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Church, Nationalism, and Christ the King

22/12/2012
Church & Culture, Kingdom of God
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christ_the_kingMany Christmas songs celebrate the coming of Christ the King – but what does such a kingship mean?

In the Christianity Today article Worship Christ the Newborn King, David Neff uses Pius XI’s Quas Primas to discusses the ever-complex relationship between Church, State, and the Lordship of Christ .

“‘the Church, founded by Christ as a perfect society, has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state; and that in fulfilling the task committed to her by God of teaching, ruling, and guiding to eternal bliss those who belong to the kingdom of Christ, she cannot be subject to any external power.’ [Pope Pius XI, 1925]

…Pius was disturbed by nationalism, and so are we whenever nationalist impulses trump the good of all people or loyalty to the international fellowship of Christian believers. In his day Italian, Spanish, and German nationalisms were all asserted at the expense of the church. When love of country is infused with a quasi-religious devotion, it threatens both the freedoms of citizens and the security of neighboring countries. The universal kingship of Christ supersedes our nation’s claims on our loyalties.”

The pope’s approach errs towards triumphalism, too much “already” and too little “not yet,” but his concern with nationalism and the danger of the Church placing the lordship of the State (or an ideology) over the lordship of Christ would seem to be as relevant today as it was in 1925.

Tradition, Catholicity, and Postmodernism: Excerpts from The Fall of Interpretation

06/10/2012
Books and Reading, Church & Culture, Hermeneutics, Philosophy, Theology
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I’m making my way through Jamie Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation, and thought I’d share some of the more thought-provoking quotes thus far.

On realizing all readings of Scripture are “traditioned:”

“I had been inducted into a tradition that didn’t think of itself as a tradition – indeed, I had been steeped in a hermeneutical tradition that regularly decried “the traditions of men” and thus championed a “back to the Bible” primitivism that took itself to be a reading rather than an interpretation of Scripture. In sum, I had been unwittingly and covertly initiated into what I describe below as a “hermeneutics of immediacy,” which, of course, does not think of it is a hermeneutic at all…

As you might imagined I felt somewhat duped, as do many who emerge from fundamentalisms that have effectivly hidden aspects of reality. Once those aspects of reality are discovered (or, in this case, once it’s discovered that “reality” is always already mediated), it’s hard not to ask: What were you trying to hide?”

On postmodern catholicity:

“there are two ways of being postfoundationalist: emergent or catholic. The former, I have argued, remains haunted by the ghost of immediacy and thus can never quite be comfortable with the particularities of a hermeneutic tradition in all of its specificity. The latter, in contrast, is a postcritical affirmation of the particularity of the “catholic” orthodoxy of the Nicene tradition, and of even more specific renditions of that (such as Reformed or Anglican or Pentecostal streams as particular interpretive traditions within catholic Christianity).

Both are postfundamentalist stances, but the former – still haunted by the modern dream – tends toward a liberal trajectory as the only other option within the modern paradigm, whereas the latter “catholic” option is postliberal precisely insofar as it refuses to be haunted by the modern myth of immediacy. Thus I have argued that the “catholic” option is actually more persistently postmodern.”

Deeper Church – The Beauty of Orthodoxy

10/09/2012
Church & Culture, Deeper Church, Theology
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There have been some exciting changes at Deeper Story recently, including a new design and its expansion into three unique channels – Deeper Story, Deeper Family, and Deeper Church. I decided it would be the best fit for me to join the team at Deeper Church.

For my first post on this new channel I decided to write about The Beauty of Orthodoxy, partly inspired by all the Hauerwas I’ve been reading lately. Below is an excerpt, and you can read the rest here.

“I find theological orthodoxy to be profoundly beautiful.

Those are not, perhaps, the first words that comes to mind for many of us when we hear the word “orthodoxy.”

Orthodoxy has often been characterized as dry and stale, stuffy old men repressing new and creative thinking. But in fact, it is nothing of the sort, although it has taken me time to appreciate that. Quite a bit longer than it should have I’m sure.

Orthodoxy, true Christian orthodoxy, could never be dry – even less could it be a power play or weapon of rhetoric, though it often has been twisted to such purposes.”

Cruciform Politics

03/09/2012
Church & Culture, Cross, Cruciform, Politics, Theology
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To say “Jesus is Lord,” is to claim to be part of a new community shaped by loving the enemy, caring for the least of these, and following Christ in the way of the cross – such a claim is inherently loaded with political ramifications.

What concerns me – no, concerns is too detached of a word – what saddens me, is that those central claims of the Christian faith seem to have so little to do with the political discussions among my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially as the election draws ever closer.

I have grown deeply weary of having political conversations in which professing Christians end up having all the same hopes and fears, friends and enemies, talking points and easy answers as their party of choice.

I hear people speak and I do not hear Christ but simply Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Tea Party, Capitalist, or Marxist ideology baptized in religious language. As if the Gospel does not call every ideology to account, as if the kingdom of God can so conveniently fit into the political creeds of the world,

Of course it can if Christianity is merely about a private inward spirituality that makes us into better people. That is the sort of Christianity that our politicians are happy to pander to every four years, before sorting out the real business of running the world amongst themselves.

Claiming that God is on your side (be that Left or Right) is easy, and a cheap way to get votes. But as Karl Barth warned us, claiming God is on our side is also an assertion of power that always involves the rejection of exactly that “God” who Christians claim to worship. After all, the power of that God looked very different than the power asserted by our favorite political ideologies, it looked instead like the death of Christ of a cross.

My fear is that we in the Western church are far too prone to allow our political presuppositions to shape how we understand our faith and encounter the Word of God, rather than our cruciform faith reshaping our political vision.

James K.A. Smith – How (Not) To Be Worldly

24/08/2012
Church & Culture, Theology
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Jamie Smith has a new article in Christianity Today titled “How (Not) To Be Worldly“. Brilliant as usual, and well worth a read as we reflect on how we might best live the Christian life in what Augustine termed “the earthly city.”

“The phrase “earthly city” is an ancient one, but you won’t find it in Scripture. (That’s not a problem in itself; the word Trinity isn’t in Scripture either.) The phrase comes down to us from Augustine’s magisterial work of cultural criticism, The City of God (civitas Dei, completed around 427 A.D.). In this work, Augustine distinguishes the “City of God” from what he variously describes as “the city of this world,” the “earthly city,” and the City of Man. These two cities or societies or “peoples” are marked by the standards by which they live: the earthly city lives by the standard of the flesh, whereas the City of God lives by the Spirit (14.1-4). What ultimately distinguishes the two are their loves: “We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self” (14.28).

For Augustine, then, the earthly city begins with the Fall, not with creation. The earthly city is not coincident with creation; it originates with sin. This is why Augustine sets the City of God in opposition to the earthly city: they are defined and animated by fundamentally different loves. So the earthly city should not be confused with the merely “temporal” city or the material world. It is not identical to the territory of creation; rather, for Augustine, the earthly city is a systemic—and disordered—configuration of creaturely life. However, this does not mean that Augustine cedes material, cultural, creaturely life entirely to the evil one. The City of God is not just otherworldly: the City of God is that “society” of people—that civitas—who are called to embody a foretaste of the social and cultural life that God desires for this world.”

You can read the rest here.

An Evening with Peter Rollins

10/08/2012
Church & Culture, Doubt, Emergent / Emerging, Faith, Peter Rollins, Pyrotheology
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Speaking of Emergence Christianity…

Earlier this year a few friends of mine helped initiate the first Spring Conference of Cornerstone’s Society for Philosophy, Thinking Christianity in the Present-Tense: The Politics of Discipleship.

As an excellent pre-event to the conference, they pulled some strings and secured Peter Rollins to come in to speak at Cornerstone for an evening, and the video of that event is now available.

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