Category: ecclesiology

A sign of contradiction

I am beginning to wonder about a fairly fundamental orientation of the church.  The church has largely understood and accepted the role of being or bringing Christ to the world.  I do not want to rehearse the misguided ways that the church has understood this mission, namely through colonial disbursement.  It is not hard to understand how people can come to the conclusion that contemporary global capitalism is an extension of an earlier theology.  In both practices there is a message of hope that is articulated by the saved/wealthy and in both cases the message never seems to play out as being truly good news for the pagan/poor.

I came across a sort of ominous foreshadowing of this orientation to the church’s message in The Epistle to Diognetus (2nd century).  In upholding love of neighbour the author of this text states,

[H]e who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive [his benefits]: he is an imitator of God.

Now to be sure the early church was not in the same position as it was to rise to in the 4th century but the logic of disbursement is already elevated to a strong paternalistic even divine tone.  While we are uncomfortable with saying that we ‘become a god’ in this imitation, that is essentially what we are saying theologically when we talk about imitating Christ, isn’t it?

In any event, this Sunday I preached on the presentation of Jesus in the Temple in Luke 2.  This is a story of reception, of receiving the Messiah.  And how does Simeon the priest receive Jesus?

Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
29     “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
30     for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32     a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
A beautiful image hope and peace but then Simeon turns to Mary and says,
This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed (sign of contradiction) so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.
Here are a few excerpts from the tail end of my sermon.
So what does it mean to receive Jesus as a sign of contradiction?  I did a bit of research on this phrase and found that the Catholic Church has an entire doctrine based around it.  This doctrine holds that the church is to be a sign of contradiction; that the church in its holiness it will be rejected or opposed.  There is an element of this doctrine that I can appreciate.  I believe that to live out the vision of the Gospel will lead to contradiction and opposition in the world.  But as I understand it there is a destructive assumption at work in this expression.  The assumption is that it is the church the has the privileged knowledge of how Jesus becomes present in the world.  This doctrine assumes that it is no longer the church that needs to receive the sign of contradiction.  In trying to hold this doctrine the church itself can actually become immune to the presence of Christ.  . . . When you believe that your way of life has a privileged or even exclusive access to ultimate human truth then it will be near impossible to receive a sign of contradiction; you control the rules of the games and determine the value of those around you.
. . .

The church, and particularly the Mennonite church, has elevated the call to discipleship, the call of being like Jesus in the world.  Mennonites have fought theological wars over this matter.  When other churches focused simply on the death and resurrection of Jesus, or the centrality of Communion the Mennonites demanded that we also give attention to Jesus life, how he taught, what he did, how he treated people.  But where is the theology that asks how we might receive the presence of God precisely from outside our theology and our expression?  How does our theology and our practice prepare us to receive something that contradicts our theology and our practice?

. . .

Our tradition affirms that the church is the body of Christ and yet Christ must remain fugitive.  Already as a child in the Gospels Jesus flees to Egypt after Joseph received a vision of Herod’s plot to kill Jesus.  The French activist and philosopher Simone Weil is quoted as saying, “We must always be ready to change sides, like justice, the eternal fugitive from the camp of the victors.”  We cannot secure the place of Christ, but we can hope to receive Christ.  Our vision remains universal because there is no place we will not seek this Christ.  Our theology and practice remains fragmented because we are never so Christ-like that we cannot receive again this child, this man, this saviour, this God.  Our theology and our faith is only as healthy as it is able to receive from outside of its expression.  I am wondering if we have made a fundamental error in our basic understanding of the church’s mission.  We go out not to bring the message of Christ.  We go out to receive it, to encounter the fugitive.

I am not exactly breaking new theological ground and I am not claiming to overturn any notion of having content or a message of some sort.  I do however sense that there is still a horrendous imbalance in how churches continue to view themselves as fortresses of divine truth.  And this line of thinking has helped me to challenge a basic Mennonite goal of discipleship.  While discipleship has always been problematic I have not heard it addressed from the basic shift from giving to receiving Christ.
Thoughts?

I Object!

From a recent Globe and Mail article,

What attracts native-born Canadians to church these days, says religion sociologist David Seljak of St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ont., is the availability of parking, quality of preaching and children’s programs, in that order.

I object!  I know from direct anecdotal evidence that children’s programs ranks higher in drawing attendance than quality of preaching.  As a minister of the Gospel I am deeply offended by this accusation.

The Gift of Difference – Part II – Review of the Parts

In Part I I addressed some of the shortfalls of the overall project while affirming what was perhaps the inevitable ‘shortfall’ of  the two dialogue camps.  Putting aside any larger intentions of this collection the chapters themselves maintained a steady offering of what it means to “to be differently ethical and differently political” (5) without falling into prescribed and caricatured notions of ‘purist’ or ‘compromised’ faith. I will touch on a number of the chapters but offer more sustained engagement with the chapters by York and Dula.

The first two chapters highlight the movements, tensions and unresolved thinking represented within the book.  In chapter one Peter Blum draws out a Derridean account of a metaphysics of violence as actually offering a greater possibility of peaceful practice as opposed to Milbank’s ontology of peace which, with Derrida, also assumes the inevitability of violence in the present and so its discerning use on the part of the Church for the purpose of peace (for more on Blum see here).  Then in chapter two the positions are flipped as Kevin Derksen accepts Milbank’s critique of Derrida and illustrates it in showing that even in offering our death (Derrida’s Gift of Death) this act “paradoxically reinscribes itself as the moment of purest ownership” (31).  In light of the resurrection even the sacrifice of life must discerned and not given in its ethical value.  This critique is then leveled against certain Mennonite accounts which seem to make peace a stable category from which other theological claims can be made.  These chapters set the tone for the book.  This will not be for or against the two traditions but simply difference, engaged and explored.

Tripp York’s “The Ballad of John and Anneken” was the most clear and straightforward account posing the simple question, “Does [Milbank] deliver an account of witness that is capable of producing witnesses” (53)?  York questions Milbank’s discriminate use of violence as simply re-framing the often used ‘myth of redemptive violence.’  York calls for a rise in ‘witnesses’ if Milbank’s work is to gain any lasting traction.  Where even is the witness of the life of Jesus in his account?  Where are the stories that flow from and reflect his ontology?  York introduces the witness of Anneken Heyndricks from the Martyrs’ Mirror.  Anneken was to be burned at the stake for heresy.  At her questioning she did not recant though neither did she curse those around her but blessed and gave thanks.  York says, “such a story represents the faithful who, rather than accepting tragedy by conceding its viability, absorb tragedy as Christ-absorbed evil” (64).  It does not pass through her life onto others but ends with her though she does not end, as the resurrection promises.  York then asks how Milbank might respond with such an account and then adds with some bite, “Were [the civil and ecclesial authorities] not practicing dominium, and, therefore, both extending and preserving the social harmony for the good of the commonwealth” (64-65)?  And further with, well, a little more than bite, “Though Milbank is not here talking about ecumenical disagreements, as charitable as I would like to be, I fear Milbank’s theology would have easily been placed in the service of ecclesiastical forces that would have resulted in a number of writers in this volume, had they lived centuries ago, being burned at the stake” (65).  Snap.

New for me was Peter Dula’s account of “Fugitive Ecclesia” that develops Sheldon Wolin’s Fugitive Democracy.  It is worth citing Dula’s initial quote of Wolin in full,

I shall take the political to be an expression of the idea that a free society composed of diversities can nonetheless enjoy moments of commonality when, through public deliberations, collective power is used to promote or protect the well being of the collectivity.  Politics refers to the legitimized public contestation, primarily by organized and unequal social powers, over access to the resources available to the public authorities of the collectivity.  Politics is continuous, ceaseless, and endless.  In contrast, the political is episodic, rare (104).

I take the political expressed here to be those ‘moments’ when motivated, intentional figures also have the stars align allowing for something to happen.  “[T]heir power sprang from grassroots . . . they were not political actors coming together but individuals formed into political actors through their common deliberation” (105).  The question Dula asks is whether the church as it is conceived in theologians such as Milbank, Hauerwas, Bell, Cavanaugh, and Yoder is actually best described as a type of ‘fugitive ecclesial,’  that is a church that for the most part does not actually exist as it is called but for moments does exist as such.  If this is the case why are they not more up front about it and what then does this mean for the church in the mean time if in fact the church remains episodic, rare?  It seems necessary for these theologians to travel back to some pure conception and expression of the church while remaining at the point of despair with regards to the contemporary western church.  This leads to the further question of whether or not there is some external some actual alternative to the structure of late-modern capitalism (or whatever else our state might be characterized as).  Is there any longer space for the political in the midst of our current ongoing politics?  The prospects, as Dula sees them, are not particularly hopeful.  He offers six.

  • We can accept a fugitive ecclesial and “celebrate the moments of fugitivity rather than mourn that that is all there is” (124).
  • We can turn to being more ‘realistic’ acknowledging that our condition robs ‘us of some possibilities of faithfulness” (124).
  • We can, with Barth, relieve the church of so much responsibility and place it on Christ making ecclesial defenselessness possible.
  • We can, with Hauerwas, acknowledge that we lack necessary skills and remain blinded to what we are called to, but hopeful that we can perhaps learn.
  • We can become more open to what is going on outside of the church.  “If it is true that we need to try harder, then outsiders may be able to teach us how” (126).

The sixth option appears to be Dula’s own offering,

[F]ugitive ecclesia could also create the space for a renewed attention to friendship.  If the church is as rare as these theologians think, then all their reflections on the church, while important, also make room for greater attention to pairs instead of communities.  We may even want to revive the long discredited epithet ‘organized religion.’  It may suggest all we can hope for is the occasional intimacy of two or three (127).

This is an intriguing offering.  It at once calls up the criticism of those fighting to change the structure but the question becomes whether this offering is from those who have been worked through the structure and understand it as perhaps one of the only alternatives left, and a theologically faithful one at that.

I will not continue reviewing each chapter at such length.  The former chapters (especially York and Dula) strike me as the most suggestive and also, potentially, the most constructive.  That being said many of the other articles offer helpful nuance to long established debates.  Such is the case with Long’s article “Desire and Theological Politics.”  Long argues that violence is as much about the desire for non-violence as it is about greed or power.  In addition to suppressing violent acts pacifism has also tended to suppress the desire that may have motivated the act, a desire that may indeed have been godly.  And I will leave it up to someone more qualified to engage with Pauls’ chapter “Harmony in Exile: Rest in its Embers” which uses Berio’s sequenza IV (for piano, 1996) as a mode of understanding Radical Orthodoxy’s theological and liturgical aesthetic.  The language in this chapter was highly evocative but slightly too technical in musical theory for me to fully grasp the force and implications of her work.

As I stated in part I this book is not constructing some theological or ecclesial project.  It is however engaging in a hopeful practice.  It is a practice that does not believe one’s tradition has the corner on a given expression, or even fully understands said expression.  It is a practice that believes that learning may in fact be possible across traditions even if that learning means that you maintain or strengthen your opposition to another tradition.  It is also a practice that has no interest in overcoming another tradition through rhetorical force but allows expressions to have their own say and persuasion.  I would conclude that these are good practices for our time and place.