(the first of three, or so, posts coming out of my summer reading of Lev Manovich concerning new media and technology)
___
What if the direction of virtual reality were reversed such that it is not us that enters into a virtual reality, leaving our normal plane of existence, but rather we are always virtual and the incarnation is God leaving his normal plane of existence and enters into our virtual reality, our copy/simulacra of reality.
Think about the Matrix. In the virtual reality of the Matrix, everything runs according to Laws and Programs which fulfill there destiny/function. But Neo comes in as one able to bend, break, augment these Laws according to his design. He brings freedom into the Matrix. And for us (humanity) this is how we must figure the break into and out of virtual reality-- the forced choice of Freedom conquering VR.
But what if the God's entering into our virtual reality is the opposite of this. Our VR is structure around freedom (even its forced choice), so might it be possible that this person would break with our Laws of freedom, conquering our VR with a new Law of necessity and function? And wouldn't this enable the great reversal where we see that our conquering of Law through Freedom is merely the greatest support of the Law, and God's conquering of Freedom through the Law is merely the greatest support of Freedom which is Love?
And of course, wouldn't this mean that Jesus' actions (and our repetition of them) would always seem irrational, impractical, insane, and leading toward death? And might this economy of sacrifice and love not signal the possibility of another life outside the laws of our VR: beyond selfishness and violence?
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Monday, July 26, 2004
Ethics of the Other; Politics of the Same
I was brooding over the two different strains of postmodern ethics/politics while walking home from the train station earlier this week, and this is what I came up with conerning the differences b/w the "Other" and the "Same". From where did these two emphases come, and to which context are they addressed?
_______
Sprouting amid the ruble of post-war Europe, the ethics of the Other (represented by Levinas and Derrida) is meant to protect us against totalitarianism, at least the overt fascist expression with its attempt to exclude and destory all the doesn't conform (to the Same of the Party, Race, Gender, etc.). The ethics of the Other, therefore, stands against the totalizing effects of the Same (which might be the modern project) by reminding us of the irriducible and infinite obligation we have before the face of the Other, which never can be draw into our circle of understanding or sameness. So against the totalizing Same we must proclaim the Other.
However, within the soil of Easter European Communism and the emergence of global capitalism, comes the flowering ethics of the Same (Represented by Zizek and Badiou). This ethics, and its related politic, is meant to guard against a different totalitarianism, a more insidious exclusion and destruction based on the continual division and deterritorialization. Because of global capitalism's continual production of difference, and therefore distraction through the endless procession of the "new", the only way of standing against this fragmenting effect is to speak and promote the Same. Against the perpetually othering of capitalism, we must proclaim that we are all the Same.
____
So we can speak of two different politics, nurtured in two different soils, resisting two different locusts. Our question then is, which pestulance is the greatest? which plant will has the greatest chance to bear fruit? and, lastly, might we consider a variety within our diets?
_______
Sprouting amid the ruble of post-war Europe, the ethics of the Other (represented by Levinas and Derrida) is meant to protect us against totalitarianism, at least the overt fascist expression with its attempt to exclude and destory all the doesn't conform (to the Same of the Party, Race, Gender, etc.). The ethics of the Other, therefore, stands against the totalizing effects of the Same (which might be the modern project) by reminding us of the irriducible and infinite obligation we have before the face of the Other, which never can be draw into our circle of understanding or sameness. So against the totalizing Same we must proclaim the Other.
However, within the soil of Easter European Communism and the emergence of global capitalism, comes the flowering ethics of the Same (Represented by Zizek and Badiou). This ethics, and its related politic, is meant to guard against a different totalitarianism, a more insidious exclusion and destruction based on the continual division and deterritorialization. Because of global capitalism's continual production of difference, and therefore distraction through the endless procession of the "new", the only way of standing against this fragmenting effect is to speak and promote the Same. Against the perpetually othering of capitalism, we must proclaim that we are all the Same.
____
So we can speak of two different politics, nurtured in two different soils, resisting two different locusts. Our question then is, which pestulance is the greatest? which plant will has the greatest chance to bear fruit? and, lastly, might we consider a variety within our diets?
Thursday, July 22, 2004
after Ekklesia
Well, the ekklesia conference has come and gone and with it all the major activities of the summer. I'm sad and glad about it.
For a run down of all the activities see AKMA's summaries (who I finally met in person). Others I met offline for the first time were anthony smith from the Weblog and Ryan from Kankakee, Jennifer Collins from scandal of particularity.
Also hero's of mine that I either met or caught up with were Stephen Long and Ed Phillips from Garrett Seminary, Micheal Cartwright, Glen Stassen, Brent Laytham, Micheal Budde, Daniel Bell, Jonathan Wilson and of course Stanely Hauerwas.
Tomorrow I'll post my note from the workshop I gave for you all to dissect and some other thought from the conference.
For a run down of all the activities see AKMA's summaries (who I finally met in person). Others I met offline for the first time were anthony smith from the Weblog and Ryan from Kankakee, Jennifer Collins from scandal of particularity.
Also hero's of mine that I either met or caught up with were Stephen Long and Ed Phillips from Garrett Seminary, Micheal Cartwright, Glen Stassen, Brent Laytham, Micheal Budde, Daniel Bell, Jonathan Wilson and of course Stanely Hauerwas.
Tomorrow I'll post my note from the workshop I gave for you all to dissect and some other thought from the conference.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Ekklesia Conference
Is any one going to the Ekklesia Conference next week?
If you are could you post a comment letting me know. We should try to get the Chicago blogger together and at least meet face to face sometime while we are there.
If you are could you post a comment letting me know. We should try to get the Chicago blogger together and at least meet face to face sometime while we are there.
Friday, July 16, 2004
The Way of Life
Who are the people? What is the vision?
This is the vision of the Living:
The Living see beyond themselves and their own desires.
The Living see the basic needs and hopes of others as the same as their own.
The Living know that even “dead men walking” can turn away from death toward life.
The Living recognize and practice a “community of life.”
The Living know good and evil tendencies are in every human being.
The Living practice repentance and forgiveness.
The Living are peacemakers.
The Living seek justice for all.
The Living are informed by history.
The Living see beyond their generation into the future.
The Living seek the same opportunity for others that they seek for themselves.
The Living respect, conserve, and share the resources of the Earth.
The Living serve the spirit of love.
The Living would rather build than destroy.
The Living seek truth instead of lies and illusions.
The Living choose trust over suspicion.
The Living celebrate life:
In the smile of a child,
In the loving touch of hands,
In the sharing of food and drink,
In the healing of the sick,
In the unique quality of each individual person,
In shared laughter,
In shared work,
In the beauty and sternness of nature,
In song, dance, and story.
from the bruderhof community.
This is the vision of the Living:
The Living see beyond themselves and their own desires.
The Living see the basic needs and hopes of others as the same as their own.
The Living know that even “dead men walking” can turn away from death toward life.
The Living recognize and practice a “community of life.”
The Living know good and evil tendencies are in every human being.
The Living practice repentance and forgiveness.
The Living are peacemakers.
The Living seek justice for all.
The Living are informed by history.
The Living see beyond their generation into the future.
The Living seek the same opportunity for others that they seek for themselves.
The Living respect, conserve, and share the resources of the Earth.
The Living serve the spirit of love.
The Living would rather build than destroy.
The Living seek truth instead of lies and illusions.
The Living choose trust over suspicion.
The Living celebrate life:
In the smile of a child,
In the loving touch of hands,
In the sharing of food and drink,
In the healing of the sick,
In the unique quality of each individual person,
In shared laughter,
In shared work,
In the beauty and sternness of nature,
In song, dance, and story.
from the bruderhof community.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
cavanaugh discussion
for those interested in willian cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination and/or the creation of the nation-state and the individual, see the discussion over at scandal of particularity.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
the prepubesant nature of christian radio
The entire time I spent in a car last week I listened to Christian radio. Not because I naturally do this, but because I was teaching at a youth camp, and every time we got in a van we started listening to the alternative christian rock radio station. Through spending a week with jr. higher and listening to Christian radio at the same time, I made a very sad discovery.
All the songs were perfectly accessable to these jr. highers.
Every thing that we listened to for an entire week could have been understood a kid who have barely reached puberty. Christian radio basically perpetuate a pre-teen understanding of God, life, and the gospel. The problem is that most people who listen to these stations are adults.
My church is spending the summer digging into the Psalms, looking at life, the hard/difficult/confusing side of life, but the Christian subculture as viewed through Christian radio doesn't even acknowledge that side of life.
I'm grieved that there is an entire segment of the Church acting prepetually prpubesant. What is to be done?
All the songs were perfectly accessable to these jr. highers.
Every thing that we listened to for an entire week could have been understood a kid who have barely reached puberty. Christian radio basically perpetuate a pre-teen understanding of God, life, and the gospel. The problem is that most people who listen to these stations are adults.
My church is spending the summer digging into the Psalms, looking at life, the hard/difficult/confusing side of life, but the Christian subculture as viewed through Christian radio doesn't even acknowledge that side of life.
I'm grieved that there is an entire segment of the Church acting prepetually prpubesant. What is to be done?
Friday, July 09, 2004
what i've been reading
in place of a really post, ill let you know what i've been reading and where I'm going.
Most importantly is the stimulating conversation stemming from the university without condition. They are reading The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty which discusses globalization and the nation-state. Other interesting articles relating this topic which I'm working thru are john milbank's Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror and william cavanaugh's wars of religion and the rise of the state and the world in a wafer. (both of which are in his Theopolitical Imagination and are brought to you by the jesus radical library.)Excerpt from World in a Wafer to show the trajectory of his thinking: "What I hope to show...is that globalization does not signal the demise of the nation-state but is in fact a hyperextension of the nation-state's project of subsuming the local under the universal."
After spending so much time on critical theorists/theologians I decided to revisit my hermeneutic root and picked up Paul Ricoeur's From Text to Action , esp. his essays on ideology (which zizek and badiou would despise) and also his Oneself as Another . As an intro to Ricoeur I would hightly recommend from text to action.
I've also been reading up on new media as mediated through Len Manovich. I'll be blogging about this soon as i'll be reviewing The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society for the matthew house project. This is some great matter for reflection in all this media/technology stuff.
so that's what I've been reading while I was away.
Most importantly is the stimulating conversation stemming from the university without condition. They are reading The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty which discusses globalization and the nation-state. Other interesting articles relating this topic which I'm working thru are john milbank's Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror and william cavanaugh's wars of religion and the rise of the state and the world in a wafer. (both of which are in his Theopolitical Imagination and are brought to you by the jesus radical library.)Excerpt from World in a Wafer to show the trajectory of his thinking: "What I hope to show...is that globalization does not signal the demise of the nation-state but is in fact a hyperextension of the nation-state's project of subsuming the local under the universal."
After spending so much time on critical theorists/theologians I decided to revisit my hermeneutic root and picked up Paul Ricoeur's From Text to Action , esp. his essays on ideology (which zizek and badiou would despise) and also his Oneself as Another . As an intro to Ricoeur I would hightly recommend from text to action.
I've also been reading up on new media as mediated through Len Manovich. I'll be blogging about this soon as i'll be reviewing The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society for the matthew house project. This is some great matter for reflection in all this media/technology stuff.
so that's what I've been reading while I was away.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
"the doubtful address of faith; or why faith is over-rated"
part one and two are diagnostic; part three is constructive. read in the order you see fit.)
Part One: Intro to Problem
"No one doubts anymore because faith has been banished! A life of faith has vanished, and with it the ability to doubt."
My primary concern is with discipleship and spiritual formation within the Church, but this reflection could be easily extended beyond ecclesial walls (see a gauche's "In Defense of These Deflated Meta-Narratives"). My premise is that we no long know how to truly doubt because we no long believe.
But let me begin again...What doubt am I talking about? Let's make a distinction: there is philosophical doubt and existential doubt; or there is methodological doubt and personal doubt (from hear on out I'll refer to "philosophical" and "personal" doubt because my homiletics professor would like the alliteration…).
Concerning the first, philosophic, the history is well known. Amid the religious wars which had engulfed Europe after the Reformation/Renaissance Rene Descartes began his quest for a universal foundation of human reason on from which he could evaluate conflicting epistemological claims. In other words, he was trying to find that one place from which everyone could agree. Methodologically this led him to doubt everything until he found that something of which it is impossible to doubt. From this process came is famous dictum, "I think therefore I am." And from this radical doubt springs the Enlightenment, the search for pure reason through the doubting of everything received whether it be tradition, religion, family, or even perception.
However, there is one catch. This radical "life of doubt," or philosophical doubt, was pursued for the explicit purpose of banishing all personal doubts. It was the Descartes, awash in epistemological chaos, full of personal doubts and anxieties that entered into philosophical doubt. Philosophical doubt was a retreat from and panacea for personal doubts, and the Enlightenment took up this quest diligently. Therefore, once the philosophical process is over, there is no longer any need to doubt, because now we have a certain answer for every personal doubt.
Part Two: Consequences
While those better informed might tease out the consequences of this "life of doubt" in our contemporary life, I will focus on the Church. The "life of doubt" has affected both the mainline/liberal as well as the conservative/evangelical church.
For the mainliners, the use of modern epistemological tools coupled with radical cynicism resulted in the deletion of much of orthodoxy replaced by culturally sensitive theological ambiguities which portioned off Christian identity. It left them with a radical critique of the faith such that the form barely consisted without content.
But the conservatives did not fair much better. In fact they might be worse off for their appropriation of Enlightenment doubt. Using the same epistemological tools, yet for a different use, conservatives began a militant defense of the faith, but not grounded in faith, resulting in a semblance of orthodoxy. They defended faith through doubt, thereby denying the faith of Paul/Abraham which moves from "faith to faith" (Rom. 1:17).
The relation of doubt and faith have been all screwed up, where now in much of the Church, real personal doubt is not allowed to be spoken. We are left with either radical doubt or militant faith, both of which kill true doubt and true faith. We aren’t allowed to question, we can’t voice our concerns, we can't speak our doubts, because this would be a betrayal of modern faith, which demands certainty.
Part Three: The Doubtful Address of Faith
So this is the difference between the "life of doubt" and the "life of faith." The "life of doubt" ("I doubt therefore I am") can truly only give answers. The "life of faith" can truly ask questions. In this "life of doubt" I must fill the in abyss with answer after answer, frantically dousing the fires of ambiguity with coolly reasoned answers b/c I can't persist in perpetual doubt. But the life of faith ("I belief therefore I am") floats above the abyss, suspended by the address to and from anOther, able to fully enter the questions and ambiguities of life precisely because doubt is not our horizon, nor the constitution of our being, but the voice of faith amid the complexity of existence.
This brings us back to the practices of discipleship and spiritual formation. The "life of doubt" can't bring to speech actual doubt. But the "life of faith" can bring actual doubts to speech. True faith, even during the dark night of the soul, even in the winter of disorientation, true faith can bring its doubts to God. It still addresses God and vocalizes doubts. This is seen continually in the Psalms. The Psalms are nothing but a persistent addressing to God the concerns of our lives. No matter the situation, the Psalmists are still talking with God. Can we cultivate in our Churches this doubtful address of faith, or are we too quick to answer the personal doubts of others?
Illustration of Job: Think through the life of Job, his suffering, his calling out to God, his receiving answers from his friends (orthodox explanations of what is happening and who is at fault). His wife advises him to curse God and die. But Job questions God and lives. His three friends come around and give him answer after answer, but he is never satisfied. So Job questions God, and demands an answer from God himself, not anyone else. But when God arrives, God doesn’t even offer the correct answer to Job’s question, there is no explanation. Only more questions. One questioner to another questioner. There are no answers, only questions. For Job, and for us, questions are the answer. Questions addressed to God, spoken to God, directed toward God, not the void or nothingness, and not silence and mute depression. Job in the midst of doubt and suffering still addresses God because there is still a relationship. And God, even though he questions Job, affirms the relationship through his questions.
So how can we affirm/encourage the doubtful questioning of faith? Or will we continue to replace true faith with the answers of doubt?
Concluding Aphorisms:
In the life of doubt, both doubt and faith are ultimately to be feared b/c they both close the space of the subject.
In the life of faith, both doubt and faith are embraced b/c they keep open the space for the subject to participate in/with Another.
Doubt ruptures relationships, but Faith forges them.
---
these thoughts brought to you by walter bruggemann's spirituality of the psalms and robert pfaller's Negation and its Reliabilities:
An Empty Subject for Ideology?.
Part One: Intro to Problem
"No one doubts anymore because faith has been banished! A life of faith has vanished, and with it the ability to doubt."
My primary concern is with discipleship and spiritual formation within the Church, but this reflection could be easily extended beyond ecclesial walls (see a gauche's "In Defense of These Deflated Meta-Narratives"). My premise is that we no long know how to truly doubt because we no long believe.
But let me begin again...What doubt am I talking about? Let's make a distinction: there is philosophical doubt and existential doubt; or there is methodological doubt and personal doubt (from hear on out I'll refer to "philosophical" and "personal" doubt because my homiletics professor would like the alliteration…).
Concerning the first, philosophic, the history is well known. Amid the religious wars which had engulfed Europe after the Reformation/Renaissance Rene Descartes began his quest for a universal foundation of human reason on from which he could evaluate conflicting epistemological claims. In other words, he was trying to find that one place from which everyone could agree. Methodologically this led him to doubt everything until he found that something of which it is impossible to doubt. From this process came is famous dictum, "I think therefore I am." And from this radical doubt springs the Enlightenment, the search for pure reason through the doubting of everything received whether it be tradition, religion, family, or even perception.
However, there is one catch. This radical "life of doubt," or philosophical doubt, was pursued for the explicit purpose of banishing all personal doubts. It was the Descartes, awash in epistemological chaos, full of personal doubts and anxieties that entered into philosophical doubt. Philosophical doubt was a retreat from and panacea for personal doubts, and the Enlightenment took up this quest diligently. Therefore, once the philosophical process is over, there is no longer any need to doubt, because now we have a certain answer for every personal doubt.
Part Two: Consequences
While those better informed might tease out the consequences of this "life of doubt" in our contemporary life, I will focus on the Church. The "life of doubt" has affected both the mainline/liberal as well as the conservative/evangelical church.
For the mainliners, the use of modern epistemological tools coupled with radical cynicism resulted in the deletion of much of orthodoxy replaced by culturally sensitive theological ambiguities which portioned off Christian identity. It left them with a radical critique of the faith such that the form barely consisted without content.
But the conservatives did not fair much better. In fact they might be worse off for their appropriation of Enlightenment doubt. Using the same epistemological tools, yet for a different use, conservatives began a militant defense of the faith, but not grounded in faith, resulting in a semblance of orthodoxy. They defended faith through doubt, thereby denying the faith of Paul/Abraham which moves from "faith to faith" (Rom. 1:17).
The relation of doubt and faith have been all screwed up, where now in much of the Church, real personal doubt is not allowed to be spoken. We are left with either radical doubt or militant faith, both of which kill true doubt and true faith. We aren’t allowed to question, we can’t voice our concerns, we can't speak our doubts, because this would be a betrayal of modern faith, which demands certainty.
Part Three: The Doubtful Address of Faith
So this is the difference between the "life of doubt" and the "life of faith." The "life of doubt" ("I doubt therefore I am") can truly only give answers. The "life of faith" can truly ask questions. In this "life of doubt" I must fill the in abyss with answer after answer, frantically dousing the fires of ambiguity with coolly reasoned answers b/c I can't persist in perpetual doubt. But the life of faith ("I belief therefore I am") floats above the abyss, suspended by the address to and from anOther, able to fully enter the questions and ambiguities of life precisely because doubt is not our horizon, nor the constitution of our being, but the voice of faith amid the complexity of existence.
This brings us back to the practices of discipleship and spiritual formation. The "life of doubt" can't bring to speech actual doubt. But the "life of faith" can bring actual doubts to speech. True faith, even during the dark night of the soul, even in the winter of disorientation, true faith can bring its doubts to God. It still addresses God and vocalizes doubts. This is seen continually in the Psalms. The Psalms are nothing but a persistent addressing to God the concerns of our lives. No matter the situation, the Psalmists are still talking with God. Can we cultivate in our Churches this doubtful address of faith, or are we too quick to answer the personal doubts of others?
Illustration of Job: Think through the life of Job, his suffering, his calling out to God, his receiving answers from his friends (orthodox explanations of what is happening and who is at fault). His wife advises him to curse God and die. But Job questions God and lives. His three friends come around and give him answer after answer, but he is never satisfied. So Job questions God, and demands an answer from God himself, not anyone else. But when God arrives, God doesn’t even offer the correct answer to Job’s question, there is no explanation. Only more questions. One questioner to another questioner. There are no answers, only questions. For Job, and for us, questions are the answer. Questions addressed to God, spoken to God, directed toward God, not the void or nothingness, and not silence and mute depression. Job in the midst of doubt and suffering still addresses God because there is still a relationship. And God, even though he questions Job, affirms the relationship through his questions.
So how can we affirm/encourage the doubtful questioning of faith? Or will we continue to replace true faith with the answers of doubt?
Concluding Aphorisms:
In the life of doubt, both doubt and faith are ultimately to be feared b/c they both close the space of the subject.
In the life of faith, both doubt and faith are embraced b/c they keep open the space for the subject to participate in/with Another.
Doubt ruptures relationships, but Faith forges them.
---
these thoughts brought to you by walter bruggemann's spirituality of the psalms and robert pfaller's Negation and its Reliabilities:
An Empty Subject for Ideology?.
Monday, July 05, 2004
i've returned
now that i'm finally back, and june is finally over, i hope to start blogging again. I've been doing a bunch of reading and thinking, just no writing...
so starting tomorrow i'll begin with my promised post on "the doubtful address of faith" and then move on from there.
in the mean time, i've changed some of the links to the side and updated the books i'm working through.
so starting tomorrow i'll begin with my promised post on "the doubtful address of faith" and then move on from there.
in the mean time, i've changed some of the links to the side and updated the books i'm working through.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Monday, June 21, 2004
The Time of the Universal/Invisible Church
(more thoughts on time and ecclesiology prompted by Graham Ward's Cities of God)
Recently (for about 2 years now) I have raged against the motion of the Universal or Invisible Church first promoted by Augustine and later used by the reformers to justify their separation from Catholicism, and currently used (by evangelicals) to refer to all those who are truly saved throughout the globe. I don't like the idea of the Invisible Church because it is usually deployed as a justification for the lack of unity with in the Church, even it bitter divisions. In a time when the most effective witness to the power and peace of the Gospel is the visible unity among diversity of the Church amid warring communities, (race, gender, class, tribe, state), it seems the doctrine of the Invisible Church engenders a lack of concern for how the visible church is doing. "It's alright that the visible Church is as fragmented as the rest of the world, because it’s the Universal/Invisible Church that really matters!" they say.
But perhaps I may have been too hasty... As I mentioned in the previous post, just as there is no place of cultural engagement between the Church and culture, but a Time; so too there is not place of the Universal/Invisible Church (as if it were an ideas to be mapped onto the globe), but rather a Time of the Invisible Church. The Universal Church is attainable in Time (the Final Judgment), not an escaped into an ideal space. In this way this doctrine becomes a motivation for unity rather than an excuse for division. Or have I missed something?
Recently (for about 2 years now) I have raged against the motion of the Universal or Invisible Church first promoted by Augustine and later used by the reformers to justify their separation from Catholicism, and currently used (by evangelicals) to refer to all those who are truly saved throughout the globe. I don't like the idea of the Invisible Church because it is usually deployed as a justification for the lack of unity with in the Church, even it bitter divisions. In a time when the most effective witness to the power and peace of the Gospel is the visible unity among diversity of the Church amid warring communities, (race, gender, class, tribe, state), it seems the doctrine of the Invisible Church engenders a lack of concern for how the visible church is doing. "It's alright that the visible Church is as fragmented as the rest of the world, because it’s the Universal/Invisible Church that really matters!" they say.
But perhaps I may have been too hasty... As I mentioned in the previous post, just as there is no place of cultural engagement between the Church and culture, but a Time; so too there is not place of the Universal/Invisible Church (as if it were an ideas to be mapped onto the globe), but rather a Time of the Invisible Church. The Universal Church is attainable in Time (the Final Judgment), not an escaped into an ideal space. In this way this doctrine becomes a motivation for unity rather than an excuse for division. Or have I missed something?
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
ecclesiology is a time, not a space
(i said I was going blog light, but this just popped out while I was working on something else. that's why it's so rough...)
There is no space of cultural engagement, no place of overlapping interests, no room in the public square for the Church. The place of intersection between Church and culture is a myth. There is only Time. The Church is in another Time. Our culture's time is Now, eternal present of enjoyment, fulfillment, and pleasure that must be perpetuated, or the eternal present of pain, lack, and dissatisfaction which must be escaped. But the Church springs from the past of Christ giving of his Body and races toward the future of being gathering into his Body; the past of the Last Supper to the future of the Wedding Banquet.
In this other Time, the Church journeys to a different rhythm, entering and exiting cultural artifacts and situation, oriented toward the real presence of past and future. And b/c of this it is only possible for the Church to remain truly in the present.
There are no overlapping spaces between Church and State, or Church and University. The Church marches through those spaces according to its own trajectory, gathering all that is good, true, and beautiful, while scattering all evils, lies, and deformity.
There is no space of cultural engagement, no place of overlapping interests, no room in the public square for the Church. The place of intersection between Church and culture is a myth. There is only Time. The Church is in another Time. Our culture's time is Now, eternal present of enjoyment, fulfillment, and pleasure that must be perpetuated, or the eternal present of pain, lack, and dissatisfaction which must be escaped. But the Church springs from the past of Christ giving of his Body and races toward the future of being gathering into his Body; the past of the Last Supper to the future of the Wedding Banquet.
In this other Time, the Church journeys to a different rhythm, entering and exiting cultural artifacts and situation, oriented toward the real presence of past and future. And b/c of this it is only possible for the Church to remain truly in the present.
There are no overlapping spaces between Church and State, or Church and University. The Church marches through those spaces according to its own trajectory, gathering all that is good, true, and beautiful, while scattering all evils, lies, and deformity.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
for the time being
well, june is here. I have so much that I want to write about, but so little time to do it. Besides preaching twice at my church, going on a week long vacation, a good friends wedding, and preparing to speak at a week long youth retreat, I'm still trying to find time to hangout with my 11 month old son Soren (who is sitting next to me while I type) and time to spend with my wife.
So, while I want to write about 1)Doubt as true faith, 2) why the Emerging Church looks suspiciously like global capitalism, 3) why evangelicals don't really believe in preaching even though they claim to believe in Scripture, 4) the "time" rather than the "space" of cultural engagement, and many other topics, I will probably not get to any of these until July, which is when summer really starts for me.
So, while i'm not signing off for a month, it will be blog-lite as my brain power is diverted offline for these various projects. peace be with you.
So, while I want to write about 1)Doubt as true faith, 2) why the Emerging Church looks suspiciously like global capitalism, 3) why evangelicals don't really believe in preaching even though they claim to believe in Scripture, 4) the "time" rather than the "space" of cultural engagement, and many other topics, I will probably not get to any of these until July, which is when summer really starts for me.
So, while i'm not signing off for a month, it will be blog-lite as my brain power is diverted offline for these various projects. peace be with you.
Friday, June 04, 2004
What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church
-----
Below are some of the preliminary notes that I've been preparing for a workshop I'm co-leading at this years Ekklesia Project Gathering with Scott Bader-Saye. They are still rough. Please help me think through the issues. This will also deepens my previous "Post-Constantinian Cultural Studies" post.
(in 3 parts: Part 1 is an introduction to the Problem. Part 2 will will examine the question of Identity as Bediako sees it through the lense of Patristic and African theologies. Part 3 will look at an appropriation of this method for our postmodern, Wester context.)
Part One
1. Intro: The question of relevance and identity.
Relevance- The tyranny of the new- that which is always coming is our Fate. Our future is always just ahead of us, never arriving, but toward which we long to be relevant. This is Modernity, always making something new to free us from custom/tradition/culture. As Stephen Long says, "Modernity is the endless repetition of sameness under the illusion of difference." We think we have moved on, yet all is sameness. In our modern era the search for relevance is seen in evidentiary apologetics, seeker-sensitive churches, Contemporary Christian Music and the Broader Christian subculture. And the quest for relevance is also seen in the missionary impulse to reach emerging generations, to reach skaters/surfer/ravers/hipsters and urbanites. If they are post-rational, post-literate, post-individualistic, intuitive, aesthetic, and image-drive, then let's be and do that. Unfortunately, while seeking to reform and transform the modern Church, the Emerging Church movement many time continues to fall prey to the perpetually new and the drive toward relevance undergirded by a missionary theology of contectualization which in a Western setting ends up creating more and more niche market Christian consumers rather than a subversive unified church.
-As we will see, the ancient church fathers and current African thinkers were/are not seeking to be relevant to their surrounding culture, but are seeking a definition and expression of their own particular Christian identity. So, I want to explore the significance of replacing the project of relevance with the project of identity. Let us not seek to be relevant but to express our identity as follows of Christ, as Christians within the particular cultures that we are in.
2. Problem of Identity posed by Kwame Bediako.
The Problem of Identity:
p. xi "I have felt the need to seek a clarification for myself of how the abiding Gospel of Jesus Christ relates to the inescapable issues and questions which arise from the Christian's cultural existence in the world, and how this relationship is achieved without injury to the integrity of the Gospel."
- This is a question of the gospel and cultural existence, not of gospel and culture as some whole or reified object. Culture is not a thing to be related to. Rather we should speak of cultural agents.
p. xv "The basic argument which underlies the various chapters is that the development of theological concern and the formulation of theological questions are closely linked as an inevitable by-product of a process of Christian self-definition." (p. 7) The more enduring problem is not the question of orthodoxy, but "the Christian's response to the religious past as well as to the cultural tradition generally in which one stands, and the significance of that response for the development of theological answers to the culturally-rooted questions of the context."
Identity/Self-Definity=Religious past and cultural/tradition present.
Who are we (past) and where are we (present) intersect in the question of identity. Where we are culturally effects how we perceive ourselves, and who we are effects how we stand where we are. For the Fathers it was who are we as Christians uniting the OT and NT in Christ, and where are we in the Graeco-Roman world. For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Mission/Wester Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present).
The question then at the end of part 1 is, What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
Part Two
The Question of Identity: Ancient Parents and African Siblings
Two test cases: Early Church Fathers and African Theologians
Ancient Parent- -church fathers interacted w/ both Judaism and Graeco-Roman culture. The question of Judaism concerns their religious past, seeking a dis/continuous relationship with it. So they appropriated OT and NT as the unified revelation of Christ. The question of identity in this is who are we is relations to our religious past. The question concerning Greaco-Roman cultural tradition is who are we in this place, and how can we understand this tradition through Christ.
i.Justifying Identity- or the Triumph of Barbarism
Tatian and Tertullian sought to vindicate Christian Identity against Hellenism. They wanted to show that Christianity in no way came from, or was indebted to Greek thought or life, and that Hellenism (its philosophical systems and religious life) were dangerous to Christian identity. In fact, Greek philosophy is really a misunderstanding of Moses, who is much before Greek philosophy, meaning that Christians are more ancient than Greeks. (Tatian). This vindicated the Truth of the Gospel outside of and before Greek criteria of acceptability/rationality. Also, Tertullian was still arguing for the right to exist and think as a Christian. His viewpoint is not the evaluation/engagement of culture, but a religious question of faithfulness amidst paganism. Yet, for both Tatian and Tertullian a defense of Identity loses its ability to be an effective witness within dominant culture. (see p. 140)
ii. Identity as Fulfillment- Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
These theologians seek to establish Christian identity as not just the culmination of the Jewish tradition, but also as the apex of Greek tradition. Justin is not attempting to fuse Christian faith with Greek ideals, rather he attempts to show that the best and brightest of the Greek philosophical tradition, in thoughts, and in persons, was the work of the eternal Word, because Truth has only one source, and that is Christ. The fulfillment-culture Justin Martyr "But his spirit of wisdom was present in very man as his highest intellect, so that not only does Christ represent the culmination of the prophecy of a single religion, even though that is the most ancient religion, but He is the incarnation of the Universal Intelligence which it has been the hopeless struggle of every philosopher to understand." The answer to the sneers of the philosophers that Christianity was not worthy of an intelligent man's consideration was thus the counter-attack that philosophy had failed, and that only in Christianity was the end of philosophy to be found.
African Siblings- For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Missionary/Western Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present). Concerning Missionary Christianity, instead of positively appropriating their religious past like the church fathers, they are needing to critically disentangle themselves from Western Christianity. They are de-westernizing Christianity in their process of self-definition as a means of dealing w/ their religious past. And concerning their cultural present, African Theologian see Christianity as fulfillment of Africa traditions.
i. Fulfillment of Africa- The theologian Idowu sees that God was already at work in africa, revealing himself as the one God. Africans are really monotheists. Mbiti sees Church as the fulfillment of aspirations of tribe, family, community. Aspirations are not destroyed, but fulfilled in the church.
ii. Indigenous Church: Idowu- Indigenization of the church. "We mean by it simply that the Church should bear the unmistakable stamp of the fact that she is the Church of God in Nigeria. It should be no longer an outreach or a colony of Rome, Canterbury or Westminster Central Hall in London, or the vested interests of some European or American Missionary Board…the Church in Nigeria should be the Church which affords Nigerians the means of worshipping God as Nigerians; that is, in a way which is compatible with their own spiritual temperament, of singing to the glory of God in their own way, of praying to God and hearing Hid Holy Word in idiom whih is clearly intelligible to them…She should be…the spiritual home of Christian Nigerians, a home in which they breathe an atmosphere of spiritual freedom."
iii. Indigenous Church: Mbiti "Mbiti makes a distinction between Christianity on the one hand, and the Christian Faith or the Gospel, on the other. Christianity, which 'results from the encounter of the Gospel with any given local or regional community/society,' is always indigenous and, by definition, culture bound. The Gospel is God given, Christianity is a result from the encounter with the Gospel in a local cultures. African theologian John Mbiti says, "We can add nothing to the Gospel, for this is an eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in it never-ending journeys and wanderings." Also, "To speak of 'indigenising christianity' is to give the impression that Christianity is a ready-made commodity which has to be transplanted to a local area. Of course, this has been the assumption followed by many missionaries and local theologians. I do not accept it any more." This is Mbiti̢۪s argument against contextualization (which assumes an unchanging essence of Christianity.
These are my summary notes of Bediako's text/argument. In Part 3 I will look at an appropriation of this method of "theology and identity" based in religious tradition and cultural present for our postmodern, Wester context.
Part Three
Indigenous postmodern Faith- Now, back to our initial question: How can we replace the project of relevance with the project of identity. What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
a.Religious Past- coming to terms w/ our religious past, or who are we by examining both:
i.De-westernizing: living beyond the encroachments of Enlightenment rationality and practices which evacuates the Faith of it power. (Resourses: in this aspect, our global siblings are paving the way).
ii. Post-Constantinian: living beyond the abdication of the Church to the State as the agent of salvation in its various manifestations through history (Constintine, State Church, Privatized Faith), esp. the current form of Evangelicalism underwriting the liberal-democratic project. Yet, this is not merely overcoming the form, but living with the specter of that very history, which is not a history imported from another as in the African case, but our own history. (Resources: Parents and Siblings can't inform our dis/continuous appropriation of history, but projects such as Radical Orthodox and The Ekklesia Project are supplying tools.)
b. Cultural Present: (post-/high-/late-modernity)- coming to terms w/ our cultural present, or where are we.
i. For Westerners, we are not dealing with current pagan religions (which African, Asian, Indian theologian must contend with). Rather we live in a secular and post-secular culture.
1. Secular in the sense of living: after the Industrial Revolution where everything sacred turns to vapor through manufacturing and science; living after/in Capitalism where all relationships are transformed into producer and consumer.
2. Post-secular in the sense that religion and the spiritual have been reintroduced into society/culture as a commodity exchanged and changed like any other material and semiotic product. The sacred is not a special-effect disconnected from a way of life.
ii. In addition to this material revolution there is the Intellectual Revolution of the Enlighten which defines the cultural horizon of the West. But just as a pagan religion that Bediako might investigate in Africa, the Enlightenment has its own myths, stories, hopes, fears, and ways of life which giving meaning to the human project, just like any religion, and its called liberal-democratic-capitalism.
c. Fulfillment culture-
i. As discussed in Part 2, we should take the perspective of the Church as the fulfillment of any particular culture, rather than merely an antagonistic counter-culture. It is not a we will change for you (relevance), but we accomplish (in identity) what you desire to be. Instead of appropriating postmodern elements/forms, we look to where they point and show that in Christ (in his body the church) they are fulfilled. -This is exactly what postmodern /theologians should be doing, and I think what Radical Orthodoxy is trying to do. Philosophy, w/o theology, has failed in the Western world, just as Greek philosophy failed when it tried to appropriate Moses and the Scriptures. While couched in religious terms rather than intellectual, Justin celebrated that efforts of certain Greek before Christ and calls them Christians even though they might be considered atheists, b/c of their willingness to denounce idolatry and misguided religion. This is similar to calling Derrida, Foucault, etc. allies because they critique that idolatrous nature of Modernity.
ii. However, this task is complicated because our culture has no clearly articulate vision of the Good toward which it is aiming. The only Good for the West is Freedom which has ended up hanging itself on the leash they tied religion to (religion which always thwarted Freedom in their opinion.) So how do we fulfill the aspirations of a culture which has non besides consumer choice? Unlike the ancient Fathers and African brothers, we must first take the negative route of articulating the void, exposing the lacks and false leads of Western culture. (this is where the real work begins, and where I'm just begin so I don't have must to offer here.)
As we negotiate b/w our religious past and our cultural present we will find our identity Christians within postmodernity (rather than merely receiving it from modern missionaries to the postmodern generation), and through this we will seek the fulfill of the culture we are immersed in, rather than a superficial relevancy.
5. So the questions i'm still working on
a. What are the contours or intersections of our identity- global, urban, postmodern?
b. What are barriers to expressing our identity?
c. How do we link this identity to the universal Church?
d. Who are the missionaries? Who are the natives?
-----
Below are some of the preliminary notes that I've been preparing for a workshop I'm co-leading at this years Ekklesia Project Gathering with Scott Bader-Saye. They are still rough. Please help me think through the issues. This will also deepens my previous "Post-Constantinian Cultural Studies" post.
(in 3 parts: Part 1 is an introduction to the Problem. Part 2 will will examine the question of Identity as Bediako sees it through the lense of Patristic and African theologies. Part 3 will look at an appropriation of this method for our postmodern, Wester context.)
Part One
1. Intro: The question of relevance and identity.
Relevance- The tyranny of the new- that which is always coming is our Fate. Our future is always just ahead of us, never arriving, but toward which we long to be relevant. This is Modernity, always making something new to free us from custom/tradition/culture. As Stephen Long says, "Modernity is the endless repetition of sameness under the illusion of difference." We think we have moved on, yet all is sameness. In our modern era the search for relevance is seen in evidentiary apologetics, seeker-sensitive churches, Contemporary Christian Music and the Broader Christian subculture. And the quest for relevance is also seen in the missionary impulse to reach emerging generations, to reach skaters/surfer/ravers/hipsters and urbanites. If they are post-rational, post-literate, post-individualistic, intuitive, aesthetic, and image-drive, then let's be and do that. Unfortunately, while seeking to reform and transform the modern Church, the Emerging Church movement many time continues to fall prey to the perpetually new and the drive toward relevance undergirded by a missionary theology of contectualization which in a Western setting ends up creating more and more niche market Christian consumers rather than a subversive unified church.
-As we will see, the ancient church fathers and current African thinkers were/are not seeking to be relevant to their surrounding culture, but are seeking a definition and expression of their own particular Christian identity. So, I want to explore the significance of replacing the project of relevance with the project of identity. Let us not seek to be relevant but to express our identity as follows of Christ, as Christians within the particular cultures that we are in.
2. Problem of Identity posed by Kwame Bediako.
The Problem of Identity:
p. xi "I have felt the need to seek a clarification for myself of how the abiding Gospel of Jesus Christ relates to the inescapable issues and questions which arise from the Christian's cultural existence in the world, and how this relationship is achieved without injury to the integrity of the Gospel."
- This is a question of the gospel and cultural existence, not of gospel and culture as some whole or reified object. Culture is not a thing to be related to. Rather we should speak of cultural agents.
p. xv "The basic argument which underlies the various chapters is that the development of theological concern and the formulation of theological questions are closely linked as an inevitable by-product of a process of Christian self-definition." (p. 7) The more enduring problem is not the question of orthodoxy, but "the Christian's response to the religious past as well as to the cultural tradition generally in which one stands, and the significance of that response for the development of theological answers to the culturally-rooted questions of the context."
Identity/Self-Definity=Religious past and cultural/tradition present.
Who are we (past) and where are we (present) intersect in the question of identity. Where we are culturally effects how we perceive ourselves, and who we are effects how we stand where we are. For the Fathers it was who are we as Christians uniting the OT and NT in Christ, and where are we in the Graeco-Roman world. For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Mission/Wester Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present).
The question then at the end of part 1 is, What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
Part Two
The Question of Identity: Ancient Parents and African Siblings
Two test cases: Early Church Fathers and African Theologians
Ancient Parent- -church fathers interacted w/ both Judaism and Graeco-Roman culture. The question of Judaism concerns their religious past, seeking a dis/continuous relationship with it. So they appropriated OT and NT as the unified revelation of Christ. The question of identity in this is who are we is relations to our religious past. The question concerning Greaco-Roman cultural tradition is who are we in this place, and how can we understand this tradition through Christ.
i.Justifying Identity- or the Triumph of Barbarism
Tatian and Tertullian sought to vindicate Christian Identity against Hellenism. They wanted to show that Christianity in no way came from, or was indebted to Greek thought or life, and that Hellenism (its philosophical systems and religious life) were dangerous to Christian identity. In fact, Greek philosophy is really a misunderstanding of Moses, who is much before Greek philosophy, meaning that Christians are more ancient than Greeks. (Tatian). This vindicated the Truth of the Gospel outside of and before Greek criteria of acceptability/rationality. Also, Tertullian was still arguing for the right to exist and think as a Christian. His viewpoint is not the evaluation/engagement of culture, but a religious question of faithfulness amidst paganism. Yet, for both Tatian and Tertullian a defense of Identity loses its ability to be an effective witness within dominant culture. (see p. 140)
ii. Identity as Fulfillment- Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
These theologians seek to establish Christian identity as not just the culmination of the Jewish tradition, but also as the apex of Greek tradition. Justin is not attempting to fuse Christian faith with Greek ideals, rather he attempts to show that the best and brightest of the Greek philosophical tradition, in thoughts, and in persons, was the work of the eternal Word, because Truth has only one source, and that is Christ. The fulfillment-culture Justin Martyr "But his spirit of wisdom was present in very man as his highest intellect, so that not only does Christ represent the culmination of the prophecy of a single religion, even though that is the most ancient religion, but He is the incarnation of the Universal Intelligence which it has been the hopeless struggle of every philosopher to understand." The answer to the sneers of the philosophers that Christianity was not worthy of an intelligent man's consideration was thus the counter-attack that philosophy had failed, and that only in Christianity was the end of philosophy to be found.
African Siblings- For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Missionary/Western Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present). Concerning Missionary Christianity, instead of positively appropriating their religious past like the church fathers, they are needing to critically disentangle themselves from Western Christianity. They are de-westernizing Christianity in their process of self-definition as a means of dealing w/ their religious past. And concerning their cultural present, African Theologian see Christianity as fulfillment of Africa traditions.
i. Fulfillment of Africa- The theologian Idowu sees that God was already at work in africa, revealing himself as the one God. Africans are really monotheists. Mbiti sees Church as the fulfillment of aspirations of tribe, family, community. Aspirations are not destroyed, but fulfilled in the church.
ii. Indigenous Church: Idowu- Indigenization of the church. "We mean by it simply that the Church should bear the unmistakable stamp of the fact that she is the Church of God in Nigeria. It should be no longer an outreach or a colony of Rome, Canterbury or Westminster Central Hall in London, or the vested interests of some European or American Missionary Board…the Church in Nigeria should be the Church which affords Nigerians the means of worshipping God as Nigerians; that is, in a way which is compatible with their own spiritual temperament, of singing to the glory of God in their own way, of praying to God and hearing Hid Holy Word in idiom whih is clearly intelligible to them…She should be…the spiritual home of Christian Nigerians, a home in which they breathe an atmosphere of spiritual freedom."
iii. Indigenous Church: Mbiti "Mbiti makes a distinction between Christianity on the one hand, and the Christian Faith or the Gospel, on the other. Christianity, which 'results from the encounter of the Gospel with any given local or regional community/society,' is always indigenous and, by definition, culture bound. The Gospel is God given, Christianity is a result from the encounter with the Gospel in a local cultures. African theologian John Mbiti says, "We can add nothing to the Gospel, for this is an eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in it never-ending journeys and wanderings." Also, "To speak of 'indigenising christianity' is to give the impression that Christianity is a ready-made commodity which has to be transplanted to a local area. Of course, this has been the assumption followed by many missionaries and local theologians. I do not accept it any more." This is Mbiti̢۪s argument against contextualization (which assumes an unchanging essence of Christianity.
These are my summary notes of Bediako's text/argument. In Part 3 I will look at an appropriation of this method of "theology and identity" based in religious tradition and cultural present for our postmodern, Wester context.
Part Three
Indigenous postmodern Faith- Now, back to our initial question: How can we replace the project of relevance with the project of identity. What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
a.Religious Past- coming to terms w/ our religious past, or who are we by examining both:
i.De-westernizing: living beyond the encroachments of Enlightenment rationality and practices which evacuates the Faith of it power. (Resourses: in this aspect, our global siblings are paving the way).
ii. Post-Constantinian: living beyond the abdication of the Church to the State as the agent of salvation in its various manifestations through history (Constintine, State Church, Privatized Faith), esp. the current form of Evangelicalism underwriting the liberal-democratic project. Yet, this is not merely overcoming the form, but living with the specter of that very history, which is not a history imported from another as in the African case, but our own history. (Resources: Parents and Siblings can't inform our dis/continuous appropriation of history, but projects such as Radical Orthodox and The Ekklesia Project are supplying tools.)
b. Cultural Present: (post-/high-/late-modernity)- coming to terms w/ our cultural present, or where are we.
i. For Westerners, we are not dealing with current pagan religions (which African, Asian, Indian theologian must contend with). Rather we live in a secular and post-secular culture.
1. Secular in the sense of living: after the Industrial Revolution where everything sacred turns to vapor through manufacturing and science; living after/in Capitalism where all relationships are transformed into producer and consumer.
2. Post-secular in the sense that religion and the spiritual have been reintroduced into society/culture as a commodity exchanged and changed like any other material and semiotic product. The sacred is not a special-effect disconnected from a way of life.
ii. In addition to this material revolution there is the Intellectual Revolution of the Enlighten which defines the cultural horizon of the West. But just as a pagan religion that Bediako might investigate in Africa, the Enlightenment has its own myths, stories, hopes, fears, and ways of life which giving meaning to the human project, just like any religion, and its called liberal-democratic-capitalism.
c. Fulfillment culture-
i. As discussed in Part 2, we should take the perspective of the Church as the fulfillment of any particular culture, rather than merely an antagonistic counter-culture. It is not a we will change for you (relevance), but we accomplish (in identity) what you desire to be. Instead of appropriating postmodern elements/forms, we look to where they point and show that in Christ (in his body the church) they are fulfilled. -This is exactly what postmodern /theologians should be doing, and I think what Radical Orthodoxy is trying to do. Philosophy, w/o theology, has failed in the Western world, just as Greek philosophy failed when it tried to appropriate Moses and the Scriptures. While couched in religious terms rather than intellectual, Justin celebrated that efforts of certain Greek before Christ and calls them Christians even though they might be considered atheists, b/c of their willingness to denounce idolatry and misguided religion. This is similar to calling Derrida, Foucault, etc. allies because they critique that idolatrous nature of Modernity.
ii. However, this task is complicated because our culture has no clearly articulate vision of the Good toward which it is aiming. The only Good for the West is Freedom which has ended up hanging itself on the leash they tied religion to (religion which always thwarted Freedom in their opinion.) So how do we fulfill the aspirations of a culture which has non besides consumer choice? Unlike the ancient Fathers and African brothers, we must first take the negative route of articulating the void, exposing the lacks and false leads of Western culture. (this is where the real work begins, and where I'm just begin so I don't have must to offer here.)
As we negotiate b/w our religious past and our cultural present we will find our identity Christians within postmodernity (rather than merely receiving it from modern missionaries to the postmodern generation), and through this we will seek the fulfill of the culture we are immersed in, rather than a superficial relevancy.
5. So the questions i'm still working on
a. What are the contours or intersections of our identity- global, urban, postmodern?
b. What are barriers to expressing our identity?
c. How do we link this identity to the universal Church?
d. Who are the missionaries? Who are the natives?
a great post from a great site
I don't usually just link to another site, but I think this is really great post. It's a 20 point rant against the Christian sub-culture by Adam Smith. It pretty much sums up what I think also.
Friday, May 28, 2004
What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church: Part Three
-
Indigenous postmodern Faith- Now, back to our initial question: How can we replace the project of relevance with the project of identity. What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
a.Religious Past- coming to terms w/ our religious past, or who are we by examining both:
i.De-westernizing: living beyond the encroachments of Enlightenment rationality and practices which evacuates the Faith of it power. (Resourses: in this aspect, our global siblings are paving the way).
ii. Post-Constantinian: living beyond the abdication of the Church to the State as the agent of salvation in its various manifestations through history (Constintine, State Church, Privatized Faith), esp. the current form of Evangelicalism underwriting the liberal-democratic project. Yet, this is not merely overcoming the form, but living with the specter of that very history, which is not a history imported from another as in the African case, but our own history. (Resources: Parents and Siblings can't inform our dis/continuous appropriation of history, but projects such as Radical Orthodox and The Ekklesia Project are supplying tools.)
b. Cultural Present: (post-/high-/late-modernity)- coming to terms w/ our cultural present, or where are we.
i. For Westerners, we are not dealing with current pagan religions (which African, Asian, Indian theologian must contend with). Rather we live in a secular and post-secular culture.
1. Secular in the sense of living: after the Industrial Revolution where everything sacred turns to vapor through manufacturing and science; living after/in Capitalism where all relationships are transformed into producer and consumer.
2. Post-secular in the sense that religion and the spiritual have been reintroduced into society/culture as a commodity exchanged and changed like any other material and semiotic product. The sacred is not a special-effect disconnected from a way of life.
ii. In addition to this material revolution there is the Intellectual Revolution of the Enlighten which defines the cultural horizon of the West. But just as a pagan religion that Bediako might investigate in Africa, the Enlightenment has its own myths, stories, hopes, fears, and ways of life which giving meaning to the human project, just like any religion, and its called liberal-democratic-capitalism.
c. Fulfillment culture- -
i. As discussed in Part 2, we should take the perspective of the Church as the fulfillment of any particular culture, rather than merely an antagonistic counter-culture. It is not a we will change for you (relevance), but we accomplish (in identity) what you desire to be. Instead of appropriating postmodern elements/forms, we look to where they point and show that in Christ (in his body the church) they are fulfilled. -This is exactly what postmodern /theologians should be doing, and I think what Radical Orthodoxy is trying to do. Philosophy, w/o theology, has failed in the Western world, just as Greek philosophy failed when it tried to appropriate Moses and the Scriptures. While couched in religious terms rather than intellectual, Justin celebrated that efforts of certain Greek before Christ and calls them Christians even though they might be considered atheists, b/c of their willingness to denounce idolatry and misguided religion. This is similar to calling Derrida, Foucault, etc. allies because they critique that idolatrous nature of Modernity.
ii. However, this task is complicated because our culture has no clearly articulate vision of the Good toward which it is aiming. The only Good for the West is Freedom which has ended up hanging itself on the leash they tied religion to (religion which always thwarted Freedom in their opinion.) So how do we fulfill the aspirations of a culture which has non besides consumer choice? Unlike the ancient Fathers and African brothers, we must first take the negative route of articulating the void, exposing the lacks and false leads of Western culture. (this is where the real work begins, and where I'm just begin so I don't have must to offer here.)
As we negotiate b/w our religious past and our cultural present we will find our identity Christians within postmodernity (rather than merely receiving it from modern missionaries to the postmodern generation), and through this we will seek the fulfill of the culture we are immersed in, rather than a superficial relevancy.
5. So the questions i'm still working on
a. What are the contours or intersections of our identity- global, urban, postmodern?
b. What are barriers to expressing our identity?
c. How do we link this identity to the universal Church?
d. Who are the missionaries? Who are the natives?
Indigenous postmodern Faith- Now, back to our initial question: How can we replace the project of relevance with the project of identity. What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
a.Religious Past- coming to terms w/ our religious past, or who are we by examining both:
i.De-westernizing: living beyond the encroachments of Enlightenment rationality and practices which evacuates the Faith of it power. (Resourses: in this aspect, our global siblings are paving the way).
ii. Post-Constantinian: living beyond the abdication of the Church to the State as the agent of salvation in its various manifestations through history (Constintine, State Church, Privatized Faith), esp. the current form of Evangelicalism underwriting the liberal-democratic project. Yet, this is not merely overcoming the form, but living with the specter of that very history, which is not a history imported from another as in the African case, but our own history. (Resources: Parents and Siblings can't inform our dis/continuous appropriation of history, but projects such as Radical Orthodox and The Ekklesia Project are supplying tools.)
b. Cultural Present: (post-/high-/late-modernity)- coming to terms w/ our cultural present, or where are we.
i. For Westerners, we are not dealing with current pagan religions (which African, Asian, Indian theologian must contend with). Rather we live in a secular and post-secular culture.
1. Secular in the sense of living: after the Industrial Revolution where everything sacred turns to vapor through manufacturing and science; living after/in Capitalism where all relationships are transformed into producer and consumer.
2. Post-secular in the sense that religion and the spiritual have been reintroduced into society/culture as a commodity exchanged and changed like any other material and semiotic product. The sacred is not a special-effect disconnected from a way of life.
ii. In addition to this material revolution there is the Intellectual Revolution of the Enlighten which defines the cultural horizon of the West. But just as a pagan religion that Bediako might investigate in Africa, the Enlightenment has its own myths, stories, hopes, fears, and ways of life which giving meaning to the human project, just like any religion, and its called liberal-democratic-capitalism.
c. Fulfillment culture- -
i. As discussed in Part 2, we should take the perspective of the Church as the fulfillment of any particular culture, rather than merely an antagonistic counter-culture. It is not a we will change for you (relevance), but we accomplish (in identity) what you desire to be. Instead of appropriating postmodern elements/forms, we look to where they point and show that in Christ (in his body the church) they are fulfilled. -This is exactly what postmodern /theologians should be doing, and I think what Radical Orthodoxy is trying to do. Philosophy, w/o theology, has failed in the Western world, just as Greek philosophy failed when it tried to appropriate Moses and the Scriptures. While couched in religious terms rather than intellectual, Justin celebrated that efforts of certain Greek before Christ and calls them Christians even though they might be considered atheists, b/c of their willingness to denounce idolatry and misguided religion. This is similar to calling Derrida, Foucault, etc. allies because they critique that idolatrous nature of Modernity.
ii. However, this task is complicated because our culture has no clearly articulate vision of the Good toward which it is aiming. The only Good for the West is Freedom which has ended up hanging itself on the leash they tied religion to (religion which always thwarted Freedom in their opinion.) So how do we fulfill the aspirations of a culture which has non besides consumer choice? Unlike the ancient Fathers and African brothers, we must first take the negative route of articulating the void, exposing the lacks and false leads of Western culture. (this is where the real work begins, and where I'm just begin so I don't have must to offer here.)
As we negotiate b/w our religious past and our cultural present we will find our identity Christians within postmodernity (rather than merely receiving it from modern missionaries to the postmodern generation), and through this we will seek the fulfill of the culture we are immersed in, rather than a superficial relevancy.
5. So the questions i'm still working on
a. What are the contours or intersections of our identity- global, urban, postmodern?
b. What are barriers to expressing our identity?
c. How do we link this identity to the universal Church?
d. Who are the missionaries? Who are the natives?
part three is coming
but I was wasting my time doing this...
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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church
Part Two
The Question of Identity: Ancient Parents and African Siblings
Two test cases: Early Church Fathers and African Theologians
Church Fathers- -church fathers interacted w/ both Judaism and Graeco-Roman culture. The question of Judaism concerns their religious past, seeking a dis/continuous relationship with it. So they appropriated OT and NT as the unified revelation of Christ. The question of identity in this is who are we is relations to our religious past. The question concerning Greaco-Roman cultural tradition is who are we in this place, and how can we understand this tradition through Christ.
i.Justifying Identity- or the Triumph of Barbarism
Tatian and Tertullian sought to vindicate Christian Identity against Hellenism. They wanted to show that Christianity in no way came from, or was indebted to Greek thought or life, and that Hellenism (its philosophical systems and religious life) were dangerous to Christian identity. In fact, Greek philosophy is really a misunderstanding of Moses, who is much before Greek philosophy, meaning that Christians are more ancient than Greeks. (Tatian). This vindicated the Truth of the Gospel outside of and before Greek criteria of acceptability/rationality. Also, Tertullian was still arguing for the right to exist and think as a Christian. His viewpoint is not the evaluation/engagement of culture, but a religious question of faithfulness amidst paganism. Yet, for both Tatian and Tertullian a defense of Identity loses its ability to be an effective witness within dominant culture. (see p. 140)
ii. Identity as Fulfillment- Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
These theologians seek to establish Christian identity as not just the culmination of the Jewish tradition, but also as the apex of Greek tradition. Justin is not attempting to fuse Christian faith with Greek ideals, rather he attempts to show that the best and brightest of the Greek philosophical tradition, in thoughts, and in persons, was the work of the eternal Word, because Truth has only one source, and that is Christ. The fulfillment-culture Justin Martyr "But his spirit of wisdom was present in very man as his highest intellect, so that not only does Christ represent the culmination of the prophecy of a single religion, even though that is the most ancient religion, but He is the incarnation of the Universal Intelligence which it has been the hopeless struggle of every philosopher to understand." The answer to the sneers of the philosophers that Christianity was not worthy of an intelligent man's consideration was thus the counter-attack that philosophy had failed, and that only in Christianity was the end of philosophy to be found.
African Fathers- For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Missionary/Western Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present). Concerning Missionary Christianity, instead of positively appropriating their religious past like the church fathers, they are needing to critically disentangle themselves from Western Christianity. They are de-westernizing Christianity in their process of self-definition as a means of dealing w/ their religious past. And concerning their cultural present, African Theologian see Christianity as fulfillment of Africa traditions.
i. Fulfillment of Africa- The theologian Idowu sees that God was already at work in africa, revealing himself as the one God. Africans are really monotheists. Mbiti sees Church as the fulfillment of aspirations of tribe, family, community. Aspirations are not destroyed, but fulfilled in the church.
ii. Indigenous Church: Idowu- Indigenization of the church. "We mean by it simply that the Church should bear the unmistakable stamp of the fact that she is the Church of God in Nigeria. It should be no longer an outreach or a colony of Rome, Canterbury or Westminster Central Hall in London, or the vested interests of some European or American Missionary Board…the Church in Nigeria should be the Church which affords Nigerians the means of worshipping God as Nigerians; that is, in a way which is compatible with their own spiritual temperament, of singing to the glory of God in their own way, of praying to God and hearing Hid Holy Word in idiom whih is clearly intelligible to them…She should be…the spiritual home of Christian Nigerians, a home in which they breathe an atmosphere of spiritual freedom."
iii. Indigenous Church: Mbiti "Mbiti makes a distinction between Christianity on the one hand, and the Christian Faith or the Gospel, on the other. Christianity, which 'results from the encounter of the Gospel with any given local or regional community/society,' is always indigenous and, by definition, culture bound. The Gospel is God given, Christianity is a result from the encounter with the Gospel in a local cultures. African theologian John Mbiti says, "We can add nothing to the Gospel, for this is an eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in it never-ending journeys and wanderings." Also, "To speak of 'indigenising christianity' is to give the impression that Christianity is a ready-made commodity which has to be transplanted to a local area. Of course, this has been the assumption followed by many missionaries and local theologians. I do not accept it any more." This is Mbiti’s argument against contextualization (which assumes an unchanging essence of Christianity.
These are my summary notes of Bediako's text/argument. In Part 3 I will look at an appropriation of this method of "theology and identity" based in religious tradition and cultural present for our postmodern, Wester context.
The Question of Identity: Ancient Parents and African Siblings
Two test cases: Early Church Fathers and African Theologians
Church Fathers- -church fathers interacted w/ both Judaism and Graeco-Roman culture. The question of Judaism concerns their religious past, seeking a dis/continuous relationship with it. So they appropriated OT and NT as the unified revelation of Christ. The question of identity in this is who are we is relations to our religious past. The question concerning Greaco-Roman cultural tradition is who are we in this place, and how can we understand this tradition through Christ.
i.Justifying Identity- or the Triumph of Barbarism
Tatian and Tertullian sought to vindicate Christian Identity against Hellenism. They wanted to show that Christianity in no way came from, or was indebted to Greek thought or life, and that Hellenism (its philosophical systems and religious life) were dangerous to Christian identity. In fact, Greek philosophy is really a misunderstanding of Moses, who is much before Greek philosophy, meaning that Christians are more ancient than Greeks. (Tatian). This vindicated the Truth of the Gospel outside of and before Greek criteria of acceptability/rationality. Also, Tertullian was still arguing for the right to exist and think as a Christian. His viewpoint is not the evaluation/engagement of culture, but a religious question of faithfulness amidst paganism. Yet, for both Tatian and Tertullian a defense of Identity loses its ability to be an effective witness within dominant culture. (see p. 140)
ii. Identity as Fulfillment- Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
These theologians seek to establish Christian identity as not just the culmination of the Jewish tradition, but also as the apex of Greek tradition. Justin is not attempting to fuse Christian faith with Greek ideals, rather he attempts to show that the best and brightest of the Greek philosophical tradition, in thoughts, and in persons, was the work of the eternal Word, because Truth has only one source, and that is Christ. The fulfillment-culture Justin Martyr "But his spirit of wisdom was present in very man as his highest intellect, so that not only does Christ represent the culmination of the prophecy of a single religion, even though that is the most ancient religion, but He is the incarnation of the Universal Intelligence which it has been the hopeless struggle of every philosopher to understand." The answer to the sneers of the philosophers that Christianity was not worthy of an intelligent man's consideration was thus the counter-attack that philosophy had failed, and that only in Christianity was the end of philosophy to be found.
African Fathers- For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Missionary/Western Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present). Concerning Missionary Christianity, instead of positively appropriating their religious past like the church fathers, they are needing to critically disentangle themselves from Western Christianity. They are de-westernizing Christianity in their process of self-definition as a means of dealing w/ their religious past. And concerning their cultural present, African Theologian see Christianity as fulfillment of Africa traditions.
i. Fulfillment of Africa- The theologian Idowu sees that God was already at work in africa, revealing himself as the one God. Africans are really monotheists. Mbiti sees Church as the fulfillment of aspirations of tribe, family, community. Aspirations are not destroyed, but fulfilled in the church.
ii. Indigenous Church: Idowu- Indigenization of the church. "We mean by it simply that the Church should bear the unmistakable stamp of the fact that she is the Church of God in Nigeria. It should be no longer an outreach or a colony of Rome, Canterbury or Westminster Central Hall in London, or the vested interests of some European or American Missionary Board…the Church in Nigeria should be the Church which affords Nigerians the means of worshipping God as Nigerians; that is, in a way which is compatible with their own spiritual temperament, of singing to the glory of God in their own way, of praying to God and hearing Hid Holy Word in idiom whih is clearly intelligible to them…She should be…the spiritual home of Christian Nigerians, a home in which they breathe an atmosphere of spiritual freedom."
iii. Indigenous Church: Mbiti "Mbiti makes a distinction between Christianity on the one hand, and the Christian Faith or the Gospel, on the other. Christianity, which 'results from the encounter of the Gospel with any given local or regional community/society,' is always indigenous and, by definition, culture bound. The Gospel is God given, Christianity is a result from the encounter with the Gospel in a local cultures. African theologian John Mbiti says, "We can add nothing to the Gospel, for this is an eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in it never-ending journeys and wanderings." Also, "To speak of 'indigenising christianity' is to give the impression that Christianity is a ready-made commodity which has to be transplanted to a local area. Of course, this has been the assumption followed by many missionaries and local theologians. I do not accept it any more." This is Mbiti’s argument against contextualization (which assumes an unchanging essence of Christianity.
These are my summary notes of Bediako's text/argument. In Part 3 I will look at an appropriation of this method of "theology and identity" based in religious tradition and cultural present for our postmodern, Wester context.
Saturday, May 22, 2004
What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church
Below are some of the preliminary notes that I've been preparing for a workshop I'm co-leading at this years Ekklesia Project Gathering with Scott Bader-Saye. They are still rough. Please help me think through the issues. This will also deepens my previous "Post-Constantinian Cultural Studies" post.
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What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church
(in 3 parts: Part 1 is an introduction to the Problem. Part 2 will will examine the question of Identity as Bediako sees it through the lense of Patristic and African theologies. Part 3 will look at an appropriation of this method for our postmodern, Wester context.)
Part One
1. Intro: The question of relevance and identity.
Relevance- The tyranny of the new- that which is always coming is our Fate. Our future is always just ahead of us, never arriving, but toward which we long to be relevant. This is Modernity, always making something new to free us from custom/tradition/culture. As Stephen Long says, "Modernity is the endless repetition of sameness under the illusion of difference." We think we have moved on, yet all is sameness. In our modern era the search for relevance is seen in evidentiary apologetics, seeker-sensitive churches, Contemporary Christian Music and the Broader Christian subculture. And the quest for relevance is also seen in the missionary impulse to reach emerging generations, to reach skaters/surfer/ravers/hipsters and urbanites. If they are post-rational, post-literate, post-individualistic, intuitive, aesthetic, and image-drive, then let's be and do that. Unfortunately, while seeking to reform and transform the modern Church, the Emerging Church movement many time continues to fall prey to the perpetually new and the drive toward relevance undergirded by a missionary theology of contectualization which in a Western setting ends up creating more and more niche market Christian consumers rather than a subversive unified church.
-As we will see, the ancient church fathers and current African thinkers were/are not seeking to be relevant to their surrounding culture, but are seeking a definition and expression of their own particular Christian identity. So, I want to explore the significance of replacing the project of relevance with the project of identity. Let us not seek to be relevant but to express our identity as follows of Christ, as Christians within the particular cultures that we are in.
2. Problem of Identity posed by Kwame Bediako.
The Problem of Identity:
p. xi "I have felt the need to seek a clarification for myself of how the abiding Gospel of Jesus Christ relates to the inescapable issues and questions which arise from the Christian’s cultural existence in the world, and how this relationship is achieved without injury to the integrity of the Gospel."
- This is a question of the gospel and cultural existence, not of gospel and culture as some whole or reified object. Culture is not a thing to be related to. Rather we should speak of cultural agents.
p. xv "The basic argument which underlies the various chapters is that the development of theological concern and the formulation of theological questions are closely linked as an inevitable by-product of a process of Christian self-definition." (p. 7) The more enduring problem is not the question of orthodoxy, but "the Christian's response to the religious past as well as to the cultural tradition generally in which one stands, and the significance of that response for the development of theological answers to the culturally-rooted questions of the context."
Identity/Self-Definity=Religious past and cultural/tradition present.
Who are we (past) and where are we (present) intersect in the question of identity. Where we are culturally effects how we perceive ourselves, and who we are effects how we stand where we are. For the Fathers it was who are we as Christians uniting the OT and NT in Christ, and where are we in the Graeco-Roman world. For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Mission/Wester Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present).
The question then at the end of part 1 is, What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
-----
What African Theologians can teach the Emerging Church
(in 3 parts: Part 1 is an introduction to the Problem. Part 2 will will examine the question of Identity as Bediako sees it through the lense of Patristic and African theologies. Part 3 will look at an appropriation of this method for our postmodern, Wester context.)
Part One
1. Intro: The question of relevance and identity.
Relevance- The tyranny of the new- that which is always coming is our Fate. Our future is always just ahead of us, never arriving, but toward which we long to be relevant. This is Modernity, always making something new to free us from custom/tradition/culture. As Stephen Long says, "Modernity is the endless repetition of sameness under the illusion of difference." We think we have moved on, yet all is sameness. In our modern era the search for relevance is seen in evidentiary apologetics, seeker-sensitive churches, Contemporary Christian Music and the Broader Christian subculture. And the quest for relevance is also seen in the missionary impulse to reach emerging generations, to reach skaters/surfer/ravers/hipsters and urbanites. If they are post-rational, post-literate, post-individualistic, intuitive, aesthetic, and image-drive, then let's be and do that. Unfortunately, while seeking to reform and transform the modern Church, the Emerging Church movement many time continues to fall prey to the perpetually new and the drive toward relevance undergirded by a missionary theology of contectualization which in a Western setting ends up creating more and more niche market Christian consumers rather than a subversive unified church.
-As we will see, the ancient church fathers and current African thinkers were/are not seeking to be relevant to their surrounding culture, but are seeking a definition and expression of their own particular Christian identity. So, I want to explore the significance of replacing the project of relevance with the project of identity. Let us not seek to be relevant but to express our identity as follows of Christ, as Christians within the particular cultures that we are in.
2. Problem of Identity posed by Kwame Bediako.
The Problem of Identity:
p. xi "I have felt the need to seek a clarification for myself of how the abiding Gospel of Jesus Christ relates to the inescapable issues and questions which arise from the Christian’s cultural existence in the world, and how this relationship is achieved without injury to the integrity of the Gospel."
- This is a question of the gospel and cultural existence, not of gospel and culture as some whole or reified object. Culture is not a thing to be related to. Rather we should speak of cultural agents.
p. xv "The basic argument which underlies the various chapters is that the development of theological concern and the formulation of theological questions are closely linked as an inevitable by-product of a process of Christian self-definition." (p. 7) The more enduring problem is not the question of orthodoxy, but "the Christian's response to the religious past as well as to the cultural tradition generally in which one stands, and the significance of that response for the development of theological answers to the culturally-rooted questions of the context."
Identity/Self-Definity=Religious past and cultural/tradition present.
Who are we (past) and where are we (present) intersect in the question of identity. Where we are culturally effects how we perceive ourselves, and who we are effects how we stand where we are. For the Fathers it was who are we as Christians uniting the OT and NT in Christ, and where are we in the Graeco-Roman world. For African Theology it is who are we as African Christians in relationship to Mission/Wester Christianity (religious past) and Traditional African religions (cultural present).
The question then at the end of part 1 is, What is the religious past and cultural present of Western Christians?
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