Kruse Kronicle

Attacking the corporate gravy train

The Economist: Attacking the corporate gravy train

The global downturn has sparked outrage over executive compensation. Only some of it is justified.

... Faced with public outrage over what they consider to be unbridled executive greed, many governments are preparing new rules to rein in pay. Most of these measures will be aimed at companies that have been rescued at taxpayers’ expense. For instance, America’s treasury secretary is due to unveil guidelines on pay for companies that have received aid under the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP). But some plans have a broader sweep. The German government has put forward a draft law which is aimed at all publicly quoted companies and which includes provisions that would force executives to hold share options for at least four years, instead of two. The German proposal would also require all members of a board, rather than just a subcommittee, to sign off on matters of pay.

All this political interference in what companies decide to pay their executives raises two important questions. Is the process for setting bosses’ pay broken? And if it is, what should be done about it? ...

... Although such a market-based approach is attractive, the American government seems bent on regulating banking pay more tightly. The good news is that it appears to have dumped the daft idea of imposing pay caps on banks, which would simply have driven talented people out of the industry. But there are still grounds for concern. The TARP rules seem to imply that executives of firms receiving money from the government will not be allowed to pocket any long-term incentives until their firm has paid it back. This could result in some banks seeking to quit the programme before they are fit enough to do so.

Strict limits on performance-related pay at banks could also do more harm than good. One reason American business has thrived for so long is that its leaders have had a stronger incentive to perform well than those of other countries (see chart 1). Limiting the ability of financial institutions to pay sensible bonuses will simply prolong their woes. Edward Liddy, who was brought in to run American International Group (AIG) after the ailing insurer was rescued by the government, recently gave warning that executives cannot be expected to toil 24 hours a day without being adequately compensated for doing so. Mr Liddy, who plans to leave AIG once a successor has been found, cut his base salary to $1 a year in November 2008 following howls of protest over the pay of bosses at firms that had received bail-outs. ...

Computing: Unlocking the cloud

The Economist: Computing: Unlocking the cloud

Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms.

“FIRST they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi probably never said these words, despite claims to the contrary, but they perfectly describe the progress of open-source software over the past 15 years or so. Such software, the underlying recipe for which is created by volunteers and distributed free online, was initially dismissed as the plaything of nerdy hobbyists. Big software firms derided the idea that anyone would put their trust in free software written by mysterious online collectives. Was it really secure? Whom would you call if it went wrong? ...

...Yet the popularity of open-source programs such as the Linux operating system continued to grow. The fact that Google, the industry’s new giant, sits on a foundation of open-source code buried the idea that it was not powerful or reliable enough for heavy-duty use. One by one the industry’s giants embraced open source. Even Microsoft admits that drawing on the expertise of internet users to scrutinise and improve software has its merits, at least in some cases.

The argument has been won. It is now generally accepted that the future will involve a blend of both proprietary and open-source software....

...But now there is the danger of a new form of lock-in. “Cloud computing”—the delivery of computer services from vast warehouses of shared machines—enables companies and individuals to cut costs by handing over the running of their e-mail, customer databases or accounting software to someone else, and then accessing it over the internet. ...

The party goes on

The Economist: The party goes on

Who, 20 years ago, would have thought that the Communist Party could come to this?

WHEN the tanks departed Beijing after the crackdown of June 1989, no one with an interest in China thought the matter ended. The Chinese Communist Party had won its battle for survival, but the war seemed unwinnable. All the more so after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe later that year, followed by the Soviet Union. Even China’s lunge for breakneck growth from 1992 looked set to accelerate forces the party might not control. As the party’s ideological and moral foundations crumbled, it was no longer clear what on earth it stood for.

China-watchers’ scenarios ran from party collapse to a democratising path. As late as 1998 Bill Clinton was able to tell his Chinese host, President Jiang Zemin, that suppressing dissent put China “on the wrong side of history”. Banyan was in the audience that day, his Flying Pigeon (state-made bicycle) outside. Mr Clinton’s words seemed self-evident. But with hindsight, much of where the West said China was going was wishful thinking. ...

Ad campaigns invite people to church

Houston Chronicle: Ad campaigns invite people to church

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Shrinking mainline Protestant denominations are turning to marketing to help stem decades of membership losses and stay afloat.

The United Methodist Church recently unveiled a $20 million rebranding effort aimed at attracting younger members to the large but diminishing Protestant group. The new ads will appear over the next four years as part of the denomination's "Rethink Church" campaign.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has invested nearly $1.2 million over the past two years launching a similar branding effort based on the theme, "God's Work, Our Hands."

The denominations are trying to bounce back from losses that began in the mid-1960s.

From 1990 to 2008 alone, mainline Protestants dropped from 18.7 percent to 12.9 percent of the population, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. ...

There have some in the PCUSA who have been asking for this same type of advertising campaign. When I was working on the Mission Work Plan for the General Assembly Council in 2005-2006, the research I saw then suggested that this type of advertising tended to increase the goodwill of existing members toward the denomination but was largely ineffective and drawing new people.

For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’

New York Times: For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’

... Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about “one hour” and “six hour” hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact. “It’s a wordless custom, from what I’ve observed,” wrote Beth J. Harpaz, the mother of two boys, 11 and 16, and a parenting columnist for The Associated Press, in a new book, “13 Is the New 18.”

“And there doesn’t seem to be any other overt way in which they acknowledge knowing each other,” she continued, describing the scene at her older son’s school in Manhattan. “No hi, no smile, no wave, no high-five — just the hug. Witnessing this interaction always makes me feel like I am a tourist in a country where I do not know the customs and cannot speak the language.” ...

Abolishing Homelessness in Ten Years

Christianity Today: Abolishing Homelessness in Ten Years

Philip Mangano, the federal 'homeless czar,' says, 'Yes we can.'

During the social upheaval of the 1970s and early 1980s, American churches began putting a much higher priority on fighting homelessness. Nearly 40 years later, these food, shelter, and outreach ministries continue. Philip Mangano, a manager in the 1970s with the late Larry Norman's Solid Rock Records, owner of Street Level Artists Agency, and a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, was among the pioneers in Christian rock and the fight against homelessness.

Since 2002, Mangano has served as executive director of the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness. He has been shaking up the world of homeless outreach by saying that rapid re-housing will abolish chronic homelessness. Recently, David Neff, editor in chief of Christianity Today, spoke with Mangano about this new economic approach and how well it might work during our current recession. ...

Best of It: The Story and the Mission (Part 2)

[Series Index]

We continue with our discussion from Chapter 6 in John Stackhouse's Making the Best of it: Following Christ in the Real World.

One of Stackhouse's big concerns (which I share) is the privileging of one portion of the Bible over another. All of scripture must be held in the context of the rest of scripture. There is no way to make sense of the New Testament without the Old Testament. We can't understand the significance of the Old Testament without the lens of the New Testament.

Some in the Protestant tradition are inclined to lift up a portion, say, Romans as the interpretive key through which everything must be processed. Recently, another model of this thinking has emerged. Some have taken to calling themselves "Red Letter Christians." (See this recent article.) In light of that, I wanted to quote Stackhouse at length on this mode of thinking:

“What would Jesus do?’ therefore is the wrong question for Christian ethics. If we keep asking it, moreover, we will keep making the perennial mistakes many have made, such as prioritizing church work over daily trades (“because Jesus gave up carpentry for preaching the gospel”); valorizing singleness, at least for clergy (”because Jesus didn’t marry”); and denigrating all involvement in the arts, politics, or sports (“because we never read of Jesus painting a picture or participating in political discussions, much less kicking a ball”). Instead, “What would Jesus want me or us to do, here and now?” is the right question – or, if I may, Who are we, for Jesus Christ today?

Connected with this material issue, the issue of the imitation of Christ as the main motif of Christian discipleship, is a formal issue for ethical method. Many Christians, including some quite sophisticated theologians, seem to equate the priority of Christ himself versus other figures with the priority of the gospels versus other books of the Bible, such as the prophets or the epistles. But this is an important hermeneutical error (bemusingly reminiscent of 1 Cor. 1:12: “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Cephas” or “I belong to Christ.”), and in at least four respects.

First, even though the gospels come first in the canon of the New Testament, they are probably not the earliest testimonies to Jesus in the Bible. Paul’s early letters, most scholars agree, predate most or all of the four gospels. So if we are seeking access to the most primitive layer of “Jesus tradition,” in terms of whole books (rather than this pericope or that saying or this hymn or that parable in the gospels), Paul’s work would deserve priority.

Second, we should not be privileging whatever we guess is the earlier material in the New Testament versus the later, because all of it is inspired by God and therefore has the same status: Holy Scripture. Any historian knows that sometimes later accounts are better than earlier ones precisely because the later accounts can have benefited from access to several earlier accounts plus perspective that only time can bring. So there is neither theological nor historical ground for preferring “earlier” to “later” – and that goes for preferring Mark’s gospel to John’s too.

Third, privileging the gospels in the name of privileging Jesus would make sense in terms of the relative status of the Lord Jesus versus his disciples, the epistle writers Paul, Peter, John, and others. But the gospels are authored not by Jesus but by other Christians: traditionally, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So to privilege them is simply to prefer Matthew to Paul, or Mark to Peter, or John to, well, John (I-III John) – which reduces to a preference of genre, of gospels versus epistles. Such a preference hardly has literary or theological merit. (Indeed, the championing of the gospels over the rest of the New Testament is particularly odd coming from educated Christians, who sound as if they have discovered a red-letter edition of the Bible, except that their new version prints all of the gospels in red ink, while the rest of the Bible remains in black.)

Finally, the story of Jesus is, of course, the key to history. But to emphasize the gospels over the rest of the New Testament is to forget that Jesus is Lord over all of history, Head of the church that succeeds him in earthly ministry, and in fact Author of the whole New Testament via the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – as he is the God who inspired the whole Bible. The better hermeneutical path, therefore, is to keep clearly in view what each of the books of the Bible has to offer us and to draw upon them according to their distinctive natures, regarding not only their genre strengths and limitations but also the place of their subject matter in the Christian Story. We Christians are not to be forever repristinating the experience of the disciples trooping about with Christ in ancient Judea – nor, for that matter, the experience of the disciples in the early chapters of Acts. For there are more chapters in Acts, and the unfinished nature of the book has itself prompted many readers to the conclusion that God intends the rest of the church to keep writing it, generation by generation, until the Lord of the church returns, to fulfill the promise made at the book’s beginning (Acts 1:11) (190-192)

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The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists," a malevolent force bent on destroying the monopolistic incentive that helps support the American dream. Gates was wrong: Open source zealots are more likely to be libertarians than commie pinkos. Yet there is some truth to his allegation. The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. ...

... We're not talking about your grandfather's socialism. In fact, there is a long list of past movements this new socialism is not. It is not class warfare. It is not anti-American; indeed, digital socialism may be the newest American innovation. While old-school socialism was an arm of the state, digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government—for now. ...

... I recognize that the word socialism is bound to make many readers twitch. It carries tremendous cultural baggage, as do the related terms communal, communitarian, and collective. I use socialism because technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions. Broadly, collective action is what Web sites and Net-connected apps generate when they harness input from the global audience. Of course, there's rhetorical danger in lumping so many types of organization under such an inflammatory heading. But there are no unsoiled terms available, so we might as well redeem this one.

When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism.

In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, "dot-communism." He defined it as a "workforce composed entirely of free agents," a decentralized gift or barter economy where there is no property and where technological architecture defines the political space. He was right on the virtual money. But there is one way in which socialism is the wrong word for what is happening: It is not an ideology. It demands no rigid creed. Rather, it is a spectrum of attitudes, techniques, and tools that promote collaboration, sharing, aggregation, coordination, ad hocracy, and a host of other newly enabled types of social cooperation. It is a design frontier and a particularly fertile space for innovation. ...

Then and Now (Cap and Trade)

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Then and Now

From a Obama-Biden campaign position paper:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all large corporate polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away for free to coal and oil companies.

From today's newspaper:

Under the House bill, only 15% of the emission permits will be auctioned initially. The rest of the permits will be given away -- 2% to oil refiners, 5% to free-standing "merchant" coal plants, 9% to regulated natural-gas distributors, and so on.

So, Mr President, the bill now being considered in Congress is in direct contradiction to your campaign pledge. Will you now please stand up for principle and issue a veto threat?

The Evolution of Cell Phone Design Between 1983-2009

Webdesigner Depot: The Evolution of Cell Phone Design Between 1983-2009  (HT: Carpe Diem)

Cell phones have evolved immensely since 1983, both in design and function.

From the Motorola DynaTAC, that power symbol that Michael Douglas wielded so forcefully in the movie “Wall Street”, to the iPhone 3G, which can take a picture, play a video, or run one of the thousands applications available from the Apple Store.

There are thousands of models of cell phones that have hit the streets between 1983 and now.

We’ve picked a few of the more popular and unusual ones to take you through the history of this device that most of us consider a part of our everyday lives.

We have tried, wherever possible, to include the most popular phones and the phones that were “firsts” for a particular feature, but may have missed out on your favorite phones due to the sheer number of models that are out there.

We invite you to post your faves in the comments section if they are not listed here.

Mobile phones are just now beginning to be as vital to North Americans as they have been to Asians. You can always see what is coming to store shelves in the next six months to a year by looking at the models that are currently available in Japan.

North America also had a spotty 3G network that has only really been revamped recently in order to deal with increasing demands for faster loading speeds from mobile customers, whereas Asia and most of Europe have had proper 3G networks in place for some time.

This has led to a revolution in 3G phones from 2007 until now, with more due to come out in 2009.

The list does not include any phones that were not portable handhelds. Car phones and some handhelds that were the size of a small briefcase were in use in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but since this is more about design than function we chose not to include them here. ...

Here is the first entry. Go to the link to see the rest:

Best of It: The Story and the Mission (Part 1)

[Series Index]

Today we begin Chapter 6, “The Story and the Mission,” in John Stackhouse’s book Making the Best of It.

“The Bible is fundamentally a story,” Stackhouse writes. (181) It flows from creation, to Fall, to redemption, to consummation. Through a variety of genres and authors we learn what has happened and what is going to happen. The historicity of the Bible is important for two reasons. First, it inspires faith and trust in God because we can see what God has done in the past. Second, it helps locate where we are … sort of like a big “You are here” sticker on a map … in God’s overarching narrative. Here are a few observations Stackhouse makes about the narrative.

Creation is very good – No Gnostic spirit/matter divide with spirit being good and matter evil.

Humanity given the mission to garden the planet – As development of human culture is inherent in the Genesis mandates to exercise dominion and care for the garden, human culture is part of the creation that is “very good.”

The creation story must be held in context of the larger story – Some today reason as if we were still in Eden. Many seem to think, “If something can be shown to be “natural” – that is, unaffected by and not a product of human action – then it is pronounced “good.” (184) He raises the example that first came to my mind, which is the prevalent argument that because homosexual orientation is “natural,” it is therefore part of God’s good creation. I’ll add here that many things that are good are “natural” but so are some terrible things, like the genetic code that has caused muscular dystrophy with two of my siblings. Stackhouse correctly points out that we cannot reason from “is” to “ought.”

“Dominion” is about responsible authority, not domination – Dominion is, “… authority that is wielded under the authority of another, as the Canadian Parliament governs under the authority of the Queen.” (185) Exercising dominion is done with care, sustenance and creativity, on behalf of others, according to the purposes of the regent who ultimately rules. Stackhouse writes, “For who benefits from the gardener doing his work well, the gardener or the garden? Clearly they both do.” (185) Echos here of Darrell Cosden’s observations that the natural world is both our habitat and the object of our work.

Culture is an expression of our image bearing nature – Culture is a natural consequence of God’s image bearers being in community but culture has been corrupted at epistemological and ethical levels through human rebellion. The first city mentioned in the Bible (Enoch, built by Cain) and the city of Babel, are the antithesis of Eden. Yet in the Biblical narrative we see God establish the “good city” of Jerusalem and in the end we see the Biblical metaphor for the new creation is the New Jerusalem. God redeems human culture.

“Who are we, for Jesus Christ, today?” – Scripture, OT and NT, were written in particular socio-cultural contexts, often addressing very particular problems. We can’t directly apply much of what the Bible says. It has to be interpreted. Nor should we look at models from a particular context as transcendental guidance. For instance, with the popular “What would Jesus do?” movement, we could conclude that Jesus abandoned “worldly” work in order to do “ministry.” He lived a life of singleness. Therefore, we shouldn’t marry or involve ourselves in arts or politics, and should go about doing “ministry.” Stackhouse points out that the better question is “Who are we, for Jesus Christ, today?” “… Jesus calls us not to do his work but to extend his work – indeed, to perform ‘greater works than these’ (Jn. 14:12)” (190)

There is much more to follow on Chapter 6. In the next post we will take a look at contemporary attempt to privilege one part of scripture over the others.

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Best of It: Methods in Ethics

[Series Index]

We have been reviewing John Stackhouse’s book Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. We now enter part three of the book “Making the Best of It” (Chapters 5-8), where Stackhouse builds his case for Christian realism. Today we will look at chapter five, “Method in Ethics: A Sketch.”

Method in Ethics

Discipleship

“I take discipleship to be the fundamental concept in the Christian ethos.”  (165) God calls us into friendship and servanthood, and adopts us into family. Stackhouse writes:

Let us posit two axioms about Christian discipleship: (1) the primary calling of Christians is to increase in knowledge and love of God and to do what he wants us to do, and (2) God will provide Christians with all we need to fulfill that calling, namely, to increase in knowledge and love of God and to work with him in mission to the world. (166)

God supplies us with the understanding we need, not necessarily the understanding we want, and not necessarily with greater understanding the others (Christian or not.) Our reliance is on God, not on gifts of knowledge. Stackhouse goes on:

Immediately, however, we confront a paradox. We must understand that the will of God in our day-to-day lives ought to be defined as “what is consonant with God’s overarching and ultimate purposes as working out in this particular situation,” rather than as “what God would like to happen if the world had not fallen and nothing else were wrong.” (167)

I can’t stress enough how central this statement is to how I process decisions and how disturbing to me is the absence of this perspective in so much of the idealistic Christian transformation agendas (left, right, or whatever) bandied about today.

So how should we approach ethical/theological issues we confront?

A (Protestant) Christian Tetralectic

Christians have traditionally drawn on four resources in their thinking: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (i.e, The Wesleyan Quadrilateral). Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants have often weighted or coordinated the resources in different ways. Stackhouse believes his is a particularly Protestant view but he believes much of it has application for other streams of the church as well. Stackhouse calls his conceptualization a “tetralectic” signifying the dynamic interactive quality of the four resources.

Scripture – The canon of sixty-six books. Scripture is typically understood to play both a foundational role (the fundamental written revelation of God) and an adjudicatory role as we wrestle with the issues.

Tradition – “… that which one generation deems worthwhile to pass on to the next. This could include formal creeds but also would include things like rituals, hymns or, “other encodings of Christian thought, behavior, and values.” Quoting G. K. Chesterton, tradition means giving one’s ancestors a vote.

Reason – While cultures may differ in what they see as authoritative data (say tradition versus science) most have a sense of things like the law of non-contradiction. Reason is an important human quality. Reason would include natural sciences, social sciences, applied sciences, humanities.

Experience – We take into account, as individuals or communities, past experiences that relate to the issues we are considering.

Conceiving of these as a quadrilateral is problematic in that we may be inclined to see them as static discreet entities. Theology and Christian life is dynamic. The four resources operate as an on-going four-way conversation … a tetralectic. Some other concerns.

First, we do not start simply with Scripture. Our knowledge of Scripture comes to us in mediated form, via some combination of family, friends, enemies, schooling, cultural flotsam and jetsam, church, reading, movies, and the like. …”

Second, we never have at our disposal simply Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. In the case of the Bible, for example, the actual Bible that we have on hand in any given case is just those portions of the Bible we can remember, that we are bringing to bear on the question, and that operate in the background shaping our presuppositions. … The tetralectic thus takes place not among Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience but among our interpretations of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Third, it is unlikely that a single pass through the resources or – better – one round of conversation among them will be enough. The hermeneutical circle is better seen as hermeneutical spiral, in which successive readings of each resource and successive syntheses of the four resources bring us to what we hope are progressively better understandings. (173-174)

Stackhouse makes the important observation that error in tetralectic approach can also spiral us away from the truth. Furthermore, he cautions against binary thinking: yes or no, right or wrong, true or false. It is better to think in terms of strong warrant versus weak warrant for taking a position, not absolutism. There is no way we can be sure we’ve collected all relevant data and interpreted it correctly. (In other posts, I’ve referred to Kenneth Bailey’s posture of “tentative finality” about decisions and I think Stackhouse has something similar in mind.) There is no, “…epistemic guarantee outside the person of God himself to guides us.” (175)

Stackhouse points out that God typically locates believers in a community and that participation in community is important for positively shaping our thinking and decision-making. But Stackhouse cautions against the tendency of some to offer community as the panacea for western “individualism.” Community has a dark side as well and can lead us away from truth.

Finally, in closing the chapter, Stackhouse stresses the importance of the Holy Spirit in our discipleship. As we engage in a tetralectic dynamic, the Spirit aids in our quest. As we move more deeply into this tetralectic mode we are better able to discern the Spirit’s leading. There is type intuition we sometimes use that makes sense of things below “articulate consciousness” but there are also acts of the Spirit that give us insight as well. Whether intuition or the Spirit, these insights figure into, and are tested by, the tetralectic dynamic.

There you have a brief summary of the ethical dynamic Stackhouse sees at work in our discipleship. This is a great articulation of many of the conclusions I’ve come to over my lifetime, though Stackhouse puts them together with such artful focus and nuance. What do you think?

Next up, we will spend some time in chapter six, “The Story and the Mission.”

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Faith Group Switches

HT: Gruntled Center

The Church Dance

Neil Craigan: The Church Dance

I asked the question, "How would you describe your favorite song to a person born deaf?" One of the answers I received was that they would communicate the emotion and passion of the song through dance.

For those of us who enjoy full use of our haring faculty seeing someone dancing and not hearing the music might appear strange to us. Not long ago we might have immediately assumed some form of mental illness, today we look to see if they are wearing an i-pod! If they are dancing beautifully we may find ourselves drawn into the moment wondering what music is playing in their head as they bob and weave to the rhythm of the sounds they hear. If the dancing is ugly and poor we will, no doubt, quickly pass by and move on our way dismissing them as being a little crazy.

For the spiritually deaf, for those who have never heard the gospel, whose ears have not yet been opened by the Holy Spirit to the wonderful music of God's movement in the world, what does the dance of the church look like? ...

How to Make a Baby

HT: Travis Greene

Best of It: Introducing Part III – “Making the Best of It”

[Series Index]

With previous post, we completed our review of the first two parts of John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Part I (Chapter  1) was a review of Richard Niebuhr’s five part typology from Christ and Culture. Part II (Chapters 2-4) offered some resources for thinking about Christian realism in the form of a review of three twentieth-century theologians: C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now we turn to the final section, Part III (Chapters 5-8), “Making the Best of It."

In some ways, the first two parts of the book could function as one book and the third part as another book. Stackhouse declares at the beginning of Part III that he is not going to present us with, say, some “corrected” version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism ... or directly engage these resources in developing a new version. Then why include the first two parts if he is not going to directly engage them?

I have chosen this less direct course partly because, while I do intend in what follows to conclude what I can as directly as I can, I fear coming to those conclusions to easily. My hope is that this exercise in tracing out the convictions of my eminent predecessors at even this relatively brief length will help us understand better the true character of their affirmations and help us avoid triggering our reflexes to overlook, repress, or misrepresent – even to ourselves, even without consciously intending to do so – any complex, odd, or even initially repellent thing they might say that we need to hear. I also frankly admire their ways of raising certain questions, setting out certain categories, and offering certain answers, so it is a pleasure to analyze these rich resources before I attempt to address some of the basic themes they bring into view.  (161)

Stackhouse also employ’s Albert Einstein’s dictum that we should simply as far as possible – and not farther.  We must put things in categories but oversimplification is a real danger in ethics. I really appreciated this paragraph.

Marx earlier warned us of the phenomenon of ideology, which is rationalization writ large on a societal scale. Those in power evolve an explanation of how they got to be in charge and how it is therefore proper for everyone else to respect the order of things and to play their respective parts with compliance and even diligence. The divine right of kings, the universally beneficial “rising tide” of capitalism, nationalist myths, and communist utopias all have been formulated as persuasive accounts of the inherent goodness of the status quo. Again, perhaps those in power have believed it themselves. (162)

So what are Stackhouse’s views? We will begin that next week with a look at Chapter 5, “Method in Ethics.”

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Emerging Economies: Decoupling 2.0

The Economist: Emerging Economies: Decoupling 2.0

The biggest emerging economies will recover faster than America.

REMEMBER the debate about decoupling? A year ago, many commentators—including this newspaper—argued that emerging economies had become more resilient to an American recession, thanks to their strong domestic markets and prudent macroeconomic policies. Naysayers claimed America’s weakness would fell the emerging world. Over the past six months the global slump seemed to prove the sceptics right. Emerging economies reeled and decoupling was ridiculed.

Yet perhaps the idea was dismissed too soon. Even if America’s output remains weak, there are signs that some of the larger emerging economies could see a decent rebound. China is exhibit A of this new decoupling: its economy began to accelerate again in the first four months of this year. Fixed investment is growing at its fastest pace since 2006 and consumption is holding up well. Despite debate over the accuracy of China’s GDP figures (see article), most economists agree that output will grow faster than seemed plausible only a few months ago. Growth this year could be close to 8%. Such optimism has fuelled commodity prices which have, in turn, brightened the outlook for Brazil and other commodity exporters.

That said, even the best performing countries will grow more slowly than they did between 2004 and 2007. Nor will the resilience be universal: eastern Europe’s indebted economies will suffer as global banks cut back, and emerging economies intertwined with America, such as Mexico, will continue to be hit hard. So will smaller, more trade-dependent countries. Decoupling 2.0 is a narrower phenomenon, confined to a few of the biggest, and least indebted, emerging economies. ...

Best of It: Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Christian and the Church in and for the World (Part 3)

[Series Index]

Today we conclude our review of the chapter on Diectrich Bonhoeffer in John Stackhouse's Making the Best of It.

Religionless Christianity. Here Bonhoeffer is thinking of religion in the sense of trying to find timeless universal truths in Christianity just as we might in other religions – it is an exercise in getting answers to our . Stackhouse sums up Bonhoeffer’s views in this way:

We live without the God that most people want in their religion, a deity who answers their questions, soothes their anxieties, and guarantees their well-being. Instead, we are to live fully in the world that the true God has made according to the way that he has made it and according to the way it has fallen. Thus we suffer along with God, yes, but suffering as God does: in the knowledge that such work is not in vain but is right and good and effective, and with the certain hope of the eventual redemption of the world. (144)

We are responsible to act in an ambiguous and paradoxical world. But Stackhouse notes we live in a troubled world that defies easy answers. Then he offers this quote from Ethics:

If one implies that Christianity has the answer to all social and political questions of the world, so that one would have only to list to these answers to put the world in order, then this is obviously wrong …

Jesus is hardly ever involved in solving worldly problems. … Since Jesus brings the redemption of human beings, rather than the solution to problems, he indeed brings the solution to all human problems. …

Who actually says that all worldly problems should and can be solved? Perhaps to God the unsolved condition of these problems may be more important than their solution, namely, as a pointer to the human fall and to God’s redemption. Human problems are perhaps so entangled, so wrongly posed, that they are in fact really impossible to solve. (145)

Relating Bonhoeffer’s views, Stackhouse writes:

The world is misshapen by evil, broadly and profoundly. It is so marked, in fact, that as we follow Christ over this tortured terrain, we may encounter ethical choices that include no option that is both obvious and pure – no “straight paths.” God’s ways themselves are transcendent and therefore not always, or even often, apparent to us – indeed, they can appear evil to us. Thus we must be careful what lessons we draw from the Biblical narrative and from our experience of God’s providence, recognizing that even with great care we may well mistake what it is we are to conclude and then do. (146-147)

Bonhoeffer was suspicious of leaning on “unmediated inspirations” as they to easily lead us into self-deception. We do have a responsibility act, however. We discern as best we can and make decision with the confidence that God accomplishes his will through such acts ... even if we choose poorly. Stackhouse writes, “All we can do, therefore, and what we must do, therefore, is to discern our responsibility as best we can and then fulfill it.” (147) This is not situational ethics but rather listening for Christ’s direction and then following.

Stackhouse makes more interesting observations along these lines. One critical issue is the complete absence of the Holy Spirit from the discussion, typical of his theological tradition. Doesn’t the Spirit play a critical role in such discernment? While I might share some of Bonhoeffer’s concern about “unmediated inspirations” this glaring omission is a major weakness in his theology.

Eschatological hope. Stackhouse writes this about the story that Bonhoeffer saw in scripture:

“… one world, created by God, that fell into evil and has been redeemed by God through Jesus Christ. This world is the world there is, and that will be – albeit renewed (resurrected) in eternal life. Thus we must not neglect this world in honor of the next, for there is no “next” in distinction from this one: “With respect to its origin this indivisible whole is called ‘creation.’ With respect to its goal it is called the ‘kingdom of God.’” Thus what is ‘above’ – that is, the blessings of heaven – is indeed given to us by grace “for this world.” (154)

Direct action. In Conspiracy and Imprisonment, Bonhoeffer writes:

Is the sole task of the church to exercise love within the given worldly orders, i.e., to animate them as far as possible with a new way of thinking, to compensate for hardships, to care for the victims of these orders, and to establish within the church-community its own new order; or does the church have a mission in regard to the given worldly orders themselves, in the sense of correction, improvement, that is, of working toward a new worldly order? I. e., is the church merely to pick up victims, or must the church take hold of the spokes of the wheel itself? (155-156)

He concludes the latter, as Stackhouse says, with some anguish, since he had taken a more Anabaptist view of conquering evil through nonresistance. Stackhouse says that Bonhoeffer did not naturally think in terms institutional politics like someone like Niebuhr might have, so he had few suggestions to offer along these lines. It was clear that at least late in life he felt Christians have a responsibility to act but he was deeply conflicted about appropriate action, as evidenced by his conviction of pacifism and yet feeling compelled to participate in attempts to murder Hitler.

This completes the review of the chapter on Bonhoeffer. What do you think?

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Having Daughters Rather Than Sons Makes You More Liberal

FiveThirtyEight: Having Daughters Rather Than Sons Makes You More Liberal (HT: Gruntled Center)

The post quotes from an article by Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee:

In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person's children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent.

Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors' key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).

By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington (2004) is able to go beyond this. She provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. In a revision, Washington (2008) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education.

Our [Oswald and Powdthavee's] aim in this paper is to argue, with nationally representative random samples of men and women, that these results generalize to voting for entire political parties. We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party. Our data, which are primarily from Great Britain, are longitudinal. We also report corroborative results for a German panel. Access to longitudinal information gives us the opportunity -- one denied to previous researchers -- to observe people both before and after they have a new child of any particular gender. We can thereby test for political 'switching'. Although
panel data cannot resolve every difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect relationships, they allow sharper testing than can simple cross-section data.

Best of It: Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Christian and the Church in and for the World (Part 2)

[Series Index]

Today we continue our discussion of the chapter on Dietrich Bonhoeffer in John Stackhouse's Making the Best of It.

One Reality. Bonhoeffer rejected the Lutheran notion of two kingdoms in any strong sense. There is one reality and Christ rules over all. There is the spiritual office and the kingdom of worldly authority which should not be mixed but God rules above both realities and they answer to him. Stackhouse makes this observation:

Thus the state ought to recognize the church’s claim to, and right to, enough space in which it can perform its central task of proclaiming “the reign of Jesus Christ over the whole world.” The state – for its own sake, as a servant of God that needs a healthy, functioning church for its own healthy functioning – must no encroach on the church’s territory and role (as the Nazis were doing). Without the church and its proclamation of Jesus is Lord, the state becomes, ironically, something other than truly and properly worldly. Lacking a divine reference point, it becomes idolatrous instead, as “the worldly will always seek to satisfy its unquenchable desire for its own deification.” (131-132)

Obedience and resistance to the state. Because the state is also of God, and because we simply can’t know all that goes into decisions about any given situation, Bonhoeffer believed deference should be given to the state. It is established by God and we owe our obedience. This deference is not absolute but when outright resistance is needed it should focus narrowly “on those  elements that have forfeited their mandate” as Stackhouse says.

Orders of preservation. Bonhoeffer was not a utopian. He believed life is deeply affected by the fall but not dominated by it. God understood God to have created human institutions promote good and restrain evil. Writing in Ethics:

Only insofar as church, family, work, and government mutually limit each other, insofar as each is beside and together with the others, upholding the commandment of God each in its own way, are authorized to speak from above to speak. None of these authorities can identify itself alone with the commandment of God. … (136)

Later in life speculated that the mandates listed might also be expanded to include things like education and culture. Stackhouse doesn’t mention it but in some ways, this seems very similar to Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty.

Stackhouse writes:

Bonhoeffer thus distinguished between life we now live as ordered by these institutions and the life to come in which Christ’s Lordship is direct and unimpeded. Yet he also sees that this life, what he calls the “penultimate,” is also given shape by, judged by, and inspired by the life to come, what he calls the “ultimate.” He therefore eschews both radicalism, which despises the penultimate, and capitulative compromise, which despairs of the ultimate. Instead he recommends the way of Christ, which means travelling through the world, doing what one can in the world, and confronting the world – informed and encouraged by the Christian Story (creation, Fall, redemption, and consummation) and especially by the story of Christ. These stories, of course have at their heart the divine project of redemption. (138-139)

Tomorrow we will conclude our discussion of this chapter on Bonhoeffer.

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How to help the poor have more money? Well, you could give it to them

Aid Watch: How to help the poor have more money? Well, you could give it to them

In 2007, people in the Western Province of Zambia lost their homes, their livestock and their crops when heavier-than-normal flash floods swept through their area. USAID’s office of disaster assistance stepped in with $280,000 worth of with seeds and fertilizer, training for farmers, and emergency relief supplies.

Two NGOs working in Zambia, Oxfam GB and Concern Worldwide, tried a different approach: they handed out envelopes stuffed with cash—from $25 to $50 per month per affected family, with no strings attached. An evaluation found that common fears about cash transfers—that the cash infusion will cause inflation in the market, that the money will be squandered, or that men will take control of the money—were unrealized.

What did people buy with the money? The list includes maize, beans, salt, cooking oil, meat, vegetables, clothes and blankets, paraffin, transport, soap and body lotion, and lots of other mundane household items. They also loaned it to friends, used it to pay back debts, purchased health care, education and transport, and rebuilt their homes. Only a very small fraction of the money (less than .5%) was spent on “unproductive” items, like liquor for the men.

Unconditional cash transfer programs can be fast and cost effective. With no technical experts’ salaries to pay, and no trans-Atlantic shipping costs for US-produced food aid, more of the cash can go straight to the recipients (in the case of the Concern Worldwide project 27% was spent on program administration, while 73% was distributed in the cash transfers.)

Cash transfers also acknowledge that poor people are capable of making good economic decisions without the help of outside experts armed with needs assessment checklists. ...

The Ties That Bind

Wall Street Journal: The Ties That Bind

Linked by 30 years of experiences and memories, 10 women from Ames, Iowa, are a lesson in the power and lifelong benefits of friendship.

... Similarly, a Harris Interactive Inc. survey in 2004 found that 39% of women between ages 25 and 55 said they met their current best friends in childhood or high school. Women are likely to connect early and then hold tight to each other. This is despite our transient society, or in some cases, even because of it. ...

... Few of the Ames girls’ husbands have longstanding groups of close friends they confide in regularly. Men’s friendships tend to be based more on activities than on emotions. They connect through sports, work, poker, politics. In an Australian government study, 57% of men said they bond with friends through “recreational activities.” That compared with just 26% of women who defined friendships in those terms. ...

Best of It: Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Christian and the Church in and for the World (Part 1)

[Series Index]

We’ve been discussing Making the Best of It, by John Stackhouse. So far we’ve revisited Richard Neibuhr’s Christ and Culture typology and we’ve reviewed two of the three theologians Stackhouse believes we can draw on as resources for thinking about Christian realism (i.e. C. S. Lewis and Reinhold Niebuhr.) Today we turn to the third theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This is the longest chapter in the book and as you might imagine, it is packed full of rich material. I’ll break this into three posts, but even so, I’m simply gleaning some themes

Stackhouse summarizes the questions Bonhoeffer pursued this way:

• How I am I to understand and speak, and how are to understand and speak?
• Who am I, and who are we?
• What am I to do in the world, and what are we to do in the world?

Christ is at the center. Bonhoeffer believed that the church is to come in silence before Christ and the Word. Bonhoeffer wrote, “The way of Jesus Christ, and therefore the way of all Christian thinking, leads not from the world to God but from God to the world.” (122-123)

Bonhoeffer did not believe in Christ as “the divine principle” of liberal theology. He affirmed the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Although, Stackhouse points out that he had his doubts about the Virgin Birth and the historicity of the empty tomb. In footnote 15, Stackhouse points out that Bonhoeffer seemed to look for a path between “naïve and dogmatic realism” and “skepticism,” but not entirely with success.

We encounter Christ through Scripture. Bonhoeffer recognized that the Bible has its flaws but nevertheless “… [Bonhoeffer] emphasizes God’s encounter with humanity through the figure of Chris and the text of the Bible despite whatever limitations or even flaws might be discerned in either.” (121) Concerning Bonhoeffer’s take on the role of scripture, Stackhouse writes:

As we continue, then, to encounter Christ particularly in Scripture, in preaching, in the sacrament, and in church fellowship, we must construct theology in order to know better who Christ is and what he wants us to be and do. Bonhoeffer was no mystic: theology is to be worked up from Biblical and historical sources with care, and only then applied to contemporary challenges. (122)

Lutheran categories – While not always agreeing with traditional Lutheran categories of “law and grace” or “two kingdoms,” Bonhoeffer was in direct dialog with Lutheran theology and regularly quoted Luther himself.

“Come and Die.”  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” from The Cost of Discipleship, is probably Bonhoeffer’s most quoted line. The death, however, is, “… in order to live again in life abundant. Cost of Discipleship was both “… an invitation and an instruction.” (123)

“Costly grace” vs. “cheap grace.” Stackhouse says that, “The Lutheran emphasis on justification by faith alone, through grace alone, had been set adrift from Luther’s own concern for holiness and rectitude.” (125) Cheap grace is sort of a warm fuzzy sense forgiveness of sins as a general truth that makes no demands on us. In Discipleship:

Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. (124)

Christ offers us costly grace … a grace which God procured at a costly price. It is a grace the calls us into discipleship and sole commitment to Jesus Christ.

Radically connected through Christ. Jesus calls out to as radically free disciples … free from family, class, nation, etc. Stackhouse writes:

“… the individual, called by Christ as such, who then is related to everything else in creation by way of Christ, who is the center. (126)

But the individual does not live and function apart from Christian community:

Our identity, Bonhoeffer asserts, is found in, and formed by life in community, and our Christian identity – our true self – takes shape in the church. The church is both the agent of God’s will and a realization of God’s will. (127)

This quote from Ethics was particularly important:

“… the church is not a religious community of those who revere Christ, but Christ who has taken form among human beings.” (127)

Tomorrow we dive into Bonhoeffer's thoughts about the state and society.

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Red Letter Christians

Presbyterian Outlook: Red Letter Christians

Red Letter Christians are the new Evangelicals.

After spending most of his years leading and shaping the Evangelical movement, Tony Campolo has thrown in the towel. He has dumped the label Evangelical. He has not changed his theological convictions. He just thinks that the public use of that label has degenerated beyond any realistic hope of rehabilitation in the foreseeable future.

As a movement, the Evangelical label once stood for both conservative theological convictions and progressive social engagement, for evangelizing the lost and healing the sick. Accordingly, Campolo has been broadcasting the saving power of Christ, while simultaneously promoting ministries of justice, peace, and compassion, i.e., the ethical teachings of Jesus.

But, as he said at the Presbyterian Head-of-Staff Pastors’ Conference this past February, the movement has been overtaken by voices on the extreme political right, and has been co-opted by a single political party.

He has given up; he no longer calls himself an Evangelical. After extended conversations with other so-called progressive Evangelicals like Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Joel Hunter, and Shane Claiborne, he has called for the launch of a whole new movement: the Red Letter Christians.

He wrote the book: Red Letter Christians: a Citizens Guide to Faith & Politics (Regal, 2008).

In the book’s foreword, Jim Wallis introduces the basic idea. “We affirm the authority of the whole Bible, not just the explicit sayings of Jesus, often found highlighted in red.  … But we believe that the ‘red letters’ of Jesus need to be focused on again. We feel a calling together in this historical moment to bring back the distinctive message of Jesus for our time, for our world, and for the critical issues we face today” (pp. 10, 11).  ...

Related: See my post from last year Why I’m not a Red Letter Christian

C. Wright's End of the World (Part 4)

Today we come to the final post on the “end of the world” section of Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand. We looked at the themes of the new creation in terms of the garden city, the glory of civilizations, the healing of nations, and the harmony of creation. Today we will look at three more themes under the rubric of “Redeemed Humanity.”

Resurrection Bodies

“I believe in the resurrection of the body”, says the Apostles’ Creed. It does not say, “I believe in the immortality of the soul”, though a great deal of folk Christianity seems to imagine that it does. If the earliest Christians had gone around saying they believed in the immortality of the soul, almost nobody would have taken any notice, for that was and is one of the commonest beliefs in human cultures. What they actually proclaimed was the resurrection of the body – and that was something surprising and countercultural, and for many even in their day, laughably unbelievable. It was, however, the unambiguous implication of the historically witnessed fact of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.” (207)

Wright goes on to observe that, “When God raised Jesus from the dead, he was also saying Yes to creation, affirming the goodness of physical bodily life that he himself had created.” (207) Jesus’ resurrection was vindication of all he had taught. He became the “firstfruits” of the new creation. Jesus had a physical body. He could eat food and his disciples could touch him. Yet Jesus could also walk through … and I mean through … doors. When we are resurrected we will be like him. (Philippians 3:20-21; 1 John 3:2)

Now this raises all sorts of interesting questions. Will we look like we did at the end our lives? What about infants who never matured? What about those of us with deformities? It appears that our new appearance will be in some way so continuous with our present selves that we will be recognizable. But there will be radical discontinuities which I doubt we can imagine … our bodies will no longer be subject to death and decay. We simply have no answers, just the promise of resurrected bodies in a world that is both continuous and radically discontinuous with what we knew before.

Presence of God

Wright writes, “We will also be living with intimate, unthreatening, and unthreatened presence of God.” (211) See Revelation 21:3. This idea of God dwelling with humanity is central the Old Testament vision of the new creation as well. There will be no need of a temple or a Holy Place because the whole creation will become God’s dwelling place. Precisely what this means is a mystery but we are assured that relationship as it was meant to be will be redeemed.

The Blessing of Work

The popular folk imagery of eternity is our transformation into angelic beings living among the clouds, strumming harps in endless repose. The Bible does speak of the new creation in terms of “rest” but rest does not mean cessation of all activity:

… The original creation Sabbath was the beginning of human history, in which we were to enjoy creation along with our Creator through exercising our mandate of rule and care within it. When God gave the Israelites “rest” in the land, it meant freedom from their enemies, so that they could get on with the job of farming the land. “Rest” meant the enjoyment of working in peace and seeing the fulfillment of one’s labours. (212)

Revelation 21 and 22 hints at this idea, but Isaiah 65:21-23 gives a more explicit picture of building houses, planting vineyards, and enjoying the fruits of our labor in peace.

I really appreciated this last emphasis on the nature of work. The ancient Near East creation narratives tended to cast human beings as slaves of the gods who do the work the gods disdained. By contrast, the Biblical narrative views human beings as co-regents and co-creators with God, bringing an already good creation to its fulfillment. The idea of “humans at work” is central to the Old Testament law and it is at the heart to the jubilee where each family is guaranteed access to their own land and labor as they provide for themselves and others. The redemption of human labor is explicitly and implicitly part of the new creation passages of the Old and New Testaments.

What we would today call economic activity … transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful states to more useful  states … is integral to the creation stewardship commission in Genesis 1 and it is present all the way through to the new creation vision of Revelation. Our labor and economic activity is not merely instrumental (i.e., a means to put food on the table so we can do “real” ministry or the workplace as merely a staging ground for evangelism). Nor is it intrinsically evil … worthy of our deepest suspicion and a primarily restrictive posture. (While there is much talk these days about “creation stewardship” and “earth-keeping,” a great deal of it casts human interaction with nature almost purely as forest rangers or radical preservationists with a deep antagonism toward economic activity.) Human labor and economic activity is an expression of our image bearing quality that is being redeemed.

Well, there you have it. This wraps up my review of the last three chapters about the end of the world in Christopher Wright’s book. As I noted at the beginning, it is one the most lucid and helpful summaries I have read. What do you think now that you have read in these four posts?

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Craig Blomberg on N.T. Wright's new book

Euangelion: Craig Blomberg on N.T. Wright's new book

My friend Craig Blomberg offers some glowing thoughts on N.T. Wright's new book on justification. He writes:

"In the past, Wright has often made sweeping pronouncements about how the Reformation was wrong on some key point, but if one keeps patiently reading one later discovers him saying instead that it’s merely a case of putting Reformation concerns into a larger perspective. Piper, on the other hand, has not always represented Wright well, I suspect in large part because he has not always understood him well. Wright’s new Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK; Downers Grove: IVP, 2009) is an outstanding book. Written in lively, if somewhat polemical style, not encumbered with many footnotes, Wright has here laid out his views with exemplary clarity. In fact, he is affirming all the major Reformation perspectives on justification. The only one he denies is one that was unique to one wing of Calvinism and not even to the entire Calvinist movement. While warmly embracing the representative, substitutionary atonement of Christ through his crucifixion and emphasizing the legal, courtroom context of justification as a metaphor for the declaration of right standing before God not based on anything of our meriting, Wright does deny that Paul, or any other Scriptural author, teaches that the righteousness God imputes to us on the basis of Christ’s cross-work has anything necessarily to do with combining what has been called Jesus’ active obedience (his sinless life) with his passive obedience (his atoning death). And when one looks at the texts often cited in support of such a doctrine (most notably 1 Corinthians 1:30 and 2 Corinthians 5:21), one does indeed look in vain for such a distinction."

Note the critiques by Scott Clark and Justin Taylor of Craig Blomberg's understanding of Christ's active obedience. Part of the issue is how one understands the difference between Christ's active and passive obedience (apart from the question is whether the distinction is even biblical). See Daniel Kirk's excellent discussion of the subject published in SBET and introduced here.

A few thoughts. ...

Just read this book myself. I may get around to my own brief review. It is a great book and I feel like I have a better handle on the controversy but ... holy cow ... tackling the subject matter is not for the faint of heart.

The Future of the American Economy?

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas

Star Trek Review

I saw the new Star Trek movie last weekend and loved it. But I think this was the best movie review.
Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Religious people are better citizens, study says

Religious News Service: Religious people are better citizens, study says

First, the silver lining: people of faith are better citizens and better neighbors, and America is “amazingly” religious compared to other countries, says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam.

Now, the cloud: young Americans are “vastly more secular” than their older counterparts, according to Putnam.

“That is a stunning development,” Putnam said. “The youth are the future. Some of them are going to get religious over time, but most of them are not.”

A celebrated political scientist, Putnam has long been concerned with declining participation in American civic life, as described in his best-selling book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” When Elks clubs and parent-teacher associations lose members, the ties that bind civil society unravel, Putnam argues.

But religious people may be God’s gift to civic engagement, Putnam and University of Notre Dame scholar David Campbell argue in their book, “American Grace: How Religion is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives,” which is scheduled to be released next year.

Putnam and Campbell unveiled some of their research at a recent conference in Key West, Fla., hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The scholars say their studies found that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious Americans to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes—including secular ones.  ...

C. Wright's End of the World (Part 3)

We now come to the final chapter in Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand called The New Beginning. We saw in an earlier post that Wright subscribes to N. T. Wrights characterization of “life after life after death.” Heaven is a “transit lounge” on the way to the new creation. So what can we say about the new creation?

New Creation

Wright is emphatic that we are not leaving the created order for some spiritual order. The “… new reality is not a fundamentally different reality. (195) It is still “heaven and earth,” not “heaven instead of earth.” Drawing on Revelation 21-22, Wright lists the following things that will not occur in the new creation:

• There will be no more sea (21:1). The sea represented chaotic, restless evil in Old Testament symbolism, the place from which the rampaging beasts in Daniel’s visions had come to trample the nations. All such unruly rebellious hostility will have gone.
• There will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain (21:4). All suffering and separation will be ended for there will be nothing any longer to cause them.
• There will be no more sin, for there will be no more sinners (21:7-8); the new creation involves exclusion as well as inclusion – exclusion of the unrepentantly and persistently wicked.
• There will be no more darkness and night (21:25; 22:5), in the sense of all that they represented. The light of God’s presence will dispel the darkest evils.
• There will be no more impurity, shame, or deceit (21:27) – things that are among the original marks of our falleness.
• There will be no more international strife (22:2), for all the nations will find healing through the tree of life and the river of life.
• There will be no more curse (22:3). With the reproach of Eden lifted at last, earth will be freed from its subjection and its redeemed inhabitants freed from bondage to its curse. (196)

But Wright asks, “what will there be?”

The Garden City

As I’ve noted repeatedly at this blog, the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city. This is significant.  But as Wright notes, the New Jerusalem incorporates the garden into the city.

• The garden included gold and precious stones (Gen. 2:12). The city likewise shines with precious stones and is paved with gold (Rev. 21:11, 19-21)
• The garden was watered by four rivers. The city likewise contains the river of the water of life flowing from God’s throne right down the main street. (Rev. 22:1-2, a picture that John owes to Ezek. 47:1-12)
• Most important, the garden had the tree of life at the centre, but human beings had been barred from access to the source of eternal life in their condition of sin and rebellion (Gen. 3:22-24). The tree of life spans the river of life in the city of God (Rev. 22:2), and those once barred from it will have eternal access to it (22:14) – a vivid picture of the wonderful promise that there will be no death at all in the new creation. (196-197)

Cities have a mixed reputation in the Bible. While the garden was planted by God, cities are the apex of human achievement, incorporating human undertakings like commerce, government, religion, art and community. Yet the first city mentioned in the Bible is Cain’s city of Enoch, built as an expression of defiance to God. Wright says that cities and sin were “… so interpenetrating as to be almost synonymous.” Still, God chooses an existing Cannanite city, establishes his temple there, and transforms it into “the city of God,” Jerusalem.  God incorporates that which is uniquely human into his new creation.

The Glory of Civilizations

 Wright decries platonic conceptualizations where the material world (evil) is destroyed and the spiritual world (good) is preserved. He also rejects the idea of “… a great fiery obliteration that will leave nothing of the present world in existence.” (199) This notion comes primarily from 2 Peter 3:10 where, in the King James Version, it says the earth “will be burnt up.” Earlier manuscripts discovered since that time show that something more along the lines of “will be laid bare” or “exposed” is a more accurate translation. Leading up to this verse, Peter refers to the flood in which the world was not destroyed but all that was evil was washed away. In 1 Peter 1:7, the idea of judgment as a refining fire is given. So the idea is one of radical purification, not obliteration.

Then Wright quotes Revelation 21:24-27:

The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it.

So what is “the glory and honor of the nations?” Wright says:

What brings honour to nations is the accumulation of cultural achievement over many generations. Art, literature, music, architecture, styles of food and dress, the richness of language and culture – and so much else – these are the things that national distinctive are built on, which at their best enrich our humanity and at their most trivial support the tourist industry. (201)

To this list I would also add things like governance and modes of commerce that may or may not translate directly into the new creation but I expect they will be redeemed brought into the new creation.

The Healing of the Nations

The leaves of the tree of life will bring healing to the nations. Peace and justice will reign.

The Harmony of Creation

Something about nature will fundamentally change. The predator and prey relationship will end and there will be a renewed animal kingdom. (I confess that I’m not as confident as Wright about the nature of this renewed animal kingdom. I’m still exploring that one.)

That will do it for this post. In the closing post, we will look at redeemed humanity and the presence of God.

What do you think of Christopher Wright’s claims here so far?

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Industrious Revolutions Make Hardworking Households

Gruntled Center: Industrious Revolutions Make Hardworking Households

I am working through C. A. Bayly's The Birth of the Modern World. The most interesting idea that he has introduced me to so far is that before there could be an Industrial Revolution, there had to be an "industrious revolution." This concept comes from Jan de Vries' helpfully named article from the Journal of Economic History, "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution." De Vries argues that households in Britain and the Netherlands started working harder in the early 1700s at making things, and buying things that others had made. ...

Best of It: Reinhold Niebuhr - Prophet of Christian Realism (Part 2)

[Series Index]

So what can we learn from Niebuhr’s Christian Realism? John Stackhouse begins his reflection on Niebuhr’s theologian in Making the Best of It with the following observations:

Niebuhr is well known for admonishing us for the sin of pride, whether in thinking we can replace the current order with one that will work nicely for everyone or in congratulating ourselves that we already have achieved a perfectly  just order in this or that institution.

Western culture has paid for [the] boon of historical dynamic with two evils inhering in the historical emphasis. One is the evil of fanaticism, the consequence of giving ultimate significance to historically contingent goals and values. The other is the creative, but also confusing, Messianism, the hope for a heaven on earth, for a kingdom of universal peace and righteousness.

Communism is one of Niebuhr’s main examples of the latter delusion, but he relentlessly chides his fellow liberals for their unwarranted and dangerous optimism about democracy and capitalism as well.

Niebuhr also, however, cautions against the complementary sin, a sin that is perhaps in more need of exposure today in a time of greater doubt, even despair, over the possibility of real, lasting, and beneficial transformation of ourselves or of the institutions in which we work. … (102)

Pragmatism (in the colloquial sense) was an important value to Niebuhr. He warns against allowing any nation or party to become identified with the promise of the Kingdom of God.  Specifically, Niebuhr warned that, “The tendency to equate our political with our Christian convictions causes politics to generate idolatry.”

Stackhouse sums up Niebuhr’s realism this way:

We might say, then, that Niebuhr’s realism – the belief that there is a transcendent standard and, indeed, a transcendent God, which both judge us and lures us on to excellence – chastens the modern idea of progress for its pride, but also chastens the postmodern idea of radical relativism for its despair. We must not assume that we can completely remake anything in our world, but we also must not assume that things must remain as they are. Instead, we must make the best of them, neither in proud confidence nor in slothful acquiescence, but in hopeful faithfulness to, and in, the command and power of God. (105)

In some aspects, Niebuhr seems to me to have been a bit quirky. His failure to entertain the idea that Biblical “myths” could have been stylized accounts of actual events, seems to me to have compromised his theology to some degree. Another area Stackhouse thinks Niebuhr was significantly deficient in addressing the role of the church as institution. “How should the church as an institution, and not just as well-intentioned individuals, function on behalf of justice and the highest ideal of love?” (111) This is very fuzzy in Niebuhr’s writing.

When I read Niebuhr (many years ago in college) I remember having an ambivalent reaction. His peculiar theological views caused me to be suspicious of his broader theological project. Yet his emphasis on epistemic humility (previous post) has been a core concern of mine my entire adult life. I think it was reading Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman’s The Social Construction of Reality back in college that really jelled this concern for me. It makes me deeply skeptical of both the religious right and the liberal/progressive/emergent communities of the church. That modernism has been dogged by hubris in its worship of scientific and economic models is a given to me. But I’m also every bit as skeptical of the certainty transformationist’s have (right and left), believing they have correctly divined the shape and form of the Kingdom of God, and have the agenda to realize it (or approximate it) in our time. Things like young-earth creationism and the ID movement on the right and the frequently sophomoric reflection on economic issues on the left do not fill me with confidence.

I find a lot that I like about Niebuhr’s realism in this chapter but there are too many qualifications I would need to make to say that I embrace his views. How about you? How does Niebuhr strike you?

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Best of It: Reinhold Niebuhr - Prophet of Christian Realism (Part 1)

[Series Index]

Reinhold Niebuhr was premier among American intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century but today is rarely read in seminaries or elsewhere in academia. Critics like Stanley Hauerwas criticize him as a “chaplain to power.” His “Christian Realism” is accused of promoting, “an un-Christian defeatism, a willingness to compromise with evil, and a repudiation of the transforming power of God.” (82) Stackhouse writes in Making the Best of It:

… Niebuhr’s fundamental public claim for Christianity is that it does a better job – a more rationally satisfying, as well as more existentially satisfying, job – of explaining the world than does any other worldview, including the worldviews of Hobbes, Hume, Comte Marx, Freud, or anyone else. Far from being an escape from reality into narcotically soothing aspirations of comforting wish fulfillment, Christianity is the most realistic view of things on offer. (84)

Stackhouse puts Niebuhr’s views into three themes: epistemology, human nature, and history. Under each theme he makes statements that summarize Niebuhr’s views (I’ve numbered these for ease of reference in discussion) and then offers commentary on each.

Epistemology

1.  We properly draw on experience to tell us what we can know of the world. (84)

2. What we can find out that way, however, prompts us to realize that we cannot know it all, and mystery is an irreducible element in any adequate description of the world. (86)

Stackhouse quotes Niebuhr:

Religious toleration … requires that religious convictions be sincerely and devoutly held while yet the sinful and finite corruptions of these convictions be humbly acknowledged; and the actual fruits of other faiths be generously estimated. (87)

“Epistemic humility” is what Stackhouse is describing. In footnote 16 he writes:

…This epistemic humility grounding pluralistic tolerance upsets critics of both Reihold and Richard Niebuhr. These critics assail the Niebuhrs for compromising the stark truth of the Gospel in order to covertly defend liberal democracy and its cultural and consumerist relativism. … (87)

Stackhouse will come to this issue later.

3. Christian theology provides the best conceptuality by which to articulate this reality: God created and sustains the world, and made us able to understand it. He then enables us to coordinate that understanding with the understanding he grants us of theology as well. (87)

4. God has provided information and insight that we never could have discovered on our own – thus we need God’s revelation. (88)

Stackhouse quotes Niebuhr from Nature and Destiny:

Christian faith sees in the Cross of Christ the assurance that judgment is not the final word of God to man; but it does not regard the mercy of God as a forgiveness which wipes out the distinctions of good and evil in history and makes judgment meaningless. All the difficult Christian theological dogmas of Atonement and justification are efforts to explicate the ultimate  mystery of divine wrath and mercy in its relation to man …

Christian faith regards the revelation in Christ as final because this ultimate problem solved by the assurance that God takes man’s sin upon Himself and into Himself and that without this divine initiative and this divine sacrifice there could be no reconciliation and no easing of man’s uneasy conscience. (89-90)

In footnote 23, Stackhouse writes:

… It is not clear to me how Hauerwas and others who criticize Niebuhr as anthropocentric – even as functionally atheistic (which I think is the implication of With the Grain of the Universe, in order to depict Hauerwas’s heroes, especially Karl Barth, all the more brightly as true Christians) – would deal with such a passage. …(90)

He acknowledges that Niebuhr was not entirely orthodox but he did hold that human quests to know God would be frustrated until the relationship with God is rectified. Quoting Langdon Gilkey

Despite its major concentration on an empirical look at human social behavior, on the real characteristics of political existence, and on the actual shape of the contours of history, Niebuhr’s theology is … a ‘God-centered’ theology and not a humanistic or naturalistic one. As a consequence it cannot possibly be understood – as many have sought to do – as primarily brilliant social commentary with the pious icing, so to speak of theological or Biblical rhetoric. … (90)

5. To reveal truth in a way the properly balances various elements and communicates well across a variety of cultures, God has resorted to the genre of story, of myth – understood as a narrative and symbol set that articulate abiding truth (“this is the way things are and have been”) but not, as Christian tradition has believed, historical truth (“this is the way things once happened”). (90)

Unlike many who talk about “myth” as a way to relate historical realities, Stackhouse points out that Niebuhr apparently saw no need for Biblical myths to have connection with actual historical realities. They are pictorial ways of illustrating our human predicament.

6. Christian Realism, therefore, is epistemologically realistic in terms of both metaphysics and morality. (93)

Human Nature

1.  Human beings have a twofold nature: we are creatures, and thus human (of the humus, the earth) – finite in awareness, in ability, in mortality. But we are also created in the image of God, and thus enjoy transcendence – to get beyond ourselves to see ourselves, to get beyond the present circumstances to imagine and create a new situation, and to aspire to get beyond ourselves and this world to arrive at a more glorious destiny. (94)

2. Human beings have the ability to choose to a considerable extent what to believe, feel, and do. And yet we are also bound in our beliefs, feelings, and actions, not only by our intrinsic creaturely limitations but also by our sin. (95)

History

1. Human beings can look forward to a great destiny, by the grace of God. This world is not all there is, and there is a better world ahead. (96)

Stackhouse quotes Niebhur:

It is unwise for Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell; or to be too certain about any of the details of the Kingdom of God in which history is consummated. (96)

In keeping with Niebuhr's sense of Biblical myth, he also did not believe in the literal resurrection of body.

2. Meanwhile, however, our duty is to approximate the goodness of that better world, in full and prudent realization of the limitations of this one. (98)

Two observations by Stackhouse:

Niebuhr thus strikes a balance between those who would abandon the world and those who still think we can solve whatever is wrong – or, at least, the Important People can, if they would just get busy. … Niebuhr strives to maintain a realism between cynicism and idealism. (98)

The world, affected by the Fall, is a place in which extraordinary measures are necessary event to approximate God’s ideal in this situation – which is all we can accomplish. (99)

Stackhouse points out that Niebuhr thought biblical ideals and universal love were eschatological ideals, unattainable in the interim until he comes again. John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus is partly a response to this. Stackhouse suggests that these ideals might have been seen as more meaningful on the individual level versus the societal level in Niebuhr’s mind, although in later life he seemed more optimistic about communities and less so about individuals.

You now have the meat of it. What to make of it all? Tune in tomorrow.

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C. Wright's End of the World (Part 2)

Today we turn our attention to “The Great Climax” (Chapter 10 in the last section of Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand. Again, I’m just going to skim through the themes.

The Day of the Lord

At first it was understood as the day when God would defeat Israel’s enemies and end oppression. However, some prophets said it would be a day of darkness and judgment. (Amos 5:19-20, Zephaniah 1:14-18 … but also Zephaniah 3:9-17 where it is a day of joy) Paul turns it into “the day of Christ” (e.g., Phil. 1:6, 10; 2:16, 1 Cor. 1:8) with the following three elements involved: return of Christ, resurrection of the dead, and final judgment.

The Return of Christ

Wright says we tend to separate the first and second comings of Christ in our minds but scripture holds them more tightly together (See Titus 2:11-13; Hebrews 9:26-28; 1 John 3:2, 5) The Return of Christ will have the following three elements.

• Personal – Jesus will return in actuality, not in some metaphorical or spiritual sense.
• Visible – It will be a visible return and a return that is visible to all at the same time.
• Glorious – He will come as the glorious king to claim his throne.

Wright asks what this means for us? Reflecting on Isaiah 52:7-10, he notes that God encouraged the Israelites in exile by reminding them that God was the reigning (v. 7), returning (v. 8), and redeeming (v. 9) King. The same good news applies today.

Resurrection of the Dead

Many ancient cultures had a belief in an afterlife in some other form in some other place, but the idea of a bodily resurrection on a renewed earth was unique to the Jews. Quoting N. T. Wright, C. Wright calls it “life after life after death.” Whatever our existence after death, it is a temporary state until we are resurrected again.

Everyone will be resurrected. How will this be done? How will bodies that have become dust or been incinerated be resurrected? We haven’t the slightest clue. But resurrection is the promise. What kind of body will we have? Paul says we will be “like the risen body of Jesus.” (Phil. 3:21) (See also 1 Cor.  15:35-49) Exactly what this means is unknown. Wright will have more to say on this in the final chapter.

The Day of Judgment

All that the Bible has said previously about the day of the Lord or the day of Christ is summed up in that great image in Revelation 20, quoted above: the great white judgment throne of God. The God who sits in judgment is the Lord of history and of humanity; that is, the Lord of life, the universe, and everything.

The first thing we need to say about the day of judgment may seem surprising: It is good news! It is actually part of the gospel. … (see Rom. 2:16) … The day of judgment is something we should be glad about, even as we tremble at the prospect of it. Why is that? (184)

God Will Put Things Right in the End – God’s will be vindicated. We are not promised justice in this life. Many who do evil seem to escape justice while others are horribly victimized. Good often goes unrewarded. At judgment, all that has been done will be made known. “It is not just an act of punishment but an act of rectifying of all wrongs, putting right all relationships, and restoring peace and harmony.” (186) It is good news.

Jesus is the Judge – “The one who will judge all people will be the one who died for all.” (187) That’s good news.

It Will be Completely Just – All facts will be known. No human errors or deceptions will be involved.

It Will Be according to the Light We Have Received – “We will be judged by what we did or did not do, in response to what we did know.” (189) God is a God of justice but he is also a God of mercy. He knows our limitations, frailties, and ignorance. Remember Jesus’ prayer, even at the end, “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.”

It Will Be according to the Lives We Have Lived – Wright writes:

“But,” you may protest, “I thought we are justified by faith, not by works!?” Yes, of course. We are justified by faith. But we will be judged by our works.” (190)

But as I said, the day of judgment is a day for God’s verdict based on evidence, not a day for hearing faith claims. So what will be the evidence of my faith? Not just that I say I had faith, but that my life has shown it. It is our lives that prove the reality of our faith (or not, as the case may be). I will be judged by the evidence (my works), and they will show publicly and beyond doubt whether or not my life has been built on trust in Christ (my faith). (190)

Jesus spoke of some type of eternal punishment and Paul writes:

 “[God] will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes. (2 Thessalonians 1:8-10) (191)

Hell is not explicitly stated by name but Paul articulates it as punishment, destruction, and separation from God. God seems to have deemed it unnecessary for us to understand the precise nature of hell but the idea that there is a penalty for failure to repent seems certain. Still, the weight of the scripture is stacked toward the good news of judgment, not fear of hell.

So once the judgment occurs, what comes next? We will look at “The New Beginning” in the next post.

What do you think about Wright’s views on “The Great Climax?”

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Meet economist John Lunn

Another economics blogger has entered the blogosphere. John Lunn is a professor of economics at Hope College in Holland Michigan (also home to Victor Claar.) You should check out his site at John Lunn's Basically Economics Blog.

There must be something in the RCA (Reformed Church in America) water there at Hope.

Don't Blame "Free Trade" for Losses of Sweet Jobs in Hershey, PA: Blame Sour Sugar Policy

Victor Claar's Economics Blog: Don't Blame "Free Trade" for Losses of Sweet Jobs in Hershey, PA: Blame Sour Sugar Policy

As a campaign-season article by Max Deveson for the BBC pointed out, unionized workers in Hershey, Pennsylvania blame free trade for the potential relocation of hundreds of jobs from dear sweet Hershey to Mexico. Their claim is that trade deals like NAFTA make it impossible for American workers to compete with cheap foreign labor.

Now, I am no apologist for massive, complicated, rent-seeking alleged "free trade" deals like NAFTA. In fact, I am quite sympathetic to arguments made by Joseph Stiglitz in Fair Trade for All that when the West brokers so-called "free trade" deals, they deliberately slant the global table to make things better for themselves, under the guise of helping the global poor. ...

... But the BBC article overlooks something very important. ...

Courtly Love in the Courts of God - Scot McKnight

Jesus Creed: Courtly Love in the Courts of God  Scot McKnight

... Friends of mine are speaking of the consumerization or commodification in the church. I offer a slightly different analysis of what might be the same thing: for many, Sunday services have become the experience of courtly love.  These folks love church, and what they mean by loving church is that they love the experience they get when they go to church. They prefer to attend the churches that foster the titillation of courtly-love worship.

They love worship, and by this they mean they love the courtly-love-like songs that extol the experience of loving Jesus or the experience of adoring God or the experience of singing long enough until their feelings are evoked or the experience of a concert-like praise team that can generate the sound of worship intensely enough to vibrate the very soul of the worshiper. Such folks might like sermons that create powerful contrasts between God's wrath and their sinfulness or stories told so well to usher them into the depths of human loves and hates and tragedies and comedies. What they like is the freshness of discovery or the flush of shame or the intoxicating sense of learning something new. They may create such a stir of silence in expectation of some great preacher or some great leader that the sheer presence of that person swoons their soul.
This is not worship.
  
My contention is rather simple: the shaping of a Sunday service or a worship event or a concert in order to generate a profound experience might emerge from a courtly love sense of worship. The expectation of such an experience on the part of the worshiper might also emerge from a courtly sense of worship. The opening of the Bible to read in search of an experience, or the entrance into a prayer time in order to rediscover some powerful emotion may also emerge from the intrusion of courtly love into how many today understand spirituality.

Let's call this was it is: spiritual eroticism and those who are good at it can be called spiritual erotics. ...

Ouch! But right on target.

Best of It: C. S. Lewis - The Christian Individual

[Series Index]

[Today we move into Part 2 of Making the Best of It by John Stackhouse. We will look at three twentieth century theologians Stackhouse considers resources for the recovery of Christian realism: C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He devotes about forty pages to each of these men. My aim is to extract some salient points and put them in one post. There is no way I can do his fascinating reviews justice, so you’ll need to get the book and read it.]

Chapter 2 – C. S. Lewis: The Christian Individual

Narrative

As a storyteller himself, one of the things Lewis tapped into was the narrative nature of the Bible … creation and fall, redemption, and consummation. Lewis used the narrative as an interpretive lens evaluating life.

Lewis believed that world was created good, but immature. There was a “nascent shalom” at Eden but the world is to evolve beyond that primitive state. The fall resulted in total depravity … not total in the sense of having become abjectly evil, but total in that it has touched every aspect of our being. Redemption in Christ includes salvation but Lewis seemed particularly attuned to sanctification; we die to ourselves and enter the process of taking on the image of Christ.

Culture

Stackhouse, quoting from an Essay, Christianity and Culture, writes:

“On the whole, the New Testament seemed, if not hostile, yet unmistakably cold to culture. I think we can still believe culture to be innocent after we have read the New Testament; I cannot see that we are encouraged to think it important.”

By “innocent,” Lewis seems to mean that it can still be seen as a good thing to be undertaken, rather intrinsically something evil to be avoided. (54)

Four reasons why culture can be a proper undertaking:

1. The need to earn a living.
2. Culture can be harmful, so “it is therefore probably better that the ranks of the ‘culture-sellers’ should include some Christians – as an antidote.”
3. Pleasure.
4. To awaken the unconverted to “something more” points toward the gospel. (54)

One of the key points Stackhouse makes about Lewis is that he has little to say about the church or society as whole. Quoting Lewis, “To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone, and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters.” (55) This was Lewis before he became a Christian but Stackhouse points out that little seems to have changed afterward.

Lewis generally saw the workplace, the economy, and societal institutions as cursed by stupidity and alienation. These institutions seem not to be his focus. From Good Work and Good Works:

The main practical task for most us is not to give the Big Men advice about how to end our fatal economy – we have none to give and they wouldn’t listen – but to consider how we can live within it as little hurt and degraded as possible. (56)

The application of Christian principles to various spheres of life was to come from Christians as they lived their vocations in those spheres. No grand agenda on issues of civil authority and civil obedience were forthcoming from Lewis.

In eschatological terms, Lewis did not embrace the dualistic notion of disembodied spirits as the ultimate destiny of humanity. Heaven is the place where things become more firm, thick, and vivid, not less so. There would be a new creation that would somehow be both continuous and radically discontinuous with our present reality … is not an unmaking but a remaking. Is something being remade or replaced? Stackhouse suggests that Lewis’ answer would have been, “yes.”

Lewis seems to have in view individuals on the path toward sanctification, “looking for the world to come, taking pleasure as he finds it, and contributing to the common good as he can.” (60)

This observation by Stackhouse was particularly insightful:

Inasmuch as the cumulative influence of Christians in society affects public institutions, however, Lewis’ concern was not to subvert public institutions nor to convert them to their final messianic state, but to revert them back to their traditional sources and purposes in God’s providence. In this view Lewis was truly a cultural conservative (and not merely reactionary or contrarian), not because he entertained any romantic view of the inherent goodness of society at some point in the past, but in the deep sense of one who continued to see the goodness and order of God over and in all earthly affairs. Lewis had not given up on the structures God has place in the world, and he believed that the Christian is to contribute as he can to any attempt to recover these healthful, helpful gifts. (60)

Later in the chapter Stackhouse concludes:

Thus he characterized contemporary culture as neither the apex of civilization’s advance (so the self-flattery of modernity) nor as the nadir of pseudo-sophisticated barbarism (so both the premodern critics). Lewis saw modern society as he saw all societies: as a mixed field, showing the fruit of worthy human efforts under Providence and also showing the fruit of evil human efforts aided by the Evil One. (69)

For Lewis, culture always demonstrates three elements in tension.

1. Culture is always plastic: we are always shaping it (as, to be sure, it shapes us), and it is not inexorable, permanent, or linear.
2. Culture always is also marked by the intransigence of evil and the active resistance of evil agents, human and diabolical.
3. Culture is yet under the providence of God, who has promised to redeem the whole world. Thus Lewis felt neither optimism nor pessimism was appropriate; rather, he advocated a realistic hope for both now and the future. (69)

Anti-City?

An interesting side note that Stackhouse picked up on that I’ve noticed as well is Lewis’ distaste for the city. In the Narnia Chronicles, London is a place to be escaped. All the cities mentioned are places of evil. In The Great Divorce, Hell is a city and Heaven is a countryside. Stackhouse wonders if Lewis need to reflect more on Heaven as the New Jerusalem.

What do you think?

There is so much more in this chapter but I’ll leave it here. What are your thoughts about Lewis’ “Christian individual?”

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It's Here!

Best of It: Revisiting Niebuhr's Typology

[Series Index]

Today we revisit the famous (for some, infamous) five part typology from Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture as summarized in John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It. Niebuhr claims that any of the following types can be appropriate in certain circumstances. They are presented in the order they appear in Niebuhr’s book:

Christ Against Culture – Christ is in opposition to culture and calls us into radical opposition. Anabaptists, as well as some fundamentalists and Pentecostal groups, are examples we might typically associate with this type.

Christ of Culture – Christ and his followers embrace culture because the culture has substantially embraced him. Stackhouse suggests that Puritan New England may have approximated this posture.

Stackhouse points that these first two types recognize no tension between Christ and culture. It is either total opposition or complete embrace. The remaining three recognize some tension between the two.

Christ Above Culture – Christ comes to Culture, which is a mixture of good and bad, to instruct and improve it through his church.  Thomas Aquinas was an exemplar of this model.

Christ in Paradox with Culture – Christ calls us to be citizens of two worlds. Contradictions are resolved according to some type of qualification, which Niebuhr never articulates. Stackhouse believes this to be the least developed of the types. This is often identified with Lutheran theology.

Christ Transforming Culture – Christ calls us to redeem the world by bearing witness to him and work for the transformation of individuals and institutions. Stackhouse identifies three modes of this.

1. Converting individuals, who then will act Christianly in all things, infiltrating and influencing all sectors of society and converting others in turn, thus leading to a cumulative transformation of culture. (29) (Billy Graham)
2. Constructing Christian institutions (whether schools, labor unions, news media, or political parties) as wholesome alternatives to the current options offered by other groups, in hope that they will become sufficiently attractive and influential that successive sectors of society will be transformed by their influence. (29) (Dutch neo-Calvinism)
3. Conquering existing institutions with legitimate power, such as taking over businesses by buying stock, taking over legislatures by winning elections, taking over media by producing superior creative products, and so on. (29) (Liberal Protestants, liberation theologians, the new religious right, Christian socialist, to name a few)

Stackhouse also notes that Christians who may be thoroughly against culture can either respond with separation or attempts to take over. Thus, the seeming slide, back and forth, between Christ Against and Christ Transforming by some fundamentalist groups.

Lessons from the Critics

Stackhouse identifies four criticisms that are usually leveled at the typology.

1.  Category Confusion – Some say when Niebuhr used “Christ,” he really meant “Christianity” or “the church.” “Culture” meant “the world” or “the dominant powers and ethos of society.” The terms need to be changed. Stackhouse writes:

I’m not sure they do, as long as we realize what Niebuhr is attempting with these categories. Niebuhr is discussing a kind of fundamental tension for the church: the tension between its fidelity to Christ (the ideal of Christian faith) and its posture toward the society from which the church is drawn and in which it must make its way. How, then, does the church best construe the relationship between those two elements? (31)

Related to this is the critique is the criticism that the Church cannot be conceived of apart from the culture. To which Stackhouse essentially responds, “well of course.” And Niebuhr, as a disciple of sociologist-theologian Ernst Troeltsch, certainly was aware of this. None of that seriously impacts the purpose for which the typology was employed; to highlight the ways we might resolve the Christ and culture tension.

2. Taxonomy doesn’t account for all possible hybrid types or nuances within types – Niebuhr did not create a taxonomy but a typology. There is an important difference. “A taxonomy is a classification of things as they are in all their specificity.” (32) A typology, in the social sciences, “… is a kind of pure intellectual construct, a setting out of logical possibilities in a situation.” (32) Each of these five is an ideal type … not “ideal” in the sense of desirability but in the sense of a pure idea that probably does not exist in reality. These pure types can be useful types in analyzing a real world variable(s) (i. e., tension between Christ and Culture) but they are not intended to be a taxonomy. Regrettably, some scholars (including sociologists who should know better) have not understood the difference.

3. Misapplication by Niebuhr of his own typology - Stackhouse suggests that Niebuhr actually slips into a taxonomical mode in his criticism of the Anabaptist, under the Christ Against Culture discussion, criticizing them for not being consistent with their opposition to culture. According to a typology, no one likely would fit a pure type. He criticizes no other examples in this way when discussing other types. Yet, in other places, Niebuhr notes that when you leave the realm of the hypothetical typology probably no individual or group corresponds perfectly with any one type.

4. Niebuhr sets up Christ Transforming Culture as normative – Stackhouse says that Niebuhr offers the least criticism of this option. It is the last type treated and many have noted how the book seems to build toward the conclusion that it is normative type. Possibly so, but this does not in itself negate the usefulness of the typology.

Stackhouse makes two more important observations. He notes that Niebuhr held that “different cultures can require different stances.” (38) But beyond that, Stackhouse writes:

“… not only can it be appropriate for Christians to take different stances on different aspects of the same culture, but it typically is appropriate. (38) For example, war is never God’s ideal, but within some Christian ethical traditions it may be justifiable. Possibly, one way the church gives witness is that some Christians participate in the war while the pacifist serves as an uneasy reminder that war is never God’s ideal.

Finally, Stackhouse says that his position, which he will lay out in the last half of the book, is probably best characterized as a hybrid of the Christ in Paradox and Christ Transforming.

There you have it. We begin Part 2 next week. What thoughts do you have?

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C. Wright's End of the World

Over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to coherently articulate my thoughts for some writing I want to do about the Kingdom of God and the New Creation at Christ’s consummation. Not being a professional theologian, and knowing what a vast minefield of issues are involved, I’ve approached this topic with considerable caution. (I’ve been told not to worry. Getting your eschatology wrong isn’t the end of the world.)

I recently read Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith. The question” What about the end of the world?” is the theme for the last three chapters of his book. What I found encouraging was that I have come to his conclusions on almost every critical point. That doesn’t make me right, or him right (though he is Wright), but it at least gives me hope that I haven’t wondered of the eschatological reservation.  Over the next several days I plan to devote four or five posts to his observations. I’ll say a little about Chapter 9 (Cranks and Controversies) and Chapter 10 (The Great Climax) and then spend more time with Chapter 11 (The New Beginning).

Chapter 9 (Cranks and Controversies) Eschatology addresses the seven last things:

• Death
• The intermediate state
• The return of Christ
• The resurrection of the dead
• The day of judgment
• Heaven
• Hell

Here are some important observations Wright makes:

“The Last Days” – In the New Testament, this phrase refers to the period from Christ’s first coming to his second.  As Scot McKnight convincingly points out in A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context, Jesus’ message was more closely tied Second Temple Judaism ideas of a restored and vindicated Israel then we typically perceive. Jesus presented himself as a messiah who would be vindicated within the lifetime of his contemporaries. That vindication came with the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., but the final judgment was not rendered at that time. This doesn’t make Jesus or his followers mistaken. The pattern in the Old Testament was for prophets to be given veiled knowledge of the next big event, not a chronology of God’s future plans. While the continuation of the church after 70 C. E. was unexpected (as was the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ death, Jesus’ bodily resurrection, etc.) it wasn’t contradictory. All that is to say that we’ve been in the last days for 2,000 years.

Millennium – While minimizing the importance of the concept of millennium, which is mentioned only in Revelation 20, Wright says he believes that the millennium is the period between Christ first and second coming (i. e., amillennial). It is the last days. Ditto for me.

Rapture – Sorry. The word isn’t in the Bible. The idea of souls snatched up into heaven out of the body, leaving the sinners behind isn’t there either. It is based on a serious misreading of one passage, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. The image here is of Christ coming from heaven to the clouds above the earth, where the dead, and then the living go up to meet him. The imagery is of a ruler visiting a town where the inhabitants go out to meet him and usher him into the town in glory. The imagery here is the dead and living ushering the ruler into their town on earth and acknowledging him as Lord. Remember that in Revelation 21, the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth.

Left Behind – A second passage that feeds into the rapture discussion is Matthew 24:40-41; the “left behind” passage. We want to be among those left behind! The analogy follows Jesus’ mention of Noah’s flood where those who were evil were swept away while the righteous were left behind. So too of the pairs Jesus mentions in this teaching. I’ll also add that I expect that what Jesus was speaking in reference to was the coming calamity of 70 C. E., not some distant event.

Land of Israel – The land of Israel is of no significance in the Christ’s return.

“The New Testament gives no special theological place to the land of Palestine, simply as territory. The land as a holy place has ceased to have relevance for Christians.” (168)

One of the essential New Testament metaphors is that the physical temple is no more and the church is a living temple with each of us as living stones. Israel, as a place, has lost significance. There are no more sacred buildings or sacred lands.

I’m sure I’ve included enough here to provoke some resistance. I think Wright nails it on each of these topics. How about you?

Next, Chapter 10, The Great Climax.

[Next]

Hobbits 'are a separate species'

BBC: Hobbits 'are a separate species'

Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.

The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping Homo sapiens.

They argue that the "Hobbits" are descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps Homo erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago. ...

Aha! So Indonesia was Middle Earth. Seems to me that if the scientists had read Tolkien they could have solved the mystery long ago. All they had to do was ask the trees.

The Long Voyage Home

New York Times: The Long Voyage Home (David Brooks)

Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.

But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order.

For example, in Ford’s 1946 movie, “My Darling Clementine,” Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, the marshal who tamed Tombstone. But the movie isn’t really about the gunfight and the lone bravery of a heroic man. It’s about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners.

The movie, in other words, is really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community. In Ford’s movie, as in real life, the story of Western settlement is the story of community-building. Instead of celebrating untrammeled freedom and the lone pioneer, Ford’s movies dwell affectionately on the social customs that Americans cherish — the gatherings at the local barbershop and the church social, the gossip with the cop and the bartender and the hotel clerk.

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order. ...

Preach it brother Brooks.

Residential Mover Rate in U.S. is Lowest Since Census Bureau Began Tracking in 1948

U. S. Census Bureau: Residential Mover Rate in U.S. is Lowest Since Census Bureau Began Tracking in 1948

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the national mover rate declined from 13.2 percent in 2007 to 11.9 percent in 2008 — the lowest rate since the bureau began tracking these data in 1948.

In 2008, 35.2 million people 1 year and older changed residences in the U.S. within the past year, representing a decrease from 38.7 million in 2007 and the smallest number of residents to move since 1962. ...

Best of It: Definitions

[Series Index]

To begin Chapter 1 of Making the Best of It, John Stackhouse lays out some important definitions.

Culture

Culture is the response we give to two “make” questions when think about a particular society:

• What do they make?
• What do they make of it?

As Martin Marty wrote, culture is, “everything humans do to, and make of, nature.” (14) So it is partly about the physical artifacts, but it is also about the meaning society gives to various actions. Niebuhr wrote:

Culture is the “artificial secondary environment” which man superimposes on the natural. (15)

Stackhouse wants to be sure we differentiate this understanding of culture from the idea of culture as “refined living” or “sophisticated tastes.” He also highlights that even in relatively small societies there is differentiation of groups within society and caution is needed when we talk about dominant culture in a pluralistic society. Stackhouse doesn’t get into the sociological distinction of culture and society (society being the community that has a culture), and says the two terms will be used almost interchangeably for this discussion.

World

Stackhouse points out that there is no word in either of the biblical languages translates as “culture.” “World” is a term that overlaps with our sense of culture but it is not identical.

Stackhouse reviews several Greek terms that are translated world. Some uses of kosmos probably come closest to what we mean by culture. It can mean “the whole of creation” or “the world of humankind,” or “the inhabited world.” In some contexts it clearly incorporates what we mean by culture. Uses of the term run the range of positive, negative, and neutral dispositions.

Church

Church can run have a broad range of meanings from sacred building, to congregation, to international denomination or the entire community saved by Jesus Christ. Stackhouse writes:

“…I will use the word in this central way: those who are committed as disciples of Jesus Christ and who band together as such. But sometimes I will mean simply the visible institution, the church as the society of those who nominally follow Jesus, however sincerely or insincerely they do so.  I trust that context will make the pertinent definition clear. (18)

Kingdom of God

In one sense, God is sovereign over all, so all creation is the Kingdom of God. But here we are talking about the sense in which it is so frequently meant in the New Testament. Concerning “Kingdom of God” in the synoptic gospels, Stackhouse writes:

The Kingdom of God is where, we might say, God’s ways are the way, and God’s rules are the rule. The Kingdom of God is where God’s judgment – which both assesses good and evil and restores them to their rightful places – has taken place, and shalom (peace, wholeness, and goodness) characterizes all things. The Kingdom of God is thus where God’s authority is joyfully embraced as legitimate and welcome. (19)

The reign of God is here but it has not reached its fullness, so in this sense he says the Kingdom of God is “already, but not yet.”

As we move into John and the rest of the New Testament, we see other euphemisms for the Kingdom of God. John speaks of “eternal life.” Paul tends to talk about “salvation.” Because the “Kingdom of God” imagery is deeply tied up with Jewish culture, gentiles would not have related to the term; thus the need for other depictions.

The Kingdom of God in this sense, therefore, means the coming of God’s salvation and the eternal life it brings – which is, indeed, experienced “already, but not yet,” by all those who put their trust in God, follow his ways, and look forward to his eventual renewal of all things. (20)

Church and the Kingdom of God

The church is not the Kingdom of God. Stackhouse points out that individuals and groups within the visible church do not always follow Jesus.  Some that may appear to be in Kingdom of God are not.  But then there are also those who we might not expect to be a part of the Kingdom of God who are a part:

Positively, in the view of many Christians (sometimes called “inclusivists”), there are people beyond the church who have put God first in their lives and are serving him as best they can. They have not heard the name of Jesus and thus have not joined the church as self-consciously Christian disciples. By God’s justifying and renewing grace, however, they have responded in faith to the Holy Spirit’s testimony in their hearts and to whatever revelation God has brought to them in their circumstances. Thus they enjoy genuine Kingdom life and are cooperating with God to reform the world according to God’s values, however seriously their outlook and experience are compromised by their lack of exposure to the gospel of Christ and their lack of contact with the church.

Furthermore, the influence of God’s Kingdom has been spreading, bit by bit, wherever individuals, groups, nations, and transnational realities have been influenced for the better. In our day, for example, the increased profile of universal human rights in national and international politics – with particular attention to women, children, and the poor (recognizing that women and children constitute most of the poor) – is an example of the spread of the influence of the Kingdom of God incognito, so to speak. It is obvious that the international order is far from Christian in its identity and conduct. In that crucial sense it is clearly not the Kingdom of God. Nonetheless, the Kingdom of God is partially and mixedly, but also really, present in the extension of these values into spheres previously not deeply shape by them. (21)

A final important distinction Stackhouse makes is that while there is considerable continuity with the Old Testament version of the Kingdom of God, there is also discontinuity as well, particularly in the political sphere.

The political dimensions of human life embodied in the Old Testament people of God are not directly manifest in the voluntary, spiritual community of the New.  Indeed, the church carries on these dimensions in the quite different mode of encouraging the state under which it lives and the broader society in which it lives to realize as many of the values of the Kingdom as they will – even as the church also reminds the state and the society at large they are not the Kingdom, but are only ever a deeply flawed and conflicted approximation of the city to come. (21)

My Thoughts:

I suspect some of Stackhouse’s definitions may be controversial with some of my readers, especially his thoughts on the Kingdom of God. The more I read about Second Temple Judaism, I’m inclined to think that Jesus had something not all that dissimilar to what the Jews had in mind in terms of a massive resurrection, Israel being restored to greatness, and the gentiles drawn into worshiping God. It is post resurrection that the Kingdom of God begins to take on new textures.  Some scholars I respect argue the Kingdom of God must be tied more specifically to the presence and action of actual communities intentional in their worship of God, and would not consider the development of certain  values and outcomes (like the emergence of human rights) to be an expression of the Kingdom of God. They see more of a one-to-one correspondence between “church” and “Kingdom of God.”

With some qualification, Stackhouse’s views correspond very closely to mine in these definitions. How about you?

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Emerging Markets Soar 47.6% Since Early March

Carpe Diem: Emerging Markets Soar 47.6% Since Early March

"The God I Don't Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith" - Review

 Two years ago I read Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative and it immediately went to the top of the list of the most important theology books I’ve ever read. Now comes The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections of the Tough Questions of Faith. It is a much shorter book tightly focused on four issues. While not nearly as panoramic as Mission of God it is a great book.

Wright acknowledges that there are some things in theology for which we simply have no complete answers. For whatever reasons, God has chosen not to make clear his motivations and purposes. There are eleven chapters addressing four questions of this kind:

1. What about evil and suffering?
2. What about the Canaanites?
3. What about the Cross?
4. What about the End of the World?

If you’ve never read Wright, he has an engaging readable style. He exhibits it here once again. I really appreciate the way he explores each issue, helping the reader to sort out what we know from scripture and what we don’t know.

All sections of the book are very well done but I particularly appreciated his observations about the end of the world, especially the last chapter on the “New Beginning.” This is one of the most coherent simple to read discussions of eschatology I’ve read. I liked it so much that on Thursday I’ll begin a short series of posts reviewing his ideas on this topic.

Wright makes a great contribution toward helping us come to grips with some of the most difficult theological questions, both for our own faith journey and for being able share our faith with others. I give this book my strongest endorsement.

(Note: One thing this book has me wondering. Christopher Wright references N. T. Wright in this book. Then he references another scholar named Nigel Wright. Is there some kind of Wright-wing conspiracy going on in England? :-) )

Springtime for US Economy Could Start This Month

Carpe Diem: Springtime for US Economy Could Start This Month

Took me a minute to figure this out but if you look at the red line in the chart, that is the current recession. It appears to have move passed its peak. With History as an indicator things should begin to improve in coming weeks and months.

Don't know if he is right but thought the graph looked really cool!

Making the Best of It - Introduction

[Series Index]

Today we begin a lengthy dialog with, Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World, by John Stackhouse.

Stackhouse reminds us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question, “Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today?” He reminds us that in all we do, we start with Christ. His identity and mission will constitute the heart of our identity and mission.

But Stackhouse says there is a corollary question that we must ask: “Who are we, for Jesus Christ Today?” Christian ethics is too often perceived in terms of morality, of right and wrong. Stackhouse writes:

Christian ethics, then, is not primarily about what to do rightly or wrongly, but fundamentally about what it is to be Christian in the world, what is proper to the profession and practice of Christian faith. Being Christian in the world is identity, a motive, an agenda, and a posture, all of which lead to action. (4)

Stackhouse quotes Glen Tinder:

I believe that the primary political requirement of Christianity is not a certain kind of society or a particular program of action but rather an attitude, a way of facing society and of undertaking programs of action. (4)

Stackhouse writes that this book is about answering this corollary to Bonhoeffer’s question.

Stackhouse says that he believes two models of Christian engagement with the world exist in North American, Europe, Australia and New Zealand:

Cultural Transformation

The aim is to reshape society according to Christian values. There are movements on both the left and right that take this view. Neo-Calvinism is one expression of this and thinkers like Dooyewood, Wollenhoven, and Rookmaaker would be representative. Roman Catholicism has had folks like Wiegel and Neuhaus. Stackhouse would include Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Liberation theology is another expression with Gutierrez and Cone being representative theologians. While Stackhouse doesn't mention them explicitly I would place the leadership of most mainline traditions in this camp.

Holy Distinctness

The aim is, “a definite Christian community living in contradistinction to the rest of society and thus offering the beneficial example and influence of an alternative way of life.” (6) There are a variety of sectarian and Pentecostal groups that take this view but the most traditional expressions would be the Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites. Then there are influential theologians like Yoder and Hauerwas. More recently there has been Radical Orthodoxy with Milbank as the leading voice.

Stackhouse finds neither of these responses adequate. Reflecting on H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture five part typology of cultural engagement, Stackhouse is going to draw on the “Christ in paradox with culture” type, though with some modification. Stackhouse notes that this was Niebuhr’s least well formulated type, but one that Stackhouse thinks is critical.

Stackhouse’s two types of engagement describe two halves of my life. The first half of my life I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene. Though the denomination has become less sectarian in recent years, it was considerably so when I was growing up. The denominational devotional guide when I was growing up was called (and maybe still is) “Come Ye Apart,” as in, come out of the world and live an exemplary life of holiness as a witness to the world. The denomination is a conservative off-shoot of Methodism

The second half of my life has been spent in the Presbyterian Church, USA, ground zero in the mainline cultural transformation movement. The politics (at least in the hierarchy) is decidedly left of center. Frankly, I find it hard to tell which is transforming which when it comes to the denomination and the culture. :-) Though many conservative reformed folks would not agree, the Presbyterian Church stands very much within Protestant reformed tradition which has transformational mindset.

In all frankness, I’ve never been (from my earliest memories) entirely at home with either of these options, though there are elements of both that have a strong ring of truth. What Stackhouse’s book does for me is give voice to the tension I’ve lived in all my life.

How about you? Do you have a “home” in these two approaches or are there others that speak to you? Do you agree with Stackhouse's notion Christian ethics?

Next we turn to Chapter 1, where we will lay out some important definitions and then quickly review Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture typology. That will complete Part 1 in the book. Part 2 of the book will look at the Christian realism of C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr (Richard’s brother), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Part 3, the last half of the book, will be Stackhouse’s analysis and reflection.

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Royals in 1st at the End of April?

A photo of the sky above Kansas City today.