Theology and the Church.

Massive disclaimer: This entire post contains genuine and sincere questions. I'd like answers.

Ever since I started studying theology, I hear all the time that theology must be for the Church. This was presented as a possible answer to my post below about theology and the academy. If theology is not "for the Church", then it is meaningless, self-indulgent, irrelevant, etc. Most with whom I have spoken who express such opinions think that theology disattached from the life and concerns of the Church would prefer silence to such selfish speech about God. What could be worse than one who claims to speak about God and only gives a damn about their own career ambitions? What kind of God could that person possibly be witnessing to if that God clearly has no conditioning upon that person's concerns?

I think I understand what people mean by this sentiment. And yet, I don't. What does it mean to say that theology is "for the Church" and "by the Church"? What do we mean when we say the word "Church"? Are we talking about our particular denomination, sect of Christianity, or the one holy, catholic, apostolic church? Does theology that is "for the Church" have concerns for those "outside" the Church, or would we prefer to offer less strict dichotomies between the Church (and "Christianity" for that matter) and the world (so that there is no "outside")? Is theology that is "for the Church" mean anyone can read it? Does it mean we teach Sunday school? Does it mean that we hand out free copies of our work?

Sometimes I think that those who say that theology should be "for the Church", especially those who actually do formal academic theology, only say so because they feel guilty saying anything else. But is the only positive reason for saying that theology is "for the Church" the fact that it is some kind of lip-service shield of sorts that protects you from looking like a complete fool? Nothing could be worse than admitting you don't do theology "for the Church." So if it is so important, why doesn't anyone really talk about what that phrase might actually mean? I want theology to be "for the Church". I really do.

Even more, if theology is "for the Church" then who is the Church for? Is it for itself? Is it for the poor? Is it for all sinners? And if the Church was actually defined (both in confession and action) in my own dearest hopes as those who find solidarity with the least of those in society then how should the questions we ask in theology be informed by this task?

Simply put, I have no idea what people mean when they say that theology should be "for the Church". I don't even really know what the word "Church" should mean.

That might be the entire problem.

Theology and the Academy.

This past weekend I had the chance to spend New Years with one of my closest friends and her husband. As three academics, we spent most of the time talking about the academy and our respective goals, current research interests, and all of that. It was a relief to be with those who are not only the closest of friends, but who also understand my life so well.

Both of my friends are studying literature (broadly speaking). They love what they do. It is refreshing to find any academic who studies what they do because they simply love the subject matter. The conversation takes a different tone, and you actually learn from these sorts of academics.

We eventually got to the part in the conversation where we starting lamenting the state of the academy. Everything is about playing the game -- getting to the next phase, getting the recommendation, trying to prove you aren't a fraud (and spiraling into paranoia every few weeks that you know absolutely nothing about nothing and the fact that you even made it this far is some crazy stroke of luck that will never be explained!), trying to figure out what you want to write about for the next five years, hopefully finding enough adjunct positions to avoid living in a box with a change cup, and then hoping that someday, after all this toil, you might actually have the chance of getting tenure. Maybe by the time you are 45? This becomes all the more complicated to whatever extent when you are a woman -- when is the best time to get married? Have children? Thinking about this entire game for too long is enough to send you straight to your couch and drown in netflix instant streaming for a few hours to avoid the torturous thought of it all.

There came a point in the conversation where my friend disappointingly admitted that you just have to jump through all the hoops to get to where you want to be. I immediately wondered what this means specifically for theology. If I understand anything about my discipline correctly, it is that the object of theology's inquiry is God. As Christian theology, our discipline is particularly informed by Jesus Christ. He is the God-man who came to be one of us, and was murdered for our redemption and liberation, and conquered death through His resurrection. As a Christian and one who is interested in studying theology, my goal is to faithfully order my speech, thoughts, and actions after this Gospel of Jesus Christ.

With all of that said, what does that mean for why anyone studies theology and hopes to someday become a theologian? Do the rules and procedures change when the object of inquiry is God? What are we doing here if they don't? What does it mean that the object of inquiry is one that summons us to obedience, faithfulness, and worship? When the object is actually our Lord? My questions are not rooted in some desire to be pious. Please don't misunderstand me here. However, if the individual doesn't have an existential commitment to the object of theology, what is the point? And if one does have such an existential commitment to the object of theology, can one really find benefit (or purpose?) in ordering their speech, thoughts, and words after the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the academy specifically? Is the academy the best way to become a theologian? Is there a better way? Is it sheer romantic naivete to think one can study theology in the academy because they simply want to be a faithful witness to the Gospel?

I guess I've come to the conclusion that these questions really aren't to be shunned. If this whole theological enterprise has any meaning, I must ask these questions. And I need help in answering them.

Loneliness and David Foster Wallace.

I stumbled across this fascinating interview with David Foster Wallace:

Interviewer: A phrase in one of your recent letters really struck me: “The magic of fiction is that it addresses and antagonizes the loneliness that dominates people.” It’s that suggestion of antagonizing the reader that seems to link your goals up with the avant-garde program—whose goals were never completely hermetic. And Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way seems to be your own meta-fictional attempt to deal with these large areas in ways that are not merely metafiction.

DFW: ”Aggravate” might be better than “antagonize,” in the sense of aggravation as intensification. But the truth is it’s hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I’ve written. It’s always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it’d be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I’ve published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this “look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate-you” syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by “antagonize” or “aggravate” has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of “form.” The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like subdreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self(a psychic self, not just a physical self ), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.

The entire interview can be found here.

Forgiveness of Sins and Divine Solidarity with the Oppressed.

It has taken me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that the choice between progressive politics and traditional faith is a false dichotomy. Thankfully, there are many faithful examples to show that the task of theology necessarily includes prophetic witness to the cause of oppression (Stringfellow, Romero, Gutiérrez, Barth, etc.). As one who was raised in evangelicalism, the cause of the suffering and oppressed was not emphasized much. This general trend is no surprise and the neglect of global oppression is well-noted by liberation theologies. Yet, after taking a liberation theology course this past fall, I struggled with the binaries between the oppressor and the oppressed. I noticed the binaries even more at the liberation theology session this year at AAR. My continual experience of this forced dichotomy left me wondering if the only way forward is to abandon a commitment to the understanding that Jesus Christ died for sinners. In my own understanding, Jesus Christ is first priest, and from that mediation He becomes our liberation. However, this becomes all the more complicated when one realizes that most who are committed to Jesus Christ's primary office as our priestly Mediator (including much of the great tradition) don't see that liberation is a necessary consequence (either in speech or act). To me, liberation of the oppressed is neither optional nor a fashionable add-on to conjure up some sort of relevant Christianity. Thus, I feel very torn.

All of that background information serves to show the significance of the following excerpt. Hunsinger's words are a verbalization of all that I wanted to say, but could not for so long (and far better than I ever could). The only amendment I would make is that there are not only "good reasons" for connecting atonement for sin and divine solidarity with the oppressed, but rather necessary reasons. If this sort of objective theological orientation does not offer genuine freedom for the oppressed and suffering, what hope is there for humanity? It must always be said that the cause of liberation is a necessary and direct consequence of the forgiveness of sins. Parsing out this connection for the Church is the task of the theologian in the next century:

"During the last twenty-five years or so, the church has increasingly witnessed the emergence of victim-oriented soteriologies. The plight of victims, variously specified and defined, has been urged by prominent theologians as the central soteriological problem. It can scarcely be denied that the history of the twentieth century has pushed the plight of the victims to the fore. Nor can it be denied that the church has too often seemed ill-equipped to bring the plight of victims, especially victims of oppression and social injustice, clearly into focus for itself so that reasonable and faithful remedies might be sought. Victim-oriented soteriologies have undoubtedly made an important contribution to a better understanding of the church's social responsibility.

Polarizations and animosities have developed, however, to the extent that the plight of victims has displaced the soteriological plight of sinners, or even eclipsed it. Victim-oriented soteriologies have unfortunately tended to define the meaning of sin entirely in terms of victimization. Sin ceases to be a universal category. It attaches to perpetrators and to them alone. Since by definition victims qua victims are innocent of being perpetrators, they are to that extent innocent of sin. If sin attaches only to perpetrators, however, victims can be sinners only by somehow becoming perpetrators themselves (a move not unknown in victim-oriented soteriologies). Victim-oriented soteriologies, with their bipolar opposition between victims and perpetrators, display a logic with sectarian tendencies.

How the cross of Christ is understood by these soteriologies is also worth noting. The cross becomes meaningful because it shows the divine solidarity with victims, generally ceasing to find any other relevance, at least positively. (In extreme cases, the theology of the cross is trashed as a cause of victimization. But such denunciations, when meant de jure, exceed the bounds even of heterodoxy and so cease to be of constructive interest to the church.) The cross, in any case, is no longer the supreme intervention for the forgiveness of sins. It is not surprising that more traditional, sin-oriented soteriologies should react with unfortunate polarization. When that happens, however, sin as a universal category obscures the plight of oppression's victims, rendering that plight just as invisible or irrelevant as it was before. Atonement without solidarity seems to exhaust the significance of the cross, and forgiveness supposedly occurs without judgment on oppression.

The task of generous orthodoxy in this situation is to dispel the polarization by letting central truths be central, and lesser truths be lesser, but in each case letting truth be truth. No reason exists why the cross as atonement for sin should be viewed as logically incompatible with the cross as divine solidarity with the oppressed. Good reasons can be found for connecting them. The great, historical, ecumenical consensus remains, however, that the central significance of the cross, as attested by holy scripture, is the forgiveness of sins. This established consensus pervades every aspect of the church's life, not least including baptism and the Lord's Supper."

- George Hunsinger, "Social Witness in Generous Orthodoxy: The New Presbyterian 'Study Catechism'", 56.

Karl Barth and the Pastorate.

As the semester came to a close this afternoon, I tried to figure out what to do with myself and all this new-found free time. I decided to take a break from reading and instead, started listening to an audio CD I rented from the library of Karl Barth in conversation with students when he gave his Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary on May 2nd, 1962. I thought this particular exchange was rather wonderful:

Student: "What one thing, sir, would you tell a young pastor today if you were asked, is necessary in this day and age to pastor a Church?"

Barth: "Ah, so big a question! That is the whole question of theology, you see! I should say, I hope that during your studies you have visited yourself earnestly with the message of the Old Testament and of the New Testament. And not only of this message but also of the Object and the Subject of this message. And I would ask you, are you trained to visit not only yourself now, but a congregation with what you have learned out of the Bible and of church history and dogmatics and so on? Having to say something, having to say that thing. And then the other question: are you willing now to deal with humanity as it is? Humanity in this twentieth century with all its passions, sufferings, errors, and so on? Do you like them, these people? Not only the good Christians, but do you like people as they are? People in their weakness? Do you like them, do you love them? And are you willing to tell them the message that God is not against them, but for them? That's the one real thing in pastoral service and that is the question for you. If you go into ministry to do that work, pray earnestly. You'll do difficult work but beautiful work.

But if I had to begin anew for myself as a young pastor, I would tell myself every morning, well, here I am; a very poor creature, but by God's grace I have heard something. I will need forgiveness of my sins everyday. And I will pray, God, that you will give me the light, this light shining in the Bible and this light shining into the world in which humanity is living today. And then do my duty."

The Body's Grace

This semester, I've had the joy of reading Rowan Williams' exquisite essay "The Body's Grace" more than once. For my ethics class, I signed up to lead discussion group for the week that the class discussed human sexuality and Williams' essay was assigned. Today, a dear friend of mine brought up Williams' essay during a conversation about human relationships. And it reminded me why I love Williams' words so much. During the group discussion a few weeks ago, other students were concerned that Williams does not offer clear standards for relationships. His seeming inclusivity became a worry that any type of relationship between two consenting individuals would be deemed acceptable. However, I actually thought that Williams offers an extremely exclusive picture of relationships since, ironically, his words are those of judgment over most human relationships that are embedded in a desire to control, manipulate, and dominate the other. But Williams compels others to see the radically fragile, life-giving, and beautiful nature of human relationships that are rooted in vulnerability. His essay goes beyond sexuality to describe what happens when two human agents seek to be in true relationship with one another. To know the other and let oneself be known is simultaneously the most terrifying yet grace-filled act human persons can choose. I'll let the good Archbishop tell you himself:

All this means, crucially, that in sexual relation I am no longer in charge of what I am. Any genuine experience of desire leaves me in something like this position: I cannot of myself satisfy my wants without distorting or trivialising them. But here we have a particularly intense case of the helplessness of the ego alone. For my body to be the cause of joy, the end of homecoming, for me, it must be there for someone else, be perceived, accepted, nurtured; and that means being given over to the creation of joy in that other, because only as directed to the enjoyment, the happiness, of the other does it become unreservedly lovable. To desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire: my search for enjoyment through the bodily presence of another is a longing to be enjoyed in my body. ...

The discovery of sexual joy and of a pattern of living in which that joy is accessible must involve the insecurities of "exposed spontaneity": the experience of misunderstanding or of the discovery (rapid or slow) that this relationship is not about joy - these are bearable, if at all, because at least they have changed the possibilities of our lives in a way which may still point to what joy might be. But it should be clear that the discovery of joy means something rather more than the bare facts of sexual intimacy. I can only fully discover the body's grace in taking time, the time needed for a mutual recognition that my partner and I are not simply passive instruments to each other. Such things are learned in the fabric of a whole relation of converse and cooperation; yet of course the more time taken the longer a kind of risk endures. There is more to expose, and a sustaining of the will to let oneself be formed by the perceptions of another. Properly understood, sexual faithfulness is not an avoidance of risk, but the creation of a context in which grace can abound because there is a commitment not to run away from the perception of another.

- Rowan Williams, "The Body's Grace"

The Merciful Love of God.

Read this. And then read it again.

The most merciful God has taken action on our behalf both in freedom and in power. In freedom: for our sin and guilt were not His and did not have to become so. Because this is so, faith believes in God's grace and election in virtue of which we receive what we have not deserved. But also in power: for He has really taken to Himself and removed from us our sin and guilt. Therefore faith is joy and gratitude, an assurance which can no longer look back, only forwards. In freedom and power, awakening a humble but assured and unshakable faith, He took our place because He was God's eternal Son, because it was manifest in Him that God's eternal being is mercy, because there is nothing more real and true behind and beyond this substitution, because this substitution is the very essence of God's own being, of His divinity, for which we must glorify Him in joy and gratitude if we are not to sin wantonly against Him, if we are to let God be God.

This, then, is how God loves. His love is merciful love. In the nature of the case, we do not need to emphasize the point that God is as merciful in Himself as He is merciful in His action. For the idea of mercy itself refers back from God's attitude and act to the depths of God's being, to His heart, His mind, Himself. All misunderstanding in regard to the idea of grace, as if it were not eternal in God Himself, becomes quite impossible when we have understood it as merciful grace. For it is then understood, not simply as God's turning towards us, but as His free, effectual compassion. Looking backwards, therefore, it is seen, not simply as an appearance, but as the disposition of the heart and being of God. Viewed as merciful grace the love of God descends to earth more deeply, and climbs higher to heaven, than the idea of grace in itself would permit us to suppose."

- Karl Barth, CD II.1, 374-375.

Photo Credit: Monica Rey