Ray S. Anderson (1925-2009)

by Christian D. Kettler, Friends University

Ray S. Anderson passed away on Father’s
Day, June 21, 2009. For many years Professor of Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary, Anderson was a theologian who never ceased to be a pastor. Whether you are a clergy person or a lay person, whatever your denomination or Christian heritage may be, Ray Anderson has many exciting, and sometimes provocative, things to say. I speak from experience as a student of Anderson’s, beginning at Fuller Seminary, but extending along many years. While reading almost any of his many books, I am always struck by both a depth of insight and an almost joyful playfulness for the ministry of theology. Theology is ministry itself, a ministry of meditating upon the gospel of the unconditional grace of God in Jesus Christ, but ministry itself is also theology; true ministry, the ministry of God, always precedes and governs theology.

For over thirty years, Ray Anderson has been quietly writing a body of work that is remarkable in its ability to awaken both theology and the church to a theology that actually intersects with the ministry of the church and a view of ministry that dwells in a deep place of reflection. I regret is that I will be unable to replicate the spark of playfulness and intellectual restlessness that characterizes Anderson’s writings, lectures, and sermons. Donald Mackinnon, the noted Cambridge theologian who has received new interest in recent years, spoke of this “nervous, restless quality” even in Anderson’s doctoral dissertation (later published as Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God).

Anderson’s lectures were for many years a refuge of grace for weary students who were bounced back and forth in seminary classes, from studying academic, critical disciplines in one to learning pastoral and ministry skills in another, with little integration of the two. Most of all, in the midst of personal crises, the students found in Anderson’s lectures (and pastoral counsel) grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:16). Unconditional grace is not just a doctrine for Anderson, but the way that he responds to people, even in their weaker moments. For what Anderson means by a theology of ministry is not simply a thin veneer of Bible verses justifying the typical, prosaic ministry program of a congregation. Rather, his theology of ministry is truly incarnational, the Word penetrating deeply into our flesh (Jn 1:14), the flesh of the whole person, involving spiritual, emotional, and physical turmoils. That is where Jesus Christ meets us, and continues to meet us, not in a ministry of our own creation, but in participating in his continuing ministry, God’s ministry.

In recent years Anderson has found more dialogue with Christian psychologists than theologians (perhaps attesting to a fear among theologians of their own humanity?). This has born fruit in a remarkable issue of Edification: Journal of the Society for Christian Psychology, in which Anderson’s article “Toward a Holistic Psychology: Putting All the Pieces in their Proper Place” was followed by several responses by psychologists, philosophers and theologians. This kind of critical interaction, certainly not uncritical, demonstrates the stimulation that Anderson’s thought can provides for all three groups of scholars and at the same time benefits all of those involved in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

For all of Anderson’s commitment to community there is a freedom in his theology to be a maverick, to be oneself and go against the grain. J. G. Hamann and Dag Hammarskjöld are two iconoclasts he likes to quote. Anderson presents an interesting portrait of the maverick theologian in the midst of community; not an easier venture, as his former colleagues and students will attest!

Good theology is not just a display of erudition, as Thomas Torrance told me once. Ray Anderson was not a historical theologian, biblical scholar, or philosopher in the guise of a theologian. Unapologetically, he was a “restless” theologian in service to the church of Jesus Christ. Good theology is being faithful to Jesus Christ and demonstrating that faithfulness with the kind of “nervous, restless quality” of mind that Donald Mackinnon spoke of Anderson’s thought. But Anderson is doubling challenging in that he refuses to allow for a theology that does not partake, like the incarnation, of actual human flesh, like the incarnation; the human flesh of human dilemmas, perplexities, and ambiguity. I remember well Ray Anderson telling a class that one must always be open to a “theology of ambiguity.” How difficult was it for us conservative evangelical students to hear that! But we came to realize that the ambiguity rightly exists in our limited and fallen understandings, not in God.

Anderson’s influences were many and profound, including Edward Carnell, Kierkegaard, the philosopher John Macmurray, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Torrance, James Torrance, and the interdisciplinary work of Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death. Ray Anderson was probably the first English-speaking theologian (in his dissertation published in 1975) to recognize the profound theological anthropology and ecclesiology in the work of the Greek Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas. Anderson provides an interesting case study of American evangelicalism at mid-twentieth century when some were trying to provide an intellectual alternative not only to fundamentalism but to the rationalistic theology that was presented by such early Fuller Seminary professors like Carl F. H. Henry. Anderson’s critique of Henry is very telling and insightful. Anderson’s place, and often a controversial place, in the modern history of Fuller Seminary modern American evangelicalism, is very much worthwhile for further study, when he and Geoffrey Bromiley sought to present Karl Barth’s theology to a Fuller evangelicalism often more interested promoting a Christian “worldview” or church growth techniques than to learn from Barth a radical evangelical theology and to build upon it.

When one reads Anderson one will be struck with the sheer humanity of his theology. The incarnation is not just an orthodox or abstract doctrine for him. I have two “Rays” that have been very influential on my life and thought: Ray Anderson and the fantasy writer Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. His writings have a profound humanity yet always with a sense of wonder and respect for the divine. In a way, as Ray Bradbury has brought a sense of God in the humanity of fantasy and science fiction writing, Ray Anderson has brought a sense of humanity into God in the field of theology. Anderson’s writings have that same respect for humanity that Bradbury’s do for the divine.

Born on a South Dakota farm, Ray Anderson comes from the soil of the very human and practical endeavor of the farmer and transplants that humanity into the struggles of American evangelicalism as a pastor and student and teacher at Fuller Theological Seminary. While a young farmer himself, Anderson listened to one of the most successful of the early radio evangelists, Charles E. Fuller, and his radio program, “The Old Fashioned Revival Hour.” From then, Anderson and his family travelled to Pasadena, California to enroll in Fuller’s relatively new theological seminary. The young Anderson found a form of the traditional American revivalistic tradition that had become preoccupied with correcting its intellectual and cultural deficiencies, now calling itself, “evangelicalism.” These sons (at that time almost exclusively male) of evangelists sought to avoid the parochialism and obscurantism of their fundamentalist forebears while holding to fast to what they perceived to be the eternal faith. The influence of Edward J. Carnell, a restless, iconoclastic, and troubled evangelical mind and professor at Fuller Seminary, was a great stimulation to the young farmer turned seminary student to move beyond simply regurgitating the new “evangelicalism.”

Planting a new Evangelical Free Church congregation in Covina, California exposed Anderson to the very real experience of a young pastor. “Restless” is the word that seems to have continued to characterize Ray Anderson in his early days in pastoral ministry. During this time of living with the raw realities of a congregation and the stereotypical expectations of a “reverend,” Anderson found himself jotting down short “musings” as he would later call them, a theological notebook of the daring of faith that sought to think beyond the stereotypes of ministry and theology. Published much later as Soulprints (1996), this theology in the midst of ministry will be hashed out in the context of the increasingly alienated culture of the 1960s. The result was a ministry that sought consciously to be incarnational, less concerned with success than with human beings trapped in an alienating world.

Mid-life took Anderson to Scotland for a Ph.D. in theology at the University of Edinburgh under the noted theologian Thomas F. Torrance. Torrance, a student of Karl Barth’s, provided for Anderson a theology that would put words to what he had become to experience in Covina, an incarnational ministry that drove one to ask new questions of God. The result was his doctoral dissertation, Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God, published in 1975. Borrowing deeply from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Macmurray, Anderson sought to orientate the doctrine of God in an increasingly skeptical age to a view of transcendence that is not “other-worldly,” but based on the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. A strikingly original ecclesiology proceeded from this, Anderson’s first major theological work.

After a short time teaching at Westmont College in California, Ray Anderson joined the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1976. As theological mentor for Fuller Seminary’s growing Doctor of Ministry program, Anderson assembled the massive anthropology, Theological Foundations for Ministry (1979). Not content with simply gathering a plethora of competing theologies for the student to be befuddled by, Anderson presented a coherent theology base on the Trinity and the incarnation, including generous selections from Barth, Bonhoeffer, Thomas and James Torrance, and others including the most ecclesiologically dynamic sections of Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God. Of special note is the essay by Anderson, “A Theology of Ministry,” in which he lays out the significance of ministry preceding and governing theology, not the opposite, based on an incarnational theology in which God is “on both sides” of both revelation and reconciliation. Reconciliation, like all of God’s ministry, is not to be left up to us! Such an anthology signaled to many that a new way of integrating theology and ministry was being proposed that did not simply try to find a lowest common denominator in ethical values or pastoral practice, but was based on the richness of the triune life of God revealed in Jesus Christ. This was a different kind of evangelical theology than the apologetics-driven heritage of the early Fuller Seminary, but one which was just as loyal to the ancient faith in the Trinity and the incarnation. Yet it was refreshingly free to acknowledge not just that Jesus Christ was God, but that God actually assumed human flesh, so an incarnational theology and ministry is not afraid but embraces the human, as messy as that might often be in the realities of ministry.

The incarnational imperative for the humanization of the world (including the church!) drove Anderson increasingly into questions of a theological anthropology. Questions of theological anthropology had begun to intrigue Anderson when he observed how little theological basis there exists with some colleagues at Westmont, whom otherwise possessed a strong, personally pious theology, yet seemed often to offer little integration with their academic disciplines. His pious colleagues seemed to be operating with more of a philosophical, non-theological anthropology than one that was rooted in the incarnation. The fruit of Anderson’s thinking came in 1982 with the publication of On Being Human: Essays in Theological Anthropology. I don’t think that Karl Barth’s profound writings on the doctrine of humanity had ever been mined so thoroughly in light of pastoral and ministry practice. Yet Anderson remained certainly his own man. As a seminarian at the time, I remember vividly the excitement of Anderson’s terse yet provocative prose, bursting with genuine theological and ministerial potential. Not easy to digest for some, but for many, Anderson’s continuing “nervous, restless quality” was the stimulation to believe in the continued healing power of a trinitarian-incarnational theology. Many a Fuller Seminary student can attest to practically stumbling into a Ray Anderson class week upon week, beaten up by life’s events, desperately seeking the grace of God … and finding it in Ray’s provocative and faithful witness to Jesus Christ.

On Being Human only served to further ignite Anderson’s creative theological juices, particularly in the implications of a theological anthropology. Anderson’s theological anthropology is profoundly relational, including male and female relationships and the family, so it was natural that On Being Family: A Social Theology of the Family, written with the family sociologist Dennis B. Guernsey, and the fruit of their team-taught course at Fuller, “Theology and Ecology of the Family,” was published in 1984. The provocative and pastoral thinking on death and dying in On Being Human led to Theology, Death and Dying in 1982. Anderson was fond of mischievously suggesting that he wanted the book to be entitled, On Being Dead, in order to harmonize with On Being Human and On Being Family, and perhaps include ethics and be called, On Being Good and Dead!

Anderson integrative interests continued to be broad and sweeping with the volume on leadership, Minding God’s Business, in 1982 and one on counseling, Christians Who Counsel, in 1990. No shoddy thinking here, Anderson demonstrated his theological bravery is taking on such “nuts and bolts” issues of ministry.

In 1991, Anderson wrote his first “popular” book, but one that is truly profound in its thinking: The Gospel According to Judas: Is There a Limit to God’s Forgiveness? Featuring an imaginary conversation between Jesus and Judas after Judas’s death, this book has deeply affected and challenged many in how shallow our view of grace and forgiveness really is. Still, many have been offended, even with the later version, Judas and Jesus: Amazing Grace for the Wounded Soul (2005). These little books still continue to have a great ministry, including, Anderson tells, even with a convicted murderer serving life in prison. Concern for the individual desperately needing the grace of God is evident many of Anderson’s later books such as, Don’t Give Up On Me – I’m Not Finished Yet! Putting the Finishing Touches on the Person You Want to Be (1994), its more technical cousin, Self-Care: A Theology of Personal Empowerment and Spiritual Healing, Living the Spiritually Balanced Life: Acquiring the Virtues You Admire (1998), Everything That Make Me Happy I Learned When I Grew Up (1995), Unspoken Wisdom: Truths My Father Taught Me (1995), Exploration Into God: Sermonic Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes (2006), and The Seasons of Hope: Empowering Faith Through the Practice of Hope (2008).

The church, the corporate, communal and relational nature of the Christian life and the presence of Christ today, however, was never far from Anderson’s thought and pen. Ministry on the Fireline: A Practical Theology for an Empowered Church (1993) challenged the need for evangelical theology which emphasizes a “Word” theology to embrace as well a “Spirit” or “Pentecostal” theology of the presence of the Holy Spirit in mission. Such concerns continued with what the summary of decades of Ray Anderson’s thinking on a theology of ministry based on a trinitarian-incarnational theology: The Soul of Ministry: Forming Leaders for God’s People (1997). Wide-ranging concerns from homosexuality to “The Humanity of God in the Soul of the City” are developed in light of a trinitarian model of practical theology in The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis. Anderson’s disgust in the lack of practical ecclesiology in much of modern systematic theology reflects his desire to leave “systematic theology” behind for the sake of “practical theology.” This direction from systematic to practical theology is spelled out more in detail theologically in The Soul of God: A Theological Memoir (2004).

Anderson continued to provoke his evangelical roots (and colleagues!) with Dancing with Wolves While Feeding the Sheep: The Musings of a Maverick Theologian (2001) with such chapters as, “Was Jesus an Evangelical?”(the “wolves” are his faculty colleagues!). One of Anderson’s most challenging proposals is his practical theology for secular caregivers found in Spiritual Caregiving as Secular Sacrament: A Practical Theology for Professional Caregivers (2003).There are many treasures of ideas in all of these books, ideas that have much appreciated by colleagues and students alike through the years. Much critical thinking stimulated by Ray Anderson’s theology can be found in the two Festschriften edited in honor of Ray: Incarnational Ministry: The Presence of Christ in Church, Society, and Family: Essays in Honor of Ray S. Anderson (eds. Christian D. Kettler and Todd H. Speidell) (1990), including essays by Thomas Torrance, James Torrance, Geoffrey Bromiley, Colin Gunton, Alan Lewis, and Lewis Smedes (with a telling introduction by the president of Fuller Seminary, David Allan Hubbard and a bibliography through 1990) and On Being Christian … and Human: Essays in Celebration of Ray S. Anderson (ed. Todd H. Speidell) (2002), which includes contributions by many of Ray’s former students, including LeRon Shults and Willie Jennings and an essay on “Community in the Life and Theology of Ray Anderson” by Daniel Price (along with a bibliography through 2002). Also included are the case studies used by Anderson for many years in his theology sequence of courses.

Karl Barth, in the lectures he gave during his tour of the United States late in his life, remarks that what he desires for Americans is to be freed for a “theology of freedom.” In a way, I think Ray Anderson is the purest example of an answer to Barth’s desire for America: A theologian who has always been first of all a pastor of a concrete, local church, never deserting the church for the rarified air of seclusion in the academy, never deserting particular, actual people for abstract values or virtues. For most of Anderson’s over twenty years of seminary teaching he was preaching every week at the “high of the low churches,” Harbour Fellowship. Anderson builds upon Barth’s revolution but is distinctly a theologian for the church in the U.S. today. Much is made today of a need for a theology of “globalization” and “postmodernism” and certainly the church and the gospel are for the world. But Anderson’s roots in a South Dakota farm and an evangelical parish become real in a theology that takes very seriously actual human beings and concrete situations in the church, not to be swallowed up by what can become abstract ideals and causes, from orthodoxy to social justice.

I have just finished a work that is to be a little introduction to Anderson’s work entitled, Reading Ray S. Anderson: Theology as Ministry, Ministry as Theology. I am pleased that Ray was able to read the preface and seemed happy (and embarrassed!) by the book. “Theology as Ministry” particularly relates to the doctrines of God and theological anthropology. “Ministry as Theology” suggests the profound integration of a theology praxis to the church in its ministry and mission. But the dialectical aspect of “Theology as Ministry, Ministry as Theology” should not be forgotten. There is one ministry of God, Anderson contends, the ministry of Jesus Christ. Theology only seeks to serve that ministry. Anderson has been well known for his uses of cases studies in exploring the implications of theology in ministry. (The actual cases he uses for examinations in his courses are found in the second Festschrift, On Being Christian … and Human, edited by Todd Speidell). So at the end of each chapter I have included a case that which “fleshes out” the implications of that chapter for ministry. I think you’ll find that the writings of Ray Anderson will be an incredible stimulation to your participation in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Homosexuality and the church: a meditation on the tragic (Part Three)

A guest-series by Ray S. Anderson

A Pastor and a Homosexual Christian: A Dialogue

“You spoke earlier of two gay men who acknowledged that same-sex relations were part of the tragic aspect of human sexuality and not what God intended. They accepted the biblical teaching on this point but nonetheless desired fellowship as Christians with other Christians. On this basis they were accepted into the church. But I do not feel that a same-sex relation such as I experience with my partner is contrary to biblical teaching. Our relationship is not promiscuous and we are as faithful and fully committed to each other as any heterosexual married couple. I do not see our situation as tragic. Does this disqualify me from being a member of your church?”

“I understand. If I had only experienced my sexuality as oriented toward the same sex, and if I had felt the same rejection and even hostility directed toward you by society and even the church I would feel the same way. But the two men we are talking about were welcomed into the body of Christ not because their view of the teaching of Scripture conformed to ours, but simply as persons who confessed Christ as Lord and savior. The Kingdom of God places no conditions upon humans in the invitation to enter. Children enter the Kingdom without knowledge of the tragic according to Jesus (Matt 18:2-3). Let me turn your question around. It is not whether or not your sexual orientation and practice disqualifies you from belonging to the body of Christ – but are you willing to enter the Kingdom of God based solely upon the grace of Christ who has already reconciled you to God? (2 Cor 5:19).”

“Suppose I am willing, and become a member of your church on that basis. How do you think I will feel when I am confronted with the biblical teaching that my sexual partner and I are ‘living in sin,’ to go back to the quotation you used from the newspaper?”

“I understand that. Each one of us is confronted by the fact that when the Bible calls us to love our enemies, give to whomever asks of us, set aside filial responsibility for the sake of the Kingdom of God, take up our cross and follow Christ, we enter the realm of the tragic. The demands of the Kingdom of God are not hostile to our humanity, but call us to what it is to be truly human. We seek a truth beyond our own. We are searching for the teaching that calls us out of our sin and places our lives under the promise of redemption.”

“So then, you do say that homosexuality is a sin?”

“Each of us must discover for ourselves what it means to be a sinner. And we cannot discover that nor find redemption from sin apart from a relationship with God. That is the irony of the Kingdom of God. The same grace that welcomes us into the Kingdom, as though we were children, places us under the rule of grace, that is, it exposes what is lacking in our humanity and brings us more and more into conformity with the humanity of Christ. That is the ministry of the body of Christ to one another.”

“Will your church recognize and affirm my ministry to the body? Suppose that I feel a calling to be ordained to pastoral ministry. Will my sexual orientation and practice disqualify me?”

“It is not our responsibility to decide who receives the gift of ministry within the Body of Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote that ‘a spiritual gift is given to each of us so that we can help each other.’ He then added, ‘It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have’ (1 Cor 12:7, 11). There is no one qualified by their own life to receive the gift of the Spirit for ministry, and there is no one disqualified.”

“But I asked about ordination. If that is true, does this mean that if I become a member of your church I could be a candidate for ordination?”

“Ordination, as we commonly speak of it today, was not known by the early Church, even though they later began to set apart Bishops and Elders for the sake of doctrinal continuity and pastoral oversight. Actually, each person baptized into Christ is baptized into his ministry and this can be understood as the basis for what we call ordination. We assume that those set apart by the church for full-time ministry through ordination have the gift of the Spirit. In one sense ordination can simply be understood as the way each church (denomination) sets apart some within the body of Christ, ordinarily a full-time vocation, to teach, lead and minister to the body in accordance with the authority of Scripture. While only members are qualified to be set apart through ordination, being a member does not in itself qualify one for this office. There are other requirements.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. If every member who is baptized into Christ is called into the ministry of Christ, and if every member has the gift of the Spirit for ministry, what are these other requirements?”

“It is kind of like the saying, ‘If it’s everyone’s responsibility to do the work, it often ends up with no one doing it.’ Because the church is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God through a human institution, it suffers from the limitations and weakness of all human organizations. The church in its teaching and ministry based on the authority of Scripture brings Kingdom truths to bear through an institution that is fallible, provisional and often failing to live by the very truths it proclaims. Thus the relation between the church and the Kingdom is also tragic. In recognition of this, the church established a polity and structure by which certain members could be set apart as those most responsible to hold the body of Christ accountable to the Kingdom truths as revealed in Scripture. Those who are ordained to this office are really servants of the Body of Christ, not superior to it.”

“You still have not told me what some of these ‘other requirements’ are.”

“Let me try. For example, because we hold that Scripture teaches that sexual cohabitation outside of marriage is not what God intended, a member of the body who is living with someone not their husband or wife would not be qualified to be ordained. In the same way, a member of the body who is known to be abusive to other family members, including children, would not be qualified. Those who are set apart for the office of teaching and leading others in the body are expected not only to uphold by conviction the truths of Scripture that are taught, but to demonstrate maturity and responsibility in their own lives and relationships with others. ‘They must be committed to the mystery of the faith now revealed and must live with a clear conscience,’ the Apostle Paul wrote (1 Tim 3:9). ‘Do not ordain anyone hastily,’ cautioned Paul (1 Tim 5:22). While the church must embrace the tragic in its ministry of the Kingdom of God, excluding no one who has experienced the grace of salvation in Christ, those set apart for ordination must be able, by knowledge and conviction, to uphold and teach Kingdom truth and to hold the body of Christ in conformity to it. Apart from commitment to celibacy, our church holds that a member of the body whose lifestyle is homosexual would not be qualified.”

“That is very interesting. In a recent newspaper article there was a report of the General Assembly of your denomination voting to remove the restriction upon the ordination of homosexuals. Do I assume that your church will follow this ruling?”

“Didn’t I say that the relation between the church and the Kingdom of God is tragic? Well, this may be one instance of that. We feel that our position regarding ordination is biblical and in accordance with Kingdom truth under biblical authority. The denomination cannot force us to change our belief and practice. At the same time, we bear the ‘name brand’ of the national church body, and will be in the awkward position of not being able to support a denominational policy while at the same time holding fast to our view of what the Bible teaches. While there are a variety of views regarding biblical authority and what the Bible teaches within the denomination regarding many issues relating to social, personal and sexual ethics, there is a steadfast commitment to the Apostolic faith as represented in the ancient Creeds. We hold denominational leaders accountable to the confession of faith rooted in these creeds. If they fail at this point, then it becomes a matter of Kingdom truth rather than merely unbiblical practice. Is this not part of our own Protestant tradition? The denomination is our spiritual home, it connects us to each other, though often with pain, and to those who went before us in the faith. It is our family, and to leave would make us orphans.”

“I didn’t realize that belonging to a church is so complicated! I am tempted to find one that conforms more to my own belief and lifestyle. But I have read enough of the Bible to know that Jesus was always on the side of Kingdom truth. That seemed to be what attracted people to him. And I must confess, I’m not sure I want a church that looks just like me. One more question, I have a friend who does belong to your denomination and is considering being ordained. She was quite dismayed at the recent ruling by the General Assembly as she feels that the ordination of homosexuals is not based on biblical truth and questions whether or not she should go ahead with ordination. What would you say to her?”

“Ordination is part of the church culture; it gives access to ministry that might not otherwise be possible. When Timothy, who had a Greek father but a Jewish mother, wanted to accompany Paul on his mission, ‘in deference to the Jews of the area, he arranged for Timothy to be circumcised before they left’ (Acts 16:3). Paul had earlier refused to circumcise Titus arguing that this would appear to make circumcision a requirement of the gospel. Ordination is something like that. In a sense, it is like an admission ticket to the institutional church’s culture of ministry. It is part of the tragic connection between the church and the Kingdom of God. Jesus embraces the tragic for the sake of bringing redemption and hope. If ordination enables you to follow Jesus, and if you understand the tragic, you can make this concession with clear conscience and a peaceful heart.”

Homosexuality and the church: a meditation on the tragic (Part Two)

A guest-series by Ray S. Anderson

The Tragic and Human Sexuality

If love is intrinsically tragic because it offers possibilities of fulfillment to human desire, hopes and needs that can never be met in even the most perfect human relationship, then sexuality itself is intrinsically tragic. The sexual nature of humanity perhaps lies nearest to the core of the self in terms of human intimacy. This is why sexuality is such a profound and yet complicated – and yes, tragic – component of the structure of humanity.

Sexuality itself is tragic because it is a component of the very structure of humanity that is woven through with the tragic. We do not understand what it is to be a human person until we understand that. And we cannot understand the struggle to integrate unfulfilled, sometimes chaotic, and often self-defeating sexual experience into authentic human personhood until we understand that.

When a man in his late 40s tells me, “I always wanted to have children, but after getting married when I was 25 I discovered that my wife could not and would never be able to conceive a child. Yes, adoption was one possibility, but my dream of having a child of my own well never be realized.” I respond: “Yes, I understand that, it is tragic.”

When a single woman in her late 50s tells me, “When I was in my 20s I thought for sure that I would be married. All of my friends found someone, I never did. I have lived all these years hoping for someone to love me in a special way. It never happened.” I respond: “Yes, I understand that, it is tragic.”

When a homosexual person tells me, “I knew that I was homosexual from the time I was a teenager. I tried to deny it, but finally accepted it, and though it is against what the Bible teaches, I have someone to love me and to live in a relationship that I could never have otherwise.” I respond: “Yes, I understand that, it is tragic.”

What each person in these situations has in common is an experience of the tragic as a component of their human experience. We must first understand that before considering the moral implications of their behavior. When Jesus confronted the woman at the well (John 4) he drew forth the truth that she had lived a life of promiscuity. “You have had several husbands and the man you are living with is not your husband.” Jesus perceived the tragic component of a woman’s life lived under these circumstances. The moral issue with regard to living with a man not her husband was never brought up. Jesus did not label her a sinner, but empowered her to confess that he was truly the Messiah sent from God. My point is that to label the sexual orientation and practice of a person as “sinful” fails to understand the tragic construct of that person’s life.

The Tragic and the Kingdom of God

Sin is not a condition that precedes grace. For until one is welcomed into the Kingdom of God through grace, the tragic only is a condition to be overcome, sometimes by religion, rather than by a relationship in which the tragic is brought under the promise of redemption. Until we each have discovered our own sin, always through grace, to be called a sinner by others is not only graceless, it is tragic. It breaks the common bond that makes us human. Saul of Tarsus would never have accepted the accusation that he was a sinner until he experienced the grace of God through his encounter with the risen Christ. Until the tragic nature of sin is revealed though grace, it lies untouched and unredeemed, hidden like a deadly virus that thrives on self-affirmation only to emerge in self-condemnation.

Jesus did not label persons whom he encountered as sinners, but rather offered them the power of his own person and inclusion in the Kingdom of God as an eschatological promise of redemption of the tragic. Looking over the crowd who followed him, he had compassion on them because “they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:7). Later that day he instructed his disciples to feed them and, as a result, more than 5,000 were fed. This “miraculous meal” was an eschatological sign and promise of redemption from the tragic. For a meal only lasts one day and holds back the tragic for a time; then hunger again rises up to remind humans that their existence is fragile and weak.

Redemption from sin begins with understanding, not with condemnation. Does this mean that sin is disregarded? Not at all. But then we should understand that we are bound to each other not only by virtue of the tragic, but also by sin. When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church with regard to sexual sin, he placed that particular sin in the same category as greed, worship of idols, and being abusive, a drunkard or a cheat (1 Cor 5:11). Paul only discovered that he was a sinner following his experience of grace through Jesus Christ. It is of no benefit to the Kingdom of God to call someone a sinner; instead, offer the grace of God so that they discover this for themselves.

The Kingdom and the Church

Jesus proclaimed the coming and the actual presence of the Kingdom of God in his own life and ministry. “But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has arrived among you” (Matt 12:28 NLT). But the Kingdom, while bringing redemption within the tragic, did not promise redemption from the tragic until the end of this temporal order and the coming of the Kingdom of God in glory. At the same time, Jesus said that his Kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). Paul taught that the Kingdom of God is not a matter of living by religious rules and regulations, but of “living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17 NLT).

The Kingdom of God confronts the world with the reality of what God intended for humanity and the way it is supposed to be, calling what is into a redemptive relation with God as Creator and Redeemer. The church is a sign of the Kingdom and acquires its identity and role in relation to the Kingdom. As such, the church is not the Kingdom of God, but an eschatological extension of the Kingdom into the present world order. In the end, it is not the church but the Kingdom of God that is presented to the Father by the Son in its fullness and completeness (1 Cor 15:17).

The church in its teaching and life, under biblical authority, is not only a place where we can come “just as we are,” but a place where we can experience the redemptive grace of God to become and live as God intended. This is the tragic aspect of the Kingdom of God and the form of the church in the world. It embraces what is tragic in the form of the failure of humanity to be and live in accordance with what God intended. At the same time in its teaching and practice it brings the tragic under the redemptive promise of healing, hope and ultimate overcoming of the tragic. For the church to exclude its neighbor, the homosexual person, is to forsake its own relation to the Kingdom of God and its authentic mission on earth.

Homosexuality and the church: a meditation on the tragic (Part One)

A guest-series by Ray S. Anderson

Following the recent ruling by the California Supreme Court permitting the marriage of same-sex couples, a newspaper report included a comment by two men following their marriage, “Now we are not living in sin.” The comment sounded somewhat sarcastic and was probably aimed more at the religious community rather than a description of their own spiritual condition. Nonetheless, it reminded me of the impasse created in the discussion of homosexuality when the label “sin” is used to portray same-sex cohabitation as unacceptable to many in the Christian community. It is not that homosexual persons are not sinners, as are all humans. “No one is righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:9 NLT). But to label homosexual orientation and practice as sin in order to justify exclusion from the church and its ministry is too simple. The issue is more complex than that. Is there an alternative?

During the 1960s when I was pastor of a small conservative church congregation, two men living together in a homosexual relationship, both graduates of a Bible school and with a clear Christian testimony, became friends of some in the church and eventually asked me if they could join. They both knew what the Bible taught concerning homosexuality and knew that my position and that of the church was based on this biblical teaching. My response was: of course you can join. This is not a church for those who are perfect but for those seeking Christian fellowship and a place to worship and grow in Christ.

The word “sin” was not mentioned, by them nor by me. If they had asked me if I considered homosexual practice a sin, I don’t know what I would have said. I hope that I would have said something like this. Do you believe that a same sex relation is what God intended when he created humans as sexual persons? They would have answered, “No, but this is the only way that we have found it possible to live and love. While others may say that we have a choice, for our part we feel that this relationship is the only one that fulfills our life and meets our needs.” In several other ways, they had communicated much the same to me.

The Tragic as a Human Condition

It was my former colleague, Lewis Smedes, who reminded me that in the area of human sexuality we should not ignore the tragic as a component of all and every human sexual experience. In the discussion of homosexuality, he said, don’t forget the tragic. Not that a same-sex relation is tragic as opposed to heterosexual relations, but that it is tragic because all human sexuality must be understood as necessarily an experience of the tragic. The key word here is “understood.” The difficulty for many heterosexual persons with regard to homosexuality is that they have no way of “understanding” how such a practice and relationship can be part of an authentic human experience, much less one that is Christian. The concept of the tragic may be one way of understanding the complex experience of human sexuality that underlies both heterosexual and homosexual tendencies and practice.

When I am able to understand what motivates a rebellious child to act out in anti-social ways, I gain insight in how to relate to that child rather than simply use labels to describe their behavior. In somewhat the same way, if homosexual behavior is simply labeled as “deviant” or a “perversion,” one is not only free from attempting to understand, but one makes no attempt. What is needed is an underlying structure of human existence rather than a practice of human behavior to begin to understand and then engage in discussion with homosexual persons with regard to the church and its ministry.

The tragic is not something that happens to humans following their creation out of the dust of the ground and endowed with the divine image – but to exist as that particular human person is tragic. Thus the tragic is not the result of the fall, as though humanity as originally created did not experience the tragic. Rather, the tragic exists precisely because human persons experience the freedom of self-conscious existence with virtually unlimited possibilities while, at the same time, remaining bound by necessity to the dust out of which they are created. The tragic is the result of the fact that humans cannot be in more than one place at a time, and they are aware of that.

When caught in a dilemma in which responsibility to help another is the most important, a decision has to be made. Failure to be able to meet both demands is tragic. Even the first humans were confronted with the tragic. Not everything that is possible, not everything that is good, can be chosen or accomplished or experienced. Being aware of that constitutes the tragic.

Søren Kierkegaard called this irreconcilable tension between possibility and necessity Dread. I prefer to call it the tragic. Dread became for him simply the psychological/spiritual moment of absolute self-awareness. The tragic is more a construct of human existence that underlies all human life, not merely a moment of awareness. As a construct of human existence, the tragic cannot be avoided though it can be denied, as Ernest Becker profoundly described in his book, The Denial of Death (Simon and Schuster, 1973).

True, there is an existential experience of dread, as Kierkegaard argued, that can only be overcome by faith. But if faith can overcome dread, it cannot overcome the tragic. The most significant human relation that Kierkegaard experienced was his engagement to Regina Olsen, an “instant love affair” that lasted for several years until he ended it by his own decision – for her own good, as he put it, even though he continued to love her. In the end, while he could apparently surrender everything to the infinite for the sake of faith, he did not have the kind of faith that permitted him to enact a finite relation of love without losing his own self. “Had I had faith I would have remained with Regina” (Journals, Harper Torch, 1958, p. 86). In the end, I would argue, what kept him from marriage with Regina was not lack of faith, but failure to understand the category of the tragic. Faith cannot overcome the tragic, as if marriage (as an act of faith) would remove the relationship from the category of the tragic.

The Tragic and Redemptive Grace

The tragic cannot be overcome and eliminated without destroying human life as we know it. Redemption of the tragic is an eschatological event. That is, it will only occur when the “new heavens and the new earth” emerge with the end of this temporal order. It is only then that “there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4 NLT). Until that time, redemption of the tragic will be provisional and partial with intimations of that eschatological reality illuminating the landscape of the tragic while calling us to embrace the tragic with redemptive grace.

Redemption is always within the tragic, but not from the tragic. Redemption from one instance of the tragic leads to an expansion of the tragic, not the elimination of it. When Jesus healed the paralytic who had been unable to work and had lain by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, this was a miracle of release from his tragic situation (John 5:1-8). But we are not told what happened to him nor how he was able to make a living, having lived by the charity of others for all those years. If he ended up healed but without the means of making a living for himself, that too is tragic.

When I come upon an apparently homeless person with a sign requesting money for food, I ordinarily pass by. Some would point to that person as a tragic person, an object of pity if not compassion. But the tragic is not an object but a relation. It is my relation to that person that constitutes the tragic. I recognize the demand placed upon me in our common humanity and his uncommon need. If I were to take that demand as an absolute moral demand and respond out of my own means as a way of overcoming the tragic, I have only magnified the tragic in the form of other humans who place their demand upon me and my resources as well. To give everything that I possess in response to the tragic situation of the needy, would be to compound the tragic with regard to my own children. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us of this when he says, “Marriage and family require time and energy that could be used to make the world better. To take the time to love one person rather than many, to have these children rather than helping the many in need, requires patience and a sense of the tragic” (A Community of Character, U of Notre Dame P, 1981, p. 172).

Theologian Wendy Farley says that “Created perfection is fragile, tragically structured” (Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion, WJKP, 1990, p. 127). She goes on to say: “The tragic structure of finitude and the human capacity for deception and cruelty together account for the possibility and actuality of suffering and evil.” Humans are finite beings, they possess awareness of the infinite but cannot fully realize it. In this sense, the tragic is not something from which humans can be redeemed and still be human, but redemption itself must take hold of and suffer the tragic if it is to approach and take hold of humans. Farley puts it this way: “But to overcome the tragic structure of finitude, to be free animate beings from all suffering, to determine finite freedom so that it will always love the good and have the courage to pursue it – these things are not possible. The potential for suffering and evil lie in the tragic structure of finitude and cannot be overcome without destroying creation” (p. 125).

Perhaps Farley would be better to speak of the fragility of humankind rather than the fragility of creation, for the kind of fragility I have described as tragic is peculiar to human beings. We may think it tragic to watch our nonhuman pets suffer and die, but this is a projection of the human tragic sense onto and into the created order. Evil, then, is the intensification of the tragic measured by its power to attack and destroy the good that God intended.

Following Farley’s insightful analysis, I would say that the freedom of creation in its own authentic nature – as differentiated ontologically from the Creator – is only tragic from the perspective of human beings who are endowed with a spiritual nature (imago Dei) which promises a destiny beyond that of its own creaturely nature. For all creatures but the human, their nature determines their destiny. For humans, their destiny lies beyond the power of a creaturely nature, though humans “suffer” from the exigencies of a creaturely nature. In this way, because love is a possibility of human existence which is in itself tragic, love is “intrinsically tragic,” for it is an investment of the self (the power of personal, spiritual being) in the face of the powers of nature, over which it is, at times, powerless.

One cannot consciously live with full awareness of the tragic, as Ernest Becker reminded us. Denial of the tragic may seem to be the only way to survive without losing one’s own existence. Nonetheless, the tragic continues to underlie human existence. Faith will not overcome it as an existential movement of the spirit, as Kierkegaard hoped. Faith itself is an eschatological point of reference that is grounded in the promise of God rather than in an immediate release from the tragic.

This is one reason why understanding homosexuality as part of the tragic construct of human sexuality may offer a more redemptive approach than simply to label it as “sin” in order to deny its right to exist.

Encountering the Word of God: against effective preaching

A guest-post by Ray S. Anderson

The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. It is an event in which speaker and listener surrender control to the other; it is like an act of love.

When the event of Word of God occurs, the blind can see what is often hidden from the eyes of the sighted – mere human words ignite the burning bush that draws both to the terrible truth of holy ground. One does not take notes when God speaks. When God speaks, a Word is worth a thousand pictures.

The effect of the Word of God is the Word of God (Isa. 55:11). When Jesus stooped to draw in the sand (John 8:6-8) he did not write something to be remembered but used the tactic to disarm and disturb the cynical power of his critics, and to assume authority for Word of God. No one remembered what he had drawn in the sand but all knew that his words to the woman were words of grace rather than judgment. A picture, a symbol, an icon, a melody can only enhance the event when they are consumed by the fire rather than extinguishing it, as they are sure to do when they become a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). Every attraction is also a detraction.

“The call to worship God can mean the temptation to idolatry,” wrote Karl Barth, but this is a call that cannot be avoided (CD II/1, p. 55). The very thing that is intended to serve the Word of God – including the voice and demeanor of the preacher – can detract or deflect from it. If we imagine that by using some kind of visual or audio aid the preaching of Word of God can be more edifying or even more believable, we may be indulging in cheap magic rather than encountering divine mystery. This is the fascination of idolatry – it is delightful but never dangerous. The idol is safe and even satisfying, but not transforming

“I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed,” wrote Annie Dillard. “In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger” (Holy the Firm, p. 59).

When we move from preaching Word of God to teaching Word of God, we move away from the mutual surrender of control (as in an act of love), to an active/passive situation where the one who teaches seeks to engage and activate a passive listener. But the passive can be engaged only through distraction, as the listener is invited to add his or her own interpretation and interest in the symbol, image, or figure. The difference here is like the difference between a lecture on love and an act of love.

For this reason, Jesus was more often frustrated than fulfilled in his role as teacher with his disciples. This is the pain of even the Master Teacher; being misunderstood is the ironic conclusion of being too quickly understood. Most sermons are misunderstood when they attempt to teach. Everyone’s notes are in a different dialect.

If one should dare to preach Word of God, be prepared to be exposed to the “naked” event of proclamation – just in case the computer for the power point slides goes down. But this might become a transforming event for all. Lord, deliver the Word of God from the technology and tricks that we use to make our preaching so effective!

Can a minister be saved?

Our friend Ray Anderson was recently re-reading Barth’s shattering collection, The Word of God and the Word of Man (1928), and he suggested that some excerpts from the 1922 address on “The Need and Promise of Christian Preaching” (pp. 97-135) might be a useful sequel to the recent post on Kierkegaard. So, thanks to Ray, here are a few excerpts from Barth:

“Can a minister be saved? I would answer that with men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. God may pluck us as a brand out of the fire. But so far as we know, there is no one who deserves the wrath of God more abundantly than the ministers…. As a matter of fact the church is really an impossibility. There can be no such thing as a minister. Who dares, who can, preach, knowing what preaching is? …

“On Sunday morning when the bells ring to call the congregation and minister to church, there is in the air an expectancy that something great, crucial, and even momentous is to happen…. Do [the people] really know at all why they are here? In any case here they are – even though they be shrunk in number to one little old woman – and their being here points to the event that is expected or appears to be expected, or at least, if the place be dead and deserted, was once expected here.

“And here above all is a human being, upon whom the expectation of the apparently imminent event seems to rest in a special way…: he himself chose this profession, God knows from what understanding or misunderstanding of it, and he has now for better or for worse wedded his short, his only life to the expectation of the event. And now before the congregation and for the congregation he will pray – you note: pray – to God! He will open the Bible and read from it words of infinite import, words that refer, all of them, to God. And then he will enter the pulpit and – here is daring! – preach; that is, he will add to what has been read from the Bible something from his own head and heart, ‘Biblical’ ideas, it may be, according to his knowledge and conscience, or ideas which fly boldly or timidly beyond the Bible; yesterday one prepared a ‘fundamentalist’, and another a ‘liberal’ sermon. But does it make so much difference which it was when the subject is considered? Every one must apparently, perhaps nolens volens, speak of God.

“And then the [minister] will have the congregation sing ancient songs full of weighty and weird memories, strange ghostly witnesses of the sufferings, struggles, and triumphs of the long departed fathers, all leading to the edge of an immeasurable event, all, whether the minister and people understand what they are singing or not, full of reminiscences of God, always of God. ‘God is present!’ God is present. The whole situation witnesses, cries, simply shouts of it, even when in minister or people there arises questioning, wretchedness, or despair. Then perhaps it is witnessed to best of all – better than when the real problem is obscured or concealed by abundant human success.”

Ten theses on Dietrich Bonhoeffer: theologian, Christian, martyr

A guest-post by Ray Anderson, Fuller Theological Seminary

1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian theologian. Rather, one should say that he became a Christian theologian. Eberhard Bethge, his former student and biographer, notes the year 1933 as a “transition from theologian to Christian.” In 1936 Dietrich wrote to a girlfriend and confessed: “I plunged into work in a very unchristian way.… [T]hen something happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day. For the first time I discovered the Bible…. I had often preached. I had seen a great deal of the church, spoken and preached about it, but I had not yet become a Christian” (Bethge 2000, 203-5). By his own admission, his two most scholarly writings, Sanctorum Communio (1927) and Act and Being (1930), were written by a theologian who was not yet a Christian. I take the word “Christian” here to mean “disciple” – one who does not merely believe in Christ, but experiences Christ.

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a lonely theologian. Though he had a twin sister, was home-schooled by his mother, and was raised in a highly interactive social environment, his decision to become a theologian was met with curiosity and even some scorn. He was caught between his mother’s piety and his father’s open contempt for religion. Kenneth Morris says that in making his decision to become an academic theologian his “father pitied him and told him so” (1986, 75). For all his analysis of the social aspect of the self, Dietrich grew increasingly isolated in the midst of his activity. “With some exaggeration it might be said that because he was lonely he became a theologian, and because he became a theologian he was lonely” (Bethge 2000, 37). When a theologian writes (in Discipleship, 87), “Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads to death” (Jeder Ruf Christi fährt in den Tod), we know that the door to life has become so narrow that only one can pass through at a time. Perhaps Bonhoeffer had already read the bleak observation of the 19th-century German underground theologian, G. J. Hamann: “In a world of fugitives / One who moves in the opposite direction / Will appear to run away.”

3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a conflicted theologian. While others perceived in Dietrich self-assurance and even a bit of arrogance, he often experienced self-contempt and even periods of depression in his own soul, or what Bethge, who perhaps knew him best, called accidie or tristitia. These periods often followed times when he had been particularly effective in preaching, teaching or leading others. However, as Bethge recalls, after his arrest and imprisonment in 1943, he no longer experienced these times, as he was gripped by a sense of duty. In spite of enforced inaction, he had finally achieved the concrete discipleship that he longed for (Bethge 2000, 506, 833).

4. Bonhoeffer was a worldly theologian. While the “worldliness of Christianity” became a dominant theme in his Letters from Prison, underlying this perspective was his conviction that the God who became human in Jesus Christ abolished the distinction between religion and the world. In his earliest writing he stated that religion is dispensable, God is not. “Not religion, but revelation, not a religious community, but the church: that is what the reality of Jesus Christ means” (Communio 1963, 112). Later, having witnessed the utter failure of the church as a religious institution to act on behalf of the oppressed Jews, he followed Christ out of the church into the world. Only those who live fully in the world have a claim to follow Christ, he wrote from prison. The God of religion whom we seek to call into the world on our behalf, has already entered the world in the form of a suffering God. “The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God” (Letters, 360). The “worldliness” of Christianity is not our invention, but our calling. The ambiguity of this situation, he asserted, is precisely what the incarnation created for us. It is ambiguity that creates prophets.

5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a prophetic theologian. He was one of the first to recognize and point out the disastrous consequences of Hitler’s campaign against the Jews. In June 1933, when the church struggle erupted over the National Bishop (Ludwig Müller) and the opposing General Superintendents were suspended, Bonhoeffer urged an interdict upon all pastoral services (baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.) as a way of confronting the German Christians with their unholy alliance with Hitler. But he could not arouse sympathy for this drastic action. In fact, Barth advised against this radical proposal, suggesting that “we should let the facts speak for themselves.” In September, following the Brown Synod, Bonhoeffer urged the formation of a new Free Church and even wrote to Barth requesting his support. But here again Bonhoeffer was disappointed at Barth’s counsel to wait until the present leaders “discredited themselves” (Bethge 2000, 292). It was in April 1933 in his article on “the Church and the Jewish Question” that he suggested that the only way to act responsibly would be by “throwing a spoke in the wheel” of the national government. Prophets often die by their own words; theologians seldom do.

6. Bonhoeffer was a postmodern theologian. Postmodern ethics was anticipated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he turned the “modern” basis for ethics (as advocated by Kant) on its head. He wrote: “In the sphere of Christian ethics it is not what ought to be that effects what is, but what is that effects what ought to be” (Communio 1963, 146). The problem of Christian ethics, said Bonhoeffer, is the same as the problem of Christian dogmatics, the realization of the reality of revelation in and among God’s creatures in the form of concreteness, immediacy, and obedience. In a world where good and evil are mixed, and where ambiguity conceals the divine commandment, the Christian’s ethical responsibility is to follow and obey Christ, not merely to adhere to abstract ethical principles. There is no place for “self justification” by virtue of reliance on predetermined principles for action. “Principles are only tools in God’s hands, soon to be thrown away as unserviceable” (Ethics 1995, 71).

7. Bonhoeffer was a post-denominational theologian. What he viewed as the demise of the church was its claim to a special place as a religious institution and its failure to exist in solidarity with the world in obedience to Christ. His participation in ecumenical conversations and dialogue marked a blurring of denominational boundaries and the recognition of authentic Christian existence in mutual friendship, as expressed in his final words sent to Bishop Bell in England from his death cell: “for me it is the end but also the beginning – with him I believe in the principle of our universal Christian brotherhood which rises above all national interests and that our victory is certain – tell him too that I have never forgotten his words at our last meeting.” Writing from prison, his view of the church’s future was incarnational and ethical in a truly worldly sense. “The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give always all its property to those in need…. The church must share in the most secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving” (Letters, 382). Denominations are religious institutions at the edge of the world; the church is an incarnational presence in the midst of the world.

8. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a practical theologian. Practical theology deals with God’s self-revelation and activity through the life and ministry of human beings. From the early Barth, Bonhoeffer learned that the act of God reveals the being of God. His second dissertation, Act and Being (1930), attempted to bring Barth’s concept of “pure act” into the historical realm through Heidegger. But Bonhoeffer was never a disciple of Barth. True, Barth led him away from idealism into critical realism with regard to divine revelation, but God’s life and activity through the human person Jesus Christ became for Bonhoeffer the praxis of revelation and thus the form of practical theology. His Christology was orthodox so far as Christ is the form of God in the world, but practical so far as the Christian is the form of Christ in the world. Because the former was merely a dogmatic assumption, his own theological praxis was concerned with action prior to reflection – a statement that scandalized his students.

9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a maverick theologian. John Maverick was a 19th-century Texas rancher and legislator who received a herd of cattle in payment of a bill and turned them loose on the range without a brand. When one of them turned up without a brand, it was assumed to be one of Maverick’s. Many have tried to mark Dietrich with their own brand, to no avail! He slipped away from the death of God theologians when they realized that the same man who wrote from prison about living in a world without God was the one who invited a Russian atheist fellow prisoner to participate in a final communion service just before being executed. Pacifists put a claim on him but felt betrayed by his admission that he would kill Hitler himself if the lot fell to him as a member of the conspiracy. Evangelicals like his talk about Jesus but wish Bonhoeffer had been more concerned about his unsaved relatives and friends. Social activists applaud him for his concern for the oppressed but are embarrassed by his orthodox Christology. Even in death, as in life, he remained unbranded.

10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a martyred theologian. There is disagreement over this, of course. His complicity in the conspiracy thrust him directly into political resistance. In the minds of many traditional Lutherans, this excluded him from being a Christian martyr. In a sermon preached in 1932 he had this to say about martyrs: “the blood of martyrs might once again be demanded, but this blood, if we really have the courage and loyalty to shed it, will not be innocent, shining like that of the first witnesses for the faith. On our blood lies heavy guilt, the guilt of the unprofitable servant who is cast into outer darkness” (Bethge 1975, 155). By his own definition, he was a martyr. He never claimed justification for his actions, other than to assume guilt as a necessary component of responsible action. Whether it was true or not, he thought that his actions, to the very end, were those of a Christian disciple in obedience to Christ. Martyrs live for what they confess to be true, and die for it. Only those who confess the same truth will call a person a martyr.

Ray Anderson: Exploration into God

Ray S. Anderson, Exploration into God: Sermonic Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 111 pp.

Ray Anderson of Fuller Seminary was kind enough to send me a copy of his new collection of sermons on Ecclesiastes, Exploration into God. He originally preached these sermons back in 1964, when he was pastor of the Evangelical Free Church in Covina, California. At the time, he was immersing himself in the works of Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard, and in the novels and plays of Dostoyevsky, James Agee, Thomas Wolfe and Arthur Miller. The sermons in this book arise from this potent blend of the Old Testament and modern existentialist thought. (In his inscription of the book, Ray tells me: “If you like Bultmann, you will love Koheleth!”)

Ray sums up the melancholy poet of Ecclesiastes with the words of Kierkegaard: “What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music” (p. 10).

With deep existential pathos and warm pastoral sensitivity, Ray discusses the melancholy of this ancient poet. He observes that this melancholy comes not merely from life, but from God. God has placed eternity in our hearts, and this “means sadness if you are aware of it” (p. 23). And for just that reason, “the sadness of life is its health”! Similarly, “the vanity of life is its hope”; and “the conflict of life is its harmony.”

Ray thus observes that sad Koheleth is no mere cynic. On the contrary, the poet presses us with the question of God as the meaning of our lives – but he refuses to offer an “easy solution” or a “premature answer” to this question (p. 81). He speaks of the “health” of life only by telling of life’s sadness; he celebrates the “harmony” of life only by stressing life’s conflicts; he speaks of the “hope” of life only by lamenting life’s vanity.

Reading Ecclesiastes is thus “like taking hold of the two poles on a battery” (p. 14). It awakens us with a jolt – but in doing so, it awakens us to God.

Ray S. Anderson: Emergent theology for emerging churches

Ray S. Anderson of Fuller Seminary will be known to many of you here at Faith & Theology – he has posted here before, and he regularly contributes to our discussions. Ray has written over 20 books, and he has kindly sent me a copy of his latest one, An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006).

While the emergent discussion hasn’t always been marked by sustained theological reflection, here Ray offers a probing and passionate theological contribution to the conversation. He is deeply sympathetic with the emerging church (his own Lutheran church is both traditional and emerging), but he warns that new forms of community and worship alone are not adequate – above all, what emerging churches need is “a clear and compelling story of the gospel” (p. 86).

At the centre of this book is a contrast between two churches recorded in the New Testament: the church of Jerusalem and the church of Antioch. In a nutshell, Ray’s argument is that “[t]he Christian community that emerged out of Antioch constitutes the original form and theology of the emerging church,” so that “the emerging churches in our present generation can find their ecclesial form and their core theology by tracing out the contours of the missionary church … in Antioch” (p. 20).

With close attention to the New Testament texts, Ray develops this argument in relation to the work of the Spirit, church polity, kingdom living (the workplace is “a secular sacrament of the kingdom of God,” p. 115), biblical interpretation, an ethics of love (“grace … embraces moral and spiritual ambiguity for the sake of bringing persons to a greater dimension of human wholeness,” p. 156), charismatic gifts, mission and social justice (“Jesus came to right wrongs, not only to create righteous people,” p. 195), and the eschatological nature of church tradition.

Although I’m not involved in the emerging church movement myself, I found this book to offer an exciting and refreshing vision of the Christian church as a community empowered by the Spirit of Christ and directed towards the future of God’s kingdom.

[If you’d like a free copy of this book, stay tuned for the next post....]

For the love of God (16): Why I love Thomas F. Torrance

A guest-post by Ray S. Anderson

I went to Edinburgh in 1970 to study under Tom Torrance after reading Theology in Reconstruction (1965) and Theological Science (1969), both of which are heavily underlined, marking my first introduction to an incarnational theology presented with scientific rigor, and grounded in a trinitarian epistemology of the self-revealing act of God. “We are not concerned simply with a divine revelation which demands from us all a human response,” he wrote, “but with a divine revelation which already includes a true and appropriate and fully human response as part of his achievement for us and to us and in us” (TIR, 131).

After sitting in his lectures for two years and writing my dissertation under his direction, I came to appreciate even more the deeply devotional, even pietistic life of faith that lay hidden behind his often forbidding erudition and the semantic thicket of his writing. Born in China of Scottish missionary parents, he was as comfortable talking about his personal relationship with Jesus as he was lecturing to an assembly of world class physicists (as he did on the occasion of the anniversary of Einstein’s 100th birthday).

In 1986 I spent a week with him in Hong Kong where we were both invited to present lectures and dialogue with Confucionist scholars on eastern and western versions of human nature. It was there, sharing a flat with him where we cooked our own breakfast, that I finally dared to make the transition from being “his student” to a colleague, brother in Christ and personal friend—a transition made difficult only by my own deference to his immense learning, but made easy by the grace of his own humanity.

Now, after publishing more than two dozen books (including his forthcoming lectures in dogmatic theology), and having suffered a minor stroke some time ago, 92-year-old Professor Torrance lives in an assisted care facility in Edinburgh. When one of my former students recently visited him and asked, “Are you not bored just sitting here?” Tom replied, “Oh no, I am talking to the Lord.” When asked if he had a message for me, he replied: “Yes, tell him I am going to heaven soon.”

As one of the primary translators of Barth and one whose theology follows in that tradition, Torrance has made his own indelible mark as a post-Barthian, evangelically situated theologian. He is often misunderstood, and he is sometimes caricatured for his “take no prisoners” approach to the defense of the faith. But I love him for all of that!

Karl Barth’s study

Professor Ray Anderson of Fuller Theological Seminary kindly sent me some pictures that one of his students took while visiting Karl Barth’s home study in Basel. Here they are, for your enjoyment.

The three stages of Barth’s Römerbrief—handwritten, typed and printed.

To the right of the chair, three metres of Mozart books—right between the Church Fathers!

Calvin and Mozart on the same level.