You know what’s really important?
Being relevant. (Being sarcastic helps when you want to be relevant.)
But in all seriousness, one of the hottest topics in an election year is of course politics. Politics, as we all know is a volatile topic for conversation. It brings out real emotions and more often the darker sides of people than their lighter side. One thing I’ve noticed among fellow Christians is one of two bad tendencies when big elections years come along. Either they retreat from debate all-together and dismiss the whole discussion as irrelevant under a mistaken understanding of separation of church and state. They say, “Let the church worry about God, and Caesar worry about Caesar” which amounts to saying, “let the church worry about itself, and let the secular government concern itself with justice.” Or they lose themselves and/or their Christian virtues in the political malaise, aligning themselves with policies that are expressly unchristian for the sake of championing other policies which are Christian. The Christian ethic forms its own unique politic in our political melting pot, and to sell one’s soul to one party or candidate is to distort the clear political witness of our evangelical faith. Just because the Republican Party espouses a “pro-life” stance for the unborn, and a hawkish foreign policy doesn’t mean that that is what the New Testament apparently espouses. And just because the Democrats’ social agenda matches semantics with the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t’ mean we can fail to realize that although care for the poor is a part of justice, that playing the part of Robin Hood is not a sole responsibility of the government. As far as I can tell, pouring money we don’t have into programs that rarely attack the central issues and only deal with symptoms, on the guilt laden and coercive rhetoric employed by the left-wing, is not just.
The Church is a political entity. And as political people we are concerned with justice. We are concerned about the general welfare of the state insofar as it accompanies the going forth of the Gospel. We like free speech for instance because free speech means the free speaking of the Gospel. Our voice in a Democratic-Republic is an equal voice among the many, but the USA is not a theocracy and we are okay with this. So our Evangelical faith informs our opinions on policies, but we do not seek to supplant our Government even if we are the minority. We play by its rules and vote according to our faith just like everyone else does. And the ballot box is just one of the myriad of ways that we can get our message across. If we’re going to complain about the brokenness of the welfare system, we should try and put it out of business by our personal charity. Thus we falsify any claim that we are not compassionate because we’d rather not give our money to an untrustworthy middle-man to distribute it as he wishes. If we truly believe that justice calls for a Democratic (the party) vote, let us not be so naïve and lazy as to think that we have thus done our whole Christian duty. We should carry an awareness of the power of our vote knowing that voting for a hawkish commander in chief does in fact mean that people in the middle east will die, and that we the taxpayer will have paid for it. So awareness of the issues and knowing what our vote means is a huge thing and since we’re Christians must be informed by our Christian ethic as well as what our voting decision mean for unsuspecting or even powerless people.
In the midst of our discussions about politics we can’t forget what the New Testament says about being people who are all about love, hope, and peace. Our hope is not in the system. We do not despair that it is broken. We saw this coming. But in love for our neighbor we seek the best way given our historical political situation to champion justice and fight corruption, and injustice, whether perpetuated by right or left or both. We do this in our personal lives, our public lives, and the way we vote; no need to compartmentalize loving your neighbor.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Judaism: How Can I Make God's Revelation in the Old Testament Less Jewish and More Greek?
My hypothesis is this. Christianity, in worldview, not necessarily in theology is inextricably attached as child is to parent to Judaism. This means that if my understanding of Judaism is correct that modern Christianity has to take a harder look at itself and change when necessary. The obvious disagreement is over the identity of the Messiah. And Paul’s understanding of Jesus as set forth in the New Testament doesn’t merely mean that God is giving the Jews time to figure out that Jesus is Messiah but that the Resurrection of Jesus has jump started the Messianic Age, and thus Judaism itself looks different. It is my opinion that an out of balanced and dare I say a medieval anti-Semitic attitude has hindered better interpretation of important Pauline epistles like Galatians and Romans. Today’s evangelical theologians take for granted that Paul’s polemic in Galatians is against a Pelagian works-based legalism. It can be easily detected by skillful and objective exegetes that the brilliant, prolific, and limited, if not overly introverted Martin Luther perhaps saw too much of his 16th century European self in the 1st century Asian Judaizers in Galatians. A polemic on top of a polemic was wrought by such an interpretation, and now while we evangelicals rightly throw out Pelagian Soteriology, we throw Judaism out with it supposing that Augustine’s famous 5th century opponent was simply rehashing the old Pharisaical legalism. And so following this misunderstanding is the misguided dismissal of the whole of Judaism, whether this dismissal shows up in the replacement theology of the Reformers or the awkward historical categorizations of the Dispensationalists.
In my opinion the truth is that Paul’s conversion to Christianity was not a move away from Jewish Pelagianism to Christian Calvinism. But was a move from Pharisaical (semi-pelagian; the Jews were not Platonists. They were not determinists) Judaism to Messianic Judaism. It wasn’t until after the Romans ransacked Jerusalem that the Apostles’ movement (Paul included) was anything more than a Jewish sect, even to the Jews. (Acts 7). There were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and Jews who believed that He was not. Paul’s task was to explain how Jesus was the Messiah and how the message that would go out to the nations, i.e. the Gentiles, as prophesied in the prophet Isaiah, was commissioned by Messiah’s atoning death and Resurrection. His theology was absolutely dependant on a Judaic worldview. It’s redundant to say that Christianity is different than Judaism. Of course it is. 2012 is not the same year as 2013, although you don’t have 2013 without 2012. Christianity’s theology must be different qualitatively that Judaism’s precisely because Christianity accepts Jesus as the Messiah, but the way that Christianity thinks about God, the way it forms a worldview, the way it tells its story, the way it relates to the world, in its essence, not in its particulars is nothing if not dependant on the way Judaism thinks about God, forms a worldview, tells its story, and relates to the world.
Of course, the truth of my hypothesis depends on whether Paul’s conversion was a conversion within Judaism, or an essential conversion of worldview. Did Paul see Jesus on the road to Damascus and find in that conversion a kind of enlightenment into the deterministic world of Plato? Did he make a clean break with his Pharisaic Judaism? I doubt it. I stand on the shoulders of better exegetes, critical-historical/textual scholars, who differ greatly on Paul, some saying he was thoroughly a Jew, and some saying he was a bitter antagonist to the Jews and invented a palatable anti-Jewish theology for the Gentiles. But as an amateur self-taught Bible College graduate, it seems most likely to me that Paul’s thought was held together by Jewish presuppositions and formed by faith in Jesus as Messiah and occasionally put in Westernish terms for the sake of evangelizing Westerners. I have argued for this in my statements above and I have argued from my understanding of the text that I am reading. In short I find it highly unlikely that God would preserve the canon of Scripture for the Church with Old and New Testaments and give us an Old Testament that has no real continuing narrative theme all the way through Revelation. Here’s a 600 page story about the Jews and how pitiful they are. Now here is the solution… Greek philosophy. Is the story of Israel the story of how totally depraved human beings really are, so that we see our need for the Gospel as revealed in Romans? This seems like a rather tedious way to go about proving the point, especially since the Bible speaks as if God really expects righteousness and rewards actual righteousness and punishes actual wickedness. Or is the story so nuanced and tangled because it takes a story like that to furnish a faith in Creator God? The Bible conceived as an intricate story is the only way to make sense of its own versatility and constant speaking out of three sides of its own mouth due to its relational nature, and it’s blatant disregard for man’s felt need for materialistic rationalism.
Finally if one accepts that there is a distinctly Judaic string from Genesis to Revelation, the following parallels (next post) will be so illuminating so as to make one wonder how he could have even missed the Old Testament. If I can show the parallels, I can show that at the very least that it’s possible that Christianity is very Jewish in worldview by showing the unlikelihood that the parallels are coincidences.
In my opinion the truth is that Paul’s conversion to Christianity was not a move away from Jewish Pelagianism to Christian Calvinism. But was a move from Pharisaical (semi-pelagian; the Jews were not Platonists. They were not determinists) Judaism to Messianic Judaism. It wasn’t until after the Romans ransacked Jerusalem that the Apostles’ movement (Paul included) was anything more than a Jewish sect, even to the Jews. (Acts 7). There were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and Jews who believed that He was not. Paul’s task was to explain how Jesus was the Messiah and how the message that would go out to the nations, i.e. the Gentiles, as prophesied in the prophet Isaiah, was commissioned by Messiah’s atoning death and Resurrection. His theology was absolutely dependant on a Judaic worldview. It’s redundant to say that Christianity is different than Judaism. Of course it is. 2012 is not the same year as 2013, although you don’t have 2013 without 2012. Christianity’s theology must be different qualitatively that Judaism’s precisely because Christianity accepts Jesus as the Messiah, but the way that Christianity thinks about God, the way it forms a worldview, the way it tells its story, the way it relates to the world, in its essence, not in its particulars is nothing if not dependant on the way Judaism thinks about God, forms a worldview, tells its story, and relates to the world.
Of course, the truth of my hypothesis depends on whether Paul’s conversion was a conversion within Judaism, or an essential conversion of worldview. Did Paul see Jesus on the road to Damascus and find in that conversion a kind of enlightenment into the deterministic world of Plato? Did he make a clean break with his Pharisaic Judaism? I doubt it. I stand on the shoulders of better exegetes, critical-historical/textual scholars, who differ greatly on Paul, some saying he was thoroughly a Jew, and some saying he was a bitter antagonist to the Jews and invented a palatable anti-Jewish theology for the Gentiles. But as an amateur self-taught Bible College graduate, it seems most likely to me that Paul’s thought was held together by Jewish presuppositions and formed by faith in Jesus as Messiah and occasionally put in Westernish terms for the sake of evangelizing Westerners. I have argued for this in my statements above and I have argued from my understanding of the text that I am reading. In short I find it highly unlikely that God would preserve the canon of Scripture for the Church with Old and New Testaments and give us an Old Testament that has no real continuing narrative theme all the way through Revelation. Here’s a 600 page story about the Jews and how pitiful they are. Now here is the solution… Greek philosophy. Is the story of Israel the story of how totally depraved human beings really are, so that we see our need for the Gospel as revealed in Romans? This seems like a rather tedious way to go about proving the point, especially since the Bible speaks as if God really expects righteousness and rewards actual righteousness and punishes actual wickedness. Or is the story so nuanced and tangled because it takes a story like that to furnish a faith in Creator God? The Bible conceived as an intricate story is the only way to make sense of its own versatility and constant speaking out of three sides of its own mouth due to its relational nature, and it’s blatant disregard for man’s felt need for materialistic rationalism.
Finally if one accepts that there is a distinctly Judaic string from Genesis to Revelation, the following parallels (next post) will be so illuminating so as to make one wonder how he could have even missed the Old Testament. If I can show the parallels, I can show that at the very least that it’s possible that Christianity is very Jewish in worldview by showing the unlikelihood that the parallels are coincidences.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Judaism: A Branch's Attempt At Understanding the Root
Introduction
If you have had a theological conversation with me of depth, and especially if you have listened to my preaching, you might have picked up that Judaism is a fascination of mine. There are two main reasons for this. One, Judaism feels no obligation to rationalism. In other words, for Judaism to exist, Jews have to accept that the most important things are things that cannot be comprehended by the faculty of the mind, such as God’s pure essence, or Torah’s essence, or God’s election of the Jewish people. I have at times been accused of being an absurdist. I’d rather be called “Kierkegaardian” I think, but I wouldn’t say that my beef with rationalism constitutes me as an “irrationalist” or an absurdist. Neither should Judaism have to endure this criticism; for to say that there are things that one can know and that one cannot know is a perfectly rational philosophical presupposition. But to claim that the most important things are things we cannot know with the faculty of our mind, is not a rational claim, it is a religious claim, but is not automatically absurd. It is from what I can tell a definition of faith. Nothing I have read from any orthodox Rabbis, despite major theological differences between them, hints any other view of faith; faith as the beginning of the Jews’ religious epistemological presuppositions. And if you know me, you know why that appeals to me.
It is not at all inconvenient that the faith which I profess is historically and theologically attached to Judaism. Therefore the second reason for my fascination with Judaism has to do with Christianity’s dependency on it. They (Jewish folk) may view us (Christians) as the annoying toddler who they just cannot shake off their leg. But we’re there, and we both know it. Regardless of Christianity’s deviation from Judaism, which is frankly more significant than many postmodern theologians might lead you to believe it is, we do share the Old Testament, and we both see it as Scripture. The Christian Messiah is a Jew who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, and the greatest apostle of Christianity (Paul) is also a Jew who claimed that Jesus’ Messiahship extended to Gentiles as well and that that was part of the plan all along. As divergent as Christianity may be from Judaism (ironically Christianity’s whole claim is that “Judaism” is divergent from true Judaism/Christianity), it still owes its worldview and way of approaching life to the Jewish worldview and Jewish history.
Believing in and holding to everything I have said thus far absolutely compelled me to study Judaism for myself; not Judeo-Christianity which can only mean one of two things: either it’s a synonym for “monotheism”, and in that case you might as well include Islam, or it’s the brand of Christianity which is somewhat educated in the Old Testament. Still, the latter is so blatantly biased in its research of Judaism. Therefore, I have endeavored to study Judaism itself without Christian presuppositions about the identity of the Messiah with a hope to gain from this a template which I can compare and contrast to the teachings and worldview of Jesus and the Apostles. The posts which follow highlight those comparisons and contrasts.
There are other things I’m reading right now, such as “The Early Church” and comparing to my appreciated but theologically limited Bible (Baptist) education. These things will also be a part of upcoming blog posts, and I may intentionally or unintentionally mix them with the other stuff I’ve been reading about Judaism or philosophy or the Bible itself. I think that this can be profitable for both you the reader and I the blogger; if I am able to untangle the mixed up pieces by the time that my fingers hit the keyboard. So as to avoid confusion, I will be sure to be very clear and possibly clever with the title of my posts, as well as with the purpose of them; making distinctions between ones that follow particular lines such as “Early Church” or “Judaism” and posts that are hodge-podgy or ruff attempts at synthesis.
As it pertains to Judaism, what I have done in the past regarding Hebraic studies has been either tainted with overblown New Testament ideas, or too heavily guided by subjective Rabbinical commentary of which I am usually ignorant of to what particular school the Rabbi I am reading belongs. Because of the disadvantages of this sort of approach, particularly the latter, I decided to start with the basics and I bought this book written by an Hasidic Orthodox Rabbi named Naftali Brawer. It is called “A Brief Guide To Judaism: Theology, History, and Practice.” It is from this book that I will be making the particular observations in the following post. Although his Hasidic biases come to surface sometimes, he’s up front about them, and reiterates compellingly that the purpose of the book is to inform non-Jews about Judaism. Plain and simple. One of the things I’ve learned in reading is that although I have a hodge-podge of ideas from randomly selected Rabbinical readings from various schools of thought and mixed in with my Christian background, there is a lot I don’t know about Judaism. Also, I would’ve thought going in that I would find more convergence with Christianity and Judaism, and have my faith strengthened thusly. Actually, I have been surprised to discover that Judaism and Christianity have major differences. So much so that I’m embarrassed at having told my friend Dan on a few occasions that one has to be a Jew before they are a Christian. I still believe in some senses that this is true, qualifications necessary, but I think if I can trust Rabbi Brawer’s “guide”, a Christian is someone very different than a Jew, even if Yahweh is who we both claim as God! However, comparisons are as helpful as contrasts in this study, because it helps us see that what the New Testament presents in Christianity is not a new religion, but to a Jew, an overblown Messiah cult, and to a Christian, a true, but totally different Judaism.
So welcome to my brain.
If you have had a theological conversation with me of depth, and especially if you have listened to my preaching, you might have picked up that Judaism is a fascination of mine. There are two main reasons for this. One, Judaism feels no obligation to rationalism. In other words, for Judaism to exist, Jews have to accept that the most important things are things that cannot be comprehended by the faculty of the mind, such as God’s pure essence, or Torah’s essence, or God’s election of the Jewish people. I have at times been accused of being an absurdist. I’d rather be called “Kierkegaardian” I think, but I wouldn’t say that my beef with rationalism constitutes me as an “irrationalist” or an absurdist. Neither should Judaism have to endure this criticism; for to say that there are things that one can know and that one cannot know is a perfectly rational philosophical presupposition. But to claim that the most important things are things we cannot know with the faculty of our mind, is not a rational claim, it is a religious claim, but is not automatically absurd. It is from what I can tell a definition of faith. Nothing I have read from any orthodox Rabbis, despite major theological differences between them, hints any other view of faith; faith as the beginning of the Jews’ religious epistemological presuppositions. And if you know me, you know why that appeals to me.
It is not at all inconvenient that the faith which I profess is historically and theologically attached to Judaism. Therefore the second reason for my fascination with Judaism has to do with Christianity’s dependency on it. They (Jewish folk) may view us (Christians) as the annoying toddler who they just cannot shake off their leg. But we’re there, and we both know it. Regardless of Christianity’s deviation from Judaism, which is frankly more significant than many postmodern theologians might lead you to believe it is, we do share the Old Testament, and we both see it as Scripture. The Christian Messiah is a Jew who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, and the greatest apostle of Christianity (Paul) is also a Jew who claimed that Jesus’ Messiahship extended to Gentiles as well and that that was part of the plan all along. As divergent as Christianity may be from Judaism (ironically Christianity’s whole claim is that “Judaism” is divergent from true Judaism/Christianity), it still owes its worldview and way of approaching life to the Jewish worldview and Jewish history.
Believing in and holding to everything I have said thus far absolutely compelled me to study Judaism for myself; not Judeo-Christianity which can only mean one of two things: either it’s a synonym for “monotheism”, and in that case you might as well include Islam, or it’s the brand of Christianity which is somewhat educated in the Old Testament. Still, the latter is so blatantly biased in its research of Judaism. Therefore, I have endeavored to study Judaism itself without Christian presuppositions about the identity of the Messiah with a hope to gain from this a template which I can compare and contrast to the teachings and worldview of Jesus and the Apostles. The posts which follow highlight those comparisons and contrasts.
There are other things I’m reading right now, such as “The Early Church” and comparing to my appreciated but theologically limited Bible (Baptist) education. These things will also be a part of upcoming blog posts, and I may intentionally or unintentionally mix them with the other stuff I’ve been reading about Judaism or philosophy or the Bible itself. I think that this can be profitable for both you the reader and I the blogger; if I am able to untangle the mixed up pieces by the time that my fingers hit the keyboard. So as to avoid confusion, I will be sure to be very clear and possibly clever with the title of my posts, as well as with the purpose of them; making distinctions between ones that follow particular lines such as “Early Church” or “Judaism” and posts that are hodge-podgy or ruff attempts at synthesis.
As it pertains to Judaism, what I have done in the past regarding Hebraic studies has been either tainted with overblown New Testament ideas, or too heavily guided by subjective Rabbinical commentary of which I am usually ignorant of to what particular school the Rabbi I am reading belongs. Because of the disadvantages of this sort of approach, particularly the latter, I decided to start with the basics and I bought this book written by an Hasidic Orthodox Rabbi named Naftali Brawer. It is called “A Brief Guide To Judaism: Theology, History, and Practice.” It is from this book that I will be making the particular observations in the following post. Although his Hasidic biases come to surface sometimes, he’s up front about them, and reiterates compellingly that the purpose of the book is to inform non-Jews about Judaism. Plain and simple. One of the things I’ve learned in reading is that although I have a hodge-podge of ideas from randomly selected Rabbinical readings from various schools of thought and mixed in with my Christian background, there is a lot I don’t know about Judaism. Also, I would’ve thought going in that I would find more convergence with Christianity and Judaism, and have my faith strengthened thusly. Actually, I have been surprised to discover that Judaism and Christianity have major differences. So much so that I’m embarrassed at having told my friend Dan on a few occasions that one has to be a Jew before they are a Christian. I still believe in some senses that this is true, qualifications necessary, but I think if I can trust Rabbi Brawer’s “guide”, a Christian is someone very different than a Jew, even if Yahweh is who we both claim as God! However, comparisons are as helpful as contrasts in this study, because it helps us see that what the New Testament presents in Christianity is not a new religion, but to a Jew, an overblown Messiah cult, and to a Christian, a true, but totally different Judaism.
So welcome to my brain.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
God is Odd
Reformed theologian Walter Brueggemann has a great quote. In reference to God's displeasure and active punishing of the socially unjust Israelites as portrayed in the prophet Isaiah he says,
"It's easy in our secularized time to find such a Yahweh reference more than a little naive, and surely life can be well imagined and well understood without reference to Yahweh. But it must have been equally easy to do so in that ancient context. It is easier to perceive reality in terms of practical politics than it is to situate a decisive Yahweh at its center. According to the prophetic tradition, however, such a construal of reality is deeply misguided and will never bring security, well-being, or joy. Yahweh is the inescapable character at the center of things. Yahweh is, insists the poet, (Isaiah), deeply offended and mobilized to wound. All this from Yahweh can be avoided, but the requirement for such avoidance is taken by Judah to be too heavy. For that reason the hand of Yahweh remains vigorously and hostilely stretched out. Such poetry is an odd rendering of reality. But Bible believers do indeed operate with such an odd sense of reality as the only version of reality that makes sense of the whole world."
One might question exactly how "odd" this view of reality is. But it doesn't need to be too "odd" for Brueggemann's point to be grasped. For the prophetic perspective is in any age, as Brueggemann points out, conter-cultural. It certainly is odd in a secular age. And in mentioning secularism at all Brueggemann may have dug himself into a hole, but despite his vagueness, one like myself who shares many of his presuppositions can appreciate what's being said here, which is very relevant. We rarely put ourselves in the situations of the subjects who are receiving these prophecies. We get to see it all from God's objective point of view, and we sometimes in the prophets get a glimpse of God's personal feelings. But suppose that we were receiving the prophecies, let alone as secular people, but as ancients, it's relationship to our experience, our reality would certainly be difficult to detect, unless we have already decided to look at things from God's point of view. If there is indeed a difference between God's perspective of our experience and ours, and God is of the opinion that our refusal to hear his perspective is the cause of our rebellion, then we are doomed unless we choose to hear it from God's perspective, because there are two realities, and ours is not really reality. An Israelite might say for example that the reason Assyria is an Empire is that they have the biggest and best army in the whole world, the prophets would say that God has granted Assyria the biggest and best army in the world so that He can bring punishment upon disobedient Israel. So for an Israelite the correct perspective is one which is focused on their relationship to God. And perhaps the most stunning and I would say beautiful aspect of this line of thinking is that God is so much less world-event oriented than he is covenant relationship with Israel oriented. If history was a newspaper, (bear with the analogy)God's favorite page might be the Israel section which to the editors of this particular paper is worthy of (if its worthy of the paper at all) section E.
"His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts"
In a nutshell God is counter-cultural.
"It's easy in our secularized time to find such a Yahweh reference more than a little naive, and surely life can be well imagined and well understood without reference to Yahweh. But it must have been equally easy to do so in that ancient context. It is easier to perceive reality in terms of practical politics than it is to situate a decisive Yahweh at its center. According to the prophetic tradition, however, such a construal of reality is deeply misguided and will never bring security, well-being, or joy. Yahweh is the inescapable character at the center of things. Yahweh is, insists the poet, (Isaiah), deeply offended and mobilized to wound. All this from Yahweh can be avoided, but the requirement for such avoidance is taken by Judah to be too heavy. For that reason the hand of Yahweh remains vigorously and hostilely stretched out. Such poetry is an odd rendering of reality. But Bible believers do indeed operate with such an odd sense of reality as the only version of reality that makes sense of the whole world."
One might question exactly how "odd" this view of reality is. But it doesn't need to be too "odd" for Brueggemann's point to be grasped. For the prophetic perspective is in any age, as Brueggemann points out, conter-cultural. It certainly is odd in a secular age. And in mentioning secularism at all Brueggemann may have dug himself into a hole, but despite his vagueness, one like myself who shares many of his presuppositions can appreciate what's being said here, which is very relevant. We rarely put ourselves in the situations of the subjects who are receiving these prophecies. We get to see it all from God's objective point of view, and we sometimes in the prophets get a glimpse of God's personal feelings. But suppose that we were receiving the prophecies, let alone as secular people, but as ancients, it's relationship to our experience, our reality would certainly be difficult to detect, unless we have already decided to look at things from God's point of view. If there is indeed a difference between God's perspective of our experience and ours, and God is of the opinion that our refusal to hear his perspective is the cause of our rebellion, then we are doomed unless we choose to hear it from God's perspective, because there are two realities, and ours is not really reality. An Israelite might say for example that the reason Assyria is an Empire is that they have the biggest and best army in the whole world, the prophets would say that God has granted Assyria the biggest and best army in the world so that He can bring punishment upon disobedient Israel. So for an Israelite the correct perspective is one which is focused on their relationship to God. And perhaps the most stunning and I would say beautiful aspect of this line of thinking is that God is so much less world-event oriented than he is covenant relationship with Israel oriented. If history was a newspaper, (bear with the analogy)God's favorite page might be the Israel section which to the editors of this particular paper is worthy of (if its worthy of the paper at all) section E.
"His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts"
In a nutshell God is counter-cultural.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Marveling at Speech
The exchanging of thoughts through the medium of words is marvelous. By marvelous, I do not mean "awesome" or "great" or "good" or "friggin great" or any other vernacular-ed synonym. (Has anyone noticed how many ways that are to exclaim high approval in our culture?) By marvelous I mean marvelous, that is, worthy of marveling. In short, I think communication is marvelous. When we communicate we take great risks. Mostly, we risk being misunderstood, and thus we also risk being opposed for an untruth, or a misunderstood truth. That we can use words that can be misunderstood is marvelous enough. You would think that the entire point of having words is to avoid miscommunication. The whole point is to communicate! Yet we would probably be a victim of misunderstanding less if we didn't talk at all. But then, we might be taken as anti-social and thus a hater of people. In our refusal to communicate we still communicate.
And one considers this, one must wonder what it even means to be understood, and how one knows that one is understood. Indeed, being understood is something that many of us regard as a rare jewel, and pine for under the assumption that our anxiety and loneliness point to the difficulty of being understood. But if it is possible to be misunderstood, isn't it possible to miss being understood? And instead of our own words being misunderstood, it is us who misunderstand the ability of our own words to communicate truth, making our loneliness a reality worth doubting, since it may be totally based on a misunderstanding of our own ability to communicate.
Silliness?
I don't know. I think it's worth writing.
And one considers this, one must wonder what it even means to be understood, and how one knows that one is understood. Indeed, being understood is something that many of us regard as a rare jewel, and pine for under the assumption that our anxiety and loneliness point to the difficulty of being understood. But if it is possible to be misunderstood, isn't it possible to miss being understood? And instead of our own words being misunderstood, it is us who misunderstand the ability of our own words to communicate truth, making our loneliness a reality worth doubting, since it may be totally based on a misunderstanding of our own ability to communicate.
Silliness?
I don't know. I think it's worth writing.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
From Tuesday into Thursday
So if you're reading this post and you haven't read the last post; read the last post.
It seems providential that I stumbled across this silly article about Alfred Pennyworth (Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler); how he's Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" from the book "Fear and Trembling". Or in Kierkegaard's (the book to which this post and the last refers)"Concluding Unscientific Postscript", he may be closely linked to the individual who does not mediate his ethics/ relationship to the absolute telos, nor does he externalize them as the monastics. But he rather keeps them to himself as he relates to them absolutely, yet, the outside world wouldn't be able to tell that he is relating himself to an absolute telos. They would see him merely as Bruce Wayne's butler, doing the job of a butler. Basically Alfred lives in the faith that one day Bruce wayne will see the impossible and destructive nature of his idealism expressed in his duel identity, Batman, and repair his damaged psyche. Alfred's ethos, his absolute relationship to an absolute telos, i.e. his faith in Bruce is based on no higher ideal, or necessary reason. His faith is a pure presupposition against which he must constantly face the temptation to abandon. It is a passionate decision that keeps him from giving up on Bruce. But all of this is inward. None of it is external, or spoken, directly. So all the while Alfred expresses himself as relating relatively to a "relative telos" (like the majority of folks) he is actually relating himself to an absolute telos. In other words, a knight of faith can never be identified.
My questions are. Is the church (universal or local) required to relate itself, as if it is an individual, to the absolute telos? i.e. is the church supposed to be a corporate "knight of faith"? And if Kierkegaard is right, how shall the church be able to be a sign of the Kingdom of God, if the nature of being a knight of faith is being unidentifiable?
For me this is difficult because I think Kierkegaard's understanding of faith as presuppositional is correct, and I follow the logic of that all the way to his understanding of a "knight of faith." But I cannot reconcile that understanding and logic, with the nature and call of the church.
To be continued...
It seems providential that I stumbled across this silly article about Alfred Pennyworth (Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler); how he's Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" from the book "Fear and Trembling". Or in Kierkegaard's (the book to which this post and the last refers)"Concluding Unscientific Postscript", he may be closely linked to the individual who does not mediate his ethics/ relationship to the absolute telos, nor does he externalize them as the monastics. But he rather keeps them to himself as he relates to them absolutely, yet, the outside world wouldn't be able to tell that he is relating himself to an absolute telos. They would see him merely as Bruce Wayne's butler, doing the job of a butler. Basically Alfred lives in the faith that one day Bruce wayne will see the impossible and destructive nature of his idealism expressed in his duel identity, Batman, and repair his damaged psyche. Alfred's ethos, his absolute relationship to an absolute telos, i.e. his faith in Bruce is based on no higher ideal, or necessary reason. His faith is a pure presupposition against which he must constantly face the temptation to abandon. It is a passionate decision that keeps him from giving up on Bruce. But all of this is inward. None of it is external, or spoken, directly. So all the while Alfred expresses himself as relating relatively to a "relative telos" (like the majority of folks) he is actually relating himself to an absolute telos. In other words, a knight of faith can never be identified.
My questions are. Is the church (universal or local) required to relate itself, as if it is an individual, to the absolute telos? i.e. is the church supposed to be a corporate "knight of faith"? And if Kierkegaard is right, how shall the church be able to be a sign of the Kingdom of God, if the nature of being a knight of faith is being unidentifiable?
For me this is difficult because I think Kierkegaard's understanding of faith as presuppositional is correct, and I follow the logic of that all the way to his understanding of a "knight of faith." But I cannot reconcile that understanding and logic, with the nature and call of the church.
To be continued...
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Relevant Kierkegaard
I hear you sighing.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."
It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."
It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.
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