Rowan Williams and kenotic ecclesiology

My paper in Rome today discusses Rowan Williams’ theological conception of Christian tradition. Here’s an excerpt:

“There is a profound apocalyptic dimension to Williams’ thought here. The meaning of doctrine is not latent within doctrinal history itself. The truth of doctrine is not immanent within the church’s own history and practices. Rather, the truth of doctrine comes to the church from beyond the church’s history. This means that an essential discipline of Christian theology is the practice of self-dispossession, of renouncing the claim to any final vision or any authoritative grasp of the truth.

“Following Donald MacKinnon, we might speak here of the ‘kenotic’ shape of doctrinal identity. Even where orthodoxy emerges as the historical winner from the struggle with heresy, that same orthodoxy must relinquish the right to claim a total vision or to interpret the direction of history. In relinquishing this right, orthodoxy preserves its own essential vulnerability vis-à-vis its founding event – and it confesses that the church can receive truth only from outside itself, as a gift that enters history from beyond history, tearing history open in the apocalyptic rupture of God’s advent.

“Williams’ role as Archbishop of Canterbury in recent years illustrates precisely this dialectic of kenosis and apocalypse. As a churchman, he combines an uncompromisingly rigorous commitment to the truth of doctrinal orthodoxy with an absolute refusal to grasp the truth as a possession or to wield it as an instrument of power. Indeed, the most striking thing about Williams’ conduct as Archbishop of Canterbury is his willingness to fail, his refusal to pursue any ideal of ecclesial ‘success’ in abstraction from the church’s spiritual identity as a community defined by weakness, fragility and self-dispossession.

“This rejection of the idolatrous notion of a ‘successful’ church, this willingness to fail, is at the same time a profoundly apocalyptic gesture: the church’s identity is not immanent within its own practices and institutions; its identity is that which exceeds it, that which comes to it as gift, that which fills its own emptiness and abasement. Williams’ approach here stands not only as a witness to the church’s proper identity, but also as a sharp critique of the tendency among some contemporary political theologies to hanker after the fleshpots of Christendom, or to envision the ecclesial polis as existing in any way other than that of discipleship and crucifixion. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer has observed, the church’s suffering is infinitely more dangerous to the world than any political power it may retain – the church’s only authentic power is its weakness.”

On Barth and Rome

Unfortunately, posting here will continue to be sporadic over the next week or two. I’m now en route to Rome for the Grandeur of Reason conference, and then I’ll be settling into Princeton for the rest of the year, where I’ll be working at the Center of Theological Inquiry.

The (terrifyingly massive) program for the Rome conference is finally available for download [104 KB]. My own paper on Rowan Williams is at 11.15 Tuesday morning; and F&T guest-blogger Scott Stephens also has a paper on Milbank and Žižek at 9.00 the same morning. There’ll be loads of good stuff, including a closing plenary by Giorgio Agamben. And I’m especially looking forward to this Wednesday afternoon all-star session on politics and theology:

• Oliver O’Donovan, “Deliberation, Reflection and Responsibility”
  
• Stanley Hauerwas, “A Worldly Church: Politics, Theology and the Common Good”
  
• John Milbank, “Transcendence and the Scope of Reason”
  

Meanwhile, be sure to check out Rudy Koshar’s excellent article, “Where Is Karl Barth in Modern European History?”, in the latest issue of Modern Intellectual History. Koshar observes that Barth’s political thought remained “inassimilable to any particular ideology,” and that his “prohibitions on idolatry made up an important part of a developing repertoire of antitotalitarian politics.” Koshar suggests that this anti-totalitarian, anti-idolatry politics “might be applied not only to the classical political ideologies …, but also to the more general phenomenon of the ‘sacralization of politics’, or even to the recent ‘identitarian’ movements, which have acted so corrosively in so many ways.”

Funeral Meditation: he read the book

A guest-post by George Hunsinger; from a funeral at Nassau Presbyterian Church, 16 August 2008
 
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:37-39)

Our friend Peter is no longer with us. He has embarked on that journey which some day must be taken by us all. That final journey still lies ahead of us, but Peter now has it behind him. He has entered “the undiscovered country,” the unknown destination, “from whose bourn,” as Hamlet famously observed, from whose boundary, “no traveler returns.”

Peter was forced by the circumstances of his life to give that journey a considerable amount of thought. Having been diagnosed, while still a college student, with a form of cancer that was considered incurable, he knew for the rest of his life — more than most of us do about our own lives, I suspect — that his days were numbered. The experimental treatment program that added decades to his span of years — a span that we may still rightly feel was all too short — left him with an uncommon sense that each new day was a gift, that life was not something to be squandered, that it was to be enjoyed, pondered in its mysteries, and above all lived out in gratitude to God. Like anyone, Peter had to grapple with his doubts, his unanswered questions, his pains, and losses, and griefs. But he did so as a person of faith. His circumstances were often difficult, but his faith enabled him to live above his circumstances. 

His circumstances did not destroy his faith. On the contrary, his faith prevailed over his circumstances. It was not an easy struggle for him. His ongoing bout with cancer was an ongoing bout with death. But in the course of that deadly bout he learned the meaning of a key biblical virtue. It is a virtue that we often discussed in our weekly Sunday morning Bible study class, because it often comes up in the letters of St Paul. Peter was a faithful member of that class for more than twelve years. When we had to consider the theme of what St Paul called hypomone — a word that has no good English translation but which points to the the theme of patient endurance, of perseverance, of calling upon God in the time of trouble, of continuing to trust in the promises of God regardless of one's difficult circumstances, the theme of not losing heart —  Peter paid particular attention. For him it was of more than theoretical interest.

Peter was well aware of what Hamlet meant when he soliloquized about that undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns. But he did not quite agree with Hamlet. He did not quite agree, because he had somehow caught wind of a rumor, that rumor which, if true, meant that Hamlet had not quite gotten things straight. Despite everything that might count against it, Peter believed that this rumor was true. And because that rumor was true, Hamlet could not have the last word. It was not quite correct that from the boundary of that undiscovered country no traveler returns. Because a Traveler was known who had returned.

This mysterious Traveler was the One who had not only returned, but by whose power that undiscovered country, that wasteland of death itself, had been robbed forever of its sting. It was this Traveler whom Peter believed would accompany him, and did accompany him, in life and in death. Better, it was this Traveler whom Peter believed that he himself was accompanying. It was this Traveler — the One who had returned from that undiscovered country with the joyful news that His love was stronger than death — it was this Traveler, whose name is Jesus Christ, whom Peter himself confessed, along with all the company of the faithful, as his only comfort in life and in death.

In my last conversation with Peter, a few days before he died, he stressed that resurrection hope — the hope by which he himself had learned to live — was a hope for this life and not just for the next. He wanted the first Question from the Heidelberg Catechism to be included in his Memorial Service. We will recite it in a moment. “Tell them it’s not just a hope about death,” Peter instructed me. “Tell them it’s a hope about life. Tell them it’s our only comfort in life and in death, in life and not just in death.” Those were, in effect, his last words.

How did Peter learn to live by this hope? This is a question which can have no easy answer. I will not try to do it justice but only to lift up one small piece of it. It concerns that piece in which I myself may have played a role, however modestly, as a figure in Peter’s life. I have already mentioned the weekly Sunday morning Bible study. But Peter also attended another class that I lead. He was a reguler member, again over a period of many years, of my Karl Barth Student Reading Group. Karl Barth was a great theologian, though, as anyone knows who has tried it, not an easy theologian to understand. Peter did not just attend the Barth Reading Group. He really read Barth. And what impressed me was that he was always eager for more. He would ask me about what were the best ways to get his hands on the writings of other great teachers of the church, like Calvin, like Luther. Peter read them too. He read them seriously. He made them integral, I suspect, to his urgent quest for faith, for hope, for hypomone.

Peter was primarily a reader of the Bible, but as a Bible reader he also read the great Reformation theologians, who gave him the incomparable gift of wisdom and understanding and hope. We might say that Peter was and became what is called in Yiddish a Gelernter. In Jewish culture to be a Gelernter is a rare and honorable achievement. Many might aspire to become a Gelernter but not everyone has the leisure or the discipline or the motivation that it takes. A Gelernter is not necessarily a Rabbi or a professor. A Gelernter can be an ordinary Jew who manages to achieve extraordinary things. A Gelerner can be an ordinary saint who through diligent study of the sacred text attains to an extraordinary level of knowlege, wisdom and understanding. A Gelernter, in this sense, is an ordinary saint who is learned in the sacred text.

Years ago I heard a story about a Gelernter in a sermon. I wish I could remember it better, but it went something like this. Once upon a time there was a Jew in a Polish village who worked as a tailor or a shoemaker. Somehow he came into some money. He no longer had to repair garments or shoes to make a living. He could do whatever he wished. So he fulfilled his lifelong dream and became a Gelernter. His wife and his family and everyone in the village were proud of him, a simple shoemaker who became a Gelernter. Of course he helped his relatives when they needed money, and he gave generously to the poor. But he did not see any of that as his deepest vocation. He enjoyed talking with the Rabbi and others in the synagogue, even as he applied himself night and day to the sacred text. He was once asked what he would say to the Lord God when he had to stand before him at the Last Judgment. The Lord would ask him, what did you do with your life? To which this former shoemaker felt he had a ready answer, the best answer he could possibly give. He would simply reply to the Lord God by saying: “I read the Book.” He belonged to the people of the Book, and he himself had been blessed to read the Book.

Peter was a serious Christian. He came to church to worship God and to hear the Word of God. With his particular life struggles, he knew there was nothing that he needed more than to hear the Word of God be rightly proclaimed. And of course he did many things with his life. He loved the opera, he loved rowing, he loved Albrecht Dürer and other great works of art. He gave generously to the poor. But he was also one of those ordinary saints with an extraordinary attainment. He was an ordinary saint who, driven by interest and need, attained to the high stature of a Gelernter. He was not a professor or a minister. But he devoted himself to study some of the great theologians of the church. And he did so most of all because they helped him to understand the Book.

Peter did many things with his life, but above all he read the Book. And when he comes to stand before the Lord God on the Last Day — as each of us will finally do in that undiscovered country to which we all must some day embark — and when he is asked what he did with his life, as we will all some day be asked, I think that on this side of that farther shore we can almost hear what Peter will say, as he will indeed be entitled to say: “I read the Book.”
 
Let us pray: Into your hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend your servant Peter. Acknowledge, we pray, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Enfold him in the arms of your mercy, in the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and in the glorious company of the saints in light. Grant also, O Lord, to all who are bereaved, the spirit of faith and courage, that they may have strength to meet the days to come with steadfastness and patience, not sorrowing as those without hope, but in thankful remembrance of your great goodness, and in the sure expectation of a joyful reunion in the heavenly places. All this we ask through Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.

On the limited importance of intellectuals

“Many elements conspire to render unlikely any serious possibility of a new communal religion borne by intellectuals…. Nor can a religious renascence be generated by the need of authors to compose books, or by the far more effective need of clever publishers to sell such books. No matter how much the appearance of a widespread religious interest may be simulated, no new religion has ever resulted from the needs of intellectuals or from their chatter. The whirligig of fashion will presently remove this subject of conversation and journalism, which fashion has made popular.”

—Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), pp. 136-37.

Donald MacKinnon on apologetics

“The philosopher is not an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion.”

—Donald M. MacKinnon, The Borderlands of Theology: An Inaugural Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1961), 28.

Milton and the problem with rights

I’ve been running a Milton symposium here in Brisbane over the past couple of days. My own paper was on Milton’s political theology, and on the theological basis of his concept of “rights.” Here’s an excerpt:

“In Milton’s view, not all members of a society are fit to participate in the political sphere. In spite of everything he says about the irrevocable rights of all individuals, Milton’s theological understanding of ‘nature’ carries with it the belief that human nature has been corrupted since the fall. Here, I think an irresolvable problem arises from the way Milton maps his political doctrine on to his theological narrative of creation and fall. For Milton, politics is defined not by the actually existing condition of human societies, but by a mythological condition of primal harmony and perfection. It is man’s original nature in the Garden of Eden which forms the basis of his rights, his liberties and his political responsibilities. This means that the fall into sin – the fall from primal perfection into the messiness of human society as it actually exists – introduces a rupture with the very basis of political order.

“Indeed, sin can become so corrosive that it divests human nature entirely of its rights. Where this occurs, the individual is no longer fit for participation in the political sphere. As Milton says, citizens then become ‘unserviceable … to the Common-wealth’ through their spiritual corruption. The benign theological conception of innate created rights thus passes over into the ominous political legitimation of a division between those whose innate rights remain effective and those who have forfeited their rights through sin. The regenerate – those who are returning from their fallen state towards the state of perfection – are now grouped politically over against the masses....

“Milton believes unreservedly in the innate rights that belong to human nature as a result of creation. But because of his corresponding theology of the fall, his conception of political order is always the vision of a regenerate few who embody the proper natural liberty of all.... The commitment to a normative human nature, then, is at bottom a theological commitment, grounded in a specific (and inherently problematic) narrative of creation–fall–regeneration.”