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
Thursday, January 28, 2010
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.
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