If you were to ask most people, they would say that there are two different ways of looking at the world, one based on faith and the other based on reason and evidence. Some would say that an individual could embrace both of these systems, using faith to understand the world in religious contexts, but using reason and evidence in scientific contexts. Others would privilege one system or the other, either saying that faith has to take precedence over anything that reason might have to say or vice versa. What is interesting to observe is that Christians and non-Christians, atheists and agnostics and people of all persuasions seem to agree with this assessment. Faith (including the Christian faith) deals with a realm where human reason cannot enter the picture. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment worldview (primarily found in the sciences but not solely there) prides itself as founded on reason alone and eschews anything that might smack of faith.
And yet this is a completely inaccurate assessment. It is true that in the West there are two primary intellectual systems: that of Christianity and that of the Enlightenment. (By the Enlightenment I mean not merely the Aufklärung of the eighteenth century but the various intellectual currents that flow from it; postmodernism, for example, is not a return to a pre-modern worldview but is a continuation as well as a modification and a rejection of the modernism derived from the Aufklärung and is unthinkable without it.) Although they are not the only intellectual systems present in our country and both contain a wide variety of thought not always in perfect harmony, they do represent two rather distinct ways of looking at the universe. But people err when they assume that only one is based on faith and only the other uses reason and evidence.
In truth, both Christianity and the Enlightenment proceed from premises that must be accepted by faith, even as they both believe that there are strong arguments for accepting their own premises. Christianity teaches the existence of God and His intervention in history. It has throughout the centuries made rational arguments as to why this is so, but it has also understood that ultimately one either accepts the premise or one doesn’t. Similarly, the Enlightenment proceeds from the notion that the material universe is all that is knowable and therefore is all that exists. Moreover, it believes that anything we want to learn about this material universe can be learned by empirical observation. And while this may seem a reasonable observation, it is one that cannot be proven empirically. One has to assume by faith that we do not live in a solipsistic world or in a universe where the senses deceive us or where nature is not always consistent. Now we may argue over the axioms upon which we rely, but ultimately they either are accepted by faith or are not.
Those premises, once accepted, determine the way that the system of thought will develop. The Enlightenment, founded on a belief in materialism and empiricism, will then use the evidence found by empirical observation exclusively to determine what will be part of its teaching and what will not. But Christianity too proceeds in an analogous manner. The Christian faith starts with the belief that God exists, that mankind in its current state is tainted by original sin, that God intervened in human history through the death and resurrection of Christ, and that the Scriptures record this revelation. A Christian theologian worthy of the title will try to conserve the data of Scripture, much as an Enlightenment thinker will try to craft an interpretation that best explains all the empirical data. Most of us are familiar with the process used by scientists, but fail to recognize that Christian theologians follow a similar process. They are not crafting ideas out of whole cloth, but are logically following the methodology drawn from their premises and are trying to preserve all of their data. The difference is that their methodology sends them to the Scriptures as the most reliable source of information, while those of the Enlightenment would look at the empirical data of the latest experiment. The Enlightenment might criticize Christians for failing to restrict themselves to material observation, but Christians would argue in reply that the Enlightenment is irrational by limiting itself to only the material realm.
There is much more to say about these two major intellectual systems, but suffice it to say that the Enlightenment view is no less based on faith than Christianity is and that Christianity is no less methodical and rational in the way that it teaches the faith.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Discerning the Will of God
In July a parishioner emailed me a series of questions about discerning the will of God. I emailed him back and he thought the answers were helpful. With my permission he shared the answers with his friends and urged me to give the answers a broader distribution. Since I haven’t blogged for a while, I thought this might make a good topic for a blog, especially since we all face moments in life when we have to make major choices. With his permission I am posting most of my reply to him, with a little editing to make it more applicable to a general audience.
Often when making a decision, we want to know that God is approving of it. Hence we want to know exactly what God has to say about it. But how can we discern God’s voice from the clamor all around us? We begin then by asking the question: Is it normal to “feel” God? If so, can you describe the feeling? One temptation that many Christians face is to equate God (or an encounter with Him) with a particular feeling. But God isn’t a feeling—any more than human beings are. There is no one consistent feeling that you have whenever you talk with your mom or dad or any other person. Of course, there is often a feeling of love when I talk with loved ones or with God, and that is to be expected. But that is not always the feeling, since there are sometimes other emotions that are more appropriate—guilt, anger, confusion, and the like. If you read the Psalms, you see the wide variety of emotions that people have when they dealt with God. Moreover, we have to understand that God does not always manifest Himself and certainly not in the fullness of His glory; even Moses wasn’t allowed to see God’s face. In addition, it often seems that the more one advances spiritually, the less one senses God, as is often expressed by the psalmists, who complain that God has abandoned them when they had been faithful to Him. Theologians have noted that God appeared to Moses as a bright light in a burning bush in his first encounter, but in later encounters he went under a dark cloud; so at first believers seem to sense God’s presence easily, but He seems more withdrawn as we progress. Of course, God seems more absent (not that He is) so that we can learn to trust His Word rather than our feelings or outward manifestations.
How do we, as Christians (faithful or trying to be) listen to God to try and understand His plan? Read the Scriptures. God has already given you a whole book revealing Himself and His attitudes. Somehow or another, though, we think that that isn’t enough. We want Him to say more. But He has already given an outline of the moral law in the Ten Commandments and further explained them in the Sermon on the Mount. He has revealed the gospel by which we have new life. The gospel is God’s eternal Word to us; it is the only means by which we have eternal life. Why would we seek something beyond it? Of course, God hasn’t spoken about every detail in our life because He does allow us great freedom. Let me illustrate with this example. Let’s say that you have a vehicle and the money to keep it gassed up. You are told that you can drive on any paved road as long as you obey the traffic signs. Within those parameters, however, you can drive wherever you want to. In the same way you have the gospel, which like a car empowers you to go wherever you want to. The only restrictions are laid down by the law, which tells you where you may not go and what restrictions you have to observe. But just as I could choose to drive to the Smokies or to the Rockies or stay in the Midwest, so I have the freedom to do all sorts of things as long as I do not violate God’s law as summarized in the commandments. Now I may have to use my common sense to ask myself whether I should go to the mountains or stay in the Midwest; likewise, in the Christian life I may have to use my common sense to ask what the best choice in life is. But God’s plan isn’t a straightjacket.
When we make decisions, should we do so honoring our parents (and what they taught us) as well as God? We must always honor our parents, but honor does not necessarily mean obedience. When we are not yet of age, it does, but once we are grown and not under their direct authority, we may listen to their advice but we are not bound to it.
When looking to the Scriptures for guidance, do we simply go with the way we were taught or is it better to come up with our own interpretation? The Scriptures are never a matter of our own interpretation, as Peter reminds us (2 Peter 1:20-21). Nor do the Scriptures tell us to simply be a Christian by association and without real thought. We are to search the Scriptures and learn them and know them. Since the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures and become clearer the more we read them, the main task for a Christian is to steep himself or herself in the Bible so that it really does become clear.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Often when making a decision, we want to know that God is approving of it. Hence we want to know exactly what God has to say about it. But how can we discern God’s voice from the clamor all around us? We begin then by asking the question: Is it normal to “feel” God? If so, can you describe the feeling? One temptation that many Christians face is to equate God (or an encounter with Him) with a particular feeling. But God isn’t a feeling—any more than human beings are. There is no one consistent feeling that you have whenever you talk with your mom or dad or any other person. Of course, there is often a feeling of love when I talk with loved ones or with God, and that is to be expected. But that is not always the feeling, since there are sometimes other emotions that are more appropriate—guilt, anger, confusion, and the like. If you read the Psalms, you see the wide variety of emotions that people have when they dealt with God. Moreover, we have to understand that God does not always manifest Himself and certainly not in the fullness of His glory; even Moses wasn’t allowed to see God’s face. In addition, it often seems that the more one advances spiritually, the less one senses God, as is often expressed by the psalmists, who complain that God has abandoned them when they had been faithful to Him. Theologians have noted that God appeared to Moses as a bright light in a burning bush in his first encounter, but in later encounters he went under a dark cloud; so at first believers seem to sense God’s presence easily, but He seems more withdrawn as we progress. Of course, God seems more absent (not that He is) so that we can learn to trust His Word rather than our feelings or outward manifestations.
How do we, as Christians (faithful or trying to be) listen to God to try and understand His plan? Read the Scriptures. God has already given you a whole book revealing Himself and His attitudes. Somehow or another, though, we think that that isn’t enough. We want Him to say more. But He has already given an outline of the moral law in the Ten Commandments and further explained them in the Sermon on the Mount. He has revealed the gospel by which we have new life. The gospel is God’s eternal Word to us; it is the only means by which we have eternal life. Why would we seek something beyond it? Of course, God hasn’t spoken about every detail in our life because He does allow us great freedom. Let me illustrate with this example. Let’s say that you have a vehicle and the money to keep it gassed up. You are told that you can drive on any paved road as long as you obey the traffic signs. Within those parameters, however, you can drive wherever you want to. In the same way you have the gospel, which like a car empowers you to go wherever you want to. The only restrictions are laid down by the law, which tells you where you may not go and what restrictions you have to observe. But just as I could choose to drive to the Smokies or to the Rockies or stay in the Midwest, so I have the freedom to do all sorts of things as long as I do not violate God’s law as summarized in the commandments. Now I may have to use my common sense to ask myself whether I should go to the mountains or stay in the Midwest; likewise, in the Christian life I may have to use my common sense to ask what the best choice in life is. But God’s plan isn’t a straightjacket.
When we make decisions, should we do so honoring our parents (and what they taught us) as well as God? We must always honor our parents, but honor does not necessarily mean obedience. When we are not yet of age, it does, but once we are grown and not under their direct authority, we may listen to their advice but we are not bound to it.
When looking to the Scriptures for guidance, do we simply go with the way we were taught or is it better to come up with our own interpretation? The Scriptures are never a matter of our own interpretation, as Peter reminds us (2 Peter 1:20-21). Nor do the Scriptures tell us to simply be a Christian by association and without real thought. We are to search the Scriptures and learn them and know them. Since the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures and become clearer the more we read them, the main task for a Christian is to steep himself or herself in the Bible so that it really does become clear.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, June 11, 2010
A Perfect Game or Not?
Did Armando Galarraga throw a perfect game or not on June 2? At first glance it might seem that he did and that umpire Jim Joyce’s botched call should not thwart Galarraga’s achievement. The pitcher had single-handedly accomplished a great feat in baseball and should not be penalized because a bystander made an error.
But what makes a perfect game? We tend to think of perfect games as the hard work of pitchers alone, but in reality everybody on the team (and, as we discovered recently, everybody on the umpire staff) has to play perfectly. The best pitcher will get nowhere if the catcher bobbles the ball even once. At the very least, a perfect game requires not only a great pitcher but also a catcher who can work well with him.
But a perfect game has never been just about an excellent pitcher and catcher. In theory, one could meet the requirement of a perfect game—27 batters up, 27 down—by striking out all of them, but that feat has never been done. The greatest number of strikeouts in a nine-inning major league game is 20, and that number has never been reached during a perfect game. In fact, from the statistics I was able to consult, I did not see any pitcher of a perfect game who struck out as many as 18 batters. Thus, more than a third of the batters in each perfect game were put out by the fielders. One outfielder who loses the ball in the sun or collides with a teammate is enough to ruin a perfect game. The pitcher may get the honor for a perfect game, but it is really a team effort.
This is something that bears repeating in our highly individualistic society, which tends to praise one individual (usually the CEO or other most visible individual) rather than to recognize others who contributed to the success. A CEO may have a wonderful vision for a company, but it can be undone by a grumpy receptionist, an embezzling CFO, an insensitive marketing department, or workers careless about environmental or safety concerns. Top executives may pride themselves on their ability to get other people in the company to work hard and honestly, but in truth their workers usually already come with those values, much as outfielders are not taught their skills by the pitchers on their team. Great companies usually have people in all areas of the operation who bring exceptional enthusiasm, diligence, and attentiveness to detail. Most of these workers may not even be recognized by management, but the company would not survive without them.
I am forced, therefore, to conclude that Galarraga did not pitch a perfect game, since a perfect game is always about more than just the pitcher, even if the pitcher is the one who gets the credit. Perhaps, though, we can use his “failure” to consider how much we need each other in order to accomplish our goals.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
But what makes a perfect game? We tend to think of perfect games as the hard work of pitchers alone, but in reality everybody on the team (and, as we discovered recently, everybody on the umpire staff) has to play perfectly. The best pitcher will get nowhere if the catcher bobbles the ball even once. At the very least, a perfect game requires not only a great pitcher but also a catcher who can work well with him.
But a perfect game has never been just about an excellent pitcher and catcher. In theory, one could meet the requirement of a perfect game—27 batters up, 27 down—by striking out all of them, but that feat has never been done. The greatest number of strikeouts in a nine-inning major league game is 20, and that number has never been reached during a perfect game. In fact, from the statistics I was able to consult, I did not see any pitcher of a perfect game who struck out as many as 18 batters. Thus, more than a third of the batters in each perfect game were put out by the fielders. One outfielder who loses the ball in the sun or collides with a teammate is enough to ruin a perfect game. The pitcher may get the honor for a perfect game, but it is really a team effort.
This is something that bears repeating in our highly individualistic society, which tends to praise one individual (usually the CEO or other most visible individual) rather than to recognize others who contributed to the success. A CEO may have a wonderful vision for a company, but it can be undone by a grumpy receptionist, an embezzling CFO, an insensitive marketing department, or workers careless about environmental or safety concerns. Top executives may pride themselves on their ability to get other people in the company to work hard and honestly, but in truth their workers usually already come with those values, much as outfielders are not taught their skills by the pitchers on their team. Great companies usually have people in all areas of the operation who bring exceptional enthusiasm, diligence, and attentiveness to detail. Most of these workers may not even be recognized by management, but the company would not survive without them.
I am forced, therefore, to conclude that Galarraga did not pitch a perfect game, since a perfect game is always about more than just the pitcher, even if the pitcher is the one who gets the credit. Perhaps, though, we can use his “failure” to consider how much we need each other in order to accomplish our goals.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Ethics is About More Than Right and Wrong
In case you have not noticed, I have been blogging recently mainly about foundational matters in ethics. I have argued that the Scriptures have a coherent ethical philosophy despite the fact that they do not arrange their ethics as a treatise and despite the fact that the rules of the Old Testament and the New Testament differ somewhat. In this blog I invite you to understand that ethics means more than a criterion for deciding right and wrong. We would recognize this instantly if we spoke Greek. The word “ethics” comes from a Greek word that means “that which is customary or habitual.” Ethics does not merely draw boundaries; it also inculcates good habits. It defines the practices that lead to the virtuous life and away from the vice-ridden.
All too often in our thinking about ethics we reduce the question to “Is x right or wrong?” Even worse, we reduce our ethical thinking to a few slogans, whether it be the Golden Rule or Kant’s Categorical Imperative or even something as elaborate as the Ten Commandments. Now if that were the beginning of our ethical thinking—that is, if we used these items to begin thinking of the sorts of practices we would like to cultivate—it might not be so bad. But when it is the end of our ethical thinking, it becomes so reductionistic that it actually may encourage us to lead an evil life. We say, “Technically I haven’t violated law Y or Z (understood in their narrowest sense); therefore I am still behaving in a moral way until I violate a law.”
We would not live so carelessly in other matters. If I were going down a winding mountain pass, it would be foolish of me to ask, “How fast can I go without going off the cliff?” If I have any sense at all, I would take every precaution so that the most trivial mistake on my part or a malfunction of my car would not send me over the guard rail. Even if technically I have not run into trouble as long as my car stays on the road, I have needlessly endangered myself and perhaps others. One day my carelessness could cost me my life. But our pet sins flourish because we think that we can do everything leading up to that sin and then slam on the brakes at the last moment. When we inevitably fail, we wonder why.
A better question to ask when going down a winding mountain pass would be, “What is the best way that I can handle this mountain road?” rather than “How fast can I go?” Similarly, a better question to ask about our lives when dealing with a moral dilemma is “How can I best live a godly life that glorifies God?” rather than “How far can I go before I do something immoral?”
This is the approach that the Scriptures take. Paul’s epistles, for example, repeatedly call God’s people to live out their baptismal life. If you look at such passages as Romans 12-13 or Galatians 5 or Colossians 3, you see that Paul does more than warn people against bad behavior. He urges them to live a life that reflects God’s working in them. Similarly, our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount warns against a mere reductionistic reading of the law (Matthew 5:21-37) but urges us to do more than avoid evil but to pursue the good that is beyond the comprehension of the heathen (Matthew 5:28-48) and to embrace the attitudes summarized in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). We are to be more than good. We are to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16).
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
All too often in our thinking about ethics we reduce the question to “Is x right or wrong?” Even worse, we reduce our ethical thinking to a few slogans, whether it be the Golden Rule or Kant’s Categorical Imperative or even something as elaborate as the Ten Commandments. Now if that were the beginning of our ethical thinking—that is, if we used these items to begin thinking of the sorts of practices we would like to cultivate—it might not be so bad. But when it is the end of our ethical thinking, it becomes so reductionistic that it actually may encourage us to lead an evil life. We say, “Technically I haven’t violated law Y or Z (understood in their narrowest sense); therefore I am still behaving in a moral way until I violate a law.”
We would not live so carelessly in other matters. If I were going down a winding mountain pass, it would be foolish of me to ask, “How fast can I go without going off the cliff?” If I have any sense at all, I would take every precaution so that the most trivial mistake on my part or a malfunction of my car would not send me over the guard rail. Even if technically I have not run into trouble as long as my car stays on the road, I have needlessly endangered myself and perhaps others. One day my carelessness could cost me my life. But our pet sins flourish because we think that we can do everything leading up to that sin and then slam on the brakes at the last moment. When we inevitably fail, we wonder why.
A better question to ask when going down a winding mountain pass would be, “What is the best way that I can handle this mountain road?” rather than “How fast can I go?” Similarly, a better question to ask about our lives when dealing with a moral dilemma is “How can I best live a godly life that glorifies God?” rather than “How far can I go before I do something immoral?”
This is the approach that the Scriptures take. Paul’s epistles, for example, repeatedly call God’s people to live out their baptismal life. If you look at such passages as Romans 12-13 or Galatians 5 or Colossians 3, you see that Paul does more than warn people against bad behavior. He urges them to live a life that reflects God’s working in them. Similarly, our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount warns against a mere reductionistic reading of the law (Matthew 5:21-37) but urges us to do more than avoid evil but to pursue the good that is beyond the comprehension of the heathen (Matthew 5:28-48) and to embrace the attitudes summarized in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). We are to be more than good. We are to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16).
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, April 23, 2010
Applying Old Testament Law to the New Testament Era
In a previous blog I wrote that the Bible doesn’t always organize its system of ethics as a textbook would. It does deal with right and wrong, but more often than not it does not do so in the abstract but in describing how people relate to God, whether in hearing His judgment or His word of forgiveness. That doesn’t mean that there is no right and wrong or that the ethics of the Bible are unclear. Rather it means that we gain a deeper understanding of God’s philosophy of right and wrong by coming to know Him fully rather than by merely looking at a treatise on ethics.
What complicates matters is that the explicit ethical content of the Bible differs somewhat in both testaments. Some laws of the Old Testament clearly do not apply anymore, as all recognize. No Christian of any stripe, no matter how inclined they are towards the Old Testament, offers the sacrifices prescribed by Leviticus, even though God was quite insistent on their observance. Why do Christians ignore the rules about the sacrifices while insisting that other rules of the Old Testament, such as those related to sexual immorality, still apply?
I would suggest that a metaphor the apostle Paul uses in Galatians 3:24-25 can solve this dilemma. He argues that the law served as a guardian for ancient Israel, which was still under age at that time. Paul doesn’t develop the metaphor other than to say that being under the tutelage of a guardian is little better than being a slave; the difference comes when a person reaches adulthood. I would like to argue, though, that the rules one learns as a child serve as an example of the sort of rules God gave the Israelites. Just as children retain some rules into adulthood while outgrowing others, so some aspects of the law remain valid at all times while others were outgrown when Christ came. Moreover, even in the rules that no longer apply there are principles that are still relevant.
For example, think of a grown man recalling an incident when he was four. His mother looked out the window and saw him wandering out into the street to get his ball. By the time she ran outside, he was back on the front yard and denied ever going into the street. She reminded him that he had been told never to tell a lie and never to enter the street without being accompanied by an adult. Although she punished him for breaking both rules that day, she punished him more severely for going into the street than for lying about it. Now what is he supposed to think today? He might be tempted to say, “My mother doesn’t still enforce the rule about not entering a street unaccompanied. Therefore, she doesn’t care about lying anymore, either, and I can lie if I want to.” Or he could take a legalistic tone: “I know that lying is wrong and always has been. Therefore, crossing the street by myself must also be wrong.” Most of us would instinctively know that both answers are foolish. There are some rules that apply universally and others that apply to particular circumstances. All people should tell the truth, but those who are not mature enough to cross the street by themselves shouldn’t do so. But even from the rule that has been changed there is a universal principle: crossing a street requires paying attention. Those who cannot pay due attention should be forbidden to cross the street by themselves; those who can pay attention may cross the street on their own.
From this analogy we can understand why God punished rather severely those who broke the Sabbath in the Old Testament days, but that does not necessarily mean that we have to keep it as the Israelites did. The Sabbath was a useful tool to instruct people to take time to listen to God’s Word. As with all the ceremonial law, it trained people to leave behind pagan thought patterns and to look forward to the redemption won by Christ (Hebrews 10:1-4). But once Christ had come, people could look to the reality rather than the shadow (Hebrews 10:1). We can enjoy Christ as our Sabbath rest rather than the earthly Sabbath practiced by the Israelites (Hebrews 4:3, 8-11). In fact, the Scriptures explicitly state that the rules of the Old Testament holidays no longer apply (Colossians 2:16-17). Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5) had the power to abrogate it, much as a parent has the authority to change household rules, and He has done so.
As some rules from childhood are set aside, our responsibility grows, not diminishes. All a four year old has to do with streets is to keep the rule not to cross it. No further thought is required. But older children and adults have much to think about. Have they looked both ways? Is the car really going to stop at the stop sign or is the driver too busy talking on the cell phone? In the same way, it was relatively easy to keep the Sabbath in the Old Testament; one simply stopped working. But entering the true Sabbath rest by believing in Christ (Hebrews 4:3) requires much more attention. It is not a one-day-a-week phenomenon, but a 24/7 one. Also because we grow in responsibility as we mature, there are also some things permitted in our childhood that are no longer permitted in adulthood. Small children are permitted to fidget, but adults are expected to sit still. By the same token, there were things permitted under the Old Testament law (such as polygamy) that are not permitted now.
I will have more to say about ethics in future blogs, but I think some things are clear from this blog and the one I posted on April 15. What at first looks like a chaotic system really is not. There is a system of values that lies behind all of the Scriptures’ rules. One discovers it not merely by looking at explicit laws but also by considering the values that underlie the interactions between God and His people. Even when certain rules are later abrogated, the underlying principles remain in force. If anything, when God lessens the force of a particular rule He actually increases our responsibility because we are ready to bear it. And thus we have an ethical system that is incredibly rich and encourages people to grow and to mature.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
What complicates matters is that the explicit ethical content of the Bible differs somewhat in both testaments. Some laws of the Old Testament clearly do not apply anymore, as all recognize. No Christian of any stripe, no matter how inclined they are towards the Old Testament, offers the sacrifices prescribed by Leviticus, even though God was quite insistent on their observance. Why do Christians ignore the rules about the sacrifices while insisting that other rules of the Old Testament, such as those related to sexual immorality, still apply?
I would suggest that a metaphor the apostle Paul uses in Galatians 3:24-25 can solve this dilemma. He argues that the law served as a guardian for ancient Israel, which was still under age at that time. Paul doesn’t develop the metaphor other than to say that being under the tutelage of a guardian is little better than being a slave; the difference comes when a person reaches adulthood. I would like to argue, though, that the rules one learns as a child serve as an example of the sort of rules God gave the Israelites. Just as children retain some rules into adulthood while outgrowing others, so some aspects of the law remain valid at all times while others were outgrown when Christ came. Moreover, even in the rules that no longer apply there are principles that are still relevant.
For example, think of a grown man recalling an incident when he was four. His mother looked out the window and saw him wandering out into the street to get his ball. By the time she ran outside, he was back on the front yard and denied ever going into the street. She reminded him that he had been told never to tell a lie and never to enter the street without being accompanied by an adult. Although she punished him for breaking both rules that day, she punished him more severely for going into the street than for lying about it. Now what is he supposed to think today? He might be tempted to say, “My mother doesn’t still enforce the rule about not entering a street unaccompanied. Therefore, she doesn’t care about lying anymore, either, and I can lie if I want to.” Or he could take a legalistic tone: “I know that lying is wrong and always has been. Therefore, crossing the street by myself must also be wrong.” Most of us would instinctively know that both answers are foolish. There are some rules that apply universally and others that apply to particular circumstances. All people should tell the truth, but those who are not mature enough to cross the street by themselves shouldn’t do so. But even from the rule that has been changed there is a universal principle: crossing a street requires paying attention. Those who cannot pay due attention should be forbidden to cross the street by themselves; those who can pay attention may cross the street on their own.
From this analogy we can understand why God punished rather severely those who broke the Sabbath in the Old Testament days, but that does not necessarily mean that we have to keep it as the Israelites did. The Sabbath was a useful tool to instruct people to take time to listen to God’s Word. As with all the ceremonial law, it trained people to leave behind pagan thought patterns and to look forward to the redemption won by Christ (Hebrews 10:1-4). But once Christ had come, people could look to the reality rather than the shadow (Hebrews 10:1). We can enjoy Christ as our Sabbath rest rather than the earthly Sabbath practiced by the Israelites (Hebrews 4:3, 8-11). In fact, the Scriptures explicitly state that the rules of the Old Testament holidays no longer apply (Colossians 2:16-17). Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5) had the power to abrogate it, much as a parent has the authority to change household rules, and He has done so.
As some rules from childhood are set aside, our responsibility grows, not diminishes. All a four year old has to do with streets is to keep the rule not to cross it. No further thought is required. But older children and adults have much to think about. Have they looked both ways? Is the car really going to stop at the stop sign or is the driver too busy talking on the cell phone? In the same way, it was relatively easy to keep the Sabbath in the Old Testament; one simply stopped working. But entering the true Sabbath rest by believing in Christ (Hebrews 4:3) requires much more attention. It is not a one-day-a-week phenomenon, but a 24/7 one. Also because we grow in responsibility as we mature, there are also some things permitted in our childhood that are no longer permitted in adulthood. Small children are permitted to fidget, but adults are expected to sit still. By the same token, there were things permitted under the Old Testament law (such as polygamy) that are not permitted now.
I will have more to say about ethics in future blogs, but I think some things are clear from this blog and the one I posted on April 15. What at first looks like a chaotic system really is not. There is a system of values that lies behind all of the Scriptures’ rules. One discovers it not merely by looking at explicit laws but also by considering the values that underlie the interactions between God and His people. Even when certain rules are later abrogated, the underlying principles remain in force. If anything, when God lessens the force of a particular rule He actually increases our responsibility because we are ready to bear it. And thus we have an ethical system that is incredibly rich and encourages people to grow and to mature.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Rich and Poor Alike
Recently a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune commented in passing that Jesus would have spent time with the poor and told the rich to sell all they owned. I also recall reading a year or two ago in the Chicago Tribune Magazine a letter to the editor took Francis Cardinal George to task for hosting a swanky Christmastime soiree (and the magazine for covering it) and said that Jesus would have rather spent His time at some soup kitchen on the west side.
It is hard to disagree with the sentiment. Throughout the Scriptures God defends the poor, the widows, and the orphans. He opposes those who would victimize them. He urges people to give alms to them. Jesus commended the impoverished widow for her great generosity, though she could give only pennies while the wealthy gave wads of cash (Luke 21:1-4). How one treats the poor is a real hallmark of that person’s spirituality.
And yet the two letters miss the mark. The authors leap from the fact that God loves the poor to the conclusion that God loves only the poor. In truth God loves rich and poor alike. And this is shown in our Lord’s interactions with the rich and poor. He attended the banquets of many rich people—Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2, 7), Matthew (Matthew 9:10-13), and a ruler of the Pharisees (Luke 14:1), to name a few. Some of the banquets he attended must have been real shindigs because the guests vied for positions of honor (Luke 14:7). And there were people who were deeply offended by our Lord’s attendance at these lavish affairs. They grumbled because these people had gained their wealth unjustly and our Lord was dining in their homes (Luke 15:2; 19:7). His enemies went so far as to call Jesus a party animal (Luke 7:34). They were even more offended when lavish gifts were poured out upon him, especially when there were so many poor who needed help (John 12:5). What is more, our Lord demanded of only one rich man that he give up all his wealth and that because he loved his possessions more than he loved God (Mark 10:21-22). He said nothing to the other rich people He encountered.
In popular imagination the only way that our Lord could have cared for the poor was by hating the rich, and vice versa. Similarly, we imagine that if our Lord hated the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (which He did), He must have avoided them at all costs. In reality, He dined with them frequently (see Luke 7:36 and 14:1 for a couple of examples) and loved them no less than He loved His disciples. Jesus was one of the rarest of human beings—comfortable with rich and poor alike, loving hypocrites and open sinners equally. He was not offended by anyone’s poverty or wealth. He did not curry favor with either, but called all to fellowship and discipleship. I would fully expect Him to be hobnobbing with people in a Gold Coast penthouse one evening and to share a crust of moldy bread in a decrepit housing project on the west side the next evening—and to feel perfectly at home in both places.
Why cannot we have the same attitude? We human beings are tempted to think that we are more deserving of God’s love than others are. We are poorer and that is proof that we are more honest. Or we are richer and that is proof that we are more hard-working. We are more religious and that is proof that we are godlier. Or we can’t stand all the hypocritical claptrap and that is proof that we are more acceptable than the religious people. But, of course, these attitudes simply indicate how uncomfortable we are with ourselves. We are graceless toward others because we fear that there is no grace for us.
I don’t deny that rich people and poor people alike have their faults and sometimes it is hard to see them as human beings because their sins distort their humanity. But we need to learn our Lord’s attitude and see the person beloved by God, not a caricature of our own making or of theirs.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
It is hard to disagree with the sentiment. Throughout the Scriptures God defends the poor, the widows, and the orphans. He opposes those who would victimize them. He urges people to give alms to them. Jesus commended the impoverished widow for her great generosity, though she could give only pennies while the wealthy gave wads of cash (Luke 21:1-4). How one treats the poor is a real hallmark of that person’s spirituality.
And yet the two letters miss the mark. The authors leap from the fact that God loves the poor to the conclusion that God loves only the poor. In truth God loves rich and poor alike. And this is shown in our Lord’s interactions with the rich and poor. He attended the banquets of many rich people—Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2, 7), Matthew (Matthew 9:10-13), and a ruler of the Pharisees (Luke 14:1), to name a few. Some of the banquets he attended must have been real shindigs because the guests vied for positions of honor (Luke 14:7). And there were people who were deeply offended by our Lord’s attendance at these lavish affairs. They grumbled because these people had gained their wealth unjustly and our Lord was dining in their homes (Luke 15:2; 19:7). His enemies went so far as to call Jesus a party animal (Luke 7:34). They were even more offended when lavish gifts were poured out upon him, especially when there were so many poor who needed help (John 12:5). What is more, our Lord demanded of only one rich man that he give up all his wealth and that because he loved his possessions more than he loved God (Mark 10:21-22). He said nothing to the other rich people He encountered.
In popular imagination the only way that our Lord could have cared for the poor was by hating the rich, and vice versa. Similarly, we imagine that if our Lord hated the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (which He did), He must have avoided them at all costs. In reality, He dined with them frequently (see Luke 7:36 and 14:1 for a couple of examples) and loved them no less than He loved His disciples. Jesus was one of the rarest of human beings—comfortable with rich and poor alike, loving hypocrites and open sinners equally. He was not offended by anyone’s poverty or wealth. He did not curry favor with either, but called all to fellowship and discipleship. I would fully expect Him to be hobnobbing with people in a Gold Coast penthouse one evening and to share a crust of moldy bread in a decrepit housing project on the west side the next evening—and to feel perfectly at home in both places.
Why cannot we have the same attitude? We human beings are tempted to think that we are more deserving of God’s love than others are. We are poorer and that is proof that we are more honest. Or we are richer and that is proof that we are more hard-working. We are more religious and that is proof that we are godlier. Or we can’t stand all the hypocritical claptrap and that is proof that we are more acceptable than the religious people. But, of course, these attitudes simply indicate how uncomfortable we are with ourselves. We are graceless toward others because we fear that there is no grace for us.
I don’t deny that rich people and poor people alike have their faults and sometimes it is hard to see them as human beings because their sins distort their humanity. But we need to learn our Lord’s attitude and see the person beloved by God, not a caricature of our own making or of theirs.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Thursday, April 15, 2010
A Messy System?
If you were writing a treatise on ethics, how would you go about writing it? You would divide ethics into several categories—personal ethics, ethics at home, ethics in the workplace, and ethics in society, for example—and then write a chapter or two on each category. Since each category can be further divided into sub-categories (ethics in the workplace could be divided into how to treat co-workers, how to treat customers, and how to treat the boss), these divisions could form sections in a chapter. If you proceeded in this way, you might get something very much like a work written by Aristotle or Immanuel Kant, but you wouldn’t get the Scriptures.
Why is that? We could simply say that the Bible isn’t an ethical treatise. It does touch on ethical matters, but it is so much more than that. It is the history of God at work among His people as He saves them. Because He saves them from the consequences of their sins, He does have to deal with the difference between right and wrong. But because God is more interested in unfolding His story, He doesn’t address the topic of ethics as a systematic treatise.
In this way the Scriptures handle ethics much in the same way that parents do when they teach their children the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes parents lay down a handful of rules and give reasons for each of them. But that is rather rare—about as often as God gave the Ten Commandments. More frequently parents give their children a particular outlook on life, sometimes by passing on a favorite adage, other times by making a passing remark approving or disapproving a behavior, and still other times by choosing a particular pattern of behavior for themselves.
I think, for example, of my own upbringing. I can recall only one time when either of my parents made a big speech about illegal drug use. My dad had just served as a juror at a trial of a man who had messed up his life with narcotics. My dad didn’t divulge any of the particulars, but he did comment on the tragedy of the situation and said that he hoped that we would learn from other people’s mistakes. But despite hearing very little about the topic, I never considered using drugs. Why? The ethical system I learned from my parents didn’t come only from their explicit statements on a particular topic, but from their whole philosophy of life as revealed in several ways. In fact, I can go so far as to say that if my dad had never broached the subject, I would still know that my parents disapproved of illegal drugs. I saw it in the way that they honored and obeyed the laws of our country. I saw it in the way that they didn’t believe that life was meant to be a pursuit of one heady experience after another. They were responsible and content. They believed that hard work was a form of pleasure. Using narcotics would go against every aspect of that philosophy.
The school where I attended tried a different approach. On the one hand, we spent a week or two in ninth grade P.E. being warned about the effects of various drugs (including legal ones such as alcohol). On the other hand, this instruction was being given in the late 70’s when youth were still expected to experiment with substances legal and illegal and when parents and teachers were generally permissive about such things, if not indulging in them themselves. At best I would have gotten mixed signals from those at school: the main problem with drugs was their nasty side effects; as long as they could be minimized or if a new drug could be invented without them (such as Ecstasy claimed to be in the 90’s), it would be all right to use it.
The advantage of my parents’ approach is that they didn’t have to change their instruction every time a new drug was invented. They had conveyed a philosophy of life explicitly and implicitly, and I was able to extrapolate from it to new circumstances. And that is also the advantage of the way the Scriptures teach ethics. They don’t have to state explicitly what is right and wrong on every topic in order to have a coherent ethical framework that can be applied to all sorts of topics, even to issues that couldn’t have been envisioned in the day when the Scriptures were being written. Of course, that means that we have to be willing to pay close attention to the beliefs, values, and attitudes inculcated by the Scriptures if we want to understand fully its ethical system and apply it to today’s issues. It is harder work than simply picking up and reading a treatise by Aristotle or Kant, but it is more rewarding, too.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Why is that? We could simply say that the Bible isn’t an ethical treatise. It does touch on ethical matters, but it is so much more than that. It is the history of God at work among His people as He saves them. Because He saves them from the consequences of their sins, He does have to deal with the difference between right and wrong. But because God is more interested in unfolding His story, He doesn’t address the topic of ethics as a systematic treatise.
In this way the Scriptures handle ethics much in the same way that parents do when they teach their children the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes parents lay down a handful of rules and give reasons for each of them. But that is rather rare—about as often as God gave the Ten Commandments. More frequently parents give their children a particular outlook on life, sometimes by passing on a favorite adage, other times by making a passing remark approving or disapproving a behavior, and still other times by choosing a particular pattern of behavior for themselves.
I think, for example, of my own upbringing. I can recall only one time when either of my parents made a big speech about illegal drug use. My dad had just served as a juror at a trial of a man who had messed up his life with narcotics. My dad didn’t divulge any of the particulars, but he did comment on the tragedy of the situation and said that he hoped that we would learn from other people’s mistakes. But despite hearing very little about the topic, I never considered using drugs. Why? The ethical system I learned from my parents didn’t come only from their explicit statements on a particular topic, but from their whole philosophy of life as revealed in several ways. In fact, I can go so far as to say that if my dad had never broached the subject, I would still know that my parents disapproved of illegal drugs. I saw it in the way that they honored and obeyed the laws of our country. I saw it in the way that they didn’t believe that life was meant to be a pursuit of one heady experience after another. They were responsible and content. They believed that hard work was a form of pleasure. Using narcotics would go against every aspect of that philosophy.
The school where I attended tried a different approach. On the one hand, we spent a week or two in ninth grade P.E. being warned about the effects of various drugs (including legal ones such as alcohol). On the other hand, this instruction was being given in the late 70’s when youth were still expected to experiment with substances legal and illegal and when parents and teachers were generally permissive about such things, if not indulging in them themselves. At best I would have gotten mixed signals from those at school: the main problem with drugs was their nasty side effects; as long as they could be minimized or if a new drug could be invented without them (such as Ecstasy claimed to be in the 90’s), it would be all right to use it.
The advantage of my parents’ approach is that they didn’t have to change their instruction every time a new drug was invented. They had conveyed a philosophy of life explicitly and implicitly, and I was able to extrapolate from it to new circumstances. And that is also the advantage of the way the Scriptures teach ethics. They don’t have to state explicitly what is right and wrong on every topic in order to have a coherent ethical framework that can be applied to all sorts of topics, even to issues that couldn’t have been envisioned in the day when the Scriptures were being written. Of course, that means that we have to be willing to pay close attention to the beliefs, values, and attitudes inculcated by the Scriptures if we want to understand fully its ethical system and apply it to today’s issues. It is harder work than simply picking up and reading a treatise by Aristotle or Kant, but it is more rewarding, too.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Thursday, March 25, 2010
That is just way too gross!
Even though I get a new batch of students each year, I know how to freak out each Latin class. It requires nothing more than to direct them to a stanza in a hymn of Bernard of Clairvaux. Here is the offending line, rendered in a rather literal translation: “I have taken honey from your lips/ Drawn from the sweetness of milk/ Beyond all delights.” As I explain to the class, the imagery is that of the hymnist tasting of the half-dried blood of Christ as it drips off of His face and finding it to be nothing short of the milk and honey of the true Promised Land.
They find the imagery gory and bizarre, which is odd. They have seen Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween, and all of their sequels. They enjoy seeing car chases (often ending in bloody crashes), exploding buildings, and insatiable sharks. War movies have to be so realistic that the only thing missing from the experience is the acrid smell. When they aren’t watching films (or doing their Latin homework), they are playing video games where corpses pile up several feet deep.
In this respect my students are no different from their peers or society at large. We steep ourselves in violence, but cannot bear the thought of the smallest injury, even a hangnail, in real life. For us violence has become entertainment, no less than it was for the ancient Romans and with equally disastrous consequences. There had been funerary games and gladiatorial contests since the earliest days of Rome. Victories were often celebrated by marching the conquered through Rome and then executing them. Since most of the adult male population had served as soldiers and knew the dangers of war, this bloody event was not mindless entertainment, but a somber celebration of victory after the perils of the battlefield. But a shift occurred in the first century B.C., as warfare was relegated to professional soldiers. The bloodlust didn’t diminish as the percentage of veterans declined among the general population. If anything, the popularity of gladitorial contests, reenactments of major naval battles, and harrowing chariot races increased. In a similar vein Americans have developed an insatiable desire for seeing violence, even though fewer and fewer will actually see real live combat. For us, violence is both entertainment and something that does not evoke a strong emotional response.
Bernard of Clairvaux takes the exact opposite stance. He does not rehearse the violence of our Lord’s death for mere entertainment value, and the crucifixion evokes great tenderness, sorrow, repentance, and love in Bernard. His poem O caput cruentatum (which is the basis via the German hymnist Paul Gerhard for the English hymn, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”) is one of the first great hymns to meditate on our Lord’s suffering, but it is with the idea that the penitent will find great comfort and healing in our Lord’s wounds. Would that we appreciate our Lord’s suffering more deeply as Bernard did!
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
They find the imagery gory and bizarre, which is odd. They have seen Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween, and all of their sequels. They enjoy seeing car chases (often ending in bloody crashes), exploding buildings, and insatiable sharks. War movies have to be so realistic that the only thing missing from the experience is the acrid smell. When they aren’t watching films (or doing their Latin homework), they are playing video games where corpses pile up several feet deep.
In this respect my students are no different from their peers or society at large. We steep ourselves in violence, but cannot bear the thought of the smallest injury, even a hangnail, in real life. For us violence has become entertainment, no less than it was for the ancient Romans and with equally disastrous consequences. There had been funerary games and gladiatorial contests since the earliest days of Rome. Victories were often celebrated by marching the conquered through Rome and then executing them. Since most of the adult male population had served as soldiers and knew the dangers of war, this bloody event was not mindless entertainment, but a somber celebration of victory after the perils of the battlefield. But a shift occurred in the first century B.C., as warfare was relegated to professional soldiers. The bloodlust didn’t diminish as the percentage of veterans declined among the general population. If anything, the popularity of gladitorial contests, reenactments of major naval battles, and harrowing chariot races increased. In a similar vein Americans have developed an insatiable desire for seeing violence, even though fewer and fewer will actually see real live combat. For us, violence is both entertainment and something that does not evoke a strong emotional response.
Bernard of Clairvaux takes the exact opposite stance. He does not rehearse the violence of our Lord’s death for mere entertainment value, and the crucifixion evokes great tenderness, sorrow, repentance, and love in Bernard. His poem O caput cruentatum (which is the basis via the German hymnist Paul Gerhard for the English hymn, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”) is one of the first great hymns to meditate on our Lord’s suffering, but it is with the idea that the penitent will find great comfort and healing in our Lord’s wounds. Would that we appreciate our Lord’s suffering more deeply as Bernard did!
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, March 5, 2010
The right tool for the job
Expert carpenters will always say, “The right tool for the right job, and the right job for the right tool.” The key for any task is to connect the job and the tool. One can use a screwdriver as a chisel or as a crowbar—I’ve done it and so have most people—but it isn’t designed to work that way and is more liable to break.
I was thinking of this a couple weeks ago when I happened to encounter two people who were enamored by two different tools. One was a fellow professor, a church historian, who complained that his students did not want to read ancient histories. They might be persuaded to read a modern history of ancient times, but they thought that ancient histories of ancient times were useless, even though our modern histories are largely based on them. The other was a hierarch in the church-at-large, who wrote an email promoting twittering and Facebook as a panacea. It would build relationships, fulfill the Great Commission, and unleash the power of prayer. Besides, this is what Jesus would have done, I was told.
My first reaction was to bristle at the sanctimonious tone of the latter. As I wrote back to him, our Lord was concerned about repentance and faith, not about being a spokesman for a particular technology or, for that matter, an opponent of it. I granted that Christians have all sorts of freedom to use technology or to refrain from using it, and in either case they would have sound reasons. Later I thought that I could have made a better case by arguing that he was trying to use the wrong technology to accomplish the right goals. In effect, he was using a screwdriver as a chisel, and he was likely to break it.
Twittering and similar media are great tools to communicate simple information quickly. At our church we use emails as a way to plan for upcoming events or to remind people of them. We send out the bulletin and newsletter electronically, and we try to keep things up to date on the website. For the communication of raw information, it is hard to beat digital media.
But do these things really build relationships? It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that they are. To the extent that tweets and a Facebook page enable us to get information about ourselves into the hands of others, it does give the impression that we are building a relationship, since relationships grow in part as people get to know each other better. But real relationships grow in the give-and-take world of interpersonal communication. Merely because 300 of your designated BFF’s have read your updated Facebook page it doesn’t mean that you have people who are willing to love you in good times and in bad and who are willing to confront you lovingly when you go astray. Either we communicate banalities in our digital media or we issue scathing denunciations that lack the loving environment of the face-to-face encounter. Neither builds real relationships.
Moreover, these are poor tools for giving thoughtful answers to important questions. Even blogs can be bad for this if one approaches blogging more as a long tweet than as an electronic version of an essay. The digital media allow us to access all sorts of information, but (like Wikipedia) the information may be overwhelming in scope and still not entirely accurate.
While we have been overestimating the value of some electronic media, we may have been underestimating some older tools. My church historian colleague was correct. There is great value in reading ancient histories (secular or religious) rather than simply reading whatever modern historians have to say about those times. Granted, ancient histories don’t build relationships any more than the digital media do, but that is not their value. They allow us to see a different perspective than our own. Historians writing today bring their questions, biases, and agenda as they look at ancient events. It is refreshing to read ancient accounts of these events since these authors in effect say to us, “We didn’t even think about those questions you are raising. They would have seemed irrelevant or bizarre to us. Here is what happened as we looked at in our own terms. If you want to understand what we were doing and why, you have to listen to our explanations, even if it means that we live in very different worlds. However, you might actually understand yourselves better if you took the time to contemplate the similarities and differences between how we looked at the world and how you do.” I could add that I learned more by reading the historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen (who wrote about 4th century church history) than I did by reading all the secondary histories and being taught by an expert in that era of the church. More than that, I came to understand better the way the struggles inside our church body were playing themselves out.
By all means, read ancient and modern histories, read newspapers, blogs, and tweets. Engage in face-to-face dialogue, and use your Blackberries. Just use the right tool for the right job, and find the right job for the right tool.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
I was thinking of this a couple weeks ago when I happened to encounter two people who were enamored by two different tools. One was a fellow professor, a church historian, who complained that his students did not want to read ancient histories. They might be persuaded to read a modern history of ancient times, but they thought that ancient histories of ancient times were useless, even though our modern histories are largely based on them. The other was a hierarch in the church-at-large, who wrote an email promoting twittering and Facebook as a panacea. It would build relationships, fulfill the Great Commission, and unleash the power of prayer. Besides, this is what Jesus would have done, I was told.
My first reaction was to bristle at the sanctimonious tone of the latter. As I wrote back to him, our Lord was concerned about repentance and faith, not about being a spokesman for a particular technology or, for that matter, an opponent of it. I granted that Christians have all sorts of freedom to use technology or to refrain from using it, and in either case they would have sound reasons. Later I thought that I could have made a better case by arguing that he was trying to use the wrong technology to accomplish the right goals. In effect, he was using a screwdriver as a chisel, and he was likely to break it.
Twittering and similar media are great tools to communicate simple information quickly. At our church we use emails as a way to plan for upcoming events or to remind people of them. We send out the bulletin and newsletter electronically, and we try to keep things up to date on the website. For the communication of raw information, it is hard to beat digital media.
But do these things really build relationships? It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that they are. To the extent that tweets and a Facebook page enable us to get information about ourselves into the hands of others, it does give the impression that we are building a relationship, since relationships grow in part as people get to know each other better. But real relationships grow in the give-and-take world of interpersonal communication. Merely because 300 of your designated BFF’s have read your updated Facebook page it doesn’t mean that you have people who are willing to love you in good times and in bad and who are willing to confront you lovingly when you go astray. Either we communicate banalities in our digital media or we issue scathing denunciations that lack the loving environment of the face-to-face encounter. Neither builds real relationships.
Moreover, these are poor tools for giving thoughtful answers to important questions. Even blogs can be bad for this if one approaches blogging more as a long tweet than as an electronic version of an essay. The digital media allow us to access all sorts of information, but (like Wikipedia) the information may be overwhelming in scope and still not entirely accurate.
While we have been overestimating the value of some electronic media, we may have been underestimating some older tools. My church historian colleague was correct. There is great value in reading ancient histories (secular or religious) rather than simply reading whatever modern historians have to say about those times. Granted, ancient histories don’t build relationships any more than the digital media do, but that is not their value. They allow us to see a different perspective than our own. Historians writing today bring their questions, biases, and agenda as they look at ancient events. It is refreshing to read ancient accounts of these events since these authors in effect say to us, “We didn’t even think about those questions you are raising. They would have seemed irrelevant or bizarre to us. Here is what happened as we looked at in our own terms. If you want to understand what we were doing and why, you have to listen to our explanations, even if it means that we live in very different worlds. However, you might actually understand yourselves better if you took the time to contemplate the similarities and differences between how we looked at the world and how you do.” I could add that I learned more by reading the historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen (who wrote about 4th century church history) than I did by reading all the secondary histories and being taught by an expert in that era of the church. More than that, I came to understand better the way the struggles inside our church body were playing themselves out.
By all means, read ancient and modern histories, read newspapers, blogs, and tweets. Engage in face-to-face dialogue, and use your Blackberries. Just use the right tool for the right job, and find the right job for the right tool.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Worship is not an adiaphoron, part three
While Roman Catholics were going back to earlier liturgies to see if there was a way to reform their mass, American Protestants were going in a different direction. Never much to take history seriously, they have experimented with one innovation after another, all in a quest to find something more “alive” than past generations. But in order to evaluate this phenomenon, we have to do a little historical research ourselves.
Early Protestant worship (aside from that of the Quakers and Shakers) was not known for its emotionalism. Though ranging from the liturgically staid Anglicans to the more informal Congregationalists and Presbyterians, worship tended to be didactic. That would change with the First Great Awakening in the mid-1700’s, the first of several revivals that would sweep the country. The Congregationalist theologian Jonathan Edwards argued that since emotions play a role in conversion, it is appropriate to incorporate emotional appeals in worship. Of course, Edwards himself was hardly a torrent of wild emotionalism. According to his contemporaries, his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” though causing his parishioners to break into paroxysms of weeping, was delivered in a dreary, monotone manner.
By the time of the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800’s it was no longer the congregation alone that was swayed by emotions. The clergy too had caught the fever. Preachers like Charles Finney believed that he had the power to convert anyone without the Holy Spirit’s help. Like a good advertizing agent, Finney knew to appeal to a potential customer’s—I mean, congregant’s—emotions rather than his intellect. Ever since that time, American Protestantism has been known for its search for wildly emotional experiences, whether through tent revivals or Pentecostalism or the new worship styles introduced in the 1970’s.
What are serious Christians like us to think of this tendency in American church life? Perhaps it would be good to consider why American Protestants went down this particular path. Calvinism was the predominant theology in our country’s early days, and it taught that God had predestined some to salvation and others to damnation, and a human being had no choice in the matter. But how could one know to which category one belonged? Looking to the Scriptures or the gospel didn’t help because the promises in the Scriptures were meant for the elect, not for those predestined to damnation. Moreover, Calvinism had taught that the Holy Spirit brings the elect to faith without the means of the Scriptures and so the elect shouldn’t need to rely on them for proof of their election. For an increasing number of people two centuries after Calvin, a feeling of being loved by God became the best assurance of election.
But Calvinism waned during the First Great Awakening and was largely supplanted by Arminianism, which still rules the English-speaking world. Arminianism rejects the idea that God predestines individuals to heaven or hell. Instead God offers salvation to all. Those who accept His plan are following God’s predestined path to heaven. Those who reject it are following His predestined path to hell. The question that confronts the believer now is no longer “Did God choose me for heaven?” but rather “Did I choose God so as to gain heaven?” But how does one know that one has a sincere faith and thus has merited God’s approval? The answer is the same as before: a deep emotional experience.
All of this is bizarre when judged by the Scriptures. The Bible does indeed teach that God elects some to salvation and that none can pluck the elect out of His hand (Acts 13:48; Mt. 24:22, 24). But it also teaches that God desires all to be saved and that Christ died for all (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Cor. 5:14). Consequently, Lutheran Christians urge people not to consider the number or identity of the elect—which, after all, God has not revealed. Instead, we direct people to the clear promises of Scripture that God does not desire the death of a sinner, but wants all to be saved (Ezek. 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4). We stress that Christ died for all sinners, not just a select few (John 3:16; 2 Cor. 5:14). Not only do we believe that these promises are genuinely offered to all who read them, we also believe that the Holy Spirit works faith and strengthens it through these promises of the gospel. When we doubt whether God can save us wretched sinners, we go to the gospel for comfort. We confess with Paul, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13, ESV).
We should not deny that we are emotional creatures any less than we are intellectual or social creatures. Our worship should reflect that truth. But we should resist the tendency in American Protestantism to make emotionalism the keystone for genuine worship. Real worship is hearing and meditating upon the Word of God, especially the gospel.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Early Protestant worship (aside from that of the Quakers and Shakers) was not known for its emotionalism. Though ranging from the liturgically staid Anglicans to the more informal Congregationalists and Presbyterians, worship tended to be didactic. That would change with the First Great Awakening in the mid-1700’s, the first of several revivals that would sweep the country. The Congregationalist theologian Jonathan Edwards argued that since emotions play a role in conversion, it is appropriate to incorporate emotional appeals in worship. Of course, Edwards himself was hardly a torrent of wild emotionalism. According to his contemporaries, his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” though causing his parishioners to break into paroxysms of weeping, was delivered in a dreary, monotone manner.
By the time of the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800’s it was no longer the congregation alone that was swayed by emotions. The clergy too had caught the fever. Preachers like Charles Finney believed that he had the power to convert anyone without the Holy Spirit’s help. Like a good advertizing agent, Finney knew to appeal to a potential customer’s—I mean, congregant’s—emotions rather than his intellect. Ever since that time, American Protestantism has been known for its search for wildly emotional experiences, whether through tent revivals or Pentecostalism or the new worship styles introduced in the 1970’s.
What are serious Christians like us to think of this tendency in American church life? Perhaps it would be good to consider why American Protestants went down this particular path. Calvinism was the predominant theology in our country’s early days, and it taught that God had predestined some to salvation and others to damnation, and a human being had no choice in the matter. But how could one know to which category one belonged? Looking to the Scriptures or the gospel didn’t help because the promises in the Scriptures were meant for the elect, not for those predestined to damnation. Moreover, Calvinism had taught that the Holy Spirit brings the elect to faith without the means of the Scriptures and so the elect shouldn’t need to rely on them for proof of their election. For an increasing number of people two centuries after Calvin, a feeling of being loved by God became the best assurance of election.
But Calvinism waned during the First Great Awakening and was largely supplanted by Arminianism, which still rules the English-speaking world. Arminianism rejects the idea that God predestines individuals to heaven or hell. Instead God offers salvation to all. Those who accept His plan are following God’s predestined path to heaven. Those who reject it are following His predestined path to hell. The question that confronts the believer now is no longer “Did God choose me for heaven?” but rather “Did I choose God so as to gain heaven?” But how does one know that one has a sincere faith and thus has merited God’s approval? The answer is the same as before: a deep emotional experience.
All of this is bizarre when judged by the Scriptures. The Bible does indeed teach that God elects some to salvation and that none can pluck the elect out of His hand (Acts 13:48; Mt. 24:22, 24). But it also teaches that God desires all to be saved and that Christ died for all (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Cor. 5:14). Consequently, Lutheran Christians urge people not to consider the number or identity of the elect—which, after all, God has not revealed. Instead, we direct people to the clear promises of Scripture that God does not desire the death of a sinner, but wants all to be saved (Ezek. 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4). We stress that Christ died for all sinners, not just a select few (John 3:16; 2 Cor. 5:14). Not only do we believe that these promises are genuinely offered to all who read them, we also believe that the Holy Spirit works faith and strengthens it through these promises of the gospel. When we doubt whether God can save us wretched sinners, we go to the gospel for comfort. We confess with Paul, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13, ESV).
We should not deny that we are emotional creatures any less than we are intellectual or social creatures. Our worship should reflect that truth. But we should resist the tendency in American Protestantism to make emotionalism the keystone for genuine worship. Real worship is hearing and meditating upon the Word of God, especially the gospel.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, January 22, 2010
Worship is not an adiaphoron, part two
In my last post I mentioned that there were a couple movements that have changed the way that people in the late twentieth century (and our current one) worship. Neither movement originated in Lutheranism. Consequently, they operate with their own distinct theology and address issues that Lutherans do not necessarily face. However, we Lutherans know that we often can learn from other Christians. The only stipulation is that we will be selective in what we accept and will look at everything through the lens of our confessions.
One of the main movements was the Liturgical Movement that came out of Rome. That movement does not make any sense unless one has an understanding of how Roman Catholics were conducting their masses around 1800. People went to mass, but rarely communed. Not only was the mass conducted in Latin, but there was nothing like Read Mass with the Priest (a bi-lingual missal for lay people to follow), as would become popular in the early twentieth century. Technically, it was not contrary to canon law to print them, but most bishops frowned on the idea. Preaching was poor or non-existent. There was catechesis for the youth and scholastic theology for the experts, but neither took place in the context of the mass. In addition, the rubrics were set by late Gothic tastes and its flair for the overly dramatic. In such a context, the liturgy was what the priest did and the people ignored; moreover, it seemed to have nothing to do with the theology of the church.
This began to change somewhat in the nineteenth century, as bi-lingual editions of the mass for the laity were printed and weekly communion was encouraged. The Liturgical Movement fostered further reforms. They devoted scholarly attention to the liturgy and discovered that Rome had not always had the same practices as in the Tridentine Rite (the Roman liturgy from the mid-16th to the mid 20th century). They encouraged people to at least follow along with the liturgy and, even better, to have the liturgy in their own language. They noted that earlier centuries had seen several people involved in the liturgy besides the priest—deacons, lectors, doorkeepers, to name a few—and they stressed that the liturgy was the work of the people instead of one man. They argued that the primary theology of the church was not to be found in the church’s catechisms or dogmatic textbooks, but in the liturgy. And they convinced many people with their arguments. By and large, Roman Catholics have been celebrating mass ever since the 1960’s in a way that the Liturgical Movement envisioned it.
Many Lutherans have admired the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Catholic Church, and it has affected many particular rubrics within Lutheran liturgies of the past four decades. Lutherans saw that Rome was at last agreeing with Lutherans when they began worshipping in languages other than Latin and when they removed some unnecessary clutter. They applauded when Rome began to emphasize the Scriptures in worship and to connect theology and catechesis with worship. It is no surprise, then, that many Lutherans adopted some of the other practices newly adopted by Rome: heavy involvement of the laity in worship; a 3-year cycle of readings instead of a 1-year cycle; a stress on liturgy as the people’s work (“everyone a minister” became a popular slogan); and the stress on the liturgy at the cost of “academic” theology.
But as I said at the beginning of this blog, the Liturgical Movement was addressing some concerns that Lutherans never had to face, and it was giving some answers that Lutherans could not accept. Even when the pastor conducted the entire liturgy, Lutherans had never been bystanders as Roman Catholics had been. Lutherans worshipped in their native language and were expected to participate by listening attentively and by joining in hymns and in various liturgical responses. (In the Roman Church those responses were spoken in Latin by acolytes, not by the people.) Moreover, preaching and liturgy in the Lutheran Church had never been separated from systematic theology, or vice versa. Pastors learned theology so that they could teach it in worship, and the Lutheran liturgy was seen as a tool for teaching sound Lutheran theology. But some (such as Aidan Kavanagh) in the Liturgical Movement envisioned an even deeper connection between worship and theology. They advocated that the liturgy be the source of the church’s doctrine, a notion that Lutherans cannot accept, since our doctrine comes from the Scriptures and is given form by the gospel, not by the liturgy. The Liturgical Movement was showing its Roman roots in deferring to a tradition (the liturgy) as a source of doctrine rather than making traditions conform to sound doctrine.
Without a doubt the Liturgical Movement gave Christianity the most serious scholarship of the liturgy since perhaps Carolingian times (ca. 800 A.D.). For that reason Lutherans will have to take it seriously and will thank it for its helpful analysis and suggestions. But since the Liturgical Movement came out of Rome and shares many of its presuppositions, we will have to take some of its conclusions with a grain of salt. We will have to imitate Martin Luther, who accepted much of the Roman Rite of his day, but altered whatever was an impediment to the gospel.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
One of the main movements was the Liturgical Movement that came out of Rome. That movement does not make any sense unless one has an understanding of how Roman Catholics were conducting their masses around 1800. People went to mass, but rarely communed. Not only was the mass conducted in Latin, but there was nothing like Read Mass with the Priest (a bi-lingual missal for lay people to follow), as would become popular in the early twentieth century. Technically, it was not contrary to canon law to print them, but most bishops frowned on the idea. Preaching was poor or non-existent. There was catechesis for the youth and scholastic theology for the experts, but neither took place in the context of the mass. In addition, the rubrics were set by late Gothic tastes and its flair for the overly dramatic. In such a context, the liturgy was what the priest did and the people ignored; moreover, it seemed to have nothing to do with the theology of the church.
This began to change somewhat in the nineteenth century, as bi-lingual editions of the mass for the laity were printed and weekly communion was encouraged. The Liturgical Movement fostered further reforms. They devoted scholarly attention to the liturgy and discovered that Rome had not always had the same practices as in the Tridentine Rite (the Roman liturgy from the mid-16th to the mid 20th century). They encouraged people to at least follow along with the liturgy and, even better, to have the liturgy in their own language. They noted that earlier centuries had seen several people involved in the liturgy besides the priest—deacons, lectors, doorkeepers, to name a few—and they stressed that the liturgy was the work of the people instead of one man. They argued that the primary theology of the church was not to be found in the church’s catechisms or dogmatic textbooks, but in the liturgy. And they convinced many people with their arguments. By and large, Roman Catholics have been celebrating mass ever since the 1960’s in a way that the Liturgical Movement envisioned it.
Many Lutherans have admired the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Catholic Church, and it has affected many particular rubrics within Lutheran liturgies of the past four decades. Lutherans saw that Rome was at last agreeing with Lutherans when they began worshipping in languages other than Latin and when they removed some unnecessary clutter. They applauded when Rome began to emphasize the Scriptures in worship and to connect theology and catechesis with worship. It is no surprise, then, that many Lutherans adopted some of the other practices newly adopted by Rome: heavy involvement of the laity in worship; a 3-year cycle of readings instead of a 1-year cycle; a stress on liturgy as the people’s work (“everyone a minister” became a popular slogan); and the stress on the liturgy at the cost of “academic” theology.
But as I said at the beginning of this blog, the Liturgical Movement was addressing some concerns that Lutherans never had to face, and it was giving some answers that Lutherans could not accept. Even when the pastor conducted the entire liturgy, Lutherans had never been bystanders as Roman Catholics had been. Lutherans worshipped in their native language and were expected to participate by listening attentively and by joining in hymns and in various liturgical responses. (In the Roman Church those responses were spoken in Latin by acolytes, not by the people.) Moreover, preaching and liturgy in the Lutheran Church had never been separated from systematic theology, or vice versa. Pastors learned theology so that they could teach it in worship, and the Lutheran liturgy was seen as a tool for teaching sound Lutheran theology. But some (such as Aidan Kavanagh) in the Liturgical Movement envisioned an even deeper connection between worship and theology. They advocated that the liturgy be the source of the church’s doctrine, a notion that Lutherans cannot accept, since our doctrine comes from the Scriptures and is given form by the gospel, not by the liturgy. The Liturgical Movement was showing its Roman roots in deferring to a tradition (the liturgy) as a source of doctrine rather than making traditions conform to sound doctrine.
Without a doubt the Liturgical Movement gave Christianity the most serious scholarship of the liturgy since perhaps Carolingian times (ca. 800 A.D.). For that reason Lutherans will have to take it seriously and will thank it for its helpful analysis and suggestions. But since the Liturgical Movement came out of Rome and shares many of its presuppositions, we will have to take some of its conclusions with a grain of salt. We will have to imitate Martin Luther, who accepted much of the Roman Rite of his day, but altered whatever was an impediment to the gospel.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Worship is not an adiaphoron, part one
Worship has become a hotly debated topic across confessional lines and in our own circles. In an effort to bring clarity to this issue the 35 district presidents of our synod issued eight theses, which I would like to examine over the course of the next few months, devoting one blog or two to each of the theses. I will not blog exclusively on this topic until it is completed, but rather intersperse it with blogs on other topics. Overall, I think that the theses point us in the right direction, although how one fleshes out the ideas behind each thesis is crucial.
The first thesis is that “worship is not an adiaphoron.” An adiaphoron (plural: adiaphora) is something neither forbidden nor commanded; an individual is able to make whatever choice he or she desires in the matter. Whether one has Cheerios or Frosted Flakes for breakfast is an adiaphoron. Indeed, whether one skips breakfast or not is an adiaphoron, although a doctor might argue to the contrary.
As later theses will demonstrate, there are many things in worship that are adiaphora. Do we stand for hymn stanzas that mention the Trinity? Do we commune kneeling or standing? How do we gather the offering? Do we confess the creed before or after the sermon? There is some flexibility on the particulars, but worship itself is not an adiaphoron. We are commanded by God to hear His Word and to receive the sacrament of His Son’s body and blood. We are commanded to make disciples by baptizing and teaching. In response to God’s grace we are obligated to pour forth our prayers and our praises before Him. Conversely, we are forbidden to pray to idols or to seek divine help from any other source but the LORD God. Moreover, we are forbidden to neglect the gathering together of the saints and are commanded to support one another through our common worship. The authors of the eight theses acknowledge these truths by drawing the following corollaries: “worship is commanded by God; the highest form of worship is faith; worship is Trinitarian, and centered in Christ; the means by which faith is created and nurtured are essential to worship.”
Even on matters that are genuinely adiaphora there ought to be serious thought. Practicalities such as the size of a congregation may dictate whether we commune kneeling or standing, for example, but in either posture we should do so with reverence, and any church making that decision should do so with great care and reflection. In so doing we will avoid two extremes. One is to find a dogma at stake in every minor choice and then to say that any difference in the most trivial areas of practice reflects an entirely different confession. The other extreme is to say that we can do whatever we want in our practice unless it explicitly violates a major doctrine of our confession, and even then we can perhaps “Lutheranize” it. Both errors ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical but are closely related. What we teach, believe, and confess will shape how we worship, and vice versa, but our practices will reflect to some degree individual and cultural variety. Those who turn every minor choice in worship into a major doctrinal issue ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical. Those who have no real limits on the variety of practice ignore the fact that bad practices lead to bad doctrine.
Before we examine these theses further, it might be helpful to examine a couple of powerful movements that shaped worship in the twentieth century and that promise to continue to influence the twenty-first century. As we will see, much of what these movements advocated had to do with worship practices, but they also had different understandings of doctrine (especially with reference to the church and justification and the Christian life), and the shift in worship practices was often accompanied by a shift in the church’s teaching. But you will have to read my comments about that in my next blogs.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
The first thesis is that “worship is not an adiaphoron.” An adiaphoron (plural: adiaphora) is something neither forbidden nor commanded; an individual is able to make whatever choice he or she desires in the matter. Whether one has Cheerios or Frosted Flakes for breakfast is an adiaphoron. Indeed, whether one skips breakfast or not is an adiaphoron, although a doctor might argue to the contrary.
As later theses will demonstrate, there are many things in worship that are adiaphora. Do we stand for hymn stanzas that mention the Trinity? Do we commune kneeling or standing? How do we gather the offering? Do we confess the creed before or after the sermon? There is some flexibility on the particulars, but worship itself is not an adiaphoron. We are commanded by God to hear His Word and to receive the sacrament of His Son’s body and blood. We are commanded to make disciples by baptizing and teaching. In response to God’s grace we are obligated to pour forth our prayers and our praises before Him. Conversely, we are forbidden to pray to idols or to seek divine help from any other source but the LORD God. Moreover, we are forbidden to neglect the gathering together of the saints and are commanded to support one another through our common worship. The authors of the eight theses acknowledge these truths by drawing the following corollaries: “worship is commanded by God; the highest form of worship is faith; worship is Trinitarian, and centered in Christ; the means by which faith is created and nurtured are essential to worship.”
Even on matters that are genuinely adiaphora there ought to be serious thought. Practicalities such as the size of a congregation may dictate whether we commune kneeling or standing, for example, but in either posture we should do so with reverence, and any church making that decision should do so with great care and reflection. In so doing we will avoid two extremes. One is to find a dogma at stake in every minor choice and then to say that any difference in the most trivial areas of practice reflects an entirely different confession. The other extreme is to say that we can do whatever we want in our practice unless it explicitly violates a major doctrine of our confession, and even then we can perhaps “Lutheranize” it. Both errors ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical but are closely related. What we teach, believe, and confess will shape how we worship, and vice versa, but our practices will reflect to some degree individual and cultural variety. Those who turn every minor choice in worship into a major doctrinal issue ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical. Those who have no real limits on the variety of practice ignore the fact that bad practices lead to bad doctrine.
Before we examine these theses further, it might be helpful to examine a couple of powerful movements that shaped worship in the twentieth century and that promise to continue to influence the twenty-first century. As we will see, much of what these movements advocated had to do with worship practices, but they also had different understandings of doctrine (especially with reference to the church and justification and the Christian life), and the shift in worship practices was often accompanied by a shift in the church’s teaching. But you will have to read my comments about that in my next blogs.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Friday, January 15, 2010
What Could Tarkovsky See That We Can’t?
In my last post I suggested that the pantheism of Avatar (not to mention several other films) was about as deep spiritually as most in our materialist society could go. (See my previous post for the meaning of pantheism and related terms.) Does that mean that an insipid pantheism is the best that any artist living in a mind-numbing materialistic society can come up with?
The late Andrei Tarkovsky shows us that the answer is “No.” Born and reared in the Soviet Union, where he also made most of his films, Tarkovsky proves that spirituality in a dogmatically materialist country need not degenerate into pantheism. It is not that he is immune to nature’s charms, whether it is the desolate steppes seen from the balloon in Andrei Rublev, or the haunting birch forests in Ivan’s Childhood, or the poet’s dacha and environs in Nostalghia. And yet Tarkovsky posits that there is a greater spirituality than mere nature worship. It is not an impersonal force behind nature that Tarkovsky proclaims in his films. It is always a Transcendent Other—not necessarily the Christian God but someone behaving much as God does: always otherworldly, sometimes difficult to understand and communicate with, and usually ignored or dismissed by hardened materialists.
In Solaris, for example, the Transcendent Other is the conscious entity to be found in the watery deep of an alien planet. A space administration has sent scientists to investigate the planet Solaris, but little progress has been made because strange apparitions manifest themselves, driving the scientists to distraction. Their colleagues back home cannot understand the delay. Solaris is a planet to be measured, probed, analyzed, and eventually colonized. Nobody expects to communicate with a being of a different order.
But simply recognizing that there is a Transcendent Other does not guarantee that we can communicate with the Other. That is a point Tarkovsky makes about all relationships, including those among human beings; think, for example, of the various estrangements depicted in his autobiographical Mirror. Communication is particularly difficult when one deals with a being who is not of this world. The apparitions in Solaris terrify the astronauts on the space station. For example, the protagonist Kris Kelvin is troubled by the apparition that takes the form of his ex-wife Hari, since he is reminded of how his neglect of her had driven her to commit suicide. In the end, the Other creates an island where Kelvin can encounter him and he takes the form of Kelvin’s estranged father. Kelvin falls penitent before him and his father embraces him in a pose drawn from Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. At its heart this is good Christian theology. We cannot pretend as if God does not exist any more than the scientists on the space station can deny the existence of the sentient being to be found on Solaris. However, if God draws near in His raw power, His presence reminds us of our sins and drives us to despair. Thus, God must prepare a place for us to meet Him, which He does through the death and resurrection of Christ.
The Soviet Union saw very well the Christian notions behind Tarkovsky’s films. They also understood the danger to their regime of allowing someone like Tarkovsky to speak of a transcendent being and did their best to silence him. Fortunately, they did not succeed.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
The late Andrei Tarkovsky shows us that the answer is “No.” Born and reared in the Soviet Union, where he also made most of his films, Tarkovsky proves that spirituality in a dogmatically materialist country need not degenerate into pantheism. It is not that he is immune to nature’s charms, whether it is the desolate steppes seen from the balloon in Andrei Rublev, or the haunting birch forests in Ivan’s Childhood, or the poet’s dacha and environs in Nostalghia. And yet Tarkovsky posits that there is a greater spirituality than mere nature worship. It is not an impersonal force behind nature that Tarkovsky proclaims in his films. It is always a Transcendent Other—not necessarily the Christian God but someone behaving much as God does: always otherworldly, sometimes difficult to understand and communicate with, and usually ignored or dismissed by hardened materialists.
In Solaris, for example, the Transcendent Other is the conscious entity to be found in the watery deep of an alien planet. A space administration has sent scientists to investigate the planet Solaris, but little progress has been made because strange apparitions manifest themselves, driving the scientists to distraction. Their colleagues back home cannot understand the delay. Solaris is a planet to be measured, probed, analyzed, and eventually colonized. Nobody expects to communicate with a being of a different order.
But simply recognizing that there is a Transcendent Other does not guarantee that we can communicate with the Other. That is a point Tarkovsky makes about all relationships, including those among human beings; think, for example, of the various estrangements depicted in his autobiographical Mirror. Communication is particularly difficult when one deals with a being who is not of this world. The apparitions in Solaris terrify the astronauts on the space station. For example, the protagonist Kris Kelvin is troubled by the apparition that takes the form of his ex-wife Hari, since he is reminded of how his neglect of her had driven her to commit suicide. In the end, the Other creates an island where Kelvin can encounter him and he takes the form of Kelvin’s estranged father. Kelvin falls penitent before him and his father embraces him in a pose drawn from Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. At its heart this is good Christian theology. We cannot pretend as if God does not exist any more than the scientists on the space station can deny the existence of the sentient being to be found on Solaris. However, if God draws near in His raw power, His presence reminds us of our sins and drives us to despair. Thus, God must prepare a place for us to meet Him, which He does through the death and resurrection of Christ.
The Soviet Union saw very well the Christian notions behind Tarkovsky’s films. They also understood the danger to their regime of allowing someone like Tarkovsky to speak of a transcendent being and did their best to silence him. Fortunately, they did not succeed.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Is Avatar’s Religion America’s?
I recently watched the film Avatar, which has stirred up some controversy. I leave aside its comments on war, greed, capitalism, colonialism, terrorism, the displacement of indigenous peoples, and the like. Some viewers have thought its handling of such topics a simplistic morality play; others have responded that there is enough content in our history to warrant a morality play, simplistic or not. However, as a theologian, I find its pantheism most noteworthy.
Pantheism is the belief that everything in nature is divine and that God is simply the sum of the spiritual forces found in every living creature. The religion of the Na’Vi is certainly pantheistic. As such, it is at odds with sound Christian theology, which teaches that God is both transcendent (He is not to be identified with His creation, but is distinct from it and greater than it) and imminent (He is involved with His creation and is not an absentee God). Pantheists stress the imminent nature of God to such a degree that they forget that the creation itself is not divine.
The film’s pantheism has certainly earned it its critics among traditionalists, who see it as an assault on the Judeo-Christian worldview. But I have a slightly different take on the film’s religion: we live in a culture where pantheism is as profound a spirituality as the average citizen can fathom. The prevailing ideology in the Western world is materialism, the philosophical (and theological!) belief that matter is all that exists. Those who rightly recognize that materialism is a bankrupt and bankrupting idea are nonetheless children of materialism who cannot grasp that there is something completely transcendent above matter. They are intellectually materialists who cannot emotionally or spiritually stomach the consequences of believing in a purely materialist universe. The best they can do is to think that matter must have some deeper ontological or spiritual significance.
This is not a new phenomenon. The eighteenth century was dominated by materialism, and the early nineteenth century reacted vehemently to its mechanistic understanding of the universe. In American letters this reaction to materialism is often called Transcendentalism, despite the fact that it is closer to pantheism than to traditional Christian transcendentalism. And so the debate in the last three centuries has been whether the living world is a soulless machine or a machine with a ghost in that machine. That life might be a creation of God and animated by the Holy Ghost never enters the mind of the debaters.
It would be easy, of course, for us Christians simply to scold our pantheistic and materialist neighbors and say that they should really learn theology better. Of course, they should, but we cannot ignore our complicity in creating the materialist philosophy of the eighteenth century and the necessary romantic reaction thereafter. By the time of the early eighteenth century Christians had begun speaking of the universe as a watch made by a master watchmaker. But a weakness lay hidden in that argument: a watch doesn’t need the ongoing help of a watchmaker. Thus, a deism emerged that could affirm that God had created the world to work in a fine, mechanistic manner, but also taught that He could leave the scene upon completing that task. Materialists then came along and suggested that if the world functions now in a mechanistic manner, there might be a purely mechanistic explanation for its origin. And so we painted ourselves into a corner where pantheism might seem the only way out.
Anyone who has gone hiking in the mountains or looked at a sunset from a beach knows the power of nature’s beauty. Christianity says, “Such things stir the soul, but there is One who is even greater than that. The heavens are not God or even His glory. The heavens merely declare the glory of God, who therefore must be greater than them.” It may not be the usual pantheism that passes for spirituality in our country, but we worship a greater God than what most people’s imagination can muster.
Pantheism is the belief that everything in nature is divine and that God is simply the sum of the spiritual forces found in every living creature. The religion of the Na’Vi is certainly pantheistic. As such, it is at odds with sound Christian theology, which teaches that God is both transcendent (He is not to be identified with His creation, but is distinct from it and greater than it) and imminent (He is involved with His creation and is not an absentee God). Pantheists stress the imminent nature of God to such a degree that they forget that the creation itself is not divine.
The film’s pantheism has certainly earned it its critics among traditionalists, who see it as an assault on the Judeo-Christian worldview. But I have a slightly different take on the film’s religion: we live in a culture where pantheism is as profound a spirituality as the average citizen can fathom. The prevailing ideology in the Western world is materialism, the philosophical (and theological!) belief that matter is all that exists. Those who rightly recognize that materialism is a bankrupt and bankrupting idea are nonetheless children of materialism who cannot grasp that there is something completely transcendent above matter. They are intellectually materialists who cannot emotionally or spiritually stomach the consequences of believing in a purely materialist universe. The best they can do is to think that matter must have some deeper ontological or spiritual significance.
This is not a new phenomenon. The eighteenth century was dominated by materialism, and the early nineteenth century reacted vehemently to its mechanistic understanding of the universe. In American letters this reaction to materialism is often called Transcendentalism, despite the fact that it is closer to pantheism than to traditional Christian transcendentalism. And so the debate in the last three centuries has been whether the living world is a soulless machine or a machine with a ghost in that machine. That life might be a creation of God and animated by the Holy Ghost never enters the mind of the debaters.
It would be easy, of course, for us Christians simply to scold our pantheistic and materialist neighbors and say that they should really learn theology better. Of course, they should, but we cannot ignore our complicity in creating the materialist philosophy of the eighteenth century and the necessary romantic reaction thereafter. By the time of the early eighteenth century Christians had begun speaking of the universe as a watch made by a master watchmaker. But a weakness lay hidden in that argument: a watch doesn’t need the ongoing help of a watchmaker. Thus, a deism emerged that could affirm that God had created the world to work in a fine, mechanistic manner, but also taught that He could leave the scene upon completing that task. Materialists then came along and suggested that if the world functions now in a mechanistic manner, there might be a purely mechanistic explanation for its origin. And so we painted ourselves into a corner where pantheism might seem the only way out.
Anyone who has gone hiking in the mountains or looked at a sunset from a beach knows the power of nature’s beauty. Christianity says, “Such things stir the soul, but there is One who is even greater than that. The heavens are not God or even His glory. The heavens merely declare the glory of God, who therefore must be greater than them.” It may not be the usual pantheism that passes for spirituality in our country, but we worship a greater God than what most people’s imagination can muster.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Welcome to my blog
I used to blog at my church's website, but I found that the blogs were beginning to take over the church's website, and so I've decided to transfer them over here. This site will contain some of my musings about theology, literature, and culture.
I need to lay down a few ground rules before we begin. I have a life beyond this blog--gasp! but it's true--and so readers should not expect me to be churning out 4 or 5 blogs a day and responding to all of them every 5 minutes. If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, it might be because I have sick people to visit in the hospital or Bible studies to prepare. And sometimes my thoughts may not have gelled on a particular topic to the point where I am ready to share them. Chill out and wait for the next blog. I plan to do something better than a monthly blog, but I wouldn't plan on seeing a weekly blog here.
As a person who is devoted to sound Lutheran theology and who has devoted his life to studying and teaching the Greek and Latin classics, I am particularly interested in the interaction between theology and culture. For me, culture is not simply a code word for "politics," and most of my conversation will avoid that realm since it is adequately covered elsewhere. Nor am I interested exclusively in popular culture, as is so often the case with those in the church who claim to be "reaching the culture." Culture is more than TV programs or great works of literature. It is more than our history or our shared customs and values. And it is all worth exploration, especially from a theological point of view.
I need to lay down a few ground rules before we begin. I have a life beyond this blog--gasp! but it's true--and so readers should not expect me to be churning out 4 or 5 blogs a day and responding to all of them every 5 minutes. If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, it might be because I have sick people to visit in the hospital or Bible studies to prepare. And sometimes my thoughts may not have gelled on a particular topic to the point where I am ready to share them. Chill out and wait for the next blog. I plan to do something better than a monthly blog, but I wouldn't plan on seeing a weekly blog here.
As a person who is devoted to sound Lutheran theology and who has devoted his life to studying and teaching the Greek and Latin classics, I am particularly interested in the interaction between theology and culture. For me, culture is not simply a code word for "politics," and most of my conversation will avoid that realm since it is adequately covered elsewhere. Nor am I interested exclusively in popular culture, as is so often the case with those in the church who claim to be "reaching the culture." Culture is more than TV programs or great works of literature. It is more than our history or our shared customs and values. And it is all worth exploration, especially from a theological point of view.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)