Following the path of St. Patrick

In the latest contribution to Books & Culture’s “Christian Vision Project,” entitled “The Patrick Paradox,” Dana L. Robert writes about the example of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland and a paragon of Christian mission. Her essay begins by noting that Patrick was born a Brit, but that his calling to Ireland led him to identify himself with the Irish, thus taking up their cause as his own. But his identity as a witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ led him to an even more radical position grounded in Gal. 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Patrick recognized that the gospel relatives ethnic and cultural differences by subordinating them to Jesus Christ who unifies disparate peoples into the one people of God. Robert writes:

To be a Christian was to identify with a new "reference group"—the Christian family. Fellow baptized believers from whatever tribe or nation became one's new family and should be treated as such. Racial and ethnic differences melted away in light of the common relationship in Christ. Patrick's Letter to Coroticus demonstrated that the Christian ideals of brotherly love and identification in Christ could overcome tribalism. Not only did the missionary Patrick become Irish in solidarity with their suffering, but he was brother to all baptized Christians. The demands of Christian mission included denouncing sin and injustice at grave risk to himself. In its ideal form, incorporation into the "body of Christ" meant choosing a way of peace and reconciliation that overcame ethnic boundaries, and renouncing the killing, violence, and slavery of a warrior culture.

We can and should learn much from St. Patrick. He exemplifies a way beyond the ethnocentrism and nationalism that continues to plague Christianity all around the world. Patrick does not eschew ethnic identity altogether, but he properly subordinates it to his identity as a follower of Christ. Robert thus writes at the close of her essay: “Because Patrick risked becoming Irish, the Irish became Christians. Those who seek to witness to God's mission in our time must also cast aside their own ethnic prejudices, cultural particularities, political loyalties, and memories of past injustices, in radical identification with the ‘other.’” May we, too, cast aside our cultural, political, and national loyalties in order to identify radically and selflessly with others.

A thought on hidden agendas

My recent debate with John Wilson of Books & Culture—which was a positive experience, and I hope the conversation continues—has made me think about the way groups suspicious of each other seek to find “hidden agendas” in each other’s ideas or actions. Wilson finds the claims of Charles Marsh (“partisan captivity of the gospel”) and Chris Hedges (“Christo-fascists”), among others, simply untrue in relation to the world in which we actually live. In his latest column, he criticizes their positions by engaging in a bit of sarcasm:

On to other things. We have to maintain our cover, you know—talking about all kinds of books and ideas as if we cared, when what really matters to us is the agenda of the Religious Right, the "Christo-fascists," as Chris Hedges says. But wait a minute. What is the agenda for today? Maybe Hedges or some equally acute observer can let me know what it is I'm actually doing when I think I am doing something else.

Wilson ridicules the opposing viewpoint as a witch-hunt, a fruitless quest to find some “hidden agenda” in the minds of conservative evangelicals. Rather than debate this point, it seems to me more interesting to switch perspectives. If Wilson gets so upset about liberals searching for hidden agendas among evangelicals, should we not get just as much upset over evangelicals searching for hidden agendas among liberals? How many times have we heard of the “homosexual agenda”—that insidious plot to corrupt the minds of our children, pervert the sanctity of marriage, and destroy the American family? How many times have we heard myths about the ACLU plotting the downfall of Christianity? How many times have we heard of the hidden agendas of mainstream media—which are clearly pawns of the ACLU, PETA, and other liberal machines seeking the eradication of “Christian America”?

I am not accusing Wilson of holding any of these positions. All I mean to do is point out the one-sidedness that plagues these debates. Conservative evangelicals criticize their liberal opponents for fabricating hidden evangelical agendas without recognizing the way they continue to fabricate hidden liberal agendas (and vice versa). If we are going to get anywhere in these political debates, we need to assume first and foremost that the “other side” has no hidden agenda. We need to assume that each side seeks the best possible life for others. We need to begin with the assumption that each side means well and has the best of intentions. Without this basic starting-point, we will inevitably end up in dead-end arguments.

The Analogy of Being: A Theological Symposium

I thought the Providence College conference on divine impassibility was about the best line-up of American theologians possible, but the upcoming conference on the analogia entis at The John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. is equally as impressive (of course, four of them spoke at the Providence conference!). The conference will take place on April 4-6, 2008. The symposium is titled “The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Anti-Christ, or the Wisdom of God?” and will focus on the debate between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara, S.J. The conference will coincide with the publication of a new translation of Przywara’s classic work, Analogia Entis, by John Betz and David Bentley Hart.

The list of speakers is impressive, including (on the Barthian side) both Bruce McCormack and John Webster. As with the conference on impassibility, the speakers are stacked in favor of the analogy of being—or, to be more precise, against Barth. Hart’s own position in The Beauty of the Infinite is well known to many by now due to the debate between Hart and George Hunsinger at last year’s AAR/Karl Barth Society meeting in Washington, D.C. How appropriate, then, that this conference be held in the same city on the same topic. While I suspect the organizers of the conference expect the Barthians to defend Barth, I am not so sure that will in fact happen. Many Barthians—particularly Eberhard Jüngel, who is a great admirer of Przywara—have argued that Barth was wrong on the analogy of being, though perhaps right in his overall theological position. In other words, Barth was right in terms of the big picture but wrong in the details. In any case, I expect McCormack to attempt a kind of rapprochement between the two extremes represented in the subtitle of the conference. Webster will likely do something similar. (It is particularly interesting to note that both McCormack and Webster are deeply shaped by Jüngel’s theology.)

Here is the list of featured speakers:

John Betz
Martin Bieler
Peter Casarella
Michael Hanby
David Bentley Hart
Reinhard Hütter
Bruce McCormack
Bruce Marshall
Richard Schenk O.P.
John Webster
Thomas Joseph White O.P.

For more information, see the official website for the conference. H/T to WTM for informing me about this important symposium.

Recommended Reading Meme

I was tagged by Aaron to produce a list of books that I continually find myself recommending to people. They may not all be my favorite books, but they are ones I find helpful in explaining important theological issues and concepts. Or they may just be classic works that people need to read. In any case, here are a few of the theological works to which I keep referring people:

• Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (2nd ed., 2004). This is the best guide to theology for beginners currently in print (until Ben Myer’s publishes his wonderful series, that is!). I’ve recommended this book countless times.
• Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (ET 1959). An excellent introduction to Barth’s theology as well as an excellent commentary on the Apostles’ Creed.
• William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (2003). Cavanaugh’s shortest and simplest work is also, in many ways, his most profound.
• T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (New ed., 1992). Torrance’s short work on Christ’s mediation between God and humanity is a work that beautifully captures some of Barth’s best insights and conveys them to English-speaking audiences in unparalleled ways.
• G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; 2002). This work had a profound influence on me when I first read it, and even though it is not strictly a work of theology, Chesterton’s masterpiece is one of those rare gems that demands to be read.

I now tag Travis, Chris, and Halden with this meme.

Update: For some unknown reason, I left Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison off this list, which is probably the book I recommend most to people. I would probably have to place Bonhoeffer’s letters and papers from the end of his life above these other important works in terms of all around importance for me both personally and intellectually. I recommend it to everyone without exception.

2007 Stone Lectures: Evil, Egotism, and the Sacred in Film

Beginning Monday, Sept. 24, Jeffrey Stout will present the 2007 Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary with the title: “A Light That Shines in the Darkness: Evil, Egotism, and the Sacred in Film.” Stout was the president of the American Academy of Religion in 2006-2007 (replaced by Emilie M. Townes) and has been professor of religion at Princeton University since 1975. He is the author of the highly esteemed works Ethics after Babel (2001) and Democracy and Tradition (2005).

The Stone lectures will be delivered over a six week period, with film screenings on Mondays and lectures on Tuesdays. The films are all classic works, including a few of my favorites. The Monday film screenings will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the James Stewart Theater on the Princeton University campus, 185 Nassau Street, Princeton (enter from the parking lot side). The Tuesday lectures will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Cooper Conference Room at the Erdman Center, Center of Continuing Education, 20 Library Place, on the Princeton Seminary campus. If you are in the area, I highly recommend attending these lectures. Stout is a lucid and lively lecturer, and the films alone are worth giving up your Monday evenings. In particular, Week 3—on the film Breaking the Waves by Lars von Trier with accompanying lecture titled “The Sacred Made Visible”—should be a highlight of the series.

The schedule for film screenings and lectures is as follows:

Week 1

Monday, September 24, First Screening: Alfred Hitchcock, Shadow of a Doubt (108 minutes, 16mm, 1943)

Tuesday, September 25, First Lecture: “In the Shadow of Darkness”

Week 2

Monday, October 1, Second Screening: Frank Capra, Meet John Doe (122 minutes,16mm, 1941)

Tuesday, October 2, Second Lecture: “Modern Horrors and Democratic Hope”

Week 3

Monday, October 8, Third Screening: Lars von Trier, Breaking the Waves (159 minutes, 16mm, 1996, CinemaScope)

Tuesday, October 9, Third Lecture: “The Sacred Made Visible”

Week 4

Monday, October 15, Fourth Screening: Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo Story (35mm, 1953)

Tuesday, October 16, Fourth Lecture: “Now and Then”

Week 5

Monday, November 5, Fifth Screening: Gregory Markopoulos, Bliss (6 minutes, 16mm, 1967); a preview excerpt from Gregory Markopoulos’s upcoming film, Eniaios (approximately 30 minutes, 16mm, premiere scheduled for June 2008 in Greece); Nathaniel Dorsky, The Visitation (18 minutes, 16mm, 2002); and Stan Brakhage, untitled handpainted film known as For Marilyn (11 minutes, 16mm, 1992).

Tuesday, November 6, Fifth Lecture: “All Mean Egotism Vanishes”

The Spirit of the Lord, §10.6.1: Eschatological Identity

10.6.1. The Eschatological Identity of the Ekklesia

The ecclesial community embodies the eschatological community as a divinely granted identity in accordance with the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace establishes the ekklesia as the proleptic realization of the eschatological reign of God in anticipation of the consummation of Christ’s work. The church is neither the final reality—it is not the new heavens and new earth—nor is it merely a stopgap on the way to something else. The ecclesial community is the eschaton made present; it is the eschatological community in a particular concrete mode of existence. But for that very reason it is not yet what it will be when God is “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The church is thus a divinely ordained mode of eschatological existence that lives in correspondence to Jesus Christ as a missional witness to the reign of God.

In order to understand the eschatological being of the church, we must first understand the three temporal modalities of the eschaton. The eschaton is not simply future, but rather past, present, and future. Because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), the eschaton also exists in the three temporal modes of past, present, and future: the past and ongoing event of Christ, the present event of the church as Christ’s apostolic witnesses, and the future event of God’s eternal kingdom in which the Lamb who was slain will reign with righteousness and peace. All three of these temporal modes of the eschaton cohere in Jesus Christ as the one in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). He is the “heir of all things” who “sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb. 1:2-3). He is “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1:18). He is “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5). Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8). Jesus Christ, the eternal and incarnate Lord, thus stands at the beginning and end of all God’s ways and works. As the firstborn from the dead, he bursts open the gates of death so that we might be raised with him. As the heir of all things and the ruler of the world, he establishes his reign of peace pro omnibus. He is the coming God who graciously assumes finite human history in order that our lives might be found in him. Consequently, we have died, and “our life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col. 3:3-4). As a result of its christological grounding, therefore, the eschaton is totus-totus-totus, not partim-partim-partim, in each of its three temporal modes. Because Jesus Christ is wholly past, wholly present, and wholly future, the eschaton is also wholly past, wholly present, and wholly future.

Jesus Christ himself is the eschaton. Eschatology is christology and christology is eschatology: this is the starting-point for any theological reflection on the eschatological identity of the ekklesia. As Karl Barth correctly declared in Der Römerbrief, “Christianity which is not wholly and without remainder eschatology has nothing whatsoever to do with Christ.” The euangelion of Jesus Christ is the gospel of a new world and a new humanity. In Jesus the Messiah of God, the Lord who judges and arbitrates between nations (cf. Mic. 4:3) becomes the Lord who condescends to live, suffer, and die in the place of those judged. The event of the Judge judged in our place is an event which reconciles the world to God and constitutes the cosmos as the theater of God’s redemptive glory. The christological event of salvation is thus an eschatological event of new creation. As a result, in his eternal existence as the ascended Lord, Jesus Christ is the actualization of the cosmic eschatological reality in which God embraces and assumes world history into eternity. In Jesus Christ, the triune God refuses to abandon creation to the forces operative on the surface of history and instead submits in obedience to these forces in order to redeem finite existence from the abyss. Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection constitute not only the creative ground of human history, but also the basis for history’s sublation into the self-bestowing repleteness of eternal life. The Christ-event is therefore the primal realization of the eschaton. Contrary to most conceptions of eschatology, the eschaton is ontologically established in the past reality of Jesus Christ, whose eternal ongoing significance (“yesterday and today and forever”) means that the eschaton is only then also a reality in the present and the future. The eschaton is grounded in the past for the sake of the present and in anticipation of the final and unsurpassable future in which we will no longer “see in a mirror, dimly,” but rather “we will see face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).

The ecclesial community is the present-tense mode of the eschaton in its correspondence to Jesus Christ. To adapt a statement by Barth, the ekklesia is the subjectivization of the objective res of the eschaton. As the eschaton made present, the ekklesia witnesses to the coming eschatological kingdom in light of the past event of Christ whose salutary significance is eternalized through his resurrection and ascension. The church thus stands in the middle between christological constitution and eschatological consummation. Within this tension, the church proclaims the gospel of God’s being-in-coming in Jesus Christ and concretely though imperfectly embodies the final eschatological community through the fructifying power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:22-25). We can speak of the church as the present-tense mode of the eschaton only because the church is the body of Christ. The church is the eschaton made present only because Christ is identifiable with the eschaton. With certain qualifications, we can thus affirm that the church is the present-tense mode of Christ. Of course, we must carefully distinguish between the ecclesial community and the person of Christ. Both exist in a relation of mutual participation and asymmetry: the church lives outside of itself (extra nos) in Christ and finds its very being in the being of the mediator; likewise, Christ lives in the church through the subjectivizing power of the Spirit and gives himself to the church for the life of the world. The church is not identifiable with Christ but rather exists in correspondence to Christ as the present-tense mode of the eschaton that was constituted in Christ’s own life, death, and resurrection in the place of humanity and on behalf of the world.

The ecclesial community corresponds to Christ as his earthly-historical body. The church is the gift of Christ’s own presence to the world. Jesus Christ establishes this particular community through the concretizing power of the Spirit as the historical embodiment of his own eschatological identity. The ekklesia is thus de facto the present-tense manifestation of the coming regnum Dei, which is to be identified with the parousia of our Lord. The church manifests the coming kingdom only because it is the corpus Christi called by Christ to live in humble obedience to God’s eternal reign. This identity, however, is never one which the church possesses; the church instead depends upon God for the continual actualization of the community’s correspondence to Christ. In other words, the being of the church, like the knowledge of God, is an event of divine grace. Just as each human person is a being-in-becoming who is always being conformed to Jesus Christ (conformitas Christi), so too the ekklesia is a community-in-becoming which is always being conformed to the eschatological kingdom (conformitas regni). The church simply is the moment-by-moment actualization of the eternal reign of Christ. The ekklesia thus corresponds to the being-in-becoming of God, whose dynamic triune life radiates outward toward the other, embracing the depths of human estrangement from God and actualizing the dynamic being of the church according to the gracious covenant between God and humanity.

As the present-tense concretization of Christ, the ecclesial community is the missional embodiment of the eschatological missio Dei. Christ’s missional identity as Deus nobiscum and Deus pro nobis means that his earthly-historical existence in the concrete form of the church is itself missional in character. The church is the missional corpus Christi in its present-tense corporate embodiment of the eschaton. Jesus Christ establishes the apostolic identity of the church in light of the fact that he is the Son who was sent at the behest of the Father into the “far country” on a mission of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19) through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit (Mk. 1:9-11). Out of this triune mission of God, Christ calls the church into existence as sanctified witnesses to the divine self-determination to be God with us and for us—a determination actualized in his life, death, and resurrection. The ekklesia is a community that proclaims Christ’s missional history to be the actualization of the eschatological reality of reconciliation. In its life of proclamation and witness, the ecclesial community takes on the mission of John the Baptist who always pointed away from himself and toward the Son of God incarnate. The mission of the ekklesia is thus again like the mission of God: a movement always away from oneself and toward others. God moves away from Godself and toward the world in order to be with us and for us in Jesus Christ. The ekklesia in turn moves away from itself and toward the world in order to be with others and for others in correspondence to Jesus Christ.

The church is a missional community whose apostolic identity is grounded historically in the sending of the apostles as witnesses to the resurrection of Christ and grounded eternally in the sending of the Logos as the self-revelation of God’s eternal decision for the covenant of grace, in which the triune God becomes our God and we become the people of God. Both the historical and eternal dimensions of the ecclesial community’s eschatological identity are grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, whose incarnate history is both our history and the history of the triune God. The eschatological history of Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection is ontologically constitutive for the being of both humanity and God; in him, both the triune God and the whole human race live, suffer, and die. For God this is an act of condescension and reconciliation on behalf of the world; for humanity this is a reconciling being-acted-upon that calls us to embody such condescension in our own individual lives. The point is that the christological missio Dei determines Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be a triune God of mission (Deus missionis) and determines the ecclesial community as Christ’s earthly-historical existence to be a community of mission (communio missionis). Jesus Christ is the eschatological actualization of both the divine mission of reconciliation for the sake of the world and the ecclesial mission of proclamation and witness within the world. The eschatological event of Christ’s human history is the actualization of these two missions, but in a different sense for each: the being of God is missional from all eternity in anticipation of this christological event, while the being of the ekklesia is missional in light of this event. The missional history of Christ is thus the eschatological missio Dei, and out of this triune mission, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit establish, call, accompany, and consummate the missional identity of the ekklesia.

Finally, the eschatological being of the ekklesia is a called existence. Just as the worlds were called into existence by the life-giving Word, so too the ekklesia is called into existence by the creative and reconciling Word of Jesus Christ. Unlike the demands placed upon us by fellow humans, Christ’s call to the church to be the corpus Christi is a liberating call that delivers humanity from its bondage to futile self-realization in order that we may live extrospective lives of love toward our neighbor. The God-given identity of the ecclesial community is not imposed as law, but rather granted as grace. The church is given a clear imperative—“take and eat; this is my body” (Matt. 26:26); “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19)—but always within the context of a gracious indicative: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8); “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The call of God is thus like the judgment of God: a word which frees and empowers for a radically new existence. The ekklesia is therefore the sanctified space set apart by the covenant of grace for the concrete embodiment of God’s liberating word. While we must confess that “there is no reality ungraced by Christ” (Frei), the ekklesia is the unique location where such grace becomes by the power of the Spirit a concrete existential reality for the sake of others.

Barth: the State belongs to the order of redemption

“The State belongs to the order of redemption. It is no accident that the place where the State appears in the Creed is in the second article (‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’) and not in the first article. It is pertinent to add that if we understand the State as an institution of the wisdom and patience of God and do not split up the work of God into various departments but see it as an undivided whole, we shall see the State strictly related to the mercy of God. It is God’s intention to see that His mercy may have scope to unfold on earth. This is in fact the purpose of creation in general, to provide a theatrum gloriae suae (Calvin). In the sphere of nature there is intended to be an order of the grace of God, and this space is guaranteed by the State. If our interpretation of the relationship between the State and the heavenly powers and forces, as expounded in the New Testament, is correct, we shall know that these powers are not almighty but subject to Christ, so that even in the State we are fundamentally in the regnum Christi, which has its centre, however, in the Church. It is also no accident that there is a linguistic affinity between the inner and the outer circle. Christ is called the Messiah, the King of Israel, who has brought in the Kingdom, the basileia. And the polis is the expectation of Christians; they themselves are called citizens and dwellers in the same house together—all these are primarily political concepts which are naturally used metaphorically in the Church, but they do show that the political sphere is related to the ecclesiastical. We have to interpret creation from the standpoint of redemption and not the other way round.”

—Karl Barth, “From the Discussion in Budapest on the Morning of April 1st 1948,” Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings 1946-52 (London: SCM Press, 1954), 94-95.