David Brewer, a justice of the US Supreme Court delivered a lecture to students at Yale University in 1902 which included this explanation of the sanctity of democracy in America:
"[The voting booth] is the temple of American institutions. No single tribe or family is chosen to watch the sacred fires... Each of us is a priest. To each is given the care of the ark of the covenant. Each one ministers at its altars."
(Cited by Michael Walzer in Exodus and Revolution, 113)
And if this religious fervor has done anything in the last century, it has only grown. Which means of course that conscientious Christians must be asking themselves, 'Which deity is being served at this temple?' And then very quickly after that, we ought to wonder if it is a sin to vote and if not yet, when?
What would it take to make casting a ballot in the general election on par with tossing a pinch of incense onto the altar before the emperor? At what point should Christians politely refuse to say the Pledge or sing the National Anthem or God Bless America at the ballgames?
Monday, November 15, 2010
Is it a sin to vote?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Christians, War, and Violence
In 1970, John Howard Yoder described the need for an open and vigorous discussion between the views he calls "chastened pacifism" and "chastened non-pacifism."
He describes "chastened pacifism" as a pacifism "which differs from the 'classical humanistic' pacifism... in its awareness of the problems of sin and the state." "Chastened non-pacifism" on the other hand is the "position of those Christian thinkers who, although they advocate, at least as a possibility, an eventual Christian participation in war, concede an element of truth in Christian pacifism." (14-15)
Yoder further summarizes Barth:
"Barth begins with a resounding insistence that there is no realm in which the Christian duty to return good for evil, to turn the other cheek, to go a second mile, does not apply... Both Jesus (Mt. 5:38-42) and Paul (1 Cor. 6; Rom. 12) speak of the conscious and intentional abandon of one's legitimate rights and of self out of love. Barth says, 'These Gospel words belong to those of which it is said that they shall not pass away. They express precisely not just a well-intentioned exaggeration of some sort of humaneness or a special rule for good and especially good Christians. They express rather the command of God which is relevant and binding for all men, in the basic sense of that command and in the sense which until further notice must be taken as final.' (CD 430)"
(Karl Barth and the Problem of War, John Howard Yoder, 33)
David Hart on Tolkien and Politics
David Hart quotes from a letter Tolkien wrote to his son:
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people. . . .
And Hart continues with similar sentiments:
If one were to devise a political system from scratch, knowing something of history and a great deal about human nature, the sort of person that one would chiefly want, if possible, to exclude from power would be the sort of person who most desires it, and who is most willing to make a great effort to acquire it. By all means, drag a reluctant Cincinnatus from his fields when the Volscians are at the gates, but then permit him to retreat again to his arable exile when the crisis has passed; for God’s sake, though, never surrender the fasces to anyone who eagerly reaches out his hand to take them.
Yet our system obliges us to elevate to office precisely those persons who have the ego-besotted effrontery to ask us to do so; it is rather like being compelled to cede the steering wheel to the drunkard in the back seat loudly proclaiming that he knows how to get us there in half the time. More to the point, since our perpetual electoral cycle is now largely a matter of product recognition, advertising, and marketing strategies, we must be content often to vote for persons willing to lie to us with some regularity or, if not that, at least to speak to us evasively and insincerely. In a better, purer world—the world that cannot be—ambition would be an absolute disqualification for political authority.
You can read the rest here.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Solzhenitsyn on Conservatism
"Western thinking as become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever."
Sozhenitsyn's Criticisms of the West
Also from his 1978 Harvard address:
Solzhenitsyn criticizes the West's blindness to its own weaknesses: "But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction... The real picture of our planets development is quite different."
"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations...And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?"
"But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive... A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Easter Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training for in advance of Wester experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores."
Solzhenitsyn: the Great Split and the Real Disease
From Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard address:
"The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception... The truth is that the split is a much profounder and more alienating one, that the rifts a are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand."
Solzhenitsyn goes on to show that the fundamental divide is between humanistic materialism found in both East and West and virtuous self government in submission to God. In this sense, communism, socialism, and humanism are all near relatives and tend to feed off one another. Solzhenitsyn quotes Marx who said: 'communism is naturalized humanism.'
He concludes: "The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition... I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness. To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects... We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections."
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Anonymous Christians
For those curious about my previous comments regarding Barth's views on Christians serving in the political realm "anonymously," Barth writes:
"In the political sphere the Christian community can draw attention to its gospel only indirectly, as reflected in its political decisions, and these decisions can be made intelligible and brought to victory not because they are based on Christian premises but only because they are politically better and more calculated to preserve and develop the common life. They can only witness to Christian truths..." (292)
Through the course of this essay, Barth has developed a fairly strong doctrine of the political nature of the church at the center of the kingdom. The church is called to witness to the entire kingdom which includes even the realm of the state. But many, on these assumptions, have then proceeded to establish "Christian" political parties and Barth objects to this on the grounds that it creates a number of strange contradictions. What of Christians who don't go along with the Christian party? Isn't the church as the community of God's people already a political force in the world?
In place of the Christian party, Barth writes:
"In the political sphere Christians can only bring in their Christianity anonymously. They can break through this anonymity only by waging a political battle for the church and by so doing they will inevitably bring discredit and disgrace on the Christian name. In the authentically political questions which affect the development of the civil community Christians can only reply in the form of decisions which could be the decisions of any other citizens, and they must frankly hope that they may become the decisions of all other citizens regardless of their religious profession." (292)
Barth goes on to insist that as the gospel is preached effectively within the church and the church is faithful to her calling this will have a far reaching impact on the broader culture. But Christians who are faithful in the political arena will be so, Barth insists, as they act "anonymously."
"There will be no lack of individual Christians who will enter the political arena anonymously, that is, in the only way they can appear on the political scene, and who will act in accordance with the Christian approach and will thereby prove themselves unassuming witnesses of the gospel of Christ, which can alone bring salvation in the political sphere no less than elsewhere." (295)
As I mentioned in the original post where I mentioned this, I find Barth to be refreshingly helpful in large part in his discussions of politics and the role of the church as a polis in its own right, and I share his concerns about "Christian" political parties. But I'm not sure I understand what he means here, and it sounds unsatisfying at the very least.
These quotations are taken from Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom ed. by Glifford Green
Sunday, June 13, 2010
How Disciples Rule
"As disciples of Christ, the members of his church do not rule: they serve. In the political community, therefore, the church can only regard all ruling that is not primarily a form of service as a diseased and never as a normal condition."
- Karl Barth
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I've Turned Political Activist
Well, a week or so ago I became a political activist. Or, I should say, I have become more active in politics than I have ever been in my life.
Yes, it's true, I have a new lawn ornament with somebody's name in large, bold letters. My wife pointed out that it matches the color of the house, so that's a plus. And I must admit that my activism ranges somewhere between "there's an election?" to "do I have to vote?"
This time around, it's a friend running for state senate, and we happen to live on a well traveled street, and I'm happy to give him some help getting his name out there. And whenever the primary election comes around (turns out it's today), I'll be glad to cast a vote for him.
But two things I would register here. First, one of the things that consistently retards my activism (what there is of it) is the red-cheeked enthusiasts going door to door like evangelists or Jehovah's Witnesses all freaked out about what's going on in DC or Boise. And with quivering voices asking what we shall do if so-and-so gets elected again. When people turn the primary or the election into a gospel-like do or die issue, I start thinking about taking all my signs down (all one of them). At least the JWs and the Christian evangelists are actually talking about what matters (even if the JWs are very wrong). And my point isn't a complaint with going door to door per se, it's more a question of priorities. Real evangelism ought to garner far more enthusiasm than elections.
Secondly, the more I think about it, the more I can't understand how a Christian can run for office and not declare front and center that he/she is a disciple of Jesus Christ and intends to rule and serve in their office as a Christian, an ambassador of the King of the Universe. Some Christian politicians do mention that they are members of such and such Church or that they have helped in their church's youth group, etc. and I appreciate that. But others make no mention of it at all, and their web sites are full of mumbo jumbo about "liberty" and "freedom" and "conservative" and I could really care less. What I want to know is "whose liberty?" "whose freedom?" "conserving what?" Everyone wants liberty and freedom; no one is running on the platform of tyranny and slavery.
Now some of you know that I'm something of a fanboy of Karl Barth (peace be upon him), but this is one of the places where he was just plain wrong. But even here, it was a mix. He lead the charge of the German Churches who stood up to Hitler and wrote the Barmen Declaration which spoke truth to power, and specifically, declared to the civil magistrate in the name of Jesus that the Church would not bow to any other king. Jesus was the Word of God, and all other words in heaven and earth must submit to Him. This was courageous, heroic, and a high water mark of Protestant political theology. But at the same time, Barth would argue that individual Christians ought to serve in politics as "anonymous Christians." They ought to translate Christian morality and virtues into common parlance for their fellow citizens. And I just don't get that. Sure, I realize that some Christians will claim the name of Christ, get elected to office, and then proceed to sleep around with all the secretaries and pageboys. Others will get elected and in the name of Christ establish injustice in the land. But at least in those cases we have all the cards out on the table. A Church that is doing its job will prosecute immorality, correct folly, rebuke insolence, etc.
But I don't know how a Christian could pretend that political party affiliation is more fundamental then allegiance to Jesus. I don't know how a Christian could pretend that he or she is not an ambassador of the Lord Jesus at all times. This would be something like me taking my wedding ring off on a business trip. Oh, I might say in defense, I'm just an anonymous husband. Oh good now we're all relieved and put at ease. For a second there we thought there might be a hint of infidelity.
There will always be husbands who are unfaithful, and they will need to be called on the carpet, rebuked, and prosecuted accordingly. But it's not better for them to perform their infidelity in the dark. It's still infidelity. Or, to flip the analogy around, it's a far greater victory for marriage and marital love for a husband to declare his allegiance and loyalty to his wife than for an "anonymous husband" to declare his allegiance and loyalty to the idea of "marriage". We don't need the idea of marriage praised and honored, we need wives who are loved and cherished and honored. Likewise, we don't need an ooze-fest championing the ideas of liberty and freedom and conservative family values. We need men and women who know and love Jesus and are committed to obeying Him as they serve their neighbors in political office. And this doesn't preclude a broad spectrum of argumentation, having many tools in the toolbox, as Tim Keller suggests here, but I want to start seeing and hearing politicians arguing for their positions and defending them on the basis of God's Word. "We can't kill babies because that's murder, and God says we can't do that." "We can't kick all the immigrants out because the Bible says that we must show hospitality and love to the strangers in our gates." "We can't bomb our enemies just because they're bad; Jesus says we should look for ways to bless our enemies."
Last, it should be clear that when I say I want Christians to serve in political office as Christians, that is not the same thing as wrapping Jesus in an American flag or draping an American flag over the cross. At best, those are just well meaning Christians who know and believe what I'm saying but who don't realize the confusing signals they are sending. At worst it is a terrible mistake, confusing the Christian Church for the United States. At worst, it's a form of political polygamy, while trying to convince both wives that they are really the same woman. Really, just relax.
Anyway, if you want to get me excited, if you really want me to become an activist, I'd suggest that you calmly tell people that you are a Christian, a follower of the crucified and risen Messiah, and that you would like to serve this community in political office by supporting and implementing measures based on the Bible. Of course that probably won't get you elected, and it just might get you assassinated. But hey, I'd be willing to put your sign in my front yard. I'd probably even put up two.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Magistrates: Servants and Condemned
"Peter does not go as far as Paul does, for the latter argues in Rom. 13:3-4 that public order is God's will and therefore the ruler is in that respect God's 'servant.' In this area our author is far more schematized, simply citing the basics of the tradition. Neither of them, of course, necessarily approves of the methods of the rulers, nor argues that Christians should participate in their activities. According to the OT both the Assyrians and Babylonians were the "servants of God to execute His wrath" and "punished those doing evil," but both in turn were condemned by God for their means and motives in doing it. Jeremiah could argue that one should not resist Babylon; he never argued that one should join her." - Peter Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 101.
Friday, January 08, 2010
As Unqualified as a Lesbian
"There will be no reformation and no revival until those pastors who do not meet the child-rearing qualifications of their office step down, in repentance, from their office. Men who have a household in disarray are just as unqualified for church office as a lesbian is. It is way past time for conservative Christians to cease being outraged with the disobedience of others. Why do we remove the beam from their radical eye when we have a telephone pole in our own conservative eye?" - Douglas Wilson, Standing on the Promises, 167.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Food Inc.
We watched Food Inc. over the weekend, and while I was fairly braced for most of what we saw, I was slightly surprised (Ok, not really -- but it was still enlightening) to see the money trail in the food industry.
Big Beef/Poultry/Pork in bed with the ginormous corn industry and mass produced fast food, and this threesome marriage bed jealously guarded by trade and patent regulations and generously pampered with federal subsidies.
Why is it that a cheeseburger is frequently cheaper than a head of lettuce? Because the government pays part of the bill for us. They pay farmers to plant and sell certain products at below market values, seed patents protect the source of pesticide resistant seeds, and beef/poultry/pork companies lobbying in DC for more protections and help.
At the same time, what the movie did not emphasize much is the fact that there is a free market element to all of this. The fast food industry was not forced on America. As the film notes, we do vote three times a day for what sort of food we'd like. And at least when the McDonalds brothers were first getting started, lots of people voted for that kind of food. And lots still do (like my kids for instance, who view Happy Meals are glorious gifts from God).
I know some of my readers are probably more attuned to this than others, but if the money trail is correct, for all these free market choices and blessings of inexpensive mass produced food (and there have been some), it seems like we have Uncle Sam helping the blessing along a fair bit. And depending on how much propping up is going on, at what point could we legitimately conclude that it hasn't been worth it? Would people continue to vote the same way without the Feds keeping it so cheap?
And I might add that I'm guessing there might be an interesting documentary done on the booming organice/free range/all natural/whatever industry as well. There's money in them hills too, and as the film showed, even Walmart knows this.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Dwindling of the Menopausal Militia
The article here in New York Magazine is hard to read straight through without wincing or tears. It's not really new information for us, but I'd say it's striking coming from the pro-choice camp. It's honest, terribly honest. And therefore it's also hopeful.
My favorite part is where the pro-choice movement is recognized as growing old compared to the current generation of younger Americans that the article describes as perhaps the most pro-life generation ever, due to technological advances like ultrasound. And one NARAL representative referred to the dwindling pro-choice ranks as the "menopausal militia."
HT: Albert Mohler
Friday, November 20, 2009
Is Sarah Human?
With the advent of Sarah Palin’s new book Going Rogue and the spotlight turned on our Alaskan hockey mom again, a few thoughts:
First, I’m not a Republican and I’m not a Democrat. While I’d certainly line up with the prolife stance of some Republicans, I’m increasingly convinced that most of them are only selectively prolife. Very few if any of our representatives are Biblically prolife, very few are interested in defending life according to the standards of Scripture. Many are romantically prolife; they are opposed to abortion because babies are cute. But bomb the hell out of Afghanistan and Vietnam and who’s to say? Muslim school kids aren’t as cute as American babies.
Second, I just can’t get that worked up about Barack Obama. Sorry. Some of my most respected friends and family are worked up, but this all feels like normal to me. Normal and awful, sure, but normal. We’ve been in a downward spiral, and Obama is just par for the course it seems to me. And there’s at least a great deal of momentum built into the system: you know, defense contracts and money to be made in foreign oil. And there’s a lot of mixed motivations, good and bad and well, here we are. I don’t trust Obama, but I didn’t trust any of his predecessors either. So what’s new? Printing and spending gazillions of dollars we don’t have? We’ve been doing that for a while. Socialized medicine? We already had that with lots of government regulations, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Torturing suspected terrorists? Already had that too. Killing babies? Check.
Third, and what’s interesting to me, is that some of this seems to fall along generational lines. I remember talking to several men in their 50s and 60s in the summer before the last election, and when I told them I thought Obama was sure to be elected, they completely disagreed. They didn’t think Obama had a chance. But I couldn’t see how he couldn’t be elected. I didn’t think McCain had a chance. How’s an old white man going to beat a sexy black man? And I honestly think Obama was elected primarily for his smooth words and good looks. And he’s got credentials that make him a darling of big money liberals. That helps too.
Last, and to the point, I’m not yet convinced that Sarah Palin is the run of the mill GOP candidate. She still intrigues me for basically two reasons. First, I still can’t figure out why the liberals are so worked up about her. If she’s such the country bumpkin, why not just ignore her and let her go quietly into that good night? Why the shrill rhetoric from the left and for that matter, why so much crap from her own party? It sounds like she talks the party line on foreign policy and economics which is very annoying, but I wonder why she’s such a threat. And this leads to the second thing that intrigues me about Sarah, it’s the long list of complaints that so many conservatives have about her. She’s an outsider, she’s inexperienced, she’s ignorant, she’s got all kinds of naiveté. She’s quaint, she’s country, she goofs up in interviews, she has a funny accent, etc. She’s completely unvetted for the political scene, and that’s what’s intriguing. She’s cute, but she’s not slick. All the other politicians got neutered in law school. They got cloned into slight variations of one another, talking heads with talking points. They got their union cards, and it doesn’t really matter which party they are in. It’s like there are two baseball teams and they just counted off by one’s and two’s and now they have their team assignments.
But Sarah obviously didn’t get a union card. She doesn’t know the secret handshakes, and stares like a deer in the headlights sometimes because she doesn’t know the game. And time will only tell whether she doesn’t know the game because she really is just a newbie and she’ll settle into business as usual with the rest of the clowns in DC. But maybe, just maybe, all these liabilities are proof that at some level, she refuses to play the game. And that’s huge. If she were elected she’d make bad decisions, she’d say silly things, and we might laugh at some of the ways she'd run things. But it would be legit. It would be a human in office and not a machine. It would be a person for a change. And I could go for that.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Martin Bucer to Obama
"It would seem fitting to write for Your Majesty a little about the fuller acceptance and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Christ in your realm. Thus it may be better understood how salutary and necessary it is both for Your Majesty and all classes of men in his realm, thoughtfully, consistently, carefully, and tenaciously to work toward this goal, that Christ's Kingdom may as fully as possible be accepted and hold sway over us." (Bucer, De Regno Christi, 175-176)
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Last Ellul
Just finished Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity. Some concluding thoughts:
In some ways, Ellul improved as he went along. But this "improvement" was also mixed with various levels of ambiguity, saying things that seemed contradictory to earlier statements. But this is not so surprising given the fact that he had already stated that "everything in revelation is formulated in antithetical fashion... It unites two contrary truths that are truth only as they come together... We never find a single logically connected truth followed by another truth deduced from it. There is no logic in the biblical revelation. There is no 'either-or,' only 'both-and.'" (43-44) And this is not necessarily wrong, but it might be and we ought to keep up our ninja alertness.
So on to the final chapters:
First, in the chapter on "Nihilism and Christianity," Ellul makes a lot of good sense. He lays the debt of modern nihilism squarely at the feet of the Church. In so far as the Church has successfully proclaimed the gospel, the Lordship of Christ, and the emptiness of the gods, it has successfully neutered all paganism of meaning. The success of the gospel is measured by the emptiness of the alternatives. The alternatives are increasingly ridiculous and shallow. "It is either God's absoluteness or nothing" (140). On the flip side, Ellul insists that the need to turn to "nothing" away from the gospel and the "absoluteness of God" is also provided by the failure of the Church. "Christian convictions have prepared the ground for terrorist outrages" (144). As the Church has colluded with various strands of unbelief, we have offered a myriad of false gospels, false freedoms. We have done this through pretending that the gospel is mostly synonymous with various political movements and philosophies, whether with workers unions and socialism or Marxist materialism or capitalism and conservatism. When these collusions fail which they must necessarily do, usually with the Church's stance co-opted and vetted for public consumption, the world turns to alternatives. If that's the gospel, they want nothing to do with it. I met these similar sentiments first in David Bently Hart's outstanding article "Christ or Nothing" originally published in First Things, I think.
Ellul's chapter "The Heart of the Problem" is more of a mix. He says that the Christian faith "does not change the structure or the functioning of the state or politics" (158). And as I've noted previously, there's an underlying eschatology at work here which begins to emerge more explicitly toward the last few chapters. And there is a static nature/grace duality riding the wake of many of these assertions. I have no problem with some ways of describing a nature/grace duality, but I think the most important question has to do with time and eschatology. A static duality, a permanent, changeless dualism is at odds with the doctrine of Creation and the doctrines of the Atonement, and that means it's bad.
In defense of the changeless duality, Ellul cites the hypostatic union of the natures of Christ which is an excellent thing to do. Three cheers for the hypostatic union. But Ellul gets this plain wrong. He rightly insists that Jesus had a normally functioning human body and that the incarnation did not alter the normal circulation and digestion of His human body. Sure. But the incarnation is not static. It does not end in the womb of Mary or even on the cross of Golgotha. The incarnation even has an eschatology. The glorified flesh of the Lord Jesus is the glorification of His true human nature. Even the life of Christ had different phases leading up to the resurrection and exaltation. His incarnation played different roles throughout His life, going from one kind of presence in the world in His childhood and young manhood, taking on a particular role in His ministry of healing and teaching, finally exalted in the crucifixion and then resurrection, etc.
Ironically, all of this business of the changelessness of society and state, etc., all comes in the context of wanting to insist that the Church must change, that institutional forms and solidification are the death knells of the faith. "Salvation is not a finished thing. I never hold it. I never own it. It is not an acquired situation. I may lose it (Paul himself tells us so). Nothing is ever finished with God. I am never installed." (162) And Ellul pushes these statements I think with the cross in mind. "Renounce everything in order to be everything. Trust in no human means, for God will provide (we cannot say where, when, or how). Have confidence in his Word and not in a rational program." (172) And that's fine, but how can we not allow this freedom, this renunciation to penetrate society and philosophy and politics?
This flows into "Dominions and Powers" where eschatology is again coming to the fore. He rightly challenges preterist readings of Revelation and Matthew 24 that seal up those passages as though their A.D. 70 fulfillments exhaust their usefulness and applicability. This is good and right and a real temptation for postmillennialists like myself. But here, Ellul over-corrects and undermines his basic point. Rather than using those eschatological passages as types which may be carefully applied and projected into our times as patterns that God frequently follows, Ellul projects the doom and judgment on Jerusalem as apparently a semi-permanent reality for all time. He says: "Seduction by many saviors of all types, the growth of wars, the development of rumors about wars and disasters, increased famines... treachery and injustice springing up everywhere, the loss of love... It is all there. The fabulous growth of the strength of these powers is expressly set forth for us" (188-189). He closes the chapter asking the right question, "Does it mean, then, the defeat of the Holy Spirit?" And while he qualifies his answer a touch, the answer is still "yes."
He says that the Spirit does comfort us in our distress, but "there is never any imperial triumph. No head of state is inspired by the Holy Spirit. No capitalist achieves success by the Holy Spirit. Science and technology do not develop under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The success of the powers, then, is the direct opposite." (190) While he is willing to grant resurrections in history (a question I asked in an earlier post), he insists that these resurrections can only be seen by faith. They cannot take the form of a success as viewed from man in his natural state.
His final chapter returns to this theme, insisting that for all the failures and compromises of the Church, Jesus and His Spirit are still there in the Church. And "because individual and collective resurrection is assured and promised and certain, then in the course of history, which is the visible, concrete expression of this resurrection, there is this astonishing survival of the church, the perceptible sign of the communion of saints" (198). Ellul knows there must be resurrection in history, but he insists on limits which is in striking contrast to the main thrust of the book, in which he argues for a faith without limits, a faith without morals, a radical freedom open to the whims of the Spirit. Why may we limit the Spirit here? Why is it OK to institute by-laws for the Spirit when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit? Only this much love, Ok? No more. Only this much peace, then stop after that. For all the hype over the Beatitudes, is there no place for the meek actually inheriting the earth? On Ellul's reading the meek must not inherit the earth.
Ellul does seek to close on a more optimistic note, citing several examples of what he sees as hopeful signs in his day, writing in the 1980s. And his point that the Church must not sellout to political parties still needs to be learned by American Christians who continue to follow the Republican Party around like a stray dog, same thing for liberal Christians and the Democratic Party. The Church must speak into the world in its own way, and resist all of the pressures to simply become another political party. The Church is neither of the current parties and not a third party either. And Ellul is absolutely right on this count. And I agree with him that Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were some modern Protestant attempts at bringing the gospel to the political world without compromise. He notes several other traditions doing similar things in their own contexts: Roman Catholics in Poland and Latin America and Baptists in the (then) USSR.
I still think he exudes something of a perfectionist/legalistic/cranky streak, but he goes some way to correcting that in the last chapter.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Ellul on Constantine
Ellul:
"After his victory at Milvian Bridge, faithful to his promise, Constantine favors the church from which he has received support. Catholic Christianity becomes the state religion and an exchange takes place: the church is invested with political power, and it invests the emperor with religious power. We have here the same perversion, for how can Jesus manifest himself in the power of dominion and constraint?" (124)
Ellul goes on to say that this alliance between the church and the empire is essentially a capitulation to the temptation which Jesus refused, the offer of the kingdoms of the world by the devil.
But granted that the power of God is manifested and perfected in weakness, granted that wisdom is manifested and perfected in fools, granted that God displays his riches through poverty, etc., is there no place for vindication in history this side of the final judgment? In other words, can there be no resurrection in history for God's people before the final resurrection? Does God never give earthly authority and influence and even power to His people? Yes, the answer may come back, but only in weakness, only in suffering, only in giving up power. But, I retort to myself, that's not what Jesus has done. Jesus did give up his life, he did humble himself for a time but this was so that He might be granted all authority and power. When He ascended into heaven He did not refuse the throne on grounds that power was only found in weakness.
We can ask this question from the other way around: will heavenly/eternal glory still be manifested in weakness and suffering after the final resurrection? Of course it is now, but what about in the eschaton, when death has been swallowed up in victory? Doesn't the removal of every tear from every eye imply that the cross is finished/completed in history and that the human race may enter that final rest? Or will our crowns not really be crowns? Is there a complete inversion of values and no resurrection?
So didn't Jesus assume authority and power over all the nations of the earth after His resurrection and in His ascension? How has Jesus not himself capitulated to idolatry? And if the answer is that He has gone about attaining this power in the *right* way, how was a couple of centuries of persecution and martyrdom not a sufficient cross to bear for the infant church? Why can't Constantine (for all his miserable failures) be an answer from God, a vindication, a resurrection in the middle of history that points, however faintly, to that final glory?
Maybe Ellul would grant this and still complain; I don't know. He goes on to enumerate all the ways political alliances can and tend to compromise the church, and I'm happy to acknowledge lots of what he says there as all too painfully true. I just don't see how we can conclude even with all the mud in the water how it makes sense to throw the baby out as well.
Ellul's Anarchism
From Ellul's chapter on political perversion:
"[T]he biblical view [of the church] is not just apolitical but antipolitical in the sense that it refuses to confer any value on political power, or in the sense that it regards political power as idolatrous, inevitably entailing idolatry." (113)
He doesn't have the space or interest to sketch his "anarchism" thoroughly, which he does elsewhere, but he gives his 3 page summary to explain his basic assumptions. This of course raises questions for the uninitiated (like myself), and so I wonder out loud to my virtual friends:
a. If the Judges era presents something of an "ideal" (is that right?), how does he account for the fact that the book of Judges itself laments the fact that there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes? In other words, Judges seems to be more of a cautionary tale than an ideal. How could someone read Judges and long for the days without a king? It seems like just the opposite.
b. Granted that Israel was in sin in asking for a king when/how they did, but what about the provision in Dt. 17 regulating the office of a king? It seems to assume that this will be part of Isreal's growing up in the land not an act of idolatry. Related to this, Ellul cites a generality that most of the best kings (politically) were the worst (spiritually) and the worst kings (politically) were the best (spiritually). This may be true -- although I'd want it spelled out in more detail-- but I'd still go to David as the emblem of the kingdom era and that dichotomy doesn't seem present.
c. Seeing Babylon as Rome in the book of Revelation and thereby representing empire and political power is just missing most of the thrust of the New Testament. Rome is an enemy in so far as she is led into idolatry by unbelieving Jews, but the enemy is a certain kind of power-idolatry particularly resident in apostate Judaism. Jerusalem has become the new Babylon, the great harlot, etc. She rides the beast (Rome), and tells him where to go and whom to devour. I suspect that a similar misreading runs through the rest of his New Testament exegesis.
Well, that's a start anyway.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Ellul on Islam
Ellul has an interesting chapter on the influence of Islam on Christianity. Like much else in this book, I think Ellul is something of a perfectionist who is overly critical, only seeing the failures of the Church, but this can of course also be helpful in pointing out real error.
Here he says that the rise of Canon Law comes to the West through Islam in the East. "I am inclined to think, for example, that the law of serfdom is a Western imitation of the Muslim dhimmi. Religious law is also important. I am convinced that some parts of canon law have their origin in Arab law." (97)
Ellul goes further by suggesting that it's a philosophical problem. Thoma Aquinas not only gave us a great synthesis of Aristotle and classical philosophy, he did it as a result of Islam. "We speak of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. But this Greek philosophy was faithfully transmitted by Arab interpreters. It was by way of Arab-Muslim thinking that the problem came to be addressed at this time." (97)
Ellul draws a straight line from Muslim unitarian monotheism and legalism to what he calls the "juridicizing of Christendom," pressuring theology into purely legal categories (99). And once religion has taken on this political role, it is not surprising to see it turn violent. Ellul says that it cannot be considered an accident that shortly after Christians come in contact with militant Islam, the crusades emerge on the scene as plausible options. "One fact, however, is a radical one, namely, that the Crusade is an imitation of the jihad. Thus the Crusade includes a guarantee of salvation. The one who dies in a holy war goes straight to Paradise, and the same applies to the one who takes part in a crusade. This is no coincidence; it is an exact equivalent." (103)
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Prince and the Princes
Toward the end of Ezekiel, the "prince" is described, the descendant of David who will rule Israel in accordance with the law of God. It's interesting however that he is given particular liturgical duties. After the vision of the temple is described in detail, the prince is said to have rights to eat of the holy bread in the presence of the Lord (44:3). Likewise, the prince leads the congregation in offering sacrifices and celebrating the feasts and appointed seasons "to make atonement for the house of Israel" (45:16-17). The prince's role seems to be as a representative of the house of Israel. He has not been merged into the priesthood, but as the representative of Israel, he is granted specific privileges which verge on priestly duties. Whereas the people must enter and exit through separate gates, the prince may come and go through the gate where the priests come and go (46:1-11).
The word here for "prince" is from the root word "lift up" [NASA]. The prince is literally "one who is lifted up." He has been raised to a position of authority and responsibility. The same word is used to describe the 12 princes descended from Ishmael in Genesis, and later it is the word that describes the "leaders" that are appointed to represent and lead the 12 tribes of Israel (Numbers 2-3). Interestingly, a hint of Ezekiel's prince is seen even as early as Numbers 7 where those previously appointed/named princes of the tribes offer sacrifices on behalf of their respective tribes. Likewise, it's these princes of the tribes whose duties include dividing the land of promise (Num. 34).
Later, at the dedication of the temple, Solomon assembles these "princes of the fathers" (1 Kgs. 8:1), again suggesting that these princes play a role in Israel that is both judicial and liturgical. Of course leaders like Abraham, Samuel, David, and Solomon play similar roles. Melchizedek is both priest and king.
No huge or final conclusions here, but tentative ideas for further study: First, what sorts of direction does this provide for civil rulers today? The Magisterial Reformed instinct to see political rulers as having responsibility for the spiritual well being of their subjects, to defend the church, and assist the church in preserving and spreading the gospel, seems to fit with this framework. Magistrates really are deacons.
Second, we might turn the equation around and also apply this to church polity.... Or at least ask the questions: are these princes the equivalent of elders or bishops in the NT or something else? Again, the dual roles of liturgical leader/representative judge seem consonant with this OT pattern.
Last, since The Prince who sits on the throne of David is ultimately Jesus Christ who is both High Priest and King of Kings, Lord of all civil and liturgical affairs, it shouldn't be so surprising that we would mimic Him in our lives. He has made us "priests and kings" to our God after all. And perhaps there is something mutually benefiting, mutually establishing in these roles as well that we've lost in the post-Enlightenment world.
Posts
