Monism part 2

Stephen Milliken, who provoked my first post on monism, pointed out that I never actually got around to defining it.

Indeed--with good reason, since it seems to me to be a term that can mean several things. I'm more interested in teasing out what those several things could be than in deciding which of them is the right definition. Insofar as I provided one, it was "that all things emanate from God." But as I pointed out, that's rather ambiguous.

Stephen then gives one possible definition:

for God to really be God, there cannot exist something which does not first find its origin in God. For if there was something that exists was not first found in God, evil perhaps, it would be said to have its own eternality and existence in some way distinct and separate from God. Thus, I do not think it probably for this to be the case for anything, including what we call bad things. That’s why, to not give them too much credit, I like Lewis’ construct of evil as a perversion or a twisting of an original good. However, if I can be nit-picky, even this perversion, to exist, must itself have an ultimate origin in this God thing.

The first sentence is, I think, totally orthodox. The problem comes when you throw evil into the mix. That's why Christians have historically said (Lewis didn't make this up) that evil is not a thing in itself--it's a privation, a lack of something that should be there. This lack has powerful effects--it distorts the nature of the created thing in question. So a human being with the "goods" of physical strength, intelligence, etc., but lacking a rightly ordered will, can do horrific evil, and the more of these goods one has the more evil one can do.

In the traditional view, the privation doesn't have to be "traced back" to a source, because it isn't a thing itself. But this is a difficult concept. William Babcock pointed out the difficulties that Augustine gets himself into in this regard in his article, "The Human and the Angelic Fall," in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian (1992). Humans fell because Satan tempted them; Satan fell because? . . . . well, because he turned away from God to himself. But why would a good being, in a state of glory and bliss, do a thing like that, unless the Creator in some way caused him to? The origin of evil is perhaps the single most difficult problem in orthodox Christian theology, and I can see why you have problems with the conventional account. But if one endorses a robust theology of free will (more robust than Augustine's mature position), then one can argue that the "perversion" doesn't find its origin in God--only the ability to choose freely does. (I've been reading Greg Boyd, and while I don't agree with him on a lot of points, I think he's right to challenge any view that says that evil is something God looks on with some kind of acquiescence because it's part of a bigger plan.)

Anyway, I think it is tricky to suggest that we are to separate Creator and creation, which, importantly, the former is supposedly pure spirit and the latter is (or is defined by the former) what is material or non-spirit. Are we not setting ourselves up to value spirit over matter?

This is certainly a tricky question. As I believe I said in the first post, the traditional position at least since the 13th century in the West has been that angels are also wholly immaterial. Aquinas, who championed this position, argues that the difference between even such immaterial beings and God is that they are a "compound of existence and essence." I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I'm also not sure it's orthodox to say that angels are in some sense material. So I'm not necessarily defending the view that all created beings are in some sense material. Using Thomist terms, what I would say is that all created beings are in part potentiality and not pure act, as God is.

I think part of the problem is that because our minds are the part of us that most consciously shares in the divine nature, and are also the most "immaterial" part of us, we tend to equate "spirit" with "idea." And the Platonic heritage pushes us in that direction. I think this is where the Platonic heritage needs to be challenged, and perhaps, ironically, why the teaching that angels are immaterial is important. The Creator/creature distinction is much more radical than the material/immaterial distinction. Whatever it means for angels to be "spirit," angels are far more unlike God than they are unlike us. In fact, due to the Incarnation, there's an important sense in which we are more like God than angels are. God isn't the highest angel. So it can be true that God is immaterial without that being the fundamental thing that makes God God.

I think we can say that both "created spirit" and "created matter" reflect something of God without saying that God is both spirit and matter. "Spirit" is a less inadequate term for God than "matter," because it doesn't affirm something that is simply false about God. Matter is, in itself, limitation. Spirit is freedom from that kind of limitation. It is, in itself, a negative term about the absence of certain kinds of limitations. Or so it seems to me. Of course, created spirits would have their own kinds of limitations. But we wouldn't necessarily know much about those. That's why idolatry (in the literal, traditional, pagan sense of the word) is such a temptation. From our perspective, angels/gods look a lot like God, because angels are free of many of the limitations that make us unlike God. We have trouble seeing the far more radical ways in which "gods" are unlike God.

The Catholic theologian Stephen Webb has written a book called Mormon Christianity which argues, apparently, that God is beyond both spirit and matter and thus can be said in some sense to be material, just as he can be said in some sense to be spirit. I am not convinced by this, but it's interesting and I have not yet read the book.

A more traditional position can be found in Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict). I find his discussion of the Christian concept of God and how it relates to Greek philosophy (in Part One of the book-actually not the first part because there is a lengthy "Introduction" on the nature of belief) very helpful. On p. 146, he sums up the orthodox understanding of God as spirit this way:

The boundless spirit who bears in himself the totality of "Being" reaches beyond the "greatest," so that to him it is small, and he reaches into the smallest, because to him nothing is too small. Precisely this overstepping of the greatest and reaching down into the smallest is the true nature of absolute spirit.

That is why I don't believe that saying God is "pure spirit" or "pure good" somehow limits God's ability to sustain all creation from within, as you and I agree that He does.

In defense of Lent: or, why outward rules help us avoid works-righteousness

Traditional spiritual disciplines and the observance of the liturgical year have been making a comeback among Protestants. This is, from my perspective, a very good thing. I may wince when United Methodists speak of an "Ash Wednesday meal," but I'm happy that they are celebrating it at all. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the growth of interest in Ash Wednesday and similar practices is causing some pushback. Brian Lee, a Reformed pastor in Washington D.C., has just written an article celebrating Ash Wednesday by denouncing it in time-honored Reformed fashion.

Lee evokes the iconic moment of the early Swiss Reformation: the sausage-eating party during Lent held by followers of Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich in Lent 1522. As Lee points out, Zwingli defended the sausages on the grounds of "Christian liberty," and this rejection of traditional ritual practices remained the norm in Reformed Protestantism and its free-church offshoots (i.e., pretty much everyone except Lutherans and Anglicans) until quite recently. But as Lee acknowledges, the times are changing: Lent is popular. Lee suggests that this has something to do with the "emergent church," or maybe with religious pluralism and the acceptance of other people's traditions.  He suggests, with a thinly veiled sneer, that Lent is "cool." He ignores the basic reason why many Protestants are returning to these practices: the conviction that traditional practices are valuable embodiments of historic Christian faith, and helpful correctives to the secularism and subjectivism of our culture. More on that later.

Lee's main theological argument against Lenten fasting is that it is spiritually effective. That is to say, that it makes us feel more spiritual because we have met a self-imposed goal. This, he argues, is a legalistic trap: we don't acknowledge our deep-rooted sinfulness, because we treat sin as something superficial that can be dealt with through a spiritual discipline. We salve our consciences with ritual practice instead of acknowledging that the rot runs deeper than any action of ours can ever reach.

This is, of course, well-worn territory. In Reformed and other conservative Protestant circles, an accusation of "works righteousness" hardly even needs an argument to support it--the mere phrase causes good Protestants to cover their ears and run in horror lest they be contaminated. And Lee's argument has a good deal of merit in it--certainly what he describes is a temptation of Lenten fasting or any other spiritual practice. In my experience, liturgical Christians of all stripes are well aware of this danger and warn against it frequently. 

The Reformed argument as rehearsed by Lee conflates two separate but related issues, both of them a concern in the Reformation:

1. The proper relationship of justification to sanctification. That is to say, Protestants have historically said that a person's standing before God as righteous depends not what God does in them through the power of the Spirit (sanctification) but on the believer's acceptance of Christ's righteousness through faith. This is easily conflated with the question of

2. The sanctifying value or lack of value of actions not explicitly prescribed in Scripture. That is to say, a whole range of practices developed in the early and medieval Church which were intended to open people up to transformation by the Holy Spirit. In the Western Church in particular, these practices were often either required by the Church under pain of mortal sin (Mass attendance, yearly confession, observance of Lenten and Friday fasting), or encouraged by the Church and sweetened by the offer of "indulgences" which would lessen a person's suffering in Purgatory. The Protestant Reformers rejected indulgences, of course, but they also rejected the idea that the Church could require any practices not taught in Scripture as a condition for right standing with God. Since the Protestants also held to justification by faith alone (point 1), the question of whether "human ordinances" were necessary parts of the Christian life was easily conflated with the question of whether even Scripturally mandated practices made a person "worthy" of final salvation.

So, for instance, no traditional Protestant would deny that all Christians in right standing with God will pray, will do works of love to the neighbor, will repent of sin and strive not to give in to the works of the flesh, etc. In traditional Protestant theology, these truly good works are believed to flow "naturally" from faith. A believer will do these things, though not perfectly and never trusting in them for salvation. It seems to me that it is logically possible to say similarly that a true believer will want to obey the divinely ordained authority of the Church, and thus that adherence to those minimal fasting practices (and church attendance on holy days, etc.) mandated by the Catholic Church is similarly a mark of true faith. But since Catholics don't believe in sola fide, this point is moot. 

This is probably the best point to "confess" that I don't believe in sola fide either. Or more precisely, I believe that the distinction between justification and sanctification misses the point and fails to solve the real problem. There is no right answer to the question "how do I attain right standing with God," because it's the wrong question. The question is rather, "how do I open myself up to God's free and generous grace so that I can be delivered from the prison of myself and transformed into a spring of life-giving love for others?" This is relevant to the present discussion only because I find the general Protestant worry about spiritual practices to be silly. I don't think that there's anything wrong with engaging in a spiritual discipline in order to become closer to God, as long as by "closer to God" I mean "a more loving person" and not simply "a person who has nice feelings about his own spirituality" or worse "a person convinced of his own spiritual superiority."

Now back to the main point . . . . 

Historically, the position of more liturgical Protestants has been not that liturgical practices are mandatory but that they are helpful ways of doing things that we all agree true believers will do. We all know that believers pray: well, we have the Liturgy of the Hours (as in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) to guide us in doing so. We know that we are to worship together: well, we have a liturgical calendar and traditions to guide us in doing so. These practices aren't seen as necessary per se, but as helpful.

Lee does not claim, as some in the more radical wings of the Reformed tradition have done, that practices not explicitly mandated in Scripture are wrong. He accepts the legitimacy in principle of the argument that such practices may be spiritually helpful, and then he argues that Lenten fasting isn't helpful. Fair enough. But the question he doesn't answer is: how then should believers fast? Or should they fast at all?

To me it seems clear that fasting, like prayer and common worship and the sacraments and works of mercy and sexual chastity, is one of those basic elements of the Christian faith clearly ordained in Scripture. Jesus in Matt. 6 assumes that His followers will fast, just as they will pray and give alms. Mark 2:20 seems to say that Jesus' followers will (and should) fast after His ascension. I recognize that alternative interpretations of these passages are possible (as almost always with any passage of Scripture), but I don't know Lee's position. He says at one point that Jesus has reduced all OT practices to love, but he obviously doesn't think that this means that Christians shouldn't celebrate the sacraments, for instance. (In fact, looking up his church's website I found that they are actually very liturgical and celebrate the Eucharist weekly. I have a lot more common ground with Lee than my first reading of this article had led me to think.) 

Assuming for the moment, then, that fasting is something Christians should do, how should they do it? Lee makes a couple dismissive remarks about the practice of fasting based on one's own spiritual impulses, so he doesn't seem to be advocating that. So does he advocate the historic Puritan practice of calling a fast for reasons of ecclesial or national significance? I.e., a communal fast but one occasioned by some specific danger or sin rather than by a liturgical calendar? That seems to be the only option left, unless he's rejecting fasting altogether. But in this case we are simply fasting at the behest of church (or, historically in Reformed countries, national or civic) authorities. How is this actually better than fasting in obedience to the historic wisdom of the Church as a whole?

In fact, isn't liturgical fasting a lot less likely to give rise to the dangers against which Lee warns than either of the alternatives? If I fast to further my own spiritual journey, I may well see myself as spiritually superior. Communal fasts for specific reasons are better in that regard, but historically they have often given rise to a sense of communal self-righteousness and have led to violence or persecution against perceived ungodly "others" (as has liturgical fasting, of course). In other words, there doesn't seem to be any escape from the spiritual dangers of fasting except not to fast at all. (Which may be what Lee is advocating, but he doesn't state the case clearly.) Liturgical fasting has plenty of dangers, but at least in liturgical fasting we are humbly submitting to ancient and widespread practices that bring us together with other believers rather than setting us apart. Hopefully my liturgical fasting will further my own "spiritual journey," but that isn't really the main point. In fact, liturgical practices don't really have to have a "point." They are joyful expressions of faith--bodily ways of entering into the story of salvation. I trust that God will use them to my good and the good of others, but I don't have to sit around checking my spiritual temperature all the time. Such endless spiritual hypochondria is the deadliest form of "works righteousness," it seems to me, and it shows up among all earnest Christians, whatever their theology. 

But even granting all of Lee's basic theological points, his case against Lenten fasting still fails utterly, at least if my own experience is any guide. He argues that Lent is bad for us because we can fulfill it and thus delude ourselves that we are pleasing to God. 

Well, that's not my experience. Every Lent I fail. Every Lent I draw up ambitious plans of spiritual improvement and fall flat on my face. I have never yet met a Lenten discipline I couldn't manage to violate at some point. And in my experience this is more common than not among liturgical Christians. I don't know these people who are supposedly walking around priding themselves on their fasting prowess. These folks may exist, and perhaps they would be better off without Lent, at least for a while. But not only am I not one of them, I have never heard Lent taught or seen it practiced in a way that would be likely to encourage that kind of delusion. Marshall Shelly, a wise and eloquent Episcopal priest who served as interim vicar at the parish I attended in New Jersey, warned us all sternly that our Lent and Holy Week practices were going to be failures, and we should expect them to be. Jesus' disciples fell asleep when He watched in Gethsemane, and if we follow the estimable tradition of signing up to "watch with Jesus" on Holy Thursday, we will too. 

Indeed, that's one good reason for engaging in ascetic practices above and beyond those of our community, in spite of the dangers of self-righteousness. As with physical exercises or intellectual challenges, our spiritual exercises should always be a little too hard for us. If we can do them, we're not pushing ourselves enough. 

In Lee's own Reformed tradition, the law is generally held to have three purposes. The third is to guide us in our journey of obedience to Christ and love of neighbor, and I've argued above that Lenten fasting serves this purpose well. The second is to restrain evil in society. I'm not too interested in that purpose here, but arguably Lenten fasting does this too, in the sense that it promotes a culture of restraint and  (when combined with almsgiving) of generosity toward the poor, even if most of the people engaging in it are damnable hypocrites.

But the first purpose of the law, in both Lutheran and Reformed theology, is to hold up a mirror both of God's holiness and our own sinfulness. And Lent does this well. Not only do the Scripture readings and preaching in liturgical churches during this season focus on sin and repentance, and on God's gracious forgiveness, but the very practice of attempting to fast brings me face to face with my sinfulness. First of all, of course, fasting confronts me with my addiction to comfort and pleasure. But more disturbingly, it confronts me with the fact that if my comforts and pleasures are withdrawn, I'm not a very nice person to be around. I have been grouchy to my wife today. I have been impatient with my brilliant homeschooled daughter Catherine, who has inherited all my ADD and who just would not focus on her addition problems or practice her piano diligently enough. And I have responded with pompous anger to a sincere challenge by an earnest Christian pastor directed against a religious practice to which I'm attached.

So yes, this post is probably an expression of sinfulness too (though I still think what I'm saying is mostly right). We are all sinners. And even though I'm not one of those mythical ascetic athletes who actually keep their Lenten disciplines, Pastor Lee is certainly right inasmuch as I do think it's kind of cool to be a liturgical Christian. Indeed, in my heart of hearts or maybe nearer the surface than that I think I'm superior to mindless American evangelicals who think that Christianity is all about praise songs and private prayer time and don't revel in the richness of Christian tradition the way I do. 

But here's the thing: Lent didn't make me that way. I was a conceited, self-righteous Wesleyan Holiness prig before I was a conceited, self-righteous Anglican snob. (It is possible, after all, to think oneself superior because one doesn't practice "meaningless rituals" like Lent.) I dare to think (and most people who know me seem to agree) that I'm a bit less obnoxious than I used to be, but who knows? Maybe the historic spiritual practices of the Faith which I practice so imperfectly and sporadically didn't have anything to do with that. Maybe I'm just a bit older and sadder than I used to be and I would be just as nice or nicer if I were a Calvinist, or  a Pentecostal, or a Buddhist, or an atheist. 

And so, to round off my sinful Ash Wednesday, I'm going to go eat dinner with those United Methodists. No doubt I will be sneering inwardly at how much better Anglicans would do things. No doubt, if God were keeping score, I'll be racking up more negative points than positive ones.

But the only hope any of us has is that God doesn't keep score. 

And that is the point of Lent. (Well, other than the fact that it's cool, of course.)

Some thoughts on monism and Christianity

A friend and former student recently asked me what to think about "monism." Is it compatible with Christianity? Are "monism" and "dualism" the only alternatives, or is there a third one?

I think we need to start by defining "monism" and thinking about just what the problems might be with it from a Christian perspective. And the best place to start for that is surely the very beginning--i.e., the doctrine of creation :)

There are three possible positions on creation from a broadly theist perspective:

1. God and matter coexist eternally, and God gives "form" to matter. This is the most clearly heretical, and the most clearly dualist. It is the version maintained by "dualist" versions of Hindu philosophy, by most of the ancient Greeks (including Plato, if I'm not mistaken!), by Mormons, and by modern process theologians. it is also, if you read purely from a historical point of view, the most likely interpretation of Genesis 1 (I think one can make a case for "bara" meaning "create out of nothing," but it's a case that really depends heavily on reading Scripture through later Christian tradition--which I think is the correct way to read, of course!) The problem with it from an orthodox Christian perspective is that if there are "two eternities" then God isn't the source of everything and thus one can say that there are two Gods. It's central to Christian piety to say that God is in fact the source of everything that exists. Which is, in a sense, a form of monism, whatever later distinctions we make.

2. Everything "emanates" from God. This I think is the position that can be called "monism." IN this view, it is true in some sense to say that everything is God. Ultimately God is the only reality and creation's distinction from God is not ultimate. This is the view of Vedanta philosophy--the version of Hindu philosophy best known in the West and probably most important within India as well, though that's harder for me to evaluate. It's also, of course, the view of modern "idealist" philosophers in the West, often influenced by Indian philosophy. And historically it was, as far as I can tell, the view of the Neo-Platonists (as opposed to Plato himself), though I may be wrong and they may still have been dualists with regard to matter. This is also considered unorthodox in the Christian tradition, and in fact most modern Christians would pounce on this as the most obviously heretical view--but in fact I think it's harder to explain just why this is wrong. More on this in a minute.

3. Creation out of nothing. This, of course, is the orthodox answer, clearly in the saddle by the time of Athanasius in the early fourth century. But it raises philosophical puzzles. Since "nothing" isn't a thing, how can you talk about something being "created out of" it? In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that the word "of" ("ex" in Latin) has two possible meanings:
a. It refers to order: that is, it means that first there was nothing, and then there was creation. (To make things more complicated, Aquinas thinks that this is a logical rather than necessarily temporal order.) Or
b. It is included under the negation found in the word "nothing." That is to say, it means "not created out of anything." In this sense, the phrase simply denies that there is any material cause of being taken as a whole. God is not the material cause (indeed, since for Aquinas God is pure form, God can't be the material cause of anything), but there is no eternal material cause either. This does not mean that there is no cause at all (as in a silly atheist article I ran into the other day, which claimed that "creation out of nothing" means that creation just pops randomly into being). In Aristotelian philosophy there are four causes: efficient, formal, material, and final. The universe taken as a whole has no material cause, and God is the cause in the other three senses: God's will is the efficient cause, God's glory is the final cause, and God's knowledge of Himself as capable of being imitated is the formal cause.

In other words, for Aquinas creation out of nothing means that God knows that finite imitations of His infinite goodness can exist, and sovereignly chooses to bring these imitations into existence. They exist only by participation in the being of God. Indeed, Aquinas uses the word "emanation" (which modern Christians tend to associate with the second view of creation and think of as "New Agey") repeatedly in describing how things come into existence.

So what is the real difference between the second and third views? I think there are two big differences:

1. In the orthodox Christian view, a real relationship between creatures and God is possible.The goal is not to lose our identity in God but to know God as the source of our being and become eternally more and more like God, while remaining always infinitely less than God. I don't know that I'm willing to say that this is impossible in the "creation out of God" view. There are forms of Hinduism which start from Vedanta principles but try to find room for a real relationship with God. I do not understand these philosophies well enough to analyze or evaluate them, but certainly the concept of "creation out of nothing" helps give shape to the idea of a relationship between us and God.

2. A clearer difference is that in the creation out of nothing view, it is possible for human beings to be eternally separated from God. Even here, though, I think a case can be made that the orthodox Christian view actually has elements of "emanationism," precisely because annihilation isn't seen as an option. Creation out of nothing would seem to imply that if separated from God we would cease to exist, and there are those who have maintained this position. But the mainstream, historic Christian view is that those created in God's image who choose to remain separated from God will in some sense remain in existence. It looks as if, then, in the Christian view the gift of life in God's image is irrevocable, and this is best explained by the idea that there is something "divine" within us which cannot simply cease to exist once God has created us (and yes, that raises a lot of debates about animals that I don't want to get into in this post!). Yet we don't say that if a person is damned, part of God is damned. In fact, God has no parts in the classic, historic view.

To summarize all of this . . . it looks very much as if the orthodox Christian view comes close to monism, while maintaining the possibility of real relationship between us and God and the possibility that we will not finally be united to God.

How does this affect our relationship with our own bodies, which is the concern behind the original question?

I'm going against N. T. Wright and the whole trend of modern (at least Protestant) theology when I say this, but I think that a neo-Platonic, panentheistic, modified emanationist view of the kind I've been articulating does best justice to the question of how we relate to our bodies.

In this view, as articulated by Aquinas, God knows Himself as imitable in a variety of ways, arranged in a hierarchy: Angels (pure spirit, but created by God)
Human beings (embodied creatures capable of abstract thought and free choice)
"Brute" animals (embodied creatures capable of moving around and of sensory responses to their environment, including basic mental activity but not reason or free choice)
Plants (embodied creatures capable of growing and receiving nourishment)
Inanimate things (bodies with no life at all)

In this way of thinking, each of these "ranks" as you go down shares in less of the being of God (this was traditionally called the "Great Chain of Being"). In this view, humans are "amphibians" (to use C. S. Lewis' vivid term). They have a rational soul which, as with other living things, serves as the form of their bodies. But unlike other animals, not to say plants, human beings can think and love.

There are all kinds of problems with Aquinas' articulation of this, both in terms of the philosophy of his own day and in terms of contemporary concerns. For one thing, what does it mean for there to be wholly immaterial beings that are still created and finite? Furthermore, if angels are seen as "pure intellect," then are our souls, when "liberated" from the body, essentially the same as angels? That would be the pure "Platonic" view attacked by most modern Christians, but Aquinas doesn't think this. He thinks, with Aristotle, that the soul is the form of the body. It would seem to follow that the soul can't exist without the body. Aquinas thinks it can, but that it isn't a full human person in that state. He believes that form is made individual by matter, which means both that angels aren't individual members of a species (each angel is its own species) and that disembodied human souls are only individuals because their bodies have somehow put a stamp on them.

In contemporary terms, the biggest objection to Aquinas' view tends to be his treatment of non-human animals. Are they really incapable of reason and choice? Aquinas' view certainly wasn't as extreme as that of, say, Descartes, who thought that animals were just machines. But it clearly has problems.

So why would I hold to some version of this as my starting point for thinking about the body? I think the key point in this traditional view is the great chain of being--that everything exists by participation according to its degree in the eternal, infinite Being of God. Mind and body are different simply because we can say with qualifications that God knows and wills, whereas we can't say that God (apart from the Incarnation) has a body. In other words, our intellect, memory, and will constitute that part of us that is most directly like God. This doesn't mean that our minds are our "real selves" and our bodies are temporary possessions, and it certainly doesn't mean that our bodies are bad. Creation is God's gracious decision to make things that reflect Himself while being distinct from Himself. Both our minds and our bodies do this, but in different ways and to radically different degrees. The best thought is thought that is heavily embedded in our bodiliness, and the best bodies are bodies that are shot through with knowledge and love. The goal--the mission we have been given by God with our very being--is to unify mind and body, not separate them. One of the reasons Christians have reacted against the traditional view is that it's always been shadowed by the ghost of Plato's Phaedo, whispering "the real job is to separate mind and body." That's where the Platonic heritage does need to be sharply critiqued and even rejected. The fundamental distinction to be made isn't between mind and body, but between Creator and creation. All the distinctions within creation are just variations on a theme: the many ways in which God's glory can be reflected in that which God has caused to exist.

Merry Christmas!

Yes, it is still Christmas until January 6.

This raises a possible solution to the whole Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays dilemma. Why not wait to say Merry Christmas until Christmas day, and then surprise people with it for the Twelve Days of Christmas? You might still offend people, but you would at least not be predictable.

Our society seems increasingly to be falling into a rut of empty, slogan-ridden conflict, in which people throw cliches at each other, or more likely pat each other on the back for accepting the same cliches.

We need to become more adventurous, mischievous, and persistent in challenging these false dichotomies and these empty slogans.

What if Christians stopped using the Incarnation of the Logos as a party shibboleth and instead took it as the occasion for riotous joy, generous love, and playful defiance of the powers that think they rule the world?

A flawed argument against contraception

This post arises from a discussion I've been having online with Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong. It began when Dave cited a passage from Calvin condemning contraception on the ground that it is a form of pre-emptive murder. As an offshoot of that discussion, Dave has posted a succinct statement of the "murder analogy" argument against contraception. The core argument goes as follows:

A) Contraception is a deliberate act of preventing the conception of Person X who would have been conceived had the persons been open to new life.

B ) Therefore, the goal or intention is to obliterate the (earthly) existence of Person X.

C) That is also the goal of a murder: to obliterate the (earthly) existence of Person X.

D) Therefore, in the deepest sense, contraception and murder are alike, and evil.

E) Contraception, however, takes it a step further and disallows even the *beginning* of Person X who might have been / would have been conceived, BUT for contraception.

F) Thus, it not only obliterates the earthly existence of Person X, but any existence whatsoever of the Person, in terms of having an eternal soul.

G) In that sense, contraception is even more anti-life than murder is.

H) Therefore, in a qualified, specific sense, contraception can almost be said to be as heinous and wicked as (and philosophically equal to) murder.

This argument doesn't work, because you can't commit a crime against a nonexistent entity. A hypothetical person who would have been conceived under some counterfactual circumstances or other is a nonsensical construct. I can prevent a particular sperm from making contact with a particular egg. But hypothetical people aren't people. I have no moral duties toward them whatsoever. Murder is wrong because it involves malice toward an existing person.

Step F makes the logical problems in the argument even more evident. You can't "obliterate" the existence of that which does not exist.

Furthermore, as someone pointed out when Dave originally posted this argument on his Facebook page, the argument proves too much, because a married couple who choose to go for a walk instead of having sex are also committing "murder" by this logic. If preventing the existence of "Person X" is akin to murder, then whether one does so by abstaining from sex or by engaging in non-procreative sex is irrelevant to the nature of the crime against Person X. You can't import other (much more solid) objections against contraception into _this_ argument, if the argument is to stand on its own two feet. Certainly _if_ non-procreative sex is wrong on other grounds _and_ preventing a person’s existence is wrong, then committing both sins together would be worse than committing only one of them. But if preventing a person’s existence is a crime against them, then it’s a crime no matter how innocent the thing-you’re-doing-instead-of-procreating would otherwise have been.

I can see two ways in which the argument might have some merit, logically:

1. If one could “mess with time” either through time-travel or foreknowledge. So, for instance, if you go back in time to prevent someone who does exist from being conceived, then you are motivated by malice against a specific person whom you know in your present. Of course, we don’t know if this is even possible. Perhaps prophecy could be seen as another example of “messing with time.” So when Merlin in That Hideous Strength tells Jane that she has failed to conceive a child who would have delivered Logres, that makes a certain amount of sense (though it may involve Molinist “middle knowledge,” which is a philosophically controversial concept), because Merlin is capable of prophecy. Even then, though, it makes no sense to say that she did so deliberately, since she did it before she heard the prophecy. Once she heard the prophecy, she could have intentions toward “the child prophesied.” I’m still not sure that it would make sense to say that she committed a crime against said child, though. Her crime, on Merlin’s premises, was rather against Logres.

2. More solidly, the “preformationist” theory to which Calvin and many other premoderns adhered allows you to talk about crimes against future people. If the "seed" is an incipient person or "potential person" then it makes sense to speak of preventing it from fulfilling its potential. Whether that's actually a crime against the future person is  a difficult philosophical issue, I think, but a case could be made that it is. And that's what I take Calvin to be arguing. Dave responded to my initial objections to the use he was making of the Calvin passage by saying that I was "failing to see the forest for the trees." On the contrary, I'm pointing out that the trees in this particular forest won't make the kind of lumber Dave needs. Without preformationism (or time travel) the “quasi-murder” argument fails utterly, because there’s no one to commit a crime against.

Christus Victor, Part II

According to Aulen, the "classic" view is superior to both the later Latin theories in part because it  preserves both "objective" and "subjective" elements, whereas the two Latin theories each stress one aspect at the expense of the other. Like the Anselmian/penal substitution approach, the "classic model" recognizes that there is something objectively alienating us from God, beyond our own subjective disposition. The classic view takes seriously the idea that Jesus' death is necessary in order for God to be able to forgive us. But whereas the Anselmian view sees the necessity as arising from the legal claims of God's honor, the classic view identifies the necessity with our subjection to the powers of evil and death. In conquering those powers, God is indeed satisfying His own justice, but in a richer and fuller and less legalistic way than that posited by the Anselmian theory.

Furthermore, Aulen argues that whereas the Latin theories see atonement as primarily the act of Jesus according to his human nature (offering the atoning sacrifice or serving as the perfect example), the "classic" view sees it as God's act of redemption. Yes, Jesus is the perfect atoning sacrifice, and His humanity is central to His sacrificial work. But for Aulen's "classic model," the role of the divine nature is far more decisive. This is one of Aulen's most interesting arguments, though it's open to a lot of dispute.  One can question whether Aulen's either/or is really necessary, and one can also perhaps question the Christology that lies behind it (does it perhaps downplay Jesus' humanity too much?). But whether he's entirely fair to Anselm and other classic Atonement theorists, it's certainly true that modern Christians tend to think of the Atonement as Jesus-the-man (or Jesus-the-loving-Son) propitiating the angry Father-God. And certainly this misinterpretation is harder to fall into with the Christus Victor theory.

Aulen's stress on divine action in the Atonement is important because of his final move. He argues that Martin Luther departs from the typical patterns of second-millennium Western theology and recovers the richness of the classic patristic model. Luther's doctrine of justification, Aulen argues, rests on a "Christus Victor" atonement theology in which Jesus' death frees us from the power of Satan, sin, death, hell--and the Law. Aulen suggests that for Luther the Law plays essentially the same role that Satan played in patristic theology. Certainly he's right that Luther tends to identify Satan with the Law--the Law's primary function is to accuse us, and so is Satan's. (One of the most hilarious, though annoying, bits of anti-Lutheran polemic I've come across is a 17th-century Catholic tract pointing out that Luther admitted having gotten his arguments against late medieval Catholic practices from Satan. This because in one of his writings Luther describes Satan interrogating him on the Scriptural basis for the practice of offering private masses, and claims to have been entirely unable to answer Satan's Scriptural arguments. The polemicist, of course, missed Luther's rhetorical point, which was that Satan torments our conscience and if we aren't firmly rooted in the Word by faith, we will fall into despair and be damned by his accusations.) Aulen sees Luther's view as even more profound than that of the Fathers, since it deals more adequately with the fact that Satan's claims against us are indeed rooted in God's justice, so that God is, in a sense, overcoming Himself. (One could put this down, of course, to Luther's being far more a product of typical "Western" atonement theology than Aulen is willing to admit.) Alas, says Aulen, later Lutherans failed to maintain Luther's position in its integrity, reverting to a more typical "Western" atonement theology.

I've described Aulen's arguments in some detail, because I think they have a lot of value for people who are looking for alternatives to the "traditional" penal substitution view. (Of course, you should really read Aulen and not just trust my summary, especially since I'm finishing this review quite a while after having read the book!) Aulen's version of "Christus Victor" (and bear in mind that he invented the phrase--the Fathers did not go around claiming to believe in something called "Christus Victor atonement theology") contains far more elements of "penal substitution" than most people realize. It is not simply about God "overcoming evil," as some banal summaries of Christus Victor imply. In Aulen's hands, Christus Victor _is_ a form of substitutionary atonement in which Jesus satisfies the claims of the Law. But He does so not through legal fiction or through passively bearing God's wrath, but through actively defeating the forces of evil, taking the full brunt of the assault of death's powers and swallowing them up in victory. 

I find Aulen's portrayal fundamentally persuasive, and I think that the patristic model as he describes it is substantially correct as a historical portrait of what the Fathers taught _and_ as the most adequate theological model available to us to describe the mystery of the Atonement. But there are some legitimate questions to be raised. As I said above, it's not clear that he's entirely fair to Anselm in particular. The Orthodox theologian David Hart has apparently argued that Anselm actually _did_ remain faithful to the patristic understanding of Satan's role in Atonement theology. That isn't my reading of Anselm, but I need to read Hart and see if he convinces me. A more serious objection, from my point of view, is Aulen's almost Marcionite reading of Luther, and for that matter of the Scriptures. (Marcion was the early Christian theologian who wanted to throw out the Old Testament.) Aulen repeatedly identifies the Western view with an Old Testament, "Jewish" understanding of God in fundamentally legal, vindictive terms. He thus interprets Luther's "Satanization" (my term, not Aulen's) of the Law as a rejection of this Old Testament understanding. This is wrong on several counts. For one thing, Luther did not identify the Law simply with the Old Testament. According to Luther, the Sermon on the Mount is the perfection of the Law--it does not belong to the Gospel. For another, I can't see anything like the Western theology of Atonement in the Old Testament. Yes, of course blood sacrifice is there, but not in the same context or with the same significance as in later Christian theology. It was a ritual act dealing with ritual pollution. The prophets, who focus on moral and spiritual offenses against God, tend to criticize ritual sacrifice and certainly don't present it as the way of dealing with such offenses (well, maybe Joel does). I'm not saying that later Christian interpretations, which harmonize Leviticus and Isaiah, are wrong--in fact, I think one of the strongest Christian arguments (if we want to engage in argument with Jews, which is generally a bad idea at this point in salvation history) is precisely that we can harmonize Leviticus and Isaiah seen through Christ's sacrifice. But this _is_ a later Christian interpretation, and it's historically wrong to read such interpretations back into Old Testament Judaism. Certainly post-Christian Jews find Christian Atonement theology, particularly penal substitution, to be weird at best. 

Even more fundamentally, Aulen repeats the typical mistake made by most Christian interpreters until recently, by ascribing to the Old Testament and to the Jewish tradition a belief in works righteousness. The consensus of most contemporary scholars is that this too is just wrong. Jews today do not tremble under God's wrath and desperately seek to justify themselves through the law. Nor is there any evidence that they did so in the first century. Whether Luther's understanding of the Law is right or wrong, it's radically different from the Jewish understanding. 

I don't think these objections are entirely irrelevant to contemporary discussions of atonement theology among "post-evangelicals." It's fatally easy for Christians to lapse into simplistic talk about the loving, gracious Jesus freeing us from the terrible burdens of Pharisaic Judaism, and then ascribe the supposed evils of first-century Judaism to contemporary forms of conservative Christianity. It's important, in the context of that temptation, to underline that Atonement theology is a Christian thing. Yes, it's rooted in Yom Kippur and blood sacrifice, but the connotations we read into those Old Testament practices are alien to Judaism. In fact, that's a major reason to _question_ penal substitution. It's so radically alien to our Jewish heritage that it's hard to see how it can be right. Christus Victor theology, to me, looks a lot more like a legitimate "development" of the Biblical tradition in light of the radical newness introduced by Jesus' saving work. Aulen really drops the ball here, in a way that weakens his argument. (In all fairness, though, his misreading of Judaism was common until recently and shouldn't be laid to his door in particular. Aulen helped promote a richer understanding of patristic theology among modern Christians, but the time for a similar revitalization of our understanding of Second Temple Judaism had not yet come.)

In spite of these weaknesses, Aulen's book is well worth reading. A lot of good books on the Atonement have been written since, but Aulen was the first Western Christian scholar I know of who questioned the Anselm/Abelard dichotomy and opened up the possibility that there might be a "third way," which was in fact none other than the genuinely "classic" view held by pretty much all Christian theologians of the first millennium.

Christus Victor

As I was writing about the Rob Bell controversy a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that one of the major issues raised by Bell's conservative critics is Atonement theology. One of the major examples of a doctrinal boundary that is extremely important to traditional evangelicals but not characteristic of the Christian tradition as a whole is the doctrine of penal substitution. For some conservative evangelicals, penal substitution is at the heart of the Gospel. And too often, the only alternative presented is a doctrine of "atonement" in which Jesus' death simply shows God's love or represents resistance to unjust political structures or something of that sort (wonderful as those things are, they don't do justice to the Biblical and historical themes of atonement and blood sacrifice).

Frequently, a third alternative is presented: "Christus Victor," in which Jesus redeems us by overcoming the powers of evil. This "theory" is generally ascribed to the Church Fathers. Unfortunately, I find that often people don't do justice to the richness of patristic atonement theology when they set up "Christus Victor" as an alternative to penal substitution. Defenders of penal substitution are right to point out that in fact substitutionary language is all over the Fathers. Early Christians did not simply believe that Jesus rescued us from evil, but that he offered Himself as a sacrifice to the Father and paid the penalty for our sins. This language is there in the early Church, and a "Christus Victor" theology that ignores it is a pale shadow of what the Fathers actually taught.

The use of the term "Christus Victor" to describe a type of atonement theology seems to derive from the English title of the Swedish Lutheran theologian Gustav Aulen's lectures on the subject, delivered at the University of Uppsala in 1930 and published in English the following year by the S.P.C.K., having been translated by A. G. Hebert. (I'm using the 1950 reprint.) Aulen contrasts both the "objective" and "subjective" views of the Atonement with what he calls the "classic" view found in the Fathers and Luther. Briefly, the first two views are contrasted thus:

The "objective" view, which Aulen finds first fully formed in Anselm, though prefigured in the Latin Fathers, holds that Jesus atones for our sins acting as a human being, paying on our behalf the debt we owed to God. This may take the form, as in Anselm, of Jesus paying the debt through His perfect obedience, or it may take the form of Jesus directly being punished for our sins (Aulen doesn't distinguish as sharply between these as I would like).

The "subjective" view, on the other hand, holds that Jesus saves us by his perfect obedience, which serves as an inspiration to us, changing our hearts rather than changing something objective about our relationship to God.

Aulen argues that these two views, while opposites, are two sides of the same coin. They share a number of features that distinguish them from the "classic" view. First of all, according to Aulen they are theories which attempt to explain the atonement through some sort of key idea, whereas the traditional view is a "model" but not a full-blown theory--it has room for a number of different emphases and permutations and allows for more mystery than the two later theories do. The most important feature common to these two theories, however, is that they see Atonement as something Jesus does primarily as a human being, rather than as something Jesus does as God. Atonement, while certainly God's work in the sense that God initiates the chain of events and in the sense that Jesus is 100% divine, is in a formal sense the activity of a perfect, sinless human being. Jesus' divinity allows the human being Jesus to atone for us--in the "objective" view by giving His sacrifice infinite value, and in the subjective view by making Jesus a perfect representation of the Father's love who had no inner alienation from God to content with on his own behalf. But in both theories, Jesus' humanity holds center stage, whereas in the "classic model" the Atonement is above all else the act of God Himself.

(To be continued)

Sunday, August 12: Visit a Gurdwara Day

Two days ago a gunman killed six Sikhs at their place of worship in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

And the response of America so far seems to be: "What's a Sikh? Oh, never mind--tell me about the Olympics."

Well, I'm happy to tell anyone who cares (and even those who don't) everything I know about Sikhs (which is much less than I'd like).

Here's a starting point for anyone reading this blog who doesn't know about Sikhism (I beg indulgence from folks who know about Indian religion and know how much I'm simplifying here):

Sikhism is an Indian religion which most scholars would describe as an offshoot of "bhakti" Hinduism. Bhakti, or devotional Hinduism, usually focuses on some particular manifestation of God--often involving myths, images, elaborate temple rituals, etc. The idea is that by focusing on this particular "form" of God (who is ultimately beyond all forms and images) you stir up your emotions and move toward ultimate union with God.  So typically in Hinduism you have "bhakti" religion which is highly personal and colorful, involving practices that Christians, Muslims and Jews tend to see as idolatrous, and then you have the philosophers who say that God is beyond form and image and is ultimately the one source of everything in the universe.

But in the late Middle Ages some "bhakti" poets began to say, "Why not just worship the God who is beyond form and image? Why should only the philosophers know this God? Why stop at particular forms and images and incarnations when everyone agrees that these are just symbols of the ultimate Reality?" So various devotional movements developed which promoted personal devotion to the one God recognized in principle by pretty much all Hindus.

Meanwhile, Muslims had conquered much of India, and Sufi Muslim mystics were saying things about God that were very similar--that ultimate devotion to God consists in union with Him in love; that God is beyond all form and image; and so on.

Many of these bhakti poets (and some of the more radical Sufis) began to say that a true lover of God would neither be Hindu nor Muslim. One of the most famous of these devotional poets was Kabir. Another was Nanak. Nanak is considered the founder of Sufism, but poems by both Kabir and Nanak made their way into Sikh Scripture.

Nanak's basic teaching was that God is the ultimate Reality, beyond any form or image, and that human beings (no matter their caste or religion) could reach union with God through love and devotion to His Name. He differed with Islam's harsher teachings about wrath and judgment, as well as Islam's insistence on the Qur'an as God's final revelation and on particular ritual practices such as pilgrimage to Mecca, etc. At the same time, he rejected Hindu ritual practices and the worship of particular "deities" as manifestations of God, and he rejected the caste system with particular vehemence. A basic Sikh practice from then until now is a communal meal to which all are invited, called the "langar."

And this brings me to the practical point of this blog post. I urge anyone who is able to make this next Sunday, August 12, "Visit a Gurdwara day." You can call ahead to let them know you are coming (particularly given last Sunday's events, I suppose some might be a bit nervous if a random non-Sikh shows up), but any gurdwara will welcome visitors even if you don't let them know in advance. And don't forget: free Indian food.

The gurdwara I normally visit, on Lower Huntington Road in Roanoke, Indiana, meets biweekly and they don't appear to be meeting this Sunday. However, there's another one near Illinois Road in Fort Wayne that also meets biweekly, on the Sundays when the one in Roanoke doesn't meet. I'm trying to confirm right now that they do have a service next Sunday.

If you don't live in the Fort Wayne area, you can find a gurdwara easily on the Internet. I think most of them follow pretty much the same practice: they start to gather around 9, but the service is long and isn't usually over till after 1. The meal follows. They are fine with you showing up late--most of the Sikhs will do so as well. And from my experience with one gurdwara and what I've read about Sikhs generally, I think I can guarantee hospitality. Just make sure to take off your shoes and cover your head.

Sikhs do not use any images in worship, though they do revere their Scriptures, which you will find under a kind of canopy in the front of their worship space. They will distribute a kind of sweet paste called "prasad"--I have no problem partaking of it, but other Christians may feel differently about it. The food itself is served in a separate space, in my experience, and is very explicitly offered to any members of the community, not just Sikhs.

I'm sure there are other, perhaps more practical ways to respond to last Sunday's atrocity. But this is at least a place to start.

Liberal Christianity and its discontents

Ross Douthat published an article this past weekend in the NYT called "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" It's gotten a lot of response, including this one by Diana Butler Bass arguing that all of Christianity is in the same boat and liberals are just feeling the decline first, and this one by Rachel Held Evans pleading for detente between liberals and conservatives and more room for those "stuck in the middle."

A specific criticism about Douthat's piece: He makes the claim that the Episcopal  Church is experimenting with "blending religions." Now I'm not willing to say that "blending religions" is necessarily bad. Given the difficulties involved in defining religion in the first place, I think that would be a very rash claim. Arguably Christians who incorporated elements of Platonism and Aristotelianism into Christian thought were "blending religions," and I'm not one of the people who thinks that this was entirely bad. I think there's  a lot of work to be done by Christians in appropriating the insights of Buddhism, for instance.

But in fact the three incidents noted in the article to which Douthat links (which are the three everyone notes, a bit suspicious if this is really the sort of thing that is happening all over the Episcopal Church) have one obvious thing in common: in all three cases the "blending" was clearly rejected by the Episcopal Church, in a show of the kind of disciplinary authority that people think the Episcopal Church never exercises.

The married clergy couple who wrote prayers to pagan deities (including an explicit rejection of Ezekiel's condemnation of mother-goddess worship) were disciplined and eventually left the priesthood.

The priest who converted to Islam and attempted to continue as an Episcopal priest was disciplined by her bishop, and again, ceased to function as a priest.

The bishop-elect in Northern Michigan who had received "lay ordination" as a Buddhist was not confirmed and thus was never consecrated as bishop. (The election of a bishop has to be confirmed by at least a majority of the dioceses in the Episcopal Church.) This appears (rightly) to have been based less on the mere fact of his  Buddhist ties than on the fact that he clearly rejected some central  Christian teachings  (such as human sinfulness and the need for redemption by Jesus).

It frustrates me endlessly that conservative commentators use these three stories to prove the very point that they refute: that the Episcopal Church has no commitment to orthodox Christianity and no willingness to exercise discipline. I confess to being rather surprised by the outcome of these incidents, particularly the one involving the "Buddhist bishop." But in all three cases the Episcopal  Church did what folks like Douthat think it can't do.

Now to the larger  point: I see no indication that liberal Christianity is dying. It is certainly dwindling, but it will always have a "market share." Bass may be right that liberalism is  suffering from trends that affect everyone, but I think she's wrong that liberalism just happened to start feeling the effects first. Douthat is right in the key claim that if a church simply copies the world, it becomes irrelevant. This point has been made most effectively by Stark and Finke in their book Acts of Faith, which argues that churches that stand in fairly high "tension" with the surrounding culture (and make serious demands of their members) tend to grow.

But in fact, as this Unitarian minister points out,  it's quite possible to have a kind of liberalism that doesn't just copy secular culture. When I read Acts of Faith, which falls into the trap of  identifying "high-tension" churches with conservative ones and "low-tension" with liberal ones, I asked myself, "But wouldn't a liberal church in, say, East Tennessee be in higher tension with its culture than a conservative, Southern Baptist one? Wouldn't it require more commitment to belong to a pro-gay church in a small  Southern town than to belong to a fundamentalist one?"

The bigger question, of course, is whether growth is really the important thing. Stark and Finke are sociologists, and naturally approach things that way. But both Stark himself and many who use his work seem to  identify numerical growth with spiritual validity. Douthat seems to be doing that in his op-ed piece.

The paradox is that if Stark and Finke are right, then caring about growth and about "attracting people" is self-defeating. The trap into which liberalism has fallen (and it's becoming increasingly clear, as the "Millennials" come of age, that the megachurch evangelicalism in which they grew up fell into the same trap) is precisely the trap of starting out with the question "how can we grow" instead of the only question worth asking: "what is true"?

From a sociological point of view, what you think is true may matter less than that you believe it (at least in terms of the growth/vibrancy of your movement). But of course, to believe anything at all is to believe that what you believe (and not merely that you believe it) is important. In other words, sociology can't be allowed to have the last word--and Stark and Finke's sociological work itself demonstrates this fact!

It's becoming increasingly clear in our culture, in secular as well as religious arenas, that the stereotypical "everything is OK" version of liberal tolerance is not only internally incoherent but practically unworkable. In many ways I'm worried by the rise of "liberal  intolerance," because combined with the existing conservative intolerance it's creating a rather toxic environment in American society.  But in certain ways it's a good sign.
As Chesterton said a century ago:

Every one of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about “liberty”; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “progress”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “education”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, “Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty.” This is, logically rendered, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.” He says, “Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress.” This, logically stated, means, “Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it.” He says, “Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education.” This, clearly expressed, means, “We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children.”

If there is one thing clear from the sociological  work of Stark and Finke and the statistical trends to which Douthat refers, it is that these attempts to avoid talking about what is good have failed. It would be tragic if this admirable  body of sociological work became itself (in the hands of triumphant conservatives) an attempt to avoid talking about what is good. Let us not substitute talk of statistical trends and growth patterns and even "high-tension" churches for talk of what is good.

Let us base our hopes for our churches on one thing alone: on our faltering and ridiculous attempts to be faithful to Jesus, or rather in the myriad ways in which Jesus uses  our faltering and sinful communities in order to be faithful to us and through us to the whole world.

Back from diocesan convention

I just returned from the second day of our diocesan convention, which this year featured the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori. I was personally impressed with the Presiding Bishop, who preached a thought-provoking sermon about St. Teresa of Avila and answered questions with grace and humor. However, I was confirmed in my belief that her understanding of the Church is radically different from mine.

The most frustrating part of the afternoon question-and-answer period was her discussion of the issue of property fights between the denomination and parishes that wish to leave the Episcopal Church. She has been criticized for allegedly preventing such congregations from purchasing "their" property, preferring (where necessary) to deconsecrate the property and sell it for some other use. She was asked about a recent WSJ op-ed piece on the subject, and criticized it as "more fiction than non-fiction." However, she affirmed that the Episcopal Church does not let property go without deconsecrating it.

The problem I see with this position is that it is proper only to someone claiming to speak for the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is the Church as a whole that consecrates or deconsecrates. To suggest that fellow Christians cannot use consecrated property is to suggest that they are no longer part of the true Church.

As far as I could tell, the Presiding Bishop's ecclesiology is one in which the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is made up of diverse, parallel organizations that both cooperate and (at times) compete with each other (she used the example of a healthy ecosystem in which there are many flourishing organisms). And yet, as her stance with regards to the Episcopal Church's property shows, she winds up in practice speaking as if the Episcopal Church simply were the Church. If she really valued the presence of many competing "organisms," why not let the departing parishes go, facilitate their purchase of the property they had been using, and celebrate the resulting diversity?

The basic problem here is that however much a denomination may claim to be only part of the universal Church, denominations don't seem to be able to stop themselves from acting as if they were the Church. And I think the answer is to admit that a denomination is not even a Church in any theological sense.

There are local churches, gathered around a local bishop, and there is the Universal Church.

Everything in between is just administration.

Landmarks of Early Film #1

Over the past few years, I've been watching a lot of early movies in more or less chronological order. I started doing this fairly systematically in 2009, but the first early-movie DVD I got from Netflix was back in December 2007: Landmarks of Early Film #1. This is a collection of movies from the earliest days of the Edison company and the Lumiere Bros. through D. W. Griffiths and the Keystone Cops. It was a great place to start my exploration of movie history.

Most of the movies on this disc are of primarily historical interest. The earliest ones were primarily experiments, though an interest in storytelling develops early on. Many of the early films were "actualites"--essentially what we would now call documentaries, though very brief and with a stationary camera. People would set up a camera outside a factory or in a train station and simply film what was going on. (Of course, one has to suspect that pretty soon the filmmakers started manipulating events in order to get more interesting results.)

Slapstick comedy is one of the genres that developed very early. Much of it isn't very interesting, at least to me. The humor often seems heavy-handed.

The three most famous movies on this disc are "The Great Train Robbery" by Edwin Porter from 1903, sometimes called the first Western; "A Voyage to the Moon" (1902) by the Frenchmoviemaker Georges Melies; and "A Girl and Her Trust" (1912) by D. W. Griffith. "Robbery" is historically interesting and somewhat enjoyable. The most talked-about moment in the movie is usually shown at the end, when one of the robbers turns and fires his gun at the camera; this seems to have nothing to do with the story (the robbers have been caught by this point), and as I understand no one really knows when it was originally supposed to be shown. "A Voyage to the Moon" seems to be largely based on Jules Verne. It's the most famous movie by Melies, who began as a stage magician and is best known for his development of special effects. Melies doesn't do a lot for me--I recognize that his technical wizardry was impressive, and that he had a quirky imagination, and I have more respect for what he did than for the bloated CGI that audiences flock to see today. But there doesn't seem to be any heart in his films--they're all trickery and crude spectacle. Historically interesting, but not particularly meaningful on other counts.

Griffith's "A Girl and Her Trust," on the other hand (a revision of a movie called "The Lonedale Operator"), is great melodrama with a plucky heroine who saves a safe from a gang of bandits (largely, in the final climax, by simply hanging on to it as they drive off with it--and her--along the railroad tracks). It has one of the great early chase scenes in the movies, and a lovely final shot of the heroine and her boyfriend sharing a sandwich while riding on the bumper of the train that has rescued her. Watching this movie made me a fan of Griffiths--about whom more to come if I continue this series.

"Blog tour" for my wife's book

It may seem somewhat improper to review a book by my wife, but hey, she asked me to do it and I'm being upfront about my "bias"!

With said bias in mind:

Jenn's basic argument is that Methodists who pushed for the use of non-alcoholic "wine" in the Eucharist in the late 19th century were doing so based on a coherent theological/philosophical point of view based in "common-sense realism." I'm no expert on commonsense realism, so I won't discuss the more technical historical-philosophical aspect of Jenn's argument. But she captures the American Victorian Protestant ethos brilliantly. The theologians, moral reformers, and authors of household advice manuals whose work she examines all shared the conviction that clear thinking about the world, based on reliable sense impressions and free from undue influence by passion or imagination, was key to personal morality, social welfare, and true religion. They were deeply suspicious of the irrationality and self-indulgence that they identified with Romantic poets on the one hand and with Catholic immigrants on the other. They believed sincerely that "cleanliness is next to godliness" (maybe even identical with it).

The most appropriate symbol for this view of the world was water. Jenn quotes a number of "temperance hymns" which extol the benefits of "pure, cold water" (see p. 62, for instance). Jenn is writing about Methodists, not Mormons, but it may be significant that Mormons (like some early Gnostics) substituted water for the "fruit of the vine" in their version of the Eucharist. Methodists and other mainstream Protestants were too attached to traditional Christianity to follow the Mormon example in this. Indeed, temperance reformers initially did not condemn all alcohol, instead arguing for stricter standards of purity in the production of alcohol and fighting against the distilling trade. Properly produced beer and wine could be consumed healthfully in small quantities (this was John Wesley's view). Hard liquor and the "adulterated" beer and wine often drunk by the lower classes were entirely evil. Benjamin Rush's "temperance thermometer" reflects this early view (p. 21). By the middle of the 19th century, however, temperance advocates had moved on to the condemnation of all alcohol. This brought them into apparent conflict with the Bible, which frequently speaks favorably of wine and seems to mandate its use in the Eucharist. Lacking the claims to additional revelation put forward by the Mormons, how were Methodists and other mainstream American Protestants to handle this apparent conflict? The answer lay in the "two-wine theory," which argued that "pure" wine was in fact non-alcoholic. One of Jenn's most interesting sources (about which I heard a great deal while she was writing the dissertation that eventually became this book) is Frederic R. Lees' Temperance Bible Commentary, which goes through every verse in the Bible discussing wine and argues systematically for the two-wine theory.

The central chapters of the book deal respectively with "Alcohol and Science," "Alcohol and the Overthrow of Reason," "Alcohol, the Ideal Worker, and the Poisoned Chalice," and "Alcohol and the Truth of the Gospel." A further chapter discusses how similar concerns about cleanliness and rationality underlay the move away from the common cup toward small individual cups.

The concluding chapter, beginning "This is the story of how grape juice became holy" (p. 121), is a brilliant summary of the argument of the book as a whole, focusing on the contrast between a contemporary "liturgical" sensibility valuing mystery, ecstasy, and passion and the theological views that motivated the temperance reformers. Jenn is formed by the liturgical tradition within Methodism, and this book is an impressive exercise in getting inside the heads of people with whose assumptions she fundamentally disagrees.

Obviously the book is useful for all grape-juice-using American Protestants (not just Methodists) who want to understand their heritage on this point, as well as for non-American Protestants, American non-Protestants, and even those who are neither American nor Protestant, who may wish to understand the weird practices of this particular tribal family. However, in a society increasingly divided along "culture-war" lines, where people on both sides routinely refuse to see any intellectual validity in the other, the seriousness with which Jenn takes her subjects' ideas may be the greatest significance of the book. (Jenn is not, I'm happy to say, unique in this respect--there are a number of young scholars of American religion who are doing this kind of thing.) It is common to hear liberal intellectuals claim (or more tragically, just assume) that the "great unwashed" of conservative American Protestantism do what they do for fundamentally non-theological reasons, usually because they are being manipulated by millionaires. In the present instance, it is often asserted that the Welch family promoted non-alcoholic Eucharistic "wine" for purely financial considerations. Jenn shows the abundant intellectual roots of Eucharistic grape juice (if juice can have roots), demonstrating that 19th-century American Protestants, right or wrong, had coherent reasons for their views. She also points out that temperance advocates saw themselves as "progressive," interpreting Scripture in the light of science and clearing away the fetid foliage of tradition to make way for the light of common sense and responsible democratic citizenship.

In summary, this book is an engagingly written, often wryly funny work of scholarship that sheds light on some of the basic underlying assumptions of the mainstream 19th-century American Protestant tradition, which continues to shape American society today. For those of us who come from that tradition, the book helps us understand ourselves better. Thanks to Jenn's work, I have a much better understanding of just what it is about my religious heritage that I reject, and why that rejection has brought me where I am today. I stand firmly on the side of mystery and paradox against common sense. And yet when I read this book, I hear the rippling of cool, clear water and I have a better understanding of the moral and spiritual vision that shaped my childhood than I did when I was under its un-enchanting spell.

(Final note: one of the big questions left to be addressed by this book is the role of emotion and even Romanticism in the Wesleyan tradition. Our mutual friend Chris Armstrong of "Grateful to the Dead" tends to emphasize this--he and Jenn have some disagreements on the subject. In my own case, I find that the "Romantic" elements of my heritage are the ones with which I am still most in agreement, while the "common-sense" elements are the ones I am most inclined to reject outright. But this is not a subject that can be addressed adequately within the limits of this review.)

Response to Kevin DeYoung, Part 1

The most thorough and widely touted refutation of Love Wins is a lengthy review by Kevin DeYoung, a pastor in East Lansing. I applaud Pastor DeYoung for his thoughtful and substantive approach. He's done an excellent job of explaining why conservative Reformed evangelicals (and no doubt many conservative Arminians as well) find Bell's views so troubling. Pastor DeYoung clearly takes seriously his responsibilities to defend the faith once delivered to the saints and to protect the sheep of Christ from false doctrine, but he carries out this task in a respectful and charitable way. I in no way endorse the common attitude among "emergents" and other less traditional evangelicals that substantive theological definition and debate is somehow "un-Christ-like."

I disagree substantively with Pastor DeYoung on a number of points, with regard both to his interpretation of Bell and to the theological standards he is using to critique Bell. Since his review is very well organized, I will follow his arrangement of topics, noting agreements as well as disagreements with his critiques.

I will start with DeYoung's third "preliminary," which attempts to close some "escape hatches" found in Love Wins.

As you’ll see, the book is a sustained attack on the idea that those who fail to believe in Jesus Christ in this life will suffer eternally for their sins. This is the traditional Christianity he finds “misguided and toxic” (viii). But in one or two places Bell seems more agnostic.

Bell is agnostic not about the claim that all who do not believe in Jesus in this life will suffer eternally (he clearly rejects this), but about the question of whether there will be some who, in spite of God's persistent offer of grace, eternally choose to turn God down. DeYoung continues:

These are strange sentences because they fall in the chapter where Bell argues that God wants everyone to be saved and God gets what God wants. He tells us that “never-ending punishment” does not give God glory, and “God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest hearts” (108). So it’s unclear where the sudden agnosticism comes from. Is Bell wrestling with himself? Did a friend or editor ask him to throw in a few caveats? Is he simply inconsistent?

The answer is much simpler. Bell is describing a position he regards as a serious theological option, held by "an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years," not necessarily the position he himself holds. Bell's position is not self-contradictory or dishonest. He is consistent from beginning to end about his "agnosticism" concerning the question of whether some will eternally persist in saying "no" to God. He considers universalism to be a live option within Christian orthodoxy, but he does not consider it to be unquestionably true.

Similarly, at the end Bell argues, rather out of the blue, that we need to trust God in the present, that our choices here and now “matter more than we can begin to imagine” because we can miss out on rewards and celebrations (197). This almost looks like an old-fashioned call to turn to Christ before it’s too late. When you look more carefully, however, you see that Bell is not saying what evangelicals might think.

You don't have to look that carefully. DeYoung is proceeding on the assumption that Bell is somehow trying to pretend to be a traditional evangelical. He isn't. DeYoung doesn't want to allow Bell to say that our choices here matter unless Bell says that they matter in the same way DeYoung thinks they do. This is not a fair way to argue. By all means disagree with Bell. Condemn him as a heretic if you think you need to. But don't try to argue that he's being shifty or dishonest when he simply doesn't accept the dichotomies that you wish to impose.

He wants us to make the most of life because “while we may get other opportunities, we won’t get the one right in front of us again” (197). In other words, there are consequences for our actions, in this life and in the next, and we can’t get this moment back; but there will always be more chances. If you don’t live life to the fullest and choose love now, you may initially miss out on some good things in the life to come, but in the end love wins (197–198).

"Love wins" for Bell because God respects human freedom, so if people do choose to reject Christ eternally (something Bell hopes they won't do but recognizes as a possibility) love still wins. This isn't too hard to understand. The fact that DeYoung and other critics are confused by it says a lot for how their theological commitments restrict their ability to understand those who differ from them. If you have a theology that tells you that people who differ on major issues are probably not real Christians and thus are spiritually blind, then you aren't likely to take the trouble to think in the unfamiliar ways necessary to understand them. This is not a personal judgment on the character of Pastor DeYoung or his theological allies, but a judgment on the general tendency of conservative Calvinist theology.

The same problem plagues the next section of DeYoung's review, "Not Your Grandmother's Christianity," in which DeYoung argues that Bell is deeply conflicted about his evangelical heritage, wishing to criticize it while remaining faithful to it. To which I respond: you make this sound like a bad thing! I've noticed that conservative Christians, especially Calvinists, frequently portray any kind of mediating position or any position including tensions or paradoxes as a dishonest compromise, and urge folks occupying such a position to be "honest" and go all the way. After all, it's easy to deal with someone who rejects orthodox Christianity outright. But someone like Bell is annoying because he persists in identifying himself as an evangelical. DeYoung insists that Bell is trying to "evolve out of" his heritage, when Bell would say that he is calling evangelicals to be faithful to the best and truest elements of their heritage while questioning some other elements.

I understand how traditionalist Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox find this kind of language objectionable. But how can any Protestant object to such an approach on principle?

DeYoung ends this section thus:

This [Bell's supposed desire to "evolve out of" his evangelical past] presumes, of course, that the Christian faith is not a deposit to guard or a tradition that must not change (2 Tim. 1:14; 2 Thess. 2:15). Much of Bell’s polemic fails if there is a core of apostolic teaching that we are called, not just to embrace as part of our journey, but to protect from deviation and defend against false teaching (Acts 20:29–31).

I agree to some extent with DeYoung here. Bell is prone to rhetoric implying that any drawing of doctrinal lines is wrong and that there is really no such thing as heresy at all. This is an untenable position. However, the point at issue with regard to Love Wins is whether the particular claims made by Bell are at odds with the "core of apostolic teaching." I do not believe that they are. That doesn't mean that I agree with everything Bell says, and I certainly think he is often not the best advocate for his own positions.

I will end my response here for now. I will continue, when I have time, with a response to DeYoung's historical criticisms of Bell (and as a teaser: this is the place where I'm most inclined to agree with DeYoung--Bell's history is often very sloppy).