Die Evangelischen Theologen

An Introduction...

2012-02-01T08:00:00.000-06:00

“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves.” –David Foster Wallace, in Infinite Jest

If my life had a narrator in the Fall months of 2008 (spoken in a sullen British accent as in Stranger than Fiction), I am sure that narrator would have to steal Wallace’s quote. At that time, I worked in a mission that housed the homeless, addicted, and paroled in Anderson, Indiana. My job description was diverse and continually inflated, but one of my duties was to provide Christian nurture in this context. Much of this was in prayer, counseling, and bible studies. The Christian Center hired me when my degree in print journalism was still hot in my hands. I took a few introductory courses in Christian history, theology, and ethics at my alma mater, Anderson University. Yet these courses mainly served to stir a deep skepticism of my fundamentalist Christian faith. Having dissected most of the faith I held dear, I entered Christian ministry with the simple belief that the historical Jesus cared for the poor and so should I. Thus, barely six months into that ministry I recognized that I really didn’t know why I was pursuing Christian ministry—and yet I knew I had to pursue ministry. At that time, the best answer to that quandary was a seminary education. Having never visited and knowing little about Princeton Theological Seminary, my extraordinarily patient and supportive wife and I packed our bags and moved to New Jersey.

At PTS, my primary motive was to develop the relationship between my interest in theology and my passion for social justice. Prior to my first year of theological education, my sense of social justice determined what I believed about God. However, I found that my God shape-shifted according to the social issues that interested me. Hence, I was easily subjected to Feuerbach’s criticism of religion. Those of you who are familiar with PTS might find what happened next a bit predictable. In the spring of 2009, I was introduced to the theology of Karl Barth via George Hunsinger and Dietrich Bonhoeffer via Nancy Duff. This introduction signaled a theological shift that significantly impacted my faith and life. I learned that both Barth and Bonhoeffer’s social action extended from the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Considering this, I found that my previous efforts in helping the poor and afflicted were fundamentally selfish. These discoveries were absolutely liberating. Through my reconsiderations, I developed a passionate interest in theology and renewed passion for the social and political implications of theological reflection.

That is close to where you find me here today. I have intentionally left out much in this semblance of an introduction because I anticipate discussing my theological story in various ways through this blogging community. So, what can you expect from me? Well, as you probably can tell, theology is a very personal endeavor for me. Therefore, as I blog I will inevitably reflect both theologically and personally. Furthermore, as indicated in my biographical blurb, you can expect me to reflect on the doctrine of Holy Scripture—as that is a primary interest of mine. More so, I will be in class for the foreseeable future and I like to challenge myself by testing what I am learning in those classes beyond the requirements of those courses. So, this semester you can expect some reflection on early Trinitarian doctrine and Lesslie Newbigin. Lastly, I am somewhat obsessed with music and running. Although I don’t anticipate any theological reflection on running, I do expect to talk about music. Mind you, I don’t play a single instrument (other than air guitar and air drums)—but I am quite the pretentious if not skilled listener. I look forward to venturing into this weird and wild blogosphere. See you there.

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New Center for Barth Studies Book Review

2012-01-30T06:55:00.000-06:00

Darren Sumner reviews Hans Vium Mikkelsen, Reconciled Humanity: Karl Barth in Dialogue (Eerdmans, 2010). Darren is a good friend of DET, and is one of the primary forces behind the collaborative Aberdeen theo-blog, Theology Out of Bounds. His review constitutes a rather lengthy critical engagement with Mikkelsen's text, so it will be well worth your time. Be sure to check it out!

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An Introduction of Sorts...

2012-01-26T10:03:00.000-06:00

“…we ought to ask, what political possibilities are the consequence of a radical critique of the categories of identity.” - Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

“As participators in this possibility, we are a riddle to ourselves.” – Barth, CD I/2, §16.2.

While my little description on the contributing authors page offers a small taste of who I am and my interests and such, I thought I would take a moment, as my first post on this site, to say just a little bit more about myself.

I am not quite sure where to start, however, because I am not quite sure how to explain myself. Actually, it is more that I don’t like explaining myself. Explaining myself means categorizing myself: Do I do theology or ethics? Political theology or theological anthropology? Feminist theology or queer theology? Am I a Marxist or a poststructuralist? A Thomist or a Barthian? A Freudian or a Foucauldian? (Ok, those last few are pretty easy to figure out if you know me at all, but you get the idea). Much of the work that I want to do in theology can be narrated in relation to these concerns about categorization—I’m really interested in thinking theologically about identity, about the different ways it is constructed (Black/white, male/female, gay/straight, sacred/profane, etc.), how those constructions are, well, constructed historically, how they are bound up in discourses of power, how they can be challenged/transformed, and how they impact ‘life together.’

Put another way, I am interested in exploring how the theological and social converge in the production of subjectivity, in the categorization of identity—in how this has been problematic, and in where it has been and can be liberative. My interest in studying boundaries, and in pushing against them has, ostensibly, found a few footholds theologically. As my now contributing to this blog suggests, Karl Barth is one of those. I find Barth’s emphases on revelation and the transcendence of God particularly generative in thinking theologically about power (which, is not saying much, but I figure I will have plentyof time to expound on what I mean later). The other theologian that holds a special place in my heart is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I like his stuff for many of the same reasons I like Barth—his emphasis on the transcendence of Christ and its ethical implications on power and on thinking through community. I’m also really interested in how both Barth and Bonhoeffer’s thoughts are shaped by their social contexts and vice versa. Another theological theme that I’ve found particularly generative is apocalypticism—what might it mean to think of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection as the radical interruptive event that both grants history meaning and conditions it? How might that trouble how community and identity are conceptualized?

Not surprisingly, I am also really interested in interdisciplinarity, and in thinking theologically at and through things that are not part of the theological canon. One of my professors and mentors, J.Kameron Carter, summed this up in a particularly profound way in a comment on a blog book event (a blog that I also contribute to occasionally. This, when paired with my blogging here, itself perhaps indicates how I tend to eschew categorization...) on his book Race: A Theological Account. Here, Carter writes:

I approach many thinkers with theological issues in mind. And I also approach them trying to hear how theological concerns are being voiced by them. And so, for example, my work on Du Bois tries to takes seriously his wrestling with theological problems. This goes against the grain of Du Bois studies. But this isn’t Du Bois’ fault. It’s the fault of those who come to him with disciplinary blinders on and who’ve already determined what they will hear. The same can be said with reading people like Richard Wright or Fanon or Sylvia Wynter or Toni Morrison or Angela Davis or Walt Whitman etc.

I remember reading somewhere of a letter that Carl Schmitt once wrote to Jacob Taubes in which he said in celebration of the latter’s work that “everything is theology—except what the theologians are talking about.” Isn’t this a great quote?! As a theologian it challenges me to not be surprised who speaks the theological (“out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you, O God, have ordained praise”) and that most often it’s not the theologians who speak the theological.

The critical humanities, especially race and gender theory, have been particularly helpful interlocutors for me in these ways that Carter points to. I find Foucault’s genealogical method and its attention to discourses of power-knowledge alone enormously helpful in exploring the role of theological discourse in constructions of subjectivity. And that is simply brushing the surface…how he calls epistemological certainty into question, what he does in his later work in thinking about possibilities for recasting subjectivity, how he is taken up by theorists like Judith Butler to think through feminist theory and gendered identity…these are just a few of the many riches I find in Foucault. But I don’t want to ramble too much in this introductory post, so more on all of this later too.

Similarly, and finally, I also think experience is a ripe, and all too often untapped, site of and for theological reflection. Moreover, I think attention to experience, and to how experiences and social contexts factor into theological discourse, is connected to how theology operates in discourses of power and in the production of identities. Quoting W.E.B. DuBois, Emilie Townes notes in her 2008 AAR presidential address "Walking on the Rim Bones of Nothingness”:

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk and only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner, or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children, or that Alexander Hamilton had Negro blood, and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.

So. That is a little bit about me and my theological interests and such. I’m going to try to blog here on a pretty regular basis, though it is quite a busy semester for me, so we’ll see how that goes. But alas, I look forward to getting to think through some of these things—and many other things, of course—with y’all, and to learn from and with you, through this virtual space.

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Hello, I'm Derek

2012-01-23T08:52:00.000-06:00

To introduce myself here at DET I’m following in our founder’s footsteps and adapting his initial introductory post:

(1) Who are you?

As you already know, I’m Derek Maris and I’m in my first year of PhD work in Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul MN. While this is my first year as a PhD student, my family has lived here for approximately 18 months now, since I started as an MTh student for a year before transitioning into the doctoral program in the fall. Before moving to St. Paul I had already studied in several institutions, receiving a BS in Family Ministry at a small bible college in Manhattan KS, and an MA in Christian Ministries at Friends University in Wichita KS. I also briefly pursued a Master’s for a year at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City for good measure.

My aforementioned family consists of my wife Beth and our dog Max, and we have also been fortunate to have my wife’s retired father in the twin cities as well, so we are not completely separated from family while we are “up north.”

(2) What can you expect from me at DET?

Here I will shamelessly crib from our editor’s introduction and initially say “only God knows.” This is not merely evasion but an admission that although I’m a doctoral student I see myself as still being very much a work in progress as a scholar. Additionally, I look forward over the next several months to gaining insight into the specifics of the roles I will play and niches I will fill here at DET.

With these caveats in mind, I will say that readers can expect me to engage a wide variety of theological topics and thinkers as I continue to wrestle with traditional and contemporary theological concerns, though some will crop up more often than others (see below). Furthermore, I’m always attempting to strengthen and deepen my grasp of relevant secondary disciplines, so if I come across something interesting and within the scope of DET’s goals I will include that here as well. Also, I am very excited to learn from my other contributors so you can expect me to be a frequent commenter here.

Lastly, as is evident from my briefer bio in the “contributing authors” tab above, I have a deep concern with how what I do as a theologian aids in personal and societal transformation. The reasons for this are both theological and personal, and in due time may be explored when possible and/or appropriate. I anticipate that in reading my posts these concerns will often be discernible.

(3) Which theologians do you most like to read?

I first encountered Karl Barth in my MA program at Friends under the tutelage of Dr. Christian Kettler, a former student of the “Barthian” T.F. Torrance. Barth impacted me greatly then, and while not a hard and fast “Barthian” I anticipate Barth being a constant dialogue partner. My primary interest right now is in the work of Jürgen Moltmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg is a thinker who is beginning to receive my attention as well.

With my interest in Moltmann and Pannenberg it is evident that eschatology is intriguing to me, and in that vein that I have a burgeoning interest in apocalyptic. In addition to eschatology I am also interested in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and over the next couple years I hope to explore how these two loci can be related in a way that aids in understanding how God works in transforming personal and societal life. Hopefully in that process of exploration a narrower topic for a dissertation will be discovered.

I look forward to writing and interacting with you here at DET, and thanks in advance for reading!

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“A doctrine for fighting men” – Augustine’s doctrine of Predestination

2012-01-19T10:06:00.000-06:00

I’m teaching an intensive course on Augustine’s Confessions this month, so I’ve been reading a bunch about Augustine. As part of that, I read through Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, which is still (and deservedly so) a standard text in the field. It has been an experience, described at times by all of the following adjectives: refreshing, frustrating, enlightening, inspiring, baffling, sobering, and the list could go on.

Understandably, I wanted to share some of that with you, gentle readers. So, here is a bit on Augustine’s doctrine of predestination. Brown situations Augustine’s work on that doctrine in his biography, and in current events. Put briefly, North Africa was in serious trouble. A barbarian host was sweeping down the cost in late 429 and 430 CE, raping and pillaging all that stood in its path. One city that stood in its path was Hippo, and Augustine had the misfortune to watch the enemy host slowly progress through his diocese destroying all he had worked for and even besieging his city. He died (mercifully) of a fever before Hippo was overrun. What does this have to do with his doctrine of predestination?

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 406. Emphasis added.

What [folks who followed Augustine’s doctrine] gained was a belief that the world around them was intelligible, even if on a plane that surpassed human reason and strained human feeling; and the certainty that they would remain active and creative. Even if they were merely agents, they were at least the agents of forces which guaranteed achievements greater than their own frail efforts could ever have brought about.

For Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, as he elaborated it, was a doctrine for fighting men. A monk might waste his leisure worrying about his ultimate identity: to Augustine, such an anxiety was misplaced. A doctrine of predestination divorced from action was inconceivable to him. He had never written to deny freedom, merely to make it more effective in the harsh environment of the fallen world. This world demanded, among other things, unremitting intellectual labour to gain truth, stern rebuke to move men. Augustine, as a bishop, had thrown himself into both activities.

Skipping ahead to pp. 409-10.

In the early months of 430, Augustine will appear in church to tell panic-stricken crowds what he had already written…: that they would have to ‘persevere’ although love of life was still strong in them. For Augustine had lost none of his capacity to feel. In these few last sermons we realize that the old man’s horror at the evils of existence…was the obverse of his deep-rooted loves: he still knew what it was to love life wholeheartedly, and thus he could convey how much it had cost the martyrs to overcome this love. Like the martyrs, Augustine’s hearers, also, might have to follow in the footsteps of Christ’s Passion. Predestination, an abstract stumbling-block to the sheltered communities of Hadrumetum and Marseilles, as it would be to so many future Christians, had only one meaning for Augustine: it was a doctrine of survival, a fierce insistence that God alone could provide men with an irreducible inner core.

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Evangelical Progressivism: An Open Letter to the Editors of Christianity Today

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-06:00

We applaud CT’s recent editorial [“No Taxpayer Is an Island,” December] for giving necessary attention to Elizabeth Warren, whose candidacy offers a breath of fresh air to voters disillusioned with the Babylonian captivity of American politics. Political discourse in our great nation has for too long been dominated by an economic vision that further privileges the already privileged and further disenfranchizes the already disenfranchized. Warren’s social vision challenges these politics as usual, and it is encouraging to see the editors of Christianity Today introducing her to evangelicals.

However, the editors leave us dissatisfied with the attention they gave to Warren. To begin, the editors seem to be of two minds about the relation of church and state as it pertains to Warren. For instance, they affirm that government’s role in society ought to be “limited” (although “not negligible”), and yet chide Warren – a public figure campaigning for government office – for failing to discuss “mediating institutions” as part of her proposals. Either these mediating institutions are within the government’s purview, and so deserving of Warren’s attention, or they are not. At the root of the conceptual dissonance here is a tenuous position on the place of religion in our society. The editors want religious institutions to play an important social role, but they also want them to remain distinct from the government and, perhaps most critically, they do not want government to replicate the services they provide. One detects here not insigificant traces of cultural (if not legal) Christendom, which many evangelicals might see as problematic.

Further, the editors make unnecessary and misleading assumptions about how evangelicals do and ought to relate to certain social visions. For instance, one gets a sense that evangelicalism and the Tea Party rightly go together, while evangelicalism and more progressive social politics are an ill fit, at best. They talk of “evangelical tea partiers” and of a “tea party conservatism that many evangelicals espouse.” On the other side, one finds reference to “secular progressivism that evangelicals rightly reject,” or to Warrren committing “the besetting sin of secular progressivism.” It is not difficult to see that the rhetorical posturing involved here predisposes the reader to view social conservatism favorably and social progressivism unfavorably. What is worse, the editors attach this unfavorable animus to social progressivism by using religiously loaded language: social progressivism commits a “sin,” and repeated descriptions of social progressivism as “secular” plays on the way many people unfortunately associate secularism and atheism.

In presupposing and promulgating these political value judgments, the editors fail to faithfully represent the true breadth of evangelicalism. The truth of the matter is that nothing inherent within evangelical belief necessarily inclines toward social conservatism and away from social progressivism. Indeed, one could construct a cogent case for evangelical commitment pushing one in precisely the opposite direction. We see evidence for this in the heritage of an institution such as Wheaton College, whose founder, Jonathan Blanchard, grounded his own quite radical social progressivism precisely in his evangelical faith. A progressive vision for American society need not be secular, nor need it involve a confusion between church and state that conflates the message of Christ with the platforms of a party.

So while the Christianity Today editors deserve appreciation for bringing Elizabeth Warren to the attention of their evangelical audience, they finally do their audience a disservice in the process. Instead of being an evangelical assessment of a political figure in light of the radical message of the Christian gospel, the editorial reads more like an exercise in political propaganda shrouded in evangelical piety.

W. Travis McMaken (Wheaton College, ‘04)
David W. Congdon (Wheaton College, ‘04)

[Ed. note - David Congdon and I wrote this open letter to the editors of Christianity Today. The context is self-explanatory. A shorter version was submitted to the magazine as a letter to the editor (it is worth noting, I think, that the word limit for such things at CT is unnecessarily restricting), but it does not seem to have appeared in the most recent issue (if the online version just posted is any indication), nor have we heard from the editors. And so we identify one really helpful aspect of theo-blogs - we have another option for getting this out, and now we're exercising it.]

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Die Evangelischen Theologen

2012-01-12T09:04:00.000-06:00

Attentive readers may have noticed that there's something different about DET. Indeed, there is something very different. For DET has transformed from "Der Evangelische Theologe" to "Die Evangelischen Theologen."

You may ask, Why the change?

While I was in Princeton to defend my dissertation, circumstances and conversations lead me to reminisce about the "good ol' days" of theo-blogging and the current decline in the practice. Put simply, all the old theo-blogs that were my fellow travelers have ground to a halt and - indeed - my own work here at DET has slowed considerably under the strain of assuming the rigorous responsibilities of full time academic teaching.

This saddens me.

My experience as a theology blogger has been profoundly positive. For instance, I have "met" (both online and in the flesh) interesting people that I would not have otherwise connected with, and I have ceased to be surprised when an e-mail lands in my inbox from some heretofore unknown theological student who reads the blog and wants to discuss something with me or is interested to hear my thoughts on this or that institution to which they are applying.

But most importantly, theology blogging provided me with a community of theological fellow travelers at precisely the stage in my intellectual development that I needed them most. Through web interaction, a group of us identified each other, formed a sort of inchoate group identity, and proceeded in a dynamic and free-form way to shoulder the ever-important burden of discerning what we believed to be the pressing theological issues of our own time.

This was an overwhelmingly positive and incalculably valuable development. But when I look around at theology blogs today, it is precisely this that I miss. Perhaps this continues to occur and I just don't know where to look, but it has all but disappeared if what makes it through the web to my terminal is any trustworthy indication (and quite a bit of things make it to my terminal from the far-flung reaches of theo-blogging-dom). So I decided to take action and foster such theological development in whatever small measure I could.

The changes here at DET are the fruit of that determination. Rather than remaining only my personal blog, I have invited a number of theological students from various stages of their academic careers to join me here in a communal endeavor to foster theological community through blogging. You can read about these intrepid individuals on the new Contributors page in the top menu. You may also read more about this renewed vision for DET in the new About page, also accessible in the top menu.

These contributors will be introducing themselves in the coming weeks (most of them are first-time bloggers) as we begin the task of theological engagement with one another. I hope that you, gentle reader, will join with us and make yourself an integral part of that undertaking. It can be hard work, but I believe that we are all up to it, and that the cost/benefit analysis is highly favorable.

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“The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical Doctrine of Infant Baptism after Barth”

2012-01-02T09:05:00.000-06:00

As promised previously, here is the abstract for my dissertation. I present it here in the version that went to defense. Be warned – it is not up to my usual editorial standards (I threw it together rather quickly from various bits and pieces), and will be revised before the dissertation goes into the library / indexing services. Perhaps the significance of this blog’s visual theme now becomes clearer…

Abstract of
“The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical
Doctrine of Infant Baptism after Barth”

By: W. Travis McMaken
Committee: George Hunsinger (chair), Bruce McCormack, Bryan Spinks.

The question of infant baptism poses both practical and ecumenical problems within the Christian church. This dissertation‘s burden is to argue that these problems are helpfully addressed through the construction of a relatively new doctrine of baptism, within which infant baptism is considered an appropriate form of administration, on the basis of Barth‘s mature theological commitments. Such a claim is counterintuitive insofar as Barth famously rejected the practice of infant baptism in his concluding part volume of the Church Dogmatics. My argument thus contains two aspects.

First, I argue that Barth‘s doctrine of baptism – and specifically, his rejection of infant baptism – has not been given a fair hearing. Against those who would write-off Barth‘s work on this subject as a departure from his broader theological commitments, I argue that those commitments deeply inform his decisions in these matters. After laying the necessary historical groundwork in chapter one, I move on in chapters two and three to explore why Barth rejected the two primary arguments in favor of infant baptism offered by the tradition. These two chapters conclude with exegetical excurses which attempt an exegetical ground-clearing on these matters. Chapter four takes a more positive approach, explicating Barth‘s doctrine of baptism in Church Dogmatics 4.4 and showing the way in which his treatment is closely related to other prevailing aspects of his thought especially in his doctrine of reconciliation as a whole.

Second, I argue that although Barth himself rejected infant baptism, such a rejection is not necessary on the basis of the broader commitments of his mature theology. Indeed, his mature theology possesses significant resources for deploying a relatively new doctrine of baptism within which infant baptism is a fitting mode of administration. Chapter five undertakes to demonstrate this claim. Therein I reconfigure Barth‘s doctrine of baptism by taking his own insights and impulses regarding the Christian life to bear on the question of baptism in ways that he did not. Ultimately, I argue for understanding baptism as a form of the gospel proclamation by means of which the church shoulders its missionary vocation.

So if you know anyone who is attracted to Barth's theology but ultimately scared away by his rejection of infant baptism, or if you know someone who likes Barth generally but simply ignores Barth's rejection if infant baptism, the definitive answer is on the way! ;-)

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2011 Top 10 DET Pages Viewed

2011-12-27T12:01:00.000-06:00

I felt inspired today, noting the inexorable march of the calendar toward a new year, to check and see what you all have been reading here at DET over the past year. Then, having checked, I thought: “Hey, this would make a good post!” So, there we are… The posts are listed in descending order of traffic (i.e., #1 has the most traffic).

Types of Theology - This one is a pleasant surprise. It has always received respectable traffic, but it was far and away the most traversed page at DET this past year. I should probably go back and update it…
So, You Want to Read Karl Barth? - A perennial top-performer, this post is approximately 4.5 years old! I could think of a couple newer secondary resources to add, but I still stand by the advice given there.
DET: 1 Year Blog Birthday - No surprise here. I wrote this post to mark the first year of this blog’s existence, and it functions as a sort of manifesto for the whole enterprise. Although it is also approximately 4.5 years old, it still adequately captures what DET is about. But now that I’m thinking about it, it could probably stand to be redone…
Recommended Reading - Wondering what theology book you should buy and read next? Check out this page for some recommendations. It appears that quite a few people have done just that over the past year.
Index: Book Reviews - Wonder what I think of a particular book? Check this page to see if I’ve offered an opinion on it here at DET. I need to expand this page, and cross reference it with my (traditionally) published book reviews.
Karl Barth on Eberhard Jüngel’s “God’s Being Is In Becoming” - from a new book by Eberhard Busch - Woah…quite the title on this one. But that hasn’t stopped people from finding it, it seems. This post includes some DET exclusive translation of interesting German literature on Barth, so I understand why it is popular. If you haven’t read it yet, now is your chance!
Curriculum Vitae - My redacted CV also made the most traffic list. I’ve recently updated it to include more information about my dissertation, so take a(nother) look.
2010 KBBC: Week 1, Day 2 - Karl Barth and Herman Bavinck on the Deus dixit - This one is the page that surprised me most in making this list. It is an entry from the most recent Karl Barth Blog Conference (check out the index page for complete proceedings), with a plenary by Andrew Esqueda and a response by Joel Esala. It didn’t lead the pack in traffic when the conference was underway, but it appears that this particular post has some staying power. I keep meaning to read more Bavinck. A New Year’s Resolution in the making? I doubt it…
Reading Scripture with John Calvin: 1 Peter 5.8-11 - This was another pleasant surprise. The post comes from my favorite serial, Reading Scripture with John Calvin (indexed with the other serials), so I’m glad that folks are reading. I’m at a loss as to why this post in particular would draw more traffic…
Popular Posts - Coming in last is the index page to the most popular posts here at DET. These are posts that attracted unusual amounts of traffic when they were first posted, or have demonstrated staying power since then. The posts linked there are some of my favorites, so take another look.

Honorable Mention:

What is theology? Who is a theologian? Why should theology persist? - I include this post as an honorable mention for two reasons. First, it barely missed making the top 10 despite being posted only this last July. If it had been around another month or two, I’m convinced that it would have placed. Second, I’m rather fond of it.

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DET Update: Doctoral Edition

2011-12-22T10:52:00.000-06:00

The big news from DET is that its proprietor now holds a PhD in systematic theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. That’s right, gentle reader, yours truly defended his dissertation on December 16th, thus giving himself what is perhaps the best Christmas present ever. Here is a picture of my setup in the PTS Center for Barth Studies as I prepared on the 15th for the defense.

For related images, click here, here, and – of course – here.

Anyway, what does all this mean for you, the faithful DET reader? Allow me to enumerate…

You can expect a post about my dissertation early in the new year. I’ve kept it pretty well under wraps as far as the theo-blogosphere goes, but there is no longer any reason for that. So I plan to throw up the abstract to let you all catch a glimpse of what I’ve been preoccupied with for a very long time…
My dissertation isn’t the only thing that I recently finished. I also finished my first semester of teaching. That semester was incredibly busy (remember that dissertation thingy?), and a bit boring since I was spending my time plowing through introductory religion and history of Christianity material. But my coming assignments are more interesting: a 12 day intensive course on Augustine’s Confessions in January and an introductory theology course in the Spring term. I’m sure my investment in such pursuits will bear fruit here.
Work on the KBBC book is progressing, although rather slowly. It is incredibly difficult to get so many authors moving in the same direction and at the same time. I feel like I’m trying to herd cats which, as some of you will no doubt know, is virtually impossible. So there may be some posts in the future aimed at shaming those who are dragging their feet… You have been warned!

See you all in the new year!

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Misconceptions about Christianity and Politics / Economics: or, Why Perkins is Wrong about Jesus

2011-12-06T15:16:00.001-06:00

The conservative religio-political propaganda has been flying today. Various initiatives are underway to combat it. But I could not resist throwing up something brief on one of them...

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. The "Belief" blog on CNN.com published a piece from him today entitled, My Take: Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier. I could spend ages taking this article apart, but I think the best thing to do would be to juxtapose a few pieces of text.

First, Perkins highlights the parable of the servants in Luke 19 who are given resources by their lord and left for a time to oversee them. From this parable he draws the following conclusion: "Jesus rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for the last few decades: that everyone gets a trophy – equal outcomes for inequitable performance. There are winners and yes, there are losers. And wins and losses are determined by the diligence and determination of the individual."

Second, consider the parable of the workers in the vineyard, found in Matthew 20. The vineyard owner goes out at different times of day and hires workers. Here is the payoff:

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his supervisor, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' But he answers one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

It is clear that this passage is not about money. Jesus teaches here about God's grace, which comes to all equally regardless of their effort. The point is to undermine usual ways of thinking about earning and compensation, even if the narrative context suggests a certain economic free-dealing. Clearly this passage isn't trying to teach us that we have to honor contractual terms or that those who control capital should be given free reign to take advantage of those hired earlier should economic conditions change. It is trying to teach us that just as God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10.34), God is also no respecter of productions.

Perhaps the most important thing that putting these two texts side by side suggests is that folks like Perkins need to be more sensitive to the hermeneutical challenges involved when one interprets scripture. Perkins not only neglects other relevant passages in other gospels (as I highlight), but he also misses things like important clues in the immediate context (Zacchaeus was moved mere verses previously to give half of his money away to the poor and to repay 4x the amount that he cheated people out of with questionable business practices, whereupon Jesus declares that "Today salvation has come to this house"), and the broader context (Luke's gospel is predisposed to support of the poor and oppressed, and consistently pictures Jesus as such; cf. Lk 4.18-19). He is also rather tone-deaf to the rhetorical force of the parable he cites: Jesus' point is not to promote capitalism, but to spur his followers on to faithful service of God and neighbor while waiting for the kingdom of God's coming.

Jesus was neither a Free-marketer or an Occupier, but he did have very specific things to teach those who profess him as Lord about how to live in the world, and there is no question that the Occupy folks have a better handle on that than do the conservative Christians running around trying to convince each other that Jesus would prefer for society to be set up to favor the rich and powerful rather than the poor and helpless.

[UPDATE: 12.22.11]

P.S. A friend e-mailed me the following in response to this post, and it was too good not to share:

I love the fact that your post flies in the face of what is often called "a politics of envy." In Matthew 20, it's the "hard-worker" who God accuses of envy because of God's generosity.

Life isn't fair - life is struggle. God isn't fair - God is mercy.

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New Center for Barth Studies Book Review

2011-11-28T09:15:00.000-06:00

Chad Marshall reviews Mark S. Gignilliat, "Karl Barth and the Fifth Gospel: Barth’s Theological Exegesis of Isaiah" (Ashgate, 2009). This book is an interesting case study in Barth's theological exegesis, and Marshall's review is very illuminating. Be sure to check it out!

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Nein! Or, against Robert Grow and in defense of the Occupy Movement

2011-11-22T16:02:00.001-06:00

Attentive readers will have noticed that things have been rather quiet around here. There are many reasons for this: for instance, I’ve been trying to get things together to defend my dissertation in December, teaching responsibilities have ballooned as the semester’s end approaches, etc. However, a not insignificant factor has been the Occupy Movement (hereafter referred to as #OWS), which is now in its third month. Considerable percentages of my woefully insufficient discretionary processing power (those slivers of mental capacity not taken up with aforementioned tasks and familial responsibilities) have been committed to staying abreast of the news and analysis concerning #OWS, and racking my brain in discerning how to lend it appropriate support from the theological field.

Notice that I have been concerned with thinking about “how” to support #OWS, not “whether” I should support it. Indeed, I had occasion to mention #OWS in a favorable light in a public lecture on October 15th. My ready support of this movement grew out of an increasing awareness – which had been growing throughout the previous year – of the incredibly inequitable wealth distribution in the United States, and the way in which the political process has become dominated by the sliver of the nation’s populace that controls an incredibly disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth.

So imagine my chagrin when I saw late last night a blog post from Robert Grow purporting to treat the “Theology” of #OWS, but finally constituting an entirely unhelpful retreat into what Barth would call “pious egocentricity” [1]. I decided to respond to Grow in this public and direct way not because he is a particularly evil person (he is not), nor because I dislike him (I like him a great deal), but because his post represents a strand of thinking within American Christianity that I believe needs to be sharply contested. [2]

What is Grow’s argument? He begins by locating #OWS along the trajectory of Marxism and Liberation Theology [2], and giving voice to some criticisms of such a trajectory. This material is rather unexceptional, although Grow takes his frame of reference from some unfortunate luminaries. However, the payoff of this discussion is Grow’s repudiation of “revolution,” suggesting that revolution is to be avoided because of the difficulty in articulating what state of affairs should replace current conditions. It pains me that such a blatantly conservative argument could come from an heir of the Reformation, an evangelical, much less from a theologian who has been influenced by theological work spawned by Karl Barth’s thought [3]. Indeed, this is not an argument; it is rather a conservative reflex. It is hard to see how such a reflex ought to be entirely at home in Christian theology, dependent as it is upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But this is only a caveat in Grow’s larger response. He criticizes both “the greed and money-mongering of the Capitalist elite” as well as “Marxist, Liberation Theology and its ideals” and “Social Democratism that perpetuates much of the labor movement element” [4]. While the dual repudiation is appreciated, Grow spends much more time rejecting the ideas he sees behind #OWS than he does criticizing capitalism run amok – an imbalance which, while it may be strictly topical, is woefully backwards given capitalism’s incredible influence and power across the globe when compared to alternatives. This pertains to the viability of Grow’s positioning himself at the end of his post as within the prophetic tradition – the prophetic tradition is one that speaks from the margins and against the dominant power structures. Grow’s limp-wristed attempt at criticizing both capitalism and more progressive options fails to be prophetic precisely because it is a cop-out, an unhelpful failure to take sides that always plays into the hands of the dominant power structures. If you want to see what prophecy looks like, here’s a picture:

More must be said with reference to the prophetic tradition. I referred earlier to Barth’s language of “pious egocentricity.” Barth’s concept is directed primarily at those who shun the missionary vocation of the church due to a preoccupation with possessing and cultivating their own salvation. It is a way to speak of a Christianity that is focused inward rather than outward, a Christianity that occupies itself with the relatively safe examination of the inner life as opposed to shouldering the task of engagement in the world for the sake of gospel proclamation. It is hard for me to read Grow’s repudiation of both capitalism and more progressive options as anything but a similar phenomenon. He appeals to the altogether correct belief that all human systems stand under God’s judgment, but this appeal is not made in the interest of pushing society toward a relatively (not ultimately, but relatively) better society. His appeal is made ultimately in the service of the status quo precisely because he is unwilling to raise his voice with those who speak out against injustice. What is this if not an instance of Christian theology living up to Marx’s declaration that religion is an opiate of the masses, a means of control, a way of reinforcing the already established power structures of society? It is an emphasis on the “inner” as part of a strategy to avoid the “outer,” it is a commitment to love of God that excludes – at least at the structural level, I assume that Grow would advocate acts of charity – love of neighbor.

The prophets had other ideas. Let us listen to Amos chapter 5:

{21}I hate, I reject your festivals,Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.{22}Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,I will not accept them;And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.{23}Take away from Me the noise of your songs;I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.

God here rejects the inner, rejects purported love of God, rejects the religious. Why?

{11}because you impose heavy rent on the poorAnd exact a tribute of grain from them,Though you have built houses of well-hewn stone,Yet you will not live in them;You have planted pleasant vineyards, yet you will not drink their wine.{12}For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great,You who distress the righteous and accept bribesAnd turn aside the poor in the gate.

The prophet’s message comes to Israel because Israel has forgotten, as Micah puts it, “to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God.” Israel has forgotten that the second table of the law flows ineluctably from the first, that the love of neighbor is itself a part of the love of God.[5] So, what does God recommend through his prophet Amos as the proper response to this unacceptable state of affairs? It certainly is not more burnt offerings! Nor is it an appeal to the fact that all people must make burnt offerings to be right with God and that no human social system can ever take the place of God’s redeeming work! Instead,

{15}Hate evil, love good,And establish justice in the gate!

God demands that his people address the social injustice in their midst, that they oppose it, that they hate it. Furthermore, these are not simply recommendations for an individual’s pious attitudes and charitable activities. Justice must be established at the gate, at the very heart of the structures and institutions that govern society!

This is the true prophetic tradition, and it is a tradition that stands firmly on the side of the oppressed and downtrodden. Jesus did not come to heal the healthy, but the sick (cf. Mk 2.17), he came to serve the marginal and oppressed rather than those who guarded the status quo.[6] He explicitly associates himself with this prophetic concern for justice when he proclaimed his commission in the synagogue at Nazareth by quoting from the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4):

{18}The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,Because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,And recovery of sight to the blind,To set free those who are oppressed,{19}To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

Allow me to close with a quote from one of Barth’s most notable students, Helmut Gollwitzer. Gollwitzer wrote a very compelling set of theses under the title, “Why I Am A Christian Socialist.” It is a very powerful document, and it is also a quick read, so I commend it to you all. The following quote sums up matters rather well:

“The conversion to which the Christian community is called daily through God's word also includes turning away from its bond in the dominant system of privileges and active engagement for more just social structures no longer determined by social privileges. Therefore the important primary question today is the question about the relation of Christian existence and capitalism, not the question of the relation of Christianity and socialism. Can one as a Christian affirm and defend the present social system together with its underlying economic order or must this system be intolerable for a Christian?”

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NOTES:

[1] CD 4.3, 568.

[2] I was particularly pained to read this blog post because I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Grow through a fairly regular and not insignificant correspondence over the last few years, spawned by theo-blogging activities – this response must be read in view of an already existing relationship, and one that is fond rather than adversarial. Also, to be entirely fair, at least Grow is talking about it. There has been a disturbing lack of attention given to #OWS by the theo-blogging community.

[3]This association is not entirely self-evident, although it does accurately describe one segment of the Occupy movement. Furthermore, I welcome this connection and wish it would become more prominent. It is high time for the cultural stigma that attaches itself to “Marxism” and “socialism” in the West, and especially the United States, to be challenged and resoundingly repudiated.

[4] Grow is, of course, more nearly a Torrancian than a Barthian, and this may well explain part of his reflexive conservatism. As George Hunsinger has written poignantly about Torrance and Barth: “it is difficult to shake a nagging feeling about the way Torrance reads Barth. Barth’s early theology has been called ‘revolutionary theology in the making’ and the ‘theology of crisis.’ From Torrance, however, one cannot help but feel that one is somehow getting revolutionary theology without the revolution, and the theology of crisis without the crisis.” Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 11.

[5] It is important to make a distinction: Social Democracy retains capitalism and attempts to regulate and restrain it in such a way as to promote humane conditions throughout society; Democratic Socialism has the same sort of goals, but jettisons capitalist economics in favor of socialist economics while retaining democracy as the means of regulating the relationship between government and populace.

[6] I don’t know how else to interpret Matthew 25.34-40.

[7] Before one rushes too quickly to spiritualize this saying, it is necessary to note that Jesus makes this statement in response to Pharisees criticizing him for eating with those on society’s margins – tax collectors and those the Pharisees think of as “sinners.” Jesus’ continuation – “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” must thus be read as dripping with sarcasm, and as an act of subverting prevailing thinking about who is righteous and who is a sinner.

UPDATE: Grow has responded with a post that is worthy of note. Note also my comment on this post.

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Karl Barth on Faith

2011-11-04T10:26:00.000-05:00

Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in 1937 and 1938 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005): 105-6.

If faith is the life of the man who faces Christ as the one from Whom alone he receives his salvation, then it is easy to understand that the man who loves in faith, when he is confronted by the faithfulness of God, sees himself convicted of his own unfaithfulness…Such a man will see that he is in no position to have faith in himself, or to ascribe to himself a capacity or power by means of which he himself could somehow bring about his salvation, or co-operate in bringing it about. What proceeds from himself the man who believes can only consider as the sin which is forgiven him. If he were to any extent to rely on himself too, as well as on Jesus Christ, he would to that extent fall back into sin, and deny the completeness of the salvation received through Jesus Christ and thus the glory of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour. But if he cannot rely on himself, he cannot rely on his own faith as a work, to accomplish which he possesses the organs and the capabilities in himself. That man is more or less religiously inclined – if it is true – may well be a good thing. But the man who really has faith will never consider his faith as a realisation or manifestation of his religious life, but will on the contrary admit that his capacity for religion would in itself have led him to the gods and idols, but by no means to Jesus Christ. The man who really has faith knows the truth…that it is impossible for him by his own efforts to have faith. It is only those who do not possess faith, who always imagine that faith is a human potentiality, which they will probably say happens to have been denied them personally. And the would-be-possessors of faith also…who see in their own faith the realisation of a human potentiality, are really not possessed of faith. Faith is not an art, not is it an achievement. Faith is not a good work of which some may boast, while others with a shrug of their shoulders can excuse themselves by saying that they have not the capacity for it. With faith itself comes the conclusive insight, that no one has the capacity for faith by his own effort, that is either the capacity to prepare for faith or to start it, or to persevere in it, or to perfect it.

Bold is mine.

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Test

2011-11-04T00:49:00.001-05:00

I've spent way too much time this evening trying to get my various social media presences (Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and this blog) synced up - hopefully they now are. This post is an experiment aimed at verifying that very hypothesis...If the hypothesis is confirmed, vastly more interesting posts on sundry theological topics will follow. If the hypothesis is disproved, then another test post will likely follow (unless I throw up my hands in despair and give up).==================================

Barth, Anselm, and Analogy

2011-10-24T07:58:00.000-05:00

(Ed. note: given that Keith's book was recently reissued in paperback, making it far more affordable, it seemed like a good time to post this...)

This is a particularly good footnote from Keith Johnson on a proper understanding of the place Barth’s Anselm book plays in Barth’s theology, in continuity with McCormack and contra von Balthasar. Although undermining HUvB’s pictures of Barth’s development does not put the final nail in the coffin of the popular picture on Barth and the analogy of being (that he didn’t understand it, that he changed his mind about it, etc.), it does (or ought to) at least shift the burden of proof off of opponents of the popular picture, and onto its proponents.

As usual, bold is mine and italics are original to the text.

Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia entis, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London; T&T Clark, 2010).

This book [Barth’s Anselm book] plays an important role in von Balthasar’s reading of Barth, as he locates Barth’s decisive turn ‘from dialectic to analogy’ precisely here. However, under the reading of Barth’s development offered here – one that stands in line with Bruce McCormack’s thesis that Barth’s use of analogy was the result of dogmatic decisions that occurred much earlier in his development – this book on Anselm does not play a pivotal role as we consider Barth’s interpretation of and response to the analogia entis. Two observations will suffice to demonstrate why this is the case.

First, Barth’s interpretation of Anselm’s methodology stands in line with the methodology that Barth himself employed as early as 1924. For example, in a section on ‘The Conditions of Theology, Barth notes that when it comes to the knowledge of God, Anselm understands that the human cannot understand this knowledge ‘as such’, but rather ‘has to understand it in its very incomprehensibility’. This knowledge would not occur, in Anselm’s view, ‘if God did not “show” himself, [and] if the encounter with him were not in fact primarily a movement from his side’. That the intellect can reach this knowledge, therefore, stems from “grace”, both with regard to the perception of the goal and the human effort to reach it’ (pp. 38-40). These descriptions of Anselm’s thought could be lifted and placed into Barth’s lectures on dogmatics at Göttingen as representative of Barth’s own. In other words, if Barth’s description of Anselm’s method in some way reflects Barth’s own view (a tricky, if often ignored, question underlying any reading of this book), then it reflects the theology he had articulated six years earlier.

Second, Barth’s discussions of the way analogy is used in Anselm correspond to the way he already had used analogy in Göttingen and ‘The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life.’ To illustrate: in a discussion of Anselm’s interpretation of ‘the revelation of God in his world’, Barth notes that this occurs ‘per analogiam’ only ‘as far as God wills to reveal himself and has in fact revealed himself’. Note the language here, and how it focuses on the event of God’s self-revelation per analogiam rather than the always-existing fact of it. It must take place in event, Barth notes, ‘because of the Fall’. That is, humans cannot acquire the knowledge of God apart from God’s activity because they are, in and of themselves, incapable of it in their sinful state (p. 117). This use of analogy falls directly in line with the account of analogy in Göttingen as well as in Barth’s account of the ‘true analogia entis’ in 1929. Inasmuch as this book represents development in Barth’s own theology, therefore, it represents simply a confirmation of insights Barth had already developed and defended earlier. It does not mark a break or a shift in his theology – or in his interpretation of the analogia entis. (150n80)

Come Have Some Coffee With Me @ Lindenwood University Tomorrow

2011-10-17T23:03:00.000-05:00

If you are in the St. Louis area, consider dropping by Lindenwood University tomorrow afternoon to get a cup of coffee with me, along with some of my colleagues and students. As an added bonus, you will receive the rare and inestimably valuable opportunity to listen to me pontificate on all manner of things. My goal is to squeeze ten pages into a twenty-minute presentation…so, that will be interesting in itself. On top of that, I only have one footnote in that whole presentation, so you know that it will be the most amazing thing ever.

In all seriousness, it should be a good time so stop by if you can.

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Well, hello there...

2011-10-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

Well, hello there, gentle reader. Long time no see. It is I, your intrepid theo-blogger. Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. The truth is, I have been buried under a pile of work here at Lindenwood, teaching 120+ students about world religions and the history of Christianity. In fact, last week was mid-term week. As if that wasn’t enough, I had the incredible foresight to assign a paper due at about the same time. Suffice it to say, I spent the last week or so grading until my fingers bled and I began bleeding from my ears. On top of that, each and every of the incredibly few spare moments I’m able to carve out has been directed toward getting my dissertation ready to defend (it’s getting close, cross your fingers!). On top of that even further, I’m currently working on a presentation on “sacred space” for a panel discussion and Q&A on that topic next week here on campus (if you are in the St. Louis area and want to attend, contact me and I’ll send you the flier).

To make a long story short, even though I’ve just told you the long version, I’ve been too busy to blog. You have no idea how ashamed I am to admit this, but I simply cannot deny it further. As a result, you will simply have to theologically stimulate yourself for the foreseeable future. Of course, I would not leave you bereft, dear brethren. I offer you the archives here at DET as a an impetus to your own reflection. Dig into them. See what’s there. In fact, try to find something embarrassing in there that I’ve forgotten about (and then tell me about it so I can spirit it away…). Who knows, you might even want to leave a comment and stoke the embers of a discussion grown cold. In fact, I’ll make it easy for you by listing a few things you might want to look at:

“What is theology? Who is a theologian? Why should theology persist?” - We all ask questions like this from time to time, and if you don’t, you should! Surf over here and get my answers. Feel free to leave a comment agreeing with me.
Index: Book Reviews - Did you know that DET offers a wealth of reflection on various books? I know! I was surprised and excited as well! In fact, let me tell you about a few of these reviews…
1. “Rosalind Marshall on John Knox” - I must say that I was very disappointed when I posted this review and hardly anyone surfed over to read it. Knox is a really interesting guy, and Marshall does a good job on him.
2. “‘Is the Reformation Over?’ by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom” - Interesting question, no? Find out a bit about how the book answers that question, and get my own cantankerous reflections.
3. “Gerhard Forde's ‘On Being a Theologian of the Cross’” - This review harkens from August of 2007. That feels like an eternity ago. I think I should re-read this book…
“KBBC Index” - DET hosts four years of the Karl Barth Blog Conference proceedings. You can read them. Right now. For free. I’m not kidding.

So, there you have it. I’ll leave you to work on all that for a while, but I promise to think of you from time to time, and to return to regular posting as soon as possible. Until then, to steal the immortal words that we sort of suspect might reflect something like a thing Oliver Cromwell once said, “Put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry.”

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Bultmann on What Schleiermacher Got Right and Wrong

2011-09-30T08:39:00.004-05:00

It’s turning into something of a “theological descendants of Schleiermacher commenting on his thought” week here at DET. I had a quote on him from Barth on Wednesday, and today it’s Bultmann.

And yes, I’m reading Bultmann. Blame David.

Rudolf Bultmann, What Is Theology, Fortress Texts in Modern Theology (Roy A. Harrisville, trans.; Eberhard Jüngel and Klaus W. Müller, eds.; Minneapolis, MN; Fortress Press, 1997): 42.

Schleiermacher’s analysis of the feeling of absolute dependence is not simply false. He does, in fact, see that God is not “given” - neither a given of that type of world toward which I know I am so dependent that I oppose it in the feeling of freedom, nor a given within the feeling of freedom, in regard to which I may speak of the “deus in nobis”…

Schleiermacher sees that we can only speak of God when we speak of our existence, and that this is given us only in the question, that is, is not really given. Of course, he does not see that we come no further than the question about ourselves and God, no further than to a concept of God, but not to God. He does not see that he is not developing the Christian idea of God that speaks of God’s actions toward us, but merely developing the assumptions from which the meaning of the Incarnation as the encounter of God with our world can be theologically understood.

Contra Bultmann, I think it is arguable that Schleiermacher did in fact see this. But that is beside the point. The emphasis on speaking of God only in connection to our existence is a vital one, I think, and one that Barth makes very clear in his essay on God’s humanity. Separating the two leads to all sort of nasty theological mistakes, like the assertion that God acts ultimately for the sake of God’s own glory rather that out of the bounty of God’s love and ultimately for the sake of us sinners…just to name one. It is further interesting to reflect on how this mistake is one not infrequently made within contemporary evangelicalism. So whereas Barth's reflection on Schleiermacher points to certain ways in which contemporary evangelicals are looking increasingly like classic liberals, Bultmann's reflection turns Schleiermacher against them.

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Barth on Schleiermacher (with brief thoughts on American Evangelicalism)

2011-09-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lecture’s at Göttingen, Winter Semester of 1923/24 (Dietrich Ritschl, ed.; Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans.; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982): xv.

Theologically the “genius” of the major part of the church is that of Schleiermacher. All the so-to-speak official impulses and movements of the centuries since the Reformation find a center of unity in him: orthodoxy, pietism, the Enlightenment. All the official tendencies of the Christian present emanate from him like rays: church life, experiential piety, historicism, psychologism, and ethicism. We need not ask how far he constituted this center personally and directly or simply as a proponent of the romantic and idealistic movement of his age – how far, then, the threads that link the past and the future also run back beyond him. Suffice it to say that almost all of them run by way of him, so that with a good conscience we can call him a type of what was determinative for a whole century, and are indeed forced to see in him the most brilliant representative not only of a theological past but also of the theological present.

The really strange thing about this quote is that the things Barth identifies as present-day (in terms of 1920’s Germany) tendencies emanating from Schleiermacher – “church life, experiential piety, historicism, psychologism, and ethicism” – are precisely the things that seem to me to be holding the field within contemporary American evangelicalism, in many ways. It is a well-worn trope of comic books and action movies that one is always in danger of becoming what one fights against. Have evangelicals started becoming liberals, in the classic European sense of the term? If so, how advanced are the symptoms, what is the prognosis, and what can be done to combat this malady?

What Am I Reading? Rosalind Marshall on John Knox

2011-09-26T10:51:00.002-05:00

Rosalind K. Marshall, John Knox (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000).

My teaching duties in the upcoming Spring semester will involve work on the Scots Confession, and so I’ve been reading up on Knox and the Scottish Reformation in order to get the necessary background information and big-picture perspective. There aren’t a lot of books out there to give one that information, or at least not many academic books (I’ll likely discuss an exception to this judgment in a later ‘What Am I Reading?’ post…), and Marshall’s book certainly does NOT fill this lacunae. Academic it is not. However, Marshall is an engaging writer and the book is well researched, making it very suitable for orienting oneself to the subject matter as well as being accessible to your average educated adult reader. For academics, this means it makes for a quick and enjoyable read. One might even keep it on one’s nightstand for a bit of light reading before bed.

One of Marshall’s strengths is her ability to see Knox the man in his own time and context. This allows her to deflect some of the contemporary slights on Knox while also recognizing certain of his character flaws. This allows Knox to be compelling on his own terms, not those of hagiographers, and not those who would elevate him as an example of how religion can go terribly wrong. Marshall’s concluding judgment on Knox’s relation to Mary, Queen of Scots, is an instance of this even-handed approach. Allow me to quote at some length:

[Knox’s] longstanding hostility to Mary had become an obsessive, vengeful hatred. People have long speculated about why he loathed her so much, suggesting, for example, that he was suppressing feelings of sexual attraction towards her. That theory is wide of the mark. From the beginning, he never could see the real woman standing before him. To him she was a second Mary Tudor – Bloody Mary – who had sent his Protestant friends to their deaths. Many years before, his own mentor, George Wishart, had died at the stake, and ever since he had been gripped by a horror of more persecution, more burnings.

Knox was unable, ever, to give Mary the benefit of the doubt, because, for him, she symbolised all the evils of the Roman Catholic church and, as her situation in Scotland went from bad to worse, he had no thought of the human being caught in distressing circumstances. He simply saw her as another Jezebel, another evil queen like those he knew so well from the Old Testament. She had ruined everything. She had come back to a Scotland newly transformed into an officially Protestant country, and, instead of taking her realm forward to a peaceful, godly future, she had menaced it with the Mass… (198)

Finally, I will conclude with another quote from Marshall which touches on Knox’s views about the relation between church and university toward the end of his life while in residence and preaching at St Andrews, which had long (since before the Reformation) been a center of ecclesiastical learning in Scotland:

“[A] deputation of university teachers and ministers came to complain to Knox about his sermons… Knox retorted angrily that neither they nor any other group of private people had the right to judge the Church and its representatives. Only God and the General Assembly could do that, and he sent them away. A fortnight later, he wrote to tell the General Assembly meeting in Perth, ‘Albeit I have taken my leave not only of you, dear brethren, but also of the whole world and all worldly affairs, yet remaining in the flesh I could not nor cannot cease to admonish you of things which I know to be most prejudicial to the Church of Christ Jesus within this realm.’ They must never allow the church to become subject to the universities. (208)

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My Most Recent Publication

2011-09-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

I have a review of Amy Marga's book, Karl Barth’s Dialogue with Catholicism in Göttingen and Münster: Its Significance for His Doctrine of God, that is now up on the Center for Barth Studies website. Surf on over and check it out!

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-09-18T10:09:00.006-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

It’s a week early for this post on the normal rotation, but I came across some important and worthwhile stuff that I wanted to spread the word about.

First off, it is time to begin announcing that Bruce McCormack will be delivering the 2011 Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in a week or so. Thanks to Jason Goroncy, from whom I shamelessly stole the below:

Lecture One: Tuesday, September 27 | 7:00-8:30 pm
“The Erosion of Protestant Commitments in the Evangelical Movement: On the
Importance of the Doctrine of God in Evangelical Theology Today”

Lecture Two: Wednesday, September 28 | 2:00-3:30 pm
“From the One God to the Trinity: The Creation of Christian Theism”

Lecture Three: Wednesday, September 28 | 4:00-5:30 pm
“The Great Reversal: From the Economy of God to Triunity in Modern Theology”

Lecture Four: Thursday, September 29 | 4:00-5:30 pm
“The God of Covenant Faithfulness in the Old and New Testaments”

Lecture Five: Monday, October 3 | 2:00-3:30 pm
“Which Christology? Refining the Economic Basis of the Christian Doctrine of God”

Lecture Six: Monday, October 3 | 4:00-5:30 pm
“The Processions Contain the Missions: Reconstructing the Doctrine of an Immanent Trinity”

Lecture Seven: Tuesday, October 4 | 4:00-5:30 pm
“Nature and Freedom in God: On Aseity and Passibility”

Second, I recently came across some theological gems on Youtube. Thanks to Michael Leyden for putting me on to these. StJohnsNottingham has a number of interesting videos up, including the following:

Paul Nimmo on Schleiermacher

David Fergusson on Bultmann

Tom Greggs on Bonhoeffer

Third, Robert Grow just posted some information about the book that he edited with Myk Habets on Evangelical Calvinism.

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Ellen Charry’s “God and the Art of Happiness” – Part 2 recap

2011-09-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

Well, it happened again. As with Part 1, I was planning to write my own recap of Part 2…until I discovered that Charry has already done it better than I could. So, I’m just going to quote her again. More comments to follow.

Ellen Charry, God and the Art of Happiness, 250:

Across epochs, locations, languages, circumstances, cultures, and discourses, texts in both Testaments of Scripture agree that the maker of heaven and earth seeks creation’s flourishing. All the texts we have considered argue that reverent devotion to the creator and redeemer of the world is the happy life, for it crafts one into an instrument of divine wisdom, love, and goodness.

The various patterns of life that Scripture intends to draw the reader into drive toward one goal: organizing ourselves around life in God that we may enjoy ourselves as we are buoyed by the love, beauty, goodness, and wisdom of God, which hoist us aloft. That the visions they paint frame the issue differently is a great strength rather than a conundrum, for here specificity would be stultifying, since the ways in which God is to be enjoyed are inexhaustible. The Pentateuch, Psalms, and Proverbs suggest that living into salvation is incremental. John’s Gospel, by contrast, talks of achieving eternal life as a dramatic commitment to leave one’s trusted way of life and embrace Jesus. It is far more nebulous – but perhaps even more passionate – in its call. Through struggle, confusion, internal dissension, resistance, and neglect, all call their readers into a beautiful and fulfilling life as the people of God. Perhaps John 15:11 summarizes the asherist ethic most elegantly: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

I’m not going to spoil the last chapter, wherein Charry draws the threads of her study together into a unified vision. I will say, however, that she provides a number of insights into concrete application of the vision she has been developing throughout the work, complete with three brief case studies. What I’m trying to say is this: not only is this work an exercise is sophisticated (even though highly accessible) theological work, it is also practical theology at its best.

One last comment highlighting something in Part 2: on pages 162-8, Charry develops a generally Barthian doctrine of the knowledge of God but, trixie author that she is, Charry does not point this out. That such a similarity should be present is no surprise: Charry studied with Paul van Buren, one of Barth’s students. She has learned from her teachers, although not slavishly (as she once put it to me). Here is a good summary line: “I am suggesting that, rather than moving from ‘general’ to ‘special’ revelation, common experience moves in the opposite direction. One must first be arrested by the biblical narrative, as conveyed by the ministrations of the church, in order to consider the knowledge of God in extrabiblical sources, especially to see the creativity of God at work in one’s own body” (162).

I don’t know what else to do or say to temp you into buying and reading this book but, I assure you, you won’t regret it should you do so.

Wisdom from Master Kong

2011-09-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

As those who follow this blog know, I'm currently in my first semester as an assistant professor of religion at Lindenwood University. Part of my consistent teaching load is a course introducing students to the world's major religions. It has been a lot of fun getting into these religions and their primary texts and, as an aside, my Barthianism makes it especially easy to find this stuff interesting and useful while also non-threatening.

In any case, I came across a passage from Master Kong (Confucius) in the Analects this morning and it struck a chord with me. I would go so far to say that it encapsulates the modus operandi of this blog at least, and also my own approach to the theological task - at least as that approach takes shape in the present stage of my career. So, here it is:

"I once did not eat all day and did not sleep all night in order to think, but there was no benefit. It would have been better to study" (15.31).

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-09-11T22:28:00.002-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

This should have been posted on Saturday, but I’m lucky that I was able to bang it out at all. So, if there is anyone out there who would possibly care about this delay: deal with it. Of course, I’m talking mostly to myself…

Anyway, here is a very brief list of links. I’ve been doing my best to stay on top of goings on in the theoblogosphere, but I don’t always have time to put everything interesting in the list. Obviously, everyone needs to check out my post supplying a translation from Eberhard Busch’s recently published journal of his time as Karl Barth’s research assistant. That goes without saying. So, what else should you read?

“Impossible Possibilities: On Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible” - A thought-provoking book review, and review of a review, from one whom I recently described in correspondence (to a third party) as “my theologically conjoined twin.”
“Edinburgh Dogmatics Paper: Christology and Sanctification” - Darren Sumner posts the abstract of his paper from the…you guessed it…recent Edinburgh Dogmatics conference.
“Things I Already Believed that Make Me Dangerously Susceptible to Barthianism” - Thoughtful reflections from a current MDiv student at PTS whom I had the pleasure of having in one of my precepts for George Hunsinger’s recent introductory course on Karl Barth.
“Is Systematic Theology Necessary?” - J. R. Daniel Kirk poses this question and responds in the negative. My theologically conjoined twin and I contest such a conclusion in the comments (along with others).
“Why “evangelical” is a label I won’t surrender” - Roger Olson continuing to hold the front lines.

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Karl Barth on Eberhard Jüngel’s “God’s Being Is In Becoming” - from a new book by Eberhard Busch

2011-09-05T07:39:00.000-05:00

And now for a DET exclusive...

As some of you may already be aware, Eberhard Busch has recently published an incredible new resource for Barth studies, namely, a compendium of his notes from his time as Karl Barth’s assistant (Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth). Those who know the Barth studies landscape don’t need to be told how significant this is; to those of you who don’t know the landscape so well, suffice it to say that this volume will be of great interest.

As a case in point, I present the below. Busch’s publishers have made a tract of his text available as a bit of a sample, and my friend and colleague from Princeton Seminary, Matt Bruce (also, coincidently, a friend of the blog and the Karl Barth Blog Conference), passed along those pages and a rough-and-ready translation of a couple interesting paragraphs. These paragraphs recount a discussion with Barth concerning Eberhard Jüngel’s then recently published, God’s Being Is In Becoming. Barth provides an appraisal (positive, by the way), as well as some thoughts on Jüngel himself and other pertinent theologians like Helmut Gollwitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. So, without further ado, the text:

From: Eberhard Busch. Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth: Tagebuch 1965-1968. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. pp. 13-15. Translated by Matthew J. Aragon Bruce, 3 September 2011.

July 1965

I gather together here notes that I wrote down sometime ago without without dates. After Barth had completed all his University activities, he formed a small working group that met at his home in which new theological literature was discussed. In the summer of 1965, we discussed in this group Eberhard Jüngel’s book God’s Being Is In Becoming over the course of three meetings. Barth was present at the first meeting; however Thurneysen presided over the other two meetings because Barth was again laid up due to his illness and also was in the hospital. In that first meeting, Barth expressed the highest satisfaction with the book. Fundamentally, he had no objections to the book, apart from that the fact that Jüngel’s linguistic style was not always accessible to him. In this regard he was of the opinion that in part, “This is his culpability, not mine.” Jürgen Fangmeier on the other hand was of the opinion that something must be wrong with Jüngel because of the strong polemics he directed against Gollwitzer’s critique of Bultmann and his disciples. Barth countered: No, he feels that he has been well understood. Jüngel criticizes Gollwitzer only in order to resist the mistaken account that the being of God “arises (aufgeht)” in the event of a determined relationship. In this manner, Gollwitzer remains stuck in the old thinking of a static concept of substance. Therefore he [Gollwitzer] is not to be spared from the objections that are indicated in the book. But, said Fangmeier: Jüngel still brings Barth into a connection with Ebeling’s statement: God is not an extramundane essence. Barth replied: “Yes, that is factually correct. God is in fact not such an essence. I have not taught such an essence.” In regard to what is at stake in the relationship between him [Barth] on the one had and Bultmann or his disciples on the other, which Jüngel so emphatically highlights, Barth feels that the respective passages are not at all instances of “mediation” or “compromise” in which this or that important insight into the matter has been ceded or relinquished to the other side. But he rather had the impression that Jüngel adhered to his line [of thought] on the whole. By means of these suggested relationships, astute insights are thus attributed to the other sight that in fact run counter to some extent to the direction of their thought. In this way something is served to them on their plate, which they otherwise could not afford. Jüngel’s appeal to Barth is credible, but less so his assertions about cross-connections between Barth and Bultmann and his associates. Ernst Fuchs has written in his copy of the book, under the subtitle (“A paraphrase of the doctrine of God of K.B.”): “A paraphrase – and more than that.” What does that mean? Barth referred to the main title as the most enigmatic part of the book: “God’s Being is in Becoming.” “What is meant by this ominous word ‘becoming’? It is not clear to me, to what extent this word is useful here and much less essential.” He may certainly not approve of Schelling’s discourse about the “becoming God.” Certainly, God is God in movement. If and in so far as it is this that is meant with this phrase “becoming God,” Barth can go along with him. His critique of Schelling begins with the question: Is it not the case with him, that the ground for the movement or for the becoming lies in a lack, in a deficiency in God. Does this mean that the “motive” of his becoming exists in the necessary compulsion in which God wants to satiate and satisfy his need for self-enrichment? However Barth on the other hand would like to emphasize that God is in movement, because he is rich in himself and because he has no need for anything himself, but wants to give something of himself, beyond himself.

Jüngel’s remarks about the doctrine of the Trinity are thus “entirely right.” But Barth would have preferred it if he had presented the argument by means of exegetical and historical-theological investigations, in this case above all with recourse to the theology of the early church. In the form in which Jüngel currently explains it, it seems almost as though the doctrine of the Trinity is “a special invention of Karl Barth.” His “modest contribution” to the churchly doctrine of the Trinity has only been the one that he saw, understood, and developed in close, indissoluble connection with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. “It is the consequence of the christological dogma of true God and true man, and it [the doct. of the Trinity] is so closely linked with it [christology], that it [the doct. of the Trinity] falls if this is contested. Naturally it is not the Trinity that falls but the Church’s doctrine of it [Trinity]. But also this insight is still not simply new compared with the most interesting discoveries in the early Church.

There certainly is a lot there to digest. And just think – there are 760 pages of this (for quite a low price-tag, I must say). We can only hope that this volume makes it into English very quickly – there is no doubt in my mind that it is essential reading for any student of Barth, and that it will be engaging enough to attract comparatively wide reading should the linguistic barrier be surmounted. So if Tom Kraft and any of the folks over at the T&T Clark Blog are paying attention, I have this simple message for you: “Do anything necessary to acquire the translation rights for this book and get it into print, ASAP!”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-08-27T08:42:00.001-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

Well, let’s see here. I want to start by giving a shout-out to Timothy Butler, a theology blogger that I came across and interacted with a number of years ago. Why the shout-out? Tim is from the St. Louis area, and is – talk about the world’s smallness – an alumnus of my institution. On top of that, he’s teaching for my department as an adjunct this year (as well as starting doctoral studies – he’ll be a busy guy). All of which lead to us finally meeting in person over lunch yesterday. It’s always lots of fun to meet face to face with those I’ve met keyboard to keyboard in the theo-blogosphere.

Also, I want to highlight a recent guest-post (over at the blog, Two Friars and a Fool) by my good friend and partner in crime, David Congdon, entitled: The Evangelical Hypothesis. It is well worth your time. Here is the heart of his proposal, but you’ll need to go read the whole thing to understand what David means:

“The evangelical hypothesis, or the eternal idea of evangelicalism, is ‘mission without churches’”

Now onto the links…

Invitation to Cynthia Nielsen’s Dissertation Lecture, August 29th - If you are in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and want to have your mind blown, you might want to think of attending. All the best, Cynthia!
Is Moderation a Christian Virtue? - The Women in Theology blog has an interesting post up about how moderation functions in theological debate, and specifically the claim to represent a middle way between two extremes. I would love to see a follow up post from someone reflecting on how an un-privileging of the middle way would impact Anglican identity… (Where’s Jason when I need him…)
The Response of Faith (Baptismal Covenant, part 3) - Speaking of Jason, here’s the next installment of his series on the Book of Common Prayer Baptismal Covenant.
Rate-Your-Seminary - That’s right, you can rate your seminary on this handy-dandy website and see how it stacks up compared to others. Just to give you an idea of the sort of crowd dominating the site, Dallas Theological Seminary is currently the highest rated. Princeton folks, our beloved PTS doesn’t have any rating yet, so let’s fix that!
Lynn Cohick on Women in the Roman World - I worked for Lynn as her TA back when I was in undergrad, and I’m glad to see her getting some press. Be sure to head over and enjoy the posted videos. Lynn has been a friend of the blog as well, contributing to the 2009 Karl Barth Blog Conference. She recently published a book on the subject, which I read, enjoyed, and posted about.
Welcome to the new F&T - Ben Myers has updated his site, taking it to a new url (old one still works) and cleaning up the design. Now, if he’d only start posting seriously again. Of course, who am I to judge given the past month…
CruciFAIL: The Good News For Those Who Are Afraid to Fail - My good friend Chris TerryNelson posted a recent sermon.
Barth on the Canons of Dort - Reflections on what Barth said about Dort in his study of the Reformed confessions.
Speaking Up for Tenure - I'm trying to post less from the Chronicle of Higher Education when doing these collections of links, but I have to point out this piece. The standard line is that why should academics (or public school teachers) have tenure when those who work in other industries don't have it. This piece points out that this line isn't quite right - other knowledge-based professions have things similar to tenure, like partnership in law firms. I think that's certainly worth remembering.

For those without the time for serious theological study, I recommend the following:

Finally, if all that isn’t enough to keep you busy, and you already read my latest on God’s transcendence in Barth’s theology, why not revisit my series on Helmut Gollwitzer (one of Barth’s best students) and the Marxist criticism of religion?

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Is Barth's God Too Transcendent? It depends...

2011-08-23T08:37:00.000-05:00

...on which Barth you're talking about.

There are a number of stock criticisms made of Barth’s theology. Chief among them is the claim that his emphasis upon Jesus Christ and God renders his theology one-sided in that it leaves no room for the rest of us, for creation. In other words, the claim is that Barth’s God is too transcendent, so much God without us that there is precious little room left for God with us. Consequently, so the argument goes, the God we meet in Barth’s theology is fundamentally a God against us rather than for us. Amy Marga describes this worry in her book, Karl Barth’s Dialogue with Catholicism:

[A] doctrine of God in which God is wholly separated from creation can bring no hope to a broken humanity. An utterly transcendent God brings no peace. God must be both above all things but also in all things…Guilty of this kind of imbalance were none other than the dialectical theologians [ed. note, with KB in the van]. They…reverted back to a doctrine of God that originated in Luther, and put forth an imbalanced view of God’s Gegenständlichkeit (objectivity) that lay at the heart of Reformation theology. It…signal[ed] a ‘genuine rebirth’ of Protestantism. Theirs is a God who alone is real, and who alone effects and brings all thing to pass, without any role played by creation. This is a God without creatures, a God who acts and dwells in a space that is hidden from creation. This God’s Yes is a Yes to God’s own being, not a divine Yes to creation. In fact, God’s own objective positivity was expressed by the dialectical theologians as a diametrical opposition to all that is creaturely, and the immensity of God’s own Gegenständlichkeit leaves no option for the creature to be anything but God’s No (72).

This is part of Marga’s description of the criticism leveled against Barth and the dialectical theologians by none other than Erich Przywara, and it is a penetratingly telling one. He hits the nail on the head in a number of ways. But, it is important to note that he made this criticism in 1923. Marga’s argument is to show that Barth learned from this (and other similar) criticisms, and developed his theology in such a way as to render them unnecessary with reference to his later theology. One need only to look at this excerpt from Barth’s 1956 essay on “The Humanity of God,” where Barth reflects on his early work:

We viewed this 'wholly other' in isolation, abstracted and absolutized, and set it over against man, this miserable wretch - not to say boxed his ears with it - in such fashion that it continually showed greater similarity to the deity of the God of the philosophers than to the deity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...Who God is and what He is in His deity He proves and reveals not in a vacuum as a divine being-for-Himself, but precisely and authentically in the fact that He exists, speaks, and acts as the partner of man, though of course as the absolutely superior partner (45).

The point of all this is to make clear that such criticisms of Barth as those mentioned at the outset do not in fact land against Barth’s mature theology. They landed against his early theology, and he moved to address them. For my money, there are two reasons why we keep hearing such criticisms, and I’ll conclude with this:

Anglophone theology knew little more than the early Barth for a very long time, and so its reflexive picture of Barth is often built on his earlier work. Consequently, criticisms of his early work are repeated as though they pertain to his work as a whole. All this we might describe as the “neo-orthodox captivity” of Karl Barth’s theology.
When Barth moved to address this and other criticisms of his earlier work, he did so in a way other than the way his critics wanted him to. So, even though Barth addresses the concerns of these critics, they remain unsatisfied because he did not simply drop what he was doing and go running into their arms. Barth was too creative a theologian for that, and many can’t be bothered to spend enough time with him to understand how he addresses their concerns. This is why books like Marga’s (and Keith Johnson’s, while we’re on it) are so important, namely, because they endeavor to clarify Barth’s theology and show how it addresses such criticisms.

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Assessment in Higher Education

2011-08-15T16:23:00.002-05:00

Today was my first official day on the job, and it was primarily spent in a whole-faculty workshop pertaining to assessment. Following a lengthy presentation about assessment, and a lunch to give us time to reflect, we gathered as departments to chart some program-level learning objectives. This was the first step in what will be at least a year long look at our various programs, and how the various courses fit into the programs, etc. All of this is well and good, and certainly necessary. All of this is aimed at verifying that students have learned something, and determining what they have learned, when they leave our institution.

That said, I could not help but thinking as I listened to the presentation that, at the end of the day, what assessment does is shift the focus away from grading students to grading institutions and programs. One could argue that this is necessary given rampant grade inflation: i.e., since grading students doesn't mean anything anymore, we need to pay attention to assessing / grading the programs they are in.

Assessment is helpful insofar as it makes departments, schools, and institutions intentional about what they are teaching. But when it is wrapped in a veneer of somehow quantifying what and how well students learn...well, I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Now, this is horribly simplistic, not in any way the fault of my institution, and **insert other standard academic loophole here**, but at the moment I'm feeling a bit disappointed: I thought I was more or less done being graded for a while...

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-08-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

I’m now installed at Lindenwood University, and am looking down the barrel of orientation week (the coming week), and the first week of classes (the week after that). My last week was spent banging out a few things that slightly resemble syllabi, as well as unpacking my books and arranging them in my office. Of course, the past two weeks have been a marathon of errands trying to get the family settled into life here. There’s plenty more to be done on that count, however, as well as with preparing for classes. It will be an interesting semester… Hopefully I’ll resume actual blogging sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, here’s another set of links to amuse and inspire you.

“More Damn Doodlings” - Kim Fabricius just can’t help himself. Here’s a good bit: “Invite Jesus into my life? You’re joking! It was breaking and entering – trashing the place, stealing the valuables, and then squatting, unevictably. Yes, I’m a Calvinist, not an Arminian.”
“Pastors in Peril” - More about the dangers of treating churches like businesses and pastors like employees.
“Christological Predication: Natures Do Not Act” - Darren Sumner explicates Chalcedonian logic.
“The Baptismal Covenant, Part 2” - Jason Ingalls continues his series on the Baptismal Covenant from the Book of Common Prayer.
“Why We Sing” - A sermon from Melissa on Psalm 96.
“Strange Prophets” - David Guretzki reflects on 1 Kings 13.
“Christianity Is Not A Cultural Project” - This from Halden, reflecting on the recent mass homicide in Norway

Now some stuff from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“We Can't Teach Students to Love Reading”

“Shame in Academic Writing”

“Handling Workplace/Classroom Disruptions”

“Faculty Immobility in the New Economy”

“The World Without Scholars: A Fable for Our Time”

“An E-Mail Experiment Helps a Duke Economist Ponder His Students’ Cheating Hearts”

If all that isn't enough for you, why not checking out the DET serials? The Gollwitzer series seems especially pertinent given recent events in the UK...

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-07-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

So, I'm stuck in NJ while the wife and kids have flown to MO. Why, you may ask? Because the company I reserved a moving truck with a month ago was unable to provide the equipment. Suffice it to say that I may well provide a post in the future about which rental company NOT to use - that depends on whether they make it worth my while not to. Cross your fingers.

In any case, this leaves me with time to write a link round-up. Here you go, in no particular order:

"The real impasse in the debate over Rob Bell" - David Congdon weighs in, highlighting the way these debates are artificially framed in terms of calvinism and arminianism.
"Doodlings Redivivus" - Kim Fabricius is back at it: "Is it surprising that so many American Christians are obsessed with hell when mass incarceration and capital punishment are the way the nation does justice?"
"No Endnotes, Please!" - Michael Gibson pleas with publishers to abolish the endnote. I'll sign that petition.
"Jesus Keeps His Promise" - A Pentecost sermon on Acts 2.1-12 by Jason Ingalls.
"Ruminations on Burnout" - Richard Floyd on whether the term "work" is appropriately applied to pastoral minister.
"Upcoming Books, part 1" - More from Michael Gibson, this time listing books who's publication in the Fall he is excited about.
"On catechesis and catastrophe" - For Ben Myers, the church is all too often like an irresponsible state bureaucrat...
"The Evolution of Academic Freedom" - A look at the academic life-cycle.
"The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s" - Forget about grade inflation, we've reached the category of degree inflation.
"Read Ahead To Get Ahead? Not So Fast." - Tempted to read ahead in a course, or have bright students who tend to do this? It probably isn't helping you / them learn. Why? Because they are engaging with texts before being equipped to do so, and they are unable to engage as deeply with those texts in the classroom because by then it might have been months since they were read. Take my word for it, which is based on personal experience - try to avoid working too far ahead.
"The Shame of Calvin College" - Looks like the administration at Calvin College is up to some shenanigans. All I know about this is what you can find at the link, but I can't help but feel that Calvin is dismissing a professor for being supralapsarian - even though the synod of Dordt established both infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism as "orthodox" options.
"Your Employer Knows Everything" - Look out for corporate / institutional Big Brother.
"From Technologist to Philosopher: Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities" - The title says it all.

Anyway, if you're looking for something to read here at DET, how about checking out one of these three older posts?

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Happy Birthday to DET!

2011-07-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

DET is 5 years old today, and we're hovering right around 600 posts. Wow. I'm not going to reflect on this any further because I suspect that such reflections could quickly turn demoralizing. Working on my dissertation will be a far better use of my time...I hope.

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Update

2011-07-23T22:17:00.000-05:00

My apologies for the way in which DET has basically fallen silent. I had a nice 6 post/2 week rotation going there for a while. As an excuse for this lamentable state of affairs, I cite my family's impending move to Missouri (we'll be in transit in less than a week) and my mad dash attempt to complete a draft of my final dissertation chapter before leaving. If I pull it off (and if you follow me on Twitter, you know that I I'm hopeful at the moment based on a couple extraordinary days), I'll have a full draft, sans only silly little things like an introduction, conclusion, abstract, acknowledgments, etc. You know, the sort of stuff you can bang out over coffee the day before the defense...or not... Seriously, though, all my energy has been going into these two things (and the odd book review posting), leaving no time left over for theo-blog-ish ruminations.

To keep yourself busy in the meantime, I suggest looking at my recent post, "What is Theology?", or my less recent post on what Bultmann had to say to Barth about philosophy and theology. If that is not enough, there are always the various indices accessible through the bar at the top of the page, especially those dealing with popular posts, the Karl Barth Blog Conference (KBBC), recommended reading, or serials. There's plenty of stuff in the archives here at DET to keep you busy for quite a while - not all of it is worth your time, mind you, but enough of it is.

I'll also do my best to get an edition of "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..." out next weekend.

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New Center for Barth Studies Book Review

2011-07-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman reviews Gerald McKenny, "The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology" (Oxford, 2010). Derek is a friend of the blog, contributing to the most recent Karl Barth Blog Conference (KBBC on the top menu). Be sure to check it out!

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-07-16T19:25:00.002-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

I’m running a bit behind on getting this post done. Oh well. Somehow the earth will keep revolving and rotating. We hope. In any case, that I’m running behind means that I don’t have time to put these links into convenient categories. Here they are thrown together in no particular order (as far as I know):

John Drury gives us an assorted collection of quotations from Barth concerning Hegel.
The Women In Theology blog reflects on the dynamics surrounding women in ministry and, particularly, female academics in theology and/or religion departments.
Roger Olson provides more reflection on neo-fundamentalism, especially the way in which folks from this camp tend to take up a primarily defensive theological posture, rather than a creative or reconstitutive one.
Wow. I knew this project was around the theo-blogosphere, but I never stumbled upon the “hive,” as it were. In any case, this NT professor at Fuller has spearheaded a project to read through Barth’s Church Dogmatics and this page gives you the reading schedule and links to his various posts on the various reading segments.
Hell. Karl Barth. Election. And Nathaniel Hawthorne. Typical Millinerd fare.
I suspect that those who are dissertating or have dissertated will readily admit that an urge to beseech your dissertation in something akin to the mode of prayer will sometimes wash over you in a well-nigh irresistible wave. Here is an artist’s rendering of what such a prayer might look like if followed through and modeled on the Pater.
Great news from and for Meredith over at The Bruised Reed. As I said in my comment there, I’m both extremely happy for her and extremely jealous of her.
Ricahrd Floyd, whom I was very pleased to meet at the recent Barth Conference in Princeton, offers 10 ways to crush your pastor’s morale. Since I’m relocating soon, I can’t wait to try a few of these out on fresh meat…
Cynthia Nielsen’s dissertation abstract.
Jason Goroncy on Barth on marriage. Coincidently, I was also very pleased to meet Jason at the recent Barth conference in Princeton.
More Richard Floyd, this time defending blogging.
This is a piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education aimed at helping junior faculty sort out departmental dynamics. In this particular case, the focus is on what such a one might be doing wrong.
Robert Grow rejoices that his co-edited volume on Evangelical Calvinism has been sent to the publisher.
Yet more Richard Floyd, now charting on the role that books played in his pastoral ministry, and wondering what the significance is of a new generation of pastors who don’t revere books in the same way.
Melissa F-B reflects on attending a recent Mennonite church convention in Pittsburgh
More from the Chronicle of Higher Ed, this time on the difficulty of measuring faculty workloads, especially in the humanities. This has all sorts of political ramifications at present.
Stanley Fish discusses a recent book concerned with assessing the relation between academic freedom and tenure, with an eye toward undermining the latter. Fish thinks the book’s argument is clever, but disagrees with the premise that higher education should continue to move toward glorified vocational training – thus disrupting the book’s calculus.
More Roger Olson, this time discussing theological liberalism, what it means, and criticizing how the language get’s thrown around unreflectively.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed draws attention to a game-changing development - The New Faculty Majority (adjunct faculty advocacy group) is now offering limited heath insurance plans to its members.
Grade inflation is on the loose, I think all would agree. Here is a historical look, with dire suggestions about the future.
Ever wonder what pastors do all week when they aren’t “working” on Sunday mornings? Here is a peek.

P.S. Have I mentioned that I'm on Twitter now?

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Eberhard Busch on Barth on Christian Participation in the “political service of God”

2011-07-14T07:55:00.000-05:00

Eberhard Busch, The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology (Eerdmans).

Christians do not do anything that is alien either to their faith in the God who graciously commands or to those who are responsible in the secular polis, when they too participate in this political service of God. They should not try to evade this duty on the grounds that it would involve digression from their “proper” task. If they do not want to deny their freedom in the world, they should never restrict their obedience to the command of God to an inner sphere, in order to subject themselves externally to the laws of some other authority. Just as the kingdom of God is hidden in the polis but still present, Christians, even when acting “anonymously” in the polis, may not suspend the one standard of the command of the God who reigns both here and there (172).

Christians must act to resist the power exercised by humans over humans that robs them of freedom and pushes them onto the margin of society. Following Christ's solidarity with the lost...Christians must 'look downward' upon the socially and economically weak. They must 'summon the world to reflect on social injustice...and to alter the conditions and relationships in question' (173-4; quoting from Barth's CD 4.3).

Barth on Evangelical Theology’s Relation to Scripture

2011-07-12T07:18:00.000-05:00

I’ve had occasion to think lately about how theology relates – or ought to relate – to Scripture. The issue shows up here and there in my dissertation. In any case, I thought that I would share with you all seven points that Barth makes about this topic.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (Grover Foley, trans.; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963): 30-5.

“[T]heology shares with the biblical prophecy and apostolate a common concern for human response to the divine Word.”
“All the same…theology is neither prophecy nor apostolate. Its relationship to God’s Word cannot be compared to the position of the biblical witnesses because it can know the Word of God only at second hand, only in the mirror and echo of the biblical witness.”
“The position of theology…can in no wise be exalted above that of the biblical witnesses…[The biblical witnesses have] thought, spoken, and written about the revelatory Word and act in direct confrontation with it. All subsequent theology, as well as the whole of the community that comes after the event, will never find itself in the same immediate confrontation.”
“Once and for all, theology has…its position beneath that of the biblical scriptures…If theology seeks to learn of prophecy and the apostolate, it can only and ever learn from the prophetic and apostolic witnesses…For this reason theology must agree to let them look over its shoulder and correct its notebooks.”
“[T]he peg on which all theology hangs is acquaintance with the God of the Gospel. This acquaintance is never to be taken for granted; it is never immediately available; it can never be carried by the theologian in some intellectual or spiritual pillbox or briefcase…Theology becomes evangelical theology only when the God of the Gospel encounters it in the mirror and echo of the prophetic and apostolic word.”
“ Nevertheless…theology confronts in Holy Scripture an extremely polyphonic, not a monotonous, testimony to the work and word of God. Everything that can be heard there is differentiated…[T]he work of theology might be compared to the task of circling a high mountain which, although it is one and the same mountain, exists and manifests itself in very different shapes.”
“Theology responds to the Logos of God…when it endeavors to hear and speak of him always anew on the basis of his self-disclosure in the Scriptures. Its searching of the Scriptures consists in asking the texts whether and to what extent they might witness to him; however, whether and to what extent they reflect and echo, in their complete humanity, the Word of God is completely unknown beforehand…Nowadays, of course, the ‘exegetical-theological’ task is often said to consist in the translation of biblical assertions out of the speech of a past time into the language of modern man. The remarkable assumption behind this project, however, seems to be that the content, meaning, and point of biblical assertions are relatively easy to ascertain and may afterward be presupposed as self-evident. The main task would be then simply to render these assertions understandable and relevant to the modern world by means of some sort of linguistic key…The truth of the matter, however, is that the central affirmations of the Bible are not self-evident; the Word of God itself, as witness to in the Bible, is not immediately obvious in any of its chapters and verses. On the contrary, the truth of the Word must be sought precisely, in order to be understood in its deep simplicity. Every possible means must be used: philological and historical criticism and analysis, careful consideration of the nearer and the more remote textual relationships, and not least, the enlistment of every device of the conjectural imagination that is available. The question about the Word and this question alone fulfills and does justice to the intention of the biblical authors and their writings. And in passing, might not this question also do justice to modern man?”

Reading Scripture with John Calvin: Malachi 1.2-6

2011-07-08T08:42:00.001-05:00

Malachi 1.2-6

[2] “I have loved you,” says the LORD. “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’ Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob, [3] but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.” [4] Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.” But this is what the LORD Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD. [5] You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the LORD – even beyond the borders of Israel!’ [6] A son honors his father, and slaves honor their master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty.

==========================

COMMENTARY:

This lecture is concerned with the doctrine of election, as Calvin promised it would be in the last lecture. He struggles to stick with Malachi’s text, instead reverting frequently to Romans 9-11. There is enough overlap between the passages to justify that move, however. Aside from Calvin’s usual comments when treating this doctrine – admonition against speculation, emphasis on election as the guarantee that God’s grace is free, etc – there are three things here that deserve highlighting.

Four-Step Program

Putting Malachi’s text together with Romans 9-11 and, indeed, the whole scope of the Old Testament narrative at a very general level, Calvin explicates God’s electing activity as a four-step program. First, God creates humanity, binding them to him in a unique way (i.e., the image of God, souls, etc.). This is a type of divine favor and election since it establishes human beings as better than, say, “asses and dogs” (473). Second, God then selects Abraham and his descendents for special consideration. This is an entirely gracious act given that Israel is precisely the same as the rest of humanity, naturally speaking, and yet they receive special favor. Third, the freedom of God’s grace is further exhibited in that God was not bound to accept all of Abraham’s descendents indiscriminately, but chose Isaac over Ishmael. Fourth and finally, God discriminates further between Jacob and Esau. For Calvin, all this demonstrates that God’s election is always personal and not enacted in virtue of any merit, whether ethical or genetic.

General Vs. Effectual Calling

Calvin’s four-step program also supports the distinction that he will go in this passage to make between general and effectual calling. In this four-step program, there are a number of instances where a promise has been made, only to be followed up on God’s side with further discrimination and promise-making. What Calvin takes away from this is that a difference obtains between a general promise and the actual and effectual work of the Spirit. This comes out when he applies this four-step program to his polemic horizon:

the Papists…estimate faith by external tokens, they haughtily object to us, and say that they are the Church; as though a general promise were sufficient without the Spirit, who is justly called the Spirit of adoption, by whom God seals it within, even in our hearts. (474)

The same logic is clearly at work with reference to the two types of calling. Calvin admits that “God addresses all men generally, ‘Come unto me’ – ‘I am your Father’” (480) but he denies that one properly concludes from this that all are elect. Such a notion is self-evidently false for Calvin since faith is always joined to election (sooner or later), and it is clear that faith does not arise in every bosom prior to death. What accounts for the difference? Particular election, and the derivative concept of effectual calling. So Calvin:

If then it be asked, why some obstinately reject the grace of God, and other embrace it in the spirit of meekness, Paul assigns the reason, and it is this – because God illuminates those who believe, inasmuch as he has chosen them before the creation of the world. It then follows that God so speaks generally, as that the efficacy of the doctrine still depends on his secret good pleasure; for whence is faith, but from his peculiar favor? And why does he not communicate his grace to all? Even because he has not chosen all (480-1).

Dueling Logics

As some of my readers may know, Calvin is of two minds about the order of the divine decrees. Sometimes he sounds like an infralapsarian (creation and fall come before election) and sometimes like a supralapsarian (election comes before creation and fall). This lecture on Malachi is interesting in that it contains both logics. Calvin first sounds infralapsarian when he argues that election cannot occur with respect to merit (and, consequently, foreknowledge) because election takes place with reference to the mass of perdition, that is, with reference to humanity as fallen and therefore devoid of merit. As Calvin puts it:

Now after the fall of Adam we are all lost. What can then be more foolish and absurd than to imagine that there is some virtue in man by which he excels others, since we are all equally accursed in the person of Adam? …All are naturally reprobate in Adam and liable to eternal death, and the reason is evident, for nothing is found in men but sin. The foreknowledge of God then cannot be the cause of our election, for by looking on the whole race of man, he finds them all under a curse from the least to the greatest. (477)

But then Calvin turns around a couple pages later and sounds supralapsarian. Whereas before he was rejecting the possibility of foreknowledge playing a role in election, now he is discussing reprobation. He seems to be following his usual infralapsarian logic when the following appears seemingly out of nowhere:

It must still be observed, that the election of God is anterior [ed.: prior to, before!] to Adam’s fall; and that hence all we who are rescued from the common ruin have been chosen in Christ before the creation of the world, but that others justly perish though they had not been lost in Adam; because God appointed Christ the head of his Church, in order that we might be saved in him, not all, but those who have been chosen. (479)

I don’t know what to make of this, except to say (1) that Calvin’s desire to be comprehensibly biblical sometimes pushes him in multiple and conflicting directions, and (2) that his christocentrism (even Muller thinks he has a sort of christocentrism) subtly pushes Calvin in the direction that Barth would later develop.

PRAYER:

(Calvin concludes each of his lectures on Malachi with a prayer.)

Grant, Almighty God, that as thou hast been pleased to adopt us as thy people for this end, that we may be ingrafted as it were into the body of thy Son, and be made comformable to our head, - O grant, that through our whole life we may strive to seal in our hearts the faith of our election, that we may be the more stimulated to render thee true obedience, and that thy glory may also be made known through us; and those whom thou has chosen together with us may be labour to bring together, that we may unanimously celebrate thee as the Author of our salvation, and so ascribe to thee the glory of thy goodness, that having cast away and renounced all confidence in our own virtue, we may be led to Christ only as the fountain of they election, in whom also is set before us the certainty of our salvation through thy gospel, until we shall at length be gathered into that eternal glory which He has procured for us by his own blood . – Amen.

Quick concluding aside: this prayer is interesting for that line in the middle about working to bring together the elect. The reformers don’t often give us glimpses in their theology of something like the church’s missionary task. It is thus noteworthy that Calvin tip-toes into that vicinity here.

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What is theology? Who is a theologian? Why should theology persist?

2011-07-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

[Dedicated readers may recall my attempt to help spread the word about a gathering of graduate students of theology (broadly conceived) organized by the Harvard Theology Salon back in February. While I could not attend, I sent the following as a contribution to their study document, Theological Times, which they formatted as an e-zine (not made public, at least as yet).]

I want to express my gratitude to the organizers of this gathering, some of whom have gone out of their way to encourage myself and my colleagues at Princeton Theological Seminary to attend. Unfortunately, a scheduling conflict prevents my presence, and I do not know whether any of my colleagues will be able to participate. Given these circumstances, and the organizers’ desire for the presence of a Princeton Seminary voice, I offer the following reflections. In what follows, I provide brief answers to the What? Who? and Why? questions posed by the gathering’s organizers. All of this is in service to answering the prompt: Why, concretely, should theology persist? For whom should it or will it exist?

First, what is theology? Considered formally, theology is the church’s critical reflection upon its proclamation, in word and deed, of the good news of Jesus Christ – the Gospel. Considered materially, theology is the attempt to describe with conceptual care what this Gospel means for how we understand ourselves and our relationships – with each other, with creation, and with God. Theology is thus the province of a particular community – the church – but is an activity performed for the sake of the world.

Second, who is a theologian? Insofar as theology is the church’s critical reflection upon its proclamation of the Gospel, every member of the church – every Christian – is called to be a theologian. Within the Christian community it is not a question of whether or not one is a theologian, but whether or not one is an intentional theologian and, ultimately, whether one is a good or bad theologian. The quality of one’s theologizing is dependent upon one’s faithfulness in allowing the Gospel to decisively determine one’s theology.

Third, why theology? The purpose for theological existence should now be clear – the church must critically reflect on its proclamation of the Gospel. But, let us take this question as referring to that particular endeavor undertaken by the professional theologian. In this case, the church identifies among its members those who are particularly gifted for the theological task, setting them apart for the task of intensive theological thinking. The task of such a “theologian” is to do what the rest of the church does, only with greater intellectual care and rigor. The professional theologian then, regardless of what other loyalties the academy or society might foist upon her – and these may well be important responsibilities – is first and foremost a servant of the church.

Finally: Why, concretely, should theology persist? For whom should it or will it exist? The answer I must give to this question should now be clear: theology both should and will persist so long as the body of Christ finds itself tasked with the proclamation of the Gospel. Given that this proclamation is the church’s raison d’être, theology will persist as long as does the church. Furthermore, and contrary to Christian eschatologies that imagine the visio Dei as humanity’s ultimate end, it may well be that heaven will ring with celebratory proclamation of the Gospel – and, consequently, hum with the drone of theological discussion – εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-07-02T09:08:00.000-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks since the last link round-up here at DET. First, the most local news:

Reading Scripture with John Calvin: Malachi 1.1-6 - I’ve resurrected this old series, and will try to make it something of a fixture moving forward. It has always been one of my favorite serial blog undertakings and I’m glad to be back to it (check the serials page for the backlog, which covers all of 1 Peter). Coincidently, however, it seems to be a traffic killer – shame on you all, surfing over when I post on something sexy like Barth and ecumenism, but staying away when I discuss apparently less exciting things like Calvin and Scripture. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
There was also that Barth Conference here at PTS recently. I have three posts on the subject, the last of which contains links to posts from other bloggers.
But other bloggers have kept blogging about the conference (even after my third post! the gall!), so I better link to some of them as well. I was pleased to meet all three of the following bloggers in person: Matt Frost, Jason Goroncy, and Richard Floyd. Of course, I already knew Nathan Maddox.

Now the less local news (although still encompassing a number of locals):

Out of Bounds - As I noted on Thursday, there’s a new collective theology blog on the block.
A Few More Doodlings - Kim Fabricius rides again. Here is a taste: “So the former head of the IMF Bank is accused of raping a chamber maid. I blame the corporate culture: the IMF suits have been screwing the poor for years.”
Newman, Barth and Natural Theology - An interesting reflection on the title figures and topic.
Jason Goroncy publishes a review of Eberhard Busch’s little book, Barth. Here is another.
A list of electronic resources on 19th century German theology.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has some interesting reflections on ending tenure. This is especially interesting to me since I’m going to teach at an institution that does not give tenure. I’ve been coming around to the idea that this way of doing things has something to offer.
What is preaching? - Richard Floyd thinks about this question with Barth.
Nathan Maddox writes about Wolfhart Pannenberg’s criticism of Barthian subjectivity. Let’s just say Pannenberg hasn’t convinced me.

Finally, the Melissa Florer-Bixler show:

Weeping and Cursing - A sermon on Philippians 4.1-9.
Seminary with Kids: Field Education - Good advice.
The Many Feminisms and Sexual Ethics - A response to a post on the Women in Theology blog.

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New Theology Blog: Out of Bounds

2011-06-30T12:11:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not starting a new theology blog. They'll have to pry DET out of my cold dead fingers with a crowbar before that happens. But other theo-bloggers are not so sedentary as am I. Case in point, a number of theology bloggers (at least one of whom has contributed to a Barth Blog conference here at DET) associated with the doctoral program at Aberdeen (and one guy who was here at PTS for a while) have recently shuttered their respective blogs (for all practical purposes) and started a new joint venture entitled, Out of Bounds: Theology in the Far Country. You'll definitely want to keep track of this blog. As of this typing, there are two introduction posts up.

There is a smattering of related blog posts across the theo-blogosphere...

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Reading Scripture with John Calvin: Malachi, Preface and 1.1-6

2011-06-28T08:47:00.002-05:00

Malachi 1.1-6

[1] A prophecy: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. [2] “I have loved you,” says the LORD. “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’ Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob, [3] but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.” [4] Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.” But this is what the LORD Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD. [5] You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the LORD – even beyond the borders of Israel!’ [6] A son honors his father, and slaves honor their master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty.

==========================

COMMENTARY:

Series (re)Introduction

It is a pleasure to bring this series back and present you all once again with discussion of Calvin’s commentary on Scripture. If you have not yet seen this series here on DET, you may want to check the serials index to catch up on previous installments. At present, we have covered the whole of 1 Peter. Now we take a step back to the Old Testament book of Malachi. On to Calvin’s text!

Preface

Calvin’s preface is quite short – only 2 pages – wherein he makes three points. First, he discusses the book’s author. Some, he tells us, have understood the author to be an angel since the author’s name is built on the Hebrew word for “messenger”, which is used of angels (much the same happens in NT Greek). Calvin thinks this is “absurd” since God was in the habit at that time of using humans to communicate with his people. He further suggests what I think is an interesting hypothesis, namely, that Malachi was Ezra’s surname. I have not found any discussion of this possibility in the limited exegetical resources on Malachi that I have lying around, but it at least fits with the book’s dating. Second, Calvin notes that Malachi is the last prophet both canonically (even though it is not the last book in the MT, it is the last prophetic book) and temporally before Christ. He thinks that this could be the case for one or both of two reasons: God could have been angry with Israel and so withheld communication, and God could have wanted to raise their level of suspense before the coming of Christ. I've heard the first of these notions often, and therefore appreciate Calvin's second option, which fits better with Calvin's own modes of thinking. Third, Calvin gives a paragraph summary of the book which recounts briefly the way in which Malachi berates Israel for its sin and calls them back to loving service of God and neighbor.

1.1

Calvin thinks that the book’s opening word, rendered “a prophecy” above, is better translated as “burden” here because “prophecy is not everywhere called a burden; and whenever this word is expressed, there is ever to be understood some judgment of God…[T]his word was regarded as ominous” (461). This sets the stage for Calvin’s reading of the whole book, which he understands to be a summons of Israel before “God’s tribunal, inasmuch as many sins had again begun to prevail among them.”

2-6

The elephant in the room for this set of verses is the doctrine of election. Calvin will treat that in his next lecture. Here Calvin points out that before calling Israel to account, Malachi sets out the benefits that God has given to her. God says first that he has loved Israel and, when Israel questions that love, God reminds her of her lowly and utterly undeserving origins. God might have loved Esau and rejected Jacob, but he did not. It went the other way, and it did so only because of God’s decision. Hence Calvin concludes that “the origin of all the excellency which belonged to the posterity of Abraham, is here ascribed to the gratuitous love of God” (465). This pertains, of course, to the question of whether Law or Gospel comes first. That is the main point – here are a few interesting asides.

(1) Calvin here notes that God dealt differently with two children of one family, loving one and hating the other; blessing one and cursing the other. What impact might this have on the tendency in certain Reformed circles to elevate the family as a unity in their ecclesiology? How might it impact the familial aspect of certain Reformed sacramental understandings?

(2) This passage tells us that Caanan was fertile land while Edom was made into desolation. Still, such a distinction seems relativized by the recognition that both Babylon and Egypt were more wealthy, powerful, and fertile still. In response to such a worry, Calvin here severs any straightforward connection between earthly success and one’s position with respect to God. He notes that Jerusalem was not a particularly good city – “Jerusalem was not superior to other cities of the land…on account of its situation…” – what made it special was its relationship to God – “…at the same time it excelled in other things, for God had chosen it as his sanctuary” (466). Of course, this has implications for all sorts of Christian thinking from notions of a “Protestant work ethic” (i.e., the practical syllogism) to the Prayer of Jabez to the Prosperity Gospel.

(3) Calvin notes how Edom was made desolate and points out that, while Israel was also made desolate a few times, it was always restored while Edom was not. As he then puts it, “Since then there had been no restoration as to Idumea, the Prophet shows that by this fact the love of God towards Jacob and his hatred towards Esau had been proved” (467). Still, the Herodian line was Idumean. What new light might such a pair of observations cast on the narrative of Christ’s passion? Is it one more instance of disgrace being visited upon Edom?

PRAYER:

(Calvin concludes each of his lectures on Malachi with a prayer.)

Grant, Almighty God, that as thou hast not only designed to give us a life in common in this world, but hast also separated us from other heathen nations, and illuminated us by the Sun of Righteousness, thine only-begotten Son, in order to lead us into the inheritance of eternal salvation, - O grant, that having been rescued from the darkness of death, we may ever attend to that celestial light, by which thou guidest and invitest us to thyself; and may we so walk as the children of light, as never to wander from the course of our holy calling, but to advance in it continually, until we shall at length reach the goal which thou has set before us, so that having put off all the filth of the flesh, we may be transformed into that ineffable glory, of which we have now the image in thine only-begotten Son. – Amen.

On the Fundamental Ecumenicity of Karl Barth’s Thought

2011-06-24T07:28:00.000-05:00

Karl Barth was a Reformed theologian, without a doubt. He purified Protestant theology according to its own best insights, to be sure. But we Protestant readers of Barth often forget just how ecumenical his vision was, something that Roman Catholic and Orthodox readers of Barth are quick to pick up on. Indeed, I helped with George Hunsinger’s intro to Karl Barth class this past semester, and had an Orthodox student who constantly reminded me of this - it was quite interesting to get a glimpse of Barth through her eyes.

In any case, Amy Marga - who spoke at the recent PTS Barth conference - has a nice paragraph on the foundation of this ecumenical quality of Barth’s thought in her book, Karl Barth’s Dialogue with Catholicism in Göttingen and Münster: Its Significance for His Doctrine of God:

Barth’s curiosity about thinkers outside of the typocal cast of Reformation figures was one of the earliest – but perhaps farthest-reaching – ecumenical move[s] that Barth made. While not ‘ecumenical’ in a contemporary sense of personal dialogue or joint statements on social and doctrinal issues, as ecumenism is carried out today, Barth’s decision to explore the wider history of Christian theology no doubt played a role in how he viewed the scope of his work, and how his work was received by Protestant and Catholic alike. On many levels, Barth’s openness to Christian theologians outside the Reformation was a signal that the wider history of the Church – including many thinkers that were authoritative in the Catholic Church – was as legitimate and useful to the needs and commitments of modern Protestantism as that of the Reformation. His exploration of the wider history of Christian theology bestowed the same value and power upon pre-Reformation (i.e. “Roman Catholic” theology) as that of the Reformation. Such a shift in vision in the early decades of the twentieth century signaled the inevitable weakening of the liberal Protestant stronghold on the interpretation and valuation of history. If the entirety of Christian history was legitimate for informing theology, there was no reason why Protestants and Catholics could not study this history in conversation with one another (28-29).

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PTS Barth Conference, Day 3

2011-06-22T14:02:00.001-05:00

Well, it's all over now. And to be perfectly honest, I'm glad - I have a dissertation that needs finishing, ASAP! But, today's conference presentations kept things moving, and the panel was a lot of fun.

First, some links: here are my discussions of Day 1 and Day 2. But, I'm no longer the only game in town. Matt Frost (who I have enjoyed getting to know at the conference) and Nathan Maddox both have stuff up. Broaden your horizons and check them out.

There was a single "regular" session this morning, on the topic of Divine and Human Action (As an aside, I'm immensely disappointed that there was no session on ecclesiology; one would think - and would be correct in assuming - that this is not an insignificant matter in an ecumenical engagement).

Holly Taylor Coolman went first. She is an interesting personage to me becuase she is an alumna of both Wheaton and PTS, like myself (although, then - unlike myself - she went to Duke). She framed her discussion as a consideration of divine and human interaction that is broader or more general than the consideration of justification and grace undertaken yesterday. Her focus was on a particular section of Thomas’ Summa, namely, the treatise on the law in the prima secunda. In Coolman’s explication, the primary interest in Thomas’ discussion of law is human happiness, that is to say, human goods and ends. Law is one of the ways that Thomas understands God to direct us to those good ends. Divine law is simply a way of talking about God’s activity in directing / inclining creatures to their proper ends. Coolman’s rationale in focussing on this material is that she thinks Thomas’ treatise on the law can serve as a good introduction to his thought. The slightly more constructive edge of her treatment is to suggest that Thomas’ understanding of analogia entis is complemented by an analogia legis.

John Bowlim was next, and made a potentially ground-breaking presentation. Bowlin argued that Barth and Thomas assume a social theory of obligation, along with a number of derrivative notions. The bulk of the presentation undertook an explication of Barth, centered in the ethical materian in Church Dogmatics 2.2, to make clear how obligation works for him. On the docket were discussions of divine command, human obedience, and the relation between the two. Just to give you a sense of the timbre of this lecture, at one point Bowlin explicated the logic of Barth’s thinking about command and obligation with reference to Hegel’s master / slave dialectic. Indeed, Bowlin was particularly good in parsing Barth’s logic in a way that is both faithful to Barth and also in the language of ethics (more commonly conceived) rather than dogmatics. As a consequence, he grasps and highlighted much thinking that I suspect Barth engaged in preparing this material, but which remained tucked away behind the text. Bowlin’s constructive thrust - and here is where the potential lies - was to argue that the next step in following Barth’s line of thinking would be to work out a thoroughly modern account of the virtues. Yep, you read that correctly. This will be an important essay to get into print. I'm very sympathetic, but this will be difficult given Barth's actualism. But if anyone can pull it off, Bowlin is that one, and he is well situated to do it (i.e., he teaches at PTS with Bruce McCormack and George Hunsinger).

Finally, there was the Panel Discussion. Only Amy Marga was missing, and Bruce McCormack chaired. There was some good discussion on a wide number of topics. Eventually the conversation stabilized on the question of how to properly relate theology and philosophy. Hopefully they figure out some way to incorporate this discussion into the published proceedings.

Well, that's it for another year. Hopefully I'll get to make the trip back to PTS for next year's conference. It was great to meet and talk with lots of interesting and smart people. For now, however, there is that pesky dissertation...

==================================

PTS Barth Conference, Day 2

2011-06-21T20:06:00.001-05:00

Day 2 did a fine job keeping pace with the first day, and the combination of a great conference and too little sleep is starting to get to me. But, it will be back to the dissertation grind tomorrow afternoon.

There were two sessions again today, each with one speaker from the Roman Catholic side and one from the protestant side. The first session was on Christology, and Keith Johnson went first. His title was something like the following: "In him, through him, and for him: a reconsideration of Karl Barth’s historical development with an eye toward...something about the conversation between Barthians and Thomists" (I couldn’t type fast enough to get the end down. Oh well!). Barth’s development after Romans 2 is a series of internal adjustments in four stages within Barth’s christology. Took time toward the beginning to survey three prominant accounts of Barth’s development: von Balthasar, Jungel, and McCormack. McCormack’s feat was to recover a distinctively Protestant Barth, which Johnson argues is a more ecumenically fruitful Barth. On Johnson’s reading, Barth does theology like a good pastor preaches: trying to do justice to the subject matter while addressing a concrete situation. Only when we understand how Barth was addressing his context at any particular time can we truly understand what he is rejecting or affirming. I don’t want to steal his thunder, so you’ll have to wait for the published version to see his developmental schema. This I will say, however, and it should be no surprise: Erich Przywara proves important.

Thomas Joseph White rounded out the session, with the following title: The crucified Lord: Thomistic reflections on the communication of idioms and the theology of the cross. How do Christ’s deity and humanity relate to each other, and how does our account of this play in our understanding of the cross and salvation? White argues that Thomas’ position on these matter are preferable to Barth’s. For Barth, properties of the human nature in Christ are definitive of God’s being, although he also affirms that God is unchangeably God in the incarnation. In other words, there must be an analog in the divine being for Jesus’ human life, an antecedent character that corresponds with - for instance, and to recall yesterday - humility and obedience. Thomas, on the other hand, maintains the instrumental character of Christ’s humanity, and believes that Jesus was humble and obeyed out of love (charity) rather than because there is an antecedent form fo humility and obedience in the divine being. To learn precisely why White believes Thomas’ position to be superior, and engage the arguments that he deploys - and to hear what he had to say about the relation of philosophy and theology - must await publication.

The second session was on Grace and Justification. Joseph Wawrykow went first. He began with a highly technical and very interesting discussion of Thomas’ understanding of grace, as well as to the relationship between grace and various sorts of merit. Part of this discussion is directed toward elucidating Thomas’ claim that consideration of merit has primarily to do with giving glory to God. On the basis of this, there appear to be wide avenues of conergence with Barth. For instance, each believes Barth and Thomas on these matters; for instance, both affirm diine priority in grace. But there are also differences as well. For instance, Thomas lacks an affirmation of simul iustus et pecator. Wawrykow identifies a number of these and then offered possible responses from Thomas’ side. It was all very interesting and I look forward to reading it someday.

Amy Marga entered the lectern next. She argued that Barth’s doctrine of grace and justification shares some common ground with Thomas in terms of the doctrine’s structure and the concerns behind it; they differ, however, in terms of how the justified sinner relates to the reality of salvation. At the outset, Marga talked through the meta-structure (or, architecture) of Church Dogmatics volume 4 in order to highlight the ways in which Barth’s soteriology mesh with his hamartiology, christology, and pneumatology. This was, I thought, a helpful exercise since non-speciallists would likely not be aware of this big picture. Another point that Marga highlighted was that Barth’s reading of Thomas by contemporary Thomists must be judged against the backdrop fo the contemporary Roman Catholic theologies and Thomisms on offer in Barth’s context. Marga’s paper drove - like Wawrykow’s - toward a consideration of convergences and divergences between Barth and Thomas on grace. It will be instructive one day to study the two papers together in their published form.

==================================

PTS Barth Conference, Day 1

2011-06-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

Wow. That was quite a day. There were two sessions today, each with one speaker from the Roman Catholic side and one from the protestant side. The first session was on divine being, and Robert Jenson was the first speaker. He began by highlighting the strangeness of Barth’s doctrine of God, especially his use of the notions of decision and event to do the heavy duty metaphysical work generally done by the notion of essence. But at every juncture Barth tries to get us to turn our attention away from the lanugage that we use and toward the encounter with God as and where it occurs.

Is God’s tri-fold being given in the event of divine decision, or is that tri-fold being antecedent to that event? Barth can be read either way, and Jens won’t comment further at present. Of course, the entirety of his discussion move in one of these directions as opposed to the other. The whole of the Church Dogmatics is a doctrine of God’s being. For Barth, discourse about God’s being reduces to the tautology, God is God, and expands to a universal discourse. And the lynchpin that holds both the reduction and the expansion together is the triune name.

Richard Schenk was the second speaker on the topic of the divine being. His lecture had an intricate thetic arcitechure, which I suspect will be easier to read than hear.

He began by noting how past work toward inter- and intra-confessional dialogue and consensus has had as a side effect the undermining the integrity of the various traditions. Consequently, the ecumenical slowdown at present could well be a good thing, allowing time for the various traditions to take stock of what has been achieved and reconceive of their unique identities.

Constructively, he sought to elucidate the theologia crucis implicit within Thomistic / scholastic thought. Thomas’ treatise on God has the structure of a theodicy insofar as, despite appearances, the discussion is fundamentally concerned with the human believer as one confronted by God. Metaphysics persists within Christian theology as a recognition of human abiding need for grace from an Other. All of this, Schenk argues, converges significantly with the concerns of Robert Jenson's theology.

The second session was on the Trinity. Guy Mansini spoke first, reflecting for starters that his lecture could easily carry the subtitle, “Why obedience and humility are not trinitarian realities.” The meat of his lecture began by discussing precisely what obedience and humility entail in the benedictine monastic tradition. He seems to assume that for such things to be a trinitarian reality would require a multiplicity of wills in the trinity. Instead, they are created things, and Jesus Christ acts in this way insofar as he is human but not insofar as he is divine. The thrust of his discussion is aimed at teaching us how to obey and be humble in a human way, which Christ models for us - not some divine humility and obedience that would mean nothing to us. He also has concerns that speaking of humility and obedience as antecedent to the incarnation would introduce something like an eternal incarnation prior to the incarnation, of which he is unable to conceive.

Bruce McCormack provided the second discussion of the Trinity. McCormack expressed astonishment at how much convergence is present between Barth and Thomas on particular topics, and he (McCormack) discussed this with reference to trinitarian missions and processions. He (McCormack) also noted that he has changed his mind a bit about Thomas based on a forthcoming essay by Matthew Levering. The particulars of this are highly technical, and are best engaged when all the material is in print. Suffice it to say here that the basic point Levering makes is that, for Thomas, the missions contain the processions (not a straightforward statement, to be sure!). On the basis of Levering’s reading of Thomas, McCormack’s paper attempts to bring Thomas and Barth into proximity on these matters.

These thought-provoking sessions were topped off by some excellent conversation with a broad spectrum of people. Now to grab a few hours of sleep and try to do it over again...

==================================

PTS Barth Conference, Now Underway

2011-06-19T21:44:00.002-05:00

The post title pretty much says it all.

Those who did NOT have obligations at home - say, helping put their 2 boys to bed - were treated to some opening statements this evening by Bruce McCormack and Thomas Joseph White. Another PTS blogger has provided some coverage of this at his blog.

For my own part, I caught up with some good folks at one of the after parties. The best part of these conferences is the high quality of informal theological conversation, and I started it off right this year with a confab with some quality folks.

I'm looking forward to some good papers and some more good conversation tomorrow.

==================================

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

2011-06-17T06:48:00.001-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

So, I’m putting this post up a day early because this year’s Karl Barth conference at Princeton Theological Seminary begins this Sunday. I’ll be there, and I look forward to doing some good mingling with folk while taking in some good lectures. It is not inconceivable that this will be my last Barth conference for a bit, so it will be a little bittersweet. In any case, I’ll try to blog it a bit. Also, if you're planning to be at the conference but haven't told me to keep an eye out for you yet, please do!

In any case, a funny thing happened when I finally got a teaching job, namely, I began reading the Chronicle of Higher Education. So I’ll begin with some interesting stuff from them:

The Value of a Humanities Degree - Six students weigh in on what their humanist studies mean to them as they move into the job market.
What We Take With Us - reflections from a retiring professor concerning the meaning of his life as an educator. I found this very interesting as one who is only just beginning such a life.
Tired of Writing for No Money - If you haven’t gotten the news that traditional tenure-track positions are getting rarer by the day, you might want to reflect on the significance of such information. As part of this trend, institutions of higher education are moving toward alternative employment models. The author of this piece finds himself in such a situation, where his job security does not depend upon publication in peer-reviewed journals in the same way that it might have a few decades ago. This gives him some interesting perspective on the practice of professional publication.
On Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers - An educator reflects on the relationship between professors and students, on the tenuous authority involved, and on the proper place for empathy.
Are Tutors the Academic Equivalent of Steroids? - This exploration is related to current admissions policies. Where once elite schools blatantly admitted only the moneyed and their progeny, this article notes that they continue that practice today although under a guise of meritocracy since it is the moneyed who can afford to provide their progeny with tutors to inflate their academic achievements. While we’re on the subject, we should talk about whether or not coffee or other caffeine consumption is similar to the use of steroids…

Now, for the usual assortment of interesting links:

Actually, that’s not in the Bible - A discussion of many popular phrases that are not in the Bible, despite being frequently cited as such. Go see if you have made any of these mistakes.
Some rather unanalytic thoughts on analytic theology - David Congdon went to an analytic theology conference at Notre Dame recently, and he posted some reflections. Definitely worth your time.
Two new volumes in the Ecclesiological Investigations series - New books from the great folk over at T&T Clark.
Church As Homecoming and Homemaking - Chris Terry-Nelson shares the first column he wrote for his church’s newsletter. Chris has been installed as a pastor in the greater Nashville area for some time now, out there doing the serious theological work.
A Double-Standard for Women and Violence In the Media? - Apparently certain self-appointed media morality watchdogs don’t like a recent Rihanna music video. The minds over at the WIT blog wonder aloud about how it compares to an Eminem video Rohanna performed in recently.
Artificial Insemination: St. Augustine’s Ideal Sex Act? - More from the WIT blog. The title says it all.
Smile, ladies!–Or not - Still more from WIT; do they ever sleep? The topic this time is microaggression.
Summer Series: Compendium of Christian Thought - Contribute to the theological education of a newly minted doctoral student.
New Titles Forthcoming from John Webster - Darren Sumner gives us a peek at John Webster’s forthcoming collections of essays. Surf on over for the full tables of contents.
On Year Two and Blogging - More from Darren. Here he reflects upon completing two years of doctoral study at Aberdeen, as well as provides tantalizing hints about a new blogging initiative that he’s working on.
Forthcoming: Studia Patristica Volume 52 - Still more from Darren. He here provides the abstract to an essay of his that will soon be in print.
Changing places: academic jobs - Ben Myers notes changes of scenery for various academics in the broader theological world, including the upcoming move by yours truly.
The Politics of Being a Good Christian - Apparently, a study has shown that its possible to be a Christian as either a Republican or a Democrat, but that those professing the faith in the former group are more focused on one’s internal morality (trying not to commit sins) while those in the latter group are more focused on external morality (trying to love the neighbor). Just more proof that everything depends on how a survey is conducted…

Special mention:

Christina Busman, a doctoral candidate here at PTS (wow, can’t use that phrase much longer…), provides a two-part review of David Fitch’s work, The End of Evangelicalism. Part 1, and Part 2.
R. R. Reno recently published a piece in First Thing, entitled The Preferential Option for the Poor. A friend and I considered writing a response at the time of publication. Despite recognizing that a response was needed, we declined based on the sheer scatterbrained-ness of Reno’s article and the amount of other work already sitting on our plate. Thankfully, others were not deterred. Dan over at the blog, On Journying with those in Exile, has provided a penetrating response: R. R. Reno’s “Preferential Option for the Poor.” Be sure to read it, but you could skip reading Reno’s piece itself.

Here are a couple links just for fun:

Google Exodus - A depiction of what the Exodus might have looked like in a Web 2.0 world.
PhD Movie Trailer - I’ve been reading the PhD Comics strip for a while, and now some enterprising students have created a PhD Comics movie. View the trailer through the link, and then surf around a bit to learn how to schedule a screening of the movie at your institution of higher education.

Whew! If all that isn’t enough…you might consider checking out the serive, Dropbox.com, which provides a cloud and file synchronization service that makes using multiple computers a breeze. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and it has been great. If you decide that you would like to try it, send me an e-mail (derevth [at] gmail [dot] com) and I’ll get you an invitation – that way, I get a little extra space for free! But if you would rather delve into the riches of DET’s archives, I recommend my reading guides for Barth, Calvin, and Torrance.

==================================

Learning from Busch on the Pietists’ claim that Barth was not Faithful to Scripture

2011-06-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

In his treatment of the back-and-forth between Barth and the Pietists in the 1920s, Eberhard Busch notes that one of the main criticisms the latter leveled against the former was that he failed to be sufficiently biblical, or sufficiently faithful to Scripture (to put the same basic point two different ways). Busch analyzes this criticism, and the problems that he points out in the Pietists on this point are instructive to all who would do theology in conversation with Scripture. Below I sketch Busch’s analysis.

Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists: The Young Karl Barth’s Critique of Pietism & Its Response (Daniel W. Bloesch, trans.; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004):217-25.

In an introduction before getting into his numbered points of analysis, Busch notes that one difficulty the Pietists had in engaging Barth was that the latter was intellectually sophisticated while the former made it a point of faith to be intellectually unsophisticated. (Strides have been made since Mark Noll pointed out The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, but the American situation remains all too similar to that Busch describes.) So Busch notes that the Pietists claimed that Barth’s theology was rooted in philosophy:

How did they know about this bias in his thought? His theology was ‘not simple enough’ and therefore ‘not biblical enough’; thus ‘the word of philosophy emerged from it more than the word of the Bible.’ His theology as well as his language lacked ‘simplicity’ and thus removed itself from ‘Christianity’ that is ‘so simple at its core.’ For this reason the Pietistic circles of that time felt justified in creating the impression that ‘Barth was a despiser of the Bible.’

On to Busch’s numbered analysis. Busch undertakes in this section to argue for what would need to be the case, what conditions would have to be satisfied, for the Pietist criticism to be justified.

The Pietists would need to take more seriously Barth’s self-understanding as an exegete interpreting the biblical text:
The fact that [Barth] used a language shaped by ‘philosophical’ concepts, that he had a complicated way of thinking does not really prove in itself that he did not also talk as an exegete at the same time. Conversely, a language and a simple way of thinking that dispenses with Kantian terminology does not in itself furnish any evidence that the language and way of thinking are shaped by the Bible.
The Pietists would need to be open to the possibility that if they think Barth improperly mixed some philosophy in with the Bible, it is entirely possible that they did the same:
Barth’s interpretation and critique could be certainly mistaken, but when they responded to it and rejected it, they referred to the fact that the position of the critic was itself not (‘fully’) biblical but also philosophically conditioned. They acted as if they knew they were immune to the danger they detected here, simply portraying their own concerns as ‘biblical.’ This naïve matter-of-factness had to appear suspicious.
The fact that their [the Pietists’] language and way of thinking is also conditioned by contemporary history does not by itself say anything for or against the truth and legitimacy of their concern. But it does say something against prematurely identifying their own concern with the biblical witness. Only by giving up such an identity does the freedom of the biblical witness to overcome all the limitations of its interpreters come into focus.
The Pietists would have to oppose Barth’s exegesis with more convincing exegesis:
By limiting themselves to occasionally quoting a biblical statement to refute an assertion made by Barth, the Pietistic authors evidently assumed that the meaning of the quoted verse is a foregone conclusion. To be more precise, they assumed that the quoted verse can of course only be understood in terms of the opinion that in their view is supported by the verse.
Closely related to the preceding, the Pietists would have to show that the verses they adduce against Barth do in fact prove what they think those verses prove. There is no nice summary quotation to lift from Busch on this point, but he treats two examples (Acts 17.31 and Romans 5.5).
(Note: in the translated version of Busch's text, there isn't a #5 here - I have supplied it because the prose seems to indicate it should be there.) The Pietists would have to avoid proof-texting, or as Busch puts it, “to avoid the impression that they were arbitrary in selecting” the biblical verses cited against Barth:
This [selection] was done in a way that they not only refrained from exegeting biblical passages but also refrained from considering as broad a spectrum as possible of various biblical statements on a particular point… They also refrained from drawing on complementary biblical concepts… Thus they refrained from referring to those Bible verses that could complement their own statements or possibly correct them and put them in proper perspective.
By concentrating on the quotation of Bible verses supporting the Pietistic concern…other Bible verses were left out of consideration which could conversely be lacking in Pietistic theology. And this must be added: What happened to the claim of the Pietists that they could ‘communicate the total chorus of New Testament truth’ and open up ‘the full riches of Scripture’?
Finally, a very fine indictment of proof-texting and the underlying hermeneutic it assumes:
They way they backed up their counterargument with Bible verses seems to be rooted in an understanding of Scripture that assumes faithfulness to Scripture is guaranteed by merely adding up Bible quotations and by stringing together proof texts. The problem with such an understanding of Scripture is that the danger of distorting the meaning of the Bible verses in question by taking them out of context is always lurking in the background. In addition, the never-ending but always essential issue of what is really crucial in the biblical witness is left out of consideration. Then we run the risk of making certain details the most important thing, even if those details may well be significant as such.

It seems to me that much of what Busch says here remains pertinent in our own North American context today, not only with reference to Barth, but with reference to the theological enterprise in general.

Wolf Krotke on Barth's Doctrine of Sin

2011-06-10T08:52:00.000-05:00

Wolf Krötke, Sin and Nothingness in the Theology of Karl Barth, 73-4.

If the 'good nature' of human beings is not a condition in and of itself, it certainly only exists at all insofar as it is lived out by men and women. Persons who do not live out their being are not human persons; they have no being. Hence, if humans are only human insofar as they live out their good nature, and if they live out their good nature only as those who sin, then they only possess their good nature as a perverted, totally corrupted nature. Accordingly, Barth can only think of the corruption of human being or nature as the 'event of their corruption.' No sphere of human existence is exempted from the event of this corrupting. The human creature is 'godless precisely in the good as good...and has fallen prey to nothingness precisely in his essentiality.'

In sum: the being of the human creature qua sinner remains ontologically constituted by the grace of God. Humans constitute their being as sinners by sinning. Several things follow from this. First, there is no perennially good 'relic or core of goodness which persists in man and in spite of his sin'; the being of sinners does not relate to human being as one quantum to another. Humans remain totally human and are totally sinners. Second, there is no 'time in which man is not a transgressor.' And third, there are 'in the whole sphere of human activities...no exceptions to the sin and corruption of man,' for under God's grace there are 'no spheres which are neutral, but only spheres of decision,' and humans have chosen in favor of sin.

The momentousness of human guilt is reflected in the enacted existence of their being: sinful humans can no longer turn to God of their own accord and by their own power. indeed, through the misuse of freedom, the liberum arbitrium given humans by God becomes a servum arbitrium.

==================================

New Center for Barth Studies Book Review, et al

2011-06-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Donald Norwood has a new review up at the Center for Barth Studies website dealing with D. Densil Morgan's Barth Reception in Britain.

Be sure to check it out!

Also, there are now links to the upcoming Princeton Barth Conference on the main Center for Barth Studies page. So, surf on over to get the pertinent information. I hope to see many of you at the conference.

==================================

Ellen Charry’s “God and the Art of Happiness” – Part 1 recap

2011-06-06T09:59:00.000-05:00

I was planning to write my own brief recap of the volume’s first part – the historical survey of Christian thought about happiness – but then I saw that Dr Charry wrote one herself. So, I’m just going to quote her. Following this lengthy quotation, I’ll highlight a few particularly good lines from the first ~150 pages of this work.

Also, I should mention here that you can download the audio of Dr. Charry's recent inaugural lecture at PTS, as well as watch a short video clip - just click here! Dr Charry recaps much of her material on happiness in that lecture.

Ellen Charry, God and the Art of Happiness, 152-3:

Augustine’s doctrine of happiness is primarily theological, eschatological, and conceptual, with room for atheological, temporal, and material happiness – unstable as it may be. Boethius’s teaching is theological, temporal, and noetic, not eschatological or material. Aquinas followed Augustine’s theological, eschatological, noetic precedent, but he made a small place for theological, temporal, and material happiness.

Fitting Butler into this schema is not easy, because his treatment of happiness is inadvertent as he pursues another project. His understanding of self-love does not recognize happiness as a side effect of obedience to conscience. That remains outside his theological purview, though it is easily incorporated into his doctrine of self-love without damage to his separation of happiness form self-love. Still, we may conclude that his teaching on happiness is material and temporal, and mildly theological to the extent that he recognizes the joy in loving God. He does not ground temporal happiness in obedience to God.

The theological conversation on happiness has staggered across the centuries, with the theologians addressing salient issues of their days. As I have noted…this foray into the subject seeks to address two theological concerns: the heavy emphasis on future eschatology at the expense of temporal, realizing eschatology in the classical tradition, and the academic triumph of theology in the modern university that has obscured the practical task of theology. The first concern, causing an underemphasis on temporal happiness, resulted in the hyper-Augustinian Jansenism of Pascal, which, while it was condemned by the church, has left tracks that make Christians skittish about temporal material happiness, fearing it is untoward from a Christian perspective. The second concern, for the consequence of the scientizing of theology within the theoretical structures of modern academic convention, has made it difficult for theology to fulfill its proper calling of helping people in their life with God.

The proposal that follows [in Part 2] addresses the first concern by suggesting a theological, temporal, realizing eschatology. It addresses the second concern by offering a theological, temporal, and experiential doctrine of happiness in the proposal of asherism.

Now, here are some tidbits:

Speaking of Augustine w/ref to his philosophical forebears:

He drank deeply from the Platonist well but finally could not be satisfied there because the incarnate Christ brought God down from heaven to earth (24).

Some more on Augustine:

The implicit teaching on happiness in The Trinity is soteriological. Salvation is the healing of the soul through the slow and painful recovery of the shattered and lost image of God that we are intrinsically by the grace of creation (49).

For Augustine, happiness is the spiritual benefit of knowing, loving, and enjoying God, and loving self and others in pursuit of that goal. It is being at rest in God, as he so famously said: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (57).

[Augustine’s] soteriology is one of ascent, but ascent through knowing Christ enabled by divine grace (59).

Speaking in the context of treating Boethius:

The wicked are feral, and the more wickedness they pursue, the less human they become (83).

Speaking in the context of treating Aquinas:

Self-realization is living as an agent of the divine will (98).

Speaking of changes that occurred with Protestantism:

Although Protestants did not talk much about happiness, it implicitly became relief from anxiety before God…The search for peace of mind is a fresh form of Augustine’s resting in God, though [Protestants] do not use the language of felicity (111-2).

Speaking of Thomas Hobbes:

Life is either a naked or disguised power struggle in which no one and nothing is secure. The Christian fear of divine wrath, which finds refuge in humility, becomes fear of one another, which finds security in power (118).

==================================

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

2011-06-04T09:51:00.000-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

There have been some significant goings-on here at DET lately:

To begin, I announced only last Thursday that I have accepted a teaching position (assistant professor of Religion) at Lindenwood University. Thanks again for the congratulations that friends and blog acquaintances have heaped upon me. I'm very excited, although it is making for quite the busy summer.
My series on baptism and the church in North Africa is now concluded. Comments piled up nicely on the introduction, and were continuing to do so until quite recently, so that is worth checking out. The final post also generated some good if limited discussion. The whole is now indexed on the serials page.
Next, a recent post about Bultmann, Barth, and the proper relation of philosophy and theology has generated good discussion - which continued at least up until yesterday - so you might find that interesting as well.
Finally, as far as local news is concerned, I once again updated the recommended reading page, so feel free to browse.

Now for news of the wider theology blogging world:

Michael Gibson recently started his own blog, named "Over the Transom." It is sure to be worth adding to your reader.
Friend of the blog, Jason Ingalls, posts a sermon on 1 Peter 2.2-10, entitled "Jesus the Cornerstone." Why not read his sermon in tandem with the pertinent posts from the DET series, Reading Scripture With John Calvin - indexed at the bottom of the serials page?
More from Jason, this time announcing a series aimed at providing a "Spiritual Exegesis" of the Anglican "Baptismal Covenant." I'm looking forward to the first installment.
Roger Olson discusses "Why I can't give up the label 'evangelical'". Olson has been putting up great stuff lately. Here's a nice bit to whet your appetite: "When did “evangelical” become a problem for me and many others who proudly wore that label for decades? First, when Jerry Falwell began calling himself an evangelical and, second, when the mass media began depicting Falwell and Pat Robertson and people associated with the Religious Right as “the” evangelical–i.e., as the leading spokesmen for the movement."
More from Olson: this time he reflects on the notion that the drift of evangelicalism toward a neo-fundamentalism might be conservative over reaction to the 1960s. Once again, Falwell lands in the cross-hairs: "Also, I grew up in a very conservative Christian home and church and yet we were no where near as conservative as many of the influential leaders of evangelicalism today. We considered Jerry Falwell a crazy fundamentalist extremist (in the 1960s and into the 1970s) and yet he emerged as a spokesman for evangelicalism without changing his views much at all. He just toned down his criticisms of Billy Graham (for example)."
The always interesting Women In Theology blog posts a feminist deconstruction / commentary on Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)" video aimed at demonstrating the continued need for feminism. The main point? That the contemporary characterization of feminine power as somehow tied to sexual prowess or characteristics only serves to mask the continued inequality between the sexes. Go watch.
Chad Holtz provides a very interesting (on many levels) reflection, entitled "The 12 Steps of Theological Addiction." Those who write and frequent theology blogs, as well as many other folk, would be bettered by reading this post.

If that's not enough for you, you might consider reading this post from the 2009 Karl Barth Blog Conference, entitled "Defending Barth’s Commitment to “Let Paul Speak for Himself:” Romans 1 and Paul’s Rejection of the Possibility of Natural Knowledge of God."

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Breaking News, or, Personal Update

2011-06-02T12:39:00.000-05:00

The news has been leaking slowly over the past few days, but everything is 100% official now and so I wanted to state publically that I have accepted a position as assistant professor of religion at Lindenwood University. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m very excited to assume this position and get on with the task for which I have been training for the last decade. It should also go without saying that my wife is very happy that I am finally gainfully employed.

So, as a fellow Michigander once said, “I'm packing up my game and I'ma head out west” – though I won’t be going as far west as he was talking about. The wife and I will be loading up our two boys and our meager worldly possessions – plus my less meager library – and heading to the middle of the country sometime at the end of July. In the meantime, I’m working hard to complete a draft of my dissertation and get ready for my not inconsiderable teaching duties this Fall semester. Oh yeah, there’s also that 2010 KBBC volume that needs editing…

And now we’ll return to your regularly scheduled DET theology programming.

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Bultmann to Barth, and the rest of us

2011-05-31T10:38:00.000-05:00

I’ve been slowly making my way through the Barth/Bultmann correspondence, or at least the English edition. My close friend, colleague, co-editor and – let’s be honest – co-conspirator has been generating a consistent buzzing in my ear about Bultmann for some time, so I figured I should pay at least a modicum of attention. The following passage is from a letter from Bultmann to Barth. I’m not clear as to whether the work of Barth’s to which Bultmann responds in the Göttingen dogmatics cycle, or the Münster. This doesn’t really matter since I’m interested in what Bultmann says for material reasons, rather than solely for questions of Barth interpretation.

Without further ado, here it is: from letter 47. Bold is me:

[Y]ou have failed to enter into (latent but radical) debate with modern philosophy and naively adopted the older ontology from patristic and scholastic dogmatics. What you say (and often only want to say) is beyond your terminology, and a lack of clarity and sobriety is frequently the result. You have a sovereign scorn for modern work in philosophy, especially phenomenology. What point is there in saying occasionally that the dogmatician must also be oriented to philosophical work if the presentation finds no place for this orientation…? It seems to me that you are guided by a concern that theology should achieve emancipation from philosophy. You try to achieve this by ignoring philosophy. The price you pay for this is that of falling prey to an outdated philosophy.

…

It is right that dogmatics should have nothing whatever to do with a philosophy insofar as this is systematic; but it is also right that it must learn from a philosophy that is a critical (ontological) inquiry. For only then does it remain free and make use of philosophy as a helper of theology; otherwise it becomes the maid and philosophy the mistress. There is no alternative; it must be either maid or mistress. Your planned ignoring of philosophy is only apparent. Naturally lordship or servanthood applies to the forming of concepts. But if dogmatics is to be a science, it cannot avoid the question of appropriate concepts.

This correspondence is interesting because it shows Barth working through some central methodological issues, with Bultmann’s help, at the moment when he was turning to constructive (positive) dogmatic work. Bultmann’s warning here has as much force for us today as it did for he and Barth back then, and I think the story of Barth’s theology is of trying to do justice to this concern. Different interpreters might well have different answers to whether or not Barth finally succeeded (same for Bultmann, for that matter). But both this concern to speak for today, and this danger of falling unwittingly back upon a previous and philosophically outdated metaphysics / ontology / epistemology / what-have-you must be consistently held before our eyes. As Barth said decades after this letter from Bultmann, “even the slogan ‘Back to the Reformers,’ cannot promise us the help that we need to-day. ‘Back to…’ is never a good slogan.”

Augustine and the Donatists (2): Baptism and the Church in North Africa

2011-05-28T06:46:00.000-05:00

Cf. the series introduction, Cyprian and the Novatians (1), Cyprian and the Novatians (2), Augustine and the Donatists (1).

Note on sources: My discussion makes use of the following resources: With reference to the history, I’ll largely be following the first volume of Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, and for the theology I’ll be following the discussion in Everett Fergusson’s Baptism in the Early Church. Quotes from Augustine are from his 185th epistle, which can be found in St. Augustin the Writings Against the Manicheans and Against the Donatists: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Part 4.

Augustine and the Donatists (cont.)

Like the Donatists, Augustine claimed to be the true heir of Cyprian. This is both accurate and inaccurate. It is inaccurate insofar as Augustine was not as rigorous as Cyprian, both in terms of enforcing general morality and in terms of sacramental recognition. For instance, while Cyprian was willing to grant weakness in the congregation but not the clergy, Augustine was prepared to recognize weakness in the clergy as well.

On Augustine’s view, such weakness did not undermine the sacraments precisely because the sacrament’s power comes from Christ, with whom the church is united through the bond of love established by the Holy Spirit. It is Christ and the church as a whole, in that order of importance, who are the true ministers of the sacraments, not the individual celebrants. The union of love established by the Holy Spirit between the church and Christ is the mechanism from which the sacraments receive their saving power. What matters is not the purity of the clergy, but their establishment in this loving union.

The concrete way of enacting this unity is, for Augustine, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. He writes that “The supper of the Lord is the unity of the body of Christ, not only in the sacrament of the altar, but also in the bond of peace” (§24). The Donatists, by setting up rival bishops and communities, excluded themselves from this sacrament of the altar wherein the unity of Christ’s body is enacted – union between the church and Christ, and union within the church. They are therefore outside the Holy Spirit’s bond of love, since “he is not a partaker of the divine love who is the enemy of unity” (§50).

Being thus cut off from the bond of love, the Donatists are not able to administer effective sacraments: being within the bond of love, clergy tainted by weakness are able to administer effective sacraments. This emphasis on the church’s bond of love with Christ as the basis of the sacraments’ saving ministry is where Augustine is indeed Cyprian’s heir, although creatively so. But, Augustine goes on to disagree with Cyprian on another point. Cyprian would not recognize that the schismatics had baptism, re-baptizing them – or baptizing them in truth for the first time, as he claimed – on their return to the church. Instead, Augustine made a distinction between a valid sacrament and an effective one, arguing that the Donatists had the former but not the later.

In other words, the Donatists did the ceremony correctly, thus removing the need for re-baptism, but this ceremony was unable to communicate saving grace because the Donatists were outside the church’s bond of love. Consequently, schismatics returning to the church did not need to receive baptism again; rather, the bond of love into which they entered through union with the church activates or makes retrospectively effective their valid schismatic baptism. Here is Augustine again, speaking in the voice of a schismatic pondering reconciliation with the church: “What, then, he says, do we receive with you, when we come to your side? I answer, You do not indeed receive baptism, which was able to exist in you outside the framework of the body of Christ, although it could not profit you; but you receive the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, without which no one can see God” (§43).

In the course of his discussion of these matters, Augustine establishes that a sacrament’s validity consists of the proper word joined to the proper material sign. So, for baptism to be valid, one needs the triune name and some water. Effectiveness, on the other hand, required communion with the church. Some treat this as an unfortunate descent into a minimalist sacramentalism insofar as liturgics are concerned. But Augustine’s treatment of baptism is far from minimalist, theologically speaking. While he establishes a rather low bar for what counts as the valid performance of a sacrament, he establishes a rather full-bodied account of what makes a sacrament an effective and saving event. He tackles in a rather compelling way the complex interaction of christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and – of course – sacramentology, uniting them within a coherent big-picture.

The End. Remember to cf. the series introduction for the polemical horizon of this study. But if you enjoyed it simply as a foray into the history of doctrine, I won't complain. ;-)

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Augustine and the Donatists (1): Baptism and the Church in North Africa

2011-05-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

Cf. the series introduction, Cyprian and the Novatians (1), Cyprian and the Novatians (2).

Note on sources: My discussion makes use of the following resources: With reference to the history, I’ll largely be following the first volume of Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, and for the theology I’ll be following the discussion in Everett Fergusson’s Baptism in the Early Church. Quotes from Augustine are from his 185th epistle, which can be found in St. Augustin the Writings Against the Manicheans and Against the Donatists: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Part 4.

Augustine and the Donatists
Augustine’s debate with the Donatists was in many ways simply the continuation of Cyprian’s battle concerning rebaptism and the Novatians. Once more, North Africa was faced with a schismatic crisis. This one, however, would – despite imperial attempts to suppress the schismatics – persist until the Muslim conquest of North Africa.

Once again, there was a period of persecution. The particulars of this case are less interesting. However, whereas Decius’ persecution created a new category of faithful Christian, the confessor, this persecution created a new category of lapsed Christian, the “traditor” – one who had surrendered the church’s sacred books to the authorities. Again there were disputes about how rigorous the church should be with reference to accepting the lapsed back into communion. The trouble really began, however, when Carthage needed a new bishop. Caecelian was elected, but the rigorists didn’t think him stringent enough, and they elected a rival bishop, Majorinus. Majorinus died shortly thereafter, and the rigorists elevated Donatus to replace him. The consequence of all this was, of course, schism.

Theologically, the Donatists claimed to be Cyprian’s heirs. One of the three bishops involved in consecrating Caecelian as bishop of Carthage, they argued, was a traditor. Because this bishop was lapsed, the Donatists rejected the validity of Caecelian’s consecration. On Cyprian’s principles, the purity of the clergy had been compromised, and thus the power of the sacraments administered by the compromised clergy was also compromised. What was needed, said the Donatists, was a pure bishop of Carthage. Also like Cyprian, the Donatists re-baptized anyone baptized by those whose ordination they questioned, maintaining that their first baptism was no baptism at all.

The Donatists appealed to the emperor over Caecelian’s consecration, thus involving the secular authorities. They were unable to prove their charges, however, and the emperor declared against them. Thus, they invited upon themselves the secular measures used against them. A fanatic fringe group made things worse by attacking secular authorities and knifing bishops in an attempt to earn what they thought of as “martyrdom.” However, their opponents claimed that even if their charges against this particular bishop had stuck, this would not render Caecelian’s consecration invalid. It is here that Augustine made his contribution.

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Cyprian and the Novatians (2): Baptism and the Church in North Africa

2011-05-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

Cf. the series introduction, Cyprian and the Novatians (1).

Note on sources: My discussion makes use of the following resources: With reference to the history, I’ll largely be following the first volume of Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, and for the theology I’ll be following the discussion in Everett Fergusson’s Baptism in the Early Church.

Cyprian and the Novatians (cont.)

If you remember from the previous installment, the problem that arose from Decius’ persecution was that it created the “confessors,” whose moral authority began to conflict with that of the church’s duly appointed hierarchy. This was especially a problem in North Africa. Cyprian became bishop of Carthage shortly before the persecution began. When it did, he decided to take the church’s administration into hiding to keep it intact and provide remote guidance – sort of like the emergency plans that attempt to keep the president and other key figures safe and, consequently, the government still functioning.

Of course, this looked like running away to some. Cyprian proved his courage by submitting to martyrdom in a later persecution, but this is still in the future for our purposes. In Decius’ aftermath, many claimed that the confessors in Carthage wielded greater authority than Cyprian, especially on the question of what to do with the lapsed. Cyprian was a moderate. He was more rigorous than many, but he was not as rigorous as some of the confessors and their followers.
This controversy progressed to the point where Cyprian called a synod to settle the matter against the confessors. Despite the synod’s ruling, however, the schism continued. Perhaps the schism was most evident in Rome. The rigorists there appointed their own bishop, Novatian, in competition with Cornelius, the established bishop. Eventually, however, the two parties reunited.

To concretize things theologically, the issue was whether those who had been baptized by the Novatian schismatics had to be re-baptized upon admittance to the church. Nota Bene: For Cyprian, the church is like Noah’s ark – it is a vehicle of salvation, a conduit for God’s sacramentally administered grace. This is why he can say that there is no salvation outside of the church. The corollary of this statement is that there are no sacraments outside of the church. In order to maintain the validity of those sacraments, Cyprian thought that the clergy had to be held to a higher standard than the laity.

Cyprian was willing to accept that the majority of Christians will have failings, such as those encountered in Decius’ persecution. The key point, however, was to maintain the integrity of the clergy, who could then supply the faithful, and those who had lapsed, with access to salvation through the sacraments. The problem with the schismatics is that they had separated themselves from the church’s sacramental system (sacramental-industrial complex?) by breaking fellowship with the church’s duly appointed leadership. As he puts it in one letter, “Only those leaders who are set in authority within the church…have the lawful power to baptize and to grant forgiveness of sins.”

Consequently, Cyprian would not admit that schismatic baptism is baptism, and thus did not see the practice of baptizing schismatics upon admittance to the church as re-baptism: this was the first true baptism that they had received. Cyprian’s position was based on North African precedent, but the non-Novatian bishop in Rome – now Stephen rather than Cornelius – disagreed. He supported receiving such schismatics into the church through the laying on of hands, since they had already been baptized. Cyprian persisted, however, calling a number of councils to support his position. Thus, North Africa maintained its own distinctive ecclesiological and baptismal tradition against Rome.

Finally, and briefly, baptism was central to Cyprian’s vision of the Christian life. Through the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, Cyprian believes that baptism provides forgiveness from sins, regeneration, and new birth. Given this, Cyprian understands the Christian life as the process whereby one’s baptism is fulfilled in one’s life. It is the process whereby you become what baptism already made you. As Cyprian puts it, “We pray that we who were sanctified in baptism may be able to persevere in that which we have begun to be.” Given the trials faced in Decius’ persecution, Cyprian could even reflect on the fact that it is one thing to begin faith in baptism, but an altogether more difficult thing to preserve and perfect that faith.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-05-21T10:35:00.001-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

So, I seems to be on a mini-series role around here lately. First, I did the series on Helmut Gollwitzer and theological engagement with the Marxist criticism of religion. Now I’ve undertaken one on baptism and ecclesiology in patristic North Africa. This series was prompted by David Congdon’s recent post, Christological Unity and Pneumatological Plurality: A Theological Reflection on the Church, so be sure to check that out.

Now, here’s some of what went on in the rest of the theo-blogosphere:

“Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu” - A sad and cautionary tale about the dangers of graduate school. A cognate danger would beset the theological student who dares to attend a church for regular worship. Sometimes it is difficult to turn off one’s critical cognitive processes.
“Reserving the Sacrament” - Jason Ingalls offers one of the more convincing arguments for reserving the sacrament that I’ve seen. Not that I’m convinced, of course.
“Walk On: A Guide to Exiting From Oneness Pentecostalism” - Brian LePort offers an extensive series filled with reflection born of personal experience. It will be an interesting read for anyone who has gone throw a shift in theological and ecclesial commitments.
“Off the shelf: three more types of reading” - Another vlog from Ben Myers. In this installment, Ben discusses whether there is anything in the notion that one can be a better writer when living in the tropics, and declares against this position: when it’s hot, all you can do is be lazy. This is why I lock myself in the air conditioned library during the summer.
“Placing T. F. Torrance in His ‘Critical Realistic’ Context” - Bobby Grow provides series of posts from Myk Habets on TF Torrance’s theology, positioned in response to some criticisms from Colin Gunton.
“When did evangelicalism start to go wrong (right)?” - Roger Olson locates the fundamental shift in the ‘battle for the Bible’ that occurred in the 1970s. Symbolically speaking, it was perhaps – as Olson notes – the firing of Carl Henry as a guest writer at Christianity Today, a magazine he c-founded.
“Tips for the Th.M. – Part 17” - Marc Cortez links to a post here at DET on analyzing theological texts.
“Podcast Sermons: Preaching out of Place?” - Jon Coutts wonders about the importance of kerygmatic context in preaching.

Finally, if all this was not enough to keep you busy over the weekend, I’ve added to the recommended reading list.

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Cyprian and the Novatians (1): Baptism and the Church in North Africa

2011-05-19T10:01:00.002-05:00

Cf. the series introduction.

Note on sources: My discussion makes use of the following resources: With reference to the history, I’ll largely be following the first volume of Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, and for the theology I’ll be following the discussion in Everett Fergusson’s Baptism in the Early Church.

Cyprian and the Novatians

In the late 3rd century CE, Christians were starting to get a bit soft. Christianity was not yet what you would call legal, and it certainly wasn’t yet the official religion of the Roman Empire, but it was generally tolerated. Local persecutions would break out from time to time as mobs got angry about something or another, but there was little systematic, imperial pressure applied. At least, that is, until Decius took the purple in 249.

Decius inherited a bad situation: there was an economic downturn underway, and barbarians threatened the empire’s borders. It wasn’t that Decius was particularly cruel. He just happened to be a traditionalist who concluded that the ills facing the empire were brought on by a lack of consideration for Rome’s ancient traditions, both cultural and religious. One can’t help but make comparisons to some of the less reflective and more vindictive of Christianity’s self-appointed PR representatives in the wake of 9/11.

However, rather than pushing the gospel of return to traditional familial models, as have these contemporary figures, Decius decreed that all Roman subjects had to worship the traditional Roman gods. Those who complied were given a certificate documenting their loyalty, some of which have survived the sands of time, and the incompliant were reduced to outlaw status. Christians were just one group, even if maybe the largest, that had to determine how to respond.

As I said, the church had gotten soft. They were not ready to deal with this systematic imperial program. Making things even trickier for the church was that Decius did not want to kill Christians and make martyrs. He wanted to make apostates. So, when Christians refused to make the required sacrifices, they were arrested and much effort was made through threats, promises, torture, etc., to convince them to make the sacrifices. However, they were only very rarely killed. This created a new category of Christian: the “confessors.” Like martyrs, they had withstood a difficult test of faith; unlike martyrs, they did not die as a result.

Many Christians failed this test to varying degrees. Some of them immediately capitulated to the imperial demands and became apostates, some of them capitulated under duress, some of them acquired forged certificates of compliance with Decius’ decree, some of them capitulated but repented of their capitulation before the persecution had ended and so faced consequences. The persecution only lasted a few years, and when it was over the church was left with a problem: what were they to do with those members who had apostatized when they wanted to return to the church? Given the various ways in which members of the church avoided persecution, there could be no one-size-fits-all answer.

Then the confessors got involved. They began weighing in on who should and should not be allowed back into the church, or on what penance should be required of them. Moreover, in some cases they did so in opposition to decisions made by the church’s duly appointed hierarchy. That was a problem. In the next installment, we’ll see how Cyprian addresses it.

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Introduction: Baptism and the Church in North Africa

2011-05-17T11:49:00.004-05:00

In my continual quest to establish myself as the dry, boring professor-type of the theo-blogosphere, I thought it might be interesting to do some history of doctrine. This series is adapted from a lecture I gave in a class at Princeton Theological Seminary this past January. More currently speaking, I was inspired to post this material by David Congdon’s recent discussion of church unity, entitled: “Christological Unity and Pneumatological Plurality: A Theological Reflection on the Church.” David argues in this post that the sort of visible (organizational / political unity) unity that ecumenical work tends to promote may not be the most desirable sort, if it is desirable at all.

In the comments to his post, David encountered the following critical comment:

I have to utterly disagree. Only when the Church was already shattered in a thousand pieces could one think or say this, that is, in the last two hundred years. That Christological-pneumatic unity is never phenomenologically visible can only appear self-evident to someone living on the far side of schism.

David’s response to this criticism is, in my opinion, sound. Perhaps because he and I discussed it before he wrote his response. In any case, you’ll have to surf over and read the whole thing for yourself. But, this series aims at elucidating and grounding two of the claims that David makes in that response. Here they are:

I think the perception of a schism is a Catholic fiction from the start. The notion that there was ever some kind of pure visible unity is a fairy tale; it never existed.

And:

However, the more important issue is what you think the church "is." If you think the church is an institution that mediates the grace of God to the world, then your position would be understandable.

An excursus in the history of doctrine will bring some thickness to David’s claims. Don’t ever let the Roman Catholics tell you that Protestants destroyed the unity of the church. Long before Martin Luther, well before Rome and Constantinople anathematized each other in the 11th century, and even before the schisms surrounding the Council of Chalcedon, there were the Donatists and the Novatians. And the story of these North African controversies is one of local theological commitments and communities being marginalized through the development of a sacramental-ecclesial soteriology.

This is not to say that the Novatians and the Donatists were ultimately correct. And my discussion is more general, as opposed to a purely polemical undertaking. Hence the dry, boring professor-type bit. But it will show two things relevant to the aforementioned polemical context:

History reveals a relationship between strong support of the church’s visible (organizational / political) unity on the one hand and a sacramental-ecclesial soteriology on the other.
There were indeed serious schisms within the church besides those involving points of what would later be considered dogma – the doctrines of christology and the Trinity. Whatever else is involved, the language of orthodoxy and heterodoxy does not apply to the Novatian and Donatist schisms.

So, stay tuned!

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Frei on the Literal Sense and Truth

2011-05-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

Hans w. Frei, Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, 166.

I plead then for the primacy of the literal sense then and, it seems to me, its puzzling but firm relationship to a truth toward which we cannot thrust. The modus significandi will never allow us to say what the res significata is. Nonetheless, we can affirm that in the Christian confession of divine grace, the truth is such that the text is sufficient. There is a fit due to the mystery of grace between truth and text. But that, of course, is a very delicate and very constant operation to find that fit between textuality and truth. The Reformers saw the place where that fit was realized in the constant reconstitution of the Church where the word is rightly preached and where the sacraments are rightly administered. There is where that fit takes place and there alone – and there without any guarantees. It is a very straight path. It is a tightrope to walk toward a very narrow gate. One constantly has to look with unease to the right, where referential truth theories abound (or at a more humble level, where neo-conservatives beckon us), or to the left, where pragmatists tell us that we have no problem of truth (or, at a more mundane level, where liberationists explode). And in between, it seems to me, is the witness of the Church within the text of the Bible.

I’m not sure I understand the entirety of what Frei says in this paragraph, which concludes a very interesting essay. However, it deserves pondering.

Kathryn Tanner on Eternal Life and Action

2011-05-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, 122-3.

Eternal life amounts to an unconditional imperative to action in that this life in God remains an empowering source of our action for the good, whatever the obstacles and failings of Christians. The imperative to act is also unconditional in that it is not affected by considerations of success. Irrespective of any likelihood that one’s actions to better the world will succeed, and even though one knows all one’s achievements will come to nothing with the world’s end, one is obligated to act simply because this is the only way of living that makes sense in light of one’s life in God. Without primary concern for the consequences of one’s actions, one acts out of gratitude for the life in God one has been given, one acts out of joyful recognition that a certain course of action is part of those good gifts that stem from a special relationship with God…

In another sense, action is a conditional imperative as well; one is also acting in an attempt to bring about a world that more closely matches the one that life in God should bring. Although eternal life is not conditional on our action, since it is in a primary sense already achieved through God’s action in Christ, the blessings in the world that should naturally follow from it are yet in some significant sense conditional in the world as we know it. Blessings flow from life in God but their egress from that source can be blocked by sin, understood as the effort to turn away from relations with the triune God (and one’s fellows), the One from whom all goods flow. In this life, action that accords with the life-giving forces of God runs into the obstructions posed by our world as a realm of death – forces promoting impoverishment, suffering, exclusion and injustice. One is called to act to counter such forces in the effort to bring in another kind of life.

This action cannot, moreover, be delayed in hopes of more propitious circumstances to come. Action is present oriented and therefore realistic. One must work with what one has and that means figuring out the present workings of the world, with, for example, the help of the physical and social sciences, in order to intervene as best one can. Action has an urgency, moreover; every moment counts…

Failure to succeed is not, however, a reason to despair. Certainly, if our action is not primarily motivated by hopes for success, the failure of those hopes is no cause to give up the fight. But to the extent our hopes are for the furthering of God’s blessing through our own action, those hopes can be sustained even in the most dire and hopeless of circumstances; one can continue to hope in God, and specifically in God’s gift of eternal life since that is not conditioned by those circumstances or by our own failure because of them…

These thoughts are, like the entirely of Tanner’s brief book, insightful and thought provoking. While I’m not entirely on board with her in this volume (primarily because it is so brief; further elaboration might ally some of my worries), Tanner is always worth reading. At <$20, this volume is a great place to start.

Johnson on Barth’s Mature Analogy of Being-In-Action

2011-05-09T07:33:00.000-05:00

The “analogy of being-in-action” language comes from page 225. But, here is a nice, tidy summary in a sentence of Barth’s position. Keith has done a great job leading his argument to this point, and you really MUST read his book if you want to understand how analogy functions in Barth – contrary to how von Balthasar saw things, along with those who have more or less followed his interpretation. I’m tempted to do a lengthy blog series just on this one chapter of Keith’s book, but I don’t want you to hear it from me – I want you to hear it from Keith. Go buy and read his book. Italics below are from Keith.

Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia entis, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London; T&T Clark, 2010).

Barth embraces an analogy of being, but his is an analogy of human being in Christ, and it takes the form of correspondence in action as the Christian finds her true being in her act of cooperating with the prophetic work of Jesus Christ in the outworking of God’s covenant of grace in history. (226)

Or again...

The human is a partner with God not because he contributes something to God's grace, as if his own action is necessary to the execution of this covenant; he is a partner because God wills that the human be an active subject as the Word of God prompts him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to act in correspondence to it by witnessing to God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ. These actions constitute a history of encounter between two distinct subjects, and these subjects stand in analogy with one another inasmuch as their actions are similar to one another in the midst of an even greater dissimilarity. It is certainly correct to say that 'being reenters the scene' here, but we must immediately clarify that this being is not the 'being' given to the human by God in God's act of creation, as it is in the Roman Catholic accounts. It is the being of Jesus Christ, who as true God and true human is the being at the center of the 'common history' between God and humanity and the mediator of their relationship.

Seriously, go read this book.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-05-07T07:55:00.000-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

Time for another link roundup, and there has been a lot happening. So, I’m going to break this down into a few categories…

Here at DET: Helmut Gollwitzer on Theology's Engagement with Marxist Criticism of Religion

04.26.2011 - Part One
04.27.2011 - Part Two
04.28.2011 - Part Three
04.29.2011 - Part Four
05.02.2011 - Part Five
05.03.2011 - Part Six
05.04.2011 - Part Seven
05.06.2011 - Part Eight

Recent Theo-blog Fracas over JKAS

“Can hope be wrong? On the new universalism” – James KA Smith (JKAS) started things off with this rather ill-conceived post, picking up on the recent Rob Bell controversy. Regardless of where you stand on the whole “universalism issue,” Smith should have been much, much more careful…
“Ressentiment and the ‘new universalism’” - Halden over at Inhabitatio Dei was the first on the scene in responding to JKAS at some length. The reader should be aware that there is a history between these two authors, but precisely what that history is can go unstated. In any case, Halden brings the pain – (“The real problem, I believe, that the whole buzz about “the new universalism” represents — and it is particularly typified in Jamie’s post — is the refusal to engage these questions theologically. Instead it is all a matter of figuring out who the sappy liberal is, and finding a clever way to make the accusation.”) - and over 80 comments appear.
“On the new universalism: a response to James K. A. Smith” - Not to be left out or out done, and believing that more needed to be said, David Congdon joined the fray in his usual, “thorough” way. In addition to deconstructing JKAS’ post, Congdon chides him for not paying attention to series scholarly and theological studies of the topic, and of ignoring the important hermeneutical question. He concludes by offering 6 suggestions to those who would criticize the new universalism.

Ben Myers / Faith & Theology

“Lose Your Faith” - Kim Fabricius offers a Good Friday sermon.
“Rowan Williams: three lectures on Narnia” - Ben provides links!
“Off the Shelf: six types of reading” - Finding that he has little time to write a blog while teaching theology full time, Ben has resorted to theology vlogging. In this installment, Ben (1) admits what some have long suspected - that it is the early Barth to whom he is most attracted; (2) denigrates disciplined or compulsory reading, saying that reading should be wildly undisciplined. In reply, I say that you generally don’t get to solo until you’ve mastered the scales.
“Jacob Taubes: apocalyptic time and the retreat from history” - Ben gives us an insight into a paper he’ll be presenting at the upcoming AAR meeting.
“Audio lecture: lessons from Augustine's De Trinitate” - It is now possible to hear Ben as he goes about his daily task of facilitating theological education.

Other

“Academic Bipolar Disorder -- the other ABD” - A colleague of mine here at PTS reflects on some of the emotional challenges to being a doctoral student.
“Professor Deeply Hurt by Student's Evaluation” - A deeply moving, disturbing, and ultimately heart-wrenching tale of the emotional and psychological dangers that face higher educators these days. Once more into the breach, dear friends…
“The Adventures of the Post-Relevant Church” - Jason Ingalls, the guy who brought you collared evangelism, is back. “What does the post-relevant church look like? I don't know yet. I think it will probably look different everywhere that faithful men and woman struggle to fashion themselves in the image and likeness of Christ.”
“How to Find Karl Barth’s Grave” - A useful set of instructions for any theology buff heading to Germany.
“Easter, Day 4” - John Drury is blogging the days of Easter. Here is a link to one of them. Explore his blog for more.
“The Karl Barth Timeline” - Darren Sumner provides a very handy cheat-sheet of the publication dates (German and English) for Barth’s major works.
“Why we can't rejoice” - PTS Colleague, Andrew Zirschky, thinks (with Bonhoeffer’s help) about how Christians should respond to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
“Theological work and general academic publishers” - Evan Kuehn reflects on the state of theological publishing, precipitated by the recent discontinuation of theological series at Cambridge UP and Wiley-Blackwell.

And if it is at all possible that the above isn’t enough for you, be sure to check out the serials index page here at DET. There you will find the Gollwitzer series, two series on Paul Tillich, a series on Yves Congar, and much, much more.

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 8

2011-05-06T10:22:00.001-05:00

This is the final installment of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. Having treated them, he concludes with two more points that Christians and theologians should bear in mind when engaging with the Marxist criticism of religion.

Harkening back to the discussion in the last installment, Gollwitzer notes that for Christianity to base its message on humanity’s “need” would be to play into the Marxist criticism: “That God is the means to an end, even if an ineffective one, is a point in which Feuerbach and Marx are one” (167). Of course, this breaks down when faced with a more sophisticated way of understanding the Christian God, one based on value and not need: “Anyone who wishes adequately to understand biblical texts must…understand that there are encounters which primarily have their significance as such, and in relation to which the consideration of value is only secondary” (ibid). The encounter in view here is, of course, one with God. That such an encounter is valuable goes without saying. But what Christianity cannot and must not do is attempt to demonstrate the truth or superiority of Christianity on the basis of this value. It must not do so because to make the attempt would be to deny the nature of the case, and it cannot do so because this value is only accessible from within the encounter, not without. So Gollwitzer (bold is, as always, mine):
It is not man and his needs that can be the meaning of God’s existence, but God is the meaning of the existence of man. Therefore what man receives in the encounter with God is not visible outside of or before this encounter, not outside of “faith”. For only in this encounter does God himself become important to men, not because of his meaning, or any value, but He himself - and just this is the most supremely satisfying answer to the question of meaning (168).
The payoff of the whole of Gollwitzer’s discussion is this: “What the atheist denies is not what the Christian affirms” , or at least not what the Christian ought to affirm, or would affirm if there was more clarity on the issue. So, Christianity must, in the face of the Marxist criticism of religion, undertake “a self-critical examination of [its] own previous statements” (172), and it has made many of the unguarded variety over the centuries. But this does not deny the other side (bold is mine, as always), and I conclude with the following long block quotation:
The whole polemic of Feuerbach indicates that the Christian faith is interpreted as the ‘assumption’ of the existence of a God, as the hypothesis that there is such an existence, and only distinguishes itself from polytheism by its concentration on one instead of many. The triumph over the fact that the sputnik and the subsequent space-travellers [sic] discovered no such being in the world of space is only an element of bathos in anti-religious propaganda and a booby-trap. The possibility of such primitive argumentation is, however, based on the fact that they denial of God occurs on the same ontological level as that on which people can discuss the existence of Martians; here one can set up theories pro and con; here one can some day by testing discover what is right…The denial which finds expression in the assertion that ‘there is no God’ believes it is speaking about the Christian God, but speaks about something quite different…I make judgments about existent facts without thereby altering myself. But the denial of God cannot at all be spoken in this way as a meaningful sentence: the sentence “God is not” is either thoughtless chatter, or it is a self-cancellation in revolt; “God must not be”.

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 7

2011-05-04T11:21:00.002-05:00

This is the seventh of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The sixth of these tasks pertains to the question of meaning. Explanations of the world – worldviews, or metaphysics – attempt to provide security by means of bestowing meaning on brute phenomena. Ancient Christianity’s worldview/metaphysic was theological in two senses: first, because it made of use of God in explaining the world; second, because it viewed its explanation as identical with that which provides the world with meaning. Marxist makes use of science in a similar way, that is, as an explanation of the world that attempts to provide meaning. In the end, Gollwitzer says, “Marxism is a kind of positive Stoicism; more meaning [than that provided by science] is unfortunately not our lot, but at least we have this much” (160)!

Positively, theology must recognize the difficulty with which one moves from science, or brute phenomena toward meaning. A sense of “need” is similarly not a trustworthy guide. To treat it as such would be to reintroduce something like natural theology, which has lurked behind much of Gollwitzer’s discussion. Ultimate meaning, Gollwitzer insists, cannot be read of the surface – or even from the depths – of human existence. Rather, meaning requires an encounter and fellowship with God. On the other hand, it is not the case that this God-bestowed meaning is entirely disconnected from human “need,” for Gollwitzer. It does, however, add a new depth and aspect to that need, situating it in a greater context and, indeed, showing us what our true need is. So Gollwitzer:

it is not the case that the fullness of meaning experienced in the gospel is the answer to an already manifest question. What the gospel offers is the answering of a question and the fulfillment of a need which is only awakened by the gospel. Therefore it can be satisfied only by the gospel. We are thus confronted here by a circle which we are always coming up against when we concern ourselves with theology; the gospel is the answer to a life-question; relevant, fully satisfying answer, but the question only arises through the proclamation of the answer (162; bold is mine).

Or again, from a different angle:

the death-bringing lack of fellowship with God, and the devastation wrought by evil is visible before the encounter with God’s condescension in the gospel, in all the phenomena of estrangement, lack of fellowship, perversion of life, which cause the ever-repeated attempts to heal life, the religious as well as the atheistic ones. But how deep the injury is, and how inadequate, indeed, how destined to lead to further evil are the remedies offered for healing, this is only evident when God himself comes on the scene and his appearing at once judges our previous state as our own self-inflicted misery and removes it. Only in concrete encounter with the Word of God that speaks to us does man’s destiny become clear, and only in the light of this highest destiny of life in fellowship with God is the previous condition unmasked as the misery of the man who has forfeited his high destiny, and the also previously visible signs of defect and wickedness of life are exposed as consequences of forfeiting his destiny” (163).

What does this mean for Christianity and theology? It means that they must stick to their guns, so to speak; they are “thrown entirely upon…faith in the self-evidencing power of its message” (165). The church ultimately has only one tool in its toolbox, namely, proclamation of the gospel. Granted, that proclamation will take different forms in different places and times. But this plurality of forms must be only that. In no sense can the church base its proclamation of the gospel on a condition that is not itself created by that proclamation. All such conditions have been contested, and contested well, by Marxism and other criticisms of religion. There is no sense casting about in search of a new one, for anything one finds with not be categorically different than those that have come before. Instead, the church must recognize its vulnerable position, and remember the saying of its Lord that his strength is made perfect in its weakness. The church - and theology, - need not "demonstrate to blind eyes, so that these will then be opened by a free decision; it can only proclaim to blind eyes the message committed to it, in the hope that this call itself, and he who is proclaimed in it as the real one will open men's eyes" (ibid; bold is mine).

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 6

2011-05-03T09:51:00.003-05:00

This is the sixth of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The fifth of these tasks concerns a renewed consideration of what it means for theology to be a science. Gollwitzer recognizes that the tradition has long considered theology to be a science, and he affirms that status. Or, he at least defends its claim to be scientific even if it not strictly speaking an independent science:

Theology indeed participates in the other sciences, has a nexus with them, uses them, welcomes them in its own sphere, inasmuch as here also, for example, philosophy and history in the strict sense are studied. It is certainly not really ‘a’ science, but (in this resembling medicine), a sphere in which different sciences are united by their service of a determinate purpose, the critical self-examination of the Church in relation to the correspondence between its actual achievement and its task (157-8).

Gollwitzer goes on to list three points to bear in mind concerning the responsibility that theology must faced because of its scientific character.

Theology must be sure not to mislead other sciences by taking up a posture that opposes free investigation, or that seeks to enforce a law other than that inherent within the subject matter itself.
Theology must be sure to develop methods that fit with investigation of its subject matter, to do so critically, working to clarify its concepts.
Theology must be true to its peculiarity, and thereby embody an uncomfortable question for the other sciences as to their limits.

Christianity’s peculiarity, and thus theology’s, “consists in the fact that it is related to a history, the history of revelation, about which it must make statements which go beyond the appearances which are accessible to the historian” (158). By doing so, it raises a serious question to the Marxist criticism of religion, making clear that every field of study has a special methodological perspective suited to its object and that, consequently, each perspective is limited. In this theology resists the temptation of the humane sciences to borrow the concept of “science” found in the natural sciences, and encourages the humanities to recognize their limited and provisional status.

The danger on which theology shines a spotlight here is scientism, “the superstition which makes a world-view out of modern science, and uses it as a quarry for the building of world pictures allegedly demanded and authorized by science” (159). For Gollwitzer, this impulse is a product of humanity’s inherently religious impulse deprived, by the Marxist and other criticisms, of the religious outlets previously open to it. Here is a good chunk of Gollwitzer by way of a conclusion (bold is me, as usual):

Every assumption, every hypothesis can in science grow into a prejudice. Rightly understood, theology opens the way unconditionally to every investigation of fact. Faith in the creator is actually an affirmation of things as they are, and is opposed to all well-meaning misrepresentation or taboo. Where science is understood as in conflict with faith (in the biblical sense of the word), and as a substitute for religion, the place is necessarily assigned to it [that] religion previously occupied. It is then required to give what it cannot give. It is then neither free nor subject to criticism, it becomes itself a taboo. Science must prove its freedom also in this, that it recognizes itself as a specific and therefore limited mode of knowledge, to which other aspects of reality are closed…The scientific attitude is not incompatible with Christian faith, but with the superstitious faith in science, and with the subjection of science to the demands of a need to believe, which finds an ideological satisfaction in it” (159-60).

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 5

2011-05-02T06:15:00.004-05:00

This is the fifth of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The fourth of these tasks continues Gollwitzer’s sally against apologetics. The particular form of apologetics that attracts Gollwitzer’s ire now, however, is that which would link Christianity with religion as a general category and, attempting to demonstrate that religion is a necessary facet of human culture and development, thus hope to secure Christianity’s pedigree. As true as such claims may be about religion, and Gollwitzer is willing to entertain that possibility, he provides four reflections on the issue.

Such arguments cannot defeat the immanentism of the Marxist criticism. To begin, who cares about this immanentism when leveled at religion? Christianity has no dog in that fight. Furthermore, a general defense of religion will not defeat this immanentism. So Gollwitzer: Christianity “cannot prove, or wish to prove, that the living God to whom the biblical word bears witness does not belong to the immanent conditions of the world, and is not a product of our need. It can, however, indicate that this is not so, by showing how in his revelation he distinguishes himself from the gods” (155). In other words, Christianity should show that its God is not one of the gods, leaving the latter to fend for themselves since “It is with the powers of this world, positive and negative, that we have to do in religion, not with the Creator himself, who must in his freedom encounter us, in order that we may have such dealings with him as to know him and be able to speak with him” (ibid).
Secularism pushes these things further, although Marxism is only one form of secularism. Whereas in the past Christianity could assume the general religiosity of those it encountered, such is no longer the case. It would be a mistake for Christianity to think that it first had to reproduce this general religiosity among its hearers before proclaiming the uniquely Christian message. No, that message must be proclaimed in such a way as to bypass the need for this general religiosity. Of the secular person, Gollwitzer writes:
Without his putting himself in a religious frame of mind, creating for himself religious experiences, awakening within himself a so-called natural consciousness of God, thus without his being compelled to adopt forms of consciousness which he can no longer recapture, he must be encountered in his life, which has become secular, by the good news from the Lord of the world, who has committed himself in the man Jesus of Nazareth to the world and the secularity of the stable and the gallows” (155-6).
This, Gollwitzer maintains, is what Bonhoeffer was on about when he spoke of a “non-religious interpretation” of the gospel.
What theology should focus on in the encounter with Marxism, then, is not the antithesis between atheism and religion, but the one “between the ‘God for us’ of the gospel, and the human refusal to live in the strength of the vital reality of this ‘God for us’” (156). In other words, it must call the world to repentance, to abandon the attempt at self-justification, which can take religious, secular, technological, and other forms. Nothing is ultimately gained if a culture or an individual converts from atheism to religion, so far as Christianity is concerned: “The only conversion with brings something new, is that form law to gospel” (ibid). The strength of this conversion is that it tears us away from all these forms of self-justification. It “ends our existence as functionaries of a front representing a world-view, and makes us messengers of the love which from above seeks every individual, the religious man as the atheist, as a creature beloved, which must leave the tense struggle against the feared non-being, to receive fellowship with him who places himself between the creature and non-being” (157).
All this lies behind Gollwitzer’s concluding statement, which provides a very measure paradigm for Christian engagement with Marxist criticism. I’ll quote it in entirety:
Thus it is possible without prejudice, without irritation, and defensiveness to discuss with the Marxists the phenomenon and the problems of religion. Not the Christian message but our human method of receiving and embodying it, the Christian religion, will there, so far as Christianity is in question, be dealt with, but it must not be withdrawn from criticism. In this, theology will be both the defender of religion over against the onesidedness, the superficiality and the fatuities of Marxist criticism, and at the same time the ally of this criticism against cruelties, stuffiness, terrorism and like inhumanities of the religious life (157; bold is mine).

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Gollwitzer Intermission and Background Reading: Guardian Series on Karl Marx

2011-04-30T07:59:00.001-05:00

Those of you who have been following my series on Helmut Gollwitzer's engagement with Marxist criticism of religion, may be happy to learn that I won't be posting over the weekend. That gives you some time to catch up on the four parts (one, two, three, four) of the eight-part series already posted.

You might also be interested in learning about a series that Peter Thompson at "The Guardian" is doing on Karl Marx. I haven't worked through it all yet, and there may be more installments coming (in which case, I'll try to update this post), but it's certainly all very interesting. Here are links to the different parts, with titles so you have an idea of what you're getting into:

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 4

2011-04-29T06:36:00.005-05:00

This is the fourth of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The third of these tasks is an elaboration on the second, which was a discussion of apologetics. Gollwitzer returns now to what he considers to be a very dubious – perhaps the most dubious – form of apologetics, namely, that build on a “God of the gaps” or on a dues ex machine. The problem with this approach isn’t, strictly speaking, that the modern age witnessed the end of the regnant metaphysics that made such argument possible, although Gollwitzer recognizes that this is the case. Instead, this approach is problematic because

To argue against our opponents with this sort of necessity of God was from the beginning a self-misunderstanding of Christian faith (153).

Here is how Gollwitzer parses the nitty-gritty:

Marxism…sums up the results of this end of the great tradition of scholastic thinking in the analogia entis in so far as the latter had claimed to find by speculation the rational ground of earthly being in the divine summum ens (most real being), and therefore conversely to pass by inference from the conditioned to the unconditioned. The presuppositions of faith concealed in these apparently rational operations have long been evident, and give Marxism the opportunity of unmasking this kind of philosophy as disguised theology (ibid).

Gollwitzer is actually being nice to theologians in the scholastic tradition. He recognizes that those theologians worked out of faith’s conviction, which served as a ground for their thought-experiments with reference to God. The problem is that they were not clear about this foundation, nor were they careful to distinguish how this foundation fundamentally sets them apart from broader metaphysical inquiry in the traditions of Plato and Aristotle. The result of these failures is this: when the metaphysics to which theology had been joined was seen to fail, it was not at all self-evident that theology should not ultimately and necessarily fail as well.

The flip side of this is Gollwitzer’s recognition – in the concluding sentence of the above quote –that ultimately the sort of metaphysical inquiry established in the tradition is a form of philosophy rather than theology. For Gollwitzer, this applies to all forms of idealism. Consequently,

Christian theology must see in the Marxist identification of Christianity and idealism a warning for itself not to bind the Christian faith for better or for worse to idealistic metaphysics. It does this, for example, so long as it includes the faith in creation under the inquiry about an explanation of the world. For then if the article of our faith about the creation is understood as an assertion of reason, God is a function of our self-understanding and our understanding of the world… (154).

Here is the payoff:

In view of the idealistic influence on Christian thinking since the time of early Catholicism, the end of Christian metaphysics demands a thorough-going theological self-criticism, to which Marxism (with its interpretation of Christianity as a special case of idealism and idealism as a special case of theology), has given a fruitful impulse (ibid; bold is mine).

Christians owe thanks to Marxism, in other words, for so driving us back to a consideration of our particularity by unceremoniously lumping us in as a species within a broader genus of thought.

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 3

2011-04-28T07:55:00.007-05:00

This is the third of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The second of these tasks is to reassess the practice of apologetics. Gollwitzer makes a distinction between two types of apologetics. On the one hand is what we might call “better” apologetics. This form of apologetics is necessary for theology, and it is concerned with

going beyond the positive exposition of the meaning of the statements of Christian faith, to a polemical rejection of the appeal of Marxism to so-called contradictions between Christian faith and modern science, to challenge the validity of the opponent’s arguments, and so on (152).

It is clear that Gollwitzer has in mind here something like defensive apologetics, aimed at showing the plausibility, or the non-contradiction of Christian faith with life in the modern world. In other words, the task of this apologetics is to establish and maintain the distinction between methodological atheism in the natural sciences, for instance, and dogmatic atheism as a worldview. Worth noting is Gollwitzer’s proviso that any sort of “God of the gaps” apologetics is a non-starter and ought to be rejected.

Another form of apologetics is what we might call “bad” apologetics. As opposed to “better” or “defensive” apologetics, we might call this one “worse” or “offensive” apologetics. In this form, apologetics attempts – to put things crassly – to argue people into the Christian faith. Such is simply not possible, for reasons that will be explained more thoroughly in Gollwitzer’s next point (to be treated in the next installment of this series, Part 4). Suffice it for now to raise a warning:

apologetics cannot afford to attempt to adduce supports for Christian faith, which can then be pulled around, and whose questionable character discredits Christian faith (ibid).

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 2

2011-04-27T07:45:00.007-05:00

This is the second of an eight-part (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) miniseries on the concluding chapter of Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970).

For Gollwitzer, the Marxist criticism of religion sets six tasks for theology. The first of these tasks is to discern whether and to what extent the Marxist criticism of Christianity is on to something. So Gollwitzer:

[T]his criticism of religion makes us aware of a transition which is repeatedly to be observed in the various epochs of Church history – a transition from a critical challenging of the existing order by the Christian message to an ideological support of the existing order (151).

In other words, the Marxist criticism of Christianity, falling as it does under a broader criticism of religion in general, serves to reveal the way in which the church has lost its prophetic voice. Rather than confronting the powers and injustices of this world, the church all too often becomes the opiate of the masses. A true, living church can never be this, but a dead church always is. Along these same lines, the Marxist criticism of religion also

draws our attention to the singular limitation of most Christian movements of renewal…they limit the thrust of their attack and challenge to the sphere of the private person, remain socially conservative, attacking the heathenism of individuals, but not of institutions…the legitimate application of the gospel to the individual…runs in fact precisely and inevitably the risk of encouraging the illegitimate modes of piety, a selfish religious desire for salvation, a flight from the world, and a fatalistic submission and the like (ibid; bold is mine).

These days, this is perhaps especially truth in the North American context, whose Christianity has been decisively shaped by ‘great awakenings’ and revivals, and whose most pervasive religious impulse seems to be the desire for individual salvation - which translates quite easily, I might add, into a desperate craving for the assurance of political or social safety. Of course, all these limitations and dangerous impulses fed into the Marxist criticism of religion:

The Marxist accusations are a catalogue of actual Christian degenerations. One should attempt to read the theological and edifying literature of the nineteenth century with the eyes of a man like Karl Marx, before whose keen vision the trend of the times and the problems of the present and the future were evident in all their grimness, while there he could find almost nothing but blind ignorance! This ignorance he saw to be based on a piety which he all too hastily took for the real thing (151-2; bold is mine).

The corollary of this is the following: if the church wishes to avoid criticisms from Marxist or other atheistic quarters, it must purge itself of these dangerous mutations and demonstrate that the piety in question here is not, in fact, the real thing.

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Helmut Gollwitzer Miniseries: Lessons for Theology from Encounter with the Marxist Criticism of Religion, Part 1

2011-04-26T08:45:00.009-05:00

I’ve been slowly working my way through Helmut Gollwitzer’s The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion (Scribner, 1970), over the past while. I did one post on it previously. I’ve enjoyed the read as a whole, but the last chapter stopped me in my tracks. For in this chapter, entitled “Christian Encounter with Atheism,” Gollwitzer teases out the lessons that theology ought to learn from an engagement with the Marxist criticism of religion. So, I’ve decided to put together an eight-part miniseries (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight) on this chapter, highlighting the six points Gollwitzer makes, along with a treatment of his introductory remarks and his conclusion – which provide a context for the six points.

Kait Dugan recently teased me, saying - in a clearly derogatory manner - that my blog is "largely occupied with announcements and book excerpts." Perhaps this mini-series will go some way in answering her imprecations.

Gollwitzer argues that Marxism’s atheism and its Messianism (utopianism) are mutually implicating. Messianism provides a way of overcoming the crisis opened by atheism, and atheism is confirmed by that overcoming insofar as it demonstrates that no God is necessary for humanity’s salvation. So Gollwitzer:

[T]he one confirms the other: because God does not exist, a world must be constructed, first in thought, and then in reality, in which man does not need God, and so no longer regrets God’s non-existence…On the other hand: because this man has now decided to see his dignity in not requiring God, and can come to fulfillment without God, therefore he must also show that God does not exist (146).

What should be the Christian response to this constellation of issues? In what way should Christianity go about engaging with Marxism or, we might say more simply in a more contemporary North American context, atheistic secularism [Ed. note: Gollwitzer’s text is interesting as it stands, but don’t get hung up on his reference to Marxism of Communism – his discussion applies far more broadly]? Gollwitzer notes that the mere existence of a truly Christian community raises a question within such a society as a phenomena for which there is no explanation, undermining that society’s theoretical certainty about itself.

However, there is much more to say about this encounter, for it is an encounter that equally raises question to the Christian community about the truth of its existence. I leave you with the following length (to say the least!) quote. As always, bold is me (underlining as well, for even more emphasis):

[Christianity] must win from its faith the inner freedom to judge its own history relentlessly under the accusations of Communism, without thereby losing its glad confidence in its message, without prejudice and without anger admitting the Communists to the brotherhood in the solidarity of the godless, without thereby losing its freedom and courage to make clear and emphatic contradiction.

Above all, this community will have to abstain from the indignation which is widely felt today in Church circles, as if atheism were a new-fangled and vicious invention of the Communists. The original thing in it is merely that here atheism is taken seriously, whereas the Church and its position in society have long depended on the fact that the world around it is indeed atheist, but would not wish to do without its Christian decoration… But now, on the contrary, the consequences are drawn from the already long-present atheism of natural scientists, historians, psychologists and sociologist, from the materialism of the capitalist economy, from Christianity’s lack of influence on manufacture, commerce, and politics, from the schizophrenic division of man into a weekday heathen and a Sunday Christian, from the failure to implement Christian social doctrines (the gulf between white and coloured peoples, not bridged, but rather deepened by Christianity, the merely verbal reservations about the whole capitalist development)… This shatters the former feeling of security of the church, which had ever and again comforted itself with the secure anchorage of Christian morals among the people, and with the respect for Chritianity at least as a cultural and sentimental factor among those who were not practising [sic] Christians, and which therefore made confident claim to respect and privilege. Communism is without respect for what merely exists; it suspects that it might already belong to the past, and allows it to continue in existence only when it can prove its right to do so. This disrespectful and drastic questioning arouses alarm and indignation in the Church. This is a reaction of the ecclesiastical ‘flesh’… The spiritual reaction against it must consist in this, that the Church should not only admit, but inwardly accept the fact that this is how things stand, that Christianity is no longer taboo, but that every conventional status and reputation has been taken from it… The Church must take in the fact that the world no longer takes it from granted. But by the fact of ceasing to do so, the world is taking the Church with new seriousness – or at least there is given the possibility that it will take it with new seriousness. The Church can only inwardly accept this situation, if it understands the burden of being called in question by the world around it as God’s question addressed to it, as the question addressed to it in judgment and grace by its own Lord, who wishes thereby to revive it (148-50).

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Head's Up

2011-04-25T12:29:00.002-05:00

Greetings dear and gentle readers,

This is just a quick note to let you know that I'll be embarking upon a 2-week long series tomorrow. So, stay tuned.

Until then,

WTM

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-04-23T10:43:00.005-05:00

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

I would like to begin by drawing attention to two recent posts here at DET on theological pedagogy. If you missed these the first time around, be sure to check them out now - and, if you are a theological student or educator, I'd love to get more feedback from you about these posts:

Now, on to the round-up. As always, the order of presentation is simply the order in which I found these various posts.

"The Surprise of Reconciliation", and "Coming Home From Exile" - Good friend and blog collaborator, Chris TerryNelson, posts two of his recent sermons. The first deals with Acts 10, and the second with Ezekiel 37.
"Jesus Delays" - Another good friend and friend of the blog, Jason Ingalls, adds a sermon on John 11.
"Spiritual Malpractice" - More from Jason Ingalls, this time reflecting on the many dangers and difficulties of pastoral care.
"I've Been Thinking About the Resurrection" - John Drury, who successfully defended his dissertation here at PTS a week or so ago, gives us some reflections - and links to further reflections - on the resurrection. They are definitely worth checking out; he did just write a dissertation on the topic.
"What about Sola Scriptura?" - Roger Olson thinks about sola scriptura, whether it is a viable affirmation and, if so, how it is so.
"Parenting: goodness as happiness" - Meaty reflections from the parenting trenches by PTS MDiv blogger, Melissa Florer-Bixler.
"Living out of the future" - GFCFC ([G]ood [F]riend, [C]olleague, and [F]requent [C]ollaborator) - David Congdon - emphasizes the "semi" bit of his semi-retirement from blogging by posting this Lenten homily on Mark 10.
"George Hunsinger on Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance" - A nearly 3-minute video of Hunsinger talking about the relationship between Barth and Torrance. Longtime readers may remember the friendly exchange between Ben Myers and myself on the topic.
"Off the shelf" - Speaking of Ben, he recently did a vlog about some of the things he has been reading lately.
"The Trouble with Ayn Rand" - It's hard to accept that there is a political movement afoot in our society, supported by a not inconsiderable number of purported Christians, that looks to Rand for inspiration. In this article, David Bentley Hart reminds us that he has his uses. Here is an excerpt:
Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons. For instance, I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered. I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism. She regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation. And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.
Paul Nimmo now in paperback! - I recently learned that Paul Nimmo's highly significant and, sadly, equally highly priced book has just been issued in a much more affordable paperback. This is one of those recent Barth studies books that everyone ought to read and engage deeply with, even if you might finally disagree. So, go get your copy!
"Observing The Gospel Coalition (Pt. 3 of 3)" - Brian LePort offers some critical reflections on a recent Gospel Coalition conference that he attended.
"New Center for Barth Studies Book Review" - Last but not least, be sure to check out the recently posted review of David Haddorff's new book - Christian Ethics as Witness - by friend of the blog and 2-time Barth Blog Conference contributor, Scott Jackson.

As always, don't forget about the vast amount of material waiting for you hear at DET, like past Karl Barth Blog Conference stuff, or the list of popular posts.

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Karl Barth: “the Christian life is a spiritual one”

2011-04-21T09:57:00.001-05:00

Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV,4 Lecture Fragments (Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans.; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981):

In modern usage the term “spiritual” has wrongly been put in embarrassing proximity to the word “religious.” It should be related to this word only indirectly and not very firmly. What has been forgotten is that, among Christians at least, the word “spiritual” can denote only a new definition of the human spirit, of the whole of this spirit, by the Holy Spirit, so that it cannot refer to a variation or modification of human spiritual activity as such… Christians can be, but do not have to be, particularly religious people. Similarly, particularly religious people can become and be Christians, but if they do they are not Christians in their quality as specially religious people. They are fortunate if their being such does not prevent them from becoming and being Christians! Invocation of God the Father by his children, the spiritual Christian life, commences and continues as a human life within the whole life of the spirit and religion, to which it is always referred and with which it is always linked. Nevertheless, it will always represent and be a new thing. Religiosity does not need to call upon a fatherly God. Hence it does not need any special movement and act of God. It does not need any baptism, sending, outpouring, and gift of the Spirit. It may work itself out in this way and take this form. But the spiritual life lives in invocation of God the Father and would be null and void without this special movement and act of this God, without the work of the Holy Spirit.

Upcoming Lecture: Woodward Theological Society

2011-04-20T08:05:00.000-05:00

It's turning into a week for announcements, it seems.

I've been thinking about Detroit much more lately due to the NHL playoffs - as the badge at the bottom of my blog indicates, I'm a big Red Wings fan. But I have lately been given another reason to think about Detroit. Some of you may remember my previous post about a new theological society starting up in the metro-Detroit area. As a native of SE Michigan (hence, Red Wings fan), I am excited about this initiative and want to see is succeed.

If you are theologically inclined and are in the area, please consider giving WTS your support. One concrete way that you can support WTS is by attending an upcoming lecture. At 5pm on May 7th, at 616 W. Hancock in Detroit, WTS is sponsoring a lecture by Mary Healy S.T.D, Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. WTS describes the lecture's content as follows:

Her talk, The Hermeneutic of Jesus, argues for a Christological reading of the Old Testament taking a detailed look at Jesus’ own manner of interpreting the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark.

Surf over to the announcement on the WTS website for more information.

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Analytic Theology Course Award Program

2011-04-19T10:07:00.002-05:00

Looking for funding for a theological project? Interested in the intersection of philosophy and theology? Want to put that interest to work in your teaching? Bring all these things together, and check out the Analytic Theology Course Award Program. There is some serious money involved here, so take a close look. Application deadlines is June 1, 2011.

Here is some more info from the official website:

The course award program is intended to stimulate the development and implementation of courses, or course segments, in analytic theology at divinity schools and departments of theology and religious studies. The program will provide five annual awards to faculty members who would like to develop and teach a course of one of the following two types:
Revised Required Courses – A required graduate survey course that does not currently contain a segment on analytic theology, and which the applicant would like to revise so that it does.
New Courses in Analytic Theology – A course dedicated to analytic theology. To qualify, such courses must, if selected, be taught for credit within major degree programs at the institution. Courses must qualify for credit towards a graduate degree in theology or religion and be a full semester, trimester, or quarter in duration. In addition, applicants must provide evidence from the overseeing administrator insuring that the course can be taught at least twice during the four year span after the course award is made.

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New Center for Barth Studies Book Review

2011-04-18T08:42:00.001-05:00

Friend of the blog and past Barth Blog Conference contributor (2008, 2010), Scott Jackson, has a new review up at the Center for Barth Studies website dealing with David Haddorff's Christian Ethics as Witness: Barth's Ethics for a World at Risk.

Be sure to check it out!

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Why Writing Matters in Theological Study

2011-04-14T09:45:00.003-05:00

First, an admission: I am almost entirely self-taught as a writer. I feel comfortable and competent in only four genres of writing: correspondence, blog posts, sermons, and academic essays. Outside of these, I am a babe in the woods, and my abilities are unevenly developed even among these four. All of this is to suggest that when I admonish theological students to work on their writing, (1) I have and continue to do so myself, and (2) I know that progress is possible.

Why is writing ability important in theological study? As in any humane discipline, theology is text-heavy. We are concerned with analyzing and producing texts. I reflected on the analyzing bit on Tuesday. As a theological student, good writing is important because writing essays or exams is how you demonstrate competency, and demonstrating competency is important because achieving that competency is ultimately in service of the proclamation of the gospel. In other words, you need to be able to preach.

I personally think that sermons are a much more difficult genre than writing academic essays, because you have whole rhetorical realms in play there that are not when someone like me asks you to write about Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, for instance. If you cannot make yourself clear in the more basic genre, you may have trouble with the more complicated genre.

The point of this post is to provide, from the viewpoint of a theological educator (admittedly, early in his career), two aphorisms about the importance of good writing in theological study.

Aphorism #1: Good writing covers a multitude of sins.
Think about it: do you think it could possibly be a good thing if your instructor is reading along in your paper, and must stop every few words to think about a missing period, an awkward construction, a missing preposition, or to wonder where a quote began because you forgot the opening quotation mark, etc.? If there is any doubt, let me clear it up for you – this is not a good thing. On the other hand, it is a very good thing if your instructor can read peacefully through your paper and understand how your phrases, sentences and paragraphs fit together, and - consequently - what you are saying.

Aphorism #2: Bad writing suggests bad thinking.
It is impossible to write well (clearly) without having first thought well (clearly). The upshot of this is that when you write badly (unclearly), it strongly suggests that you have first thought badly (unclearly). You might very well have a remarkable intuitive grasp of the material in question, but everything comes down to communication (just like in preaching). If you cannot tell your instructor in a structured and reasonable manner about the material of which you purport to have an intuitive grasp, chances are that there is no such intuitive grasp. In any case, there is no way for your instructor to know about it (this goes for your congregation, too). Coincidently, and as an added bonus, working at writing well (clearly) will help you to think well (clearly).

What’s the bottom line? Work on your writing!

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