Conference: Karl Barth in Dialogue

I'm late with this, as I've been mostly away from the blog this spring, but I still wanted to make sure people heard about it who may not have yet. The annual Karl Barth Conference this year is being held at Princeton Theological Seminary on June 16-19, with the theme of "Karl Barth in Dialogue: Encounters with Major Figures." You can register at the website here or contact those running the conference here. The lineup of speakers includes Nicholas Healy, George Hunsinger, D. Stephen Long, and Paul Molnar, among others. Thinkers put into conversation with Barth range from Catholics like Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar to Orthodox like Georges Florovsky and Sergei Bulgakov to the wildly diverse mix of James Cone, Joseph Ratzinger, Paul Tillich, T.F. Torrance, and Elizabeth Johnson. I'm sorry not to be able to make it myself, but I'm sure it's going to be a wonderful gathering.

Julian of Norwich on Avoiding Thoughts of Other People's Sins

"The soul that wants to be at peace must flee from thoughts of other people's sins as though from the pains of hell, begging God for a remedy and for help against it; for the consideration of other people's sins makes a sort of thick mist before the eyes of the soul, and during such times we cannot see the beauty of God unless we regard the sins with sorrow for those who commit them, with compassion and with a holy wish for God to help them; for if we do not do this the consideration of sins harms and distresses and hinders the soul."

—Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (trans. Elizabeth Spearing), ch. 76

Karl Rahner on the Words We Say in Prayer and the Single Word God Says in Return

"In the final analysis, talking about prayer doesn't matter; rather, only the words that we ourselves say to God. And one must say these words oneself.

"Oh, they can be quiet, poor, and diffident. They can rise up to God's heaven like silver doves from a happy heart, or they can be the inaudible flowing of bitter tears. They can be great and sublime like thunder that crashes in the high mountains, or diffident like the shy confession of a first love.

"If they only come from the heart. If they only might come from the heart. And if only the Spirit of God prays them together also. Then God hears them. Then he will forget none of these words. Then he will keep the words in his heart because one cannot forget the words of love.

"And then he will listen to us patiently, even blissfully, an entire life long until we are through talking, until we have spoken out our entire life. And then he will say one single word of love, but he is this word itself. And then our heart will stop beating at this word. For eternity.

"Don't we want to pray?"

—Karl Rahner, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer (cited in Kevin O'Brien, SJ, The Ignatian Adventure [Chicago: Loyola Press, 2011], 247)

John Calvin on the Universality of Love for the Neighbor

"Our Savior having shown, in the parable of the Samaritan (Luke 10:36), that the term neighbor comprehends the most remote stranger, there is no reason for limiting the precept of love to our own connections. I deny not that the closer the relation the more frequent our offices of kindness should be. For the condition of humanity requires that there be more duties in common between those who are more nearly connected by the ties of relationship, or friendship, or neighborhood. And this is done without any offense to God, by whose providence we are in a manner impelled to do it. But I say that the whole human race, without exception, are to be embraced with one feeling of charity: that here there is no distinction of Greek or Barbarian, worthy of unworthy, friend or foe, since all are to be viewed not in themselves, but in God. If we turn aside from this view, there is no wonder that we entangle ourselves in error. Wherefore, if we would hold the true course in love, our first step must be to turn our eyes not to man, the sight of whom might oftener produce hatred than love, but to God, who requires that the love which we bear to him be diffused among all mankind, so that our fundamental principle must ever be, Let a man be what he may, he is still to be loved, because God is loved."

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Henry Beveridge), Book II, 8.55

For the 10 Year Anniversary of the Beginning of the Iraq War: Wisdom from John Howard Yoder and Wendell Berry

"We have always been taught to understand the nature of power in society so as to expect that the way to get useful things done is to find a place at the command posts of the state. We have suggested already that the man in power is not as free or as strong as he assumes, that he is the prisoner of the friends and the promises he made in order to get into office. But an even more basic observation is that he is not at the place in society where the greatest contribution can be made. The creativity of the 'pilot project' or of the critic is more significant for a social change than is the coercive power which generalizes a new idea. Those who are at the 'top' of society are occupied largely with the routine tasks of keeping in position and keeping balance in society. The dominant group in any society is the one which provides its judges and lawyers, teachers and prelates -- their effort is largely committed to keeping things as they are. This busyness of rulers with routine gives an exceptional leverage to the creative minority, sometimes because it can up the scales between two power blocs and sometimes because it can pioneer a new idea. In every rapidly changing society a disproportionate share of leadership is carried by cultural, racial, and religious minorities.

"What is said here about the cultural strength of the numerical and social minority could just as well be said with regard to political strength. The freedom of the Christian, or of the church, from needing to invest his best effort or the effort of the Christian community, in obtaining the capacity to coerce others, and exercising and holding on to this power, is precisely the key to the creativity of the unique Christian mission in society. The rejection of violence appears to be social withdrawal if we assume that violence is the key to all that happens in society. But the logic shifts if we recognize that the number of locks that can be opened with the key of violence is very limited. The renunciation of coercive violence is the prerequisite of a genuinely social responsibility and to the exercise of those kinds of social power which are less self-defeating."

—John Howard Yoder, "Christ, the Hope of the World," in The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), 171-72

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Now you know the worst

By Wendell Berry

To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin

Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom: A Scriptural Manual for How to Be Killed

The most striking thing about Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom is not its otherworldliness, its openness to or even zest for dying, its idiosyncratic interpretation of Scripture, or its full-throated subordination of the body to the spirit (what a drag for souls to be saddled with bodies!). It is, rather, the dawning realization of what Origen is attempting to accomplish as the work slowly unfolds. Because Origen's Exhortation is nothing less than a biblical script for dying: a practical manual for Christians to be trained how to be murdered in public—and, moreover, how to do so in a way that is not shameful to Christ but faithful to his way. Origen views Scripture as typological all the way down; consequently, the words of the heroes, fathers, and forebears in the faith are there for the express purpose of contemporary appropriation. The Spirit has provides these for our use, so that we will know what to say when the time comes to die.

He therefore writes: "I pray that when you are at the gates of death, or rather of freedom, especially if tortures are brought . . ., you will use such words as these . . . [2 Macc. 6:30]" (Exhortation, XXII). Regarding the Maccabees, he says that "it would be appropriate for us, as well, in such circumstances to use their words . . . [2 Macc. 7:6]" (XXIII). Or when worries for one's family or children arise, with immediacy he urges: "Now have the words ready . . . [Matt. 10:37, 39]" (XXXVIII). Or perhaps one knows oneself to be "hated and abominated and considered impious"; in the event, "take up the saying . . . [John 15:19]" (XXXIX). Not only evil men but evil spirits may threaten, and in that case "let each one of you say when you smite [them] . . . [1 Cor. 9:26]" (XLVIII).

Scripture, in Origen's use, is a collection of various scenes and acts in the drama of God's victory over death through Christ. His advice to those who would be faithful μάρτυρες is simple: Know in your bones, through diligent and disciplined study, the trustworthy sayings of those who have come before; for when you, too, find yourself in similar dire straits, just the right words will come to you, and they will not fail.

Sunday Sabbath Poetry: Christian Wiman (II)

It's hard for me to believe that it's been more than a month since my last post, and really a full three months since my last substantive post—i.e., where I wrote something of my own rather than quoted or excerpted someone or something else. I'm not quite sure these days how to make time for writing in this forum, but I would like to make the attempt. In the meantime, here is another wonderful poem from Christian Wiman's extraordinary collection, Every Riven Thing.

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Hammer is the Prayer

By Christian Wiman

There is no consolation in the thought of God,
he said, slamming another nail

in another house another havoc had half-taken.
Grace is not consciousness, nor is it beyond.

To hell with remembrance, to hell with heaven,
hammer is the prayer of the poor and the dying.

And as wind in some lordless random comes to rest,
and all the disquieted dust within,

peace came to the hinterlands of our minds,
too remote to know, but peace nonetheless.

Brief Teaching Tips

Having recently finished his MDiv, my brother Garrett shared three teaching tips—for current as well as hopeful professors—that I thought were worth re-posting over here. The second one in particular is at once basic common sense and, naturally, the exact opposite of undergraduate and seminary practice in theological studies:

1. Do not orient a course to the student in the class with the least knowledge of the subject matter. Only one person learns when you do that. Rather, aim to challenge your most advanced students. That way, everyone should learn something.

2. Giving a theology student a book about how to think theologically or how to do theology is like giving 7th grade students a book about how to read fiction novels instead of putting To Kill a Mockingbird in their hands. To learn to read fiction, 7th graders need to read fiction. To learn to do theology, graduate students need to read and engage substantive theological proposals.

3. Give choices for reading assignments. I love when a professor offers three books on a subject and lets you decide which one to read depending on your personal interests. If students pick their books themselves (within your parameters), they are more likely to read and enjoy them. One idea I have thought about pertains to teaching a course on Church History. Instead of trying to give even treatment to Latin American, African, North American, European, and Asian Christianity in a general introductory textbook, let students select the geographic region that they are most interested in and read extensively on Christianity in that region. Of course, students will need some general introductory textbooks to read together and class lectures should give each region a fair shake, but allowing students to choose one of their textbooks will likely lead to deeper engagement of the readings.

Sunday Sabbath Poetry: Christian Wiman (I)

Upon hearing the recent, very happy news that renowned poet Christian Wiman has been hired to join the faculty at the Institute for Sacred Music at Yale Divinity School for (at least) a five-year appointment, I immediately ordered his most recent collection of poems, Every Riven Thing. It is at once bleak and hope-ridden, unflinching and delicate, formally exemplary and invitingly inventive. It is, in other words, as good as promised. I look forward to engaging his work (both poems and prose) further as time goes on, not to mention potentially in the classroom. I'm sure this will be but the first of many of his poems shared in this space. Enjoy.

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Small Prayer in a Hard Wind

By Christian Wiman

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds . . .

John Calvin on the Excuselessness of the Divine Command of Universal Love

"The Lord commands us to do 'good unto all men,' universally, a great part of whom, estimated according to their own merits, are very undeserving; but here the Scripture assists us with an excellent rule, when it inculcates, that we must not regard the intrinsic merit of men, but must consider the image of God in them, to which we owe all possible honour and love; but that this image is most carefully to be observed in them 'who are of the household of faith,' inasmuch as it is renewed and restored by the spirit of Christ. Whoever, therefore, is presented to you that needs your kind offices, you have no reason to refuse him your assistance.

"Say he is a stranger; yet the Lord has impressed on him a character which ought to be familiar to you; for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh. Say that he is contemptible and worthless; but the Lord shows him to be one whom he has deigned to grace with his own image. Say that you are obliged to him for no services; but God has made him, as it were, his substitute, to whom you acknowledge yourself to be under obligations for numerous and important benefits. Say that he is unworthy of your making the smallest exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, deserves your surrender of yourself and all that you possess.

"If he not only deserved no favour, but, on the contrary, has provoked you with injuries and insults,—even this is not just reason why you should cease to embrace him with your affection, and to perform to him the offices of love. He has deserved, you will say, very different treatment from me. But what has the Lord deserved? who, when he commands you to forgive all men their offences against you, certainly intends that they should be charged to himself."

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.7, cited in Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 77-78

Rowan Williams on the Sorts of Difficulty the Creed Does and Does Not Represent

"[I]f I say I've never found the creed difficult, I think that gives the wrong impression, but it does seem to me that the kind of difficulty that it represents is not the 'Is this true or isn't this true?' or 'That sounds silly' kind of difficulty, much more 'If this is true it needs a lot of hard work to understand it'—you know, the kind of difficulty that you face when you're trying to read Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic or something like that: the idea there must be something so important here if it's so difficult to get hold of. That, on the one hand, combined, I suppose, with a rather celebratory sense of the creed which has always been very important. I don't think it's entirely accidental or irrelevant to this . . . that I learned the creed by singing it. I don't imagine I'd ever encountered the Nicene Creed before I learned to sing it to Merbecke in All Saints', Oystermouth, and that means it becomes part of the idiom of worship, and you inhabit it in that way, not any other way, which is why, when I came to look at it critically or historically, I couldn't just turn off the music or the context."

—Rowan Williams, in Rupert Shortt, Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008), 56-57

Sunday Sabbath Poetry: Mary Oliver

I don't think I have ever shared a poem from Mary Oliver, whose work I have skimmed and stumbled across here and there, but never spent much time with. Happily, though, a family member gave us her latest collection of poems for Christmas, so I am making my way through it now. The poem below is, I think, a gentle and wry reminder for those of us who inhabit the social spheres of academy and church, each prone in its own way to an outstripping of its proper knowledges and of the mysteries which close them in. Enjoy.

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The Man Who Has Many Answers

By Mary Oliver

The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.

John Webster on What Preaching Is and What the Preacher Does in Preaching

"[E]ntrusted with and responsible for the message of reconciliation, what does the preacher do? It is tempting to think of the task of preaching as one in which the preacher struggles to 'make real' the divine message by arts of application and cultural interpretation, seeking rhetorical ways of establishing continuity between the Word and the present situation. Built into that correlational model of preaching (which is by no means the preserve of the liberal Christian tradition) are two assumptions: an assumption that the Word is essentially inert or absent from the present until introduced by the act of human proclamation, and an assumption that the present is part of another economy from that of which Scripture speaks. But in acting as the ambassador of the Word, the preacher enters a situation which already lies within the economy of reconciliation, in which the Word is antecedently present and active. The church of the apostles and the church now form a single reality, held together not by precarious acts of human realization, but by the continuity of God's purpose and active presence. The preacher, therefore, faces a situation in which the Word has already addressed and continues to address the church, and does not need somehow by homiletic exertions to generate and present the Word's meaningfulness. The preacher speaks on Christ's behalf; the question of whether Christ is himself present and effectual is one which—in the realm of the resurrection and exaltation of the Son—has already been settled and which the preacher can safely leave behind.

"Preaching is commissioned human speech in which God makes his appeal. It is public reiteration of the divine Word as it articulates itself in the words of the prophets and apostles, and by it the Holy Spirit forms the church. This public reiteration both arises within and returns to contemplative attention to the Word; the church preaches because it is a reading and a hearing community."

—John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 26

Leo the Great on the Birthday of Christ as the Birthday of Peace

"They then who are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God, must offer to the Father the unanimity of peace-loving sons, and all the members of adoption must meet in the first-begotten of the new creation, who came to do not his own will but his that sent him; inasmuch as the Father in his gracious favor has adopted as his heirs not those that are discordant nor those that are unlike him, but those that are in feeling and affection one. They that are remodeled after one pattern must have a spirit like the model.

"The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace: for thus says the apostle, 'he is our peace, who made both one; since whether we be Jew or Gentile, through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.' And it was this in particular that he taught his disciples before the day of his passion which he had of his own free-will foreordained, saying, 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave for you'; and lest under the general term the character of his peace should escape notice, he added, 'not as the world give I unto you.' The world, he says, has its friendships, and brings many that are apart into loving harmony. There are also minds which are equal in vices, and similarity of desires produces equality of affection. [Such] belong not to God's friendship but to this world's peace.

"But the peace of the spiritual and of catholics coming down from above and leading upwards refuses to hold communion with the lovers of the world, resists all obstacles and flies from pernicious pleasures to true joys, as the Lord says: 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also': that is, if what you love is below you will descend to the lowest depth: if what you love is above, you will reach the topmost height: there may the Spirit of peace lead and bring us, whose wishes and feeling are at one, and who are of one mind in faith and hope and in charity: since as many as are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God -- who reigns with the Son and Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen."

--Leo the Great, Sermon 26 (On the Feast of the Nativity VI)

A Response to the Immediate Politicizing of Yesterday's Tragedy

1. Yesterday's events in Newtown, Connecticut -- less than an hour northwest of where we live -- were an unspeakably horrific tragedy. It is not only difficult but impossible to put into human words the evil and misery wrought on an entire community and its families.

2. The United States undeniably has a gun problem. In their affection toward them, in their manufacturing of them, in their fetishization of them, in their absolutist attitudes towards ownership of them, in their inability to talk about them calmly and respectfully, in their catastrophically high death tolls at the hands of them: Americans have gun issues.

3. Yesterday's events were not the occasion to make Americans' gun problem the central topic of discussion. It is unseemly and distasteful that, while the blood of children was still drying inside an elementary school, "friends" on Facebook were lambasting one another for their politics on gun control.

4. Some say: "We are indeed politicizing this tragedy, and we are right to do so, because politics is life together and/or because politics is the way we stop such tragedies from happening again." While the intention behind this stance is commendable, it is shortsighted and unhelpful. In the U.S. context, to politicize something is to make it a means to some other end. And that is what these asinine and overwrought gun debates did: they instrumentalized the suffering of others for the sake of some greater goal or principle. That is, they made it about something else. But yesterday was not about something else. Yesterday was about the senseless deaths of human beings, most of whom were barely six years old, at the hands of a deranged man's wicked actions. Is it ever inappropriate to politicize such a thing? When the murders are still in process? When the death count is still rising? They were counting bodies of dead children yesterday while people argued on the internet about the second amendment. Do not defend this.

5. The unhesitating politicization of events like yesterday's does something else: it makes evil explainable. It says, "We know what the problem is here, and we know how to fix it. In fact, we've known all along -- this is just one more instance of a larger issue. Now, finally, let's get to it!" But we do not know what happened yesterday. An adult man apparently intentionally shot and killed over two dozen other human beings, mostly children. This is not intelligible. This is not comprehensible. It is absurd. It is evil. It is not a genus of a species (whether this be "evil things" or "mass murder shootings"); it is not an instance of a larger nameable phenomenon. It is entirely dumbfounding. It is speechlessly, unspeakably, astonishingly wrong. Language cannot encompass it. And when we rush to our laptops and smart phones to pronounce and link and debate -- again, while authorities are still transporting dead bodies out of an elementary school -- we make this evil speakable. It is not.

6. Christian friends and colleagues in particular are accountable here for certain rash and unwise aspects of their responses. One is this. It seems to me that there are two and only two things we can do in immediate response to events like yesterday's when we are not part of the local community experiencing it: pray or remain silent. How could we ever presume to have words appropriate to the situation -- words, that is, explaining or arguing or discussing or pronouncing or holding court or commentating or whatever? To speak in such a way is a temptation; silence is the better path. Let such an event reduce us to silence, not elicit hasty speech. Almost certainly the words that will come out will be bullshit.

7. Our only alternative, if we are to speak, is to pray. This need not be the glib half-baked theological commentary of all-knowing biblicists. It is simply our only recourse in a world where children are murdered and yet God is and the world is God's. Let us first pray for this world, in particular for the mothers and fathers, sister and brothers, neighbors and friends of the victims. (There are children who huddled in bathroom stalls yesterday praying that they would not be shot. There are children who saw their friends shot and killed. How, in God's name, does anyone have the gall to pick an ideological fight while these children are still on lockdown?)

8. If we cannot move our lips for intercession beyond the mere petition, "Lord, have mercy" (though this is indeed enough), or if we are angry and shattered and want to call for action and make this about something else, then let us turn to lament. Let us rain down our broken and uncomprehending words upon God; let us hold God to account; let us demand that God answer for how and why this could happen; let us bewail this absence of divine justice; let us follow the psalmist and wake God up to this nightmare. This is our recourse for our sorrow, for our damaged words. Not pontifications for others to read. Lament to God.

9. Bizarrely, I saw Christians consistently opposing action (or "politics") to prayer in their responses to yesterday's events. What does this mean? Prayer and action are not contraries, nor are prayer and politics. They are not competitive with each other. Time and again people were prioritizing action/politics over prayer. I truly can make no sense of this. Christians' politics is not other than their prayer; at its best, Christians' political engagement in service to their neighbors is one mode of their prayer. Moreover, it is a strange thing to give priority to "action" over against "prayer." This seems perilously close to giving priority to our acts over against God's acts, with the result of making yesterday's tragedy a problem to be solved rather than a loss to be suffered, lamented, grieved over.

10. In my judgment, what we saw yesterday on the part of Christians was a spiritual and therefore a political failure of patience. Prayer is the shape of Christians' patience when we do not know what to do, what we can or should do, what there is to do, or when there simply is nothing to do; instead of posturing, we throw ourselves on the mercy and judgment and grace of the One who is able to act with justice and wisdom, and will do so. Instead of patience, what we saw yesterday was the reflex of Christians (and Americans generally) who were reminded that they are not in control, and wanted to reassert that control. Friends, we are not in control. There are things we can do going forward, and we ought to do them. But this is not fixable. We are not in control.

11. Coinciding with the contrast of action to prayer is the prioritization of politics, specifically of national congressional politics. I am mystified by this. Not because it is bad -- there are surely enormous gains to be made in U.S. gun laws, and it would be an extraordinary achievement to lower American mortality rates due to gun use to a comparable level with other industrialized societies. But again, there is this strange, intractable faith in the U.S. political process. I do not see how this faith is different in substance from more conservative Christians' faith in the U.S. There is a by-God genuine conviction that, if only gun-lovers would agree to more reasonable laws, tragedies like yesterday's would simply cease to happen. Evils and horrors are thus politically resolvable. We just have to have the will -- and what better motivation than the slaughter of children to gin up some political will?

12. Those who have politicized yesterday's events do not -- I assume and trust -- come from such a crass and unloving place. But their speech is no less problematic for that, and for the reasons outlined, it would have been better to remain silent. There will be time for such things as they are (rightly) concerned about. There will be time for action. But we must learn the patience to grieve, to be still, to leave unexplained that which cannot be explained. For to explain evil is to normalize it; but yesterday was not normal, nor was it about something other than itself. Our responses should reflect that.

Sunday Sabbath Poetry: Charles Wesley (Advent #1)

My absence from the blog has been a sum of factors: wipeout from AAR (thanks to all who came!), hosting Thanksgiving, getting back in the swing of things, and -- ah yes -- a baby in the mix. But I love Advent season, and can at the very least share favorite hymns sung at church each Sunday. So here's the first. Blessings friends.

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Lo! He comes with clouds descending

By Charles Wesley (adapted from John Cennick)

Lo! He comes with clouds descending,
Once for favored sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending,
Swell the triumph of His train:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God appears on earth to reign.

Every eye shall now behold Him
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at naught and sold Him,
Pierced and nailed Him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.

Every island, sea, and mountain,
Heav’n and earth, shall flee away;
All who hate Him must, confounded,
Hear the trump proclaim the day:
Come to judgment! Come to judgment! Come to judgment!
Come to judgment! Come away!

Now redemption, long expected,
See in solemn pomp appear;
All His saints, by man rejected,
Now shall meet Him in the air:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
See the day of God appear!

Answer Thine own bride and Spirit,
Hasten, Lord, the general doom!
The new Heav’n and earth t’inherit,
Take Thy pining exiles home:
All creation, all creation, all creation,
Travails! groans! and bids Thee come!

The dear tokens of His passion
Still His dazzling body bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshipers;
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!

Yea, Amen! let all adore Thee,
High on Thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the power and glory,
Claim the kingdom for Thine own;
O come quickly! O come quickly! O come quickly!
Everlasting God, come down!

AAR/SBL: See You in Chicago

For some people in the field, the annual meeting of AAR/SBL is a stressor: presentations, meetings, interviews, schmoozing, being "on" without a break. The way I see it, it's a professional excuse to spend one weekend a year in the same place as friends who live in dozens of cities around the country, with the added bonus that, concurrently, there happen to be a few interesting papers being read about God. Also, the book room.

I haven't had time to look through the conference program, though others have already combed through and found some good sessions. As it happens, this is my first year to present; so for those interested, I'll be reading a paper on Monday, 1:00-3:30 (better known as "AAR prime time"), as part of the Christian Systematic Theology section on "Community and Hierarchy," with Gerard Loughlin presiding. The paper is titled "An Undefensive Presence: The Mission and Identity of the Church in Kathryn Tanner and John Howard Yoder." Naturally, it continues my habit of putting Yoder into conversation with every theologian ever.

I'm excited about this year's meeting, if only because I've never been to Chicago before. Feel free to mention in the comments your own presentation or other interesting ones. See you soon.

Robert Jenson on "original" versus "christological-ecclesial" readings of the Old Testament

"There is a growing consensus among biblical scholars who have some concern for the churchly relevance of their studies: indeed the church and her exegetes must somehow read the Old Testament as prophecy of the events the New Testament narrates and comments, as anticipation of the gospel. For an obvious fact becomes ever more irksome: if the Old Testament is first and foremost a record of ancient Israel's faith, it unsurprisingly turns out to be indeed just that, the artifact of a religious community that is other than the church, and moreover is not now extant. We will read the Old Testament from the New or we will not be able to read these texts as Scripture at all. This new agreement goes, however, little further. Somehow -- it is now often agreed -- we have to read the Old Testament christologically and pneumatologically. But even this repentant scholarship has left that 'somehow' undetermined.

"Scholarship's modern inability to resolve that 'somehow' results, I propose, from a certain distinction that we all tend to make, that indeed is so ingrained in our habits as to seem inevitable. When it is proposed that Old Testament texts have a christological or ecclesial sense, many biblical scholars will now agree, but this sense will then be anxiously and promptly contrasted with another sense which the texts are supposed to have 'in themselves' or 'originally' or 'for their own time.' The official exegetes will now not often simply brush off proposal of christological and ecclesial readings of the Old Testament. But they will still quickly say, 'On the other hand, we must not override their original sense' or something to that effect, and those of us who are not certified exegetes will more or less automatically concede the point. The trouble is: when reading Old Testament texts christologically or ecclesially is contrasted with another reading which is said to take them 'in themselves,' or in their 'original' sense, the churchly reading inevitably appears as an imposition on the texts, even if an allowable one. Christological or ecclesial readings will be tolerated for homiletical purposes, or for such faintly suspect enterprises as systematic theology, but are not quite the real thing.

"We need to question this all too automatic distinction. The place to start is by observing some obvious but generally overlooked hermeneutical facts: an author's intention or a community of first readers' reading is plainly not identical with the texts 'themselves' or with an 'original' import. Any author constantly interprets her own writing -- before, during, and after formulating text. We later readers are not the only ones with a particular hermeneutic and with resultant interpretations of the texts an author produces; the author has his own, and these are no more identical with the texts themselves than are ours. Moreover, first readers are just that and no more: they are not pure receivers of meaning but first readers, which is to say, the first readers to have a chance to impose their hermeneutical prejudices. Therefore, what is really on the table is not the church's christological-ecclesial reading and a reading of the texts in some original entity but the church's christological-ecclesial reading and the author's and first readers' equally problematic readings.

"So soon as we see that these are the readings to be considered, we are liberated to ask: Which of them grasps the texts 'in themselves' or as they are 'originally'? And the answer to that question is not necessarily that the author's or first readers' reading is original, not if there is someone in the pictures besides the author, the first readers and us. Not when the text is supposed to be Scripture, so that God the Spirit is in the picture. It was -- I now have come to see -- a function of the old doctrine of inspiration to trump the created author with prior agents, the Spirit and the Word, and to trump the alleged first readers with prior readers, with indeed the whole diachronic people of God, preserved as one people through time by that same Spirit. And then we may very well take the christological-ecclesial sense of an Old Testament text as precisely the 'original' sense, the sense which it has 'in itself,' if in the particular case we have grounds to suppose that the christological-ecclesiological sense responds to the intention and reception of this primary agent and these primary readers."

--Robert W. Jenson, On the Inspiration of Scripture (Delhi, NY: ALPB Books, 2012), 30-32

The Lure of Political Eschatology: On Remembering to Remember that the World is in God's Hands, Not the President's

Four years ago, I wrote a post bearing the same title as this one, which I offered as a gentle reminder for Christians who were overly anxious about the supposed disastrous state of affairs that would occur if one or the other presidential candidate were elected. Reading back through it, I realized that I need only replace "McCain" with "Romney," and the relevance of the piece would be entirely undiminished. It is both sad and unsurprising that this is so: Americans (and American Christians) spy a precipice lying behind every election, just waiting to swallow up the universe. Christians should know better. Read below for why.

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Following the presidential race this year (or any year), I've noticed an inevitable trend that peaks its head with marked regularity, but is especially noticeable this year. It is an offshoot of what I will call political eschatology: the ongoing, pervasive belief that the fate of the world (at the very least, the nation) hangs on the outcome of the presidential election.

And in reading political commentary on both sides, surveying bumper stickers, and listening to everyday people talk about the candidates, you might just buy into the fact that the world will fall apart if America does not make the right choice.

Into this situation and these assumptions, then, the church bears good, if difficult, news: the world does not depend on America for sustenance, provision, life, virtue, or need; for those things the world depends on God.

I realize for many Christians that statement may not seem like anything new; however, the way people -- often Christians -- speak about this election belies trust in anything other than the American political process to hold together the fragile state of the global situation. That is not to say that the election of Obama or McCain Romney would not entail profound differences, or that these differences are not serious enough to cause one to vote with hope one way or the other. Rather, in remembering both God's promise to not forsake his creation and his calling of a people to offer the world an alternative to its rebellion, Christians cannot give into the alluring temptation that any nation is the key to holding the world in balance. The church has a better name than keeping-chaos-at-bay for what God has given us in Jesus: shalom (Hebrew for "peace" or "wholeness"). And the shalom of the people of God cannot be left behind simply because we have forgotten to remember that in Jesus God has given us a gift greater than military strength, or democracy, or political freedom.

So let conservative Christians affirm: if Obama is elected, the world will not end. The economy will not self-destruct, terrorists will not overtake the government, the judiciary will not dissolve the rule of law.

And let liberal Christians affirm: if McCain Romney is elected, the world will not end. The poor will not be forgotten, nukes will not be launched at a moment's whim, a new global ice age will not be inaugurated.

For the truth is indeed good news (and let all Christians affirm!): in the cross of Jesus of Nazareth, the world did end. But in Christ's resurrection the world has been made anew, the shalom of God's Spirit has been breathed onto God's people, and the "end" which will come with Jesus's return will not be destruction and finality, but restoration and renewal, forgiveness and reconciliation, redemption and new creation.

This is good news, because we, the church, do not have to worry about what will happen come the first Tuesday of November, for we know that "the God who moves the sun and the stars is the same God who was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth," the crucified and resurrected one. That is, we know that neither Obama nor McCain Romney will put the world to rights, and neither can offer to the world the shalom of God.

And that is okay. But we will not do either candidate any good with messianic hope or eschatological doom. Instead, we must be patient -- that most important virtue of God's people -- and rest easy knowing that God is in control, and the President of the United States of America is not.

Predictions for the 2012-2013 NBA Season

Tomorrow is the first day of the NBA season, and as I do each year (see: 2009-2010; 2010-2011; 2011-2012), I offer my predictions below for the season: each team's win-loss record, which teams make the playoffs, and who wins it all. My picks this year are as boring as the season is likely to be exciting: namely, not a lot of surprises in terms of top and bottom, but a quality of play as high as anything we've seen in the league's history. I do think the Lakers' depth and chemistry are a problem, even if they are Finals-bound, and the Thunder doubtless made a mistake in trading away Harden for some unknown future (and to satisfy their own cheapness). As for the East, it's the Heat's conference (and year) to lose. Most important, the Spurs are never out of the hunt.

Now let's play some basketball.

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Western Conference
1. Oklahoma City Thunder (60-22)
2. Los Angeles Lakers (57-25)
3. Denver Nuggets (56-26)
4. San Antonio Spurs (54-28)
5. Los Angeles Clippers  (51-31)
6. Utah Jazz (50-32)
7. Memphis Grizzlies (48-34)
8. Dallas Mavericks (45-37)

9. Minnesota Timberwolves (42-40)
10. New Orleans Hornets (38-44)
11. Portland Trailblazers (35-47)
12. Houston Rockets (33-49)
13. Golden State Warriors (29-53)
14. Sacramento Kings (23-59)
15. Phoenix Suns (18-64)

Eastern Conference
1. Miami Heat (66-16)
2. Boston Celtics (56-26)
3. Chicago Bulls (52-30)
4. New York Knicks (51-31)
5. Indiana Pacers (50-32)
6. Atlanta Hawks (49-33)
7. Brooklyn Nets (47-35)
8. Philadelphia 76ers (45-37)

9. Detroit Pistons (42-40)
10. Cleveland Cavaliers (37-45)
11. Washington Wizards (30-52)
12. Milwaukee Bucks (22-60)
13. Toronto Raptors (19-63)
14. Orlando Magic (15-67)
15. Charlotte Bobcats (10-72)

Western Conference First Round
Oklahoma City Thunder (1) over Dallas Mavericks (8) in 5 games
Los Angeles Lakers (2) over Memphis Grizzlies (7) in 6 games
Denver Nuggets (3) over Utah Jazz (6) in 6 games
San Antonio Spurs (4) over Los Angeles Clippers (5) in 5 games

Eastern Conference First Round
Miami Heat (1) over Philadelphia 76ers (8) in 4 games
Boston Celtics (2) over Brooklyn Nets (7) in 6 games 
Atlanta Hawks (6) over Chicago Bulls (3) in 7 games
Indiana Pacers (5) over New York Knicks (4) in 6 games

Western Conference Semifinals 
San Antonio Spurs (4) over Oklahoma City Thunder (1) in 7 games
Los Angeles Lakers (2) over Denver Nuggets (3) in 6 games

Eastern Conference Semifinals
Miami Heat (1) over Indiana Pacers (5) in 5 games
Boston Celtics (2) over Atlanta Hawks (6) in 6 games

Western Conference FinalsLos Angeles Lakers (2) over San Antonio Spurs (4) in 6 games

Eastern Conference Finals
Miami Heat (1) over Boston Celtics (2) in 7 games

NBA Finals
Miami Heat (1) over Los Angeles Lakers (2) in 7 games