Christian, your flag, race, & gender do not define you!: Ben Witherington III on Social Identity

I have been a bit scarce around TF lately due to heavy commitments at Huntington and an upcoming conference paper (which is still dreadfully unformed!), but we recently hosted Ben Witherington III  and his paper on social identity deserves comment.

Unrelated to the paper, I found Ben a delightful guest. After dinner and before his presentations we chatted about recent films, debates on the doctrine of justification, the first of his two-volume ethical theology of the New Testament, and what he believes might characterize “responsible” theological interpretation of scripture. On this later point Ben was passionate and will be posting something here in January on the topic.

In his paper on social identity, “E Pluribus Unum: The One and the Many in Luke-Acts,” Ben leverages social identity theory to draw conclusions about conversion and Christian identity. “The problem of social identity formation in the church is a pressing one,” he explains, ”not least because all too often a person’s Christian identity is their secondary identity, and their national or ethnic identity is de facto their primary identity.” He goes on,

Crises tend to bring to the surface what our real defaults are, what our real primary commitments and identities are. And this leads to some painful revelations. All too many church goers seem to have been inoculated with a slight case of Christian identity, and in some cases it is preventing them from getting the real thing.

We have pressed this point before on TF, and it is a critical one for Christians to get straight – especially American evangelicals for whom God and country can become dreadfully disordered.

Theology on the Way to Emmaus: Hermeneutics, Doctrine and Meaning

We continue our look at Nicholas Lash’s book by picking up his chapter, “What Might Martyrdom Mean?” To set the stage, I will let Lash speak for himself:

There is a received account, in this country, both of the character of these enterprises, and of the relationship between them, which goes something like this. Christian hermeneutics is principally concerned with negotiating the ‘gap’ between what was once said and what might appropriately be said today. The biblical scholar, and the historian of doctrine, are expected to recover, today, what the text meant; the systematic theologian is supposed to transpose the recovered meanings into contemporary idiom; and Christian living is conceived as the practical application…In this essay I propose to indicate some of the reasons why I regard this hermeneutical model as profoundly unsatisfactory” (75).

Lash is allergic to building one’s exposition around what the text “meant” towards what it “means,” and offers a series of responses to Stendahl. First, Lash is concerned about the positivist account that this kind of analysis will bring. What does it mean to exposit what the text meant – apart from what it means? Is this somehow to believe that historical work exists pre-interpretation? Second, Lash is concerned about the meaning of the concept…well…”meaning.” Is the concern Paul’s intent or the Corinthian audience’s reception? Translation, Lash fears, is then pushed to the systematic analysis, and is somehow after the historical task.

Once More on the Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self: Or Why Pope Benedict XVI Is the Only Real Theologian

I was reading Pope Benedict XVI’s little gem The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God this morning and found that he provided some new perspective on what was at issue in my post. But first, a little clarification of what I was suggesting earlier is in order.

My terribly titled post was aimed at redefining “theology” as involving more than just the establishing of facts or the advancement of scholarship. Appealing to Calvin, it assumed that knowing God is a fundamentally different sort of endeavor than knowing, say, a tree or, even, another human being. To know God is not like knowing any other reality in this world, because God, as Creator and Redeemer, is ontologically determinative for the knower in a fundamental way. To know God thus is not just about knowing another fact, but about understanding oneself, about seeing one’s true place in the world. In this way, knowledge of God provokes knowledge of self. Theological rationality is irreducibly spiritual in this way.

Unfortunately, I never clearly brought out the consequence of this which was, for me, the most important point. The point that I really wanted to make was not simply that true theology is unavoidably spiritual, but that theology must consequently take on a certain form or character wherein the spiritual struggle of accepting certain views should be on display and part of the argumentative development. One is not simply making a theoretical case for a view, but is also making a spiritual case. Simply put, theology should be sermonic or exhortatory. Theology should enjoin upon the reader the self-knowledge that is demanded by the knowledge of God and overcome by pastoral-like criticism the false selves that would inhibit the acceptance of the position being argued for. And this is why I recklessly alleged that Rowan Williams is the only true theologian, as his theology is often sensitive to the human temptation to idolatry and often ends with prescriptions about what it means to be human (see, for example, his essay “On Being Creatures,” which not only argues for a certain understanding of the doctrine of creation, but also for a certain understanding of human identity, the moral of which is humility). In short, crucial to the exposition of theology is moral and spiritual exhortation. Theology is more, but not less, than conceptual or evidential argument; argumentation that stalls out at mere description is not yet “theology.”

Now, on to Pope Benedict XVI.

Baptism and Christian Identity: Ecclesial Pedagogy and John Calvin

If you recall (I know it has been a while) that our last post on Gordon Mikoski’s volume Baptism and Christian Identity we looked at Gregory of Nyssa. Now we turn our attention to John Calvin. Mikoski offers justification for his rather odd pairing:

Gregory of Nyssa and John Calvin shared enough similarities on the matter under investigation that meaningful comparison is both possible and useful in service to developing overtures to a contemporary trinitarian practical theology of formation. Both were servants of the church and dedicated their lives to the defense and promotion of the Christian faith…More to the point, both Gregory of Nyssa and Calvin held together the sacrament of baptism, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the practices of ecclesial pedagogy in dynamic interplay” (132).

Calvin’s development of Baptism, Mikoski argues, arose out of the Roman liturgical “subfamily in the early Western church.” This liturgy included: Pre-Baptismal Rites (anointing and renunciation); Baptism Proper; and Post-Baptism Rites (White garment, anointing, imposition of hands and prayer by bishop, anointing of forehead by bishop, and eucharist).

Divine Persons and Attributes

Halden has been musing about the divine persons and attributes here and here, and I thought it would be helpful to posit Edwards as a distinctive in the tradition. The two major issues brought up in Halden’s posts seem to be, in the first, the question of relations in the Trinity and simplicity, and, in the second, the question of attributes. In the second post, Halden questions the move to punt difference to procession and spend the rest of the time making sure there is no difference in attributes between the triune three. I think Edwards has a solution.

Using the psychological analogy, Edwards suggests that the Son actually is the Father’s understanding and the Spirit actually is the Father’s will. To be clear, these remarks do not function on the level of appropriation but being. So, how is the Son a person? Edwards runs personhood through the machinery of perichoresis so that personhood obtains only insofar as perichoresis obtains.

Evangelicals and Tradition

In my last post on Evangelical idolatry I focused on the various movements in evangelicalism and how they tend to be attached to various kinds of idolatry. In the discussion on Facebook, unfortunately not had on the post itself, it was suggested to me that evangelicals cannot honestly be concerned with the Christian tradition and still be Evangelical! I find this both possible and shocking. I have often said that if you want to be miserable (and are Evangelical), the best way is to study either theology or Church History, but I never imagined that giving the tradition any weight whatsoever would preclude you from being Evangelical.

I find this suggestion interesting because it could very well help to delineate two kinds of evangelicalism – as well as help explain why evangelicals tend towards either fundamentalism or frustration. Fundamentalism because they border on, or accept wholesale, bibliolotry, such as post-Reformed heretics who were biblicists

Theology Is Not about Argumentation, but Sanctification: Or Why Rowan Williams is the Only Real Theologian

John Calvin began his Institutes of the Christian Religion programmatically asserting that the knowledge of God and knowledge of self are irreducibly intertwined. In this, he stood in a long tradition of spiritual theologians who saw theology as more than a mere articulation of truths, but as a self-involving activity, more about the growth of people than the increase of scholarly knowledge. We ought not make too much of the fact that Calvin chose “knowledge” rather than “will” or “affections,” for while such a decision probably prioritizes rationality and is rooted in the medieval tradition of seeing rationality as the essence of the imago Dei, I think Calvin is far enough removed from modernity to be free from any cold rationalism. Today, we might appropriate Calvin’s thought by saying that for him, knowledge is a spiritual event, for seeing knowledge of God linked with knowledge of self runs against any purely analytic or empirical conception of theology.

Now, Calvin thought this relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of self was ordered, that is, knowledge of God was primary and determinative while knowledge of self was contingent and derivative. Just so, one’s knowledge of God cannot increase unless one’s self-understanding catches up, as it were. Knowledge of God is thus transformative of the knower; one cannot have knowledge of God unless one changes, conforms to the object. No doubt, such a view is tied to a larger theological vision about the relationship between the Creator and creatures where the former has ontological priority over the latter.

We could easily explore with interest said vision. But what I want to briefly point out is how different Calvin’s position is from the general course of most contemporary theology, academic and seminary. In conservative seminaries,

Evangelical Idolatry

I have been thinking, as of late, about the various strategies in evangelicalism to navigate the marketplace of ideas. It seems to me that the typical evangelical strategy to “win” (sorry, I don’t mean this to be polemical (yet) but I can’t think of another word which is accurate), is simply to create something of a boys club. In other words, we surround ourselves with people who both agree with every word that comes our of our mouth and who won’t actually attack our views in any significant way. This is enough, in itself, to be idolatry, but it rarely stops there. The next step is to start a movement. A movement, in these terms, is nothing more than simply organizing leadership and adopting worldly strategies for kingdom building. Once teaching, leadership and dogma can be disseminated, there is a twofold turn outwards: First, a turn outwards to evangelize – not Christ as much as the movement itself - and, second, a turn outwards to attack anyone who thinks differently. The latter turn stems from the inherent fundamentalism in evangelicalism which equates difference with danger.

So, why this seemingly random rant about evangelical idolatry? Well, I have been thinking about what a healthy movement of the church might look like, and I didn’t have any examples. All the movements I can see, from my perspective, seem to be endlessly idolatrous.

The Bible in the Economy of Salvation: Telford Work on Scripture

 [A]n adequate doctrine of Scripture [contra B.B. Warfield and C. Hodge] depends circularly on the very doctrines that Scripture helps establish. It fits equally well at the end of a systematic theology as at its beginning. Indeed, it arguably fits best throughout one’s theological system, developing along with its other categories in order to inform them and be informed by them at every point. The Bible is a truly rich theological resource, as both prophetic and apostolic foundation for Christian doctrine and a beneficiary of it [...]

Systematic bibliology…orders the various dimensions of Scripture according to the divine economy of salvation: The Bible saves because of its divine character and agency. The Bible has a divine character and agency in order to form, reform, and govern God’s chosen people” (Work, Living and Active: Scripture in the Economy of Salvation [2002], 319-20).

“The Bible is endlessly a surprise”: Brueggemann on Scripture

“The Bible is inherently the live Word of God that addresses us concerning the character and will of the gospel-giving God, empowering us to an alternative life in the world…Given inherency…the Bible is endlessly a surprise beyond us…

The Bible is not a fixed, frozen, readily exhausted read; it is rather a “script” always reread, through which the Spirit makes new…Nobody makes the final read; nobody’s read is final or inerrant, precisely because the Key Character in the book who creates, redeems, and consummates is always beyond us in holy hiddenness” (Walter Brueggemann, Struggling with Scripture (2002), pp. 11, 12, 13)

Luther on Proper Meditation: Part 1 – Evils

I will continue our look at Dennis Ngien’s book, Luther as a Spiritual Advisor: The Interface of Theology and Piety in Luther’s Devotional Writings. The chapter we will look at here is entitled: “Gems for the Sick: Proper Meditation on Evils and Blessings,” and is taken from Luther’s work Fourteen Consolations. Ngien summarizes:

In all these consolations the victorious image of Christ looms large, by which we are lifted outside ourselves (extra nobis), and are so caught up into Christ that we might see how, with such eagerness, Christ was willing to suffer on the cross to make death contemptible and dead for us (pro nobis)” (48).

The fourteen consolations are made up of seven evils and seven blessings. Instead of focusing his attention solely on glory, Luther accepts the reality of the cross as forming the Christian life – thereby making this work – as Ngien argues, an exercise in a “theology of the cross.” Luther, Ngien explains, “accentuates the unity of word and Spirit, working together in accomplishing the proper outcome of any act of meditation. The Holy Spirit assigns value and meaning to a thing on which our mind focuses so that whatever he considers as trivial and of no significance will move us only slightly, be it love as it comes to us or pain when it disappears” (49).

Theology on the Way to Emmaus: A Theology of History

We continue our look at Lash’s volume, Theology on the Way to Emmaus with the chapter “How Do We Know Where We Are?” As good a question as any I suppose! Lash muses that our trouble with a theology of history is that we have no summit from which to stand beyond and view our situation. Likewise, he adds:

But if the philosophy of history now seems so questionable an enterprise, how much more problematic must be the idea of a theology of history. If ‘the meaning of history’, the idea that history has some single sense or direction, is a will-o’-the-wisp, how much more insubstantial must be any attempt to perceive how such ‘meaning’ stands in relation to the mystery of God” (64).

There is a sense, of course, that to be a Christian, let alone a theologically minded one, is to necessarily be historically minded. Again, Lash states, “To put it as baldly as possible: whatever be the case with some other religions, I do not see how a Christian theology could fail to be, in some sense, a ‘theology of history’ (64).

Barth on Anthropology: look no further than Christ

The ontological determination of humanity is grounded in the fact that one man among all others is the man Jesus. So long as we select any other starting point for our study, we shall reach only the phenomena of the human. We are condemned to abstractions so long as our attention is riveted as it were on other men, or rather on man in general, as if we could learn about real man from a study of man in general, and in abstraction from the fact that one man among all others is the man Jesus. In this case we miss the one Archimedean point given us beyond humanity, and therefore the one possibility of discovering the ontological determination of man. Theological anthropology has no choice in this matter. It is not yet or no longer theological anthropology if it tries to answer the question of the true being of man from any other angle (Church Dogmatics, III/2, 132-33).

Barth is such a great example of the twentieth century shift in theological anthropology from the doctrine of creation to Christology. Later Pannenberg would propose an eschatological orientation, then Zizioulous and others would retrieve from the church fathers a home in the doctrine of the Trinity. Honestly, when I read Barth I find him so incredibly persuasive (darn him), but I still have misgivings about this move. Anyone want to comment on Barth’s move to dogmatically order anthropology in the doctrine of Christ?

Baptism and Christian Identity: Part 4

Mikoski engages Gregory of Nyssa in a chapter entitled: “Baptism, Trinity, and Ecclesial Pedagogy in the Work of Gregory of Nyssa.” Mikoski claims that while Gregory did not offer any unique contributions to the liturgical framework of his time and place, “His unique contributions to the complex rites of Christian initiation came in the form of insightful interpretations of the meaning of baptism” (83). Mikoski believes that his understanding of baptism contributed to his development of trinitarian doctrine.

First, Mikoski compares the Eastern and Western baptismal rites. For the East, there was a renunciation (facing West) and then an act of adherence (facing East), followed by a pre-baptismal anointing, first by the minister on the forehead and then by someone else to the whole body. The baptism was accompanied by the form, “I baptize you in the name…” The Western rite had a renunciation, followed by the baptism accompanied by “triple interrogation of the faith,” but no baptism form. This was followed by a post-baptism ceremony of prayer for the Holy Spirit, anointing of forehead and imposition of the hands (84). Mikoski offers interpretation: