The ‘Common Life’: Five Reasons Why and How Theological Controversy Can Be Edifying

I have had a long and varied blogging career (since 2005, so relatively speaking), and in that career lots of life has happened. One part of that happening has been continued theological development, hopefully toward the unity of faith that has already found its terminus in Christ’s unity for us with the Father by the Spirit. Some of you have been with me for my entire blogging career (almost), and others started with me mid-career, while others of you are just new comers. Much of my career has been characterized by polemical speech. In the beginning of my career, being new to the online world, I was more intrigued than anything else; and the sense of anonymity coupled with being too close to the halls of Bible College and Seminary dorm life, fused together in a way that found ultimate expression in online debates about minutiae that might only be characterized by Fundamentalist idiosyncrasy, and zeal. This zeal, though, I can honestly say, was not born out of a vindictive heart, or a desire to show people that I was smarter than them, or better at rhetorical wit (well, maybe sometimes it could be so reduced!); but really, I have always had a passion for the truth of the Gospel and the edification of the body of Christ. My zeal for the Gospel, in its best moments could be stated this way and for this end:  “Zeal is public passion for gospel truth; without it the church drifts into indifference, weariness or irony of the late career religious professional.” [John Webster, The Domain of the Word, 167.] I don’t ever want to experience this kind of drift, but a growing in zeal with knowledge. And I would like to believe that most of my blogging career has been characterized not by wandering polemic aiming at a bunch of moving targets; but a ‘zeal’ and ‘public passion for gospel truth’!

In this spirit, John Webster offers five reasons wherein theological controversy can be fruitful and edifying. I was contemplating only emphasizing the last thesis statement by Webster, but I think I will give it a go, and transcribe all five reasons; because, well, they are that good! I will offer each thesis, and then provide a summary/response at the end.

[F]irst, and most generally, theological controversy must be an exercise within the communio sanctorum. Those who contend are saints, not mere ‘civil neighbours’. They are bound together by bonds beyond the natural, together placed in the tranquil realm of reconciliation. It is as reconciled and sanctified persons that they engage in controversy; reconciled and sanctified controversy is a very different exercise from its unregenerate counterpart. Moreover, the end of controversy is the furtherance of communion, not its erosion. Righteous conduct in theological controversy requires charity, and therefore resists the flight from society which contests commonly precipitate.

Second, theological controversy must be undertaken in a way which displays and magnifies the truth of the gospel whose author and content in is peace. This principle brings with it a remarkably demanding ascetical requirement: controversy will only serve peace in the church if it has an external orientation, if it is a movement in response to an object beyond the contending parties. Without this reference to the object – an object, we should remember, which is primarily and antecedently a divine subject, living, personally, active communicative and directive – controversy will simply reinforce discord by embedding in the public life of the church the self-absorption of sensuous minds which, the apostle tells us, do not ‘hold fast to the Head’ (Col. 2.19). may controversy be conducted without self-conceit, mutual provocation and envy (Gal. 5.25), and assist in the uniting of the hearts and minds of the saints in a common object of delight.

Third, theological controversy must not allow divergence of opinion to become divergence of will otherwise it will fail as an exercise of charity. ‘Concord is a union of will, not of opinions’. In many cases, however, we allow divergence of opinion to become inflamed, and so to erode concord, failing to rest content with the fact that those from whom we diverge in opinion may be at one with us in a commonly cherished good. There are, of course, conflicts which are generated from fundamental divergences about the gospel, and which cannot be contained within concord, there being no common object of love. But these are not conflicts within the church so much as about the church. In such cases concord must wait for conversion to the truth.

Fourth, theological controversy must have an eye to the catholicity of the object of Christian faith and confession, an object which exceeds any specification of it which we may make. The object which constitutes the peace of the church and which is the substance of common Christian love is infinite and inexhaustible. This does not give licence to any representation which may court our favour – the object of common love is this one, not a formless reality. Yet, of all possible objects of love, this one is not such that we can ever end our dealings with him, determine him in such a way that we put ourselves beyond learning from our companions. Controversy turns into conflict when opinions become weapons of the will, that is, when some one reading of the gospel becomes that to which others must conform even at cost to that friendly concord in which ‘the hearts of many are joined into one focal point’.

Fifth, and most of all, theological controversy must be undertaken with tranquil confidence that, with the illuminating power of the Spirit, Jesus Christ will instruct and unify the church through Holy Scripture. Properly conducted, theological controversy is an exercise in reading the Bible in common with the calm expectation of discovering again what makes up peace and builds up our common life. We often talk ourselves into (or perhaps allow ourselves to be talked into) a kind of barren naturalism according to which appeals to Scripture founder on irresolvable exegetical and hermeneutical conflict. Once confidence in the power of Scripture to determine matters in the church is lost, the politics of the saints quickly slides into agonistic practices in which we expect no divine comfort or direction. This is not a new experience in the history of the church; it has afflicted Western Protestants since at least the early seventeenth century – John Owen, in a melachonly aside, lamented that ‘men do hardly believe that there is an efficacy and power accompanying the institutions of Christ’. The only corrective to loss of trust is recovery of trust. Because there are divine institutions, because there are prophets and apostles in service to the prophetic presence of Christ, we are not devoid of divine assistance and we may be confident that exegesis, rightly and spiritually ventured, will not exacerbate conflict but draw its sting, and guide our feet into the way of peace.[1]

All of these are good (even excellent, at points!). But let me close by focusing on the fifth point. This is one that I have struggled with over the years, and what Christian Smith has called the problem of Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism; the idea that we all have our own kind of Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. And given this reality, coupled with the ‘Reformed’ Priesthood of All Believers, it becomes almost terminally difficult to come to any commonly held interpretive conclusions around the text of Scripture. And so in argument, among ourselves (per some of the dictates highlighted by Webster), we all appeal to Scripture, but we proof text right past each other. I have often argued in the past that we need to become aware of the theology that we are committed to prior to using Scripture to challenge each other’s conclusions; but what I have fallen prey to, is what Webster cautions us to. That is, a sequestering of the text of Scripture by theological concerns, such that Scripture no longer really has any kind of norming norming effect or centrality of place in our theological discussions. Scripture becomes a relic and trophy of our  heritage, but not the place where the Lordly Word can accost us in such a way that it can strip all of us bare and level us out in a way where we all are kneeling together at the foot of the cross, which is the preamble and shape of the throne at the right hand of the Father. So I am convicted by Webster’s last point! And the rest too …

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[1] John Webster, The Domain of the Word:Scripture and Theological Reason, (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 169-70.

Some Critical Reception of Thomas Torrance and Scripture

Let me caveat this prior to getting into this post. The following neither undermines or suggests that I have become antagonistic to the theologian under consideration through the rest of this short post. All it should suggest is that I do not read this theologian without some critical reservation; it should suggest that I am not his puppet, and it should also suggest that as with any of us, even this theologian has gaps or holes in his theological construct. And I think John Webster helpfully articulates and identifies a hole in Thomas Torrance’s conception of Scripture that is pretty fundamental and might cause some die hard Torrance fans to gasp a bit. Nevertheless, I think the following is true, and has been something that I have been struggling with in regard to Torrance over the past couple of years.

For Thomas Torrance, the res or reality is the all determinative thing; which means that Jesus is THE regulative force in Scripture’s ontology. But one way in which Torrance, I think, overstates this is almost by denigrating the reality that in fact God has actually ordained the syntax, semantics, grammar and lexical formation of the text, in such a way that the ‘depth dimension’ of Scripture is actually tied into the literary contours of Scripture and not simply back up behind them in God’s life. That is not to say that Scripture is God, or that Scripture is determinative of God’s speech; but it is to recognize that Scripture, is indeed, God’s speech. And thus given this auxiliary mode, and the placement that God has given Scripture in His disclosure of Himself to us in Christ; it is important to remember that Scripture, not Dogmatics, is the norming norm of theological and dogmatic speech and grammar, and not the other way around. Webster states that like this:

[…]What dogmatic reason may not do is pretend to a firmer grasp of the object of theological reason than can be achieved by following the text. The prophets and apostles are appointed by God, dogmaticians are not; prophetic and apostolic speech is irreducible; the sufficiency of Scripture includes its rhetorical sufficiency. [John Webster, The Domain of the Word, 131.]

Torrance has the tendency to elevate Dogmatics to a level that begins to have a trumping effect upon Scripture. This is not to say that Torrance is not a Bible guy, through and through; it is simply to notice that Torrance has the tendency of allowing an ecclesiocentrism (ironically) to displace the primacy of a reformed sola scriptura mode. Here is the critique that Webster offers of Torrance that I agree with:

[T.]F. Torrance surely was correct to insist that theological statements are ‘genuine statements in so far as they derive from [the] Word and refer back to it: that is their essential analogic’  (‘The Logic and Analogic of Biblical and Theological Statements in the Greek Fathers’, in Divine Meaning, p. 381). But there is something problematic in his suggestion that ‘theological activity … is not concerned merely with biblical exegesis or with the kind of biblical theology that builds up what this or that author in the New Testament taught about the Gospel; it is concerned with the Truth at a deeper level’ (p. 385) in so far as it penetrates ‘into the interior logic of the apostolic witness, and [allows] the truth that was embedded there to come to view in an orderly and articulate way’ (p. 386). The difficulty here is that the work of dogmatic reason appears to generate conceptual improvements on the biblical text (what Torrance calls paradeigmata, p. 367), improvements which are more immediately connected to the ‘apostolic mind’ (p. 388). Torrance is reluctant to order concepts to the letter of the text – a point which comes out in his treatment of Hilary of Poitiers, who, he suggests, ‘interprets what is meant rather than just the sense of the words’ (p. 395). Sermo is certainly subject to res; but paradeigmata are subservient to sermo, and the prophetic and apostolic sermo remains the governor of theological discourse, not simply that which we pass through on the way to res. [John Webster, “The Domain of the Word,” 131, n. 34.]

This is an important observation, by Webster in regard to Torrance. And it is one that I have been struggling with myself over some time. I come from a tradition (North American Evangelical) that presses the textual extreme, and so Torrance, when I encountered him, has been (and still is) a helpful corrective to this extreme. Yet, Torrance goes to the opposite extreme, I think, in some ways; his approach almost makes the text of Scripture so instrumental that it begins to lose its primary place as the space wherein God has chosen to speak through the Son by the Spirit. I actually don’t think Torrance would disagree with Webster in principle, but in practice I think Torrance differs.

Just to be clear, I still like Torrance a lot; as does John Webster (he just finished a whole chapter on T. F. Torrance prior to the chapter I take these quotes from). It is just that Torrance, like all of us, needs some clarification and help in some areas. If he didn’t, well then, I guess we would have a pope on our hands.

Learning How To Read Scripture As Christians, Through Understanding Scripture’s Proper Placement

If you have ever struggled with biblical interpretation and hermenutical theory (i.e. your philosophy of Biblical interpretation), maybe part of that struggle has been because of unconscious captivity to a certain mode or philosophy of Biblical interpretation that you have inherited from your own Christian tradition (denomination, etc.). Maybe it is because you have been holding to a doctrine of Scripture (and an ontology or ‘reality’ of Scripture) that has been hindering you from fully engaging in a genuinely Christian attempt at reading Scripture.

I think my above hypothesis is probably true for most of us Evangelical Christians, in particular; but also true for so called Liberal Christians, neo-Orthodox Christians, and whatever other variety of Christian there might be. If so, then John Webster provides a good picture of the differences between the typical approach (with various expressions) of Biblical interpretation—and how that is previously related to a prior commitment to a particular doctrine of Scripture—and a truly and principled Christian reading of Scripture (as related to Scripture’s placement within a theological account). Here is what John Webster communicates:

[I]n Christian theological usage, Scripture is an ontological category; to speak of the Bible as Holy Scripture is to indicate what it is. In applying the designation ‘Scripture’ to the biblical writings, we are not simply or primarily indicating something about the place which these texts occupy in the religious or moral world of their readers; nor are we describing our own intentions and those who make use of these texts. ‘Scripture’ is not merely a morally or socially evaluative term, an epithet of honour which draws attention to the veneration bestowed upon these writings by a particular community. To say ‘Scripture’ is to say ‘revelation’, not just in the sense that these texts are to be handled as if they were bearers of divine revelation, but in the sense that revelation is fundamental to the texts’ being. Revelation engenders Scripture, and in that relation of being engendered Scripture is what it is. By ‘revelation’ here is meant the communicative presence of the risen one in the Spirit, his resounding divine voice ‘like the sound of many waters’ (Rev. 1.15; cf. Ezek. 43.2). Scripture has its being in the ‘word’  (the magisterial self-utterance) of the risen one. Brought into being by that word, made resonant by it, the biblical texts are caught up in the exalted Christ’s proclamation of himself and his glory.

Such affirmations resist the historical naturalism to which accounts of the nature of Scripture quickly succumb. Once the historia scripturae is allowed to be determinative of the way in which the ontology of Scripture is conceived, then the biblical texts become a subset of the larger category of ‘texts in general’. They may still, of course, be distinguished by certain contingent properties which pick them out from other members of the class; but in a naturalist textual ontology such properties indicate the attitudes, policies or evaluations of the users of the biblical texts, but do not give any direct indication of the place of the texts in a divine economy. The biblical texts may be lifted beyond other texts by virtue of their content (doctrinal, moral, experiential); but explanation of this difference remains at the level of interpretive or religious intention. No language of divine action is required for determining what the texts are, for they are essentially ‘historical’ entities. They are to be conceived as the products of human religious agency, occupying and doing their work in an immanently conceived communicative field. As such, investigation of their natural properties and the natural properties of the agents of their production, dissemination and interpretation, is sufficient. To such investigations, evaluations of their religious significance may be contingently attached, but must remain subsidiary to the definition of what the biblical texts are. [John Webster, The Domain Of The Word, 39.]

Most of what counts today as Biblical exegesis, even among Evangelical Christians has been given its reality by way of ‘historical naturalism’. Indeed, I could think of many academic Christian Biblioblogs, for example, that are given shape by this very mode of Biblical interpretation. It does not normally take its form from intentional Christian thinking about the Bible, instead it has allowed various historical-cultural forces (primarily from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries) to impinge upon its existence as a discipline of Christian exegesis. This same drift is true and evidenced in Christian theology in general; except in this arena, the exemplification of this is that Philosophers of Religion and Philosophy of Religion (and all of its assumptions) are baptized for Christians, as their theologians—but there is nothing methodologically significant about this, since these same Philosophers of Religion, if they happen to be Muslim, could take their same mode and practice and just apply it in the direction of Islam instead of Christianity. So there is nothing unique or special, either about this kind of typical “Christian” Biblical exegesis, and/or this type of “Christian” theology. Matthew Levering identifies similar things as Webster does, when he writes:

[…] By the eighteenth century, logical rules of historiography took priority over the Bible’s narrative as the ground on which Christians could understand themselves. These rules envisioned God’s action as radically “external” to human action, and thus extrinsic to historical accounts of Scripture’s genesis and meaning. In patristic and medieval hermeneutics, by contrast, not logical rules of historiography, but faith in providential God grounded the assumption that the books of the Bible displayed the divine patter of salvation. This faith nourishes and is nourished by the Church’s biblical reading, understood as a set of embodied and liturgical practices constituting the Church’s conversatio Dei. [Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation, 21-2.]

Neither, Webster, Levering, or myself are suggesting that engagement with the historical, grammatical and literary realities of the text of Scripture should not be the primary means by which we exegete Scripture. But what is being suggested is that without a proper understanding of Scripture’s placement (ontology) within God’s relationship to us (so Dogmatic), given its clothing by the humanity of Christ by His Spirit spiration, then Scripture and its interpretation becomes dislocated and lost in the wilderness of human proclivity; lost because it is not first and intentionally grounded in its reality in Christ. And thus Scripture is no longer read through the faith of Christ, but instead through the disorderly turns of natural history and man’s own disposition.

Sublating the Gospel: The Gospel Coalition, 2013

The National TGC or The Gospel Coalition conference is currently underway; today is the kick off day for the next three days, through the 10th, of its main scheduled speaking events. The Gospel Coalition has amazing reach into the realm of all things “Evangelical.” I know people in attendance at this year’s conference, in fact. It is no secret that I have not been (and continue to not be) a fan of TGC, and I have written about my non-fan-ness numerous times. In fact, if TGC did not have the kind of reach it has, I would simply ignore it. But alas, it does have the reach it has, and so I cannot ignore it; because it is impacting people that I know and love.

Why do I dis-like TGC so much? Is it because I dis-like the actual people who constitute its core identity? No! Is it because I don’t want people to spend time together thinking about Jesus and the Scriptures? No! The reason I really cannot endorse TGC is because of the “G” and what goes into defining that for TGC. This is of fundamental importance. Do I then not think that people who are associated with TGC aren’t “saved?” No! Here is what I think about TGC, and the “G” in particular: I believe (and thus dislike) that the “G” which stands for Gospel in the The Gospel Coalition, is given a fundamental shape and trajectory by theological resources that are not adequate, and thus fitting for servicing the Gospel. What I mean is that I believe that the Gospel, as understood and defined by TGC is lack-luster because by way of its theological method (prolegomena) it ends up emphasizing people and performance (i.e. neo-Puritan categories of soteriology) based conceptions of salvation. Meaning that the whole construct that the TGC conception of the Gospel is funded by necessarily places an emphasis on what the Puritans rightly called experimental predestinarianism. This is the logical outcome of holding to the idea that God in Christ Unconditionally Elected particular individual people for salvation, and then God in Christ died only for these elect people on the cross; which is known as Limited Atonement (particular redemption). If this is indeed the case, the mechanism that is in place for discerning whether or not you are one of those Elect individuals for whom Jesus died is that you take the first step of responding to God’s Irresistible Grace, but most importantly that you Persevere in Good Works. The Peservering part leaves salvation and election an open ended proposition, and a highly subjective proposal; and thus it remains an ‘experimental’ project (if in fact this kind of person given to such thinking actually internalizes and owns the implications—as the Puritans did—of their commitments to their ‘kind’ of Calvinist theology). If a person does not evince enough good works, then their election is questionable. The ultimate problem with this, no matter how amplified the implications of this paradigm become for the individual adherent, is that the person is always initially turned and tuned into themselves; and thus Christ remains a ‘reflexive’ concern, and really only the instrument by which salvation may or may not have been accrued for the purportedly elect individual. So salvation then takes on a performance based trajectory, that inimically must start with focus on me, myself, and I before I am really secure enough to be able to look to Jesus (even though ironically I am trying to prove to myself that Jesus is in me, demonstrated and exemplified by the good works and work through me and in me).

The Gospel for The Gospel Coalition does not have the resources available to it to provide a genuinely Christian spirituality, because its underlying theological anthropology is devoid of the Spirit. It is devoid of the Spirit because it fails to methodologically see ALL of humanity grounded in the humanity of Christ for us. Christ’s humanity is given its reality for us by the Spirit’s creative power as He overcame Mary’s womb, and impregnated her with the humanity given shape by the person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The Gospel Coalition does not see Jesus’ humanity as the ground of all creation, and in particular, then, it does not see Jesus’ humanity as the ground for all of creation (instead they see it as the ground for certain elect individuals, which it only becomes ‘after’ Jesus has met the requirements of paying the penalty for sin on the cross—which then makes one start thinking of adoptionistic christologies). John Webster fills out what I am getting at with great clarity:

[T]here are startling implications here for the metaphysics of created being. The resurrection of Jesus is determinative of the being of all creaturely reality. Created being is to be defined as τα παντα which the risen Jesus Christ is ‘before’, which is ‘held together’ in him and in which he is ‘pre-eminent’. Determination by the resurrection is not accidental to created being but ontologically definitive. A parallel might be drawn here with the concept of divine ubiquity. God’s omnipresence is not simply one more qualification of creaturely reality but rather its sufficient ground, such that created time and space have their being as and only as that to which God is present. So here, there is no creaturely existence apart from the risen one in whom it is held together. The risen one is the domain within which the creation lives and moves and has its being. Created being and history are thus not that in terms of which the resurrection of Jesus is to be placed, but rather the opposite: he is axiomatically real and true, having his being of himself and of himself bearing witness to himself. The ramifications of this for the project of historical apologetics (namely, that to search for warrants for belief in the resurrection external to the axiomatic reality of the risen Jesus is to misperceive the object of resurrection faith, which is the Son of God himself in his self-bestowing reality as divine subject) cannot be explored here. Rather, what has to be borne in mind is the categorical primacy of the resurrection, which can be transcended neither by history nor by reason. ‘The “resurrection” of Christ,’ Hoskyns noted, ‘appeared to have led [the first Christians] to apprehend final meaning, positive affirmation, all-embracing reason and sense illuminating, and far more than illuminating, not only the course of his life but the circumstances and events of theirs as well, and indeed the universe in which, as God’s creatures, they found themselves placed’. The resurrection is that divine act in which there is manifest the eternal self-existent life of God the Son who is the ground and goal of all things. ‘To be’ is to be caught up by the movement of the risen one who fills all in all, and his resurrection is thus the ‘source and truth of all that exists, that is known, that can belong to us, the reality of all res, of all things, the eternity of time’. Created being in this divine act of transfiguration, being in the miracle to which Paul points with such wonder: ιδου γεγονεν καινα (2 Cor. 5.17). [John Webster, The Domain Of The Word, 36.]

We can see from this, that, as Webster rightly argues, all of humanity’s being is conditioned and grounded by Jesus’ being. The same life that underwrites and sustains the power of resurrection and atonement is inextricably tied into the life (of God) that sustains all of life (not then an abstract conception of an elect group of people/humanity). Webster rightly notes that we cannot think of what Jesus did as an ‘accident’ of salvation history; instead, we must think of atonement/resurrection as the ground of all being, the reality that sustains all of recreated life; both in the present, but as a conditioned present, one that finds its condition from the consummate life we look forward to when our walk becomes one of sight not just faith. In other words, The Gospel Coalition’s conception of salvation, and what Jesus did places Him and that event into history, instead of seeing what Jesus did as definitive of history. The necessary implicate of this (the TGC view), is that Jesus becomes part of history and His atoning work and resurrection become an instrument of the elect’s personal and individual salvation, instead of being seen (as it should be) as definitive and grounding of all of creation through the re-creation (reconciliation cf. Col. 1.17ff) of all things in Christ. 

Whether or not you are able to fully follow what I am getting at is almost beside the point. The point is, is that it is possible to identify a fundamental and damning flaw in The Gospel Coalition’s conception of the Gospel; such that, it calls into question, at least, the claim that what unites those present at TGC’s conference in fact is representative of the actual good news required and declared by Jesus’ life itself (Himself). If the Gospel is not ‘really’ (ontologically) for all, then how can anyone in good faith say this is the Gospel? If the Gospel does not enclose and re-orient all of creation, if the atonement and resurrection are simply subsumed by and thus predicates of natural history, then in what sense is God sovereign over creation, and then in what sense is this kind of gospel good news? (So to be clear here, I am using the same argument that classic Calvinists use by appealing to God’s sovereignty, I am just trying to reductively turn that on its head in such a way that demonstrates how TGC’s conception of the Gospel actually sublates the sovereignty of God by committing His salvation works to creation’s behest, instead of vice versa).

These are the questions that I think need to be addressed, and not pooh-poohed by The Gospel Coalition and all of those in association with it (whether by attending it, or by endorsing the general trajectory of TGC). To  try and relativize my concerns in order to marginalize the issues I have here raised, only will illustrate that this potential interlocutor is not really serious about the truth, and thus the Gospel. In other words, I am not attempting to offer a maximalist critique of TGC’s conception of the Gospel, but a minimalist one;  minimalist in the sense, that with nuance, I am suggesting (arguing) that the theology underwriting the theology of TGC does not ultimately serve the Gospel’s furtherance but distorts it; and for the above reasons.

A quote from John Webster on Resurrection and Interpretation

“The nature of Holy Scripture, and of its interpreters and their acts of interpretation, may all be understood out of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The task of biblical interpretation is a function of the nature of Scripture; the nature of Scripture is a function of its appointment as herald of the self-communicative presence of the risen one. Scripture is to be read as what it is, a complex though unified set of texts through which the risen Christ interprets himself as the one in whom the entire economy of God’s dealings with creatures has its coherence and fulfilment. The ground and substance of the church’s confession is his majestic and luminous perfection: ‘he fills all things’ (cf. Eph. 4.10). Scripture and its interpreters have their being within the compass of this all-embracing reality; acts of interpretation are undertakings within the history of reconciling and revealing grace over which the exalted Christ presides. Such acts are becoming when they conform to the order of being in which they are ventured, and disorderly when they misunderstand or disavow that order of being and treat Scripture as something other than the address of the risen Christ to the saints.”

–John Webster, “The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason,” (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 32..

The Despised Word of God

John Webster describes, well, the pitfalls associated with engaging with Scripture in academic mode. He has been developing how Scripture, critically engaged, has fallen prey to a dualism (nominalism) that results with the practice of engaging it from a purely naturalistic standpoint; instead of dealing with it as it is, God’s Word! And I would want to extrapolate and apply his point out further into the realm of not just the academic (“critical”) handling of the text of Scripture, but also how that gets fleshed out in non-academic ways. For either the academic or the non-academic (Christian), Scripture, when dealt with dualistically—pressing a hard line between a so called ‘sacred & secular’—results in engaging with a Text that has been annexed to our own proclivities. For the academic, this means developing tools of inquiry that treat Scripture as if it is something that man has control over instead of the place where God contradicts man’s tools and thoughts. For the non-academic, this kind of approach results in engaging with Scripture as if it is a place where I get my daily spiritual fix, it is a place, again, that I largely control (by my emotional state), instead of a place where God is free to contradict our ‘spiritual fixes’ and various emotional states (as he did with Job for example). Here is what Webster writes in regard to the academic (critical) side of a faulty understanding of Scripture’s ontology (or placement relative to its location in God’s Self communication):

[W]hatever one makes of the details, these kinds of narratives can at least serve to unsettle some of the habits which sustain much modern – by, for example, showing that historical criticism is as much a metaphysical as an historical or literary enterprise. But the pathologies are not unproblematic. As the doctrinal level, they can exhibit something of an imbalance toward the order of creation, and, within that locus, an unease about making much of the distinction between created and uncreated being; and, in at least some accounts, the order of creation outweighs the order of reconciliation. But a further point should be registered: the heart of the difficulty we face in attending to Scripture is not the conceivability of revelation’s taking creaturely form but our antipathy to it. Lost creatures (and the not-so-lost in the church) make Scripture’s humanity a ground for despising its embassy. We do not care for prophets and apostles, because they set before us the sermo divina; and so we spurn them – sometimes in high theory, but more often in baser ways. Once again, the history of conceptions of the Bible is spiritual as well as intellectual history, an episode in the wider course of the sinner’s rejection of the folly of the gospel and preference for ‘eloquent wisdom’ (1 Cor. 1.17). Prophetic and apostolic speech is contested (Jer. 15; Ezek. 2.3); it occurs in the history of rebellion of creatures against the divine Word. Thinking our way out of nominalism may be a necessary part of reconceiving the nature of Scripture and scriptural interpretation, but it can only take us to the threshold, so to speak. Once we are there, the real contest begins: between the prophets and apostles and those who will not listen to them, because they will not listen to God (Ezek. 2.7). [John Webster, Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason, (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 12.]

When Webster refers to ‘nominalism’, this is the ‘dualism’ that I was referring to in my pre-word to the quote (we won’t get into detailing what nominalism entails at the moment). The basic point of Webster is hard core, and one that most Christians (so a time to be self-critical once again!) don’t want to cozy up to. We would rather just remain satisfied with our cushy pew seats, our casual quiet times (if we even have those), and our all to prevalent privatized faith where we have taken God’s Word captive to our own sentiment; and this captivity has been won precisely because of it. Meaning that we cannot even hear from God through Scripture because we think we are, and we aren’t; we aren’t because we have taken it captive by our own dire situations, our own life circumstances, and molded Scripture’s purpose into meeting those needs, and thus dis-allowing God’s “needs” to be heard through His Word against our words. We cannot distinguish God’s Word from our own, because we have made our words, His (all clothed in good purpose and good will, on our side).

The academic appropriation and engagement of Scripture flows, largely, from the posture I just sketched.

We Need More Christian Dogmatics and Less Apologetics

I am just rereading John Webster’s chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology on ‘Theologies of Retrieval’. As he begins his essay he sketches how theologian Eberhard Jüngel engages this mode of theological endeavor in his book God As the Mystery of the World. In his sketching, Webster highlights Jüngel’s primary thesis overriding his book, and that is […] “The book is best read as a set of analytical soundings in the modern history of the relation between theology and philosophy, seeking to show how the rise of atheistic philosophy is parasitic upon decay in Christian thought about God….” (Webster, p. 586) This is a very intriguing point, and one that Christian Fundamentalism, which has now come of age in American Evangelicalism would do well to take heed to. I say this because in many quarters of Evangelicalism—and I say in the quarters that make up the academic side of Evangelicalism, mostly found in seminaries, and then parachurch ministries—there is still to be found the ‘fighting Fundy’ spirit. That is, Evangelicals are consumed with matching wits with their atheist and “Liberal” counterparts by engaging the atheist (or whomever) on their own terms; nary realizing that maybe the terms set by the atheist panoply might be a result of Christians (Evangelicals or otherwise) not taking care of proper business in their own house. Namely, that Christians, in their abandonment of the doing of actual Christian Dogmatics (Theology) have in this vacuum created space for antagonists to the Christian faith to bottom feed off of the waste produced or not-produced by Christian thought today. Webster writes further of Jüngel’s thesis:

[W]hat is most noteworthy in Jüngel’s diagnosis is its focus on the mismatch between the authentic content of Christian faith and the conceptual version of itself by which it sought to retain its authority in the face of modern critiques. ‘Atheism’ is as much a child of theology’s theistic self-alienation as of philosophical unbelief. Jüngel’s presentation of this authentic content is undoubtedly dogmatically compressed, appealing to only a narrow selection of doctrinal material; and his historical narrative can lack complexity and nuance. The book’s appeal is, indeed, as much kerygmatic as historical. What gives strength to his account is his insistence that the crisis of Christian thought and speech about God ‘is to be worked through in terms of the particular character, the proprium of the Christian faith’ (Jüngel 1983:229). What is required is not a more effective apologetic strategy but a better dogmatics. [emboldening mine] [John Webster, The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, Chapter 32 Theologies of Retrieval, 587.]

Maybe if Christians, and Evangelicals in particular, got back to engaging with actual positively shaped Christian Dogmatics (instead of following the ‘negative way’), and abandoned the current trend of continuing to engage with a god largely shaped by classical theism (still!); then maybe atheists and the rest of the unbelieving crowd would lose the traction they currently have in the culture today. It is much easier for an atheist to argue with a conception of god that is humanistically constructed based on philosophical reflection and abstraction of the universe versus dealing with a God, who by definition, is shaped by His own internal Self-presentation and revelation through Jesus Christ. If ‘apologists’ were to become theologians, instead of philosophers, atheism might fade away; and if not fade away, it would at least have to reconsider how to assail the conception of the Christian God who resists philosophical manipulation, and instead contradicts it (by the wisdom of the cross!). We need more Christian Dogmaticians, and less Christian philosophers of religion.

A Critique of the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Society: For, I think the Third Time

I really like how John Webster describes Barth’s understanding against the Liberal Protestantism of his day. Ironically, I think, that the way Barth understood the Liberal Protestants of his day, could (should) be the way (by and large) that we understand American Evangelicals of our day [please note: I am speaking in generalities, there are obviously many exceptions to this amongst American Evangelicals, just as there was exceptions to the Liberal Protestants in Barth’s day]. In fact, I think this dovetails nicely with the post I just posted on Occupy Wall Street. It gets to the question of how it is that “good” honest hard working (even Christian) people can be duped into thinking that the aformentioned attributes serve as the garb that justifies their place in society (i.e. as good honest hard working folk). There is always room for conviction and self-“criticality;” I know we don’t like this, and I know that much of this ultimately bothers our sensibilities; but we are Christians, people of  love and truth (insofar as we participate in God’s life in Christ).

As I’ve already alluded to, the following is Webster commenting on Barth and his critique of the Liberal Protestants (which I am lifting and applying to American Evangelicals). This is intended to decenter our trust in ourselves, and instead cause us to throw ourselves at the mercy of God in Christ. This is intended to turn our lights on so that we can more critically see how what counts as Christian and Ethical (in America and the West), probably is not as ethical and Christian as we think. This is intended to highlight how it is that “we” so easily become the standard for what is good and right in the world instead of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

[A] large part of Barth’s distaste is his sense that the ethics of liberal Protestantism could not be extricated from a certain kind of cultural confidence: ‘[H]ere was … a human culture building itself up in orderly fashion in politics, economics, and science, theoretical and applied, progressing steadily along its whole front, interpreted and ennobled by art, and through its morality and religion reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.’ The ethical question, on such an account, is no longer disruptive; it has ‘an almost perfectly obvious answer’, so that, in effect, the moral life becomes too easy, a matter of the simple task of following Jesus.

Within this ethos, Barth also discerns a moral anthropology with which he is distinctly ill-at-ease. He unearths in the received Protestant moral culture a notion of moral subjectivity (ultimately Kantian in origin), according to which ‘[t]he moral personality is the author both of the conduct with which the ethical question is concerned and of the question itself. Barth’s point is not simply that such an anthropology lacks serious consideration of human corruption, but something more complex. He is beginning to unearth the way in which this picture of human subjectivity as it were projects the moral self into a neutral space, from which it can survey the ethical question ‘from the viewpoint of spectators’. This notion Barth reads as a kind of absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness’. And it is precisely this — the image of moral reason as a secure centre of value, omnicompetent in its judgements — that the ethical question interrogates. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 35-6]

The ‘Human culture building itself up’ was the German one (for Barth) that ultimately expressed itself in German bourgeois society, and ultimately Nazi Germany. For Barth, for the Liberal Protestant, because of the collapse of the Christian self into the self as the moral self; there no longer remained space for Christ to break in and speak a fresh word of holiness over and against the established norms of what the Liberal Protestant had come to already think of what counted as such. In other words, Barth was against a What Would Jesus Do? society.

I am appropriating this critique from Barth (a la Webster) for the American Evangelical in particular. We have come to think that what counts as moral is captured by the symbol ‘Conservative’. It is this absolutized ‘Conservative Self’ that presumes that what it means to be moral, and Christian is to ask, simply, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ This perfectly illustrates Barth’s critique of the German Liberal Protestant. For them, as for us, to be Christian, was to be nationalist, exceptional, and normal. It is this posture that negates any space for the Word of God to break in on all of these norms or the status quo; since the status quo is synonymous with being Christian. And it is this self-evidential situation which allows for atrocities to take place in the name of Christ; through the “absolute self.”

Is what I am getting at overstated?

*Yes, I have reposted this numerous times … it is just that I like this post so!

Self-actualization, The Christianized Acceptance and Renaming of Sin: Calling the Crooked Straight

Can Sin be defined, theologically, as Self-actualization? If so, and I think so, then, no doubt much of our Western culture (and Eastern for that matter), and in particular, much of American (and Western) Christian ministry platforms are building their houses on sandy-land. Here is an example of what Self-actualization might mean for today’s winner and upwardly mobile movers:

Seeks to be a ‘way shower‘, cannot settle for mediocrity, always strives to reach greater plateaus, is self contemplative, and seeks to know even the mind’s shadows, doesn’t readily surrender to fear, sees the means as the important conquest, not the end. For the self-actualized there is no end, just a constant movement to expand and become and express more of Oneself! [Taken from The Center for Self Actualization, Inc.]

Or maybe, more famously Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of Self-actualization might be more explicit and apropos:

Surely there is some truth, some pragmatic utilitarian reality to Maslow’s hierarchy, at least on a purely horizontal plane. But that is the point, right? We don’t live ‘purely’ on a horizontal plane, our  horizontal plane has vertical elevation and purpose that provides its ultimate shape and what it means to finally be ‘actualized’; if, that is, we are even willing to continue to use the language of actulization as a viable anthropological category for supplying us with what it means to be a human, and a successful one at that!

Maybe to get more to the point, and bring this closer to the American Evangelical home and ministry (because I know in the past and present this book is appealed to by leaders in Evangelicalism); what about that infamous book written by a Mormon The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? Here are the Seven Habits:

Independence or Self-Mastery

The First Three Habits surround moving from dependence to independence (i.e., self-mastery):

• Habit 1: Be Proactive

Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life’s principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.

• Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life. Create a mission statement.

• Habit 3: Put First Things First

Prioritize, plan, and execute your week’s tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.

Interdependence

The next three have to do with Interdependence (i.e., working with others):

• Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a “win” for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.

• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, and positive problem solving.

• Habit 6: Synergize

Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone.

Self Renewal

The Last habit relates to self-rejuvenation:

• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to society for spiritual renewal.

Philosophically (and thus theologically through a Thomist synthesis, which I will need to discuss at a later date) all of this talk about self-actualization can be traced back to that Greek great, Aristotle. His notion of habitus, or habituating in certain kinds of behavior in order to shape an interior person that might be considered virtuous, successful, moral, or even upwardly mobile could be blamed for our culture that believes that Self-actualization is the only way to live an existentially fulfilling life. Maybe this mode of Self-actualization could be reduced and summed up to that all to familiar axiom of ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’. So the focus is on the outside/in; it is on outward appearance, and it is this which counts as being a successful and effective person in our actualized age.

But what if all of this, this ‘Self-actualization’ is really just what the Bible calls ‘Sin’? John Webster reports how another theologian of import, Eberhard Jüngel believes that this rather modern (with pre-modern and classical rootage) turn towards the Self-actualized self is really and simply just sin. Here is what Webster writes of Jüngel; and within Webster’s commentary, he provides a quote from Jüngel:

Jüngel thinks of modern society as haunted, both theoretically and practically, by the image of the human person as achiever, by the axiom: ‘[W]ithout increased performance, no increase in the quality of life.’ His theological judgement on the image is that it reinforces that human compulsion to act (Zwang zur Tat) which is the essence of the disorder of human life. ‘Sin’is, simply put, the hopeless drive to self-realization: ‘amongst the worst human failures is the desire to realize oneself alone through one’s good acts, through one’s righteous action — whether it be only legalistic or even moral. The category of self-realization, which today is used in such an unreservedly positive sense, is more accurately to thought of as the quintessence of sin, according to the biblical understanding of the matter.’ The attempt at self-realization is condemned to failure precisely because humanity is essentially relational, …. Thus, in a passage typical of many others, Jüngel writes:

[W]hat Holy Scripture calls sin is … the drive to have one’s own right prevail at the expense of others and in this way to be the one nearest to oneself. We have set out and understanding of righteousness as the ordering of richness of relations between those existing with one another in such a way that justice is done to all those included without their needing to seize if for themselves. Sinners, however, are characterized by a belief that they must and can seize their own right. Those who try to seize their own right take away the right of others. And precisely in this way they break out of the well-ordered richness of relations in which they have been included by God. Sin is the Godless drive away from the diverse relations of created life protected by God, and into relationlessness. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology, 188.]

If what Webster writes, and Jüngel thinks, is correct, and I think it is, then the trajectory of American culture in general, and insofar as Evangelical’s have imbibed this trajectory, in particular, is, again, on the sandy land of man’s own making—thus Sin!

As admirable as Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits might appear, even though he finally gets to others; he only first starts with the self. Even as apparently true as Maslow’s hierarchy of Self-actulization might appear it runs directly contrary to the ethic and direction that Christ’s kingdom does; remember this dominical teaching?:

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?^[g] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ~Matthew 6:25-33

So Self-realization really equals Self-justification, or usurping godness for oneself. Doesn’t this remind you of this:

⁴ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ~Genesis 3:4-5

The Christian view of justification, salvation, is that salvation is primarily and antecedently inacted by God in Christ. Salvation for the Christian isn’t a se, or internal to the person, a possession innate to the person, simply waiting to be activated through habituating in certain kinds of behavior and activating activity; Nein! Salvation for the Christian is extra nos, or outside of us; it is an alien righteousness, as Luther might quip. It is a life that is received, passively; a life that is only ‘given’ activity through the life of God. So the conclusion then is that we ought to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto us’.

If you want to be successful in the pyramid of God in Christ’s kingdom, then understand that his kingdom inverts the pyramid of this world. If the American Evangelical church wants to be successful, then take up your cross and follow Jesus; be willing to lose your soul that you might find it in Christ.

Good Works, The Work of the Great Deceiver

I am starting to become less and less convinced that Christians, at least in America, actually struggle with things like I am about to highlight in this post. It seems as if a folkism has overtaken American Evangelicalism in a way that pragmatism and utilitarianism rues the day, and principle and doctrinal concerns no longer, for some reason are important—I am somewhat rabbit trailing from where I want to take this post. I hit on this because I think that what this post is going to talk about might be down on the pole of significance for many of us; in fact I think that American Evangelicalism, in general, has so imbibed our feel good pop culture that the concept of ‘good works’ and right standing before God really have no functional meaning for people’s daily lives and spirituality. We are so busy with everyday concerns, trying to make ends meet, watching TV, and entertaining ourselves to death; that serious reflection about doctrinal concerns—like the relation between good works and saved by faith alone—really have no place of import in our lives.

Nevertheless, for those who might be the exception to my sketch above, this post might mean something to you. As you might have already picked up, I want to bring up the issue of ‘good works’ in the Christian’s life. And in particular, I want to get more insight into what Martin Luther, the Reformer thought, who is primarily known for emphasizing sola fide, ‘faith alone’. Maybe though, maybe I am wrong about what I was getting at in my first paragraph above; maybe in fact good works for Christians are alive and well, maybe good works (whatever those are) are what provides salvation, psychologically, for so many of us. Maybe when we do good things we feel good before God (coram Deo), and maybe when we do bad things we feel guilty before God; so maybe that’s why we try to comfort ourselves by the good that we do, and brushing the bad under the good in a way that makes us feel ‘justified’ before God (and of course we attribute the good to the power of God in our lives, and thus we even feel more justified when we see our good works; in fact we start to look at our good works as the basis for our assurance of salvation). According to John Webster, Martin Luther would totally disagree with you—if you think your good works are a sign of your salvation or something—here is how Webster describes Luther’s view here:

[…] Luther’s doctrine of justification b grace through faith severs the bond between acceptance and self-realization which he found in scholastic anthropology; in effect, his moral ontology calls into question the notion that self-conscious, self-actualizing selfhood is anthropologically primary. Indeed, in a crucial phrase he notes how, in good works as traditionally understood (i.e. as ‘religious’ works), ‘the self has been set up as an idol’. He acutely sees that religious works, and the understanding of the human person through which their significance is expounded, have become an exercise in self-preservation; good works are in league with human egotism, and their consequence is accordingly the deepening of human depravity and not release from it. For such works have become ‘merely acts of appeasement and self-righteous attempts at self-salvation. Luther recognised the depth of the corruption of the self which attempts to turn all goods to itself’. The target of Luther’s critique is thus the prudential calculation of benefits which might accrue to the agent on the basis of certain kinds of moral performance; acts undertaken in anticipation of rewards are ipso facto disqualified as good works, because within them lurks the sinful, self-realizing ego. If the Christian is related to his or her good works ‘self-centeredly’, the result is that chronic inflammation of the self which is the curse of sin. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology, 163.]

This seems like a dilemma! If good works aren’t the sign of my salvation; if good works can’t provide me with assurance of salvation, then what or who can? If good works which are done by natural Pelagian impulse only serve to really further my own self-deception about how sinful I am—as T. F. Torrance would say ‘all the way down’—then I am of all men most to be pitied.

Of course the answer is ‘faith’, the faith of Christ at work in us by the Spirit. This is the ground of assurance, it is the faith of and the faith in Christ that resolves the dilemma. Good works, the ones we have been recreated in, in Christ (Eph. 2:10); are a result of the overflow of relationship that we already have with Christ. We don’t look to our good works as if those are our ‘Yes’ before God, He already said ‘No’ to them at the cross; instead, with the Apostle Paul we look to Christ where ‘all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory’ (II Cor. 1:20).

What Luther’s emphasis can provide is a way out of a moralistic Christian spirituality that can only produce introspective navel gazing Christians who ultimately are driven by angst, instead of the power of God, which is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ; the one that we are not ashamed of (Romans 1:16).