LTJ on Authority

This is one of the better articles that I have read on the issue of Authority as it pertains to the issue of homosexuality. Thank you Luke Timothy Johnson for writing it. It quickly cuts through the red tape and puts the issue that few people seem to actually be discussing.

So we can—and should—understand the mix of fear and anger that fuels the passionate defense of such positions. For those who hold them, something sacred is at stake. And something sacred is at stake. The authority of Scripture and of the church’s tradition is scarcely trivial.

LTJ writes from the perspective that homosexual unions should be an allowed practice within Christianity. And he knows what that entails.

The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself…

I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. By so doing, we explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality—namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order.

Of course, anyone coming from a Protestant tradition (mind you that LTJ does as well), will have an issue with this approach, he defends it:

The answer is that over time the human experience of slavery and its horror came home to the popular conscience—through personal testimony and direct personal contact, through fiction like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and, of course, through a great Civil War in which ghastly numbers of people gave their lives so that slaves could be seen not as property but as persons. As persons, they could be treated by the same law of love that governed relations among all Christians, and could therefore eventually also realize full civil rights within society. And once that experience of their full humanity and the evil of their bondage reached a stage of critical consciousness, this nation could neither turn back to the practice of slavery nor ever read the Bible in the same way again.

Many of us who stand for the full recognition of gay and lesbian persons within the Christian communion find ourselves in a position similar to that of the early abolitionists—and of the early advocates for women’s full and equal roles in church and society. We are fully aware of the weight of scriptural evidence pointing away from our position, yet place our trust in the power of the living God to reveal as powerfully through personal experience and testimony as through written texts. To justify this trust, we invoke the basic Pauline principle that the Spirit gives life but the letter kills (2 Corinthians 3:6). And if the letter of Scripture cannot find room for the activity of the living God in the transformation of human lives, then trust and obedience must be paid to the living God rather than to the words of Scripture.

His key to ‘experience’ is precisely something one needs to be aware of: the transformation of a human life. After all that is what the gospel is all about, a transformation. There was no Scriptural reason for either the ordination of woman, or the removal of slavery. Yet, both Scripture and transformative experiences, were used to justify both advances.

By “experience” we do not mean every idiosyncratic or impulsive expression of human desire. We refer rather to those profound stories of bondage and freedom, longing and love, shared by thousands of persons over many centuries and across many cultures, that help define them as human. The church cannot say “yes” to what the New Testament calls porneia (“sexual immorality”); but the church must say yes to the witness of lives that build the holiness of the church.

Before I get called for blasphemy and out-and-out revisionism let LTJ remind us of something:

Such discernment is difficult, but it is necessary. I believe there is the deepest sort of consonance between such an approach to God’s revelation and the witness of the New Testament. Indeed, the New Testament compositions owe their existence to the struggle to resolve the cognitive dissonance between a set of sacred texts that appeared to exclude a crucified messiah as God’s chosen one (“cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,” Deuteronomy 21:23) and the powerful experience of Jesus’ new and exalted life as Lord through the Holy Spirit—an experience that empowered the first believers.

If you study the NT you have to realize this very basic fact. The Christian faith was developed in contradiction to many Jewish claims. And it was done against a Jewish canon, by Jews. Why? Besides being the largest question of Christian origins, the answer includes “because they believed it to be true”. No element of precedent could be found, no plain meaning of Scripture to grasp at, only the re-reading of their cherished texts in light of their experience got them on their way.

In short, we would not have the New Testament as Scripture if the first believers had not been willing to obey the living God disclosed in their own bodies more than the precedents provided by the writings—writings they also, by the way, considered holy and inspired by God.

I encourage everyone to read LTJ’s article. It is worth the time. Having said all this, the matter is still far from settled. This line of argumentation allows the debate to take place. This validates that the debate is open, and needs to be heard. What is lacking, and something I’ve never seen yet, is an actual theology of homosexuality that is life giving. The love of another can transform how one feels about oneself. But is that the extent of it?

Sacrifice in Evolution

This article gives me a little hope that the contemporary worldview, entirely built on Darwinian supposition, can actually be influenced. I don’t write to address whether or not the worldview is “correct” – as if such a determination was accessible – but that this worldview is fact, and therefore needs to be addressed, wrestled with, and worked with and through. I think that is what Coakley asks for when she mentions better engagement with evolutionary theory.

I especially like the author pointing out that sacrifice is “irrational”, and is also found in natural and evolutionary theory. So much for telling the entire world that everything must be rational. Let’s get over ourselves a bit.

Is Everything a Nail?

So, an aquantaince shared a PDF written by a certain Charles Dickenson in 2007 titled A Proposed “Paradigm Shift” in Christology. The thrust of the argument is to offer historical Jesus methodology as a way to understand Christology, since all previous methods of understanding Jesus and trinitarian ideas have always had their problems. I think this basic thesis suffers on two points. First, we should be careful to think that we can propositionally, without problems, understand either God, or Jesus (regardless of whether it is the historical Jesus or the Jesus of faith, or even if those distinctions are proper). Second, that a historical methodology is applicable to a resurrected and exalted Jesus. All arguments concerning resurrection aside – everyone is in agreement that a crucified messiah-claimant does not start a Jewish offshoot group. To work based on a method that aims to get behind the proclamation of the early Church is precisely to set aside the Christological question as it has come down to us today. On to pointed reflection, I only aim to talk about the interesting points, not offer a full review, so this is going to be choppy.

It seems to me that making a Christological problem out of the crucifixion of the incarnate Jesus Christ by linking it to the Death of God movements put forth by Nietszche is an incredible non-sequitur. The language borrowed has no bearing whatsoever on the concepts behind the train of thought.

It is true that the conclusions of the early Church created problems – they experience these problems. I would sense that any talk of God that did not create problems to be entirely vacuous, making no claims of interest whatsoever. Let us not suppose any construction of God – as they are all constructions – will be without fault. Rather one ought to recognize that our constructions are mere devices, whether those devices be around another individual you know, or around God. Both constructions are faulty, but they are necessary. The better question is not “are there problems with the construction?”, but “is the construction effective?”. Dickinson answers in the negative, as is fair to do.

I find that the true issue at stake here is a failure to grasp the larger picture of the task of theology, and perhaps the nature of truth and worldview.

…only sharpens the question whether they do not presuppose conceptions of divinity and humanity which must now be abandoned as ultimately mythological.

To claim that the very worldview of the Greek Fathers is mythological, seems to me, to be incorrect. At this point, I wonder if I am in possession of a hammer – and consequently see everything as a nail – because the viewpoint that appears to be presupposed is that our Enlightenment, or even post-Enlightenment, worldview is inherently better than the Greek Fathers worldview. Granted they are both different, but if Naugle’s Worldview is correct, worldviews are neither inherently “better” than another. To resort to calling their view ‘mythological’, while ours is depicted as truer is inherently false based on the very function of ‘worldview’. Let it be known that our own worldview is also mythological – just on different terms and it different ways.

Rather, we ought to recognize (again Naugle) that truth is contextual. The truths of (however much is contained in) the early Church belong to the presuppositions, and questions of the early Church. Their answers that they claimed as truth are for themselves. What one ought to recognize is the referent to which those answers point, what considerations in light of their presuppositions did they make, why, and what could they not do? I find more and more that I am persuaded by this maximalist approach:

Third, there is the principle of what may be infelicitously called
Christological maximalism: every possible importance is to be ascribed to Jesus
that is not inconsistent with the first rules. This last rules, it may be noted,
follows from the central Christian conviction that Jesus Christ is the highest
possible clue (though an often dim and ambiguous one to creaturely and sinful
eyes) within the space-time world of human experience to God, i.e., to what is of
maximal importance. Lindbeck

That is to say, if Christ is the perfect depiction of God to us, and the perfect depiction of us Godward, on what appropriate grounds ought anything be denied him? And surely this is absolutely a referent which both the NT and the Greek Fathers point at. This is not to say, however, that everything we accord him must be perfectly congruous as we shift between each of these perspectives. If there is a consistent mistake made, it is one of harmonization, smoothing out the edges for our own mental well-being. Again, truth is contextual. The perspective approached determines the validity. When bringing together perspectives there is no reason they wouldn’t conflict! This is a very human truth, and we are human. The creation of a pure, clean, objective, rational, and paradox-free truth is a hoax. We do not experience that in our lives lived. Why do we create another world in which we apply this strange principle to?

It is at this point if I wonder I am missing the forest for the trees. Is the de-mythologization program exactly what I’ve pointed out? Going behind the worldview and finding the referent? On one level I think I am saying the same thing. However, whenever I’ve seen it executed, no care is taken to our own presuppositions as being equally mythologized as where we’ve gotten this new piece of data from.

So likewise for us today: the very fact that ancient world-views allowed for and even expected the divine to incarnate itself in a human being, but that we today no longer share those world-views, makes it
more probable for us that ancient stories of such incarnations are products of those world-views than of anything that actually happened.

First, the issue is that the Jewish world-view in no way whatsoever allowed or expected YHWH to incarnate himself. This is the standard history of religions approach without taking any sensitivity to the context in question. That is the large origins question that needs answering, in Hurtado’s words “How On Earth Did Jesus Become God?” in the first century according to Jews! Furthermore every formulation comes directly out of one’s worldview and resulting experiences. Those experiences recount things that are perceived to have actually happened. I don’t have to understand the reasons behind the east coast blackout during the summer of 2002 I was caught in, but I experience it and it created a formative experience. The incredible interdependence of our society is just a part of my worldview – and it might not be shared by another reader in another time and place, yet that experience does in fact state that something happened.

I have read Wright’s first three volumes, and am a supporter of his approach in general. What I don’t think my acquaintance realizes is what this actually entails. He supposes that such an approach a priori vindicates his own theological stance, before he has even handled the evidence, over and against the orthodox opinion. As for Dickenson’s essay, I am not sure why, in his estimation the third quest should offer him better prospects for a problem-free Christology.

Ah, Academics

Lessig has to further explain what he was going on about in his last piece. Much like most people misunderstood Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William’s talk about the place of Sharia law within England, I feel that others have done the same to Lessig.

To one degree, it comes down to the difference between academic argument – and don’t forget Lessig was, or still is, a law professor – and the sort of argument you’ll find on Leno, Letterman, or even O’Reilly. No amount of framing, nuance, or subtlety seems to insulate oneself from being entirely misunderstood and caricatured.

It really makes me wonder, as I certainly approach things with the academic method, how to effectively communicate outside the academy. Where effective doesn’t mean getting slammed from both the right, left, top, and bottom, because you might not be an ideologue, or whatever reason. I imagine it requires some sweetness of the tongue that is rather unbecoming an academic. If we all had it, we might as well have been calculating CEO’s I guess.

A Lost Spirit

I’ve left behind a charismatic 70′s Jesus movement tradition. Their prized possession was the charisma, the influence of the holy spirit moving them to such manifestations as prophecy and speaking in tongues. I find that ironic because as much as they exalted these two specific manifestations, they brought any other conception of the holy Spirit right through the mud.

As with most movements coming out of the 70′s there was a deep seeded anti-establishment, anti-tradition, and thus anti-Catholic perspective. In its own right that is rather funny since many Catholic priests of the 70′s took up progressive peace stances and continue to remain a powerful influence to this day. A high pneumatology could not budge them concerning their own condemnation of nearly every other Christian group. I find this to be rather blasphemous, as if the one and same Spirit does not work in all Christians. Their argument would require that the Spirit only works through them, and whatever Spirit might work through any other claiming the name of Christ is false. And the evidence flat out cannot bear that weight. Pneumatology is as much a doctrine of the holy Spirit as it is an ecclesiastical doctrine. This inconsistency, and the fact that it has never once been addressed shows that their understanding of the Spirit is rather naive and self-reflective only.

A movement becomes mature when it can become purposefully self-reflective. I think that is true of both individuals, and of movements. That is what marks adulthood from adolescence, the ability to step outside oneself and one’s desires to see the other and oneself from another point of view. All so that one may better understand themselves. Any movement that cannot understand itself is destined to die out. This movement is at that point. They have no one to carry their torch onward, because no one identifies with their movement, because their movement is undefined. More than a few people have moved on towards definite forms of Christianity, myself being one of them.

One Explanation

Well Done

Monsters

For all you parents out there, this understanding of monsters might prove helpful with your kids

As it turns out, many scholars have considered the definition of monsters, and there is even a field of “monster study,” called teratology. I finally settled on a definition of monsters as those socially constructed entities that either blur existing categories or that must exist between categories, where nothing else fits. For instance, Frankenstein is both living and dead, and Big Foot is only scary if he is both Human-like and Ape-like. A giant lowland gorilla species would frighten no one! In turn, this definition implies that the function of monsters is exactly, then, 1) to allow a culture to express what category formations are important to it, 2) what boundaries are currently being challenged, and 3) thereby to express societal fears about these boundary crossings, usually as a catharsis. Godzilla, as an ancient creature awakened by atomic energy, expressed the fears of Post WWII Japan and America in the nuclear age. Monsters are thus vital to the mental health of a culture, and keys to what a culture values. With Clifford Geertz, I consider religion to be a cultural system. Hence, monsters must be crucially important to understanding religion.HT: James Crossley

Truth is Contextual

If you had any more doubts, take a look at this TED talk. Our mind works on the exact principle that reality is bound within a context. And I’ll leave you with his last question, appropriated: “Is truth an illusion?”

Speechless, Again

For the love of God teach these people some history

Update

This is more like it

Fundamentals of Hermeneutics

Just finished Dunn’s The Living Word which contains one of the single best chapters I have read recently: Levels of Canonical Authority. He also spends a fourth of the book taking apart the fundamentalist hermeneutic strand by strand. Thank you James – I am very thankful lately. I wish I could staple this book to the forehead of many of the fundamentalists I know. Go past your horizons folks.

In short the price of fundamentalism is too high.