Without Authority

The Economist and a Defense of Christendom

2007-11-23T14:58:00.000-06:00

I recommend taking a look at the November 1st issue of the Economist, which features a number of articles on the role of religion in the coming century. The magazine points out that religious observance is rising worldwide and that "faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century." The approach the Economist takes towards religion is refreshingly fair and neutral - it is not blind to the dangers of fundamentalism but, at the same time, it understands the amazing complexity and vibrancy of the world's religions. It also understands that faith is flourishing, in part, because of globalization - something the Economist vigorously supports:

"The idea that religion has re-emerged in public life is to some extent an illusion. It never really went away—certainly not to the extent that French politicians and American college professors imagined. Its new power is mostly the consequence of two changes. The first is the failure of secular creeds: religion's political comeback started during the 1970s, when faith in government everywhere was crumbling. Second, although some theocracies survive in the Islamic world, religion has returned to the stage as a much more democratic, individualistic affair: a bottom-up marketing success, surprisingly in tune with globalisation. Secularism was not as modern as many intellectuals imagined, but pluralism is. Free up religion and ardent believers and ardent atheists both do well... From a classical liberal point of view, this multiplicity of sects is a good thing."

The issue also contains an article on the state of Christianity in Europe, which may not be as moribund as most people think. In many parts of Europe, smaller churches of evangelicals, charismatics and Pentecostals are growing rapidly. But the state churches are still hurting, with active church attendance reaching new, pathetic lows. But the empty pews should not necessarily be interpreted as a lack of faith. Grace Davie of the University of Exeter argues that many Europeans regard the state churches as a sort of "'public utility': there is one state-backed supplier, and most Christians follow their religion vicariously (in the sense that somebody else does your churchgoing for you). For instance, around 75% of Swedes are baptised as Lutherans, but only 5% regularly go to church. The church pockets a staggering $1.6 billion in membership fees, collected by the state through the tax system. It has been rare for Swedes to opt out, though that seems to be changing."

This situation in Sweden (and other Scandinavian countries) is interesting because, while active religious participation is rare, the state church itself is not unpopular or discredited. It still plays a welcome, albeit small, role in the lives of the Swedish people. Most people still pay their church fees, baptize their children, get confirmed, and have a church funeral when they die. But otherwise they rarely set foot inside a church.

Of course, the notion of "vicarious Christianity" is exactly what Kierkegaard was railing against in his Attack on Christendom. And it would be tempting to say, with him, that the Church of Sweden (or Denmark) is a sham, no more than kulturprotestantismus at its worst. But that judgement might not be entirely correct. The fact that people still turn to the church in "life changing" moments - birth, marriage, death - is significant, I think. Indeed, it may be that the states churches, by encompassing the entire nation and not just a small group of "true believers", are a testament to the sovereignty of God over all Creation. As the Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren writes in Creation and Gospel:

"By their very existence the national churches of Europe represented a form of faith in Creation, even in those times when the Creation faith was neither theoretically articulated nor the subject of reflection in university theology. Parishes with geographical boundaries are purely external arrangements, it appears; but built into this arrangement is a profound faith in Creation: the place of work, birth, death, matrimony - everything is encircled by the church and therefore by the Father of Jesus Christ."

Whether the state churches of Europe will be able to continue to play this role in the future remains to seen. It may be that they're merely "running on fumes"; after all, no church can survive for long on mere tradition and convention. Most damningly, the national churches may be serving as obstacles to a genuine revival of faith, since they encourage the complacency of "vicarious Christianity." Christianity on European soil might have to begin anew, and this would entail the demise of the national churches. But I'm not sure. Would Swedes miss the national church if it was gone? Would anything take its place?

The Sacrament as Christ's Availability to Himself

2007-11-14T22:36:00.001-06:00

In case you missed it, First Things posted an interesting commentary last week on Bill Bryson’s science book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The article, written by Frederica Mathewes-Green, discussed the fact that our bodies are continually exchanging atoms with the environment, such that "every seven years all the cells in a human body are replaced." Moreover, as Bryson writes, “every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms—up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested—probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name."

This result certainly has theological implications, and Mathewes-Green explores some of them. For instance, the "resurrection of the body" cannot be understood as the simple reassembly of the same atoms that comprised our bodies at death, since these atoms are not essential to who we truly are. Our continuity over time lies in the pattern of our bodies, not in the identity of their physical components. Thus, speaking of the resurrection of the dead, John Polkinghorne can write that "it is a perfectly coherent hope that the pattern that is me will be remembered by God and its instantiation will be recreated by Him when he reconstitutes me in a new environment of his choosing."

This concept also raises interesting implications for the sacraments. Most of the controversy surrounding the Lord's Supper has focused on the meaning of "is" in Jesus' statement "This is my body", i.e. should "is" be taken literally or does it really mean signifies. Comparatively little thought has been given to what "body" means in this context, perhaps because it is assumed that everyone knows what body means. But, as Bryson's book makes clear, the body is a more dynamic concept than previously thought. So how are we supposed to understand the true presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist?

Robert Jenson gives a very compelling answer to this question in his Systematic Theology. He writes that, according to Paul, "someone's 'body' is simply the person him or herself insofar as this person is available to other persons and to him or herself, insofar as the person is an object for other persons and him or herself. It is in that Paul is a body that persecutors can mark him as Christ's; it is in that Paul is a body that he can be seen and interrogated by one of his congregations, or be remote from this possibility; it is in that Paul is a body that he can discipline his own self. In Paul's ontology, such personal availability may or may not be constituted as the biological entity moderns first think of as 'a body'" (I, 205).

The question then becomes: where is the risen Christ available to us, where is he an object for us? Drawing on 1 Corinthians, Jenson's answer is two-fold: "The body of that Christ that the Corinthians culpably fail to discern is at once the gathered congregation, which is the actual object of their misbehavior and to which Paul has just previous referred as the body of Christ, and the loaf and cup, which are called Christ's body by the narrative of institution he cites in support of his rebuke." (II, 211) Thus, Christ is an object for us in church and sacrament, although in somewhat different ways. The Church is Christ's availability to the world at large, while the Eucharist is his availability within the congregation. "The object that is the church-assembly is the body of Christ, that is, Christ available to the world and to her members, just in that the church gathers around objects distinct from herself, the bread and cup, which are the availability to her of the same Christ." (II, 213).

At first glance, it may appear that Jenson is endorsing a purely symbolic interpretation of the sacrament in which the Church regards the load and cup "as if" they were the body of Christ, although the remain mere bread and wine. However this is not the case, because Christ himself recognizes these objects as his body. "The church with her sacraments is truly Christ's availability to us just because Christ takes her as his availability to himself. Where does the risen Christ turn to find himself? To the sacramental gathering of believers. To the question 'Who am I?' he answers, 'I am this community's head. I am the subject whose objectivity is this community... And again: 'I am the subject whose objectivity for this community is the bread and cup around which she gathers.'" (II, 214)

To question of how this is possible, Jenson simply remarks: "All that is needed is that the risen Christ's personal self-understanding determine what is real, that is, that he be the Logos of God... As he is the Word of God by which all things are created to be what they are, no further explanation is needed or possible." (II, 215). This is essentially the same explanation as provided by Luther in his defence of the Real Presence, which I described in an earlier post. The Word of God effects what it says. The sacrament is simultaneously the body of Christ and bread and wine, just as we are simultaneously sinful and righteous in faith. In both cases, it is the mighty Word of God that holds the paradox together, that creates a new reality.

Hauerwas at the University of Minnesota

2007-11-11T11:32:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday I walked across the Mississippi river to hear Stanley Hauerwas speak on the West Bank of the U of M campus. He was giving the 12th Annual Holmer Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Maclaurin Institute (whose admirable mission is to "bring God into the marketplace of ideas" on the Minnesota campus). The event was a rare opportunity for those of us at this public university to hear from an honest-to-goodness Christian theologian and, appropriately, Hauerwas spoke about the role of theology in the modern university, the subject of his most recent book.

Since you can read a good summary of his remarks here, I won't try to recreate the lecture. I generally agree with his main point that we need to find a way to bring theology back into higher education. The university needs theology, and theology needs the university.

I had never heard Hauerwas speak before but I've read plenty of stories concerning his explosive and colorful personality. So I naturally went in with high expectations. Hauerwas, though, was surprisingly tame, using occasional profanity but never reaching a full boil. Despite this, he made a number of memorable comments, especially in the question-and-answer section. For instance, he said "I'm a theocrat but I'm also a pacifist. And I don't know how to rule the world nonviolently, but I'd like to have the chance." Also, "For a Christian college to offer the same education as a public school but say that they're educating the 'whole person', that's bullshit. That's not Christianity, that's just hand-holding." In response to a question about Bob Jones University, he said "Bob Jones, they're just dumb, it needs to be said. It's sort of a learned ignorance, but they know nothing about Christianity, that's their problem."

I enjoyed the lecture but it raised a question that perhaps some of my readers can answer: why do academics in the humanities read their lectures straight off the page? I've always found this strange and somewhat annoying. In the sciences, we speak freely in our lectures, with nothing prepared except our visual aids or a few notes. Such talks are more natural and pleasant to hear than someone monotonously reading. Thankfully, Hauweras often departed from his prepared text, and it was in those moments when he was most genuine and interesting. I wished the entire lecture was that way. If scientists and preachers can speak in public with only notes, why can't English or theology professors? Why do we expect so little from them with regards to presentation style?

More Thoughts on Closed Communion

2007-10-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

I've been delving into Robert Jenson's theology of the sacraments, as found both in his Systematic Theology and in Visible Words (1978). I hope to write a post outlining his overall sacramentology soon, but for now I will simply share his thoughts on the open vs. closed communion debate:

"Disagreement about the interpretation of Christ's presence has been a profound and continuing occasion of the church's disunity, especially at the table itself. There is a terrible irony in this; since in fact Christ's presence as the bread and cup is not separable from the unity it creates as those who share the meal.

Many rationalizations have been attempted, all of them sophistical. The simple case is this: if I and my group celebrate the Supper, and do not admit you, this is excommunication; and if we indeed belong to the body of Christ, as we claim merely by our celebration, it is excommunication from the body of Christ. If you then otherwise celebrate the Supper with a group of your like, we are bound to maintain that this celebration is a mere attempt, in which Christ is not present. If we fail to maintain this, either we are merely being inconsequential, or we revoke our right to exclude you in the first place.

There is no middle ground. If you acknowledge that I belong to the church, you must admit me to your Supper. If you will not admit me to your Supper, you should not then talk about my nevertheless being your 'fellow in Christ.'" (Visible Words, 113)

It is worth noting that Luther held essentially the same position as Jenson, although to much different effect. For Luther, the anti-sacramentalists, whether Reformed or Anabaptist, were genuine heretics and not Christians in the least, as dramatically emphasized by his refusal to accept Zwingli's hand in Christian brotherhood at Marburg. So Luther would have no problem with the logic of Jenson's thinking; that is, for Luther, the table was indeed open to all Christians, as he defined it. You can call him divisive and intolerant, but at least he was consistent.

The same cannot be said of modern Lutherans who practice closed communion. They are guilty of what Jenson calls "inconsequential" thinking - they forbid table fellowship with baptized Christians not in communion with their denomination, but they do not deny that such people may be Christians. That this is the case is amply evident in Missouri Synod documents that explain their stance on closed communion. For example, in response to the question whether the sacrament can be provided to "relatives who are very close to us but who are members of other church bodies", the LCMS writes: "This question is often a very difficult and sensitive one on an emotional level, because we feel united with those whom we love - especially when they are fellow Christians!" (emphasis mine). In the same document, we find the following Q&A:

Question: How can we possibly say that all those Christians from other church bodies are unworthy to receive the Lord’s Supper? Isn’t that what we are saying?

Answer: Absolutely not! There are two reasons why people can be refused admission to the Lord’s Supper. The first has to do with faith and discerning the body. Those who do not have such faith and discernment would commune in an unworthy manner and thereby receive God’s judgment. But the second reason has to do with the need for a fitting confessional unity among those who commune together. Roman Catholic Christians, for example, may be perfectly prepared to receive the Lord’s Supper in their own churches in a worthy manner and so to their own great blessing. But it would be unfitting for them, as confessors of their church body’s error, to receive the Sacrament in our churches.

This is an interesting position. The LCMS does not deny the validity of the Roman sacrament; quite the contrary, they call it a "great blessing". But this is only true for Catholics! The same sacrament is presumably damaging for a Lutheran participant, hence the prohibition against LCMS members communing in other church bodies. But isn't the same body and blood of Christ present at both altars? And if so, must it not be acknowledged that some form of unity does indeed exist between the Lutheran and Catholic churches, even if there is disagreement on non-sacramental matters?

I have previously expressed reservations about "wide-open" communion and I generally stand by those statements. But I also think there are serious theological problems with closed communion as practiced by the LCMS and RC churches. For me, the decisive point is whether a given church group "recognizes the body of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:29), that is, whether they acknowledge the Real Presence as generally understood by Luther. If they do, then I see no problem with permitting table fellowship, regardless of other differences. As Jenson says, "The old question about whether fellowship is a means or consequence of fellowship in the faith is an entirely perverse question; fellowship at the Supper is fellowship in the faith."

That said, it seems to me that where there is no agreement concerning the Lord's Real Presence, there can be no table or pulpit fellowship. So, as you can imagine, I am not a fan of the ELCA's full communion agreements with Reformed bodies like the Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church of Christ. Does this mean that I regard members of these denominations as non-Christians? I won't go that far, but it may be true that by failing to recognize the body of Christ in the sacraments, these denominations forfeit their claim to be part of the body of Christ that is the Church (for Jenson, it is axiomatic that the existence of these two "bodies of Christ" are interdependent. However, it is not my place (or nature) to make drastic statements. I will leave it to others to decide whether the ELCA's agreements with the Reformed churches go too far and thus establish nothing but a false unity. But I don't think it's extreme to maintain that the celebration of the Lord's Supper in these churches is "a mere attempt, in which Christ is not present," and that this must have severe consequences for ecumenism.

Barth on Luther's Doctrine of the Eucharist

2007-10-22T20:07:00.000-05:00

In relation to my previous post, I've been reading and enjoying Karl Barth's article "Luther's Doctrine of the Eucharist", written in 1923 and published in Theology and Church. Barth, of course, ultimately disagrees with the direction that Luther took regarding the Lord Supper's, but he remains astonished at the force and boldness of the Reformer's thought. At one point he writes, "It is possible to understand the step which Luther took [with regards to the Lord's Supper] as the act of pure Christian faith in revelation, or as an act manifesting truly demonic force... Actually it was both." Nevertheless, with his penetrating intellect, Barth is able to cut to the heart of the matter as few can. One might even say that he understands Luther better than Luther understood himself, even if he ultimately rejects the Reformer's position.

Barth rightly dismisses the notion (common among Reformed) that Luther's insistence on the Real Presence is an inconsistency in his overall thought, a lingering hangover from medieval Catholicism. "There can be no doubt that what we find here is not a slip in logic, but the purpose which manifests itself with compelling inner necessity... One can say confidently that he would not have been Luther if he had not taken this step."

So what drove Luther irresistibly to the Real Presence? The answer, for Barth, is to be found in Luther's dynamic understanding of the Word. But this insight is misunderstood if the Word is thought to refer only to Christ's words at the Last Supper, "This is my body,... this is my blood." Luther's doctrine of the Eucharist was not merely the product of simple-minded biblical literalism, although later generations of Lutherans have often understood it this way. No, the reason lies deeper. Luther can see Christ's bodily presence in the Eucharist because God's Word is a creative word that establishes the reality it promises. "The word brings with it everything of which it speaks, namely, Christ with his flesh and blood and everything he is and has."

Barth sees this as the truly original aspect of Luther's thought. It is the "predicate of identity", "the identification of the signifying with what is signified, of the sign with the signification." Whereas others played the signum and res of the sacrament against each other, Luther held them tightly together. Another way to say this - citing my earlier post - is that Luther emphasized the signum et res of the sacrament, although he never used this exact formulation. Take the following quote:

"So that this divine promise [of forgiveness] may be to us the most certain of all and render our faith most secure, he set upon it the token and seal which is the most trustworthy and precious of all, as he himself was the price of the promise, his own body and blood under the bread and wine. By this he guarantees that the riches of the promise are given to us; and this requires our acceptance of the promise."

Here it is clear that Luther regards Christ's body as both signum and res: it is what is signified by the bread and wine and it is a "token and seal" of the divine promise of forgiveness. This is not a trivial point for Luther, since it reflects the fact that it is only through Christ's humanity, his body and blood, that we have salvation and the forgiveness of sins. The connection between Christology and the sacrament is clear here. As Luther says, "he himself was the price of the promise." This is the essence of his insistence on the "identification of signifying with what is signified", on the signum et res, and ultimately on the Real Presence itself. The "predicate of identity" is derived from the Incarnation, where the body of Christ both is and signifies our salvation. A disembodied, "spiritual" Christ does not save. Thus, Luther's belief in the Real Presence is nothing more than his belief in the saving power of the Incarnation, where the promise is true because it is "in, with, and under" the flesh.

Augustine and the Sacraments

2007-10-20T09:13:00.001-05:00

I've been reading and thinking a great deal about the sacraments lately, which has been interesting due to the sheer variety of positions that have been adopted by Christians through the centuries regarding what the sacraments are and mean. It seems that sacramentology is an area of theology where confusion has generally trumped consensus, often because people can use the same language but mean something entirely different (just think, for example, of the various ways that the word "presence" can be (mis)understood). Despite this diversity, no matter which book I turn to, I invariably encounter St. Augustine's definition of a sacrament: "The Word comes to the element; and so there is a sacrament, that is, a sort of visible word." That is, every sacrament has two components: the physical object(s) - the sign (signum) - and the invisible reality (res) that is thereby signified and proclaimed. Thus, in baptism, the element of water signifies the res, which in this case is the word of justification (or participation in the church of Christ).

At first glance, Augustine's definition of sacraments as "visible words" seems admirably straightforward, until one realizes that every faction in the history of Western Christianity - regardless of their sacramentology - has claimed to be faithful to it. Of course, by the standards of modern ecumenism, this may be considered a good thing; after all, if everyone agrees with Augustine, then perhaps we can leave behind the divisive battles of the past. But, to my way of thinking, such universal consensus merely points to the inadequacy of Augustine's thinking on the sacraments. Any definition that can encompass both Luther's and Zwingli's positions on the Lord's Supper is dangerously vague.

The medieval scholastics implicitly acknowledged this shortcoming when they introduced a third sacramental reality that is both sign and res (signum et res). This signum et res is most obvious in the case of the Lord's Supper, as concisely described by Robert Jenson in his Systematic Theology:

"There are of course many sorts of signifier-signified relations, most of them involving nothing remarkable beyond the wonder of language itself. The relation between the bread and cup as signum and Christ's mystical body as res is exceptional in the way called sacramental in that there is a middle reality between what is simply sign and what is simply res; this is the body and blood of Christ. The body and blood are at once signum et res: they are the thing the bread and cup signify but in turn they are signs, the visible Word of God that promises our communion with God and with one another.

To be signs Christ's body and blood must be there, available to our apprehension. Yet they are no more apparently present than is the mystical body they signify; they are visible only as the bread and cup that signify them. It is this identify between being visible only as signified and being visibly present so as to signify that makes the peculiar sacramental reality."

Jenson thus locates the essence of sacrament in the "middle reality" of the signum et res, and he goes on to show how it applies to all traditional sacraments.

Of course, this raises the question: why is it necessary to invoke this middle term, the signum et res? Why isn't Augustine's definition sufficient? The complete answer to these questions, which I hope to provide in a latter post, is grounded in Christology and our understanding of the incarnation. But suffice it to say, the signum et res is essential for any doctrine of the sacraments that affirms the real presence of Christ's body. As Jenson puts it, the signum et res is the sacrament's true "character," its "potentiality." It is that thing "in, with, and under" the element that makes it an effective sign, and not just a sign. It thus allows the elements to actually "contain the grace they signify" (a formulation from the Council of Trent that Lutherans can also affirm).

From this, we can conclude that any account of the sacraments that takes Augustine's definition as exhaustive is bound to end-up with a non-realist (Zwinglian) sacramentology. The common feature of all such teachings is that they dismiss the signum et res, leaving only the signum and res of Augustine's formulation. But this vitiates the sacrament. The signum is inevitably regarded as secondary to the res and eventually the element is trivialized or discarded altogether. It is no wonder, then, that Hermann Sasse in This is My Body blames Augustine for the anti-sacramentalism that has been so prevalent in the Reformed tradition from Zwingli to Barth.

Much more needs to be said, particularly concerning the intimate connection between the sacraments and the incarnation. But this post is already too long, so it will have to wait.

Jüngel: God's Being is Realized in Contradiction

2007-10-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

For those of you wondering what I've been doing lately in my free time, I've been working my way through Eberhard Jüngel's Theological Essays II. That partially explains my lack of posting, since, among modern theologians, Jüngel is perhaps the most difficult to blog about. This is due to the depth and rigor of this thought, which is impossible to summarize in short posts, combined with his lackluster prose. Simply put, he's not quotable! Regardless, I would like to discuss some concerns regarding the most thought-provoking essay in the collection: "The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God."

Jüngel's goal is to rectify misconceptions regarding the deus absconditus that have historically appeared in Lutheran theology (those familiar with this blog will know that this has also been a concern of mine; see here and here). Jüngel begins by saying that if God is hidden and dark to us, "it cannot imply that God himself is dark." Instead, God is concealed because he "dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim 6.15).

"The absolute invisibility of God is, therefore, the expression of the excess of light that God essentially is. This light, one might say, is unbearably intense and blinding in its pure illuminating power. In this light, in the light of his own being, God is not visible, he is hidden. If there is in him an inaccessible depth, it is in no way a dark depth or a murky abyss, but rather the depth of his glory, the unfathomableness of primal light. It is the majesty of God that lets him be hidden for us."

Here, Jüngel discredits the notion, which can be traced to Luther, that there exists a terrible and wrathful God behind (or separate from) the God we encounter in Christ. For Jüngel, it is of the utmost importance that the God we meet in Jesus Christ be fully and truly God, such that there is no deus absconditus contrary to this revelation. But, in agreement with Luther, Jüngel argues that it is proper to speak the hidden works of God. These alien works of God (opus dei alienum), manifested as wrath, serve the purpose of God's proper works (opus proprium). "The work of God's left hand is always related to the work of God's right hand. God kills so that he can bring to life. Luther can also say: God annihilates, so that he can create the new out of nothingness."

It seems to me that Jüngel is walking a thin line here. Is it so easy to separate God's nature from his works? Is it not a contradiction for God to act in a manner "alien" to his being? Jüngel doesn't say, but the issue becomes even more problematic when, drawing on Barth, he writes:

"God does not contradict himself... Even in the greatest of all imaginable contradictions, even in the contradiction of eternal life and earthly death [in the crucifixion], God corresponds to himself. The being of God is capable of this contradiction. Indeed, God's being is realized in this contradiction without being destroyed by it. God endures it. And this endurance of the contradiction of life and death is God himself, it is the depth of God's glory."

Jüngel seems to be saying that contradictions cannot contradict God because he is contradiction. But how is this consistent with the statement of 1 John that "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all", which Jüngel himself cites in the essay? Moreover, how is it compatible with his earlier remark that "if there is in him an inaccessible depth, it is in no way a dark depth or a murky abyss, but rather the depth of his glory, the unfathomableness of primal light"?

I'm not convinced that Jüngel's efforts have resulted in a gain over Luther's original position. Luther understood the hiddenness of God under its opposite (the essence of his "theology of the cross") as an inscrutable paradox that could not be resolved dogmatically. But Jüngel, who shares Barth's distrust of paradox, attempts just this. In the end, he merely succeeds in moving Luther's paradox into the very heart of God's being.

Interestingly, towards the end of the essay, Jüngel appears to circle back to something akin to Luther's anti-speculative position. He writes:

"The ancient need for an explanation of evil and so for a justification of God in the face of evil, the ancient human need not only to pose, but also to solve, the question of theodicy, does not in fact stop outside the sacred halls of dogmatics. Dogmatics cannot ignore this ancient need. But neither can dogmatics satisfy it. And dogmatics should not act as if it could do so. Dogmatics must not even want to satisfy this ancient need."

Exactly! But Jüngel then goes on to say :

One can only speak of God as the uncompromising enemy of evil. There is only one, but one decisive, connection of God and evil. And that is the cross of Jesus Christ, the fundamental fact of Christian faith: that God conquers evil in that he suffers it himself."

Which raises my final question: does God really conquer evil (and death) if evil (and death) become part of the very being of God, even in such a way that they lose their power over humanity? Would it not be better to say that God remains free of contradiction even in the horror of the cross, although this statement involves a seeming paradox?

A Bitter Brew

2007-09-29T11:32:00.001-05:00

The Brewers' quest to reach the post-season for the first time since 1982 is over. Their 6-3 loss to the Padres last night, combined with the Cubs' victory, has eliminated them from contention. Thus ends a season of high hopes that started strong but ended with a series of maddening breakdowns. Now the goal, however pathetic, is to win at least one of their final two games in order to finish with a winning record, something the Brewers franchise hasn't done since 1992.

Perhaps I shouldn't feel so disgusted. The future remains bright - they're a young team that will certainly contend for the NL Central title next year. But let's review the events of the past 11 days, and maybe you will better understand my smoldering rage:

Sept. 18: The Brewers win their fourth game in the row, a 9-1 trouncing of Houston, and move into a first-place tie with the Cubs. But Ben Sheets, Milwaukee's perpetually injured "ace", leaves the game with tightness in his hamstring. His season is over.

Sept. 22: Against John Smoltz and the Braves, the Brewers tie the game on J.J. Hardy's two-run homer. In extra innings, Corey Hart leads off the top of the 10th with a solo shot but the Brewers can't get any more, leaving the bases loaded. Then, with two outs in the bottom of the 10th, Brewer's closer Francisco Cordero gives up a home run to Scott Thorman (average .221!). In the bottom of the 11th, the Braves win thanks to a fielding error by Rickie Weeks.

Sept. 23: The Brewer's bullpen suffers another meltdown, surrendering a 4-1 lead by giving up six runs in the 7th and 8th innings. Milwaukee manger Ned Yost is thrown out of the game for arguing with the umpires. He would be ejected from two of the next three games, and is currently serving a suspension (vide infra). The Brewers are now 3.5 games behind of the Cubs.

Sept. 24-25: Milwaukee takes two from the Cardinals in dominating fashion, while the Cubs lose. The gap is closed to 2 games. Do they still have a chance?!

Sept. 26: No, they do not. Even though the Cubs lose again, the Brewers suffer the most aggravating loss of all. Trailing the Cards 3-2 in the 7th and with one out, idiot manager Yost sends in pitcher Seth McClung with orders to drill Albert Pujols in the ribs (McClung gets this done with one pitch) in retaliation for St. Louis hitting Prince Fielder earlier in the game. Both Yost and McClung are ejected, and later suspended. Turnbow relieves McClung, strikes out the first batter, and then forgets where the strike zone is located, eventually walking in a run. The Cards go on to get four runs in the inning, thanks in large part to Yost's macho posturing.

Sept. 27-28: Brewers lose badly to the Padres, twice. In the first game, they somehow manage to commit five errors! It's over.... Now all of America gets to cheer for those lovable Cubies (excuse me while I swallow my own vomit).

Where do we go from here? Like I said above, this is a team with a bright future, but it's a future that needs to be actualized now. Given the meager size of Milwaukee's payroll, we're not going to be able to keep all these players together for very long. So time is crucial. Hopefully, GM Doug Melvin will acquire some much-needed pitching in the off-season. And another question needs to be answered: is Ned Yost up to the task of leading the Brewers to the post-season? His performance down the stretch has been miserable - clearly, the pressure got to him. So perhaps it's time to make a change. Regardless, it will take a good deal of winter to get this bitter taste out of my mouth.

God's Word in Filthy Language

2007-09-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

In a previous post, I quoted from Heiko Oberman's biography of Luther to illustrate how the Reformer's frequent talk of the Devil, while often extreme, usually served evangelical purposes. It turns out the same can be said for another of Luther's embarrassing traits: his penchant for scatological language. Indeed, talk of Satan and talk of crap often went hand-in-hand, usually as a way of expressing contempt for the adversary. Once, after professing his faith in Christ, Luther added: "But if that is not enough for you, you Devil, I have also shit and pissed; wipe your mouth on that and take a hearty bite." As Oberman writes, "Luther's language is so physical and earthy that in his wrathful scorn he can give the Devil 'a fart for a staff': You, Satan, Antichrist, or pope, can lean on it, a stinking nothing... A figure of respect, be he Devil or pope, is effectively unmasked if he can be shown with his pants down."

Luther's filthy language undoubtedly had something to do with his physical ailments. He suffered frequently from constipation, hemorrhoids and perhaps anal fissures. He once wrote to a friend that "after five days of constipation his bowel movement had caused him such pain 'that I nearly gave up the ghost - and now, bathed in blood, can find no peace. What took four days to heal immediately tears open again."

Most shocking of all, perhaps, is Luther's claim that he had his Reformation breakthrough while sitting on the toilet: "The Spiritus Sanctus gave me this realization in the cloaca." Catholic polemicists have seized on this comment as proof of Luther's depravity, and Protestant apologists have tried to explain it by saying he didn't mean the actual toilet, merely the study in the tower above it. But Oberman insists that we take Luther at his word:

"The cloaca is not just a privy, it is the most degrading place for man and the Devil's favorite habitat. Medieval monks already knew this, but the Reformer knows even more now: it is right here that we have Christ; the mighty helper, on our side. No spot is unholy for the Holy Ghost; this is the very place to express contempt for the adversary through trust in Christ crucified... Luther attests to the birth of Christ in the filth of this world. The Son of God was truly born into the flesh, into the blood and sweat of man. He understood men because He experienced - to the bitter end - what it meant to be human."

Luther was not some 16th-century Lyndon Johnson, using crude language to humiliate and intimidate. Instead, his goal was to express the profound earthiness of Christianity, the supreme condescension of God Incarnate who is "with us in mud and in work, so that his skin smokes." As Hamann understood well, God's Word often appears in filthy and vulgar language: "How the Holy Spirit humbled himself when he recorded the most trivial, and the most contemptible events on earth, revealing to man in his own language, in his own transactions, in his own ways, the mysteries and the ways of the deity."

Denominations: What are they good for?

2007-09-08T11:56:00.000-05:00

This is a bit belated, but D.W. Congdon has a must-read post at The Fire and the Rose on the future of Protestant denominations. It is no secret that the Protestant churches are in crisis, both here in America and abroad. D.W. cites Bruce McCormack, who has written that "if current rates of decline in membership continue, all that will be left by mid-century will be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and non-denominational evangelical churches... The churches of the Reformation will have passed from the scene – and with their demise, there will be no obvious institutional bearers of the message of the Reformation." A chilling thought!!

What I find so valuable about D.W.'s post is that he locates the problem in worship and tradition, not theology (although he admits that the two issues are not unrelated). Simply put, the established Protestant churches have failed to "inculcate an ecclesial tradition." I couldn't agree more. What's missing from many Protestant churches is anything distinctive, anything to give their members a unique identity. Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and others have all merged into a bland, homogeneous soup. These denominations have different histories and theologies, but most members aren't aware of these differences since they rarely manifest themselves on Sundays.

D.W. helpfully identifies five means by which traditions have historically been preserved in Protestant churches: sacraments, liturgies, catechisms, confessions, and hymns. All five have been marginalized in recent decades - the sacraments ignored or trivialized, liturgies radically revised or discarded, catechisms not used for the young, confessions unread and unknown, and hymns replaced by contemporary praise songs. To borrow Tillich's terms, gone is both "Protestant principle" (in the form of catechisms and confessions) and "Catholic substance" (in the form of sacraments and liturgies). It's no wonder that the churches are emptying. Of course, it's possible that this decline can be reversed but I'm not sure the leaders of mainline churches are up to the task. In their urge to be relevant, they keep repeating the same mistakes. They don't understand that the way forward requires going back to the past and reclaiming the traditions that have been lost.

In the end, it may prove impossible to save the "denomination" precisely because it's not worth saving. It's an artificial concept that emerged fairly recently and only in the American context. Moreover, it's profoundly uninspiring - who wants to be a member of a mere denomination when they can be part of The Church. That's why I've always been attracted to Robert Jenson's notion of Lutheranism as "a confessing movement within the church catholic." This movement transcends the boundaries of any particular denomination and has no existence apart from the universal church. Denominations are at most emergency institutions with penultimate significance. So perhaps we should shed no tears at their demise. But the question remains: can the confessing movement known as Lutheranism survive in America without them?

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil

2007-09-02T13:51:00.000-05:00

On WTM's recommendation, I've been reading Heiko Oberman's impressive biography Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. As the title implies, Luther's vivid conception of the Devil figures prominently in the book, perhaps because one of Oberman's goals is to present Luther in all of his glorious strangeness. Here we do not encounter the tame and enlightened Luther of latter Protestant hagiography, but the bold, brilliant, shocking, and apocalyptic monk who turned Christendom upside-down. Regarding Luther and the Devil, Oberman writes:

"Luther's world of thought is wholly distorted and apologetically misconstrued if his conception of the Devil is dismissed as a medieval phenomenon and only his faith in Christ retained as relevant or as the only decisive factor. Christ and the Devil were equally real to him: one was the perpetual intercessor for Christianity, the other a menace to mankind till the end. To argue that Luther never overcame the medieval belief in the Devil says far too little; he even intensified it and lent to it additional urgency: Christ and Satan wage a cosmic war for mastery over Church and world. No one can evade involvement in this struggle...

"There is no way to grasp Luther's milieu of experience and faith unless one has an acute sense of his view of Christian existence between God and the Devil: without a recognition of Satan's power, belief in Christ is reduced to an idea about Christ - and Luther's faith becomes a confused delusion in keeping with the tenor of the time."

It's not surprising that latter generations of Lutherans have often been embarrassed by Luther's apparent obsession with the Devil. He sometimes sounds like one of those paranoid street-corner preachers who see the Devil everywhere. For modern folks, the Devil is either nonexistent or understood in a thoroughly demythologized way. Thus, Luther's worldview is bound to regarded as strange at best and dangerous at worst. After all, wasn't fear of the Devil behind all of those gory witchhunts? But Oberman is quite sympathetic towards Luther on this point. He stresses that Luther's talk of the Devil was usually done, not to terrify, but to comfort; it served evangelical and pastoral purposes. Take the following passage from Luther's Table Talk:

"[Luther said:] When I awoke last night, the Devil came and wanted to debate with me; he rebuked and reproached me, arguing that I was a sinner. To this I replied: Tell me something new, Devil! I already know that perfectly well; I have committed many a solid and real sin. Indeed there must be good honest sins - not fabricated and invented ones - for God to forgive for God's beloved Son's sake, who took all of my sins upon Him so that now the sins I have committed are no longer mine but belong to Christ. This wonderful gift of God I am not prepared to deny, but want to acknowledge and confess."

To which Oberman writes: "Luther's purpose is not to spread fear but to strengthen the resistance of the faithful.... As a rule [these stories of the Devil] have a point to make: the reporting of battles past is to instruct and prepare the younger generation for the prospect of the fierce opposition which will always threaten the preaching of Gospel... They are not meant as horror stories to keep the overly audacious in line but as consolation and strength to timid and tired souls."

Oberman assumes that modern people are no longer capable of taking the Devil seriously, at least not to same extent as Luther. Satan's gone and he's not coming back. Which raises an interesting question for Lutheranism today: given the centrality of the Devil to Luther's thinking, are we really capable of understanding this man? More importantly, is Oberman right is saying that "without a recognition of Satan's power, belief in Christ is reduced to an idea about Christ"? Is there any way to reclaim Luther's understanding of the Devil for the present age that isn't unbearably offensive?

Evangelicals Head East

2007-08-27T17:07:00.000-05:00

A recent article in the New Republic - strangely entitled “The Iconoclasts” - discusses the growing number of American evangelicals who have converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. While the author of the piece, Jason Zengerle, expects us to be amazed by his findings, nothing in the article will come as a shock to those who pay attention to the religious scene in America. The Orthodox Church has gained a number of high-profile converts from Protestantism over the past few decades and it appears that the trend is only accelerating. Not surprisingly, when asked to explain their decisions, most of the coverts in the article cited their dissatisfaction with the insipid liturgies and anti-intellectualism of American evangelical churches, as well as their belief that the Orthodox Church comes closest to replicating the early church.

The article is most interesting when it discusses the trend towards Orthodoxy from a political angle:

Although the culture wars seem like a staple of evangelical life, the converts suggest that there is a growing fatigue with this worldly fight. One of the more striking things about the Orthodox Church is that it's not very political. That's not to say it isn't conservative. "As Orthodox, we don't believe that being gay is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, we believe it's an aberration. We also say abortion is murder," says Gillquist. But, unlike in many evangelical churches, these views--while strongly held--tend not to come up in the course of worship. As Daniel Larison, a conservative writer and Orthodox convert who attends a Russian Orthodox Church in Chicago, says, "As a general rule, the sermons are going to be related to the gospel and that's about it. Political themes and political ideas don't come into sermons directly. That's not why people are there. They want to keep that as far away as possible."
And, by keeping it far away, the Orthodox Church has been immune to the social and political conflicts that frequently flare up in the Anglican and Catholic Churches, where disaffected evangelicals once typically sought refuge. "In the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, there's a lot of dialogue with the culture: For instance, what do we do with the whole creation versus evolution thing? Where does science play in?" says Andrew Henderson, an evangelical-turned-Anglican who recently converted to Orthodox Christianity and worships at Holy Transfiguration. "In the Orthodox Church, with that Eastern mindset that's just so ancient, those questions haven't really arisen. It just isn't a concern."

I’m intrigued by that last statement – “those questions haven't really arisen.” Does he mean to say that things move so slowly in the Orthodox Church that issues like homosexuality, evolution, and women’s ordination just haven’t come up? If this is the case, I can understand the appeal of a church that is so isolated and so consumed with the gospel that it hasn't gotten around to fighting the culture wars. But with so many outsiders moving in, I wonder how long this "splendid isolation" will last.

Mother Theresa and Doubt

2007-08-24T11:29:00.000-05:00

As the Guardian regularly makes sport of religion (and Christianity, in particular), I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the inane column that appeared today, where Andrew Brown asks the question, “Was Mother Theresa an Atheist?”. The basis for this provocative title are some recently publicized letters in which the saint describes her crisis of faith. Brown writes: “Even as she was receiving the Nobel prize, she asked her confessor to pray for her because she could feel nothing when she prayed herself and no longer had any experience of God.” He cites the following letter, written at her confessor's request, in which he claims that Mother Theresa “sounds like an adolescent Dawkins”:

‘I call, I cling, I want ... and there is no One to answer ... no One on Whom I can cling ... no, No One. Alone ... Where is my Faith ... even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness ... My God ... how painful is this unknown pain ... I have no Faith ... I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart ... & make me suffer untold agony.

'So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them ... because of the blasphemy ... If there be God ... please forgive me ... When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me ... and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.’"

(How does this sound like Dawkins at all? Dawkins has never experienced the “dark night of the soul” – his faith in Reason is far too strong for that. Who could ever imagine him saying, “If there be God ... please forgive me”?). Regardless, from this quote Brown concludes that Theresa was a full-blown atheist, and thus nothing but a hypocrite and a fraud (although he admires her determination to stick with an institution that she no longer believed in). He even mocks her earlier professions of faith, saying that her talk of a “union” with Christ “seems to have come from a bodice-ripper.” Clearly, Brown is aroused by his irreverent tone and shocking language; he perhaps imagines himself brave, although he is merely engaging in adolescent iconoclasm.

Brown is most surprised that “the letters have not been revealed by one of her avowed enemies, like Christopher Hitchens, but by the man who is responsible for promoting her canonization, the Rev Brian Kolodiejchuk.” Shouldn’t the Catholic Church be scandalized by these professions of doubt? After all, it turns out that one of their star players was really a double-agent, working for the other side. But apparently the Church is taking it all in stride; indeed, some in the Church say that "it will give a whole new dimension to the way that people understand her." Brown concludes: “Only the most hardened atheists will not be shocked by the ease with which the Catholic church has assimilated the news that its most famous saint thought of herself as a hypocrite when she talked about the love of God.”

But this goes to show that Brown understands nothing about the nature of real faith. For him, any expression of doubt indicates that the so-called believer is really just an atheist who is lying to themselves. The slightest wavering and your faith is a lie, as true faith necessarily excludes doubt. But Christians have always understood doubt to be a integral part of faith (see my previous post on this topic here). Mother Theresa continued to trust Christ even when she couldn’t trust herself. This is not so unusual. God’s hiddenness has been experienced by nearly all “great” Christians through history (just think of Luther, to name one), and, most significantly, Christ himself felt forsaken by God on the Cross. So why should it be any surprise that this saint was granted the opportunity to follow Him into the darkness of faith?

Oswald Bayer: Faith and Lamentation

2007-08-19T15:33:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I mentioned that for Luther faith means "against God to force its way through to God and call upon God, ... to break through to God through his wrath, through his punishment, and through his disfavor." I take this to mean that one must strive with God, wrestling with him until he gives us a blessing. As the Lutheran theologian Oswald Bayer writes in Living by Faith: "Faith does not conduct a debate about God and God's righteousness, as does the natural, the redeemed, or the presumably already glorified reason before its own forum. It conducts a dispute with God in prayer and lament." Indeed, Bayer understands lament against God as one of the most profound expressions of faith. This is because the foundation of lament is belief in the essential goodness of God and his creation:

"Lament is only possible because of the promise that it will be heard. Without promise there is no cause for lamentation... Lament is an eminent way of perceiving and experiencing the world. For it never surrenders the faith that the creation is 'very good,' nor does it make evil and suffering harmless, regarding them as nothing. In lament pain is felt in all its profundity. Our most profound testing is that God, who has promised us life and external communion, who has guaranteed them, is still the God who does not lament death or destroy it, but who is at work in life and death and all things."

Faith allows space for lamentation, but comprehensive systems do not. Here, Bayer contrasts the theodicies of Hegel and Luther. Hegel's "contemplative theodicy" tries to rationalize evil, to locate its place in the larger picture in such a way that it serves the greater good. In the System, "the misery and suffering of this world are ultimately regarded as irrelevant. This contemplative theodicy supposes the painful difference between the promise of life and all that contradicts it to be already resolved. The passion of lament, which perceives this difference, dissolves and gives way to 'the passionless stillness of knowledge that only thinks'." Suffering is not real or serious for Hegel - it's merely a principle. By contrast,

"Luther never downplays or treats as harmless the situation of temptation and testing when God withdraws and conceals himself. He confronts it in all its depth and sharpness. He does not ignore experiences of suffering. Yet he refuses to accept their finality. He flees from the hidden God to the revealed and incarnate God. He presses on 'toward God and even against him calls upon him.'"

It seems to me that the spirit of striving and lamentation are sorely lacking today. Not that there is no suffering in the world -there surely is, often on an unprecedented scale. It's just that most people, whether they believe in God or not, have their preferred method of explaining away evil and suffering. Even in the church, there is a sense that we should never protest against God, that God is our friend and he only wants the best for us. Like Hegel's system, our theologies absolve God and try to erase the pain by explaining that "it's all for the best." But this is simply not biblical (just read the book of Job!).

Bayer's book reminds us that "Luther's Reformation theology does not mean to justify the world as it is." Honest Christians are compelled to admit that "we cannot demonstrate the goodness and the love of God... The nexus of the world [is] no nexus at all, but foremost an embattled and lacerated world in which creation is 'rent and torn from top to bottom.' There is no agreement, no harmony in the world. It rings out like 'cracked bells.'" Such a world requires faith and lamentation. It requires that we strive with God, holding fast to existence and remaining in the flux, accepting both joy and suffering from his hand, and trusting his promises in Christ.

"God Against God" in Luther's Theology

2007-08-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

In an effort to get back to basics, I'm currently reading Paul Althaus's The Theology of Martin Luther. I would recommend this book for two reasons. First, Althaus was a Luther scholar of the first rank and he presents the various facets of Luther's theology in a clear and comprehensive manner - no easy task given the notoriously complex and unwieldy nature of Luther's thought. Secondly, he always supports his statements with extensive quotations from the Reformer's writings and sermons, both in the main text and in footnotes. Thus, the book serves as a sort of condensed version of the Weimar Edition, and is a handy reference for anyone (like me) who is always saying, "I know that Luther said such and such, but I'm not exactly sure how or where...".

Reading this book has certainly heightened my admiration for Luther's theology, but it has also reminded me of some of its problematic aspects. I found the chapter "Man Between God and Satan" particularly difficult, not because my modern mind has trouble believing that the devil exists, but because of what it implies for Luther's doctrine of God. Althaus stresses that Luther took the devil seriously in a way that exceeded the medieval tradition: "Luther's devil has, one might say, more hellish majesty than the medieval devil; he has become more serious, more powerful, and more terrible." This was borne out of his personal experience; Luther once remarked that "by the grace of God, I have learned to know a great deal about Satan." Althaus makes it clear that Luther conceived of the world as a battlefield between God and Satan, with humanity as the prize: "God and the devil are fighting for men, for humanity and for the lordship. Here there is no neutrality, no buffer state."

Thus "the devil stands in opposition to God." But this isn't the end of the story. Althaus continues:

"Although [Satan's] power and his claim are so great that he can be called the 'god of this world,' there is never any doubt that only the true God is God. Luther holds dualism within the boundaries set by God's omnipotence, which works all in all. This means that the devil must still serve God's will for men and for the world - in spite of the fact that his will and activity are directed against God. God keeps him in his service and uses him for his own work. He uses him primarily as the tool of his wrath. As Luther wrote, "God indeed uses the devil to afflict and kill us. But the devil cannot do this if God does not want sin to be punished in this way." What God's wrath does and what Satan does frequently appear to be one and the same. The devil is 'God's devil.' And yet at the same time he remains the devil, the enemy of God, who wants the opposite of what God wants."

It's passages like these that set my head spinning. Althaus himself admits that this aspect of Luther's thought is highly contradictory. Yet we dare not back away from the implications of God being God. "It is God himself who lets us die: 'Thou causest men to die.' In death man has to do with God. Under no circumstances may he attribute misfortune and death to some other demonic power. To do that would be to deny the unity of God."

But it is precisely the unity of God that seems to be compromised by this line of thought. Luther seems to require a dualism in the nature of God. This is evident is his distinction between the "alien" and "proper" work of God: "God uses Satan for his 'alien work' (opus alienum) but in so doing is always aiming at his proper work (opus proprium)... God uses misfortune, suffering of body and soul, and death in order to humble those who belong to him and to lead them from trust in something earthly to trust in him alone." Thus, God often acts in a manner contrary to his own nature. Indeed, although "wrath is the undeniable reality between God and [man], it is false to speak of God's wrath as though it were an essential part of God's true being." But this begs the question: how can God act in manner contrary to his own being? Is his wrath real, or is his love only perceived as wrath by a sinful humanity?

This is the "God against God" motif in Luther's thought. And like all aspect of Luther's theology, it is situated in a christological framework. It is Christ who reconciles the division within God: "Christ acts in the name and in the power of God in such a way that he not only deals with humanity and the powers to which it has succumbed but also with God himself. He acts also in relationship to God; he 'reconciles' God, or we may also say, he reconciles humanity with God (Luther uses the expression interchangeably). God in Christ deals also with himself, in himself, and in an inner trinitarian relationship." Luther makes this very clear in a dramatic passage from Bondage of the Will. Reflecting on Christ's weeping over the lost in Jerusalem (Matt 23:37: 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together and thou wouldst not'), Luther writes:

"Here, God Incarnate says: 'I would, and thou wouldst not.' God Incarnate, I repeat, was sent for this purpose, to will, say, do, suffer, and offer to all men, all that is necessary for salvation; albeit He offends many who, being abandoned or hardened by God's secret will of Majesty, do not receive Him thus willing, speaking, doing, and offering.... It belongs to the same God Incarnate to weep, lament, and groan over the perdition of the ungodly, though that will of Majesty purposely leaves and reprobates some to perish. Nor is it for us to ask why He does so, but to stand in awe of God Who can do, and wills to do, such things."

Here, Luther seems to be teaching that the will of God Incarnate is opposed to the will of God in his Majesty; or, said another way, that the revealed God and the hidden God are not necessarily the same thing. God the Son wants to save all, while God the Father condemns many. Such comments, if understood metaphysically (that is, as objective statements about the nature of God), would be highly unorthodox.* But it would be wrong to construe Luther this way. As I have discussed elsewhere, Luther is (usually) not interested in providing a comprehensive doctrine of God or a system that nicely resolves the thorny problems of free-will, evil, predestination, etc. Instead, he gives us a theology "from below", one that, through faith, is able to live with the paradoxes. Luther writes in BotW that "God in His own nature and majesty is to be left alone; in this regard, we have nothing to do with Him, nor does He wish us to deal with him. We have to do with him as clothed and displayed in his Word, by which He presents himself to us." Faith means "against God to force its way through to God and call upon God, ... to break through to God through his wrath, through his punishment, and through his disfavor." The God that is against God and humanity is ultimately the God "for us" in Christ. Only faith in Christ is able to perceive this.

* With regards to this matter, I recommend an old post by Chris Atwood at Three Hierarchies in which he defends Luther's position against a Calvinist critic.

The Lutheran Canon

2007-08-12T21:27:00.000-05:00

Last week, Edward T. Oakes wrote an interesting article for First Things about the nature and role of canons. He made the valid point that canons are indispensable in any field, despite efforts by postmodernists to dismiss the very idea of the canon as hegemonic and imperialist. He also mentioned his candidates for various canons - theological, philosophical, and literary - and remarked on their differing criterion for admittance (style is crucial for the literary canon, whereas orthodoxy is decisive for the theological). It's a fascinating subject, one that appeals to my need to classify and delimit, to formulate my "best of" list.

Of course, Oakes's piece got me thinking about the Lutheran canon. What theologians (other than Luther) and books (other than the Book of Concord) are central to Lutheran self-understanding? Who is on the Lutheran All-Star team? At first I thought it would be easy to answer such questions, but I soon realized that it was no easy task. Indeed, it became apparent that the composition of the Lutheran canon would be a contentious issue, one that would easily divide along denominational lines. We can all agree, of course, that Luther is the standard-bearer of our theology, but who are Luther's true successors? Questions like these have divided Lutherans from the very beginning.

After writing down a few names, I concluded that "canonical Lutherans" can essentially be divided into two lineages, with Luther as their common ancestor. Here's my preliminary list,* which includes Lutherans from every century except our current one (the verdict is still out on living theologians). Please feel free to suggest additions and/or subtractions:

Group 1: Melanchthon (1497-1560), Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), C.F.W. Walther (1811-1887), Werner Elert (1885-1954).

Group 2: Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705), Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Paul Tillich (1886-1965), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945).

The two groups can perhaps be labeled "insiders" and "outsiders", although some may call the latter group "confessional". Another distinction might be "pietist" (or "existential") versus "orthodox", although this is also imperfect. Regardless, members of Group 2 were typically devout Christians raised in Lutheran countries who often clashed with the established church of their day (Kierkegaard is the classic example). These thinkers were unmistakably Lutheran in their theological orientation, but they were in no sense trying to repristinate Luther's theology. They admired Luther but did not feel beholden to him. In contrast, those in Group 1 were determined to preserve the "pure doctrine" of the Reformation. They viewed their task as principally one of expounding upon what had already been perfectly revealed in Scripture and the confessions - style was less important than a clear and forceful exposition of the faith.

Readers of this blog should not be surprised to learn that I am most drawn to the "outsiders" wing of the Lutheran canon - Kierkegaard and Hamann are particular favorites of mine. It is also this group that has received the most attention from non-Lutherans, perhaps because they better capture the boldness and excitement of Luther's theology, if not always the exact content. But I really believe that the two groups need each other, since they represent the tension that is always present in Lutheran theology between radicalism and conservatism. As I've mentioned before, this tension can be traced back to Luther himself, who led a very conservative Reformation with one foot in the Catholic Church and one foot outside. But it's my belief that this incongruity has contributed to the incredible richness of Lutheran theology.

* I have deliberately left Lutheran church historians and biblical scholars off the list, although Bultmann and Harnack would probably make many people's list of most influential Lutherans. I also omitted philosophers that had been heavily influenced by Lutheran theology, such as Hegel and Nietzsche. Finally, I did not include musicians, although some would say that J.S. Bach is the greatest Lutheran to have ever graced our planet.

Tunnel of Love: An Appreciation

2007-07-23T14:45:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been in Vienna for the past 11 days attending a scientific conference. I could write about my trip, but since I generally find peoples' travel stories quite boring, it would be hypocritical of me to do so. Suffice it to say that Vienna is lovely town, albeit somewhat staid - almost like a fine museum.

Instead, I'll write about something completely different. Before heading off to Europe, I loaded Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love onto my mp3 player and I listened to it repeatedly during the trip. I've owned this album for a long time, but it had been awhile since I'd given it close attention. Simply put, I had forgotten how masterful this album is, and I feel compelled now to sing its praises. Released a few years after the mega-success of Born in the USA, ToL was greeted with coolness from critics and disappointment from fans. The songs were too inward, too stripped-down. Where were the rock anthems? But the album has aged well. If nothing else, ToL proves that Springsteen is not only a great singer and artist, but a great human being. No other album so clearly displays his compassion and sincerity, his depth of feeling, his desire to do good.

It's important to remember that the album was written during Springsteen's falling-out with his first wife. Yet we hear none of the angry rants so typical of break-up albums. Instead, Springsteen puts the blame squarely on himself. He thought he knew himself, he thought he knew what committed love was all about. But it has all turned into a hall of mirrors, where "the house is haunted and the ride gets rough" ("Tunnel of Love"). In "Brilliant Disguise" he sings:

Now look at me baby, struggling to do everything right
And then it all falls apart, when out go the lights
I'm just a lonely pilgrim, I walk this world in wealth
I want to know if it's you I don't trust,
'cause I damn sure don't trust myself...

Tonight our bed is cold, I'm lost in the darkness of our love
God have mercy on the man, who doubts what he's sure of

The last verse is simply heartbreaking, and the same theme is repeated in "One Step Up" (the highpoint of the album, in my opinion):

I'm sittin' here in this bar tonight, but all I'm thinkin' is
I'm the same old story same old act, One step up and two steps back

It's the same thing night on night, who's wrong baby who's right
Another fight and I slam the door on,
another battle in our dirty little war
When I look at myself I don't see the man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
I'm caught movin' one step up and two steps back

There's a girl across the bar, I get the message she's sendin'
Mmm she ain't lookin' to married, And me well honey I'm pretending
Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms, the music was never-ending
We danced as the evening sky faded to black
One step up and two steps back

Notice the abrupt transition in the last verse from the temptation of the "girl across the bar" to the longing for a fading love. This is real despair from a man who is not sure if he can find his way back to the man he wanted to be. Indeed, the pervasive emotion expressed by Springsteen in ToL is existential fear - fear of losing his marriage, fear of losing himself. His psyche is fractured and confused (see "Two Faces") and he prays for "the strength to walk like a man." Given all this, it's not surprising that the album is filled with religious overtones. In "Valentine's Day", for example, Springsteen has an experience of God's light that grants a rebirth from darkness to new life:

They say if you die in your dreams you really die in your bed
But honey last night I dreamed my eyes rolled straight back in my head
And God's light came shinin' on through
I woke up in the darkness scared and breathin' and born anew
It wasn't the cold river bottom I felt rushing over me
It wasn't the bitterness of a dream that didn't come true
It wasn't the wind in the grey fields I felt rushing through my arms
No no baby it was you
So hold me close honey say you're forever mine
And tell me you'll be my lonely valentine

In my humble opinion, ToL conveys the grief of a lost marriage in a way surpassed only by Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (which also contains plenty of Christian/religious imagery). Given that few albums treat love and marriage with such maturity and insight, I'm amazed that it remains somewhat overlooked in the Springsteen corpus.

Fourth of July

2007-07-04T00:16:00.000-05:00

In Garrison Keillor's book We Are Still Married, there is a short essay that has always been a special favorite of mine. It's entitled "Laying on Our Backs Looking Up at the Stars" and I try to read it every Fourth of July. Given our current situation, I think it's especially important to do so this year.

The story recounts a Fourth of July that Garrison spent with friends and family at his rented farmhouse in central Minnesota:

On the Fourth of July, 1971, we had twenty people come for a picnic in the yard, an Olympic egg toss and gunnysack race, a softball game with the side of the barn for a right-field fence, and that night we sat around the kitchen and made pizza and talked about the dismal future.

America was trapped in Vietnam, a tragedy, and how could it end if not in holocaust? We were pessimists; we needed fear to make us feel truly alive. We talked about death. We put on loud music and made lavish pizzas with fresh mushrooms and onions, zucchini, eggplant, garlic, green pepper, and drank beer and talked about the end of life on earth with a morbid piety that made a person sick, about racial hatred, pesticides, radiation, television, the stupidity of politicians, and whether Vietnam was the result of strategic mistakes or a reflection of evil in American culture. It was a conversation with concrete shoes.

No doubt similar conversations will be taking place all across America this Fourth of July. But Garrison did not indulge his "morbid piety". Instead, he snuck outside with his son and a few friends to lie in the grass and look at the stars:

The sight of the sky was so stunning it make us drunk. I felt as if I could put one foot forward and walk away from the wall of ground at my back and hike out toward Andromeda. I didn't feel particularly American. Out there in the Milky Way and the world without end Amen, America was a tiny speck of a country, a nickel tossed into the Grand Canyon, and American culture the amount of the Pacific Ocean you bring home in your swimsuit. The President wasn't the President out there, the Constitution was only a paper, and what the newspapers wrote about was sawdust and coffee grounds. The light I saw was from fires burning before America existed, when my ancestor John Crandall lived in the colony of Rhode Island. Looking out there, my son lying on my chest, I could imagine my grandchildren, and they were more real to me than Congress.

I imagined them strong and free, curious, sensual, indelibly cheerful and affectionate, open-handed - sympathetic to pain and misery and quick in charity, proud when insulted and modest if praised, fiercely loyal to friends, loving God and the beautiful world including our land, from the California coast to the North Dakota prairie to faraway Manhattan, loving music and our American language - when you look at the stars you don't think small. You don't hope your descendants will enjoy your mutual fund portfolio, you imagine them as giants of the earth.

Looking into the great beyond, Garrison gains perspective, and his attitude towards America passes from ambivalence to deep affection. Yes, in the grand scheme of things America does not matter much, and it certainly has its sins, but it's the only land that he can imagine for his grandchildren. For their sake, he will not abandon hope.

Perhaps in 1776 our ancestors, too, were rattled by current events and the unbeatable logic of despair and had to go out and lie in the weeks for a while and think: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Indoors, the news is second-hand, mostly bad, and even good people are drawn into a dreadful fascination with doom and demise; their faith in extinction gets stronger; they sit and tell stories that begin with The End. Outdoors, the news is usually miraculous. A fly flew into my mouth and went deep, forcing me to swallow, inducing a major life change for him, from fly to simple protein, and so shall we all be changed someday, but here under heaven our spirits are immense, we are so blessed. The stars in the sky, my friends in the grass, my son asleep on my chest, his hands clutching my shirt.

These days, it's tough to avoid the "unbeatable logic of despair". Iraq, Guantanamo, global warming, our broken politics and coarsening culture - the list is almost endless. But tonight my wife and I will sit in a field with a few thousand of our fellow Americans and watch the fireworks overhead. We will sing that corny Lee Greenwood song ("From the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee") and eat some greasy cheese curds. And we will count our blessings.

The Death of Adam

2007-06-02T12:33:00.000-05:00

Lee at Thinking Reed has an interesting post regarding presidential-candidate Sam Brownback's op-ed piece in the NY Times where he clarifies his position on evolution. As Lee points out, Brownback's opposition to Darwinism has more to do with safe-guarding the dignity of human beings than with defending the literal truth of the Bible, which mirrors my own concerns regarding Darwinist philosophy. Too often the evolution debate is portrayed as God vs. Darwin, when really the issue is Adam vs. Darwin (Adam being humanity as created in the imago Dei, possessing intrinsic worth and occupying a unique place in the cosmos). This point was driven home to me as I read Marilynne Robinson's* essay "Darwinism", which appears in her collection The Death of Adam: Essays in Modern Thought. As the title implies, Robinson is not happy with the state of modern thought, which she perceives as impoverished and dark, lacking any sense of the grandeur of humanity that fostered civilization through the ages. Indeed, "Darwinism" ends with this heartbreaking eulogy to the old Adam:

"There is no place left for the soul, or even the self... Our hypertrophic brain, that prodigal indulgence, that house of many mansions, with its stores, and competences, and all its deep terrors and very rich pleasures, which was so long believed to be the essence of our lives, and a claim on one another's sympathy and courtesy and attention, is going the way of every part of collective life that was addressed to it - religion, art, dignity, graciousness. Philosophy, ethics, politics, properly so called. It is a thing that bears reflecting upon, how much was destroyed, when modern thought declared the death of Adam."

Robinson makes it very clear that her target is not evolution as a scientific theory. Neither she nor I are anti-science, and neither of us has anything at stake in a literal reading of Genesis. As Robinson points out, "[Darwin's] theory, as science, is irrelevant to the question of the truth of religion. It is only as an inversion of Christian ethicalism that it truly engages religion. And in those terms it is appropriately the subject of challenge from any humane perspective, religious or otherwise." It is in the realm of ethics where Darwinism makes its most serious assault upon humanity, as its vision of nature is one where the weak are discarded and the only ethical imperative is to preserve our "selfish genes." Robinson sees it as no coincidence that Darwin's theory arouse at a time when the European aristocracy was tiring of "the irksome burden of extending charity to [the poor] - a burden laid on the back of Europe by Christianity." Robinson provides a great deal of evidence that a form of Social Darwinism was already widespread in 19th-century Europe even before Darwin's advent. Malthus, after all, had paved the way by demonstrating "the harmful consequences of intervening between the poor and their death by starvation." Thus, "Darwin's work was rightly seized by antireligionists who had other fish to fry than the mere demystification of cosmology. I am speaking, as I know it is rude to do, of the Social Darwinists, the eugenicists, the Imperialists, the Scientific Socialists... and, yes, of the Nazis."

Of course, reputable Darwinists have long since disavowed the ugly ways in which Darwin's theory has been employed in the past, but Robinson wonders if they're being intellectually consistent. Daniel Dennett, for example, has argued that a distinction must be drawn between Darwinism as applied to nature and its implications for politics, economics, social programs, etc. But "if, as Darwin argues, the human and nonhuman worlds are continuous and of a kind, then Dennett implies a distinction that is in fact meaningless." That is, if culling is beneficial for animals in the wild, or for a herd of cattle, then it must be beneficial for the human race. There is no way to escape this implication without invoking a radical discontinuity been humans and other species, which is the one thing that Darwinists will never do. Moreover, Darwinists at all times have never been shy about extending their theory to humans (Darwin himself did it frequently), and "Darwinism is still offered routinely as a source of objective scientific insight on questions like the nature of human motivation and the possibility of altruism." It is only when Darwinism is taken to its logical conclusion (that is, eugenics) that its adherents claim that it's not meant to be applied to humans.

Robinson is aware that many proponents of Darwinism have tried to soften its hard edges by showing how altruism and social behavior could have arisen by natural selection. But she is very skeptical of this band-aid, since selfishness and survival remain the supreme virtues. Here, Robinson quotes an article by Robert Wright published in Time magazine: "Wright says, 'Such impulses as compassion, empathy, generosity, gratitude and remorse are genetically based. Strange as it may sound, these impulses, with their checks on raw selfishness, helped our ancestors survive and pass their genes to future generations.'" To which Robinson mockingly replies:

"To whom on earth would this sound strange except to other Darwinists? Most humans beings live collaboratively and have done so for millennia. But Darwinists insist that 'selfishness' is uniquely the trait rewarded by genetic survival. So while Wright does concede a biological basis to the traits we call humane and civilized, he puts them in a different category from the more primary traits (in his view) of selfishness and competition... This kind of thinking makes all experience that contradicts its assumptions into the product of illusion and self-deception. A splendid way to win every argument. The idea of illusion is very important to Darwinian thinking... It is often used to reinterpret behavior to make it consistent with the assumptions of the observer."

As long as selfishness is considered the most fundamental trait of life, all of our human virtues will only be interpreted as masked aggression. Such a position is an "expression of the belief - for which no proof is imaginable - that human goodness is not natural, and therefore is neither beneficial, nor, if the truth were known, even truly good." Robinson wonders how we got to this point, where our scientists "to this day watch for murder in baboon colonies" and hope to find it!

"For the old Adam, that near-angel whose name means Earth, Darwinists have substituted a creature who shares essential attributes with whatever beast has been recently observed behaving shabbily in the state of nature. Genesis tries to describe human exceptionalism, and Darwinism tries to discount it. Since Malthus, to go back no further, the impulse has been vigorously present to desacralize humankind by making it appropriately the prey of unmitigated struggle. This desacralization - fully as absolute with respect to predator as to prey - has required the disengagement of conscience, among other things. It has required the grand-scale disparagement of the traits that distinguish us from the animals - and the Darwinists take the darkest possible view of the animals."

Even Adam in his fallen state is infinitely grander that the vision of our species offered up by Darwin, Dennett, Dawkins, and Gould. The Darwinian human represents the death of Adam, and this is what Robinson makes so clear. Unfortunately, this post cannot do justice to the scope and power of her essay, and I encourage anyone interested to read it themselves. There are few works with which I agree on such a visceral level.

* Most of you are probably familiar with Robinson from her award-winning novels, Gilead and Housekeeping.

Do Lutherans Have Bad Karma?

2007-06-01T07:40:00.000-05:00

Thursday's Star-Tribune carried a review of Broders' Pasta Bar, a restaurant in south Minneapolis that my wife and I have enjoyed on several occasions. The review is generally positive, with the critic (Rick Nelson) praising the owners for "the giving communal dining a shot... For taking pasta seriously. And for accomplishing the near-impossible and creating a casual neighborhood restaurant that genuinely merits the cross-town drive." But while I agree with his assessment of Broders', one paragraph in Nelson's review struck me as strange:

"Watching all the animated conversation bubbling around my perch at the bar - where, trust me, each seat is as premium a piece of real estate as a potential Lake of the Isles teardown - one thought raced through my cortex: Can all this conviviality really exist in buttoned-up Minneapolis? OK, closer observation revealed that the social interaction was running true to form, with conversation obviously reserved to parties with a prior connection. God forbid a Minnesotan -- present company included -- would actually spark up a spontaneous chat with the stranger to their right. Maybe it's karmic: After all, the restaurant lives in the shadow of the city's Protestant epicenter, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church." [For those of you who don't know, Mount Olivet is a (very) large Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis, with two campuses, nine pastors, and about 13,600 members.]

What is Nelson trying to say here? Is he implying that Lutherans (or Protestants in general) are so dull and pleasure-hating that simply locating a restaurant near one of their churches poisons the atmosphere? It appears that Nelson is blaming Lutheranism for what he perceives as the "buttoned-up" nature of Minneapolis residents. And why the reference to karma? Karma is not a Christian concept, but perhaps it's well known in certain circles that Lutherans have the bad variety of karma, and therefore those looking for conviviality had better avoid even the ominous "shadow" of a Lutheran church.

Although I may be wrong, I suspect that Nelson's comments can be attributed (at least indirectly) to the massive influence of Garrison Keillor, who has convinced much of the nation that Lutherans are dark, bland, and guilt-ridden, incapable of enjoying the good things of life. Of course, there is much truth, and a great deal of humor, in Keillor's depiction of Midwestern Lutherans. But it is obviously a caricature, ideal for getting easy laughs from any audience. So it's not surprising to see others in media pick-up on this theme, since the term "Lutheran" has now become short-hand for a whole set of cultural and psychological attributes. Thus, a restaurant critic can contrast "conviviality" with "Lutheran church" and assume that everyone will get his meaning immediately.

The Brewers and the Suffering Servant

2007-05-31T20:33:00.001-05:00

Well, it has been a month since my last post. I'm not sure why, but I haven't felt like saying much lately. There are times when I want to share all of my thoughts with the world, and other times when I just want to live inside my own head. This past month has fallen under the latter category. Regardless, I'm going to try to post more often. If only I could master the art of the short post instead of always writing essays, then it wouldn't be so darn hard to muster the energy.

Along with all the usual stuff, I've spent a good deal of the past month following baseball - listening to it on the radio, reading about it in the paper, and going to games.* Unlike football, which comes around only once a week, baseball is a daily companion. It's a steady presence, without the hype, and that's one of the reasons why I love it so much. Also, the baseball season is in full blossom right now. Gone are the early days of spring, when every team is equal; now is the time for differentiation. My team, the Milwaukee Brewers, started the season hot (at one point, their record was an unbelievable 24-10), but they have cooled-off considerably, losing 14 of their last 19 games. Thankfully, they are playing in the weak NL central, where 85 wins might be enough to take the division. But given that the BrewCrew hasn't finished above .500 since 1992 and hasn't been to the playoffs since 1982, we Brewers fans are trying to keep our expectations low.

On a related note, I highly recommend Kim Fabricius's recent post at Faith and Theology "Ten Reasons why Baseball is God's game." However, I must quibble with his claim (in #8) that baseball's "Suffering Servant" is the Chicago Cubs. While the Cubs certainly have a long history of losing, they play in gorgeous Wrigley field and have a large, nation-wide fan base (thanks in part to season-long coverage on WGN). On the contrary, the pathetic Brewers - who are just as adept at losing as the Cubs - play in almost total obscurity, followed by Wisconsinites only until the beginning of Packer season, after which they are ignored by everyone. Like the suffering servant, the Brewers have "no beauty or majesty to attract us to [them], nothing in [their] appearance that we should desire [them]." They are a team "despised and rejected by men", full of "sorrows", and "familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces [they are] despised, and we esteemed [them] not." Clearly, these words are more applicable to the Brewers than the Cubs.

* Unfortunately, now that I live in Minnesota I'm forced to attend games at the sterile, soul-sucking bubble called the Metrodome, perhaps the worst stadium in all of major league baseball (only Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay can rival its bleakness). I miss Miller Park - hell, I even miss the old County Stadium. And I certainly miss tailgating and those crazy racing sausages!

Neurobiologists "Find" Religion (and then lose it)

2007-04-29T13:22:00.000-05:00

When I saw the stupid headline - "This Is Your Brain on God" - at Slate.com, I thought here we go again. Another ridiculous article purporting to "explain" religion as the by-product of Darwinian evolution or neurobiology. We've been here before (both Slate and the NYTimes seem to have soft-spots for such articles - just recall "Darwin's God"**). But George Johnson's article on the emerging field of "neurotheology" is a refreshing rarity: an article in the popular press that actually expresses skepticism about the ability of science (in this case, neurobiology) to explain every facet of human existence. Thank heavens!!

Johnson makes it clear that the findings of neurotheology will never satisfy either believers or atheists - in the end, the results will always conform to one's metaphysical presuppositions:

In the neurological search for the spiritual, there is no shortage of data. But pile it as high as you like, and you're left staring across the same divide. Depending on your predisposition, you can interpret all these experiments in two different ways. The believers take them as scientific evidence for the reality of their visions, while the atheists claim more proof that God is all in your head.

Johnson isn't afraid to say that many of the neurotheological findings - which are often hyped by the popular scientific media - are actually rather banal and "reductive". This isn't surprising, since much of modern neurobiology simply involves hooking patients up to brain-scanning devices and then observing which parts of their brains "light up" when they do something unusual or interesting (like play ping-pong, pray, look at naked women, etc.). As Johnson remarks, such "high-tech imagery has a way of stating the obvious." For instance, a study at UPenn "found that praying Franciscan nuns and meditating Buddhist monks generate similar brain scans: The frontal lobe, associated with focus and concentration, lights up. At the same time, the parietal lobe, which integrates sensory information, goes dim... As you fix your thoughts on the otherworldly, you lose contact with your immediate surroundings." Surprise, surprise!!

A major limitation of neurotheology, which Johnson doesn't really address, is that it's forced to study religious behaviors (like deep praying, mediation, or ecstatic visions) since it can't really probe religious thought or belief as such. But such behaviors are merely one aspect of the religious life, and are in no way determinative of religious practice as a whole. I, for one, have never experienced an ecstatic vision, and while I do pray, I doubt that it moves my brain into a dramatically altered mental state. For me, praying is not that different than ordinary thinking. So why do I still believe? The emphasis on religious ecstasy also ignores the fact that such experiences have historically been regarded with suspicion by religious authorities themselves. Even in biblical times, it was widely understood that not every vision or prophecy was legitimate; such experiences had to be verified with other criteria. Thus, the basis for religious faith does not lie in such altered mental states, although these can complement previously held beliefs.

So it matters not one bit that "Michael Persinger of Laurentian University can induce [mystical experiences] by scrambling the brain with magnetic fields." Humans have known since prehistoric times that various substances and foods can cause visions. So who cares that they can also be caused by magnetic fields? Regardless, Persinger's device serves as the occasion for my favorite paragraph in the article:

After donning [Persinger's] helmet wired with electromagnets, some subjects reported experiences they described as mystical, or at least misty. When Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, put on the hood, it only made him a little dizzy. Persinger was quick to note that Dawkins had scored way below average on a psychological questionnaire measuring temporal lobe sensitivity—hints of a neurobiological correlate for atheism.

Johnson's last line here is brilliant. After all, if theism is simply a product of neurochemistry, then so is atheism - something that the "explainers of religion" all too often forget. Perhaps, in the end, the neurotheologians will show that it is atheism, not theism, which is caused by a mental defect (this would be the logical conclusion, of course, since the vast majority of the world's current and past inhabitants have been theists). If so, will Slate.com then treat us to articles that attempt to explain the "atheism meme" and the "agnostic delusion"?

** Remember that silly "Darwin's God" article? Hopefully not. But if you're still interested, and still annoyed, the blog Adventus has a brilliant response.

Kierkegaard on the Imago Dei

2007-04-29T09:32:00.000-05:00

The perfect passage for a beautiful Sunday in Spring:

"How glorious it is to be a Human Being!... Now how should we speak about this glory? We could go on speaking for a long time without ever finishing, but this is not the place for that. Let us therefore speak briefly instead and concentrate everything on that one single verse that Scripture itself uses with authority: God created the human being in his image, but again for the sake of brevity let us understand this verse with regard to only one thing.

God created the human being in his image. Must it not be glorious to be clothed in this way! In praise of the lily, the Gospel declares that it surpasses Solomon in glory. Must it not be infinitely more glorious to resemble God! The lily does not resemble God - no, it does not do that. It bears a little mark by which it reminds one of God; it has a witness, since God has not let himself be without witness in anything created, although the lily does not resemble him...

To be spirit, that is the human being's invisible glory. Thus when the worried human out in the field stands surrounded by all these witnesses, when every single flower says to him, "Remember God!" he replies, "I will indeed do that, my children - I will worship him, and you poor little ones cannot do that." Consequently the erect, upright one is a worshiper. The upright gait of the human is the sign of distinction, but to be able to prostrate oneself in adoration and worship is even more glorious; and all nature is like the great staff of servants who remind the human, the ruler, about worshiping God. This is what is expected, not that the human being is to come and assume the command, which is also glorious and assigned to him, but that worshiping he shall praise the Creator, something nature cannot do, since it can only remind the human being about doing that. It is glorious to be clothed as the lily, even more glorious to be the erect and upright ruler, but most glorious to be nothing by worshiping!

To worship is not to rule, and yet worship is what makes the human being resemble God, and to be able truly to worship is the excellence of the invisible glory above all creation. The pagan was not aware of God and therefore sought likeness in ruling. But the resemblance is not like that - no, then instead it is taken in vain... The human being and God do not resemble each other directly but inversely; only when God has infinitely become the eternal and omnipotent object of worship and the human being always a worshiper, only then do they resemble each other... The ability to worship is no visible glory, it cannot be seen, and yet nature's visible glory sighs; it pleads with the ruler, it incessantly reminds the human that whatever he does he absolutely must not forget - to worship. Oh, how glorious to be a human being!"

- From Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, "What we learn from the lilies in the field and from the birds of the air", pg. 192-193.

David Hart: Arrogant or Brilliant?

2007-04-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

Due to frequent travel and general busyness, I've haven't had much time to post lately. It's strange, but I often feel guilty when I go for long periods of time without posting, as if I had neglected to call my mom or ignored a letter from a close friend. I wonder if any other bloggers feel the same way....

Regardless, my travels have given me the chance to really dig into David Hart's much-discussed The Beauty of the Infinite. This book has attracted considerable praise from bloggers and real theologians alike, as well as some criticisms. I, for one, am thoroughly impressed. Hart's prose is fantastic, and his theological insights have given me a new appreciation of the importance of Christian aesthetics (something that my reading of Kierkegaard had taught me to distrust). The book has also clarified my understanding of the Trinity, for which I am grateful.

That said, I agree with Patrik that Hart's harsh treatment of modern theologians and philosophers is somewhat at odds with his frequent assertion that the Christian proclamation is one of "peace" (although I wouldn't claim, like Patrik, that his rhetoric is the equivalent of American foreign policy!). There's little doubt that Beauty of the Infinite would have been better without Hart's snarky dismissals of almost every major Protestant theologian from Luther and Calvin up to Tillich and Jüngel. Indeed, it's hard to disagree with Halden's comment that Hart has an irrational prejudice against anything German and Protestant (he seems to subscribe to the popular notion that there has been a "German captivity of theology").

It's worth noting, though, that there are two German Lutherans that Hart cannot praise highly enough: J.S. Bach and Johann Hamann. He refers to Bach as "the greatest of Christian theologians", saying that "Bach's is the ultimate Christian music; it reflects as no other human artifact ever has or could the Christian vision of creation" (282-3). By comparison, Hart's adoration of Hamann is more restrained, but not by much. He writes that "for [Hamann], to a degree perhaps unparalleled in Christian thought, the true knowledge of God in creation - the true analogy - lay in a childlike rapture before the concrete and poetic creativity of God" (254) Elsewhere, Hart employs all of his rhetorical gifts to hail Hamann as "most amusing philosopher" of all time, possessing "a truly Christian mirthfulness".

The connection between Hart and Hamann in interesting for me, since I have been reading them somewhat in tandem. While I consider Hamann to be superior both aesthetically and theologically, there is undoubtedly a close affinity between the two authors. In fact, it has proven beneficial to read Hart in light of Hamann, since the latter provides a corrective to the excesses and omissions of the former (call it a "Lutheran corrective"). It seems to me that Hamann might serve as useful mediator between Hart and the Protestant theologians he so often criticizes. After all, given that both Hamann and Bach understood themselves as no more than orthodox Lutherans, Hart's praise of these two men may signify a closer affinity to Lutheran theology than he realizes. If nothing else, it gives me hope that Hart's theological insights can be separated from his brash rhetoric and employed for truly evangelical purposes.

Pope Benedict and the European Intelligentsia

2007-03-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

The German magazine Der Spiegel has an interesting special issue devoted to the "Power of Faith" - an acknowledgment that religion remains a major force in the world, if not in Western Europe. Particularly interesting is the article "Sexy for the Intellectuals", which examines the strange attraction between Pope Benedict XVI and Europe's secular intellectuals. According to the article, "The secular intelligentsia's curiosity is piqued; it is flirting with the una sancta, the 'One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.'" Benedict has struck a chord because he does not use piety to shield religion from scrutiny, but instead understands that faith and reason must walk together:

Pope John Paul was into images; Benedict is a man of words. He sympathizes with the nonbelievers. He does not say, as his predecessor did: Kneel down and say the rosary. He says: Enlightenment must be enlightened. He is an intellectual who does not replace reason with mysticism, but instead deploys it in the service of God...

Ratzinger has mulled all his life over these unequal siblings, faith and reason, which explains the leniency and interest with which German cultural critics have received this pope. He is one of us. He refuses to be defined in terms of the laical trinity, i.e. the triple threat of condoms, women priests and abortion...

Man encounters the self at the level of thought. That is why believers can communicate with non-believers. That is why the Frankfurt philosopher Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger harmonized so perfectly when they discussed the "Dialectics of Secularization" at the Catholic Academy in Munich. If the Word is a gift from God, then the theorist who champions communicative action can but nod agreement.

As the article points out, Benedict's academic style has allowed him to make some of the Church's controversial teachings intellectually respectable:

Benedict XVI knows how to maintain a level of abstraction so far removed from earthly toils that it has all the appearances of compassion. Deus caritas est, Benedict's first encyclical in January 2006, was a meditation on love - and not the widely anticipated reactionary harangue against homosexual unions, unmarried cohabitation, inchastity and other works of the Devil.

Mum was the word on all of these issues. The encyclical was a eulogy, extolling love, eroticism in marriage, and social work. He simply switched the level of abstraction and made himself more unassailable. This pope doesn't talk about condoms; he talks about exploiting people (even if it's only for a one-night stand). This pope gets to the bottom of things. This pope is a radical - another trait that makes him sexy to the intellectuals.

The intellectuals also like style, his undramatic demeanor during public appearances. "He prays with a fixed stare and barely moves his lips, like an altar boy whose thoughts are somewhere else entirely." He's a nerd, and intellectuals love their fellow nerds:

The library is the Holiest of Holies. The professor pope pens page after page: letters, sermons, speeches, epistles, books. Several hundred theological works already make him the most published pontiff in church history. He seizes every opportunity to put systematic theology into practice and into print. Benedict XVI is even capable of working a reference to fundamental theology into a letter of accreditation to the Andorran ambassador.

Importantly, the article ends on a hopeful note for those us who long to see a Christian revival in the heart of Christendom:

In October 2006, a star-studded colloquium at the University of Münster discussed "The Return of the Religions" - and identified an "ego weariness" in Germany, a post-modernist upward valuation of the concept of truth: "Man cannot survive on doubt, irony and deconstruction alone." What is left for us to believe in, if everything is open to discussion? And who is going to take us seriously? This is the fundamental question addressed in Germany by numerous bestsellers and talk-show debates on "values," "the new Kulturkampf," "the parenting challenge" and so on.

In the post-modern age, everything was somehow OK; values were relative, and we believed that was a good thing. By September 2001 at the latest, this belief was called into question. There was no more room for irony.

How can truth exist in a pluralist society? Joseph Ratzinger has pondered this question all his life. And it has never been more relevant than today.

A today that is perhaps not the hour for prayer, not the age for ritual, but rather a time for introspection, for self-examination, for thought. And in that context, the man in the Papal Palace is right for his role. Benedict XVI is not a comfortable pontiff, because he can communicate eye-to-eye with the secular world. He already sees eye-to-eye with the spiritual one.

(Final Note: While I found the article very well written, one sentence struck me as odd: "Something has happened: The country of Luther, Marx and Nietzsche has lost faith in godlessness." Why is Luther included here alongside Marx and Nietzsche? Is he "godless" simply because he disagreed with the Catholic Church of his day? Perhaps this sentence reflects the habit - common in Germany - of viewing Luther not as a religious figure but as a liberator and revolutionary. Regardless, Luther should not be blamed for the current state of godlessness in Germany).

More about Marburg

2007-03-24T15:24:00.000-05:00

(Note: The first part of this post can be found here). At Marburg, Zwingli felt he had a sure-fire argument against Luther’s belief in the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar: If Christ’s body, after his ascension, sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, then it cannot possibly be found on the altars of the church. It is ironic that Zwingli, who insisted upon a figurative understanding of the words “This is my body”, interpreted the phrase “the right hand of the Father” in such a literal sense. Modern Christians, of course, are more likely to understand heaven in a metaphysical sense, and thus Zwingli’s objection probably carries much less force today. But since both sides of the Marburg debate, Lutheran and Reformed, thought of heaven as a physical place where Christ’s human body resides, this was not a matter that the Lutherans could take lightly. In response, they provided an explanation of how Christ can be both in heaven and on earth – a doctrine known as “ubiquity” – that also yields compelling insights into the Incarnation and Creation.

The doctrine of ubiquity is based on a key element of Lutheran christology: the communicatio idiomatum, or exchange of attributes. This teaches that the human nature of Christ participates in God’s divine attributes (his omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.) and vice versa. Thus, Lutherans can speak of God suffering, even dying, because the divine Son of God participates in the human suffering of Jesus Christ. Moreover, because the humanity of Christ shares in God’s omnipresence, Luther could teach that “Christ can be present in heaven and on earth and in fact everywhere, not only in his divine nature but also in his perpetually human body” (Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology). This explains how Christ’s true body and blood can be present on the altars of the world in the sacrament.

To the Reformed, the doctrine of ubiquity has always seemed like blatant pantheism. After all, if Christ’s body is everywhere, then it’s in every piece of bread and the sacrament is meaningless. To this charge, Luther replied “that there is a difference whether Christ’s body is there or whether it is there for you; whether it is there or whether you can find it. You can find it only where Christ Himself has promised that He would be found, and that is in the sacrament” (Sasse, This is My Body).

It goes without saying that Lutheran and Reformed positions are based on two dramatically different understanding of the relationship between God and Nature. The Reformed, with their assumption that the “finite cannot carry the infinite”, conceive of God and Nature as mutually-incompatible opposites. But the Lutherans doctrine of ubiquity makes it clear that all of Creation participates in the Incarnation, since it was only through Christ that “all things were made.” Every rock, tree, and bird shares, not just in “being” or “being-itself” (to quote Tillich), but in the triune life of God. Thus, the sacrament (and the incarnation itself) should not be viewed a miraculous deviation from the natural order, but instead as the culmination and fulfillment of God’s eternal dealings with the world.

Doubt, Ignorance, and Faith

2007-03-18T16:55:00.000-05:00

"My friend Kant needs the observations and calculations of the latest astronomers to give himself an idea of the abyss of human ignorance. The proof for this ought not to be fetched from such a distance; it lies far nearer to us." -- Johann Hamann, Letter of 4 May 1788

The concept of doubt figures prominently in the rhetoric of scientific atheists like Dennett and Dawkins, who frequently assert that scientists are comfortable with doubt, even welcoming of it, whereas religious people seek to banish all doubt through crass fideism. In this simplistic story, scientists are portrayed as humble and open-minded seekers of truth, constantly doubting their conclusions and open to any piece of contradictory evidence, while the faithful cling to their superstitious dogmas. Needless to say, philosophers of science have long since discredited this naive picture by pointing out that scientists are not so open-minded, even when they're practicing science (not to mention when they're pontificating about philosophical or theological matters). Thomas Kuhn, for instance, showed that scientists under normal circumstances strive to make their data conform to agreed-upon paradigms. They cling to these paradigms quite tenaciously, even when evidence mounts against them, and the scientific community will only switch paradigms as a last resort. The notion of a completely neutral and objective perspective from which to discern all truth - so crucial to the Enlightenment project - has been shown to be something of a myth, even in the so-called "hard sciences".

Regardless, my point here is not to dispute the importance of doubt in the scientific method, but to probe the nature of this doubt in more detail. After all, religious faith has its own form of doubt. So what is the difference between these two types of doubt? Scientific atheists would claim that they are essentially the same, as least at the beginning; that is, both doubts concern the truth of specific propositions. The only difference, then, is that scientists go on to examine the validity of these "doubtful" propositions with experimental methods, while believers simply accept them on blind faith. Viewed this way, doubt can only be the enemy of faith. But Christian theology has often regarded doubt in a positive light, seeing it as precursor or element of faith itself. So clearly the atheist notion of doubt is oversimplified, but in what way?

Johann Hamann offers an answer to this question in his Socratic Memorabilia of 1759. This little essay was written after two of Hamann's friends, including a young Immanuel Kant, staged an intervention to bring him back to Enlightenment orthodoxy (Hamann had experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity a few years earlier). In his response, Hamann invokes the character of Socrates, who was highly regarded by the rationalists of his day. The central issue in the Socratic Memorabilia is the famed ignorance of Socrates, that is, the philosopher's confession that "I know that I know nothing." In this Socratic ignorance, the rationalists thought they detected an early form of scientific doubt - a willingness to challenge all the received truths of tradition and religion. This is the ignorance that clears the way for Reason. But for Hamann, such ignorance is merely that of sophists and skeptics, not Socratic ignorance at all:

"The ignorance of Socrates was a feeling. But there is a greater difference between a feeling and a proposition, then between a living animal and its anatomical skeleton. The old and new skeptics betray themselves by their voice and ears, no matter how they may wrap themselves in the lion-skin of Socratic ignorance. If they know nothing, does the world need a learned demonstration of it? Their deception and hypocrisy are ridiculous and shameless. Anyone who needs so much sagacity and eloquence to convince himself of his own ignorance must harbor in his heart a strong repugnance for the truth of ignorance."

Here, Hamann is pointing out that the rationalist form of ignorance is merely a preliminary stage, something to be overcome by the scientific method. For a scientist to doubt something he must first be shown why he should doubt it; he demands hard proof of his ignorance (hence Kant's interest in the astronomical findings). But the standard for evaluating this doubt is that of human reason itself, which is never doubted in the least. Thus, the ignorance of the scientist is only skin-deep, masking a much deeper certainty. In contrast, the ignorance of Socrates was a feeling, a sensibility, an existential state that went to the core of his self-knowledge. He was not skeptical - doubting this or that - he was ignorant from beginning to end. Hamann draws a parallel between this profound Socratic ignorance and Pauline theology:

"For the testimony which Socrates gave of his ignorance, therefore, I know no more honorable seal and at the same time no better key than the oracle of the great teacher of the Gentiles: 'If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him' (1 Cor. 8) - just as Socrates was known by Apollo to be a wise man. But how the grain of all our natural wisdom must decay, must perish in ignorance, and how the life and being of a higher knowledge must spring newly created from this death, from this nothing - as far as this the nose of a Sophist does not reach."

Socratic doubt, as understood by Hamann, is the beginning of faith; it's a form of repentance and confession before the Almighty. And it's far more radical than any rationalist conception of doubt, which confines itself only to penultimate matters and never creeps into the depths of the soul. The scientist (as scientist) may be skeptical, he may be curious, but he can never really doubt. That is reserved for those who know only as they are known, in faith.

On Explaining Religion

2007-03-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

D.W. Congdon has an excellent post at The Fire and the Rose concerning the recent New York Times feature, Darwin's God, which discussed scientific explanations for the origin of religion. According to the article, evolutionary biologists are currently divided on whether religion is "an evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident." Of course, the possibility that religion is a legitimate response to a preexistent reality - namely, God - is not seriously considered by Times Science section (nothing new here...).

These are matters that I've dealt with before (see here and here), but D.W. phrases the question in a very concise manner: "Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away?" Clearly the scientists behind this kind of research think so. They assume that if religion can be shown to arise from faulty brain chemistry or evolutionary selection, then it will lose it's strange grip on humanity. Religion will be brought into the nexus of determinative causality, and thus will have to surrender it claims to transcendence. As D.W. points out, this strategy of "explain and dismiss" has already been applied to the Bible and the church: "it is rather common nowadays to hear people speak of the political context in which, say, the Bible came into being or the institution of the Church arose—as if explaining the political climate is the same as explaining away the Bible and the church."

But explaining is not the same as understanding. Moreover, it seems to me that the "explain and dismiss" strategy is only effective if one shares the assumption - common among scientists - that historical and contingent events can never serve as the basis for absolute truth (Lessing's ditch, once again). Based on this assumpton, if the Bible (or religion itself) can be shown to have originated through a historical process, involving thousands of contingent events, then we cannot consider it a reliable source of truth. Only the "eternal truths of reason" are really true. Thus, scientists naturally think that theological truths about God, if they were to exist, would take the form of generalized theorems or equations - that is, of pure abstraction. The idea that God could reveal himself in concrete historical events and in human language is simply absurd to them, since the world and its history are considered mere objects in a closed system, incapable of carrying divine truth (interestingly, this is modern science's equivalent of the Calvinist motto: finitum non capax infiniti). By creating an artificial conflict between God's transcendence and his immanent actions, science only considers two theist positions legitimate: pantheism or deism.

But Christianity, which holds the Incarnation as its central truth, has never regarded God's immanence and transcendence as being incompatible, and thus asserts that God speaks to his creatures through his creation. David Bentley Hart makes this point in his devastating review of another attempt to explain religion in purely natural terms - Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell. Hart writes:

Of course religion is a natural phenomenon. Who would be so foolish as to deny that? Religion is ubiquitous in human culture and obviously constitutes an essential element in the evolution of society, and obviously has itself evolved. It is as natural to humanity as language or song or mating rituals. Dennett may imagine that such a suggestion is provocative and novel, and he may believe that there are legions of sincere souls out there desperately committed to the notion that religion itself is some sort of miraculous exception to the rule of nature, but, in either case, he is deceived.

For one thing, it does not logically follow that, simply because religion as such is a natural phenomenon, it cannot become the vehicle of divine truth, or that it is not in some sense oriented toward a transcendent reality. To imagine that it does so follow is to fall prey to a version of the genetic fallacy, the belief that one need only determine the causal sequence by which something comes into being in order to understand its nature, meaning, content, uses, or value....

Certainly the Christian should be undismayed by the notion that religion is natural "all the way down." Indeed, it should not matter whether religion is the result of evolutionary imperatives, or of an inclination toward belief inscribed in our genes and in the structure of our brains, or even (more fantastically) of memes that have impressed themselves on our minds and cultures and languages. All things are natural. But nature itself is created toward an end-its consummation in God-and is informed by a more eminent causality-the creative will of God-and is sustained in existence by its participation in the being that flows from God, who is the infinite wellspring of all actuality. And religion, as a part of nature, possesses an innate entelechy and is oriented like everything else toward the union of God and his creatures. Nor should the Christian expect to find any lacunae in the fabric of nature, needing to be repaired by the periodic interventions of a cosmic maintenance technician. God’s transcendence is absolute: He is cause of all things by giving existence to the whole, but nowhere need he act as a rival to any of the contingent, finite, secondary causes by which the universe lives, moves, and has its being in him.

In other words, the attempt to discredit religion by describing it as "only" a natural phenomenon rests on a dualism that is totally alien to Christianity. We need not choose between natural and revealed religion, as the Word of God is always clothed in the earthen vessels of flesh and blood, bread and wine, history and language. Truth is not to be found in a higher plane of purity and abstraction, divorced from nature and history. Instead, "truth comes before us coarse, as do the signs of nature - without actually being this way. Lies, on the contrary, are threshed and polished for the eye, as works of art." (Hamann)

The Lost Tomb and the St. Olaf Professor

2007-03-04T12:10:00.000-06:00

The ridiculous coverage of the James Cameron's The Lost Tomb of Jesus documentary continues unabated. While some major news organizations (notably the Washington Post and Time) have expressed skepticism about the documentary's "findings", others in the mainstream media have clearly taken the bait. It appears that even the flimsiest of evidence gets a pass from reporters when the target is Christian doctrine.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, to their credit, turned to a local scholar to evaluate the case made by the Lost Tomb documentary. Unfortunately, they managed to find one of the few scholars who is even remotely supportive of Cameron's little foray into archaeological science. James Hanson, a professor of New Testament studies at St. Olaf College (a small Lutheran school in Northfield, MN), is genuninely intrigued by the Discovery Channel program, saying that it's worth a "cautious look." "You have to be a little skeptical", says Hanson, "But it's hard to completely ignore what these guys are saying." Indeed, even though most of his academic colleagues have derided the Lost Tomb as a crass publicity stunt with little merit, Hanson seems impressed by the quality of scholarship:

"I watched the news conference, and I was impressed by the caution with which their experts, some of whom are serious scholars I'm familiar with, spoke. These guys are making the most out of some intriguing scraps of evidence. But they have some strikings things here, and it's worth a look."

Strangely enough, Hanson offers this positive assessment despite the fact that he disputes many of the Lost Tomb claims: he calls the Mary Magdalene connection "a stretch", points out that previous tombs in the ossuary were found to be fraudulent, and has a hard time imagining "the circumstances in which Jesus' family would have had this kind of tomb." He's also disappointed that the results were not peer reviewed. Regardless, he says that "I don't see how we can ignore it... It's going to be fascinating one way or another."

What are we supposed to make of Hanson's contradictory comments? Clearly he's skeptical of most of the documentary's major claims, and he's unnerved by James Cameron's end-run around the scientific establishment, but he has only nice things to say about the people involved. Why didn't he give the Lost Tomb the smack-down it deserves? My theory, based on my interactions with several St. Olaf graduates, is that Hanson is simply too nice to say anything mean. Like most people affiliated with St. Olaf, he has an almost neurotic fear of offending others. Thus, he's willing to say "gee whiz, it sure will be interesting" about this shoddy piece of research, even though it threatens the integrity of his profession and his faith. A classic case of "Minnesota nice" (not to be confused with the equally common "Wisconsin drunk").

Which raises the question: does Hanson see the Lost Tomb as a threat his faith? No, he answers, but not because its findings are almost surely bogus. Instead, he isn't threatened because faith "is not based on the vicissitudes of historical discovery. If your faith rests on a literal interpretation of the Bible's description of what resurrection involves, a finding that counters that could be troublesome." Hanson fails to elaborate on what he thinks Jesus's resurrection and ascension "involved", but apparently it's consistent with him being buried in a tomb outside Jerusalem. He goes on to argue:

"What it comes down to is whether claims made by religious traditions are the same as historical claims. I'm all for learning as much as we can about the times. But faith is never going to hold up to pure historical analysis. That's not what it's about."

While there is certainly some truth to what Hanson is saying, I think it's wrong to assume that the claims made by the Jesus Tomb documentary, if true, would only be problematic for fundamentalists. Christianity, after all, is a religion rooted in the historical figure of Christ, who was not a mere phantom but flesh and bones. His resurrection and ascension are therefore not simply metaphors of spiritual truths, but events that took place in the world for its salvation. Hanson is right that historical research will never provide an adequate basis for faith, but he's misguided if he thinks that the historical claims of Christianity are only for literalists.

Thoughts on Open Communion

2007-02-18T17:44:00.000-06:00

Recently, the practice of open communion has been a topic of discussion on several blogs (Kim Fabricius' hymn at Faith and Theology got the ball rolling, followed by posts at Connexions and Out the Door). Based on the posts and comments, it appears there's a general consensus in favor of giving communion to all who approach the altar, regardless of baptismal status, age, denomination/religion, or unrepentant sins. Richard's comments are typical:

My position on this is very clear. When I am celebrating communion, it is not my place to withhold the gifts from anyone who opens their hand to receive them. There is a place to exercise church discipline, but the Lord’s Table is not it. It should be a place of welcome and grace. No buts, ifs, howevers or maybes. All are welcome.

Similarly, Bob Cornwall (another pastor) writes:

When thinking about the “Lord’s” Table, maybe we should consider Jesus’ own dining habits — he didn’t put up barriers — so should we? I think not. If Jesus practiced an open table, then I as the one who issues the invitation must do the same.

Of course, there is much to be said for these arguments. We should never wield the sacraments like a club in order to enforce theological or moral discipline; after all, they are means of grace, not law. But I must confess that the concept of open communion, if it becomes too open, makes me a bit uncomfortable. For instance, one commentator said that he "would go a step further and welcome all people to the Eucharistic table...Christian, atheist, Buddhist...whatever." I found this rather shocking when I first read it, although I couldn't say exactly why at the time.

Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that such a wanton distribution of the sacraments violates the holiness of Holy Communion. As Rudolf Otto argues in his seminal book, The Idea of the Holy, all holy objects have both a fascinating and a terrifying quality (mysterium fascinans et tremendum). We are drawn to them become they possess the eternal, but we are also scared of them because we know that it's very dangerous to trifle with the eternal. To play with the holy is to play with fire - it could result in one's annihilation. For this reason, Paul includes the warning in 1 Cor. 11 that "if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, that person is guilty of sinning against the body and the blood of the Lord... For if you eat the bread or drink the cup unworthily, not honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God's judgment upon yourself." Thus, in my opinion, there is a legitimate danger in encouraging people (like atheists, Buddhists, or even nominal Christians) to partake of a holy ceremony that they don't really understand. And a church that is so promiscuous with the sacraments has clearly lost sight of the fact that we should always approach the altar with both joy and "fear and trembling".

The question then becomes: where do you draw the line? It seems to me that the bare minimum requires that the communicant be a baptized Christian. But I'm tempted to set the bar higher. As Hermann Stasse points out, "church fellowship has been altar-fellowship and vice versa every since New Testament times." He goes on to say:

The idea that people could be admitted to Holy Communion with whom there is no perfect peace, no unity of faith and consequently no church-fellowship, is a modern idea that was absolutely foreign to the churches of the 16th century... Such open communion, according to the conviction of the Church of all ages up to the modern world, is no communion at all, no sacrament to be justified by New Testament practice and doctrine.

Sasse's position might be extreme, but I think it's reasonable to insist that people taking communion be "in fellowship" (that is, in basic agreement) with the church where they are receiving the sacrament. Thus, a person who rejects the rejects the "real presence" of Christ in the sacrament should abstain from taking communion in a Lutheran church. Similarly, I would not feel comfortable taking communion at a Catholic mass, and not only because the R.C. church expressly forbids it. As my act of communion would imply that I agree with the self-understanding of the R.C. church (which I do not), out of respect for both them and me I would exclude myself from the table even if there was no such rule. In this way, the communion aspect of the Lord's Supper is not compromised.

The Real Presence and Modernity

2007-02-10T13:22:00.000-06:00

In This is My Body, Hermann Sasse notes that Lutherans, at nearly all points in their history, have been tempted to abandon their adherence to the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar. Even Melanchthon succumbed to this temptation after Luther’s death, as he sought to harmonize the Lutheran position with Calvin’s theology of the sacrament. Although his compromises were eventually rejected by the Formula of Concord, which affirmed Luther’s belief that “in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present and are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine”, the controversy never went away. In the European situation, the debate over the Real Presence would arise whenever churchmen and politicians sought to merge the Reformed and Lutheran churches. Such ecumenical considerations have also played a role in America, as evidenced by full communion agreements negotiated by the ELCA. But part of the motivation for ditching the Real Presence has also come from rationalists who argue that “modern man” cannot tolerate this absurd doctrine, which is supposedly a stumbling block to faith. It is undoubtedly true that the Zwinglian approach, which regards the bread and wine as nothing more that signs of Christ’s body and blood, is more palatable to the modern scientific mind. But while reading This is My Body, it occurred to me that, in at least two respects, the Lutheran doctrine is actually more in tune with current theological and intellectual trends than the Reformed position.

First concerns the flesh/spirit dualism that was central to Zwingli’s understanding of the sacrament. In the Marburg Colloquy (which is reproduced in Sasse’s book), Zwingli and his ally Oecolampadius return time and time again to John 6:63: “It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.” For them, it is axiomatic that “spirit can only be influenced by spirit.” Thus the tangible elements – the bread and wine – are essentially worthless, since they can only feed the body, not the soul. As Sasse writes, “of all the absurdities which Zwingli found in Luther’s doctrine on the sacrament there was none greater or more dangerous than the idea that a bodily eating can help the soul… Such an idea seemed to be a violation of the spiritual character of Christianity.” For Zwingli, Christianity is a spiritual affair in which our bodies are mere spectators. Thus, the Reformed churches teach that the Supper only involves the “spiritual eating of faith” (As Oecolampadius said at Marburg, “As we have the spiritual eating, why should there be any need for bodily eating?”).

Luther’s position is very different. In response to Zwingli’s persistent claims that the “flesh profiteth nothing”, Luther asserts that “I do not know of any God except Him who was made flesh. And there is no other God who could save us”. Luther is capable of distinguishing between spirit and flesh, but he never separates them for fear that the reality of the Incarnation will be compromised. Thus, “the idea that the sacrament is meant for the whole man, body and soul, is one of the fundamental elements of Luther’s doctrine of the Supper… Luther knew that according to Holy Scripture not only the human soul, but also the human body, is the object of God’s redemption.” (Sasse, 184, 186).

I would argue that Luther’s refusal to radically separate the soul from the body is more consistent with our current scientific understanding of the body, as well as modern theological approaches to our corporeality, then the Reformed dualism. It is also more Biblical. As Sasse points out, the separation of body and soul is really a Platonic concept that has no foundation in the Scriptures. This type of dualism has fallen out of favor today, not only among scientists, but among those who advocate a holistic approach to human body. Thus, I suspect that Luther’s position on the Real Presence would be appealing to many “moderns” who reject an other-worldly spirituality. It is the Lutheran contention that Christ incarnate comes to us in the lowly things of this world - bread, wine, and water.

As I mentioned above, there is another area where I think the Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper is more congruent with our current ways of thinking. This involves the Reformed contention that Christ’s body is physically located in heaven, and thus cannot be present on the altars of the world. But since this post is already plenty long, I’ll save that discussion for another time…

The Confessional Question

2007-02-06T20:10:00.000-06:00

In my previous post, I discussed the perpetual identity crisis of Lutherans in America, drawing on Mark Noll's article in First Things. Noll writes that:

Lutherans do have much to offer to the wider American community, but only if they can fulfill two conditions. First, to contribute as Lutherans in America, Lutherans must remain authentically Lutheran. Second, to contribute as Lutherans in America, Lutherans must also find out how to speak Lutheranism with an American accent. Falling short of either condition means that, though Lutherans as religious individuals may contribute much to Christianity in America, there will be no distinctly Lutheran contribution. The task is to steer between the Scylla of assimilation without tradition and the Charybdis of tradition without assimilation. If such skillful navigation could take place, the resources that Lutherans offer to Americans, especially to other Protestants, would be of incalculable benefit.

So what guides should Lutherans employ to help them "navigate" such dangerous waters? The logical answer is, of course, the Lutheran confessional documents contained in The Book of Concord. But this solution is not as straightforward as it seems, as there has never been agreement amount the precise role of the confessions in the church. To what extent are we "bound" to the confessions, and how should they be used in the church (as Law or Gospel)? Moreover, as our history demonstrates, the more "confessional" churches tend to be more sectarian and legalistic. Is this necessarily so?

Carl Braaten addresses these issues in his Principles of Lutheran Theology (1983), noting that:

As Lutherans we have no magisterium that can impose an answer from above. Lutherans have frequently reacted to this dilemma of self-definition by claiming to take the confessions more seriously than all the others, thus becoming the "scribes and Pharisees" of a Lutheran sect... Lutherans now separated do not trust the sincerity of each other's confessional subscription. For some people confessional subscription is not enough; it must be done "seriously." Some require as a condition of altar and pulpit fellowship a certain amount of confessional good works. It is ironic that a church can become absolutely legalistic about a set of documents that condemns all legalism and not see the point.

Braaten then goes on to label four misuses of the Confessions in the Lutheran churches:

1) Repristination: "The basic aim of this type of Lutheran confessionalism is to repristinate the theology of orthodox Lutheranism... Confessional statements are applied as rules and laws to govern what ministers and officers of the church say publicly."

2) Liberal Nonconfessional: "This position leaps backward over the period of 17th-century orthodoxy and The Book of Concord to the creative years of the young Reformer, Martin Luther... It is much easier to modernize Luther than to try to prove the relevance of 'The Formula of Concord' or Lutheran scholasticism."

3) Hypothetical Confessional: "According to this view, our modern situation has been so drastically modified by the revolutions in the natural and historical sciences that any confessional statements conceived in a prescientific age can no longer be ours in a direct way. Nevertheless, we can still accept these confessions as part of our heritage... Moreover, these confessions are still our in a hypothetical sense. Were we to confront the same issue as our Lutheran forefathers, we would adopt their identical positions... But, of course, times have changed; and so there are certain strings attatched to our confessional loyalty."

4) Anti-confessional Biblicism: "Contemporary Lutherans locked into American Protestant neo-evangelicalism have no use for the confessions, but prefer to go right back to the Bible."

Whereas the conservative Lutheran churches (LCMS and WELS) are primarily guilty of #1, the ELCA suffers from both #2 and #3 (with an emphasis on the latter). Meanwhile, many of those sitting "in the pews" probably opt for #4. Against all of these approaches, Braaten proposes an alternative that he calls "constructive confessional Lutheranism", which incorporates the principles of continuity and contemporaneity: "continuity with the substance of the catholic tradition" and the ability "to preach the gospel and actualize its reality within every new situation." To use Noll's words, Braaten's constructive confessionalism is trying "to steer between the Scylla of assimilation without tradition and the Charybdis of tradition without assimilation." It sure sounds nice, but it's tough to figure out how this approach would work in practice. Since it involves a balancing act, people will inevitably disagree about which side should be emphasized more. And where will we turn when the debates begin? After all, an argument about the role of the confessions cannot be decided by the confessions themselves.

In the end, my fundamental question is this: is it possible to take the confessions seriously without using them in a legalistic fashion? Or is it inevitable that these documents, which were originally written to promote the Gospel, will become Law in the hands of our church leaders? I would really like to hear what people have to say about this question, because it cuts to the heart of all issues concerning identity, mission, ecumenical relations, etc. Without the confessions we really aren't Lutherans, but if the confessions are more of a hindrance than a help (as many seem to think), then we shouldn't want to be Lutherans. If the confessions no longer advance the Gospel, but only serve as Law, then we should abandon them and move on. But if they still hold the Truth of the gospel message, then we can't afford to compromise a single word. So which is it?

Our Perpetual Identity Crisis

2007-02-03T11:12:00.000-06:00

It is widely acknowledged that Lutherans in America are suffering from something like an identity crisis (see here, here, and here*). Indeed, for many, the question of our identity has become almost an obsession. What does it mean to be Lutheran today? Is our identity theological or cultural, or some intangible mixture of both? Does our identity even matter? I'm certainly not above engaging in such self-analysis; quite the contrary, this blog has often bewailed the decline of a distinctive Lutheran identity. But I've come to the conclusion that none of this is new. In fact, it would appear the Lutheranism, especially in its American form(s), has always suffered from an identity crisis and always will - it's simply built into its structure.

This point was driven home as I re-read Mark Noll's excellent First Things article on the history of American Lutheranism. Noll argues that, while Lutherans are quite ordinary as a group, Lutheranism itself has always been somewhat "out of place" in the landscape of American Christianity. Thus, from the very beginning, there has been consistent and enormous pressure for Lutherans to assimilate their churches into the American mainstream, whether that be conservative or liberal. This was evident even in the 19th century, when the influential Samuel Schmucker sought to amend the Augsburg Confession in order to bring Lutheranism in line with New World Protestantism. Schmucker's "reforms" were eventually rejected and Lutheranism retained its Old World distinctiveness well into the 20th century. It wasn't until after World War II that Lutherans began to reengage with the broader scene, bringing with it the same pressures to assimilate. This time, the forces of Americanization were more successful, resulting in our present situation. Noll writes:

The jaundiced critic, in other words, might think that American Lutherans escaped the peril of nineteenth-century Schmuckerism only to fall prey to a late-twentieth-century version of the same thing - for the ELCA, launching the ecclesiastical ship into a mainstream that had almost run dry; for Missouri, taking on the colors of a fundamentalism ever more clearly revealed as a Christianity merely of assorted rightist tendencies.

Some of this was simply inevitable. As German and Scandinavian immigrants assimilated into American culture, it was natural that they would lose elements of their Old World religion, just as they lost their language and customs. But, upon closer analysis, it appears that the plight of Lutheranism in America was never going to be easy. This is because Lutheran theology, in many respects, is fundamentally at odds with the American "creed" of progress and self-reliance. As Matthew Rose writes (in another great First Things article):

Perhaps no theology is so wonderfully unfitted as Lutheranism for the triumphant, but often disordering, American Century. The American Success Story requires a list of ingredients that reads something like a Lutheran anti-creed: an obsession for the new and untried; a condescension towards the old and tried; a mania for self-expressive accomplishment; a creative drive to overcome, define, and establish oneself over and above others. These distinguishing characteristics have been strung into a charming civic poesy. Yet American Lutherans have been little inspired by this, not being people of an epic state of mind. Fame, for Lutherans, seems best accomplished by accident, if at all. In this vein Falstaff is surely revealed as an “anonymous Lutheran” in his dictum, “The better part of valor is discretion.”

Yet it would be too easy to simply blame America for our current dilemma. Instead, we must admit that there is something internal to Lutheranism that lends itself to a perpetual identity crisis. By leading a very conservative Reformation (with one foot in the Catholic Church and the other outside), Luther guaranteed that future generations of Lutherans would find themselves in a precarious position with respect to other Christians. Are we a "confessional movement within the Church catholic" or are we full-blooded Protestants? Are we a conservative, traditionalist church, or does the spirit of semper Reformanda allow us to change and adapt with the times? Even in Europe, the Lutheran Church found it difficult to answer these questions, as it struggled to articulate and preserve its identity against both Catholic and Protestant influences (for an example, see my previous post on the Prussian church). How much more true is this must be in America, where the old fault-lines created during the Reformation no longer apply. We should therefore expect the wrangling over Lutheran identity to continue for some time.

* While I agree with Preus's statements in this article regarding the JDDJ and the Reformed full communion agreements, he's wrong to assume that only liberalism is a threat to Lutheran identity. Noll's article makes it clear that conservative forces, in the form of American evangelicalism, have already eroded the Lutheran identity of the so-called confessional churches (i.e., LCMS and WELS). These churches, of course, make a big show of their allegiance to the Lutheran confessions. But it doesn't matter if you're a biblical fundamentalist and a confessional fundamentalist - you're still a fundamentalist (this is not to say that the LCMS or its members are fundamentalists, only that there is a danger in them becoming so).

"Each Misunderstanding of the Sacrament is Bound to Lead to a Wrong Concept of the Gospel"

2007-01-31T22:21:00.000-06:00

In the introduction to This is My Body, Hermann Sasse argues that the Lord's Supper is so central to Christian life and thought that "every disease of the Church becomes manifest at the Lord's Table." This was true even in the early church, as Paul's first letter to the Corinthians demonstrates. Sasses writes that:

"The schisms and heresies against which Paul had to fight in the Church of Corinth seem to have become noticeable first in the celebration of the Lord's Supper... Thus the controversies over the Lord's Supper, which have so often provoked the criticism of Christians and non-Christians - Holy Communion having become the cause of unholy disunion - go back to the time of the New Testament. The reason for such controversies may be found in a lack of love, as seems to have been the case at Corinth. But it may be found also in the fact that every dissension concerning the Gospel necessarily expresses itself in a dissension over the Lord's Supper. Just as the Church of Christ becomes conscious of its own nature as it gathers around the Lord's Table, so its weaknesses, errors, and sins also become manifest on that occasion. Each misunderstanding of the Gospel must lead to a misunderstanding of the Sacrament. Each misunderstanding of the Sacrament is bound to lead to a wrong concept of the Gospel."

In other words, the Lord's Supper is not simply one element of Christianity among many, unrelated to other matters like soteriology, Christology, ecclesiology, etc. Since it serves as the center of Christian piety and worship, a person's understanding of the Lord's Supper will inform their thinking on all other matters of faith, and visa verse. Thus, Sasse's words should serve as a warning to all those who would sweep aside differences regarding the Sacraments in the name of ecumenical progress. Disagreement with regards to the Lord's Supper is a sign of major disagreements elsewhere. In Here We Stand, Sasse illustrates this point by referring to the Lutheran/Reformed split that occurred in the 16th century:

In the 16th century it was the question of the Lord's Supper which first brought to light the great doctrinal differences between the two churches which claimed to be evangelical. It is not true, as was later contended.., that there had been agreement in all essential points of evangelical doctrine until Luther's stubborn insistence on his exposition of the words, "This is my body," wrecked the unity which had already been achieved. The Sacrament of the Altar was rather the point at which, despite every good intention, the utter impossibility of reconciling two fundamentally different conceptions of Revelation and Gospel were clearly demonstrated... What was really at stake was revealed during the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, when Oecolampadius exhorted Luther not to think so much about the humanity of Christ, but rather to lift up his thoughts to His divinity. Luther replied that he knew and honored no other God than the one who became man. And this God is present in the Sacrament just as substantially as He was born of the Virgin. Apart from Him there is no God who can save us. Consequently the humanity of the Lord dare not be underestimated or neglected... Consequently, Luther's insistence on the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament is at the same time an insistence on the reality of the Incarnation."

Here we see how Luther could not abandon his belief in the Real Presence without destroying his whole understanding of the Gospel in the process.

Sadly, latter generations have failed to appreciate the intimate theological relationship between the Sacrament and other areas of doctrine. For example, the ELCA, since 1997, has been in "full communion" with several Reformed churches that do not share Luther's insistence on the Real Presence, meaning that Reformed ministers can now preside over Lutheran altars. That such an arrangement is considered generally acceptable is an indication that the Sacraments have a diminished standing in both churches, such that it's not considered important what we or other Christians believe about the Lord's Supper. Apparently, "it is enough" if we all agree to simply ignore our differences and treat our confessional heritage like trivia. Sasse's book is valuable corrective to this trend, because it reminds us how vitally important a correct understanding Lord's Supper was to the Reformers. There can be no unity where there is disunity about the Sacraments.

Too Hungry, For Dinner at Eight

2007-01-30T21:55:00.000-06:00

Sadly, I haven't had much time to blog lately, as I was in Palo Alto for several days running experiments at the Stanford Synchrotron (trust me, it's not as cool as it sounds). The weather in the Bay Area was (to quote Sinatra) "cold and damp", with highs in the low 50's and periodic rain showers. But compared to our current weather in Minnesota, it was paradise.

Thankfully, the plane rides and the long hours spent collecting data gave me plenty of time to read. In particular, I read two works by the German Lutheran author Hermann Sasse - Here I Stand and This is My Body (I have just started reading the latter title). I hope to have something to say about these titles in the future.

In the meantime, please amuse yourself with the song Alando - a tribute to Wisconsin basketball star (and Player of the Year candidate) Alando Tucker. The lyrics, composed by a Madison DJ, are set to the ABBA song "Fernando". Beware - the song will get stuck in your head!!

Luther's Two Theodicies

2007-01-20T09:22:00.000-06:00

Midway through Bondage of the Will (section V), Luther takes up the problem of theodicy, which is intimately connected to the matter of free will. After all, if there is no free will and all occurs by necessity, then God becomes the author of evil and suffering. Indeed, this constitutes one of Erasmus's main arguments in favor of free will: if God gives us freedom, then we can blame the presence of evil in the world on sinful humanity, thereby absolving God of any possible crimes. But Luther will have none of this. He deals with the question of theodicy in two separate ways, which I will label "existential" (for lack of a better term) and "speculative". In this post, I argue that these two approaches are somewhat at odds with each other, and that this may be an area where Luther's thinking is not entirely consistent.

The point of departure for this discussion in BotW is the following passage from Exodus: "The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh". Erasmus writes: "It seems absurd that God Who is not just but good, should be said to have hardened the heart of a man so that by means of his iniquity God should show his power." To resolve this absurdity, Erasmus argues that God did not actively harden the heart of Pharaoh, but merely permitted Pharaoh's heart to harden itself. That is, God did not correct Pharaoh's sin, thus allowing it to take its own evil course. But Luther rejects this interpretation for many reasons. Firstly, he thinks it goes against the plain meaning of Scripture. He also points out that it doesn't really absolve God in the matter, since presumably He could have corrected Pharaoh's behavior instead of allowing him to languish in sin. Finally, and most substantially, Luther argues that this whole business of trying to justify God is misguided to being with. It is not the job of human reason to justify God. Instead, reason must be silent before the holy mystery of God:

Reason will insist that these are not acts of a good and merciful God. They are too far beyond her grasp; and she cannot bring herself to believe that the God Who acts and judges thus is good; she wants to shut out faith, and to see, and feel, and understand, how it is that He is good and not cruel... It is along this line that reason storms and contends, in order to clear God of blame, and to vindicate His justice and goodness! But faith and the Spirit judge otherwise, believing the God is good even though he should destroy all men...
This must be said: if you want the words 'they were very good' to be understood of God's works after the fall, you will notice that the words were spoken with reference, not to us, but to God. It does not say: 'Man saw what God had made, and it was very good.' Many things seem, and are, very good to God which seem, and are, very bad to us. Thus, afflictions, sorrows, errors, hell, and all God's best works are in the world's eyes very bad, and damnable. What is better than Christ and the gospel? But what is there that the world abominates more? How things that are bad for us are good in the sight of God is known only to God and to those who see with God's eyes, that is, who have the Spirit.

Here, Luther rejects any speculative theodicy that presumes to reconcile the existence of evil with the goodness of God. In its place, he offers an existential theodicy based on faith, not understanding. For Luther, as for Kierkegaard*, the highest expression of faith is to believe that God is loving and good even in the deepest suffering. Indeed, a central insight of Luther's "theology of the cross" is that God's presence is to be found, not in glory and happiness, but in the dark night of suffering. As he says in the Heidelberg Disputation: "He deserves to be called a theologian who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross." Or as Kierkegaard wrote: "Faith sees best in the dark."

So far so good. The problem is that in the following sections (starting with V(iv)), Luther engages in the same type of speculative theodicy that he just condemned in Erasmus. Granted, he appears somewhat reluctant to do so, saying that he is only attempting to "humor reason". But, nevertheless, he pushes forward with his own apology for God. Luther says that God works on all humans "according to what they are, what He finds them to be: which means, since they are evil and perverted themselves, that when they are impelled to action by this movement of Divine omnipotence they do only that which is perverted and evil." Thus, God is the engine, so to speak, of all human action. But if the machines themselves are wicked and evil, then this divine power will result in evil acts.

Here you see that when God works in and by evil men, evil deeds result; yet God, though He does evil by means of evil men, cannot act evilly Himself, for He is good, and cannot do evil; but He uses evil instruments, which cannot escape the impulse and movement of His power. The fault which accounts for evil being done when God moves to action lies in these instruments, which God does not allow to be idle.

As with all speculative theodicies, this explanation raises more questions than it answers, and it in no way lets God "off the hook." After all, why doesn't God make the evil instruments good, as he certainly has the power to do so? More to the point, how is Luther's position different than the one offered by Erasmus, which he trashed just a few pages ago? In both cases, God allows evil to remain; the only difference is whether he tolerates evil actively or passively. And that doesn't amount to much of a difference from the perspective of a suffering humanity.

In the end, all speculative theodicies flounder upon the following paradox: that a God who is loving and omnipotent has created a world in which suffering and evil run rampant. No explanation that takes both God and evil seriously will ever be able to solve this contradiction. The advantage of Luther's existential approach is that it doesn't try to resolve the paradox, but instead incorporates it into faith itself. Of course, this won't satisfy the theologian of glory who craves an all-encompassing explanation, but it will suffice for those who "know God hidden in suffering."

* Not to beat a dead horse, but Kierkegaard and Luther are on the same "wavelength" here. In his Gospel of Sufferings, SK writes: "If God is love, then he is also love in everything, love in what you can understand and love in what you cannot understand, love in the dark riddle that lasts a day or in the riddle that lasts seventy years... Right here is faith's struggle: to believe without being able to understand."

Command as Promise

2007-01-16T22:17:00.000-06:00

The nagging problem of free will, which I discussed in a recent post, has compelled me to read Luther's Bondage of the Will in its entirety (previously, I had only read excerpts). I'm approximately half way through the book and, frankly, I'm ashamed that I didn't read it sooner. It's truly Luther at his best - polemical, insightful, often quite funny.

Most of Luther's arguments in BotW are familiar ones, at least to those acquainted with his theology. But one theme was new to me. In section IV(ix), Luther challenges Erasmus' interpretation of three Old Testament passages: Zech 1.3, Jer 15.19, and Ezek. 18.23. The first two verses exhort the listener to "turn" (or return) to the Lord. Erasmus, of course, argues that these passages contain an implicit endorsement of free will, since they seem to suggest that the individual is capable of choosing whether or not to "turn" to the Lord. However, Luther understands these passage quite differently:

The word 'turn' is used in the Scriptures in two ways, one legal, the other evangelical. In its legal use, it is an utterance of exaction and command, requiring, not endeavor, but a change in the whole life. Jeremiah frequently uses it in this sense, saying: "Turn ye unto the Lord' (Jer. 25.5, 35.15, 4.1), where it is plain enough that he includes a requirement of all the commandments. In its evangelical sense, it is an utterance of divine consolation and promise, by which nothing is required of us, but the grace of God is offered to us. Such is this, in Ps. 15: 'When the Lord shall turn again the captivity of Zion'; and this in Ps. 22: 'Turn again unto thy rest, O my soul!'. Zechariah has therefore set out in the shortest compass the proclamation of both law and grace. It is the whole sum of the law when he says: 'Turn ye unto me'; and it is grace when he says: 'I will turn unto you'. -- Bondage of the Will (165-166)

Luther interprets the command as promise. God, in effect, says to the sinner: "You will return to me, not on the basis of your own power, but because my Spirit will work in you. Do not despair of fulfilling this command. Instead, hold on to my promise, that you will return to me because I will see to it." The command is both law and grace, which "raises up and comforts the sinner as he lies under [the] torment and despair" of his sin.

After thinking about Luther's remarkable words for a time, it occurred to me that I had heard a similar approach before. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard, while discussing the command that one "shall love his neighbor as himself", briefly mentions what a blessed comfort this shall is. In fact, like Luther, he asserts that the divine command cures the despair it creates:

"It is indeed most strange, almost like mockery, to say to the despairing person that he shall do that which was his sole desire but the impossibility of which brings him to despair... Who would have the courage [to say this] except eternity, which at the very moment love wants to despair over its unhappiness commands it to love... When eternity says, "You shall love", it is responsible for making sure that this can be done. What is all other comfort compared to that of eternity!" -- Works of Love (41-42) [Note: for Kierkegaard, eternity = God].

Viewed this way, the command to "love our neighbors as ourselves" acquires a whole new dimension. It loses its heaviness and becomes positively light. The command still stands, but we are no longer abandoned to our own resources. It is as if Christ says to us: "Trust in me and I will teach you to love. You shall love, I promise." What a merciful thought!

P.S. The similarity of Luther and Kierkegaard on this point is further proof of my proposition #4, which asserts that "Kierkegaard was a very good Lutheran". In my estimation, few theologians have so thoroughly internalized Luther's law/gospel dialectic as SK.

True Colors, Shining Through

2007-01-16T22:07:00.000-06:00

As the Wisconsin men's basketball team is now ranked 2nd in the AP poll (and 3rd in the lousy ESPN/USA Today poll), it's high time for Without Authority to start sporting the Badger red-and-white. With Alando Tucker and Coach Bo Ryan, I have a feeling that this team (probably the best in Wisconsin history) will be playing long into March. On Wisconsin!!

Best Contemporary Theology Meme

2007-01-11T09:39:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged by Patrik:

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of the last 25 years (in no particular order).

To make my decision a little easier, I've decided to confine myself to Lutheran authors. Also, I won't include the very deserving Systematics of Jenson or Pannenberg because: a) many others have already included these volumes, and b) these theologians are borderline Lutherans. So here are my picks:

1) Eberhard Jüngel: God as the Mystery of the World
2) Gerhard O. Forde: Theology is for Proclamation
3) Oswald Bayer: Living by Faith - Justification and Sanctification

P.S. I've decided to add a fourth: Eberhard Jüngel's Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith

The Scientific Assault on Free Will

2007-01-08T16:32:00.000-06:00

John Rose at First Things has some worthwhile comments regarding a NY Times article about science and free will. Apparently, there are a growing body of scientific evidence that suggests that free will is simply an illusion, a trick played on the mind by the mind. According to neurobiologist Mark Hallett, "Free will does exist, but it's a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free... The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don't have it."

Someone should remind these scientists (and the NY Times, as well) that the debate over free will is not one that can be resolved by science. Why? Because science itself does not have free will when it comes to this question; that is, science is forced by its own presuppositions to conclude that humans lack free will. This is nicely illustrated in the article by Dr. Silberstein, who notes that "every physical system that has been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random." But these are the only two possibilities that science allows itself to consider! Science regards all systems as machines whose behavior is determined by fixed laws of cause and effect, and any system whose behavior is not predicable in this fashion is labeled as "random". Thus, when approaching the brain, the neurobiologist is essentially forced by the scientific method to think of this organ as a machine, a fancy computer that (by definition) lacks free will in any meaningful sense. It's not surprising, then, that they have found some aspects of what they were looking for, but the overall conclusion was determined in advance (but then again, that shouldn't surprise the scientists, because they lack free will themselves).

Quoting Dr. Silberstein, the article goes on to say that "if human actions can't be caused and aren't random, 'it must be - what - some weird magical power?'... People who believe already that humans are magic will have no problem with that." So apparently anyone who believes that there is a qualitative difference between a human being and a machine is guilty of "magical" thinking. Of course, this is a not-so-veiled shot at those religious types who stubbornly cling to the notion that humans have an intrinsic dignity greater than birds, bacteria, and PCs. Indeed, as Rose points out, it seems that the urge to expose the "free will delusion" is largely motivated by the desire to debunk religion. After all, if there is no free will, then there can be no soul or spirit, or so the argument. But this is not a good strategy, as the lack of human free will is hardly incompatible with theism; in fact, there are various strands of Christian theology, in particular Calvinism, that have long advocated determinism. The findings of biologists that some of our actions and decisions are out of our control would come as no surprise to Calvin or Luther (the latter even wrote a book entitled "The Bondage of the Will").

What the scientists fail to realize is that the real casualty of their assault on free-will will be humanism, not theism. If there is no free will, then there really is no democracy, no ethics, no art or literature, no science, no love. If free will is an illusion, then all these other things are illusions too. Is this really what the scientists want? I somehow doubt it. But in their quest to destroy religion, they should take care lest they accidentally destroy humanity instead.

P.S. The article also contains some baffling comments from Daniel Dennett, in which he essentially claims that "free will and determinism can coexist". Anyone who understands what he's saying here, please help me out. He makes no sense to me.

Ten Propositions on Kierkegaard

2007-01-06T19:11:00.000-06:00

Over at Faith and Theology, Kim Fabricius has written several "ten propositions" posts on topics ranging from the Trinity to Karl Barth to Hell (a nearly complete list can be found here). I have enjoyed these posts immensely and now it's time for me to rip-off the idea. So here, without further ado, are my ten propositions on Kierkegaard:

1. To fully understand and appreciate Kierkegaard, one must share his faith in the God-human [Gud-Menneske] Jesus Christ. This is because SK, in many of his works, is not writing for the general public; he is writing so that the “single individual” may develop a deeper commitment to New Testament Christianity. To approach these works in a detached manner is to miss the point entirely.

2. Kierkegaard's second (i.e., Christian) authorship should be given priority over his first authorship, and thus his early works should be read in the light of his latter works, and not vice versa. A SK novice should therefore begin with For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself and work back to Either/Or (never, never start with Fear and Trembling).

3. It is a fatal mistake to assume that the various pseudonyms speak for Kierkegaard himself. To know what SK really thought, go to his Upbuilding/Christian Discourses or to his Journals.

4. Kierkegaard was a very good Lutheran - a "theologian of the cross" par excellence. He never wavered with respect to solas of the Reformation - sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide. And his Communion Discourses make it clear that he was a firm believer in the real presence. By stripping off the metaphysical baggage that had accumulated during Lutheran orthodoxy and Hegelian idealism, Kierkegaard liberated the essence of Luther's theology for the modern world.

5. Kierkegaard's theological brilliance was equalled by his literary genius. No other theologian in the entire history of the Church has been so skillful with the pen, so witty and imaginative. I dare you to name another theologian or philosopher that is as fun to read as SK (Thomas Oden has issued a similar challenge in this book).

6. While Kierkegaard was certainly the first existentialist (and perhaps the first postmodernist), his Christian faith makes his identification with these latter-day movements problematic. Bultmann and Barth are his true 20th-century heirs, not Heidegger, Sartre, or Derrida.

7. Anyone who claims to completely understand Fear and Trembling or Repetition is either a liar or an idiot (or both).

8. Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom was a justified assault against the liberal, bourgeois Christianity of his day, and it is relevant wherever the Church transforms itself into the "established order". However, the shrill and bitter tone adopted in these final writings should not be emulated.

9. Kierkegaard's life and his writings are intimately intertwined - it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. For this reason, virtually none of writings cannot be read apart from his Journals. If you don't know about his relationship with his father, his aborted engagement to Regine, or the Corsair affair, you will miss a great deal.

10. Anyone who thinks that Kierkegaard was an acosmic misanthrope should read Works of Love. And even if you don't think that about SK, you should still read Works of Love!!

Generic Protestantism: A Brief History

2006-12-28T22:37:00.000-06:00

Since Christmas, I've been reading Christopher Clark's recent book, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947, a gift from my thoughtful parents. Given that the book's subject matter is a nation that no longer exists, one would perhaps expect it to be a dry read, but Clark has written a surprisingly readable book. In particular, I have enjoyed his analysis of the various religious movements that shaped Prussian society through the periods of reformation, orthodoxy, pietism, and rationalism. Too often, histories either ignore the role of religion completely, or treat it as an irrational relic that was eventually overcome by the forces of enlightenment. Clark, in my estimation, avoids both pitfalls, which is a good thing because the post-Reformation history of Christianity in Prussia is far more complicated (and more interesting) than I previously thought.

Although Brandenberg-Prussia became predominately Lutheran during the Reformation, its confessional status was thrown into turmoil in 1613 by the conversion of Elector John Sigismund (the sovereign of the territory) to Calvinism. He then set about cleansing houses of worship of "the dirt of papal idolatry", including altars, baptismal fonts, crucifixes, and artwork. Strangely enough, the Elector naively assumed that his subjects would enthusiastically support these actions, as he believed the superiority of the Reformed faith was self-evident. But his plans for a "second Reformation" were met with stiff, and sometimes violent, opposition from both the nobles and the general populace. According to Clark, the conflict between the Calvinist and Lutheran camps centered on two issues: liturgy and the sacraments.

"[The conflict] was in part an aesthetic issue: to the colorful extravagance of a Lutheran church interior, with its candles and images graven and painted glowing with reflected fire, the Calvinists opposed the white space of a purified church, suffused with natural light. There was also an authentic apprehension that Catholicism remained a latent force within Lutheranism. A particular focus of concern was the Lutheran communion rite; Elector Sigismund objected to Luther's doctrine of the real presence in the Lord's Supper, calling it a 'false, divisive, and highly controversial teaching.' In the words of the Calvinist theologian Simon Pistoris, author of a controversial tract published in Berlin in 1613, Luther 'derived his views from the darkness of the papacy'... In other words, the Reformation remained incomplete."

Much to Sigismund's dismay, the people of Brandenberg-Prussia were rather attached to their ornate churches and communion rites, and thus there was no "second Reformation". From that point forward the monarchy of Prussia, along with most political elites, were Calvinist, while the remainder of the nation remained staunchly Lutheran. This was an awkward situation, to say the least, and to help ease the tensions the Prussian rulers to become some of the earliest advocates of "generic Protestantism". Their efforts culminated in the forced merger of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches into a single Prussian "evangelical-Christian church".

"The king himself [Frederick William III] was the chief architect of this new ecclesiastical entity. He designed the new United liturgy, cobbling together texts from German, Swedish, Anglican, and Huguenot prayer books. He issued regulations for the decoration of altars, the use of candles, vestments and crucifixes. The aim was to create a composite that would resonate with the religious sensibilities of both Calvinists and Lutherans. It was a further, final chapter in the long history of efforts by the Hohenzollern dynasty to close the confessional gap between the monarchy and the people."

As before, the King's designs aroused considerable anger amongst the people, who (justifiably) felt that their religious heritage was being stripped away. Several thousand "Old Lutherans" fled the country for North America and Australia, where they established confessional Lutheran churches like the LCMS.

If you're still reading, you might be wondering why this long story is relevant for us today. After all, such intense confessional antagonism is largely a thing of the past. The ELCA, for instance, has established full communion, including altar and pulpit fellowship, with several Reformed churches - PCUSA, UCC, and the Reformed Church in America. And no one seems scandalized by the fact that these churches do not believe in the real presence. That's because the real battle within Protestantism these days is between liberal and conservatives, and not between Lutherans and Calvinists. Thus, it's relatively easy for the ELCA to make common cause with mainline Presbyterians, even though the divide between Lutheran bodies like the ELCA and LCMS remains as wide as ever. But is it wise for the ELCA to enter into full communion with Reformed bodies that, while culturally similar, are theologically quite different? Likewise, is it prudent for more "confessional" Lutherans to mimic the behavior and attitudes of Southern Baptists?

Sadly, the generic Protestantism advocated by the Prussian kings, and resisted by their subjects, has become a reality for many Lutheran churches in America, both liberal and conservative. I wonder if this situation is a reflection our misplaced priorities, our tendency to put cultural issues ahead of theological ones. In the end, don't matters of sacramentology and liturgy, or predestination and atonement and Christology, lie at a more fundamental level of doctrine than homosexuality or the ordination of women? Surely they do, but it's the latter set of issues that stir the strongest emotions. Hence the temptation, as old as Christendom itself, to compromise one's theological heritage to secure political and cultural allies.

Concluding Unscientific Puppet

2006-12-28T21:51:00.000-06:00

Since Lee at verbum ipsum is showing off his Archbishop of Canterbury ornament, I've decided to display a picture of one of my favorite Christmas gifts. That's right, folks! It's a Kierkegaard finger puppet, purchased by my wife from The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild. Soren looks appropriately melancholy (click on the picture for a closer look), but I'm sure he'd be disappointed to learn that his puppet is tough to distinguish from Hegel's.

Is There Freedom in Heaven?

2006-12-18T22:02:00.000-06:00

James Wood has written a fascinating review of Sam Harris' book, Letters to a Christian Nation, in which he provides a brief history and explanation of his own atheism.* As is the case for many atheists, Wood finds it impossible to believe in God given the widespread presence of evil and suffering in the world. He also takes issue with the idea of heaven, by which believers let God "off the hook" for the evils of this world by imagining a perfect world in the next life. But Wood argues that, even if heaven exists (which he thinks is unlikely), it would not resemble our earthly lives in the slightest, because free will is not possible in heaven:

In heaven, it seems, all tears will be wiped away and we will be free of pain and suffering. We will also be free of freedom--necessarily so, because if freedom were to exist in heaven, we would merely replicate our lives on earth and start doing terrible things to each other again. Heaven, as an intellectual category as much as an "actual place," depends on the idea that the highest form of happiness--to be face to face with our Maker, and so on--is a state without freedom, or with severely curtailed freedom. But if this is the ideal state, the state that our Creator longs to have us in, then why was heaven not instituted on earth? Since heaven was not created on earth, we must conclude that our lives here are more or less painful experiments, and that the world is a training ground for heaven.

Yet it is a rigged experiment, since the experiment already knows its own answer. Not just because God, being omniscient, must know what will become of each of us (the Catholic church tied itself up in knots over this issue, and eventually had to repudiate its own doctrine of "double predestination"), but also because a real experiment would put the existence of heaven itself in doubt. A rigged experiment simply puts our going to heaven in doubt. Yet if heaven must exist, if there is no doubt that heaven exists, then we know that we are being trained here on earth to exercise a free will that will not be needed in heaven, a free will the exercise of which causes immense pain to many people, but a pain that will be miraculously eased in heaven. This is nothing less than a definition of torture.

The issue of freedom in heaven is a very interesting one, which I had never really considered until this point. But I'm not convinced that Wood is correct. This is because the Bible primarily envisions heaven as the consummation of Creation, and not as a location distinct from this world (for more on this topic, please see Byron's excellent series, Heaven: Not the End of the World). The Christian hope is for the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul, as Wood seems to assume. Thus, the residents of heaven will not simply be "face to face with our Maker" in a spiritual netherworld, but will instead occupy a restored and renewed Creation. It is reasonable to assume that we will retain our creaturely freedom in such a world, although our perfect reconciliation with God will prevent us from sinning.** I think Pannenberg says it best in Volume 1 of his Systematics:

"In the renewed world that is the target of eschatological hope the difference between God and creature will remain, but that between the holy and profane will be totally abolished... The goal of the act of creation is the independent existence of creatures" (400, 420).

That is, in heaven, there will be no conflict between the freedom of God and the freedom of his creatures.

* Interestingly, Wood finds the "popular atheism" offered up by Harris and Dawkins to be quite lacking. He regards their writings as merely "guilty pleasures" for atheists - satisfying, but not substantive or serious.

** I realized after writing this post that the "we" and "our" in this sentence implies that I consider myself worthy of heaven. Of course, that may be presumptuous.

Carter, Israel, and Apartheid: How Can a Decent Man Get it So Wrong?

2006-12-14T21:20:00.000-06:00

As a longtime fan of Jimmy Carter, I must say that I'm disappointed by the position that he has adopted regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, as set forth in his new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (which I haven't read) and in an op-ed piece for the LA Times (which I have read). In the op-ed article, Carter makes the audacious claim that the plight of the Palestinians is "more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid." This analogy is wrong for many reasons, as has been pointed out by numerous people (here, here, and here), and I agree with Michael Kinsely that it is "unworthy of the man who won—and deserved—the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Israel and Egypt together in the Camp David Accords, and who has lent such luster to the imaginary office of former president." Does Carter really believe this apartheid nonsense, or is it merely a cynical attempt to sell more books? I hope it's the latter, but either way, I've lost a lot of respect for the former president.

Carter seems to have swallowed, without reservations, the Palestinian narrative of the conflict, which places nearly all of the blame on Israel. Absent from his op-ed piece is any acknowledgment that the Palestinians, through their relentless campaign of terror against Israeli civilians, are also responsible for the lack of a permanent peace (the word "terrorism" only appears once in the article, and it is not used in connection with the Palestinians). Carter also lauds the Palestinian community for their successful elections in 1996, 2005, and 2006, but fails to mention that the 2006 election brought to power Hamas, a terrorist group that has long advocated the destruction of Israel. Apparently, Carter's eagerness to smear Israel with the "apartheid" label has made him blind to the genocidal intentions of many Palestinians.

Judging from the op-ed piece, it appears that Carter has developed something of a persecution complex with respect to the mainstream media, which he believes is firmly in the grip of the pro-Israel lobby. He complains that major newspapers have generally shunned his book, and that "reviews have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations". He is also bothered that most prominent Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have distanced themselves from his writings. But he's not deterred: "out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive." What bravery! But if Jimmy should ever feel discouraged, he should remember that his anti-Israel screeds will be welcomed on just about any college campus, and in every European nation, and in the entire Muslim world (especially Iran). And if the people in these places get their way, soon there won't be any Israeli apartheid to worry about, because there won't be any Israel.

The Immaculate Conception: An Overlooked Ecumenical Barrier

2006-12-09T16:32:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday, Catholics observed the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The doctrine of the IC, as set forth by Pope Pius IX in 1854, holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." To mark the day, Pontifications posted an interesting excerpt from Balthasar, which traces the convoluted and fractious history of the IC doctrine, from the Church Fathers to its elevation to infallibility in 1854. According to Balthasar, the central issue at stake is this: "If Mary is to be the true Mother of the Redeemer, she must genuinely belong to the race of Adam, which stands in need of redemption; at the same time, if she is to be his Mother, she needs to be entirely holy, 'immaculate'." As Balthasar indicates, there has never been real agreement on how to solve this apparent dilemma, and he attributes this to the fact that Mary does not "seem to be really at home" in any theology. Thus, it perhaps isn't surprising that the three branches of Christianity - Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholics - have adopted such radically different attitudes towards Mary.

Pontifications has since posted a lengthy quote from Newman, in which he expresses surprise that "so many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine [of the Immaculate Conception]." Frankly, I'm surprised that he was so surprised. The IC doctrine causes such great offense among Protestants, not because we have a low opinion of Mary, but because so many of the worst characteristics of Catholic theology are evident in this doctrine. It is the product of rampant theological speculation completely unhinged from Scripture (the cited proof texts, Genesis 3:15 and Luke 1:28, are laughably weak) with its truth simply asserted by papal fiat, and it reveals an obsession with Mary that is tough for Christocentric Protestants to swallow. Moreover, as Balthasar's quote makes quite clear, there has never been a real consensus concerning nature of Mary's conception (in other words, the IC is clearly not something that has been believed by Christians at all times and in all places). Thus, it was somewhat presumptuous of the Catholic Church to raise the IC to the level of infallible doctrine, thereby creating a huge obstacle to future unity with Protestant and Orthodox Christians.

If nothing else, the doctrine of the IC should serve as a reminder to Protestants that several ecumenical barriers have been erected by Catholics since the Reformation, including the doctrine of papal infallibility. This fact is often forgotten by evangelical catholics who point to the (limited) agreement on justification as evidence that the Reformation divisions need no longer apply, as the central issue has been dealt with. Yet, in my estimation, the doctrines of papal infallibility and the IC (as well as the issue of Mary in general) are just as divisive.

Odds and Ends

2006-12-05T22:30:00.000-06:00

The Cynic Librarian is hosting a carnival dedicated to my favorite theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, and he has kindly included my recent post concerning Fear and Trembling. The carnival also features a link to S.K.'s MySpace entry, which indicates that he has 250 friends - certainly more than he had in real life.

Andy at Sinning Boldly has a great post on the different ways of praising God.

Ben Myers and Kim Fabricius both have profound posts on the theological vocation of people with disabilities. As Kim says, "It is not, observe, a question of the abled bringing help to the disabled – just the reverse: the disabled are the ones who bring help to the abled by showing that we are all, one way or another, limited, broken, and needy flesh, who are who we are only in interdependent relationships where asking for help is a sign not of our weakness but of our created and redeemed humanity."

Finally, as one with a rapidly receding hairline, I was naturally attracted to an article on Slate.com entitled "Further Proof that God Loves Bald Men" (it's part of David Plotz's series, Blogging the Bible). I really like Plotz's take on one of the most bizarre episodes in the Bible, which concerns the prophet Elisha:

At last, we've reached the crazy, horrifying, inexplicable finale. As Elisha is walking to Bethel, a group of boys—"small boys"—start mocking him: "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" I've written before about the Lord's profound affection for bald men. Here He demonstrates that His fondness for cue balls has veered into dementia. Elisha turns around and curses the boys in the name of the Lord. After his curse, "two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys."
Yep, you read it right. The Lord sends bears to commit a mass mauling, all because of a bald joke.
After much head-scratching—bald-head-scratching, since I'm a bit of a ping-pong ball myself—I realized there's one possibly sympathetic interpretation of Elisha's behavior. He's new at this prophet thing. He hasn't learned his own powers yet. Until he picked up Elijah's mantle, he was a regular guy. His curses had no more effect than ours did. But now he has superpowers, and his every action has consequences. His passing curse—presumably tossed off the way you might give the finger to a tailgater—suddenly has potency it never had before. He learns the hard way—or rather, the 42 boys learn the hard way—that "with great power comes great responsibility." (Oh wait, maybe this is like Spider-Man.) You can't go around crippling every tyke who insults your haircut. In this charitable interpretation of the baldie-bear story, we must assume that Elisha is as horrified by the episode as we are, and that it helps him learn that he must only use his powers sparingly, and for good.

An Actual Conversation That Occurred Yesterday at Lunch

2006-12-01T06:49:00.000-06:00

Imagine a few guys sitting around a table in an ordinary lunchroom:

Coworker A (holding up a small round corn chip): Hey look, this chip is just like a communion wafer.

Me: Communion wafers cannot be made of corn; they have to be wheat-based.

Coworker B (surprised): Really?

Me: Yeah, I think so. There weren't Tostidos or corn tortillas at the Last Supper, after all.

Coworker B: Of course, some people think that the wafer doesn't stay wheat-based. You know, transubstantiation - it becomes the body of Christ.

Coworker C: And if you believe that, you're a f*cking moron.

Me: You just called almost a billion people f*cking morons.

Coworker C: Well, so be it. There are a billion people who love Baywatch too. That doesn't mean it's good.

So which is more preposterous (or miraculous, depending on your perspective): transubstantiation or the world-wide popularity of Baywatch?

Iraq: What Next?

2006-11-29T21:42:00.000-06:00

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. I feel like I should say something, but what is there for me to say? My meager mind cannot begin to grasp the magnitude of this conflict, nor does it want to. I follow the news and analysis like everybody else, of course, but the impact on my psyche is always shortlived. There is no real connection, no point of contact, between my day-to-day life and the horror experienced every moment by our soldiers and the Iraqi people. I confess my callousness; most of the time, I just don't care.

In the most recent New Republic, seventeen experts try to answer the question "Iraq: What Next?". The answers, as indicated the titles of the articles, are all over the map. Robert Kagan wants to "Send More Troops", while David Rieff says "Bring the Troops Home." Peter Galbraith thinks the best approach is to "Divide Iraq", while Reza Aslan believes we should "Keep it Whole." Three articles focus on the troublesome Sunnis: "Deal with the Sunnis", "Crush the Sunnis", "Ally with the Sunnis". Leon Wieseltier, not ready to give up, but also completely out of ideas, says "Try Anything" - desperation as foreign policy. Apparently, the only consensus is that there is no consensus; all options are terrible.

Lately, the debate among our political and media elites has focused on whether Iraq is in a state of civil war. To which I say: who gives a f*ck? Why are we quibbling about semantics when the situation on the ground is so appalling? Does anybody really think that our troops care whether the conflict meets the technical definition of a civil war? The reality of Iraq is too messy for the textbooks, too ugly to fit nicely into anyone's political ideology, conservative or liberal. So let's forgo the bullshit and the talking points, as well as the ridiculous calls for "moral clarity". All the clarity is gone, and the morals of everyone involved are nothing but filthy rags.

Given that a satisfactory conclusion to this bloody struggle is now a human impossibility, there is nothing left for the Church to do but pray, fervently and unceasingly. We must pray for peace, but also for forgiveness. The Iraq war has revealed, as few events in our history have, the hubris and sinfulness of humanity, and we all deserve a portion of the blame: Iraqis and Americans, Republicans and Democrats, Sunnis and Shiite. Let us pray together for deliverance.

The Scientists Prepare for Battle

2006-11-21T10:52:00.000-06:00

There’s a fascinating article in today’s New York Times that talks about the growing number of influential scientists who are itching for an all-out fight between science and religion. The article takes us to a conference in La Jolla, California, that brought together many of the leading anti-faith minds of the day, including Dawkins and Sam Harris, along with a few more moderate voices. The general tone at the meeting was one of anger and despair that so many people around the world continue to hold “irrational” religious beliefs. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” said Mr. Harris, who has never been afraid to tar billions of people with the actions of a few. Why, oh why, are people so stupid, wailed the scientists.

Many of the scientists are fed-up, frankly, and they’re not going to acquiesce to religious belief anymore. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, thinks that “anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.” When someone mentioned that we should respect people’s deeply-held beliefs, Dawkins went into one of his hate-filled tirades: “I am utterly fed up with the respect that we — all of us, including the secular among us — are brainwashed into bestowing on religion.” For Dawkins, religious people are “brainwashed”, and those who respect religion are “brainwashed.” Only those who have spent decades practicing science in the insular world of academic research are not brainwashed. Amazing!!

The scientists, or at least the ones in La Jolla, want a war, an apocalyptic struggle that will settle the science versus religion issue once and for all. A bizarre wish, in my opinion, as this is a battle that science will never win. The vast majority of the world’s people hold some form of religious belief, and have for thousands of years, and a tiny cadre of scientists is not going to change that, no matter how many books they write. Not to mention that a concerted campaign by the scientific community against religion would put an incredible strain on the thousands of dedicated scientists who are also devout believers. I, for one, already feel like something of an outsider in the scientific world, and an anti-religion crusade by the scientific establishment would probably send me fleeing the lab as fast as possible.

Interestingly, once of the strategies advanced in the meeting was to present science to the public as a religion:

Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its first minister. She was not entirely kidding. “We should let the success of the religious formula guide us,” Dr. Porco said. “Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome — and even comforting — than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.” She displayed a picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn and its glowing rings eclipsing the Sun, revealing in the shadow a barely noticeable speck called Earth.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, it’s refreshing to hear a scientist acknowledge that the product peddled by Dawkins & Co. really is another form of religion (scientism), and not simply disinterested science. Secondly, her statement that the “incredible richness and beauty” of the universe is “so much more glorious and awesome — and even comforting — than anything offered by any scripture or God” reveals a profound ignorance of how religious people view the cosmos. For the faithful, the glory of God and the glory of creation are not in competition. Quite the contrary, they feed off each other in a synergy of glory, with the beauty of the world testifying to the goodness of its Creator, and the love of God infusing every corner of the universe. The atheist presents a false choice: either love God or love the “real world.” But the believer looks at the rings of Saturn and loves both even more.

Is Death Evil or Necessary, or a Necessary Evil?

2006-11-20T17:34:00.000-06:00

In my opinion, the challenge posed by evolutionary biology to the Christian faith is not that it refutes the so-called “argument from design”, but that it offers a narrative of nature that is at odds with the Christian understanding of Creation. Whereas Christians view the cosmos as essentially “good” and attribute the presence of death and suffering to the fallen state of humanity, Darwinists understand death and violence as intrinsic properties of the biological realm that predate the advent of the human species. From an evolutionary standpoint, there is nothing good or decent about creation; the story of life is one of brute force, of Nietzschean will to power, where all the spoils go to the strong and progress occurs by benefit of (and not in spite of) death. Nature exists only by virtue of its willingness to dominate; it has no purpose, no morals, no beauty (given this, it is somewhat surprising that so many evolutionary biologists are ardent environmentalists. E.O. Wilson, for one, has a strong sense of purpose to preserve this purposeless world).*

Christian thinkers have responded to this incongruity between the biological and Christian narratives in two fashions (here, I am greatly indebted to a series of excellent posts by Lee at verbum ipsum – please read them here, here, and here). The first approach, advocated by Keith Ward, holds that “destruction and death are built into the universe as necessary conditions of its progress to new forms of life.” That is, death and suffering serve to promote the greater good, namely, the evolution of intelligent life. The drawback of this argument is that is makes God the author of death and evil, and, for this reason, it has been strongly opposed by David Bentley Hart, especially in his book The Doors of the Sea. For Hart, death and destruction are alien forces in God’s creation to which He is implacably opposed. The advantage of this position, of course, is that God is no longer complicit in the existence of evil, and it more closely adheres to the traditional view that death is the result of man’s original sin. But, as Lee points out, Hart’s rhetoric can easily lapse into a kind of gnostic dualism wherein God is only the redeemer of the world, not its sole creator.

While I tend to think that Ward is more right than Hart on this point, I take issue with the assumption, implicit in both arguments, that death is evil. Isn’t it death that makes us creatures and not gods, serving as the most dramatic expression of our finitude? In particular, I find the notion that death only arose as a judgment for sin simply preposterous.** Perishability, after all, is what gives the world the possibility of true becoming and creativity, as well as its historical character (see Jüngel's excellent discussion of the positive aspects of perishability in God as the Mystery of the World). Moreover, the death and resurrection of Christ demonstrate once and for all that death is God’s servant, not his enemy.

It is man’s sinfulness, his lack of faith, that transforms death from something natural into something terrible, something evil. Humanity, apart from God, begins to have delusions of immortality, and then death becomes only an absurd negation. But the Christian understands that his life is never his possession, that he is always dependent on the higher power. His faith in Christ also teaches him that death has no real finality; it is God’s love that is absolute. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t mourn the passing of those we love, or try to heal the sick. We must always cherish and protect life. But we should never begrudge God death when it is He who so graciously grants us life.

So, in my estimation, the evolutionary biologists are right when they say that death is a necessary part of nature. But are they also correct in concluding that the world is not good, as the book of Genesis would have us believe? I think the answer depends on how one interprets the biblical statements concering the goodness of creation. Are these meant to imply that the world is intrinsically good, that is, good in-and-of-itself? Or do they mean that creation is only good when it’s in communion with its Creator? I think the latter answer is correct, which means that only a redeemed creation is truly “good”. We should never draw too sharp a distinction between God’s roles as Creator and Redeemer, as if He first made a supposedly good creation and then had to save it when all hell broke loose. Creation always involves redemption, and redemption always involves a new creation. Thus, it’s not surprising that a purely atheistic worldview like neo-Darwinism is incapable of seeing the inherent goodness of creation, since it cuts itself off from the salvation that redeems and restores this fractured world.

* The purpose of this post is not to challenge the scientific merit of the theory of evolution, which is quite simply beyond question. My target is Darwinism as a metanarrative, a sort of theory of everything, which is advanced by the likes of Dawkins and Dennett.

** Of course, there is a form “unnatural” death that did arise because of man’s sinfulness: murder. But murder is not the same as death in general, and it provides no evolutionary advantage that I can think of.

A Special Sufjan Christmas

2006-11-18T09:10:00.000-06:00

While I normally forbid myself from engaging in any Christmas related activities before December 1 (or at least no earlier than the first Sunday of Advent), I've made an exception for Sufjan Steven's 5-disc Christmas Singalong,* which you can listen to here. While all the songs are terrific, I highly recommend "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" (disc 2) and "Joy To The World" (disc 4).

*Thanks to Clint at Lutheran Confessions for the tip.

"Every Phenomenon of Nature was a Word"

2006-11-15T21:51:00.000-06:00

Since I've been bereft of original ideas lately, the purpose of this post is simply share some marvelous quotes from the 18th-century German theologian Johann Hamann (a.k.a., "the happy Kierkegaard"), whose writings I cannot recommend highly enough. Stylistically and theologically he is similar to Kierkegaard, but he lacks Soren's stridency and melancholy disposition. Moreover, one can find in his writings early traces of Jüngel's emphasis on language, Pannenberg's account of time and eternity, and von Balthasar's (and later Hart's) aesthetics. A truly remarkable combination for a humble bureaucrat from Königsberg.

The initial passage describes Hamann's vision of the original state of creation, and also expresses the eternal Christian hope for the consummation of the world:

"So Adam was God's: and God himself introduced the firstborn and oldest of our race as the bearer and heir of the world which had been made ready by the Word of His mouth. Angels, happy to look upon his heavenly countenance, were the ministers and courtiers of the first monarch. All the children of God lifted their praise to the chorus of the morning stars. All tasted and beheld, firsthand and in the very act, the friendliness of the Maker, who played on his earth and found delight in his human children. As yet no creature had fallen against its will into the vanity and bondage of the transitory system, under which they now yawn and sigh... Every phenomenon of nature was a word - the sign, symbol, and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible, but so much the more intimate union, participation, and communion of divine energies and ideas. Everything that man in the beginning heard, saw, gazed upon, and touched, was a living word. For God was the Word. With this Word in his mouth and in his heart the origin of language was as natural, as near and easy, as a child's game."

Here we see how Hamann's thought is thoroughly imbued with a sense of the profligate and gratuitous Word of God; a Word that is not an abstract and ethereal idea, but something that can be seen, touched, and tasted. As he wrote to a friend: "To express my soul to you from the depths, my whole Christianity...is a taste for signs and for the elements of water, bread, and wine. Here is fullness for hunger and thirst." Hamann's motto was the Psalmist's saying: "O taste and see that the Lord is good" (34:8)

In short, Hamann was the epitome of an earthy Christian who never lost his awe for the sheer miracle of Creation:

"Just as man often pits his nature against his reason and makes his habit of action into a necessity, so too, in his worldly wisdom, he has often tried to pit nature against its creator by speaking of unnatural and supernatural works. We might ask how many miracles God has performed, that we should no longer regard anything as natural. And what is there in nature, in the most commonplace natural events, that is not a miracle in our eyes, a miracle in the strictest sense of the word?"

I absolutely love this quote, because it shows that Hamann was continually amazed that the world exists, and that he exists. He lived his life in pure receptivity, never failing to hear God's voice in Scripture, nature, and history. For him, existence was a perpetual conversation with the Creator, "the poet at the beginning of days":

"Our entire life is a history of divine mercy and love. When we complete the day's work, we praise and honor them if we accept love and appropriate it, the love which moved Him to be our creator and redeemer. This love alone can make us into creatures whom He views with favor and with the word of the second creation: 'It is finished.'"

What was Abraham Thinking When He Raised the Knife?

2006-11-05T15:58:00.000-06:00

I recently embarked on a second reading of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, hoping to suck more marrow out of this rich text. As a guide for this journey, I checked out John Lippitt’s commentary on F&T. But beware of commentaries; they can sometimes prove a distraction, preventing one from focusing on the primary text. This has happened here, as I find myself spending more time disagreeing with Lippitt’s interpretations than engaging with the book directly. Thus, this post offers both my thoughts on F&T and a critique of Lippitt's notion of faith.

The central theme of F&T is the Akedah - Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah. Kierkegaard (via the book’s pseudonym, Johannes de silentio) never tires of praising Abraham, the father of faith. According to SK, Abraham’s faith involved a “double movement” - “infinite resignation” to the loss of Isaac, followed by belief “in virtue of the absurd” that Isaac would not be taken from him. To illustrate this concept, SK employs the example of a young lad who falls in love with a princess far above his meager social standing. As it becomes clear to the lad that he will never marry the princess, he becomes “the knight of infinite resignation”:

“So the knight [of infinite resignation] makes the movement – but what movement? Will he forget the whole thing?... No! For the knight does not contradict himself… The knight remembers everything, but precisely this remembrance is pain, and yet by the infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence.”

But if the lad had faith, like Abraham, he would make an extra movement, the movement of faith:

“Now we will let the knight of faith appear in the role just described. He makes exactly the same movements as the other knight, infinitely renounces claim to the love which is the content of his life, he is reconciled in pain; but then occurs the prodigy, he makes still another movement more wonderful than all, for he says, ‘I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible.’… At the moment when the knight made the act of resignation, he was convinced, humanly speaking, of the impossibility… so the only thing that can save him is the absurd, and this he grasps by faith.”

It appears that Lippitt cannot understand this double movement, which, in his estimation, “involves simultaneously believing two mutually contradictory propositions”: that the lad will not marry the princess and that he will marry her (or, that Abraham will have to sacrifice Isaac and that Isaac will not be taken from him). In short, Lippitt does not understand why the knight of faith must first become the knight of resignation.

To solve this dilemma, Lippitt argues that “Johannes’ view of faith is inherently confused” and that it doesn’t represent SK’s true conception of faith. Lippitt instead advocates for Ronald L. Hall’s reading of the text, in which resignation is described as “annulled possibility.” Here, resignation is the antithesis of faith, not its necessary precursor; whereas the knight of resignation tries to transcend the pain of the world by refusing it, the knight of faith lives fully in the world. Lippitt, quoting Hall, writes:

Human existence is ‘intrinsically subject to possibility, and hence to anxiety, to vulnerability, to loss. The faithful self does not put these elements to rest, she plunges forward through them. The faithful self is continually called to embrace the world in all of its fragility, for she recognizes that it is, at any moment, in her power to refuse. The knight of faith knows that such a refusal would bring with it a form of existence that would be other than the human, and to this possibility she must continually say ‘no!’.

For Hall (and Lippitt), resignation is conceived as a form of temptation, or inauthentic existence – a possibility that must be forever annulled. But, in my opinion, this interpretation does violence to Kierkegaard’s concept of faith. For instance, in what sense does the faithful one, in Hall’s account, believe “by virtue of the absurd”? Moreover, how does Hall reconcile his reading with SK’s frequent remark that faith requires belief in what is humanly impossible? Where is Hall’s sense of paradox? The key problem, in my view, is that Hall is largely committed to a humanist reading of the text, and thus, for him, faith can never mean more than “authentic existence.” He is powerless to understand what SK means when he says that Abraham believed “in virtue of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible.” In the end, the paradox that Kierkegaard was so determined to maintain is dissolved.

Thoughts for Reformation Day

2006-10-31T22:01:00.000-06:00

Today is Halloween, of course, but it is also Reformation Day in the Lutheran Church. On this day in 1517, Martin Luther, dressed as a monk, played a world-historical trick on the Catholic Church by nailing 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. What exactly he intended to accomplish with this act of vandalism remains unclear, but we are all aware of the consequences, both good and bad. Through the centuries, Reformation Day (now typically celebrated on the previous Sunday) has served as a sort of Protestant 4th of July, with multiple renditions of "A Mighty Fortress" and a festive meal in the church basement. But perhaps the day calls for more reflection and less denominational patriotism. After all, the existence of a separate Lutheran church is not necessarily a good thing, and the freedom we gained in the Reformation will be in vain if we forget what motivated Luther in the first place - the insight that justification comes through faith alone. Reformation Day is worthwhile only if it spurs the Church to renew its commitment to the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae.

A brief aside: The Catholic author Flannery O'Connor was at a dinner party when "the conversation turned to the Eucharist." A lady remarked that "when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one." To which O'Connor replied, "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it." She later wrote that "that was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

O'Connor's words often come to mind when I contemplate what the doctrine of justification through faith means to me. This article has come under frequent attack, especially in recent years, and the only defense I can offer is that it serves as "the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable." It is a source of joy and my refuge in distress. To those who would say that it is merely a doctrine, one among many, my reply is nearly the same as O'Connor's: "Well, if it's just a doctrine, to hell with it." As Luther said, "nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls... Upon this article all things depend which we teach and practice." In other words, justification is the Word that God has spoken to his Creation, and we must resist all attempts to obscure its radical message with caveats and evasions.

Ultimately, O'Connor's position is not that different than mine. The sacrament is, after all, nothing more and nothing less than the visible Word - "my body given for you." Similarly, the justifying Word comes to us in the very human and very earthy language of Scripture. As Luther said, "The glory of our God is precisely that for our sakes he comes down to the very depths, into human flesh, into the bread, into our mouth, our heart, our bosom." Reformation Day reminds us that the Church and all its members live only from these two gifts of Word and Sacrament. Thus, the Church is never a finished product capable of standing on its own two feet. The Holy Spirit continues to work within the Church, justifying it through grace, and that is the reason why we celebrate today. Semper Reformanda!

Followers of the Antichrist, I Ask for Your Vote!!

2006-10-29T14:50:00.000-06:00

Here in Minnesota, religion has been a major issue in two congressional races. Voters in the 5th district, which encompasses Minneapolis and nearby suburbs, are expected to send Democratic candidate Keith Ellison to Washington, thereby electing the first Muslim member of Congress. Not surprisingly, Ellison's faith has been a major point on contention in the race. In particular, his opponents have targeted his past associations with the Nation of Islam, the notoriously anti-Semitic organization led by Louis Farakan. Ellison denies that he was ever a serious follower of the Nation of Islam, and he has repeatedly disavowed the group's teachings. However, the stain lingers. I'm inclined to take Ellison at his word, but given his assured victory, and my disgust with the two-party system, I'll probably cast my vote for third-party candidate Tammy Lee.

More interesting is the 6th district, which pits Democrat Patty Wetterling against Republican Michele Bachmann. Bachmann has long been the standard-bearer for the religious right in the Minnesota Legislature, where she fought the "homosexual agenda" tooth-and-nail. This involved leading a "prayer circle around the desk of an openly gay state senator" and spying on a gay-rights rally at the Capitol while hiding behind a bush. She has also made it clear that God told her to run for Congress and intends for her to win (of course, such statements have become de rigeur for Republicans these days, so we shouldn't be too surprised).

Interestingly, Bachmann is a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, which prompted this snippet from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Opinion page:

Much has been made of Democratic Fifth District House candidate Keith Ellison's alleged ties to the Nation of Islam -- or, as Scott at [the Power Line blog] put it, his "long, enthusiastic and devoted service to the Nation of Islam as the acolyte of a hate cult." Conservative bloggers have made candidates' ties to religious groups an issue, but now a liberal blog -- Faithful Democrats -- has adopted the same tactic regarding GOP Sixth District House candidate Michele Bachmann's church. It is affiliated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which regards the Roman Catholic papacy as the Antichrist. "It's tantamount to hate speech," said Dennis McGrath, spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The blog asked, "Can a congressional candidate whose faith says Catholics follow Satan win in a district that's 30 percent Catholic? ... This statement is one of only nine core doctrines listed on WELS's website, suggesting it is particularly important to the denomination. Might Bachmann disagree with this rabid anti-Catholicism? Perhaps, but WELS insists that members and congregations agree on the fundamental doctrines of the church in order to remain in communion with it."

After reading this, I visited the WELS website and, sure enough, their feelings about the papacy are loud and clear: "We reject the teaching that Christians should look for one individual to arise in the end times as the great Antichrist. The characteristics of the Antichrist as presented in Scripture have been and are being fulfilled in the institution of the papacy (2 Thessalonians 2:4-10). We reject the opinion that the identification of the papacy with the Antichrist was merely a historical judgment valid only at the time of the Reformation." In their defense, WELS does make a distinction between the institution of pope and individual Catholics, but it's a very slight distinction:

We thank God, that even within the outward kingdom of Antichrist, there will be some (the precise number known only to God) who escape the fate of the Antichrist because they believe the Scripture's teaching about Christ rather than Antichrist's lies. It was just such Christians within "Babylon" that made up much of the Invisible Church in the days before the Reformation.

Apparently, Bachmann has not visited the WELS website, because she claimed in a debate that her Synod says no such thing about the pope. I guess her particular church has done a poor job of teaching her the "right doctrine". Perhaps, for political purposes, she should quickly transfer to the ELCA (God forbid!) or the Missouri Synod, which, according to the WELS website, has gone soft on the Antichrist.

Some political experts think this issue has the potential to hurt Bachmann, and I hope it does. It would be delicious irony if Bachmann's over-the-top religiosity manages to alienate other conservative Christians, thereby costing her this very close election. Poor Michele. She thought only liberals and gays followed the Antichrist.

Nagel on Dawkins' Latest Book

2006-10-16T21:49:00.000-05:00

Following up on my last post, Thomas Nagel has an excellent review in The New Republic of Richard Dawkins' latest book, The God Delusion (subscription required). He describes the book as "a very uneven collection of scriptural ridicule, amateur philosophy, historical and contemporary horror stories, anthropological speculations, and cosmological scientific argument." While Nagel is not a religious person himself, he finds Dawkins' arguments for the non-existence of God unconvincing (incredibly, the book contains a chapter entitled "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God". Well, then I guess we'd better cancel church this Sunday). According to Nagel, the primary flaw in Dawkins's thinking is a lack of imagination, in that he can only conceive of two grand explanations: a "physicalist naturalism" and "the God Hypothesis" (read, crude theism). But these "stark alternatives may not exhaust the possibilities". Moreover, Nagel points out that both perspectives require faith, notwithstanding Dawkin's outlandish claims for science:

"All explanations come to an end somewhere. The real opposition between Dawkins's physicalist naturalism and the God hypothesis is a disagreement over whether this end point is physical, extensional, and purposeless, or mental, intentional, and purposive. On either view, the ultimate explanation is not itself explained. The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics."

Dawkins is clearly perplexed and angry that, 400 years since the dawn of the Enlightenment, so many people continue believe in God. So why aren't people satisfied with a purely scientific understanding of the world? Are they deluded? Dawkins certainly thinks so. But for Nagel, the explanation lies in the fact that the reductionist worldview offered by modern science simply doesn't do justice to reality as experienced by actual humans:

Dawkins, like many of his contemporaries, is hobbled by the assumption that the only alternative to religion is to insist that the ultimate explanation of everything must lie in particle physics, string theory, or whatever purely extensional laws govern the elements of which the material world is composed.

This reductionist dream is nourished by the extraordinary success of the physical sciences in our time, not least in their recent application to the understanding of life through molecular biology. It is natural to try to take any successful intellectual method as far as it will go. Yet the impulse to find an explanation of everything in physics has over the last fifty years gotten out of control. The concepts of physical science provide a very special, and partial, description of the world that experience reveals to us. It is the world with all subjective consciousness, sensory appearances, thought, value, purpose, and will left out. What remains is the mathematically describable order of things and events in space and time.

That conceptual purification launched the extraordinary development of physics and chemistry that has taken place since the seventeenth century. But reductive physicalism turns this description into an exclusive ontology. The reductionist project usually tries to reclaim some of the originally excluded aspects of the world, by analyzing them in physical--that is, behavioral or neurophysiological--terms; but it denies reality to what cannot be so reduced. I believe the project is doomed--that conscious experience, thought, value, and so forth are not illusions, even though they cannot be identified with physical facts.

Dawkins fails to realize that science will never be able to provide an adequate basis for a complete understanding of human existence. It can only give us abstractions which, however useful they may be, are not the substance of life. What Johann Hamann says of historical events is also true of scientific theories and the law of nature; they "are like that wide valley full of dry bones - and lo, they were very dry. No one but a prophet could presage that veins and flesh would grow on these bones and that skin would cover them. As yet there is no breath in them, until the prophet prophesies unto the wind and the word of the Lord speaks..."

In Search of Better Atheists

2006-10-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

"I guess it's obvious that Santa Claus is the kid's version of God. If you get to your twenties and you're still believing in God, which I was, I feel it's a state of arrested development, as if a child was twelve and still believed in Santa Claus." -- Julia Sweeney, as heard on NPR's To the Best of our Knowledge.

Although Julia Sweeney - former cast member of SNL - could hardly be called an intellectual, I give her credit for so succinctly summarizing the fall-back position of atheistic luminaries like Dawkins, Dennett, and Sam Harris. Anyone who has encountered the writings of these bold men is quite familiar with such "God as Tooth Fairy" attacks. Indeed, the idea that religion is no more than childish fancy is one of the most treasured and nurtured thoughts among secular elites, largely because it reinforces their sense of superiority over the benighted masses. But sadly, it's a simplistic approach that betrays the ignorance and shallow thinking of its advocates. The main problem is that it misses its intended target by a mile. Sweeney's argument is correct to this extent: if any believer's conception of God actually resembled the figure of Santa Claus, then they would certainly be in a state of arrested development. But very few of the adherents of the world's major religions - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. - have such a crude conception of God. The fact that Sweeney can say that "it's obvious that Santa Claus is the kid's version of God" indicates that she has no understanding of actual faith, and that the faith she thought she had in her twenties was only a sham, and not the real deal. Apparently, she has since come to think that all believers share her simplistic notions of God.

Likewise, Dawkins and Harris have sold a lot of books with their straw-man arguments, running down a caricature of religion that primarily exists in the minds of "secular fundamentalists" like themselves. These modern atheists are not interested in understanding religion, only attacking it. Thus, Dawkins can say that "we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns." He makes no effort to understand the best minds of the Christian tradition - Augustine, Aquinas, or Barth - probably because it's so much easier to beat up on the likes of Pat Robertson.

The intellectual laziness of modern atheism is a shame because, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Christianity needs smart atheists to keep it honest. In my estimation, the best example of a "purifying atheist" is Friedrich Nietzsche (for a wonderful synopsis of Nietzsche's contributions to Christian thought, please check out Byron Smith's post here). The son of a Lutheran pastor, Nietzsche had a deeper understanding of Christianity than the vast majority of theologians, past and present. And unlike modern atheists, he took the idea of God very seriously. He may have reached some of the same conclusions about religion as modern atheists, but he took a very different route. His writings bear witness, not to a simple-minded dismissal of God, but to a profound confrontation with his religious heritage. In the end, his struggle may have yielded a purer and more faithful account of the Christian faith. Thus, Eberhard Jungel could say that "[Nietzsche's] thoughts come very close to the Christian truth which he was opposing. They merit special attention." A hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone will be saying the same thing about Harris' recent book.

So here's a challenge to all those aspiring atheists out there: ditch the silly "Santa Claus" argument (you're better than that!) and start engaging religion with a little sophistication. May I suggest a certain German madman?

Is Forgiveness Only an Amish Virtue?

2006-10-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

In the wake of the Amish school shooting, much has been written about the willingness of the Amish community to forgive the perpetrator and his family. Before the bodies of the children were even buried, the Amish "sent words of forgiveness to the family of the killer who had executed their children", and representatives of the community even attended the murder's funeral - not to vent their anger, but to forgive and mourn for the troubled man who has caused them so much grief. Needless to say, the eagerness of the Amish to forgive has surprised and confounded most Americans, who tend to view revenge as a perfectly natural, and even beneficial, response to such injustices. We have grown accustomed to the sight of victims' families testifying in favor of the death penalty – a practice supported by a majority of Americans. The Amish, however, have set a very different example.

Indeed, the Amish response to this tragedy is so outside the norm that it has sent the media scurrying to finds its source in their theology and way of life. What is it about these simple people that allows them to forgive so freely and so quickly? Donald B. Kraybill, an expert on Amish life, does a good job of answering these questions in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Amish roots stretch back to the Anabaptist movement at the time of the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe. Hundreds of Anabaptists were burned at the stake, decapitated and tortured because they contended that individuals should have the freedom to make voluntary decisions about religion... The martyr voice still rings loudly in Amish ears with the message of forgiveness of those who tortured them and burned their bodies at the stake.
The martyr testimony springs from the example of Jesus, the cornerstone of Amish faith. As do other Anabaptists, the Amish take the life and teachings of Jesus seriously. Without formal creeds, their simple (but not simplistic) faith accents living in the way of Jesus rather than comprehending the complexities of religious doctrine. Their model is the suffering Jesus who carried his cross without complaint. And who, hanging on the cross, extended forgiveness to his tormentors: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Beyond his example, the Amish try to practice Jesus' admonitions to turn the other cheek, to love one's enemies, to forgive 70 times seven times, and to leave vengeance to the Lord. Retaliation and revenge are not part of their vocabulary.

For me, Kraybill’s analysis is somewhat unsettling, as it begs the question: why don’t other Christians, myself included, behave like the Amish? Why is the media so impressed, and so surprised, by the radical forgiveness exhibited by this isolated community? Could it be that the willingness to “turn the other cheek” is not often seen, even in this supposedly Christian nation? Could it be that most Christians, unlike the Amish, fail to “take the life and teachings of Jesus seriously”? In a nation whose foreign policy has been motivated by a spirit of vengeance ever since 9/11, a tiny group of pre-modern farmers has shamed us by its extraordinary example.

We “conventional” Christians should be quite worried that, for many non-believers, the forgiveness exhibited by the Amish is considered a peculiar quirk of their brand of Christianity, and not of Christianity in general. That they could think such a thing is proof that they have not witnessed enough forgiveness from the rest of us.

Works of Love (Part 4): The Paradox of Forgiveness

2006-09-30T13:53:00.000-05:00

By forgiveness, love hides a multitude of sins... This is a wonderful thought, therefore also faith's thought, because faith always relates itself to what is not seen. I believe that what is seen has come into existence from what is not seen; I see the world, but what is not seen I do not see; that I believe. Similarly, in forgiveness there is also a relation of faith of which we are rarely aware. What, then, is the unseen here? The unseen is that forgiveness takes away that which does indeed exist... The one who loves sees the sin he forgives, but he believes that forgiveness takes it away. This cannot be seen, whereas the sin can indeed be seen; on the other hand, if the sin did not exist to be seen, it could not be forgiven either. Just as one by faith believes the unseen into what is seen, so the one who loves by forgiveness believes away what is seen. Both are faith. Blessed is the believer, he believes what he cannot see; blessed is the one who loves, he believes away that which he indeed can see! -- S. Kierkegaard, Works of Love (294-5)

In this passage, Kierkegaard tells us that the act of forgiveness is a paradox in which the sin of our neighbor is both seen and not seen. And as with all other paradoxes, forgiveness requires the passion of faith - the faith to believe that what exists does not exist. Only in this way can love hide a multitude of sins.

Interestingly, Kierkegaard draws a subtle contrast between divine and human forgiveness. God's forgiveness is divine forgetting: "Forgetting, when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing, and to forget is to take back into nothing." Humans do not have this power to "uncreate" sin. But Kierkegaard recommends that we do the next best thing: following Isaiah 38:17, we should place the offending sins "behind our back":

"What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way: he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin. In love he turns towards the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course cannot see what is lying behind his back." (296)

By placing the sin behind his back, the forgiver removes the obstacle that had come between him and the offender, and thus he opens the way for reconciliation. True forgiveness requires that we not see the sin when we look at the forgiven sinner. Of course, this is easier said than done. Too often, our forgiveness only goes half way. We say "you're forgiven" but, in reality, we continue to nurse our grievances. We may even remind the forgiven of their past sins in order to shame or manipulate them. In short, we refuse to put the sin behind our backs, and Kierkegaard points out that this refusal to forgive completely is also sin:

"Does not the one who unlovingly denies forgiveness increase the multitude of sins?... He enlarges the sin, makes it seem greater. Forgiveness deprives the sin of life, but to deny forgiveness provides the sin with sustenance." (297)

The unforgiving person multiplies the multitude of sins. Only forgiveness liberates both the sinner and the offended one from the bondage of sin.

The Shame of America

2006-09-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

As the bumper-sticker says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." The latest case-in-point is the detainee bill passed yesterday by Congress. Not only does this bill grant the government significant leeway in torturing terrorism suspects, it also strips these suspects of such time-honored rights as habeas corpus, even if they happen to be American citizens. To add insult to injury, the House also passed a bill that permits warrentless wiretapping by government agencies. All in the name of keeping the homeland "safe".

Are we still the land of the free and home of the brave? Are we still a nation that values freedom over security? Or have we allowed a tiny bunch of terrorists to turn us into a fearful and cowardly people? Under the guise of fighting terrorism, our rights are slowly being handed over to an Administration that refuses to acknowledge any limits to its power. The fact that this travesty is being perpetuated with the consent of Congress - an institution that should stand for democracy and the separation of powers - is even more appalling.

For more details, I refer you to Lee at verbum ipsum and D.W. Congdon at The Fire and the Rose (and for an extra dose of outrage, check out this article from washingtonpost.com).

Especially with regards to the issue of torture, the church in American can no longer equivocate or remain silent. To quote from D.W.'s excellent post, the time has come for Christians to take a stand against this Administration:

We have a moral duty to oppose what is happening in our country today. To sit back and allow such things to take place is to support them. I do not have the experience or the resources to know how I can be involved, but I hope to contribute to some sort of protest through posts like this one. Finally, as the church that confesses Jesus to be the only Lord and Savior, we must deny the claim of the president to be the sovereign of this land. We must deny his claim to power, and affirm Christ as sole authority. We must deny the kingdom of this world that says "might is right" and "U.S. freedom is worth preserving at any cost", and we must instead affirm the Kingdom of God, which nullifies all other kingdoms. As the church, we confess that God alone lays claim to our lives, because it is in God alone that we find new life. As the church of life, we thus are called to stand against the empires of death. This is our calling. May we walk in steadfast obedience as we seek the glory of God.

My hope is that the courts will put an end to this madness by reaffirming the rule of law, and that the Democrats will take back one or both houses of Congress in November. Failing that, I'm afraid our nation is headed for a full-blown Constitutional crisis.

Works of Love (Part 3): Proper Self-Love

2006-09-21T23:07:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the trickiest part of the command “to love the neighbor as yourself” is that little phrase as yourself. What exactly does it mean? Should we love ourselves at all, or should we sacrifice everything for the neighbor? Who has priority – the neighbor or myself? The as yourself often appears to be a sort of paradox, since self-love and neighbor-love are so often in conflict. It seems that we can only love ourselves at the expense of loving the neighbor, or visa versa. Thus, it’s not surprising that most Christian thinkers have dealt with this paradox by eliminating it, refusing to take the “as” seriously. Luther, for instance, frequently asserted that we should love the neighbor more than ourselves, since any self-love is inherently selfish and sinful. Thomas Aquinas took the other route, arguing that “a man ought in charity to love himself more than his neighbor.” But Kierkegaard refuses to compromise: the Christian loves the neighbor as he loves himself – the two loves are not in competition. But how is this possible?

First, it important to understand that Kierkegaard draws a sharp distinction between selfish self-love and proper self-love. With regards to the former, he is as harsh and uncompromising as Luther. But he also says that “if anyone is unwilling to learn from Christianity to love himself in the right way, he cannot love the neighbor either.” Just as Kierkegaard is not interested in eliminating romantic love or friendship, but seeks to set these preferential loves on their proper foundation, he is determined to preserve proper self-love. So what does it mean to love oneself in the right way? Kierkegaard provides a clue by saying that “to love God is to love oneself truly.” God is the “middle term”, even in self-love. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s statement that “the love relationship requires threeness: the lover, the beloved, and the love – but the love is God” holds true even when the lover and the beloved are the same person. Thus, we can only love ourselves properly when we stand before God, an experience that is both harrowing and blessed, as described in the following passage:

“If you want to be well off and yet easily manage to become something, then forget God, never let yourself really become aware, never let it become really clear to you that it is he who has created you from nothing; proceed on the presupposition that a human being does not have time to waste on keeping in mind the one to whom he infinitely and unconditionally owes everything… So forget it and be noisy along with the crowd, laugh or cry, be busy from morning until night… Above all, be an earnest person by having forgotten the one and only earnestness, to relate yourself to God, to become nothing. Oh, but then keep in mind that this annihilation before God is so blessed that you at every moment would seek to return to this annihilation more intensely, more warmly, more fervently… The world cannot take everything, simply because it cannot give everything. That can be done only by God, who takes everything, everything, everything – in order to give everything.”

This is self-love before God! Here we understand that our very existence is a gift from the loving God, who gives us everything. Here we learn that we do not belong to ourselves; instead, we belong first to God our Creator and secondly to the neighbor, a fellow child of God, whom we are called upon to serve. Here we finally see that “whoever loses his live shall save it.” To love God is to know that one is loved by God, and thus to love oneself.

Early in Works of Love, Kierkegaard remarks that the commandment to love the neighbor as yourself, “as with a pick, wrenches open the lock of self-love and wrests it away from the person.” Notice that self-love is not eliminated, but it is radically de-centered. In faith we live outside ourselves, both in God and in the neighbor, and learn to love ourselves anew.

By Their Fruit You Will Recognize Them

2006-09-17T16:07:00.000-05:00

Based on several news reports (see here, here, and here), it appears that the Muslim world is doing a bang-up job of proving the Pope right. The level of hypocrisy on display is simply unbelievable:

A senior Vatican official stopped short of issuing an apology but said Pope Benedict XVI "deeply regretted" offending Muslims with his inflammatory comments about Islam last week. Not good enough, say Muslim leaders.
The pope's suggestion that compulsion and violence are inherent features of Islam has outraged the Muslim world. In Afghanistan, where apostates are subject to execution, the parliament and the Foreign Ministry demanded an apology. In Yemen, where religious conversion is punishable by death, the president has threatened to sever diplomatic ties. In the West Bank, Palestinians attacked four churches with guns and firebombs. And a Somali cleric added his two cents: "Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim." (from Slate.com's summary of what's in major papers)

Unfortunately, it appears that the Pope has now issued a full apology. Score another point for radical Islam's on-going quest to intimidate the West. It's almost enough to make one believe the over-heated rhetoric from Republicans concerning "Islamofascism", but I'll try not to succumb to that oversimplification.

A Few Science and Theology Links

2006-09-16T16:52:00.000-05:00

In the interest of fairness, here's a link that defends string theory against the charges leveled by Easterbrook in the Slate.com article. Rosenhouse argues the Easterbrook has mischaracterized both the objectives and methods of string theory. For instance, he says that "string theory is not an explanation for the existence of the universe. Rather, it is an attempt to explain the properties of the known subatomic particles by viewing them as the results of interactions of more fundamental objects, namely strings." He also claims that, while there's no evidence for the existence of extra dimensions, such speculation is not outrageous because three dimensions are known to exist. Thus, "physicists are hypothesizing more of the same, not anything fundamentally new." For me, this is not a convincing argument because it suggests that the number of dimensions is an arbitrary variable that can be changed at will, while physics has historically viewed it as an intrinsic property of the universe. Given the lack of experimental evidence, I see no reason why that time-tested assumption should be cast aside.

Rosenhouse goes on to say that, in contrast to dimensions, the "plane of the spirit" that Easterbrook mentions is "something that is hypothesized for no reason at all, beyond the fact that some people find it comforting to think it exists." Ah, yes, the old charge that religion only serves as an emotional crutch. Perhaps Easterbrook is not the only one guilty of "snarky" and "incoherent" characterizations of his subject matter. With respect to religious faith, Rosenhouse would do well to follow his own advice: "just confess ignorance and concede that he's not really in a position to assess the merits of the subject."

I've also been meaning to write a post on E.O. Wilson's well-intentioned, but frustrating, "letter to a Southern Baptist pastor" in The New Republic. Wilson argues that Christians and environmentalists should make common cause in protecting our fragile environment - something I agree with completely. However, Wilson exhibits such condescension towards his letter's recipient that it's hard to tell if he really wants the help of Christians after all. For one, his descriptions of religious belief are arrogant and crude in the extreme. Here's an example:

"I see no way to avoid the fundamental differences in our worldviews. You are a strict interpreter of Christian Holy Scripture; I am a secular humanist. You believe that each person's soul is immortal, making this planet a waystation to a second, eternal life; I think heaven and hell are what we create for ourselves, on this planet. For you, the belief in God made flesh to save mankind; for me, the belief in Promethean fire seized to set men free. You have found your final truth; I am still searching."

The smugness is just dripping of the page. I'm particularly struck by the last line: "You have found your final truth; I am still searching" (how brave!!). But is it true? Certainly not!! Wilson has found his final truth - it's called scientism, the belief that science represents the only legitimate way to think about the universe. Make no mistake about it, Wilson's core principles are not up for debate either, and he's just as close-minded and dogmatic as any Christian fundamentalist.

Like I said, I was going to write a full post about Wilson's letter. But Scott Carson at An Examined Life has already beat me to it. Since I couldn't hope to surpass his remarks, I'll simply provide the link and stop here.

Pope's Recent Comments on Justification

2006-09-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

Apparently the Muslim world is shocked that Pope Benedict has a few concerns about Islam's attempts, then and now, to spread it's faith "by the sword." Having read his comments in context, I hardly see what the fuss is about. But Muslim extremists, like campus activists in the U.S., never pass-up an opportunity to be offended. So we'll probably be treated to large doses of Muslim outrage in the coming days - Mohammed cartoons redux. (Apart from the controversy, I highly recommend reading the Pope's lecture for it's own sake, as it provides a thoughtful and concise account of Catholic thinking on the relationship between faith and reason. Words that should be taken to heart by those condemning the Pope's remarks).

While the media focuses on two lines from his lecture to the Regensburg faculty, I would like to highlight something the Pope said during the same trip at the Ecumenical Celebration of Vespers. He praised the "efforts to reach a consensus on justification", and then added:

The agreement on justification remains an important task, which – in my view – is not yet fully accomplished: in theology justification is an essential theme, but in the life of the faithful today – it seems to me – it is only dimly present. Because of the dramatic events of our time, the theme of mutual forgiveness is felt with increased urgency, yet there is little perception of our fundamental need of God’s forgiveness, of our justification by him. Our modern consciousness – and in some way all of us are “modern” - is generally no longer aware of the fact that we stand as debtors before God and that sin is a reality which can be overcome only by God’s initiative. Behind this weakening of the theme of justification and of the forgiveness of sins is ultimately a weakening of our relation with God. In this sense, our first task will perhaps be to rediscover in a new way the living God present in our lives, in our time and in our society.

Given my focus of late, the Pope's comments immediately brought to mind this passage from Kierkegaard's Works of Love:

"Take away from the forgiveness of sins the battle of the anguished conscience (to which, according to Luther's excellent explanation, this whole doctrine is to lead), and then close the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement that stand open all day!"

Both the Pope and Kierkegaard are pointing to the fact that modern man has essentially no conception of sin, "of our fundamental need of God’s forgiveness, of our justification by him." And without the "anguished conscience", Christianity falls apart. Of course, the two men differ somewhat in how they emphasize this. Benedict seems to suggest the one can lack sin-consciousness and still live the "life of the faithful", while SK would rather "close the churches" than practice a faith without the anguished conscience (which, by the way, he had in spades). In this, they are simply reflecting their respective theological heritage. Kierkegaard, good Lutheran that he was, believes justification to be the central issue in Christianity, whereas Benedict holds a more multi-faceted view.

But there's no doubt that our churches - all of them - struggle with how to talk about human sin. To generalize, the mere mention of sin in liberal congregations is usually considered divisive and depressing, and thus omitted altogether. Conservatives, on the other hand, often give the impression of being obsessed with sin, although only with particular sins - homosexuality, adultery, drinking, depravity (conveniently, these sins only apply to certain types of people, thereby leaving the accusers in the clear). In both cases, what's missing is a sense of "radical sin" that corrupts both our good and our bad deeds. This sin permeates our entire being, forming a chasm between us and God that can only be bridged from the side of God. Understood this way, radical sin sends us fleeing to the radical grace of Christ.

Luther did not need to instill an "anguished conscience" in his parishioners - they already had it. The question for the church today is whether it needs to "make sinners of people" before it can save them. Both Barth and Bonhoeffer cautioned against a "Law first, then Gospel" strategy, and there's a great deal of merit to these arguments. But whether the Law comes first or second, we need to somehow re-acquaint "our modern consciousness" with the notion of Sin before God (and not merely sins against conventional morality). If we can't manage that, then we should get busy transforming our churches into pool halls and dance clubs.