"Take These Gifts...Make Them Holy..." - A Meditation on Thoeotic Ministry

As I labour in the vineyards of academia, I thought it would be nice to share the fruits of my toils, here in the form of a final reflection/meditation paper I composed for David Yeago as part of our seminar on "Theologies of Salvation." We were asked to speak to the pastoral implications of the various accounts of soteriology we encountered; the following draws primarily on The Life in Christ by 14th-century Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas, St. Bernard's treatise "On Loving God," and the Sacred Meditations of 17th-century Lutheran great Johann Gerhard. This is definitely more of an article than a post, but I pray it offers as much delight in the reading as it did in the writing.

~

An old Vincentian priest who used to preside at our weekly Thursday evening Eucharists at the Denver Catholic Worker was fond of attributing to Karl Rahner the belief that “each human being is the unique and unrepeatable expression of the creative love of God.” When he presided at table, during the Great Thanksgiving, he would often pause over the words “take these gifts; make them holy; may they become for us the body and blood of Our Savior Jesus Christ,” taking care to enunciate the words “these gifts…make them holy…may they become for us…” and as he did so, his eyes and hands would drift from contemplation of the uplifted host to gaze upon the small rag-tag assembly of old nuns, young upstarts, mentally ill residents, drug addicts playing clean for a meal, and all the other jagged edge of the mosaic of the Body of Christ. His intent was clear: what we were about to eat was sacred, but not more nor less sacred than what we would become in the partaking of it.

Father Tom was a liberal Catholic in every sense of the word. Yet, I think in this subtle but profound gesture from Christ’s sacramental to His ecclesial body, he ingrained in me spiritually and in my desire what our present seminar has given me words to express in my intellect and tongue. My transgression of Roman Catholic Eucharistic policy not withstanding, Father Tom moved from second order claims like Rahners or Augustine’s famous “become what you are,” and in worship drew us into a participation of the highest theological order, enfleshing Nicolas Cabasilas’ claim that “there is nothing so sacred as a human being to whom God has imparted His nature,” for, as the Thessalonican pondered, “what then could be more sacred then this body to which Chirst adheres more closely than by any physical union? Accordingly, we shall hold its high estate in veneration and preserve it when, conscious of so wondrous a splendour, we at all times hold it before the eyes of the soul.” What Father Tom’s gentle dramatics made transparent was nothing less than “the dignity of our nature, and also a clear perception of the loving-kindness of God.” Such a ministry, I should like to suggest, lies at the heart of a pastor’s vocation to proclaim the Gospel in Word and Sacrament.

Lutheran pastors in general, and this future one in particular, have long fallen prey to the tendency towards an over-emphasis on humanity’s helplessness and perpetual struggle with their sinful condition. They do so, I believe, in order to safe-guard that most important of Lutheran emphases, the beauty, power, and passion of grace to love the unloveable, redeem the unredeemable, and resurrect the dead. Too often, we allow Bonhoeffer’s stern critique of cheap grace to move us to lay an emphasis on humanity’s need for the costly grace of the cross, even if such moves serve only to back us into the Forde-ian crater of a life-long passivity masquerading as dependence in the face of sanctification. While scathing meditations on one’s wormhood, so much the staple of the spiritual ruminations of a Johann Gerhard, no longer leap from the pulpit to scare the hell into us, we do have the strange phenomenon of 20th-century Lutheranism’s obsession with the simul, in which we cannot quite stand to let go of our corruption, lest, we fear, we lose the grace we need to cover over those practices that keep us feeling alive and relevant.

What is lost, of course, is that just as true sin is often watered down in the lukewarm tea of pseudo-paradox, so too, a true understanding of the dignity of a Christian is ultimately surrendered. By refusing to bend too low, we also reveal our fear of ascending too high; we fear true worth, lest with it, we incur worthy responsibilities. We speak much of God’s unconditional love for us; thereby, we forfeit the opportunity to participate in the exceedingly delightful pleasure of getting to love God in return. And, as Gerhard reminds us, “no one can have hope of loving God perfectly in the age to come, who does not begin to love God in this present age…Love for God is the chariot of Elijah ascending into heaven. Love for God is the delight of the mind, the paradise of the soul; it shuts out the world, conquers the devil, closes up hell, and opens heaven. Love for God is the seal with which God seals the chosen and the faithful.” As the current state of affairs in the ELCA self-evidently attests, not only has the church failed to shut out the world – she has also, in so doing, neglected to open up the heavens.

Just as Father Tom tantalizingly pulled back the corner of the veil of the Bridegroom’s chamber, so too must we pastors see our entire ministry as one of unfolding for our congregation, and before the watching world, the naked beauty of the human being’s true beauty in the eyes of God. For, as Cabasilas notes, “the thirst of human souls needs, as it were an infinite water,” pointing to the fact that human beings, made in God’s image, contain more desires and mysteries than merely their capacity for atrocity. We are finite creatures who have been ordained to infinite ends, and our the groanings and longings of our bodies and our hearts strain towards the One who has made us for Himself. Yet, such infinite means exceed our finite human capacities. St. Bernard of Clairvaux makes clear that such desires cannot achieve their end, that is, a mind “drunk with divine love,” in that time when God “will cause everything to conform to its Maker and be in harmony with Him,” for, in addition to our sin and the persistent presence of the needs of others, “it is impossible to draw together all that is in you and turn towards the face of God” unless the Lord Himself makes such turning possible. Ministers hear every day the thirsty yearnings of their people, longing to slake the parched throats of their souls with the liquid of the eternal Meribah. But we are poor stewards of this mystery, for we are not given merely to reflect thirst back to the thirsty, but also to offer them the water to drink in which they have already bathed. Too often, we believe ourselves to be beggars, and this is most certainly true. But we are also beggars into whose hands have been pressed alms of infinite value, and the Giver would not have us squander such charity on more rags.

Rather, we pastors can take a cue from Gerhard when he urges us: “let Christ be the target at which your life aims; follow him on the journey, so that you may arrive with him in the heavenly homeland. In all things, let your greatest concern be deep humility and burning love. Let love lift your heart to God so that you may cling to him; let humility hold down your heart lest you grow proud.” We are beggars, but the Bridegroom’s servants have been sent out to invite such as us to the feast, and has given us the means with which to purchase our wedding garment! Or, in plain terms, Christians are not called to remain in the gutter of their sins, for in the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, and in the sending of His Spirit, God has made a new creation, and won for God’s children a share in Christ’s very nature! It is the privilege and mandate of pastors to act as stewards of the feast in extending as full and as warm an invitation to those who have been invited, not merely restating sinfulness, but also enticing, enthralling, and enchanting those whose imaginations have been so weighed down with the truth of what Christ has done – united Himself with them, and thus, conferred on them a life that grows from stasis to pilgrimage, desires that blossom from selfishness into service, and a beauty that is a sharing in the Beauty of Christ Himself!

Because of Christ’s grace, we can proclaim with Cabasilas that “it is clear that joy in every way corresponds to the abundance of love,” that it is “apparent, then, that human souls have a great and wondrous capacity for love and joy, and that it is perfectly employed only when He is present who is truly loveable as well as beloved.” As both he and Father Tom make clear, it is not only when pastors proclaim the fullness of the theotic dimension of the Gospel, but also enact it by enabling participation in its sacramental-renewing manifestation that this capacity of the human is made a possibility. As Cabasilas notes, “the table, however, is set forth for those who already have been united…it enables us to use the power and the weapons which have been given us and to pursue goodness, no longer as though we were being carried or dragged along, but spontaneously bestirring ourselves and moving as already skilled runners.” Christ does not gift us merely so we can enjoy the pleasures of loving and being loved in God, but also so that such love by use might grow, and thus overflow into invitations to others to come and join the feast. By orienting their preaching, pastoring and presiding towards this positive dimension of the Gospel, ministers and leaders will not only inspire the imaginations and ignite the desires of their people; they also equip and empower them with the means to live more abundant Christian lives, to experience salvation as ever present, and thus to heighten their eschatological anticipation, creating a feedback mechanism of reciprocal grace whereby desire and service mutually amplify one another until, like a hurricane, the entire world is gathered into the rushing winds of the Spirit, which demolishes the flesh, and clears the space upon which God builds the kingdom, in individual hearts, in the community of the church, and upon the face of the creation.


Meditation upon the wonders of the Gospel in its fullness could and ought to consume never-ending pages of delight and exclamation; sadly, these short pages afford me means to have pondered this small slice of the banquet. But in nuce, what I am suggesting is that in reclaiming the positive orientation of the Gospel towards the dignifying deification of human beings who in being joined to Christ are able to transcend narcissistic obsession with God’s love for them in order to join with God in the pleasure of becoming loving agents, pastors are given not only food to sustain their own grace-fired imaginations and scriptural meditations, but also a deeper sense of their call and a greater vocabulary with which to proclaim the Gospel, making their chief aim not merely the care and maintenance of broken sinners, but more radically, the nurturing, encouraging, and empowering of redeemed saints and lovers of God. Contemplation will beget action, and such action will flower forth in new contemplations in the hearts and minds of those who hear the beauty they have been promised incarnated on the tongues and in the hands of the one preaching and presiding at their table. Then worship will begin not only to anticipate, but also to participate, in the feast that is to come.

Lest this all seem to prematurely lift off into the ether of speculation, I recall in closing the point from which we set off in this reflection. Let us go back to that cramped room in a Catholic Worker house, to a withered old Rahnerian priest, reminding the scraps of the world that they are in fact the feast of the Bridegroom, while pleading in his priestly role that God would “take these gifts...make them holy…may they become for us the Body and Blood…” Such gestures, such promises of God, do not merely lead to monastic navel-gazing; they are the words spoken over chaos which transforms it into new creation. To those true beggars whose dignity has never been known, these are truly words that bring new life. The liturgy of the Worker house forms a people who, in Dorothy Day’s words, strive to create “a society in which it is easier to do good.” Believing the Gospel of God’s gift of Godself to the unlovable, believing in the infinite ends to which all strive, the Workers offer hospitality and aide, material gifts meant to help foster the growth of the seed of beauty they know God has planted in the hearts of all God’s children from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1.4-5). Pastors who practice what they preach seek to live out in and for the body that which they proclaim of and in the Spirit. Even if one is not a Catholic Worker, one can do the same for one’s people, blazing paths of discipleship such that the desires of the heart can become the movements of the body, and the Body can become the movement of the Spirit through the world.

Let us as pastors continue to act as loyal stewards of the mysteries, inviting beggars to be clothed in the wedding garments of the Lamb, supplying them with the wealth of the Bridegroom, and being willing to walk with them as together, we return to the hall of feasting, where eternal desires are given eternal food, in anticipation of the fulfillment of all desire in the world to come. Lord, take us...make us holy...may we become the Body and Blood of Christ. Amen.

(Sources: Bernard of Clairvaux, Selected Works. Trans. G.R.Evans. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.; Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ. trans. Carmino deCastanzaro. Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974.; Johann Gerhard, Sacred Meditations. Trans. David Yeago (unpublished), 2000.)

Collecting Manna: Soren Kierkegaard

"Christ is the way. These are his own words; so it certainly must be true. And this way is narrow. These are his own words; so it certainly must be the truth. Indeed, even if he had not said it, it still would be the truth. Here you have an example of what it is, in the highest sense, "to preach." Even if Christ had never said, "strait is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life," look at him and you see immediately: the way is narrow. But the fact that his life every single day, every hour, every moment expresses "the way is narrow" is indeed a totally different continual and penetrating proclamation that the way is narrow than if his life had not expressed it and he had proclaimed a few times: the way is narrow. Furthermore, you see here that proclaiming of Christianity for a period of a half hour, by a man whose life every day, every hour of the day, every moment, expresses the opposite, is at greatest possible distance from the true proclamation of Christianity. Such a proclamation transforms Christianity into its very opposite...

There is only one way, the one that the proclaimer is walking, proclaiming "the way" is narrow. There are not two ways, one smooth and easy, along which the proclaimer walks proclaiming that "the way" is narrow - that is, the true way, the one he is not walking - thus his proclamation invites people to follow Christ on the narrow way, while his life, and it of course carries a much greater authority, invites them to follow the proclaimer along the smooth and easy path. Is this Christianity? No, from the Christian point of view, life and proclamation must express the same thing, this same teaching: "the way" is narrow.

And this way, which is Christ, this narrow way - it is narrow in its beginning. He is born in poverty and wretchedness. One is almost tempted to believe that it is not a human being who is born here - he is born in a stable, wrapped in rags, laid in a manger - yet, strangely enough, already as an infant he is persecuted by the rulers in power so that the poor parents must flee with him. That in truth is a singularly narrow way...to be born in a stable and wrapped in rags - that is destitution and poverty that can be straits dire enough...but just as he does not seem to be destined for the heights by his birth, so it also remains just about as it was at the beginning: he lives in poverty and lowliness and has no place to lay his head...(from For Self-Examination, trans. Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 56-7).

I Love My Library

Phase One of paper writing is complete. I've effectively defended Rudolf Bultmann against his Barthian detractors, interpreted the liturgy's Gloria as the foundations of an ecclesiological ontology of peace, reviewed Tuomo Mannermaa's Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther's Religious World, and shown how Augustine can claim that the mountains in Psalm 36 are an allegory of the apostolic witness of Church tradition and those shaped by it without being merely arbitrary or insane - as well as outlining my STM proposal and preaching a sermon last Sunday in which I contrasted the Church as spoken of in Psalm 122 as a pilgrim peace march of participation and praise whose purpose is that none be left behind, with the world's tendency towards a trail-of-tears death marching conquest, which destroys, consumes and ravages everything in its concupiscent path - think MLK/Gandhi vs General Sherman, who I'm very much starting to resemble facial-hair-wise given the obligatory abstinence from shaving inherent to all paper-writing periods - the Southerners loved it! Which is all to say: I really have been busy. Sorry for the lack of postings, and thanks to those of you who extend your Advent patience and prayers in my direction. Five papers down, five to go...

In the meantime, I wanted to continue a During the World tradition of praising LTSS' fantastic Lineberger Memorial Library, whose fantastic collection has provided much fuel for this blog's inspiration. This past weekend, Lineberger held its semi-annual book sale, selling off overflows from their collection and from pastoral libraries at the profound pricing of $.50 for paperbacks and $1 for hardbacks. For a mere $20, I snagged a mini-condition hardcover set of Wolfhart Pannenberg's three-volume Systematic Theology, half a dozen hardcover editions of Kierkegaard's works, several paperback copies of Barth's Dogmatics in Outline (to be distributed to unwitting Lutherans for their conversion, er, edification) Yoder's Barth and the Problem of War and The Politics of Jesus, two volumes of Eberhard Jungel's Theological Questions, five different essential works of Karl Rahner, a handful of selections from the Classics of Western Spirituality series, the Early Church Fathers and Christology of the Late Fathers volumes of the Westminster Christian Classics series on Pietism, Gregory of Nyssa and Luther, Bultmann's Hermeneia commentary on the Johannine Epistles and Kasemann's Jesus Means Freedom, a complete set of John Chrysostom's homilies on the Gospel of John, several Hauerwas classics including A Community of Character and The Peaceable Kingdom (again, for evangelistic purposes), several works on 20th-century Lutheranism for my seminar with Michael Root in the Spring (even one by Forde!), Obermann's Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, and yes, I even picked up a few books on Methodism by Duke's Randy Maddox, Richard Heitzenreiter, and Thomas Langford...ah, Responsible Grace! All this on the SECOND day of the sale (I missed the first due to aforementioned paper-writing responsibilities). All this really just reveals me as a complete and total nerd, but there's is something of a foretaste of the feast to come in scoring such a range of works from such a broad spectrum across the history of the Church and still having a couple bucks left over to pay for our CSA crops. Not that I'll have time to read them any time soon, of course, but ah, the bliss...thanks Lineberger Memorial Library, for continuing to make Columbia, SC a better place. If there are in fact indulgences for Lutherans that the Pope is holding in reserve as a surprise on the Day of Judgment, well, surely you shall be first among many to receive them. Thank God you were up the hill so Sherman couldn't level you with all the rest of the city's churches that he kept mistaking for being the site of the initiation of secession. Thank God.

I bid you good evening, completely cognoscente of the obvious fact that this was an almost completely self-obsessed, self-promoting post that will hold absolutely no interest to anyone not equally obsessed with either theology or my attempts to earn a second Masters of its sacred iteration. Even so, thanks for reading, and for keeping me in prayer during this crazy time. Advent Blessings, and grace and peace.

"I also like St. Ath-a-nas-i-us..."

The papers are starting to drop like dominos, but respite time is being strictly rationed for supportive wife and sick-with-a-cough daughter, so alas, poor blog, you continue to remain un-prioritized and un-updated. Here's a treat for your patience, which Herr McNutt has so graciously brought to my attention (that's a real person, btw, not another imaginary cartoon squirrel-like creature I've concocted as part of a weird sleep-deprived hallucination that finds me conversing with empty blog space...). A fairly accurate depiction of the kinds of things one can hear in the hallowed halls of Duke Div - which, to quote the aforementioned pseudo-cartoon squirrel, is "supposed to be funny. but it depresses me." Even so, its an excuse to talk to my blog...my precious...ok, seriously, just pray for me as the paper trail of tears continues - I evidently need it, blog - and enjoy:

Collecting Manna: Theology of the Boss

Bruce Springsteen is a Roman Catholic, but in this recent interview with Rolling Stone, discussing the "vampire schedule" he often keeps while working on records like his recently reissued masterpiece, Darkness on the Edge of Town, the theology of the Boss sounds a lot like Luther's theology of the cross:

I'm an alienated person by nature, always have been, still am to this day. It continues to be an issue in my life, in that I'm always coming from the outside, I'm always operating at a distance, and I'm always trying to overcome my own internal reticence and alienation - which is funny, because I throw myself the opposite way onstage. But the reason I do that is because while the stage and all those people are out there, the abyss is under my heels, and I always feel it back there. I've accepted that just as my nature and it's given me the ability to write a "Rosalita" or "The Rising" or "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" or "Nebraska" or "Straight Time" or "the Ghost of Tom Joad." You can't write those without having had at least a taste of the abyss. It's allowed me to have an emotional breadth and subject matter in my work that is very wide, but then, you also have to live with it [laughs]. (11.25.10 issue, p62).

Luther might put it this way:

One deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and the "back" of God seen through suffering and the cross. The "back" and the visible things of God are opposites of the invisible, namely, human nature, weakness, foolishness. The Apostle in 1 Cor. 1.25 calls them the weakness and folly of God...now it is not sufficient for anyone, and it does no one good to recognize God in God's glory and majesty, unless one recognizes God in the humility and the shame of the cross...This is clear: One who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore one prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and in general, good to evil...God saves no one but sinners, God instructs no one but the foolish and the stupid, God enriches no one but paupers, and God makes alive only the dead; not those who merely imagine themselves to be such but those who really are this kind of people and admit it. (Quoted by Tuomo Mannermaa in Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther's Religious World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010, 28, 33)

I think the Reformer would join with me in experiencing the grace hidden in suffering in The Boss' powerful prayer, "My City of Ruins," left off his list above, but in my opinion, not only one of his finest, but one of my favorite songs of all time, with which I bid you good evening:

Giving Thanks for Primordial Saints

In honor of those whose past and ongoing suffering makes possible our present and undeserved gratitude, let's take a break from dead German guys, and follow the path of the conquistadors across the ocean to be surprised by the grace of God which plants its flag firmly in the camp of the conquered. In his latest work, Christ Our Companion: Toward a Theological Aesthetics of Liberation, Hispanic Roman Catholic theologian (and personal influence) Roberto Goizueta calls the church to "retrieve the significance of lived faith for theology, the lived faith of the primordial saints in our communities," whose faith liberation theologian Jon Sobrino defines thusly:

Saintliness does not have to be accompanied by heroic virtues - which are required for canonization; it is also expressed in a life of everyday heroism. We don't know whether these poor who cry out to live are saints-intercessors or not, but they have the power to move our hearts. They do not perform 'miracles,' in the sense of violating the laws of nature, which is also required for canonization. But it is not rhetorical to say that their miracles violate the laws of nature; it is a miracle to survive in a hostile world that makes their life exceedingly hard. What we call primordial saintliness is the will to live and survive amid great suffering, the decision and effort that it requires, the unlimited creativity, the strength of constancy, defying immeasurable problems and obstacles. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009, 6)

Goizueta goes on to unfold the significance of Sobrino's understanding for those who practice the art of theology:

Perhaps, ironically, the reconciling truth of the crucified and risen Christ is revealed, above all, in the invincible faith of the victims of history, in their stubborn insistence that, in the face of all the evidence, life is worth living; life is a gift. If the young Guatemalan mother forced to decide which of her children will go without food today, because there is not enough for call, can still proclaim, 'caminemos con Jesus (we walk with Jesus),' we must listen. If the elderly Cuban American woman whose family has been ravaged by the violence of exile can still kneel at the foot of the cross, we must pay attention. If the Mexican American farm worker lying in a hospital bed, suffering from terminal illness caused by repeated exposure to toxic pesticides, can still lovingly caress the medals of La Morenita and the Sagrado Corazon pinned to his pillow, we must not turn away. It it can honestly be affirmed at all, the absolute value of life as a gift will be affirmed most convincingly in the enduring faith, the hope against hope, of those persons who daily live at the very limits of life, at death's door. Paradoxically, it is the unloved, the despised of our world whom God has chosen to bring the good news to a world desperate to feel loved. That is...in my experience, the fundamental message of Jesus Christ. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009, 7)

Whether on this national day of thanksgiving they are eating alone at a Burger King, toiling away at Bi-Lo to support their family, or giving a sticker to a volunteer's one-and-a-half year old daughter at a church outreach supper, let us give thanks for God's gift of primordial saints to those of us who cannot know salvation without the grace God gives us through them.

Collecting Manna: Rudolf Bultmann

The proliferation of Collecting Manna posts, along with their focus on obscure German Lutheran theologians, means that the waves of paper writing loom high above my head, casting a shadow over the time I might otherwise be able to devote to blogging. In lieu of potential posts in the pipe-line, here's one of the fruits I've gleaned from engaging with the infamous and oft-misunderstood mid-20th century Lutheran New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann (a co-signer with Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which declared theological opposition to the pro-Nazi Christianity of Hitler's Germany). In his 1950 essay "The Problem of Hermeneutics," Bultmann throws down the gauntlet (not unprobelematically, to be sure) against any attempt to interpret Scripture that seeks to stand apart from the authoritative claims of the text, and thus, to evade personal implication in the claims the Word itself makes on one's existence:

"The true" is made visible in literature and in art, and it is to be appropriated there only by participatory understanding...the demand that the interpreter has to silence his or her subjectivity and quench any individuality in order to achieve objective knowledge could not be more absurd. It makes sense and is justified only insofar as it means the interpreter must silence his or her personal wishes with respect to the results of interpretation...for the rest, however, this demand completely misjudges the nature of genuine understanding, which presupposes the utmost liveliness of the understanding subject and the richest possible unfolding of his or her individuality. Just as we succeed in interpreting a work of art or literature only by allowing it to grip us, so we can understand a political or sociological text only insofar as we ourselves are concerned with the problems of social and political life...Here, the "most subjective" interpretation is the "most objective," because the only person who is able to hear the claim of the text is the person who is moved by the question of his or her own existence...

Unless our existence were moved (consciously or unconsciously) by the question about God in the sense of Augustine's 'thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee,' we would not be able to recognize God in any revelation...(New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. trans. Ogden, Schubert. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984, 85,87)

Collecting Manna: Johann Georg Hamann

Who? Centuries before "theological aesthetics" became an easy pathway to acceptance in top doctoral programs, the Lutherans were already there, and perhaps one of the great forgotten figures of 18th-century Lutheran philosophy is Johann Georg Hamann. In this lovely excerpt from the third volume of Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord, the great Roman Catholic theologian recounts an exchange between the Pietist Hamann and his friend, Immanuel Kant, as an illustration of the centrality of the divine kenosis (God's self-emptying condescension - think Philippians 2) to Hamann's understanding of God's relationship to humankind:

If faith is to be possible, offence must always be possible. God has emptied himself so he could write a children's book for us, and Hamann is fascinated by the thought that his friend Professor Kant should be commissioned to write a physics book for children; he gives encouragement and instruction in two magnificent letters: 'To win oneself praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! - to share in this ambition is no mean task, and one must not begin by stealing brightly coloured feathers, but by divesting oneself of all superiority in age and wisdom of one's own free will and renouncing all vanity. A philosophical book for children would therefore have to appear as simple, foolish and tasteless as a book written by God for men...the greatest law involved in the method for teaching children therefore consists in condescending to their weakness. However, nobody can understand this practical principle or put it into practice unless, to use a vulgar expression, he is crazy about children and loves them without really knowing why.'

Thus, in the simpleness of childish stammering, the simplicity of God becomes visible and comprehensible, although of course, only for an understanding that through kenosis of itself in the simple act of faith, has itself become a suitable organ for the divine simplicity. (The Glory of the Lord, Vol. III: Studies in Theological Styles: Lay Styles. trans. Louth, Andrew, et al. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986, 253.)

Collecting Manna: Philip Cary

My wife's cousin Lissa enthusiastically commended to me Augustine-Luther scholar Philip Cary's (her teacher at Eastern University) new book, Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do. Among said decade is the admonition, "Why 'Applying it to your Life is Boring, Or, How the Gospel is Beautiful,'" from whence I found the following passage, which she noted expresses with far greater succintitude the main point of my last post on "the Idol of Being Interesting (thanks to Lissa!):"

The alternative to "relevance" is the willingness to learn. It's like when you really start to get a new kind of music, maybe classical or jazz, that at first seemed boring and intimidating. When you begin to see the beauty and power in it, you stop asking how it's relevant to your life. Instead, you acquire a new ability to hear, new powers of perception, as you begin to understand more clearly what's really there. Learning to perceive this reality enhances your life, makes you a richer person with a deeper understanding of the world. Similarly, the Holy Spirit teaches us to understand the Gospel like a kind of divine music, not making Christ relevant to our lives, but reshaping our lives so that we perceive the beauty of Christ, which captivates our hearts.

The underlying concept here is not relevance, but beauty. If you're a preacher or a teacher, you don't need anything to make beautiful things relevant to us. They wouldn't be beautiful unless they already had the power to move our hearts, stirring us to love. And from love comes eagerness and diligence in the works of love - all the things which sermons telling us what to do can't give us. WHat gets Christians moving in the right direction is thus not advice about how to change our hearts but teaching that shows us more clearly the reality and beauty of Christ himself. The preacher's job is not making Christ relevant but helping us to see his beauty - so that we may know what is glorious, wonderful, and joyous about our Beloved.

All Saints...even Charles Wesley

Once again, the library staff comes through. While returning some books I'll never read, I spied a freshly-laminated copy of The Lyrical Theology of Charles Wesley: A Reader, ed. by S.T. Kimbrough, a research fellow at Duke Divinity, which I promptly stole before any Methodists could get their mits on it. Sadly, I never read a page of either Wesley despite studying with Methodists for three years. To atone for this fault, and in honor of today's celebration of All Saint's Day (yes, even Methodists), I share below excerpts from Wesley's beautiful poem, "The Communion of Saints." Through it, may we all become more aware of the mystery that each of us is, through participation in and divinization through grace, a "transcript of the Trinity," as we seek to become "perfectly built up in love" and joined with one another in Christ.

Father, Son and Spirit, hear
Faith's effectual, fervent prayer,
Hear, and our petitions seal;
Let us now the answer feel.

Mystically one with thee,
Transcript of the Trinity,
Thee let all our nature own
One in Three, and Three in One.

If we now begin to be
Partners with they saints and thee,
If we have our sins forgiven,
Fellow-citizens of heaven,

Still the fellowship increase,
Knit us in the bond of peace,
Join, our new-born spirits join,
Each to each, and all to thine.

Build us in one body up,
Called in one high calling's hope;
One the Spirit whom we claim,
One the pure baptismal flame,

One the faith, and common Lord,
One the Father lives, adored
Over, through, and in us all,
God incomprehensible.

One with God, the source of bliss,
Ground of our communion this;
Life of all that live below,
Let thy emanations flow,

Rise eternal in our heart:
Thou our only Eden art;
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Be to us what Adam lost.

Bold we ask through Christ the Son,
Thou, O Christ, art all our own;
Our exalted flesh we see
To the Godhead joined in thee.

Glorious now they heaven we share,
Thou art here, and we are there,
We participate of thine,
Human nature of divine.

Live we now in Christ our Head,
Quickened by thy life and fed;
Christ from whom the Spirit flows,
Into thee thy body grows:

While we feel the vital blood,
While the circulating flood,
Christ, through every member rolls,
Soul of all believing souls.

Daily growth the members find,
Fitly each with other joined:
Closely all compacted rise;
Every joint its strength supplies,

Life to every part conveys,
Till the whole receive increase,
All complete the body prove,
Perfectly built up in love.

(excerpted from The Lyrical Theology of Charles Wesley: A Reader, ed. by S.T. Kimbrough. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011, pp.271-273.)

Sins of the Grandfather?

Leah and I were shocked one day when, taking a rare pit-stop at Starbucks for coffee before church, Abby pointed to the sign and said, "da-da!" While Leah may contest, I couldn't honestly remember a time I had ever taken Abby to worship at the altar of the two-tailed caffeine goddess - though of course, have made many pilgrimages there myself in my day. Have I passed this delightful idolatry on to my beloved offspring?

Yes, claims Michael Skinner, the infamous Washington State University molecular biologist, I'm quite possibly to blame. Though to be fair, culpability could be spread around to any number of her grandparents too. A recent article in Newsweek reports that Skinner has indeed confirmed that certain epigenetic changes in sperm are not only carried forward genetically, but can even result in potentially permanent reprogramming of one's future progeny. Thus, rat-fathers not genetically diabetic but who chowed down on junk food produced severly diabetic children by a healthy rat-mother, with notable genetic alterations discovered in their pancreas' and insulin resistances, while in Sweden, similar results have been observed in human generations. While such a view of genetic transmission has long been considered heretical in the bio-genetic world, this new evidence

raises the intriguing possibility that the childhood-obesity epidemic is at least in part due to alterations in sperm caused by fathers-to-be eating a high-fat diet. After all, while it’s fine to blame kids’ couch-potato ways and fattening diets, that does not explain why obesity in babies has risen 73 percent since 1980.

Thankfully, positive environmental factors and enriching decisions by fathers can likewise prove beneficial to future generations. So Abigail gets my love of iced chai lattes laced with Starbucks-brand cocaine, and is also a musical genius, a lover of books, and has a natural affinity for churches and prayer. You win some, you lose some.

I'm no scientist, but I know enough to want further confirmation of such findings beyond the sensationalism of desperate news magazines like Newsweek. Even so, an article like this one, entitled "Sins of the Grandfather," begs theological questions. Family systems theorists like Edwin Friedman and Ronald Richardson have already reflected on the transmission of anxiety, instability, addictive tendencies and damage within families in light of texts like Exodus 20.5, maintaining the tension with more hopeful texts like Ezekiel 18.20, where grace and forgiveness offer the possibility of redemption and reconciliation unto the future. While Skinner's research may seem to affirm an interpretation of, say, original sin, in which all are utterly imprisoned to the predeterminations of their parents' past, it also affirms the value and dignity of human decisions of faithfulness, revealing the profound possibilities of Gospel-transformed acts of holiness and love - in other words, it provides genetic contours for the advance of both the Flesh and also of the New Creation. What science cannot detect, however, is what only a theology of the cross can offer: that even those ill-decisions chosen and those adversities faced by our ancestors might hold within them not only damage and damnation, but also gifts and resources, raw materials by which grace creates life out of chaos. My great-grandmother may have endured great distress as an immigrant from Macedonia to the United States, resulting in permanent stress to my genetic line. But the sustenance of God in bringing her through this time, and the faith it thus nurtured in me, is by far the more transformative reality. Our past ugliness may well become our present blessedness. Such experiments might also provide helpful metaphors for how we reflect corporately on the "genetic" alterations made to Body of Christ via church division or failed witness (for one such challenging assessment, see Ephraim Radner's The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Church Division.) Our actions are bigger than ourselves; therein lies their great and terrifying dignity.

All that speculation done and said, I'm certainly thinking twice about my continued allegiance to the caffeine queen. Not just for my own health, but also, for the sake of the witness of both my actions and my genetics, and for the future life, to those who I have yet to be given to love. Thanks be to God whose grace, mercy and love, and not merely the machinations of our appetites, determines their futures and holds them in the palm of God's hand.

Eating Issues in a (Very) Hungry World

Perhaps its the fact that I wasn't quite as quick on my feet at the Luther Bowl as I've been in past years. Or maybe its due to the gradually increasing numbers in the waistlines in my pants. Maybe it had to do with walking by those hulk-sized mirrors in the entry-way of Brodie Gymnasium at Duke - meant to reassure me that such aspirations of body-type were absurd, yet always managing to remind me of my decidedly non-hulk-itude. Reason tells me I'm just getting old, and as my body decreases the tempo on its metabolic suite, the instrument just doesn't sound the same. But that irrational side of me that is increasingly sensitive to changes in my own corporeal nature can't help but pick up on and ponder two cultural soundings from the past week that bring issues of eating disorder and body perception to the fore.

Earlier today, The Daily Beast ran a head-lining article (which has since disappeared from their main page) about the emergence of "Fat Studies" programs at various colleges across the country. Concerned with the marked scarcity of "plus-sized silhouettes" on the campuses of the nation's top schools, college profs are turning to texts like The Fat Studies Reader to begin investigating not only the phenomena, but also individuals' experience of living with, obesity in the midst of a culture whose deck is stacked in favor of the thin and the glamorous. Issues raised include "How is weight perceived in different countries? What do media depictions of larger sizes say about our social priorities? What if there were a "fat gene," and what if we could test for it prenatally?" The article's author, Eva Binder, a conspicuously thin Yale undergraduate, maps the current debate as to whether such a program is in fact academically rigorous, or whether it merely serves as therapeutic self-help and self-affirmation under a scholarly guise. According to the writer:

Recent studies have shown that body-consciousness can not only hurt academic performance in high school, but can also deter fat students from applying to college, and from receiving adequate help and attention from teachers and college advisors. The exact amount of attrition is impossible to pinpoint, but members of fat academia have noticed the scarcity of plus-size silhouettes on campus—particularly in exclusive private schools, where Fat Studies is most likely to be funded and taught. "The more elite a campus is, the fewer people you will see who are anything but ideal weight," says Dr. Rothblum, explaining that in addition to being daunting to fat students, top-tier schools tend to attract applicants from stronger socioeconomic backgrounds, who are much less likely to be overweight.

Noting this dilemma and countering the academic skepticism about these programs, Binder seems to be taking an advocacy stance herself, attempting to raise awareness for a group she deems increasingly marginalized:

That resistance may eventually fade if Fat Studies takes root on campus. But if that's going to happen, slender students may need to turn up the volume of their support for the subject. "For members of any oppressed group, the ones who are allowed a foot in the door are the ones who look as mainstream as possible," says Dr. Rothblum. If that's the case, then the fat-exclusive movement that Ms. Johnson once faced could be a thing of the past. What fat activism needs now, it seems, are a few small waistlines.

Reaching a much wider audience was last week's episode of television's smash hit high school drama Glee, entitled "The Rocky Horror Glee Show." Overshadowing the episode's main drama, which once more revolved around the vain attempts of Mr Schuster to manipulate and stretch the limits of his position as high school teacher in pursuit of self-fulfillment and happiness, was a surprising sub-plot having to do with male struggles with their bodies. For those not yet addicted, Finn, the vapid high school quarterback, has been cast in a role in the cult drama which requires him to appear in naught but his skinnies on stage before the entire school. His resultant anxiety at his lack of a perfect body, unrelieved by the reassurances of his girlfriend Rachel (portrayed by a Lea Michele who herself looks like she hasn't eaten anything since before they started filming last season's premier...), is deepened by the presence of fellow glee-clubber and friend-rival Sam, who not only sports a chiseled physique, but also spouts about his "ab-ulousness" as he lectures the boys on cutting calories and working out. Sam's wisdom? "There ain't no carpool lane to sexy...if you get up on stage looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, there's no way you're staying popular." In a rare profound moment, the show educates its audience through Artie, who declaims that

Personally, I blame the Internet. Once Internet porn was invented, girls could watch without having to make that embarrassing trip to the video store. Internet porn altered the female brain chemistry, making them more like men, and thus more concerned with our bodies.

Whether or not this science is plausible, Glee risks meaningfulness in pointing to the growing numbers of young men who have joined the ranks of an already tragic army of benighted young women who are fighting a losing battle against eating disorders and social pressure.

What is striking to me about both Binder's article and Glee's foray into the prophetic is the marked silence their voices reveal within the theological community in these matters. A quick Google search and parousal of Amazon reveals an alarming paucity of engagement by Christian thinkers with either obesity or eating disorders, the exception being groups like Focus on the Family, who has released several volumes on raising "fit kids," or various biblical counseling publishers who seek to uproot the sin at the heart of struggles with food at both ends of the spectrum. While not meaning to disparage well-intentioned efforts, there is very little in the way of thoughtful theological and pastoral reflection on the implications of obesity for the Christian life, or the devastation wrought upon human life by distorted appetites (or the lack thereof)towards food.

A turn to the web reveals a further striking issue: many websites' that DO address issues of obesity in particular do so in reference to the sin of "gluttony." I found several websites debating whether or not an obese Christian was fit to be ordained, given their continued practice of this deadly sin; one even compared such struggles to homosexuality, and on one facebook page, various detractors claimed there was even a greater biblical warrant to exclude fat people from church than there was practicing homosexual Christians!

I raise these concerns not so that we can all go have a laugh at the poor fundamentalists and their outmoded hermeneutics, but rather, as I argued in a book review on Mark Driscoll, it is a mark of shame for the church and her theologians that such crucial issues that effect so many human lives have been left to the province of gimmicky college programs, American Idol knock-offs, and a slim portion of the Church's rich theological heritage. If we will not look these issues in the face and respond with the Gospel of new creation, others will.

As someone whose own struggles with certain foods is often experienced as a kind of addiction, and who claims the heritage of plus-sized theologians from Augustine to Aquinas to Luther (Calvin was, on the other hand, a bean-pole), I think the Church owes it to herself and her members to build on the recent "green theology" and "agrarian/food" movements to provide an accounting of and a word of Good News to a world that struggles with and calls out for an answer to the powers of obesity and eating disorders. The Church has taken tremendous strides in addressing the starving ones of this world; she cannot afford to forget about the hungry ones as well. Jesus Christ loved to super-size the meals he offered others - but always for the sake of providing for His sheep. Its time for our shepherds to do the same - including myself, which I will in future posts.

Finn Watch ctd: Logic, Love and Gifts from Helsinki

As promised, here's a brief report on two fascinating lectures exploring the implications of the logic of gift-giving for Lutheran theology by Finnish Luther scholars Risto Saarinen and Olli-Pekka Vainio, given yesterday at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Dr. Saarinen reminded us several times that while he has already published a book on these matters, the material he presented is hot off the bench of his theological workshop, and is still in development. Therefore, I'll only share some highlights, while eagerly anticipating the finn-ished product.


Dr. Vainio laid the groundwork for Dr. Saarinen's constructive proposal by surveying recent philosophical developments in the phenomenology of gift giving. At one extreme stands Nietzsche, declaring that all giving is inherently an act of utter self-interest, an act of power and assertion of the will that seeks to enslave the recipient in the individual's quest to become a great soul. The state of suspicion under which all giving is placed prompted an equally extreme reaction represented in Derrida, who in seeking utter disinterestedness in giving declared that a gift given is no gift at all. Vainio rejected this postmodern polarity, offering a very Lutheran invitation to accept the fact that all acts of giving are necessarily a mixture of self-interest and disinterestedness, and urged us to reject the grounding narrative of ontological violence which ultimately excludes both personhood and the possibility of goodness, lest we be tempted into the typical Lutheran quagmire of passivity before God's gift of grace, and thus also, towards our growth in love flowering forth in the creation of relationships with our neighbors. Vainio argued that gifts can only be given in a context of personhood and desire, and that not even God gives disinterestedly or "unconditionally," since God desires to establish us as persons who can enter into life-giving relationship with Godself. This is where the Finnish Luther comes in. The union offered in justification between person and Trinity removes the sinner from slavery to debt and power and sets them within a reality where interested love without debt is possible.

Dr. Saarinen continued this train of thought, drawing on recent linguistic research into the semantic range of the word "gift," urging us to look at the phenomenon of giving not from the perspective of the recipient, but rather the giver - in this case, the Trinity. Such a move, while not unproblematic given Nietzsche's suspicions, brings into theological focus in which giving has priority over receiving. Simple as it may sound to emphasize that it is GOD who gives, this basic move, consonant with Barthian and post-liberal concerns, opens up the nature of the gift given by focusing on the identity of the giver, and thus the kind of relationship established between giver and recipient. When the recipient is primary, too often, she becomes merely a passive receptacle for the gift - indeed, we do not say "I give a book to a shelf," but only "I set a book on the shelf." Only a person can receive a gift, which can only be given by a person in relationship.

This epistemic framework grounds Saarinen's constructive proposal for a way forward in Lutheran theology beyond certain gaps and lacunae which exist due to the incompleteness of the church's confessional documents. While some still view the confessions as exhaustive, Saarinen rather views them as "stem cells" or seends from which can be grown rich new varieties and further developments in theology in response to contemporary challenges, using the theology of the gift. Delving into the etymology of various biblical formulations such as "handing on of doctrine" or "proclamation," Saarinen notes that words have their root in the Greek verb "to give." Various categories can be divided into either "economic" or "donative" gifts, the former of which entails an exchange, while the latter is an act of charity. Ultimately, no theological concept is a "pure gift," but is an admixture of economy and donation. Only God gives pure gifts, with clarity and depth of purpose. Theology needs to grow forth from an understanding of God's pure gift of love, and even as it is differentiated into primarily economic or donative aspects, must always recall its roots in this purity, while never forgetting its admixture.

Thus, while we might for example imagine that a social-program ought to be merely donative, giving aid to the needy without requirement, remembering that God's love includes within it but is not exhausted by its economic aspects might lead us to reconsider whether our ethic of charity is not also seeking domination, and also challenges us to give gifts in such a way as to create relationships of exchange between persons. I take this to mean that pretending to offer "unconditional gifts" to the poor is an incomplete witness to God; rather, when possible, gifts are offered so as to establish relationship. It may be the difference between simply giving someone spare change, or inviting them to share a cup of coffee, only to discover that your personhood is tied up with the recognition and acknowledgment of theirs. (The image I have included of St. Vincent de Paul and the beggar exemplifies this for me in its blurring of the distinction between giver and recipient, begging the question of who is Christ to who, and offering a vision of mutuality and exchange, where my salvation is bound up with that of my new friend.)

For Lutheran theology, this is particularly important, since it blurs the edges between merits and gifts, focusing less on the recipient's passive acceptance of the gift and more on the ontology, that is, the vision of reality, that is established by the Giver. Saarinen argued that this Trinitarian, gift-giving ontology incorporates traditional notions of transcendentals, things like truth, goodness, beauty, and love. The Christian life can be mapped as a pilgrimage which, having recognized the Giver as the One who gives Himself in love, initiates a life of seeking after and journeying towards God. Renunciation of sin and hypocrisy is not the substance of the Christian life, but merely its initiation, and while pursuit of one transcendental, such as Truth, might tempt us to focus away from Goodness, life becomes less an "ordo salutis" and more a series of biographical stations which enables lived narratives of creative variety in relationship with and growth towards the God who has first given God-self to us. Passivity is replaced not with a system of merit, but rather, an intimate dance of relationship.

I see this as a welcome corrective to 20th-century Lutheran theology, which has followed Reformation polemics in associating such approaches with works-righteousness and obsession with merits. In this view, exemplified by Forde and others, life becomes merely an exercise in continual repentance and renunciation of our own goodness, an endless repetition of the Gospel of justification, which explodes into our lives, leaving a crater of emptiness behind to be filled by God's grace. But we remain empty (thanks to David Yeago for offering this image). My STM work at LTSS is precisely to reconceive of holiness and sanctification in the Lutheran tradition along more catholic and Augustinian lines, in which the life of faith is akin to a marriage, in which faithfulness means growth in relationship leading to acts of desire and devotion, and pours forth in creativity, which is a form of improvising with and being led in the dance by the music of the Holy Spirit. I also believe that the Finns' approach provides a kind of post-liberal Lutheranism that would interface quite nicely with the Hauerwasian focus on the communal character of the Church's witness. Indeed, it provides a corrective, able to integrate the subjective relationship with Christ into the more objective reality of the Church, the former of which Hauerwas and much of post-liberalism has repeatedly downplayed. And, most importantly, I think these insights provide pastoral resources for breaking the cycle of endless sermons about the already of justification, creating conditions to speak of the adventure, the discovery, and the delight of a life lived in relationship with the Christ dwelling in our hearts, and in the hearts of others.

While Dr. Saarinen's project remains incomplete and awaits further development, yesterday's lectures inspired me with new hope in the possibilities for Lutheran theology, as well as for the life of faith. I'll be waiting eagerly to see what new rich varieties of crops can be grown from the fertile soil of Finnish studies, and am thankful for their sharing the fruits of their labors, as well as planting new seeds in Southern soil, with us at LTSS.

Finn Watch: Luther and Divinization

On Thursday morning, LTSS will host two lights of the "Finnish School of Luther Interpretation," founded and flourishing in the theology department of the University of Helsinki. Dr. Risto Saarinen will lecture on "Gift as the Heart of Lutheran Theology," and Dr. Olli-Pekka Vainio will talk about "Logic and Love of the Gift." It should be a fascinating session from one of the more exciting and creative theological movements in the church today.

Birthed via a series of regional ecumenical dialogues between the Finnish Lutheran Church and the Russian Orthodox, the Finnish Lutheran scholars have challenged the Kantian-Ritschlian foundations of much of 20th-century Luther reconstruction (see my teacher Michael Root's elaboration here), along with its anti-Catholic bias and its focus on forensic justification. In contrast to the latter view, which holds that in Baptism God's righteousness is merely credited or imputed to an individual, the Finns have exhaustively shown in dissertation after dissertation that, at least in the early Luther, we ought more properly focus on a very real "union with Christ," wherein God communicates God's own qualities and nature to the believer. The founder of the school, Tuomo Mannermaa, captures this Lutheran notion of the classic Christian doctrine of theosis, or, divinization, in the title of his treatise, "Christ Present in Faith." God does not merely look upon a broken sinner as righteous, but rather enters into that sinner, indwelling him or her in an intimate union by which that person, in the words of St. Peter, becomes a "partaker in the divine nature" and is subsequently transformed ontologically into a new creation. As Mannermaa summarizes,

The notion of the presence of Christ as favor and gift is the essence of Luther's concept of justification. At least on the level of terminology, the distinction drawn in later Lutheranism between justification as forgiveness and sanctification as divine indwelling is alien to the Reformer. Forgiveness and indwelling of God are inseperable in the person of Christ, who is present in faith In that sense, in Luther's theology, justification and theosis as participation in God are also inseperable. (in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther. ed. Braaten and Jenson. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 38)

When Luther, in On Christian Liberty, speaks of us becoming "Christs to one another," he thus means it quite literally. After the Finns, it becomes difficult to read this work, which Luther himself considered a compendium of his thought, or passages like these, without hearing echoes from the East:

No good work can rely upon the Word of God or live in the soul, for faith alone and the Word of God rule in the soul. Just as the heated iron glows like fire because of the union of fire with it, so the Word imparts its qualities to the soul. It is clear, then, that a Christian has all that he needs in faith...(trans. Lambert, W.A. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003, 15)

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh ad there is between them a true marriage...it follows that everything they have they hold in common, he good as well as the evil...(ibid 18-19)

Here Luther merely uses language common to spiritual theologians throughout the history of the church, from St. Augustine, St. Bernard and Nicolas Cabasilas to St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

The Finns' re-visionary account holds great promise for ecumenical theology by positing a Luther engaged in broader catholic debates about ontology, theosis, and participation. In this sense, he belongs less to Protestant partisan politics and polemics, and can speak constructively as a teacher of the church - albeit, a radical, idiosyncratic, and by no means unproblematic pedagogue.

(For those interested in learning more, Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson's collection of lectures by Mannermaa and his circle, Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, is highly recommended as an introduction.)

The Other Stanley: Introducing Cavell

While procrastinating in the LTSS library, I noticed that The Chronicle Review had done a cover piece on philosopher Stanley Cavell. I referenced Cavell's work on Wittgenstein and language learning n an earlier post (er, web article?) - the one with the dinosaurs - and had the wonderful opportunity of studying him along with Wittgenstein and Austin with the fabulous Toril Moi during my last semester at Duke. Despite teaching at Harvard, where he is Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value (like I said, Harvard), Cavell is an inspiration to me for the ways he manages to combine the study of philosophy and literature, bridging the unnecessary disciplinary gap to the great benefit of both sides. Few thinkers have challenged me more to look at the world, my self, and others with renewed wonder and fresh questions, while taking seriously the tragic reality of human limitations, and the even more tragic attempt to be more than human in the effort to escape, by our own skeptical efforts, those limits which make us the creatures that we are.

Despite his appreciation for Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and his challenging yet ultimately friendly reflections on theology, Cavell remains largely unknown and underappreciated in the theological world. The Chronicle Review article, is a splendid and accessible introduction to his major concerns and works. Dukies may find it particularly interesting for the ways the author, the Dean of the Honors College at Baylor, situates Cavell with MacIntyre and Charles Taylor in his criticisms of the fragmentation of the disciplines in modern universities. I offer the following excerpts by way of introducing the Other Stanley:

In Cavell's view, philosophy will never be able to successfully model itself on the sciences, because it never really makes progress. Not just in moments of intellectual crisis, but at all times, philosophy circles back to its own assumptions and puts them in question and, even when it does not revise them, tries to see them in a new and enriched light. Cavell speaks repeatedly, in the course of describing his intellectual journey, of the need to "begin again," to revisit and re-examine assumptions and purported conclusions that have gone untested.

Cavell explores films in which ordinary characters leading ordinary lives make the discovery that the ordinary is the extraordinary. For him that is a theme straight out of Wittgenstein, who once described his own philosophical writing as consisting of a series of "observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes." The recovery of the ordinary is Cavell's way of responding to the dilemma of modern philosophy, which finds itself vacillating between peremptory certitude and despairing skepticism.

Occasional Remarks on Worship

In an effort to jumpstart my blogging efforts, I'm re-printing a paper I recently wrote here at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary for a class on worship. We were asked to reflect, prior to lectures or readings, what our working understanding of worship was, as well as on the role of spontaneity within that understanding. Hopefully there will be some original posts in the days and weeks to come; in the meantime, while not original by any means, I pray this is as helpful in the reading as it was in the writing.

~

Working with Reformed Presbyterians as a campus minister for a year, I came to know the opening words of the Westminister Shorter Catechism, and I think the twin means of “glorifying God” and “enjoying Him forever” suggest beautiful foci for the practice of worship. In creation, God created all the earth for the sake of God’s glory, and God gloried in the love with which God created each of God’s unique and unrepeatable expressions of care and creativity. In response to God’s covenant love, first expressed in God’s binding God’s glory to the creation, God also made worship the grain of the universe. In this sense, worship is creation’s vocation.

Worship is also the telos (end, goal) of creation. The Bible is book-ended by worship, whether in God’s command to Adam to work and tend the garden, to the sublime chorus of “holy, holy, holy” which echoes unto eternity in Revelation, all of creation and in particular humanity have been made to enter into the relationship of worship with God. As vocation, worship is also, quite literally, the work (read: the liturgy) of the whole people of God, lived in concert with creation. This means that living in peace and reconciliation with one another, and living life as stewards of the creation, are vital components of worship. As the prophets never cease to remind us, worship and an ethical life of discipleship are but two sides of the same coin.

We know what true and right worship is when we know who it is we worship. Jesus Christ reveals the God of Israel to all nations, and by His death and resurrection, calls forth the Church. In John 12.28, Jesus cries out to heaven, “Father, glorify your name!” to which a voice from heaven responds, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” John’s Gospel lacks a baptism account, yet this same voice echoes the Synoptic Gospels account of Christ’s rising from the waters to hear the voice declaring him the beloved son. In John, the Father declares He has been glorified in the Incarnation and will again be glorified in Christ’s Passion; thus, Baptism, Incarnation, Passion, and new creation are the stuff of worship. We as Christians know who we worship, who has related Himself to us in creation, and thus, who we are, when our worship is born out of, and participates, in these various forms of the Word unfolding. Incarnation and Passion beget the Sacraments, and with the preached Word, they create the world anew.

Jesus’ outburst in John 12 is spontaneous, preceded by the declaration that “my soul is troubled” (v.27). Likewise, we need not be happy to worship; instead, God’s glory is called forth when we are authentic before God, and this includes the willingness to confess before Him. In our (Lutheran) case, this means, worship begins with confession, and leaves room to be restored to the children we are. It can also mean outbursts of joy and thanksgiving, as we see in Christ in Matthew 11:25 when he declares, “I praise you Father…for such was your gracious will.” Joy and sorrow overflow into relationship with a loving Father, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit.

Spontaneity is the work of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul, in Romans 8:25f, reminds us that the effort is not entirely dependent on us, for when our words and emotions fail, the Spirit placed in our hearts, the same Spirit which created the earth and the heavens, “intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Spontaneity in worship can mean following the Spirit in emphasizing certain words of the written Word, adapting formal prayers to follow and reflect the preached Word, improvising in music to compliment the sacramental Word, or, releasing our need to improvise or create for the sake of a more “formal” gesture that might fit the rhythms of the Spirit in the moment. Allowing the Spirit to give an account on our behalf before the world is not limited, as in the Gospels, to standing before the rulers, but, as the Church always worships publically before a hostile world, we can also trust in God to make worship glorify God’s name, if God’s people humbly pray and enter into relationship with God with hope.

Worship is also a gift and a pleasure for us who worship. God made us for Godself, and when we allow the Spirit to guide us and the Word to shape us, we enter more deeply into our life in Christ, the salvation that is at once arrived and also merely an anticipation and a foretaste of the feast to come. Whether the music is classical or rock, the style High Church or folk, the spoken words educated or simple, when we know with whom we have been made for love and with whom we are being brought into love, we can take delight and rejoice, witnessing to the world the life of love into which God desires to call all people.