Category: theology

Christ, Who Fills Everything in Every Way

This past Sunday I preached on Ephesians 4:4-16.  I wanted to draw attention to two themes in the book.  First is the abundance of language about abundance.  Believers are filled with riches, power and wealth.  Second, this is set within the context of the body of Christ which (who) fills all things.  A broad theme in my recent reading is on the notion of capitalism as that body which currently (and rapidly) seeks to fill everything.  From last Sunday’s sermon,

The basis of economic growth is of course to make more money.  This requires more resources to make products and more markets in which to sell them, and ideally cheaper labour by which to make the products.  Consider how coorporations scour the entire globe in search of resources and labour.  Consider the manner in which resources that arguably should be public are increasingly coming under the umbrella of private coorporations.  The issue of access to water comes readily to mind; the patenting of seeds for agriculture is another.  Think of ever expanding marketing we face.  Children are marketed, lifestyles are marketed, environmentalism is marketed, health and beauty, relationships, status; the list could go on forever.  The public space for gathering is now the food court surrounded by the constant refrain of the mall to consume.  High-interest money-lenders are popping up everywhere taking more money (and security) than they will ever give.  The market of money knows no limit to its desire to bring everything under its control.

Borrowing heavily from Philip Goodchild I then went on talk about how the financial crisis exposes both the power and the fragility of contemporary capitalism.  Even governments submit to its whims.  Though the ‘limits’ of contemporary capitalism are also becoming more apparent (increase in material costs).  In this way capitalism forms a mocking portrayal of an expanding and universal body which we participate in.

Also, borrowing heavily on Goodchild, I turned to the role of attention as a primary indicator of piety (whether ‘secular’ piety of religious).  To what then does the body of Christ call our attention to?  Here I returned to the Ephesians text and drew attention to what had seemed like a strange insertion for me.

[E]ach of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”  (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) Eph 4:7-10

Here I drew attention to Christ’s descent.  The primary movement for the body of Christ is one of descent.  It is after this movement that ascension occurs, captivity is held captive and gifts are released.  Therefore our attention is turned to the descent.  I described this as attention to suffering and vulnerability.

This is the paradox of the body of Christ.  That in turning our attention to the vulnerability and suffering within and around us we enter in the joy of God’s grace; in feeling bound and helpless by the scope of suffering Christ binds bondage and frees us with his gifts of grace.  We are called to draw near to that strange place where we face each other, where crying and laughing become almost indistinguishable. [I thought of the description of the Cairo protests as by one participant as a ‘wedding feast’]

I had a relatively strong reaction to this sermon both positive and negative.  I ran into one group after the service vigorously discussing the implications of the sermon.  I also ran into other individuals who felt that the message was too ambiguous and loosely connected.  This sermon was part of a small series on ‘lay’ leadership.  In this way I suppose I could (or should) have been a little more ‘practical’.  However, I could not shake the notion that practicality in the church has typically meant ‘plugging into’ existing programs that are often ‘unplugged’ from pressing issues.  While the Mennonite church may have a slightly better track-record in this regard my hope is that ‘abstract’ sermons like this one can eventually build a new framework for church expression.

Introduction to Louis Riel and His Philosophical Theology

[Update: For those who may be interested in following this I have included a link to these posts in the ‘Translation Projects’ tab.]

Louis Riel was a Metis Canadian born in 1884 near Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada.  He was the leader of two resistance movements that attempted to preserve Metis rights in the face of the expanding Canadian government in the East.  I do not pretend to be a Riel expert nor do I consider myself particularly knowledgeable of the political context for the expansion of Canada.  However, I do know the following;

Louis Riel is a controversial figure.  He has been described as a hero, revolutionary, lunatic, self-proclaimed messiah and traitor.  Louis Riel was a deeply religious man.  Louis Riel attempted to promote an alternative politics in the face of the monopolizing government and Hudson’s Bay Trading Company.  In the process he established a provisional government in Manitoba in opposition to the Canadian government in the East.  Riel continued this pursuit in the face of extreme resistance.  Riel received capital punishment for his actions.  Riel is part of my local history.

This scant information has provided enough motivation to seek out his writings to find if there are any explicitly theological tracts.  In his Collected Works I have come across a short section that includes fragments he called a ‘philosophical theology’ in French.  So far as I know these are untranslated.

While there is a book on Riel as a religious man, Louis ‘David’ Riel: Prophet of the New World, there is no substantial study of his theology in relation to his politics in English.  There is one work in French that I hope to eventually give some attention.  This is Gilles Martel’s, Le messianisme de Louis Riel.

My intention is to slowly offer his Système philosophico-théologique in translation (it is only 12 pages of fragments).  I have no idea what this pursuit might offer but it seems helpful to at least render more of Riel’s French writing into English.  It also seems helpful to look over these writings (in addition to his occasional writing relevant to his theology) with a more thoroughgoing theological attention than has been given.

Controlled Irony

I finished Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony yesterday.  While the majority of the text worked through Socrates thoroughgoing negativity the final section looked at “Irony After Fichte.”  This was essentially a commentary on Romanticism.  I think I missed something in this section.  While Kierkegaard was not entirely critical of this expression he also did not view this movement as either reflecting or going beyond Socrates.  In browsing over what I underlined I saw what might be a paradigmatic statement at the start of the section;

It was in Kant, to call to mind only what is generally known, that modern speculative thought, feeling itself mature and come of age, became tired of the guardianship in which it had lived hitherto under dogmatism and, like the prodigal son, went to its father and demanded that he divide and share the inheritance with it.  The outcome of this division of the inheritance is well known, and also that speculation did not have to go abroad in order to squander its resources, because there was no wealth to be found.  The more the I in criticism became absorbed in contemplation of the I, the leaner and leaner the I became, until it ended with becoming a ghost. (272)

Turning then to Fichte he talks about how he “infinitized the I in I-I. . . . But this infinity of thought in Fichte is, like all Fichte’s infinity, negative infinity, an infinity in there is no finitude, an infinity without any content” (273).  I don’t entirely understand why K. becomes more critical of this ongoing need of irony to ‘free itself’ (he was hardly critical of Socrates in this regard).  The criticism comes, it seems, on the shift towards making everything myth as a disingenuous mode of irony (contra Socrates); a sort of unfair play by irony to keep its thinking free.  This [Romantic] ironist ‘poetically composes’ but is not ‘poetically composed’.  This would require a limiting within actuality.  There is no content for the Romantic and transitions are nothing.  “At times he is a god, at times a grain of sand” (284).  So while Romanticism offered a cool breeze its tragedy is that “what it seizes upon is not actuality” (304).

So at the end of his 35o page dissertation he offers a brief 5 page conclusion, “Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony.”  Here he treads carefully along the contentious line relating the life of the poet to the poetic work.  K. agrees that the poet’s life is no concern of ours.  “But in the present undertaking it should not be out of place to point out the misrelation that can often exist in this respect” (325).  I am still not quite sure what that sentence means.  As an example he points to Goethe.  “The reason Goethe’s poet-existence was so great was that he was able to make his poet-life congruous with actuality.  But that in turn takes irony, but, please note, controlled irony” (325).  K. accuses the Romantic of being incongruous with his work.  The point here seems to be that poetry is nothing if it does affect lives . . . and should it not affect the poet above all!  K. continues making the intriguing statement “what doubt is to science, irony is to personal life” (326).

As I am re-reading this short conclusion I am realizing that it is much more suggestive than I first realized.  I think I will end it here for now and spend a little more time working directly through his conclusion.

I am also almost finished the 100 pages of notes Kierkegaard took on the lecture series he attended by Schelling.  It is a supplement added to the Princeton series . . . I kinda of wish it wasn’t.  I doubt I will post anything on it.

Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony – Mid-Point Reflections

I have to say that The Concept of Irony has been a pleasant surprise.  It has provided a sorely needed introduction to Socrates.  Kierkegaard’s continual engagement with Hegel has also been helpful.  Surprisingly this engagement is primarily positive.  Hegel is an authoritative source to which Kierkegaard consistently appeals.

The method of Socrates is a thorough-going negativity.  All is clearing away, nothing is planted or established.  Kierkegaard reflects on the role of Socrates’ daimon as enabling a shift away from both state and religious control.  The daimon is not to be equated with consciousness but is a sort of necessary shift for the possibility of individuality.  Instead of state law or religious oracle there is now an internal / external authority.

Instead of the oracle, Socrates now has his daimon.  The daimonian in this case now lies in the transition from the oracle’s external relation to the individual to the complete inwardness of freedom and, as still being in this transition, is a subject for representation.  [citing Hegel] . . . “The daimon is not Socrates himself, nor his opinion, nor his conviction, but it is something unconscious; Socrates is impelled.” (163-164)

What is important for Kierkegaard is that the daimon only warns.  It, again, offers no positive content.  It remains negative.  Socrates brings nothing but silence and space, the vanishing point.  This is irony.

[Socrates’] whole position, therefore, rounds itself off in the infinite negativity that turns out to be negative in relations to both a previous and a subsequent development, although in another sense it is positive in both relations – that is, infinitely ambiguous.  Against the established order of things, substantial life of the state, his whole life was a protest. (218)

With regard to morality the good then becomes the process of becoming and not arriving.

There are clear and strong seeds and outlines here of what Kierkegaard will take up in later writings.  What interests me will be how and if he explicitly addresses his move away from Hegel and beyond Socrates (in Christ).  He seems to maintain the role of negativity.  There is high view of clearing away and creating space and yet joined to that is the possibility of the ‘leap’ which seems to allow for positivity that is not trapped in a Platonic or Hegelian idealism.  This text is far more invigorating than I expected.

I have an unusually high amount of free time this weekend so hopefully I can finish off this volume shortly.

A Faithful Life?

I notice a tension between a substantive conception or articulation of a faithful life on the one hand and its entirely contextual and unexpressable nature on the other.  The notion of the substantial reality of faith is most often employed as a negative presence.  This is why my life is not faithful.  The most common refrain being that I live in the midst of and am embedded in powers and principalities that benefit the few at the cost of the many.  In Yoderian language I cannot say that I live independently of these powers.  Therefore my life is not faithful. But I can look to the ungraspable notion of grace and hope in apocalyptic action (of which I seek and participate).  So maybe my life is not faithful but God is faithful.  I am internally in contradiction.  I live in tension.  I would argue, though, that this tension is not a creative dialectic but a binding and entangling cord.  It is only a negativity.  Perhaps a negativity that will serve a purpose or has a place but it is a negativity nonetheless.

I think of a family I know.  She works and receives an increasingly rare middle-class salary.  They have bought a modest house in a ‘bad’ but developing neighbourhood.  He suffers from mental illness and requires stability but is still unable to work.  They have a young girl who he cares for.  This is not a dramatic home (well I cannot attest for everything that goes on there) but also not an easy life.  They discuss and strive for faithful choices in daily life.  I would characterize this house as faithful in the sense that Jean Vanier speaks of when he refers to enough stability for healing and growth and enough chaos and uncertainty to keep life open.

My life is not much different.  But I struggle some days even to conceive of their life as faithful never mind my own.  Negativity can always appeal to a lower (or higher) denominator.  This is binding, indebting and imprisoning.  It is not Gospel.  But I don’t know another way forward.  Is this process I am in necessary . . . is it helpful?  What would freedom mean?  Can I enact that freedom (who will rescue me from this body of death . . . )

Am I stuck in morality?  Do I need to move beyond good and evil as they say?  There is not enough nuance in the world to account for its complexity, at least in terms of possibility.  Who then is the righteous fool?  Who is the faithful one?

The Potency of Life

What, then, is the potency of life?  A life, a singular life, a life that dies in the event, a fragile life that does not live in time and cannot be evaluated in terms of money – a life that necessarily dies in its incarnations. . . . Throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers have elevated bizarre idols to obscure this transcendental field. . . . the situation is hardly improved when one throws out the transcendent, allowing capital and time to become impersonal grounds of evaluation and thought.  Life is controlled by that which does not live.  All manner of tyrants and idols have been worshipped as supreme values, as dogmatic images of thought, or as transcendentals – philosophy is superstitious, all too superstitious.

All it requires is for thought to consider a transcendental persona, to show a little care for a dying rogue, to try resuscitation once more, to breathe a little life into ‘this dank carcass,’ ‘this flabby lump of mortality’, for thought to lend ‘a hand, a heart, and a soul’.  For, in modern life, this dying rogue is no one but ourselves, and the transcendental persona of thought is our doctor.  Life is immanence, ‘the most intimate within thought’, yet it is also transcendence, ‘an outside more distant than any external world because it is an inside deeper than any internal world.’ So often the concepts of immanence and transcendence are opposed to each other, as if one could be thought without the other.  Nevertheless, the criteria for absolute immanence and absolute transcendence are the same: they consist in removing all pretenders from the role of the absolute.  Transcendence only has a relation to this world in immanence; immanence only constitutes this world in transcendence. [emphasis mine]

– Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion, 166.

The Concept of Irony – A Constructive Position?

I am still trying to outline the contours of SK’s initial approach to the Socratic method.  In relation to Christianity SK views Platonism as a negative to Christianity’s positive.

On the one hand, in Christianity that which is to be died to is understood in its positivity as sin, as  a realm that all too convincingly proclaims its validity to everyone who languishes under its laws; on the other hand, that which is to be born and is to arise is understood just as positively.  In the intellectual dying to [Platonism], that which is to be died to is something indifferent; that which is to grow during this dying to is something abstract. . . . The one says that we should refrain from unwholesome food, control desire, and then good health will come; the other says that we are to stop eating and drinking, and then one can have the hope of gradually becoming nothing.  Thus we see that the Greek is more of a rigorist than the Christian, but therefore this view is also untrue. (76-77)

I have mixed feelings about this basic distinction.  On the one hand it lends itself towards instrumentalizing Christianity.  But on the other hand it demands that Christianity remain articulated and engaged in the level of materiality.  I cannot imagine this will be SK’s unqualified word on the matter but I thought I would throw it up to keep a point of orientation.

As I read along a little further I wonder if irony in the Platonic (or Socratic) context informs that space in which the necessity and the nothingness of death are affirmed.  Kierkegaard writes,

In my view, that well-known epitaph by Wessel, “At last he could not be bothered to live,” contains irony’s perception of death.

And then he continues,

But he who dies because he cannot be bothered to live certainly would not wish for a new life either, since that would indeed be a contradiction.  Obviously the languor that desires death in this sense is a snobbish sickness found only in the highest social circles and in its perfectly unalloyed state is just as great as the enthusiasm that sees in death the transfiguration of life.  Ordinary human life moves drowsily and vaguely between these two poles.  Irony is healthiness insofar as it rescues the soul from the snares of relativity; it is a sickness insofar as it cannot bear the absolute except in the form of nothing, but this sickness is an endemic disease that only a few individuals catch and from which fewer recover (77-78). [emphasis mine]

Preaching Existentially?

I am noting a consistent trend in my preaching.  I am targeting the individual.  This comes in part from my own experience and formation in existentialism but also in my experience of the Mennonite church in which it is easy for individuals to point to our good works in social supports and non-violent initiatives.  And then when the individual is called to account it is typically with some moral leveraging around what else we could be doing.

The approach I am taking seeks a type of honesty that is divorced from being identified as a criteria of truth.  I am not sure where I equated honesty with truth . . . is that a cultural thing?  But, rather, I am seeking honesty as an attempt at congruence and liberation.  I am trying to push my congruence to simply acknowledge the way things are.  This is not a statement about access to some neutral body of truth but of observations.  Observations could include things like money and economic security as constituting our primary mode of personal decision making.  Observations like acknowledging the power of status and conformity within the church.  There are many observations that need to be made as such.  Subsequent qualifications can follow but I believe many of them can initially stand.  Secondly, I am trying to divorce this from the typical and almost immediate shift to guilt and/or shame.  The reason for this is not because we are not guilty of things or that certain expressions could not be considered shameful.  Rather, I want to move away from them because they are debilitating.  I want us to get a sense that we are in many ways already ‘living a lie’ so why don’t we name it as such.  In this I want the pursuit of congruence to lead towards a liberating experience and liberating expressions.

As part of being honest with myself in this process I must admit that with respect to liberation I hold to some view of ‘enlightenment’.  This does not refer to an isolated inner-journey but again of a sort of honesty that manifests itself in congruence with action, experience and belief.  This is partially informing my conception of faith in which anchors to various modes of knowledge and decision are exposed.  While I hold a high view of material liberation as it is being expressed in many contemporary theologies I cannot shake the notion that there is a prior act and experience of liberation.  I would consider the Gospel insufficient if it cannot offer liberation to those suffering under material bondage.  That is, I believe there is liberation without immediate material liberation.  This does not mean that the two are not divorced.  Rather it takes Jesus as an example in the liberating independence he exhibits despite the fact that his life arcs towards material bondage.  So while full liberation is always to be engaged and on the table this does not deny that individuals cannot already enter into forms of liberation.  For those with material forms of power at their disposal congruence will mean acting in accord with liberation; which means oppression as incongruent with liberation.

All of this is to say that I believe in a personally engaged form of faith that works intimately with if not perhaps prior to structural changes.  So I will continue to support those working on a structural level (and hope to add my own contributions) but given my primary influence in preaching this remains a fundamental orientation.  I hope to continue to push my own ‘honesty’ in this expression.  Currently I am actively monitoring the extent to which my sermon preparation reflects a safety with respect to my own economic stability.  I believe that this influence is waning but I would also admit that it is still probably the strongest external influence.  I could interpret this as a structural flaw (that is churches that can dictate whether or not they want to keep a pastor) but I am not interested in engaging it on that level (presently).  It would seem that it would be helpful situation for a church to have to reject and even fire a pastor on the basis of his or her preaching.  In any event I am working on liberating myself from economic security in my preaching.

Thoughts or criticisms of this homiletic theology?

Born Not of a Husband’s Will

This Sunday I will be preaching John 1:1-18 . . . well were could I possibly go with that?  I took the opportunity to begin with the only joke I can remember which which is Zizek’s Lacanian joke about the man who believed he was a grain.

A man had been seeing a psychiatrist for some time.  The problem it seems was that he kept believing he was a grain of seed.  He and the psychiatrist worked on this issue for some time.  They made slow progress until one day both he and the psychiatrist were sure that the problem solved.  The man no longer believed he was a grain of seed.  The two shook hands and parted encouraged by what was possible.  The man left the office onto the street and a few seconds later returned in fear and panic.  Obviously concerned the psychiatrist asked what was wrong.  The man said that there was a chicken standing right outside the office door.  The psychiatrist responded, “Remember you are not a grain of seed.”  The man replied, “I know that, but how I can be sure the chicken does?”

From here I moved to what seemed like the obvious parallel.

Continue reading “Born Not of a Husband’s Will” →

On My Arc Away From Liturgy

I left an annoying comment on Tony’s recent post about liturgy.  His post briefly explores the possibility of the Church Year as offering the foundation for an ‘irregular dogmatics’.  My comment was simply stating that I wish I could comment because at present the notion and validity of the Church Year and its structural liturgy is, at present, in upheaval.  I thought I might try and trace my thought trajectory so that I can see where it might be heading.

As I alluded to my last post I have been preaching Romans for Advent.  Paul, having little to say about the historical Jesus at the best of times, has no Christmas story.  There appears to be no value in recounting Jesus’s birth for the sake of churches he worked with.  This led to a sort of paradigm shift which began to view liturgical practices not so much as rhythms of resistance but as abstractions displacing what should be existentially integrated (did that make sense?).  So we set baby Jesus outside of us as opposed to attending to the blood, shit and pain that comes with childbirth.

This thinking was further crystallized by a comment Chris Rodkey made on a somewhat unrelated post at AUFS.  He states,

One thing I have been thinking about as I am constructing an outline for a collaborative project a colleague and I are gearing up to write together is Jacob Taubes’ critique of Christianity in his book Occidental Eschatology. Essentially my appropriation is this: The liturgical calendar and liturgical time prevents any sense of Parousia. [emphasis mine]

Perhaps I could be convinced that present liturgies are simply parodies but it hardly makes a difference.  The point is the manner in which our lives are presently and existentially engaged.  As it turns out Dan seemed to push my thinking even further with his recent post.  He writes,

This is the season of Advent and some of my friends are writing pretty words about this time of waiting, hope, anticipation and proleptic action.  They are saying the sort of thing I used to say not too long ago.  As for me, I am tired of waiting and tired of being a good little fellow and “waiting well.”  With all due respect to my friends, I say fuck that noise.  If there is a God out there, and that God is lingering, deciding to postpone an intervention, then I think the only way to wait is to act as if God is not coming or to try and force the coming of God.  Instead of finding ways to make our peace with our godforsakenness we should absolutely refuse to accept it.  Anything is better than that acceptance.  Better to risk everything on the wager that God cares enough to intervene (although that usually doesn’t work out well) than to sit back and make peace with this.  Better to spit at the back of God if that is what will bring God to act.  Besides, it is actions like these, and only actions like these, that actually take God seriously.  Anything else in the context of abandonment is either a pale imitation of worship or idolatry.

I am not quite sure how to take this.  At present I read it as a Psalm which is fully truthful if not entirely complete (is that an insult Dan?).  This leads me to my present reading in Philip Goodchild’s Capitalism and Religion.  Goodchild looks at Henri Bergson’s work on time and freedom.  Bergson critiques ‘measured’ or ‘counted’ time.  Goodchild writes,

For synchronization to occur, real time must be replaced by an abstraction which has eliminated the essential quality of time – change.  Measurable, homogeneous time is an abstraction where nothing takes place.  In countable time, the living is measured in so far as it conforms to the behaviour of inanimate clocks. (105)

In brief, the representation of reality in both science and metaphysics is a commodification, replacing the thing with a quantifiable symbol fashioned for the purpose of exchange.

Bergson’s alternative is to place reason within the temporal process itself. . . . The experience of thinking replaces the object of thought.  Freedom must be encountered in the experience of thinking before it can become the object of thought. (107)

The question this raises is the extent to which liturgical practices actually undermine, overthrow or replace dominant social modes (empire, capitalism, etc.).  Or do they simply fall prey the near omnipotent work of commodification?  Does a flash mob singing the hallelujah chorus in a food court do anything more than make people feel good about their shopping experience?  Even the cultural liturgist Jaime Smith thinks not (I have not read his Desiring the Kingdom). (I also can’t help but cringe at Winnipeg’s attempt to piggy-back on this . . . apparently the press was there waiting for it ‘to happen’)

So that is a bit of the arch.  I still retain theological convictions of doxology as a sort of foundation for practice but as for present form of church liturgy I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied.  The issue remains the extent to which the acts and the structures produce abstractions or commodities that keep one from encountering and entering into the Gospel.  What is my alternative?  At present it is little more than an increasingly social form of (or socially aware) existentialism.  Or to be more naive . . . a biblical faith.  Hopefully, more to come.