Irrelevance as a Divine Vocation

The Word Has Been Abroad – Introduction 1

onefear — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:37:45 +0000

We begin with a proxy. Life does not leave time for Hans Urs von Balthasar‘s seven-volume The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, but it does leave time for Aidan Nichols’s guide to this seven volume work, The Word Has Been Abroad. So where you see a characterization of Balthasar, remember its a characterization of Nichols characterizing Balthasar.

The Glory of the Lord is itself but the first piece piece of Balthasar’s systematic theology trilogy, and the one in which he meditates upon the good, the beautiful, and the true. The rest of the trilogy includes the five-volume Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, examining “the action of God and the human response, especially in the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday” and the three-volume Theo-Logic (in which Balthasar examines ontology and the relation of the nature of Jesus Christ (christology) to reality itself.

Happily, Balthasar seems to be a biblicist, in the best sense of the word. That is, he has a high view of and robust respect for holy scripture and its role in the life of believers. Importantly, for our purposes, he begins his systematics in The Glory of the Lord with aesthetics and an extended consideration of beauty (glory) and its role. This is important, because I anticipate that human attitudes, beliefs, and practices regarding beauty significantly determine the nature and extent of their interaction with culture.

The key to the trilogy is found in the Scholastic notion of transcendental determinations of being, qualities so pervasive throughout reality that they crop up in all the categories of particular being, and so may be said to ‘transcend’ such categorical distinctions as those differentiating substance and accident, quality and mode. . . .There is a correspondence, an analogy, as well as a staggering disproportion . . . between worldly beauty and divine glory. There is a correspondence, an analogy, as well as a staggering disproportion between finite freedom and the infinite freedom of God. There is a correspondence, an analogy, as well as a staggering disproportion between the structure of created truth and the structure of divine truth. (xix)

Many recent theological debates have quibbled over the extent that we can (and should) learn of God and glimpse His mission in the world in the created order and through “common grace.” This fundamental premise of the Trilogy gives greater texture to this proposition (that general revelation does have much to teach of God and something of his mission as well), and reminds us of just how BIG are His presence and activity in the universe and its creation. The discussion of general revelation, common grace, and their role in the church has seemed rather flat to me; this analytical key to the Trilogy begins to restore multidimensionality to that debate.

Beauty corresponds to glory. It may take some time to unpack and examine that one.

Of Blogs and Resurrection – Love in Sin and Sin in Love (Reprise)

onefear — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:33:50 +0000

Though long fallow, this blog space may exhibit some Autumn resurrection that looks more like tiny shoots of Spring. Whether these shoots blossom into kudzu or tulips remains to be seen. I can’t get away from the fundamental question of how Christians are supposed to live individually and together (as the Church visible) with respect to present human culture. I am still talking primarily to myself, though the journal burning parties for thoughts recorded this medium are likely to be less fun than burning paper and smoke disappearing into the night.

Back to the question. What is the proper conception of Christian individual and corporate roles in human institutions and general culture – right now, today, at this cultural moment? Are these roles more oriented to process or product? Should they be viewed as “redemptive” or not? Do Christians merely herald the beauty of the eternal kingdom, which arrives with such cataclysm that the heralds’ trumpets are silenced before their rebirth into the symphony of a consummated kingdom? Or are the heralds’ notes a harmony that blends and builds with the melody of a restored earth and a consummated kingdom? Is there any melody, any cultural riff on God’s revealed truth – on His love – whose audition today will resonate recognizably in eternity? What about the two kingdom approach? Is God’s kingdom, as it unfolds or arrives, demonstrably broader than the Church (as I believe it to be)?

These questions are not merely eschatological, though eschatology is essential to their consideration. I don’t even know if they are the “right” questions – the questions whose answers will scratch my itch. I have some ideas about answers to these questions, but they do not rise above the level of intuition (at best, because it has often proven true in the past) and bias (at worst, simply because it may be invisible).

At its core, this line of inquiry should facilitate an answer to a simple question to ask: “I am a Christian, so how should I live before God and man (and why)?” OK, that’s more than one, but the “line of inquiry” is the why – the bridge we have to cross to get to the how. It’s likely to be a long bridge, and I begin unsure of my method. I suspect that any method is better than no method, so it’s no worry. Here goes: (1) Figure out the right questions to ask, (2) ask the questions of Scripture, and (3) reconcile my answers from Scripture with others’ answers in light of our present cultural position. The third step is likely to induce further items in the second step, so that may be something of a feedback loop.

I will seek the “right questions” by engaging a few different works (some in greater depth than others), perhaps somewhat arbitrary, but they are the ones right here beside me:

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford 2010)

Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Eerdmans 1994)

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God (IVP Academic 2006)

Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (IVP 2004)

Graeme Goldsworthy, The Goldsworthy Trilogy (Gospel and Kingdom, Gospel and Wisdom, The Gospel in Revelation) (Paternoster 2000)

Thomas Sowell, Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (Basic Books 2007)

Adian Nichols OP, The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics (CUA Press 1998)

Adian Nichols OP, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Bathasar’s Dramatics (CUA Press 2000)

Dick Keyes, Beyond Identity: Finding Your Way in the Image and Character of God (Paternoster 1998)

Though some are harder than others to understand, each of these works is pretty heady and many are abstract. Yet the questions I want to discern and answer are concrete and earthy. In part, these works come to mind because I think that they encircle the questions I want to ask and answer without stating the questions or answering them directly. In part, they make the list because they have been or should be influential in my thinking, but I haven’t yet squeezed all the worth out of them that I can. No doubt I shall need something like Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity to keep my feet on the ground. We’ll see how it goes . . . .

Ezraic Nugget

onefear — Sun, 10 May 2009 03:27:34 +0000

Ezra 7:10 is key verse of book. For Ezra had made his heart firm (established this as an ideal that he owns, which he has directed his life) to pursue in detailed study the Torah of the Lord (particualrly the Pentateuch) and to do it, and to teach statutes and rules in Israel.

In Hebrew you have two lamed-inf construct — in English we would say to study the law of the Lord and to do it. You are expecting asa to be transitive,

Study in order to do, and by being a doer he is then qualified to teach. What is told about EZRA are the things that make him the ideal priestly person.

You have to make it your first pastoral priority to study in order to do and not to study in order to teach. Your first question hast to be how do I own this? The zip, the pow, the bang in ministry comes from authenticity — the transcript of your own soul.

Poor parson in Chaucer’s Prologue. “And was a poor parson of a town, but rich he was of holy thought and work. He was also a learned man, a clerk, that Christ’s Gospel truly would preach, his parishoners devoutly would he teach. . . But Christ’s lore, and his apostles’ twelve, he taught, and first he followed it himself.”

Collins — “Dare we be less?”

This and Malachi 2:1-9 — lips of priest should preserve knowledge. Being someone who has ingested the word and learned how to embody it. Out of the embodiment the mouth speaks.

Is there a reason why Ezra was effective? 7:10 is it. .

Driscoll’s Dance with the NY Times

onefear — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:12:59 +0000

Molly Worthen’s piece “Who Would Jesus Smack Down” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine highlights Mark Driscoll and his ministry as pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. No systematic comments, but a few reflections:

Invictus makes its predictable and appropriate appearance in the same stroke of the pen as one of several caricatures of Calvinism: “Yet [Driscoll's] message seems radically unfashionable, even un-American: you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time.”
Worthen’s words accompanying her Invictus reference may give some additional insight into an answer to the second question in that earlier post concerning why the church doesn’t look very different from the world. To really live as if one is not the master of one’s fate and the captain of one’s soul is downright un-American, and the “soul captaincy” embodied in American political and social culture is a force difficult to escape, even in the church.
Many a pastor “planting” a new congregation has learned hard lessons from allowing the vision and mission of the fledgling congregation be diluted by tangential and competing concerns. Yet, in Driscoll and Mars Hill we may see some aspects of how protestant evangelicalism’s broken view of the church (i.e., ecclesiology) makes it harder to escape the cult of personality. I have no way to know the form, content, or spirit of the dissension identified in the last part of the article, but the depiction of opposition from his own leadership as “‘sinning through questioning’” and the alleged practice of shunning recommend church polity and discipline that handle dissension and produce direction from a posture of expectant dependence on God and submission to one another out of reverence for Christ. The nature of the human heart is such that this becomes even more important when what you are doing seems to be successful.
Some have said that earthly, human attention to (and therefore identification of) who is in and who is out, the elect and the non-elect, is an inescapable, if not essential, part of Calvinism. If so, it is to the system’s detriment. In any event, the viewing world seems preoccupied with the doctrines of election and predestination, and seems to treat them as far less mysterious than did Calvin himself.
Finally, and in the category of intuition, irrelevance as a divine vocation still appears to me an essential feature of the pastoral calling. At least in part, this is because relevance and notoriety by nature divide person and persona, leaving observers in the watching world (with access to little more than personality) insufficient relationship with the pastor to accurately read his person, and expanding followers’ opportunities to follow pastoral “personality” rather than the person of Christ modeled through pastoral transparency. Real harm flowing from such circumstances may not reflect the person of the pastor, and certainly would not reflect his desire. Worthen’s closing is chilling, and almost certainly not what Driscoll has in mind: “At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage – until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll’s face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious face: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling its adherents.” Christ is obscured by the opacity of the once-transparent pastor at the peril of the only truly good news for the world.

Sibling Loyalty

onefear — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:00:45 +0000

M(then 4) to E(then 2 days old): “I’ll always be by your side, but sometimes I’ll be doing other stuff too.” 08.14.02

Yellow

onefear — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:13:46 +0000

S(7), decked out in all pink, is getting out of the passenger side of the van. Mom is in the front passenger seat. Both are within the hearing of L(3), in purple pants and shirt and yellow coat, who is standing outside to the right of Dad, who just poked his head in the van:

S(7) to Mom: “I guess I’m all pink today – pink pants, pink shirt, pink coat, pink purse!”

Mom to S(7): “Yeah, I guess you are!”

L(3) to Dad: [in a low voice before S(7) gets out of the car] “Yellow goes with anything.”

Wal-Mart Religion

onefear — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:23:36 +0000

A nice convergence here between Andrei Codrescu:

. . .And so we went shopping! We so went shopping, in rumbling herdlike elephant masses, we killed a guy who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. It’s a tragic incident, but by no means meaningless. Shopping is a religion, and some religions demand sacrifices.

The Wal-Mart employee died for us on Black Friday, but have we stopped to think what his sacrifice means? Not at all: We’re stampeding right on through to the other side of Christmas. We aren’t just shopping: We are saving America. . . .

And Michael Horton in his recent People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (as quoted here):

The nihilistic eros of the consumer society, which seems to have drawn much of American Christianity into its wake, creates a desire that can never be satisfied. Ads and shop windows offer us a perpetual stream of icons promising to fulfill our ambitions to have the life that they represent: a fully realized eschatology. Handing our credit card to the salesperson can be a sacrament of this transaction between sign and signified. Yet this anonymous space of endless consumption is the parody of the place of promise: true shalom.

Election Reflection

onefear — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:55:01 +0000

Extending Sean Lucas’s good observations about the post-election hyperbole among public commentators and my brief comments there, I wonder about the state of hyperbole everywhere. A couple of reflections:

Shortly after the election, David Brooks remarked on the significance of the fact that the candidates for President were pre-Boomer McCain (b. 1936) v. post-Boomer Obama (b. 1961). Thus, this election may be epochal because it represents the end of sustained political dominance by the Boomers and the rise of the post-Boomers.

Understandably, the hand-wringing is more acute for the Republican Party because many of its segments have no idea what they have to do to bring Xs, Ys, and present-and-future Zs into their ranks en masse. The result of the Presidential election prompted unexpected visceral relief or excitement among many young conservatives, even among those who still voted for McCain. The mixture of relief and excitement varies greatly in its composition, but arises from at least two hopes: (1) that Obama will actually govern in a way that counters many of the moral failures, injustice, and oppression wrought by the Bush administration, and (2) that the failure of the vacuous Republican election message is an opportunity to turn the Republican Party back away from obeisance to Enlightenment Liberalism, statism, and unconstrained vision (using Sowell’s terminology from Conflict of Visions). Of course, history will demonstrate that Bush and Obama each brings his own different moral failures, injustice, and oppression to bear on our society, and history will judge their relative weight.

The secular messianism of many Obama followers will ultimately disappoint. A principled Administration is, however, preferable for everyone over the relatively recent history of Clintonesque thumb-in-the-air pragmatism and Bushesque end-justifies-the-means pragmatism.

An Obama Administration that acts according to principles will be good both for those who agree with those principles and those who disagree with them. If you will allow a little Chesterton:

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men–so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. * * * Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them. Men will walk along the edge of a chasm in clear weather, but they will edge miles away from it in a fog.

The myopia of many in the church is profound.

Since the election I have heard some in the church cite as the only reason to be thankful for Obama’s victory: (1) anticipated direct religious persecution by the Obama Administration, and (2) judgment by God against the United States for the moral decadence that the victory itself both symbolizes and accomplishes.

I agree that “there is no authority except that which God has established” and positively “The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Rom. 13:1. Surely, then, we cannot dichotomise and reduce God’s posture to any one President merely to “blessing” or “judgment.” Every President is a mixed bag, the actions of each jusifying a mixture of blessing and judgment.

Immediately prior to that verse, Paul gives us our task:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Whew! That’s enough to keep us all busy.

What is a City?

onefear — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:16:36 +0000

Thinking about cities this past weekend while auditing Travis Vaughn’s Church in Context: Gospel in the City. Asked to write a tentative definition, my rough-draft take on what city is: “A city is a place where humanity is sufficiently concentrated that people, including strangers, are forced to come into constant contact with one another but are able, because of that same density, to control the nature and depth of the ensuing relationships, that can range from sustained anonymity to sustained and deep vulnerability and love.” Of course, for individuals the ability to move along this continuum is partially dependendent upon individual personality, skills, temperament, resources, etc. Probably overbroad but I am still thinking.

During the class I heard the oft repeated statement that “the gospel of Jesus Christ always tends to move to the margins.” Based upon observations of Christ’s actual ministry, this seems to be a function of who has ears to hear and eyes to see. Most of the time those who have such ears and eyes are indeed those who know they have nothing they can offer God, and are therefore dependent on Him for their very breath. During this class, it occured to me that the proposition may lie at the heart of the confluence of reconciliation ministry, weakness, and the propagation of the good news. When those in vastly different socio-economic categories are reconciled to God and to one another, the power of Jesus Christ’s work effectively marginalizes each of the parties, making each more receptive of the good news. This marginalization is a type of the weakness through which God’s power is made perfect. See 2 Cor. 12-13

Ministries of Word and Deed and the Church

onefear — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:10:04 +0000

The September 2008 issue of Themelios is out, and in the opening editorial D. A. Carson speaks of fifty pastors’ (presumably the Gospel Coalition’s Council Members) consensus and question:

[T]here was, I think a broad consensus that Christians who understand the priority of preparing people for eternity must also help people here and now, and that gospel proclamation must not be set antithetically against deeds of mercy. Far from it: many of the pastors and the Christians they served were heavily involved in an array of strategic ministries. It was, of course, immediately recognized that how one discharges such responsibilities will vary enormously from community to community, from country to country, for the needs vary hugely, almost beyond comprehension. Still, we returned again and again to this pointed question: Granted that we ought to be engaged in acts of mercy, what safeguards can be set in place so as to minimize the risk that the deeds of mercy will finally swamp the proclamation of the gospel and the passionate desire to see men and women reconciled to God by faith in Christ Jesus and his atoning death and resurrection?

Carson reports that two particular safeguards stood out in the discussion: (1) distinguish between the responsibilities of the church qua church and the responsibilities of Christians, and (2) preach hell as a reminder that Christians desire to relieve all suffering and as a guard against distracting involvement with those who would shunt aside the mankind’s need to be reconciled to God and to flee the coming wrath.

For Carson, and presumably these pastors, the end of the first of these two safeguards is similar to the goal of the second – to ensure that “[m]inisters of the gospel . . . [do] not become so embroiled in such multiplying ministries [of service] that their ministries of evangelism, Bible teaching, making disciples, instructing, baptizing, and the like, somehow get squeezed to the periphery and take on a purely formal veneer.”

Mildly critical of those “writers [who] flip back and forth between references to ‘Christians’ and references to ‘church’ as if there is no difference whatsoever,” Carson concludes that there is no New Testament warrant for and rejects the conclusion of ”many Christian thinkers . . . that if the church qua church is responsible for some of these substantial works of mercy, such works of mercy ought to come under the leaders of the church.” To support his conclusion he draws upon the apostles’ example in Acts 6:1-6:

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. ² And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. ³ Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. ⁴ But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” ⁵ And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. ⁶ These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

Carson observes that the twelve recognized that they should not be diverted from the ministry of the Word and prayer even by the inequities of food distribution among the saints, so they saw that others were appointed to “tackle the problem.”

I grant that the fifty gathered in Chicago are pastors pondering their role and the role of their congregations in ministries of service. Yet, Carson fails to apply the “broad consensus” to the responsibilities of ”church qua church” as promised. Instead, he narrows the focus to the role of minister of the gospel.

Even ignoring the possible discontinuities between the apostles’ particular calling in Acts 6 and a pastor’s calling in today’s church, if the consensus is that ”Christians who understand the priority of preparing people for eternity must also help people here and now,” then the question for the minister is how to lead Christians in the flock together to do both of these things. Such a “consensus” implies that each part is an essential part of what it means to be a Christian. And ministers are to be all about equipping the saints to be Christians, equipping them for works of service (diakoni,aj), together building up the body of Christ. Eph. 4:11-16.

Neither Carson nor I would argue that ministers should become so involved in the service-based works of the Church that they neglect the Word to the church. Yet the implication of Carson’s shifting emphasis from the Church qua Church to the apparently limited role of the minister in ministry of service, obscures the centrality of the minister’s duty to spur the people of the Church to lead lives of whole-bodied Christians. Church qua church is to be full of men and women who both preach the perilous grace of the Gospel and physically demonstrate the immense depth and strength of Christ’s love. They do these things with their mouths, with their hip pockets, and with their hands and feet. Surely it takes Word and deed together create a robust reflection of the love of God in Christ.

The Church qua Church cannot adequately illumine the world with the glory of God in Christ without both of these things (remember the consensus). In order to correct the imbalance in the American church, it seems to me that ministers of the gospel should be a lot more worried that their lives and the ministry lives of their congregations fail to reflect the deed side of this combination than worried about being distracted from faithful proclaimation of the Word by overattention to acts of charity and love. Word and deed must go out together for the Word to be manifest to the world in His saving glory, power, and love.