More on Why I Like Rowan Williams

It is not just the eyebrows folks:

But ‘where Jesus is’ is in itself quite a many-layered notion. Jesus is in the neighbourhood of God the Father and so when we stand where Jesus is we too are in that neighbourhood and we learn his language of his relation to God the Father. But the incarnate Jesus is also in the neighbourhood of the chaos and the suffering of the world – a world he has entered to transform… To speak in those terms is really to paraphrase the epigram which I think originates with the great Irish Benedictine, Columba Marmion. He spoke about Christ being simultaneously in sinu Patris and in sinu peccatoris: in the bosom of the Father and in the bosom of the sinner. Christ is simultaneously in the neighbourhood of the Father and in the neighbourhood of the sinner, the formlessness, the shapelessness and dissolution, the dis-integrity of creation. He is in the heart of both realities, simultaneously. And that, of course, suggests that when we as baptized persons come to be in the neighbourhood of Jesus, that same dual proximity is what we have to get used to.
Lecture

Keep on reading. It is fantastic. [HT Inhabitio Dei]

Turning Around a Wanderer

I came across these dueling articles, written by the same author, claiming that the only real theologians are Rowan Williams, and then Pope Benedict. Funny titles with serious content, and serious critique of “doing Theology”. James’ entire point is that “doing Theology” is not about arguing:

At the end of the day, academic theology is just about being intellectually sexy, about trying to coin some technical distinction in thought, about being the first to introduce some unknown figure into a debate or trying to mediate a debate through appeal to other thinkers. It is concerned with advancing a body of knowledge, either for the sake of one’s career or, for the slightly more noble, for the state of knowledge. The whole enterprise is purely cerebral, and even that may be too high a compliment.

I never understood, and therefore shied away from, arguing about theology. It seemed far too open ended to produce anything constructive. Without any anchors in confessions, epistemology, or even historical facts building castles in the air is far too easy, and so very impractical. And I’m a pretty cerebral, impractical, academic guy.

So I’ve largely kept away from theology, focusing instead on historical studies (initially from an equally backward approach of restorationism). But, as I’ve encountered more catholic theology I am finding precisely James’ point, that theology is about being affected by God and by that theology. It isn’t, necessarily, about an argument, but about a way forward to being altered by God and the way one thinks about spiritual issues.

For those who find themselves wandering into odd theological concepts I offer this catholic thought as a way of being grounded. Not that you come to the same conclusions – but it is at least a starting point, and operating in a coherent framework about what it means to think theologically. And that theology is true not just mental asentions to propositions that “orders your mental world”. I’m finding joy in being messy, because that is what we are. (Though if Prothero happens to wander over here: I’m not discounting wandering, I look forward to your book on the subject).

Sex and Identity

An interesting little conversation took place a while ago. I am certainly late to posting on this, in fact it has been sitting around as a draft for a while. I am certainly in no place to make a judgment, rather I aim to recount all of it and gather facts. Certainly this issue has been perplexing the Church for several years now, specifically the Lutheran and Anglican denominations. There are certainly issues worth highlighting.

“If Christ [i.e. not Freud] is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say categorically that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness” – since Jesus himself did not participate in any of these experiences.

The quote within the quote there is the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. And it is an incontrovertible fact. Any Christocentric approach of anthropology must take this line. One can always cease to be Christocentric anthropologically, and I imagine that some have, but one is left to argue why that understanding should be preferred over the authentic and perfect humanity of Christ. I think Barth is right to underscore that our sexuality is a part of our identity, you would have an uphill battle in our times to prove otherwise. Perhaps he was mistaken to imagine that is it the pinnacle or underlying issue of our humanity.

Foucault’s argument shows that we are obsessed not with sex itself (as a physical act), but with “the truth of sex” – with the idea that sex is a revelation of truth.

For myself I find this to be true. The temptation of the act lies not so much in the act itself, but what beyond the act is signified. If sex, and sexuality, is just a red herring for us where might we look?

For one thing, I think Christians ought to take much more seriously the category of friendship, while thinking a good deal more critically about the unbridled theologisation of marriage and the so-called “family unit”

I find the overall statement of the Gospel, as evidenced in the New Testament to be specifically a new family. As I’ve become more keen, thanks to some training, to pick out the civil religion instituted as a part of the United States, I wonder just how much this idea of the family unit is tainted. Surely the thrust of the Gospel message is an entirely new community. More than a single family living detached from every other single family. This intense level of friendship is hard to sustain – that I am sure, on very few occasions I’ve tried.

Marriage, he contends, offers an expression of love and sexuality not realisable in any other human relationship, but it is no more human than any other human task or relationship.

Imagine holding marriage and friendship on the same level of humanness? I’ve never conceived of them that way. I ought to and see what comes of it. Again, if we’re to have a Christocentric approach, what is the epitome of humanity? Self-giving, self-sacrificial love with a goal of God’s will being done in the world. What does that look like in a friendship, in a marriage, in a community of faith? That ought to be what we look towards when we ask ourselves these kinds of questions, is it not?

It may, through the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit be commandeered and become in many and sundry ways a parable of the kingdom, just as many of the trivial aspects of human life are open to God’s interruption and transfiguration. But, insofar as the meaning of authentic human existence, sexuality tells us nothing. Not if we really believe that Jesus defines for us what it means to be be human. And, further to this point, only when we allow sex to be truly and wonderfully insignificant, to be trivial, will it be able to be received as a gift rather than gulpingly grasped in an idolatrous fit of fetishizing.

Sexuality and Lonliness

Wesley Hill has a very moving and truthful story for all of us to hear. He is a homosexual Christian desperately trying to understand his sexuality in light of Christianity.

I know of no more difficult path for a person of integrity to tread. Phillip Yancey

Wesley tells us that his most powerful emotion is loneliness. A disturbing loneliness that goes beyond anything I could imagine. And at times in my life I’ve been very depressed and lonely. I would not dare to put my feelings of loneliness anywhere near his. He has consciously chosen a path which he feels will lead him closer to his Lord, despite that path being the anti-thesis of his being. He does not allow himself the choice of living a non-celibate life. I could not imagine placing that kind of a barrier on my own future, having pre-made a decision that I would never marry and never enjoy another’s life intimately and sexually. Wesley’s choice is the Gospel Choice – it is the highest expression of loyalty to Christ. For that Wesley deserves our praise, compassion, brotherhood, and friendship. He ends with a question that the entire Church needs to answer for themselves.

Will the Church shelter and nourish and humanize those who are deeply lonely and struggling desperately to remain faithful?

Answering no to that is to be anti-Gospel.

Your Kingdom Come

Laura writes about the Kingdom work we do in helping feed, cloth, and fight for people’s justice:

The work we do does not in some sense help to further establish the kingdom. So what is it’s purpose? All this is very confusing, and I am still discerning what exactly that means for how we are to live our lives.

Having just read the first half of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics it seems that this question is best handled with Bonhoeffer’s treatment of the penultimate and ultimate.

The penultimate prepares the way for coming to Christ. Without the ultimate the penultimate will shatter

Bonhoeffer’s Ethics 1

for my own note-taking and posterity

The Love of God and the Decay of the World

I appreciated the straight-line of logic employed by Bonhoeffer. He starts at one point, plots a trajectory and just keeps going. His first move is straight out of Genesis, and in my opinion right on point.

The knowledge of good and evil shows he is no longer at one with his origin

In a world where relativism reigns, the defeat of other ethical systems by supplanting the knowledge of right from wrong, good from bad, with the lack of a choice based on one’s participation in Christ is genius both on the philosophical and pastoral level. To show that Christian ethics is something wholly other than every other ethics is a unique move. The inherent claim there is that Christianity cannot be compared with the other institutions and systems of thought – there is something significantly difference about Christianity. With that intuition I heartily agree.

Bonhoeffer goes on to exemplify this distinction of knowing good and evil as setting oneself in the place of God, as the judge, the arbiter of what is right and wrong. To judge as if one sets right and wrong is hypocritical, since God is the one who sets good and evil. Jesus’ command to “judge not and you shall not be judged” is therefore to deny oneself the place which is rightly God’s. To not imagine that you are the one who is to uphold the law of God, but rather, to only do the will of God. And that will of God is exactly reconciling the fall whereby which we know good and evil.

To undo that knowledge – which Bonhoeffer explains is not that we have gained anything we previously did not know, it is merely a changed perspective that we now can put ourselves in God’s place giving ourselves a choice that is rightly God’s – is the goal of reconciliation. To know, only in the light of Christ who is the will of God, is reconciliation. And reconciliation does not perform the judgment that knowing good and evil does. Whereby one judges according to his own definition of good and evil, he determines to make every man is his own image, not in God’s image. To know, through union, and what Bonhoeffer calls action, is the way to act in the will of God, and not create disunion.

These very actions that create peace and unity is what love is. Though we cannot purely define is that way. Bonhoeffer demands that we understand God is love. Not that we know what love is, therefore we know who God is. This love comes from God, and is God’s, and His alone. Our love, is merely God’s love that we express, whether it be to our neighbor or back to God. That is the only love available. Any other is based on selfishness (which I have written about here before). If Christ is the supreme revelation of God, and God based on his love for us sent his Son to die for us – in order to recreate that unity which was lost – this is how we should understand love. Jesus’ suffering and death was an action that created unity. Though Bonhoeffer warns us that love is not defined by the action, but by the man Jesus.

Deeply Resonating…

with what Michael is saying here. Follow that conversation.

…convinced that the pursuit of the truth was more exciting than presupposition of numerous axioms…

Barth

Love

may be recognised by the fact that it is determined, and indeed determined upon the life-partnership of marriage. Love does not question; it gives an answer. Love does not think; it knows. Love does not hesitate; it acts. Love does not fall into raptures; it is ready to undertake responsibilities. Love puts behind it all the Ifs and Buts, all the conditions, reservations, obscurities and uncertainties that may arise between a man and a woman. Love is not only affinity and attraction; it is union. Love makes these two persons indispensable to each other. - (CD III.4, 221)

The Forest for the Trees

I’ve found myself using this phrase “Don’t miss the forest for the trees” very often in conversation lately. I wrote it in my paper for the conference I am going to next weekend. I said it last night when I talked to my good friend Lauren about where to start about theology. And I think it is exactly what David is talking about here.

Please understand: he doesn’t know the language of faith, the proprieties of religion, the ethos of Christianity…As he was rambling on, carrying me through a series of emotions from laughter to rage, I was struck by the deep spiritual qualities of my black-sheep brother. I couldn’t help but feel, in spite of his roughness, toughness, lack of the right knowledge, absence from all things religious, and wild and dangerous lifestyle, that he was precious to God. Throughout the week, he exemplified, for me, the spirit of Jesus… without the name, the forms, the customs, the baggage, and the symbols… but the spirit of Jesus just the same. I was humiliated by my arrogant exclusive stupidity the church is reluctant to challenge.

Our life here is about continuing the story of Jesus. Following that story sometimes means we will follow all the social conventions that are commonly associated with Christianity. Other times we will be very far from it. Don’t lose the sight of the forest (faithfully living Jesus’ Gospel story) for the trees (what has become culturally normative for a Christian). Sometimes you have to forget the trees to see the forest.

On Fighting

I have really been enjoying the contributions on Duke Divinity’s faith and leadership blog. They always have thoughtful, current, and relevant topics for living in the world today, like “The Secular is not the Enemy”

Karl Barth once wrote, “We do not have the Word of God otherwise than in the mystery of its secularity.” Whenever we draw the line too sharply between God and secularity, between the church and the world, or between faith and public life, we inadvertently reinforce the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. That is, by morally and spiritually separating God, the eternal and immortal, from the world of substance and stuff.

C. S. Lewis, wrote: “People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.” When we write-off whole tracts of humanity as secular we may be missing the wisdom of the God who cannot be contained in any creed or ideology. It is fitting and prudent, humble and sane, to be ready to hear what God may wish to say to us from unexpected corners of the larger world.

For some strange reason we in the Church sometimes get the idea that everyone else is the problem, or should be avoided. I can’t put my finger on why, but I know that I have felt that way in the past. No where is this clearer than the contempt of friends in church when you start having a social life outside the church. This fight between the Church and the world is exactly what should not be happening. Of course there shouldn’t be fighting within the Church either – but we see that as well, we’re not perfect. At least we consider one another family, and fighting within the family precludes leaving the family (one would hope at least).

The world is not the enemy, Jesus plainly showed us that the accuser, the power behind the institutions and high places that de-humanizes is the enemy. He fought that enemy through his ministry and personally. The fighting that the world does with the Church is de-humanizing at times. The Church should be responding in kind. We need to treat the world humanly with love and compassion, showing them who they are and what they are doing. We are not to respond with in kind with fighting.

Both factionalism and schism seem to forget that, according to the gospels at least, we are not recognized as children of God (literally as children of our heavenly Father) by the correctness of our views, but by the quality of our mercy.