Some Notes on Bulgakov’s Political Theology
April 30, 2011
I’m taking a survey course this semester on the history and culture of Eastern Orthodoxy. A fair amount of time has been spent on Russia and I used it as an opportunity to read up on some Sergii Bulgakov, though I’ve not read as much as I would’ve liked yet, and I’ll certainly need some help with his massive trilogy, The Lamb of God, The Comforter & The Bride of the Lamb, which is so far above my skill level it’s insane.
The primary book I worked with is +Rowan Williams’ book introducing Bulgakov’s political theology. It consists in a group of texts edited and translated by +Williams himself and his own introductions to each reading. The total effort is a minor intellectual biography focused more on politics than his larger works in theology. In a large part this introduction is already out of date since the publication of many works of Bulkagov in English in the last few years, thanks in no small part to the effort of Eerdmans and the tireless labor of the translator, Boris Jakim. But the introductions by +Williams are worth the price of the book.
Bulgakov, the son of a priest, went to seminary but dropped out and became an atheist Marxist. But during his time working on his doctoral thesis about “Capitalism and Agriculture,” he found himself shifting from received Marxist orthodoxy. This was eventually to put him in deep water and Lenin eventually shipped him and over a hundred other “rogue academics” out of Russia. What’s the point of having an authoritarian state without using it to excommunicate heretics and political dissidents?
In The Economic Ideal, Bulgakov is critical of notions of the human being reduced to a homo economicus. For him, it is fundamentally necessary to speak of the larger goals of wealth creation and distribution, that for which spirit is working. There are two errors that theorists can fall into, according to Bulgakov. The one is a hedonism, which he saw reflected in the bourgeoise pseudo-capitalism of Sombart. ”Naive hedonism is always allied to a conscious or unconscious economic philosophy, in so far as wealth and high consumption or demand are ultimately taken to be the absolute good” (31) The other is a social asceticism as reflected in certain kinds of buddhism. ”asceticism strives for its complete liberation from matter…All pleasure is slavery for the spirit. Life is a mirage, a malign deception, an illusion.” (35) For Bulgakov, the historical task is one of labor, indeed the centrality of labor to his work is pervasive. At the same time, he remains strident that freedom from poverty is the fundamental foundation for entrance into the moral life, the life of spirit. Without it, one remains subject to the elemental powers of the world. The fall was for him a sort of reversal; in the beginning humanity was the “master” of matter and nature, and the post-lapsarian condition is a kind of enslavement to nature. Labor and creation, freedom from sheer survival, is the move toward salvation, the imitation and realization of the divine Logos/Sophia in the human and created sophia. What here is mostly political commentary, eventually flowers into his full fledged work on the Divine-Humanity.
In fact I got the impression that Bulgakov’s dogmatic work was in a way an attempt to give a solid christological and dogmatic foundation to an understanding of human poetics, to supplant his former Marxism with a Christian vision of the world as a household. (The whole series of works based on oikos is relevant) There’s a lot of unworked potential in conversation with Bulgakov, and his hasty denouncement by the Russian patriarchate and men like Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky, and the only very recent translation of his works into English, has pronounced this. I for one can’t wait to read some more.
My Continuing Debt to +N.T. Wright
April 26, 2011
While it was William Barclay who first got me excited about the Scriptures, his commentaries generally stay shelved (though I still make recourse to those lovely gems). Rather, I am quick to grab something of +Wright’s anytime I have an itch. Be it the Christian Origins Series (the Paul book cannot come fast enough), his incredibly dense but rewarding The Climax of the Covenant or his own Barclay’esque New Testament for Everyone commentaries (there used to be a page where you could subscribe to the series and get a book or two a month, but I can’t find it). I have yet to procure his commentary on Romans and I’ve hesitated to get his “little” Paul books with his larger one pending.
My debt becomes especially clear when Easter rolls around. Reading his Resurrection book was no easy task, his middle section on Paul was at times laborious, but that and Surprised by Hope first suggested that perhaps Easter is the single most important celebration of the Christian year and the key to the Gospel – as opposed to a single-minded focus on the Crucifixion. As the last few years have come and gone, tired and stressed though I always am from school, I find myself anticipating the Easter celebrations and welling up with overwhelming joy at the first Alleluias after Lent and at the proclamation that ”Alleluia. Christ is risen! - The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”
So this is sort of a fluff post, but I was compelled merely to note that I find myself extremely grateful to the good bishop every Easter.
What is at stake in the “Gender Roles” debate?
April 19, 2011
My previous post seemed to prompt a myriad of other questions from readers and from my own ruminations. There can be little argument that gender roles have been and will continue to be an issue for much of the Christian church for many years (perhaps generations) to come. This all prompts the beginning of what has become an important exercise for me. Whenever I get into the middle of a polemical debate, eventually I want to know what people are protecting; and, so, I begin deconstructing the various arguments trying to find out what is at stake for each group in the argument. Unfortunately, sometimes the breadth of the issue extends beyond my personal expertise. The argument over gender roles is quickly turning into one of those discussions that obviously has pertinence in a variety of fields – effectively dismantling my ability to efficiently tease out the prominent theological issues. There seems to me to be clear interference in identifying theologically sound gender roles coming from cultural narratives. Even the soft sciences point to the fact that much of our gender identity comes from environment. Consequently, the loop I get stuck in comes, in part, from the fact that those soft sciences identify religion as one of the environmental factors that produce sexism (here is an example of what I mean). So, what are the questions that best identify what is at stake when we discuss gender roles and their practical impact on Christian theology? Here are a few of the things that I have been thinking about and researching as I try to identify some of the root issues.
1. To what extent, if any, does the biological function of gender play? Namely, there are some writing from the Christian perspective that seem invested in framing gender roles within the confines of anatomical differences, why? There are, of course, a series of questions that follow - and this will require the most exploration, because I know the least about it. Does your reproductive function (your maleness or femaleness) actually have bearing on anything outside of, well, reproduction? In other words, does having a certain anatomical characteristic extend beyond the anatomy’s actual function? In an entirely biological sense, I am a male because my body produces “small, typically motile gametes, esp. spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.” Is that the end of gender distinction? Do the hormones that cause my body to serve a certain reproductive function also program my personality to only serve a certain social function? Does that programmed social function constitute the will of God for my life? In fact, by the 1990′s we have an interdisciplinary field trying to explain how these questions get answered – sociobiology.
2. Are some Christians trying to prop up their bibliology? Here, I must confess a personal bias. I have read many evangelical scholars that essentially paint themselves into a corner on this issue. Many have attempted to defend certain notions of inerrancy and infallibility in our modern translations only to retreat to defending them in the manuscripts, only to retreat to defending them in autographs, only to defending them in “essential” New Testament material (see this text by G.K. Beale for a discussion of the “erosion” as he calls it)
3. Are some Christians trying to prop up their ecclesiology? Let’s be honest, the huge ordination debate centers on the fact that traditionalist understandings of gender roles prevail in most churches. A few articles that interact with some different nuances of the issue are here, here, here, and here.
4. Are some Christian men trying to prop up their patriarchy? Here is an even-handed text that addresses these (and other) kinds of questions.
5. What is the real (if any) significance that Jesus was male, and how is that significance offset by a robust Mariology in the Church?
6. How much of Scripture’s account regarding this material is meant to be prescriptive; and how much is, by virtue of context, only descriptive?
I don’t currently belive that there is a clear-cut answer to all of these types of questions. I think gender and gender identity is created by a variety of things, but I can assert with certainty at least one thing: whatever differences gender identity and roles introduce, there is no value difference between men and women and to the extent that our theology allows men to be held above women our theology is wrong.
So, what do you think is really at stake in the debate over gender roles? What do you think people are protecting?
Mars Hill Church, Mark Driscoll, and Gender Roles
April 14, 2011
If you are a student of theology searching through sources that are immediately obvious (Mars Hill Church’s web page) and easily attainable (the publications of Pastor Mark Driscoll) concerning the theology of Mars Hill Church, you will find nothing surprising, nothing indecent, nothing “out of the ordinary.” This was, frankly, a little bit surprising, indecent, and unexpected to me. You see, much of my experience with Mars Hill Church, and Mark Driscoll by way of extension, is through those that attend services at a Mars Hill campus or through those that listen to Mark’s sermons. Without fail (no, really) these conversations always lead to a discussion regarding Mark’s theology on gender roles; particularly gender roles and how they are played out in the church and home. Now, admittedly, many of my more recent conversations have been driven by my own morbid curiosity concerning these issues. As such, I am the one that brings up the gender role “issue.” However, my most recent encounter with this theology comes via a concerned friend attending a Mars Hill Church.
I know I am late to this party. Bloggers have been bashing and defending Mark for years. The reason I enter the fray now is in order to faithfully walk with a friend in need. Consequently, though I am late, I wonder if two or three years after the brouhaha I am not seeing the practical incarnation of Mark’s theology in the lives of his parishioners. Still, it bears telling that after reading everything I could get my hands on for free and after watching what seemed like pertinent sermon archives on YouTube, I am mostly annoyed over how little I am actually annoyed by Mark’s writing and preaching when it comes to matters of orthodox theology. Sure, his tone is brash, his words are poorly chosen at times, and he mostly lacks theological finesse; but which of these things could not also be said of me? The lion’s share of his doctrinal writing is done in the style and quality of most reformed theology. So, after adjusting for things that I would personally not like to be nitpicked on, I am not left with a lot to attack.
Then there is the ministry niche he is filling. Mark has made his mark in the church market by bringing in the elusive 20-35 male crowd. He has published quite a bit of material directed toward discipling Christian men on how to be good husbands and fathers. How did he do it? Well, here is where most people have been fighting. Dr. Richard Beck of ACU has a very evenhanded approach to understanding the practical/pastoral theology of Mark Driscoll and why it makes waves in the broader Christian community. In short, Mark’s advocates claim that he has given men permission to be real men, and Mark’s detractors claim that he has created a haven for misogynists and their sympathizers. Dr. Beck’s blog (here and at the end of this post) answers with an eloquent “yes” on both counts.
Mark should be applauded for an attempt to bring genuine masculinity into an environment whose controlling narrative is fundamentally feminine and feminizing. Conversely, Mark’s teaching is not always accurate in depicting genuine masculinity. Instead, much of what Mark props up as complimentarian gender distinction finds its locus in misogyny. To borrow Dr. Beck’s words,
“I think this is because there is a great deal of confusion about what we mean by “masculine.” In psychology, the word “masculinity”, due to its gender overtones, has been largely replaced by the term “agency.” Agency/masculinity is associated with motives for control, power, independence, and dominance. These are, stereotypically, “masculine” traits, but women can be highly agentic as well. If agency means power, control, and dominance then it seems clear that “masculine” traits will struggle to find a place in the Christian ethic. This was precisely Nietzsche’s concern about Christianity: Christianity preaches a passive “slave ethic.””
Consequently, Mark is an “agentic” guy and he interprets his “agency” as genuine masculinity. So, what is the best way for Christian men to be genuinely masculine in the Christian sense? If you read Mark’s publications the answer is for men to exert control, power, independence, and dominance over their wives and children. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Where have we heard it before?
One more quote from Dr. Beck is helpful I think:
“I’ve {Dr. Beck} argued in Thought #1 and #2 that Driscoll should not be so easily dismissed. The question he’s raising–Why are males not more attracted to church?–is worth asking. And one of his diagnoses on this issue–Church leaders are chickified–has some merit to it.
But the dark side of Driscoll’s ministry is its chauvinism and misogyny. And this criticism is also valid for certain impulses one finds in the Christian men’s movements. Specifically, the assertion of masculinity implies a suppression of women and a restoration of male power over women. To be a “Christian man” means “reclaiming” and “taking back” leadership roles in both the family and the church. Men use spiritual warrant to assert power over women.”
The danger is when Mark uses biblical exegesis in that very “evangelical argumentum ad baculum” way to proof text gender roles that he superimposes on biblical texts. Why is this problematic? It is problematic, because this theology has created a normative expression of gender in the Mars Hill Community that cannot be contradicted, because of an appeal to Scriptural authority. If one does not meet the expectations of those normative gender roles, then one is looked down upon for not submitting to God. In short, if you are a member of Mars Hill Church and want to participate as a leader (even at the lowest rung) in discipleship or fellowship, then you cannot deviate from the established gender roles. If you want to lead a small group and you are a man, then you had better be fulfilling Mark’s vision of genuine masculinity – read dominant, controlling, and powerful. If you want your family to belong and you are a woman, then you had better be fulfilling Mark’s vision of genuine femininity – read submissive, controlled, and weak. So, what happens if it makes better sense for a family if the mother works and the father stays home to raise the children? You come up for “review” with the leadership of the church, that’s what. A man who will stay home with his children while his wife works comes under the same kind of scrutiny as a man who is cheating on his wife. It becomes a question of whether said man is “fit to lead.” This is justified, because, apparently, Mark’s Bible says so.
Exegetically, Mark takes too many liberties in 1) giving narrow definitions for terms that are either contextually or culturally bound in the text, and in 2) insisting that such notions be applied to the lives of Christians as if they were the actual theological principles found in the texts, and in 3) using wisdom literature as prescriptive rather than descriptive.
For an instance of #1 and #2, in this broadcast posted on YouTube, you can see the basic hermeneutical approach utilized by Mark and his wife. They use 1 Timothy 5:8 which says, “but a man that will not provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever” as an injunction against both a father that would stay home and take care of his family in order for his wife to work, and as an injunction against a father that allows his wife to work outside of the home - at all. Mark even goes as far as to acknowledge that some have complained that he takes the Bible out of its cultural context, but does nothing to answer the criticism.
As far as 1 Timothy 5 is concerned, a larger issue than even the cultural expression of gender role is the fact that Paul is clearly not talking about “every man.” Paul is giving instruction to widows, their families, and their churches. Paul tells them that some of them are merely husbandless, and some of them are “true widows.” Those women who find themselves husbandless are to return to their parents. In which case, Paul explains that the parents of husbandless women that will not care for her have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever. Apparently, Timothy’s church was full of rich, heartless bastards that wouldn’t even take care of their widowed daughters, because it was easy to let the church community do it instead. This comes from only a simple reading of the whole text of Timothy. No fancy Greek translation, no obscure historical-cultural background. Mark Driscoll is superimposing what he wants the text to say onto a text that seems to fit the bill. I think we call that proof texting? In fact, if anyone would take the time to read it, I surmise that I could easily dismiss most of his readings in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 3, and Titus 2 on the basis of the same kind of sloppy hermeneutics.
For an instance of #3, in Pastor Dad he states that Proverbs 19:13 proves that the sorry state of modern families is due to the fact that women have undermined the authority of the husbands by “chirping” at them constantly and turning their children into ruinous fools by proxy. The verse says, “A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.” I’m sure it is obvious to everyone how he came to those conclusions? Interestingly, this kind of exegesis is damaging to the actual principle at hand. Why can we not just appreciate the wisdom of Scripture in identifying the importance of harmony in the home? Why does this verse prove gender roles? Go ahead; replace any of the characters in the verse with another member of the family. For instance, what if son and father is replaced with daughter and mother – what if a wife’s quarreling is replaced with a husband’s quarreling? Does it change the theological principle? No. Does it change the verse’s utility as a proof text for gender roles? Uh-oh. Furthermore, and perhaps more problematic, why does Mark have to rely on Scripture’s wisdom literature in such a prescriptive manner for so much of his theological stance on gender roles?
What is ultimately the case, in my experience, is that only people who have the luxury of indulging their personal biases and living out their “ideal self” are ever so pedantic about moralizing issues like gender role. Sure, there are lots of chauvinist men out there that would have their wives in their proper place – the home; but how many of them earn Mark’s salary? Sure, there are lots of misogynists out there that think women are gullible and weaker than men, but how many of them are as charismatic as Mark? Mark has the ability to get away with this moralizing, because he is a successful mega-church pastor (and has been since a young age) and is untouched by the realities faced by young professionals, single parents and low-income families alike. This is, of course, a practical explanation of what ultimately originates from a need in the theological framework of most “conservative evangelical” narratives. Meaning this: sure Mark is reaching a historically hard to reach demographic, but he is reinforcing a historically negative social hierarchy based in gender bias. This negative bias is at the root of many patriarchal worldviews, and is defensible from arguments that rely on perspectives that in turn rely on traditionally fundamentalist understandings of Scriptural authority. What’s the cost? Real people, in real modern families, are once again begin taught to objectify women by men of the cloth. Kyrie Eleison.
Some of the interesting material I used preparing for the post
http://theresurgence.com/files/2011/03/02/relit_ebook_pastordad.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WPVxndUcHQ
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2009/02/thoughts-on-mark-driscoll-while-im.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11punk-t.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.cbmw.org/images/onlinebooks/rbmw.pdf
http://www.dennyburk.com/mark-driscoll-on-women-in-ministry-2/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-goldstein/whos-to-blame-for-pastor-_b_33279.html
Ancient Documents and Magic Words Syndrome
April 12, 2011
I was reading a journal article for my Latin class and was again reminded of something that I’ve been ruminating on for a while. Historiography continues to fascinate me and is something I hope to dedicate plenty of energy to. One of the most questionable activities that many historians and exegetes like to play around with is what I like to call “Magic Words Syndrome.” If you’ve ever been reading a commentary and the exegete postulates an entire literary history for a document (in time, a critical edition of the text might be produced) we don’t have, belonging to a theoretical community we don’t know about, coming from an original oral source we’re unaware of, all based on a tiny handful or even a couple of words, then you know what I mean when I say Magic Words Syndrome.
This shows up in postulating “dependence” and “allusion” as well.
What is it about the fact that a document is in Greek or Latin that makes people believe that authors didn’t actually use language in some comparable way to the way we learn and use a language? Nobody looks at three words in Joyce’s Ulysses and does this. That’s because he wrote in English, and English is familiar to us, we use it with very little thought or in general, attention to detail. Could you ever imagine someone arguing like this? -
“You see how Joyce uses “in the yard” here? Clearly he is alluding to passage X in work Y who too uses “in the yard” in similar circumstances, that is, the protagonist is in fact coming into a yard. Furthermore we know, based on person Z who is a contemporary of Joyce, that the use of work Y was “in the air” and broadly known of by crazed Irish intellectuals despite the fact that it is far from clear whether Joyce himself knew about work Y. Either way, my argument does not depend on this. My own footnoted person T wrongly asserts that here Joyce is relying on work W because W uses “into the yard,” the preposition clearly shows that her reading is foolish nonsense. Academic person H has argued, unconvincingly in my opinion, that the original form of the phrase in work W was “in the yard,” but the best sources all say “into,” thus this need not change our rendering. Furthermore it is my contention that “in the yard” needs to be understood according the neo-platonic use of the yard to signify the Elysian Fields, popular at the time in France, which surely Joyce knew about, himself being very familiar with random French neo-platonists.”
Now of course academics can often legitimately pick up an allusion. The other day I successfully recognized one to Wesley on Facebook hidden in a stack of comments. But that doesn’t change the fact that very often I think these kinds of papers and books are operating with a kind of reasoning that doesn’t take into consideration the way people actually use language. It certainly doesn’t strike me as convincingly historical. Partly this springs from the readings I did a few years back on hermeneutics. It escapes me that entire worlds can be extracted from so little. It seems like irresponsible reading to me.
All this to say, I need to read more on the writing of history. de Certeau here I come!
Putting Things in Perspective
April 9, 2011
I hope that I’m not sounding too much like an anti-intellectual, but there are definitely times where I am reminded about the frustrating gap between certain academic conversations and the real needs of the Church, as well as the indulgent curriculum offered at some seminaries reflecting more the desires of professors than the recognition of appropriate classes for pastoral training. (See these two articles to really fill this out more – here and here).
My father makes an annual trip to India to evangelize and work with local pastors. A significant number of these country pastors, as it happens, cannot even read. Not a Bible, not a hymnal. When he told me this I remember wondering to myself how they could even perform their pastoral duties.
Now, I am in total support of educated clergy, indeed that is why this tidbit of information really got my imagination going, once again, as it is prone so to do, about seminary education. If one were to teach these pastors, just what might be an appropriate “core” to enable and empower them? And by thinking about this, it began to prompt thoughts on our own seminary education here in the States.
It seems to me that apart from needing first to teach them to read, and considering it is totally impractical to expect these pastors to attend a residential seminary, an appropriate “core” would ideally revolve around four books: The Bible, a Prayer Book, a hymnal and a catechism.
At first I questioned this – surely this is a peculiarly Anglican way of looking at things? But inasmuch as there could be developed a Pentecostal (Pentecostal because my father is an Assemblies of God minister) “Prayer Book, hymnal and catechism” it began to strike me as far more appropriate than I would’ve thought at first. Precisely because these clergy have a “blank slate” when it comes to the Faith, and precisely because they couldn’t be expected to leave their responsibilities for too long, by teaching them to read and giving them these elementary tools, what they lacked in “full training” they made up in practice by really getting to know these books.
What it seems the A/G might need, then, is a Book of Common Prayer -of sorts! – appropriate to their tradition, for the training of clergy where otherwise training is unavailable. And as for us, perhaps our own core should revolve around these rather than having so many electives open for “Feminist readings in Daniel” or whatever.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
