On Sin 3

If sin may be primarily thematised under 'pride' - as it has been for millennia - then the appropriate response must be 'humility and obedience'.

But despite its seemingly strong pedigree, this also raises all sorts of questions.

One question which Matt Jenson raises in his book The Gravity of Sin*is, does this thematisation do justice to the actual experience of sin - does everyone suffer from simple pride, or might, say, women, or others, have a different wrestling with this? He responds that, yes, people actually do have different characteristic experiences of sin, that sin takes different shapes for them. Drawing on the work of Augustine, Luther, and Barth, Jenson paints an alternative picture of sin as homo incurvatus in se, using the Latin, or 'humanity curved in on itself', and therefore not able to be open to God or neighbour. I agree that this far better thematises the broad category of sin than simply 'pride'.

This also suggests - quite helpfully - that the 'solution' to sin is not force. If sin is primarily pride, with the appropriate stance being simply humility and obedience, then this implies that the problem is having a will - having a self - and one ought to get in line and do as one is told. It is a military-style solution intended to create identical repetition. It also - at least in effect - discourages thinking. Obedience in this sense is not to be considered, not to be interrogated; imagination has seemingly no role in such obedience; it is simply to be enacted.

There is a deep and disturbing finitude to this which seems not to do justice to the excessiveness of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Put another way, it is hard not to see legalism as the 'solution'** to sin as pride; and legalism and its attendent self-righteousness are, it must be said, godless foolishness.

But if sin - which might well be pride, yes, but is much broader than that - is more a matter of 'one being curved in on oneself', then the response is more a matter of 'opening oneself up', or 'being opened up'. One is opened up to who one is in God and in light of the neighbour; the problem is not one's will or self in themselves. These are themselves gifts of God, and for God's creation to be its fullest we must participate in it, rather than shrinking back from them, or using them for our own ends over others. We need to be healed, redeemed, reconciled, certainly: we should use these gifts appropriately rather than using them abusively, or failing to use them.

If our selves are brought into play in this way, then, it also means that we are also free to think. We are not to shelve ourselves and cease thinking: rather we are to embrace thinking - and acting - in their fullest ways. As I like to say, the life of faithfulness requires thinking and thinking about thinking. That is to say, when we hear - in Barth's terms - the command of God come to us, that command is itself always mediated through the human, whether ourselves or others. Since it is always mediated through the human, it is always already involved in thinking - language, judgement, and so on - and so it is only appropriate that we engage in thinking about thinking. We are not to be formed into a military-like obedience (sorry, Ignatius of Loyola), but rather a thinking faithfulness which is consonant with creativity, yet which is also able to self-interrogate.

I call this a 'light' hermeneutics (or, thinking about thinking) of suspicion. (I need a better expression!) With it, one is open to possibilities in God, perhaps surprising possibilities, for nonidentical yet faithful repetition of Christlikeness in our lives. But one is also open to the possibility of self-deception and ideology. This is meant to instill a vigilance as well as an eagerness to hear. And part of this vigilance is a vigilance against our own perfectionism - 'I must know everything before I can act' - as well as being able to interrogate our own interrogation - 'Am I suspicious of this just because I don't like it?' It is, in philosophical terms, a non-foundational hermeneutic; I mean it to be an ad hoc and ongoing practice rather than some sort of all-encompassing theory of understanding.

And so, in this way, perhaps we might see that the revelation of God to sinful humanity - to quote Rowan Williams, drawing on Paul Ricoeur - 'is addressed not so much to a will called upon to submit as to an imagination called upon to "open itself".' (from 'Trinity and Revelation' in On Christian Theology, p. 147.)



* I reviewed this work - mostly favourably - in International Journal of Systematic Theology. I am not sure if you will be able to access the review, but the link is here.

** How I despise thinking there is a 'solution' to sin! To say there is a solution to it implies that it is essentially something isolable to be managed, simply to be controlled. It not only seems not to do justice to the reality and scope of sin, it also seems to (even more!) domesticate grace, as perhaps some sort of 'strategy for living', an idea which can be plucked out of nowhere and adapted to whatever we're doing, rather than something elemental and awe-inspiring, which cannot be adapted to whatever we're doing, but transforms us in the deepest ways.

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Reading Scripture

First off, let me be entirely upfront that I owe this reference - even down to the post title - to Sean the Baptist. (Thanks, Sean!) Thankfully, the internet allows for (perhaps even encourages) endless iteration, and so it is not entirely beside the point to reproduce a great quote from Rowan Williams on the dynamics of reading (and just as importantly, re-reading) Scripture.

The address as a whole is great and well worth a thoughtful read through. Here are a few quotations from ++Rowan's speech to whet your appetite (including Sean's original quotation):

[B]efore Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public. Those of us who assume that the normative image of Scripture reading is the solitary individual poring over a bound volume, one of the great icons of classical Protestantism, may need to be reminded that for most Christians throughout the ages and probably most in the world at present, the norm is listening. ...the Church in reading Scripture publicly says both (i) that it is not a self-generated reality, created simply out of human reflection and ideals, and (ii) that what is read needs to be read as a communicative act, - that is, not as information, not as just instruction, but as a summons to assemble together as a certain sort of community, one that understands itself as called and created ‘out of nothing’. Whatever we do in private with our reading of Scripture, we must do in awareness of this public character. The Church – a familiar enough point – is in the language of the Bible itself an ‘assembly’, a ‘convocation’: an ekklesia. It declares its basic character when it represents itself as listening to the act of ‘convoking’, calling together.
. . .
what I am trying to define as a strictly theological reading of Scripture, a reading in which the present community is made contemporary with the world in front of the text, is bound to give priority to the question that the text specifically puts and to ask how the movement, the transition, worked for within the text is to be realised in the contemporary reading community. To move too rapidly to the use of the text to make a general point which does not require the reader to be converted is to step outside what I have been calling the time of the text, the process by which it shapes its question. It is to make the text more passive than active, and so to move away from the stance of the listener, from the stance of the Church as trying to be still enough to hear and free enough to respond to God’s summons to be his community. Of course the work of exegesis to establish doctrine and ethics is unavoidable; commentary is always going on. But the first moment of commentary – if this emphasis on the basic character of listening is correct – needs to be the tracing of the ‘time’ of a text so as to chart where it is moving.
. . .
A written text inevitably has about it a dual character. It comes before the reader/hearer as a finished product, and so as something that can in some ways be treated as an object. If we are not careful its written character can be misused by working with the text as if it were passive. In contrast to the event of a voice speaking, it can be abstracted from the single occasion when the hearer has no control over what comes to her or him from outside. At the same time, a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate. Just as the text itself contains re-reading, is almost constituted by re-reading, so that it repeatedly recreates a movement towards conversion (towards the cross of Jesus, in Christian terms), so the eternal possibility of ‘reading again’ stands as a warning against ignoring the active ‘restlessness’ of the text in summoning the reader to change. The writtenness of the text is from one point of view risky as a strategy of communication: it risks the appearance of passivity, and the re-readability of the text risks the appearance of indeterminacy. Yet from another point of view it can be seen as inseparable from the risk of the communication it itself describes as well as enacts – a divine communication that is never without human speech and narrative, never just an interruption of the created continuum but a pressure upon it that opens up to the divine by the character of its internal relations and connections, the shifting, penitent perspective of a story enacted in time. The writtenness of the text is like the sheer factuality of the historical past as the vehicle of revelation: it is
something irreversibly done, but for that very reason continuously inviting or demanding.

Read the rest here.

This is classic Williams. For all the occasional pains of living in communion with Anglicans, it is truly gratifying to have a primus inter pares archbishop who can theologise well in public.

Credit for the picture of Archbishop Williams and his wife Jane goes to Lambeth Palace. Similar such pictures may be found here.

Some theological odds and ends

I know I haven't posted much recently - busy. And likely to be so to the end of March, not that I'm saying I won't post. Just don't hold your breath.

But do go check out Kim Fabricius' 10 Theses on the Holy Spirit at Faith & Theology; especially note numbers 6 and 10. (Hat tip to Alistair.) Good stuff from an estimable theological thinker.

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Also from Alistair, a quotation from Rowan Williams:

Scripture and tradition require to be read in a way that brings out their
strangeness, their non-obvious and non-contemporary qualities, in order that
they may be read both freshly and truthfully from one generation to another.
They need to be made more difficult before we can accurately grasp their
simplicities…. And this ‘making difficult’, this confession that what the gospel
says in Scripture and tradition does not instantly and effortlessly make sense,
is perhaps one of the most fundamental tasks for theology.

(Alistair himself got it from Faith & Theology, so it's really the whole circle of life thing...or something.)

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Also, there is a lot good out there on the whole "Jesus and family tomb" questions. You'll find alot of it at Mark Goodacre's weblog, which will point you towards other great resources, too.

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I had an experience a little while ago of finally reading Colin Gunton and thinking to myself 'why did no one tell me about this guy?! This is great!' Of course, that wasn't completely true. Others had told me, or held forth on his worth - not least Andy Goodliff - and I was simply heedless. And although I found much great, I also think he is limited in some unfortunate ways. I once said to Andy that I would say how I think he is, but this is not that post. I've had a very similar experience recently. But let me back up.

I root for the Chicago Cubs, and for England in international test cricket - I know all about self-loathing. But Calvin takes it to new depths. I have been reading Calvin's Institutes over Lent, along with some friends. There are hints and glimmers of real insight and brilliance. There is also some really wretchedly awful bits. And a lot of banal truth in-between. But he's not who I've 'discovered'.

As a respite from Calvin, to some degree, I have been reading Jurgen Moltmann, namely his Trinity and the Kingdom of God. Before this, I had read extracts from The Crucified God, and on that basis, well, let's just say I wasn't a fan. But Trinity and the Kingdom has completely changed my outlook on him. Why didn't anyone tell me about him before?

That's not to say I am now somehow a 'Moltmannian'. As with Gunton, I find him limited in ways. But he is intensely hopeful, and makes some very interesting moves. Much, much better than Calvin: even if, like Gunton, he works broadly within he same tradition.

Gleanings

I've run across some great blog entries and websites that I thought would be worth sharing:

Caleb takes a characteristically clear-eyed view of martyrdom, prophecy, and how certain interpretive strategies undermine the Christian life. His post is, in ways, a beginning of my response to why I find dispensationalism (one such interpretive technique) wanting. Here is one quote to whet your appetite for more:

For one thing, a view of persecution as inevitable discourages Christians from engaging in any efforts to make the world a more equitable place to live. There is no ethics behind the "nice cake" view of eschatology, only certain destruction. As Fred Clark put it in a different context, "At a very basic level, this worldview opposes and undermines any long-term thinking, any sustained effort to make the world a better place -- replacing the hope of redemption with a perverse longing for apocalypse." This worldview was not Stang's, clearly. It was precisely her "sustained effort to make the world a better place" that led to her death. So it should not marshalled as evidence to support a "perverse longing" for the world to perish. Christians, presumably like the God they worship, do not desire the destruction of the world, but instead its renovation.

I have also discovered an interesting post with Rev. Dr. George Hunsinger (of Princeton Theological Seminary) talking about Church Folks for a Better America, a group he has begun that presents a political alternative for those who are both passionately-committed Christians and uncomfortable with the politics of the right.

Re-keying Locke

Stephen C. Carlson provides, via Seth Sanders, Larry Lessig, and David Dungan a very helpful look at how John Locke (yes, that John Locke) was a precursor to the modern practice of literalist Biblical exegesis.

Hypotyposeis: "Literalist" Exegesis

I thought a couple of further remarks might be made - the reader keeping in mind that I am entering this particular conversation midstream.

First, as the entry points out only in passing, literalism is the order of the day for modernity, not only fundamentalism. Modern historical critics are very much literalists in the sense that Locke specifies: "(The Bible must) be understood in the plain direct meaning of the words and phrases, such as they may be supposed to have had in the mouths of the speakers, who used them according to the language of that time and country wherein they lived..." The difference between fundamentalists and historical critics (I don't like this distinction, but it will do for now) is not that one is literalist and the other not - much less that one is "critical" and the other not - but the emphasis that they place on the criteria they use and the ways in which they then employ those criteria. In other words, this fundementalist-historical critical debate is one of modernity's in-house discussions.

Further, Carlson quotes Dungan, who says "In America, fundamentalists belong to private, voluntary, democratic associations having minimal hierarchy. In these groups, the aversion to all creeds, the aversion to lateral or hierarchical authority so that congregations are joined with other congregations only in the loosest of coalitions, the universal suspicion of educational standards for their clergy--all spring from one and the same core value: the need to remain politically and religiously equal." One might well read "all people" for "fundamentalists" in the first quoted sentence. With only the possible exception of suspicion of educational standards, this is broadly true of nearly all American Christians. As I have been aching to say for some time now, if you scratch an American, you will find a baptist underneath.

Third, the terms "literal" and "literalist" are not usually used as technically as they are in Locke and Dungan, or Carlson. Generally, they are used to mean an interpretation which is simplisitic, and more generally to speak of someone who is ignorant. In fact, these terms are usually used simply as a pejorative dismissal of someone who thinks differently than the speaker; it is a good way to avoid any engagement with someone else, and any searching self-examination of our own beliefs. It is very much of the moment in our society now. (For my money, I think they are such problematic terms I have banished them from my vocabulary for the time being. I would heartily encourage any readers consider taking the same measure.) But Carlson and those he quotes do not use the terms in these ways.

Fourth, one would do well to keep in mind that a literal reading of a text -- preserving the way the words run, with an eye towards what the author intended -- is not an innovation of the Enlightenment at all. Locke's contribution was not saying that the Bible ought to be understood this way (Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana says this, too). His contribution, and the Enlightenment's generally, was saying that this was the only way that it may be understood (or better: the only thing that counts for understanding). Locke stipulated: [the Bible must be understood]..."without such learned, artificial, and forced senses of them as are sought out and put upon them in most systems of divinity (theological systems)."

Finally, it strikes me that there might be an imprecision here. The literalist interpretation that Locke speaks about (interpretation 'according to the letter') is careful to take into account historical considerations, authorial intent, genres. Conservative Biblical interpreters are (as mentioned above) just as much literalists in this sense as liberal historical-critical interpreters, and are careful to attend to just these concerns. But I suspect that these conservative Biblical interpreters are better characterized as evangelicals than fundamentalists. Also, ironically enough, some (soi-disant) fundamentalists might not be sufficiently literalist in the sense that Locke (and Carlson) uses, if they ignore such considerations as history or genre. This sort of fundamentalist would use more of a divinitory (and pre-modern) technique than an evangelical, pulling meaning out of words without regard for authorial intent. (They are otherwise quite modern in that they are thoroughly voluntarist and individualist.)

Whose Alter Ego is Dinah Shore?

This is my favorite quote from Jacques Derrida so far (I found it in a quotation from a book review that Joel Garver wrote here).

Garver writes, quoting Derrida in Limited, Inc.:

Some interpretations are better than others and some are just wrong. Regarding the interpretation of his own texts as advocating a "skeptic-relativist-nihilist" viewpoint, Derrida says that such an interpretation is "false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine" (146).

Maybe this will be the impetus for one or two of those who dismiss "postmodernism" as silly relativistic rubbish to reapproach and reassess the necessary perils and promises that the post-modern holds for us.

(The title comes from something Jello Biafra said back in the 1980's during a Dead Kennedys concert, which I actually have sitting around on vinyl somewhere, if you can believe it.)

Mighty Fishy

An op-ed piece in the Times today, from the dean emeritus of my old university (no, I wasn't there when he was).

Stanley Fish, "The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom"

As usual, Dr. Fish makes some startling, cogent points. And while I value nuance and complexity (as in wine, so also in rhetoric), his argument is solid: even with appropriate subtlety, you must be clear in what you communicate.