Truly You Are a God Who Hides Himself

One story making the rounds today is that philosopher Antony Flew has gone from being a renowned defender of atheism to embracing some kind of theism or deism.

While interesting, this shouldn't necessarily be taken as a victory for Christianity. Even if we could "prove" the existence of some kind of limited deistic god, that's a long way from the God of the Bible. I like to recall these words from Pascal:

I admire the boldness with which these persons undertake to speak of God. In addressing their argument to infidels, their first chapter is to prove Divinity from the works of nature. I should not be astonished at their enterprise, if they were addressing their argument to the faithful; for it is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, and in whom we purpose to rekindle it, persons destitute of faith and grace, who, seeking with all their light whatever they see in nature that can bring them to this knowledge, find only obscurity and darkness; to tell them that they have only to look at the smallest things which surround them, and they will see God openly, to give them, as a complete proof of this great and important matter, the course of the moon and planets, and to claim to have concluded the proof with such an argument, is to give them ground for believing that the proofs of our religion are very weak. And I see by reason and experience that nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt.

It is not after this manner that Scripture speaks, which has a better knowledge of the things that are of God. It says, on the contrary, that God is a hidden God, and that, since the corruption of nature, He has left men in a darkness from which they can escape only through Jesus Christ, without whom all communion with God is cut off. Nemo novit Patrem, nisi Filius, et cui voluerit Filius revelare.*

This is what Scripture points out to us, when it says in so many places that those who seek God find Him. It is not of that light, "like the noonday sun," that this is said. We do not say that those who seek the noonday sun, or water in the sea, shall find them; and hence the evidence of God must not be of this nature. So it tells us elsewhere: Vere tu es Deus absconditus.**

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*Matt. 11:27 "Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."
**Is. 45:15. "Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself."

It's Better to Be Right Than Popular

Max Sawicky responds to Peter Beinart's "get tough" article:

Whether a closer Democratic adherence to a “muscular” foreign policy would win elections is an uninteresting question. More important is whether such a policy is commendable in its own right. Beinart envisions a reconstruction along the lines of the late 1940s Truman/ADA crusade against communism, with “Islamist totalitarianism” taking the place of the Reds. He cites Clinton’s toppling of Milosevic and the Afghan mission as precursors of his Trumanesque revival. He attributes Kerry’s primary victory and electoral defeat to the Senator’s ambivalence about Iraq. Kerry acted to placate the party’s liberal base and compromised his commitment (itself problematic, in light of his Senate record) as a liberal interventionist hawk. Bad politics and maybe bad (inconsistent) policy, but is an anti-war posture wrong on the merits? [...]

Beinart wants to conflate opposition to dictatorship and terrorism with the projection of U.S. military force. If you are skeptical of the latter, you are inadequate on the former. If you are prone to recount the historic calamities wrought by the U.S. in the name of Wilsonian interventionism, you are in solidarity with anti-Americanism around the world. PB approvingly cites John F. Kennedy’s escalation of defense spending, glossing over his role in the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, and the disaster that became Vietnam. Similarly, there is no restraint occasioned by TNR’s own endorsement of the Iraqi venture. Never let empirical evidence restrain the enunciation of principles! As I have harped on here ad nauseum, the moral case for liberal interventionism does not imply the practical feasibility of any such project. The moral case borders on triviality: elsewhere in the world, people are doing awful things and somebody ought to stop them.

With the benefit of hindsight, how many U.S. military interventions could be said to have turned out well? I would say damn few. (Warning: Godwin’s Law is in force.) The same goes for foreign aid in ostensible support of Third World democracies. By my lights, democracy is not a common sight in under-developed countries. There are lots of voting systems, but to me democracy requires a great deal more than that.

Economic Populism in the Heartland

David Sirota argues that Democrats can, and are, winning in "red-state" areas with an progressive economic message. A strong case against the conventional wisdom that Dems need to either become more hawkish or embrace conservative cultural issues.

I have no particular stake in seeing the Dems win more elections per se, except insofar as I would like to see a party that emphasized protecting the worker and the small-farmer and made protecting local communities and the environment a priority rather than swallowing hook, line and sinker the corporate-globalist new world order being touted at the highest levels of both parties. Sirota makes clear that, in many cases, this is not an issue of expanding the nanny-state so much as leveling the playing field between, e.g. small businesses and big box stores like Wal-Mart.

(via Godspy)

Sacrifice and Suffering

In a comment to this post Marcus wondered if John Paul meant to be promulgating a new understanding of the Atonement to replace the "traditional" satisfaction theory.

Though I don't believe the Roman Catholic Church has ever definitively pronounced one Atonement theory to be the correct one (certainly nothing comparable to the dogmatic definitions of Christ's two natures or the relations of the Persons of the Trinity), certain passages in the Catechism of the Catholic Church seem to indicate that the notion of "satisfaction" is still considered a crucial element in any adequate understanding of the Atonement.

For instance:

615 "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous." By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who "makes himself an offering for sin", when "he bore the sin of many", and who "shall make many to be accounted righteous", for "he shall bear their iniquities". Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.

and:

616 It is love "to the end"that confers on Christ's sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life. Now "the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died." No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.

I suspect that what the Pope is doing in the passage I quoted is drawing attention to the light the Atonement sheds on the problem of human suffering, rather than offering a new theory. For instance, in his book Responsibility and Atonement, philosopher Richard Swinburne suggests that even if the good of the universe outweighs the evil, it would still be a very good thing for a loving God to enter into solidarity with his creatures by sharing their lot in life, including (especially) their sufferings and disappointments. This is a supererogatory act of divine love, not something God is obliged to do (since, by hypothesis, the good of the world outweighs the evil). It's important to remember, though, that this is in addition to the atoning work acheived by Christ's Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection.

I think it's tempting for moderns to see the problem of evil and suffering as greater problems than that of human sin. We tend to think that God needs to justify himself to us, but that we, on the other hand, don't need atonement for our sins. After all, we're the victims here! There seem to have been a host of new theologies that understand Christ's work primarily in terms of God entering into solidarity with our suffering (or perhaps just the suffering of certain oppressed groups). While this is certainly an important aspect of what Christians believe God accomplishes, I think we lose a big part of the picture if we leave out our need for forgiveness and atonement.

The passages from the Catechism quoted above affirm that it is precisely our disobedience that Christ undoes through his obedience. Christ's sacrifice isn't just his death, but his entire life as a continuous self-offering to the Father. This is the "true worship" that we fallen humans are unable to offer, which Christ offers on our behalf. Or, as Luther was fond of saying, there is a "happy exchange" whereby we take on Christ's righteousness, and he takes on our sins.

Here's how Reformed theologian B. A. Gerrish puts it:

Jesus' offering to God was his life of perfect obedience, an obedience which remained firm in the face of death. Even the death of Christ derives its significance from being an act of obedience. In St. Bernard's familiar adage, "Not his death, but his willing acceptance of death was pleasing to God." It is remarkable how prominent is the idea of Jesus' obedience alike in the New Testament and in the Reformers. He was "obedient unto death," says Paul (Phil. 2: 8). And again: "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5: 19). Hebrews associates Christ's obedience with his sacrifice, making use of the 40th Psalm (Heb. 10: 4-10). Again, in both the Reformers Christ's gift to us, his part in the "happy exchange," is always his obedience or righteousness. According to Luther, it was with his eternal righteousness that Christ endowed his bride (that is, the sinful soul). According to Calvin, Christ reconciles us to God "by the whole course of his obedience." The purpose of the Incarnation was precisely that he might pay the debt of obedience; and even his death is significant only because it was a sacrifice offered willingly. The "victory" of Christ, we might add, was that he allowed nothing to turn him from his purpose to make this perfect offering to God. The crucial engagements in the conflict are represented in the Gospels by the temptation-story, the decision of Jesus to set his face stedfastly towards Jerusalem, the agony in the garden, and, finally, the cross. The victory of obedience was complete when he cried out "Father, forgive them" (the obedience of love) and "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (the obedience of faith). And upon this victory the resurrection set the seal.

Thought for the Day

Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? Obviously, one response could be that God does not need to justify Himself to man. It is enough that He is omnipotent. From this perspective everything He does or allows must be accepted. This is the position of the biblical Job. But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and-to repeat once again-Love, desires to justify Himself to mankind. He is not the Absolute that remains outside of the world, indifferent to human suffering. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us, a God who shares man's lot and participates in his destiny. This brings to light another inadequacy, the completely false image of God which the Enlightenment accepted uncritically. With regard to the Gospel, this image certainly represented a step backward, not in the direction of a better knowledge of God and the world, but in the direction of misunderstanding them.

No, absolutely not! God is not someone who remains only outside of the world, content to be in Himself all-knowing and omnipotent. His wisdom and omnipotence are placed, by free choice, at the service of creation. If suffering is present in the history of humanity, one understands why His omnipotence was manifested in the omnipotence of humiliation on the Cross. The scandal of the Cross remains the key to the interpretation of the great mystery of suffering, which is so much a part of the history of mankind.

Even contemporary critics of Christianity are in agreement on this point. Even they see that the crucified Christ is proof of God's solidarity with man in his suffering. God places Himself on the side of man.

He does so in a radical way:

He emptied himself
taking the form of a slave
coming in human likeness
and found human in appearance
he humbled himself
becoming obedient to death
even death on a cross (Phil 2:7-8)

Everything is contained in this statement. All individual and collective suffering caused by the forces of nature and unleashed by man's free will-the wars, the gulags, and the holocausts: the Holocaust of the Jews but also, for example, the holocaust of the black slaves from Africa.

- Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope

Phooey on Neo-Cold War Liberalism

That's Marcus' response to Peter Beinart's attempt to revivify "muscular" liberalism for the 21st century.

The B-I-B-L-E, Yes That's the Book for Me

Camassia has a meaty post on John Howard Yoder and biblical inerrancy. Basically Yoder's message is: the Jerry Falwells of the world aren't taking the Bible seriously enough!

Not sure if "inerrancy" is the right word though. Maybe "reliability" (as Camassia's post title indicates) or "trustworthiness." This piece by Richard Hays deals with some of these issues, especially the notion of applying a "hermeneutic of suspicion" to the biblical texts.

Silence Is Golden

Control the thoughts by controlling the tongue, says Steven Riddle.

Christmas Album of the Week

The Darkest Night of the Year by Over the Rhine

UPDATE: Wow - great minds think alike! The Morning Retort has a post on OTR's Christmas album and on seeing them recently. (Side note: I saw them at a teeny tiny bar in Philadelphia in the fall I think it was. Linford was cajoled by the crowd into doing an impromptu version of "Jack's Valentine" here too! It was excellent. By the way, if you think an OTR crowd is well-behaved, try going to see The Innocence Mission in the basement of a Unitarian Church!)

Also, thoughts from TMR on "A Charlie Brown Christmas" which I also watched last night. This is getting weird!

In Defense of Peter Singer

Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Here's Keith Burgess-Jackson on Singer's Animal Liberation:

Obviously, each of us has many interests, the main one being the interest in not suffering. Let us call beings who have the capacity to suffer “sentient beings.” You and I are sentient beings. Cows, pigs, turkeys, and chickens are sentient. Trees and other plants are not. Rocks and dirt are not. Since cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and other animals are sentient, and since suffering is intrinsically bad (you believe that, don’t you?), every sentient being has an interest in not suffering. Trees, plants, rocks, and dirt, not being sentient, cannot suffer (by definition), and therefore have no interest in not suffering. Indeed, they have no interests at all. Nothing matters to them. Sentience appears to be a necessary condition for having interests, and, since being sentient gives one at least the interest in not suffering, it is also a sufficient condition. The class of sentient beings is the same class as (i.e., is coextensive with) the class of beings with interests.

All Singer demands, in Animal Liberation, is that, when we act, we take all relevant interests into account and consider them equally. We must neither disregard nor discount relevant interests. But disregarding and discounting routinely occur with respect to animals’ interest in not suffering. Humans inflict terrible suffering on animals for little or no reason, often just because they like the taste of their flesh. (I refer here to factory farms, where most meat, including, I suspect, all the meat you consume, originates.) That this disregards the animals’ interest in not suffering can be seen by the fact that we would not inflict any amount or kind of suffering on humans in order to satisfy our taste for human flesh (supposing we had such a taste). We are fastidious about respecting human suffering, but cavalier to the point of indifference when it comes to animal suffering.

Just because alleviating suffering doesn't exhaust the extent of our moral obligations (i.e. it still isn't right, contra Singer, to painlessley kill a newborn infant), doesn't mean that it isn't relevant when making moral decisions.

(Note: the stopped clock I'm referring to is Singer, not KBJ, who is frequently (though, of course, not always) right.)

Bandwagonesque

Despite being underwhelmed by their post-Zooropa output, all the hype got to me and I picked up U2's How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I have to say, it is a darn fine record. In particular, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own," "Crumbs From Your Table," "City of Blinding Lights" and "All Becuase of You" have stood out for me on the first few listens. I could be wrong, but this seems to be their most explicitly religious album in years.

Thunderstruck has a comprehensive collection of reviews and other U2-related media items here.

"Torture and Death"

Nat Hentoff on Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's nominee to replace John Ashcroft as AG:

In the July–August 2003 Atlantic Monthly, Alan Berlow wrote a long, carefully documented article, "The Texas Clemency Memos," which told of the role of Gonzales, then legal counsel to Texas governor George W. Bush, in deciding the fate of prisoners on death row, including the mentally retarded. Even then, Berlow noted that Gonzales was "widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee." [...]

"Based on this information, Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one." Berlow says the first 57 of these summaries were written by Gonzales and were Bush's primary sources of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. "Each is only three to seven pages long. . . . Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of the defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim." [...]

Gonzales refused to be interviewed for the Atlantic Monthly article. I would expect that a public official of conscience would have wanted to reply to Berlow's conclusion that "in these documents, Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." (Emphasis added.)

One of the cases in the article was that of "Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old." In his three-page report on Terry Washington, Gonzales never mentioned that Washington, as a child, along with his 10 siblings, was "regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts." And this was "never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Just hours after Gonzales's brief report to Bush, Washington was executed.

In the July 20, 2003, Washington Post, Peter Carlson wrote, "It's hard not to conclude that both Gonzales and Bush were rather callous, even cavalier, about the most profound decision any government official can make—the decision to kill another human being." And now Gonzales will be our chief law enforcement officer.

For more of Hentoff on Gonzales, see here.

Emerging

As far as I can tell, the "Emergent Church" is to evangelicalism what the "postliberal" church is to mainline Protestantism, i.e. an attempt to come to grips with postmodernity through a recovery of a more robust sense of what it means to be the church, often drawing on pre-modern and pre-Reformation sources for inspiration.

The Christian Century has two articles up on the Emergent Church movement. First is The Emergent matrix: A New Kind of Church?

If “contemporary worship” and “seeker services” looked like Christian versions of rock concerts, emerging worship looks more like a Christian version of Starbucks. Small spaces, comfortable seating (preferably couches) and interactivity are prized. But here, alongside the accouterments of café culture, are the very signs of Christian identity that had been purged by the iconoclasm of Willow Creek and its descendants. Candles and crosses, bread and wine, incense and altars create an eclectic, ancient-future blend with the video projection screens, electric guitars, and televisions rolling looped images like postmodern icons. The ambiance evokes more the art gallery than the arena, and the technological elements are intentionally subdued, made subservient to personal connection and spiritual reflection.

Second is an article on Brian McLaren, one of the leaders of the movement.

A Question for Pacifists

As I mentioned here, I think a commitment to pacifism could have major ramifications for how one relates to the larger structures of society, especially the state.

So, in that vein, I've been wondering: Does a pacifist have an obligation to avoid endorsing political leaders who employ violence? For instance, in his book Choosing Against War, Mennonite John Roth suggests that a Christian pacifist might refrain from voting, or at least voting for president, since the President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The underlying logic seems to go something like this. In voting for president, I am authorizing him to deploy lethal force if he deems it necessary. But if I am a pacifist, I don't think it's permissible for me to deploy lethal force, so how can I authorize someone else to do so on my behalf?

It may be that in voting for president it's not the case that part of what I'm doing is authorizing someone to use violence on my behalf. In other words, maybe that's not the right way to understand what I'm doing when I vote. But doesn't it seem, at least commonsensically, that if I vote for president I am (at least implicitly) accepting the legitimacy of using force, since that's a major part of what the President's job entails?

A "Monstrous" Solution to the Stem-Cell Impasse

This is very weird but fascinating. Not sure what to think about it.

What the Left Is Thinking

The Nation has a forum up with input from various left-wing and liberal luminaries trying to hash out where they should go in the wake of the election.

Here are some snippets I found of particular interest:

SUSANNAH HESCHEL:

Democrats are being advised to respond to their election losses by enhancing their rhetoric of religion. What we need to do instead is revive the prophetic tradition, especially its critique of religion.

Major movements of social advancement in this country have spoken in the name of the prophets, not in the name of churches or religion. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, spoke as a prophet, not a priest or theologian, and in fact was regarded with suspicion by many religious leaders, including in the black church. "Let justice roll down like water, and righteouness as a mighty stream," the anthem of the civil rights movement, were the words of Amos (5:24). Central to the prophetic tradition is its critique of religious rituals, beliefs and those who enforce them. In words applicable to today, Jeremiah declares, "An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?" (Jeremiah 5:30-31)

MICHAEL LIND:

In an era in which most US population growth is occurring in the South, West and heartland, American liberalism is defined by people in the Northeast. At a time when rising tuitions are pricing many working-class Americans out of a college education, the upscale campus is becoming the base of American progressivism. In a country in which most working-class Americans drive cars and own homes in the suburbs, the left fetishizes urban apartments and mass transit and sneers at "sprawl." In an economy in which most workers are in the service sector, much of the left is obsessed with manufacturing jobs. In a society in which Latinos have surpassed blacks as the largest minority and in which racial intermixture is increasing, the left continues to treat race as a matter of zero-sum multiculturalism and white-bashing. In a culture in which the media industry makes money by pushing sex and violence, the left treats the normalization of profanity and obscenity as though it were somehow progressive, making culture heroes of Lenny Bruce and Larry Flynt. At a time when the religious right wants to shut down whole areas of scientific research, many on the left share a Luddite opposition to biotech. In an age in which billions would starve if not for the use of artificial fertilizers in capital-intensive agriculture, the left blathers on about small-scale organic farming. In a century in which the dire need for energy for poor people in the global South can only be realistically met by coal, oil and perhaps nuclear energy, liberals fantasize about wind farms and solar panels. And in a world in which the greatest threat to civilization is the religious right of the Muslim countries, much of the left persists in treating the United States as an evil empire and American patriotism as a variant of fascism.

RICHARD RORTY (sounding pretty darn despondent):

As far as I can see, the only recourse Democrats have is to reverse the drift toward the center that began after McGovern's defeat in 1972, and once again put themselves forward as the Party of the Poor. This may not work, but it is the only card they have left to play. They should beat the drum about the widening gap between haves and have-nots, about the humiliation and misery of families without health insurance, about the scandal of disappearing pensions and about outrageous corporate tax dodges, about fabulously overpaid corporate executives, about Halliburton and Enron. If they adopt this strategy, at least they will be positioned to take advantage of any future economic downturn, and can hope for something like a reprise of the 1932 election. If they instead edge still further to the right, the Republicans will simply shift the goal posts by doing the same.

BETH SHULMAN:

We need to continue to push at the state and local levels to bring changes that help working Americans. Initiatives to raise the minimum wage and provide healthcare won handily in states that went for Bush. Yet while we should build on coalitions formed during this election, we cannot just talk issues and policies. Without a clear vision of America based on the values we believe in, we will face another Republican victory. Voters do judge issues through a moral lens. But if the other side is the only one articulating a vision, we will continue to lose. John Edwards began a conversation about "the two Americas." The Democratic Party needs to continue that conversation and set forth a bold agenda based on values that will insure economic opportunity, fairness and prosperity for all.

JULIET SCHOR:

... Democrats must also gain ground on authenticity (character) and quality of life (culture). The former trumps policy positions and facts. It's an animating value in consumer markets, where authenticity is created by promoting a brand myth and history. It's why companies use "founded in" language, and niche brands don't reveal their corporate owners. Once presidential politics became a branding exercise, the value of authenticity soared, and we got "postrational politics." It explains the appeal of McCain and Dean. Bush successfully rebranded as a real-deal Texan. Kerry got hammered as an opportunist. Whether it's possible for him to successfully rebrand himself in the next four years is an interesting question.

On culture, it's not "god, guns and gays" the Democrats should address but the quality-of-life issues that cross the red-blue divide--excessive working hours, loss of community, commercialized childhood and rampant materialism. A people's environmentalism could target the poisoning of food and neighborhoods. Eighty-five percent of Americans believe society's priorities are "out of whack," and they're not all in blue states. But to be authentic on these issues Democrats need to give up corporate money and remake themselves as the party of small donations. It's a bold but high payoff move that would enable both cultural and economic populism, differentiate the Democrats from their opponents and free them up to offer real, galvanizing solutions.

A Final Word (for now) on the Great Sectarian Debate

After some not-so-subtle prodding from me, Jennifer graciously responded in greater detail to some of my questions about "sectarian" Christian social ethics.

Her response comes in the form of a reply to the criticisms offered by Robert Benne in this essay I had linked to earlier.

Here's Benne's criticism:

If God is indeed the creator and sustainer of the larger world of economics, politics, and culture, then we as Christians are called to witness there. Our salvation is not in that witness, but our obedience is. And though we know that much of contemporary culture is debased, we also know that it is not beyond redemption. Indeed, reminding ourselves of the illusions of perfectionism, we might even grant that, relatively speaking, it is not all that bad. In any case, modernity’s own norms of procedural justice and individual rights offer openings for Christian witness.

Jennifer agrees with this and points out that "sectarians" are committed to offering concrete assistance to those in need. The difference, she says, has to do with eschatology:

The main theological difference may be eschatological, as Vaughn points out:

But the difference is that if we believe that Christ's work really changed the world (in some objective sense) and indeed changed the course of human history (that is, it didn't merely create 'possibilities' for the few who believed) then I have to believe that the Church's reasons for caring for the poor, freeing the oppressed, and bringing peace among enemies is not because it is going to make the world a better place (i.e. a useful social strategy) but because we can't imagine NOT doing these things. We simply can't imagine the world otherwise.

I call it living into the kingdom of God, into salvation.

In response to my question whether the church replaces the political order, she says:

I agree the state has a role to play, so I don't know that I would say the church replaces the earthly political order. The Church isn't a political order in the sense that it will pave roads or pass laws. In order to say that the Church is its own alternative polis, you must accept that Jesus, who we just celebrated as King, was political. And that liturgy, baptism, eucharist, hospitality, binding and loosing, visiting the sick, sharing possesions in common, preaching, etc. are political acts that often put us in opposition to the claims the state makes upon us. A quick example: baptism tells us that our primary identity is Christian and makes us brothers and sisters with one Father. The state sometimes tells us we have to kill our brothers and sisters because our first and primary loyalty is to the state, which supercedes any bond we might have with Christians in other countries. (The Benne essay doesn't even mention violence or pacifism, which I found odd.)

So I wouldn't agree that the state and Church always have complementary missions, or that "the state serves the Church by making possible its mission." The life, death and resurrection of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit make possible the mission of the Church. The state can help create a "peaceful" space in which to do that, free from oppression, but I'm wary of "make possible" language.

Great stuff! Let's see if I can tie a couple of threads together and make a little more sense of this for my own edification.

I agree that the different eschatological perspectives of a Yoder or Hauerwas and a Benne are driving a lot of this, and I think that the question of violence & pacifism does come into play as a result, even though Benne isn't explicit about it.

For Benne (and for the mainstream Catholic and Refomed-and, more ambiguously, Lutheran-traditions) the structures of the "larger world of economics, politics, and culture" are more or less given as "orders of creation." That is, they are intended by God as the means by which humans cooperate in the care and sustenance of creation. And, as such, they are fundamentally good, and, at worst, morally neutral. They can be turned toward good ends or bad ends, depending on the character of the agent. Therefore, it makes sense that Christians should participate fully in these structures and attempt to "baptize" them by turning them toward the good.

Someone like John Howard, however, has a much more ambivalent attitude toward these structures. He identifies them with the "powers" of Pauline theology - the suprahuman forces that, while not fully under the control of human beings, nevertheless exert great influence on human affairs.

For Yoder, the powers are fallen, but are nevertheless under the Lordship of the risen Christ. However, they will only be fully subjected to his will on the Last Day. The state, for instance, is used by God to maintain order in a fallen world, but the means by which it does so do not fully express God's will for creation or for relations between human beings.

In his study of Yoder's thought, The Politics of the Cross, Craig Carter characterizes Yoder's view of the powers' relationship to the present reign of Christ this way:

The present age is characterized by the defeat of the powers by Jesus Christ by means of his resurrection and by his rule over them. However, "the present paradoxical state of the world" is seen in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, which says that, although Christ is now reigning, not all of his enemies have yet been subjected to him. So, although they have been defeated, the powers still have great destructive capability and run rampant in the world. One day, every knee will bow "in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10-11). D-Day has occurred but V-E Day is still future. (pp. 146-7)

Therefore, for Yoder, Christians cannot derive norms for their behavior from the structures of political, economic or cultural life that are supposedly "given" as part of creation. This is because the powers retain the mark of their falleness which distorts their true nature. For Christians, all principles of action have to be subjected to and measured by the norm of God's revelation in Jesus.

How is this related to the issue of violence and pacifism?

For the mainstream, or what I've been calling the "realist", tradition, violence almost inevitably winds up appearing "normal," part of the "way things are." For instance, if we take the nature of political authority as it currently appears in our world as given, we will conclude that, since it rests ultimately on the threat of violence, such violence must be proper to the functioning of society. The state exists to deploy violence against internal and external disturbers of the peace. Paul Ramsey, perhapst the most consistent advocate of this position, treats the use of force as morally neutral in itself; it belongs to the esse of politics, and the relevant moral question is determing the proper use of that force, or the benne esse of politics.

For the tradition represented by Yoder, on the other hand, the present behavior of the powers can't unambiguously provide us with norms for behavior. Only Jesus can do that. This entails that Christians must follow their Lord in relinquishing the sword. Violence is not part of God's intention for his creation. The church represents the "advance guard" of that new order that will only be fully revealed at the Parousia. The church is the place where Christians learn how to live into the kingdom, to steal Jennifer's phrase. This is one sense in which I think it makes sense to say that the church is a new polis - it is where Christians learn to live under the Lordship of Jesus.

But if we are truly learning to live in the kingdom, it seems inevitable that we have to reject the world's standards, which reflect a fallen world, not God's ultimate intentions for it. This is the heart of Bonhoeffer's critique of the Reformers' justification of Christian participation in war (and other forms of violence) that I discussed briefly here. According to Bonhoeffer, the Reformers are asking us to divide our selves between a "public," official self and a "private" self, and that only in our capacity as private selves are we supposed to follow the teachings of, e.g. the Sermon on the Mount. But, he argues, our whole self belongs to Christ, and there can ultimately be no such division if we are truly going to be disciples.

Defining Torture

In a comment on this post Bill Keezer questioned whether torture should be prohibited in all circumstances, raising the wrenching hypothetical dilemma of a loved one who can only be saved from certain death by applying torture.

I tried to offer some reasons why one should never resort to torture, but it occured to me that I'm not perfectly clear on what exactly we mean by torture, and thus what kinds of actions fall under that category.

So, it seems necessary to ask: what is torture, and what distinguishes it from other uses of force or coercion?

Here, from the UN Convention against Torture, is an attempt at a definition:

... 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

(Emphasis added)

The highlighted parts seem to me to be a nod toward something like the principle of double effect. It's not torture to inflict pain as a foreseeable but unintended side effect of some other legitimate sanction, or constraint, or whatever. In other words, to count as torture, the infliction of the pain must be intentional and is usually intended as the means to the end sought.

In the post I cited from Disputations, Tom quotes from the relevant passage in the documents of the Second Vatican Council:

... whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.

(My emphasis again)

I think the notion of "coercing the will" gets at part of what we find so horrific about torture, apart from simply the infliction of the pain itself. The notion of coercing the will seems to imply an invasion of the inner sanctuary of the self - of reducing the self, soul or personality itself to a thing to be manipulated. This distinguishes torture from other forms of coercion which at least leave the will intact. For instance, the robber who says "Your money or your life" is undoubtedly engaging in coercion, but the victim's will is still free to assent or not. If our dignity as human beings consists in part of our freedom of will, torture, to the extent it destroys this freedom, destroys the victim's dignity.

None of this shows that the torture is categorically wrong, and there do seem to be some outstanding questions such as: How severe does pain have to be to count as torture? What about the threat of severe pain? Is that torture?

Hopefully, though, a clearer idea of what counts as torture will facilitate the understanding of its moral status.

A Conservative Value: Opposition to Militarism

So says Jacob Hornberger.

Bush, the Pope and Ali G

Godspy interviews Pat Buchanan.

Advent for Non-Liturgical Christians

From Christianity Today:

Once upon a time, in 4th- and 5th-century Gaul and Spain, "Advent" was a preparation not for Christmas but for Epiphany. Epipha-what? That's the early-January celebration of such diverse events in Jesus's life as his Baptism, the miracle at Cana, and the visit of the Magi. In those days, Epiphany was set aside as an opportunity for new Christians to be baptized and welcomed into the church. So believers spent Advent's forty days examining their hearts and doing penance.

It was not until the 6th century that Christians in Rome began linking this season explicitly to the coming of Christ. But at that time, and for centuries after, the "coming" that was celebrated was not the birth of Jesus, but his Second Coming. It was not until the Middle Ages that the church began using the Advent season to prepare to celebrate Christ's birth. And even then, this newer sense of the Lord's "advent" or coming did not supplant the older sense--the Second Coming. And the muted, Lent-like mood of penitential preparation remained alongside the joyous anticipation of Jesus' birthday.

More here.

(Incidentally, this is also the explanation for the new color scheme.)

It Is Your...Destiny

I really like this theologically rich post by Jonathan at The Ivy Bush on why, despite his appreciation for Calvinism, he remains an Arminian/Wesleyan.

As a Lutheran, I suppose I should be more sympathetic to the Calvinist side of the debate, but I've always thought that traditional Lutheran theology has a hard time avoiding the dilemma of Calvinist predestinarianism (is that a word?) on the one hand, and universalism on the other.

Stem Cells and Scientism

Paul Cella lucidly dissects the fallacy of appealing to "Science" to settle what are ultimately moral and philosophical debates:

Science, when it aspires to step outside itself and explain how its fruits should be put to use, is no longer science but philosophy. The scientific enterprise tells us how a discrete question is to be answered; it does not tell us how to apply that answer to life. We want to discover whether genetic cloning at the embryonic stage is possible: science can answer that question. But it can tell us almost precisely nothing about whether such technology ought to be used by men (the only assistance I can imagine science providing on this latter question is to inform us that cloning carries high risks of failure.) Bereft of first principles, Science is nothing but a mass of unconnected facts, an organ with no mind to command it. Practically speaking, the demand for decisions to be made on the basis of science alone has meant that while profounder schools of philosophy are excluded, a sort of utilitarianism reigns, a dull calculation of pleasure and pain which scorns all concerns about the wider social state, much less the wider moral order.

Possibly the Only Time I'll Ever Post on Homosexuality

Fellow Lutheran Dwight P. at Versus Populum has a very thoughtful essay on same-sex relationships in the church that actually pretty closely matches the place where I am on the issue: a desire to be faithful to the witness of Scripture and tradition existing in tension with personal experience of gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances.

I have virtually nothing of value to add to the public debate on this, except, perhaps, that I think a big part of the problem is that the churches (specifically mainline Protestant churches) seem presently to have very little in the way of a coherent or credible sexual ethic, and that having such an ethic is probably a precondition for thinking about same-sex relationships in a meaningful theological way (rather than trying to bring the church in line with our pre-existing secular political commitments, whether "liberal" or "conservative"). By a "coherent sexual ethic" I mean a specifically Christian understanding of the ends sex & marriage should serve.

Most people in our society, and in our churches, have abandoned the idea (rightly or wrongly) that sex is primarily about procreation. Basically we seem to have replaced that with a notion of "companionate marriage" that is all about "self-fulfillment." But again, this lacks any specifically theological content.

Well, ya see, there's good torture and there's bad torture...

Tom at Disputations puts the smackdown on a specious attempt by Linda Chavez to justify torture (and bashes the Jesuits a bit for good measure).

Joaquin Phoenix as the Man in Black

Photos from the upcoming movie Walk the Line (also starring the very fetching Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash). Not sure if Phoenix has the gravitas to pull it off. I'll reserve judgment til I see the film.

(via Thunderstruck)

Red Meets Blue at the Foot of the Cross

Here's a moving story by Sojourners' Jim Wallis about reconciling with a fellow evangelical and political opposite:

The experience of my relationship with Bill Bright has taught me much about the promise and power of reconciliation. I will never again deny the prospect of coming together with those with whom I disagree. It is indeed the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to break down the walls between us. Thank you, Bill. I will never forget you.

Catholic Conservatives and the Iraq War

This looks good. Haven't read the whole thing yet.

(via Amy Welborn)

Worship as a Political Act

The post from Keith at ATR on the political significance of the sacraments reminded me of this essay by Peter Leithart from a few years ago.

The problem with injecting politics into the church's worship, according to Leithart, is that it presupposes that worship, considered in itself, is apolitical:

My insistence on the inseparability of liturgy and politics is not an endorsement of trendy efforts to make Christian liturgy “more relevant.” Liturgies for the homeless, for AIDS victims, for the oppressed peoples of the earth, for the whales, for an end to Florida’s recounts, for whatever are objectionable not only because they are kitschy and not only because they bind worship to a political agenda. More fundamentally, they are objectionable because they assume that the liturgy itself is apolitical and needs to be made political. Those who wish to purify the liturgy of politics and those who want to inject contemporary politics into the liturgy share a common basic outlook: both assume that politics and liturgy are separable zones of life, which can be mixed or not mixed as we please.

Worship is a political act because it orients us to our citizenship in the heavenly city which trumps all earthly allegiances:

Paul did not require that Christians renounce all rights as citizens—he himself made use of his rights as a Roman to advance the gospel—but the fact that the Corinthians ate at the Lord’s table meant they were citizens of the Lord’s city to which their citizenship in Corinth had to be subordinate. This was not an apolitical act or a renunciation of politics, but a sign that the Church was a different sort of political order. As such, it was a direct challenge to the claims of the pagan political order.

This challenge requires that Christians maintain a critical distance from all earthly politics:

The Eucharist was a sign of the Church’s distinctness from the world, a sign that she constituted a new “city” that had invaded the ancient city, a sign that, contrary to Aristotle, the virtuous life was lived in the Church rather than in the Greek polis. By participating in this ritual, Christians were committing themselves to maintaining a critical distance from the political system. They were committing themselves to what Rowan Williams has called the “fundamental Christian vocation of not belonging.” And that commitment, enacted liturgically, is emphatically political.

Hauerwas, Cavanaugh and ... Bono?

If you go to the Amazon page for The Hauerwas Reader and scroll down you will see this:

Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items:

• After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas by Stanley Hauerwas
  
• With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology : Being Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 2001 by Stanley Hauerwas
  
• Theopolitical Imagination by William T. Cavanaugh
  
• How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb ~ U2

U2 - the official soundtrack of the postliberal church?

Libertarians and War (Yet Again)

Non-libertarian Matthew Yglesias weighs in on the running debate between interventionist and non-interventionist libertarians:

Making war is a massive deployment of the state's coercive force, both against the target population and (in order to acquire the necessary warmaking resources) the warmaking nation's home population. All ideological points-of-view represented in contemporary American society involve some skepticism about the advisability and/or morality of deployments of the state's coercive force. Libertarianism (in all its varieties) is all about taking this skepticism rather further than do other points of view. Since libertarians are skeptics about the use of the state's coercive force and war is a huge use of coercive force, libertarians ought to be skeptics about war.

That seems right to me, both from a libertarian and a non-libertarian point of view. I think anyone in their right mind should be skeptical about the deployment of the state's coercive force. Since war is far and away the most destructive use of that force, it ought to be subject to particularly strict scrutiny and moral restraints. This is what just-war theory is essentially all about. There is a presumption against the use of force, a presumption which should be overturned only under strict conditions.

I blogged on the great libertarian foreign policy debate a bit here and here.

Lewis-olatry and Statist Salvation

Well, someone has been blogging up a storm at the Japery. (Is "Father Jape" a collective nome de blog for various contributors? That's my suspicion...)

Anyway, here we have a response to S. M. Huthchen's piece on C. S. Lewis' Protestantism (which I mentioned the other day). Fr. Jape notes the obsession many evangelicals and Catholics seem to have with discerning where Lewis would stand on the great issues of today:

In the end, the whole argument about Lewis is silly. He is yet again an imaginary proxy for the ideal learned evangelical and perhaps for Pearce, an almost ideal Catholic. What Would Jack Do? This, of course, is code for "what should we (orthodox, thinking Protestants) do--or at least strongly consider doing?"

Also, a pointed response to William Stuntz's call for an evangelical/professorial axis on economic issues:

William J. Stuntz, an (ex?) "Evangelical" and Professor at Harvard Law School, thinks "there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?)." Opines the Professor, "These men and women vote Republican not because they like the party's policy toward poverty -- cut taxes and hope for the best -- but because poverty isn't on the table anymore. In evangelical churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems much concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it."

If the Democrats would just lean further to the left and return to statist social welfare agendas... indeed, that is the ticket. This sort of thinking ought to be encouraged. Hillary and Obama is the way to go! And if this is their official campaign music, they are a shoe-in in 2008.

Yet, in all seriousness, there is probably more than a grain of truth to the Professor's view of Evangelicals, who consistently lack the deeper insight and cultural resources on "values" issues that would fortify them against the temptation of the liberal statist salvation gospel and press them to define an authentic conservatism, or simply a politics of truth and justice, which is not on offer in any political party today.

Spoken like a true sectarian!

The Politics of the Table

Keith at Among the Ruins meditates on how Christians should exercise power in the world:

...I tend to shy away from any blending of the church with political power because I believe that it is inherently dangerous and almost always corrupting for the church. But, at the same time, I am not ready to give up the idea that the church ideally can be and should be a political force to be reckoned with in the world: a power that can evoke change on behalf of those who are weak as it lives out its calling to be the kingdom of God on earth. So the question is raised: how should the church exercise power in the world?

For the Falwells and the Dobsons, the answer can be found in organization, motivation, and mobilization. But that's just playing on the world's turf, and while you may win sometimes, you will just as often lose; in the end, nothing much will change. So perhaps we should turn to something else—the sacraments. Those who seek to overthrow the status quo through votes or influence will likely scoff at the idea that the sharing of bread and the pouring of wine can influence something like a government, but I think they underestimate the power that these sacraments have for the church. The bread and the wine represent Christ's death and burial, and the word that they preach is that, in the midst of the hopelessness that springs from seeing love resisted and annihilated, powerful and reinvigorating forces can spring forth, ones greater than any previously imagined. The sacraments preach to the nobodies of this world that there is someone for them and with them, and that someone has chosen them to help shake and confound the very foundations of power.

More here.