All Christianity is Liberal

There is no such thing as a purely “conservative” or “Biblical” theology. It is all liberal, or at least all theology has a liberal etiology, or began as a kind of liberalism, no matter it’s current distinction today as “conservative” in relation to newer, modern liberal thought. In order to see this, we need to define “liberalism” in a very basic sense, apart from our particular historical context and the issues associated with it. JC himself (John Cobb) argues:

Historically, liberal theology developed as an effort to continue the Christian tradition in an increasingly inhospitable intellectual and cultural context by adapting its teaching to that context. Liberals appropriated the results of the natural and social sciences and showed how Christian faith, rightly formulated, could be understood in a way that did not conflict with that new understanding. Liberals appropriated the results of historical study of Christian scriptures and church history and showed how these supported transformation of the Christian teaching. Liberals opened themselves up to the many criticisms of Christianity and sought to reformulate the faith in ways that did not continue the evils done in the past in the name of Christianity. (The Process Persepctive II p. 166)

So what has this to do with conservative theology, or even fundamentalism? Well, it’s all quite liberal, of course. If a broad survey were taken of evangelicals and fundamentalists, certainly core tenants of their orthodoxy would include doctrines such as creatio ex nihlo, the omnipotence of God, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus as the second person of that Trinity, the idea of immortal souls and an after-life, and many other key concepts find their root in extra-Biblical source material and are used to interpret the texts of the Bible in a particular fasion (note: this is not to say that any of these doctrines are not true, certainly the fathers who conceived them thought so!)

The influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian theology, as everyone knows, is tremendous. Clement of Alexandria wrote in the Miscellanies “Philosophy has been given to the Greeks as their own kind of Covenant, their foundation for the philosophy of Christ.” (6.8). In his Confessions, Augustine reflected But when I read those books of the Platonists I was taught by them to seek incorporeal truth, so I saw your ‘invisible things, understood by the things that are made” (7.20). Eusebius wrote that Greek philosophy laid the foundation for the Gospel, philosopher Philo Judaius (of Alexandria), who was the first to synthesize the God presented in the Hebrew Bible with Greek metaphysics (around the same time as Jesus), influenced Clement but also Origen and Ambrose, among many other lesser known theologians. Even the very earliest Christian thinkers, such as Justin Martyr in the early second century, were under the sway of Platonism, and there is good reason to think that St. Paul himself was educated within Hellenistic Judaism.

The authoratative scientists of their day!

What these early formulators of Christianity had in common, and as their goal, in assimilating so much Greek philosophy and concepts into their theology and doctrines about Jesus, is that they were doing exactly what Cobb describes as liberalism within their context, i.e. they were taking into account the highest learning of the sciences of their day, and incorporating them into their faith, as well as responding directly to challenges made from the dominant perspective of their day, creating what they saw as a reasonable, cohesive framework that could be accepted in light of secular knowledge of the world. This was the dominant paradigm for well over a thosand years, with even Thomas Aquinas developing his systematic theology and famous “five proofs for the existence of God” within an Aristotelian framework. In many respects, even Augustine, a paragon of Western orthodoxy, has more in common with those of us who self identify as “liberal,” who seek to do theology in a a time where evolution is an accepted scientific norm, we know many complexities of biological and mental systems, and are able to explain many other things apart from an appeal to the divine.

Rather than Plato and Aristotle, we now have a communities of social and physical scientists, experts in many diverse fields, who raise many substantial challenges to the Greek liberalism that is now standard conservative orthodoxy. For instance astro-physicists who question the idea of creation out of nothing, philosophers who wonder why anyone would believe in an all powerful deity given the world of suffering we inhabit, and even “liberal” theologians who question the ontological nature of the Trinity given the seemingly mistaken metaphysics of substance that lead to its creation in the first place! Those of us who take these challenges seriously, and work to theistically understand the world while learning from these experts, are taken to be liberal, but the only difference between conservatives and liberals is the “freshness” of the liberalism itself. Like theologians who refuse to move beyond Luther and Calvin, who declared “ecclesium semper reformanda est,” the Church must always be reforming, there is the same irony within self proclaimed orthodox theology itself: it is stuck in its own beginning. It refuses to grow, it posits a theology appropriate for a time past and utterly incoherent now. When Christians get caught in the details, the spirit is cast out. Like the spirit of the Reformation was actual reforming, and too often “Reformed” theologians refuse to keep reforming, conservatives are in denial about their liberal heritage, and thus will not continue to be good liberals. A rejection of the most up to date understanding of our world is not a principle the founders of our faith believed in. The attitude of theology was always to add to the conversation, to the secular understanding of the world, not replace it. All Christians are some type of liberal, I encourage my conservative, dogmatic brethren and sisthren to reflect on why they might continue to insist on a world view informed by information that has been out of dat for hundreds (or thousands) of years!

Wretched Forgiveness: How the New Testament Ignores Jesus

Forgiveness makes people very uncomfortable, it’s radical and illogical. So much so, it has even been taken out of Christian theology all together. Often there is a certain economy present in the logic of forgiveness – if the person shows remorse, perhaps repents, apologizes, poses no further threat to the offended party, or maybe even there is a benefit to the offended party – the transgressor may be forgiven. In fact many people see Jesus working in the same manner, calling people to repent and enter the Kingdom of God, and thus be forgiven of their sins. Furthermore, Christians often claim and even more rigid economy to forgiveness than repentance, that of the death of Christ. Christ’s death somehow magically and mysteriously imputes righteousness onto those who trust in it, and thus we are justified to stand before God. This is a very strange turn of events from the Jesus who preached radical forgiveness of sins, not the imputation of righteousness. If we stand before God with our offenses annulled, as some claim, by the death of Christ, then there is nothing left to forgive. Similarly, if we are “clothed in the righteousness of Christ,” something many Christians celebrate the prospect of, it is almost as though we are Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character Dutch in Predator, in one of the last scenes where he covers himself in mud in order to avoid the alien hunter’s heat based vision. Christ is the mud that keeps God from detecting our sin! If we are justified or covered by the perfect essence of Christ, there is nothing left for God to forgive.

So does God actually forgive us? And what is forgiveness? First, it is important to understand that the forgiveness of sins was precisely what got Jesus in trouble with the authorities and ultimately what lead to his execution. But we must be quick to point out that we’re not speaking of run of the mill mercy and forgiveness, for as New Testament Scholar E.P. Sanders points out, the Pharisees were not quite the unforgiving murderous brood early Christian writers make them out to be, early Christians were so cynical about the Jewish religion they render it quite inaccurately. If Jesus had taught something like teshuva, or “return,” he would have been saying something quite Jewish, not anti-establishment. Almost all of the Hebrew prophets call for return, especially Ezekiel and Hosea, and it is hard to imagine anyone would pick out Jesus’ message as such as remarkable or heretical.

We might be tempted to end our discussion by claiming that Jesus offered forgiveness prior repentance, while the Pharisees only offered conditional forgiveness and mercy, i.e. repent and the be forgiven. As Sanders puts it, “The gift should precede the demand.” In other words, Jesus forgives with the telos, or goal in mind of the forgiven repenting. However philosopher John Caputo contends that while this is an intriguing and provocative theological point, it is hardly something that would have put Jesus on the cross, and furthermore if Jesus had dined with the prostitutes and tax-collectors and told them they were forgiven, and that lead to tax collectors giving up tac collecting and prostitutes to stop prostituting, the Jewish people would have been thrilled. These were not completely impractical or non-pragmatic folks! But of course this type of forgiveness, while working in the opposite direction of the pharisees offer, is hardly unconditional, it is simply forgiveness offered “on credit” as Caputo says. There is a demand! Is it more generous to offer something on credit, perhaps without interest, than waiting for someone to earn it? Surely! But again, hardly the radical teaching that gets a man killed.

Sanders proposal of how Jesus got into such trouble lies in his radical departure from those like Ezekiel -  Jesus did not offer forgiveness in exchange for repentance, nor did he offer it on credit, he simply offered it. This was even a sharp division between Jesus and John the Baptist, who also was calling for repentance as a condition. Of course this is not to say that Jesus did not desire for sinners to change their ways, but rather he did not require it, or demand it. Jesus says things like “the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of Heaven before you” (Mat. 21:31) to the Pharisees. This is not an indictment on the poor moral character of the Pharisees – by all accounts they may have been perfect Jews. What Jesus is saying – and forgive my overuse of this term – is extremely radical and illogical, if not downright unethical. Jesus is claiming that sinners, not ex-sinners, get the front row seats in the Kingdom. Not that once tax collectors humble themselves and repent that they will enter the Kingdom first, but that they already are ahead in line!

This is what Derrida would call “the impossible.” It is forgiveness with no reason whatsoever. Furthermore, Caputo comments, this kind of forgiveness shifts the focus away from human beings and our differences, our distinctions between good and wicked, and to the God of unconditional forgiveness. This is a complete short-circuit of the economy of forgiveness and even the ethical. We are no different from the Pharisees, and not by virtue of the typical comparison, that we are judgmental like them. Rather, we are like the Pharisees, and the Pharisees are like everyone else in this sense:

It is just maddening that someone would get off scot-free, without having to pay for what they did. It offends all economy, our economic reason, which cannot tolerate this sort of disequilibrium… We want to get even, settle the score, a point which leads us back to Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals.”

Has this ever been more evident than in the wake of the Casey Anthony verdict? Who hasn’t been calling for blood? Hasn’t this picture incensed rage

in almost everyone who has seen it? Someone we perceived as a murderer, of a small child no less, smiling because they have gotten off “scot-free.” Do not misunderstand me, I am not endorsing anything Casey Anthony did, or celebrating the fact that she seems to be free of any consequences for a truly evil action. Rather, this situation provides the perfect illustration of how typical Jews and Pharisees alike must have felt when Jesus told them that even unrepentant sinners may enter Heaven before them. This photo enrages us because she does not have a look of repentance on her face, rather one of having got away with something significant. This is exactly what the Pharisees must have been imagining in Matthew 21 when they are told people like Casey Anthony may enter the Kingdom ahead of them.

Sanders argues that this casts the “Christian-Jewish polemic in a clearer light.”

This was not a debate between the lovers of the gift and cold-hearted legalists. There was no disagreement between Jesus and his contemporaries, his fellow Jews, about whether God was loving, gracious, and forgiving. Everyone was agreed on the value and beauty of the “gift” so long as it is taken abstractly. What they disagreed about was whether the gift of forgiving occurred under the concrete conditions of repentance and restitution traditionally required by the  law and set forth explicitly in Ezekiel, or whether God granted forgiveness unconditionally and without repentance or restitution to those who followed Jesus. Jesus was being opposed, not by bigots and hypocrites, the unworthy opponents who Matthew describes (Mat. 6, 23), but by earnest and responsible religious people who were understandably offended by his views on forgiveness.  (Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event 223) 

The Pharisees vilified by Matthew especially are only appealing to a common sense of public justice. They want to see Casey Anthony pay for her crimes, just like the rest of us. Rachel Maddow would have an aneurism on the air if Jesus came on her show and declared that perhaps Casey Anthony, smiling as she leaves the court room, may enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the rest of us fine, upstanding citizens. It is scandalous. We already see the early Christians modifying this offensive teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, with his insistance upon repentance, meeting conditions, and sinning no more.

Writer A.N. Wilson postulates that the popular Lucan story of the tax collector and Pharisee in Luke 18 in which both ascend a mountain to worship God, wherein the Pharisee thanks God that he is not like the sinners and the tax collector, the hero of the story, humbles himself and simply askes God for mercy on him, a sinner, is an updating of a pre-Lucan parable told by Jesus. The difference, Wilson suggests, is that the original story is not about repentance and humility, as exemplified in the tax collector, but the unconditional grace and forgiveness of God. Rather than holding up the tax collector as a hero, Wilson speculates that Jesus was communicating that the perfect Jew who does not sin, the Pharisee, and the wretched tax collector, a betrayer of his own people, come before God on equal terms. God’s mercy levels any difference between the two men, and perhaps shows the preferred access to God of the tax collector, who has numerous transgressions to be forgiven. The sun of forgiveness and grace rises and shines upon the good and the wicked.

Going further than demanding humilty to attain God’s forgiveness, the New Testament moves beyond the entire category of divine forgiveness, and creates a paradigm of “God’s justice” or “holiness.” In this system, God forgives no one, rather, God is perceived as operating under the ancient common sense justice of people getting what they deserve, “an eye for an eye.” God is perfectly just, God balances the scales, thus, we must redefine forgiveness. Instead of Jesus-like unmerited forgiveness, forgiveness is reframed in the guise of grace being extended in the form of Christ’s sacrifice. If I haven’t already lost you, I will here

In the oversight (or coverup) of Christ’s teachings on forgiveness, it becomes necessary to “cheat” justice, to find a loophole. If God cannot forgive because he is just, then what? As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, this is where the Church begins theorizing about atonement mechanisms, really beginning at the start of the second century in earnest. We start reading things like Christ dies “in our place” or “for us” so that God is ultimately compensated for the offense of humanity. Others write (even in the New Testament) that Christ’s righteousness is transferred to us if we believe. Not only is this transference conditional, it is not conditioned forgiveness, but conditioned magic, a loop hole. Obviously God cannot stand sinners, the logic goes, he cannot just let them go scot-free, so we must be clothed in Christ, or be in Christ so that God does not judge us. The logic is quite perverse, and forgetful of what got Jesus in trouble in the first place (among other things). The church has done backflips to avoid the idea that God forgoes his claim on any transgression on account of humanity. This idea offends us like sin apparently offends God. I close with one more articulation of the unpopular message of Jesus on forgiveness:

… Forgiving sinners emerges as one of the most fascinating short-circuits of all time. To be sure, forgiveness is is a well-known and venerable idea that enjoys an excellent theological reputation, but it appears, upon closer examination, to be utterly mad and, in the anarchical sense we are describing here, actually to have been more or less rejected by both philosophical and theological traditions, despite the favorable press it is regularly given there. We all agree that forgiveness is for sinners, but when we speak of forgiving sinners, we usually mean for those who are not sinners anymore, former and reformed sinners, or sinners who at least intend to sin no more. But if by sinners you mean people who are sinner and are still sinning, with little or no intention of ceasing their sin, then it appears unreasonable or mad to forgive them, because they do not deserve it and common sense tells us we might not be doing them any favors in forgiving them when they have no intention of reform… but if we are not simply giving back to repentant sinners what they have earned and deserve, then it is the sinner qua sinner, the sinner who is still sinning, whom we must forgive, who, in a certain sense, is the only one we can ”forgive” if forgiveness is a gift and not an economic exchange. Unconditional forgiveness would institute a special alliance between God and sinners, which makes religion, although it says it is for sinners, very nervous, even as it makes philosophers nervous, for they drag their feet when it comes to doing things without sufficient reason. (Caputo, 212)

Lastly, we must remember that forgiveness is not forgetting, just like it is not “hiding” behind Jesus and his righteousness. As the pharisee and the tax collector together on a mountain, it is not as if God literally fogets, but does not hold the past against the forgiven. All the pharisee has on the tax collector is the past, and God wipes it away, not because he is fooled by it or forgets it, but knowing full well what is is, releases his claim on it.

No institute cannot operate like this, with this powerful of a short circuit at its core, and I content there has been a massive cover up. Evangelicals may say you must believe that you are saved to be saved and forgiven, Catholics may say you must confess or say a prayer, many others would say that we need Jesus’ death in order to be forgiven, and thus we theologize til the end of the world about how exactly God can allow us to live, to find a loophole in order to avoid this illogical, wretched, enraging forgiveness. Are we all terrible people for finding this type of “justice of forgiveness” repugnant? Were the Pharisees as awful as Matthew would have us believe? I don’t think so, we are doing what comes naturally to us, yet Jesus calls us beyond. Not to advocate letting murders and thieves run around to hurt people again and again, but to not hold the past against them. To forgive them as they are in the act. While this teaching enraged the Pharisees and other pious Jews and Romans,  the rest of the writers of the New Testament seem to overlook it, especially Paul, who obsesses over “Christ crucified” and hardly at all about the life and teachings of Jesus. If he had spent more time with waht Jesus said (perhaps he did not have access to it), maybe Paul would see that we do not need a sacrifice to be forgiven, that such a statement is in fact a contradiction, and economy in place of a gift. God help us all.

Lord I believe, Help Me Un-believe!

It means almost nothing to state your beliefs. First, a belief is worthless unless it is put into action, and second claiming to “believe x” is the easiest way to fool those around you, but primarily yourself, as to what is most valuable to you (what you value is often more evident to those around you than you yourself). In the first instance for example, it is very hard to imagine a valuable belief that carries no weight in the way that you live your life, this is fairly obvious. These kinds of beliefs are benign and hardly worth talking about (or are they… death bed conversions?). The second instance of believing, wherein you are unconsciously deluding yourself, is much more dangerous. The danger of placing any kind of emphasis on belief is that we can make ourselves believe belief itself makes a difference. For example we believe that we are pro-environment, green, conservationists, etc. – perhaps because we have just seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and have been incredibly moved – but by telling ourselves this story about ourselves to ourselves, an gap is automatically formed, a separation, between who we actually are and who we think we are.

Christianity is the immanent threat with this kind of dangerous believing, for what is the overarching mantra of Christian orthodoxy? Is it not “believe you are saved in order to be saved?” At the core of orthodox theology (and I use the term “orthodox” tongue-in-cheek) there is the assertion that believing something to be true is the mechanism of your own salvation and happiness. If this is accepted, the Christian story is the ultimate narcissistic relgion in which we get to tell ourselves who we are, no matter what we are doing. Here we may read Roman 7: 15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” as Paul admitting “I know I am an ass, but nonetheless I reject this fact and as long as I reject it, God will as well.” Christianity can thus provide the trump card for any action, it is a lie about who we are.

This line of Christian thinking presumes so much as to tell us that God believes whatever we believe about ourselves. 

Thus orthodoxy is the ultimate non-realism about God: there is no big Other pronouncing judgements on us, we decide whether we can be saved or not, and God listens. God is reduced to superego in the ultimate irony of conservative theology, in which it is asserted vehemently the historical and literal nature of God’s interaction with humanity and objective existence in Heaven. Is this really what Jesus means when he says “believe in me” to be saved? Is this not the attitude of a psychopathic or immature lover who proclaims “I love you with all of my being and desire to be with you forever,” however follows this remark with the stipulation of “but if your spurn my love, I will ensure a life of misery and pain for you…” Aside from the dangers of belief itself being a goal, the very idea of beliefs having the kind of efficacy Christians endow them with turn God into quite the narcissistic lover, not an example of true love which never seeks self recognition before the good of the beloved. But I digress.

Perhaps we have misunderstood the man oft quoted from Mark 9 who implores Jesus “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” I like to think of this man as the first disillusioned evangelical, who also having misunderstood Jesus’ command to “believe” in order to be saved,  came to the realization that his emphasis on believing the right proposition about Jesus and God were inhibiting him from entering into “eternal life,” or life of the ages, becoming fully human. This man came to realize that his belief in belief was hollow and superficial, that believing that one is saved in order to be saved is a scam that prevents us from creating a new reality in the now by taking responsibility for our own actions and life.

In the case of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, or any such documentary, the point should not be to get us to accept propositional beliefs (global warming is true) so much as convince us that the alternative, green lifestyle is desirable, that to live in a cleaner, less wasteful world is a good thing, whether humans are to blame for climate change or not . Similarly, the community of believers should not be insisting “believe like us” but rather “come and join us in our project of renewing all of creation.” We need faith, not belief, but what is faith?

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see

Hebrews 11:1

Peter Rollins on faith: 

Today faith is most often taken to refer a way of holding propositions. In other words, faith is considered to be a mode of belief. To be precise faith is thought of as a way of firmly believing something that lacks sufficient evidence to know beyond reasonable doubt. Here are examples,

- I have faith that the rain will clear up later today

- I have faith that my partner will come back to me

In each of these examples the individual who asserts them believes that something will happen in the absence of overwhelming evidence (indeed, for some, faith increases in direct proportion to the decrease in evidence). This will become more clear as we contrast the above expressions with statements that we would not likely hear or utter,

- I have faith that 2 plus 2 equals 4

- I have faith that the milk I put in the fridge will be there when I open the fridge door [unless, of course, you live with people who might drink it]

The point here is simply that faith has come to mean a psychological claim to certainty about something that would, from a purely empirical point of view, be uncertain. In terms of religion faith has come to mean the confident assertion of dogmas (historical, biological, cosmological etc.) that evidence alone could not reasonably enable us to affirm…Paul is referring to faith as a way of participating in a different kind of reality, one that has nothing whatsoever to do with beliefs (for their domain is the world of exteriority)… It is an invisible reality that we do not see, but that we fully live within. A reality that enables us to see.

This is what the desperate man desired, to eschew belief (the kind that is all important) in order to gain access to the “hope against hope” of Saint Paul which leads us to desire a new reality amongst us. Instead of acting as a light that allows us to see, our beliefs, the kind we hold as essential for salvation etc. instead blind us to our true nature and reality. I believe that child sweat shops are wrong, but as I write this, I am wearing a shirt purchased from a well known chain of clothing stores that has again and again been accused of utilizing such reprehensible labor. I am certainly against child slavery, but recently I have eaten non-fair-trade chocolate, which possibly contained ingredients picked by slaves. What shields me from the horror of these realizations? My beliefs against such things. In a similar sense, Christian, or any religious belief, has the potential to inhibit us from addressing the worlds greatest problems by shielding us from the harsh reality. The easiest case to point out is the missionary activity of such organizations as Campus Crusade for Christ, who, rather than addressing serious socio-economic problems in third world countries has, in the past, shown Jesus films and taught the four spiritual laws so that the unbelievers will believe and be saved, in spit of their unfortunate earthly disposition (this is also the message of the newly released, critically acclaimed, and hysterical Broadway musical “The Book of Moron” from Trey Parker and Matt Stone).

That’s an easy target. In our own lives, as Christians, when we believe that we are saved, that we are somehow favored, that our sins are blotted out in the eyes of God (and we want to follow God) we also unfortunately blot our sins from our own mind and consciousness as well. In our own self reflections and world analyses, we miss something. As Pete points out, we make faith simply something that we believe in the absence of overwhelming evidence, like that we are part of some ontological category of “the saved,” or that God loves us and not them. From now on, let us speak of faith as hoping against hope for a new kind of world, hoping for a given reality so badly that we will live as if it is true, all the way to the end when we can’y physically do so any longer.

Let us stop saying things like “I believe…” and proclaim “My hope is here…” We need to leave behind the false security and remember that out material reality is the true reflection of our “beliefs,” thus undermining how we use the word “belief” in the first place. When we come to this realization, and focus on the world we want to create, it is my hope that it provides a bridge joining progressive and evangelical Christians, Catholics, Orthodox, et al in a common ethical and spiritual cause – one where our common hopes about the future unite us rather than our beliefs about the current state of things divide us. I have mentioned the potential unity of Christianity within this paradigm, but we shouldn’t stop there. Since we’re moving the emphasis away from metaphysical beliefs about the identity of God, Jesus, etc. as being meaningful in themselves for some kind of deferred/ future salvation, anyone can share this hope. Don’t believe God exists? Or that Jesus rose from the dead? No problem, our hopes for a new kind of world can still unite us. Do I believe everything I have faith in? No, but I am in favor of these things I may not even believe are real. I don’t really believe that the Trinity is an actual description of who God is, yet I affirm the symbolism of that doctrine as expressing something good and unique about the Christian God. In the same way, on the days I don’t believe God is actually out there, I still remind myself that I think that there is no better story than the Christian story and I still seek to affirm the same things Jesus affirmed, and have faith that adhering to that story has the potential to create and enrich, as I have experienced so many times. Faith is a choice about how to view and interpret the world, and of course we all have some capacity to choose our paradigm, and the Christian claim is that Christianity, the way of Jesus, is a beautiful way to be in the world.

It’s like the story of a non-superstitious professor who was seen by his neighbor nailing a lucky horseshoe to his front door one day. Puzzled, the neighbor asked the cynic why in the world would such a learned, suspicious man be embarrassing himself by putting a horseshoe on this front door where everyone would see it? Without hesitation, the old professor turned an said “Well of course I don’t believe in such madness, but I friend told me that even if you don’t believe in the damn thing, it can still work!”

The point here of course is that the man really is superstitious, he just doesn’t know it. It also shoes us how the story we tell about ourselves and the world to ourselves is often deceptive and dangerous. Jesus told us to believe in him, not to simply “believe that I am a real person who is also a metaphysical God!” It means to have faith and value the same things Jesus did, and perhaps, just perhaps, there is hope.

A Postmodern Confession of Faith Pt. II: Power and Knowledge

While we have already discussed the dangers of onto-theology and how it relates to Derrida’s attack on “logocentrism,” or a “realist” understanding of language in which words are actual representations of the world as it actually is apart from interpretation, Foucault’s project is an attack not on interpretation,  but on what he calls “the modern illusion of knowledge.” In doing so, Foucault seeks to expose the oft hidden connections between knowledge and power, or what we legitimize as knowledge can actually be a concealed play for power, hence his most famous proclamation: “power is knowledge.”

Most of us grew up being told in school and by our parents “knowledge is power” in an effort to encourage us along our educational experiences (though an appeal to some kind of primal Nietzschian “will to power? Who knows”). At the outset, before we may be tempted to think that is Foucault says that “power is knowledge” that we have a simple case of A=B and B=A, so that the two are interchangeable or self-identical. Instead, what Foucault is insisting that we examine is the relationship between knowledge and power. What we consider “knowledge” has something to do with power structure – such a thing is not simply objectively determined. There are powers - political, social, cultural, economic -which have a hand in telling us what is valuable, or counts as knowledge. Foucault wants to implore to us that:

We should…admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply   by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of     knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations. (DP 28)

Following Derrida in his postmodern suspicion, Foucault speaks of his own project similar to Nietzsche – it is a genealogy that seeks to uncover the hidden biases that play into what we consider to be valuable knowledge and truth. In other words, power constitutes objectivity. For Foucault, knowledge is not some naïve thing that is just granted to us, ulterior interests, like all else, motivate it.

In summation, James K.A. Smith writes:

To claim power is knowledge, then, is to make a claim about the power relations that stand behind both institutions and ideals. As Nietzsche earlier claimed in his Genealogy of Morals, good and evil are just names       that we give the power interests of the strong and the weak. Thus “in a     sense,” Foucault concludes, “only a single drama is ever staged in this  ‘non-  place,’ the endlessly repeated play of dominations. The story of   humanity is not the Enlightenment fiction of perpetual progress or the constant 2progression of the race, as Kant (and Richard Rorty) suggest, but rather the shift from one combat to another, from one form of  domination to another.

So, in a sense, we can say that Foucault is Nietzsche’s most loyal disciple, as Foucault actually sets out to prove and research the radical claims of Nietzsche. In many ways, there was no more of an unceasing critic of modernity and the enlightenment that Foucault. Key to understanding Foucault’s rejection of a theory of universal or objective knowledge is his discourse against Enlightenment thinking.

Rather than following the Enlightenment, Foucault draws on Nietzsche’s  emphasis on the richness and variety of reality. Reason and rational discourse are problematic, he argues, because they require that we squeeze the variety of reality into the artificial homogeneity that accommodates our concepts. In this way, rational discourse elevates sameness and  universals at the expense of difference and “otherness.” (Grentz 127)

Foucault wants to uncover this inclination by inversing it, e.g. privileging the unique over the ordinary, different over the same, etc. Foucault is fighting against the assumption that questions regarding universals are more so rooted in the flux of history and context. Instead of asking a question such as “what is human nature,” Foucault examines “how has the idea of human nature functioned in society and culture throughout history.” According to Stanley Grentz, this is the basic principle Foucault uses to undermine the Enlightenment project itself. To do a disservice to Foucault’s nuanced and insightful position, to come up with universal theories, histories, or principles (and we’re not talking science but rather targeting philosophy and history) is inherently a process that covers up the singularities and anomalies that would cripple any universal theory.

With this critique of modernity’s modus operendi in mind, we can turn back to knowledge. According to Foucault, Western society has made three major errors, we have believed (1) that an objective body of knowledge exists and is waiting to be discovered, (2) that they actually possess such knowledge and that it is neutral or value-free, and (3) that the pursuit of knowledge benefits all human kind rather than just a specific class (Grentz, 131). Thus, there is no such thing as our assumed “disinterested knower,” knowledge is pursued with interests in mind, whether they be noble (rare, perhaps) or with more sinister intentions. Similar to Nietzsche’s “will to power,” Foucault describes what he calls a “will to knowledge.” Foucault talks about “discursive formations” as what practices and values institutions create that their particular power structure finds useful. What we call “truth” sometimes pushes away anything it cannot assimilate.

Of course this is all supposed to be framed as “good news” for the church of the future, or at least part of the “gospel” of postmodernism for the gospel itself. As James K.A. Smith argues, while Foucault is a major critic of the Enlightenment, at his core, Foucault is an Enlightenment liberal in the classical sense, meaning that Foucault places a very high value on the individual’s autonomy and freedom. In particular Foucault wants to eschew artificially constructed power structures that use their power to discipline and punish, and to resists individuals being formed by these institutions of power. For the church, the importance for Foucault is to accept the work of Foucault in exposing the ways in which power discourses and disciplinary formation creates desire and value at the individual and societal level, yet we must do so with a different telos than Foucault. As the church, though it is tempting and pervasive, we are not called to be caught up with our freedom or individual rights (Rom 8:29, 12:2). If Foucault has done his job, his work will enable anyone, especially a Christian, to realize the aritifcal discourse that try to shape and control us. The end goal is not autonomy, but submitting to the good authority of God. To ward off idols in order to worship the true God, not the God of power but the God of weakness (see John Captuo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event). Hopefully, the geneology that Foucault exposes to us fights of our “frog in a kettle” mentality, to notice what is actually going on around us, an invitation to a higher consciousness or awareness.

Again, I close with a quote from David Foster Wallace, this time from his brilliant and acclaimed novel Infinite Jest:

Marathe had settled back on his bottom in the chair. ‘Your U.S.A. word for fanatic, “fanatic,” do they teach you it comes from the Latin for “temple”? It is meaning, literally, “worshipper at the temple.”‘

‘Oh Jesus now here we go again,’ Steeply said.

‘As, if you will give the permission, does this love you speak of, M. Tine’s grand love. It means only the attachment. Tine is attached, fanatically. Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith.’

Steeply made motions of weary familiarity. ‘Herrrrrre we go.’

Marathe ignored this. ‘Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.’

‘How are your wife and kids doing, up there, by the way?’

‘You of U.S.A.’s do not seem to believe you may each choose what to die for. Love of a woman, the sexual, it bends back in on the self, makes you narrow, maybe crazy. Choose with care. Love of your nation, your country and people, it enlarges the heart. Something bigger than the self.’

Steeply laid a hand between his misdirected breasts: ‘Ohh . . . Canada. . . . ‘

Marathe leaned again forward on his stumps. ‘Make amusement all you wish. But choose with care. You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice. You, M. Hugh Steeply: you would die without thinking for what?’

Marathe said, ‘This, is it not the choice of the most supreme importance? Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? What to love enough not to think two times?’

Steeply’s face had assumed the openly twisted sneering expression which he knew well Quebecers found repellent on Americans. ‘But you assume it’s always choice, conscious, decision. This isn’t just a little naive, Remy? You sit down with your little accountant’s ledger and soberly decide what to love? Always?’

‘The alternatives are –’

‘What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?’

As Marathe implores us, we must be very careful to be aware of our live options regarding what we attach ourselves to, the world is constantly telling us what is valuable as knowledge and what is valuable to love, thus in order to fight off the default setting of autopilot, of letting others choose for us, it is up to us to wake up (to the “Desert of the Real” as Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix) and choose. To make informed, worth while choices, we have to fight the urge to accept what is handed to us. This is the good news of Foucault.

A Postmodern Confession of Faith

While I realize the term “post-modern” may be passing out of vogue, some of the basic tenants of the movement’s greatest thinkers have yet to be fully understood within the context of religious community. Time and time again I am frustrated with Christians labeling “the Emergent Church” or “postmodernism” to be relativistic or even worse, nihilistic. Oftentimes I think suspicion of things we call “true” (such as what we find in Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud) are mistaken for denial (of truth) and deconstruction is mistaken for destruction. What does a “Postmodern” confession of Christian faith (and perhaps a useful model for other faiths) look like? Modernity failed to take into account the experiences of those on the fringes or the outside (e.g. homosexuals, women, minorities). These failures of modernity contributed to a myopic, narrow view of reality. Something that could not affirm plurality or diversity and was far from the universal “good news” proclaimed throughout the ages, and certainly a far cry from God’s first affirmation’s about the goodness of all of creation. Postmodernity, on the other hand, gives us the tools and guidanc for a paradigm shift which affirms goodness in diversity and difference, not conformity and heterogeneity. It cuts down our arrogant assumptions and opens the door for the silenced and oppressed.  Merold Westphal, in his excellent book “Overcoming Ontotheology” gives this possible confession, taking into account the influential worries of three of postmodernity’s patriarch’s: Derrida (“there is nothing outside the text”), Foucault (“power is knowledge”), and Lyotard (incredulity toward metanarrative”):

In affirming that there is an explanation of the whole of being and I am pointing in the direction of that explanation; but i am not giving it, for I do not possess it. To do that I would have to know just  who God is, and just how and why God brings beings out of nothing. But both God’s being and God’s creative action remain deeply mysterious to me. They are answers, that come loaded with new questions, reminding me in Heideggerian language that unconcealment is is always shadowed by concealment, or in Pauline language that I only see “through a glass, darkly,” (or “in a mirror dimly” 1 Cor. 3:12). My affirmation of God as Creator is not onto-theological because it is not in the service of the philosophical project of rendering the whole of being intelligible to human understanding, a project I have ample religious reasons to repudiate.

So what is “onto-theology” and why should we be concerned about it? Ontotheology is that which places God in the service of our particular philosophical  projects, like rationally explaining away the world around us. John Caputo says that as soon as we start hearing about God as a “causa sui” around the time of Aquinas, it is a dead give away that ontotheology is beginning to take hold. A “causa sui” is a thing that is a cause of itself.  This signifies human beings dictating  how God can be and act. In Identity and Difference, Heidegger says that onto-theology becomes apparent “only insofar as philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires how the deity enters into it.” (56)… Therefore, “we cannot fall on our knees in awe or sing and dance before this God” (ID 72) because this is a God we have contained within our human epistemological and rational systems! There is nothing “other” or mysterious about this God. God cannot just “be,” he must be explained, for Aquinas and others, as having a cause, because in an Aristotelian system, everything has a cause, even if the cause is itself. “The what,” Westphal claims, “of the Judeo-Christian tradition is reduced to a how.” 

But what about these aforementioned worries of Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard? What do they mean. Jacques Derrida is most well known for a theory he articulated called “deconstruction.” As Thomas Oord describes it, deconstruction is:

Deconstructive postmodernism identifies inherent inconsistencies in the language we use to describe reality.  Modernists base their knowledge about the world upon a linguistic foundation they believe is certain, secure, and unambiguous.  They assume that words, propositions, and sentences capture the truth about reality.In opposition to modernity, deconstructionists point out that language cannot be nailed down.  Words inevitably contain unintended meanings.  Communication is never crystal-clear. Just when we think a word corresponds fully to reality, we find it inadequate.

Thus, deconstruction, through exposing the nature of our language as being dependent upon it’s context (think of language as the Emperor in the story “The Emperor With No Clothes”), we can hope to advance that which is undeconstructable, according to the later work of Derrida, and that is justice. Similar to Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology is Derrida’s deconstruction of what he calles “the metaphysics of presence.” In doing so, Derrida says that Western philosophy always has a tendency to want immediate access to meaning.

Derrida argues that metaphysics affects the whole of philosophy from Plato onwards. Metaphysics creates dualistic oppositions and installs a hierarchy that unfortunately privileges one term of each dichotomy (presence before absence, speech before writing, and so on).

This is the philosophical side of deconstruction.

“The deconstructive strategy is to unmask these too-sedimented ways of thinking, and it operates on them especially through two steps—reversing dichotomies and attempting to corrupt the dichotomies themselves. The strategy also aims to show that there are undecidables, that is, something that cannot conform to either side of a dichotomy or opposition.”  (IEP: http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/)

Why must we uncover the under privileged elements? Because of our hubris in interpreting, the universalization of our subjective experiences. This leads to the literary side of Deconstruction where  Derrida proclaims “There is nothing outside of the text!” (Of Grammatology, 1967) what he is saying is that we can never downplay or overlook context, there is nothing outside of the context. To make such a claim is simply to say that “everything points beyond itself to its other, without which it cannot be understood” (Westphal 125). Is this not what the role of our Bible actually is? A signifier? A sign? Derrida c

laimed “the thing itself is a sign,” meaning we can’t get around signs and signifiers. We don’t have access to “things” in the world objectively or directly. When we mistake the Bible as the thing and not a sign pointing toward something that is ultimately outside of language, or ineffable, this is what God warned us about when he commanded that we refrain from making idols.

This leads to Derrida’s critique of onto-theology, or as he says “presence” (the God of onto-theology is always “present,” God is the presence or being that we can come to know, and can be described by language which is able to represent such ultimate reality in its essential nature… we have access to the divine mind) leads, one way or another, to an analysis of language.

Imbued with the myth of “presence,” says Derrida, the Western philosophical tradition makes claims it can not possibly defend and exudes a confidence it cannot possibly sustain. This “onto-theological tradition” refuses to consider that there is in fact no such ultimate grounding for our systems of thought and language… if such a transcendental signifier exists, it must lie beyond language. Derrida thus is concerned with how language derives its meaning. He charges Western philosopher with ascribing objective meaning to our statements about reality. (Stanley Grentz, “A Primer on Postmodernism,” 142)

We always interpret our world on the basis of language, so language itself filters our understanding of the world, so we must be extremely careful with the language we use and continue to analyze, or deconstruct it for its hidden biases and privileging of one element over another – masculinity over femininity, straight over gay, light over dark, etc. So it is not the case that Derrida is some kind of strange metaphysician claiming there literally is nothing outside of language, but that it is useless to speak of what is actually outside without claiming that the only way we can understand that which is exterior to our words in through words. For a Christian, this should pose little threat, for in shedding ontotheology, we should not disagree that we are dependent upon a being that is not contingent upon such things as language, that we do have a grounding, that what we call God is our transcendental signifier. While a Christian is justified in asserting this, we must also be careful to remember the contingency of such an interpretation of reality itself. In the recent collection of essays “Church in the Present Tense,” Peter Rollins makes this point:

…the fundamental Christian event involves exposing the contingency of all interpretations, opening up a desertlike space of negation where metanoia (repentance) can take place (i.e. a substantive change in the individual rather than a mere quantitative improvement)”

It is in this space that is opened up by the contingency (rather than the certainty which takes up space) that we are invited to effect real change with our neighbors. We must always remember that things could be otherwise than we perceve them (contingency), and in fact people do interpret things radically different than us. This open space serves not only as a space for personal transformation, as Pete points out, but also a meeting space for those who do interpret the world quite differently, but share the understanding of their interpretations as contingent. This is not a kind of relativism, but a call to remember that we are always interpreting (either carelessly or well), and when we forget, language is always doing it for us anyway:

Texts that require interpretation are not things that are inserted between me and the world; rather, the world is a kind of text [data] requiring interpretation. Even experiencing a cup “in person” demands that I interpret the thing as a cup, and this interpretation is informed by a number of different things: the context, in which I encounter the thing, my own history and background, the set of presuppositions that I bring to the experience, and more. (James K.A. Smith “Who’s Afraid of Post-Modernism? Taking Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard to the Church” 39-40)

While is often seems like we are not interpreting, or a thing does not require interpretation, we are actually interpreting so naturally we don’t think about it or realize it. Like the cornea of our eye, it is so close we do not see it. Or in the case of light, unless we are looking at something very bright we do not think of the light, but rather what the light illuminates, or allows us to see. Interpretation is light, unless we concentrate on it, or pay attention to it, we miss it, yet it is the thing that allows us not only to see the world but make any sense of it. This is far from relativism, and certainly not anti-biblical. In addressing this criticism, Smith writes:

On the one hand, this criticism is right. I would agree that the gospel is an interpretation and that we can’t know the gospel is true, if by knowledge we mean unmediated objectivity or pure access to ‘the way things are’ (a Rousseauean dream). On the other hand, it is wrong to conclue that this is antithetical to orthodox Christian faith… it assumes interpretation is a disease… that pollutes and corrupts our relationship to the world. But the fact that something is an interpretation does not mean that an interpretation cannot be true or a good interpretation.

Think of the gospel accounts themselves! They contain irreconcilable differences due to their subjective, interpretative nature of actual events, but nonetheless they are all “true” in some sense (for a Christian) and considered good! Everyone needs an interpretive framework in order to understand the world, and the Christian should not be reticent to see how their’s stacks up in the marketplace to other paradigms of interpretation. Finally, to demonstrate this, I turn to David Foster Wallace:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

Wallace goes on to say that his is of course a case of different interpretation, but we must pay attention to where our interpretations come from. He is saying that we must be careful to pay attention to interpretation and choose very wisely how we choose to see the world, that we choose well, with criteria, but understand that our criteria may not be another’s. If we don’t choose, the world will choose for us, and we will live life on a sort of “autopilot.” No one wants that. With that humility in mind, hopefully we can see that interpretation is not bad, not a disease, but real and very, very important. Something we must actively choose and pay attention to.

Moving on from text and interpretation (though much more on interpretative method, or hermeneutics, in a future post), what about onto-theology should worry us in regard to knowledge and “power?” In the next post, we will turn to Foucault to tell us why he makes the inverse claim of a famous axiom that “power is knowledge” and what this has got to do with the “evils” of the onto-theologic.

Depraved Christian Vampires?

In Christian circles, a it’s no secret that a somewhat depraved view of humanity is painted. As evidence of this, time and time again the example is used of humanity putting to death the Christ. In other words, we are so screwed up, as a humanity, that even when God appears incarnate, we crucify him. How utterly depraved and evil we must be. Funny though, how the very act of crucifxtion which is supposed to embody our evil ways is the very engine of salvation, for some. At least the people who like to emphasize humanity’s evil nature. Imagine if we had been slightly less depraved, at least enough not to kill our savior, what would these people do for their salvation?

In a model where Christ had to die for our sins, it seems ridiculous to point to the fact that humankind crucified God incarnate in a negative light – what if we had been just a little bit more well behaved – would we lose our salvation if Jesus was left to die a natural death? One of the many pitfalls of a substitutionary model of salvation… it is dependent on the very thing it is set against in order to possibly exist in the first place. If Jesus had to die at our hands, there are a lot of questions I don’t think anyone can answer.

Why must salvation come through violence? Murder, no less.

Why is God’s plan dependent upon human evil? Dependent upon something God himself denounces?

Is Jesus himself, God incarnate, not enough? The life, the teachings, the presence of Christ is not sufficient? We need something more, Christ’s own death (something he undergoes, not simply him)?

Why would anyone point the finger at Judas if he set in motion the events that would lead to an event that would, purportedly, save all of man kind?

Perhaps we need a call to be less vampiric. The time where we preach the spilled blood of Jesus as the Gospel is over. My hope is that we enter into an age as the Church in which we both move beyond blood and expect more for humanity. Heed the call of Nelson Mandela (from a 2003 speech):

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Amen.

Christianity’s “Exclusive” Language as Radically Inclusive

Why do people remain Christians? Does it have to be because Christianity is the only way, the exclusive, lone espouser of truth, and the only religious system of supreme value? Regardless of your feeling in answering these questions for yourself, consider your relationship with Jesus in light of your other personal relationships (and if you have no personal relationship with Jesus, turn or burn… or continue reading and see if this articulation of Christianity is something you would want to live in the world with). In answering this question, take a moment to consider your closest relationships with other human beings. The married person often feels (or should feel!) as if their husband or wife is the most wonderful, beautiful, in unique human being on the planet- this constitutes a deep love of one another. When a man, for example, encounters another man who is deeply in love with a different woman and makes the same claims of supremeness and uniqueness about his love, rarely does a fist fight or argument ensue over which woman is truly “the one,” it does not strike us as strange that other people can have their own “one.” When it comes to the most meaningful relationships in our lives, we already embrace relational pluralism. With American Christianity’s emphasis on “a personal relationship” with Christ, rather than engaging in a religion, it is ironic that the exclusive religious mindset is maintained. When speaking of faith, when another individual or tribe has found their “one,” at best they are frowned upon and looked at as potential converts to our “one”- Jesus.

Christians can (or dare I say should!) remain Christians because Jesus has been close with them and impacted their lives in a special way that is reserved for Jesus- such as the relationship with a spouse or best friend. We are then still free to realize others have been touched by other traditions and religions in similar ways; we can be friends with them and their leaders, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Krishna, while not being totally devoted to them, as a married man can befriend other people and learn from them, even grow to love them in different ways. Affirming the uniqueness and beauty of Jesus, like doing so of one’s spouse, does not need to entail exclusive truth claims! The wonderful thing about Christianity as a relationship is the way we are able to relate to our brothers ans sisters of other faith traditions, or no faith tradition. By shifting ourselves away from a religious system to a relational model, other world views no longer remain threatening, but become open to our friendship- we can even engage with them to learn and grow in our own “marriage” to Christ.

This view is not to say that there is no need for evangelism, however. Just as I may want others to appreciate the values, virtue, and wisdom of my best friends or spouse, so too the Christian can seek to help others appreciate the value of a relationship with Jesus, even enter into one if they so choose. The difference is people don’t need to be targeted, just as do you rarely target people to become friends with your friends, it is something that can come naturally by first befriending that person and then sharing parts of your life with them. They may appreciate your friends or they may not, certainly not everyone is compatible! Still, for me, there is a universal quality about Jesus that I want others to see about him, to let him make the difference in their life he has made in mine. The uniqueness and universality of Jesus, however, is not exclusionary, it includes and it open to others. Paul Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology at Union Seminary, puts it this way:

Philosophically we can say that the uniqueness of Jesus, far from being exclusive, is a complementary or relational uniqueness. By its very nature, it is able to, or it needs to, relate to others, engage them, learn from them, challenge them.

Or, as process theologian John Cobb Jr. puts it, “Jesus is the Way that is open to other Ways.”

If we as Christians want to be authentic about our relationship with Jesus, we should honestly engage others faiths as such. Christianity, by its nature, is something that opens itself up and creates the possibility of other meaningful relationships with other faith traditions. Still though, one might wonder what is to be done with the seemingly “one and only” language of the Bible. Scholars point out that this language is “confessional” language, which is to say it is the way early communities expressed the way they felt about this man Jesus and how he affected their lives, it was something like “love language,” as Paul Knitter describes. Like all language then it “made spontaneous and abundant use of superlatives and exclusives.” We often say to our beloveds things like “You’re the most beautiful person in the world,” or “You are the ONE for me!” But herein lies the point, this language is to be used in situations of intimacy, not in the presence of those with other lovers or spouses. These “situations of intimacy” are our prayers, services, creeds, and confessions.

For too long Christians have believed that exclusive language was meant to be preached to outsiders, but all along, as our relational model of religious faith suggests, this language for for us in private, not in public. Certainly anyone is welcome to join us and we can tell them how we feel about our beloved, but not by inappropriately using language full of superlatives to demean and trivialize others beliefs. This does not discount the reality of our relationship with Jesus, it affirms our relationship of faith, according to Kierkegaard, as “radical subjectivity.” Statements of love are always so. This is a beautiful thing.

Are We Under the Right Banners?

“Those who love are of God, for God is love”

Earlier, I explored whether or not the term “Christian” actually has meaning due to the vast array of interpretations about what the God of Christianity is like and who Jesus was. I am an enemy of what I perceive as the dominant trend in American Christianity, conservative evangelicalism (not forgetting enemies are to be loved and treated as friends). I have almost nothing in common with them in respect to my picture of God, so it is strange that we are all “Christians.” This is the case because we organize religion around the concept of our ontological sense of who God is, i.e. taking the form of Jesus/Trinity, Krishna, Allah, YHWH, etc, but within the construct of religion centered around divine identity there is always an inevitable myriad of ideas and practices founded upon ideas and interpretations regarding what their identified God is actually like.

My thesis is this: maybe what we think God is like, God’s attributes, are more important than who we think God is, or how he manifests. Let me be clear: the reason I am a Christian is because I feel like the teachings and story of Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth who was the Christ resonate with how reality actually is at its core, and I am in love with following this man/God. I believe in Jesus, truth is made manifest more perfectly than in any other religion, therefore I ascribe to it. I want it to be true and most of the time I think it is. But instead of bickering with others within or traditionally constructed religions, would it not make more sense to band together with those who think their God is like your God? People who value the same things in this world would be able to work towards common goals more efficiently, it seems. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, whomever could band together under the banner of radical compassion, peace, and unconditional love and acceptance (where I’d be) while different members of the same groups could form communities around values such as “people getting what they deserve,” (retributive justice), making sure everyone is straight, voting Republican, and outlawing abortion. (These are stereotypes only meant to serve as an example). I am losing faith that “Jesus” can be a unifying symbol, value, or entity due to the lack of agreement amongst hardly anyone about what he was like. I, for one, would rather practice my faith with those who do not agree that Jesus is God yet value Jesus-esque agape love than those who agree Jesus is Lord yet make him out to be violent, wrathful, and exclusionary. So my question is what benefit naming Jesus as God gives us, when it hardly tells us anything unambiguous about God at all (in light of how we all disagree). My opinion is that Jesus reveals God’s character, but most seem to not care about that and only be concerned with God’s revealed identity because apparently it will save them. Is “the way, the truth, and the life” about lived out values or an identity? I have my idea, but I could be wrong. One thing is certain, however: it is easier to name who God is than understand what he is like and to do what he says. Maybe that’s what’s been behind these different Jesus’ all along. And maybe God regards the issue of whether you believe there’s a God or not as fairly low on God’s list of things he is interested in in you. So atheists, join the party too.

A Nation of Salty Priests

“A Kingdom of priests?… We may not always be used to thinking of the whole of being, at least in God’s intention,  a “kingdom of priests,” an entire nation trusted with duel royalty and priesthood. This vocation often seems to have been submerged or forgotten in the long and frequently murky history which followed. But it lived on somewhere within the corporate memory of the people. And it resurfaces dramatically in the New testament…. Human was simultaneously the bearer of God’s wise rule into the world and also the creature who would bring the loyalty and praise of that creation for its creator into love, speech, and conscious obedience.” NT Wright After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

If God’s people, whether it be the nation of Israel or those he has called since, are truly called to be both royal (see Jesus’ own view of how that is to be lived out) and priestly, then there a a few key observations about what is expected of priests, their relation to the general population, and the risks of entering into such a calling. Three things to consider.

First, not everyone can or will be a priest. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the doctrine of “election” (meaning certain people are chosen and others are not by God) as long as it isn’t bound up with salvation and damnation (Calvinists do indeed bound these things, a profoundly evil proposition). If we are to be a nation of priests called by God, we better begin to think of ourselves as more of what Brian McLaren calls a “crisis first response team” rather than the privileged, “God loves us more” people group. Priests are the intermediaries, not the upper class of humanity who alone get to escape damnation. Just as Israel was to be “a light to the world,” so to the body of Christ is meant to be outward facing, serving as the go between of humanity and divinity. It is the mode through which God wants to bring a new heaven and a new earth into being, not just for the benefit of the priests and insiders, but for all. This has been God purpose from Genesis 1 through Revelation. Priests don’t exist as ends in themselves! They are not priests primarily for their own salvation, but to work to accomplish God’s aforementioned purposes, which, of course, is not to save individuals from supernatural post mortem torture. Certainly it is an honor to be a priest and to be able to have a grasp on the ultimate nature of reality via being blessed with knowledge and experience of God’s nature and grace and we should invite others to join us whom are able, but we cannot forget that the teleology, or goal, of the Biblical narrative is to bring about a new creation, to bring the world to rights, to set things back to how they were supposed to be. We help God in doing that, and in case we’ve forgotten, the way things were meant to be did not include perpetual sinners being tortured in Hell. We are simply the first responders, what the Bible calls the “first fruits, not only fruits, of the new creation, spreading God’s Kingdom which is meant for all people. That is our distinctly priestly role, we are blessed to be able to serve in this way. The atrocity is that Christianity becomes insiders vs. outsiders when the Bible has been telling us all along that God’s plan is insiders for outsiders. As Priests and followers of Christ , we are dependent upon there being non-Christians, outsiders, and foreigners so that we can live out our calling of loving our neighbors and those who call themselves our enemies. In a homogenous world of priests, this would not be possible. There would be no room for God. Another metaphor for God’s people other than priests: salt. Jason Derr, in a recent blog post about Big Tent Christianity (which happened in North Carolina last week), beautifully articulated what it means to be “salty:”

“In other words the goal of the church in this method is less conquest, conversion and constitution – and more salt. A fitting metaphor as any if we consider the notion of the Bible that we are to be ‘salt of the earth’. Salt has as its task to flavor that which is not salt, not make everything into salt. Another model we can draw on is Gods command to Abraham to be a nation that blesses the nations of the world. Again, blessing is much different that conquest, control and constitution.”

Second, being a priest is dangerous. We know that on the day once a year when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, he would wear bells so that should the bells ever cease to jingle as the priest moved about, those outside would be alerted to his death via proximity to pure holiness. In Ancient times, being a priest meant being upheld within your community with reverence and respect, but with that came the distinct possibility that serving God may kill you! Whether the actual deaths ever occurred is speculative at best, however it works as a metaphor pointing towards a reality that Jews and early Christians new quite well, i.e. being persecuted for not just your beliefs, but your actions driven by those beliefs. Something early Christians, it seems, knew quite well was that entering into a community of priests meant there was a good chance it would get you killed. Why were Christians viewed as dangerous and persecuted, just as the Jews were by the Romans for hundreds of years? It wasn’t because of cruel authoritarian leaders, the Romans were actually just as tolerant, if not more tolerant, than contemporary America of various religions and practices. The distinction among Christians and Jews before them was that they would not give their allegiance to Caesar and they had communal practices that, were they to spread, would threaten the foundations of empire (I refer you to Peter Rollins twist on an old evangelical parable for further clarification)Intrinsically, in any state-even America- Christianity should be illegal if it was lived out. But rather, Christians are complicit rather than counter to empires…but that’s a separate matter. To attempt to tie it all together, the point here is that we shouldn’t be expecting “persecution” (i.e. in our culture angry op-eds or an inability to pray in schools) because people are jealous or hate us because of our arrogance, but because we are called, as priests, to relay God’s will into creation, which means opposing principalities and powers which constrict and bind those who are not fellow priests, and may never be called to be. We are called to bring justice (the way things should have been from the beginning) to all, which leads to the last point.

The third point about priests is that they have a greater relative responsibility to the rest of the population. Christians, especially evangelicals and conservative types, love to spend their time speaking of judgement and God’s justice, which, lo and behold, burns only against the outsiders (amazing grace, how sweet thy sound!). However, when priests become poor or even malevolent stewards of truth and fail in their priestly duties, to what extent can the people whom the priests were to be serving be held responsible! Certainly not very much! This turns the table on many Christians, and perhaps in the last days we will see the people God wanted to serve all along standing judgement over those priests who so flippantly failed them. As priests, with an active role in the world, we are called not forgo blaming the dark for being dark, and to be a light to all nations (A light to the nations, not converting them all to be part of the same light!). Instead of preaching to congregations about the sins of secular society, maybe we should begin preaching about the sins of our congregations in failing to redeem all that we come into contact with.

NT Wright ‘s book, “After You Believe,” quoted above, is written because Wright believes character development by “priests,” here in the now, is of the upmost importance because of the vital and life giving nature of our responsibilities. Speaking of Paul’s vision in the 5th chapter of Romans, Wright argues

“Redeemed humans, then, are to share the “reign” of Jesus Christ over the new world. But what will the result be of this “reign”? Nothing short of the renewal of the whole world!

“Reign” is a tricky word in this context and may seem a bit arrogant, but as Wright says, the reign is culminated with the “restitution of all things,” as Peter would say, and if we want to know what God-like reign looks like on Earth, we need look no further than Jesus’ example. It is self-sacrificial love, serving without discrimination, maybe best described as kenosis, or self-emptying. Reign does not denote control over, but support from under, that is the Christian distinction.  A priestly reign is certainly different than most of us imagine, and hopefully metaphors such as God’s people being salty and priestly can be taken more seriously, as they seem to stand in stark contradiction of our traditional understanding of what it means to be a part of God’s story. Grasping the core nature of our roles as priests may even clear the way within our faith for coexistence and appreciation of our spectacularly pluralistic and blessed world.

Does a “Christian” Label Mean Anything?

I wish I could attend “Big Tent Christianity” next month and see how this plays out. Clayton may be dreaming a bit with the Colbert Report petition, but this event brings out an important issue in the language we have been using for thousands of years, and that is what does “Christian” even mean? Could it be that we equivocate every time we use the word as an adjective?

For starters, the word “Christian” has historically been used to denote a set of propositional beliefs about the fundamental  structure of the universe, in some way involving the deity and supremacy of Christ. Rarely is this word (which derives from “little Christ”) applied to someone who does not hold these beliefs but whose actions remind someone of Jesus. You just don’t hear people say “That imam is such a Christian in this community.” At least we can say the label has to do with who you think Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth actually was, if you believe he was the one supreme God of all, then you call yourself a Christian. Problems? I think so. Some believe Jesus hates those enough who don’t think the right things about him to send them to eternal torment in Hell. Some believe Jesus will use his love to save all of humanity. Some believe Jesus is coming back to make his enemies (human beings included) bleed (eh hem Driscoll), some believe Jesus taught a way of peace that he won’t undo whatever the cost. Some believe God preordains people to saved or damned, some vehemently defend the “free” choice of individuals to accept or reject God. One God takes pleasure in destruction, one in redemption. The dichotomies go on, the obvious point being that this term Christian, which is supposed to be indicative about beliefs, really only indicates an incredibly broad belief about various images of Jesus that would be unrecognizable to one another.

I’ll go out on a limb and say the Jesus I belong to has more in common with many Hindu Gods than he does Reformed Jesus, as I also think Reformed Jesus has more in common with certain Babylonian war deities than the Jesus I know. So to say “I follow Christ” could mean “I follow a God who will destroy all those who do not believe in him at the end of time” or “I follow a God who is the Prince of Peace and would never harm a human being.” One side says the other is primitive and blood thirsty, the other side claims the opposition worships a limp wristed hippy.

It’s as if the word “Pookah” referred to a person that is a war monger and also a person who is a pacifist. It’s confusing, the war mongers don’t like being associated with pacifists and vice vera! The case with “Christian” is much worse because it could not only refer to one of two types of things, but myriad types of people, beliefs, and actions. How many Christians have believed it is their duty to kill for Christ and how many have believed it is their duty to refrain from violence in the name of Christ? It would be one thing if we were only speaking of beliefs, but the rubber certainly hits the road when it comes to something like violence. This word describes any kind of person, and has!

My questions are what ecumenicism will look like in this century, and what the body of Christ is actually supposed to refer to? Is the qualification simply a profession that Jesus is Lord, even though “Jesus” hardly ever refers to a God or person with consistent characteristics? How do we link communities which cannot agree on interpretations that are diametrically opposed? How could we possibly choose Whose Community? Which Interpretation? is to be  privileged? At a time when we have so many thousands? How do we maintain the meaning of our faith’s language? Jesus implored us all the stay together, what does this look like, how? Have we failed? Is it always a case of spotting the “real” Christian in the pairing? Regardless, I’d love to hear what would happen if John Shelby Spong and Jerry Falwell walked into a big tent…

*I know these dichotomies may seem extreme or even false, but they are meant to be more hypothetical than anything, surely they exist in some forms, but you  can think of your own. Think people, McLaren/Driscoll, Piper/Rollins, Osteen/Packer, etc.