For the love of God (26): Why I love Wittgenstein

A guest-post by Sam Norton

“If what we do now makes no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with”—a remark which Ludwig Wittgenstein made to his friend Drury, skewering the universalist heresy.

Wittgenstein was a deeply serious man, and I believe he developed insights which all theologians need to absorb. While it is debatable whether he was in fact a Christian, he certainly believed in God, and he infamously saw things “from a religious point of view.” While at service on the Eastern Front in World War I, he was known as “the man with the gospels,” as he never went anywhere without taking Tolstoy’s summary with him.

He was a rather tortured soul in terms of his sexuality; he revered Augustine (the greatest influence on his own thought—he felt the Confessions to be “the most serious book ever written”); he hated virtually all modern music (you could “hear the machinery in Mahler”); and he gave up all his wealth to his sisters, since he felt that they were the only people unlikely to be spoiled by it. Clearly, in a different era, he would have been a monk, possibly a hermit. I find him a compelling human being: complex, flawed, yet gripped by the claim of the divine upon his life.

What is most important about Wittgenstein is his method of philosophy, which prevents a fruitless pursuit of metaphysical “solutions”; more precisely, it teaches us what metaphysics actually is. Thus Wittgenstein’s method is a necessary discipline for theologians, as it prevents us from mis-characterising the nature of Christian doctrine. As he put it himself: “Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For ‘consciousness of sin’ is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.” Wittgenstein has had a great influence on contemporary theology, from Stanley Hauerwas to Herbert McCabe—and it seems to me to be a wholly beneficial influence.

While most understandings of Wittgenstein emphasise the “Sturm und Drang” of his life, I think there is also an under-appreciated current of joy. He used to relax by going to the cinema, especially enjoying Westerns—and he found this to be of value. He wrote early in 1947, “I have often learnt a lesson from a silly American film”—and I believe that he watched something that year which gave him some inner peace, that allowed him to believe that his life was worth something after all. After all, his last words were: “tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.” I like to think it was what he had in mind.

For the love of God (25): Why I love Emil Brunner

A guest-post by Jon Mackenzie

“I am inexpressibly grateful that the Lord of my life has granted to me in such abundance these opportunities to take part in the life of his ecclesia and to bear witness to the Living Christ in so many places and in so many ways.” —Emil Brunner

Being an undergraduate in St Mary’s College at St Andrews University, there is little chance you will survive without some knowledge of the giant of twentieth-century theology, Karl Barth. The place is steeped in his legacy, and his name is bandied about throughout the disciplines—in theology, church history, ethics, and even biblical studies. However, being a naturally rebellious type, I quickly tired of the irrational love of Barth among my fellow students (many of whom had only flicked through Dogmatics in Outline), and I sought out ways to shatter their naïve dreams of theological completeness.

And there he appeared in the shadows: a man who was facing the same Sisyphean task as myself; a man who stood up to Karl Barth; a man who provoked Barth to cry “Nein!”; a man who travelled against the grain. These were the circumstances of my introduction to Emil Brunner, peripheral as they were, yet leading to a fully-fledged appreciation of this Swiss theologian.

Of course, “loving a theologian” seldom correlates to “agreeing completely with a theologian.” This is the case with my love of Brunner. Why then do I love Brunner? In reading theology, my main criterion is to be provoked to thought. There are some tomes of theology that I can read without caring at all. But Brunner provokes thoughts that will not go away. His is a theology of the real world. It does not leave you alone. As Wilhelm Pauck said, Brunner’s theology “is a modern theology in the sense that it interprets the gospel in such a way that [people] of today can feel themselves addressed thereby in their particular conditions.”

There are many other reasons why I love Brunner—his books are cheap because they are shadowed by Barth; unusually for a German-speaking theologian, his work is concise; his name has a wonderfully mystic ring; and he had a missionary heart, and served in such places as Japan, Korea, India and Pakistan.

But time has gone, and my words have been few and clumsy. If you ever see that Brunner volume lying forlorn on the dusty shelf of the library or the second-hand bookstore, pick it up. Lose yourself in the pages of a man whose main aim was to meet with the God who communicates himself, and to tell the world of this God who relates.

For the love of God (24): Why I love Dorothee Soelle

A post by Kim Fabricius

This is my fourth post in the series. I admit it: I’m a promiscuous pilgrim who likes to sleep around! I can also be fickle. Dorothee Soelle is a good example: while I love her dearly, she also gets on my nerves. But then so does my wife!

I discovered Soelle in the late seventies when I came across her little Political Theology (1971) in a second-hand bookshop. She did not come well recommended, as my main man Barth had said of her “that that woman should keep silence in church!” Nevertheless, there was something passionate and powerful about this working mother who would not shut up.

Soelle was certainly a persona non grata in the German theological establishment: never was she offered a chair in her homeland. But then Deutschland’s loss was New York’s gain, as Soelle became a professor at Union Theological Seminary (1975-1987). She thrived in the cultural pluralism and social activism of the Big Apple, which markedly influenced her theology, an eclectic mix of politics and poetry, mysticism and ecumenism. No ivory tower academic, Soelle visited both Vietnam and Nicaragua in the cause of her praxis of peace and justice.

Sure, Soelle’s fragmentary work lacked academic rigour and failed to engage both with tradition and with the theological heavyweights of her time. And, yes, her obsession with the Holocaust clouded her judgement when it came to contemporary Israeli politics. But the theological scene of the last three decades of the twentieth century would have been the poorer without this godly gadfly, who died in 2003, aged 73, while leading a workshop in Bad Boll. Just hours before, Soelle had read some protest poetry on the war in Iraq, but ended with words she had written to her grandchildren: “Don’t forget the best!”

Juxtaposing Soelle’s flawed theology with her political instincts and commitments, I am reminded of a conversation between Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller. Barth: “Martin, I’m surprised that you almost always get the point despite the little systematic theology that you’ve done!” Niemöller: “Karl, I’m surprised that you almost always get the point despite the great deal of systematic theology that you’ve done!”

For the love of God (23): Why I love G. C. Berkouwer

A guest-post by Charles Cameron

At a conference for Scottish students in 1975, I met two Dutch visitors, one of whom was a theological student. On the bookstall, there were some books written by the Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer (1903-1996). Some of my conversations with this theological student focused on Berkouwer.

After the conference, I showed the Dutch students around our capital city, Edinburgh. We visited a Christian bookshop where I bought the book Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, which contains an article on Berkouwer (written by Lewis B. Smedes). Describing Berkouwer’s contribution to contemporary theology, Smedes writes: “Berkouwer has called orthodox Reformed theology away from its love affair with metaphysics…. [H]e has called it back to its proper and humble service as hand-maid to the preaching of the gospel” (p. 96). For Berkouwer, “divine election is identical with the grace of God that was revealed in Jesus Christ … [and is] not to be confused with a notion of an arbitrary, graceless decree of a purely Sovereign Deity” (p. 74). After reading this I said, “I must read Berkouwer!”

In 1976, while visiting Canada, I bought Berkouwer’s book Holy Scripture. Living out of a suitcase, I didn’t have many books with me. What did I do? —I read Berkouwer. Reading became studying and writing. By the time I met him in his home in 1986, I had written a PhD thesis based on his writings. I spoke with him for one hour, but I felt like I had known him for a decade. Long before I ever laid eyes on him, I had loved him as a “father in the faith” (1 Cor. 4:15). He had helped me to praise God and to preach the gospel of grace with joyful thanksgiving.

For the love of God (22): Why I love Herbert McCabe

A guest-post by Kim Fabricius

It was love at first (sound) bite: a nineties newspaper article on “spirituality” referred to a Catholic spiritual director named Herbert McCabe, who defined prayer as “wasting time with God”. Exactly, I smiled! Prayer, like play, is useless; it is not necessary – it is much more important than that. I’ve got to find out more about this guy, I thought!

But there wasn’t a lot to discover. There was a book called God Matters (1987), but over a quarter of it was on transubstantiation. My separated brothers and sisters, forgive me, but that was one way I did not want to waste time with God! Eventually I came across an obituary – McCabe died in 2001 – and posthumous collections of his writings, lectures and sermons suddenly began to appear.

The style is engaging – elegant and exact, conversational and caustic, reflecting McCabe’s rigour of thought and nose for humbug: rightly it has been compared to that of Chesterton.

And the expanded content (I am happy to report) transcends transubstantiation. The influences of Marx and Wittgenstein are evident, as McCabe speaks passionately about the incompatibility of Christianity and capitalism, and writes insightfully about sacramental language and faith’s forms of life. But there is always a “dumb ox” in the room – the presence of Thomas Aquinas. And out of the mix on ethics and virtue, prayer and liturgy, evil and atonement – all the old loci – McCabe always brings new mint, coined in the memorable phrase.

And what a character! As befits a don of Dominic, who founded his order in a pub, McCabe liked his Scotch. He was zestful and jestful, and at home at high and low table alike. And no jobsworth was McCabe. A colleague tells me that so radical were his leaders as editor of one particular journal that he was sacked. But the unemployment of such a class act was temporary. Re-hired, McCabe began his first leader back: “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted ...”

Among those inspired by McCabe are not only theologians like Eamon Duffy and Nicholas Lash, and philosophers like Anthony Kenny and Alasdair MacIntyre, but also critics and poets, including Terry Eagleton and Seamus Heaney. Testimony to a man lazy in publication but powerful in presence.

For the love of God (21): Why I love Colin Gunton

A guest-post by Douglas Knight

The truth of the God of Jesus Christ is its own reward. Communication of that truth makes for joy and a life well lived—a second reward. Colin Gunton taught me this.

Colin Gunton showed that the doctrine of God is not only about the truth of God. It also secures our own identity, our worth and our responsible freedom as children of God. The temptation to aspire to something we mistakenly identify as greater than created humanity makes us less than human. The truth that we are not God, but creatures of God—the doctrine of creation—is the really great gift of the Christian faith to the world. This is why Gunton focused on these two doctrines: God and creation.

Gunton taught that we creatures are able to know God because the Holy Spirit enables us to confess Jesus, who confesses God the Father. Often quoting Irenaeus to say that the Son and the Spirit are the two hands of the Father, Gunton showed that the doctrine of the Trinity provides us with a doctrine of mediation—God himself is not only the (christological) content but the (pneumatological) medium and bearer of that content. He argued that God is now at work making possible not only our worship and knowledge of him, but also our recognition of one another. God is the means by which I may see you for who you are, and let you become what God intends you to be—a unique and particular person.

In the years Colin Gunton taught systematic theology at Kings College, London, worldwide interest in trinitarian theology grew dramatically. Postgraduates would come to Colin to study Barth and other heroes of the Reformed tradition, but with him they also discovered the Church Fathers and learned how to think across the whole Christian dogmatic tradition.

In the weekly seminar, Colin hosted an intense encounter of ideas. With the first-timers he always wrestled through the issues again and found better ways to frame them, forever expressing delight in the richness of the Christian tradition. We would arrive with the patronizing assumption that we moderns have discovered crises of previously unknown complexity, but in seminar after seminar Colin would enable us to see that such self-consciously “modern” theology was self-deluding. It is much more likely that we have to catch up with the intellectual rigor of previous generations of Christian thinkers.

The result was not only Gunton’s powerful written work, but students who could think for themselves precisely because they could faithfully listen to what many generations of Christians had been saying. We who knew Colin Gunton are grateful to God for him.

[Note: Thanks to Colin Gunton’s widow for providing this photo.]

For the love of God (20): Why I love Nietzsche

A guest-post by Byron Smith

“Is not every unbeliever who has a reason for his atheism and his decision not to believe a theologian too? Atheists who have something against God and against faith in God usually know very well whom and what they are rejecting, and have their reasons. Nietzsche’s book The Antichrist has a lot to teach us about true Christianity.” —Jürgen Moltmann, Godless Theology.

My early years as a Christian were spent in a fairly dualistic Christian culture. Creation and redemption were frequently opposed: salvation meant redemption from the world, from worldliness, from distractions and secondary things. Explicitly and implicitly I received the message that anything that was not a gospel-matter didn’t matter.

Friedrich Nietzsche awoke me from my Platonic slumbers. I began with Beyond Good and Evil (1886): “Christianity is Platonism for ‘the people.’” Nietzsche’s humorous, vigorous, irreverent and megalomaniac take on Western culture and thought helped me to see the world-denying resentment behind much that passed for Christian thought. Reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85) and the Bible, I rediscovered a world-affirming faith. Not a naïve optimism, nor Nietzsche’s heroic Übermensch, but a realisation that the author of salvation is none other than the creator who declared everything “good, very good.” The God who raises the dead brings not redemption from the world, but the redemption of the world.

Nietzsche seeks to vanquish the shadows of god that linger on in Western culture after it has rejected Christianity. The god he banishes is one to whom I’d also like to bid good-riddance. Nietzsche, a self-styled anti-Christ(ian), does Christians a great service through his iconoclasm. Although usually pegged as a philosopher (he briefly held a university position as a philologist), he is also able to “theologise with a hammer,” sounding out the hollow idols and ideals of the Western tradition. This task is integral to any Christian theology worthy of the name.

“I beseech you my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go” (Zarathustra, Prologue, §3).

For the love of God (19): Why I love Flannery O’Connor

A guest-post by Kyle Potter

Flannery O’Connor was a Roman Catholic fiction writer from Georgia, USA. I love her because her disturbing, macabre stories capture my imagination for the God who is always creating and redeeming the church and the world.

Her stories are often violent, and her characters unsympathetic. There are country-folk and urbanites, intellectual atheists, and pious bigots. However, they stop just short of being caricatures as I realize that they are so much like me. O’Connor invites us to thank God that we are not like the Pharisee who is thanking God for not being like the publican. It is in this realization that the character’s moment of grace and judgment will become my own.

Revelation comes to O’Connor’s protagonists in unexpected and sometimes violent ways, freeing them (and us) from pretensions and self-deceptions. Her stories turn on the fact of the Incarnation, and on a strong sacramental principle: God acts in and through his creation. Through acts of violence and visions of the grotesque, O’Connor depicts the wrath of God moving upon the ungodly—and the ungodly sure do look a lot like me!

In the story “Revelation,” a pious and judgmental woman is sitting at a doctor’s office, pondering the South’s social hierarchy and her own rightful place in it. Suddenly she is attacked by a hysterical teenager who screams at her, “Go back to hell, you old warthog!” The woman realizes this to be a message from Jesus, and she asks him later: “how am I a hog and me both?” In response she receives a purgative vision and observes that even the virtues of the righteous are burned away.

In her visions of costly redemption, O’Connor teaches powerfully that all our righteousness is indeed as filthy rags, but that God is not content to leave us to our own devices, and will shake us awake rather violently if necessary. Bizarre events become movements of grace by an unseen God who wants us to know the truth about ourselves. O’Connor’s characters rarely find salvation, but salvation often comes to get them—and us.

In O’Connor’s stories, the love of God is tender, self-giving and determined, and it is because of this that it is also wrathful. O’Connor thus helps us to see, perhaps happily, that “even the mercy of the Lord burns.”

For the love of God (18): Why I love Eberhard Jüngel

A guest-post by Thomas Adams

In a world where faith is usually on the defensive, confidence is an essential quality for a theologian. And Eberhard Jüngel has confidence in spades. Indeed, it seems to me that the expression “no apologies” (or “no apologetics”) could serve as the overarching motto for his entire theological program. Whereas others try to ground Christian theology in philosophical principles or human nature, Jüngel asserts (again and again) that “God has spoken”—in Christ, on the cross, once and for all. Despite the complexity of his thought, Jüngel is first and foremost a listener to the Word of the gospel as revealed in Scripture, and his theological method is therefore a daring “chasing after” the Word.

Unlike others who have contributed to this series, I do not have an interesting story about how I came to love and admire Jüngel. I have never met him, or heard him speak, or taken a class on his theology. But on the recommendation of this blog, I naively requested a copy of God as the Mystery of the World (1977) via inter-library loan. The experience of reading this sprawling masterpiece, so dense and so rich, was both frustrating and exhilarating. I learned quickly that Jüngel does not accommodate himself to the reader; instead, the reader must accommodate himself to Jüngel (again, “no apologies”!).

But the theological workout paid sizable dividends, as reading God as the Mystery of the World triggered a seismic shift in my theological perspective. Here I found a thinker whose brilliance was so enormous that his theology could somehow encompass the great minds of the past, both theological and philosophical. Barth and Bultmann, Luther and Aquinas, Hegel and Nietzsche, Descartes and Heidegger—all contribute in different ways to Jüngel’s symphonic theology.

Jüngel also has a polemical side—another admirable trait, in my opinion—that was on display during the controversy surrounding the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. His desire to bring “clarity” to the debate resulted in the book Justification (1999), a masterly presentation of the essence of Lutheran theology. In keeping with the spirit of his entire career, Jüngel declared that Justification “is not a book that takes pleasure in compromise. An ordered theology makes no compromises.” For Jüngel, the gospel needs no apologies.

For the love of God (17): Why I love Martyn Lloyd-Jones

A guest-post by Guy Davies

I never knew “the Doctor,” who died some years before I was converted. But his books and example have had a formative influence on my life and ministry.

As a new believer in my late teens, I read Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Prove All Things (1985). Most of the Christian literature I had read up to that point were testimony-type books, light on doctrine but full of experiences. But here, I encountered another world. The writer took the text of Scripture seriously and thought deeply about the things of God. I became disenchanted with shallow, experience-based Christianity and longed for something with more depth.

Here are some of the reasons why I love Lloyd-Jones:

Reformed Doctrine: He preached the sovereignty of our triune God in the salvation of sinners. He emphasized the biblical truths that were rediscovered at the Reformation and exemplified by the Puritans and the Calvinist Methodists. With him you get the theology of John Owen without the Latinized prose and rather large wig, and you get Jonathan Edwards’ emphasis on experiencing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Expository Preaching: Lloyd-Jones is well known for his sermons on Romans and Ephesians. He believed that theology is best communicated by preaching—“theology on fire.” What is the point of a theology that is not ablaze with the glory of God? His sermons are a mixture of considered exegesis, doctrinal depth and powerful application. Mrs Lloyd-Jones described her husband as “first of all a man of prayer and then an evangelist.” His Sunday evening services were invariably evangelistic. He urged ministers to seek the anointing of the Spirit on their preaching: “Seek him! Seek him! What can we do without him?”

The Life of the Mind: Lloyd-Jones emphasised the importance of study and scholarship, and he kept abreast of the latest trends in secular and theological thinking. This preacher-theologian helped deliver British evangelicalism from the shallows of anti-intellectualism.

Revival: “The Doctor” had a great burden for an outpouring of the Spirit on the church. He agreed with Jonathan Edwards that the church has grown throughout history as a result of revivals. The need of the hour is not “new ways of doing church,” but a heaven-sent, Christ-glorifying revival.

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!

For the love of God (15): Why I love Wolfhart Pannenberg

A guest-post by Sean du Toit

“True respect for the mystery [of the incarnation] can express itself, among other ways, just in the attempt to understand it fully.” —Wolfhart Pannenberg

As an undergraduate I delved into various theologies, hoping they could guide me in a quest better to understand the God of the Bible. But it was not until I picked up a used copy of Jesus: God and Man (1964) by Wolfhart Pannenberg that I made significant progress. Others had helped me to see the transcendence of God and the majesty of the creator, but Pannenberg brought me face to face with the manifestation of God’s glory on planet earth. It was here that the discovery of the historical Jesus became relevant to my expedition of fides quaerens intellectum.

Instead of assuming Jesus’ divinity, Pannenberg saw the task of Christology as offering reasons why one should embrace the divinity of Jesus. His commitment to Scripture as the defining source of theological reflection has encouraged me many times. In an age in which systematic theology and biblical studies have long been separated, Pannenberg has brought back together what none of us should ever have separated.

Pannenberg awakened in me a love for the historical Jesus and for careful study of Scripture, as well as an awareness of other issues in theology, such as the role of science, ethics, anthropology and metaphysics. This does not mean that I fully understand or appreciate all that Pannenberg has to offer. But I have found him to be a worthy friend who leads us to discover more and more about the world we live in, the God who is there, and the hope that will unite us all in the future.

It was this unknown German, in a random bookshop, who introduced me to my first love. He is thus my cupid, the one who lured me into a place of love and devotion. And that is why I love Wolfhart Pannenberg.

For the love of God (14): Why I love Kathryn Tanner

A guest-post by Chris Tessone

“[In the Incarnation], God is doing what God is always doing, attempting to give all that God is to what is not God” (Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology, p. 15).

This conviction about the constant, unconditional grace of God lies at the center of Kathryn Tanner’s theology. There is no moment at which God chooses to withhold the constant stream of grace from creation—it is part of God’s identity that God wishes to share with humanity and the rest of the world all that is shared between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This leads Tanner to some tremendous conclusions.

First, this universal access to grace leads her to stress the importance of non-competitive economies of grace in human life. If the Divine wishes to bring us into the shared life of the Trinity no matter what short-comings we bring, this should radically transform our relations with one another. In her most recent book, Economy of Grace (2005), Tanner expands this to include financial economies that are non-competitive or that seek to distribute wealth downward, to the neediest and the least in society.

Her theology is also deeply Eucharistic, highlighting the role of the Eucharist in training us to accept and freely distribute the grace of God. “[T]he character and quality of our union with Christ must be bettered, heightened from weak union to strong, for example, through the repeated performance of the Eucharist in the power of the Spirit.” This permits us to “live in God and not simply in relationship with God,” sharing the grace we receive in a profligate manner, not worrying that it will be diminished or wasted on the “undeserving.” One reason I love Tanner’s theology is that this understanding of the Eucharist speaks more directly to my experience of it than any other I’ve encountered.

Kathryn Tanner’s theology is located at a very fruitful “sweet spot” between the mystical and the exoteric; the church of the Eucharist and the church of social justice; our powerful, transcendent God and our intimate, immanent God. Her central concepts of profligate grace and non-competitiveness can challenge and transform our deeply divided church of today.

For the love of God (13): Why I love Stanley Hauerwas

A guest-post by Kim Fabricius

I have never met Stanley Hauerwas, but a colleague who has describes him as a thoroughly unpleasant man. Another colleague tells of Hauerwas at Cambridge dismissing Jürgen Moltmann as “full of shit.” And Hauerwas himself admits to a violent streak.

As a New Yorker I am inclined to snipe: “What else do you expect from a Texan?” But then Hauerwas also happens to be an Episcopalian layman and one of the church’s most outspoken apostles of non-violence. Gandhi would not be surprised: the violent, he said, often make the best pacifists.

Rowan Williams I love because he’s so humble and irenic; Stanley Hauerwas I love because he’s such a rootin’ tootin’ gunslinger. He stands in the venerable tradition of the rabies theologorum that can be traced back to the vitriolic Paul, via the hot-headed Luther and the ruthless Augustine.

Theologically, I like the way Hauerwas keeps his work seamless: dogmatics and ethics (Barth), doctrine and narrative (MacIntyre), character and action (Bonhoeffer), church and world (Yoder). The accusation of sectarianism is preposterous, as Hauerwas roars his counter-cultural critiques in the fora. The professor’s The Peaceable Kingdom (1983) will issue in the public intellectual’s Dissent from the Homeland: Essays after September 11 (2003). Here Hauerwas declares: “I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better—a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.” He also says: “If we do not think it possible to love our enemies then we should plainly say Jesus is not the messiah.”

The Sermon on the Mount obviously resources Hauerwas’ theology, but the ultimate source is the God who is our friend. Indeed “friendship” lies at the heart of Hauerwas’ understanding of the Christian life, and informs his thinking not only on peacemaking, but also on sexuality, abortion and—a special concern—the mentally handicapped. Indeed, the recent Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words (2004) is more poignant than polemical.

Hauerwas may be a son-of-a-bitch—but he is our son-of-a-bitch.

For the love of God (12): Why I love Hans Küng

A guest-post by Chris Tilling

Somewhere Hans Küng has said something like this: “I want to be worldly enough that I can be of worldly use.”

Not the most convincing start to this post, admittedly, and the fact that I couldn’t find the exact quote has been driving me nuts. Alas, had I found it, I may even have sounded as smart as Kim and Cynthia, et al. But now, you know, I’m just a grumpy New Testament man masquerading as a theologian.

There is much that I could love about Küng: that he has engaged with an astonishingly broad spectrum of subjects; that his ecclesiology rings very well with my inner evangelical (with a focus on a proper appreciation of the New Testament heritage); or that his ecumenism strives laudably to approach years of religiously motivated bad feeling in open dialogue.

However, it is the opening words (mutters again at not finding the reference) that sum up, for me, why Küng is such a likeable theologian: he is a thinker for theological borderlands, for the questions that aren’t simply about the inner logic of Christian doctrine, for questions that don’t presuppose an already-in-place Christian faith.

He made this clear in his opening words in On Being a Christian (1974), but this is also seen in his open an honest engagement with questions of science, the existence of God, and how one can develop a reasonable faith in the “modern world.”

Moreover, highly significant is Küng’s engagement with the historical-critical method. The historical-critical method is so often overlooked or pushed aside in systematic theologies, as if it didn’t exist, as if its results were of no significance. But Küng has always had a feel for its importance. “Responsible faith today,” he argued back in the 70s, “presupposes—directly or indirectly—historical research.” The New Testament researcher in me punches the air!

However, Küng wants to engage in such open questions to serve the church and to inform its praxis. Naïve faith, he knows, can mean a life not lived in accord with the kingdom of God.

Of course, Küng is not perfect, and my words of praise might sound rather naïve in the ears of my Catholic friends. Also, his appreciation of the “modern frame of mind” may well be past its sell-by date. But what I love about Küng remains of vital importance to me and my personal development as a Christian—as I too want to be worldly enough to be of worldly use.

For the love of God (11): Why I love Thomas Groome

A guest-post by Aaron Ghiloni

Thomas Groome makes me hot. Unlike Patrik, who met his love prematurely, I encountered Groome belatedly. I had already been involved in faith education for some time, when I finally discovered what it was all about. Though I had met Groome before, we had only flirted. Reading Thomas Groome in the summery shadow of Presidio Park’s cypress pines, I was peeved that we hadn’t had this conversation sooner, relieved to find that my work was legitimate, captivated by his comprehensive approach, and, yes, I was in love. Like Augustine, my adoring heart confessed: “Late have I loved you!”

I love Thomas Groome because he helps me to see—in theory, practice, and praxis—what real Christian education might be. I love Thomas Groome because he enables me to envision a church that truly knows its God and a world that is becoming the kingdom of God.

Groome’s education for the reign of God draws on the best of resources available to educators. He is part Deweyan and part Huebnerian; fully Catholic and yet patiently catholic; completely liberationist and yet more than just political. Groome enables us to remember our selves, healing the “forgetfulness of being” that has so marked Western intelligentsia. Groome’s “shared Christian praxis” connects with our very marrow, and, for lovers, it connects deep within the heart.

In a field delirious with “tricks of the trade” and “how-to” simplicities, Groome provides a theoretical basis for practical theology that is fully informed by the Western philosophical tradition, by the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and by theological landmarks.

Thomas Groome makes me hot: hot to teach, hot to learn, hot to grow, hot to remember, hot to be, hot to become.