to think the thoughts ‘properly.’ I’m just an undergrad who reads theology in his spare time.
But that hasn’t stopped me from acquiring ‘opinions’ and having them strongly. (I was just rereading some of Ben Meyer’s old posts and while reading this one was uncannily reminded of myself several times throughout.)
For better or worse, and I can think of few worse ways of learning theology than by reading it by yourself with no teachers and blogging your opinions, this is how it has been for me.
Yet there have been many surprising positives to my experience blogging and it is on account of these that although I’d like to stop for a few years, I would in the end regret it (I think). Before proceeding to explicate these I want to relate my blogging career to something that Rowan Williams made a big point of in his book.
Learning to speak properly and ‘responsibly’ is a very large part of becoming an adult. This learning allows one to negotiate the complex web of relations and responsibilities that accompany adult life. And in this adult world one is expected to be able to be ‘held responsible’ for what they say. This means that part of being a ‘youth’ is being allowed to have ‘irresponsible speech;’ speech where you can play with ideas, words and expressions, where you can be given the space to learn the rules of ‘language games’ with the sort of room needed to grow and play; a youth ought not be held ‘accountable’ for all the things they say.
Not too long ago I stated in my Twitter feed and Facebook status that I have tended to learn by expressing an opinion strongly, encountering the feedback and correction of other people, engaging in ‘argument,’ and finally by reflection, ascertaining whether or not the things that I ‘believed’ and said were in need of correction or augmentation. On another day I proclaimed that I often read old blog posts and realize that I disagree with some of them entirely and some in part.
I am not claiming that I cannot at all be held responsible for the things I’ve said on this blog…in many ways other than the craft of theology I am an adult; nevertheless it has been the case that blogging has been an exercise in speech where I hope and somewhat expect to be given the freedom to say naïve and sometimes foolish things because with respect to such speech I am still very much a child. It has been, in all the best senses of the term, a ‘game.’ A ‘game’ I have very much enjoyed sharing with my many and various interlocuters from whom I’ve learned a great deal.
It is in this learning that blogging has had and continues to have value for me. Over time, both here and on other sites, I’ve picked up many friends and ‘playmates.’ Many of them are PhD students at prestigious universities and some of them are even seasoned pros. What I have lacked in class time from professors and peers I have supplemented with all these. Sometimes I’ve been quite afraid and intimidated because many have done me the favor of ‘taking me seriously;’ that is, even if some of the things I’ve said are crazy, they’ve taken the time to engage me without treating me like an infant. It is my hope that they’ll still give me a couple years of ‘play time’ without expecting me to join the varsity team.
But if I might be so bold I’d like to say that this ‘playful irresponsibility’ is intrinsic to theology blogging and blogging probably ought never to be held to very high standards. There is an ad hoc and unedited nature to blogging, even on some of the better sites. While it may be the case that after an engagement we realize that something profound or challenging was said and learned, as a general rule, it seems dangerous to me to hope for peer reviewed linguistic and academic accuracy even of people capable of such art.
Additionally, blogging has greatly honed my ability to write. My basic grammar, syntax and stylistic skills have increased since I started.
So cheers to all my internet friends and mentors…I am truly grateful for the chance I’ve had to grow up amongst such people and for all the emails, book recommendations, bibliographies and comment threads…To many more!
Thoughts, Anglo-Catholic: On ‘Traditionalists’ or “You Can’t Handle the Oxford Movement”
July 12, 2010
As a movement, as a theologically ‘centered’ or ‘coherent’ vein of Anglicanism, at least in my experience, and in the West, traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism is dead. There are of course many Anglo-Catholics, many of whom drive the theological wheels. I’d say in fact that the theological heavyweights in Anglicanism are in fact predominately though not exclusively ‘Anglo-Catholic.’ Long-lasting effects of Anglo-Catholicism can be felt in our revived Prayer Books; they can be seen in various liturgical performances; we like to recount the Oxford Movement and the (poorly understood and barely read) ‘Liberal Catholics’ in our histories; but if we are to take it as a continuing theological presence, and if we are to take the Oxford Movement and the Liberal Catholics as paradigms, then I personally don’t see many indicators that ACism sustains a theological vein apart from certain British movements of recent memory.
Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. I’ve gotten into not a few conversations about this with people who mostly disagree with me and/or disagree with how I define ‘Catholic.’ But as an example lets look at the possible move of some traditionalist AC clergy from the Church of England on account of the likely move to allow women to be bishops.
Without a ‘conscience clause’ these clergy would have to accept the sacramental and pastoral oversight of a woman if such a thing came to pass. For these people, this would amount to an abandonment of true sacramentality; a transgressing of the apostolic office and the foundation that Christ himself laid and set out for eternity: If you have a mitre, you must have XY chromosomes and a penis.
Let us assume for the sake of the argument that the Oxford Movement (OM) and probably even the Liberal Catholics (LCs) would disagree with both womens ordination and especially women bishops. Current traditionalist ACs until this point have suffered their conscience on the matter of women clergy in the C of E so long as it didn’t happen in their parish. Indeed, if a ‘conscience clause’ had not been rejected as it seems it will be, even still, so long as they themselves were able to practice their piety in good conscience, then it seems few if any would have been tempted to leave the C of E.
Enter a proposition: AC clergy (in the C of E) will not leave the church even if there are women clergy and bishops in the church so long as they are able to maintain their own practice.
That is, they can suffer a diversity on this issue in their wider fellowship, both in the C of E and in the wider Communion.
Proposition II – AC clergy are in Eucharistic (that is, the highest level of) fellowship with women clergy and bishops and parishoners ‘under’ them.
If we are to assume that a ‘true’ traditionalist AC does not ‘recognize’ the sacramental validity of women clergy, then:
Proposition III – ACs are able to abide ‘invalid’ sacraments in part of their church.
If these three propositions are true, and broadly of traditionalist ACs they are, then:
Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics are in fact high-church Congregationalists.
The OM and even the LCs were very concerned with authority. Indeed, many in the OM were not even thurible swingin’ high-churchers. No. Time and again when you read the Tracts for the Times, you realize that the OM was concerned to establish that the C of E sat in proper sacramental, that is episcopal continuity with the church of the apostles and that it wouldn’t have mattered if they had been allowed a thousand parishes to fill with chant and incense. What mattered was whether or not they were practicing in the same church and with the same authority as the apostles. Additionally, this would have had to have been true of the entire C of E, and indeed when Newman and many others deemed that it wasn’t, they left for Roman Catholicism.
Similarly Bishop Gore spent an awful lot of time defending the catholicity of the C of E. Indeed he wrote an impressive and persuasive book on just that topic. (cf. Order and Unity)
Now, I usually situate myself within Anglo-Catholicism seeing a clear line from ABC Michael Ramsey to Rowan Williams to RadOx. I would then consider myself a “liberal (charismatic and evangelical) catholic” though not in the way that term is generally used today.
But my point isn’t really in this essay to establish my own perfect catholicity (I’m pretty sure there isn’t such a thing) but rather to show that if traditionalist ACs have so far suffered sacramental invalidity in their church they should never have been in the C of E to begin with. I wonder if they simply don’t get what it means to be ‘Catholics;’ whatever the case they have a long way to go before they can legitimately say that they stand in continuity with Anglo-Catholicism.
Lonesome Dan Kase
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia.
Toward the end of my time at North Central University, which is located in downtown Minneapolis, MN, I began to frequent a nearby coffee shop/music venue/art space called E.P. Atelier (this wonderful place closed closed down awhile back). It was there, that I was introduced to a young blues musician named Lonesome Dan Kase. It was a Saturday evening, and business was slow for the coffee shop, I was the only customer. Lonesome Dan began to sing, and stomp, and play his 1938 Gibson guitar. It was the first time I had heard the country blues, and I was transfixed. Later, I wrote an article about Lonesome Dan for The Northern Light (the venerable student newspaper of North Central):
The music he plays hasn’t been heard (at least by most) in 70 years. It is captivating music, full of raw and throaty vocals, and intense finger-picking guitar work. It’s foot-stompin’, knee-slappin’ music of a bygone era; nostalgic music that takes you back even if you’ve never been there before. When you hear it, it makes you wish you had a name like Lonesome Dan, or Reverend Gary Davis, or Sleepy John Estes, riding from town to town on a freight train and playing the country blues on your old beat up guitar.
Back in the ’20s and ’30s the country blues was called “race music.” Back in those days it the popular genre of African America, and you can trace the development of modern rock, blues, R & B, and rap back to those gritty voiced black singers who got their start and their sound during the Great Depression: Mississippi John Hurt, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson (Eric Clapton’s muse), Son House (Jack White’s muse), Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the Reverend Gary Davis. The best word to describe the music of these men, and of Lonesome Dan is genuine. One man, a guitar, sitting on stool, in a bar or a road house, (back when such places were still filled with the smoke of cheap cigarettes) singing of love and religion, place and tradition, agriculture and crime and racism. These men lived the life they sang about, and it was not a glamorous life, either. They did not own mansions, or drive Escalades. They were many times homeless, and rode freight trains (Lonesome Dan ran away from home and hopped a freight train when he was eighteen…or so the legend goes). They didn’t lip sync their concerts or use computers to edit out their mistakes and correct their voices. The country blues is some of the most authentic music every made, and that’s why when you hear it, it makes your heart ache. It calls you to the open road, it makes you want to pack a knapsack and head for the train yard. It gives you nostalgia for a way of life you’ve never lived.
- – -
Nostalgia is a yearning for authenticity, for a time when things were simpler, more real; but it is often a paradoxical yearning. These days, nostalgia has been commercialized, plasticized and outsourced. We’re flooded with cheap Elvis clocks, and Betty Boop commemorative plates that are supposed to remind us (well, actually our parents) of a better a time, back before suburban sprawl and big box stores, back when Americans actually manufactured things. So much for authenticity.
It is in this culture so filled with hype, with mind-controlling advertising, with disposable everythings, that the search for authenticity becomes urgent. My generation wants authenticity so badly–almost as badly as we want the new I-phone. And ultimately, that’s the problem, our search for authenticity always seems to get sidetracked, co-opted, packaged and sold back to us. But, good, raw, real music keeps on calling us back to the search, to the road…even if that music gets played through ear-buds.
Strange Encounters of the Pentecostal Kind
July 3, 2010
So long as one is drudging themselves through the process of acquiring basic linguistic skills, fantasizing about future research projects can provide the necessary motivation to continue to drudge. I already have a running list of books and articles that I’m “going” to write and the other day I posted one of my ideas on Twitter and Facebook,
“Of Pilgrimage and Handkerchiefs: The Implicit Sacramental Ontology of Classical Pentecostalism”
Reactions hovered around amazement at my astute imagination. But our long time reader George P Wood asked the perennial question: “How does this move the missional ball down the Kingdom field?”
The funny thing is that I feel this has huge implications for missions and ecumenism. I realized that it maybe was time for me to clarify a bit more why I wish to continue to engage Pentecostalism and perhaps even hint at some of my own hopes future academic work. So here are a few of my persistent thoughts on Pentecostalism and what I hope to do about them.. I am more than aware that I might ‘accomplish’ little of this but I figure it’s more fun at least to plan big and trim as the situations require than stew in perpetual uncertainty like a fourth year sophmore who has changed majors six times.
For the sake of clarity I always attempt to differentiate between “Pentecostals” and “Charismatics” even if the difference is blurred. Consider it heuristic. Charismatics are those in Mainline, Catholic and other historic churches who experience(d) and promote(d) the “charismatic gifts and experiences” (thought of more narrowly as the type normally associated with “Pentecostals”) and Pentecostals are those Protestants who look to various ‘revivals’ which happened roughly a century ago for their roots. They are also generally differentiated by idiosynchratic eschtologies.
- It seems clear based on the unique rise and spread of Pentecostals that it is a work of the Spirit. If it is, then it is incumbent on the whole Church to ‘get on board’ with it, though with discernment. This is really just another way of saying that the charismatic gifts of the Spirit are for the whole Church.
- So I hope to work ecumenically with Pentecostals and encourage the use of the charismatic gifts in the wider Church.
- This engagement is hindered by several things:
- Pentecostals have historically been skeptical of ecumenism. They have been especially hostile to Catholics and Mainline Christians and have tended to feed this with an etiological narrative that sees in intellectualism and liberalism (among other things) a “fall” from the Spirit. So the “start” of Pentecostalism is seen as Gods judgment that the rest of the Church has failed and so is better ignored and left behind than looked to as partners and teachers. This has also borne fruit as anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism and anti-tradition.
- So part of what I want to do is demonstrate how under the surface of Pentecostal experience and practice there is a substantive overlap with Catholic Christian theology, experience and practice. By doing this I can help prepare the ground for fruitful dialogue between pentecostal and other churches as well as for cooperation in mission.
- On the other hand, despite initial flowering in various charismatic renewals, other churches still often remain skeptical of pentecostalism on the grounds that it is anti-intellectual, anti-institutional and anti-traditional and just plain ‘weird.’ So by speaking the historic theological language of the Church, I hope to show how the whole Church needs to be renewed by the Charismatic work of the Spirit.
- Additionally I’d like to explore the future of anglo-catholicism and argue that only a charismatic anglo-catholicism can de-clericalize the movement and renew a focus on missions and the sacraments.
- I’d also be interested in exploring the historic three-fold ministerial order, and ‘laws of ecclesiastical polity’ in general, with reference to the charismatic gifts.
- Similarly I’d like to look into the charismatic theology of the Eastern Orthodox because I’ve often found that their theology of the Spirit connects brilliantly with Pentecostal experience.
- I’ve got a million more of these.
- Another minor premise of mine that is rather disconnected to the points I’ve already made is that Pentecostals have done us all a disservice by selling their soul to buy street cred with Evangelicals. So even now Pentecostals need a Charismatic renewal! Especially with respect to how they read Scripture.
A basic underlying premise of all this is that Pentecostals are right in certain things and can enhance and be part of a larger renewing work of the Spirit who is reconciling all things to Christ, but in many things she is young and wrong and needs the whole Church to teach her.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
