The church participates in the death of Christ

the life of the church lived in constant participation of the death of Christ produces a martyr-church.  It shares in the death of Christ through baptism and renews this when it breaks bread.  It admits the paradoxes of its own existence: its life is death-made, the bread it breaks is infinitely creative.  It affirms that Jesus cannot be the first Chrstian martyr, since there are no Christian martyrs except those who die the death of Christ. (p79)

I’m currently halfway through a really thought-provoking book: To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church, by Craig Hovey (2008).  It’s a theological reading of the gospel of Mark, showing how this piece of Christian scripture calls the church to a life of cruciformity.

My own thinking is that this is precisely what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians: Calling the Corinthians to inhabit the cross in the present, as they look ahead to participating fully in the future resurrection.  This means an orientation of dependence upon God, which will be expressed ethically in (at least) surrendering my own defiant sense of bodily ownership, and forgoing the exploitative exercise of my own rights in relation to others within the body of Christ.

In other words, the knowledge that our identity is tied up with Christ means that we can have confidence that when HE is revealed, WE too will finally share in the fullness of his glory.  This frees us up to pursue the pattern of the cross in the present: Thoughtfully, creatively, utterly giving ourselves up in the service of God and others… labouring to transform this world, knowing that “in the Lord, our labour is not in vain” – because God raises the dead (1 Cor 15:58).

Anyway, the book by Hovey is short, well-written, provocative, and worth a read.  I’ll finish with one more quote:

To identify with Christ in his death and resurrection is to identify with the church.  But this also makes sense only if the church is a martyr-church.  What does this mean?  It means that the church is characterized by the life of the resurrection only insofar as it undergoes the pain of the cross.  (p27)

Alien Intertextuality

I feel like I haven’t done a serious theological/bible post in a while, but I’ll get onto that soon.  In the mean time, here are some thoughts I’ve had about intertextuality, in relation to the films Alien and Total Recall.  It’s just over a minute – and I promise you won’t regret it if you check it out…

An open response to googlers

Two brief responses to google searches that have led people to my blog:

1) To those people who have ended up here by searching for “crypto sex” or “crypto sex movies”, let me offer my apologies for your inevitable disappointment.  Let me also register my faint curiosity – but we’ll leave it at that.

2) To the person who searched “The dead in Christ rise first October 1 2008″, let me offer my condolences for the undoubted disappointment you felt on October 2, 2008.

Unconscious Preferences

You have completed the Judaism – Other Religions IAT.

Your Result

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Judaism compared to Other Religions.

Anti-Semitism is widely believed to have declined in the last century, but nevertheless still exists, and may now exist more in implicit than overt form. This test uses symbols associated with Judaism, and contrasts them with combined symbols of several other religions. This design was intended to create a more general test than one that contrasted Judaic symbols with those of just a single other religion.

This test comes from a controversial series of online tests run by the University of Harvard: You can (allegedly) see whether you have unconscious preferences in terms of race, sexuality, religion, weight, gender, etc etc etc… Have a go if you dare!

Christmas Spirit

Well I’ve been getting into the Christmas spirit today, making fruit mince pies, setting up the Christmas tree, and making some new decorations for the tree (note the bell in about the middle of the picture):

…But when a certain person who lives here witnessed all this, she quite rightly told me that I was WAY too early, and that it was ridiculous to be doing such things in mid-November.

I don’t really have any further comment to make… I stand by my ridiculosity, and defiantly label the rest of the world “Scroogeville”

Thoughts on Paul and Judaism

Could one say, “For the nineteenth century German, and thus for Marx, the exchange of money for goods was seen as straightforward and essentially fair”?  If not, why should one be able to say, “for the first-century Jew, and thus Paul, living by the Torah was a response to God’s grace, rather than an attempt to merit it”?  (Maico Michielin, SJT 61/4 (2008) 427, emphasis mine)

 

Critiques of free-market capitalism are not generally grounded on sociological evidence that consumers understand themselves -and present themselves – as greedy exploiters of the poor.  Rather, critiques generally aim to argue that consumers are effectively participating in a system that can be – or ought to be – viewed in this way.  Similarly, any critique by Paul concerning Judaism and the works of the law should not be expected to be calmly expressive of the median self-understanding of first century Jews, but rather expressive of Paul’s crisis-driven conception of what it effectively means to be a participant in this religious system, which for him has become forever transformed by his encounter with the risen Messiah.  Might Paul, for example, have come to the conclusion that his fellow Jews share a “false consciousness” regarding the function of the law, which can only be understood and remedied by starting with the solution of Christ?

 

A related point of interest is that, whether or not Paul perceives it as discontinuous with his former Judaism, he considers that the necessity of divine grace must be emphasised to the Corinthians, whose problems constitute an effective denial of dependence on God.  Is it possible that, as a former “zealous” Pharisee, Paul now holds to a general human inclination toward soteriological autonomy?  In order to understand Paul on this point, the need is not simply for a sociological reconstruction of first-century Judaism, but for attentiveness to the theological perspective of Paul the Pharisee, who had turned from his “earlier life in Judaism”, in which he “was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.”  (Gal. 1:13)  It is this Paul who now characterises humans as effectively attempting soteriological autonomy – an attempt which must be countered with the soteriological accomplishment of God in Christ.

 

Anyway, these are just some rambling thoughts, “in process”…

Larry Hurtado and Early Devotion to Jesus

Yesterday, Larry Hurtado came to the University of Nottingham (which, interestingly, was originally known as Snottingham – but I digress) to speak about a new “school of scholars” who regard religious devotion to Jesus as being extremely early, within the unlikely setting of monotheistic devotion.  This “school” is also known as the “early high christology club”… and any club that has official club mugs is highly commendable in my book.

Hurtado spoke clearly, drawing especially on his books Lord Jesus Christ (2003) and Earliest Christian Artifacts (2006), both of which I’ve found to be helpful and thought-provoking books.  I actually had a couple of questions this time – even though I have a policy of never asking questions in case I look stupid – and Hurtado answered them thoughtfully. 

My first question related to the early Christian introduction of nomina sacra in manuscripts – that is, the practice of abbreviating divine names as a form of written reverence – including names for Jesus.  My question was this: What about the fact that they also abbreviated the name of Moses in the same manner?  How does that fit?  His answer was that the practice was begun with names for God and Jesus – and only significantly later were other important names given the same treatment: Moses, Mary, Jerusalem, etc…  Thus, the earliest use of nomina sacra bears witness to Christian devotion to Jesus that was otherwise reserved for God – suggesting a very early ‘binitarianism’.

My second question was about this idea of ‘binitarianism‘: I asked: By the mid-50s (i.e. the time 1 Corinthians was written), we clearly have the Spirit delineated as a separate ‘person’ (see 1 Cor 2), and the church in Corinth clearly considered their worship to be “Spiritual”… and yet Christian consideration of the divinity of the Spirit has never taken exactly the same form as Christian devotion to Jesus.  So how can we appropriately include the Spirit in our understanding of early Christian devotion?  That is, can’t we consider it trinitarian rather than binitarian?  Hurtado’s response was that, unquestionably, early Christian consideration of God was ‘triadic’ – but in terms of observable cultic practices (such as the singing of hymns devoted to a figure or the celebration of a cultic meal), the evidence is largely about God (i.e. the Father) and Jesus.  Thus his term ‘binitarian’ should not be thought of as a creedal term, but rather as a description of observable cultic devotion.

I half expected Maurice Casey, who was present, to make a comment – but he kept quiet.  I asked him about this afterwards, and he said that he finds Hurtado to be easier to agree with every time he hears him.  Of course, the two of them would not share the exact same views about the development of early Christianity, but both would affirm that early on, devotion to Jesus developed as a ‘mutation’ within monotheistic devotion.

1 Cor 3 wordle; and the main point of chs.1-4

Once again, we see that Barth’s favourite term “theou” (“from God”) is the most common word in this chapter – just as in the previous two chapters. 

This contintued empahsis illustrates the hesitancy I have about Margaret Mitchell’s very influential argument that it is the issue of ecclesial disunity that is the key to chs.1-4 (and to the letter as a whole).  I think that Mitchell’s argument that the problem of disunity is primary neglects the way that in 1 Corinthians 1-4, Paul focuses on and drives toward the more fundamental problem of human pride/boasting: Every “conclusion point” in chapters 1-4 sets confidence in that which is human against confidence in that which is divine; and the climactic opposition of Corinthian and apostolic characteristics in chapter 4 is really the endpoint of this trajectory:

A showdown between the apparent vitality of those who are proudly human and the contrasting cruciformity of those who are appointed by God as apostles.

There is, then, an important distinction in nuance to be made here: The problem is not just that boasting is a “component of the party conflicts within the Corinthian church” (Mitchell, 1991, p210); Paul’s problem rather appears to be that party conflicts within the Corinthian church are evidence of proudly autonomous, over-manifest boasting. In discerning Paul’s rhetoric here it is thus not enough to draw attention to “terms and topoi rooted in the issue of political divisiveness” (Mitchell, p111) and then conclude that the chief issue is division; it is essential to be attentive to where Paul drives his discussion. The presenting problem of political partisanship in relation to external figureheads gives way to the theological crisis of autonomous, over-manifest boasting.

Marion L. Soards (in continuity with Chrysostom and others) rightly captures the fundamentality, from Paul’s perspective, of the problem of boasting in Corinth:

“Throughout this letter Paul criticizes the particular actions of the Corinthians, but above all he denounces the will to boast. The will to be superior and to brag about it was the fundamental problem that generated the other symptomatic problems in Corinth.” (2003, p1164)

My contention is that this boasting was, in Paul’s view, (unwittingly) theological, because it implied confidence outside of God, claiming in the present the manifest wisdom and spirituality that can only really be found hidden in Christ, and which awaits manifestation at his future revelation.

123 book meme

I have been tagged by Jeff with a quite likeable meme  But the task seems to have brought rather unfortunate results in my own case, as will be seen below.

The rules state that I must pick up the book closest to me and:

1. turn to page 123
2. count the first five sentences
3. post the following three sentences

Well here are the three lines following the first five sentences on page 123 of the book closest to me:

La la la la la la la la la la

Do do do do do

Ah – ah – ah -ah – ah – ah

The book is entitled Acoustic Hit Songs, and p123 is part of a song called “Lovin’ You”, by someone called Minnie Ripperton.  I wouldn’t have called that a “hit song” myself, and I feel a bit miffed that I didn’t get to do a really profound quote from some edgy theological book…. But on the other hand, I do now find myself in a carefree, sing-songy sort of mood.

I hereby tag three people who occasion this blog but don’t have their own blogs – so they’ll have to supply results here in the comments (if they happen to notice this and find themselves in an agreeable mood!): Peter (the one who creates wordles), Steph (the one who loves fruit & veges), and Carolyn (the one who utilises smileys in comments)…

la la la la la la la….

Forgiveness, gruesome evil, and friendship

Today we had a postgraduate study day focused on the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation.  There were some really interesting issues that came up – and I just want to mention those raised by Stuart Jesson’s paper on ‘Forgiveness and its Reason’…

Stuart began with the position of Trudy Govier, which focuses on the intrinsic worth of the perpetrator rather than on the deeds themselves:

“The explanation permits us to move from the acts themselves to a sense of the human being who was their agent….  In the process of forgiving another, we come to understand him to be a person who is more than his evil deeds, a moral agent capable of more than just wrongdoing.  Understanding circumstantial factors, some of which amount to mitigating excuses, makes it easier to distinguish the agent from the acts and in this way makes forgiveness easier.” (Trudy Gover, Forgiveness & Revenge, p57)

As Stuart rightly pointed out, a problem with this approach to forgiveness is that it seems to discount the “evil” that actually occurred, essentially saying that it doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things, when you take into account the whole of a person’s being.  Furthermore, it may actually be the case that coming to understand a person better (eg acknowledging their love for their family) may in fact make their acts of evil all the more grotesque and harder to forgive.

He went on to look at the perspective of Vladimir Jankelevitch, for whom evil cannot be mitigated or justified – and forgiveness is therefore not a matter of excusing, but of facing that which is senseless, accepting its reality, and offering to absorb its pain:

“Above all, forgiveness obeys neither the causality of the loveable, nor the causality of the detestable; it is unleashed neither by a pre-existent value, nor by a countervalue; it trails behind nothing.  Not only is it not because the accused is innocent that forgiveness forgives him (innocence, on the contrary, rendering forgiveness superfluous), rather it is much more because forgiveness forgives that the guilty person is innocent.” (Jankelevitch, Forgiveness, p145

I think this is a really worthwhile perspective: Forgiveness doesn’t say “well it doesn’t really matter – you didn’t really mean it…” – it insists, “it does matter, and was senseless – but I will absorb its pain for your sake.”

But (as Stuart & I chatted about afterwards), I think it’s possible to re-instate Govier’s idea of trying to understand the personhood of the perpetrator; not in order to necessarily undo the “evilness” of the crime, but at least to stop myself from becoming self-righteous: I need to recognise that the “senselessness” that drove their crime is a characteristic that I share with them in this age.

Let me give a personal example: In Perth, Australia, just under two years ago, two 18yo girls were arrested for a gruesome crime: They had set upon a 16yo girl who was in their home, overpowered her, bashed her to death, and filmed themselves kissing at the scene.  They then stuffed the body into a bin, put it in the shed, and got on with their lives.  They were found sunbathing outside when the police came to visit a few days later.  At their first court appearance, the judge was outraged that they couldn’t stop giggling.  Now all of this is a pretty sure contender for the category of “evil”.

But I have an added perspective – I know one of those two girls who committed the crime.  She worked alongside me in the charity arm of my church, doing work experience.  And I knew her as a funny, sweet, sad girl, who had been sexually abused all of her life, was experiencing the break up of her parents, and was just aching to be loved.  She thought she had found love with her co-accused, and the 16yo girl came onto the scene as an apparent threat to the one instance of love she had ever encountered.  She became desperate, and murdered.

Now, does any of this excuse the evil of her crime?  No, I don’t think it does: She committed a gruesome, senseless evil.  But knowing and understanding her does help me, for my small part, to consider forgiveness - because I’m reminded that she is just like me: Both of us are trying to cope with life and cling to what we cherish, both of us long to experience love, and both of us have areas of our lives that just defy sense and explanation.