Hopeful Daniel

Andrew Perriman on Easter

2009-04-18T12:09:00.002-05:00

I also appreciate the historical and narrative sensitivity of Andrew Perriman's account of the significance of Jesus' resurrection. I quote:

"In his death at the hands of Rome, betrayed by a nation on the brink of apostasy, Jesus suffered for the sins of his people, anticipating the faithfulness of those who would take up their own cross out of loyalty to him during this protracted eschatological crisis. In his resurrection from the dead through the power of the Spirit, he anticipated the restoration of the people of God and the eventual vindication of the community that would take the risk of following him down a narrow and dangerous path leading to life.
The story would soon clash with the dominant religious conceit of the pagan world. Unlike the lawless, blasphemous, self-aggrandizing type of Caesar, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He embarked on an entirely different trajectory, downwards towards servanthood, humiliation, suffering and death. But God raised him from the defeat of death - he did not abandon his soul to Hades (Acts 2:27) - and gave him a name far above all the governors and kings and emperors of the earth; and because of his faithfulness and obedience, all the ends of the earth would come to see that YHWH alone is God, that he is sovereign over the nations and cultures of the world."

The whole post (as well as the subsequent conversation) is well worth reading (see here).

Peace.

Easter words from Michael Westmoreland-White

2009-04-13T08:58:00.002-05:00

And I quote:

"But Resurrection Sunday isn’t about any of that. I BARELY tolerate “Santa.” I have no tolerance for Easter Bunnie intrusions into the celebration, not of rebirth after winter, but of LIFE AFTER DEATH. Jesus was DEAD (not swooned on the cross) and God RAISED HIM UP.
I believe in the BODILY resurrection of Jesus–more than just a physical resuscitation, but not LESS THAN that–nothing ridiculous like a “spiritual resurrection.” [On advice from a friendly critic, I am removing the judgmental language. But Christianity grew out of Judaism and in that context "spiritual resurrection" was a contradiction in terms. No First Century Jew would have used the term "resurrection" for anything non-somatic. "Spiritual resurrection" is a belief that grows out of Western post-Enlightenment skepticism, building on the Greek body-soul dualism imported into early Christianity from Hellenistic philosophy.] I don’t believe that souls exist apart from bodies (Greek rather than biblical anthropology), nor anything stupid Gnostic like “the immortality of the soul.” ONLY GOD is immortal. The Christian hope is for resurrection. And our hope, as Paul says in I Co. 15, is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus.

Resurrection Sunday means that we worship a Risen, Living Savior. It means that empires of death do not have the last word. It means that God VINDICATES Jesus’ nonviolent way. Rome, the temple elites of 1st C. Judaism, and all the Powers of Death only THOUGHT they were victorious in crucifying Jesus. They failed. The cross reveals the violence of the system, of all of us, but strips it naked of any victory because of the empty tomb and the proclamation, “He is not here; He is risen!”

This is the power behind all Christian movements for justice or liberation. As Gustavo Gutierrez replied to a liberal theologian from the U.S. trying to water down his robust theology, “In Latin America, we need a God who can raise Jesus from the dead.”"

All I can say is, amen!
(Read the whole thing: here)

Misinterpreting Matthew 25

2008-12-19T09:32:00.002-06:00

Matthew 25:31-46 is often quoted to motivate Christian involvement in 'social issues' (such as poverty, homelessness, and so forth).

I believe Christians should work for the common good in the cities we find ourselves in, to be clear (following the example provided in Jeremiah 29:7). But Matthew 25 is about a judgment of the nations in light of their treatment of Jesus' disciples (the 'least of these... my brothers [and presumably sisters]' is what Jesus says). The parables of judgment are primarily about judgment on unrepentant Israel, ultimately centered around the destruction of the Temple (cf. e.g. Mark 13). The trampling of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of course goes hand in hand with 'fleeing to the hills'--with the scattering of the disciples (who will nevertheless be 'gathered' in God's providential care). The judgment of the nations (NOT the 'final judgment'--notice there's no mention made of resurrection in this passage) in Matthew 25 is thus Jesus' way of comforting his disciples--suggesting that they will still be in God's providential care.

Christians miss this, in my opinion, because they are taught to think 'final judgment' every time they read 'judgment'. But of course the biblical text is far richer (and far vaguer) than that. Many judgments are conceived of historically (read Isaiah, Jeremiah, or even Jesus on the Temple) and are rendered symbolically in prophecy.

Just had to get that out there, after reading the 1,001st misuse of this passage online.
[Further reading: Andrew Perriman's The Coming of the Son of Man]

Peace.

Greed, made in the U.S.A.

2008-11-28T14:07:00.002-06:00

As New York Times reports, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death this morning, as an 'overeager' crowd broke through the doors looking for 'deals'.

"Black Friday" is so-called, as I understand it, because for many retailers, it makes the difference in the financial year between being 'in the red' and being 'in the black'. But every year, people get hurt because everything about the day fuels greed, impatience, and selfishness. Instead of letting the people who genuinely can't afford the necessities of everyday life do their shopping in peace, people who already have too much throttle each other for the chance to pinch a few pennies.

It's greed, it's sin, it's an abomination.

A depressing day to be a citizen of this 'great' country.

God have mercy on us.

Time to say goodbye.

2008-11-21T22:00:00.003-06:00

I thought starting a blog would be a good idea. Turns out the only way to get blog traffic is to be active on lots of others blogs (unless you're a famous theologian, then people just come to you, of course, but that's not my situation). And I have better things to do with my time (grad school comes to mind, as does my marriage, my devotional life, etc...).

So I think I'll call it quits. At least for the time being. I may still post from time to time, but no promises. There's a life to be lived and I spend too much time online as it is.

I'm always available via e-mail: daniel.farmer *at* mu &dot& edu ...

To the occasional reader: peace be with you.

-Daniel-

A very short Christian history of the universe.

2008-11-10T17:10:00.002-06:00

God. Love. Creator.

A world, evolving.

With sentience comes pain, with reason, sin.

A people, called to point back to the beginning, to God, to goodness.

A human, God, killed by the People.
New Creation: Resurrection: a new Israel.

Marks of the Spirit People: conversion, baptism, communion.
Marks of the Spirit People: peace, simplicity, generosity, holiness, love (rebirth).

Scattered everywhere--salt for the earth.

[...]

Consummation(?)(!)

Swearing, media, and the common good

2008-11-04T13:23:00.003-06:00

The LA Times reports that the U.S. Supreme Court's is hearing a case on 'broadcast indecency'. Predictably, the case centers around which words can and can't be used at which times on broacast television.

The fixation on words is, of course, deeply problematic, since it bypasses content altogether. The effect is that, under the current FCC regulations which prohibit certain words from being spoken, you get to hear sh*t on TV and the radio with a cherry on top. I mean the metaphorical fecal matter, not the word. A song or show may be free of the taboo words, but nevertheless glorify cheap sex, drugs, alcohol and violence, and still get on the air. By contrast, a fantastically critical song such as Nickelback's "I wanna be a rockstar" gets words like 'drug-dealer' edited out (so it comes at as '------dealer' - and so it's totally obvious what was 'edited' out), even though the whole point of the song is to make fun of wannabes and the 'rockstar' lifestyle.

This fixation on words regardless of context (there is some consideration of context--but that's more the exception than the rule) betrays not a shared societal good which is being supported by broadcast TV or radio, but rather a simple fear of being sued (typical of liberal democractic societies whose only moral language is that of 'rights'). It's reminiscent of the spirit of the question Christian teenagers ask of their spiritual mentors: "how far is too far [sexually]?" By the time the question has been asked, the point has already been missed. It is the wrong question.

Likewise, the question 'what words can't we air?' is already a sign that social uplift is off the agenda and profit is the driving force behind broadcast content. Welcome to the U.S.A.!

Study links TV sex and teen sex

2008-11-03T08:57:00.002-06:00

MSNBC reports on a new study, which links teen pregnancy with watching sex-saturated TV. Apparently, when teens watch hour upon hour upon hour of people sleeping around with each other, that makes them think they should be doing it too!!! Wow! What a discovery! What a novel idea!
It makes me wonder--what does MSNBC recommend doing to reverse the tide?
And I quote:

"So what’s a parent to do under these circumstances? Lock up the television set for good and throw away the key?

On the contrary, the study’s authors advise parents to become familiar with the shows their kids watch — and, whenever possible and practical, to watch TV with them.

'By taking the time to watch together, parents can turn these into teachable moments … and opportunities for frank discussions about sex,' Chandra said.

'Parents [also] might want to limit some exposure. But realistically, this kind of content is everywhere. Our study only looks at TV. There’s also the Internet, music, magazines.'"

You heard it here folks--it's too late, give up. No one can realistically expect you to throw away your TV. So just watch it with your kids (they'll love you for it!), then you can have awkward sex talks about what their favorite characters are doing.

Makes you wonder about the trash that flows on the airwaves, doesn't it? Public edification? Can someone say 'BS'?

Don't get me started on radio...

Visions of Peace - A Peace Sunday Sermon

2008-11-02T19:24:00.002-06:00

(Text: Isaiah 65: 17-25)

Today is ‘Peace Sunday’ in the Mennonite church. And, lucky for us, today’s passage speaks to the depth of the work to be done before that elusive thing, that frightening, dangerous task, ‘peace’, is accomplished.

In today’s passage, the prophet Isaiah envisions a day when ‘the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox’ and the snake’s food shall be dust. Now, I have no trouble imagining ox and lamb chewin’ the cud. No problem whatsoever. Probably because they already do. What’s a little bit harder for me is to imagine snakes, lions and wolves, all of a sudden going vegan. Mufasa having a spinach salad for lunch; Eve and the serpent, co-authoring a ballad. George W. Bush might as well have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over for a tea party. Then they could join hands in a green field, dance in a circle, and sing Kum Ba Yah.

Just to drive home how crazy this picture is, consider what I learned about the dietary habits of wolves from the organization Defenders of Wildlife. Their website explains: “Wolves' digestive systems operate somewhat differently than ours. They are adapted to process huge amounts of food at a time, then eat nothing for three days or more. Biologist David Mech witnessed a pack of 15 wolves kill a 600- pound moose and eat about half of it in an hour and a half, meat, bones, fur and all. This works out to about 20 pounds of food per wolf! Mech estimated that the wolves he witnessed in this encounter were about 85 pounds each, which means they each ate about 23% of their body weight. They don't do much chewing, mostly just tearing chunks off and swallowing them whole. After eating their fill, wolves will either spend a few hours relaxing and digesting, or return to the den to regurgitate food for the pups and other pack members who did not join in the hunt. A wolf's digestive system can handle a large amount of food quickly and efficiently, processing the meat and fat so thoroughly that only bones and fur are excreted in the scat.” In case you were wondering.

The point is: wolves are fine-tuned killing, and chomping, machines. And the same is true of lions and snakes. These animals are intelligently-designed for carnage. And Isaiah has the audacity to imagine some kind of Eden—not as a point of origin, but as a destination—where these very same wolves and other predators are converted, born-again, transformed, saved and sanctified, so much so, that they are harmless as lambs. It is a vision of New Creation, one commensurate with the first Creation, as much ex nihilo (out of nothing) as the first one, one in which peace is law, where God’s shalom is all in all.

Of course, maybe this is a misreading. The prophets are notorious for hyperbole. Maybe this is all just a metaphor, an exercise of the imagination. Aah, yes, but a metaphor is always a metaphor for something, a signpost whose meaning depends on what it points to. And so even if we take seriously the figurative nature of Isaiah’s speech, the question still remains, what on earth does he mean by it? In fact, especially if we take seriously the metaphorical nature of Isaiah’s vision, we must ask—what does he mean by it?

Who are the lions and wolves of the world? Who are the predators? Who are the ravenous beasts, formed for destruction? There can be no single answer. Satan? Jezebel? Hitler? Pol Pot? Saddam Hussein? George Bush? (John McCain? Barack Obama?) We all have our favorite personifications of what’s wrong with the world. But consider this. Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, but rejected their creator at the first opportunity. Sarah was the mother of Isaac and thus of all Israel, though she had openly scoffed at God. Rahab of Jericho saved two Israelite spies, and was a prostitute. David was a man after God’s own heart, but had an innocent man murdered to cover up his adultery with, or an a different interpretation his rape of, that man’s wife. Elisha, the spirit-filled peacemaking prophet, had 42 young boys ripped to pieces by bears. I could go on. The spirit of the predator, of the destroyer, the spirit of selfishness, pride and greed, the spirit of profit, self-justification and vindictiveness, it turns out, occupies every human heart. We have evolved for violence, been fine-tuned for sin—each and every one of us (they call it ‘the Fall’). So even if we do take the ‘metaphorical line’ on Isaiah’s vision of peace, it’s still as outlandish. It’s ridiculous. Crazy. Unnatural. It would take a miracle for a lion to digest straw like an ox. It would take a miracle for Bush and Ahmadinejad to sing Kum Ba Yah, for oppressors to seek forgiveness from the oppressed, for the rich to redistribute their wealth to the poor. It would take a miracle for anyone to turn the other cheek, to pray for those who persecute them, and to overcome evil with good.

Jesus said “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God.” (Luke 18:26)

So we have an impossible picture of transformation, no matter how we look at it. Taken literally, carnivores going vegetarian, it’s ludicrous. Taken figuratively, rapists, terrorists and thieves gettin’ ‘saved’, it’s preposterous. But the God who creates from nothing, and who melts the hearts of the stubborn, promises a new work of Creation, a renewed microcosm in a fallen macrocosm, a mustard-seed revolution that turns everything upside-down.
“Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating,” says the One who crafted the cosmos, “for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” They shall not hurt, or destroy, or kill, or plunder, or lie, or oppress, or sin, on all the earth. Or, as Isaiah puts it in chapter 11, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain”—why? Because “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse” (the father of king David), “and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” And through this shoot, through this branch, because of this vine, “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

Or to put it perhaps a little more succinctly, Isaiah’s prophetic vision of God’s New Creation, of Israel’s hope for the future, is inseparable from the one who ushers it in. A Davidic Messiah will come, and in faithfulness to YHWH will lead the people of God into a new age. Already in Isaiah’s visions we see hope for the things that make for peace, and for the one who makes for peace.

Sometimes, Christians get the idea that an emphasis on the Reign of God, or on God’s New Creation, overlooks ‘personal responsibility’ or personal transformation, because it takes seriously the social and economic parts of the gospel. But Jesus is the inbreaking of God’s Reign, and the firstborn of God’s New Creation. And just as Jesus did not separate the so-called ‘private’ transformation of personal holiness from its social manifestations, so also as followers of Jesus, we cannot compartmentalize our conversion and baptism to just one part of our lives. New Creation is new Creation—it is all-encompassing. As we saw this past summer in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses the poor, the pure in heart, those who hunger for justice, the peacemakers. He forbids insults, adultery, divorce, deceit, retaliation, and urges the love of enemies—personal enemies and political enemies—he teaches prayer and almsgiving, simplicity and trust in divine sovereignty, Jubilee generosity and Jubilee economics. Do you see a distinction here between ‘public’ and ‘private’? Between ‘personal’ and ‘social’? Between my ‘personal relationship with God’ and liberation theology?

This is what it means to be ‘salt and light’. To follow Jesus, everything must change.

Consider these verses from Colossians 3. Try to follow the movement from the personal, to the social, to the universal. Paul says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. [...] These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:2-3, 7-11, NRSV)

The world is not as it should be. But God has undertaken, is undertaking, to rescue this world from the inside out. The only relevant question then, it seems to me, is how faithful we are being to our calling, to our identity as first fruits of New Creation. How faithful am I being? How faithful is Milwaukee Mennonite being? And are we being as drastic in our following as God is being in God’s leading?

I end with a prayer written by German peace activist and author Dorothee Soelle, which is based on the ninetieth psalm. It was written 15 years ago, but still seems quite relevant.

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations!
Before the mountains were brought forth and the oceans,
before our little blue planet,
on which life multiplies through love and union,
was born from you after a long pregnancy,
you were there waiting for us.
You allow cultures to perish
when they separate from you,
and call others into being.
What seemed to us a thousand years and unchanging,
the bloody violence,
is to you a short watch in the night.
Even tyrants break down exhausted,
economic conglomerates dissolve,
and the knowledge of infallible parties
becomes last year’s snow.
Slavery was profitable and flourished,
but in the evening of your day it withered.
The fruits of armament climbed to the sky,
but your anger consumed them,
and your wrath will destroy the stolen prosperity.
You make known our plundering of the poor;
you bring to light our veiled crimes.
Our days pass away quickly in fear of the truth;
we spend our years as if on a drug trip
that turns into horror.
Our life here is seventy years;
in other lands many will not live even four years.
Here we push eighty and more,
but joy has become stale;
technology drags us along.
Who has faith in you, poor God,
without nuclear bombs and without banks,
and who is afraid when your fish die?
Remind us that we are small,
dwelling here briefly on borrowed earth.
Teach us that we must die
and have no time for all the hatred
that makes our low-flying planes howl.
Teach us to number the days
in which we think of you
and call upon you.

Turn your countenance to us, O God;
come to those who watch for you.
Satisfy us in the morning with your light,
so that we make music, and no day is without joy.
Make us glad again after all the years of emptiness
in the land of looters,
where blood cleaves to our bank-palaces.
Bring us bread and roses, O God;
your splendor is in the hair of children.
Let your light be upon us, making it easy for us
to come and go.
Help us preserve your world
and establish the work of our hands,
the good work of liberation.”

The good work, allow me to add, of participating in New Creation.

A recommendation to Christians in the U.S.

2008-10-16T11:58:00.002-05:00

Some of us who are baptized citizens of Christ's upside-down enemy-loving Kingdom also happen to be citizens of that violent superpower known as the United States of America. This citizenship involves us both in the sins of oppression which are the necessary correlate of power and in the internal possibilities of reform characteristic of contemporary 'democracies' (the quotation marks are there because the U.S. is not ruled by 'the people' in any direct way). That is, U.S. citizens can (among other things) vote to elect a president. And there's a presidential election coming up.

If you choose to vote (you certainly don't have to), make an informed decision. Ask yourself what would be best for the Church and for your neighbors both at home and around the world. If you think you have an answer that's clear enough to justify voting for one person rather than another, then great!
Once you've made your informed choice, stop obsessing about it. Why do I say this? Because the media, your friends and even (sadly) your fellow sisters and brothers in the Lord will encourage you to continue thinking about it. Everything about 'election season' in the U.S. says "dwell on me, think on me, meditate on me day and night, for I will shape the course of history." This is, of course, borderline idolatry. There are some aspects of this year's U.S. election which are of historical importance (e.g. the prospect of an African-American president) which shouldn't be minimized. But as much good (or bad) as a U.S. president can accomplish, the heart of humankind requires conversion--something best accomplished from the bottom-up, and by the movement of God's Spirit.

Pray for the elections. Think about the elections. Then stop. Pray about something else. Think about something else. Go be the Church. Don't worry. Don't be anxious.

"And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to your life? But above all pursue God's kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:27,33-34)

"Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things." (Philippians 4:6-8, NET)

Peace.

Wendell Berry on economics and the environment

2008-10-08T21:31:00.003-05:00

I ran across a thought-provoking article by Wendell Berry (full text here) on local and global economies, which I hope you'll make time to read. It's all the more relevant given the current economic crisis.

Some excerpts:

The "environmental crisis" has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of "raw materials," and that we may safely possess those materials merely by taking them. This taking, as our technical means have increased, has involved always less reverence or respect, less gratitude, less local knowledge, and less skill. Our methodologies of land use have strayed from our old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes, and have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining, even as mining itself has become more technologically powerful and more brutal.

[...]

What has happened is that most people in our country, and apparently most people in the "developed" world, have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food, clothing, and shelter. Moreover, they are rapidly giving proxies to corporations or governments to provide entertainment, education, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, and many other kinds of "service" that once were carried on informally and inexpensively by individuals or households or communities. Our major economic practice, in short, is to delegate the practice to others.

[...]

The trouble with this is that a proper concern for nature and our use of nature must be practiced not by our proxy-holders, but by ourselves. A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life. The "environmental crisis," in fact, can be solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the "environmental crisis" is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an "environmental crisis" because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the God-given world.

Call and response

2008-10-03T10:40:00.002-05:00

Hat tip to Rob Karch for drawing my attention to this.

Leroy Barber on simple living

2008-10-02T16:05:00.002-05:00

Leroy Barber offers some clear thoughts on surviving economic crises here (at Sojourners' "God's Politics" blog). Some excepts:

"The present financial crisis facing our nation is sure to touch most of our lives in one way or another over the next few days, months, and even years. [...]
There are, however, two groups of people that are better suited to survive the storm, and they are the very wealthy and those who live simply. The very wealthy will take a hit, but on account of being very wealthy they are better prepared than most for storms and massive losses. Those who live simply are in many ways prepared because the simple lifestyle keeps you from over-indulging in this consumer driven economy of ours. Living simply is wealth for the middle class and the poor.

[...]

Simplicity says to use very little credit. Buy the older model car that you can own. Shop at reasonably priced venues. Use public transportation sometimes instead of driving. The smaller house is okay. My friends that live this way can survive the coming storms a bit better. They have, in fact, created stability in their lives that allows them to live, as they are wealthy through this crisis."

Good words to take to heart, particularly for those of us who claim to be Christian.

Propositional knowledge and omniscience

2008-09-28T14:13:00.003-05:00

Some theologians define divine omniscience as God's knowing all and only those propositions which are true. I call this the 'propositional' conception of omniscience. I think it's crap. Why?

Think of the widely different kinds of knowledge human beings have. I know that there was a French revolution. I know my wife. I know how to play guitar. I know where my school is. So, though I certainly do have 'propositional knowledge' (knowledge that something is or isn't the case), that is only a tiny piece of my knowledge. Much of my knowledge is in fact skill at navigating the world, or a certain relational one-ness with the object of my knowledge.
I can form propositions about my wife if I have to, but my knowledge of her is primarily a function of my having lived with her day to day for the past 3+ years.

So what happens when traditional epistemologists privilege propositional knowledge? Well, they take it to be the only form of 'true' knowledge, and therefore attribute IT and only IT to God (since God is, after all, a perfect being--wouldn't want to attribute improper forms of knowledge to the deity, right?). And what we end up with then, is a picture of God 'knowing' the world, and 'knowing' us at arm's length. God knows us propositionally.
But think about how omniscience could better be described relationally. Instead of my relationship with God being mediated by those pesky propositions, God could know me immediately, like I know my friends and my world. Propositions are a byproduct of the world and of thought, not the primary instance of knowledge. Therefore God's omniscience isn't primarily a doctrine about God's relationship to the set of all true propositions, but is rather a doctrine about God's relationship to the world.

God is all-loving, therefore God knows all, and this kind of knowledge is also presence with--God knows us because God lives in our midst, so to speak. God's omniscience is not the knowledge of a distant sovereign, but is rather the deep knowledge of love. God loves us and the whole Creation. Therefore God's omniscience cannot be divorced from God's omnipresence (both are aspects of God's love for the world). Propositional renderings of omniscience however, assume that God's knowledge of the world and presence in it and with it can be separated.

The truth is much more beautiful.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Death and the Tree of Life

2008-09-19T12:34:00.002-05:00

(1) The central theological assumption of the second Creation story (Genesis chap. 2ff) is that death is bad.
(2) The Tree of Life thus guarantees the man and the woman's immortality, so long as they can eat it.
(3) Procreation, that is, multiplication, is in principle pre-Fall.

I take (1), (2) and (3) to be uncontroversially part of the narrative declarations or assumptions of the second Creation story. A problem appears when these three points are combined with the observation that the Earth is finite. That is, (1) (death's badness) stands in tension with the combination of (2) and (3). The solution requires (in the narrative sense of necessity) a change in either (2) or (3). That is, either procreation must come to an end, thereby preventing overpopulation, or immortality must come to an end, again thereby preventing overpopulation.

All of this is a way of saying that, so long as procreation is possible, death must enter the world. The narrative logic requires it.

Or to put it more negatively, the woman and the man were screwed from the get-go.

The 'goodness' of Creation held within it the seed of its own undoing.

There was, as it were, a shrewd serpent in the Garden.

Boyd on foreknowledge in the philosophical tradition

2008-09-12T08:45:00.002-05:00

Greg Boyd shares some helpful reflections on the question of divine foreknowledge over at his blog (see here). More specifically, he highlights the historical background to contemporary formulations of this idea. In brief, visual metaphors for knowledge (which we still have many of in English) encouraged a misconception of foreknowledge on the basis of (largely incorrect) views about how vision works.

"[S]everal Neoplatonistic philosophers (Iamblichus, Proclus and Ammonius) used this theory of eyesight and knowing to explain how the gods can foreknow future free actions. They argued that the nature of divine knowledge is determined not by what is known but by the nature of the knower. Since they assumed the gods were absolutely unchanging, they concluded that the gods knew things in an absolutely unchanging manner, despite the fact that the reality the gods know is in fact perpetually changing. This allowed them to affirm that the future partly consisted of indefinite [...] truths (viz. open possibilities) while nevertheless insisting that the gods knew the future in an exhaustively definite, unchanging way." (emphases his)

I should note that this is precisely how Thomas Aquinas thought about foreknowledge (something he inherited partially through the Islamic Aristotelians--al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes, et al.--and partially through Boethius, who got it from the Neoplatonists). That is, roughly speaking, Aquinas construes knowledge as occurring according to a mode of being appropriate to the knower. It's easy to see how a doctrine of divine timelessness and impassibility (which goes back, generally speaking, to Aristotle) would thus lead to the traditional conception of foreknowledge, in spite of the future's open-endedness (typically affirmed in Arminian or Arminian-friendly circles).
Boyd's assessment is, in this case, spot on:

"The view is, I’m convinced, completely incoherent.
[...]
Once we abandon the ancient view of seeing and knowing as active processes, it becomes clear that God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if , it perfectly conforms to the nature of what is known. So if possibilities are real, then God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if, God knows them as possibilities." (emphases his--I would qualify his bit about seeing and knowing as encouraging us to abandon viewing them as purely active processes; they're partially passive and partially active processes I would argue)

Read the whole thing. I've come to reject some aspects of Boyd's libertarianism concerning free will, but I do believe indeterminacy and open-endedness are woven into the fabric of Creation, and so his conclusions concerning divine foreknowledge seem to me quite correct.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Wright on sex and wealth

2008-09-04T16:59:00.004-05:00

I recommend to my readers the unofficial NT Wright page. Bishop Wright is one of the foremost orthodox Jesus and Paul scholars of the world, and many of his writings have been very helpful for me. On said page, you can find a link to his 'Communion and Koinonia' sermon, which includes the following incisive remark:

"A footnote on sexual behaviour in Paul’s world. If one looks at the ancient world there is of course evidence of same-sex behaviour in many contexts and settings. But it is noticeable that the best-known evidence comes from the high imperial days of Athens on the one hand and the high imperial days of Rome on the other (think of Nero, and indeed Paul may have been thinking of Nero). I have argued elsewhere, against the view that Paul was quiescent politically, that he held a strong implicit and sometimes explicit critique of pagan empire in general and of Rome in particularly; and clearly denunciation of pagan sexual behaviour was part of that (e.g. Philippians 3.19-21). I just wonder if there is any mileage in cultural analysis of homosexual behaviour as a feature of cultures which themselves multiply and degenerate in the way that great empires are multiply degenerate, with money flowing in, arrogance and power flowing out, systemic violence on the borders and systematic luxury at the centre. Part of that imperial arrogance in our own day, I believe, is the insistence that we, the empire, the West, America, or wherever, are in a position to tell the societies that we are already exploiting in a thousand different ways that they should alter their deep-rooted moralities to accommodate our newly invented ones. There is something worryingly imperial about the practice itself and about the insistence on everybody else endorsing it. It is often said that the poor want justice while the rich want peace. We now have a situation where two-thirds of the world wants debt relief and one-third wants sex. That is, I think, a tell-tale sign that something is wrong at a deep structural level."

(Zing!) Read the whole thing.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Richard Beck on Calvin and Hobbes

2008-08-29T16:50:00.002-05:00

My favorite e-psychologist, Richard Beck, is starting a series on "The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes." Since both Dr. Beck AND Calvin and Hobbes are awesome, I thought I'd point you, dear reader, to the first post in his series. See here ---> [click].

Boyd on Obama

2008-08-29T16:29:00.002-05:00

Greg Boyd reflects on Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention last night on his blog (see here).
An excerpt:

"Would Obama help unify our country on this and other issues if he was elected? He has such exception personal and political qualities it almost seems possible. Even a [Kingdom] foreigner like myself is tempted to hope.

But its precisely at this point that I have to remind myself that I am a citizen of a different empire and am not to get overly invested in civilian affairs. I have to therefore regard Obama’s call to embrace the audacity of this political hope as a temptation. [...] Whatever good Obama, McCain or any other politician may or may not be able to accomplish, the ultimate hope and allegiance of all Kingdom citizens must remain in Jesus Christ and in the mustard seed Kingdom he established. Our call as ambassadors of Christ is to individually and corporately look like Jesus in how we love and serve people, including the poor, the marginalized, the judged — and women with unwanted pregnancies. And our call is to trust that God will use the foolishness of this humble, servant activity to advance his Kingdom and ultimately transform the world.

This is the audacious hope we foreigners are to embrace and passionately work for.

I just wish I could articulate it as eloquently and as powerfully as Obama." [emphasis mine]

Good thoughts Greg, good thoughts.

Peace.

On voting

2008-08-26T08:20:00.002-05:00

As a Christian who also happens to be a U.S. citizen, I'm very frustrated by both McCain and Obama. More so, I'm frustrated by Christians who think McCain or Obama will solve all the world's problems. Of course, they'd never put it that way, but the stories they tell about each candidate betray no deviation from the plain old boring party line--whichever party it happens to be.

As an Anabaptist by conviction, I've mentioned to several folks that I've thought about not voting in the fall. I didn't vote in the primaries, why would I vote in the presidentials? Needless to say, the outcry has been overwhelming. Civic duty bla bla bla, abortion bla bla bla, war bla bla bla. Right-o, not only is it my 'civic duty' to vote, it's also obvious which way I should vote. For McCain. For Obama. Of course, of course.

So here are my thoughts as they stand.

I am a Christian. I don't really care about my U.S. citizenship (or my French citizenship for that matter)--though of course in many ways I profit from it. As a Christian, I do not have a 'duty' to vote. I do not believe in the nation-state, whatever that nation-state happens to be--I believe in Christ's Reign. (Or to put it in biblical language: "Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one in military service gets entangled in matters of everyday life; otherwise he will not please the one who recruited him."--I Tim. 2:3-4, NET. Voting, I would suggest, may well count as getting 'entangled in civilian affairs'...)

Nevertheless, I don't believe in principled nonvoting either. Paul, for example, though he says "Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness?" (II Cor. 6:14, NET) is also unafraid to use his Roman citizenship to his advantage, as in Acts 22:25, when, being whipped, he asks: "Is it legal for you to lash a man who is a Roman citizen without a proper trial?" (notice how gentle this question is however--this is hardly the patriotism it is sometimes made out to be).
Christians cannot be 'pure' by opting out. Though we are as good as 'saved', we are not yet 'sanctified', and so we aren't 'pure' in the first place. It would thus be inconsistent to pretend to be more pure than we are. Besides, the kind of purity God has given to those in Christ is not a fragile purity, one that would be easily 'contaminated'. No, rather we are freed from contamination logic to be contagiously pure. Jesus touched corpses, menstruating women, and lepers. He embraced them. Christians, to the extent that they actually are pure, have this kind of purity. It is a purity which transforms the world, not one which shies away from it.

At the same time, the Christian logic of contagious purity cannot be used to baptize party platforms (e.g. Donald Miller's unfortunate prayer at the DNC--cf. here, HT: JT). So where does that leave us? As it stands, I think Christians can allow themselves a form of ad hoc voting, where this is justified by one candidate's being far superior to another. This presupposes two things.
(1) First, it presupposes that there is a legitimate distinction between casting a vote and endorsing. A Christian cannot endorse any kingdom of the world. But I do agree with those who suggest that voting need not signify endorsing. If I could be shown that this distinction is a false one (as Mark of Jesus Manifesto believes), I would be unable to vote.
(2) Second, and perhaps more dramatically, it presupposes that there is a reasonably easy way to tell that one candidate is better than another. And that, my friends, is one very optimistic presupposition.

So let me part with the following. I am neither 'pro-life' nor 'pro-choice', as the parties define these terms, because I am not an essentialist concerning human nature (having a certain genetic code does not unilaterally make us 'special'). And so the abortion issue is not enough for me to tell which of McCain or Obama is better. I am a pacifist. But the war issue is not enough for me to tell which of McCain or Obama is better, because both men want to beef up the military, and even Obama, who is against the Iraq war, wants to continue on in Afghanistan, and in the so-called 'war on terror' in general (sigh). Both men are unwilling to raise critical questions about the U.S.'s 'support' of (read: giving loads of weapons to) the state of Israel.
Energy: both men are roughly on the same page here.
Social policies: I don't have a PhD in economics, so I have no idea what's good for the poor. Nevertheless, as a Christian who believes that the Fall is deep, I'm incredibly wary of the naive idealism required for so-called 'free markets' to work. So I naturally lean to the left here. The trouble, of course, is that governments are made up of people too--so corruption can happen there just as easily as it can in big corporations. Perhaps this is something I need to think more about.

Finally, and here there IS a big difference between McCain and Obama: so far as I can tell, only McCain seems to have an uncritical, quasi-Bushian view of evil (see the Civil Forum transcript here, or specifically this file). And I quote: "Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century: radical Islamic extremists."
Yes, it's those damned 'Islamic extremists' who are evil. They, them. Over there. Not us. Never.
Right, McCain... right.

Compare with Obama's answer (see this file): "... one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it [...] but you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil."
For all the rest of Obama's mushy liberal theology, here he reveals himself to have a solidly Christian understanding of evil (which means, in passing, that I would rather attend Obama's church--even given his former pastor, that scary black man Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright--than McCain's church).

This post is dragging on, so I apologize. My main point is this. Things being what they are, I'm considering voting for Obama in the fall. Or rather, I'm considering voting against John McCain in the fall, because he scares me. A man with that kind of power and that kind of worldview can do a whole lot o' damage. God have mercy on my soul--and on the world.

As an aside, I have good friends who are voting Green, for Cynthia McKinney. And while I appreciate their (and her) perspective, given the fact that she won't be elected (just trying to be realistic here), voting for her really does seem to me to embody some kind of trust in (or endorsement of) the system--the kind of trust that sits oddly with Christian commitments in the Anabaptist tradition.

That's all for today folks. I'd love to hear some of my readers' reasons for voting, or not voting, or voting for candidate X, Y or Z.

God's peace.
-Daniel-

On Dualism in Politics

2008-08-05T14:27:00.002-05:00

Thom Stark helpfully reminds us that:

"[The Church] claims to be the reality of which Caesar’s empire is the parody; it claims to be modeling the genuine humanness, not least the justice and peace, and the unity across traditional racial and cultural barriers, of which Caesar’s empire boasted. If this claim is not to collapse once more into dualism, into a rejection of every human aspiration and value, it will be apparent that there will be a large degree of overlap. 'Shun what is evil; cling to what is good.' There will be affirmation as well as critique, collaboration as well as critique. To collaborate without compromise, to criticize without dualism—this is the delicate path that Jesus’ counter-empire had to learn to tread." And which we at present must learn to tread. (Read the full post here.)

Something to think about in an election year, as little as it pleases me to say so...

Peace.

Eschatology and confusion

2008-07-29T13:47:00.002-05:00

One of the most significant recent evolutions in my personal understanding of Christianity has been in the field of eschatology (or 'end-times-ology', you might call it). The traditional conservative evangelical eschatology I inherited from my upbringing ran essentially as follows:
Jesus, Paul, and all the New Testament writers prophesied about the end of the world. Everyone expected more or less the same thing. There'll be a rapture. Lots of doom. Truckloads of doom. Satan will run rampant. Believers will lose their faith left and right. And then at some point, Jesus is going to come riding back to Earth on a supercloud, crush the opposition, and take us all to heaven/renew Creation (don't ask me how those last two points fit together--they don't).

You run into problems very quickly on this scheme. First of all, there's all that stuff Jesus says (e.g., in Mark 13 and parallels) about things happening within a generation. Now, I know all the pseudo-explanations about how a generation isn't a generation, but is rather a long stretch of time or has to do with the non-extinction of the human race. But re-read the texts. And honestly, that's just bad exegesis. If bad stuff will happen at some point, but not right away--only before the species goes extinct... what's with all the urgency? "Be vigilant"? No thanks! I'd rather chill and sleep.

Thankfully, NT Wright and Andrew Perriman have done their historical homework and have offered credible historical hypotheses to explain the nature of apocalyptic language within Second Temple Judaism and thus to help us understand what on Earth Jesus and Paul (and the others) were talking about. All of Jesus' talk of judgment, vindication, 'coming on the clouds', Gehenna, narrow roads and wide roads, thieves coming in the night, angry landowners trouncing bad renters, and so on... ALL of that should be understood as historically grounded apocalyptic metaphor. Or as Wright puts it, as language which invests historical events with their full theological meaning.
And with hindsight, Jesus' predictions of the end point of Jewish nationalistic trajectories are seen to be fulfilled (in the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70AD, culminating in the destruction of the Temple).

Perriman builds on Wright's work and suggests that the apostle Paul extended Jesus' eschatological vision to include the Roman Empire. And so the Jew-Greek salvation process is matched by a Jew-Greek judgment process. Jesus' salvation is for the Jew first, but also for the Greek. But there is also a judgment (historically conceived) reserved for the Jew, and another for the Greek. Rephrased, Babylon will be judged for her wrath against Israel.
The idea here is to tap into the Old Testament pattern of judgment where Israel bears "God's wrath" either through war or exile, but where God's anger then turns to the instrument of wrath and judges the invading nation as well.
There are loose ends galore, of course, but the overall shape of the narrative works quite well as far as I can tell.

Another contribution Perriman offers is to see Paul's talk of 'first' and 'second' resurrections as referring to a transitional period's privilege and to the destiny of all humankind. Paul believes, on this view, that there is a general resurrection at the end of history, but also that those who are faithful to Jesus in the transition from Israel's age to the Church's age may well attain a more glorious resurrection--one which immediately follows their death. A resurrection directly to 'heaven' to be with Jesus. Read Paul's eschatology with these lenses on, and I think you'll find them preferable to Wright's 'intermediate state' theology.

A final point. It's quite clear to me now that the New Testament has no one teaching on afterlife theology or ultimate eschatology (I say 'ultimate' to distinguish what will happen after the general resurrection from what happened within a generation of Jesus). The New Testament writers are confused, hopeful, and anxious. I couldn't admit this earlier on, because I thought I would have to say Jesus was confused or wrong about eschatology. And that's hard to do with any kind of interesting Christology. In retrospect however, it seems quite clear to me that Jesus knew what he was doing, had a clear vision of what was shortly to come and that he was vindicated in the proper historical sense. It's also clear to me that the early Church was unsure what to do with their new situation, their continuity and discontinuity with old ethnic Israel, the stories of God's judgment, and the doctrines of resurrection. Thus we get a variety of more or less believable stories about God's future acts in history.

Of course, the apocalyptic language helps to muddy the waters even more.

In the meantime however, just because we're not sure how the story exactly ends doesn't mean we don't know what God is like, how God has called a people for Godself, and how we are to subsume our stories under the story of Israel's god and the world's Creator.

Any questions? Me too.

Peace.

On eating less meat

2008-07-17T15:51:00.004-05:00

The New York Times has a delightful piece on reducing meat consumption by Mark Bittman here (HT: Tim Yenter). It's not written from a vegetarian perspective, but has some helpful reminders and tips for folks who recognize that U.S. citizens on the whole eat waaay too much meat. Here are the first and last of Bittman's seven suggestions.

"1. Forget the protein thing. Roughly simultaneously with your declaration that you’re cutting back on meat, someone will ask 'How are you going to get enough protein?' The answer is 'by being omnivorous.' Plants have protein, too; in fact, per calorie, many plants have more protein than meat. (For example, a cheeseburger contains 14.57 grams of protein in 286 calories, or about .05 grams of protein per calorie; a serving of spinach has 2.97 grams of protein in 23 calories, or .12 grams of protein per calorie; lentils have .07 grams per calorie.) By eating a variety, you can get all essential amino acids.
You also don’t have to eat the national average of a half-pound of meat a day to get enough protein. On average, Americans eat about twice as much as the 56 grams of daily protein recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (a guideline that some nutritionists think is too high). For anyone eating a well-balanced diet, protein is probably not an issue.
[...]
7. Look at restaurant menus differently. If you’re cutting back on meat, there are three restaurant strategies. Two are easy, and one is hard, but probably the most important.
The first: go to restaurants that don’t feature meat-heavy dishes. It’s harder to go overboard eating at most Asian restaurants, and traditional Italian is fairly safe also.
The second: Once in a while, forget the rules and pledges, and eat like a real American; obviously you can’t do this every time, but it’s an option.
The third is the tricky one: Remember you’re doing this voluntarily, for whatever reasons seem important to you (or at least seemed, until you were confronted with the lamb shanks on the menu). Then order from the parts of the menu that contain little or no meat: salads, sides, soups and (often, anyway) appetizers. If all else fails, offer to share a meat course among two or even three or four people; many restaurant entrees are too big anyway.
I distinctly remember (no great feat; it was just over a year ago), the first time I was in a restaurant and ordered two salads and a bowl of soup.
My companion, who had long known me as a meat-first kind of guy, asked, 'Really?'
The waiter asked, 'How would you like that served?' And then life went on as usual. Wasn’t bad at all."

Interview with Nancey Murphy

2008-07-09T17:26:00.002-05:00

Nancey Murphy is my hero. Perhaps that's too strong. I'm very grateful for her work. I don't know if it's because her arguments are good or because I agree with all her conclusions (e.g. she's roughly Anabaptist, loves Hauerwas and MacIntyre, argues for a physicalist anthropology, enthusiastically supports Christian engagement with the best of contemporary science [i.e. she, among other things, encourages Christians to embrace evolution]). Maybe both.
Imagine my delight then, at finding this interview she did with www.religion-online.org (the article originally appeared in The Christian Century, December 27, 2005, pp. 20-26)!
Some excerpts:

On dualistic anthropologies:
"Separating religion and science into two noninteracting spheres has been a common strategy since the 18th century to avoid conflict between religion and science. While religion (or theology) and science do have different aims and employ different sorts of language, this strategy ultimately fails.
Consider, for example, the issue of human nature. Throughout much of their history Christians have understood humans dualistically -- as a combination of two parts, body and soul. Developments in the cognitive neurosciences are increasingly making it clear that the brain performs all the functions once attributed to the soul, so the division breaks down."

On Christians and evolution:
"When I first discovered that there are still Christians who reject evolutionary theory (having grown up in the Catholic school system, I did not encounter this as a child), I thought of it as a harmless expression of ignorance. More recently, though, I’ve come to see it as tragic. Vast numbers of young people are taught that evolution and Christianity can’t both be true. They get a good science education in college, recognize the truth of the evolutionary picture, and then believe that they have to reject their faith."

On so-called 'natural evil':
"After the tsunami last year I read accounts reflecting on the likely responses to the event by adherents of different faiths. I was startled to see that all of the responses were anthropomorphic -- that is, they asked, 'Why would God do this to us?' None reflected an appreciation of the fact that plain old natural processes were the cause.
A current project for me is the problem of suffering -- both animal pain and human suffering at the hands of nature. The issue of cosmological fine-tuning is quite relevant to this problem. The laws of nature had to be almost exactly as they are for us to exist, which means that for us to exist nature also had to have the capacity to inflict damage on our bodies."

On the suffering of animals:
"Opponents of Christianity sometimes use the violence of predation to argue either that there is no God or else that God has created an unnecessarily cruel world. Science can tell us, though, that predation is necessary in order for us to be here. Then we can join with the 16th-century Anabaptists in seeing the suffering of beasts of burden and animals of prey as a participation in the drama of God’s creation and redemption. This was called 'the gospel of all creatures'." [Am I wrong to imagine a friendliness to vegetarianism here?]

Aaah, if only there were more like her...
Peace,
-Daniel-

An ode to war and peace

2008-07-08T11:59:00.001-05:00

My brother in Christ Ray Gingerich passed this on to our little Mennonite congregation. Thought I'd share it. (The emphasis at the end is Ray's.)

Ode to War and Peace

Joe Franks

So here's to the snappy salute, to spit and polish, the clicking of booted heels, the singing of martial odes. Here's to the officers' club and the swaggering commandant, to the loving but abusive drill sergeant, to the constant flow of insult that is the philosopher's stone of survival. Here's to the young lieutenant fresh from the academy, to the troop ship, soldiers with their duffel bags slung over their shoulders, their cloth caps slouched and angled on their brows. And here's to weeping parents, sweethearts and children clutching at the skirts of their mothers, to final tearful embraces and brass bands playing.

Here's to the night before the battle, to the assault, the coursing landing craft, to going over the top, to the airborne troopers plunging from their droning seed pods, to the rubber dinghy landing at night. Here's to where the farm boy and the city dweller meet and are made equal. Here's to the arcing shell and magnesium dawn, to the clanking treads of armored personnel carriers, to bullets and howitzers, carbines and recoilless rifles, to mortars and anti-personnel bombs, to fragmentation grenades and tear gas canisters, to machine-gun emplacements and flamethrowers, to fasgene(ph) and mustard gas, to the serrated bayonet and the deadly rain of shrapnel.

Here's to minefields fraught with sudden fragmentation, to screaming sergeant death, commanding the rag-tag remnants of his courageous platoon. And here's to raising the flag on the shattered field of victory, to the prisoner of war camp, to the medevac chopper, the hospital ship, sacrosanct, yet sunk, to chaplains, to burial detail and body bags, to "Taps" and other songs. And here's to the brave pilots who in their cavalier ready rooms prepare to become the airborne messengers of death, to the dog-faced infantry who dedicate themselves to the earth as much as their own cause. Here's to words like courage, sacrifice, discipline, glory, maimed, dead.

Here's to war. I raise my glass to you and gaze into the roiling liquid of death's own intoxication. O, war, you have made the low elevated. You have created heroes, and history will be written by your winner. Peace is pallid next to you. Peace can skulk and shrink, a weakling, a coward's paradise. Peace, you lukewarm bowl of grandmother's mush, you washed-out stand-in for manly behavior. Peace walks through the marketplace offering second-hand bargains, peace, the shaver of points, the cut-rate merchant. Peace, you miserable converter of men into swine, you destroyer of valor, quicksand in which nations founder, the bleeding wound in the side of the great avenging angel. Peace, the apologist, the compromiser, the appeaser, the rust upon the edge of courage's great sword.

What is peace but an excuse, a reason for cowardice, a refusal to accept one's responsibilities? I spit on peace. I lift my leg on peace. I have my dog despoil the miserable garden of peace. There are no medals to peace, no honors, no marching bands, no great monuments to peace, no hymns sung, no great odes, no martial melodies, no parades to peace. There are no gigantic fireworks displays, no champagne corks popped to peace, no last cigarette smoked in its honor. There is no night before peace, no declaration of peace. The very absurdity of a nation declaring peace on another shocks the imagination. And who among us can say that he has heard of the spoils of peace? Is there such a thing as a peace hero? Who among us have gathered with his old cronies late at night, hoisted a glass and told peace stories? What valiant young man has been welcomed back from peace? What young boy has gazed longingly at his father, saying that he would willingly go to peace to save his country?

Happy 4th?

2008-07-03T11:24:00.002-05:00

"The Lord said to Samuel, 'Do everything the people request of you. For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king. Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected me and have served other gods. This is what they are also doing to you. So now do as they say. But seriously warn them and make them aware of the policies of the king who will rule over them.'
So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, 'Here are the policies of the king who will rule over you: He will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot. He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment. He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants. He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants. He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use. He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants. In that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you in that day.'" (I Samuel 8:7-18, NET)

"'You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well. And if someone wants to sue you and to take your tunic, give him your coat also. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you, and do not reject the one who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor' and 'hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors do the same, don’t they? And if you only greet your brothers, what more do you do? Even the Gentiles do the same, don’t they? So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:38-47, NET)

"Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil; consider what is good before all people. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people. Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord. Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:16-21, NET)

"Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness? And what agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share in common with an unbeliever? And what mutual agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, 'I will live in them and will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.' Therefore 'come out from their midst, and be separate,' says the Lord, 'and touch no unclean thing, and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,' says the All-Powerful Lord." (II Corinthians 6:14-18, NET)

"If anyone is meant for captivity,
into captivity he will go.
If anyone is to be killed by the sword,
then by the sword he must be killed.
This requires steadfast endurance and faith from the saints." (Revelation 13:10, NET)

God bless the U.S.A.?

Scot McKnight on guns

2008-07-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

Scot McKnight has some great thoughts on guns in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the second amendment here. An excerpt.

"I came to this conclusion long ago: that God doesn’t want Christians killing others. So, I sold my gun. Do I think owning and using a gun for hunting is fine? Sure. But, I think such guns ought to be stored in some safe, governmentally-based location. No one is following my idea, that I know.

But, that doesn’t mean I won’t speak up for what I think is right.

What about you? Do you own a gun? Why do you have it? Can you imagine that you would ever pick it up and shoot someone, an Eikon of God?"

Good questions for Christians who claim to follow the Prince of Peace. Think on these things this week-end, as U.S. citizens get carried away in patriotic fervor...

Boyd on The Shack

2008-06-25T11:36:00.003-05:00

Greg Boyd reviews The Shack here. An excerpt:

"I felt like the portrait of God in this novel was beautiful and reflective of what we find revealed in the New Testament. And the theological and psychological insights of this book were at times profound and consistently communicated in brilliantly simple ways.
[...]
The only substantial disagreement I have with the theology of this novel concerns Young's view of time and the nature of the future. While his book breaks from the classical tradition on many points, on these two issues Young is a traditionalist. At several points God brings up his foreknowledge of all that will (not might) take place and Young seems to (mistakenly) think that this helps God achieve his sovereign purposes without violating free will (as though God were not infinitely intelligent and thus able to anticipates 'maybes' with the same effectiveness as 'certainties'). But given that the open view of the future is a minority view in Christian circles, it's hardly surprising Young espouses this view. And given the over-all theological, psychological and spiritual insight of this masterful novel, this one piece of theological disagreement is hardly worth registering."

I'm surprised Greg liked the book this much, to be honest. It is nothing less than a systematic theology in fictional form (it touches on everything from the Trinity to the problem of evil). Conservative evangelicals have been upset by its representation of God the Father as a woman (for most of the novel), and by its rejection of hierarchy in the Trinity. Personally, I find these unobjectionable.
What is deeply objectionable about this novel however, is its ecclesiological void. A hole, nay, a gaping chasm lies in the author's understanding of Jesus' ministry, insofar as the Church, as such, play no role whatsoever in his picture of Christianity. But Jesus was fundamentally a reform prophet in Israel to save the people of God. The utter absence of any communal considerations from Young's novel is deeply problematic. As if one could talk about Jesus' ministry without ever mentioning baptism or communion!

And so the picture that emerges from the novel is one of a nice, egalitarian God, who wants human beings to get along. This is all well and good, but it is not Christian. If non-Christians were to adopt such a picture of God, that would be great. But Christians can't afford to stop there. My understanding is that the author is not involved in any kind of Church life. This is very saddening.
My verdict? The Shack exploits Christianity for a (relatively accurate) picture of God, but leaves out the key biblical piece about God's plan for Israel and the Church. What's left is something we've seen far too often: an individualistic pseudo-Christianity.

By all means, read the novel, it's pretty good. But keep your thinking-caps on.

Peace.

Common Christian Party

2008-06-18T12:31:00.002-05:00

Ran across a new blog today that I thought I'd recommend: The 'Common Christian Party' blog.
A sassy excerpt from a recent post:

"There are some who are very comfortable mixing church with politics, but they tend to do so in a very narrow and partisan way. The Common Christian Party is not interested in the false dichotomy of Left v. Right, Democrats v. Republicans, and Liberals v. Conservatives. We believe the lens by which we interpret reality, including political matters, should be Jesus and His cross. As finite, infinitely flawed human beings our sight will never be perfect, but wedding yourself to worldly ideologies will ensure that you are half-blind, with a patch over at least one eye. We must engage in a politics that is particular to the way of the Christ.

Perhaps (at least until we regain our Christ-centered political consciousness), we should at certain times refer to our selves as the "Body Politic of Christ", instead of simply the Body of Christ, and "the party," instead of the church. The notion of a body politic is very explicit in it's representation. Party is slightly less so, yet still provides much more clarity in terms of ecclesial politics, than the word church, currently does. When it is not used in a recreational context (e.g. birthday party) or in reference to a person or group, the term party has very strong political connotations and can be defined as a "political group organized to promote and support it's principles and candidates for public office," (dictionary.com). We believe in promoting, supporting, and more importantly living the principles of Jesus Christ, which have profound political implications, and this is why we designate ourselves as a party."

Check it out!

Israel, the Jews, and a sense of 'we'

2008-06-18T10:14:00.003-05:00

In general, I'm fairly clueless about politics. But I'm fascinated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More specifically, I'm interested in how Jews around the world navigate common assumptions that they 'must' support Israel. The three-way Jewish virtual round-table conversation found here goes a long way to qualify that picture. Some key excerpts:

"[Carlo Strenger:] Let me begin with a basic belief of mine: any criticism of Israel that does not actually incite racism and antisemitism is legitimate. Many supporters of Israel automatically play the card of antisemitism to muzzle criticism. This is intellectually and morally wrong and it is dangerous. It empties the charge of antisemitism of serious content, and creates deep animosity not only towards Israel, but also towards Jews in general.
[...]
[Brian Klug:] As you say, Steven, the situation in Israel-Palestine is not 'a private business for Jews or Israelis'. Nonetheless, there is private business to transact; for Israelis and Jews need to think their identities apart. Which brings me, Carlo, to your remark that I am 'involved in this as a Jew'. You are right. But what does this mean? Steven, you refer to 'the tribal loyalties into which many [Jews] were born'. But I was born into something much larger - more generous and humane - than tribal loyalties. It's called Judaism (or Jewishness). Speaking out about Israel is not a way of 'breaking free' (in your phrase) of this identity; it is a way of reclaiming it.
[...]
[Steven Rose:] To invoke Holocaust memories in defence of one of the most heavily armed and militarised nuclear states in the world, supported as it is by the imperial might of the US, is a rhetorical device past its sell-by date.
[...]
But to expose Israeli racism and oppression is not to condone repressive Arab regimes, nor terrorist attacks on civilians, nor to suggest that Israel is the 'moral low point of the world'.
[...]
[Brian Klug:] You mention 'pride' in Israel's achievements. I feel neither pride nor shame about the state's doings, for Israel is not my country and I am not its citizen. If it is to have a future, Israel must shed the burden of Jewish fears and hopes that led to its creation. It must see itself as belonging to the Israeli - not the Jewish - people. In other words, it is time to move on, to cut the cord that ties Jewish and Israeli identities together. Insisting Israel be its own state and not ours: this might be the most constructive thing that we - Jews on 'the outside' - can do.
[...]
[Steven Rose:] Unlike either of you, I do not think that Jews outside Israel have a special status in 'solving' the problems of the Middle East. However, by dissociating themselves from Israeli actions and policy, as IJV have done, and by insisting that such actions are 'not in my name', they can help weaken Israeli and Zionist claims to speak for 'all Jews', and form an effective counter to the powerful Israel lobby both in Europe and the US.
So I end by echoing - and extending - Brian's words. To survive, he says, Israel must cut the cord that ties Jewish and Israeli identities together. I would add that the cord that binds Israel to Europe also needs cutting, and Israelis must find their place, not as settlers in Euro-America's last colonial outpost, but as good neighbours in a culturally rich and diverse Middle East." (emphases mine)
(HT: Fuad Rahmat)

Looks like Christians aren't the only ones trying to disentangle a 'we' from patriotic identification with a particular nation-state...

Peace.

On patriotism

2008-06-17T18:22:00.003-05:00

And a scary article on patriotism, again at Christianity Today. An excerpt:

"Christians ought to be the best citizens and the finest patriots. Certainly they have a prior allegiance to God Almighty. But this can only make them better Americans. They need not gloss over the nation's defects or sweep its failures under the rug. They need not claim that their country is always right. When it is right, they will support it; and when it is wrong, they will love it and work to correct it. Even as the Apostle Paul could speak proudly of his Roman citizenship, so should every American Christian speak proudly of his. The day that patriotism ceases, that day we will have ceased to be a people." (Read the full article here.)

Since when are 'we' a people?

Was it not Paul who said "Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness? And what agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share in common with an unbeliever? And what mutual agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, 'I will live in them and will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.' Therefore 'come out from their midst, and be separate,' says the Lord, 'and touch no unclean thing, and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,' says the All-Powerful Lord." (II Corinthians 6:14-18, NET)
If this is the apostle being 'proud' of his Roman citizenship... well I'll be darned. It sure doesn't look like it to me.

Cooperate with the State if you must, don't cause the Church to be maligned unnecessarily, but we are the Body of Christ, we are the people of God, the city on a hill, we are the enemy-loving servants and slaves of the Creator, we wield the sword of the Spirit--not the sword of the empire. Christians, this fourth of July, stay home. Or even better, do something the U.S.A. will never be able to do--love your enemies, and pray for those who spitefully use you.

Christ's Peace.

Virtues and presidency

2008-06-17T18:15:00.002-05:00

Some great reflection (by Bethel U profs!) at Christianity Today on the need for virtuous presidents. An excerpt:

"Are we to believe, yet again, that Democratic candidates can find the money in a real Congress for all the social equity promises they make every four years? Or that Republican candidates can actually, even if they want to, dramatically shrink the size of government? Or that anyone is genuinely revolutionary or powerful enough to invoke overwhelming "change" in Washington? There's a systemic momentum to government and its bureaucracies that eats ideology for lunch. Simple realism indicates we have a better chance of making a generally accurate assessment of a candidate's character—and hoping in that—than we have of using policy or ideology to predict their future actions or success." (Read the full article.)

Free will?

2008-06-09T18:42:00.003-05:00

So I'm taking a course on the free will debate, and I just have to say, boy am I confused. The debate that got me into theology and philosophy was the theological counterpart to the free will debate in its Arminian, Calvinist and Open Theist disguises. But of course, the theological question isn't particularly precise, since concerns about human freedom are tied in not only to human responsibility but also to providence and divine foreknowledge.

The philosophical free will debate (between hard determinists, compatibilists and libertarians) is a little bit more focused, but not extremely so. The reason I've finding this topic difficult is because I've been a de facto libertarian for the past six years (at least) and I'm now finding that the central intuitions grounding libertarian claims (namely, the need to justify attributions of moral blame and praise) aren't that central in my worldview anymore.
This has largely to do with my more recent views on afterlife theology. From a heavy emphasis on 'heaven' and 'hell' as post-mortem destinations for disembodied human 'souls', I've learned (from NT Wright, Andrew Perriman and others) to tell a different story about who we are and where we're going. Needless to say rewards and punishments don't figure so centrally in my new picture (though perhaps they're still there in a mitigated form).
Combined with some recent shift in my ethics (informed here by Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Margaret Urban Walker), practices of praise and blame no longer require the repudiation of determinism I once thought necessary.

Determinism, however, is still a bad hypothesis. There is every reason, as I understand it, to suppose that indeterminacy is woven into the very fabric of Creation, and every reason to suppose that this leads, not to chaos, but to beauty, creativity, and change.

So my metaphysics are averse to determinism, but my ethics are not. Freedom of will lies somewhere in the intersection of these two, but I'm not sure where or how. Any insights would be welcome...

Peace!
-Daniel-

Skinner on voting

2008-05-28T08:30:00.003-05:00

My wife and I just finished reading B. F. Skinner's classic 'Walden Two'. And can I just say, what an excellent book!! Its utopian vision is not perfect by any means, but the book offers trenchant critiques of contemporary theories of justice, social orderings, economics and politics. A must-read!
Skinner (via his character and community founder 'Frazier') offers the following insights on voting:

"Then I say democracy is a pious fraud," said Frazier. "In what sense is it 'government by the people'?"
"In an obvious sense, I should say."
"It isn't obvious at all. How is the people's will ascertained? In an election. But what a travesty! In a small committee meeting, or even a town hall, I can see some point in voting, especially on a yes-or-no question. But fifty million voters choosing a president--that's quite another thing."
"I can't see that the number of voters changes the principle," said Castle.
"The chance that one man's vote will decide the issue in a national election," said Frazier, speaking very deliberately, "is less than the chance that he will be killed on his way to the polls. We pay no attention whatsoever to chances of that magnitude in our daily affairs. We should call a man a fool who bought a sweepstakes ticket with similar odds against him."
"It must mean something or people wouldn't vote," said Castle.
"How many of them would go on voting if they were free of a lot of extraneous pressures? Do you think a man goes to the polls because of any effect which casting a vote has ever had? By no means. He goes to avoid being talked about by his neighbors, or to 'knife' a candidate whom he dislikes, marking his X as he might defile a campaign poster--and with the same irrational spite. No, a man has no logical reason to vote whatsoever. The chances of affecting the issue are too small to alter his behavior in any appreciable way."
"I believe the mathematicians have a name for that fallacy," said Castle. "It's true that your chances of deciding the issue get smaller as the number of voters increases, but the stakes get larger at the same rate."
"But do they? Is a national election really an important issue? Does it really matter very much who wins? The platforms of the two parties are carefully made as much alike as possible, and when the election is over we're all advised to accept the result like good sports. Only a few voters go on caring very much after a week or two. The rest know there's no real threat. Things will go on pretty much the same. Elections are sometimes turned by a few million voters who can't make up their minds until election day. It can't be much of an issue if that's the case."
"Even so, it's important that the people feel they've chosen the government they want," said Castle.
"On the contrary, that's the worst of it. Voting is a device for blaming conditions on the people. The people aren't rulers, they're scapegoats. And they file to the polls every so often to renew their right to the title."
(Macmillan Publishing, 1976, hardcover edition, pp. 249-50)

The book was first published in 1948.

Ode of parting to libertarianism

2008-05-20T15:28:00.002-05:00

Woe is me,
My libertarian soul,
My brain thinks it's free,
But perhaps it ain't so.

They told me that guilt,
They told me that blame,
And all the world's praise,
High fives and shame,

Only made sense,
Could only carry,
Their fully moral weight,
With power to the contrary.

Behold and beware,
It seems now to me,
That this isn't true,
Dear determinacy.

To say 'shame on you',
No metaphysics requires,
Save a shared understanding,
And no crossed wires.

This grasp of the good,
This agreement of life,
Is what makes blame and praise,
Clear and sharp as a knife.

Good bye libertarian,
You've ceased to make sense,
Compatibilist self,
You're not quite as dense.

The world is in flux,
And my will is free,
The two are related,
But how, it beats me.

Wright on Jesus and marriage

2008-05-07T14:37:00.002-05:00

Bishop Wright offers a crucial insight in his analysis of Jesus' saying on marriage and divorce. Attentive readers of the New Testament will have noticed two appeals to Scripture in the resolution of the question. First, the Pharisees appeal to Moses (i.e. Deuteronomy); second, Jesus appeals over Moses' head, back to Creation. The key point is this:

"Jesus responds with an assertion which reveals that he stands at a vitally different point in Israel's story. Deuteronomy, he says, is part of a temporary phase in the purposes of YHWH. It was necessary because of the ambiguous situation, in which Israel was called to be the people of god, but was still a people with hard hearts. Israel cannot be affirmed as she stands. She is still in exile, still hard-hearted; but the new day is dawning in which 'the Mosaic dispensation is not adequate', since 'Jesus expected there to be a better order' [quoting Sanders].
By quoting Genesis 1.27 and 2.4 to undermine Deutoronomy 24.1-3, Jesus was in fact making it clear that the story to which he was obedient was that in which Israel was called by YHWH to restore humankind and the world to his original intention." (Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 285 - italics his, bold mine)

First, notice that Wright has correctly shown the narrative logic which undergirds Jesus' prescriptions. It is not a matter of universalizable maxims (Kant), maximal utility (Mill) or some other 'principle' (e.g. 'love', 'liberation', etc.); rather it is the story of Scripture, in all its glorious thickness and oddity, that grounds the leap from 'is' to 'ought' in Jesus' thinking. Hopefully the Church will follow suit.

Second, the fact that Jesus' life, death and resurrection are taken as the giving of a new heart, far from allowing more sexual 'freedom', in fact requires (actually, frees us) to return to the ideal of Creation. A more relevant point could not be made...

Peace,
-Daniel-

NT Wright on Hades

2008-05-05T16:40:00.003-05:00

Inevitably, when the topic of 'hell' comes around, I point my interlocutors back to the distinction in Scripture between the place of the dead (Hades, or Sheol) and apocalyptic metaphors for judgment (e.g. 'Gehenna'). Whereas some conservative evangelicals like to claim that Jesus talked more about hell than love, or peace, or what have you, I cannot but point out the absence of 'hell' from all New Testament texts. Hell, I tell them, is a post-biblical construct. We may have arguments about how closely it conveys similar meanings to Hades or Gehenna, but the point is the former is not in Scripture, the latter are.

But what about, you ask, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? Glad you asked. Here's what NT Wright has to say about it:

"The parable is not, as often supposed, a description of the afterlife, warning people to be sure of their ultimate destination. If that were its point, it would not be a parable: a story about someone getting lost in London would not be a parable if addressed to people attempting to find their way through that city without a map. We have perhaps been misled, not for the first time, by the too-ready assumption, in the teeth of the evidence, that Jesus 'must really' have been primarily concerned to teach people 'how to go to heaven after death'. The reality is uncomfortably different." (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 255)

Thank you bishop Wright, for the helpful reminder. If readers are curious as what what that 'uncomfortably different' reality might be... good. Do a little bit of research and report back. ;-)

Christ's peace,
-Daniel-

On voting

2008-04-22T12:45:00.002-05:00

A Reuters report helpfully reminds me today that if I, with fear and trembling, decide to vote in the upcoming presidential elections, it cannot be with any enthusiasm. How can a pacifist vote for violence?
Witness Clinton's rhetoric: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could 'totally obliterate' Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel."
Obama is barely better: "Meanwhile, Obama said he would respond 'forcefully and swiftly' to an Iranian attack against Israel or any other U.S. ally, whether conventional or nuclear."

And Christians get excited about these people! Don't be deceived folks. If you vote, you vote for what you think is the lesser of three evils--though of course, you might be wrong. Consequentialist reasoning has always been dangerous.

Christ's peace.

A story of unshod feet.

2008-04-21T16:13:00.002-05:00

Some months ago, I learned a very interesting fact about my feet. Perhaps I should say I remembered this fact, because it certainly seems like I knew it at some point, but just forgot it. Either way, the knowledge is presently in my head. My feet like being naked. Shoes are well and good, don’t get me wrong, but God has stuffed my flippers full of nerve endings, and they do enjoy a good tickle.

And so whenever it’s warm, I make a point of walking barefoot. I don’t just mean walking barefoot in my back yard. Or on the beach. No, I mean barefoot everywhere. In the car, in the street, in the store, and, yes, in my back yard. It’s amazing what a little gesture like this can do to change your life. I’m a pretty average-looking guy; a little on the tall side, but not a freak show by any means. I’m white, and most of the places I find myself, that puts me in the unremarkable majority. And yet, when I take my shoes and socks off, it’s like a gust of wind has just come up and blown up the skirt of my invisibility cloak. Goodness gracious, look at that man! He’s not wearing any shoes! The scandal!

The point, of course, is that such a way of being in the world is unintelligible to most people. They don’t understand that human feet like to be barefoot, and that it’s just because we’ve pinned most of Creation down in heavy concrete manacles that this fact isn’t immediately obvious to everyone. We’ve homogenized the ground so that we don’t have to listen to what it’s telling us (‘slow down!’, ‘lose some weight!’).

You’d never imagine the kinds of things people have said to me as I walk around in my nature-soles. “Do you know you’re not wearing any shoes?” Why yes, I do! Seriously, do you think people are that clueless? “Where are your shoes?” At home, why do you ask? “Don’t your feet hurt?” No, my Creator didn’t make me to be fragile. And of course, the necessary chorus “No shoes, no shirt, no service.” People tell me this on the street. Not even in the parking lot on the way to the store or anything. Just minding my own business in town. Good thing I’m not lookin’ for any kind of service right now, I tell them.

Of course, in spite of all the benefits of walking barefoot (it feels nice, it strengthens the arch and the toes, it enhances one’s awareness of one’s surroundings, etc.), there are reasons to be cautious. Along with our concretization of the world, we’ve gone and strewn broken glass and rusty nails all throughout it, as if to say, if you get hurt it’s your own damn fault! If I take the world for granted, then yes, it is my own fault if I cut myself while barefoot (though this is actually much harder to do than some people think). But taking the world for granted is precisely what I’m not doing when I walk barefoot. Rather, my naked feet are an announcement to the concrete jungle that it is what’s unnatural. It is the problem. It is the source of my pain. Not me or my bare toes.

They tell a story of man who was barefoot once, long ago (but not too long) and far away (but not too far). The world he inhabited was as harsh and uninviting as any junkyard, full of jagged rocks and broken bottles. But he walked barefoot through it anyway, and in doing so, he spoke judgment on that world. He was truly human, and in his naked humanity, the world was revealed in the full measure of its inhumanity. The managers of the junkyard were furious, of course. Maybe the man would sue. Mostly though, they hated that people were realizing how crappy the whole dump was. More people started walking barefoot, and were becoming aware of how wrongly uncomfortable and uncomfortably wrong their lives had become.

So the junkyard managers went out of their way to teach the man a lesson. They forced him into a path strewn with the harshest gravel they could find, and they threw thorns and scraps of twisted metal down on his path, crowning it all with a gnarly old rusted monster of a nail. And they made him walk on it. Or he willfully walked on it. I suppose it depends which perspective you take. Either way, I suppose you could summarize the whole ordeal by saying that he got tetanus and died (like I said, this was a long time ago, before compulsory tetanus vaccinations and the such).

Jesus is our barefoot God. Having kicked off the heavenly slippers of divine aseity, the man from Nazareth walks barefoot through a world at war, and impales his hands and his feet on the rusty nail of Roman oppression and Jewish faithlessness. A warning to all who would walk barefoot through a world no longer suitable for unshod feet.
In his death, Jesus absorbs the corruption of the world’s disease and brokenness, and it kills him. It is not the end of the story, of course. For in his resurrection, Jesus’ wounds become a fountainhead of antibodies. The raw gashes are healed and are stripped of their killing power. The way of barefootedness is vindicated and Jesus’ followers are equipped once more to face an unforgiving world of rusted nails and broken glass.

A wild story, I know. But in spite of all this, some still say that a violent world calls for shoes. Not wearing shoes is just not realistic! I never said it was. Being barefoot is asking for trouble! I never said it wasn’t. But if we really follow the barefoot man from Nazareth, the one who refuses to conform to the world and in so doing reveals precisely where it has gone off track, how can we be content with anything less than full barefootedness? How can we be content to lie and cheat and kill, when our master died for his unwillingness to do so? Christians, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Christians, put down your handguns and your rifles. Christians, take off your shoes and your socks. And be barefoot as your heavenly Father is barefoot.

Amen.

Aquinas on divine foreknowledge

2008-04-16T11:16:00.003-05:00

Well, this is my 100th post, and I've been holding off posting to see if something incredibly profound could sprout out of my brain onto this page, but this doesn't seem to be happening. So I'll just be posting on some work that I've been doing of late.

Thomas Aquinas, that great doctor of the Church, wades into the problem of divine foreknowledge and essentially reaffirms Boethius' take on the issue (rather than, e.g., Augustine's). His point is this: human beings are rational beings. To reason is to deliberate, and in deliberation, our wills can be directed towards opposite things. In short, we have free will (in a libertarian sense). Of course, Aquinas inherits both philosophical and theological prejudices against women and their rational capacities, so when I summarize Aquinas' view by saying 'we' have free will, perhaps it would be best to say "Aquinas thought men had free will." It's a sad truth, but we won't be able to move beyond it until we realize what a patriarchal mess we've inherited.

Moving on. The future outcome of free choices is contingent, that is, not settled, determined, or necessary in any way. And Aquinas firmly argues that, 'in its causes', the future CANNOT be foreknown as certain.
Nevertheless, he does seem fairly enamored with the Boethian suggestion that divine foreknowledge isn't foreknowledge at all, but is rather knowledge. This is a function of God's mode of being--God's timelessness. Though the future cannot be known certainly 'in its causes', God can know it 'in its presentiality', that is, insofar as it is present to God in eternity.

The problem with this of course (and it is the problem that plagues all such attempts to justify the doctrine of foreknowledge on the basis of God's supposed 'timelessness'), is that God's mode of being is irrelevant to the mode of being of the future. And if the future does not exist, it doesn't matter if God is timeful, timeless, time-whatever. There's nothing there to 'know'.

Aaah, but the astute Thomist will point out that for Aquinas, 'knowledge' is a word we use analogically of God. Because God is essentially impassible, God does not 'receive' knowledge from the world in any passive sense. Rather he knows the world through himself, as its First Cause. His knowledge is thus activity, rather than passivity.
Of course, the point is well taken. For Aquinas, though we may speak of God's 'knowing' and God's 'causing' because of their semantic differences, for God these are in fact the same thing. God's action is entirely simple and undivided, and so what we call 'knowledge', 'providence', or 'creation' are in God all the same act.

The trouble here, is as follows. What the doctrine of divine simplicity entails is either A) that God foreknows what he predestines, such that his certain foreknowledge of the future is related to his certain causing of the future--and this undermines the conception of free will he has worked so hard to maintain; or B) we take seriously Aquinas' point that God's 'causation' of the world is compatible with 'contingent causation' (and thus with human free wills) and therefore insist that God's knowledge extends only as far as God's causation--which means that God 'knows' the future as it is--as contingent--which makes Aquinas an open theist.

What I'll be arguing in the paper I'm writing is that the source of this confusion is probably the linguistic habit we have (and all people seem to have) of referring to the future in the singular. But taking Aquinas' conception of free will seriously requires that we speak of futures rather than simply 'a' future. To the extent that indeterminacy results from human deliberation, there are several possible futures. Within Aquinas' scheme, if God's causation is compatible with a plurality of futures, then God's knowledge must be as well.
The philosophically inclined will recognize this as some form of so-called 'neo-Molinism'. The key metaphor here is of time as a tree lying on its side. The trunk is the past, the branches are possible routes for the future (or, we could say, the futures), and the point connecting the two halves is the present.

Long story short: if Aquinas can't reconcile exhaustive definite foreknowledge and libertarian free will, who can? Perhaps one or the other doctrine should be thrown out (/reformulated)...

Peace,
-Daniel-

Movie Recommendation

2008-03-30T11:17:00.002-05:00

'I am Legend'. Just watched it last night. Highly recommended.

It's a 'zombie movie' in the same way that Signs is an 'alien movie'. The subject matter provides the driving force for the plot, but there are deeper philosophical questions below the surface. Ok, to be fair, Signs was more blatantly about NOT aliens than I am Legend is about NOT zombies, but watch the movie(s) and tell me if the comparison is apt.

All I can say is, I was scared out of my skin, and I was also deeply moved. A surprising combo for a Will Smith apocalyptic movie...

Evangelicals and homosexuality

2008-03-28T20:24:00.002-05:00

Great thoughts on how gays and lesbians hear typical evangelical discourse on homosexuality here. Give it a read.
:-)

A Prayer of Confession

2008-03-24T14:15:00.001-05:00

Gracious Father, good Creator, forgive me for believing in Barack Obama more than I believe in you. I confess I have been more excited about his politics than about your Church.

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Democrat. Though you bore the full weight of racism and oppression within your very flesh, still I have not believed that humanity is one in you. Forgive me for believing there is salvation in the words of a politician.

Holy healing Spirit, breath of Life, restore your Creation, marred by the divisions of race, gender and social strata. Remind me, and remind the Body you enliven, that wholeness and reconciliation are through Christ alone. You alone our hope. 'Yes we can'? Not without you.

He is Risen!

2008-03-23T08:34:00.003-05:00

Today we celebrate the victory of our Lord over death. Today we marvel at the Creator’s New Creation. Today the healing Spirit binds all who are in Christ as one. Because God first loved us, now we are free to love in return, and we pledge allegiance to the unstoppable Reign of God.
We pledge allegiance.
To a peace that is not like Rome’s.
We pledge allegiance.
To the gospel of enemy-love.
We pledge allegiance.
To the kingdom of the poor and broken.
We pledge allegiance.
To a king who loves his enemies so much he died for them.
We pledge allegiance.
To the least of these, with whom Christ dwells.
We pledge allegiance.
To the transnational Church which transcends the artificial borders of nations.
We pledge allegiance.
To the cross rather than the sword.
We pledge allegiance.
To the banner of love above any flag.
We pledge allegiance.
To the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist.
We pledge allegiance.
To the one who rides a donkey rather than a war horse.
We pledge allegiance.
To the revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free.
We pledge allegiance.
To the way that leads to life.
We pledge allegiance.
To the slaughtered lamb.
We pledge allegiance.
And together we proclaim God’s praises, from Baghdad to Khartoum, from Paris to Nanjing, from Jerusalem to Milwaukee.
Long live the slaughtered lamb!
Long live the slaughtered lamb!
Long live the slaughtered lamb!

[adapted from Jesus for President, by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw]

God and Gender

2008-03-21T10:51:00.003-05:00

Thought provoking post over on Julie Clawson's blog.
Excerpt:

"A couple of days ago, Mark Oestreicher posted his thoughts on gender pronouns for God. He described his lengthy journey into understanding that solely using male pronouns limits God and alienates many women. [...]
But of course his post has stirred much controversy. There are those fearful that Youth Specialties will take a similar stance (to which my reply is - “what? actually be biblical?”). They claim that they (as youth pastors) would not be allowed to attend YS events if YS said that God isn’t strictly male. I personally find it depressing that a church would promote idolatry over unity or truth. Others there though claimed that if one doesn’t believe God is male then one therefore doesn’t believe the Bible is inerrant (which I think they are inappropriately using as a synonym for true). I was just fascinated by the whole thing. I’m used to this topic being taboo, I’m used to being told that it’s just easier to use male default language, I’m used to people being uncomfortable with including female metaphors in their God talk, but I haven’t heard such extreme “God has a penis” rhetoric in a long time."

NT Wright on Holy Week

2008-03-21T10:06:00.002-05:00

"That rhythm of private and public is what we find, sharply and starkly, in the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Today, Jesus takes the disciples into a private room, and the door is shut. Nobody else knows what’s going on. But the words he says there in private, and still more the small but earth-shattering actions he performs, will turn within twenty-four hours into the most ghastly and shocking display of GOD in public: God shamed and mocked, God beaten up and HUMILIATED, God stripped naked and hung up to die. You can’t get more public than crucifixion by the main west road out of Jerusalem. And, as in fact you can observe throughout Jesus’ ministry, you need that rhythm of private and public at every stage. The private without the public becomes gnosticism, ESCAPISM, a safe and narcissistic spirituality. But the public without the private becomes political posturing, meaningless gestures, catching the eye without engaging the heart. We need both; and the events through which we live today enable us to inhabit both, and be strengthened thereby for the ministries both private and public to which we are called."

(source)

Boyd on Biblical Genocide

2008-03-14T14:11:00.002-05:00

Fantastic questions over on Greg Boyd's blog (check them out here). Some excerpts:

"Here's an inspired verse I don't find particularly beautiful.

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction...
Happy are those who seize your infants
and dash them against the rocks (Psalms 137:8-9)

When an army conquered a city in the ancient world the victors would sometimes celebrate by smashing the heads of the infants against rocks. (Possibly inspired by this verse, this practice was resurrected by Christian Crusaders conquering Muslim cities). In this dark passage, the Psalmist is eagerly looking forward to this being done to Babylonian infants. He thinks the warriors who get to do this are lucky!

Most beautiful book in the world? Sorry. I'm not feel'n it.

Let's be honest. This passage is barbarically ugly, and we've got to wonder what on earth it's doing in the "inspired Word of God"! How are we to see this passage as "inspired" in light of the fact that Jesus taught us to love and bless our enemies, not hate and curse them? How could the same Lord who taught us to turn the other cheek, never retaliate and never use the sword inspire the Psalmist to gloat over the splattering of infants' heads? If harboring anger and speaking nasty words ("Raca") to another person puts us in danger of [judgment], as Jesus taught (Matt 5), what kind of danger must the Psalmist be in for harboring this utterly vindictive attitude toward the Babylonians?

[...]

In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith. It's a problem I want to wrestle with in my next few posts. But I want you to be forewarned: If you think I'm going to have nice and tidy answers to this question, you're going to be disappointed. I don't. I'm still in process, entertaining a number of possibilities."

As usual, I appreciate Greg's honesty. I look forward to reading his future posts on the topic. I hope you check them out too.

Peace.

Stream of consciousness: responsibility and freedom

2008-03-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

Am I morally responsible for that which I did not freely choose? If I choose path X over path Y, it is because I can conceptualize the difference between X and Y. To the extent that Y is available to me without my being aware of it, my 'choice' of X can hardly be described as a 'free' choice.

Can I be held responsible then, for being on a path when I do not know another is available? Perhaps I can be criticized because I should have stopped and thought about it, and discovered the other path(s). But what causes me to stop and think about something? The brain typically functions on auto-pilot, unless something (from outside?) triggers its self-reflective capacities. But what triggers self-reflection? The questioning of others no doubt. Perhaps also the experience of moral crisis, that is, one's conscience. But this of course assumes that one's conscience is properly formed. A malformed conscience will not 'stop' one because its powers of moral perception are damaged. Frequently, our consciences are damaged for reasons outside our control (e.g. upbringing, environment... the fall).

The solution to bad character is of course education. But then, can we be held specifically responsible for failing to have received an education which we do not know we need? Do we blame cats for torturing mice? The moral education which makes torturing sentient beings unthinkable is unavailable to a cat for reasons of its neural structure (and human inability to overcome it).

Being blamed for moral shortcoming triggers in us our justificatory brain module. I hear "you shouldn't have done that," and I immediately think, "what are you talking about? It was clearly the most obvious thing to do in the moment!" The point of course, is that my perception of 'the moment' was deficient in some way.

Growth then, occurs when I take responsibility for my inability to 'see' (the morally salient features of my situation). By bearing the weight of my own malformed character (which I probably have not have chosen!), I teach myself to be sensitive to similar circumstances. I associate negative feelings (of guilt and maybe shame) with a particular attitude or circumstance, such that my conscience is formed into triggering an appropriate 'reflective moment' in analogous situations. Taking responsibility for my unchosen character frees me to choose to behave differently. In this way, the vision I share with my accuser of what 'ideal me' looks like grounds my transition from 'actual me' to 'ideal me'. (Truly good moral agents are thus formed, gathered, from the messy wreckage of a fallen world. This is truly the work of the Spirit.)

Ironically, the more I take responsibility for my (formally unfree) actions, the more I am formally free to act differently (because of my 'moments of conscience'), and therefore the more likely I am to conform myself to what I should be, and the more I become good. The more I become good, the less I need to take responsibility for unchosen bad acts (presumably because I do less of them). Taking responsibility thus creates formal freedom. Formal freedom creates the possibility for change. Change can be harnessed for transformation. Transformation makes me good in character. And a good character makes formal freedom unnecessary. The true freedom of good character makes formal freedom obsolete.

Succinctly, taking responsibility, which is to say, accepting the moral consequences of something beyond our control, which is to say, being enslaved to the good, leads us to true freedom, via the formal freedom caused by pangs of conscience. Slavery leads to freedom.

Our Just God: Person or Principle?

2008-03-07T11:07:00.003-06:00

R.C. Sproul has said:

"The Gospel is called the 'good news' because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I’m not. And at the end of my life, I’m going to stand before a just and holy God, and I’ll be judged. And I’ll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness – or lack of it – or the righteousness of another. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn’t possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God. " (source)

Now, notice how the legal problem of the individual's standing before God becomes the sole definition of 'justification'. Notice also that Jesus' sacrifice is necessary because of 'the justice and the righteousness of God'. My question is this: how does our conception of God's justice affect how we view Christ's death?
The background for this question is the Socratic question of whether the good is loved by the gods because it is good, or whether we call 'good' that which is loved by the gods. The question that Socrates raises in the Euthyphro is one of the relationship between the gods and the good (or perhaps in that dialogue its 'piety' that's at stake... I don't remember clearly).
But we can ask the same question: what is the relationship between justice and God? Is justice whatever God does, or is justice that which God must do? Which do we place higher: God's subservience to an impartial justice, or God's personhood which supercedes mere 'legal' justice?

There are a host of false dichotomies in the above paragraph, of course. But I have to wonder how faithful to Scripture this picture of God being constrained by a regard for abstract justice is. If we emphasize the personhood of God, does this lower the importance of justice? Or perhaps reframe it? What is 'justice'? And is 'justice' in the penal substitution model of the atonement the same thing as 'justice' in Scripture? If N.T. Wright is correct to suggest that "God's justice" in Romans refers primarily to God's covenant faithfulness (to bless the world through the seed of Sarah and Abraham), then what becomes of Sproul's definition of 'the Gospel'?

Righteousness 'by proxy' as it were, which is the heart of the Christian's justification before God on a Reformed model, is already hard to comprehend. A relational context which emphasizes that God is a person, and not a legalist embodiment of principle, makes this easier to begin to comprehend. But on the Reformed model, it is precisely the impartial, absolute, disembodied eternal 'justice' of God which is made central to 'the problem' addressed by the Gospel. Making sense of 'imputation' of righteousness in that context is much more difficult. If God's justice is that strict, how can it be so loose as to count one man's perfection as the perfection of other men and women?

The good news (Good News?) of course is that God is impartial not in an abstract sense, but in a personal, loving sense. God's justice takes into account our circumstances rather than ignoring them (and is this not true justice?). God is fair. This does not mean that our brokenness and the evil of our hearts is somehow 'ok', but rather simply that God does not punish us for that which is not our fault. The legalistic binds of evangelical Reformed theologies of the atonement and of the gospel are escaped with a closer reading of Scripture which simultaneously emphasizes the fairness and justice of God, and the corporate nature of salvation which retrieves the centrality of the promise to Abraham and Sarah.

Sorry Sproul...

Boyd, Colson, Claiborne

2008-02-29T10:27:00.002-06:00

As Greg Boyd reports, he, Chuck Colson, and Shane Claiborne were all a part of a conversation on faith and politics (see Greg's blog for more details). Man I wish I could've been there. I'll let you read it for yourself, but I thought it'd be worth highlighting Claiborne's response to Colson's suggestion that Christians, because of their supposed duty to be involved in government, may sometimes have to be violent:

"I have to say that the best lines of the debate went to Shane. Three times the crowd applauded after he spoke (Chuck and I got zero).
The most insightful, I thought, was when he responded to Colson's citation of Bonhoeffer's attempt to assassinate Hitler as an example of how Christians need to participate in politics and sometimes resort to violence. Shane told a story (of course) of a film he watched that interviewed Hitler's chief secretary. She said that it was "miraculous" how Hitler escaped unharmed when the bomb Bonhoeffer's group planted exploded. This reinforced Hitler's sense of divine mission at a time when it was wavering and encouraged him to carry out his genocidal programs more enthusiastically.
Shane said that as much as he respects Bonhoeffer, 'the cross lost when that bomb went off.'
Wow."

Things to think about.

A Sermon for Lent

2008-02-26T15:36:00.002-06:00

Scriptures:

- Exodus 17:1-7: The Israelite community camps at Rephidim and quarrels with Moses, testing the faithfulness of God, because they have no water

- Psalm 95: The people of God are invited to glorify the Maker of heaven and earth, and warned not to repeat the mistake of Meribah and Massah (viz. hard heartedness)

- Romans 5:1-11: Paul exhorts believers to rejoice in sufferings and trials, which produce endurance, character and hope—because God has proven his faithfulness by giving of himself in Christ Jesus, thereby saving us from “God’s wrath”

- John 4:5-42: Jesus dialogues with a Samaritan woman, identifies himself as the true wellspring of life, and points to the coming revolution in the people of God who will worship neither like the Jews nor like the Samaritans, but rather in spirit and in truth—the Samaritans come to believe in Jesus

(Hope and the faithfulness of the God of Israel)

The ‘focus statement’ for today’s service reads: “From the unquenchable thirst of our obstinacy, we open ourselves to receive the water of God’s love. Our parched lives are softened by a spring gushing up to eternal life.” These themes of thirst, of softened hearts, hope and God’s love deserve a little elaboration, so this is what I will attempt to provide.

When the Israelites are thirsty at Rephidim, they cry out, “God give us water!” Or more precisely, “Moses, why isn’t God giving us water???” I don’t blame them for complaining. What’s one to do without water? Sit and die of thirst without putting up a fuss? But Moses is ticked off. And the Psalmist seems to empathize more with Moses than with the Israelites. The Israelites are warned: “O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.” God loves Israel. God proves God’s love for Israel by giving them water. They need water, they get it. So why is this episode theologically significant?

“Your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.” Having seen the faithfulness of God, Israel hardens her heart and quarrels with Moses and with God. The episode at Massah and Meribah is theologically significant, because it is one of many instances when Israel hardens her heart. She has seen the faithfulness of her God, and yet will not let it sink in. YHWH is always on trial.

I’m married. I love my wife. I tell her I love her (I think) on a regular basis. But I don’t tell her because she doesn’t know. Rather my love is embodied, or so I hope, in the history of my actions towards her. So whatever I intend to communicate when I say “honey, I love you,” I’m not just passing on information. And she accepts this as the foundation of our relationship. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never called into question. In fact, if it needed to be reaffirmed on a daily basis, it might undermine the relationship itself. “Don’t you love me Daniel?” – “Yes, of course I do.” “Don’t you love me?” – “Yes, isn’t it obvious?” “Don’t you love me honey?” – “Well yes, but the more you ask, the harder it is to do so.”

The reason the Israelites’ complaint at Rephidim is interpreted as faithlessness in the tradition is simply because they should have known better. God had already proven Godself. In the context of Israel’s salvation history, from the exodus through the giving of the Law, the Creator of the cosmos of whom the Psalmist says “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. […] He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand”—this God has time and again proved to be trustworthy. The world since Eden has gone drastically bad, but YHWH is unconditionally committed to setting it right through the seed of Abraham. And yet the Israelites ask “Is the Lord among us or not?”

In Genesis 22, we read the promise of the Lord to Abraham: “By myself I have sworn, […] I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. […] by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves.” [Gen. 22:16-18] The Scriptures portray Israel as God’s solution to the problem of evil. It’s an odd solution really. Rather than just fix everything, either by taking away our free will and making us instantaneously perfect, or by constantly and supernaturally intervening to prevent every single evil act, God calls a people into existence. Their mission is to be a renewed microcosm within the fallen macrocosm. God is invisible, but in Israel the Creator is to be made manifest, so that all nations will be drawn back toward their Maker. “Salvation,” Jesus says, “is from the Jews.” (John 4:22)

But if Israel is to be God’s central means of setting the world right, then we’ve got a problem. More precisely, YHWH’s got a problem. The story of the Hebrew Scriptures is a string of reruns—reruns of the Meribah and Massah episode, over and over. Perhaps this is why the Psalmist voices the frustration of God by saying: “For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.’” YHWH is their faithful God, but they are a faithless people. If faithfulness to the covenant brings blessings, faithlessness brings curses. In covenantal terms then, Israel runs the risk of falling under the ‘wrath of God’. We might say that God is in a bind—YHWH is committed to blessing the world and putting it to rights through the seed of Sarah and Abraham, but the Israelites refuse to be rightly related to their God. What’s a Creator to do?

“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, YHWH visits Israel, embodies Israel, and renews Israel, through faithfulness to the point of death, to the point of the shedding of blood. “Rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.” But, the apostle Paul claims, YHWH’s enduring faithfulness to the people of Israel, to saving the world through Abraham and Sarah, is made manifest because “while we were still weak,” and full of faithlessness, “at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

Ethnic Israel was to be a wellspring of healing for a world gone bad. And though the story seemed destined for a tragic ending, “at the right time,” its author, the playwright in the flesh, stepped onto the stage. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus says, “but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The Samaritans had worshiped on one mountain, the Jews on another. In Jesus, the faithful Jew, worship, and eternal life, are open to all who believe. “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” The original plan must be put back on its feet. And because in Christ God’s faithfulness is definitively demonstrated, it has been put back on its feet.

In college, when I was first exposed to the diversity of Christian views on various controversial points, I quickly learned that the heart of many of these controversies was one’s view of Scripture. The Bible is authoritative! But how can a book be authoritative? How can old myths, old stories, old poetry and old commandments be authoritative? How could they possibly apply to us today? Perhaps most of us can relate to this question. Do we not encounter a text and ask “what does this mean for us today?” Must we take everything at face value? Are we allowed to disagree with Paul on this or that point? On what basis would we do so?

The reason the biblical story is authoritative, I submit, is precisely because its story is not confined to its pages. The story it tells continues to the present day, and it is therefore not a story we hold at arm’s length, but rather a story that envelops us, tells us where we’ve come from, and points us to where we’re going. How we live and how we think of ourselves is largely a function of the stories we live in. Anyone who’s watched Back to the Future can grasp this point quite easily. Marty McFly’s parents are losers at the beginning of the story; but with the help of Doc Brown’s time machine and a little tampering with the past, Marty’s parents change. In fact, by the time they have him, they’re really cool. So cool, in fact, that when he’s only a teen, they buy him a Jeep and let him go up to the lake with his girlfriend for the weekend.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that last point, and for the sake of those who haven’t seen the movie I won’t dwell on this too much, but the point is this. The story we tell about ourselves—my parents are losers, my parents are cool; or alternatively, my God is unreliable, my God is faithful to the point of death—these stories necessarily shape how we live. And if I’m right, and the Bible’s story continues today because God has called a people to believe in Jesus and to bless and serve the world, then Israel’s story is our story—connected not through simple analogy, but through the historicity of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Meribah and Massah, Test and Quarrel, are episodes in our history. And so just as the Psalmist warns Israel “O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work,” so also, as the renewed people of God, formed around Jesus, we also must fix our eyes on the faithfulness of the God who has called us.

God in Christ is proved faithful. For this reason, as the apostle says, “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” We will thirst again. We can and we should ask God for water. But may our minds and our hearts, by the memory of the faithfulness of God made manifest in Jesus, be softened—not hardened as in the wilderness—so that our earnest pleading may do justice to the justice of God, who is not far off, but is Immanuel, God with us.

From the unquenchable thirst of our obstinacy, we open ourselves to receive the water of God’s love. Our parched lives are softened by a spring gushing up to eternal life.

Amen.

On the Wisconsin Primaries

2008-02-20T20:39:00.002-06:00

I'm a Wisconsin resident. Yesterday (Tuesday) was Wisconsin's primary election. I could have walked around the corner and cast a ballot for... Obama? Hillary? ... ... McCain?
I didn't. The fact that the school where I would have voted is right next door allows me to think that my non-vote is not a result of apathy. In fact, I agonized over whether or not to vote many times throughout the day, though I ended up not doing so. Why?

Well, many interrelated reasons really, some better thought out than others. First of all, it wasn't just an election for the presidential primaries, there were local folk on the ballot as well. Whereas I should perhaps have cared more about the local folk, I know nothing about them, whereas I've been following (at some distance) the news about the presidential primaries. So maybe that means my priorities as a U.S. citizen are messed up. In any case, as much as I respect John McCain (particularly for his willingness to say that torture is bad, in contrast to all other pussyfooting Republicans), his stance on the war in Iraq is, to my mind, quite problematic. So I wouldn't have voted for him. That leaves Huckabee (whom, as much as I like for his Chuck Norris ads, I could probably never vote for), Obama and Clinton.

What's the real difference between Obama and Clinton? I mean other than the whole skin-color and gender thing (both of which I find rather irrelevant). Obama is a much better speaker (I love his deep voice), but Clinton has more experience. So which is better for the U.S.?

I don't know!! In fact, to be able to make that judgment, I would have to have some independent idea of what's good for the U.S. that I could measure each of them against. But I have no idea what's 'good' for the good ol' U.S. of A. In fact, what may be 'good' for the country may be bad for, oh, say, Christianity. Both Barack and Hillary claim to be Christians. Do I, as a Christian, really want the rest of the world to see the Earth's last superpower (for the time being) as a 'Christian' country? Heavens no! Hell no! No, no, no!
So then should I use my super write-in powers, writing in someone more radical perhaps? Perhaps... but that supports democracy in some way. But is democracy even worth supporting? Ask a bunch of people who disagree about 'the good' and who know nothing about politics to make serious determinations about their government? Sounds like a recipe for disaster!! I'm a philosopher, not a politician. What do I know about running the world? Or just running a country?
To what extent does running a country necessitate wielding military force? As a pacifist can I, even indirectly, vote into power someone who has no qualms with lethal force, and war, as an instrument of policy? Maybe I could have voted for Dennis Kucinich... but he's been out of the race for a long time (sadly)!

Further, as a Christian Anarchist who has 'no king [/monarch?] but God', how involved can I be in the political process of a 'kingdom of the world'?

Hmmm... Too many questions, too few answers. So I didn't vote. I probably won't vote in the presidentials either. I secretly hope Obama will be the next U.S. president, but I don't know if that's because he would in fact be what's 'best' for the U.S., or if it's just because the media portrays him as a cool guy. Maybe it's just his hypnotic voice. Perhaps 'fasting' from political influence is just what I need to rely more fully on God--the world's true sovereign.

But maybe I'm being 'irresponsible'. Any thoughts?

Deus Caritas Est

2008-02-18T09:58:00.003-06:00

Excerpts from Pope Benedict's Deus Caritas Est (available here):

"Did Christianity really destroy eros? Let us take a look at the pre- Christian world. The Greeks—not unlike other cultures—considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a “divine madness” which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary: “Omnia vincit amor” says Virgil in the Bucolics—love conquers all—and he adds: “et nos cedamus amori”—let us, too, yield to love. In the religions, this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the “sacred” prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine.
The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing “divine madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.
[...]
Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing."

Boyd on vegetarianism

2008-02-14T12:47:00.002-06:00

My former pastor Greg Boyd has been blogging about vegetarianism (see his first post here, and his second post here--I think there are more to come). Some excellent insights, including (but not limited to) the following:

"Animals are not just food, and insects are not just inconveniences. They are works of art by the eternal Creator and they have their own intrinsic, sacred worth. But I couldn’t see this worth very clearly when I thought of them primarily as food and inconveniences. Becoming a vegetarian and committing to complete non-violence has significantly deepened my capacity to experience the sacred beauty of God’s creation. This experience brings with it a new dimension of delight and joy over creation.
[...]
Now, the most fundamental job of followers of Jesus is to manifest the reign of God. I take this to mean that we're called to put on display now what the world will look like when God fully reigns over it in the future. In theological terms we're to be "the eschatological community."
[...]
If God's original ideal of a creation free of violence will be achieved in the future, it seems to me that the job of Kingdom people is to manifest this ideal now, as much as possible. Which to me suggests that since humans won't be killing animals and eating them in heaven, we shouldn't be killing them and eating them now.
[...]
I want to remind bloggers that I am not trying to convince anyone that eating meat is sinful, for the Bible clearly allows for it. Nor am I trying to suggest that a person is in any sense more "righteous" for abstaining from eating meat. [...] I do believe that refraining from eating meat whenever possible is most consistent with our call to manifest the Kingdom and to extend God's loving dominion over animals (Gen. 1:26-28). But Scripture explicitly forbids making this a litmus test for how righteous a person is. This is a matter that each person must wrestle with on their own, and no one is allowed to judge another."

Think on these things.

On transubstantiation

2008-02-13T21:05:00.002-06:00

The local church I am a part of is currently reviewing its theology of communion. One aspect that came up in dialogue was how Mennonites have at times affirmed a modified doctrine of transubstantiation. Rather than the bread and wine becoming physically Jesus' body and blood, they believe the believers gathered at the communion table are literally transformed into the Body of Christ. Ha! Take that Catholics! ;-)

Gift Bags!

2008-02-11T16:35:00.000-06:00

My wife and I were in the Twin Cities this past week-end for a wedding. The wedding ceremony itself was fine. The order of service (they had the 'sermon' first, and the vows second--not how I've always seen it done) was quite good, even though the theology (intensely complementarian) was mediocre.

That's simply by way of introduction. The church the service was held in had little fliers in the back of every chair which read, and I quote: "YES! I said YES to Christ for the first time today. To receive your GIFT BAG to help you get started on your walk with Christ, turn this card in at the Info Counter. Name: _________ Contact Info: _________" and so on.
I'm positively convinced the card comes out of an honest heart to see people 'come to Christ'. But I just have to marvel at the contrast between this church's apparent practice and the practice of the early Church.

As we read in the Acts of the Apostles (Peter speaking):
"'This Jesus God raised up, and we are all witnesses of it. So then, exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he has poured out what you both see and hear. [...] Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond a doubt that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.'
Now when they heard this, they were acutely distressed and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “What should we do, brothers?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.” [...]
They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. [...] All who believed were together and held everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need. Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.
(Acts 2:32-47, NET)

There's lots to be said about that passage, but I want to highlight two central foci: 1. baptism as the rite of initiation into the new community of God, and 2. the fellowship of the believers.
The second point stands in stark contrast to the fragmented individualistic church created by a consumeristic society.
The first point stands in stark contrast to all 'private' declarations of faith. Believers in the early Church make the public pledge of allegiance to Jesus by being baptized into Christ and his Body. The theology of baptism in contemporary evangelicalism is, well... problematic. We have divorced baptism from conversion, something the early Church clearly would have trouble conceiving. This divorce of course makes it difficult to imagine what the role of baptism could be. It's like monogamous cohabitation outside of marriage. If you have all the benefits of the actual thing, why go through the tedious public ceremony?

Things to ponder.

MacIntyre on 'rights'

2008-01-25T10:31:00.000-06:00

More from MacIntyre's superb 'After Virtue':

"It would of course be a little odd that there should be such rights [e.g. the rights to life, to the pursuit of happiness, to liberty, to due process, education, etc.] attaching to human being simply qua human beings in light of the fact [...] that there is no expression in any ancient or medieval language correctly translated by our expression 'a right' until near the close of the middle ages: the concept lacks any means of expression in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Arabic, classical or medieval, before about 1400, let alone in Old English, or in Japanese even as late as the mid-nineteenth century. From this it does not of course follow that there are no natural or human rights; it only follows that no one could have known that there were. And this at least raises certain questions. But we do not need to be distracted into answering them, for the truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns." (After Virtue, p. 69, emphasis mine)

I suggest MacIntyre should be required reading in all ethics courses.

More from Boyd on Anarchy

2008-01-25T09:30:00.001-06:00

Greg Boyd posts his latest thoughts on Christian Anarchy here. He rightly focuses on I Samuel 8 as central to the biblical story's take on government and the people of God. The strongest theme concerning the people of God's relationship to governments is that they have no king but God. Ancient Israel's demand to have a king was a failure on their part to trust God.
Not surprisingly then, the reconstituted Israel of God in the New Testament (a.k.a. the Church) has no king but Christ--and its witness concerning Christ is that he is God. We are thus back to the original plan. This has, of course, startling political implications.

The exegetical hiccup, as far as I'm concerned, is what to make of Paul's theology of the principalities and powers (which bear some sort of relationship to governments). For in Colossians, Paul says that:
"[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him. He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven." (Colossians 1:15-20 - NET)

NT Wright latches on to this aspect of Paul's theology to suggest that there is still a role for governments to play within the New Testament's New Creation scheme (Walter Wink makes a similar argument, suggesting that the fallen Powers can be redeemed). I wonder what Greg would make of that...

MacIntyre and 'functionalist essentialism'

2008-01-24T17:48:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading the fifth chapter of Alasdair MacIntyre's 'After Virtue' for my course on theological ethics. His argument is, I find, very compelling. MacIntyre suggests that historically (referring to Aristotle and Aquinas in particular), ethics has been three-pronged. It has consisted of 1. a picture of humankind as it is, 2. a picture of humankind as it ought to be, and 3. rules or principles to get from 1 to 2. Under this scheme, humankind is thought of functionally (hence 'functional essentialism'--a human being is fundamentally one who does X). An analogy might be of a watch. We define a watch functionally, therefore it is impossible to define a watch without also defining a good watch. A watch keeps time, according to the current time zone. Therefore, a watch which speeds up, or stops, by definition, is a bad watch--because a GOOD watch keeps time.
Incidentally, this is how you get an 'ought' from an 'is' (via a functional definition of something). By definition, a watch ought to keep the time well. If human beings likewise have a functional essence, a telos (or end) that makes one 'good', then ethical claims (one ought to do thus and such) can be derived from factual claims. In other words, ethical imperatives make sense within this three-pronged scheme.

Enter modernity. The anti-essentialists, for various metaphysical reasons, reject the idea of a human 'essence'. Consequently (within MacIntyre's scheme), all they're left with for 'doing ethics' is humankind as it is and a bunch of rules (Kant is a great example of this). What MacIntyre suggests is that as a result of this, the Enlightenment project of grounding ethics was bound to fail (and he highlights several symptoms of this failure early on, including the incommensurability of ethical first principles, such as Kant's categorical imperative or Mill's principle of utility) because it was using moral concepts inherited from a scheme within which they made sense but without the necessary framework.
In other words, for MacIntyre, you can't do ethics without some kind of functionalist essentialism, some pre-existing conception of what a good life looks like. (I haven't read the rest of the book yet, but I'm assuming where he's going with this is that we need traditions to tell us what the good life consists in, and these traditions can be tested against each other and against the real world.)

So then what I'd like to suggest is that Christians belong to a tradition which gets its paradigmatic definition of humanity in the first chapters of Genesis. Christian functionalist essentialism is the imago dei. Rephrased, the young-Earth Creationists are right to attack philosophical Darwinism (insofar as it is anti-essentialist) and accuse it of undermining morality. Within MacIntyre's scheme, it does!
The problem of course is that the Christian's conception of human 'essence' cannot be 'proved' independently of the tradition. This is because of what we call 'the Fall'. If there was an independently knowable human essence at some point, it has been to a certain extent marred by sin and rebellion. Because of this, you can't 'argue' to a Christian conception of human nature. Christian eschatology hopes that God will make this possible some day, but this is not yet the case.

More on this later. The above is essentially a stream of consciousness fresh from my brain. I trust someone will find it thought-provoking.

Peace!

Boyd and Anarchy

2008-01-11T13:58:00.000-06:00

Greg Boyd has finally come out as an anarchist (here). All I can say is, it's about time! Some choice excerpts:

"The Kingdom Jesus established is anarchistic in that it recognizes God alone as the arche (supreme power). It thus lives free from all other powers (an-arche [anarchy] means without authority). Governments are part of the fallen, oppressed world system that has been done away with in Christ.

In Ellul's estimation, it's not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom. If we do this, then we, like Jesus, will find ourselves revolting against the government (and culture). We are, most fundamentally, called to be non-conformists. Our service to the world is the way our counter-cultural lives expose the invalidity of all forms of government by manifesting the reign of God.

[...]

Vernard Eller's Christian Anarchy espouses basically the same perspective and covers much the same ground and Ellul - but he's actually a better writer than Ellul (though this may partly be due to the fact that Ellul's work is translated from French) and is more thorough. He also has a playful style I enjoyed (especially when feeling close to death as I read it). Here's how he re-states Paul's call to submit to ruling authorities in Romans 13:1-7:

'Be clear, any of those human arkys [governmental authorities] are where they are only because God is allowing them to be there. They exist only at his sufferance. And if God is willing to put up with a stinker like the Roman Empire, you ought to be willing to put up with it, too. There is no indication God has called you to clear it out of the way or get it converted for him. You can't fight the Roman Empire without becoming like the Roman Empire; so you had better leave such matters in Gods' hands where they belong' (Christian Anarchy, p.11)."

On the Christian Creation myths

2008-01-10T21:25:00.000-06:00

Well here it is. Forever ago, Mike and I had a fun conversation about how 'literally' I took Genesis. I told him I'd post some thoughts about the topic. So here they are, in no particular order.

First, Christians live in the Christian story. The Christian story starts in Genesis. It begins with God creating the world. There's a garden, a snake, and well... you know the rest. The genre of the first Creation story (Genesis 1) is hard to pin down. It's so beautiful, so structured, and so inspiring, I don't feel I could do justice to it by talking about it. So let's ignore it for now. The second Creation story (Genesis 2 and following) reads like a creation myth. From what I understand, creation myths are a fairly universal phenomenon. You even get fine philosophers like Plato writing myths on the fly to truthfully describe what cannot be known (e.g., in the Phaedo and in the Republic, Plato has Socrates describe a mythical afterlife that, while not taken to be literally like the description, is similar enough that one should live 'as though it were true'). Textual hints that this is the case in Genesis include: the unexplained origin of the talking serpent, the naming of the animals (really? all of them?), Cain's fear for his life, the absence of justification for incest (although contemporary Creationists are quite creative in filling in the juicy details... something about genetic perfection and "it's ok as long as the babies aren't deformed"), and so forth. To sum up, the Christian must acknowledge that the beginning of the world's story is shrouded in mystery, but that his or her tradition nevertheless makes substantive claims about the nature of God.

This is my second point, the fact that Genesis is a myth does not prevent it from speaking. To the contrary, as myth, it tells us: that God abhors violence (his Creation is entirely vegetarian), that God is all good, that human beings are partially responsible for the fall but also partially not responsible (the lying serpent's presence, as I mentioned earlier, is unexplained, though clearly not willed by God), that human beings are called to be God's vice-regents on Earth (I take the imago dei primarily in the governmental sense), and so forth.

Third, Creationism is a bad idea. It is founded on a bad reading of the Creation stories, and the 'science' it claims to uphold is problematic on many levels (in spite of the ever-increasing philosophical sophistication of the Answers in Genesis folks).

Fourth, 'evolution' is too broad a term to be embraced or rejected. I'm not referring here to the (false) micro vs. macro-evolution distinction, but rather to the simple fact that 'evolution' can mean anything from 'DNA changes over time' to 'chance mutations channeled by appropriate environmental conditions explain all biodiversity everywhere'. The former is undeniable, the latter is philosophical overburdened ('chance' is a metaphysical concept, and 'environmental conditions' far too vague to do any interesting work). And so the Christian committed to the Christian story must reject naturalistic evolution as untruthful speech about the world's origins.

Where does this leave us? I accept on the basis of authority (a bunch of people smarter than me all agree about this) universal common descent and evolutionary time frames (even ID proponent Michael Behe does this), as well as most of contemporary cosmology (viz. 'Big Bang' and inflationary cosmological pictures). But I am not so naive as to think that science has its own unbiased language with which to describe the world. To the extent that we believe the Christian story is true, and to the extent that we think evolutionary theory is correct, we must believe that evolution IS God's speaking the world into existence.

However, the problem of suffering rears its ugly head very quickly. Why? Because according to Genesis, God wills a nonviolent creation, but according to evolutionary biology, nature is 'red in tooth and claw' very early on. The most important thing I can say here is this: this tension is real and should not be explained away.

That having been said, a preliminary quasi-resolution can be attempted by simply saying that whatever 'force' in nature is responsible for unnecessary suffering cannot be equated with the will of God. From very early on, there have been anti-God forces at work in Creation. For those of us who take the Christian Creation story to be true, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders at lions eating gazelles, or parasites eating their prey from the inside out, and say 'oh the marvelous design of the Creator!' No, to do so is to contradict the Creation story. There's lots of work here to be done by Christian philosophers of science. Greg Boyd has been working on this particularly sticky question for a little bit now (see his blog and his 'Satan in Nature' hypothesis, as he calls it).

The facts remain: it would be difficult for me to reject common descent and evolutionary time frames, and as a Christian I am committed to the view that Genesis tells a true story (which is, by the way, why I am a vegetarian). Contradiction? I hope not.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Peace.
-Daniel-

The Latest

2008-01-10T16:44:00.000-06:00

I still owe Mike his post on Genesis, and I still mean to comment about the Shack. This post has nothing to do with those, but they're still on my radar screen. I am enthused to inform whomever might care that I have swapped out my spring Kant course for a course on Theological Ethics with Dr. Therese Lysaught. The textbooks for the course include The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (by Hauerwas and Wells), MacIntyre's 'After Virtue', Wells' 'Improvisation', and Cavanaugh's 'Torture and Eucharist' (among others--yes the bill did add to quite too much). Needless to say I'm quite excited about it all.

In addition to figuring out which courses to take this coming semester (which starts on Monday), I've been working on a paper for the Marquette Philosophy Graduate Student Conference in March. I got it all done yesterday, only to discover it was 1,500 words longer than the limit (3,000 words). So I have to substantially revise it (which is to say, trim it way down), preferably before the week-end (I guess that means tomorrow, since today is Thursday).

Anyway, that's all for personal updates for the time being.

Cheers,
-Daniel-

Yoder and Hauerwas on premarital sex

2008-01-01T12:30:00.000-06:00

Stanley Hauerwas (in his 'Sex in Public: How Adventurous Christians are Doing It', pp. 481-504 in The Hauerwas Reader) quotes John Howard Yoder as having the following to say about premarital sex:

"[W]hat is questionable about 'pre-marital sex' is not that it is sex, nor that it is pre-marital, but that the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of legality, the postponement of common residence and finances, the withholding of public pledge, constitute both a handicap for the marriage's success and prima facie evidence that the love is not true. This is not sex-without-marriage but marriage without honesty." (n.15, p. 494)

Hauerwas adds:

"The church's traditional condemnation of 'secret marriages' involves substantive assumptions that can be too easily overlooked. For the significance of maintaining that sex should occur in publicly sanctioned contexts [...] suggests that we should not trust our declaration of love unless we are willing to commit ourselves publicly. [...] The problem with the suggestion that sexual expression should be relative to the level of loving commitment is that it is simply too hard to test the latter. I would suggest instead that the form and extent of our sexual expression is best correlated to the extent we are willing to intermix our finances. It may sound terribly unromantic, but I am convinced that one of the best test of 'love' is the extent to which a couple are willing to share a common economic destiny." (n. 15, p. 493, emphasis mine)

Good Movies

2007-12-31T08:40:00.000-06:00

I don't watch television very much, but I thoroughly enjoy a good movie from time to time. I've had the privilege of enjoying two such good movies recently.
The first is 'Stardust'--an epic love story between a young man and a 'fallen star', which, though not as fancy as The Lord of the Rings, is nevertheless very enjoyable, entertaining, and far far better than 'Eragon'.
The second is 'Juno'. Not epic at all, but just a fantastically cute little movie about a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. This movie easily makes my top-ten. Maybe even my top-five. Its characters are real, flawed, and totally lovable.
Coming soon: an appraisal of the book 'The Shack', and my (long overdue) response to Mike on taking Genesis seriously as a Christian evolutionist.

Peace!
-Daniel-

NT Wright on faithfulness

2007-12-22T20:21:00.000-06:00

There's a fun interview of NT Wright here. I recommend you read the whole thing yourself. It's not particularly deep, but instead covers a lot of ground (in other words, it helps if you've read some other stuff by Wright to get a hold on the context of the questions). But just for the heck of it, here's what the bishop had to say about Jesus' cross:

"The cross is not just an example to be followed; it is an achievement to be worked out, put into practice. But it is an example nonetheless, because it is the exemplar—the template, the model for what God now wants to do by his Spirit in the world, through his people. It is the start of the process of redemption, in which suffering and martyrdom are the paradoxical means by which victory is won."

Then, when asked about a Christianity which is content with mere conversion, Wright responds:

"This is unfaithful to the Lord’s Prayer which states, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The point of following Jesus isn’t simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. We’re called, here and now, to be instruments of God’s new creation, the world-put-to-rights, which has already been launched in Jesus and of which Jesus’ followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents."

To which I can only say: amen!

On Peacemaking

2007-12-21T10:18:00.000-06:00

More from The Hauerwas Reader (the paper is a reflection on Jesus' teachings on reconciliation in Matthew 18:15-22):

"We say we want peace, but in fact we know we love conflict and even war. Indeed, I suspect that one of the deepest challenges for those of us who call ourselves pacifists is that on the whole peace just does not seem very interesting to most people. We may all say that we want peace, but I suspect that most of us would be deeply upset if we got it.
[...]
We simply have to admit that for most of us peace is boring. [...] Life needs movement, which most of us believe, rightly or wrongly, entails conflict.
[...]
Conflict is not to be ignored or denied, but rather conflict, which may involve sins, is to be forced into the open. That we are to do so must surely be because the peace that Jesus brings is not a peace of rest but rather a peace of truth.
[...]
We therefore do not confront one another from a position of self-rightousness; we must come to the other as one who has been forgiven. Such a perspective, I think, throws quite a different light on this passage from that which is often given it. Too often it is assumed that this text legitimates our confrontation with the brother or sister on the assumption that we have power over the other because we have been wronged and thus can decide to forgive. Forgiveness from such a position is but another form of power, since it assumes that one is in a superior position. But the whole point of this text is that we confront one another not as forgivers, not as those who use forgiveness as power, but first and foremost as people who have learned the truth about ourselves--namely, that we are all people who need to be and have been forgiven.
[...]
To challenge the world's sense of peace may well be dangerous, because often when sham peace is exposed it threatens to become violent. The church, however, cannot be less truthful with the world than it is expected to be with itself. If we are less truthful we have no peace to offer to the world.
[...]
Without an example of a peacemaking community, the world has no alternative but to use violence as a means to settle disputes.
[...]
If the tack I have taken is close to being right, then it puts pacifism in singular perspective. For pacifism is often associated with being passive in the face of wrong. As a result, some even suggest that pacifism is immoral insofar as the pacifist suffers wrong and as a result fails to fulfill the obligation to the brother by resisting his injustice. But peacemaking is not a passive response; rather, it is an active way to resist injustice by confronting the wrongdoes with the offer of reconciliation. Such reconciliation is not cheap, however, since no reconciliation is possible unless the wrong is confronted and aknowledged.
Contrary to usual stereotypes, this means that peacekeepers, rather than withdraw from politics, must be the most political of animals." (from 'Peacemaking: the Virtue of the Church', pp. 318-326)

God of the old, God of the new?

2007-12-20T13:09:00.000-06:00

Anthony had the following remarks to make on the 'Pacifism is unrealistic' thread:

"1) We don't know why God chose to use Israel in war (with God Himself leading them into battle), yet it would not be a leap to consider that Israel would still be wise to go into battle, if required to do so, with God leading their armies. In other words, who are we to say that God "used to" operate that way and could not choose to do that again for Israel, in particular?

2) It's not an either/or proposition. It's not pacifism or all-out aggression. Jesus did say to forgive, turn the other cheek and do more for your enemy than he asks (go two miles instead of one). Yet it's not impossible to realize that a peaceful attitude and demeanor is our goal, but we must also have the capacity to use the exact same measures (war) that God has used time and again. If we preach pacifism exclusively, we are not believing that the God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament."

Very briefly, let me offer the following thoughts:

1. Christians start with Jesus, not with Israel. This might seem backwards of course, since Jesus can only be understood as an Israelite. But the fact remains that we take our 'marching orders' from Jesus rather than from some episode in the Old Testament.

2. The problem with taking the Old Testament war stories as 'normative' is the problem with taking Scripture in general as normative. What we have (generally speaking) is a set of stories. But how can narrative be normative? Or to rephrase this, how does a story about something in the past legitimate anything in the present? (I'm not saying there's no answer to this question, but just that we can't jump from observation of war in the OT to prescription for war today.)

3. In salvation history, the Israel chapter is closed. If Jesus preached anything, he preached just this: there is a new Israel that is inheriting the promises made to old Israel. This is also why Paul calls the Church the 'Israel of God'.

4. We have to allow that Jesus' commandments stand in tension why aspects of the Old Testament. In redefining the people of God (which he undeniably did), he also gave 'new commandments'. So however we account for the Old Testament stories, we must allow that the calling of the Church stands at several points in marked tension with what Israel took to be its calling.

5. Given the points above, Christians can say either that A) Israel misunderstood God in going to war, and that therefore God didn't really lead Israel into war, or that B) God changed his modus operandi. Or some fusion of the two. I can see arguments for both. Personally I haven't made up my mind.

The fact remains Anthony, that your point 2) above essentially says "Jesus said to love your enemies but there are some implicit exception clauses." This is a formidable claim which I'd like to see evidence for. Until you can prove that you're not just saying you don't like what Jesus said, I think I'll stick with what's clearest in the New Testament: Jesus expects his Church to live a certain way.
Insofar as this is perceived to be saying that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament, the source of the tension isn't me, it's Jesus. How Jesus' claim that those who see him see the Father should be interpreted in light of certain Old Testament stories, I leave for you to decide.

Hope that helps.
Peace.

Hauerwas and the Supreme Court

2007-12-20T09:50:00.000-06:00

My Dad got me the Hauerwas Reader for my birthday about a month or so ago, and I've been enjoying reading through some of Stan the Man's thought-provoking essays. In a 1992 commencement address to the graduates of Goshen College, Hauerwas offers the following thought:

"[W]hen George [H. W., of course] Bush nominated Justice Thomas for the Supreme Court he had to say that Judge Thomas was the most qualified justice he could find. We know that is the politics of the lie. Someone like Justice Thomas should have been nominated for the Supreme Court because America is and continues to be a racist society. George Bush could not tell Americans that we need Afro-Americans in such offices so they might use their power to protect their people in this racist society. He could not say that because Americans do not want to acknowledge that this is is a racist society. We have not the skill to know how to live truthfully with such sin. That is a truth we lack the power to aknowledge because we do not want to pay the price that forgiveness requires, a forgiveness that would make reconciliation possible."

Zing!

Thom Stark and the New Life Church tragedy

2007-12-11T16:40:00.000-06:00

I'm very pleased to report that my brother in Christ and e-friend Thom Stark is blogging again.
I commend his most recent post/open letter to you. He responds to the shootings at New Life Church in Colorado, where the gunman was shot dead by an armed security guard employed by the church. Some excerpts:

"When I learned of the shootings I was heart-wrenched. I immediately began to pray. I began to pray that your church would be empowered to witness to the self-sacrificial, suffering love of the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. Some minutes later, I learned of a second great tragedy, a greater tragedy, and one that I did not expect. I learned that the gunman was shot and killed by a paid employee of your congregation of believers. Hearing this, I was devastated. The life of an unbeliever was traded for the lives of believers. A man was consigned to eternal separation from God in order to save from heaven those who are assured of salvation. The opportunity for the unique witness of a Bible-believing, Christ-following people in a world gone mad with violence was surrendered for the safety and security of predominantly wealthy Christians. God was not glorified. In fact, it was the contrary. The way of the world was held up and affirmed. A Spirit-empowered people charged by God to follow Jesus' example in overcoming evil with good instead chose to fight fire with fire. The gospel of Jesus Christ--the gospel of nonviolent, suffering agape--was displaced by the gospel of the United States of America--the gospel of safety secured by force.
...
The only thing, it seems, you have to say about your enemy is that it is "unfortunate that we live in a society where this happens, but it does." You did not pronounce forgiveness upon him. You did not ask forgiveness of his family for taking his life. You simply bemoaned the fact that we live in a fallen world as though that were something novel to Christians. You said nothing of the Church's commitment to transforming such a society by the power of God's suffering love. You said nothing of that because it would have contradicted your witness, which was not a witness of God's suffering love but of self-defense and retaliation. Almost as if you forgot that your local congregation is a member of a much larger, universal Body of Christ, you conclude by saying that your church "has gone through difficult times in the past," and that your church "will survive and do well." It is clear how you intend for your church to survive--by the blood of your enemies. Brother Boyd, I urge you to reckon with the fact that if your church is representative of the universal Body of Christ, then the blood of the martyrs is no longer the seed of the Church.
...
I write as your humble servant, brother Boyd. I am not superior to you in any respect whatever. I have no pretensions of that kind. On the contrary, I write as one broken and bruised by his own fallenness. But I also write as a prophet of the God of Jesus Christ, by the unction of His Spirit. I write in all sincerity, in all truthfulness, and in all humility, that by the power of the Holy Spirit the faithful witness of the Church to the nonviolent, suffering, self-sacrificial love of Jesus Christ might be restored. I call upon you to come alongside me and the universal Body of Christ to repent for this specific incidence of the killing of the gunman, and to repent for our broader complicity with this world and the many institutions of violence constituting it that stand in contradiction to the orthodox, faithful gospel of Jesus Christ. I will stand beside you, as now I mourn with you, both for the violence done to us, and for the violence we have done."

Read the whole thing, here.

Peace,
-Daniel-

Aah, the silliness of consequentialism

2007-12-11T14:38:00.000-06:00

CNN reports that according to an ex-CIA agent, 'waterboarding saved lives'. The implicit "and was therefore justified" is filled in by our imaginations. Of course waterboarding can save lives! Of course torture can save lives! Of course doing something evil can have positive consequences!
...

Since when does that make doing evil right?

If you could rape a little girl to save a hundred people, would you do it? By this logic, you should! And this is the immorality of consequentialism. When the highest good you can think of is mere survival, it won't matter to you that you have to violate every one of God's good laws to achieve it. But being good is more important than being alive. Or to phrase it controversially: being good is more important than someone else's being alive.

So the choice is this: either
A) be a consequentialist, and be willing to do evil for the sake of the 'greater good', or
B) reject consequentialism, and be willing to admit that bad things happen, and that you don't have the power to guarantee outcomes (the consequentialist can't do this either, but is in denial about it).

Against liberalism (or, my defense of supernaturalism)

2007-11-30T10:07:00.000-06:00

Having basked in 'post-modern' circles for a little while (by which I mean I've read too much Brian McLaren), I've learned to feel bad about words like 'supernatural' and so forth. While there are certainly ways in which the term can be abused (insofar as it 'objectifies' God and domesticates divine providence), I think it may nevertheless be helpful, and even necessary.
I'm also not very fond of the overrated conservative/liberal dichotomy. For theological purposes however, it can be helpful to make the (very simplistic) statement 'liberalism = denial of the Resurrection' (if this is not to your taste as a definition of liberalism, which has historically been a fairly variegated phenomenon, then just take it as the way I'll use the word in this post).

Liberals might be able to say they believe in Jesus' resurrection, but I'm confident they know they don't mean the same thing as conservatives do when they say it. But I'm here to say that miracles are not passé. Rather, they are real signs of God's extravagance and of the hope which is to come. Resurrection, as the 'impossible' (viz. supernatural) miracle of God's intrusion on our world, is what grounds the hope of redemption in Christianity. In fact, it grounds Christianity tout court.

This is because the Christian analysis of what's wrong with the world includes structural features of that world. Nature 'red in tooth and claw' is adamantly not as God has intended it to be, and if we take Genesis to be normative for the Church in any way, it must at the very least tell us that 'Creation' and 'nature' are two very different realities. For this reason, the Christian doctrine of New Creation, because it appeals to Creation, is deeply UNnatural. We affirm the reality of God's Rule breaking into the present order which contradicts all that is wrong with the world. Since what is wrong with the world is woven into its very fabric (cf. Boyd's 'Satan In Nature' hypothesis), that which rectifies the world must be greater than the world. In fact, only One who is also Creator can save us from death, violence and decay--because these are parameters we cannot on our own transcend.

To sum up, what makes Christianity interesting is (among other things) the belief that God is in the process of rectifying that which is wrong with the world. Since what is wrong with the world is structural, what fixes it must be 'superstructural'--which is why it is appropriate to call the Holy Spirit 'supernatural', and why Jesus' resurrection is central to our hope. The best hope you can have without a true New Creation, without Resurrection, is an ok life within the limited parameters of the world as we know it. Death gets the final word.

The good news (dare I say 'Good News'?) is that He is indeed Risen. New Creation is under way. And we are called to be the faithful people of the One who is Lord over all. Will we listen and obey?

Peace.

Pacifism is unrealistic.

2007-11-27T16:59:00.000-06:00

No duh.

In other news...

But seriously, if Christian pacifism is grounded in Jesus' commandment to overcome evil with good at cost to ourselves (even when that cost is our very life), then why should it be 'realistic'? Good Friday is realism. Nonviolence doesn't work. The powers-that-be triumphed over Jesus. The innocent is murdered by the guilty. Injustice triumphs.

The message of Resurrection Sunday is that Jesus' nonviolence is endorsed by God as the way by which God's Rule is manifested. God's will is for Creation to be nonviolent (cf. Genesis 1, Isaiah 11), and the reality that embodies this will is inaugurated in Christ. Therefore those who pledge allegiance to Jesus (a.k.a. Christians) live in the New Creation, where so-called 'pacifism' is the norm (and in that sense, is trivially 'realistic'). For those bound by the old creation however, this is lunacy, folly, and utopianism all rolled into one. But the folly of the world is the wisdom of God. Self-sacrifice and nonviolence may not 'work' in the natural realm but the sovereign Creator is pleased to honor those who follow Christ's example with supernatural vindication. Therefore we do not kill, but we die boldly for those who would kill us, pledging allegiance not to the kingdoms of this world, but to the Kingdom of God.

If you call yourself a follower of Jesus, put down the sword and pick up the cross. You may die, but if you do, you will have found life.

Peace.

On creationism

2007-11-16T11:29:00.000-06:00

John Scalzi offers his review of the Creation Museum here.
His style is not for everyone, so if mild swearing offends you, or negative remarks about Creationism offend you, you should probably not follow the link (nor perhaps continue reading).
Here's an excerpt:

"Will these folks [Christians] find the arguments they find at the Creation Museum convincing? Again, you got me. I certainly hope not, but more to the point I would hope that these folks don’t come away feeling that their love of Christ obliges them to swallow heaping mounds of horseshit from people who are phobic about metaphor. I really don’t think Jesus would care if you think that you and a monkey have a common ancestor; I think he would care more that you think you and your neighbor have a common weal.
What about non-Christians? I can’t imagine that anyone who wasn’t strongly religious or already inclined to agree with creationist ideas would be converted by this place. Between blaming Adam for everything from poisons to sweating and T-Rexes eating coconuts and a particularly memorable placard explaining why in early Biblical times it was perfectly fine to have sex with your close relatives, it’s just way too over the top."

Even if you don't share his frustration with Creationists (I must confess that I at times do), he makes some very good points, two of which I think are quite problematic:

1. Creationists must believe that T-Rexes were vegetarian. (Or that their anatomical structure was radically reconfigurated after the Fall to give them all the traits of carnivores but that no remains of pre-Fall T-Rexes have been discovered--nor will they ever be because nothing died before the Fall.)

2. Creationists must believe that incest is ok in some circumstances.

Number one is pretty hard to swallow, though I can imagine ways of making it turn out ok (even if positing a fantastical prehistory which leaves no empirical data seems a little too convenient). But number two... man that's a tough one. Especially since Creationist rhetoric tends to make contemporary disregard for (fundamentalist interpretations of) Scripture responsible for homosexuality and abortion (and all the other societal woes). But wait, if incest is an 'abomination' like homosexuality, how's come Adam and Eve's kids got to sleep together? The Creationist has to mumble something about genetic perfection and procreation. But notice that, from a moral perspective, this makes it perfectly ok for siblings who are infertile to get married (since they won't have kids). Is that a logical moral stance? Really? Or does God make morally arbitrary decrees?
Critics of the Divine Command theory of ethics argue that making morality dependent on the whim of God makes it arbitrary (in other words, people reject Divine Command theory, because it would make them relativists... hmmm). If you're a Creationist however, it seems fairly clear that this should be the ethic you espouse. Otherwise how can you account for incest being ok 6,000 years ago but not today???

Any comments on this topic would be welcome. Help me out here folks, I just don't understand.

On hell

2007-11-12T11:15:00.000-06:00

This post is in response to Nora's comment on my previous post. She says:

"Daniel, have you read George MacDonald's views about hell? I confess that I don't completely understand his theology, but his view seems to be that hell is a temporary state (not literal burning, btw) for the betterment of the individual to bring them to a place of reconciliation. In other words, he views it (if I understand correctly) not as a place of punishment, but a place of growth that is as much an expression of God's love as heaven. I'm interested in hearing more about your views on hell as well, as this is something I have struggled with for a long time."

I have to be careful exactly how I phrase my response, since this unfortunately seems to be some kind of political issue. Very briefly let me just say the following. I'm not up-to-date on my MacDonald, but I have encountered views of 'hell' as refinement. In fact, one of my favorite Christian bloggers (Richard Beck) seems to hold something like this view ('hell' is a place of rehabilitative justice were God's love always wins out--eventually everyone will be made fit for heaven). Personally I think this is a very appealing view for theological reasons, and it makes sense of the biblical truth that 'heaven is an acquired taste'. However, I honestly cannot find it anywhere in Scripture. It is consequently my view that people who believe this need to admit that theirs is a synthetic, post-biblical construction (which may or may not be a bad thing depending on your other theological commitments).

My own view on the subject is (and hopefully it isn't too presumptuous to say this) more closely tied to the biblical text. Heaven is not a post-mortem destination for eternal souls, but is rather the metaphorical abode of God. While there is biblical reference to being 'with Christ' after death, it seems to me to be somewhat of an afterthought. The more positive emphasis is on resurrection and new creation. As NT Wright continues to affirm, the hope of Christians is not disembodied bliss in 'heaven', but rather embodied bliss on the (re)new(ed) earth (which I guess could also be described as the new heavens, since "God's dwelling is with humankind"--the present 'veil' between heaven and earth is done away with).
So much for 'heaven'. What about 'hell'? Well, as many (e.g. McLaren, Perriman) have pointed out, 'hell' is a post-biblical construct. What we get in Scripture is an amalgamation of references to Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna. Sheol (in the OT) and Hades (in the NT) seem to be roughly equivalent as 'the place of the dead', and the biblical writers seem to alternate between imagining it as a place of ethereal existence (which would include both a place of torment and a place of rest) and as a metaphor for non-existence. The point being that developing a theology of the 'afterlife' isn't a pressing concern for the biblical writers. Gehenna, as both NT Wright and Andrew Perriman argue, seems to basically be an apocalyptic spin on anticipated historical destruction (see, for example, Mark 13, where the entire point is that Jerusalem will be destroyed, and the disciples are to run from the city when they see the 'signs of the times'). It is an image for God's judgment of rebellious nations (and usually, in the mouth of Jesus, of rebellious Israel). The point is that, by and large, this judgment isn't post-mortem, but rather pre-mortem--and resulting in plain ol' mortem. Israel is destroyed, annihilated, trampled on by Roman armies. Jerusalem is overrun by pagans. Israel's faithlessness is punished, while the new Israel of God (the Church) is vindicated. This is the biblical thrust of so-called 'hell' imagery, in the Gospels least.

For those of us who have been taught to think in terms of non-physical souls (a more Greek than Jewish notion after all--though of course there is some overlap), we immediately think 'oh no! but then, what about what happens to me after I die?' This is of course a valid question, but my point is simply that it is not a question the biblical text sets out to address. So then we must clearly distinguish what Scripture says on the one hand, and what we imagine is a good answer to this non-biblical question on the other.
I personally don't believe in the existence of a post-mortem torture chamber for non-Christians. The problem of course is that if I say "I don't believe in hell," people will misunderstand me as saying that I simply am disregarding all the NT says about judgment, wrath and destruction. But my claim is the exact opposite: belief in the modern notion of hell, rather than my disbelief of it, is what constitutes ignoring the biblical data.

Now, with all these qualifications out of the way, do I have an answer to the 'what happens after we die?' question? Yes and no. I have hunches and intuitions. More importantly I have trust in the goodness, fairness, and justice of God. We will all have to face the Lord Jesus Christ, judge of the living and the dead. As a physicalist however (one who doesn't think human 'souls' are by nature eternal), I'm comfortable with the idea that when we die, we simply are dead (viz. we don't 'go' anywhere). In that case, 'judgment' takes place at the general resurrection, when God makes all things new. I imagine that if our mental pictures are correct and that God has in fact decided to finally bring this epic to a close, then everything which has no place in the new creation will be discarded. Perhaps everything and everyone will be to a certain extent salvageable, perhaps (more realistically?) not. God is the judge. I am not.

But the point is that Christians claim to know what God looks like: Jesus. For this reason, if we truly believe that some day all of us will have to face up to how we have lived in light of the Creator's decrees, we will be moved first to be conformed to the image of the Son, and second to encourage others to 'repent', to change, to pledge allegiance to God (rather than to this or that cause, or this or that nation), and to join his Kingdom revolution.
This is the hope of the world. God will renew all things. But even better: God has already begun to renew all things--and we're invited in on the process.

Nora, does this help?
Peace,
-Daniel-

A puzzle about sanctification

2007-11-11T10:19:00.000-06:00

Some fine evangelical Reformed folk like to say that we are saved by faith alone, but that saving faith is never alone. The idea is that you are 'justified' freely by God upon your declaration of faith (you are 'born-again', receive the holy Spirit, etc.). Subsequently, God goes to work in you to 'sanctify' you--make you become truly holy in your words, thoughts and actions. This isn't some snooty 'holiness', but is rather the holiness of Christ--true Christians are set apart (viz. 'holy') by their love, their care for the poor, their self-control and their self-sacrifice (cf. Paul's 'fruit of the Spirit').

Good deeds don't save, but are rather necessary corollaries to salvation. This is all well and good, but the image starts to get bizarre in the context of an afterlife theology where 'heaven' is for people who are 'saved', and 'hell' is for people who aren't. The good deeds (or rather, the good character of the person doing the deeds) becomes irrelevant at that point, and the crucial factor is 'justification'. You can do all the good deeds in the world, but if you aren't saved, you still go to hell. At this point, many Christians think it's odd that sanctification seems so unimportant. Some try to sneak it back in with a 'judgment of rewards', where really good Christians get a bigger mansion in heaven than plain old mediocre Christians, but if you're in heaven, does it really matter all that much? As long as there's a sharp divide between the good place and the bad place, you just want to make sure you get to the good place.

So some people (e.g. Douglas Campbell) have tried to conflate justification and sanctification by saying things like 'salvation is sanctification' (rather than justification). On this view whether or not one is saved can be empirically verified. The Christians are the ones who act like Christ. Or 'the world will know you are disciples by your love'. That's the basic idea. It sounds all well and good, until you transition to other religions or worldviews. After all, there are good people in every walk of life. Socrates was clearly virtuous--but he wasn't 'saved'. Or was he? He certainly wasn't a Christian in any case. On an extreme version of this view, sanctification (that is, good character) is all that matters in determining the appropriate afterlife. So then good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. Notice that this has much more intuitive appeal, but that it isn't recognizably 'Christian'. If the holy Spirit sanctifies and sanctification is empirically verifiable, then many Christians aren't sanctified and many non-Christians are. Further, the holy Spirit is at work everywhere, and doesn't seem to pay much attention to religion or supposed declarations of faith. Needless to say, this messes up the picture significantly. Is there a (Christian) way out?

Very briefly, I think something like a 'solution' to these paradoxes can be found in a refutation of the common afterlife theology. If our understanding of 'heaven' and 'hell' can be shown to be post-biblical constructs, then maybe our take on justification and sanctification needs to change. The question then is 'what does the Bible say about heaven and hell?'

Eight-limbed girl stable after surgery

2007-11-07T09:22:00.000-06:00

Very interesting news story here. An indian girl was, in a sense, fused to a non-developed twin. The parasitic twin's distinctive features were removed in surgery, but its extra limbs weren't--hence the girl's 4 arms and 4 legs. As I've argued in the past (see here), these kinds of situations raise interesting questions about personhood and fetal development. As anti-abortion as I am, the procedure described in the article (removing the parasitic twin) doesn't bother me at all, even if it is somewhat analogous to abortion. After all, what could have been a separate human organism was destroyed.
As much as I'd like to resist it, the claim that moral weight is primarily a factor of proper neural development seems to me inescapable. If something doesn't have a brain, it is not a moral other, to whom we owe care or respect for its own sake. This raises all sorts of hairy questions, I realize, but I still think it's right. (For what it's worth, I should add that even if moral personhood is a function of the existence of some kind of neural structure, I don't think that makes abortion on demand perfectly justifiable. There are communitarian considerations to be weighed.)
Things to think about...
Peace,
-Daniel-

Perriman on Scripture

2007-11-02T10:19:00.000-05:00

Andrew Perriman (of OST) has had a very interesting exchange with a certain Mike Macon here. Some excerpts:

Andrew:
What the emerging church is asserting is that truth cannot be reduced to artificial doctrines such as inerrancy. We also need to take into account the literary and historical nature of the Bible - it is not a magic document, it is a product of human history, no matter how inspired we may take it to be. [...] It may not be apparent in your world, but plenty of committed Christians do not regard inerrancy as a ‘critically definitional’ doctrine of the Faith, yet have no difficulty taking the Bible with the utmost seriousness as God’s reliable word. And there really is absolutely no biblical or theological reason for supposing that Genesis 1-3 must be taken as a literal account of how creation and fall happened. American conservative Christianity has got itself hopeless blinkered on this one.

Mike:
If the doctrine of inerrancy is true (and to deny it you have to first affirm its premise, thus it is a reflexive or “first principle”) then it’s both:
(1) Hardly a nuisance, but instead is irreducibly vital, and
(2) contraindicative of the very necessity of your premise.
Here’s what I mean:
IF the Bible is true (and what’s say… let’s pretend like it is…) then (other than being therefore by direct and inevitable extension inerrant, but I digress) it is already relevant and powerful in itself, with no help necessary at all from man, due to its origin (God), subject (…ah, God), and Illuminator (again… God).

Andrew:
I still don’t see the negation. I merely make a distinction between the text of scripture, which may or may not be inerrant, and a doctrine of inerrancy, which is not (despite your protestations) itself biblical, merely a dogmatic formulation devised to provide a rationalist shield for the text. To my mind that is a straightforward distinction. You have a book and you have a metal box that you lock the book up in called the ‘doctrine of inerrancy’. I don’t think we need the box, that’s all.

Mike:
I’m going to clue you in on something that might help you to “contextualize” my position: I habor a deep sympathy for Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic - minus, of course, Van Til’s soteriology. Accordingly, I have little patience for “re-imagining,” or “bringing everybody into the big tent and let’s all sit down and chat” or anything like that.

Hmmm...

Greg Boyd on penal substitutionary atonement

2007-10-31T10:25:00.000-05:00

Greg Boyd shares some helpful thoughts on the atonement at his blog. An excerpt:

The one thing all of us have in common is a concern about the dominance of the Penal Substitutionary theory of the atonement. This is the view that the way Jesus reconciled us to God was by becoming the object of God's wrath against sin. We don't deny that Jesus "died in our place" and "as our substitute." Nor do we deny that we're reconciled to God only "through the blood of Jesus" or that Jesus died as our "atoning sacrifice." We just have serious reservations about the Penal Substitutionary interpretation of this substitutionary and sacrificial language.

For example, if God punishes Jesus for our sin, does God really forgive anybody? If you owe me a hundred dollars and I won't let you off the hook till someone pays me, did I really forgive your debt? Why does God frequently forgive people in the Bible without requiring a sacrifice? So too, is sin and guilt the kind of the thing that can literally be transfered from one party (us) to another (Jesus)? Where is the justice in God killing his innocent Son because of what we humans did? Does Jesus reveal God's love for us, or placate God's wrath toward us? And doesn't this way of thinking presuppose that you can attain a good, loving result through violence? Does the end justify the violent means? Isn't this the sort of thinking that has fueled the endless cycle of violence that's characterized human history?

Well, needless to say, I think Greg's concerns are spot on. The key point of course, is that these are theological concerns. They have to do with the systematic structure we erect around the narrative of Scripture. There's no denying that there is penal and substitutionary language in the New Testament text when its authors reflect on the significance of the death of Jesus (e.g. the entire book of Hebrews). And so the trick is to simultaneously do justice to the text AND do justice to God's character. You can't dismiss chunks of Scripture because they don't fit well into your systematic theology, but you can't forfeit the goodness of God because it's the 'easiest' way to make sense of the text (of course, I would argue that the Reformed take on the atonement actually does violence to the text, but that's an argument for a different day).

Good things to think about.
Peace.

Plato on mimesis

2007-10-30T11:43:00.001-05:00

Plato is infamous for his tirade against imitative art in the tenth and final book of his Republic. Since the forms are most real, and since artists only 'mirror' things in the world (which 'mirror' the forms), so-called 'artwork' is many times removed from true reality, and can therefore never impart true knowledge.

Plato's metaphysics may no longer be popular but his point about knowledge is well taken. He argues for example that only someone who daily interacts with horses would know how a bit needs to be shaped and how horse-riding equipment is to be used. The artist who paint a rider on a horse (usually) has none of this knowledge, and so his or her painting is at best educationally pointless, and at worse entirely misleading. Plato attacks Homer for his portrayals of grief and courage, but we can modernize this by considering our 'literature'--the stories of popular culture which shape us. Are 'Titanic' and 'Serendipity' good references if we want to learn about love? Certainly not! And yet because of how our brains work, we understand ourselves and our relationships in terms of the stories we dwell on. This is why some women are 'hopeless romantics'--they're foolishly inspired by bad imitative art, thinking that 'true love' needs to look like DiCaprio painting Winslet wearing only a pendant. Men are stupid too: what flashes through the brain of Joe Drunk before he picks a fight with Al Coholic? Scenes of 'The Rock', VanDamme and Schwarzenegger being 'manly men'. But do these guys (or their screenplay writers) really know what 'manliness' is? No! They're mere imitators at best, and deceivers at worst!

I don't think it's too far of a stretch then, to think that Plato would agree with Paul when he says: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things" (Ephesians 4:8, NET).

Peace.

Politics and global warming

2007-10-25T15:12:00.000-05:00

I'm a little concerned by this article at ABC News. It reads:

"Environmental and public health experts overwhelmingly denounced editing by the White House of a federal health agency head's testimony to Congress Tuesday. Significant deletions were made from the testimony, concerning global warming and the potential impact on human health. The original, unedited testimony [...] was 14 pages long, but the White House Office of Management and Budget edited the final version down to a mere six pages. [...] The edits essentially deleted all sections that referred to climate change as a public health concern."

Hmmm... as one who hasn't gotten to excited about the 'debate' over global warming (which as far as I can tell is more a debate over its consequences than a debate over its existence), I have to admit, I'm not impressed by the administration's approach. I understand the need for editing, but this is on the shady side of editing...

Since I'm not a scientist, I won't make any bold claims about what is going to happen in 30-50 years, but if some of the reports I've heard are correct, we might see some very devastating 'natural' disasters. If these in fact occur, it will present a tremendous opportunity for Christians to buckle down and get to work--serving others by dying for them.
I'm told that many Christians died from the plague because they were the only ones willing to stay back and care for the dying, rather than running away. Regardless of whether this is a correct historical account, I think that Christians should always consider tragedy an opportunity to embody Christ's sacrificial love.

Speaking of disease and those who stay to help... I recommend watching 'The Painted Veil'--it's a poignant and touching love story. Much much better than the drivel-ish 'love'-stories that usually come from Hollywood.

Peace,
-Daniel-

John Piper on justification

2007-10-19T16:52:00.001-05:00

Bob Allen (I don't know who that is) interviewed John Piper on the subject of justification (see the transcript here). What's amazing is how much of NT Wright's take on the subject Piper is able to affirm. However, because his overarching worldview makes God's 'wrath' (or his mercy) so central, Christianity, or at least the Gospel, is primarily and fundamentally about the individual's standing before God (am I righteous or not? is God's wrath on me or not?). So Piper says this: "at the moment when we put our childlike faith in Jesus Christ, he became our punishment and our obedience. That is, at that moment he became the obedience required for God to be totally for us." These are, of course, the lenses of the Reformation.

What I'm wondering is if Piper's new book on justification (see here) addresses the New Perspective's claim that, in light of the biblical text in the context of Second Temple Judaism, this cannot have been the center of the early Church's 'gospel'. If the language of justification is primarily about ecclesiology rather than soteriology (Wright's claim), then how is Piper not just talking past him? I should limit what I say here, since I haven't read Piper's book. I'll simply note that eschatological considerations are relevant here as well (if God's wrath is eschatological, and if our eschatology follows Wright's or Perriman's, then Piper's argument may well dissolve).

However, notice how taking 'the wrath of God' seriously as that which lies over all of us (until Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, or at least, to those of us who are 'elect') shapes our theology profoundly. The theological alterations that are required if this is not a correct picture of God's relationship to the world are equally profound.

A thief cleans up at gunpoint

2007-10-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting AP news story here. A couple came home to find their home vandalized, and a thief still in their home. The homeowner had a gun which he used to compel the thief to clean up around the house (since he'd made a mess).

This is a fairly creative way of not pumping an evildoer full of lead, so props to the man for that. I should point out however, that even the empowerment of the firearm wouldn't have been enough to get what he wanted out of the thief, had his accomplices been equally armed (it sounds like they left the scene, so the couple got lucky). Power is a dangerous game.

But it's an interesting question to ask yourself what you would do if you caught a thief red-handed. Should a pacifist even call the police? Tough-love, though probably incompatible with killing someone, may well be compatible with handing them over to law enforcement. But is this the enemy-love of God? In Hugo's famous masterpiece 'Les Misérables', a priest is in roughly the same situation but doesn't turn Jean Valjean over to the authorities (though he certainly deserved it). Is this not a superior enactment of God's character than mere retributive justice? But how much does it presuppose some kind of coercive capability?

I would never carry a gun and so I would never be in the same situation (viz. a situation of clear 'power over') as this couple. But I do wonder, what would I do in that situation? What is the Christ-like thing to do (or what is one of the several possible Christ-like things to do)?

Piper on sinning, me on abortion

2007-10-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

John Piper has an interesting article in Christianity Today. It starts out really well, and then deviates a little too much into Reformed theology for my taste (see especially his take on Christ's cross as my punishment--and notice that he doesn't mention 'limited atonement' which might have raised difficult questions about God's otherwise much-acclaimed 'justice'), but his overall point, I think, is correct: one of the worst things you can do when you sin is to buy into Satan's lies. Rather, fight back!

The practice of truth-telling is probably the most important one here. If you're married and you struggle with pornography, one of the best things you can do to break your addiction is to make a vow not to lie. Every time you sin, tell your spouse. This will make things worse for a time, but this is simply the consequence of your sin. When you stare your sin in the face like this, you see it for all its ugliness. And seeing it as ugly rather than pretty gets you a long way towards no longer having a desire for it. We only really long for beautiful things, and the reason we long for ugly, sinful things is because we have trained ourselves not to see their ugliness. Truth is the remedy.

As an aside, I think abortion (and birth-control to a certain extent) functions on a societal level like a lie. If I'm addicted to internet porn and I lie about it, I don't have to deal with the consequences, and so life goes on 'as usual'. If I stop lying about it, all of a sudden my life gets a whole lot worse (until I deal with my addiction). Similarly, our society inculcates its members with a deviously horrible sexual ethic, but as long as we have abortion on demand, we don't really deal with the consequences. If, however, we were to outlaw abortion tomorrow, the societal consequences would be devastating (you think poverty and the crime rates are bad now?) until we addressed the larger problem of how we are shaped as sexual beings. Abortion is denial.

The question then is: am I, and are we, willing to stop lying?

Birth control for teeny-boppers

2007-10-19T08:56:00.001-05:00

ABC News reports (article here) that a middle school in Maine has started offering birth control services to its students. One of the parents says: "I'd rather see a health center here and a kid be able to get birth control in a health center than see a pregnant 12-year-old."
What's wrong with this picture???
Well, for starters, it seems to be a form of denial. Our preteens are having sex, but instead of dealing with that, we'll just make sure that they don't have to get pregnant (otherwise they might have to learn from their mistakes! Oh no!) by putting them on the pill. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for being responsible in one's activities, but I reject the myth that systematically divorcing sex from its natural consequences is 'responsible'. If preteen pregnancy is an action-item, then the course of action to take shouldn't be a band-aid cover up. Rather we need to ask why children growing up in the culture we've created are behaving the way they are. And if we believe their behavior is wrong, then that's an indictment of our culture.
I'm out of constructive thoughts, so I should probably stop here.
Peace.
-Daniel-

On pacifism

2007-10-16T20:12:00.000-05:00

Pacifism has a bad reputation. The word has what you could call 'wussy-connotations'. The stereotypical pacifist is the long-haired, guitar-strumming hippy in a skirt Driscoll likes to make fun of. And yet I call myself a pacifist.

My wife recently pointed out that my self-identification as a pacifist made her feel unsafe around me, or at least like if she were attacked she'd have to fend for herself. I've commented in the past that I think people resort to violence far too quickly and that speaking with one's attacker may well be more appropriate, or at least more Christ-like at times--so her thoughts are understandable. As I made it clear to her however, my pacifism is not a commitment to nonviolence for its own sake. It is rather a commitment to take Jesus' commandments, including the commandment to love our enemies, seriously. I'm of the view that loving our enemies is in general incompatible with killing them, or with beating the tar out of them, and I think that Christian churches are called to be communities of peace-makers in a robust sense, so I think the label 'pacifism' is helpful as a shorter way of saying all of that. But it is after all only a label.

The difficult question is of course 'what does loving my enemies look like in this particular situation?'--for each situation, enemy-love might look very different. To be honest, I see no a priori reason to reject a solid tackle or other 'violent' act as an expression of pure love ('tough love' anyone?). Letting someone do something wicked is usually not very 'loving'. Of course, there is a risk that in saying this, I might train myself to think only in these terms such that creative nonviolent alternatives totally pass me by. This is something to avoid. Further, the kind of force I have in mind isn't in any sense 'ultimate'. In a given situation, I may be able to stop person X from doing an evil deed, but I may also be weaker than X, or outnumbered by X and his or her posse, in which case reliance on my own physical strength is silly. This is something any consequentialist ethic will have to face. But Christian faithfulness isn't about ensuring outcomes.

Jesus was certainly no stranger to shady situations. We don't have any stories about how he might have handled intervention between aggressor and victim, but this is usually because he always was the (potential) victim. Most of the time he said something sassy which stopped everybody in their tracks, or he mysteriously slipped away (an interesting counterpoint to bar-fight machismo). For him and for his disciples however, death was sometimes unavoidable. Faithfulness to enemy-love sometimes necessitates 'failure'. For Christ it meant death on a cross. What might it look like for me?

As long as I live in that question, I don't think I need to worry too much about what I would do in every potentially problematic situations. No, rather I need to have my character molded by God's shalom such that my response to morally ambiguous situations comes more or less naturally, and seeks to maximize my Christian witness in every way possible. This cannot involve killing someone. It may however, involve dying for someone.

Thoughts on Acts 10

2007-10-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

"Then Peter began to speak to [Cornelius and his household]: 'I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ - he is lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.'" (Acts 10:34-43, NRSV)

A large part of the interpretation of Scripture is an attempt to fit a specific text into an overarching narrative. This process is messy and works both ways since the individual texts shape our impressions of the larger narrative which we then try to fit other texts into. It's as if we were trying on different pairs of glasses. Some are tinted, others not, some distort, other make things clear, and so forth... A good way to compare glasses is to see how much sense they make of the world around us. If everything's fuzzy and you can't make your way around the room, chances are a different pair of glasses is called for.
For various reasons, I've found Andrew Perriman's narrative rendering of the biblical story quite persuasive (Tom Wright seems to have a very similar outline). In part, this has to do with seeing Jesus as a radical reform prophet in Israel. Jesus sees Israel as being on a large path that leads to destruction (certainly in a vague existential sense, but primarily in a historical sense). His 'solution' taps into a number of Old Testament narratives (the Davidic Messiah, the suffering servant, the Son of Man from Daniel 7, etc.): he retells and reshapes Israel's story around himself. The rest of Israel has been unfaithful, and is being cut off from the covenant, but God has chosen a remnant in this man Jesus of Nazareth. He is the narrow path that leads to life.
There is of course, much more to be said, but even this much helps to make sense of many New Testament texts. I've offered these brief comments as background information on how I read the text I quoted at the top of this post (so that you're forewarned as to where I'm coming from). Now on to some textual commentary.

Peter says: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."
-- This in and of itself is good news. It shouldn't of course be taken as a kind of universalism, traditionally construed, but it expresses the heart of God's character. When God does seem to single out individuals or communities, it must be acknowledged that this is not favoritism. Rather, people are chosen to perform certain tasks for the sake of others. Just as the people of Israel were originally meant to bless the whole world, so also the Church exists for the sake of the whole world. I think taking the impartiality of God deeply to heart is a welcome corrective to certain theologies which can distort our sense of God's justice.

"You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ - he is lord of all."
-- Here we get a sense of the expansion of the people of God. To say that peace is found in Christ is to say that whatever can be said about 'old Israel' in the 1st century (that it has been unfaithful and therefore has the covenantal 'wrath of God' upon it), it is undone and rectified in Christ. Pledging allegiance to Christ, walking in his Way, submitting oneself to the Reign of God--these are literally life-savers. And since the God of the Israelites is also the Creator of all, so also his Messiah who is raised as Lord is Lord of all.

"That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem."
-- Notice the logic of this passage: God was with Jesus, therefore he went around doing good and healing those oppressed by the devil. To manifest the character of God, to manifest faithfulness to God, for Luke, is to meet the needs of the poor, to care for those society has ostracized, and to undo the work of the devil. Again, this says a lot about the kind of God we serve.

"They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead."
-- The story I mentioned earlier about Jesus being a reform prophet helps to explain Peter's 'they'. In the worldview of the early Church, there is a clear 'us' and a clear 'them'. A new Israel and an old Israel. The old Israel, because of its unfaithfulness, is under God's wrath. The new Israel, because of Jesus' faithfulness, is not. The old Israel is collectively guilty of murdering God's anointed one--this is why Peter feels no need to say anything like "my sin put Jesus on the cross." Even if a certain interpretation of the cross might lend itself to this kind of phrase, the early Church is much more communitarian and therefore much more comfortable blaming a group (not itself) for the crucifixion. In this context, it is clear that the victory of the resurrection is a victory of faithfulness over faithlessness. By it, God vindicates Jesus and his message and calls all who hear about him to recognize him as Israel's 'way forward'.

"He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead."
-- Knowing the kind of person Jesus was, his position as judge over all is profound good news. It is not easy news, since Jesus knows the full weight and consequence of human sin (it killed him), but it is good news, since he has compassion on the weak. Jesus is the justice of God. In him, New Creation breaks forth and spreads to the whole world.

"All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
-- 'Forgiveness of sins' should be read in light of the story of Israel's renewal. In Christ, Israel's sin, her unfaithfulness, is forgiven. To align oneself with Jesus is consequently to share in that forgiveness of sins--it is to belong to the new Israel of God: the Church. The story is broader than this of course. While it is first and foremost about Israel, it also applies to the whole world (remember Paul's phrase 'to the Jew first, and also to the Greek'). 'Forgiveness of sins' in that light is also an overcoming of our alienation from God. The Evangelical construal of the
Gospel is after all grounded in Scripture. Just as Israel, by virtue of its unfaithfulness, was subject to God's wrath, so also the whole world in its unfaithfulness to the Creator is in danger of destruction. The covenantal context doesn't loom quite as large, but the solution is the same: the faithfulness of Jesus. Trust in and imitation of Christ are the means by which the Reign of God is acknowledged on Earth as it is in heaven.

I apologize for my long-winded-ness. I just had an urge to write on this text after reading it this morning.

Peace.

Prostitutes, pastries, and the goodness of God

2007-10-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

I'm working through the Republic again, this time for academic reasons. What a gem.

Socrates (heavily mediated via Plato, as usual) gives us this insight into materialistic excess (and the source of meat-eating):

"Yet the true city, in my opinion, is the one we've described, the healthy one, as it were. But let's study a city with a fever, if that's what you want. There's nothing to stop us. The things I mentioned earlier and the way of life I described won't satisfy some people, it seems, but couches, tables, and other furniture will have to be added, and, of course, all sorts of delicacies, perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries. [...] Then we must enlarge our city, for the healthy one is no longer adequate. [...] And so we'll need more servants, too. Or don't you think that we'll need tutors, wet nurses, nannies, beauticians, barbers, chefs, cooks, and swineherd? We didn't need any of these in our earlier city, but we'll need them in this one. And we'll also need many more cattle, won't we, if the people are going to eat meat?" (Republic, 373a-b)

The city with a fever has prostitutes and meat-eaters... Gotta love it!
And he follows this up with an insight into the character of true divinity:

"We won't allow poets to say that the punished are made wretched and that it was a god who made them so. But we will allow them to say that bad people are wretched because they are in need of punishment and that, in paying the penalty, they are benefited by the gods. And, as for saying that a god, who is himself good, is the cause of bad things, we'll fight that in every way, and we won't allow anyone to say it in his own city, if it's to be well governed, or anyone to hear it either--whether young or old, whether in verse or prose. These stories are not pious, not advantageous to us, and not consistent with one another.

I like your law, and I'll vote for it.

This, then, is one of the laws or patterns concerning the gods to which speakers and poets must conform, namely, that a god isn't the cause of all things but only of good ones." (Republic, 380b-c)

The father of philosophy deserves his good standing.

Cheers,
-Daniel-

Wittgenstein and virtue

2007-10-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: the little that I know about Wittgenstein comes from hazy memories of introductory philosophy classes years ago, so take the historical claims in what follows with a grain of salt.

Philosophers, for centuries, have been known for asking annoying questions like 'what is justice?', 'what is truth?', and so on. For some, these are profound questions. For Wittgenstein, they're a form of linguistic masochism. Whereas some of us when asked (e.g.) 'what is marriage?' would talk about some sort of commitment with legal and emotional implications (or perhaps something more precise still like 'a lifelong union between a man and a woman'), Wittgenstein might answer with another question: "how is the word 'marriage' used?" In other words, rather than assume 'marriage' is something 'out there' to be grasped, he would argue that 'marriage' is a label humans have concocted for a certain (relatively) predictable set of behaviors. So what we call marriage is, generally speaking, some kind of joining together of two people with a commitment (usually) to share stuff, have sex, and be nice to each other, for a long long time. But the point is that this is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Notice that this Wittgensteinian approach to philosophical questions can be very productive. Rather than ask "is 'gay marriage' really 'marriage'?", Wittgenstein might ask "shall we communally choose or not choose to extend the practices described as 'marriage' to what some gay couples are in fact doing?", or something like that (less controversially, this approach to question-answering works well for questions like "is a Mormon a Christian?"--you simply see how people use the word 'Mormon' and the word 'Christian' and explore their interconnections, if there are any).
I'll go on record as saying Wittgenstein's insistence on the role of language as the source of many so-called philosophical puzzles appeals to me a lot.

However, it is also problematic. If, for example, we try to bring a Wittgensteinian mindset to the Socratic question 'what is virtue?', you end up not answering the question. To answer by saying "well, our culture generally sees activities x, y and z as virtuous" is to bypass the thrust of the question--you still don't know how to lead a virtuous life after that kind of an answer.
The point is that some philosophical questions about the world invite a descriptive answer, while others require a prescriptive answer (I take it a central idea in Wittgenstein's project was getting as many philosophical questions assumed to be in the latter category to fall into the former).

There is no (good) Wittgensteinian answer to the question 'what is virtue?'.

Another reason to love Greg Boyd

2007-09-24T17:50:00.000-05:00

I have to admit that Greg Boyd is one of my favorite theologians. His latest blog entry (here) gives me yet another reason to love him (beyond his advocacy of open theism and pacifism). And I quote:

"This morning I found a spider in my sink. Now, I happen to not like spiders very much. It would have been easy -- some would say "natural" -- to just wash this bug down the drain. But instead I got out my handy dandy bug-suction gun (a toy for kids to collect bugs alive), sucked it up, then released it outside.
Now, I know this may sound like a perfectly silly thing to do. But think about it. Why should this bug die just to spare me the 25 seconds it would take to allow it to live? Consider that GOD made that little spider -- and in doing this, he made something humans with all of our ingenious technology can never replicate. Doesn't that give the spider some worth -- at least a worth that warrants 25 seconds of inconvenience?"

Do what you will with the man's theology, but the man's heart of compassion (even for something as insignificant as a spider) is profoundly worthy of emulation. The fact that we are (I am!) inclined to make fun of this gentle behavior is a (small) reminder of our fallen-ness, and of how far we have yet to go before God is done sanctifying us...

Peace,
-Daniel-

Ethical Improv

2007-09-23T02:12:00.001-05:00

Richard Beck just finished up his 'Everyday Evil' series over at Experimental Theology (see here). The entire series is quite good, but his latest post is just too good to pass up. While in past posts Dr. Beck has highlighted how human behavior is frequently co-opted by amoral considerations (e.g. 'going with the flow') which create an enormous potential for evil, the most recent post suggests a way for Christians to avoid the pitfalls of 'everyday evil'--training in the virtues. The metaphor of ethical improvisation is quite helpful, as I'm sure you'll find.
Check it out!

A response to Daryl

2007-09-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

There's been an interesting discussion of the imprecatory (fancy word for cursing) Psalms at Justin Taylor's blog (see here) to which I added a few comments. A certain Daryl, bless his heart, finds my arguments lacking, so I thought I'd defend my views here. Let me know your thoughts.

Daryl says "Anything God does to/with us is right and fair and holy. Anything." I whole-heartedly agree! But unlike some fine folk, I think that for this statement to be in any sense meaningful, it has to be incompatible with certain other statements (e.g. 'God delights in the suffering of the wicked'). I don't think it's wise to take words like 'right' and 'fair' out of a discussion on an assumption of divine authorship. If something is in fact right and fair, then God may be the author of it. But if it is in fact profoundly unjust, then God cannot be its author. I see this as the flip side of the same coin.

Daryl also says "Nowhere does the Bible teach a blanket non-violence." Clearly, I strongly disagree. If Jesus doesn't intend nonviolence to be normative for the new Israel of God, then what on earth does he mean when he says: "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. [...] But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people."? (Luke 6:32-35, NET)
Paul makes the same point: "Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, [...] if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:19-21, NET) -- We leave justice to God and commit to living a life of service, both individually and collectively. This clearly precludes the use of violence (which is why Jesus says that his Kingdom is not 'of this world' in its refusal to carry the sword).
I suggest Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus" as further reading on this issue...

"Where does Jesus contradict the idea of loving your friends at the expense of your enemies?" -- See above (Luke 6:32-35).

Another Daryl question: "does God love the non-elect in the same saving way that he loves his elect?" Here the problem is that Daryl has assumed God's love is sufficient to effectuate salvation. He's Reformed, God bless him. If however you take seriously the biblical datum that God's will is not done on Earth as it is in heaven (hence the Lord's Prayer), and that God's love is universal, then surely you'd end up with the view that God's love extends to the 'elect' and the 'non-elect'. God's love is manifested in Christ's life and death on the cross (see 1 John 4--I'd add that 1 John 4:15 clearly presupposes universal availability of salvation, contra so-called 'limited atonement'), and this was for the sake of the whole world.

And now, the most interesting question: "What is your 'Biblically creative' answer to the situation at the ATM?" [apparenly his sister was mugged and beaten while making a withdrawal at an ATM--and this is supposed to count against any kind of Christian pacifism]
The short answer is this: it depends. If we as Christians take seriously our Lord's commandment to be a peacemaking people, then whatever we do will come out of our commitment to that way of life. That being said, I can imagine a number of responses. Perhaps I could throw myself between attacker and victim (how Christological--suffering instead of others!); perhaps I could tackle the attacker (I don't think nonvindictive tackling is incompatible with enemy-love); perhaps I could speak prophetically against the attacker (don't laugh this one off--it's been known to work; ask Shane Claiborne and many others); and so on... If we're practicing the presence of God, and indwelling our Christ-ian identity, these kind of alternatives to fight or flight should come to us more naturally. Certainly violent reaction is preferable to passivity, but Christians are not bound to these two limited options the world provides.

But the bottom line is that nonviolent Christians can't guarantee outcomes. We are not nonviolent because it 'works'. By God's grace, and through the strength of his spirit, sometimes it does. But the purpose of our nonviolence is not instrumental--it is eschatological. We proclaim God's Reign through our refusal to hate the enemy--because God loved us while we were still his enemies.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
-Daniel-

Witherington on Piper

2007-09-19T08:44:00.000-05:00

Ben Witherington, a well-known New Testament scholar, has recently posted a critique of (among other things) Baptist pastor John Piper's theology (see, e.g., Piper's response to the Minneapolis bridge collapse). Witherington paints with broad brush strokes, but I am in general agreement with what he says. Greg Boyd echoes some of his concerns with divine determinism here.
There are some very important worldview differences to meditate upon here...

Andreas Hüttemann and pluralistic causation

2007-09-18T16:16:00.000-05:00

I recently finished Andreas Hüttemann (henceforth AH)'s book "What's Wrong With Microphysicalism" (cf. my earlier post here), and I'm not sure how to process his account of causation. His aim is to counter the claim that micro-explanation (the scientific practice of giving an account of macro-phenomena in terms of micro-constituents) establishes the hegemony of the micro-level (such that holding to micro-physicalism would be warranted). I'm fully supportive of this project since I'd hate to have to blame my neurons for my behavior, but as I pointed out in my earlier post, I'm not sure AH's linguistic tools are aptly chosen.

He claims (and this ties in to his commitment to 'dispositions') that "Laws of nature describe how physical systems behave in isolation, i.e. in the absence of disturbing factors. Within a compound system these conditions are never realized for the subsystems" (p. 92). Since, on his reasoning, 'micro-laws' aren't instantiated and 'macro-laws' are (for AH, 'instantiation' cannot be counterfactual, so since the micro-level is part of a larger system, the micro-laws which describe the behavior of the isolated micro-parts aren't instantiated), it's legitimate to think of various sciences and the laws they study as separate.

I whole heartedly agree with his conclusion--psychology is (and should be) separate from neurophysiology. But I have trouble seeing his talk of instantiation as anything more than philosophical hand-waving. At best, it's a linguistically jumbled attempt at expressing a fairly simple thought: namely that theories describing the lawful behavior of compound systems (e.g. chemical reactions) can't be usefully described in terms of the lawful behavior of their parts (e.g. single-particle quantum physics). The 'laws of composition' (or 'bridge laws') which makes sense of the part-whole relation have to be added to the micro-theory in order to get the macro-theory. But you don't need to talk about dispositions and instantiation to say that.

To his credit, AH's conclusion acknowledges that pragmatic considerations are the driving force behind what is considered a 'part' or a 'whole'. Which means that 'instantiation' is relative to the system under consideration (in a strict sense laws are never instantiated since there's always some disturbing/non-ideal factor to consider). Still, it seems odd to me to say that the law of inertia is only instantiated in an ideal circumstance (as if my car on the freeway were only 'disposed' to 'behave inertially'...)--wouldn't it be better to use 'law' as an expression of the way in which the universe in fact does work (not just counterfactually--so that inertia fully applies to my car as I drive, in spite of wind resistance and friction in general)?

Causation is still a very mysterious thing for me, and AH's book didn't really help me get a better grasp on it. But perhaps my Hume class will sort this out for me...

Williams versus Spong

2007-09-15T13:22:00.000-05:00

I ran into a fabulous text online which is a response by (now Archbishop of Canterbury) Rowan Williams to bishop Spong's "12 theses"--it can be found here. Read and enjoy!

Speaking of faith, speaking of God

2007-09-05T14:06:00.000-05:00

Mike Leaptrott at Progression of Faith has raised some very interesting questions in response to some recent comments I made. Rather than sprinkle my responses throughout the blogosphere, I thought it might be worthwhile to centralize them here. So here goes [important note--these are all my own paraphrases of Mike's questions]:

Question 1: If I interpret "God changes heart" metaphorically by claiming that what actually changes is neural firing patterns, why don't I interpret "resurrection" similarly?

Quite simply because metaphors are used with the intent of signifying something. "Change of heart" is short-hand for something which is subject to empirical verification. If Bob, who used to be a jerk, has a change of heart, then what I mean by saying this is that Bob's behavior has changed. In fact, to the extent that we conceive of behavior as a disclosure of a person's 'essence', the change of behavior in a person who has had a 'change of heart' leads us to think (roughly) that they've had a 'change of essence'. This is all highly figurative, of course, but the point of the metaphorical speech is its experiential correlate. Bob used to be this kind of a person, now Bob is that kind of a person.
To say that Jesus is 'resurrected' means, for the NT writers, that his tomb is empty. Now this has drastic worldview implications (e.g. Jesus was right about his being the seed of New Creation / the Messiah, God's future has come into the present, we share in the hope of resurrection, etc.), but the implications crucially depend on the primary datum of the empty tomb. My frustration with Mike's denial of the historicity of the resurrection is that he wants the implications ('New Creation', 'the Kingdom of God', etc.) without that which, for the NT writers, is the foundation of their renewed worldview.

Question 2: If I accept the current scientific and philosophical consensus about the nature of human persons (namely that they shouldn't be thought of as being dualistic body/soul fusions), why don't I also reject the more fantastical aspects of ancient Jewish worldviews?

This obviously is one version of the question: what in Scripture should be considered normative, and what should only be considered descriptive? I don't claim to be able to answer that question in any thoroughgoing manner. The only thing I can say is that the arguments for the unity of physical persons (as opposed to the dual nature of body and soul assumed by tradition) seem to me to be quite strong, in such a way that they overrule the assumptions of the NT writers (though these may not be as univocally dualistic as is sometimes assumed). I should also point out that the NT nowhere makes dualism about human beings normative (whereas Jesus and Paul both clearly prescribe overcoming evil with good, e.g.).
On the other hand, the NT writers clearly intend to make believing in resurrection normative. Should I reject resurrection on the basis of 'modern science'? No! I have no good scientific or philosophical reason to reject the reality of miracles (such as Jesus' resurrection)--and adequate evidence to continue believing in them [though each miracle claim is of course subject to verification]. So that's where I stand on that.

Question 3: What do the central Christian concepts ('dying with Christ', 'Jesus being one with God', 'resurrection', 'kingdom of God') really mean?

Hopefully this will all be pretty straightforward. I see no reason to make this complicated.
'Dying with Christ' means conforming one's behavior with Jesus' where the latter's is intended to be normative (e.g. sacrificing oneself for others).
"I and the Father are one," in Jesus' mouth seems to mean something along the lines of what he himself says: "if you see me, you see the Father." That is to say, Jesus taught the disciples (rather sacrilegiously) to think of Jesus' actions as being God's actions. The metaphysical implications are provocative though, in the NT corpus at least, left fairly hazy.
I've already talked about 'resurrection' (though the NT writers clearly think that 'sanctification' is a sort of 'resurrection' before the bodily resurrection of all people).
'Kingdom of God' refers to the sphere where God's sovereignty, his directives, are obeyed (cf. Isaiah 11). It identifies Jesus' movement as a purity movement within Israel (though 'purity' for Jesus and 'purity' for the Pharisees mean very different things) as well as being conceptually related to dozens of other biblical stories and concepts (which I couldn't possibly unpack here even if I tried).

There. Hopefully this will generate (constructive) discussion. Mike, I hope I have framed the questions fairly. Feel free to correct me if I haven't.

Cheers,
-Daniel-

Libertarian free will and intercessory prayer

2007-08-31T11:29:00.001-05:00

Justin Taylor's blog has an interesting post on (roughly) the oddness of intercessory prayer given (libertarian) free will. I'll give a brief response here, since I don't want to hog up too much comment space over there (and since there are already a couple of free will theists there offering good insights). A couple of preliminary remarks are in order:

First of all, though I can't claim to speak for every free will theists everywhere, I certainly think most of them would agree that libertarian free will (LFW) isn't necessarily valuable in and of itself. Rather, it is the necessary prerequisite for something else (genuine love, or something of the sort)--this is why people like Greg Boyd can argue that there will be no LFW after the consummation of the Kingdom (LFW as a tool to character-formation will have become obsolete). All this to say, LFW isn't something holy which must never be violated or anything like that (though I would argue that talk of God 'overriding free will' is linguistically awkward given my second point below).
Second, and this is perhaps more of a minority viewpoint within the free will camp (though I don't think it should be), I personally don't think it's helpful to speak of LFW as something which people 'have' (as if it were an merely accidental feature of human beings). Rather, something like LFW is entailed by the sheer fact of human existence. We are (among other things of course) centers of consciousness, others, both to our fellow humans and to God. Our very existence assumes a certain level of autonomy (within predetermined boundaries, of course). We are by our very nature agents capable of choosing between alternatives.

This having been said, what can way put forward by way of reply to Feinberg's take on the Arminian's prayer paradox? Well quite simply, I don't think Christians who pray for someone to have a change of heart want God to coerce this change. Theirs is an appeal to God's creativity rather than an appeal to God's power. If I pray for Bob to have a change of heart, I don't want God to 'possess' him and make him merely behave in a certain way (though at times that might seem like a nice thing). Rather, I want Bob to have a change of heart, and God to do whatever can be done to facilitate this change (with the full realization that this may not happen). Notice that this is also an appeal to God's omniscience since we (as limited humans) don't know what it would take (or if it's even possible) for Bob to become kinder or gentler (but God does).

Any questions?

Hüttemann on laws of nature

2007-08-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

One of the joys of being a grad student is having access to fantastic libraries full of excellent books. Further, Marquette allows grad students to check books out for semesters at a time (not that I would ever read that slowly, but the thought is nice). While I was doing some research on the directionality of cosmic rotation in Aristotle's De Caelo (don't ask--even I don't get it), I ran into (and promptly checked out) Andreas Hüttemann's "What's Wrong With Microphysicalism."
Very briefly, 'microphysicalism' is the idea that the behavior of composite systems is entirely determined/caused by the behavior of its parts (and not vice-versa). This is in direct opposition to something like 'top-down causation' (which Nancey Murphy advocates in, e.g., Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism), which stipulates that composite systems, thanks to 'emergent properties', can sometimes determine the behavior of their parts. Practically, my interest in these questions has to do with countering claims that run along the lines of 'my neurons made me do it' (it looks like Murphy was involved in a book to address just that claim--see here).

Hüttemann's claim is that microphysicalism (roughly, bottom-up causation and determination) is incorrect. Rather than arguing for top-down causation however, he wants to argue for pluralistic causation--where neither micro- nor macro-levels take determinative precedence. I've only just started the book, so we'll see how its goes, but needless to say, I'm very excited to work through his arguments.

Which brings me (at last), to the reason for this post. Hüttemann (henceforth 'AH', since the umlaut requires too much keyboard tinkering)'s account of causation will apparently depend on some interesting claims he makes about laws of nature. His second chapter (pp. 16-23) argues for 'dispositions' (despite the fact that they "do not have the best reputation" in the philosophy of science--p. 21), which supposedly explain why "Laws of nature can be explanatory even though they are not instantiated" (p. 18). So for example, the law of inertia says (roughly) that things keep going the way they're going (they maintain their velocity and linear trajectory barring the influence of outside forces). The point is that we can appeal to the law to explain behavior in a system, even if the system doesn't meet the law's requirements (in the case of inertia, that there be no outside forces, e.g., surface friction).
AH's summary is as follows:

"If one thinks that laws of nature are explanatorily relevant only for those situations in which the regularities implied by the laws actually obtain, the use scientists make of these laws cannot be explained. It is only if what the law says somehow carries over from the ideal to the less than ideal that sense can be made of the scientific practice [...]. The assumption of dispositions is the best explanation of these [...] features of our scientific practice." (p. 19)

And so, as I understand him, AH believes that we should talk about objects having 'inertial dispositions', such that even in less than ideal circumstances, objects will behave closely to what we would expect in ideal inertia scenarios.
Does this seem crazy to anyone else? Might it not be better to take the expression 'laws of nature' to intend a description of reality in a nearly universal sense? For instance, I don't think of the law of inertia as a description of an ideal scenario which is basically never instantiated. Rather, I take 'the law of inertia' to be a description of what in fact is true about the structure of our universe: bodies moving through space do maintain their velocity and direction when we filter out the influence of other forces. So for me, the ideal situation is merely a mental tool for understanding the law which is equally in action throughout the universe (though not at quantum levels), and not just in that hypothetical situation. 'Law of nature', as I interpret it, encapsulates all of that. To make 'law', as AH does, mean only 'that which is true in specific situation X', and 'disposition' that by virtue of which the law can also be appealed to in circumstances less ideal than X is just... ... unnecessarily convoluted. It's a bad use of language in my opinion.
But then again, what do I know? Perhaps I'm missing something. I will have to wait and see how AH uses this bulky linguistic apparatus to tackle causation. Perhaps it will be effective in spite of its oddness.

I now congratulate you, my reader, if you have made it thus far without falling asleep. I salute you.

Cheers,
-Daniel-

Kaufmann on YHWH

2007-08-26T12:12:00.000-05:00

From 'Critique of Religion and Philosophy':

"Arguments based on the realities of this world can prove at best the existence of such morally revolting functionaries as Kafka portrays in his two great novels, and the God of Pascal's wager who saves those who shun imprudent risks is not the God of Abraham. When God said to Abraham, 'Go from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you,' Abraham could not have wagered that he stood to win all without risking anything. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob asks men to risk everything." (p. 172)

Critical and committed?

2007-08-22T04:01:00.000-05:00

I've often wondered how to handle Scripture. Growing up in the evangelical faith, I absorbed early on the idea that Christians are a people committed to Scripture. In college, I also learned about those who were critical towards Scripture, and how to 'defend' myself (/Scripture) against them. However, genuine faith in the 21st century, it seems to me, must be critically aware for its own sake (not just to have handy replies for outside critics). That is to say that there really is something to be gained from looking at Scripture with a discerning eye. As Andrew Perriman has so succinctly stated it (e.g. here), the Christian approach to Scripture must be both critical and committed.
We are not blindly committed to this text. We do not accept everything our tradition says that it says. It is in this sense that we are Protestant: we allow that traditional interpretations might be wrong. Not only that, but we must allow that Scripture might be wrong. Here we depart from conservative orthodoxy: our commitment cannot allow us to be blinded to contradiction. And so we are critical.
But we are not pessimistic about the texts either. Contra those who flail around denying everything interesting about the Christian story, we must not be afraid to follow the evidence where it leads. As Christians we realize that with all its irregularities, the Bible tells a story which is in a very real sense our story. To be Christian then, means to locate oneself within the biblical storyline--we submit to something beyond our control. And so we are committed.

What does this look like in real life? Perhaps like someone who studies evolutionary biology or ancient cultures and their creation myths and comes to believe that the Genesis stories are just that: stories. Nevertheless, this person might also believe that the Genesis texts are to be considered normative for how Christians think of God's intent for Creation (namely that humans were meant to be God's peaceful vice-regents on Earth, and that death, decay and violence are in that sense "against God's will")--which might push this person to become a vegetarian (for example).

Just some thoughts at 4:40am (there's a thunderstorm outside, our bedroom is too hot, and I can't sleep--in case you were wondering).

Kaufmann on language

2007-08-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine suggested I read Walter Kaufmann's 'Critique of Religion and Philosophy' and purchased a copy for me. And so I'm reading it and enjoying it very much. Kaufmann's comments on the evidential basis of basic Christian claims are problematic (though understandable), but his philosophical insights are delightful. Witness his thoughts on language:

"Imagine a walk in the jungle and a tiger leaping at your companion. The word 'tiger' tears the beast out of its original surroundings, transposes it into the environment of other similar animals, makes it a helpless object of comparisons, and exposes it to endless criticisms.
'Circle' and 'tiger' differ insofar as no object of sense experience is really a circle, while some are really tigers. But every general concept is a norm. When I call a object a table, I no longer accept it without question; I propose a standard of criticism. When I call an object a table or a tiger, this is not like calling my son 'Jehoshaphat' or my daughter 'darling'; it is rather as if I set myself up as a judge and classified the case before me: it is as a table that I propose to judge you.
[...]
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are all implicit comparisons and potential criticisms: they represent a thrust beyond the present, a violation of the given, a forcible removal of a thing, activity, or quality into a critical environment.
[...]
Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
With words man has been able to create a world, and it is fitting that the author of Genesis should have proposed that the world of sense experience, too, was created with words." (pp. 78,79)

More to come...