Dawkins, ABC Williams, and Kenny Debate
February 24, 2012
Just too deliciously nerdy not to share. Comments are welcome!
Book Reviews In Short and At Length – Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace
February 14, 2012
In Short
This is a book that many readers will enjoy “living with.” Volf’s stated purpose for the book is to encapsulate the whole of Christian living within two axiomatic concepts. In other words, what does Christianity really look like when it is lived in a contemporary life? In Free of Charge, Volf’s answer follows two principles – one that flows from the nature of who God is and, by way of extension, another that reveals the heart of the Gospel. According to Volf, the Christian life can be summarized by participating with God in giving and forgiving. Because God’s nature is so bound up in his ability to give purely, forgiveness becomes the backdrop of all of his interactions with a creation marred by sin. If we truly follow, then our lives must mirror such giving and forgiving.
As such, the book serves as a wonderful devotional tool. While it is deeply theological, it is admirably accessible. He does not drown the text in technical writing or lofty language. I have many friends that started reading this book a long time ago. Often, in eager anticipation of their thoughts on the book, I’ll ask how it is going. They always reply, “It is so good, but I can only get so far before I have to put it down and reflect on it.” In this sense, this book is not only a wonderful resource for those that want to practice generosity or forgiveness, but it might just be the kind of reading experience that drives self-reflection in order to help those who struggle with selfish ambition or unforgiving hearts break those chains of bondage.
At Length
In Volf’s own words, the book does four things. First, it is an examination of whether the landscape of Christian perspective can appropriately be viewed through the lens of giving and forgiving. Honestly, while some will have no issue with such a conceptualization, I think there will be many others that will not be ale to fit all of their theological identity under both of these concepts – especially, not the way that Volf visualizes forgiving.
Second, the book is an interpretation of Paul’s theology. This, however, is likely to be a perspective that is widely accessible and acceptable. He confesses that he has not taken any scholarly stance, referencing the recent fighting going on over Pauline discourse (think N.T. Wright and John Piper). It turns out, that this kind of spiritual rumination over Paul may be much needed medicine for the soul. Honestly, though, I’d be surprised if those unfamiliar with theological discourse are not quite able to appreciate the nuanced way that Volf interacts with the primary source.
Third, we get a glimpse into Volf’s academic work on Martin Luther. At every turn in the book, he interacts with Luther on important points of Protestant theology; namely, Luther’s time honored perspectives on grace and faith are explained in the context of practical Christian living. I don’t want to spoil any of the content, but much of Volf’s interaction with Luther has the same freshness that his atypical approach to Pauline theology has. The book is a beautiful demonstration of how deeply careful theological inquiry can impact our every day lives.
Finally, the book was selected by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be used as the church’s official Lenten reflection in 2006. The spiritual formation facet of the book is perhaps best attested to by the fact that I have seen several friends carrying this book around with their Bibles for weeks on end. The book deals with not only the deep things of faith, but also the deep things of life – which, ironically, are not concomitant in Christian writing often enough.
In my estimation, the greatest value of this book is the practical advice it provides on giving and forgiving as spiritual disciplines within the Christian life. I have not seen many other books with a straightforward process for giving and forgiving. Volf provides clearly defined and well thought out processes for each. Consequently, the careful reader can come away with a list of things detailing what pure giving and true forgiveness really look like, as well as a process for disciplining oneself into becoming that kind of pure giver and true forgiver.
I must also confess, though, that there are stories in this book, the stories of real people and real hurt, that tore at my heart. It is, at times, difficult to read, especially if you tend to put yourself in the place of the people in the stories you read. Not once do you read Volf using a petty or trite situation as an affirmation of his points. The issues he deals with are the real issues of humanity, the gut-wrenching issues – and he interacts with them in courage and a true sense of compassion. There is no “feel good” theology going on here.
Perhaps the greatest praise I can give any book, I can give Free of Charge with out qualification. I will come back to this book again. It is worth reading over and over.
On Not Caring About Stemming the Tide of Mainline Decline
January 12, 2012
It appears that Anglicans are really quite talented at creating entire cottage industries around problems of identity. Books about “Anglican Identity” and “What is Anglicanism?” abound in numbers far greater than you may at first imagine. I feel as though, if one is allowed to judge by certain internet circles, we are about to start on a whole new creation when finally – about 30 years too late – we get around to addressing the “problem” of “mainline decline.”
The facts are…
- We’re getting older
- We’re getting smaller
- We’re getting poorer
- We’re getting less and less important in our social stature
Well, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT!!!????
- Should we eschew hierarchy?
- Should we come up with THE missional strategy?
- Should we maybe wear khakis to preach?
- Should we mess with the liturgies? Make God more feminine; black; expansive; Celtic; relevant?
Now, these are not all merely banal questions (though perhaps some are), but I would like to suggest that so long as the beginning and focal point of the discussion is centered around decline and “stemming the tide,” then we’ve already failed.
This line of reasoning puts us immediately in a reactionary position. “What are we going to do about this threat? (This too is where the “identity fetish” creeps in. Constantly going in circles trying to fence the boundaries of identity means that less and less do we care to look to Jesus to judge what we think it important about our identity).
It also creates an atmosphere where even practices and beliefs that are very good are swept aside by the well-meaning or self-proclaimed “prophets” and “reformers.”
What often goes overlooked is how deeply institutional this line of reasoning is, and how ironic it is that these questions are often under the guise of being “anti-institutional.” Concern about numbers and colleges and seminaries and ages are all very institutional issues. (Though, far be it from me to be anti-institutional.)
Allow me to suggest that whether numbers are waxing or waning, the primary issue ought to be one of praying, working, longing, to be faithful to our Lord and faithful to the proclamation of the Gospel. I know this might seem just empty and pious word-mixing. The point I’m trying to make, though, isn’t about out-piousing anybody, but about shifting the seat of discernment from one of reactionary concern about structures to a positive freedom to love and worship our Lord and love our neighbor without concern for “maintaining” the Episcopal Church.
Doing otherwise evinces a deep lack of faith. As if somehow Christ isn’t risen and it’s up to us to pick up the Church by her bootstraps and keep her going! (Thus, even now the pelagian shadow of liberal protestantism lurks behind every question and every answer)
I think we could all stand to learn from people like Derek Olsen, who when prodded on the question of a drop in numbers responds not by saying what ought to go in order to stop the bleeding, but by pointing out what ought not be negotiable because they are the things that help to keep us faithful to the Gospel that we’ve received. Or +Rowan Williams who concludes his astounding essay “God” in this way:
“In a church that is in many ways deeply wedded to ‘territorial’ preoccupations, it is unlikely that the gift and promise of the non-territorial God will be clearly discernible. In other words, a church that is concerned about its internal politics will not transform the political in the way that is in fact made possible by Jesus. The desire to secure purity and control in the Church (which can be a preoccupation as much of ‘progressives’ as of ‘traditionalists’) looks to a territory in which believers may see in one another a reassuring sameness; and when believers are looking at one another to test that assurance, they are less likely to be attending to the foundational absence on which the life of the community rests. And if the contemplative life is central in some way to the integrity of the Church at large, it is because of this: not to point to ‘values’ above and beyond the concerns of the world, not to pass judgment on the unspiritual conflicts of the Church or society, but to witness to the way in which a life may be constructed in which all acts are referrable to God and in which the consequent ‘deregionalizing’ of the life of the spirit, life before God, impacts increasingly upon the understanding of prayer. It is to do with the poverty and wealth of the everyday; with the fullness and emptiness of faith.”
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.
The Idea of Feast Days
December 10, 2010
According to the Episcopal Church’s Holy Women, Holy Men, today is a day available to celebrate the great Karl Barth. Here is the collect:
“Almighty God, source of justice beyond human knowledge: We thank you for inspiring Karl Barth to resist tyranny and exalt your saving grace, without which we cannot apprehend your will. Teach us, like him, to live by faith, and even in chaotic and perilous times to perceive the light of your eternal glory, Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, throughout all ages. Amen.”
I noted this on my Facebook wall with a link and an interesting conversation ensued. This began by something the always engaging Benjamin Guyer said, namely that Barth, a man who publicly berated his friends and who carried on a 20 year affair with Charlotte von Kirschbaum, could be said to be a major Christian intellectual but his moral conduct was far from being worthy of celebration on any calendar.
Responses tended to question whether this is a fair way to gauge the calendric worth of a saint. After all, it was said by one, “Luther hated Jews, Augustine killed heretics, St. Paul killed Christians”…it seems that being a saint is not dependent on a wholly virtuous life.
Ben stood by his guns though and said that “Barth lived in various ways that are fundamentally incompatible with what a calendar of saints is intended to do - namely hold up for emulation particular men and women.”
This brought up a question in my mind: Are calendars in fact intended to hold up lives for emulation? It seems that it will at least do this, but I think there is a deeper way to look at this that I think might make room for the possibility of “flawed” saints being joyfully celebrated.
Not that long ago, Derek Olsen put a piece up on the Episcopal Cafe’ asking some much needed questions about the criteria used to compile Holy Women, Holy Men. Do go read that piece. Though he does not there lay out a full argument, I believe he points us in the right direction. Ultimately, there needs to be a sense in which a calendar is christological and not reduceable to contemporary party idealogies.
I would like to suggest that the calendar of feasts should be less about pointing to exemplary lives for the sake of emulation, though this will be a very strong feature of many such celebrations, but more about recognizing that these lives represent particularly strong points of intensity in the life of the Church that witness to the saving grace of God – His salvation is here being worked out amongst us. We recognize in them that God’s life and work became undeniably clear and the feast is not to celebrate the virtue in a life as such, but to respond in praise to the God who has made Godself known. It is a mark of God’s continuing faithfulness to bring his work to completion.
To elaborate even further, I’d like to suggest that the saints point to a Life that makes our lives coherent. The trustworthiness of these lives points to the trustworthiness of the God for whom they lived. In pointing beyond themselves, there is room to ‘allow’ that even the saints will not always come off so saintly. +Rowan Williams expresses what I’m trying to say like this:
“Often all we can do is go on telling the stories of those who keep us going; I may not look very credible, but I can at least point to someone who does. And as long as there are those who effectively and bravely take responsibility for God, the doors remain open and the possibility is there for others, perhaps very slowly, to find their way to a point where they can say…’I want to live int he same world as them; I want to know what they know and drink from the same wells.” – Tokens of Trust, 28
I’m aware that +Williams was not talking about the same thing I am talking about per se, but I think this holds true for what the celebration of saints is supposed to accomplish. By doing this there will be some who will inspire us to deeper levels of discipleship by emulation, but there are others who are significant for reasons that are not explicitly ethical, for instance someone like St. Ignatius of Loyola. Just as there are many gifts, so there are many ways in which to build up the life of the Church.
Christ and Dionysus
October 9, 2010
I’m really loving my Greek and Roman Mythology class. On the one hand, it’s a 1000 level course, so the ‘difficulty’ is pretty minimal, but being a four credit class instead of a three means that we get a ton of reading in the original sources. Amongst other things, it has been very interesting for me to read these ‘myths’ and ‘see parallels’ in certain Scriptural images. As a friend of mine recently confirmed, it is hard to look at Noah the same after reading the Epic of Gilgamesh.
So I find myself confronted with how to understand these things. Of course I want to affirm the ‘uniqueness’ of Christ (and I do!) but it is intellectually irresponsible to apologetically argue that Christ, as represented in Scripture – that is, on a textual as compared to an ontological level – is a totally unique ‘apocalyptic event’ without precedence in other sacred literature. (I take this to be at least a part of what Hans Frei argues.)
A classic example is a confusion that sometimes happened as Christianity came into contact with its neighbors. Jesus was sometimes understood as a sort of Dionysus figure – Christ as Vine; as transforming life in the Eucharist; and as Harrower of Hell, were taken to be parallels to certain Dionysian myths.
There are two thinkers in particular who have been helping me, though in many ways they take radically different positions. Rowan Williams has a sort of take on this in an essay entitled “The Finality of Christ” in his astounding “On Christian Theology.” Williams wants to see Jesus “not dehistoricized or absolutized as an icon of significance, but neither [as] depicted as the teacher of one among several possible ways of salvation. He is presented as the revelation of God: as God’s question, no more, no less. Being a Christian is being held to that question in such a way that the world of religious discourse in general may hear it.” (105)
+Williams represents here a sort of chastened iconoclasm, trying to worm between the simplistic options of ‘exclusivism,’ ‘inclusivism’ and ‘pluralism’ as commonly conceived. I’m not totally convinced of this essay on all points, but his christological focus I think is indispensable in understanding other faiths and ‘myths’ in light of Christ.
On the other hand I’ve been ruminating on C.S. Lewis’ “Reflections of the Psalms.” Famously Lewis makes a (rather good) case for understanding certain myths as ‘pointing to’ Christ. He is most convincing when talking about Plato’s picture of the ‘Perfectly Just Man’ who is scorned by society as a disruptor of the peace and subsequently crucified. Lewis goes on to say “when I meditate on the Passion while reading Plato’s picture of the Righteous One, or on the Resurrection while reading about Adonis or Balder…there is a real connection between what Plato and the myth-makers most deeply were and mean and what I believe to be the truth. I know that connection and they do not…One can, without any absurdity, imagine Plato or the myth-makers if they learned the truth, saying, “I see…so that was what I was really talking about. Of course. That is what my words really meant, and I never new it.” And with his typical generosity he concludes “(Or may we more charitably speak, not of what Plato and Virgil and the myth-makers ‘would have said’ but of what they said? For we can pray with good hope that they now know and have long since welcomed the truth; ‘many shall come from the east and west and sit down in the kingdom’)”
As it stands I’m not looking for the mythic ‘middle’ or ‘third way’ between these two, but I’m feeding off both and trying to see the truth of what they’re saying; I’m looking for the Christ in Dionysus not because I want to cheapen the truth of Christ, who remains the Way, Truth and Life – but I’m looking for him because I believe that it is in him that all things cohere.
Anglican Identities: Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey
August 14, 2010
After his retirement, ++Ramsey spent much of his time at Nashotah House Seminary. At the time there was a nearby home for the mentally handicapped. One day a resident of that home ‘escaped’ and police were looking for him. Also on that day, Michael Ramsey was taking a walk in his full purple cassock. Seeing a very hairy man in a long purple ‘dress’ the police stopped him on his walk and asked who he was. ++Ramsey replied, “Why I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury!”
I just wanted to throw that story in there. It doesn’t really serve a larger purpose in this post.
It has often been noted that most who have taken the name Cantaur have been less than the greatest minds of the Anglican Church, but somehow the last century has produced three ABCs about whom has been said, “He is the most theologically astute ABC since St. Anselm himself.” I cannot judge such sayings, but at the very least, Michael Ramsey stands alongside William Temple and Rowan Williams as a creative and original theologian in his own right.
At this point I’ve not read as much Ramsey as I should like to. But even what I have is enough to excite me to read more. His classic theological work is The Gospel and the Catholic Church; a book written very early in his academic career and one that has apparently had a mixed reception. Ramsey was writing this in an Anglican school system very much dedicated to the liberalism of its time yet also when Barth was starting to be read and the “Biblical Theology” movement was coming into its own. It is remarkable the sheer amount of theology that is crammed into this thing. From the first chapter Ramsey is quick to remove any sense of worldly ‘purpose’ from his ecclesiology; the Church is made and has its life only in the life death and resurrection of Christ. It doesn’t play chaplain to the State, neither is it there to spread progressive values.
But this is also a mysterious participatory life. Here Ramsey is well ahead of his time for a Protestant. It may have been his deep appreciation of the Eastern Orthodox and/or his refusal to ‘rationalize’ how the New Testament talks about Gods life in the Church, whatever influenced Ramsey, he envisioned the Church as in the process of theosis.
But this forms only the beginning to this work. From there Ramsey attempts to explicate church order and unity, the episcopacy and apostolic succession in light of this Passion as opposed to locating it in the predetermined discussions as they have been developed. For him ‘Christian authority consists not in propositions about God [or, presumably the Church], but in God’s own redemptive action.” This is a section I should like to work on in the future: teasing out how the structure of the Church ought to be reflective of its life given by God in Christ. This section of the work is among the most novel and creative.
The next part of the book consists in a series of three essays of historical theology exploring the “Church of the Fathers,” including both the Greek and Latin fathers; “Developments in Catholicism,” in which he critiques the Roman Catholic Church for what he sees as certain discontinuities; and “The Reformers and the Church.” Ramsey was very much a sensitive reader of the Reformers and though himself often (and correctly) identified by others as “Anglo-catholic,” he was passionate that the Gospel and it alone stood at the heart of the Church.
In the next to last chapter Ramsey talks about the “Ecclesia Anglicana” and (typically) locates it both in the Reformation but also, on account of it’s historic order, within the intents of the Catholic Church. He here has a great little section on F.D. Maurice.
In a concluding note Ramsey returns again as he did throughout to the topic of Christian reunion, which for him cannot occur except as the Gospel is more and more ingested into the Church.
This work easily sums up the reason I feel so at home in Anglicanism. As with any church, in practice we are mixed, but at its best Anglican theological reflection usually follows this exact order: You must begin in the Scriptures; however authoritative and valuable the developments of history, Scripture (as it testifies to Christ) forms the heart of how we think of ourselves; then you move to the Church Fathers who still (providentially?) form a paradigm for integrating spirituality and philosophy into an holistic theology; but both the medieval church and the Reformation church have a rightful place even if both must be integrated with a tad bit more attentiveness; and it is only after this that we ought to begin to talk about the ‘Anglican Church’ and identity. The mixing of the universal and the particular are perhaps one of the reasons that Anglicans have not historically excelled in systematics but rather in devotional theology.
But that’s mere speculation. Whatever the case, by this book as well as his Anglican Spirit and An Era in Anglican Theology From Gore to Temple: The Development of Anglican Theology from ‘Lux Mundi’ and the Second World War 1889-1939, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury has taught me how to feel at home in the Episcopal Church even when sometimes I still feel like a baby Anglican.
Other important works of his include: (please leave comments with others)
The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ
A great starting point with secondary literature is Glory Descending: Michael Ramsey and His Writings and Glory!. Owen Chadwick also composed this biography.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
