Over the Transom

Church Dogmatics set 70% Off

2012-02-09T09:21:00.003-06:00

T. & T. Clark/Continuum is running a major sale on the complete set of Barth's Church Dogmatics. The new study edition, a 31-volume set, was revised by the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary and features the Greek and Latin in English.

The complete set, which retails for $1095, is being offered for a limited time by the publishers at a deep discount for just $325.

Order here. When prompted, enter the following code: CTUDOGS212.

You can also call: 800-561-7704. (Be sure to tell them you heard it here!).

Offer expires on 15 March 2012.

Architecture of Theology

2012-01-27T15:44:00.000-06:00

I wish to draw your attention to an excellent review by Fergus Kerr of Anna Williams' new book, The Architecture of Theology (Oxford University Press, 2011). Williams, who lectures on patristics at Cambridge, is the author of a fantastic book on Aquinas and Palamas (and the highly controversial issues of the essence-energies distinction and deification), called The Ground of Union (Oxford, 1999).

In her latest book, Williams provides an account of 'systematic theology' as a rigorous and contemplative discipline, while continuing her interest in working across the traditions of East and West. Of course, this volume goes beyond parochial interest in historical studies, bearing as it does on the constitutive features of the disciplinary enterprise of theology itself in its systematic mode.

Kerr's review, appearing in the latest edition of The Tablet, can be accessed here.

(An appeal to OUP: if you'd like, I'd be very happy to review this book myself. Please send me an email at theologyeditor [at] gmail [dot] com).

The Future of Books

2012-01-04T15:32:00.000-06:00

The following is a link to an interview with Robert Darnton, a professor at Harvard University and director of the Harvard University Library. Prof. Darton discusses the attempts to create free, open access digital libraries, some of which, while innovative and potentially revolutionary, have fallen on hard times (commercially speaking). Darton has been at the forefront of the public access 'digital library' movement and is the author of several important, and quite interesting, volumes on the history of books, reading and the future of books and libraries.

The interview can be found here.

Maximus the Confessor and the Mystery of Christmas

2011-12-24T13:40:00.002-06:00

Some thoughts from Maximus the Confessor on the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ to contemplate on the eve of Christmas.

"For it was fitting for the Creator of the universe, who by the economy of his incarnation became what by nature he was not, to preserve without change both what he himself was by nature and what he became in his incarnation. For naturally we must not consider any change at all in God, nor conceive any movement in [the divine being] [since] change properly pertains to moveable creatures. This is the great and hidden mystery, at once the blessed end for which all things are ordained. It is the divine purpose conceived before the beginning of created beings. In defining it we would say that this mystery is the preconceived goal for which everything exists, but which itself exists on account of nothing [since God is Godself the final goal (telos) of all creation and the divine existence depends on nothing outside itself]. With a clear view to this end, God created creaturely beings, and such is, properly speaking, the terminus of God's providence and of the things under God's providential care. Inasmuch as it leads to God, it is the recapitulation of all things created by God. It is the mystery which circumscribes all the ages, and which reveals the grand plan of God (Eph 1.10-11), a super-infinite plan infinitely pre-existing the ages. The Logos, by essence God, became a messenger of this plan (Isa 9.5, LXX) when he became a human being and established himself as the innermost depth of the Father's goodness while also displaying in himself the very goal for which his creatures manifestly received the beginning of their existence [e.g., Jesus Christ, according to Maximus, is himself the beginning (arche), middle (mesotes) and end (telos) of all creation].

Because of Christ -- or rather, the whole mystery of Christ -- all the ages of time and the beings within those ages have received their beginning and end in Christ. For the union between a limit of the ages and limitlessness, between measure and immeasurability, between finitude and infinity, between Creator and creation, between rest and motion, was conceived before the ages. This union had been manifested in Christ at the end of time, and in itself brings God's election to fulfillment, in order that naturally mobile creatures might be secure around God's total and essential immobility [stasis]. The union has been manifested so that they might also acquire, by experience, an active knowledge of him in whom they were made worthy to find their stability and to have abiding unchangeably in them the enjoyment of this knowledge.

.... This mystery was known solely to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit before all ages. It was known to the Father by his approval, to the Son by his carrying it out, and to the Holy Spirit by his cooperation in it. For there is one knowledge shared by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit because they also share one essence and power. The Father and the Holy Spirit were not ignorant of the incarnation of the Son because the whole Father is by essence in the whole Son who himself carried out the mystery of our salvation through his incarnation. The Father himself did not become incarnate but rather approved the incarnation of the Son. Moreover, the whole Holy Spirit exists by essence in the whole Son, but he too did not become incarnate but rather cooperated in the Son's ineffable incarnation for our sake. Whether, then, one speaks of 'Christ' or the 'mystery of Christ,' the Holy Trinity alone -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- elected it. And no one should question how Christ, who is one of the Holy Trinity, was elected by the Holy Trinity, when recognizing that Christ was elected not as God but as human. In other words, it was his incarnation for humanity's sake that was elected.

Thus, Christ was elected not as what he was in himself by nature but as what he manifested when, in the economy of salvation, he subsequently became human on our behalf. For truly he who is the Creator of the essence of created beings by nature has also to become the very Author of the deification of creatures by grace, in order that the Giver of well-being might appear also as the gracious Giver of eternal well-being."

-Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 60 (CCSG 22:75-77, 79-81); in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), 123-5, 127-8.

Merry Christmas!

Early Reformation Debates and "Social Media"

2011-12-22T10:15:00.000-06:00

An interesting article from The Economist that suggests the pamphlet wars of the early sixteenth century functioned similarly to contemporary social media. Luther was a blogger!

Social Media in the 16th Century

Job Opportunity: Academic Editor

2011-08-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the recent hiatus in posting. I am currently in the midst of packing up our house in Chicago, preparing for an upcoming move to Athens, GA. I will be departing from Chicago to Athens towards the end of September, so there are many things to be done in just a short time. In the meantime, I will try to update the blog as often as I can; but, I will definitely resume blogging on a regular basis once I land in the Peach State.

To any holder of the PhD (or for you ABDs), I would like to draw your attention to a job opportunity. It is for a position as an academic and reference editor. The job particulars can be found here:

http://www.ivpress.com/jobs/refeditor.pdf

Since this is my current position, I would be happy to answer any questions you have about the job, publishing, transitioning from the academy, etc. Feel free to drop me a line at mgibson[at]ivpress[dot]com.

Addiction and Virtue

2011-07-29T20:58:00.001-05:00

Another fall release arrived in the office this week. Addiction and Virtue, by Kent Dunnington, which is the latest in IVP Academic's Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology (SIET), a series of scholarly, interdisciplinary monographs. In this volume, Dunnington re-examines the nature of addiction, attempting to push beyond the standard paradigms of understanding what addiction is (e.g., disease, choice). Dunnington offers a fresh philosophical and theological construction of the category of addiction through a contemporary ressourcement of Aristotle and Aquinas. One of the most startling, and insightful, claims made by Dunnington is the addict as prophet.

This is a bold, innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries and attempts to address a critical cultural issue with real theological acumen and grit. It is one of our forthcoming titles I am quite sure will make an important contribution and will be recognised as an innovative, thoughtful and, even, landmark text. Beautifully designed (one of my favourite covers) and reasonably priced, this should be on your fall list of books. (Order here)

"Drawing on Aristotle's and Aquinas's accounts of habit, Kent Dunnington has given us an analysis of addiction we have desperately needed. Few are able to combine philosophical analysis with theological insight, but Dunnington has done it in a manner that helps us better understand the nature of addiction and why it is so prevalent in our time. This is a book that needs to be read, not only by those who work in the fields of addictive behaviors but also by philosophers, theologians and pastors. I suspect in a short amount of time, this book will be viewed as something of a classic in the field."
-Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School

No Endnotes, Please!

2011-07-22T21:15:00.001-05:00

Consider this a plea to all academic publishers: abolish the use of endnotes in academic texts and monographs. The endnote, whether of the variety that appears at the end of a chapter or in the back matter, is a despised and detestable creature, whose extinction will be mourned by no-one. It is really a nonsensical thing, perhaps understandable within a trade publication, but as an apparatus in an academic text, it can only be a creation of das Nichtige. First, it is utterly disruptive to the reading process to have to flip continually back-and-forth between 'text' and 'notes' to follow quotations, citations, technical explications or arguments, much more so than merely scanning the bottom of the page. Second, for students and scholars engaged not only in reading texts but tracing arguments with texts inside the pages of a particular text, that is, the inter-textual conversations, footnotes facilitate this task far more expediently than sorting through the ungodly block of notes piled in the back, which can only be located by reference to the header that indicates which mass of notes pertains to this-or-that page range or chapter. Third, the art and praxis of reading inculcates the habit that when our eyes cross a superscript number in a line of text, we anticipate that the corresponding text is just below, waiting for our attention. It is a cruelty -- a sadistic infliction -- to thwart that holy and honourable practice. Please, just don't do it!

Now, the recent demise of Borders and the report that sales of Kindle titles outpaced print titles on Amazon may mean that all of this is quite close to irrelevant, that the demise of print publishing is nigh. (Digital publishing may transform the nature of the scholarly apparatus -- users of the Digital Karl Barth Library know what this may look like). I tend to think that print will be around for yet awhile longer. But, whatever may come, to all academic publishers, for the sake of the users who are most likely to be the ones buying your product, stop using endnotes. Now.

Upcoming Books (Part 1)

2011-07-19T22:07:00.000-05:00

With the fall publication schedule rapidly approaching, I thought I would draw attention to some forthcoming titles that I'm especially excited about. I've divvied up this list by subject and indicate publisher and publication date. (I will provide further lists. This covers forthcoming releases from Baker Academic, Routledge and Oxford).

Biblical Studies
Fraçois Bovon, New Testament and Christian Apocrypha (Baker Academic, Sept 2011).
Looks to be an exciting set of studies on New Testament and early Christian literature.

Historical Studies
Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Baker Academic, Oct 2011).
Anatolios' previous work includes two high-caliber volumes on Athanasius in the Routledge series on the early church. This volume looks to be an exciting complement to the work of Lewis Ayres, furthering the deep historiographic recasting of Nicene theological culture.

Robin Jensen, Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity (Baker Academic, April 2012)
Set to be a spring release, but this is volume I am eagerly anticipating. Robin Jensen is one of the foremost experts on early Christian art and in this book she will explore what images reveal about early Christian baptismal beliefs and practices.

Lawrence Besserman, Biblical Paradigms in Medieval English Culture (Routledge, Oct 2011)
Exploration of the multi-faceted relationship between biblical sources/motifs and medieval English literature.

Jennifer Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine's Letters (Oxford, Dec 2011)
Examines important issues in Augustine's epistolary exchanges with figures like Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, the Donatists and Pelagians.

Systematic Theology
Paul DeHart, Aquinas and Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Inquiry (Routledge, Nov 2011)
Vanderbilt theologian, Paul DeHart, author of Trial of the Witnesses, offers a critical account of the appeal to Aquinas by Radical Orthodoxy. This book, I think, will be the go-to source not only for lucid, precise explication of the genealogical development and contours of the Radical Orthodox movement, but also for sharp untangling of contemporary interpretations of Aquinas.

Peter Ochs, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Baker Academic, Oct 2011)
Ochs is a tremendous voice in contemporary theology, a Jewish scholar at the forefront of ecumenical and interfaith discussion (e.g., Society for Scriptural Reasoning).

A. N. Williams, The Architecture of Theology: Structure, System and Ratio (Oxford, Aug 2011)
A volume on theological method from an important specialist in patristic theology and the thought of Aquinas.

The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, eds. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering
'Nuff said!

Matthew Levering, Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (Oxford, Sept 2011)
Looks to be a stellar volume that carefully examines the biblical, historical and contemporary theological dimensions of this controversial doctrine.

Molly Haslam, A Constructive Theology of Intellectual Disability (Oxford, Sept 2011)
A much needed work.

Anothony Briggman, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford, Feb 2012)
A winter/spring release, but nonetheless, this is a book that I cannot wait for. An account of the pneumatology of Irenaeus, examining its deep historical context and contribution to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Along with Anatolios, this will be a must-have.

Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, eds. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford, Feb 2012)
I am listing this because there are currently so few good secondary sources on the ressourcement movement in Catholic theology. Should be an excellent companion piece to Boersma's recent work.

Michael DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth and Protestant Theology (Oxford, April 2012)
Again, a spring release, but this is a must have.

Early Christian Thinkers

2011-07-13T19:54:00.001-05:00

I am pleased to announce that one of my editorial acquisitions is newly arrived from the printer. Early Christian Thinkers, edited by Paul Foster (University of Edinburgh), is an elegant collection of essays that examines the lives and contributions of a dozen figures from the pre-Nicene era of ancient Christianity.

The essays in this volume, contributed by leading international scholars of early Christian studies, provide historical and biographical context, survey the key texts and themes, as well as the significance of each figure on the development of the Christian tradition. Eminent scholars, such as Timothy Barnes, J. Patout Burns, Judith Kovacs, Rebecca Lyman, Sara Parvis and Michael Slusser, introduce readers to critical thinkers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian of Carthage; moreover, several figures who are often left off the roster are featured, such as Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Perpetua and Eusebius of Caesaria.

The clear, accessible essays are complemented by current bibliographies that direct students and readers to the best primary original language sources and translations of each figure's works, as well as recent scholarship. This text will make an ideal introductory volume as a core or supplemental text for courses in early Christianity.

Endorsements for Early Christian Thinkers:

"Paul Foster has edited an excellent collection of essays on key figures of the pre-Nicene church. Teachers of the period will find this an invaluable volume, both for the quality of the essays and the particular selection of figures included. In English this collection has no equal."
Lewis Ayres, Bede Chair of Catholic Theology, University of Durham

"This is a thoroughly reliable, appreciative introduction to the formative perspectives of early Christianity by a well-chosen team of experts. This account of tentative progress is an excellent foil for those wrestling with the changing church today."
Iain R. Torrance, President and Professor of Patristics, Princeton Theological Seminary

Get your copy today! http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3937

Sarah Coakley and the Subversive Act of Prayer

2011-07-04T19:34:00.002-05:00

Recently, I came across an essay by Sarah Coakley (available here), who is, to my mind, one of the most interesting thinkers in contemporary systematic theology. In this essay, "Meditation as Subversive Activity," Prof. Coakley recounts her experience teaching meditation and silent prayer to inmates at a Boston correctional facility. She provides a great description of the process of acclimatising to the 'unnatural' activities of extended silence and meditation and cultivating the space for prayer and meditation. There is, as well, a kind of mirth within the narrative as it records how, over a period of weeks, these inmates began to identify with the ascetic figures, like the desert monastics and Palamas, who found spiritual strength in their enclosed environments.

At the same time, of great significance in this essay, is a candid examination of the very thorny issues of race, discrimination and injustice, particularly as it relates to the correctional system in the US. Prof. Coakley raises a number of important questions in this regard, which are quite relevant to the topic of the essay. It is within the matrix of these issues that the ancient practices at hand are revitalised as subversive in a particular way, one that is, I think, correspondent with their original subversiveness. More to the point, I think this essay is quite relevant as many at this very moment are celebrating the American Empire (and so many churches this weekend did obeisance to the Empire within their liturgies), in that it provokes us to think about what our Empire is like from the vantage point of truly dispossessed of place or standing. There have been many very excellent reflections on issues related to the imperial holiday (here, here, here, and here for instance), and this one does not explicitly bear on the national cult observance itself, but I do think it queries and evokes substantial subterranean issues upon which reflection is merited.

(Be sure to watch for the first volume of Prof. Coakley's forthcoming systematic theology from Cambridge University Press).

Silence and the Blogger

2011-07-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the recent hiatus in posting. This was due, in large part, to severe storms that raged through the Chicago area early last week, carrying gale force winds through large swaths of the western edges, even spinning out two tornadoes. We were fortunate not to have any significant property damage, though fallen trees litter our property. Some large trees at the back of our property fell against the power lines and damaged the transformer, which caused a blackout throughout the neighborhood that lasted nearly five days. (And, once power was restored, my computer developed a short in the connector board and had to be ‘hospitalized’ at the repair shop for another several days).

Being without power for a sustained period meant being ‘disconnected’ – no computer, internet, television, social media, refrigerator, etc. Not only was I forcibly disconnected in this way, but my whole routine was visibly disrupted. I work during the day as an editor at IVP Academic, going into the office, but in the evenings I write my dissertation for Vanderbilt at home. Obviously, without electricity – no lights or computer – work on the dissertation came to halt. There was little I could do in the way of focused academic work once the final fingers of sunlight disappeared. (What writers of dissertations did before the advent of electricity or computers is beyond me!).

At first, I viewed this disruption with consternation as inconvenient and a drag on productivity. I need to work and I require my routine. However, slowly, what was disruptive turned out to be suffused by grace, in that by being disrupted of routine, busyness and production, I was stripped of all the activity and processes that I depend upon and, in a way, upon which I predicate my identity. No longer able to bury my consciousness in work and active study, or ‘unwind’ by consuming variegated distractions, I was confronted with stillness, silence and darkness. I was completely alone with nothing but time, empty space and my thoughts.

During these silent nights, my mind turned quite often to the mystics, particularly the desert mothers and fathers. I've always found their writings to be incredibly attractive yet, concomitantly, strange and alien. They're imbued with a density of desire and abandon for the untamed divine and full of pathos and energy. The life of prayer -- the life of the ascetic -- is a dynamic struggle, a constant battle to attain silence and stillness in the presence of God. The peculiarity of these figures is quite often the extremity of their chosen conditions: living in caves, sitting atop pillars, wandering through deserts. I think now that rather than being sheer abandonment of the 'world' -- a capitulation to a dualistic theology -- that perhaps these desert figures are actualised parables of the strange life of prayer *in* the world. They are uncomfortable, disconcerting, odd, even paralysing, just as prayer and contemplation are. They disturb, interrupt and exorcize, often plundering the things we most want to hold onto. We want to avert our gaze -- to be distracted from them -- because they pose a significant danger to the veneer of our being. Their bodies have become the site where consumerism, commodification, distraction, and industrialised or technological exchange are evacuated. In this, they are proclamations to the world, *for* the world.

From the Vaults: Patristic Doctrine of Redemption (3)

2011-06-19T14:02:00.003-05:00

Chapter Two: Christ the Illuminator

With a heading like ‘Christ the Illuminator’ one would expect straight way an exposition of a mystical view of Christ or something akin to a Logos-oriented doctrine of illumination, gnosis. Turner does, of course, work his way to the early ‘Christ the Teacher’ sorts of motifs from the early second century. However, Turner first traces the theme of ‘illumination’ to the New Testament as tied to the exemplary pattern of Christ’s death, which Turner underscores in John, the first epistle of Peter and even in Paul’s Christology; in the latter Turner perceives a strongly ‘practical’ orientation, as evidenced by the introduction to the hymn of the humiliated and exalted Christ, which is set of by Paul’s directive ‘let this mind be in you…’ (Phil 2.5-11). This obviously cuts against the traditional ‘objectivist’ views of the atonement, which sequester the practical/ethical from the objective, ‘transactional’ doctrinal stratum (29-30). Turner’s aim is not to dismiss entirely the presence of an objective element in the New Testament, but rather to argue that even in the New Testament there is variegation; even more, Turner’s point here is that these should not be played off each other or segmented from each other, “must be held in solution with other insights and significances” (31). What is important to his investigation is that the practical, exemplary pattern found a quick channel into the early post-apostolic church and became a pivotal Christological grounding for the church of the martyrs. (Of course, we have to see in this a participatory asymmetry, in that the martyrs were not exactly ‘other’ Christs, but elevated to participate in the suffering and sacrifice of Christ; at the same time, the martyrs (and confessors) did serve, to a degree, a mediatory function in that their sacrifice opened space for secondary intercession, i.e., martyr->Christ->God.

That the pattern that emerges at the forefront is styled ‘exemplary’ is not indicative, however, of strictly ethical data. Deeply set in rich typological reading of the Jewish scriptures, the ancient church interpreted the death of Christ “as a demonstration of the redemptive purpose of God towards [hu]mankind…. It may mean as little theologically as a mere repetition without further theologizing of the primitive Christian lex orandi, ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,’ but it possessed in many cases a far deeper significance… an argument from the mighty acts of God” (31). Turner pages through the typological exegesis of Justin, Clement, Irenaeus and Origen to demonstrate the ‘organic relation’ that existed between the Jewish and Christian scriptures in the mind of the early church through which a fundamental link was made between God’s redemptive acts in history and the death of the crucified one; the history of Israel is, in these, filled with types that point toward and figure the climactic historical act in first century Palestine. For these early thinkers, simultaneously, that God is identified with this act, one which is redemptive in purpose and scope, bears directly and transformatively on the life of the Christian. In this, there is a decisive connection – one might call it onto-ethical – between the act of God in the death of Christ and the Christian person. Polycarp, for instance, as Turner quotes, urged the Philippians that “[Christ] endured all this that we might live. Let us therefore become imitators of his endurance and, if we suffer for his name, let us glorify him” (Ep. Phil. viii.1-2; p. 33). Turner finds a similar pattern in Origen, who brings together the language of justification with redemption and the ethical patterning of the Christian life on the basis of God’s act in Christ’s death and resurrection (In Rom. iv.7).

Turner goes on to demonstrate that, from quite early, the redemptive and the ‘educative’ were held closely together; here, Christ the illuminator is Christ the redemptive teacher. This is, of course, indicative of an imbrication of ‘life’ and ‘knowledge,’ concepts that are attributable to the person of Christ in the New Testament, but made explicit in their conjunction as early as the Eucharist prayer in the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas; in the latter, Turner argues, “it is possible that under the figure of a hendiadys Hermas is including both the redemptive work and the teaching office of Christ under this head” (33-4).[1] The motif of Christ as teacher easily developed in modified trajectories, a highly moralistic theology, not uncommon to the second century, and the more Platonic-Gnostic inflected theology of divine knowledge or illumination, which itself became highly diverse in the second and third centuries.

The aspect of illumination quickly became bound up with the doctrine of the Logos that took root in the era of the apologists. Logos theology had significant antecedents in the Johnannine literature and the apostolic fathers, such as Clement of Rome, in which Christ is construed as the source of enlightenment and wisdom. In one of Clement’s homilies, he proclaims “Christ gave light and saved his children, our spirit was blinded and we adored stone, wood, gold, silver and metals. Thanks to him the circle of darkness which shrouded has been broken and we have recovered our sight” (Hom i.4; 36). Turner argues that the apostolic tradition of Christ as the Logos of illumination – or, Logos Revelator – depended upon a particular emphasis of the relation between Father and Son, that the historic Jesus, in virtue of an invisible relation, is the bearer of the revelation of the Father; slowly this notion took on cosmic terms, in the apologists, in which the relation is understood pre-temporally and with implications not just for the doctrine of redemption but for creation itself. The difference is reflected, for instance, in the underlinings of Irenaeus and Justin: Irenaeus “is deeply concerned with the unity of the Father and in revealing word and act,” which is embodied in the recapitulatory event of the incarnation,[2] while Justin and the later apologists are concerned with the eternalized Logos as God whose incarnation intensifies the process available within the structures of creation (though clearly differentiated in degree and distinction). [I would register a bit of disagreement over this characterization of the apologists; this is not, however, far from the standard interpretation of the second and third century thinkers]. The apogee of such a construction is reached, for Turner, in the work of Clement of Alexandria, whose work is a sophisticated riposte to the intellectual and philosophical culture of the Greek world, in which the doctrine of redemption is construed as illumination through Christ the Paidagogos. For Clement, true gnosis is delivered in the Logos of Christ, available in the Church to those who strive to attain knowledge, and in this way, Christianity outstrips Gnosticism “by showing that Christianity, rightly interpreted, offers all that Gnosticism claimed to present” (41).

The upshot of this examination, for Turner, is that “there is no question that the concept of Christ the Teacher bringing as part of his redemptive work for humanity knowledge and illumination is a basic element in the Christian doctrine of redemption. No doctrine of the cross, for example, which does not explain how the world is made the better by it can claim to represent the fullness of the Christian tradition.” Further, the doctrine of redemption is ineluctably imbricate with the ethical, as “any theory which separates the obligation of leading a better life from the redemption brought by Christ has small claim for acceptance by Christian” (46). Of course, what Turner is at pains to demonstrate in all this is that there is not a singular, isolable pattern or motif that is “the” doctrine of redemption, even from the beginning; rather, even a motif like ‘illumination,’ so-called, is multi-dimensional and opened out in several avenues. It cannot be, then, that the earliest doctrine of redemption was of a single type or strictly defined, but integrated and polyvocal.

[1] Turner locates this in a particularly illuminating passage from the Shepherd, which states “Having Himself [Christ] thus cleansed the sins of the people, He showed them the paths of life, giving to them the Law which He had received from His Father” (34).

[2] This can be seen clearly in Irenaeus’ remark that “Not otherwise could we learn what God is if our Teacher the Word (Logos) had not become [hu]man. We could not otherwise lean unless we were to see our Teacher the Word and hear his voice with our ears, that we might become imitators of his actions and those who fulfill his words” (Adv. Haer. V.I.I).

A Meditation on Tree of Life

2011-06-16T10:31:00.003-05:00

Some Minimal and Preparatory Reflections on Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life In Which I Ask You, the Reader, to Bear With Me

Joshua Davis

I came to Chicago last year from Nashville, where I had lived for fifteen years. We are afforded certain luxuries in Chicago that we were not in Nashville. One of the more gratifying is getting an early viewing of the latest film by my deepest and most cherished theological influence, Terrence Malick. As Jeff Buckley once said of Nusrat Feteh Ali Khan, “He’s my Elvis.” One of the least gratifying facets of this move to Chicago is the sheer increase in volume, density, and intensity of what were once known, in their more palatable form, as “hepcats.” And, of course, the only theatre in the city showing the film is in Hepcat Central.

Now, as unpleasant and curmudgeonly an observation as this is, I do not mention it to be unpleasant or curmudgeonly. In fact, the kind of humor that we often attach to these sorts of observations, the value of the kind of humor you most likely detect in my tone here, is something that I will return to below. No, I mention it because the place, the circumstances, the entire “form of life” that set my first experience—this is the only word to use—of The Tree of Life is important for what I have to say about it. I ask that you bear with me for a moment.

We had hepcats in Nashville, too. But owing in no small measure, I’m sure, to that bizarre concoction of Evangelical Fundamentalism, Noblesse Oblige, Southern Propriety, Agrarian Heredity, Musical Industrialism, Rockabilly, and Racism, the characteristic irony of the hepcat, the gesture he uses to distance himself from his place and to distinguish himself within it, his strategy for nestling down into the margins, is carried out entirely in earnest. It is a city that subsists on the fantasy of marginalization. The “country road” overcrowded by the city. The musician who falls through the cracks to keep the dream alive. Your degree of being at home in Nashville is, paradoxically, in direct proportion to your capacity to live your life entirely ironically.

This is, maybe, one of the reasons religion runs a close second to music for the city’s preoccupation. Christian publishing, Christian bookstores, Christian music, Christian Schools, Divinity Schools, Christian seminaries, retreat centers, charities, counseling centers, art communities, experimental New Monasticism Houses—they abound in every part of town, for every different point of view, and for the very specific purpose of catering, denominationally, the moods of the hepcat. There is something perversely quaint about the city’s lack of awareness of how deeply morally compromised that is. But such is one very important function of irony. It can become a duty, a responsibility to keep the fantasy of a long abandoned innocence alive so we can continue to sell it as “home.” It is a most peculiar phenomenon, as if the important thing is the authenticity of the irony; as if a perfect, solemn devotion to perpetual departure is how the fantasy of the departed is perpetuated. There is, of course, no center here at all. It is entirely on the margins…and has a just planted a vegetable garden.

But Chicago is different. Though he has his own parts of the city, his own distinct subculture, music venues, social forms, a hepcat here is ironic about his sincerity. I hesitate to put it that way because it seems too convenient a contrast to be accurate. But this is how it is. Irony here is a live tactic for coping with pain. There is something more honest, more Midwestern in this use of irony. It is, though, in the end, just as morally reprehensible as selling the fantasy of home about a place you long ago abandoned. Irony here is “pure,” subsists as a perpetual interrogative. It transforms the urban condition of “not-being-at-home” (Unheimlichkeit) into a practice of habitation, a virtue to acquire, a style of survival, a way of life. Tatooed Deleuze on the metro, where he belongs (rhizome)…in “skinny jeans.”

The theatre where I first experienced The Tree of Life was the deep vein thrombosis of that habitude, silently coagulating, waiting for the unanticipated shift when it all would keel over. Across the street from a now defunct Borders’ Books, it was a converted shopping mall with a salon on the ground floor, a Victoria’s Secret and other such sellers of wares on the second floor, and from the third floor up, off the side of an open walkway winding around the open center of the building, were a number of storefronts converted into theatres. Such overt yet sly defiance of the urban inhospitality to movie theatres (and an “art house” theatre at that) was intriguing and entirely weird.

I was a half-hour early. I wanted my choice of seat. I had, after all, been waiting for this movie for three years, so my “movie space” was very important to me. And almost immediately upon taking position, two hepcats took up their place in the row directly behind me and to my right. The man hardly ever spoke, though I did overhear him listing Malick’s films to the woman in a way that clearly suggested she was unfamiliar. But I learned much about her. She spoke in that aggressively defensive way certain hepcats have where the words seem to come from the back of their mouths (not throats, this isn’t guttural) as though they are forcing them forward and on you, but not in the hope that you will receive them, rather like some preemptive assertion of value against their assured rejection. So it was that she laid claim on my “movie space.”

She took the time before the film to tell the man, the rest of us included, about her most recent camping trip. It was unplanned, in Wisconsin, and with some vaguely defined and (I think) female Irish friend. It rained during the entire trip, making it a bust, other than the particularly arresting event she recounted.

With “nothing else to do” but drink, they of course “got drunk,” and decided to explore the woods. The sheer stupidity of this idea should not go without remark, but is not the point of the story. Intoxicated, running in the Wisconsin woods, the sky flashing bright and red, then going dark, rain pelting, thunder raving: it was entirely unclear to me what they were actually doing. I do not know; but she said they suddenly were entirely taken by surprise to stumble on a fawn curled up at the base of a tree.

Lightening, rain, thunder. They stopped whatever it was they had been doing. The fawn was alone. It was dying.

Laughing nervously, she asserted, “We didn’t know what to do!”

The man said nothing. I imagined him listening intently, brow raised, a slight smile to encourage her to continue.

She did. “It probably had some kind of heart defect or something, and couldn’t live. It was soooo weird.” She used the “r” like a pivot to elevate the significance of the event.

“We had to just leave it there, you know, to die or whatever. I mean, the last thing you expect to run up on, you know, is Bambi.” The insistence of her manner brought a greater sense of reserve, a significant and disconcerting detachment.

It was then that she said what those of you that “know” will understand, why I asked that you bear with me. Asserting this story of displacement on everyone around her—the drunkenness, the Wisconsin wilderness, rain and thunder racking her survival style of urban habitude; recounting this story of pain, she then said, now directly laughing: “It was totally like something out of Anti-Christ.”

. . .

Gillian Rose once remarked about Spielberg’s Schindler’s List that the film is most deeply flawed for never once demanding that its audience identify with the guilty. Schindler’s personal flaws, in fact, never point to his being morally compromised, but merely reinforce in us, the audience, a capacity to identify with him in his innocence. Most egregious, perhaps, is that even his own weeping over his shattered illusion of innocence is presented as the final sign of his purity. As with her commendation of Miss Marple as an ethical paragon, I believe Rose is on the right track but significantly wide of the mark with this judgment. It is certainly true that Spielberg hankers after sentimentality, but the film’s narrative arc displays Schindler’s devastating encounter with the broken reality of obligation that obtains and overtakes even his most self-serving of actions. In other words, it is a story about the discovery of law—and the mourning that becomes it, the mourning that it becomes.

Nevertheless, Rose makes an important point. In Spielberg’s hands, the story of Oskar Schindler simply sells the illusion of innocence. He gives you all you need to be confident that you would have been on the right side of the Nazi war machine, and that because of that you can be confident that you are now, too. The question of guilt, the reality of judgment never arrives. As long as we are sincere in our detachment, that is, we can know that our sleep will be sufficiently unsettled to lie in a bed. Or so long as “the poor” are our Transcendental Agitator of Conscience, the orienting locus of our Identity, we can be confident, at the very least, that we are hunkered down with what is beyond critique—unexposed, unrelated, immune. Sincere irony understands itself as an act of radical risk that stokes the engine of moral courage, but is simply the veil we spread over cowardice to titivate our shame.

The pain at the root of shame is not denied. It is unacknowledge. Never acknowledged, it is never encountered.

Rose commends to us, instead, a further ironic gesture, the honest embrace of irony itself. Just as she notes that Kant’s stopping at the thing-itself is arbitrary, so she insists on subjecting this icon of transcendental immunity to the methodological irony that sustains it. We take up our sincerity once more, no longer as alienated from irony, but as reconciled with it. We can now be freely engaged by virtue of our honest detachment from our sincerity—affirming the “brokenness” of the “middle.” This is her inflection of the Hegelian absolute, the final negation of negativity as a positive determination for thought. It is the manner of our reconciliation with the absolute, and it is the thought of the absolute itself.

You can see why Miss Marple is the ethical hero of Rose’s vision. Unlike Simone Weil, Rose once observed, Marple can pass undetected. Haunted by the impossible quest for an uncontaminated point of reference for ethical activity, for purity, Weil is always peculiar. She tries to set herself up as the sincere site of transcendental righteousness, while its infinite demand compels her shame. But Marple’s detachment from sincerity accepts her compromised condition. Freed from the desire for purity, she is the denizen of law: not at all sincere, but unreservedly honest, intent on exposing injustice to jurisprudence.

Rose gives you all that you need to be confident that you are compromised. You can be certain that whether you were for or against the Nazis, you weren’t blameless, and because of this you aren’t now, either. Judgment, guilt, exposure to the law is inescapable. It is only by being detached from our sincerity that we can be honest enough to sleep soundly on the floor. Or so long as Law is the Immanent Necessity of the Absolute, the dirempted middle of Identification, we can be confident that sufficient interrogation of pretense will ensure that our prophets are deflated—stripped, bound, emptied. Ironic sincerity believes its self-oblational acceptance of guilt is the condition of possibility for justice, but it is only the fuel ardent shame needs to be rendered into violence.

The pain at the root of shame is not denied. It is acknowledged. But acknowledged, it is not encountered—merely denuded as compulsory opposition.

. . .

This is why The Tree of Life is a titanic work of art: with ferocious passion and adamant conviction, Malick refuses any path of diversion from the experience of the pain that animates our shame and feeds our violence. He never flinches. The moment of the most private, individual loss is inflected at just the moment we are tempted to detachment—that moment when, for the sake of sincerity, we would have our innocence sold back to us as sentiment, or that moment when, for the sake of our pain, we would shun all affection in favor of the defiant demand for justice and exposure to the harrowing necessity of law—at just that moment of temptation, he intensifies the particularity of this pain to the level of universality, beautifully displaying it as a the groaning of the cosmos. Life screams out from the bowels of reality, “Lacrimosa, Lacrimosa dies illa.” Mrs. O’Brien’s pain, your pain is directly shown to be minute amidst the vast folding and unfolding of the universe, and yet it is specifically there that it is of absolute significance.

Please note, this is not a pious realism that would insist that pain is a wound that cannot be hidden; nor is it the severe declaration that we must shoulder our affliction, that pain is simply a necessary part of life, that life goes on. No, these are banal observations. Malick makes the more colossal assertion that no matter how capable we are of detachment from experience (which is simply another way of saying we are susceptible to death) we have no avenue of escape from exposure to the risk, the contingency, the gratuity, the affect of actually living. Life must be experienced if it is lived.

Here some focus on the formal innovations of the film would normally be in order. I should say something about the fact that Malick does things with film that elevate its direction to the status of cathedral-building. The use of photography, music, narrative technique, editing, poetic and symphonic structure—everything here that Malick began with Badlands and broke open in The Thin Red Line is perfected in an inimitable cinematic palette that grasps possibilities for film that far surpass the achievements of even our greatest directors. All of these make the film a monumental work of art, but what places it alongside truly great works of art and Malick among the truly great artists of history, I believe, is that the film successfully performs a complete coincidence between the form of its portrayal of life and the viewer’s experience of the reality of life. To be affected by The Tree of Life’s art is to be immediately exposed your own experience of life. Or, put the other way around: if you are detached from The Tree of Life’s art, it is because you are detached from your own experience of life. I am not saying you must agree with its presentation of life, but that the film disallows that you the possibility of detachment. In order to disagree, you must do so on the basis of your experience of experience. It is magnificent not simply because it challenges, but because it leaves you no avenue of escape from the very experience of life. That is to say, the movie is entirely without irony.

There is not the slightest hint here that history, bodies, politics, or economics are not the very stuff of life. Malick’s images are neither metaphor nor allegory. Malick’s style is so often described as “Romantic” or “Transcendental.” But this is wrong. His images are impressionistic, but they are not “ideas,” much less are they “ideals.” They are the unsubstitutable worldly occasions in which the intricate interweaving of biological, physical, cultural, and psychological significance become perceptible as meaningful. They spread out, temporally and spatially, diachronically and synchronically, repeating prior moments and reversing them, while prior moments anticipate, reverse, and impel later ones; identities are both stable and fluid, irreducibly singular but entirely universalizable. They display the rich patterns of meaning and coherence that overtake the experience of creative, passionate engagement with the conflicts, passions, joys, pains, desires, obstructions, villainies, evils, and goods of the world.

Characters are not representations. They are imbued with a significance that only emerges between them, in time. It is how their bodies enunciate their relations and how those relations spread out and are enfolded into the world. Mrs. O’Brien is Eve and a mother and Mary and Rachel and a wife and Ruth and the Woman Wisdom and the Woman Clothed with the Sun and a daughter-in-law and Job and the Beloved Disciple and once a child and Adam and Abraham and Gabriel. Mr. O’Brien is Adam and a father and Eve and Rachel and Jacob and Job and a son and Cain and Noah and a husband and Judas. Jack is Esau and Jacob and Joseph and Abel and a son and Cain and Job and Mary Magdalene and will be an adult and Peter and Abraham. Significations proliferate between relations and bleed into one another, redoubling and repeating within and across broader associations.

This is figuration, typology. Hans Frei saw this as the hallmark of Biblical narrative; it’s unique articulation of history’s significance to the meaning of the world. Most importantly, reading the world figurally was the means by which we perceive providence without elevating ourselves to a station outside of history or our bodies. Frei understood that this way of interpreting experience was nowhere else more alive than in the legacy of the American religious experience. Malick seems to know or intuit this. It is what makes the film uniquely American in the way The Illiad is Greek, Ulysses, King Lear is English, or Ulysses is Irish.

This signification between relations is best captured in the dialogical pattern of the film, its question and answer form. This technique, which enfolds the consciousness of the characters as an irreplaceable part into a more general movement, places the film at the heart of the Biblical narrative, and most especially the Book of Job’s protest against the simple theodicy of Hebrew Wisdom. The Lacrimosa that inflects the cosmic significance of Mrs. O’Brien’s pain is simultaneously her interrogation of God and God’s response. This call and response, redoubling and reversal assumes, in that moment of quiet intensity, a musical configuration in its very coincidence with nature. And what is more, the entire composition of the experience—as a question, an answer, a relation, a natural occurrence—is not merely harmonic, but specifically liturgical, cast within overarching movement of a Requiem Mass. The Lacrimosa that carries Mrs. O’Brien’s cry across the cosmos, the cosmic groan in which Mrs. O’Brien’s cry participates, is itself enfolded within the Dies Irae Sequence of the liturgy—that is, The Day of Wrath. The entire Sequence itself occurs as an extended poetic, psalmodic meditation on judgment, pain, loss, hope, and resurrection. And infolded in its interrogations is the response that the Sequence is to the Kyrie, Elesison (Lord, have mercy) that precedes it. The Lacrimosa ends the Sequence, and opens onto the Offeratory, which is normally followed by the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy). All of these musical movements are visually displayed in the film.

I leave it to those of you familiar with liturgy to fill in the significance these movements, and for those of you who don’t to look them up. What I am concerned with is what follows the close of the Offeratory and how this coincides with the narrative of the film.

At just the moment of Jack’s life that is the culmination of the film’s presentation of his experience, at just that moment that coincides with and elicits the encounter with life in the affected viewer, the film offers another response. It is a response to this interrogation of life; it is a response to Mrs. O’Brien’s, Jack’s, nature’s Lacrimosa; it is the response of the film itself, its crux: “Agnus Dei, qui tollis/peccata mundi.”

All of time, space, the pains and exaltations of bodies, life: gathered together in the sacrifice of the Son and the oblation of praise and thanksgiving. The experience of life is communion.

It is the Paschal Mystery.

Take a moment to ponder that. It is sheer genius. It is. And that is remarkable enough. But the genius of it is not what is most striking. What is most awe-inspiring is the bravery, the moral courage, the unequivocal, heroic conviction it takes not simply to say something like that, not simply to say it so boldly, but to say it so intimately, to lay oneself bare before the world with all your hopes, pains, fears. To be so exposed to the experience of life. In love with love. Pleading, praising, praying. Loving.

Really think about that. A filmmaker in the twenty-first century, a citizen of the United States of America, has created a monumental work of art that evokes an experience of life that leaves you with no escape from life, presents you with the glory of life, forces your engagement, and says to you, Choose: Irony or Worship.

“I give him to you... I give you my son.”

. . .

As the credits rolled, the theatre was silent. So were the woman and man behind me. I was struck, intrigued by their hush.

As they walked down the aisle, I heard the women say, in her for me now iconic manner, “Well…um…that was unrealistic.”

I am tempted, at just this moment, at the crux of this review (or whatever it is), to close by saying: “It was totally like something out of Anti-Christ.”

Or, to say something witty and Biblical about the beast with ten horns and seven heads rising up out of Lake Michigan.

But I won’t. Instead, I’ll just tell the truth: this caused me pain.

Preference for the Poor and Bourgeois Theology

2011-06-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

This is, to my mind, the most cogent response to R. R. Reno's recent article in First Things.

http://poserorprophet.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/r-r-renos-preferential-option-for-the-poor/

From the Vaults: Patristic Doctrine of Redemption (2)

2011-06-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

In the introductory chapter, Turner provides a helpful survey of the secondary literature on the doctrine of the atonement, tracing the contributions of the 19^th c. ‘histories of dogma’ from the German modern Protestant school up through the now classic text of Gustav Aulén. There is much that Turner approbates in these accounts, especially the brilliance and exhaustive nature of the German and French textbooks of Loofs, Harnack, Werner, Rivière and Turmel, as well the classic liberal statement of Hastings Rashdall. Many of these texts put an array of passages from long-forgotten figures in the hands of students and, especially the bulky volumes of the old manuals of the German historians, provide fulsome resources for deeper research into the primary texts via cross-reference to the critical sources in the apparatii. (Of course, these are, in the present, quite out-dated with the availability of much better critical editions beyond Migne).

However, Turner argues that these accounts share a set of deficits. On the one hand, “scholars primarily concerned with the doctrine of the atonement normally tend to hurry over the early centuries and to begin a serious discussion with the teaching of St Anselm and of Peter Abelard” (7). The rush to the post-patristic ‘establishment’ of standard Western motifs of the atonement comes at the expense of significant attention to vast tracts of territory within the patristic canon, whereby ‘key’ passages or metaphors are lifted out and pressed into service as a general paradigm (7, 12ff.). On the other hand, many studies are determined by material assumptions that shape interpretation, something common to both liberal and conservative readings. The former, for instance, are typically weighted to the ethical register, such as in Rashdall or Harnack; the latter tend to assume a penal, substitutionary view as both the biblical (thus veritable) and standard position, often inflected by sixteenth century concerns. As such, these authors "select from the patristic material the passages and allusions which fit best into their own preferred doctrinal mould" (11). (Such assumptions can be said equally to influence readings of the New Testament; Turner, for instance, underlines in Torrance's account what could be labelled an overdubbed Paulinism in his assessment of the 'established' position of the New Testament writings (24)).

Perhaps the most pressing problem is the lack of 'patristic acclimatization,' the inability to hear the minor chords and motifs, the complementary patterns and images, which feature equally significantly in the larger harmony of the patristic canon (13). What escapes attention in surface readings that fail to plumb the depths of the patristic literature is the richness and diversity of the patristic experience of redemption, something not reducible strictly to the formulations of the creeds or a particular theologian, though these are vitally important components of the development of the doctrine. In this, the lex orandi of the ancient church is equally as crucial as the lex credendi. (Turner's suggestion, here, that a scholarly study of the Regula Fidei is 'one of the more urgent needs of patristic scholarship,' so far as I can tell, is still valid [14]). Concomitant with this is the importance of careful attention to the nature of the development of the articulation of the doctrine of redemption, as a careful refinement and 'precisioning' of the church's body of proclamation, prayer and liturgy, in the course of its traffic with other intellectual and religious climates. Both the sharpness of Christian expression (in an apologetic mode) and the variegation of images and motifs are lit up by this context, in which Christianity had to differentiate itself from the religious and intellectual systems of the Greco-Roman milieu and, at the same time, it appropriated and transformed elements around it. This is to say that the existence of the ancient church as a liturgical and missional community -- its particular internal structures and practices and the particular external contexts -- are decisively important to genuine understanding of the pattern of beliefs. (This opens the space for Turner to exposit the notion of unified diversity or diversity-in-unity vis-à-vis early doctrinal development, an opportunity unfortunately not taken but subtending somewhat implicitly the whole discussion).

Turner rounds out this chapter with an excellent, though brief, sketch of the pattern of general doctrinal development in the ancient church under these conditions, from the fixed elements of the Regula Fidei to the intellectual categories and 'stylings' of schools and individual theologians, as problems and issues were worked out and clarified. For Turner, it is particular importance that 'orthodoxy' not be thought of "merely Christianity defensively stated" but "lived as a total system of prayer and devotion" that over time felt the "need to integrate and evaluate the various elements in the Christian lex orandi," though polemic cannot be dismissed as unimportant to the effort at clarification (16-7). (The examples of Athanasius and the Cappadocians serve to highlight the concomitance of polemic and 'precisioning,' in which a defensive need is evident as well as a handling of doctrinal refinement by "one[s] who lived richly within the whole Christian lex orandi" [17]). The integrated nature of early Christian beliefs, further, can be seen in that when clarity or refinement was achieved on a particular issue, such as the doctrine of the Trinity or the person of Christ, other elements rose to the surface for discussion, such as redemption, grace, sacraments, etc. Turner does not, however, assume monolithic consensus here, but variability of redemptive motif around a commonly held center of redemption in Christ. Various 'models' of redemption existed side-by-side that construed restoration along physical, metaphysical, mystical and/or sacramental lines, turning upon what was thought to be lost in the fall and how it was restored by Christ. Thus, one can find Christus Victor models as well as Logos Victor, models that pivot on the incarnation or the focus on the passion. It would, however, be difficult to find patristic models that "set incarnation and atonement in opposition" as it happens in medieval and modern accounts (21).

The variability within the patristic doctrine of redemption, which will be explored throughout the remainder of the book, is unified, according to Turner, by a few key factors. First, a common belief that redemption is an event or experience in Christ, that something is restored to human beings through Jesus Christ. Second, that redemption is act wrought by God on our behalf, that is that God acts in particular way towards humanity. Third, that the humanity of Christ is pivotal to the nature of redemption. In relation to this latter theme, Turner highlights two variations: Christus Victor and Christ the Victim. According to Turner, "the Christus Victor theory stresses what was wrought through Christ by God on behalf of [humanity]; the Christ Victim theory emphasizes what was offered by Christ as human for all before God. The action, as it were, takes place on two simultaneous planes. Later theories by their preoccupation with one tend to under-emphasize the other. In more modern parlance, the so-called subjective theories represent an attenuated form of the first; the objective theories a partial and limited phrasing of the second" (22-3)."

Turner's treatment will consist of exploration of the variegated themes or motifs of redemption in the following: Christ the Illuminator (ch 2); Christ the Victor and Recapitulatio (ch 3); Christ the Giver of Incorruption and Deification (ch 4) and Christ Our Victim (ch 5).

Something to Ponder

2011-06-04T22:16:00.001-05:00

Here are two thoughtful, provocative essays on an all-too-common phenomenon: white congregations appropriating ethnic hymns and songs. [If you are not a regular reader of the blog, Women in Theology, it is well worth tuning in!]

Essay1 : witheology.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/ethnic-hymns-in-white-churches/

Essay 2: witheology.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/ethnic-hymns-in-white-churches-take-two/

This is something I have encountered too many times to count, from all-white choirs singing black spirituals in dialect to Native American nature 'hymns' complete with Tonto-esque piano motifs. Every time I have found it to be disturbing, creepy and racist. The congregations and their directors are not, in most cases, ill-intentioned; rather, it is done, presumably, out of a desire to appear inclusive and diverse. The problem, though, unreflective stereotyping and colonialistic traces subtend these appropriations and performances. It is somewhat analogous to lilly-white institutions and organizations that round-up the few minorities on-campus or employed to appear in promotional material. In other words, it is not actually highlighting the reality of diversity locally embodied, or celebrating the particular persons; rather, it is the creation of the appearance of diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately, in the instances of ecclesial bodies, the simulacrum is often not only false, but the medium is one that is offensive and prejudicial to those they wish to include (or give the appearance of including).

Inclusion and diversity require hard work to cultivate. Such comes out of serious efforts to understand and genuinely be with others; it is also crucial to reflect on our known (and even unknown or unintentional) participation in prejudicial and oppressive behaviors and systems.

From the Vaults: Patristic Doctrine of Redemption (1)

2011-06-04T21:36:00.002-05:00

I have decided to inaugurate the From the Vaults occasional series with a multi-part review of H.E.W. Turner's classic work, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption. Long out-of-print, this 1952 work, the proceedings from Turner's series of lectures given at Scolae Cancellariae in Lincoln from 1949, is available in a reprint from the venerable line at Wipf & Stock (here: wipfandstock.com/store/The_Patristic_Doctrine_of_Redemption_A_Study_of_the_Development_of_Doctrine_during_the_First_Five_Centuries).

Turner, who served for several decades as the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and as Canon Residentiary of Durham Cathedral, was a beloved, if lesser known, Anglo-Catholic theologian of the classical Oxbridge variety, a contemporary and ecclesial-theological fellow traveller of Henry Chadwick. Much like Chadwick, Turner was deeply committed to the study of the tradition of the ancient church -- its teaching and practices as embodied in its liturgy, prayer, confession and doctrinal body -- not for the sake of arcana, but in the burning conviction of the relevance for contemporary ecclesial life. Turner was much more a theologian than a historian in the traditional sense; that is, his focus was profoundly theological, even if concerned with an historical body of thinkers, figures, ideas and traditions, and even if inflected by the discipline of classics, always with an eye situated on issues and problems circulating in modern theology. His most notable work is The Pattern of Christian Truth, a bowshot aimed at Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, in which Bauer argued that 'orthodoxy' was later, reactive construction that, in hegemonic fashion, ruled out previously prevailing positions, now deemed as heresies. In Pattern, Turner contests Bauer's work, which became a reigning paradigm in much of late 19th & early 20th century systematic theology; Turner argues that 'orthodoxy' was really a conceptual 'precisioning' of the body of teachings and beliefs found in the scriptural, liturgical and prayer life of the earliest church (what would be styled the regula fide by the later second century). Though Turner is not mentioned, perhaps the best counterpart to his work is Lewis Ayres' phenomenally brilliant, Nicaea and Its Legacy. [Pattern of Christian Truth is also offered in a reprint edition: https://wipfandstock.com/store/The_Pattern_of_Christian_Truth_A_Study_in_the_Relations_between_Orthodoxy_and_Heresy_in_the_Early_Church].

Over the next week or so, I will offer an in-depth, chapter-by-chapter review of Turner's Patristic Doctrine of Redemption, a short, but dense monograph on the doctrine of the atonement in the early church. This work, which is really about the developing motifs vis-a-vis the person and work of Christ in the early centuries of ancient Christianity, is an alternate account to the now standard classic, Christus Victor by Gustav Aulén. Turner offers a richer, more variegated account than Aulén, one that is focused specifically on the early church and is more attentive to the fluidity and diversity amongst the ancient theologians. A lucid and engaging work, though now, undoubtedly, out-of-date, and not without its flaw, it deserves to be rediscovered. In the next instalment, I will provide an overview of the book and review the first chapter.

From the Vaults: An Occasional Series

2011-05-31T22:20:00.001-05:00

When I moved to Chicago in 2009, I transported nearly 70 boxes of books from our townhouse in Nashville. A hazard of being a ‘professional student,’ I imagine, as this collection has grown over the course of a double-major undergraduate degree, three masters degrees and a (nearly complete) doctoral degree. Many of these books are, obviously, discipline related, accumulated from coursework, exams, dissertation and the standard bibliographic requisites; of course, being a bibliophile, there were numerous acquisitions of books from beloved authors, genres or recognition of a hidden gem, and even those that would be tucked away for time when I would get around to mastering a different body of literature or discipline. Somewhat disheartening, when I arrived in Chicago, there was significantly less shelving space available in the house than anticipated; the situation was exacerbated by the substandard particle-board shelving, which served rather spartanly in Nashville, not surviving the move.

As such, many of my books have remained bundled in the moving boxes, now distributed across various rooms and floors. Those that are most pertinent to my work, or couldn’t not be displayed, managed to obtain the position of prominence on the shelves that were here; the rest are hidden away in cardboard enclosures. On occasion, I have to burrow through the boxes to ferret out a needed title that did not make the display roster. I actually quite like these excursions, as it is an opportunity to familiarize myself again with those holdings that have, for one reason or another, seemingly disappeared from my memory. It is rather like receiving a call from a cherished old friend long out-of-touch. Thumbing through the pages of a carrelled book feels like being reacquainted, running over old memories and sharing new insights. Often, I will encounter one of those titles that I’ve never read, which provokes a pang of guilt over the neglect. And, equally as often, a few of these will be retrieved along with the originally intended object and set in a place of eyesight. Alas, as these things go, after time, the pile becomes clutter (and too many tokens of guilty remembrance) and they swept up back into their holding cell.

But, it seems that this is a fitting forum – and a good excuse – to dust off these titles and give them their proper recognition. So, I will run an occasional series here that I am calling ‘From the Vaults.’ The series will feature books from my collection that are currently vaulted in those packing boxes, of which I will offer reviews and commentary. For a time, most of the titles in this series will have some relation to my current work; but, over time, this will broader and hopefully provide an opportunity to delve into those from other disciplines and genres. Stay tuned!

Reality Becomes Film and Film Becomes Reality

2011-05-28T17:22:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to watch the fantastic documentary, Hearts of Darkness, about the making of one of the greatest American films, Apocalypse Now. This documentary examines the sheer brilliance, creativity, grandiosity, hubris, and even insanity, that goes into making a film -- a film that is not just a movie but art, allegory and witness.

Coppola, the director of Apocalypse Now, stated, upon winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, that 'my movie is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money. Too much equipment. And little-by-little we went... insane."

Hearts of Darkness

Strangelove documentary

2011-05-23T18:14:00.000-05:00

Here is a documentary on the making of one of the greatest satiric films of all time, Dr. Strangelove.

Part 1 of 5:

Part 2 of 5:

Part 3 of 5:

Part 4 of 5:

Part 5 of 5:

De Lubacian Aphorisms on the Church

2011-05-22T16:24:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts from Henri De Lubac on the church:

"One who gives way to the temptations of a false spiritualization and wants to shake off the Church as a burdensome yoke or set her aside as a cumbersome intermediary will soon find himself embracing the void or end up by worshipping false gods. If a man begins by using her as his support and then comes to believe that he can go beyond her, he will be nothing more than a mystic run off the rails.... There is no other Spirit than this Spirit of Jesus, and the Spirit of Jesus is the soul that animates his body, the Church [Cf. St Augustine, Sermo 268, no 2 (PL 38, 1232): "Quod est spiritus noster, id est anima nostra, ad membra nostra, hoc est Spiritus sanctus ad membra Christi, ad corpus Christi, quod est Ecclesia]. Just as the letter of the Law drew together the first People of God, so the Spirit forms the new People of God. Today we are 'in the Spirit' as we are 'in Christ,' and we may say, with St Paul, that we have been baptized in one single Spirit to form one single body, or, as St Basil comments, in one single Body to form one single Spirit [On the Holy Spirit, 26.61]. The Church is 'the society of the Spirit' [St Augustine, Sermo 71, 19.32]. And it is in the Church that the Spirit glorifies Jesus, just as it is in her, the 'House of Christ,' that he is given to us in a final and eternal alliance. It is a bad business when an attempt is made to separate the Church from the Gospel; a bad business when people want to get rid of the spiritual leaven that she mixes into the meal of humanity, and when anyone tries to extinguish the Spirit in the Church. But it is an equally bad business when anyone claims to set the Spirit's flame free by rejecting the Church."

De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 204, 208.

"The Church is a mother, but quite unlike other mothers she draws to her those who are to be her children and keeps them united together in her womb. Her children, says St Maximus, come to her from all sides:

Men, women, children, profoundly divided in nationality, race, language, walk of life, knowledge, rank or means... all these she recreates in the Spirit. On all in the same measure she imprints a divine character. All receive of her a single nature which cannot be divided and by reason of which their many and deep differences can no longer be held in account. By it all are brought up and united in a truly Catholic manner. For (in the Church) no one is in the slightest degree separated from the community, all are fused together, so to speak, one in another, by the mere and undivided strength of faith.... Christ is also all in all, for he encloses all in himself by his sole power, infinite and all-wise in its goodness, like the center to which all lines converge, so that all the creatures of the one God should be strangers or enemies to one another without common ground whereon to show their friendship and the peace between them [Mystagogia 1, PG 91, 665-68].

.... If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present.... [Thus] it follows that the schismatic outrages what is dearest to Christ, for he commits a crime against that 'spiritual body' for which Christ sacrificed his carnal body. It is a violation of that vital charity which is the guardian of unity. Woe to the perditor caritatis!... In truth it is self-destruvtion, in that the schismatic cuts himself off from the tree of life: 'If a member is separated from the Whole he ceases to live.'"

De Lubac, Catholicism, trans. L. C. Sheppard and Sr. E. Englund, OCD (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 54, 76, 78.

Apocalyptic Prediction, Disappointment and Harold Camping's Heresy

2011-05-21T23:09:00.001-05:00

May 21, the purported date of the disappearance of millions of Christians and the beginning of the final judgment of the world, as predicted by eccentric, multimillionaire radio broadcaster, and now twice-failed false prophet (remember 1994?), Harold Camping, has come and gone uneventfully (or, at least, uneventfully vis-à-vis a major apocalyptic happening). In the run-up to the appointed terminal hour, rampant media attention has focused unsurprisingly on the sensationalist aspects of this event, such as Camping’s bizarrely idiosyncratic “mathematical” calculations, the costly campaign by Camping’s organization to publicize the impending doomsday, the colorful tactics employed by his ardent followers, and, more distressing, the zealous extents to which a number of his adherents have gone in their conviction of the validity of his predictions. Unreported, however, is that the activities of Camping are, in fact, blatant heresy. Camping is a false teacher deserving of severe censure and ecclesial denunciation, guilty not only of making Christianity a mockery to a general public that rarely distinguishes orthodox Christianity from marginal, lunatic figures and continually distorting texts in ways that concretely wreak havoc and damage to the lives of the misguided and untrained who have the misfortune of purchasing into his addled hallucinations, but also of propagating fraudulent doctrines in direct violation of Christian scripture and ecclesial teaching, propounding a Gnostic hermeneutic of scripture and theology, subverting the institutional offices of proclamation and sacrament, and advocating schism by proclaiming that all Christian churches are, in reality, defunct and apostate. Hereby, Camping is a quadruple heretic: a false prophet, a rebel against the church, a Gnostic and a quasi-Donatist.

Camping’s predictions of a specific date, both in 1994 and 2011, are a clear violation of the apophatic dictate of scripture. The disciples, on numerous occasions, peppered Jesus with the demand to know the arrival of the hour, always told that it was not their business to know (Matt. 24.42, 25.13; Acts 1.6-7) or, more startlingly, that Jesus himself did not even possess this knowledge (Mark 13.32). Later, the writer of Thessalonians, whose verses are often poached by pretend prognosticators, had to tamp down the false fears injected into the Christian community by apocalyptic agitators. Once again, a warning is issued about speculation vis-à-vis dates and times (1 Ths 5.1-3). Camping arrogates to himself the apparent authority to override the clear dictates of Jesus and the apostolic writers; ignoring these injunctions, Camping has deluded listeners of his radio broadcasts twice into believing that he alone possesses the insight to know that which is expressly excluded to followers of Christ. In this, Camping substitutes his own delusional logic and proclaims his own ‘revelation,’ thereby exhibiting the precise hallmarks of a false teacher and false prophet, that which St Paul (Gal. 1), St Peter (2 Pet. 1-2) and St John (1 John 1-2) warned about and declared to be apostasy.

Unfortunately, the history of the Christian church is littered with the detritus of apocalyptic speculation and subsequent disappointment. Examples range from the highly symbolic year 1000CE (and again around 1033CE) to various outbreaks of millennial enthusiasm during the era of the Reformation and throughout the early modern period. After the bitter failure of the American prognosticator, William Miller, who repeated set dates for the arrival of millennial kingdom (whose disappointed followers rebanded as Seventh Day Adventists), such open speculation cooled considerably until the radically fringe American dispensationalist movement garnered cultural attention in the 1970s through Hal Lindsey and the amateur fright-night films illustrating the cultic belief in an end-time rapture of Christians and subsequent cataclysmic destruction of the unbelieving remainder (motifs retread in the literary abominations of the Left Behind pieces of … fiction). However, this trajectory of interpreting apocalyptic and eschatological images and literature in the Christian canon is fundamentally at-odds with the long-standing tradition of orthodox (Eastern and Western) Christianity. While some of the earliest Christians affirmed a version of chiliasm, which was, to a degree, a political act of protest against terrestrial imperial claims, by the late second and early third centuries, millennialism was held in disdain by much of the church as it had subsequently come to be identified mainly with radical sectarian and heretical groups, such as the Montanists or Apollinarianism. Many, especially in the East, understand the condemnation of Apollinaris by the Council of Constantinople in 381 to be a rejection of millennialism, underscored by the insertion of the clause ‘and his kingdom shall have no end’ (thus refusing the notion of an intermediate terrestrial reign of Christ between the parousia and the new creation). In the West, small pockets of millennialism lingered on a bit longer, though it was largely extinguished after Augustine’s allegorical interpretation in De civitate Dei XX, which was virtually the canonical reading for over a millennium, until the enthusiast outbreaks on the fringe of the Reformation (such as the followers of Münzter. The Ausgberg and Helvetian confessions condemned such teachings). This is not to say, though, that premillennialism eo ipso is a heresy, but the speculative apocalypticism of Camping’s variety has fundamental genetic ties to the eschatology of sectarian fringe groups largely repudiated and condemned by most of orthodox Christian history.

Moreover, Camping’s speculation is fundamentally ignorant of the nature and function of apocalyptic literature in the New Testament and early Christianity and is dependent on an essentially Gnostic method of interpretation. The writings of Camping demonstrate a complete lack of awareness of the socio-political context of the New Testament writings and disregard entirely how apocalyptic imagery and literature would be read under the duress of empire and persecution. Camping presupposes such passages to be straightforward, literal description of the end-times, which can be tagged to current events devoid of context or history. First century protest literature is turned into present-day disaster porn. The rub is not just here but also in the fact that the distillation of a precise date requires an abstruse (and asinine) numerology known only to Camping. The predicted date of judgment day was the result of the duplicate multiplication of a set of numerals coded in the text into which Camping gained illumination. Of course, the error of his Gnostic delusion of initiation into insight of the coded text was compounded by his utter ignorance not only of the original language of the texts but the fact that the biblical narratives, especially apocalyptic literature, often revise quite freely the histories of the stories they tell, thus resisting formulaic readings and mechanical deductions. (Even Origen’s allegorical reading of ‘numerology’ did not fall into this trap). On the more humorous side, Camping’s numerological interpretation and mathematical calculations ran roughshod over the enormous problem of the different historical calendars and dating systems that plague biblical scholars and classical historians. Anyone with a smidgen of historical sense would recognize a calculation that presupposes the exact date of the crucifixion as 1 April 33 CE as being woefully misinformed (or that one could even come close to dating with any kind of accuracy the flood of the Noahic narratives). But, the foolhardy historical-critical mistakes notwithstanding, that there is a mathematical formulation to be extrapolated from the text and how such computations are to be derived are not matters of basic hermeneutics but contingent upon a ‘secret’ knowledge arrived at by Camping alone and not contained in or expounded by any received, public teaching of the church itself. In this, Camping is guilty of the very errors and falsehoods assiduously attacked by St Irenaeus and Hippolytus in their defenses of the apostolic preaching and tradition.

Ultimately, Camping is an arch-heretic who places himself outside of the church altogether. Following the previous erroneous prediction of 6 September 1994, Camping began to proclaim that the ‘church age’ ceased in 1988 and that all Christian churches were apostate and essentially defunct. He advised listeners of his broadcasts to cease attending mass and services at any church; not only were followers to quit churches (thus disbanding all sacramental observance), but ‘true’ Christian teaching, from 1988 onwards, would only be available through his media organization. Camping is hereby not just a separatist or a schismatic, but a hyper-Donatist. I hesitate to use this term because at least the Donatists retained ordained clerical orders and sacraments. Camping eradicates the entire order of the church itself, in violation of both the New Testament and the teaching of the entire history of orthodox Christianity. One wonders, for someone so committed to reading ‘just the bible,’ what to make of a supposed teacher who jettisons the single command found in the teachings of both Jesus and Paul – to observe the sacrament of Christ’s death and resurrection until he returns.

While Camping’s failure will, hopefully, finally neutralize his visibility and render him less credible even than this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK_RGgEwsGY), the sad reality is that his heresy will have devastating consequences to many, not least to those followers of his who abandoned homes, loved ones and livelihoods. Camping himself is nearly 90 and so he will not have to live long with the damage he has caused; but he will leave behind many in his wake who are broken, destitute and spiritually vacant. Moreover, the heightened cultural visibility of this fraudulent huckster over the last several weeks has put on display a grotesquery that turns Christianity into a lampoon and something easily, and rightfully, mocked. For the sake of those defrauded and disappointed by his failure and for those who cherish the integrity of real Christianity, it is requisite that serious disavowal and critical clarification occur. Given the apoplexy over the recent alleged denial of hell in a popular Christian publication, the relative silence on Camping’s real heresy is deafening. Apokatastasis doesn’t taste nearly as bitter as this brew.

A New Blog

2011-05-21T23:07:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, a late entry into the ether of the blogosphere, but better late than never. I am starting this blog because a number of friends and acquaintances have asked whether I blog (or when I will blog) and I have decided that I would like a forum in which to test out ideas. Hopefully, what I churn out here will be, in some way, a small contribution to the ever-expanding set of discussions happening around the theological blogging scene.

Not everything on here, though, will be strictly focused on theology. That is my main area of interest, of course, as a doctoral student in theology and as a professional theology editor at a Christian publisher. (I should note, for the record, that the views expressed on this blog are entirely my own and in no way represent the publisher for which I work). In addition to theology, I will explore other fields of thought and discourse, such as history, classics, art, music, film, literature and pop culture. For the theologically minded, though, the main foci will likely be patristics, medieval theology and Catholic liturgical and systematic theology (with a healthy dose of the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, of course). I will also comment on the publishing industry and editing.

The name of this blog, Over the Transom, comes from an old designation in the publishing industry for unsolicited manuscripts that were dropped through the window over the door of a publisher's office. It seems quite appropriate to describe what transpires on a blog, unsolicited musings from a random agent hoping someone will take notice. I suppose, at the same time, the blog could equally be called Stromata, after Clement of Alexandria's fragmentary collection of miscellaneous thoughts and sayings. Such would refer to the unsystematized (and likely under-nuanced) thoughts and ideas that will be collated here. All the same, this will be an unsolicited and experimental space.