I think I finally got it figured out. No, really. This whole thing with the RC church, and using Girard’s theory of course, it’s made me focus down on the problem of desire.
There can be no doubt that desire is imitative and violent. (Quick big frame example: Mr. Ahmadinejad wants a nuclear weapon. Why? Because everyone else has one. If you’ve never encountered Girard before check the study page on this site.)
Way back, in the very first springs of human development this violent desire gets impacted into human culture through myth and ritual forms of all sorts. Rules and hierarchy are very important too. What results is that humans don’t know which end is up. They think violence is part of the order of things. In fact it is divine. You can know the gods by their cosmic violence. And so the whole of society follows suit.
Something new had to come into the world in order to break wide open this rigged system. The name of the new thing is Jesus and the fore-giveness he shows. Because of Jesus it is always possible for individuals to live in a Holy Spirit of love, free of the kingdoms of death that rule this world. But, exactly, the whole world remains a dense system of violence. It takes centuries and centuries to break down its apparatus of falsehood, let alone the violence by which it lives.
I believe that is actually happening, but in the meantime it does not solve the problem of desire for a believer, and that’s what the focus is here.
Imitation of the other could not happen unless there was an even more primordial unity with the other. How would we want what the other wants unless we’re somehow already linked, unless somehow I am already the other person and the other person is me? So there is in fact a more original at-traction or drawing together of me and the other. The fact that it quickly becomes competitive does not negate its original condition. At the organic and sub-organic level it goes without saying that this huge force of attraction exists. I will call this primordial attraction “eros” to distinguish it from desire.
In the past Christians, once they have learned the message of forgiveness and love, have pointed their eros at heaven. That’s the place where it will be possible to release and experience fully the aboriginal unity of all things. In the RC church this has been the case but, at the same time, they also pointed the eros toward themselves, toward their concrete forms, and that is one of the key things that marked out this tradition and has led to its profound crisis.
I do think scripture intends us to recognize and actively seek earthly eros. It can only be done in a heart free of violence and it will express itself in service, justice and peace, but it is real, physical and intended for creation. I think the “woman” of the Johannine writings, in all her multiple realizations, is a figure of this physical eros. At the point of the cross, standing under it, creation is freed from violence, and the disciple is brought into relation with her as his mother. The disciple accepts the woman into his/her closest life. Then at the end of the bible the whole earth becomes this woman, the New Jerusalem come down out of heaven as a bride of Christ. God and Christ are themselves in the most powerful erotic relation with the earth.
So now back to the crisis in the RC church. The RC tradition in some measure relied on this eros to make celibacy work. The priest loves the people and the people love the priest. But it was all mixed up with power and militancy against the world, and with societal changes in the 20th century it became more and more actively corrupt. That’s the way I see it. I think the crisis in the RC church is a crisis of eros and it simply cannot be resolved in the present set-up of the church in this present moment of history. The forms of eros in our contemporary world are far too diverse, multiple, subtle and generative to be ever contained in the strategy of celibacy devised in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
But that does not mean that true Christian eros for this earth has gone away. No, it is more vital and real than ever. Against the collapse of clericalism on the one hand and Left Behind violence on the other communities of emerging Christianity will practice a true physical eros, a closeness to the earth and to each other, without violence but also without separation. Only communities of such fullness of life will be able to embrace the rampant eros of the modern world and transform it into love, through and through. I look forward to a time when Christian leadership will express itself in real Christ-like humble proximity to the physical, to the world’s pain and, even more deeply, to the world’s joy, its longing for union with itself.
I once had a long one-on-one conversation with Mother Teresa. We talked about the church for over an hour. It was my big moment, my dancing-with-the-stars in the Catholic stratosphere. The content of the conversation doesn’t much matter—in fact I didn’t really get answers—but what was fascinating was being with this woman who had an immense passion for the physical world expressed in service to the poor. The most impressive thing was the power of her passion, which was humble but galactic in weight. Being next to her was how I would imagine the experience of being a small spaceship circling a giant star, being pulled into her orbit. At one point I noticed her foot extending beneath her sari. I could see the bones and the blue veins and I became fixed on it. She saw me looking and quickly pulled her foot back. But the image is sealed in my mind and I think it’s because it was so physical. The whole weight of this woman’s eros was expressed in it. I’m always longing for Mother Teresa’s foot.
Tony
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Resurrection, The Killer App.
I know priests who don’t believe in a physical resurrection; two thousand years of Platonism have done for that. They should call themselves “pratons” perhaps, not priests! All the energy of the New Testament is in the cross and resurrection, both together and inseparable.
You can’t overcome the catastrophe of the cross in a “spiritual” way. It has to be a real physical reversal. That’s the only intelligible explanation for the first-century Christian movement.
Even in formal doctrine the resurrection remains seriously underrated. According to Anthony Kelly the Resurrection is the poor cousin of Christian themes. It’s always subordinate to the grand idea of the Incarnation, of Jesus as God. But if you think about it the way it’s meant to be, in human terms, then it becomes suddenly explosive in meaning.
It means a real human being has overcome the physical drag and philosophical doom of death. It means that the actual constitution of the cosmos at some point in its surface and depth is now fully and irreversibly turned to life. Because we have been taught to think Platonically we were told that Jesus’ resurrected body went “to heaven,” where in fact it is indistinguishable from all that heavenly stuff and has nothing to do with the earth. The opposite is the case.
If Jesus triumphed over violence and death he did it in the human order of reality and not somewhere else. That’s why his disciples could meet him on the road, in a garden, on the shore of a lake cooking breakfast. And the more you think about it this has some really marvelous implications.
Jesus’ withdrawal from his disciples after forty days was not “to go to heaven” but in order to let the resurrection as meaning sink into human consciousness (rather than simply remain an amazing miracle). The truth of resurrection has to be received freely, but as a matter of fact because of the resurrection all material reality is bent round to immortality. And time as we know it has come to a stop.
Because the thought of Jesus’ resurrection has entered human consciousness then little by little all the fantastic stupidity of life as we lead it at the moment is shown for what it is, fantastically stupid. All the greed, the lies, the hate, the pride, the violence. Instead there is another life, one based on inexhaustible love, a love that never dies. And so the time of violence which has ruled all our timepieces since the beginning—the forward march of nations and empires, the glory of Rome, the British empire on which the sun never set, the irresistible “spread of democracy” (a.k.a. capitalism) throughout the world, all of this has slowly congealed on itself and shown itself literally to have no future. Not simply because the planet cannot bear the weight of the violence but because in the depth of the human heart we know all this is pointless, false and wrong. Because of the resurrection.
My son has a smartphone. He shows me what he calls “apps” or applications. For example, one in which he can google any place on earth and then add in a three-d sketch of new buildings. Right there on his phone. Now every marketer is looking for the “killer app,” the one that everyone will want, so useful that no one could be without it.
Well, that’s the resurrection. Somewhere in the universe, which means right here in your room, death and violence are done, defeated, put to death. You can’t see it on your Blackberry, but you can with your heart. You can click on the new time of peace and forgiveness and all the old ways of doing things seem like Pony Express. Moreover this application is not going to go down because there is a power cut, or a cyber attack, or even because someone drops a nuclear bomb. It is irreversible in the material order. You can always trust it.
This is why Christians say “Alleluia” at Eastertide, and really anytime. A new time has come into our world, and we laugh at the old time as it melts horribly into itself on all the old media screens of the planet. Death and violence are the most tried and most tired of applications. Try Resurrection instead!
Tony
You can’t overcome the catastrophe of the cross in a “spiritual” way. It has to be a real physical reversal. That’s the only intelligible explanation for the first-century Christian movement.
Even in formal doctrine the resurrection remains seriously underrated. According to Anthony Kelly the Resurrection is the poor cousin of Christian themes. It’s always subordinate to the grand idea of the Incarnation, of Jesus as God. But if you think about it the way it’s meant to be, in human terms, then it becomes suddenly explosive in meaning.
It means a real human being has overcome the physical drag and philosophical doom of death. It means that the actual constitution of the cosmos at some point in its surface and depth is now fully and irreversibly turned to life. Because we have been taught to think Platonically we were told that Jesus’ resurrected body went “to heaven,” where in fact it is indistinguishable from all that heavenly stuff and has nothing to do with the earth. The opposite is the case.
If Jesus triumphed over violence and death he did it in the human order of reality and not somewhere else. That’s why his disciples could meet him on the road, in a garden, on the shore of a lake cooking breakfast. And the more you think about it this has some really marvelous implications.
Jesus’ withdrawal from his disciples after forty days was not “to go to heaven” but in order to let the resurrection as meaning sink into human consciousness (rather than simply remain an amazing miracle). The truth of resurrection has to be received freely, but as a matter of fact because of the resurrection all material reality is bent round to immortality. And time as we know it has come to a stop.
Because the thought of Jesus’ resurrection has entered human consciousness then little by little all the fantastic stupidity of life as we lead it at the moment is shown for what it is, fantastically stupid. All the greed, the lies, the hate, the pride, the violence. Instead there is another life, one based on inexhaustible love, a love that never dies. And so the time of violence which has ruled all our timepieces since the beginning—the forward march of nations and empires, the glory of Rome, the British empire on which the sun never set, the irresistible “spread of democracy” (a.k.a. capitalism) throughout the world, all of this has slowly congealed on itself and shown itself literally to have no future. Not simply because the planet cannot bear the weight of the violence but because in the depth of the human heart we know all this is pointless, false and wrong. Because of the resurrection.
My son has a smartphone. He shows me what he calls “apps” or applications. For example, one in which he can google any place on earth and then add in a three-d sketch of new buildings. Right there on his phone. Now every marketer is looking for the “killer app,” the one that everyone will want, so useful that no one could be without it.
Well, that’s the resurrection. Somewhere in the universe, which means right here in your room, death and violence are done, defeated, put to death. You can’t see it on your Blackberry, but you can with your heart. You can click on the new time of peace and forgiveness and all the old ways of doing things seem like Pony Express. Moreover this application is not going to go down because there is a power cut, or a cyber attack, or even because someone drops a nuclear bomb. It is irreversible in the material order. You can always trust it.
This is why Christians say “Alleluia” at Eastertide, and really anytime. A new time has come into our world, and we laugh at the old time as it melts horribly into itself on all the old media screens of the planet. Death and violence are the most tried and most tired of applications. Try Resurrection instead!
Tony
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Celestine the Last?
It’s hard to get off this topic, especially in the present season. The waves of the pedophile crisis are lapping against the doors of the Vatican itself, and right during the peak activity of Holy Week and Easter. Pictures of the Bavarian pope carrying the symbols of Christ’s passion make great copy, suggesting a delicious irony (or malicious, depending on how you see it) against the roiled background of suspicions about how much he knew and how much he covered up. And now even the inconceivable has been suggested: that he resign.
Only one other pope has ever resigned on his own personal account, it was Celestine V back at the end of the 13th century. (There was another resignation to end the crisis of three rival popes early in the fifteenth century, but that was to resolve an ecclesiatical power struggle and really someone had to go.) According to tradition Celestine is the nameless figure Dante placed in the antechamber of hell because of “his great refusal.” However, Celestine was really a mystic and actually a canonized saint: he simply couldn’t stand the job. The nature of Benedict’s departure would be immensely different: a pope resigning under pressure from a secular society because it had gained the moral high ground and made the pope’s position untenable. Who would Dante send to hell here and for what reasons?
In an article in the New York Times Maureen Dowd suggested that the R.C. church needs a ‘nope’ not a pope, meaning a nun should fill its top post. I am sure this is tongue-in-cheek. Ms. Dowd is a shrewd commentator and must have some inkling of the geological resistance to a shift of that order. The Vatican would prefer to let the pope resign precisely to forestall something like that, putting in his place ‘a good man’ to restore the reputation of the papacy.
But even so I think she is onto something. The very meaning of celibacy is in crisis and mention of a woman in the papal seat does by its flight of fancy throw a light on something very disturbing about the character of the male R.C. priesthood. I have recently been writing some of my own recollections of my priesthood days, and so it is on my mind, and as is the way with what is written the matter can suddenly show itself in an entirely new light.
The pedophile crisis is not simply a crisis of crime and punishment, as it is often understood. The way that offending priests were systematically protected (something I witnessed at first hand) speaks to clerical celibate culture as such. Priests because of their special sexual situation are bonded to each other as a single caste of males, seamless from the pope to the lowliest parish curate. The analogous institution in the past was the band of male warriors around their chieftain and I think this is the correct sociological model for the priesthood over centuries. In past times, perhaps up to the 2nd World War, the caste of priests experienced themselves in militant opposition to the world, including political forces, and so, I believe, the dominant tone among them was one of a military brotherhood, the feeling tone of a professional officer class.
But in the middle of the century and especially from the Vatican Council onward the militant character waned and what took its place was a much warmer, more positive energy toward human society and culture. The latent eroticism in the band of brothers, focused aggressively against a common enemy, became confused, reflexive, awakened in and for itself. Hundreds of thousands of men left to get married, but those who stayed found themselves swimming in a much more powerful current of desire. In this situation infantilized members of the caste turned to children as their sexual prey. But the whole brotherhood protected its members in a kind of vast erotic conspiracy. The hushing-up and moving ever onward of offending priests were explained as attempts to avoid scandal but really what was at stake was the collective self-desire of the priestly caste. How else account for the actions of otherwise intelligent men who knew the cyclical behaviors of those in their charge, the criminal acts, the trauma to children, the permanent spiritual damage to those affected?
I know this is a sweeping, broad-brush description which does not take into consideration the variety of circumstance, the possibility that the division of periods is not exact (what was the incidence of sexual abuse of children by clergy before the 2nd World War?), and the presence of mature and genuine men among it all. But I believe I speak from something of a vantage point and the time to name the real malaise of priestly celibacy is now. If the scandal has touched the pope surely it is not accidental or passing? Priestly celibacy is an institutional misuse of human eros for the sake of power and control and it corrupts the consciences of men.
What we are talking about eventually is the gospel of Jesus Christ, its clarity and truth, and a world that so desperately needs it. Those who read the signs of the times are obliged to think through the situation and prepare and act for something different, something new. Pope Benedict and those around him have tried to return the Roman church to a sense of militancy, hoping that it might save the day at this desperate hour. I think they have a sense of how far we’ve come. But the genie cannot be put back in the bottle because, as I argue elsewhere, it is the gospel itself which has sprung it loose: chaotic desire can and must find only love as its solution. What is needed is a style of Christian community marked by the four essential characteristics as I see them: a scale that does not exceed the face-to-face; understanding the work of Christ as remaking the human from violence to love; resurrection as the true afterlife; sacraments arising spontaneously in and from the community.
And we cannot worry about the huge numbers of Roman Catholics who perhaps will stop going to church, or will turn to a mega-church etc. They probably already have in the West, and early Christians did not stop meeting in each other’s houses just because there was such a huge crowd last night at the Coliseum! Today we can seek only the authenticity and faithfulness of the face-to-face group to which we become committed in Christ.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note that to mark the 800th anniversary of Celestine's birth, Pope Benedict has proclaimed a ‘Celestine year’ from 28 August 2009 through 29 August 2010. Does that mean we are to expect some announcement before the end of August?
Tony
Only one other pope has ever resigned on his own personal account, it was Celestine V back at the end of the 13th century. (There was another resignation to end the crisis of three rival popes early in the fifteenth century, but that was to resolve an ecclesiatical power struggle and really someone had to go.) According to tradition Celestine is the nameless figure Dante placed in the antechamber of hell because of “his great refusal.” However, Celestine was really a mystic and actually a canonized saint: he simply couldn’t stand the job. The nature of Benedict’s departure would be immensely different: a pope resigning under pressure from a secular society because it had gained the moral high ground and made the pope’s position untenable. Who would Dante send to hell here and for what reasons?
In an article in the New York Times Maureen Dowd suggested that the R.C. church needs a ‘nope’ not a pope, meaning a nun should fill its top post. I am sure this is tongue-in-cheek. Ms. Dowd is a shrewd commentator and must have some inkling of the geological resistance to a shift of that order. The Vatican would prefer to let the pope resign precisely to forestall something like that, putting in his place ‘a good man’ to restore the reputation of the papacy.
But even so I think she is onto something. The very meaning of celibacy is in crisis and mention of a woman in the papal seat does by its flight of fancy throw a light on something very disturbing about the character of the male R.C. priesthood. I have recently been writing some of my own recollections of my priesthood days, and so it is on my mind, and as is the way with what is written the matter can suddenly show itself in an entirely new light.
The pedophile crisis is not simply a crisis of crime and punishment, as it is often understood. The way that offending priests were systematically protected (something I witnessed at first hand) speaks to clerical celibate culture as such. Priests because of their special sexual situation are bonded to each other as a single caste of males, seamless from the pope to the lowliest parish curate. The analogous institution in the past was the band of male warriors around their chieftain and I think this is the correct sociological model for the priesthood over centuries. In past times, perhaps up to the 2nd World War, the caste of priests experienced themselves in militant opposition to the world, including political forces, and so, I believe, the dominant tone among them was one of a military brotherhood, the feeling tone of a professional officer class.
But in the middle of the century and especially from the Vatican Council onward the militant character waned and what took its place was a much warmer, more positive energy toward human society and culture. The latent eroticism in the band of brothers, focused aggressively against a common enemy, became confused, reflexive, awakened in and for itself. Hundreds of thousands of men left to get married, but those who stayed found themselves swimming in a much more powerful current of desire. In this situation infantilized members of the caste turned to children as their sexual prey. But the whole brotherhood protected its members in a kind of vast erotic conspiracy. The hushing-up and moving ever onward of offending priests were explained as attempts to avoid scandal but really what was at stake was the collective self-desire of the priestly caste. How else account for the actions of otherwise intelligent men who knew the cyclical behaviors of those in their charge, the criminal acts, the trauma to children, the permanent spiritual damage to those affected?
I know this is a sweeping, broad-brush description which does not take into consideration the variety of circumstance, the possibility that the division of periods is not exact (what was the incidence of sexual abuse of children by clergy before the 2nd World War?), and the presence of mature and genuine men among it all. But I believe I speak from something of a vantage point and the time to name the real malaise of priestly celibacy is now. If the scandal has touched the pope surely it is not accidental or passing? Priestly celibacy is an institutional misuse of human eros for the sake of power and control and it corrupts the consciences of men.
What we are talking about eventually is the gospel of Jesus Christ, its clarity and truth, and a world that so desperately needs it. Those who read the signs of the times are obliged to think through the situation and prepare and act for something different, something new. Pope Benedict and those around him have tried to return the Roman church to a sense of militancy, hoping that it might save the day at this desperate hour. I think they have a sense of how far we’ve come. But the genie cannot be put back in the bottle because, as I argue elsewhere, it is the gospel itself which has sprung it loose: chaotic desire can and must find only love as its solution. What is needed is a style of Christian community marked by the four essential characteristics as I see them: a scale that does not exceed the face-to-face; understanding the work of Christ as remaking the human from violence to love; resurrection as the true afterlife; sacraments arising spontaneously in and from the community.
And we cannot worry about the huge numbers of Roman Catholics who perhaps will stop going to church, or will turn to a mega-church etc. They probably already have in the West, and early Christians did not stop meeting in each other’s houses just because there was such a huge crowd last night at the Coliseum! Today we can seek only the authenticity and faithfulness of the face-to-face group to which we become committed in Christ.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note that to mark the 800th anniversary of Celestine's birth, Pope Benedict has proclaimed a ‘Celestine year’ from 28 August 2009 through 29 August 2010. Does that mean we are to expect some announcement before the end of August?
Tony
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A (W)holy Breakfast Group
This Sunday morning as I write there are thousands of men who are getting their game face on to go speak to millions of people and suggest that despite its current sins and difficulties the Roman Catholic Church is good for the long haul. That it has had huge problems before and survived, and that is because it remains God’s uniquely approved instrument in the world.
Pope Benedict’s eight page letter apologizing to the people of Ireland for the abuse of children by clergy is to be read today throughout the churches of Ireland and it is by most standards an extraordinary historical event—when has a pontiff ever apologized to a single nation for the misdeeds of his officials? Even so the letter is problematic, leaving the impression this is just a difficulty in Ireland, singling out the Irish ecclesiastical authorities, and failing to connect the abuse to systemic issues in the worldwide church. Now full disclosure: I have a personal stake in the matter, having both been a Roman Catholic priest myself and birthed by an Irish mother. I know about this stuff from the inside—both the generational cascades of cultural and actual violence which narrow human reality for a young man so he becomes a celibate priest or brother in the first place, and then the resulting privilege which places that man above and beyond the law—but my interest is not to rehash the past. What draws me is the anthropological consequence of this moment.
If you go online and follow the conversations in the various discussion forums there seem to be three key trends in response to the pope’s letter: wholesale and violent condemnation of the church and its criminal priests, specious attempts to salvage the situation arguing the number of pedophiles in the church parallels that of the broader population, and anxious remarks on how this whole thing will only serve to bolster fundamentalist or mega-churches with refugees from Roman Catholicism. The second two are relevant.
If you argue the church is no worse or better than the population in general you surrender a key concept of the RC church, and perhaps every church. You reduce it to sociological continuity with the rest of the world—something that the single most important book of late antiquity and the middle ages, Augustine’s City of God, denies with relentless dialectic. According to Augustine there is an ontological difference between the church and the world. But you don’t have to read Augustine to believe this. One of the tenets of the Nicene creed is that the church is “holy”. So when your last-ditch defense of this institution is that it is no worse and so no better than the rest of society it must forfeit that article of faith. Or it may be that the actual concrete form of a holy church is no longer the one claimed by that institution, or indeed any large scale institution. Really, you can’t have it both ways. This then touches on the issue of fundamentalism and the mega-churches. Let me give an example.
I have a neighbor who is a strong supporter of an RC parish here in Syracuse, one that has a solid reputation for working with the poor and disadvantaged. He and a bunch of guys attend a weekday mass at that church once every week. Afterward they go for breakfast together. I know a good few of these men, some ex-priests, some social justice Episcopalians, and they are among the greatest people I've had the pleasure to meet. In my opinion what these guys are doing is taking the eucharist in a traditional manner and then going off to find personal support and nourishment from a small-group faith community. They have a foot in the old and challenged institutional order and a foot in something new, something deeply human, relational and holy.
There’s no way of course of stopping people going to fundamentalist or big churches (and in some cases of the latter neither would you want to—for example perhaps Rob Bell’s church in Grand Rapids MI). But what is possible is to shift the theological accent progressively to these small face-to-face groups of committed this-world-rooted compassionate Christians which are springing up spontaneously all over the place. So that a group like this would not have first to do a cafeteria style eucharist and then turn to the vital matter of face-to-face relationship, but would consciously find the eucharist arising exactly from their own Christ-centered small-scale community. If this theological shift were taken then suddenly the whole tradition of the sacramental churches would take on a radically new and dynamic existence.
And lest anyone think I’m idealizing the small group I am totally aware that problems can occur there just as much as in the big legal structures. I am also aware of the reflex response that these groups could very easily turn fundamentalist or authoritarian. But in response to both challenges I believe there is something of the Spirit happening, something that arises from the rubble of the old order, that exemplifies the holiness claimed for the church and that it is possible to have faith in. It is something I call “the matrix of Christ” present in our actual cultural world (described in the forthcoming book Virtually Christian.) It means that there really is something to tap into, which represents the tradition but is not just in the past. It is the deep transformation in the human order brought about by Jesus, meaning forgiveness, compassion, nonviolence in the here and now and rising to the surface in all sorts of ways. Having faith in the life and truth of this human shift gives vigor and coherence to these small groups and allows genuine ecclesial life to occur among them. In other words, this is not a man-made phenomenon but a move by the Spirit in her own right and that carries her stamp of authenticity.
So although it’s not a bad thing that the pope makes his apology I don’t think it’s going to turn the clock back. He’s lost half of his Irish legions, the infantry that in the past carried the Roman cause across the world. Many of those disaffected troops, and surely many others from other failing institutions, are looking for a new, different model. My friends who meet every week to share eggs, bagels and coffee bear witness to this, and I believe they and others like them will continue to do so in a more and more consistent, radical and wonderful way.
Pope Benedict’s eight page letter apologizing to the people of Ireland for the abuse of children by clergy is to be read today throughout the churches of Ireland and it is by most standards an extraordinary historical event—when has a pontiff ever apologized to a single nation for the misdeeds of his officials? Even so the letter is problematic, leaving the impression this is just a difficulty in Ireland, singling out the Irish ecclesiastical authorities, and failing to connect the abuse to systemic issues in the worldwide church. Now full disclosure: I have a personal stake in the matter, having both been a Roman Catholic priest myself and birthed by an Irish mother. I know about this stuff from the inside—both the generational cascades of cultural and actual violence which narrow human reality for a young man so he becomes a celibate priest or brother in the first place, and then the resulting privilege which places that man above and beyond the law—but my interest is not to rehash the past. What draws me is the anthropological consequence of this moment.
If you go online and follow the conversations in the various discussion forums there seem to be three key trends in response to the pope’s letter: wholesale and violent condemnation of the church and its criminal priests, specious attempts to salvage the situation arguing the number of pedophiles in the church parallels that of the broader population, and anxious remarks on how this whole thing will only serve to bolster fundamentalist or mega-churches with refugees from Roman Catholicism. The second two are relevant.
If you argue the church is no worse or better than the population in general you surrender a key concept of the RC church, and perhaps every church. You reduce it to sociological continuity with the rest of the world—something that the single most important book of late antiquity and the middle ages, Augustine’s City of God, denies with relentless dialectic. According to Augustine there is an ontological difference between the church and the world. But you don’t have to read Augustine to believe this. One of the tenets of the Nicene creed is that the church is “holy”. So when your last-ditch defense of this institution is that it is no worse and so no better than the rest of society it must forfeit that article of faith. Or it may be that the actual concrete form of a holy church is no longer the one claimed by that institution, or indeed any large scale institution. Really, you can’t have it both ways. This then touches on the issue of fundamentalism and the mega-churches. Let me give an example.
I have a neighbor who is a strong supporter of an RC parish here in Syracuse, one that has a solid reputation for working with the poor and disadvantaged. He and a bunch of guys attend a weekday mass at that church once every week. Afterward they go for breakfast together. I know a good few of these men, some ex-priests, some social justice Episcopalians, and they are among the greatest people I've had the pleasure to meet. In my opinion what these guys are doing is taking the eucharist in a traditional manner and then going off to find personal support and nourishment from a small-group faith community. They have a foot in the old and challenged institutional order and a foot in something new, something deeply human, relational and holy.
There’s no way of course of stopping people going to fundamentalist or big churches (and in some cases of the latter neither would you want to—for example perhaps Rob Bell’s church in Grand Rapids MI). But what is possible is to shift the theological accent progressively to these small face-to-face groups of committed this-world-rooted compassionate Christians which are springing up spontaneously all over the place. So that a group like this would not have first to do a cafeteria style eucharist and then turn to the vital matter of face-to-face relationship, but would consciously find the eucharist arising exactly from their own Christ-centered small-scale community. If this theological shift were taken then suddenly the whole tradition of the sacramental churches would take on a radically new and dynamic existence.
And lest anyone think I’m idealizing the small group I am totally aware that problems can occur there just as much as in the big legal structures. I am also aware of the reflex response that these groups could very easily turn fundamentalist or authoritarian. But in response to both challenges I believe there is something of the Spirit happening, something that arises from the rubble of the old order, that exemplifies the holiness claimed for the church and that it is possible to have faith in. It is something I call “the matrix of Christ” present in our actual cultural world (described in the forthcoming book Virtually Christian.) It means that there really is something to tap into, which represents the tradition but is not just in the past. It is the deep transformation in the human order brought about by Jesus, meaning forgiveness, compassion, nonviolence in the here and now and rising to the surface in all sorts of ways. Having faith in the life and truth of this human shift gives vigor and coherence to these small groups and allows genuine ecclesial life to occur among them. In other words, this is not a man-made phenomenon but a move by the Spirit in her own right and that carries her stamp of authenticity.
So although it’s not a bad thing that the pope makes his apology I don’t think it’s going to turn the clock back. He’s lost half of his Irish legions, the infantry that in the past carried the Roman cause across the world. Many of those disaffected troops, and surely many others from other failing institutions, are looking for a new, different model. My friends who meet every week to share eggs, bagels and coffee bear witness to this, and I believe they and others like them will continue to do so in a more and more consistent, radical and wonderful way.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
True Eye!
To see the truth we must stop looking by the light of the sun. We have to split the light from the trees, unzip the radiance from the grass, peel the glamour from the world. Because our eyes do not show us what is real. Desire is what gives things their real and present shape, and only love has the light to show this and bring everything into true reality.
I’m not saying there’s a different physical reality in things. If you look at a tree it really is sixty feet tall, it really has green leaves, it really has brown bark. Nevertheless, to see these things does not mean you’re really, truly seeing the tree. Why? Because human beings cannot see a tree without also seeing the signs that make up a tree, i.e. “tall,” “green,” “brown,” “on this land,” “good for timber” etc., and all these signs are permeated by desire. Try separating your vision from your active (signifying/desiring) mind. It just can’t be done. Michael Hardin teaches something he calls a “fox walk” and “wide angle vision” as you walk across a field, for example. You tread very deliberately, heel and toe, and you refuse to focus on one thing but let everything around you impact you directly. This is as close an approximation to being totally “in nature” as possible. But your active mind is still there, proven by the fact it can switch on and focus in an instant. And because of that everything is still experienced as sign: i.e. the back of your mind is saying “yes this is what I’m doing, the ‘fox walk’ and ‘wide angle vision.’”
The same goes for Buddhists. A long-practiced monk may reach enlightenment but there is a whole panoply of signs to put him there, the robe, the bell, the master, the scriptures etc. etc. And there is a sign for the state itself, i.e. “enlightenment” or “Nirvana” which must somehow always be there playing in the back of the mind, as are the signs for the rest of the world. If not the monk could never say to himself I need to stop meditating right now and go get my dinner: i.e. the world of objects and the signs that communicate them is never dissolved.
This is not to devalue any technique of awareness or the devotional practice of meditation overcoming destructive desire. What it does mean is that it is impossible to escape the human system of signs and the desire they mediate—does not the Buddhist still in fact desire “enlightenment” and “an enlightened world?”
Meanwhile our actual Western commodified world is exploding with signs of desire, signs filled with desire. It’s the engine which makes everything work and nothing can stand in its way. Hey, you’re Islamic and you like your Shariah law. Out of the way for these signs of ours filled with desire! Hey, you’re an indigenous person, living in your rain forest, and you like your traditional way of life. Out of the way for these signs mediating desire! Hey, you’re a Christian and believe in Jesus, well heaven is the greatest of all signs of desire, the last payoff of a prosperity gospel. Get right on board with your very own Christian signs mediating desire!
Heaven as the absolute reward (infinite flying miles earned) is a recent twist on the Christian tradition which always said that the world we see is not the real world, but did so by framing it within a Platonic division of heaven and earth. To get between the sun and the earth was a first move of Plato’s philosophy, telling us that there was an ideal world up there and what’s down here is a poor inferior copy. Meanwhile the ideal world can be accessed by the intellectual self which is the immortal soul. It was far too tempting for Christian consciousness, following Plato, to switch the false world of desire to the world of the material senses as such, and then transfer the real world to one above, not to an earth transformed by love. For example, the following: how easy is it to read the passage as earth below (bad) / heaven above (good)?
If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ, seek the things which are above, where the Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth; for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God. When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
But really the words “raised” and “above” are just metaphors for the radical separation between the way the world is now and the way it will be. Everything hinges on “when” and “manifested”, meaning that the real issue is something happening in time and it will be a “showing forth” of a different way of life and living; and then all of us will “show forth” (and also see) in exactly the same way.
Heaven as an object of desire makes it today part of the present order where our “showing forth”, i.e. our signs, are based in desire and the violence of desire. The character of signs based in violence is a critical argument from Girardan anthropology, something that has been mentioned frequently in these blogs and is necessarily supposed here.* The Buddhist attempt to get away from signs of desire into enlightenment or emptiness is indirect proof of this problem—they know something is very wrong. (Their technical doctrine is called “dependent co-arising” and illustrated in Indra’s net where you realize “everything is everything” and so you become free of any individual sign.) They are entirely right in their instinct. But as I suggest they just can’t get rid of the sign and so the actual world remains rooted everywhere in desire and violence.
But what if another sign should arise in the world, one entirely without violence and capable of changing every sign into its own nonviolence? In the New Testament this absolutely new, trans-originating sign, the Alpha and Omega, is the cross and resurrection. This sign goes to the very ground-zero of meaning and signification and begins it over. And it can do so because it works not at the level of sight or intellect but of our whole nervous system in its blindest and most unconscious mode of operation which is to build up a world out of desire and murder. The sign of the cross and resurrection constantly works at this level to reprogram our most primordial gesture of meaning—which could be summarized as “you’re out and we’re in,” into something wonderfully different—“you’re out and I’m out there with you.” Here is the good news, a sign that means the world, a new world, a new creation. When you truly meet the sign of the cross and resurrection your deepest neural self is reprogrammed to love.
So true “seeing” comes with the transformation of desire not sight. To loosely paraphrase Paul we change from the body of death to the body of love. And this overcomes every sign rooted in violence, slowly, amazingly changing every significance into the new significance of love. How beautiful to see everything around us with the eyes of love! Not the eyes of anger or power, not the eyes of indifference or boredom, and, yes, neither the eyes of ignorance and blindness. To see with true eyes. Or as Jesus puts it, the single eye, the eye not divided by violent desire, but gazing out with total love. True eye!
(* For origin of signs see Girard’s Evolution and Conversion, 103-09)
I’m not saying there’s a different physical reality in things. If you look at a tree it really is sixty feet tall, it really has green leaves, it really has brown bark. Nevertheless, to see these things does not mean you’re really, truly seeing the tree. Why? Because human beings cannot see a tree without also seeing the signs that make up a tree, i.e. “tall,” “green,” “brown,” “on this land,” “good for timber” etc., and all these signs are permeated by desire. Try separating your vision from your active (signifying/desiring) mind. It just can’t be done. Michael Hardin teaches something he calls a “fox walk” and “wide angle vision” as you walk across a field, for example. You tread very deliberately, heel and toe, and you refuse to focus on one thing but let everything around you impact you directly. This is as close an approximation to being totally “in nature” as possible. But your active mind is still there, proven by the fact it can switch on and focus in an instant. And because of that everything is still experienced as sign: i.e. the back of your mind is saying “yes this is what I’m doing, the ‘fox walk’ and ‘wide angle vision.’”
The same goes for Buddhists. A long-practiced monk may reach enlightenment but there is a whole panoply of signs to put him there, the robe, the bell, the master, the scriptures etc. etc. And there is a sign for the state itself, i.e. “enlightenment” or “Nirvana” which must somehow always be there playing in the back of the mind, as are the signs for the rest of the world. If not the monk could never say to himself I need to stop meditating right now and go get my dinner: i.e. the world of objects and the signs that communicate them is never dissolved.
This is not to devalue any technique of awareness or the devotional practice of meditation overcoming destructive desire. What it does mean is that it is impossible to escape the human system of signs and the desire they mediate—does not the Buddhist still in fact desire “enlightenment” and “an enlightened world?”
Meanwhile our actual Western commodified world is exploding with signs of desire, signs filled with desire. It’s the engine which makes everything work and nothing can stand in its way. Hey, you’re Islamic and you like your Shariah law. Out of the way for these signs of ours filled with desire! Hey, you’re an indigenous person, living in your rain forest, and you like your traditional way of life. Out of the way for these signs mediating desire! Hey, you’re a Christian and believe in Jesus, well heaven is the greatest of all signs of desire, the last payoff of a prosperity gospel. Get right on board with your very own Christian signs mediating desire!
Heaven as the absolute reward (infinite flying miles earned) is a recent twist on the Christian tradition which always said that the world we see is not the real world, but did so by framing it within a Platonic division of heaven and earth. To get between the sun and the earth was a first move of Plato’s philosophy, telling us that there was an ideal world up there and what’s down here is a poor inferior copy. Meanwhile the ideal world can be accessed by the intellectual self which is the immortal soul. It was far too tempting for Christian consciousness, following Plato, to switch the false world of desire to the world of the material senses as such, and then transfer the real world to one above, not to an earth transformed by love. For example, the following: how easy is it to read the passage as earth below (bad) / heaven above (good)?
If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ, seek the things which are above, where the Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth; for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God. When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
But really the words “raised” and “above” are just metaphors for the radical separation between the way the world is now and the way it will be. Everything hinges on “when” and “manifested”, meaning that the real issue is something happening in time and it will be a “showing forth” of a different way of life and living; and then all of us will “show forth” (and also see) in exactly the same way.
Heaven as an object of desire makes it today part of the present order where our “showing forth”, i.e. our signs, are based in desire and the violence of desire. The character of signs based in violence is a critical argument from Girardan anthropology, something that has been mentioned frequently in these blogs and is necessarily supposed here.* The Buddhist attempt to get away from signs of desire into enlightenment or emptiness is indirect proof of this problem—they know something is very wrong. (Their technical doctrine is called “dependent co-arising” and illustrated in Indra’s net where you realize “everything is everything” and so you become free of any individual sign.) They are entirely right in their instinct. But as I suggest they just can’t get rid of the sign and so the actual world remains rooted everywhere in desire and violence.
But what if another sign should arise in the world, one entirely without violence and capable of changing every sign into its own nonviolence? In the New Testament this absolutely new, trans-originating sign, the Alpha and Omega, is the cross and resurrection. This sign goes to the very ground-zero of meaning and signification and begins it over. And it can do so because it works not at the level of sight or intellect but of our whole nervous system in its blindest and most unconscious mode of operation which is to build up a world out of desire and murder. The sign of the cross and resurrection constantly works at this level to reprogram our most primordial gesture of meaning—which could be summarized as “you’re out and we’re in,” into something wonderfully different—“you’re out and I’m out there with you.” Here is the good news, a sign that means the world, a new world, a new creation. When you truly meet the sign of the cross and resurrection your deepest neural self is reprogrammed to love.
So true “seeing” comes with the transformation of desire not sight. To loosely paraphrase Paul we change from the body of death to the body of love. And this overcomes every sign rooted in violence, slowly, amazingly changing every significance into the new significance of love. How beautiful to see everything around us with the eyes of love! Not the eyes of anger or power, not the eyes of indifference or boredom, and, yes, neither the eyes of ignorance and blindness. To see with true eyes. Or as Jesus puts it, the single eye, the eye not divided by violent desire, but gazing out with total love. True eye!
(* For origin of signs see Girard’s Evolution and Conversion, 103-09)
Monday, March 8, 2010
Taking Jesus Seriously #5
Here is the study summary from last Thursday (3/3/10) on the theme of Resurrection....
• What does the Bible teach us of life after death?
• What does death mean? What is resurrection? Is it real?
• If resurrection has already taken place why is the world still suffering?
• Is creation a work in progress?
Resurrection is only important if you are dead. Sounds obvious but if you have an immortal soul that detaches itself at death to make its way to an eternal heavenly abode – then bodily resurrection doesn’t really make sense. Is redundant in fact.
Resurrection was a relatively new idea at the time of Jesus. It had emerged as explicitly stated doctrine about 200 years before. But it developed out of the Jews’ experience of persecution and redemption. If God could intervene directly to overturn living death –slavery in Egypt – then why would God not rescue us from actual death? Death was never in God’s plan. In Jesus’ time the Pharisees believed in resurrection, but it was rejected by many others – including the priests and Sadducees.
When people think of God intervening they think of light and force. A good example is Saul’s conversion account in Acts 9:3 (and 26:12-13) – including a blinding light and being thrown to the ground. Light and force also feature in Dn 12:1-2 where those whose names are written in the book of life shine like the stars.
Mark’s Gospel gives the earliest account of Jesus’ resurrection. The Gospel has two endings – the second added on because the first is just so shocking. The first image is of absence – the empty tomb, and of a young man giving a narrative. The account is counter-intuitive. There is no display of light or power.
I Cor 15 has one of the earliest accounts of the resurrection – Paul says he is passing on what he has received. He recounts the appearance of Jesus to five hundred men. Women are not mentioned because at that time women were not considered creditable, reliable witnesses in a court of law. Paul in pitching his message, therefore, leaves the women out. In the Gospels, however, it is women who are the primary witnesses – again this is counter-intuitive.
The Gospel accounts of the resurrection are almost post-modern they are so indirect and elusive. They are also non-violent. Jn 20:11-18 relates the encounter of Jesus with Mary Magdalene at the tomb. There is no fanfare. Mary only recognizes Jesus when he says her name. It is a relational rather than evidential. The very unlikely nature of the resurrection narratives is what paradoxically gives them credence. Something happened that was very hard to pin down, that didn’t occur in the world of force and violence, that was first grasped by women and which grew to a conviction that Jesus really had conquered death and was alive.
So what does the resurrection mean to us?
The Jewish understanding of resurrection is that when we die we rest until the day of the Lord - when all will rise to new life. There was no concept of individual resurrection. Unless all rise, no-one has risen. That is why Paul argues that because Jesus rose again, all have risen. Resurrection is therefore a communal event. Jesus’ resurrection is our concrete hope.
It is also linked to this world. The Biblical understanding of life after death is not the Greek understanding. There is no immortal soul that dwells in us for a short time in our mortal body. There is no heavenly eternal realm in which all those eternal souls reside. This Greek idea has permeated our culture but does not have its roots in Scripture. Resurrection is resurrection of the body (stated in the Nicene Creed). We are not separate from our physical being. All our thoughts and emotions are mediated through physical cells and physiological processes. So how can we live outside of these? But then how can our bodies that have rotted away then be resurrected? It doesn’t seem logical – except, we are always recreating ourselves. After receiving a kidney transplant the recipient’s cells will eventually replace all those of the donor’s. Even in this life we can be recreated, yet remain uniquely ourselves – all things are possible to God.
The essential thing is that resurrection is concerned with this earth. How we live our lives today affects our life after death. We rest in the earth until the earth is transformed. When it is so filled with God’s spirit of love that death no longer has a place, then that will be the day of the Lord. The gospel message is one of transformation. We are called to transform ourselves and our world in love. Resurrection is therefore directly tied to the earth and our actions relating to it. The earth is waiting, like the dead, for the day of the Lord.
When we die, we wait and rest. We remain in relationship with God. Anything that is love remains. The love within us is the Spirit of God – who is love, and this cannot die. Resurrection is about love relationships – with God and with each other. Resurrection is therefore always relational.
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful servants comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
(Hymn, For All The Saints)
• What does the Bible teach us of life after death?
• What does death mean? What is resurrection? Is it real?
• If resurrection has already taken place why is the world still suffering?
• Is creation a work in progress?
Resurrection is only important if you are dead. Sounds obvious but if you have an immortal soul that detaches itself at death to make its way to an eternal heavenly abode – then bodily resurrection doesn’t really make sense. Is redundant in fact.
Resurrection was a relatively new idea at the time of Jesus. It had emerged as explicitly stated doctrine about 200 years before. But it developed out of the Jews’ experience of persecution and redemption. If God could intervene directly to overturn living death –slavery in Egypt – then why would God not rescue us from actual death? Death was never in God’s plan. In Jesus’ time the Pharisees believed in resurrection, but it was rejected by many others – including the priests and Sadducees.
When people think of God intervening they think of light and force. A good example is Saul’s conversion account in Acts 9:3 (and 26:12-13) – including a blinding light and being thrown to the ground. Light and force also feature in Dn 12:1-2 where those whose names are written in the book of life shine like the stars.
Mark’s Gospel gives the earliest account of Jesus’ resurrection. The Gospel has two endings – the second added on because the first is just so shocking. The first image is of absence – the empty tomb, and of a young man giving a narrative. The account is counter-intuitive. There is no display of light or power.
I Cor 15 has one of the earliest accounts of the resurrection – Paul says he is passing on what he has received. He recounts the appearance of Jesus to five hundred men. Women are not mentioned because at that time women were not considered creditable, reliable witnesses in a court of law. Paul in pitching his message, therefore, leaves the women out. In the Gospels, however, it is women who are the primary witnesses – again this is counter-intuitive.
The Gospel accounts of the resurrection are almost post-modern they are so indirect and elusive. They are also non-violent. Jn 20:11-18 relates the encounter of Jesus with Mary Magdalene at the tomb. There is no fanfare. Mary only recognizes Jesus when he says her name. It is a relational rather than evidential. The very unlikely nature of the resurrection narratives is what paradoxically gives them credence. Something happened that was very hard to pin down, that didn’t occur in the world of force and violence, that was first grasped by women and which grew to a conviction that Jesus really had conquered death and was alive.
So what does the resurrection mean to us?
The Jewish understanding of resurrection is that when we die we rest until the day of the Lord - when all will rise to new life. There was no concept of individual resurrection. Unless all rise, no-one has risen. That is why Paul argues that because Jesus rose again, all have risen. Resurrection is therefore a communal event. Jesus’ resurrection is our concrete hope.
It is also linked to this world. The Biblical understanding of life after death is not the Greek understanding. There is no immortal soul that dwells in us for a short time in our mortal body. There is no heavenly eternal realm in which all those eternal souls reside. This Greek idea has permeated our culture but does not have its roots in Scripture. Resurrection is resurrection of the body (stated in the Nicene Creed). We are not separate from our physical being. All our thoughts and emotions are mediated through physical cells and physiological processes. So how can we live outside of these? But then how can our bodies that have rotted away then be resurrected? It doesn’t seem logical – except, we are always recreating ourselves. After receiving a kidney transplant the recipient’s cells will eventually replace all those of the donor’s. Even in this life we can be recreated, yet remain uniquely ourselves – all things are possible to God.
The essential thing is that resurrection is concerned with this earth. How we live our lives today affects our life after death. We rest in the earth until the earth is transformed. When it is so filled with God’s spirit of love that death no longer has a place, then that will be the day of the Lord. The gospel message is one of transformation. We are called to transform ourselves and our world in love. Resurrection is therefore directly tied to the earth and our actions relating to it. The earth is waiting, like the dead, for the day of the Lord.
When we die, we wait and rest. We remain in relationship with God. Anything that is love remains. The love within us is the Spirit of God – who is love, and this cannot die. Resurrection is about love relationships – with God and with each other. Resurrection is therefore always relational.
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful servants comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
(Hymn, For All The Saints)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Taking Jesus Seriously #4
02/18/10
Can Christianity make exclusive claims—e.g. Jesus is the only way to salvation—without being necessarily violent?
How can you be passionate and committed about Christian belief and not cause offense in a pluralist world?
How can you respect other traditions and not water down your own?
Has Christianity lost its voice?
Thinking they’re better than others seems to be a default setting for just about any human group. Many nations think they’re the best on earth. Every season sports team and supporters think this will be the season when they win the series.
In religion and philosophy better-than-others thinking gets translated as metaphysics, i.e. claims about the ultimate order of reality. It gets to be my-metaphysics-is-better-than-yours. Philosophies and religions set out to be winners in the game of truth.
It seems to be impossible to get away from the game of truth. If you say there is no truth, then you’re claiming that to be truth. But does it have to be violent?
Christian metaphysics became highly legalized in content. It wasn’t just a matter of: this is the name by which we should know God and we all have a spark of God inside us. It was: We all have a big problem because God does not like sin. God has given us a solution, but then if you don’t accept the solution you’re in really deep trouble. You’re going to hell, a place God keeps going for all eternity.
This explains the urgency behind the approach of many evangelicals. They really want to save you from something terrible. On the other hand because there is so much violence in the message it comes across as itself violent.
But what if the legal definition is the problem? What if making Jesus’ death a legal transaction between humans and God is the mistake? The Christian tradition that framed it this way was in fact keeping a lid on the human revolution brought by Jesus. It was saying: “Jesus is not asking us to change our violent way of being human because God is in fact intensely violent. The death of Jesus is not about human victim-making, but a victim demanded by God!”
All the same, the fact that the tradition put the problem in the area of victims was basically correct. It had a sense this was the issue, and now this has come to full light. So Christianity’s claim to truth becomes as follows: Jesus challenged and changed the core mechanism by which we work, from violence toward the other to forgiveness. Only the biblical religions take the side of the victim, and only in Christianity does God become the victim in order to make the victim live through love. So the divine becomes the weakest human, in order to change the violence of the human from inside.
This means that Christians in making claims about truth are setting themselves against all exclusion and violence. Damnation is simply what we do to ourselves in and through history once we refuse the challenge of love. On the other hand, to accept this challenge is to pour forgiveness and love into whatever human system you find yourself in. We all know the temptations of adding violence to a system. But in Christ we know the joy and peace of for-giving (forth giving) into that system.
And who could not be passionate about that, the birth of love in the world?
Can Christianity make exclusive claims—e.g. Jesus is the only way to salvation—without being necessarily violent?
How can you be passionate and committed about Christian belief and not cause offense in a pluralist world?
How can you respect other traditions and not water down your own?
Has Christianity lost its voice?
Thinking they’re better than others seems to be a default setting for just about any human group. Many nations think they’re the best on earth. Every season sports team and supporters think this will be the season when they win the series.
In religion and philosophy better-than-others thinking gets translated as metaphysics, i.e. claims about the ultimate order of reality. It gets to be my-metaphysics-is-better-than-yours. Philosophies and religions set out to be winners in the game of truth.
It seems to be impossible to get away from the game of truth. If you say there is no truth, then you’re claiming that to be truth. But does it have to be violent?
Christian metaphysics became highly legalized in content. It wasn’t just a matter of: this is the name by which we should know God and we all have a spark of God inside us. It was: We all have a big problem because God does not like sin. God has given us a solution, but then if you don’t accept the solution you’re in really deep trouble. You’re going to hell, a place God keeps going for all eternity.
This explains the urgency behind the approach of many evangelicals. They really want to save you from something terrible. On the other hand because there is so much violence in the message it comes across as itself violent.
But what if the legal definition is the problem? What if making Jesus’ death a legal transaction between humans and God is the mistake? The Christian tradition that framed it this way was in fact keeping a lid on the human revolution brought by Jesus. It was saying: “Jesus is not asking us to change our violent way of being human because God is in fact intensely violent. The death of Jesus is not about human victim-making, but a victim demanded by God!”
All the same, the fact that the tradition put the problem in the area of victims was basically correct. It had a sense this was the issue, and now this has come to full light. So Christianity’s claim to truth becomes as follows: Jesus challenged and changed the core mechanism by which we work, from violence toward the other to forgiveness. Only the biblical religions take the side of the victim, and only in Christianity does God become the victim in order to make the victim live through love. So the divine becomes the weakest human, in order to change the violence of the human from inside.
This means that Christians in making claims about truth are setting themselves against all exclusion and violence. Damnation is simply what we do to ourselves in and through history once we refuse the challenge of love. On the other hand, to accept this challenge is to pour forgiveness and love into whatever human system you find yourself in. We all know the temptations of adding violence to a system. But in Christ we know the joy and peace of for-giving (forth giving) into that system.
And who could not be passionate about that, the birth of love in the world?
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