Theoblogica

Redeeming Hermes

2011-12-07T17:30:00.003Z

Hermes is the Greek god of both commerce and threshold – of movement from A to B. The Hymn to Hermes was written (around 420 BC) as Greece moved from an economy marked by the exchange of agrarian goods between kin to one that encompassed commerce between strangers for profit.

From Hermes we also get the word “hermeneutics”* – the art and science of interpretation. So when one missionary writes, “the church is the hermeneutic of the Gospel”, he means that the church is to interpret the Gospel to the world. Literally, the church is to embody the Gospel as it moves into the world and, by doing so, the church is to invite the world to move into the Gospel.

At the threshold of the City what words will we use to communicate that life cannot be reduced to commerce between strangers for profit? Life comes to those who welcome strangers out of love [Matthew 25:31-46]. And it comes because of this same Gospel: ‘that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures’ [from 1 Corinthians 15:3-4].

* Or, at least, Socrates does in Plato’s Cratylus.

The Complex Christ

2011-11-17T16:32:00.002Z

Kester Brewin, The Complex Christ: Signs of Emergence in the Urban Church (London: SPCK, 2004), viii + 184

In this influential text, Kester Brewin argues that the urban church be allowed to emerge in the city just as the city itself emerged from what went before. This begins by grieving the ecclesiastical top-down hierarchies of yesteryear. He is often worth quoting at length.

‘Becoming incarnate will mean the same for us as it did for Christ. We will have to experience being small and defenceless, requiring nurture from our host-world just as Christ needed Mary’s milk. We cannot and must not remain rootless people or rootless churches. Christ needed water from the earth, food from the ground, education from his elders; yet we too often experience church as an organization that has absolutely no need for its surrounding community or area. It is too often an appendage, something slightly apart and independent, not needing the neighbouring culture in order to survive. To admit our need as a church, our dependence on a host culture is a risk. Yet like Christ we must take this risk of interdependence, this risk of being born, this risk of life.
We must be born again. We must re-emerge into the city space as infants. We must stop, wait, imagine, remember. Become wombs of the divine and undergo re-incarnation in the city. And Christ’s experience tells us that if we are going to minister to the city, to speak to it in a language that will understand, to represent God without distortion, then we will have to understand thoroughly how the city works. For it is only once we understand how our host culture works from the inside that we will even begin to understand what an emerging church dedicated to serving that urban host culture might look like’ [52].

‘Somewhere between these two poles of anarchy and rigidity – a spectrum with death at each end – there exists a place where a system begins to live, to self-organize, to become more than the sum of its parts, to develop a character, a culture, a soul if you will – as if some breath has entered it and commanded it to live’ [60].

‘Regardless of the discipline we look at, the same truth rings out: “life” springs up in the complex region between rigidity and disorder’ [60].

‘God will not come any more, will no longer be lured into our stone traps. And yet against this huge force of evolutionary movement, the bulk of the urban Church stands rigidly still under the precarious arrangements of stones. If we cannot adapt, the pressures of them will crush us too and form our fossilized homes, leaving us to museums and history books.
Living in the emerging, complex, bottom-up city, we attend churches that are hugely top-down, mechanistic, obsessed with hierarchy and authority. Often wrapped in the guise of “accountability”, our leaders enforce dictatorial structures ensuring that every sign of life is routed through them, that nothing is given the go-ahead without their “blessing” – and the need for blessing from on high usually acts as the curse of death on innovative, creative, and cutting-edge ideas. Inspired fledglings have their wings clipped as they are forced to justify their ideas and come up with completely “sorted” plans that fit in with a monochrome vision.
We should not ask this of our children. The newly emerged, the newborn, must be allowed to make mistakes, to risk, to dribble and scribble. In a church that admits it is “not holding, winning or discipling young people”, there needs to be a radical reassessment of how we treat our young, a move to “release and support young people who are leaders among their peers”. Christ could not begin his ministry immediately he was born, and neither should we expect every sprouting of new growth to be fully formed and fully able to defend itself. So much of the church still demands immediate results from every new initiative and idea – still demands a revolution.
“Listen”, God says, “I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?” Complexity theory warns us we must listen because old-order top-down systems cannot survive in an emerging, evolving world. There will be no more revolution, only evolution. As the New York Times proclaimed, this is “not just a fascinating quirk of science: it’s the future”.
Yet if science warns us that a rigid, top-down church will not survive in an emergent world, it is also clear that a totally deregulated, anarchic church will do no better. Without any checks or balances it will disperse into obscurity, having no mechanisms for feedback and therefore no way of learning and evolving. So if the Church is to survive in the modern urban environment it must learn to to find new peaks out of the valleys by re-emerging as a complex, self-organizing system. It must be born again at the edge of chaos, just as the rigid, Old Testament God was. It must become embryonic and re-evolve within a host culture, learning from it, feeding from it and growing to understand it from the inside out. We must reestablish ourselves as the body of Christ, not the machine of Christ. Bodies are organic, dynamic, sentient, and conscious. They have hearts. Machines break down, while bodies evolve. This metaphorical re-centring from machine to body will require us to rethink our language too, away from the industrial vocabulary of “structure”, “drive”, “mechanism”, “steering”, towards more body-centred language: “nourish”, “grow”, “nurture”, “cultivate” and “adapt”.
There are still those who cry for revolution, for a revival that will change things in a snap, make everything OK as thousands flock to church … But the days of revolution are over. The cry for revival is too often a cry of abdication: you do it all, God. Well, God has done God’s bit – it is the systems that now need to change. This is the faith we have signed up for: the church as the body of Christ where we have real parts to play, real responsibilities’ [62-63].

‘Life exists on the edge of chaos’ [69].

‘There are … two possible modes of change: revolution or evolution. Revolution is characterized by speed and violence. It is about divide and rule. It tries to impose change from without. It is top-down and heavily dependent on hierarchies and centralized power. Evolution refuses to rush ahead and thus avoids shearing and fissures. It tries to bring about change from within. It is about empowerment. It is bottom up and dependent on distributed knowledge.
In Christ’s coming to earth, we see God finally critiquing revolution as ineffective. The top-down system of the law, the temple and the priests – all of which Paul tells us end up condemning us without changing us – are superseded in this new covenant, which promises to change us from within. In Christ, we see God modelling a bottom-up emergent system that can transform us in this new way, and calling us onto this path of spiritual evolution as we seek higher places’ [153-154].

‘This then is the complex Christ: it is Christ disestablishing the need for the temple, for people to gain access to God only by being in one place and through hierarchies of priests; it is Christ establishing his body as a decentralized network of believers, and thus giving birth to a complex, emergent church that could not be destroyed any more easily than the Internet could be’ [163].

The Smartest Guys in the Room

2011-11-17T14:39:00.004Z

Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (London: Penguin, 2004), xxiv + 440 pp.

Some thoughts, quotes, and summaries are laid out below. In light of Stephen Green’s comments in Good Value on the neglect of relationships in business, it is telling to see relational dysfunction threaded throughout.

‘Rarely has there ever been such a chasm between corporate illusion and reality’ [xx].

‘The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn't work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster – and who couldn't admit they were wrong’ [xxi].

“We were changing the world. We were doing God’s mission” [xxi].

‘For all his brilliance, Skilling had dangerous blind spots. His management skills were appalling, in large part because he didn’t really understand people. He expected people to behave according to the imperatives of pure intellectual logic, but of course nobody does that (including, it should be said, Skilling himself.) One former top executive recalls arguing with him constantly, struggling to explain, “Jeff, people will do things just because they’re people”’ [28].

Enron’s derivatives ‘revolved around the idea that natural gas could be reduced to its financial terms.’ This is ‘not about speculation, at least at first’ [37].

Skilling hired people regardless of relational ability [55-56].

Skilling’s marriage suffered [68].

‘Skilling loved to say that in trying to create a new kind of energy company, Enron “was doing the Lord’s work”’ [71].

‘Speed was of the essence: everything moved so fast there was no point in long-range planning’ [120].

Focused on the quarter, the stock price became everything [125].

‘Deal closings were accelerated so that earnings could be posted by the end of the quarter’ [127].

‘The danger was that skewing curves to generate more profits was not only improper but also raised the likelihood that the curves would turn out to be way off base, producing a big mismatch between Enron’s projections and a reality it would eventually have to face. But that, of course, was a future concern, far removed from the crisis of the immediate quarter’ [128].

‘There was a conviction at Enron that clever accounting could alter business reality’ [142].

‘Here’s how another former employee describes the process: “Say you have a dog, but you need to create a duck on the financial statements. Fortunately, there are specific accounting rules for what constitutes a duck: yellow feet, white covering, orange beak. So you take the dog and paint its feet yellow and its fur white and you paste an orange plastic beak on its nose, and then you say to your accountants, ‘This is a duck! Don’t you agree that it’s a duck?’ And the accountants say, ‘Yes, according to the rules, this is a duck.’ Everybody knows that it’s a dog, not a duck, but that doesn’t matter, because you’ve met the rules for calling it a duck”’ [142].

‘Over time, Glisan’s affability slowly morphed into the swaggering arrogance that characterized so many Enron executives’ [154].

They ‘got huge bonuses not on the basis of how a deal worked out over time but on how profitable it appeared on the day the contract was signed’ [180 (italics in original)].

‘They played with the price curves and other assumptions to disguise reality’ [182].

‘Whalley has the trader’s ability to strip his decision-making of all emotional content, which he viewed as noneconomic.’ This is fine, except ‘he saw everything in terms of split-second economics; if he couldn’t buy or sell something right this second, it seemed to have no value to him’ [214 (italics in original)].

‘They believed that the market was the ultimate judge of their work and their worth. The market created a true meritocracy: you either made money because you made good trading decisions or you lost money because you made bad ones. Enron traders didn’t concern themselves with ethics or morality apart from the unyielding judgment of the markets. Maximizing profit was not inconsistent with doing good, they believed, but an inherent of it, and the judge of good and bad was the immediate consequences of a split-second trade. The highest compliment a trader could pay a colleague was to call him intellectually pure. The worst insult was to accuse someone of making a deal that wasn’t economic’ [216].

Enron painted itself as a logistics company, which was a lie to stakeholders in order to keep the stock up [219-220].

‘Enron’s stated profits had more to do with its accounting than the reality of its business’ [230].

‘Everything was perception; nothing was real’ [261].

‘It seems that no one agrees what the rules should be when it comes to a commodity that is essential to modern life’ [280].

Just Forgiveness

2011-11-17T12:18:00.010Z

Anthony Bash, Just Forgiveness: exploring the Bible, weighing the issues (London: SPCK, 2011), xiii + 162 pp.

In this book, Anthony Bash makes a number of important observations about forgiveness. Amongst other things, he notes that when Jesus asks his Father to forgive his persecutors “for they do not know what they are doing” [Luke 23:34], their ignorance means that they cannot receive forgiveness, and therefore Jesus cannot forgive them. Rather, Jesus prays for his Father to forgive them, presumably at a later date when they have been made aware of who they killed. (Might Acts 2:22-24, 40-41 be an example of this?) It is not the case, argues Bash, that Jesus (or his Father) forgives his persecutors for not knowing what they are doing.

He goes on to note a three-fold pattern of confession, repentance, and restitution in the Old Testament [17]. ‘The three-fold pattern was not a formulaic hoop through which people had to jump in order to receive forgiveness, but an outward expression of inner faith. Forgiveness only took place if someone had that inner faith’ [20]. He also qualifies that ‘an offer to forgive (or something akin to forgive, as we shall see is probably the case) can stimulate people to respond by acknowledging their wrongdoing and repenting’ [21].

The force of these preliminary remarks is to make clear the interpersonal nature of forgiveness. It takes two to tango. It takes two to forgive: one to give, and one to receive. And receiving forgiveness begins with a confession of – or apology for – wrongdoing. Then, with that in mind, Bash suggests five features of forgiveness. ‘There are five features of the forgiveness quintet … 1 A Response to wrongdoing … 2 Repentance … 3 Acts that are morally wrong … 4 Restored relationships … 5 Justice’ [30 (bold in original)]. (And Bash qualifies that justice is about the restoration of character [31].)

He goes on to differentiate between “thick” and “thin” forgiveness depending on how many features forgiveness exhibits [37]. For example, a forgiving response to a morally wrong act that did not result in (or begin with) repentance, restored relationships, and/or justice is “thin” forgiveness. In this sense “thin” forgiveness is an intrapersonal act, whereas thick forgiveness is an interpersonal one.

Other examples of “thin” forgiveness come later. When Paul exhorts the Corinthian church to forgive the man expelled [2 Corinthians 2:7, 10], ‘there is no evidence that the offender had wronged anyone in the Corinthian community’ [46]. So Paul exhorts forgiveness merely in the sense of acceptance.

However, I did wonder whether Bash’s criteria of moral wrongdoing (and therefore guilt) might not fit a culture more concerned with shame (if indeed it is such a culture). Whereas guilt concerns the individual before the law, shame concerns the relationships of a community. So when Bash notes contra Paul that a community cannot forgive – only the individuals within it can – he might be betraying a Western mindset (of guilt). He further notes that ‘the forgiveness is not for a moral wrong done to the community members but only for the shock, hurt and disappointment that they may have suffered, that is, for the personal and social difficulties arising from the offender’s wrongdoing’ [46]. So what Bash perceives to be “only” personal and social difficulties might actually have more gravity for the the Corinthians. But far from weakening his next proposal these thoughts about shame and grace only seem to strengthen it.

‘I propose that we should now refer to “forgivenesses”, to alert us to the variety of forms that forgiveness can take, and not speak of “forgiveness”, as if we are referring to one phenomenon that always takes the same form and is always the same for us as it is for God. Some of these “forgivenesses” may be “thick”, others “thin”, but most will be somewhere in between’ [38]. To give another example, ‘Matthew, reflecting what is clearly the teaching of Jesus, emphasizes the idea of duty when it comes to forgiveness. In contrast, Paul emphasizes the idea of “gift” in the meaning of forgiveness and does not describe forgiveness as a duty.’ So ‘a different starting point – that forgiveness is a duty or that forgiveness is a virtue – can lead to forgiveness taking different forms or shapes’ [80].

In the remainder of the book, Bash devotes chapters to forgiveness as a gift (charizomai), forgiveness as letting go (aphiemi), the different New Testament books (reinforcing the varieties of forgiveness), and other types of forgiveness (therapeutic forgiveness and restorative justice, neither of which are examples of “thick” forgiveness).

Good Value

2011-11-16T17:23:00.004Z

Stephen Green, Good Value: Choosing a Better Life in Business (London: Penguin, 2009), xii + 212 pp.

Ordained in the Church of England and former Chairman of HSBC, Stephen Green offers us these choice cuts:

‘There has been a massive breakdown of trust: trust in the financial system, trust in bankers, trust in business, trust in business leaders, trust in politicians, trust in the media, trust in the whole process of globalization – all have been severely damaged, in rich countries and poor countries alike’ [xi].

‘A large part of our quest as humans is to explore what we can come to accept as our “home” in the profoundest sense, for that is where we will discover our true spiritual purpose’ [18].

‘Compartmentalization – dividing life up into different realms, with different ends and subject to different rules – is a besetting sin of human beings’ [18].

‘Compartmentalization is a refuge from ambiguity; it enables us to simplify the rules by which we live in our different realms of life, and so avoid – if we are not careful – the moral and spiritual questions. One of the most obvious and commonplace manifestations of the tendency to compartmentalize is seeing our work life as being a neutral realm in which questions of value (other than shareholder value) or of rightness (other than what is lawful) or of wisdom (other than what is practical) need not arise. But there are many other ways in which we compartmentalize our lives. Work, family, friends, society – these are different (though often partially overlapping) realms of life, and it is all too easy, in a thousand ways, to play to different rules in each of them. These different realms of being also overlap with the inner realm of the self (though none of them completely): by what star does that inner self navigate? And would it even know when it is off course? Compartmentalization helps to shut such questions out’ [18].

‘He [Calvin] wrote, “Usury is not now unlawful, except insofar as it contravenes equity and brotherly union”’ [69 quoting Institutes IV, 20, 18].

‘Urban transformation of the world is the most important social, political and cultural consequence of globalization’ [89].

‘Cities embody the drive of humanity for connectedness – for society, convenience, stimulation and wealth’ [90].

‘London is the world’s purest example of a world city: it is quintessentially organic, open and kaleidoscopic, and constantly growing outwards culturally from its deep roots in the past’ [94].

‘When the history books are written about this period [the 2008 financial crisis], I believe they will miss an important dimension if they do not focus on the pervasive stress and sheer tiredness of those involved – whether policymakers, regulators or bankers’ [120].

‘Confidence is followed by foolhardiness, then by fear followed by a crash, followed by witch-hunts – and eventually by renewed growth. The human emotions appear to repeat themselves: the greed, the panic, the shame and anger, remorse and sobriety – until exuberance reasserts itself’ [124].

‘What is progress? Is it the accumulation of wealth, or should it involve a broader definition of the quality of life which takes into account a more integrated understanding of well-being. Surveys consistently show that economic progress has not been accompanied by the expected improved level of happiness, and that the price paid for it by many has been the quality of human relationships. On average, people do not think of themselves as happier or better off than their parents were – even though the material standard of living is, in so many societies, unquestionably higher. And there has in particular been a marked decline in the sense of trust. The collapse in perceived trustworthiness is obvious with respect to the banking sector, but also applies to business more broadly – as well as in family life and in social relationships generally’ [131].

‘The word “credit” derives from the Latin word credere, meaning “to believe”. So a credit crisis is, by the very meaning of the word, a crisis of confidence’ [132].

‘If we are to restore trust and confidence in the markets, we must therefore address what is at its root a moral question … It is as if we have grown increasingly to accept the idea that the value of what we do is fully delineated by the market, by regulatory compliance and the law of contract. If the market will bear it, if the law allows it, if there is a contract, then no other test of rightness need apply. Yet we would not (or should not, at least) live our private lives this way … What has happened is that we have succumbed to the sin of compartmentalization … As individuals we do not govern our behaviour simply by what is allowed by law or regulation. We have our own codes of conduct, and hold ourselves accountable. We take responsibility for our actions. The institutions of capitalism – businesses, banks, and other institutions of the financial markets – have to do the same. This is the sine qua non for the restoration of public trust in the market, and is therefore essential for the overall health of society’ [132].

‘If everything is defined by price, not value, then surely social fragmentation follows, since all that matters is a supply of cash rather than shared blood, community, friendship, or beliefs’ [136].

‘It [microfinance] may not make people rich; nonetheless, it is profoundly transformative’ [144].

‘The response [to what has gone wrong] has to be renewed commitment to the real task of sustainable value maximization. And it is clear that this has four elements. First, there is of course the direct and basic responsibility to earn as good a return as is sustainably possible on the capital entrusted to the company by its shareholders … And, second, … in order to earn the best return over time, businesses need to nurture their customer relationships and service … A third element of value maximization – the way a business engages with its people – takes us straight into the realm of sustainability and corporate responsibility … The fourth element of sustainable value maximization is therefore the way in which the business engages with the communities in which it operates’ [155-156].

‘There will always be those who have not merely more than others, but more than they could conceivably need. There are only two possible responses to this fact for those of us in this position: we can, in effect shrug our shoulders; or we can hear the still, small voice of conscience. That voice reminds us – if we listen – that something is owed by the affluent. And a debt not paid makes a debtor who is guilty. Hence that voice. We often hear affluent people speaking of wanting to “give something back to the community” – the very phrase conveys a sense that something is owed. At its worst, this response may be little more than a transaction à la Melmotte: doing something because it is expected, and because it wins social points. In which case it is simply one more transaction of the kind discussed by Simmel – the objectification of human relationships through the medium of money and exchange. At its heart, this is not giving back what is owed: rather, it is a transaction which is an investment.
‘At its best, though, a different – and deeper – form of transaction takes place when we respond to that voice. The giver discovers that his or her spirit becomes involved, and may then even experience an inkling of a sense that the debt is not just being repaid in the giving, but being forgiven. And the sense that the debt is forgiven in the giving can then bloom into a sense that the debtor is forgiven – for all the imperfections through which the affluence has been generated, and for all the presumption that the affluence may have generated in its time’ [159].

The Shawshank Redemption II

2011-08-28T21:43:00.004+01:00

This is the second of two posts.

HOPE

Andy keeps hope alive through (amongst other things) guile (as we have seen), vision and persistence. Let’s begin with vision. One of the recurring questions is how released cons will fare. On the one hand, Brooks kills himself. On the other, Andy escapes to Mexico. So when Red’s turn comes, will he choose life or death? Will he end up like Brooks or like Andy? Since Andy has given Red a vision of Mexico, Red chooses the latter. The redemption of Red – and that presumably alluded to in the title – comes through this vision. Perhaps somewhat similarly, Moses envisions the people of Israel [4:29-30a] with the promise of a land brimming with milk and honey [3:17]. But as in the case of Red, this initially has little impact: “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor” [6:9]. (Further, perhaps God gives them the law in order to survive in the land. Perhaps in the same way that an institutionalized ex-con might struggle to adapt to the world outside [Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ in Stephen King, Different Seasons (London: Warner Books, 1982), 48-49, 108-109. Henceforth, ‘RHSR’], Israel would struggle to adapt to the new land without the law.) But before we explore persistence, the film famously embellishes vision and hope with beauty. Andy blasts out The Marriage of Figaro (‘Deutino: Che soave zeffiretto’) across the prison.

RED (V.O.)
I tell you, those voices soared.
Higher and farther than anybody in
a gray place dares to dream. It was
like some beautiful bird flapped
into our drab little cage and made
these walls dissolve away … and for
the briefest of moments – every
last man at Shawshank felt free.
[Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket, 1996), 64 (scene 145). Henceforth Shawshank]

His punishment is solitary confinement, about which he says.

ANDY
I had Mr Mozart to keep me company.
Hardly felt the time at all.

RED
Oh, they let you tote that record
player down there, huh? I could’a
swore they confiscated that stuff.

ANDY
(taps his heart, his head)
The music was here … and here.
That’s the one thing they can’t
confiscate, not ever. That’s the
beauty of it. Haven’t you ever felt
that way about music, Red?

RED
Played a mean harmonica as a younger
man. Lost my taste for it. Didn’t
make much sense on the inside.

ANDY
Here’s where it makes most sense.
We need it so we don’t forget.

RED
Forget?

ANDY
That there are things in this world
not carved out of gray stone. That
there’s a small place inside of us
they can never lock away, and that
place is called hope.

RED
Hope is a dangerous thing. Drive a
man insane. It’s got no place here.
Better get used to the idea.

ANDY
(softly)
Like Brooks did?
[Shawshank, 65 (scene 150)]

The point about memory is a pertinent one. It is captured when God reveals his name to Moses.

God said to Moses, “I-AM-WHO-I-AM. Tell the People of Israel, ‘I-AM sent me to you.’
God continued with Moses: “This is what you’re to say to the Israelites: ‘GOD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob sent me to you.’ This has always been my name, and this is how I will always be known [3:14-15].

The memory of Abraham connotes the promise.

I’ll make you a great nation
and bless you.
I’ll make you famous;
you’ll be a blessing.
I’ll bless those who bless you;
those who curse you I’ll curse.
All the families of the Earth
will be blessed through you.
[Genesis 12:2-3]

And God was the same then as he is now. Perhaps that is part of the force of his name – I-AM-WHO-I-AM. Nonetheless, the point is clear: Israel will be blessed and Egypt cursed. God’s word is their hope. But wherein lies Andy Dufresne’s hope? Answer: in the recurring leitmotif of geology. It comes up several times, for example: ‘Andy smiled his small, composed smile and asked … what would happen to a block of concrete if a drop of water fell on it once every year for a million years’ [‘RHSR’, 50 cf. 38, 75, 97]. By such persistence Andy obtains books for the prison library [‘RHSR’, 49-51] and tunnels his escape [‘RHSR’, 92-93]. This is accompanied by a good dose of luck: for example, he just happens to have taken classes in geology [‘RHSR’, 97], never moves cell, never has a cell mate (with one short-term exception) [‘RHSR’, 102], and is never caught tunnelling [‘RHSR’, 99-101]. Persistence and luck. Frank Darabont, director of the film, writes this.

I consider myself very lucky, but I also believe you make your own luck by applying the elbow-grease of determination and effort, by seizing every opportunity and nurturing a persistent belief in yourself no matter how bleak your chances seem (this philosophy lurks at the very heart of The Shawshank Redemption, and is one of the main reasons I fell in love with King’s story) [Shawshank, 184 (italics in original)].

Or does Andy just happen to be the right person in the right place at the right time? Either way, compare this with Moses. Moses singularly lacks belief – both belief in God and belief in himself, for example: ‘Moses raised another objection to GOD: “Master, please, I don’t talk well. I’ve never been good with words, neither before nor after you spoke to me. I stutter and stammer’ [4:10]. God suggests that his lack of self-belief follows from his lack of God-belief [4:11]. Intriguingly, and later on, Moses is neither stuttering nor stammering but fuming at pharaoh. ‘Moses, seething with anger, left Pharaoh’ [11:8]. The signs that God performs seem to strengthen Moses’ belief in God’s promises, and therefore his self-belief.

CONCLUSION

In sum, whereas hope comes “from below” in RHSR (symbolized by geology), hope breaks in “from above” for Israel. One is “lottery” hope, the other biblical hope. These need not be mutually exclusive for what breaks in “from above” can work through what lies below. But the converse does not hold. RHSR represents a reductionist, truncated view of biblical hope – one that depends on geology, luck, and the persistence of time.

The Shawshank Redemption I

2011-08-26T18:23:00.008+01:00

This is the first of two posts.

“Hope is a good thing ... maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies” [Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ in Stephen King, Different Seasons (London: Warner Books, 1982), 112. Henceforth, ‘RHSR’.]

Frank Darabont’s screen version of ‘RHSR’ routinely frequents polls for people’s favourite film. It may be no coincidence that hope is it’s main theme. As the strap line reads: ‘Fear can hold you prisoner … Hope can set you free.’ Hope is a theme for our times.

In what follows, I will compare and contrast both versions (book and screen) with the biblical book of Exodus. We will begin by noting shared patterns of oppression and resistance, before considering their different accounts of hope.

DEHUMANIZING OPPRESSION: HUMANIZING RESISTANCE

The first chapter of Exodus sets up a striking contrast between the nameless oppressor and the named agents of resistance: ‘The king of Egypt had a talk with the two Hebrew midwives; one was named Shiprah and the other Puah’ [1:15]. The pharaoh is never mentioned by name, which could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps this captures the way in which oppressors dehumanize themselves and others. Indeed, perhaps not naming him is an act of non-violent resistance against the pharaoh. It takes the momentum of one who dehumanizes himself further, by blotting his name out of history altogether – much like the first (failed) kinsman-redeemer in Ruth 4. (The Hebrew simply calls the kinsman-redeemer almoni peloni, literally “so and so” – which I prefer to render “Baloney Maloney”.) If so, then the very naming of the two Hebrew midwives resists the dehumanization of Israel. Moreover, perhaps the pharaoh remains nameless to ensure that this book resonates with the oppressed throughout history. Insert your own oppressor into the blank.

We will return to the issue of guile later. But it is enough to note now that the protagonist of ‘RHSR’, Andy Dufresne, uses guile to humanize screws and cons alike. While tarring the roof of a factory, Andy hears one of the guards moaning about tax. As a former banker, he offers to help – in return for a few beers for his fellow prisoners. ‘It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men’ [‘RHSR’, 47] Andy subsequently goes on to make his financial expertise available to all the guards [‘RHSR’, 51], which the film further embellishes. The film imagines Andy shaking hands with these guards, glimpsing equality because only equals shake hands [Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket, 1996), 49 (scene 92). Henceforth Shawshank].

Whereas the oppression in Exodus is characterized by enslavement and infanticide, the oppression in ‘RHSR’ is characterized by a miscarriage of justice [14-23, 61-69] and systemic corruption. One the one hand, the oppressive system can be just as faceless as pharaoh. King even uses the biblical phrase “the powers that be” to describe it [‘RHSR’, 38]. On the other hand, it is embodied by Norton.

NORTON

Norton’s distortion of the Christian faith symbolises the systemic corruption – a point made in passing in the book [‘RHSR’, 51], but embellished in the film. There, Norton even takes the place of Christ. In a surprise cell inspection Norton finds the Andy reading the Bible.

NORTON
I’m pleased to see you reading this.
Any favourite passages?

ANDY

“Watch ye therefore, for ye know not
when the master of the house cometh.”

NORTON
(smiles)
Luke. Chapter 13, verse 35. I’ve
always liked that one.
(strolls the cell)
But I prefer: “I am the light of
the world. He that followeth me
shall not walk in darkness, but
shall have the light of life.”

ANDY
John. Chapter 8, verse 12.
[Shawshank, 45 (scene 86)]

From here, Andy is forced to follow Norton into his corrupt world, receiving perks (the light of life) for doing so.

GUILE

However, Andy uses guile and perseverance to escape the prison and frame the warden, who subsequently kills himself [Shawshank, 45 (scene 86)]. (In the novella, the warden is neither framed nor killed, but simply resigns [‘RHSR’, 95].) The fate of the warden is thus similar to the fate of pharaoh’s chariots. ‘The waters returned, drowning the chariots and riders of Pharaoh’s army that had chased after Israel into the sea. Not one of them survived’ [14:28]. And Andy’s guile is similar to that of the Hebrew midwives. They too do not comply with an oppressor who has ordered them to slaughter male babies. ‘The king of Egypt called in the midwives. “Why didn’t you obey my orders? You’ve let those babies live!” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; they’re vigorous. Before the midwife can get there, they’ve already had the baby”’ [1:18-19]. In both stories, the fearlessness of the protagonists flows from hope. For the midwives, it flows from their fear of God [1:17]. For Andy, it flows from somewhere else. But from where, exactly?

We’ll consider this further in the next post.

Horne on Volf

2011-07-22T12:33:00.003+01:00

Jon Horne, ‘A reservation about Miroslav Volf’s theory of non-remembrance’, Theology, September 2011, 114: 323-330.

If it is to allow for the transformation of memory, then Miroslav Volf’s theory of non-remembrance stands in need of Christological qualification.

The Emotions

2011-04-30T15:34:00.012+01:00

Peter Goldie, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 267 + vi pp.

My two previous posts consider Robert Solomon’s The Passions. Whereas Solomon analyses the emotions through the lens of continental philosophy, Goldie does so through the lens of Anglo-American philosophy.

Goldie approaches the emotions from a personal point of view rather than impersonally. And although the subsequent rationality of emotions is normative (in a manner appropriate to practical reasoning), emotions cannot be reduced to rationality. ‘Much philosophical work on the emotions tends to over-intellectualize emotional thought, feeling, and action, seeking to force them into a mould of a rationalizing explanation when often the best one can hope for is an explanation which makes them intelligible’ [3]. This does not mean that emotions can be reduced to some abstract concept of intelligibility either. ‘The idea of making sense of someone thus extends beyond giving a rationalizing explanation of what they think or do, and indeed beyond any other single explanatory notion which might replace that of rationality’ [3].

“FEELINGS TOWARDS”

Furthermore, although ‘emotions are intentional – they are directed towards an object’ [4] – emotions cannot be reduced to intentionality (desire). (Pride, after all, involves “feelings towards” but no desire. And desires are not always explicable in terms of feelings. Indeed, whereas “feeling towards” has a phenomenology essentially, desires do not.) Nor can emotions be reduced to belief. I may believe that I am safe behind the glass, but still recoil in fear when the snake behind it attacks (so Darwin) – a phenomenon Goldie labels “cognitive impenetrability” [110].

Bizarrely, reducing emotions to desire (or belief, for that matter) tends to make feelings a mere add-on to emotion, when ‘feelings are, as we all know, at the heart of emotion’ [12]. ‘What I want to do is to emphasize an intentional element which is neither belief nor desire, and which is, in many respects, more fundamental to emotional experience than either of these’ [19]. Goldie calls this “feeling towards” some object. ‘The object of an emotion is that onto which one’s thoughts and feelings are typically directed, and to which they typically return’ [17]. (This is what distinguishes moods from emotions: emotions have objects but moods do not. And, ‘mood can “focus” into emotion and emotion can blur out of focus into mood’ [8].)

‘Any suggestion that our emotional feelings towards things can be understood as, or analysed into, simple terms (such as attraction or aversion, pleasure or distress, feeling comfortable or uncomfortable, positive or negative evaluation on some rating scale) should be strongly resisted. Surely we all know that emotional feelings are not that simple. If you ask me to say what the feelings are like when one is feeling disgusted or jealous or angry or in love, I refuse to answer: if you have experienced the emotion, then you know very well what these sorts of feeling can be like, and you do not need me to tell you; if you have not experienced the emotion and want to get some idea of what it feels like, then, as Harold Macmillan once said to a young politician, I suggest you read a good novel. It is, emphatically, not a requirement of my philosophical account that I should attempt such a thing’ [19].

It then follows that emotional feelings cannot be reduced to bodily feelings either. ‘No degree of bodily feeling alone can reveal to you what your emotion is about; the association of ideas is, initially, from the feeling towards to the bodily feeling, and thus, if you do not know what your thoughts and feelings are directed towards, you cannot find out merely through introspection of your bodily feelings’ [58 (italics in original)]. So, for example, anger is more than feeling one’s teeth and fists clenched. Anger has an object in the way that the feeling of our teeth and fists does not. So Goldie contends that this does not necessarily mean we have two separate sets of feelings – emotional and bodily – but rather we experience anger as a psychosomatic unity [55]. Intriguingly, one can dissipate an emotion by moving attention from focal awareness (of the object of our emotion) to tacit (awareness of our body). ‘This is, incidentally, a good way to try to give up smoking cigarettes [80].’ Feeling towards is therefore a sui generis that cannot be reduced to rationality (or other abstract notions), desires (or beliefs) or bodily feelings.

But how is it related to the will? ‘Feeling towards is thinking of with feeling, and thinking of is subject to the will’ [58]. That is, we can choose to think of things in particular ways. By using our imagination we can think of a cloud as a camel. But sometimes a thought just grasps us, and we can only think of something in one particular way. ‘In feeling towards, the imagination tends to be much more intractable than in thinking of; that is to say, the imagination tends to be less subject to the will – it tends actively to “run away with you”. And it is, in part, because of this feature that the emotions are passions: your thoughts and feelings are not always as much under your control as you would want them to be’ [58 (italics in original)]. Nonetheless, ‘we can be responsible for our emotional capabilities, if not for a particular response at a particular time’ [7].

NARRATIVE

Another concept Goldie employs is narrative. ‘It is the notion of narrative structure which ties together and makes sense of the individual elements of emotional experience – thought, feeling, bodily change, expression, and so forth – as parts of a structured episode; and in turn underpins the way that individual emotional episodes relate to the emotion of which the episode is a part, and this emotion to mood, to character trait and to character, and to the person’s life as seen as a whole’ [5]. Narrative proves to be a versatile concept for Goldie.

For example, we may or may not know that we feel a particular emotion at any one time. In the heat of the moment the emotion is more like a pair of glasses through which we see than a pair of glasses that we see. ‘So, to say that you did not feel fear in the sense of being reflectively aware of your feelings does not imply that you did not have any feelings that might be part of fear’ [67]. For later reflection might reveal those feelings. And if emotion is not only understood episodically, but also as part of a wider narrative, then narrative helps to explain how I can love my wife for years, yet not feel love for her 24-7. ‘An emotion – as contrasted with an episode – can last for years’ [188]. Emotions, therefore, cannot be reduced to feelings.

‘An emotion involves feelings, and any true account of emotion cannot ignore feelings; but it does not follow from this that the emotions are feelings, and everything else (facial expressions, bodily changes, and so on) is at best just a symptom of the feeling or the emotion’ [184 (italics in original)].

Moreover, since feelings are insufficient to distinguish between emotions, narratives can make the difference. (The difference between shame and embarrassment is well illustrated by Solomon, whom I quote here.) Narrative also plays a central role for Goldie in the debate between nature (evolution has given rise to universal “basic” emotions) and nurture (emotions are cultural constructs).

‘There is, across cultures, a shared conception emotional experience as comprising a number of elements which are part of a narrative, so that, for each sort of emotion, there will be a paradigmatic structure of elements of emotional experience. Thus, the paradigmatic narrative structure for an emotion could vary across cultures, depending in part on the interests which are peculiar or special to that culture’ [92].

EXPRESSION OF AND ACTION OUT OF

One last point. Goldie distinguishes between expression of an emotion and an action out of an emotion in terms of means and ends. An expression is an end in itself, whereas an action is a means to an end. Indeed, the former can become a symbol of the latter.

Although there is much in common between Goldie and Solomon, there are differences. For Solomon, emotions create meaning. Emotions imbue Reality with narrative: what we might call “narrative-in-emotions”. But by distinguishing between emotional episodes and prolonged emotional narratives, Goldie posits that emotions are intelligible within their wider narratives. Therefore he tends more towards an “emotion-in-narrative” position. (Solomon hints at such a distinction but fails to develop it: ‘One can be angry without ever feeling angry – for days or weeks or years’ [Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 118].) Nonetheless, the two positions could be considered mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive: emotions (as episodes) not only construct narratives but are also (partly) constructed by them.

And finally, whereas Solomon (as a philosopher) is solely concerned with the objects of our emotions, rather than their causes, Goldie suggests developing our emotional capabilities, if they produce inappropriate emotional episodes [117]. Subsequently, whereas Goldie alludes to the development of emotional capabilities in community – say, through the Parachute Regiment – Solomon restricts himself solely to self-effort.

The Passions II

2011-04-28T15:59:00.007+01:00

Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 326 + xxiv pp.

This is the second of two posts.

In the previous post we saw Solomon explore what an emotion is not. In this post we turn to what an emotion actually is.

Solomon writes that ‘an emotion is distinguished by its object, not by its causes’ [120]. ‘The object of an emotion is never identical to its cause. The object is always subjective, a part of the world as one sees it, whether or not it is in fact the case or not. The cause is always objective; it must be the case if it is to be the cause’ [123 (italics in original)]. So if I am angry because I believe that you stole my laptop, the belief that you stole my laptop is the cause of my anger, but you are its object.

(This approach works with the so-called “three-fold-assertion message”: “I feel X, when I see you Y, because Z,” where Z is the reason linking Y to X. On the one hand, “I see you Y” emphasises the subjective nature of the object Y (“you”) by virtue of the “I see”. On the other hand, “when I see you Y” is expressed through “because Z” as an objective cause of “I feel X”. “I felt angry, when I found out about the laptop [which I am led to believe was taken by you], because I trusted you”. In other words, I am angry because my trust in you has been broken by my belief that you stole the laptop.)

So emoting is like looking through a pair of glasses, of which I am only tacitly aware, but which cause me to see something in a certain way. Yet whether those glasses are coloured by drugs or by belief, conscious (as above) or unconscious (as for Freud), which cause me to see something in a certain way, Solomon’s concern is their object. Solomon is concerned that we change the object of our passions from the inside, rather than have the causes of our passions changed from the outside. ‘The causal instruments which may cause such changes in experience are not the sphere of the philosopher but rather the neurologist, the developmental psychologist, and the pharmacologist … To change someone else, whether for “better” or for “worse,” is, in a sense, to “destroy” him. But to change oneself is to grow’ [125 (italics in original)].

Solomon continues, ‘an emotion is a structure linking ourselves and the objects of our world which provides the structures of our world’ [119]. More specifically, ‘an emotion is a judgment (or a set of judgments), something we do. An emotion is a (set of) judgment(s) which constitute our world, our surreality, and its “intentional objects.” An emotion is a basic judgment about our Selves and our place in the world, the projection of the values and ideals, structures and mythologies, according to which we live and through which we experience our lives’ [126 (italics in original)]. Thus, emotions are like speech-acts (or performatives) in the sense that they make judgments. But although they construct meaning, they do not construct reality.

‘Objectively, we need not hesitate in admitting the independence of Reality from our passionate tamperings within it. But the Way the world is for us is never simply the way the world is. We do not live in Reality but in surreality, a world that is populated with objects of value and objects of fear, gains and losses, honors and injustices, intimacies and inequalities. It is our passions – and our emotions in particular – that set up this world, constitute the framework within which our knowledge of the facts has some meaning, some “relevance” to us. This is why I insist that the emotions are constitutive judgments; they do not find but “set up” our surreality. They do not apply but supply the framework of values which give our experience some meaning’ [135 (italics in original)].

‘In anger, we judge that a friend’s casual comment is offensive; but the anger is not merely a report or a “reaction” to an offense; it declares that the comment is offensive precisely in the same way that the magistrate declares that the defendant is guilty. One does not become angry because the comment is offensive: the comment is offensive by virtue of its being an object for anger … The emotions, like magistrates, do not find but rather are responsible for the objects of their judgment’ [135-136 (italics in original)].

Further developing the legal analogy, Solomon notes that ‘together, our emotions form an organic system of projected rules and standards within which any particular emotion takes its place, borrowing from but also contributing to that system in much the same way that a magistrate both borrows from the law and contributes to a common-law and “constitutional” legal system’ [137]. Hence we must often choose between the values of competing communities. Moreover,

‘Our emotions are not only projections; they are also our projects. They are not only directed toward intentional objects; they are laden with intentions to act. Emotions are concerned not only with “the way the world is” but with the way the world ought to be. Every emotion, in other words, is also a personal ideology, a projection into the future, and a system of hopes and desires, expectations and commitments, intentions and strategies for changing our world’ [153 (italics in original)].

‘Mythologies become ideologies when we play a role in them, live in them, take action and take sides’ [161].

This is not to say, of course, that such projects are always completed. Indeed, many such projects are impossible to complete such as those thrown up by anger at a political decision or envy at some celebrity. Yet it is precisely such dissatisfaction that gives meaning to our lives. By exacerbating the grief that underlies it, excessive mourning might actually be an attempt to find meaning. (Indeed, emotional expression may not dissipate emotion as hydraulic theories – where emotion requires venting – suggest.) Rather, choosing not to pursue a particular project (such as excessive mourning) might dissipate the emotion that evokes it.

Solomon then draws up various categories for the emotions: are they inwardly directed (like guilt and shame) or outwardly directed (like fear and anger)? Is their scope particular or general? What is the nature of their object? (Human, subhuman, superhuman or inhuman, which we must personify, if we are, say, angry with the weather?) What are the criteria by which judgments are made? What is the status of their human object? (We tend to hate equals, resent superiors, but show contempt to subordinates.) What evaluations do emotions involve? (These are our immediate intuitions, as opposed to our more reflective criteria.) Do they ascribe responsibility? (Embarrassment and pity tend not to.) Are they intersubjective? (That is, do they form part of a relationship, even if one of hatred?) If so, how intimate are they? What are their mythologies? What projects do they throw up? How potent are they? (‘Jealousy welcomes the opportunity of confrontation; envy assumes impotence from the outset’ [221].) What is their strategy? (Because ‘every emotion is a subjective strategy for the maximization of personal dignity and self-esteem’ [222].)

Since categories such as these create innumerable combinations, Solomon contends there can ultimately be no satisfactory list of so-called “basic” emotions. Besides, different cultures will “construct” different emotions. ‘Yiddish has many more concepts of irony and derogation, appropriate to many ways of enduring hardship, concepts which are wholly absent from the language of paradisical South Pacific cultures’ [224]. Moreover, ‘we [in the West] have far more emotions that indicate how much is wrong with our Selves and our world than there are emotions indicating what is right’ [240]. Solomon even suggests that depression is more basic than fear in an individualistic society such as ours. Thus, ‘there are no “basic” emotions, only those emotions which are prevalent – in word or in fact – in a particular society’ [225].

Solomon’s existential approach makes a stimulating framework for thinking about emotions. On the one hand, his refusal to divide reason and emotion leads to some suggestive insights.

‘“Cool” behavior – our all too common paradigm of rationality – is itself an example of extreme irrationality, for it deprives a person of all those structures which might give his life some meaning and maximize his self-esteem, leaving him only with the subjectively worthless coinage of success and public recognition’ [191].

His schema also bears more than a passing resemblance to Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowing [Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: CUP, 1966)].

On the other hand, Solomon might stand accused of replacing a reason-emotion divide with a reality-surreality dichotomy that divides objectivity from meaning. (Compare Polanyi for whom passion is a criterion of objectivity.) When he writes, ‘there is no Reality so degrading that a man cannot mythologize himself as a martyr, someone else as an oppressor from whom he shall liberate himself or against whom he shall avenge himself’ [151], he simultaneously suggests that Reality contributes to our mythologizing judgments by being degrading, but also that it does not – the phrase: ‘there is no Reality so degrading that a man cannot mythologize’ could suggest that all Reality can (and is) mythologized. For Solomon, it is we who invest reality with meaning to create surreality. ‘The mythology of emotion is the construction of surreality in dramatic form’ [148]. But within a Christian doctrine of creation, reality is already vested with meaning. So perhaps in order to soften Solomon’s suggestion that our judgments create meaning, Roberts prefers to talk about “construals.” This is because “construals” allow reality to make an impression on us (and therefore contribute to meaning) whereas “judgments” do not necessarily allow this [Robert C. Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 23].

The Passions I

2011-04-20T15:06:00.004+01:00

Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 326 + xxiv pp.

This is the first of two posts.

For Solomon, Camus’s notion of the Absurd stands as the (inevitable?) culmination of the western tendency to privilege reason over emotion. Incessant rationalizing – forever asking why – exposes an absence of meaning. And yet there is often the absence of such questions when we experience strong emotion. ‘The problem of the Absurd arises only because one refuses to accept the passions and meanings of everyday life’ [52]. Lover and avenger respectively find meaning in love and anger. In this sense, Solomon contends that emotion is the key to purpose and meaning of life.

But this is not emotion without reason (to mirror the western tendency separate reason from emotion). ‘Reason and reflection are but the articulate expression and expansion of the passions themselves. Reason is nothing other than perspicacious passion’ [59]. Solomon therefore does not play the immediacy of emotion against the slow deliberation of reason. For ‘our emotions are only “spontaneous” in the sense that they can benefit from many years of hard work and development; and the present masterpiece seems to emerge as if on its own’ [60]. The same is true of reason, which may also come to us spontaneously, as if in a flash of insight.

He further clarifies that ‘there are three fundamental species of passions: (1) emotions, (2) moods, and (3) desires … What all passions have in common is their ability to bestow meaning to the circumstances of our lives’ [70 (italics in original)]. Emotions dramatize routine. ‘Desires convert mere “things” into goals’ [70]. They include hunger and thirst, but are also more than these. And whereas emotions attend to particulars, moods colour everything. In all of this, Solomon’s focus is the relationship between emotions and those interpersonal desires (such as standing), which predominate once physiological needs are met.

But, ‘“what is an emotion?’” One might think that the question had long been settled by the psychologists, until, that is, he reads some academic psychology’ [73]. First, Solomon rejects what he calls the hydraulic model of emotion. The hydraulic model ‘requires only the category of passivity regarding consciousness – the idea that the emotions (and the passions in general) are inflicted upon us or caused in us by psychic or bodily or environmental forces beyond our control’ [83 (italics in original)]. (We may suspect that Solomon substitutes a passivity-responsibility dichotomy in place of an emotion-reason one. That is, we may not be a Canute before the sea of emotion, but neither are we a Spock.)

Although Solomon suggests that no cause for an emotion excuses our responsibility, he acknowledges nonetheless that knowing the occasion for an emotion can help to soothe it. (The vocabulary of “occasion” is mine, since it seems somewhat self-defeating for Solomon to use “cause” when that is precisely what he is denying.) So although drinking coffee does not excuse my irritability, knowing that the occasion of my irritability includes coffee may help to soothe my feelings. (Hence Solomon affirms the validity of seeking the cause of psychic disturbance even in the unconscious, however misplaced this may be, because seeking any cause for emotion can help to soothe it.)

He further argues that although physiological change can induce emotional change, emotions cannot be reduced to a simple awareness of our physiology. This is because different emotions can be ascribed to identical physiological states. And in the same way that emotions cannot be reduced to physiology, nor can they be reduced to feelings:

‘Imagine two situations: In the first, you are standing in line to board a bus when a crowd behind you pushes you abruptly and you fall, unable to catch yourself, into an elderly woman, knocking her into the rain-soaked gutter. In the second, obeying a malicious whim, you push her – with the same result’ [98].

Solomon surmises that our feelings following each situation would be the same, except that we would call the first feeling embarrassment and the second shame. Thus emotion is more than feeling, because it is partly determined by what Solomon calls the “logic” of the situation. Besides, we do not always feel emotions due to suppression, familiarity, or numbness. ‘One can have an emotion without feeling anything, and one can feel anything (including all of the “symptoms” of emotionality, for example, flushing, pulsing) without having any emotion whatever’ [99].

So having explored what an emotion is not, we will turn in the next post to what Solomon says an emotion actually is.

Andres Serrano's Piss Christ is the original shock art

2011-04-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Cliff Bergdahl for drawing this to my attention.

Christian Compliance or Stubborn Love?

2011-04-20T11:30:00.000+01:00

Another gem from Ron.

Job and the Disruption of Identity

2011-04-17T10:02:00.003+01:00

Susannah Ticciati, Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading beyond Barth (T&T Clark: London, 2005), 204 + x pp.

If theodicy be the attempt to explain away evil by providing (the right) information, then Ticciati does not see this as the purpose of Job. Rather, she follows Barth’s insight that the key to Job is Job’s obedience. Job is right to cling to the God who once blessed him, but wrong to make demands of this God. Since he clings by making demands, ‘his right is inseparable from his wrong. Hence no amount of extra information could help him’ [22]. Thus Job’s obedience takes the form of wrestling, which, in turn, witnesses to God. ‘God’s freedom cannot be grasped cognitively; it must be wrestled with’ [23].

To grasp God’s freedom cognitively would be to subordinate God to our cognitive faculties, thereby making him less than God. (Job’s appeal for a mokiach – for a “referee” between him and God – is analogous to this.) So how are God and man – or its analogue: eschatology and history – to mix?

Here, Ticciati parts company from Barth. Like oil and water, she argues that eschatology and history do not mix in Barth’s theology. She writes, ‘On the one hand, if the new is to constitute a true transformation of the old, the act of veiling must result in a perceivable transformation; on the other hand, the transformation of the old into the new cannot be understood in terms of a distinction within the old’ [28]. Since the old is characterised by falsehood the new cannot be understood in terms of the old without it being distorted. And ‘if the new creation cannot be present to the old in terms of the old, how then is it to be manifested in the old at all?’ [24] Thus Barth construes things in such a way that the transformation of Job (in history) is impossible.

(Or does he? Against her emphasis on freedom, Timothy Gorringe reminds us that Barth’s God is the one who loves in freedom [Journal of Theological Studies 60/2 (2009), 759-760].)

Yet Job is transformed. Ticciati draws on the Hebrew text of Job to compare prologue with epilogue. Although she posits a rather unconvincing chiasmus – A [1:1-5]; B [1:6-19; 2:1-8]; C [2:9-13]; C’ [42:9]; B’ [42:7-9]; C’ [42:10-17] – her comparison illuminates otherwise. The themes of blessing and cursing suggest a Deuteronomic (rather than an eschatological) context for prologue and epilogue. She notes that whereas there is no direct communication between heaven and earth in the prologue, God communicates directly with Job in the epilogue. Satan has also disappeared. And Job now prays for his friends and he hosts a party for his family; whereas, before, his sons would host parties and Job would pray for them (from a distance). So a deeper relationship with God is reflected by a deeper relationship with those around him. Thus through Job’s wrestling we do not see witness in place of transformation (Ticciati’s reading of Barth), but transformation as witness (Ticciati’s reading of Job).

Ticciati then turns her attention to the main body of Job. She writes, ‘It is integral to the narrative that God does not know how Job is going to fare; the text would otherwise be pointless. Thus God has doubt’ [74-74]. She follows this with a footnote.

‘The alternative is to understand the wager as having the purpose simply of proving a point to the Satan. But there are no clues in the text that God is any wiser than Satan. And if the text’s temporality and contingency are taken seriously, the outcome of the text is something that can only be established in the course of time’ [75 n.59].

However, could not the wager also prove a point to the reader? (Why else is the reader given access to the divine council?) If so, then the issue is not so much God’s foreknowledge and wisdom as the reader’s. (Besides, doesn’t God’s nomination of Job express confidence, and not doubt? Is not such confidence also wise? For if God were simply to destroy Satan, Satan’s taunt – “Does Job fear God for no reason?” [1:9] – would remain unanswered. So Job – and Job alone – must answer his accuser, and silence him.) It is for the reader’s benefit that the temporality and contingency of the text are to be taken seriously.

Building on her comparison between prologue and epilogue, Ticciati notes that Job may not initially fear God for naught, even if this is where his subsequent wrestling takes him. In the midst of his suffering, he cries out, “For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me” [3:25]. Does this suggest that his pious lifestyle was previously driven by fear? Does the fact that he sacrificed just in case his children sinned – rather than because his relationship with them enabled them to do so (like his friends in the epilogue) – does this suggest an isolated neurotic rather than a relational priest? If so, then Job’s initial relation to God can be seen to be contractual – he sacrifices so that God blesses or, more correctly, out of fear that God will not bless – rather than covenantal – he sacrifices because God blesses.

This means that Job has no point of reference for his subsequent suffering. The contractual system utilized by Job’s friends (and previously by Job) suggests that suffering follows from sin. But Job knows that he has not sinned according to this system. This perhaps explains why he does not mention his suffering in chapter 3. Indeed, he blackens the world around him, presumably because the world no longer makes any sense. In this way Job wrestles for an identity beyond the law.

So note how God employs Job’s vocabulary (from chapter 3) in his response (chapter 38). Using Job’s own vocabulary shows God connecting with Job in a way that his friends fail to do. Then in chapter 39, God affirms life beyond the law by pointing to mountain goats, ostriches, hawks, and wild oxen, donkeys, and horses. (All of these creatures exist outside of the law.) Finally he describes Job in terms of a mokiach. (Within legal contexts a mokiach is one who champions the cause of the oppressed.) “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” [40:2]. Up until this point there have been two references to a mokiach, and one to a go’el [a redeemer] (a similar term in 19:23-29).

“Would that there were an arbiter [mokiach] between us, who might lay his hand on us both” [9:33].

Even now, behold, my witness [mokiach] is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would argue the case of a man with God, as [or “and”] a son of man does with his neighbour. For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return” [16:19-22].

Ticciati argues throughout that Job is appealing to a God who is beyond his contractual understanding. (This corresponds to Job’s wrestling for an identity beyond the law.) The mokiach is therefore not simply another member of the heavenly council, or even Job’s own appeal. God and God alone is the mokiach.

God alone as the mokiach is also the inevitable conclusion of Elihu’s contribution. Whereas the focus of Job’s friends is that Job must be sinful because he is suffering, Elihu’s focus is that Job must be sinful because he wants to put God on trial. But ‘to defend God’s justice, Elihu must take up a role that undermines it’ [129]. Only God can defend God. “Teach us what we shall say to him; we cannot draw up our case because of darkness. Shall it be told him that I would speak? Did a man ever wish that he would be swallowed up?” [37:19-20]. This entails that Elihu does not wrestle with God. In other words, by ‘eliminating the mokiach, Elihu is thus expressing his unwillingness to probe God’s “for naught.” This is what an equation with justice ultimately is – a refusal to explore the nature of God’s relation to creation’ [131].

So God’s response to Job in 40:2 is revealing – “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” All along, Job has been becoming that which he seeks. ‘It is only in the course of the poem, in which Job learns how to argue with God, that he learns how truly to be a mokiach’ [136]. The transformation of Job suggests that this is not a theodicy of the (traditional) kind, which seeks to “resolve” evil through (philosophical) information. Rather,

‘The theodicy being advanced here – in which God’s transformation of the evil of creation is the “answer” to the problem of evil – cannot, therefore, be given in the abstract’ [181].

From Passions to Emotions

2011-03-16T18:34:00.002Z

Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), 304 + x pp.

Thomas Dixon traces the development from (ancient) passions to modern (emotions). In an axis of thought that flows from Aristotle (in the fourth-century BC) through Augustine (in the fourth-century AD) to Aquinas (in the thirteenth), passions and affections saturate the seat of rational decision: the soul. Passions are those involuntary movements of the soul towards the sensual. Passions, like lust, must therefore be bridled by reason. But although a bridled passion, like lust, might have virtue within marriage, there is rarely reference to such virtuous passions. And where Augustine, for example, does describe the control reason can exercise, he lapses into the grotesque.

Some can swallow an incredible number of various articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm, can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition … A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region [Augustine, City of God (trans. Henry Bettenson, London: Penguin, 1972), xiv.24: 588].

Affections, on the other hand, are voluntary movements of the soul towards God. This schema could suggest that the spiritual is good and the sensual is bad. But ‘it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible’ [City of God, 551]. Thus the problem resides in the soul and not in the flesh. But over the centuries emotions emerged as a category outside the Christian framework. Thomas Brown first introduced them as a comprehensive category in a posthumous 1820 publication, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind; and William James’ 1884 paper ‘What is an emotion?’ is credited as the source of much contemporary opinion. This includes playing emotion off against reason, as if we have to choose between reason and emotion. Since this resonates with the dichotomy between reason and passion, the Christian tradition has subsequently been blamed for the modern emotion-mind divide. But since, as we saw, passion can be bridled by reason, and affections are inherently rational, such indictments are unfounded. Further, whereas passions and affections are determined by the state of the soul, emotions are determined by the state of our body. So James’ legacy can be seen where emotions are reduced to neural activity. And whereas passions and affections are determined by a strong sense of self, our neural activity reduces us to a phantasmagoria of emotion. Agency has been transferred from an “I” to a synapse. Moreover, the erosion of first the divine and then the human subject in the development from passions to emotions corresponds to a relative lack of precision in defining the latter. There is, simply, no point of reference for them. Dixon by no means advocates a return to the categories of yesteryear, but he does ask us to consider what wisdom we might draw from them.

The Ethics of Punishment

2011-02-06T12:15:00.004Z

Walter Moberly, The Ethics of Punishment (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), 386 pp.

Seventy years or so before The Ethics of Punishment, Tolstoy wrote about punishment, that it was ‘intended as crime-prevention, deterrence, correction and “condign retribution” ... In reality there was not a vestige of the first or second of these, nor the third or fourth. Instead of being prevented, crime was on the increase. Instead of being deterred, criminals were positively discouraged, many of them, like the tramps, going into prison of their own accord. Instead of correction, all kinds of evil were being spread around by systematic infection. As for the need for retribution, far from being mitigated by government punishment, it was breeding revenge from among the people where it had never existed before’ [Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (ET. Anthony Briggs, London: Penguin, 2009), 473].

But what is punishment? Moberly begins with Grotius’ five criteria for punishment (indicated by italics): ‘what is inflicted is an ill … It is a sequel to some act which has gone before … There is some correspondence between the punishment and the deed which has evoked it … The punishment is inflicted … upon the criminal’ [35 (italics in original)].

So why punish? Moberly breaks this question into two – “for what offence?” and “to what end?” – before facilitating a dialogue between utilitarian and retributive theories.

“For what offence?” Retributive theories tend to punish offences primarily because they offend against moral order, whereas utilitarian theories tend to punish offences primarily because they offend against social order. But can the latter can really reduce the moral to the social, since the social order itself has a moral basis [54 n.2; 72f.]? Moreover, if criminal acts are an expression of moral character, then ‘perhaps some criminal actions are dangerous to the State because they are morally wrong, rather than are wrong simply because they are dangerous to the State’ [74]. (Besides, if societal benefit through deterrence becomes the end of punishment, then the State becomes absolute. So could not one be punished simply to benefit the State without having done anything morally wrong?) Therefore, utilitarian theories inadequately answer the question, “for what offence?”

Moberly continues, ‘[punishment] can neither be understood without reference to morals nor can it be governed simply and solely by moral standards’ [92]. It cannot be limited to moral standards because retributive theories inadequately answer the question, “to what end?” If the end of punishment is simply (retributive) justice, then the ‘belief in an equation between the amount of crime and the amount of punishment has no real foundation in the principle of retribution. The demand for exact mathematical equality between crime and punishment is easily shown to be impracticable if not meaningless; but it is anyhow misconceived. It is a clumsy attempt to express in quantitative terms the principle that the moral basis of punishment is justice’ [92]. (He later likens this with the difficulty of quantifying happiness in utilitarian theories [160-161].) ‘The real moral obligation concerns verdict rather than sentence, condemnation rather than punishment’ [94].

(Incidentally, he notes that society has an obligation to punish: ‘To refrain from punishing would be to act like a complaisant money-lender, who encourages his victim to plunge deeper and deeper into debt’ [111]. This seems particularly pertinent in light of our current economic woes.)

So why punish? Moberly first notes a distinction between impersonal and personal punishment. Punishment can be meted out (dispassionately) simply to vindicate the moral order or to effect the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Whereas the former might fail to allow the offender to rue the error of his ways, the latter might treat the offender simply as a means to a societal end. Both are impersonal and therefore tantamount to outlawry. (Outlawry is not only exclusion from society but also from the dignity of being human in whatever way a society bestows that dignity. Guantanamo Bay provides a contemporary illustration.) ‘But, so long as the way of expiation [moral reform] remains possible, it should always be preferred; to resort to outlawry would be a confession of failure’ [120]. Moral reform, therefore – or at least the possibility thereof – is the reason to punish. After all, might not society best benefit from the moral reformation of the offender?

It follows that Moberly resists the temptation to classify criminals as wholly bad (and, by extension, the rest of us as wholly good) [134, 221, 231]. There must be something that can be redeemed, and since this is character (of which crime is an expression), Moberly resists the further temptation to split criminal from crime. ‘If retributive justice consists in giving man his due, it is he and not any of it that must be at the centre of the picture’ [165 (italics in original)]. So a balance needs to be struck between a detailed (but juristically inefficient) process, which takes into account the character of a man, and one that is less detailed (although more efficient) but prone to inaccuracy.

With all this in mind, Moberly proposes that punishment should be ‘a kind of inverted sacrament.’ [208 (italics in original)]. So what ‘is “just” or “fits the crime” or “serves the culprit right”’ means ‘it is designed to symbolize, and it is felt to symbolize, the two-fold retribution inherent in the situation, the moral deterioration which is automatic, and the counter-stroke which is obligatory. Such punishment is “retributive” in the sense that, in some, very rough, symbolic way, it depicts the true retribution of the crime. The likeness may be extremely crude, partial and remote; but unless some likeness is recognizable, the punishment can hardly be accepted as just’ [205]. Such punishment only ever remains symbolic because crime and punishment ‘are evils of different orders. The one is spiritual evil, the other is temporal evil’ [206 (italics in original)]. ‘The two are never simply identical; they are always to be distinguished though they cannot always be divorced’ [212].

Thus the end of punishment is therefore ‘to destroy his will to evil by holding up a mirror before his eyes, in order that he might see himself as he truly is’ [207 cf. 133]. ‘Moral ruin is foreshadowed precisely in order that it may not be achieved’ [208 (italics in original)]. Punishment therefore symbolizes and limits inner consequences. Yet, ‘reclamation of the individual wrongdoer is not enough. Every crime has a social setting and social implications. For everybody’s sake, including his own, the attention of the offender should be drawn to these. He should be required to make what reparation he can for the social damage he has done’ [224]. So punishment invites both moral change and also its expression through reparation. Punishment thus also functions at a societal level (where it further serves as a deterrent and as an expression of moral indignation [209]).

‘I believe most of the familiar puzzles and controversies in the field of penal theory arise from a double failure. On the one hand, there is failure to appreciate that a punishment is intended to signify something of deeper moment than itself; on the other hand, there is failure to distinguish clearly the sign and the thing or things signified. The one is the error of the philistine, the other is the error of the romantic. The one tends to be blind, the other to be fanciful. The one is characteristic of the utilitarian, the other the retributionist’ [204].

POSTSCRIPT

Moberly is often cited in atonement debates. For example,

Christopher Marshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), 135-140

Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), 11-12

Garry Williams, ‘Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticisms’ in Derek Tidball, David Hilborn, and Justin Thacker (eds.), The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 174-177

Travis notes, ‘I think our disagreement [between himself and Williams] is more to do with terminology than with substance’ [11].

Virtue Reborn

2011-02-02T17:00:00.004Z

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn (London: SPCK, 2010), xiv + 258 pp.

To read Virtue Reborn is to subject oneself to metaphorical machine-gun fire. The same point is made over and over from a variety of texts, and the resulting spray can feel a little arbitrary, even if the individual bullets remain true.

Nonetheless, Wright presents a glorious vision of biblical virtue, which is captured in all its eschatological 3D, over and against the 2D of Aristotle. Whereas the telos (goal) of Aristotle’s arete (virtue) is simply eudaimonia (flourishing), the church is to “put on” the transformed image of God as it is in the new heaven and the new earth. And what we “put on” in faith by God’s grace will be. So whereas Aristotle locates the attainment of virtue in man, the Bible locates it in the gracious action of Son and Spirit. The goal of man is more than simply eudaimonia: it is to reflect God to creation (as royalty) and creation back to God (as priesthood).

Intriguingly, the word arete only appears in the New Testament three times, and in Paul never. Thus what Aristotle and Scripture might count as virtue varies. For example, humility rates highly in Scripture but not at all in Aristotle. Similarly evangelism, which ‘has something of the character of virtue … telling people the good news is habit-forming, and the habit is, like all Christian virtues, one that genuinely anticipates in the present time the life of the age to come, where celebration of Jesus’s rescuing, healing lordship will be unstinted and unending. At that point, of course, the royal and priestly vocations join up once more’ [199]. Again, these vocations are fulfilled in the transformed image of God, which is the goal of humanity.

But what are the steps to get there? Wright observes, ‘the pathway to that goal is the complete set of learned habits of life – of heart and body and especially mind’ [149 (italics in original)]. And he contrasts this with the (Christian) reduction of virtue to both rules and feelings (or spontaneity). Allow me to quote at length:

‘Thinking about what one ought to be doing is one of the key elements in virtue ethics, as opposed to schemes of ethics based either upon mere rules obeyed unthinkingly or upon “spontaneity” or “authenticity.” In the former case, you don’t need to think anymore once you’ve got the rules – but, like certain rugby players who have learned dozens of “formal” moves but have never really acquired a second-nature instinct for the game, you will be lost when a new situation arises for which the rules (the formal moves within the rugby game) provide no clear answer. In the latter case – spontaneity or authenticity – you shouldn’t think too hard (in fact, you shouldn’t really think at all), because what matters is what “comes naturally.” Paul does of course want the young Christians to develop to the point where, as mature followers of Jesus Christ, they will gradually find that the Christian habits of heart and life “come naturally.” But to get to that point they must learn to think, must be “transformed by the renewal of their minds,” and must then allow that transformation to inform and redirect their habits of life’ [150 (italics in original)].

My only reservation about this otherwise excellent book is Wright’s tendency to play feelings off against virtue, rather than to explore them as a possible mid-wife of virtue. Although he rightly holds to account the pervasive substitution of feeling for thinking in Western culture [134-135], he also writes that the fruit of the Spirit are ‘like the virtues, characteristics that need to be thought through, chosen with an act of mind and will, and implemented with determination even when the emotions may be suggesting something quite different’ [178].

To my mind, this suggests a substitution of thinking for feeling, so perhaps could be qualified by noting that such implementation can be learned because such emotions may be suggesting something quite different. (And on that I have posted here, here, and here.)

Sentiments as Culturally Constructed Emotions: Anger and Love in the Hebrew Bible

2011-01-29T17:08:00.006Z

Ellen van Wolde, ‘Sentiments as Culturally Constructed Emotions: Anger and Love in the Hebrew Bible’, Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008), 1-24

Van Wolde begins by noting that feeling states are ‘both psychobiologically universal and culturally specific’ [4]. ‘Whereas in Japanese and Chinese the different stages of growing pressure and attempts for control are extensively elaborated in the prototypical scenario of anger, the Hebrew Bible does not make mention of attempts to control anger, to keep it in the belly or chest or in another of the body's internal parts. On the contrary, anger seems always to have the instant effect of destruction’ [12].

Furthermore, Van Wolde notes that women are never the subject of anger in Hebrew scripture. (She understands the ascription of כעמ to Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 as sadness rather than anger.) Anger is hierarchically ascribed.

‘Culturally most representative is the view that anger is a sentiment that takes control of a person. Hence, the emotion itself is grammatically construed as the subject of action (e.g., אף חרה, fury burns): it is not said that the deity is angry, but rather that the deity’s rage is bursting; the king is not described as becoming furious, but rather the fury of the king is raging, or, a person is not burning of anger, but rather someone’s nose is burning with anger’ [13].

So ‘in modern cultures, an individual person is conceived of as the carrier of emotions, whereas in the Hebrew Bible it appears that the sentiment of anger is seen as “in charge”: it exerts control over a person’ [17].

Van Wolde then goes on to argue that this is also true of אהב, which Hebrew Lexicons tend to associate with the English verb “love”. However,

‘In the book of Genesis ... the verb אהב does not precede marriage or sexual intercourse, but is presented as a consequence of these events ... In Christian tradition the general view of what the acceptable sequence of actions is is first love, then sex. In the ancient biblical narratives, sex very often precedes love. The verb אהב designates, therefore, a different meaning from the English verb “love”’ [19-20].

Moreover, it ‘appears that it expresses a man’s love for a woman, not a woman’s love for a man’ [18]. It only appears in 1 Samuel 18:20 and 28 with a woman (Michal) as subject. But ‘Michal’s position as King Saul’s daughter places her in a hierarchically higher position than David, who at this stage of the book is a man of no consequence at all’ [22].

Therefore ‘the standard schema of English could be called romantic, whereas that of biblical Hebrew is not romantic, but presupposes hierarchic relationships between people of different positions and ranking. This may also explain the convention in the Hebrew Bible to use the verb אהב to express the relationship between God and human beings. In these useage events God always obtains the hierarchically higher, male position, while the people (or, metaphorically, the city or the land) take the lower, female position’ [21].

Van Wolde thus concludes,

‘Culturally accepted are only those instances of anger and love that start with and come from a person in a hierarchically higher position and are orientated towards someone in a lower position. These emotions are expressed in language as the sentiments of anger and love. Circumstances in which these emotions might have been directed upwards – starting with and coming from a person in a lower hierarchical position and orientated towards someone in a higher position – are considered inconceivable; that is to say, they are not construed as sentiment [23].

However, this overlooks Deuteronomy 6:5, where (according to the ESV), ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ The verb is the same, and Van Wolde’s schema somewhat suspect in this respect at least.

Glorifying Glory

2010-10-20T08:10:00.001+01:00

Fantastic stuff from Ron can be found here.

How Horror Helps Us See Ourselves

2010-07-14T23:08:00.004+01:00

This is an amalgam of two previous posts.

Here I wrote,

During my counselling training we did a role-play in which someone recently diagnosed with HIV sought counselling. As the therapist in this scenario the client asked me whether I had HIV too. So I said, “I think you are trying to identify with someone.” But what I should have said is, “I think you are trying to identify with me.” This requires courage.

Transference is that which the client brings (or transfers) – consciously or otherwise – to their relationship with the therapist. And this client’s concern that I identify with them revealed their (natural) need for intimacy. The client had transferred this need onto the therapist: me.

But I had failed to step outside of the transference, and to name it for what it was. I failed to cross this boundary. I was afraid of the client’s attempt to connect with me. I was afraid of intimacy with an HIV sufferer. (Perhaps I was afraid of catching HIV?)

And here I referred to “phantasies” as ‘unconsciously scripted stories that we play out.’ So ‘the zombie, if you recall, represents the phantasy that others will persecute us. That is, the fantasy of the zombie represents the phantasy of paranoia.’

My response to the former (HIV client) could be seen to be an example of zombie paranoia or xenophobia. I was afraid of being infected, of being devoured by the other. So when we fail to identify with the stranger, awareness of our prejudices might actually be the first step in deciding whether to embrace them or not. Although we would be wise not to embrace someone who might actually devour us, we would be equally unwise to let unexamined prejudices run riot.

Such (unexamined) prejudices mean we might live as if in some zombie apocalypse. Whereas we might see others as zombies, we might be seen to be vampires. But note two areas where vampire mythology (in this instance) requires qualification.

First, rather than drink the (infected) blood of the other, our survival seems to depend on killing the other, or, at least, on making sure that we do not connect. (Yes, we kill by failing to hold or to affirm the other). We are better, more beautiful, more worthy than the other. Thus independence (albeit of the sociopathic variety) is a vampiric virtue.

So unconsciously or not, we prefer to “live” like the vampire rather than some diseased zombie. Way better, right?

Wrong. We are no more beautiful and no less diseased from God’s point of view. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” [Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)]. The vampire is no more than a romanticized zombie, and the zombie a projection of our true self onto the other. Such denial about ourselves brings me to my next point.

Second, although vampires tend to know no fear, paranoia and xenophobia are driven by it. But this should not disguise an important parallel. Zombies lack higher brain functions, and vampires are said to have no souls. Therefore both manifest emotional dysfunction. This parallel is not insignificant. If vampires tend not to fear their victims, then perhaps it is because they are in denial about their fears. And it is precisely such denial that drives paranoia and xenophobia in the first place, leaving prejudices unexamined.

Horror helps us to see ourselves as we truly are. Although zombie and vampire mythology can give us a language to describe our sin, only God can transform us to see ourselves as we truly are. Only God can help us become more a blessing to others, and less a curse.

Summer Reading

2010-07-08T18:54:00.003+01:00

Copious travel this summer has enabled me to plough through four novels.

Frederick Buechner, Son of Laughter (New York: HarperCollins, 1993)

John Updike, Rabbit, Run (London: Penguin, 1964)

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (London: Virago, 2004)

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (London: Faber and Faber, 1984)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being begins by surmising that what returns in life is heavier than what does not return. This is personified by Tomas’ relationships. His one night stands are light, but his relationship with his wife, to whom he keeps returning, is heavy. But what is better? Heavy or light?

The answer, it seems, is love. Love is more weighty than lightness, but lighter than heaviness. Love is lighter than politics – exemplified by Russia’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia – but heavier than having a mistress – exemplified by Sabina. Love is what redeems Tomas’ seeming shallowness, and subverts the heaviness of Russian occupation.

Love is like Bud Lite.

Updike’s Rabbit, Run makes an interesting foil for Robinson’s Gilead, since both are set in late fifties America. In itself, the former paints a disturbingly real picture of male irresponsibility through Updike’s lush impressionistic prose. But Rev Eccles’ attempt to win Harry Angstrom contrasts sharply with (Rev) John Ames overtures to Jack Boughton in Gilead. Ames’ jealousy for his wife Lila, whom he suspects of being subject to Boughton’s advances, and his subsequent forgiveness of Boughton capture the depth of his character. Where there is no redemption for Rabbit (Angstrom), there is for Ames.

Last but not least, Buechner’s retelling of Jacob’s story in Son of Laughter is nothing short of masterful. Whereas his English prose captures the concrete earthiness of the Hebrew thereby transporting the reader into an alien world, Jacob’s questions, doubts, and flaws remain all too familiar, perhaps even comforting for those of us with similar inclinations. Genius.

To Change The World

2010-06-09T22:14:00.018+01:00

James Hunter Davison, To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in The Late Modern World, (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 358 + x pp.

ESSAY I

‘Christians from many different traditions tend to believe that cultures are shaped from the cumulative values and beliefs that reside in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. The means and ends of world-changing, they argue, are to change the hearts and minds of enough people that the social order will finally come to reflect the values and beliefs that they hold. This is why Christians often pursue social change through evangelism (and conversion), civic renewal through populist social movements, and democratic political action (where every vote reflects values). The evidence of history and sociology demonstrates that this theory of culture and cultural change is simply wrong ...’ [274].

It won’t work, so argues James Davison Hunter. And this is why.

Since a worldview consists of ideas, changing one or the other is not sufficient to change the world. Why else does the worldview of most Americans contain some faith commitment, and yet American culture is essentially secular [19]? For one, culture cannot be reduced to ideas [34-35]. ‘Ideas do have consequences in history, yet not because those ideas are inherently truthful or obviously correct but rather because of the way they are embedded in very powerful institutions, networks, interests, and symbols’ [44].

Hunter also contends that culture is hierarchical such that change is necessary at the centre [41-43], whereas Christians tend to exist at the periphery [87-90]. ‘On the one hand, populism is organic to American Christianity, yet on the other, populism is, in some ways, at odds with what we know about the most historically significant dynamics of world-changing’ [94].

And when culture does change such as the change Christianity wrought on the Roman Empire, ‘persistence over time is essential; little of significance happens in three to five years’ [43].

ESSAY II

Moving from the first of three essays to the second, Hunter describes the paradigms of cultural engagement exemplified by the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and neo-Anabaptists. These are, respectively, “defence against” secularisation, “relevance to” (deal with) exploitation, and “purity from” violence (both physical and institutional). In each, power is conceived in terms of political power (rather than love), which is part of a wider cultural tendency towards the politicization of public life [102-106]. Hunter first argues that this is a category mistake.

‘It is true that laws are not neutral. They reflect values. But laws cannot generate values, or instill values, or settle the conflict over values. The belief that the state could help us care more for the poor and the elderly, slow the disintegration of traditional values, generate respect among different groups, or create civic pride, is mostly illusory. It imputes far too much capacity to the state and the political process’ [171]. If anything, values have become political slogans [172]. The net effect is that Christians across the board have defined themselves negatively, by what they stand against rather than constructively as a cultural blessing [172-174].

So second politicization is counterproductive. ‘The tragic irony is that in the name of resisting the dark nihilisms of the modern age, Christians – in their will to power and the ressentiment that fuels it – perpetuate that nihilism. In so doing, Christians undermine the message of the very gospel they cherish and desire to advance’ [275].

Allow me to quote Hunter at length.

‘It is essential, in my view, to abandon altogether talk of “redeeming the culture,” “advancing the kingdom,” “building the kingdom,” “transforming the world,” “reclaiming the culture,” and “changing the world.” Christians need to leave such language behind them because it carries too much weight. It implies conquest, take-over, or dominion, which in my view is precisely what God does not call us to pursue – at least not in any conventional, twentieth- or twenty-first century way of understanding these terms.

‘Two of the three leading political theologies of the church today are rooted in such language. The third political theology is, ironically, just as beholden to this language, for its frame of reference and its defining characteristic is the rejection of Constantinian forms of engagement. The very nature of the third political theology, in other words, is the mirror opposite of the first two – it opposes all forms of Constantinianism while being dependent on it for its self-understanding’ [280 cf. 168].

(Allow me a short excursus. In his assessment of neo-Anabaptists Hunter notes a distinction between the “soft” power of symbols, which defines reality, and “hard” power [178]. At its extreme “soft” power becomes Orwellian Newspeak, and what Zizek calls symbolic violence, Slavoj Zizek, Violence (London: Profile, 2008). Hunter then argues that ‘only by narrowing an understanding of power to political or economic power can one imagine giving up power and becoming “powerless”’ [181 (italics in original)]. This is because power is ubiquitous, as in the case of “soft” power. Thus neo-Anabaptists are at best “passive-aggressive” [164], and at worst deluded in their quest for powerlessness.

But do Anabaptists frame the issue this way? Are their understandings of powerlessness not self-consciously restricted to “common-sense” notions of non-violence? If so, then the distinction between “soft” and “hard” power that Hunter gives with his right hand, is taken away by his left hand in his representation of neo-Anabaptists. Ironically, he accuses postmodernists of failing ‘to make distinctions in the types of power and the layers of meaning that human beings impute to their own lives, relationships, and circumstances’ [107]. So if his elision of “hard” into “soft” power is an anthropological move, then is Hunter guilty of “anthropologization”, and ironically so, because he accuses neo-Anabaptists of politicization at this point? And if here, then where else in his argument does he “anthropologize”? Excursus over.)

Hunter continues, ‘Politics is just one way to engage the world and, arguably, not the highest, best, most effective, nor most humane way to do so. This does not mean that Christians shouldn’t “vote their values” or be active in political affairs’ [185]. Rather, ‘There are innumerable opportunities not only in art, education, the care for the environment, and the provision of relief for the widow, orphaned, and sick, but in the market itself to engage the world for the better’ [186]. Perhaps more of our energies would be better invested there.

Generally, then, the church responds to the wrong problem (secularization, exploitation, or violence) in terms of the wrong solution (political power). Important as these problems are, Hunter argues that the big problems of our age are difference – the problem of the “other” – and dissolution – the dissolution of the relation between word and world.

‘By misreading the nature of the times and by focusing so much energy and resources on politics, those who have claimed the mantle of leadership have fixed attention on secondary and tertiary problems and false solutions. By admonishing Christian lay people for not, in effect, being Christian enough, they shift responsibility for their own failures onto those they lead’ (by admonishing them to be better Christians) [226].

ESSAY III

In contrast to these three paradigms, Hunter suggest engagement with the world through “faithful presence within” [238-254]. His point of departure in this third and final essay is Jesus, from whom two things follow.

‘The first is that incarnation is the only adequate reply to the challenges of dissolution; the erosion of trust between word and world and the problems that attend it. From this follows the second: it is the way the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ and the purposes to which the incarnation was directed that are the only adequate reply to challenge difference’ [241 (italics in original)].

Here, I believe that Hunter’s second point would benefit from a dash of pneumatology.

That aside, these are the foundation for God’s faithful presence, which enable our faithful presence to him and to each other (Christian or otherwise). ‘Though we are irreducibly different from him and, in our sin, irreducibly estranged from him, he does not regard us as either “danger” or “darkness”’ [243]. And so we must not regard others like this. ‘That power will be wielded is inevitable. But the means of influence and the ends of influence must conform to the exercise of power modeled by Christ’ [254 (italics in original)]. Allow me to highlight three points about faithful presence.

First, we are to love. Faithful presence is all about shalom and relationships [227-230, 244, 263]. So ‘what is required here is not a new ministry or a new program’ [270]. Second, it therefore gives space to both affirmation and antithesis (in contrast to the emphasis on antithesis in other ways Christians engage the world) [231-236]. It enables us to encourage the good, but challenge the bad. Third, faithful presence is also about purpose and fulfilling the creation mandate.

‘Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community; the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia; the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself’ [234-235].

Nonetheless, the creation mandate remains. Indeed, ‘when people are saved by God through faith in Christ they are not only being saved from their sins, they are saved in order to resume the tasks mandated at creation, the task of caring for and cultivating a world that honors God and reflects his character and glory’ [236].

Hunter finally concludes with a number of concrete examples [267-269], by which ‘it is possible, just possible, that they will help to make the world a little bit better’ [286].

Overall, this is a stimulating book but one in which it is not always easy to differentiate between Hunter and the neo-Anabaptist view he criticizes. Although he acknowledges both agreement (on the church as polis) [283] and disagreement (on the theology of work, or lack thereof) [249-250], I wondered whether Hunter was caricaturing neo-Anabaptists somewhat – or focussing on self-caricatures thereof – in order to make his points. Either way, this reservation does not detract from a very worthwhile read.

Ten Thoughts on Suffering

2010-06-03T03:56:00.004+01:00

1. Theodicy? When we ask why God allows suffering in our lives, we are in danger of allowing the question to determine our thinking. We must not assume that God is the sole agent of suffering, nor must we assume that the suffering in question is solely ours. Let us take the first assumption first.

2. Control? If we elide God’s allowing suffering into his controlling it, the danger is that control becomes my crutch. So whenever I experience suffering, I may diminish human and natural causes, comforted that God is in control. He becomes the sole agent of suffering. (As such I wonder whether there is any negative correlation between stronger forms of Calvinism and social activism. The stronger the Calvinism, the lesser the social activism?) Granted, God is sometimes the sole agent of suffering (such as the the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5:1-11], but this is not always so (see point 7 here).

3. Agency? Therefore the verb that we choose to describe God’s relation to suffering needs to be chosen wisely. I will settle on God “using” suffering, although I am not suggesting that the means [suffering] justifies the ends [what God does]. By “using” I mean something more akin to the Hebrew bara’, which one could translate as “graces” – God “graces” suffering. He creates something that could not emerge by itself from what went before [Isaiah 65:17-18].

4. Jesus. Nor must we assume that suffering is solely ours, as if suffering is one thing and God another. (This is the second assumption.) Such raw paradox can lead to individualism – it’s all about my suffering. But if we begin with Jesus, then the issue of God and suffering is not just about me. Indeed, insofar as the incarnation is dialectical in nature, the paradox takes a dialectical shape. That is, we see suffering-in-God and God-in-suffering.

5. Dialectic. We see suffering-in-God insofar as the Son becomes flesh, and suffers with us, for us and in our place (see points 1, 2, 3, and 6 here). We also see God-in-suffering because God uses the life and death of Jesus to bless the world.

6. Glory. God not only uses Jesus’ suffering for his glory but also our suffering too. This is because the death and resurrection of Jesus releases the Spirit. And the Spirit enables us to be refined through suffering to become his glory. Thus rather than ask why God allows suffering in our lives, perhaps we should be asking why God allows life (through his Spirit) in our sufferings.

7. The Fall. After all, Christ suffered because Adam fell, and because in Adam all fall, all subsequently suffer. So suffering is the norm. (We may never know why God allowed Adam to fall beyond knowing that love entails the possibility of rejection, and therefore also Adam’s rejection of God. But we trust that fall or no fall God’s created purposes for us in Christ still stand.)

8. One Another. God allows life in our sufferings so we can give life to those around us. (This is part of God’s created purposes for us in Christ.) The Spirit is given to be given. (Since John 20:22-23 suggests that receiving the Spirit enables us to forgive others, and since John 20:23-25 suggests that forgiving is witnessing, does this not suggest that the Spirit is given to us to be given to others through us?) So it is not all about my suffering, and it is certainly not all about my blessing. It is about one another.

9. Like Christ. Giving life to those around us involves character. Thus we forgive when persecution evokes anger, or we display courage when it evokes fear. (In other words, giving life flows from our faithfulness to Christ, because of his faithfulness to his Father and to us.)

10. The Answer? So what is God’s answer to suffering? Christ, and in him, us.

The OC: A Christological Approach

2010-05-28T02:06:00.006+01:00

I’m sitting in a cross-cultural training seminar in the middle of nowhere. I’m told that missionaries who have microwaves in third-world countries might meet resistance from members of their team, who believe that missionaries should not have microwaves. “Why would anyone interfere with someone else’s home life?” someone asks. “Because they haven’t resolved their Oedipus Complex,” I’m thinking.

(One way to think about the Oedipus Complex is to say that it is the difficulty a child has in coming to terms with the exclusivity of their parents’ relationship. Unless a child comes to terms with this fundamental boundary, so the theory goes, then they will struggle with boundary issues throughout their life.)

I’m bored out of my skull, so do I say this out loud? Probably not. The atmosphere’s too conservative. But it does give me something to ponder for the rest of the session.

Could Jesus have worked through the Oedipus Complex?

Now, let me be clear: I am not asking whether the Oedipus Complex is true or not. I am simply asking whether it is possible that Jesus had it. I am asking about the possibility not the actuality.

Two questions come to mind. First, is it even appropriate to use psychodynamic categories of Jesus? Second, and if so, does this particular category – the Oedipus Complex – implicate Jesus in sin? (To caricature, is it bad to say that he wanted to sleep with his mother? This got me thinking: would an imaginatively titled book on this issue sell reasonably well?)

Anyway, first thing’s first. Is it appropriate to use psychodynamic categories of Jesus? If Jesus is fully human then absolutely so. But we should not reduce talk of Jesus to psychodynamic categories. Such categories could never contain his divinity.

Second, does the Oedipus Complex implicate Jesus in sin? Not, I believe, if we construe the Oedipus Complex in terms of temptation. After all, ‘we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin’ [Hebrews 4:15 (ESV)].

The Oedipus Complex is the desire, the temptation to enter what should not be entered. This then suggests that the Oedipus Complex could be part of the created order, since temptation is part of that order. One need look no further than Genesis 3 for evidence of this.

Moreover, Luke writes, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man” [Luke 2:52]. What is wisdom other than the virtue of discerning boundaries? (I have posted on wisdom elsewhere.) Indeed, a psychodynamic sine qua non for the beginning of wisdom might be the fear of the father (Joseph) when tempted (albeit unconsciously) to enter into his relationship with the mother (Mary). Again, this is not to reduce biblical categories to psychodynamic ones, for it also remains fundamentally true that ‘the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom’ [Psalm 110:10].

So if we understand that Jesus was filled with the Spirit throughout his life, and that the Spirit enabled him not to sin, then my suggestion is that Jesus could have been enabled to come to terms with Oedipal temptation (albeit unconsciously), all the while without sin. But to say that this is possible is, of course, not to say that it is true. The truth or otherwise of the Oedipus Complex remains for another post.

Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ

2010-02-19T19:01:00.001Z

John G. Turner, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 304 pp.

Turner – an assistant professor at the University of South Alabama – perhaps provides the most succinct account of his own work.

‘While I respect Campus Crusade for boldly and aggressively pursuing its objectives, I also highlight the ministry’s periodic anti-intellectualism, its infatuation with large crowds and statistics, and the messy ways [Bill] Bright [Crusade’s founder] connected his mission to partisan politics. I do not render any judgment on the merits of Crusade’s theology or mission; in any event, readers’ opinions will likely hinge on their own relationship to that theology and mission.

‘When I began this project, I knew little about Bill Bright, who emerges in the following pages both as a hard-nosed autocrat and as a tenderhearted evangelist. When Bright practiced evangelism, he evidenced a patient concern for individuals, a concern frequently displayed to the members of his staff. As Crusade’s president, on the other hand, Bright brooked no deviation from his vision, drove his followers to exhaustion, and questioned their loyalty when they questioned his decisions. More so than previous studies of Campus Crusade, I shed light on Bright’s “feet of clay”: the demanding nature of his leadership, his missteps, and his organizational hubris. Like most evangelical leaders, Bright felt the tug of conservative politics. Through a mixture of confusion, naïveté, or misdirection he never admitted the rather obvious political implications of his activities and rhetoric. Yet despite such faults, it was impossible to complete this project without admiring Bright’s persistence and, on balance, the fealty of his commitment to evangelism. At a time when scandal and hypocrisy are once more tarnishing evangelicalism’s public image, Bright’s authenticity is noteworthy, as is Crusade’s positive history of financial stewardship. His transparent commitment to his faith and to evangelism inspired tens of thousands of individuals – in the United States and abroad – to join his Crusade.’

Attachments

2010-01-27T15:56:00.025Z

Tim Clinton and Gary Sibcy, Attachments: Why You Love, Feel and Act the Way You Do (Brentwood: Integrity Publishers, 2002), 318 pp.

I usually resent so-called “self-help” books as they almost always collapse into selfism, whereby the self is sufficient to resource itself, and they often lack academic underpinnings, to boot.

But Attachments is different. First, the authors note that the self is not all sufficient, rather requiring God for healing. And second, the book follows its namesake “attachment theory.” If you recall, this arose from Mary Ainsworth’s empirical work in psychology [25-29]. (And both resonate with Melanie Klein’s psychodynamic approach to counselling, on which I have posted here.)

The quality of our caregivers as infants contributes to us either tending towards a positive or negative view of ourselves and a positive or negative view of others. This results in four different attachment styles. Page 24 contains the following diagram:

Secure Attachment Style POSITIVE SELF/POSITIVE OTHER	Avoidant Attachment Style POSITIVE SELF/NEGATIVE OTHER
Ambivalent Attachment Style NEGATIVE SELF/POSITIVE OTHER	Disorganized Attachment Style NEGATIVE SELF/NEGATIVE OTHER

First, a secure attachment type (top left) tends to be comfortable expressing strong negative emotion, secure in the knowledge that such expression is ultimately constructive rather than destructive [179].

Second, an avoidant attachment type (top right) tends to be averse to intimacy (even if desired), substituting it for misplaced attachment to things and success. (After all, things and success cannot reject you like people can.) Emotion also tends to get shut down, making decisions more difficult [181]. (How can there be gut decisions, when the gut is being suppressed?)

Third, an ambivalent attachment type (bottom left) tends to grasp at intimacy, suffocating relationships. (I guess, by lacking good, the good of the other is sought instead.) ‘They have difficulty setting boundaries with others and may often confuse themselves (i.e., their goals, desires, wants, needs, etc.) with those of others’ [180]. Moreover, whereas an avoidant attachment type tends to over-regulate emotion, an ambivalent type tends to under-regulate it [180].

So ‘those with ambivalent attachment might also have difficulty making decisions, but for the opposite reason. Their actions are constantly changing. One moment they might feel an action is right, and in the next they change their minds’ [181].

And fourth, a disorganized attachment type (bottom right) tends to manifest symptoms of both avoidant and ambivalent attachment styles.

Further, our experience as an infant affects our relationship with God [154-156]. So, ‘What is required to cultivate a more secure attachment with God?’ [163]. The authors’ answer is disciplines, and they make two qualifications.

First, ‘rules without relationship lead to rebellion’ [164].

Second, discipline ‘may produce uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, depression, irritability, and intrusive memories about bad past events, particularly for those who have a history of abuse and other trauma’ [164]. (To my mind, the latter can fuel the former – relationship – by causing us to wrestle with God.)

Such disciplines include: scripture; solicitude; silence; simplicity; secrecy; simple prayer; and meditation. (In addition, I would have preferred to see a stronger communal aspect – although it is noted that ‘solicitude can be especially powerful for those with ambivalent and disorganized attachment styles’ [167]. This is because it can address the fear of abandonment.)

So particular disciplines can have a particular impact upon particular attachment types; for example: since ‘solicitude literally dismantles defences,’ care should be taken with disorganized attachment styles so that repressed memories do not come flooding back [168]. As such, the authors’ recommend the practice of waking up in the middle of the night to meet with God. That way, one has the comfort of home.

Or again, silence can neutralize the narcissism of the avoidant attachment type. This is because there is literally nothing to fuel their ego. They can also be encouraged to silence their tongue in order to listen, and therefore connect better with others.

The penultimate chapters begin by exploring emotions. ‘Anger is a natural response to finding one’s attachment figure unavailable’ [219]. But ‘when we disavow our raw emotions, we deny that Christ is powerful enough to help us deal with them honestly’ [266]. So an ambivalent attachment type might suppress – or even repress – anger with guilt about being angry. This is because such anger runs the risk of rejection, reinforcing the belief that they are not good enough for others. (Page 184 contains a table of how primary emotions often relate to secondary ones, like anger to guilt in my example.)

Subsequent chapters then explore: marriage – ‘the key to the success and longevity of marriages is not if but how couples fight’ [211 (italics in original)]; parenting – avoidant parents rein in ‘their children’s emotional expressions, [and] ambivalent parents fence in their children’s attempts at autonomy and independence’ [244]; and, finally, what it takes to change.

This last chapter looks at how our past stories can distort our interpretations of relationships now, and how our past stories (and present interpretations) require reframing. The chapter ends with some thoughts on forgiveness, but could be improved by more attention to how ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles might distort forgiveness.

The "Real" World

2010-01-17T17:24:00.018Z

THEOLOGY

This is the third of three posts.

It is not that experience of the “real” world has no value for the theologian, minister, or missionary.

I did not feel that it was right for me to pursue a doctorate in theology without first gaining some experience of the “real” world. So I worked in publishing for several years. Now I may never get the opportunity because there are now other important things in life – such as marriage and DIY (hence the rather sparse blogging as of late!)

Or to give another example, a former colleague of mine lamented his minister who encouraged his congregation to have a significant “quiet time” before work, without fully realising the implications for those who worked long hours.

But is hard to draw a strong boundary between the two. The issue is not theology or ministry, on the one hand, and experience of the “real” world, on the other. The “nine to five” is no less a place of ministry than the Sunday service. And both church and academy can be as cut-throat as any office.

So perhaps the issue is not so much where my experience lies as what my experience occasions. If this is so, and if experience is the mid-wife of wisdom, then wisdom matters more than experience.

(Again, in the last post we noted that celibate individuals can offer much wisdom to the married.)

Now, wisdom is about boundaries. ‘The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens’ [Proverbs 3:19 (ESV)]. God establishes the heavens by separating the waters [Genesis 1:6-8], and he founds the earth by gathering the waters under the heavens [Genesis 1:9-10]. Thus the heavens are a boundary between the waters, and there is an implicit boundary between the earth and the waters under the heavens.

Fundamentally, wisdom begins by knowing our place before God. ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom’ [Psalm 110:10 (ESV)]. To fear the LORD is at least to know that there is a line – a boundary – between us and him. (I have touched elsewhere on fear here and on wisdom here.) And pursuing a healthy boundary with God overflows into pursuing healthy boundaries with others.

Our skin illustrates the way in which boundaries work. It not only forms a boundary between us and the world but also connects us with the world. So if wisdom is about boundaries, then being wise is about pursuing good relationships, since relationships connect us. And good relationships require work. (I have posted on this here.)

Indeed, pursuing a good relationship can be as intimate and as hard work as wrestling.

Through the cross and resurrection of Christ, the Father sends his Spirit as an engagement ring that we might become who we were made to be. But we wrestle. We express our anger at God, our doubts, our despair yet we give thanks and we confess. We wrestle with God yet we fear him. And in the midst of this wrestling between very real sin and the God who enables us to really become his image, we become a blessing to others – by being “real”.

Put another way,

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real” [Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit].

Thus “real” is not about someone’s else world of which we lack experience so much as it is about the quality of relationship that we pursue both with God and with others.

So returning to the subtitle of this post – THEOLOGY – does a theologian live in the “real” world? Well, it all depends on the quality of relationships that we nurture with God and with others. And judging by some of the nastier comments posted on the blogosphere many do not nurture quality. (By “quality” I do not necessarily mean “nice,” but I certainly do not mean “nasty”.)

Perhaps the value in suggesting “real-world” experience to said perpetrators is that they might learn – and I emphasise “might” – that such comments do not get one far in life. They might learn the hard way that there are more constructive ways of suggesting X is an idiot.

This is the third of three posts.

The first noted that sometimes the “real-world” experience of a counsellor is questioned because their client has not come to terms with their own experience. Besides, the life-experience of the therapist (insofar as it resonates with the client) is largely irrelevant to the outcome of the therapy anyway.

The second suggested that this can be extended to ministry. So sometimes the “real-world” experience of the theologian, missionary, or minister is questioned because the questioner has not come to terms with their own experience. But this is not to say that life experience has no value.

And the third moved from experience to wisdom, to wrestling, to being “real,” arguing that wisdom takes precedence over experience, and that “real” is not about someone’s else world of which we lack experience so much as it is about the quality of relationship that we pursue both with God and with others.

The "Real" World

2010-01-15T15:40:00.010Z

MINISTRY

This is the second of three posts.

Given the last post, I wanted to consider an occasion recently when someone accused me of lacking credibility. This was because they did not believe that I shared their experience of the “real” world since I am in “ministry”. So they challenged me to get a “proper” job.

I am genuinely grateful that this person questioned the worth of my work. That takes balls, and the question should be asked regularly. (That said, I do not believe that this was the right person to answer that question).

So having thanked them for caring enough to raise the question, I admitted that I could not understand what they were going through. I meant this both in practice and in principle – “in practice” because I had not sat down with them long enough to listen to their story, and “in principle” because we are all existentially isolated. As Irving Yalom writes,

‘Existential isolation … refers to the unbridgeable gap between self and others, a gap that exists even in the presence of deeply gratifying personal relationships … While there is no solution to existential isolation, therapists must discourage false solutions. One’s efforts to escape isolation can sabotage one’s relationships with other people. Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation’ [Irving D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner: and Other Tales of Psychotherapy, (London: Penguin, 1991), 10-11].

(This raises a couple of interesting theological questions. Can God really know my own consciousness (like I know it) without destroying my otherness? Or is couching the question in terms of “knowing” a category-mistake, and categories like love and empathy more appropriate?)

But before I go on, I want to make two assumptions about the relation between professional therapy (as in the last post) and “paraprofessional” endeavours, which is how a professional therapist might see a theologian, minister, or missionary.

First, one can extend the following research-informed principle to paraprofessional endeavours. The life-experience of the therapist (insofar as it resonates with the client) is largely irrelevant to the outcome of the therapy. (I will qualify this in the third post later). In the meantime, this illustration will suffice: some of the wisest advice about my marriage has come from friends who remain single.

Second, one is not obliged to “do” therapy in a paraprofessional relationship. Therefore I did not qualify my statement that I could not understand what they were going through. So it meant very different things to each of us. To me it meant that no amount of life-experience would necessarily help me to help them. To them it sounded like I was agreeing.

But I do wonder whether this person wanted to use me as a shield against their own isolation. (I came to this conclusion after wondering whether this person was feeling isolated in the first place.) And if this were a therapeutic relationship, then I might explore this with them.

I would be concerned that they questioned my experience in order to feel better, when it is actually better for them to come to terms with their own experience instead. Or in terms of transference, this person’s demand that I identify with them revealed their (natural) need for intimacy. They had transferred this need onto the missionary: me.

But someone’s concern about the life-experience of the professional or paraprofessional to the neglect of their own well-being is not to say that experience of the “real” world is of no value. This is what the next post will begin to explore.

The "Real" World

2010-01-15T15:31:00.007Z

Has anyone ever told you – as a theologian, missionary, or minister – that you don’t live in the “real” world? Well if so, then read on. This is the first of three posts.

COUNSELLING

During my counselling training we did a role-play in which someone recently diagnosed with HIV sought counselling. As the therapist in this scenario the client asked me whether I had HIV too. So I said, “I think you are trying to identify with someone.” But what I should have said is, “I think you are trying to identify with me.” This requires courage.

Transference is that which the client brings (or transfers) – consciously or otherwise – to their relationship with the therapist. And this client’s concern that I identify with them revealed their (natural) need for intimacy. The client had transferred this need onto the therapist: me.

But I had failed to step outside of the transference, and to name it for what it was. I failed to cross this boundary. I was afraid of the client’s attempt to connect with me. I was afraid of intimacy with an HIV sufferer. (Perhaps I was afraid of catching HIV?)

So my failure aside, I want to suggest that exploring this transference is more significant than revealing my experience.

First, to reveal one’s life experience – or lack thereof – would mean that the opportunity to name and explore the transference is lost. But if by saying to them, “I think you are trying to identify with me,” they then conclude that they have not yet come to terms with their own isolation, some significant work has been done. And this work would have been missed otherwise.

(To put the point another way, perhaps they asked about my experience in order to feel better, when it is actually better for them to come to terms with their own experience instead.)

Second, research suggests that ‘matched therapist-client life experiences does not make much difference to outcomes’ [Mick Cooper, Essential Research Findings in Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Facts Are Friendly, (London: SAGE, 2008), 88]. So the life-experience of the therapist (insofar as it resonates with the client) is largely irrelevant to the outcome of the therapy anyway.

In the next post we will consider the implications of this for ministry.

Miroslav Volf on Human and Divine Memory

2009-11-12T15:51:00.003Z

This is the third of three posts on Miroslav Volf’s work on human and divine memory.

JESUS’ MEMORY

As an analogy to pistis christou (which can be translated as either “our faith in Christ” or “the faithfulness of Christ”), this post explores what could be called mneme christou (“our memory of Christ” or “Christ’s memory of us”). Let’s begin with Christ’s memory of us.

John locates this memory within divine forgiveness. When Jesus forgives Peter the fire at the scene [John 21:9] brings to mind the fire at Peter’s denial [18:18]. And the three questions to Peter [21:15-17] are reminiscent of his three-fold denial [18:17, 25-27]. John is at pains to point out that Jesus retains his memory of Peter’s sin.

On the other hand, Christ’s memory of us, including of our wrongdoing, makes possible our memory of him. That memory is kept alive in the present age through the eucharist, and in the age to come by the scars on his hands and side. (I have posted on Williams’ collapse of the latter into the former elsewhere.)

Moreover, since we are to forgive others as Jesus forgives us [John 20:21-23], and since the place of memory is in the context of forgiveness, Jesus’ memory of us, including of our wrongdoing, makes possible our memory of him, which, in turn, makes possible our memory of others’ wrongdoing. As Stanley Hauerwas puts it: ‘Christ is the memory that makes possible the memory of the wrongs we have done as well as that have been done to us’ [Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Why Time Cannot And Should Not Heal The Wounds of History But Time Has Been And Can Be Redeemed’ (Scottish Journal of Theology, 2000, 53: 33-49), 35]. This is possible because the memory of wrongs is transformed by the Spirit, and not negated. The Spirit empowers Christ to forgive us, and us to forgive others [John 20:21-23]. And in doing so, he transforms our memory of wrongs such that, like Jesus’ memory of Peter’s wrong, the issue of theodicy does not arise.

I cannot imagine that Volf would take issue with this, for elsewhere he writes, ‘Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a nail-pierced hand’ [Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 205 (italics mine)]. But it does beg the question: if the resurrection body of Jesus has wounds [John 20:24-31], won’t we (in the new world) remember what he was wounded for? So for Volf, presumably even the scars of Jesus fade over time.

Yet the absence of a christological crux in Volf’s argument leads to the conclusion that God will rather than might choose not to remember. Whereas the future of the former seems to be a negation of (our memory in) the past and present , the future of the latter is an affirmation of (our memory in) the past and present. What are the pastoral consequences?

Allow me to employ a second analogy. Certain kinds of “Christian” thinking seek only to save souls because they believe everything else is going to burn anyway. So if memory is going to burn anyway, then perhaps a certain kind of latent Platonism is evident in Volf’s work. Much like those certain kinds of Christian who lack a sufficient foundation for the transformation of the world now, Volf lacks a sufficient foundation for the transformation of memory now. The danger is that the lack of sufficient foundation for transformation leads to a lack of transformation, period. And this is not good news for pastoral practice, and the transformation of memory. ‘What protects us from our sin becoming the justification for our sinning all the more is not the hope that God will forget, but rather that we are able to remember forgiven sin’ [‘Why Time’, 42]. This is what we see in Christ’s forgiveness of Peter.

In sum, by displacing the work of Christ with divine non-remembrance, we become disengaged from the world because it is only through Christ that we are reconciled (or engaged) with the world. So insofar as we will choose not to remember the past from the future, the danger is that we will become disengaged from our own memories – and therefore from the world – now.

And displacing Christ also underestimates evil. Since our memories are tainted by evil, they require transformation and not negation. Volf reasons that since God’s action can only redeem the present, and past cannot be redeemed by theodicy, the past must ultimately be forgotten. Yet our memories – albeit of the past – are present memories, and therefore subject to God’s redemption. Such redemption changes our attitude to the past, rather than removing the past from memory.

So if indeed we choose not to remember one day, it will be a transformed memory that we allow to fade.

Miroslav Volf on Human and Divine Memory

2009-11-11T17:29:00.004Z

This is the second of three posts on Miroslav Volf’s work on human and divine memory.

DIVINE MEMORY

In the previous post Volf argues that we will forget. He then supports this contention by appealing to scriptures that suggest God forgets. The connection between God’s memory and our memory is an intriguing one. Before I explore this connection further, note how Volf appeals to Jeremiah 31:34, where God will, ‘forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more’; Isaiah 65:17, where ‘the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind’; and Isaiah 43:18, where God exclaims, ‘do not remember the former things; do not consider the things of old’ [Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 136].

Presumably the fact of divine non-remembrance guarantees human non-remembrance, much like Descartes’ God guarantees the continued existence of Descartes’ self. This is the ordo essendi. But in the same way that Descartes’ God is not the God of the Bible, so Volf’s appeal to scripture is in danger of falling short of this revelation.

This is because the Hebrew for “remember” (zakar) in each of Volf’s “proof” texts can also mean to “act on”. So when God remembers Noah in Genesis 8:1, it is not that God has forgotten that’s he’s left Noah out on the floodwaters in the ark, and then has suddenly remembered him. No, zakar here means that God acts on behalf of Noah. He does what Noah cannot do for himself. Similarly God does not act as Israel’s sin deserves.

And just in case you were wondering: although Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:5 that love ‘keeps no record of wrongs’, the Greek for not keeping a record is logizetai (“to take into account” or “compute”). So it is not so much that love forgets sin, as fails to take it into account. Perhaps we could say that it chooses not to compute them (which implies that the past is not forgotten).

In contrast to Volf, however, Rowan Williams makes a christological connection between divine and human memory. He argues that since there is no oppressor in Christ, we can trust God’s memory of our sin. He will not oppress us in his remembering.

‘“God” is that to which all things are present, so theology traditionally affirms: so through the mediation of God, all things can be made present to us again, present through his presence. The concept of God’s “memory” as holding or keeping open the past overthrows the delusion that our violence is final and irremediable. But what takes us further than this and ensures that the “memory” of God is a saving fact, neither a menacing nor a neutral one, is the conviction that God’s presence to the world is neither menacing nor neutral’ [Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: DLT, 2002), 17 (italics in original)].

And again,

‘“God is the ‘presence’ to which all reality is present”. So to be with God is to be (potentially) present to, aware of, all of one’s self and one’s past; which is why, as St John repeatedly reminds us, presence to God can be excruciating, and some will hate and reject the possibility’ [ibid., 29].

Although Volf’s position is not necessarily mutually exclusive with Williams, for God’s non-menacing, non-neutral presence to the world might one day result in divine “non-remembrance,” the absence of a christological crux in Volf’s argument leads to the conclusion that God will rather than might choose not to remember. Whereas the future of the former seems to be a negation of (our memory in) the past and present – a via negativa that we saw skew Volf’s interpretation of Romans 8:18 – the future of the latter is an affirmation of (our memory in) the past and present. (We will pick up possible pastoral fallout in the next post.)

Stanley Hauerwas makes the point forcefully.

‘God remembers because if God does not remember then God is not the timeful God we find in Israel and the cross and the resurrection of Christ. That God, the God of Israel, the God that raised Jesus from the dead, is the God that makes time, makes memory, possible … The problem with Volf’s non-remembering is … what it implies about God’s life. Consummation comes too close to a false eternity. God’s eternity is … not the simple contradiction of time … God makes possible all the time in the world to make our time, our memories, redeemed. Our time can be redeemed because time has been redeemed by Christ. That is why we do not need to deny our memories, shaped as they are by sin, but rather why we can trust memories to be transformed by forgiveness and reconciliation’ [Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Why Time Cannot And Should Not Heal The Wounds of History But Time Has Been And Can Be Redeemed’ (Scottish Journal of Theology, 2000, 53: 33-49), 42-43].

This christological connection is what I want to explore in the next post.

Miroslav Volf on Human and Divine Memory

2009-11-10T19:41:00.008Z

This is the first of three posts on Miroslav Volf’s work on human and divine memory.

HUMAN MEMORY

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf has recently written on memory [see Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996); and The End of Memory (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006)]. Although memory can provide a shield to protect us from wrongdoing [Memory, 19-35], Volf argues that evil will not come to mind after God’s Judgment [Memory, 131-151 cf. Exclusion, 131-140]. Note that Volf prefers ‘“non-remembrance” or, more precisely, “not-coming-to-mind”’ to forgetting because ‘memories of wrongs, rather than being deleted, will simply fail to surface in one’s consciousness – they will not come to mind’ [Memory, 145 (italics in original)]. After all, so Volf’s logic goes, none of us remember everything anyway, and since this not-remembering does not destroy our identity, not remembering evil in the age to come will not destroy our identity either.

So why non-remembrance? Because, for Volf, the past cannot be redeemed either by God’s present action or by human theodicy.

(A theodicy is a human attempt to justify God in the light of suffering. It is often employed to tackle the conundrum: if God is good perhaps he is not powerful enough to stop suffering, and if he is able-to-do-anything then perhaps he shows us his lack of goodness by not stopping suffering.

One popular way to “resolve” this conundrum is to say that everything – suffering included – happens for a God-ordained reason. The problem with this is that the Bible suggests otherwise. God himself says that Job suffers “without any reason” [Job 2:3]. Indeed, it is because suffering has no reason that God’s grace, which works in all things for the good of those who love him, is grace [Romans 8:28]. If suffering had a reason, then grace would be conditioned by it. It would no longer be grace because it would be no longer unconditional. The thrust of the Bible is that God justifies our sinfulness by his grace, not that we justify God by reasoning away suffering.)

Volf writes,

‘Since no final redemption is possible without the redemption of the past, and since every attempt to redeem the past through reflection must fail because no theodicy can succeed, the final redemption is unthinkable without a certain kind of forgetting’ [Exclusion, 135].

Let’s break that down phrase at a time. ‘Since no final redemption is possible without the redemption of the past.’ Volf explains, ‘Though action can do much about suffering in the present, it can do nothing about the past experience of suffering. When the tears have dried up and death and pain are no more, what will happen with the memories of the wounds suffered and of the inhumanity of those who inflicted them?’ [ibid., 134].

‘Every attempt to redeem the past through reflection must fail because no theodicy can succeed.’ Again, Volf explains, ‘Even in God’s new world, we will either have to look back and see “sense” by making the impossible claim that all suffering was justified, or be deeply troubled by the “non-sense” of evil’ [ibid.]

So the past cannot be redeemed by either God’s present action or by human theodicy. Therefore, ‘the final redemption is unthinkable without a certain kind of forgetting.’

‘“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). The logic is as simple as it is profound. If something is not worth comparing, then it will not be compared, and if it will not be compared then it will not have been remembered’ [ibid., 138].

Yet it seems to me that Paul connotes the present and not the future. The comparison is to be made now, and not in the future. And if so, Volf’s logic is redundant.

Moreover, there is something cartesian about Volf’s line of thought. Descartes, if you recall, attempts to flush the mind of everything he can doubt, until he is left with something he cannot doubt. Volf’s ordo cognoscendi (order of knowing) proceeds similarly. He suggests that memory will be flushed of all doubt (arising from failed theodicy) until non-remembrance leaves it with nothing to doubt.

But in the same way that Descartes cannot really doubt everything, for he at least remembers the language by which he formulates his argument, is it possible that we can really not remember anything from this life? It seems to me that total depravity implies that we cannot divide the world into discrete units of evil and non-evil, remembering the latter but not the former. The whole world is fallen. So since evil pervades every facet of life would we not need to not remember every facet of life for Volf’s argument to work? And if so, in the new world will we really never question where we came from, and – to draw a parallel with Descartes – where we learnt to speak?

In the next post we will turn from human to divine memory, and from Volf’s ordo cognoscendi to his ordo essendi (order of being).

Relationships As Workplace

2009-10-31T18:18:00.008Z

RELATIONSHIPS AS PLACE

David Harvey begins The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) by citing from Jonathan Laban’s Soft City. ‘To the ideology of the city as some lost but longed-for community, Laban responded with a picture of the city as labyrinth, honey-combed with … diverse networks of social interaction orientated to … diverse goals … “The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate in maps and statistics”’ [5]. The roles we play make the city what it is rather than vice-versa.

Now, without collapsing into Laban’s subjective individualism, I wish to draw on the insight that social interaction can be construed in spatial terms – as a city in Laban’s case. Indeed, I wish to deepen the scope of social interaction to that of relationships.

Whereas being introduced to a friend of a friend at a party is a social interaction, getting to know that person requires time. Time is a necessary ingredient for relationships. (Note, for example, The Relationship Foundation’s notion of continuity as a precondition for quality relationships – I will henceforth refer to The Relationships Foundation as the RF.) So whereas social interaction can be construed merely by spatial terms, relationships also require temporal terms. Relationships take time.

Similarly, during his final passover in the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to relationships in spatial terms [John 14:2-3]. Jerome Neyrey writes, ‘‘“Home” is not a physical building but a metaphor for a household and its relationships. Oddly, the disciples never go to the “many rooms” in the Father’s house; rather, God and Jesus “make their home” in the disciples’ [Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J., The Gospel of John (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 286 cf. 241]. So when Jesus talks about preparing a room, he is talking about preparing a relationship. More specifically, he is talking about preparing a relationship that continues his mission [John 20:21].

Thus what distinguishes the relationships that I have in mind from Laban’s social interaction are at least time and some sense of mission (or continuity and purpose, to again cite relational preconditions from the RF).

RELATIONSHIPS AS WORK

Relationships also require work (or preparation as Jesus puts it); and work – as every physicist knows – requires the transfer of energy. But despite such sentiments we have come to demarcate work from relationships. In The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber notes how production becomes an “iron-cage” – the foil to Laban’s soft city. Work is one thing, relationships another.

Even Bonhoeffer concurs. ‘Work plunges men into the world of things. The Christian steps out of the world of brotherly encounter into the world of impersonal things, the “it”’ [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (trans. John W. Doberstein, London: SCM 1954), 52]. He goes on to note that things are ‘an instrument in the hand of God for the purification of Christians from all self-centredness and self-seeking’ [Life Together, 53]. But so are relationships, especially those we need to work at.

So how far should we push this division between things and brotherly encounter?

Dan Allender recounts a conversation with a passenger on a plane, in which the passenger mentions that his children learnt to love from him. But it turned out that he and all his children were divorced. Allender’s point is that love might not come as naturally as we think it does. We need to work at love. We need to work at our relationships.

Although it is one thing to divide work from relationships, and another to fail to work at relationships, how far does the former fuel the latter?

Incidentally, I do not mean to infer that there was a halcyon era for relationships before the Reformation (from where Weber traces the rise of the “iron cage”.) Rather, Weber traces a particular set of conditions that could account for the breakdown of relationships since Genesis 3.

EXCURSUS: FREUD

As an aside, I wonder whether the psychoanalytic notion of “working through” arose as something of a corrective to relational negligence. “Working through” is a Freudian concept whereby the psychoanalyst uses their relationship with the client to recognize and overcome some defence mechanism [see, for example, M.J. Sedler, ‘Freud’s Concept of Working Through’ in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1983) 52:73-98]. Defence mechanisms (such as projection and repression) keep the lid on strong emotion resulting from the client’s failure to come to terms with some aspect of their own relational life.

Although much comparison of Freud and Weber concentrates on the connection between sublimation – Freud’s concept of coming to socially acceptable terms with strong emotion – and rationalization – Weber’s “iron cage”, seeing the former as a response to or even part of the latter; I would like to draw attention to the relationship between psychoanalyst and client. This is essential to psychoanalysis as the place of “working through” the client’s relationships.

Indeed, if the absence of work from love has been exacerbated by the protestant work ethic, then “working through” might actually be seen to be a corrective to this exacerbation. Note the change in architecture from Vienna’s Narrenturm asylum (1784) to the Steinhof Sanatorium (1907). This change reflects a development in the treatment of mental health corresponding to Freud’s innovations concerning relationships. Whereas the former is reminiscent of today’s residential tower blocks – detrimental to relationships: an “iron cage”, as it were – the latter was designed to nurture some semblance of community.

Of course, the weakness of this suggestion is that many of Freud’s clients came from high society, and one would have to link this social strata with the protestant work ethic, and the subsequent suffocation of relationships by work. Perhaps the protestant work ethic and its symptoms simply spread through society by some kind of osmosis. Weber himself notes that this happens between denominations. But even if my connection between Weber and Freud does not hold, Freud at least illustrates the point that relationships can be a place of work.

RELATIONSHIPS AS WORKPLACE

Today, the division between work and life – the “work-life balance” – seems most acute when relationships at work are poor. Many people leave their jobs because of poor relationships, regardless of how much otherwise they would enjoy the job itself; and many people persevere with less than satisfying jobs because of the quality of relationships around them.

‘Western newspapers constantly run articles on the ‘work-life balance’. But the term is misleading. The real issue isn’t stopping work taking over your life. Nor is the choice between earning money at work and having relationships at home. It’s managing the whole range of your relationships – in work and outside work – in a way that maximises outcomes’ [Michael Schluter and David John Lee, The R Option (Cambridge: Relationships Foundation, 2003), 28].

(Developing the same relationships in a variety of contexts, such as work and home, is another RF precondition for quality relationships known as multiplexity.)

But because the fruit of good relationships is not immediately quantifiable, relationships are not seen as a place of work. Again, the protestant work ethic might be exacerbating the myth that relationships just happen. Against this, I wish to suggest that the workplace is not necessarily the physical space of the office (or whatever). Rather, the place of work is primarily – or should primarily be – the relationships within which we find ourselves.

WORK AS RELATIONAL

This not only means that relationships require work, but also that our daily work impinges, for better or for worse, on those relationships. (Indeed, our work might also impinge on relationships in which we do not find ourselves, such is the nature of the global economy.) As the work of the RF demonstrates, our daily work is not relationally neutral.

GOD

This non-neutrality is not restricted to the “horizontal” dimension of relationships either, because the “horizontal”– our relationship with others – is related to the “vertical” – our relationship with God. So not only does work impinge on our relationship with God, but working on our relationships with others also requires working on our relationship with him. As Bonhoeffer puts it, since ‘we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ … spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ’ [Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 23].

Life Together

2009-10-28T20:43:00.004Z

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (trans. John W. Doberstein, London: SCM 1954), 96 pp.

ON VISION

‘Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely we must be overwhelmed by a great general disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves’ [15].

‘God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself’ [16].

ON PRAYER

‘Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts’ [17].

Since ‘we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ … spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ’ [23].

ON SCRIPTURE

Bonhoeffer recommends that we read large chunks of scripture together [36-37], and that we read them canonically. So ‘forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land. With Israel we fall into doubt and unbelief and through punishment and repentance experience again God’s help and faithfulness … And only in so far as we are there, is God with us today also’ [38 (italics in original)].

ON WORK

‘We cannot simply take it for granted that our work provides us with bread; this is rather God’s order of grace’ [54].

ON COMMUNITY

‘Listening can be a greater service than speaking’ [75].

‘Mutual, brotherly confession is given to us by God in order that we may be sure of divine forgiveness’ [91].

THAT SAID

There are a couple of things with which I beg to differ:

‘God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth’ [15]. I have written on God and the emotions elsewhere, like here and here.

‘He loves the sinner but he hates the sin’ [86]. I wonder whether this creates too great a gap between the sinner and their sin. Surely it is one thing to say that sin depersonalizes, and another to depersonalize sin by abstracting it from the sinner. Alex Tylee notes the consequences of the latter in Walking With Gay Friends: A Journey of Informed Compassion (Leicester: IVP, 2007 ). “Loving the sinner, but hating their sin” sends mixed messages, which can result in confusion. So why not simply say that God forgives us?

Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel

2009-10-27T01:29:00.004Z

Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: DLT, 2002), 144 pp.

In this deeply nuanced book, Rowan Williams offers ‘reflections on what the raising of the crucified and rejected Jesus does to the human spirit and imagination. Thus [he does] … not concentrate on questions of the exact historicity of the stories, but on the theological vision they proclaim’ [vii (italics are in original throughout)]. Before returning to the issue of historicity in the final chapter, Williams initially attempts ‘to show how the Christian proclamation of the resurrection of the crucified just man, his return to his unfaithful friends and his empowering of them to forgive in his name offers a narrative structure in which we can locate our recovery of identity and human possibility’ [43].

This narrative is not only ‘a paradigm of the “saving” process’ but also ‘an indispensable agent in the completion of this process, because it witnesses to the one personal agent in whose presence we may have full courage to “own” ourselves as sinners and full hope for a humanity whose identity is grounded in a recognition and affirmation by nothing less than God. It is a story which makes possible the comprehensive act of trust without which growth is impossible.’

And the story ‘makes possible the comprehensive act of trust’ because it witnesses to the presence of God as Christ the pure victim [7]. Here, much depends on the historicity of the narratives. ‘If certain facts were to be demonstrated about the life and character of Jesus, that he was a violent and exploitative personality, for instance, the symbol [of Christ’s transforming work] would be reduced to being only a convenient fiction, and its force would be very different’ [21].

As a foil to the non-violence of Jesus, Williams exposes violence (or oppression) on two fronts. First, violence diminishes the violent: ‘my oppressive and condemnatory role in fact wounds and diminishes me’ [6]. Second, the oppressed are not morally superior because they are oppressed, therefore this is not the reason why violence is wrong [10-11]. Rather, violence (or oppression) is wrong simply because it excludes, and since moral superiority excludes moral inferiority, moral superiority is itself oppressive (as, presumably, is any attempt to “measure” morality). Besides, the supposed-superior morality of the victim suggests that violence (or oppression) is a mistake (only?) when it fails to recognise this superiority. So ‘what, after all, is the definition of just or rightly-directed violence?’ [10].

In contrast, Williams notes that ‘God is not “with” the victim [Jesus] in order to make us victims; so the preaching of the resurrection affirms’ [11]. (The preaching of the resurrection is therefore ‘an invitation to recognize one’s victim as one’s hope’ [5].) This is possible because Christ is pure victim. Since there is no oppressor in Christ, we can trust God’s memory of our sin. He will not oppress us in his remembering.

‘“God is the ‘presence’ to which all reality is present”. So to be with God is to be (potentially) present to, aware of, all of one’s self and one’s past; which is why, as St John repeatedly reminds us, presence to God can be excruciating, and some will hate and reject the possibility’ [29].

‘“God” is that to which all things are present, so theology traditionally affirms: so through the mediation of God, all things can be made present to us again, present through his presence. The concept of God’s “memory” as holding or keeping open the past overthrows the delusion that our violence is final and irremediable. But what takes us further than this and ensures that the “memory” of God is a saving fact, neither a menacing nor a neutral one, is the conviction that God’s presence to the world is neither menacing nor neutral’ [17].

And in the same way that God is not with Jesus in order to make us victims, so God is not with us in order to make others victims.

‘This is how the cross can be made to serve an ideological purpose. God is identified with my cause, because he is identified with my suffering: the cross is the banner of my ego – or the banner of a collective ego. If I suffer I am in the right, because God “endorses” my pain … [But] the cross ceases to be an ideological weapon when it is recognised not only as mine but as a stranger’s; and it is a stranger … whom we meet on Easter morning’ [70-71].

But where is this stranger met? Or, more specifically, where is the body of Christ?

On the one hand, Williams rejects a strict identification of Christ’s body with the community [74]. ‘I don’t think we can make much sense of any of the stories unless we begin from assumptions about the empty tomb, and so about the possibility of God’s action in raising Jesus’ [vii cf. 96-97, 110]. And again, ‘for some at least, the encounter with the risen Jesus began as an encounter with a stranger. And this is one of the most important pieces of evidence counting against the suggestion that the risen Christ is to be seen as a projection of the community’s own belief, its sense of continuity with the identity of Jesus’ [75].

On the other hand, he refuses to separate Christ’s body from the community. This is precisely because the narratives are written by those who are being transformed, ‘the resurrection of Jesus, then, is not simply the raising and the restoration to the world of his past identity … Equally importantly, it is the “raising” of the past identity of those who have been with him’ [35]. Thus Jesus’ appearance to Thomas is not a standalone proof that can be abstracted from his reintegration into the community [94]. Indeed, ‘we might say that the apparitions have no meaning independently of the establishment of the community; and if this is so, there is no reason for any interest in the detail of these encounters for its own sake’ [109].

Williams, therefore, notes that such appearances eventually come to an end, and that John 20:29 ‘implies that a faith which can promptly detach itself from any need for apparitions is more mature than a faith which needs to “see”’ [94]. He also refuses to reduce the significance of the incarnation to the physicality of Jesus. Such significance also requires Jesus’ relational acts, which extend through the community [98-99]. (Again, the latter cannot be reduced to the former, because the former is pure victim, whereas the latter is not.)

So, where is the body of Christ? For Williams, it is located in the community, centred around the Eucharist [106-107]. The empty tomb is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the community to interpret its own experience of forgiveness as an encounter with the risen Christ [96-97]. The resurrection accounts are therefore to be interpreted as such.

This is a fascinating account of the resurrection, but one where I wish Williams’ exegetical criteria were clearer. Why so much faith in a non-violent Jesus and an empty tomb, but not in “literal” appearances of the risen Christ? To what extent has Williams’ wrought violence on the text – something that he humbly concedes? [107]. Maybe Williams has more faith than me. Maybe I am a Thomas in his schema. I need to know the empty tomb does not mean that Jesus has abandoned us to delusions of forgiveness. I need to know that someone, somewhere has touched his hands and his side.

In the Name of Jesus

2009-10-12T23:49:00.004+01:00

Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 118 pp.

AGAINST RELEVANCE

‘The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his own vulnerable self’ [30].

‘The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there’ [35].

‘The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus?’ [37]

‘It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow human beings, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word, and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness’ [43].

AGAINST POPULARITY

‘Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which “service” takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is being served, and be sure not to mix up the roles! But how can we lay down our life for those with whom we are not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life’ [61].

‘The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God’ [62].

‘How can priests and ministers feel really loved and cared for when they have to hide their own sins and failings from the people to whom they minister and run off to a distant stranger to receive little comfort and consolation? How can people truly care for their shepherds and keep them faithful to their sacred task when they do not know them and so cannot deeply love them?’ [65].

AGAINST CONTROL AND POWER

‘“In all truth I tell you
When you were young
you put on your belt
and walked where you liked;
but when you grow old
you will stretch out your hands
and somebody else will put a belt around you
and take you where you would rather not go.” (John 21:18)

… The world says, “When you were young you were dependent and could not go where you wanted but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way, and control your own destiny.” But Jesus has a different vision of maturity: It is the ability and the willingness to be led where you would rather not go … The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross’ [80-82].

Thrash is for Girls

2009-09-04T00:50:00.003+01:00

This is Laurence Fishburne.

However, I don’t want to write about Fishburne. I want to write about Ross, even though Ross and Fishburne do have one thing in common: whereas Laurence Fishburne plays a forensic scientist, Ross is a forensic scientist. And from what I can see Ross is a very well published forensic scientist.

One day Ross – a New Zealander living in London – was on holiday in Ireland, where he met a beautiful Estonian lady called Maarja. Now, Maarja was a Christian and Ross was not. Nonetheless they embarked on a long-distance relationship. And because she loved him, she prayed for him to meet Jesus.

Now it just so happened that Maarja’s flatmate worked for the Navigators. So she contacted Rob Wood in Southampton. Rob is the Director of the Navigators UK workplace ministry. And Rob contacted me. Got that? Ross went from Maarja to flatmate to Rob to me.

So one Sunday I met Ross in a Starbucks on Regent Street. We got chatting, and the conversation soon turned to faith and science. He’d just read Francis Collins' excellent The Language of God, and, quite coincidentally so had I. Ross assured me that he needed to deal with Jesus quite apart from Maarja’s interest, and that it was just a matter of time before he did.

The conversation began to wind down, and we started to talk about music. I found out that Ross was a guitarist in a thrash metal band. But, being a death-metal man myself, I always thought that thrash was for girls; and I blurted out as much. Ross then made some smart-arse comment about death metal. But I was already half way across the room and out the door.

Thrash is for girls.

(Some names and places have been changed, as has the ending.)

Roots

2009-09-02T23:59:00.005+01:00

Over the years I have been asked several times whether I am going to get ordained. And I have often found myself bemused: why would I? The roots of this only crystallized recently whilst reading a history of Saltisford Evangelical Church – where I grew up.

I am a Brethren boy.

(The picture, by the way, is of the late Nigel Lee whose family joined the church around the same time as my parents in the late 1970’s. He epitomizes Saltisford to me still. And he was never ordained.)

Consider this concerning the church in the nineteenth century:

‘Originally in the Brethren movement there would be no paid workers of any sort. Each Gospel Hall had its own “Elders” who carried the responsibility for the running of the church. Initially this Eldership would be formed from the laymen who started the church, then as time went on they would invite other laymen to join them’ [Don Franks, The Saltisford Story, 1999].

And this is not all that has shaped me.

‘The First World War 1914-1918 did bring some help to the beleaguered Church. Many of the men in Brethren Churches refused to bear arms and fight for their country. This was a criminal offence and the men concerned were sent to various prisons’ [9-10].

And more Conscientious Objectors would follow in the Second World War [14-15].

That said, I have spent about the same amount of time in the Anglican Church – about fifteen years or so, which has left me a firm believer in infant baptism. But that hiccup aside, I am still a Brethren boy at heart.

FairBanking: The Road to Redemption for UK Banks

2009-09-02T23:31:00.004+01:00

Antony Elliott, FairBanking: The Road to Redemption for UK Banks (London: Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, 2009), 60 pp.

Allow me to quote from Andrew Hilton’s preface:

‘This is not an “anti-bank” diatribe, though Antony genuinely believes that, for many financial institutions, their approach to customers is ethically indefensible. What it reflects is a belief that banks have a privileged position vis-à-vis their customers, particularly poorer customers, and that there is a moral imperative for them to work to improve the Financial Well-being of those customers’ [i].

‘What he proposes is a suite of simple products that would go a long way to enabling customers to get a much better handle on their finances – to their benefit and the benefit of their families, and to the benefit of the financial institutions that offer such products’ [i].

Three things caught my eye:

First, research commissioned by FairBanking among young workers (aged 18 to 29) and young families (aged 25 to 39) shows that ‘a household with high financial well-being would not be worried because it would be exercising sufficient control to have enough money to pay for essentials, to have some left over for luxuries, to service its debts, to have savings for the unexpected and to save regularly’ [12 cf. 11-15, 47-52]. Financial control is therefore a significant factor in financial satisfaction.

Second, ‘seventy three percent of respondents thought a monthly financial reward scheme would be the most motivating [for controlling expenditure]’ [28]. And various on-line tools are presented to help people to manage their money, and therefore to control their expenditure.

Third, ‘for banks, building societies and credit card companies to help customers, it is important that there is a high level of trust’ [41]. And high-level trust in a financial services institution is ‘based around notions of being concerned about the best interests of the customer’ [41].

Interesting.

‘Antony Elliott FCIB spent over 10 years as Group Risk Director of Abbey National plc having worked for a number of UK and international banks previously … He now divides his time between working for a large hedge fund and pursuing the vision of a banking system that helps people manage their money’ [55].

Providence Made Flesh

2009-09-02T22:45:00.003+01:00

Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2009), 302 pp.

Essentially Terry Wright does for providence what Tom Wright (no relation) does for justification. Both reframe doctrines around the history of Israel, fulfilled in Christ, shedding philosophical baggage along the way. ‘There appears little concern to explicate divine providence from within the scriptural context of God’s continuous relationship with the world shaped through his dealings with his elected covenant people’ [19].

Wright begins by outlining the contours of a doctrine of providence. ‘God provides. These two words, which constitute the heart of the Christian doctrine of providence, immediately present us with two questions: What does God provide and how does he provide it?’ [1]. Wright’s terminus a quo is that God provides himself through himself, and this in contrast to those who suppose that God provides everything through secondary causation.

He affirms the threefold scheme of providence. ‘We may understand providence in terms of conservation (God’s preservation or sustaining of creation), concursus (his concurrence, cooperation or accompaniment of creation in its activity) and gubernatio (his governing of it to a particular end)’ [6]. And he notes the place of primary and secondary causation within concursus. ‘The majority position, then, of Reformed theology is that divine primary causation works through creaturely secondary causation in such a way that the divine will is fulfilled even as the integrity of creaturely causal efficacy is maintained’ [10].

Of Calvin, however, he contends that ‘we may be uncertain of the extent to which Calvin intends his teaching on providence to be a positive doctrine in and of itself in faithfulness to Scripture, rather than a teaching that derives its significance from how it is not Stoicism and not Epicureanism’ [52]. ‘This is not to say that Calvin fails to understand the action of the triune God but that it is difficult to see how he reconciles this conception with his emphasis on the divine will’ [50 cf. 45-46, 76-77]. So whereas Wright critiques this emphasis on divine will he also builds on Calvin’s understanding of triune action.

Calvin’s emphasis on the divine will means that he plays the ordo essendi (the order of being) against the ordo cognoscendi (the order of knowing). ‘Secondary causation presupposes primary causation; but primary causation cannot be known apart from secondary causation’ [56]. And, although the latter requires the eyes of faith, ‘it is impossible to speak of God’s action in a way entirely different from how we would speak of a creature’s action; but talk of distinct causal orders can only function on the presupposition that it is not impossible’ [12]. That is, talk of distinct causal orders can only function on the presupposition that it is possible to speak of God’s action in a way entirely different from how we would speak of a creature’s action. For that is the ordo essendi.

The crux of the problem seems to arise from what “the eyes of faith” have faith in. Is it faith in the schema of primary and secondary causation or faith in the Word made flesh? Where the tendency is for the former, the latter is displaced. ‘God appears to take secondary causation to himself in similar fashion to the eternal Son’s taking flesh to himself in the incarnation’ [50]. At least three problems follow. Either, faith in primary causation becomes redundant, and secondary causation displaces “God”. So Wright traces the development of deism after Calvin [55-78]. Or, primary causation overwhelms secondary causation, for example, diminishing Jesus’ suffering at Gethsemane [213]; which, third, reflects Calvin’s somewhat Nestorian-esque construal of the incarnation [193-219]. We will return to this later. Therefore, against the schema of primary and secondary causation Wright contends that ‘in the life of Christ, we see God’s providence made flesh’ [15]. This gives rise to his oft-repeated refrain: ‘providence is God’s sovereign action within creation to his promise that the world in its entirety shall be the place of his presence’ [105].

Wright then traces the presence of God from garden to Gethsemane and beyond. He notes the similarity between mankind’s mediating function in the garden, and the priestly mediation of divine presence in both tabernacle and temple [115-123]. He therefore explores atonement in terms of divine presence.

‘We cannot deny that God manifests wrath towards sinners – and in this respect, the theology of penal substitutionary atonement cannot be faulted … [But] whilst kipper [“to atone”] can at times connote propitiation, it does not entail propitiation or require atonement to be understood solely as or equal to propitiation … The proper context for understanding the sacrificial system, then, is not as a means to avert God’s anger – though that is not entirely foreign to the system – but as a way to maintain the divine presence in Israel’s midst’ [172-173].

Because God is holy, his dwelling requires purification. ‘The high priest enters the holy of holies and purifies that most sacred of spaces, thus ensuring God’s continued presence’ [189]. But whereas the high priest would leave the holy of holies, Jesus remains there to intercede [185]. And whereas the former sacrifices only dealt with the flesh, Jesus’ sacrifice deals with the conscience also [189]. The law was given as a temporary measure, so that Israel’s character ‘would mirror that of God and effectively mediate the divine presence throughout the world’ [143]. But now, ‘by Christ’s faithfulness, God demonstrates his own faithfulness to creation; and by his faithfulness, Christ accomplishes that which is necessary for God’s presence to spread from the holy of holies to all creation: the freedom to live in peace with God, in faithfulness to him’ [190-191].

In contrast, and to pick up the point (above) about Calvin’s christology, Christ’s faithfulness is overwhelmed in the schema of primary and secondary causes. For if Gethsemane is predetermined, then Christ’s struggle is not real, and the significance of the Spirit is diminished. Indeed, ‘the communicatio idiomatum functions in Calvin’s christology in place of the Holy Spirit or, at the very least, points away from a christology with a truly pneumatological accent’ [209]. (This resonates with Tom Wright’s observation that “imputation” displaces the work of the Spirit in certain reformed theologies.) Against this, Wright (Terry) argues that ‘the Spirit provides the Son with the humanity necessary for him to remain faithful to the Father as a human person and enables that obedience by prompting the incarnate Son willingly to submit to the Spirit’s guidance and strength’ [217]. That said, ‘there is a sense of inevitability that Jesus’s betrayal, suffering and death will happen, but Matthew does not suggest that they are predetermined events to which Jesus resigns himself’ [213].

Wright concludes by anticipating potential objections to his thesis, and by positing possible implications of his thought; for example, concursus is now not so much God’s accompanying creation as God’s inviting creation to accompany him [227]. In addition, I would like to offer two possible implications of my own. First, much recent debate about the atonement can be reduced to the question: in what sense is atonement penal? If primary and secondary causation is assumed, then the Father becomes the agent of Christ’s suffering. The Father punishes the Son. However, if Christ is the agent of divine presence, then perhaps we can simply say that he suffers the penalty of sin. I have written more about this here, points 6, 7, and 8. So if the real issue in these atonement debates is differing understandings of providence, then without acknowledging these differences, conversation partners will inevitably talk past each other.

Second, by circumventing the stoic tendency that arises when primary causation overwhelms secondary, Wright makes place for real struggle. So the positive pastoral implications should be abundantly clear. Again, I have written more about this here.

In sum, Wright’s thesis is simply conceived, well researched, thoroughly biblical, lucidly written, and brilliantly executed.

Providence Made Flesh

2009-08-06T08:52:00.004+01:00

Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2009)

Traditional discussions of the Christian doctrine of providence often centre on the relation between divine agency and human freedom, seeking to offer an account of the extent to which a person is free before God, the first cause of all things. Terry J. Wright argues that such riddles of causation cannot determine the content of providence, and suggests a unique and alternative framework that depicts God's activity in terms of divine faithfulness to that which God has made. Providence is not God as first cause acting through creaturely secondary causation; rather, providence is God's sovereign mediation of the divine presence across the whole world, achieved through creaturely faithfulness made possible and guaranteed by his own faithful action in Jesus Christ.

Terry is a long-time friend of mine, and this has been a long time in coming. I am delighted that its publication is imminent. A review will follow in due course.

Justice, Mercy and Humility

2009-07-28T16:03:00.004+01:00

Tim Chester (ed.), Justice, Mercy and Humility: Integral Mission and the Poor, (Carlisle: Paternoster: 2005), 240 pp.

Like most collections of papers this is something of a mixed bag. The better essays include those on globalization (Tom Sine), the poor (Tim Costello), violence (Peter Kuzmic), and advocacy (Gary Haughen). Tim Chester’s introductory piece is also worthy of note. He writes,

‘The term “integral mission” comes from the Spanish ‘misión integral’ – the term commonly used in Latin America for what others describe as “holistic ministry”, “Christian development” or “transformation”’ [2].

And citing the Micah Declaration he continues,

‘Integral mission or holistic transformation is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life and our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ’ [2-3].

Having been exposed to a degree of liberation theology (and its cousin black theology) the social dimension doesn’t strike me as anything new, other than the churchmanship involved. But the churchmanship involved has a high priority on proclamation, which liberation theology often lacks.

All said and done, I’m not sure this volume is quite worth the £9.99 cover price, but I’m happy to lend it out for at least the essays noted above.

Love's Executioner

2009-07-21T13:32:00.007+01:00

Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy (London: Penguin, 1989), 288 pp.

Love’s Executioner is Yalom’s first anthology of case studies from psychotherapy, the second (and most recent) being Momma and the Meaning of Life. He is an exponent of existential psychotherapy, whereby ‘four givens are particularly relevant ... the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life’ [4-5].

The title is lifted from the first paragraph of the first chapter. ‘The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love’s executioner’ [15]. Later, he writes, ‘“good therapy” … is at bottom a truth-seeking venture … I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic’ [154]. And here he extends illusion, from love (or sex) to “religious magic”. Such magic is (consciously or unconsciously) employed to ward off death, but the magician gets enslaved to the magic. (Hence the importance of the second “given” – ‘the freedom to make our lives as we will’ [4-5 (italics mine)], which is achieved by taking responsibility.)

Anyhow, the stories of Thelma, Marvin, and the others are all deeply engrossing. Within a few pages of each chapter, I was lost in the story, wondering what the outcome would be. Each story, moreover, is peppered throughout with pithy words of wisdom. ‘My task as a therapist (not unlike that of a parent) is to make myself obsolete – to help a patient become his own mother or father’ [219]. ‘As a general rule, the less one’s sense of life fulfillment, the greater one’s death anxiety’ [260]. Yet Yalom does not hold back from his own failures as a therapist either.

A fantastically helpful book about being human, and a great read too.

On Writing

2009-07-16T08:39:00.001+01:00

Ben Myers blogs:

‘I’ve often been struck by the fact that a period of intensive writing has exactly the same symptoms as chronic depression – or rather, if someone described the symptoms of depression, you would think they were simply talking about writing. “I have sudden inexplicable mood swings. I am anxious and dejected. I am awake late at night, and can’t get out of bed in the morning. I’ve lost interest in normal activities. I forget to shower and groom myself. I no longer eat meals at regular hours. Late in the afternoon, I am surprised to discover that I’m still wearing my pyjamas. I am drinking too much alcohol. I don’t return phone calls from friends. I feel like I can’t go on.”’

John 8:12-9:5

2009-07-15T00:47:00.009+01:00

Over the years I have become wary of what I have come to call chiasmania. This is the propensity to see chiasms where there are none, forcing the text into a form that it resists. (A brief on-line search for chiasms in the Bible should reveal the level of textual mutilation that can occur.) So somewhat tentatively I offer the following observations on John 8:12-9:5.


A (8:12a-b)	I am the light of the world
B (8:12c-d)	Darkness and light
C (8:13)	Pharisees
D (8:14-20)	Jesus says, “If X, then Y. It is my Father…”
	Pharisees challenge
	Jesus answers
	Temple setting
E (8:21-25a)	Jesus talks of “seeking”
	Jews misunderstand and quote Jesus
	Jesus speaks
	Jews ask who Jesus is
F (8:25b-30)	Jesus speaks
	Jews do not understand
	Jesus speaks
G (8:31-32)	If you believe, then you will be free
H (8:33)	Abraham is father of the Jews
I (8:34-35)	Slaves of sin will not remain in the house
J (8:36)	“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed”
I’ (8:37-38)	Children of Abraham will kill
H‘ (8:39a-b)	Abraham is father of the Jews
G’ (8:39c-41a)	If you do not believe, then you will kill me
F’ (8:42-47)	Jesus speaks
	“You do not understand”
	Jesus speaks
E’ (8:49-53)	Jesus talks of “seeking”
	Jews misunderstand and quote Jesus
	???
	Jews ask who Jesus is
D’ (8:54-59)	Jesus says, “If X, then Y. It is my Father…”
	Jews challenge
	Jesus answers
	Temple setting
C’ (9:1-3	Blind man
B’ (9:4)	Day and night
A’ (9:5)	I am the light of the world

Three things should be noted.

First, there is an imperfect parallel between and 8:21-25a and 8:49-53 because Jesus only speaks once in the latter.

Second, the first-half of the chiasm begins with judgment [8:15,16,26; also note "lifted up" in 8:28], whereas the second-half ends with glory [8:49-50,54 and 9:3].

Third, 9:1-5 forms part of the wider unit 9:1-7, which in turn begins a second chiasm:

A [9:1-7] (Blindness and sin)
B [9:8-12] (Neighbours question man)
C [9:13-17] (Pharisees question man)
D [9:18-23] (Pharisees question parents)
C'[9:24-34] (Pharisees question man)
B'[9:35-38] (Jesus questions man)
A'[9:39-41] (Blindness and sin)

So 9:1-5 serves a double function.

The Gospel of John

2009-07-14T20:45:00.011+01:00

Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J., The Gospel of John (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 376 pp.

By way of preparing to teach John’s Gospel in August, I came across Jerome Neyrey’s commentary. He writes,

‘Modern readers unknowingly take a great risk if they presume that they can simply take up the Fourth Gospel and read it with understanding. This two-thousand-year-old document was written in a time and place utterly foreign to us, embodying complex social dynamics unfamiliar to modern readers’ [15].

So he approaches the text from literary, rhetorical, and socio-historical perspectives, which all inform each other. And he does so in an admirably accessible way. At a literary level he locates occasional chiasms, such as 1:1-18 [38-47]. He constantly compares John with the conventions of ancient rhetoric, from Aristotle through Cicero to Quintilian. And he employs socio-historical insight to illuminate the nature of relationships within the Gospel.

For example, noting the shame-honour (or shame-glory) nature of first-century Palestine Neyrey suggests that Jesus neither accepts volunteers nor immediately accedes to requests because both put conditions on Jesus, thereby diminishing his glory. Since Jesus might become indebted to volunteers [56], his disciples tend to recruit instead [1:35-51]. And since requests might force Jesus' hand [65], Jesus rebukes [2:4] or delays [11:3-7] in order to deal with those requests on his own terms. Therefore, Jesus always keeps the initiative, thereby signifying his glory.

As far as the balance between insight and accessibility goes, this is the most comprehensive commentary on John that I have found.

On Zombies and Solicitude

2009-06-18T23:15:00.010+01:00

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (San Francisco: Quirk, 2007), 320 pp.

William Duggan, my A-Level Greek Teacher, perennially asked me if I had read Pride and Prejudice yet. But I was far too absorbed with Achilles wreaking havoc in The Iliad to bother with Austen. (More correctly, one could argue that since we focussed on book nine of The Iliad, where Achilles is sulking on the sidelines, the Greeks main fighting machine is Diomedes. So the question becomes Diomedes or Mr Darcy? And Diomedes simply wins hands down when you’re eighteen.)

More recently a couple I know did a deal. If he watched Pride and Prejudice – all six hours of the BBC version – then she would watch The Shining. And this, by a rather roundabout route, leads me to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (henceforth PPZ). For if this was a film, and if my friends were to watch it together, having first read the undiluted Austen, then this might be the fairer deal; and here’s why:

When I finally read Pride and Prejudice, I learnt at least one thing: one simply cannot capture Austen’s narrative on film. Pride and Prejudice the film – of whatever variety – simply pales by comparison with Pride and Prejudice the book. Turns of phrase like ‘the stupidity with which he was favoured by nature’ are simply lost [Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (London: Penguin, 1996), 120].

On the other hand, a film version of Seth Grahame-Smith’s PPZ might work better than PPZ the book. Although 85% of PPZ is the text of Pride and Prejudice, 15% isn’t. And this 15% does not contain much that would be lost in adaptation to film; for example: ‘it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’ [Pride and Prejudice, 5] becomes ‘it is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains’ [PPZ, 7]. Et cetera et cetera. Sure, there are some nice touches such as Grahame-Smith’s portrayal of Mr Collins, who is even more absurd than the original:

‘The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teased by Mr Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though he could not prevail on her to dance with him again, he put it out of her power to dance with others, by using his thick midriff to hide her from view’ [PPZ, 82].

And Grahame-Smith uses the word “solicitude” far more sparingly than does Austen, who, on this point, could have done with a thesaurus. But despite my preference for these amendments, PPZ remains the better fodder for a film, and Pride and Prejudice is best left as a book.

The Piper-Wright Debate (cont.) (again)

2009-05-12T11:39:00.030+01:00

Having seen that mission colours Wright’s reading of the text, but “being moral” colours Piper’s, we now turn to what it might mean for God to justify us. Both the noun “righteousness” and the verb “to justify” have the same Greek root: dikaiosune for “righteousness” and dikaioo for “to justify”. Piper ties the two closely together so that when God justifies us he imputes to us his own moral righteousness. And this effectively saves us. Wright, on the other hand, notes that a broken covenant (or failed mission) requires a judge [Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 43-44; see also 71 for a comparison with Piper]. So God’s covenant faithfulness (his righteousness) results in his declaring righteous (or justifying) those who are in Christ. Whereas justification is effective and moral for Piper, it is declarative and legal for Wright. And whereas justification gives us Christ’s own righteousness for Piper, it gives us our own righteousness for Wright. Finally, whereas justification has one decisive moment for Piper, it has two for Wright: God’s verdict in the present anticipates his verdict in the future. Our present justification anticipates our future justification. Romans 4 anticipates Romans 2:1-16.

Piper’s moral framework contributes to why he understands the law in Romans 2:14-15 to be the moral law in general [John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Leicester: IVP, 2008), 107]. He even begins his discussion of Romans 2:13 with ‘high moral standards’ [105]. But Wright understands the law to be the Torah – and this in the context of Israel's mission. After all, such a mission is hinted at in 2:19 and 2:24 – although the Jews think of themselves as ‘a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,’ ‘the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of [them]’. Piper’s moral framework contributes to why he does not equate forgiveness and reckoning righteousness in Romans 4:6-8, although equivalence ‘is plausible’ [75]. ‘Exercising clemency toward, or forgiving, a guilty defendant does not provide a basis for justification’ [77]. For him, Christ’s moral righteousness is the necessary basis of our justification, because Christ needs to make up a moral deficit on our part. So reckoning righteousness is both moral and more than forgiveness, whereas Wright equates the two in the context of Israel’s mission to bless the nations [193-4]. Piper therefore asks of Wright [103-104 (italics in original)],

‘What is the basis or ground of justification – in the present and at the end? […] Wright’s answer would be something like this: In the future at the final court scene, God the Judge will find in our favor on the basis of the works we have done – the life we have lived – and in the present he anticipates that verdict and declares it to be already true on the basis of our faith in Jesus […] When he says “by works,” he does not mean by legalism or by merit or by earning, but by the obedience of our lives that is produced by the Holy Spirit through faith.’

Although Piper argues contra Wright that Romans 2:13 does not mean justification by works [104-110], I cannot see that Wright says otherwise. He simply notes that Paul does not even use the concept of “basis” [34, 229 n.7]. And whereas Piper asks Wright what the ground of justification is, if not Christ’s moral righteousness, Wright asks of Piper ‘where did moral righteousness come from all of a sudden?’ [51 (italics in original)].

But perhaps we can say this in answer to Piper. If justification means that we are declared members of the covenant family, and if membership is by the Holy Spirit, then can we say that the basis of justification is the Spirit [cf. Wright, 164]? Remember the second-order narrative? The Spirit is given as a guarantee much like an engagement ring [2 Corinthians 5:5]. And as an engagement ring anticipates a marriage, so justification in the present anticipates justification in the future. (Besides, the Spirit points us to Jesus who is the assurance of our salvation, and not to some theory of justification [cf. Piper, 20].) Further, since the Father seeks a Bride for his Son through his Son and the Spirit, this basis is clearly Trinitarian. As Wright is keen to point out, ‘Paul invites his hearers to trust both in Jesus Christ and in the father whose love triumphed in the death of his son – and in the holy spirit who makes that victory operative in our moral lives and who enables us to love God in return’ [211-2 (italics in original)].

So the Spirit functions for Wright as imputation does for Piper. Whereas Christ’s moral righteousness is imputed to us in Piper’s schema, the Spirit enables us to be legally declared “justified,” “righteous,” and “acquitted” in Wright’s. But perhaps we can take this further. If to be justified is to be declared forgiven [Romans 4:6-8], and if God’s forgiveness of us cost him his Son [Luke 23:34, 46], thereby enabling his Spirit to come to us [John 16:7], then contra Piper, forgiveness is a basis for justification [77]. Or perhaps – the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit in order that he might empower us by the Spirit, is the basis of justification.

So supposing that Piper is making a category mistake by reducing missional failure to moral failure, several things follow. First, this might explain why Wright and Piper seem to talk past each other at points. Second, then, it seems better to flag this issue rather than all the exegetical issues arising from it. Better to address the cause than the symptom. (Of course, going through each disputed text in turn might help to determine which framework is more comprehensive. But this is not the place to do that.) And third, perhaps it is not insignificant that Wright’s missional framework came to light while he was in the academy – a mission-field if ever there was one.

The Piper-Wright Debate (cont.)

2009-05-12T11:27:00.012+01:00

Much of this has been said before.

The debate is about God’s righteousness and what it means for God to justify us. But it is also a debate about the frameworks – or lenses – within which those things are understood. Both Piper and Wright acknowledge this. ‘We all wear colored glasses,’ notes Piper, ‘And we both take courage from the fact that Scripture has the power to force its own color through any human lens’ [John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Leicester: IVP, 2008), 17]. But there are at least two differences between them.

First, Wright has more than tacit knowledge of his lens, which I believe helps that lens to be more biblically informed. He notes that, for Paul, ‘God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centred upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah’ [Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 18-19 (italics in original)].

Second, if Piper has any narrative in mind, then this seems to be an ordo salutis inducted from Romans 8:30. So Piper’s narrative concerns individual salvation, whereas Wright’s concerns the rescue of the whole creation. Presumably this constitutes what is “reformed” for him. But as Wright observes, ‘among the Reformers themselves, and their various strands of successors, there have been major disagreements which indicate that further work is necessary, perhaps even involving various paradigm shifts’ [221]. For example, LeRon Shults outlines ‘a movement away from a focus on an individual’s experience of an ordo salutis and toward what I call salutary ordering in community’ [F. LeRon Shults and Steven J. Sandage, The Faces of Forgiveness: Searching for Wholeness and Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 148].

One more thing: as a summary of the biblical text Wright's narrative concerning God’s covenantal plan might be considered a first-order narrative. But how does his emphasis on the person and place of the Spirit relate to that narrative [viii, 164]? Perhaps a second-order narrative arising from reflection on the first might help to clarify this. If this narrative were the mystery of the Father seeking a Bride for his Son, then this second-order narrative is expressed through the first-order one. And the role of the Spirit can be made clear. (Those involved with New Frontiers may remember the mystery of the Father seeking a Bride for his Son from Stoneleigh ’95!) In 2 Corinthians 5:12 Paul writes that God ‘has given us the Spirit as a guarantee’, where the Greek for “guarantee” – arrabon – has come to mean an engagement ring. So this narrative is the mystery of the Father seeking a (corporate) Bride for his Son through the offer of his Spirit. Receiving this ring enables the Bride to tend and transform the cosmic garden together with the Son. So the Bride is taken up in the search to increase her number. Navel-gazing couples are one thing, those that express their love outwardly another.

For both Piper and Wright God’s righteousness connotes some divine self-relation. Somehow God is right with himself. For Piper, God is concerned for God’s own glory. For Wright, God is faithful to his side of the covenant.

Piper writes that ‘the essence of the righteousness of God is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his name’ [64]. Wright responds that ‘there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of “God’s righteousness”, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosune theou in Greek actually means “God’s concern for God’s own glory”’ [45-6; see also Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (Leicester: Apollos, 2000), 45]. Then he qualifies, ‘Of course, when God acts in faithfulness to his own promises, this results in his name, his honour and his reputation, being magnified or glorified. Nobody would deny that.’ But he notes that whereas Piper’s God is concerned with himself, Paul’s God is concerned his covenant people [51-52].

Before we turn to what it might mean for God to justify us, we need to reflect on Wright and Piper’s respective frameworks again. Wright’s framework is missional. But Piper’s is moral because justification in his ordo salutis assumes that Christ’s moral righteousness is imputed to us. For Piper it is necessary for us to fulfil the Torah’s moral requirements in order to be saved. But for Wright it is necessary for Israel to fulfil the Torah in order to bless the nations. (Wright therefore sets up a symmetry between the covenant faithfulness of Jesus – who sums up Israel – and the covenant faithfulness of God.) True, mission and morals are related but their relationship is not commutative: to be missional is to be moral, but to be moral is not necessarily to be missional.

(By “missional” I mean being enabled by the Holy Spirit to be part of God’s mission to the world. And by “missional being moral” I mean something like – and excuse the proof-text – ‘I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ’ [Philemon 6].)

But there is no space here to explore the relationship satisfactorily. (Another PhD anyone?) Suffice to say that “good” – or tob in Hebrew – has a dynamic connotation. What gives life is good. It is nourishing to others. It does not merely measure up to some moral standard (although that can be true too). So when the Psalmist writes that ‘there is none who does good’ [14:1-3; 53:1-3], he is lamenting that there is none who nourishes others – or perhaps blesses others? Does this not connote mission?

The Piper-Wright Debate

2009-05-08T15:12:00.011+01:00

My previous two posts were an attempt to explore my predisposit- ion towards Wright. They explain rather than justify (no pun intended) where I stand. Allow me to note two things.

First, I mention what might be called attachment to Wright (point 4). This attachment is psychological in the sense that he provided for me when Piper did not. Conversely, those who sit under Piper’s preaching or are moved by his books develop a similar attachment to him. Such attachments could explain why Piper-on-Wright comforts some but angers others (and vice-versa Wright-on-Piper).

Second, I note a tacit ambivalence towards Augustine in my background (points 1 to 3). This predisposes me towards Wright because he also shares this ambivalence. (Hence those in the Emerging Church who eschew Augustine along with Christendom are also likely to be predisposed towards Wright.) One might even detect two streams within the reformed tradition: Calvin-with-Augustine and Calvin-without-Augustine. Piper reflects the former, and Wright the latter.

Perhaps the difference between these two streams explains why they talk past each other. After all, Wright notes, ‘We are not in dialogue … The problem is that he [Piper] really hasn’t listened to what I am saying’ [Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 4-5].

Let me represent the difference between these two streams diagrammatically (above). The line between Augustine and Calvin represents those in the reformed stream of Calvin-with-Augustine. Because they frame the Piper-Wright debate in terms of the Augustine-Pelagius debate, this stream deems those they disagree with “Pelagian”.

However, for those in the reformed stream of Calvin-without-Augustine, the Piper-Wright debate is framed in different terms: Augustine-Origen for Marston and Forster, Augustine-Cappadocians for Gunton, and Augustine-Paul for Wright. Both Origen and the Cappadocians hail from the (Greek) East, and so generate an interesting foil to the (Latin) West (as indicated by the horizontal red line). But I’ll take the Cappadocians over Origen because I believe Origen mutes the person of the Spirit. And since the same claim has been made for the Cappadocians over Augustine, and since the Cappadocians resonate with Calvin, I have represented the stream of Calvin-without-Augustine by the line between Calvin and the Cappadocians. This line need not suggest that the Cappadocians influenced Calvin. That point is a moot one. My point is that the Cappadocians at least remain symbolic of an emphasis on the person of the Spirit within the reformed tradition.

Therefore, perhaps the issue is not so much Augustine or Pelagius as Spirit or not. Rightly or wrongly, I have used the East-West distinction to symbolise this. So deeming proponents of the Calvin-without-Augustine stream “Pelagian” misses the mark because the Augustine-Pelagius debate is particular to the Latin West (as indicated by the horizontal red line). Rather, perhaps we can posit that whereas both Pelagius and Augustine mute the person of the Spirit, the Calvin-without-Augustine stream symbolised by the Cappadocian East does not.

I hope this highly simplistic (and therefore distorting) framework at least helps us to acknowledge the importance of exploring our frameworks along with our various attachments. Without doing so we cannot endeavour to bring either under the authority of scripture.

Here's hoping that the next post will finally get round to the Piper-Wright debate proper!

Four (More) Reasons Why I Am Disposed to The Wright

2009-05-04T16:23:00.012+01:00

4. One of the issues that a student of theology wrestles with is the clash of evangelical culture between church and university. (Within the US context we might point to the clash of evangelical culture between churches and universities of a particular kind, and churches and universities of other kinds.) What is considered worthy in one might not be considered worthy in the other. So despite Piper’s academic roots, Wright notes that:

‘there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of “God’s righteousness”, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosune theou in Greek actually means “God’s concern for God’s own glory”’ [Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 45-6; see also Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (Leicester: Apollos, 2000), 45].

Piper is not worthy in the academy. (I can’t say that his name ever came up in class either.) And when I needed a scholar to lean on when all was Bultmann and bollocks, where was Piper? There was Wright, but where was Piper?

Wright, on the other hand, straddles both academy and church. I have heard his name endorsed twice, no less, from the pulpit of All Souls, Langham Place – once by John Stott. But Wright does not straddle everywhere. I've also heard him described as “dangerous” by a conservative professor from the States.

Piper and Wright, therefore, embody the clash of evangelical culture between church and university. And quite frankly, it is a relief that it is out there. “Look,” I can say, “Look at what I’ve had to live with for the past sixteen years. Do you understand?”

But can you also sense the feeling? Where was Piper when I needed him? "Nowhere. He is no one. He knows nothing." And that is where I need to be careful because John Piper is a great preacher and pastor. And I am a fallen human being.

5. I now work for Agapé (aka Campus Crusade for Christ), where many of my colleagues are Calvinist. (So how about a name change guys? Calvinists on Campus for Christ?) (OK, so I’m a one-point Calvinist – I’ll take total depravity any day.) But consider this.

We use a gospel outline called Knowing God Personally and not Divine to Human Imputation (and vice-versa). We value a relationship with God before outlining its (supposed) mechanism. And we have a booklet on the Spirit-filled life. Our cry has been ‘come help change the world’ and not ‘come help save souls’, hence our humanitarian aid and inner city work. Yet despite values that resonate with Tom Wright’s expression of Paul, it would be disingenuous to ignore our perennial tendency towards individual salvation.

6. Whereas the points thus far have fitted, more or less, into an autobiographical narrative, the remaining points do not. Nonetheless, I have needed this narrative to frame my (forthcoming) thoughts on the Piper-Wright Debate. Critics of Wright please take note. Narrative counts.

This is a brief point. I was just wondering whether the Enlightenment collapse of final into efficient courses is reflected in Calvinism’s propensity to account for election by how God does it, rather than by why God does it. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

7. One of the strongest arguments for Wright is often the work of his critics: for example. Mark Seifrid argues that ‘the exilic interpretation must suppose that generally Jews understood the nation to be in exile and they regarded this condition to be a result of the corporate guilt in which they shared’ [Seifrid, 22]. But as Wright puts it, ‘we cannot say “all first-century Jews thought like this”, any more than you can say “all Americans like hamburgers”. But plenty do and plenty did’ [Wright, 41]. It is simply not necessary to argue that all Jews thought of themselves in exile for Wright's take on Galatians 3:10-14 to work.

Second, Wright’s exilic ‘theory implicitly assumes that the human being is capable of self-diagnosis … the problem of sin can supposedly be read off the outward course of events’ [Seifrid, 22]. “We are in exile, therefore we are sinful.” More correctly, however, ‘the problem of sin [is] ... read off the outward course of events’ in light of God’s Word [Deuteronomy 28].

And so on and so forth. I rarely find the arguments convincing. In fact, if Wright’s critics ever laid off, then perhaps I would be more inclined to disagree with him.

Three (Peculiar) Reasons Why I Am Disposed to The Wright

2009-05-04T13:35:00.008+01:00

Before I jump into the Piper-Wright debate over justification, I am asking myself why I err towards Tom Wright? Several reasons come to mind, peculiar in the sense that they contribute towards my own theological autobiography.

1. During my first year of university I attended Ichthus by day, and St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, by night. Through the former I came across Marston and Forster’s, God’s Strategy in Human History (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000). (My references are to the second edition, and not to that first 1973 one.) Two things immediately appealed. First, the foreword by F.F. Bruce:

‘It is a sign of grace on the part of the authors of this book that they should invite an impenitent Augustinian and Calvinist to write a foreword for it. There are several reasons for my ready acceptance of their invitation, but there is one which outweighs all others, and that is the thoroughly exegetical character of what they have written […] A study of the following pages will impress on the reader that the initiative in saving grace rests with God; that the election of believers is “in Christ”; and that election implies not that some are elected and that others are consigned to perdition, but that some are elected so that others through them may receive the divine blessing’ [Marston and Forster, x].

What more could you want than the endorsement of a Calvinist exegete?

Second, the opening chapter on Job appealed to my teenage angst [5-15]. (This has subsequently given way to a great concern about the way in which we harness our emotions. So I’m as interested in why someone emotes, and in what sense that might – or might not – be redemptive, as I am in the particular point of theology or exegesis that they are emoting about: creation, evolution, etc. etc.) In this chapter Marston and Forster note that God works through us – and that means through existential and emotional struggle – to bless others, and not merely for us.

(The correlation between anti-Augustinian sentiment and the observation that God works through us and not merely for us is an intriguing one. It appears in Wright's work, with whom Marston and Forster note their affinity [170-223].)

2. During university I was taught by Colin Gunton, whose ambivalence towards Augustine is a euphemism. (In case of doubt note well his ‘Augustine, The Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West’ in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 30-55. Here he lays the blame for modern atheism squarely at Augustine’s feet.)

Therefore, if both Protestant (imputed) and Catholic (infused) understandings of righteousness have their roots in Augustine, then perhaps Colin’s ambivalence towards Augustine has somehow contributed to my own ambivalence towards righteousness so understood? Let me put it like this. When asked why we obey God if he saves us by grace, and we answer that we obey out of love, haven’t we just done the following? Haven’t we just given the Gospel (of grace), and then said, “Oh! And by the way it’s a relationship”? If so, why don’t we begin with a relationship?

Of course, even Calvin mixes relational terms with forensic ones when writing on justification in 3.10 of The Institutes. But Wright notes that being justified concerns the relation of the defendant’s status to the judge, rather than his or her relationship with the judge [Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 50-51]. Indeed, Wright sees imputed (and presumably infused) understandings of righteousness as a hangover from the language of merit. Against this he posits the language of love [163], which is the language of relationship, without making ‘my relationship with God’ the centre [126].

3. Colin much rather encouraged us to engage with Karl Barth, and engage we did. In IV/3 of the Church Dogmatics, Barth outlines the essence of what it is to be Christian. He concludes that Christians are called to Christ so that Christ can work through them, and from this salvation is a corollary. This goes beyond the classic view, which is simply about “my” salvation and “my” telling others that they need to be saved. Barth wryly notes of the latter, ‘We certainly do not have in the Bible stories of conversion such as that which [you guessed it] Augustine recorded in his autobiography’ [571]. (See further T.J. Wright – no relation to N.T. – “Witnessing Christians from Karl Barth’s Perspective,” The Evangelical Quarterly 75.3 (July-Sept. 2003), 239-255.)

Note again the correlation between anti-Augustinian sentiment and the observation that God works through us and not merely for us. (There’s a PhD in there for somebody.) More importantly, however, this correlation appears in Wright’s work. Wright argues that justification took a wrong turn with Augustine [62, 70]. And he is also clear ‘that salvation is not simply God’s gift to his people but God’s gift through his people’ [211] (italics in original). So given points 1 to 3, it is no wonder that I have something of a predisposition towards Wright. There are other reasons why I err towards Wright, which I will post in due course. But before then I want to make one final point.

Wright is not a one-man band. He sits firmly within the reformed tradition of Calvin without Augustine, which commits neither him nor his peers to any form of Pelagianism. As Wright is keen to point out, ‘Paul invites his hearers to trust both in Jesus Christ and in the father whose love triumphed in the death of his son – and in the holy spirit who makes that victory operative in our moral lives and who enables us to love God in return’ [211-2] (italics in original). It is precisely this centrality of the trinity, and subsequent pneumatology, that do not sit well with Augustine in the first place.

Excursus. With all that said, and with a nod back towards Barth on Schleiermacher, I have undertaken a “love Augustine” campaign. I read Augustine’s Confessions at the end of last summer, and bought De Trinitate too. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Theologian as Chef

2009-05-04T11:12:00.009+01:00

Helmut Thielicke describes the ‘anxiety of the ordinary Christian about theology’ [Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996), 3-5]. So how can a theologian best help to lay this anxiety to rest?

The conclusion I have come to is food. Good theology is like good food – it nourishes. In the same way that everyone needs to eat, every Christian needs theology. So in the same way that the quality of food prepared varies from person to person, the quality of theology varies from Christian to Christian. And it varies in terms of nourishment, creativity, and taste.

Perhaps I can put it like this. Some people are brilliant cooks. They have never had formal training as a chef but, boy, can they cook! Similarly, there are those who have never had formal training in theology, and really know their stuff. (I dare say that there are those who have had formal training as a chef but remain a liability in the kitchen, but let’s leave them aside for now.) This brings me, then, to those who have had formal training. I tend to trust them to cook well, not only for themselves but also for others.

I hope this illustration does two things.

First, I hope it helps the ordinary Christian to appreciate what a theologian can offer – hopefully more than beans on toast, although the discerning reader should note the menu of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen.

Second, by raising expectations, I hope this illustration encourages the ordinary Christian to hold the theologian accountable to these expectations. Again, quality at least concerns nourishment, creativity, and taste. So if a theologian were only to nourish him- or herself, or to remain a liability in the kitchen, then perhaps a gentle word is in order. Or perhaps even another vocation.

What does it mean to be ‘Reformed’?

2009-04-27T15:12:00.000+01:00

Steve Holmes blogs on this here.

Kitsch <=> Grotesque

2009-04-25T22:30:00.004+01:00

Betty Spackman describes kitsch as ‘any form of popular art or entertainment that is a sentimental, cheaply made trivialization of something else … a defining characteristic of kitsch is that it tends to reinforce ideas and convictions rather then either generate or challenge them’ [Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Carlisle: Piquant Editions, 2005), 5]. Kitsch is an attempt to airbrush out the fall.

But by airbrushing out the fall kitsch can ironically become grotesque. Consider Michael Jackson. Cosmetic surgery is an attempt to airbrush out perceived physical flaws, and the result is (arguably) somewhat grotesque. Or consider Kinkade’s fairy-tale cottages. We all know the story of Hansel and Gretel, and of what when on in the cottage. And we all know the story of Michael Jackson. Kitsch is grotesque.

In contrast, the Chapman Brothers’ work Fucking Hell (2008) (pictured) is exactly what it says it is. Thousands of tortured Nazi figurines fill up nine enormous display cases. Like much of their output, it is grotesque in the extreme. But note the title, and Spackman’s observation. ‘Swear words play the same role in the vernacular as religious kitsch does in popular culture: cheap clichés that are used too often and flatten meaning. They serve only to provide a vehicle for the release of emotion that has nowhere else to go’ [Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Carlisle: Piquant Editions, 2005), 283]. More pertinently, the monotone repetition of violence portrayed by the piece is reminiscent of the mass production of kitsch. The grotesque is indeed kitsch.

Whereas kitsch denies the bad, grotesque denies the good. The former leads to escapism, and the latter to nihilism. Both lead to each other, and neither is redemptive. But this does not leave us sinking in some Zizek-ian play of opposites [note, for example, Slavoj Zizek, Violence (Picador: New York, 2008), especially 204-205, where, he “concludes” that love is hate, and vice-versa].

Bonhoeffer notes this pattern from the fall:

‘[W]hat is pleasureful and good is submerged in that which is painful and evil, and vice-versa. But exactly what is painful in pleasure? It is that in all pleasure man desires eternity, and that he knows pleasure is transitory and has an end … And on the other hand we ask what is the pleasure in pain? It is that man in the depth of pain feels the pleasure of transitoriness, the pleasure of the extinction of apparently infinite pain, the pleasure in death’ [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall (London: SCM, 1959), 59].

And as he famously writes elsewhere, ‘The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge’ [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (London: SCM, 1955), 3]. So if there be such a thing as “Christian” art (whatever that might mean), perhaps its first task to invalidate both kitsch and the grotesque.

Karl Barth’s Anthropology in Light of Modern Thought

2009-04-15T18:37:00.007+01:00

Daniel J. Price, Karl Barth’s Anthropology in Light of Modern Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 328 pp.

Whereas Robert Karen uses object-relations theory to flesh out forgiveness, Daniel Price notes the resonance between object-relations and Karl Barth’s anthropology. Misquoting Kant, he writes, ‘if Christian anthropology without scientific anthropology is empty, then scientific anthropology without dogmatic Christian anthropology is blind’ [5]. So dialogue with object-relations theory might prove useful to theology; for example: Price tantalisingly cites Zizioulas. If freedom is found through being-in-communion, then has not Zizioulas glossed over the possibly inhibiting role of the unconscious here? [29].

(So if were I still studying under Zizioulas, then I would have asked what he made of something like Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts (eds.), The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organisational Stress in the Human Sciences, (London: Routledge, 1994). Price’s citation is tantalising because he does not pursue it. Yet it does raise the more general question, which Price does seek to answer – albeit through the particular case study of object-relations theory and Barth’s anthropology – of whether dialogue between theology and psychology is fruitful. To this Price gives a resounding “yes”. And if this is so, then what might the psychology of the emotions and forgiveness – my own interests – have to contribute to our understanding of, say, atonement? Note Barth himself: ‘The other sciences, too, might finally set themselves this task [of the criticism and correction of talk about God]’ [Church Dogmatics I/1 7]. Barth also provides the chalcedonian concepts needed to avoid category mistakes in such an undertaking, on which, see my post here. Anyway, back to Price.)

Price begins his comparative study with Kant. He notes that one can either concede to Kant, passively by limiting religion to reason or actively by shoring up religion on feeling (so Schleiermacher); or one can reject Kant by beginning with revelation (so Barth) [53-54]. (Although Barth finally rejects Kant, Price notes their common rejection of natural theology.) As such, Price devotes his second chapter to expounding Kant (appended by Hegel), and his third chapter expounding Schleiermacher (appended by Kierkegaard). (Price is largely positive about Kierkegaard, only berating him for his excessive individualism.)

Price then spends chapter four expounding Barth’s theological anthropology (largely derived from III/2 of Barth’s Church Dogmatics); and chapter five expounding object-relations theory as Price inherits it through Fairbairn. Finally, in chapter six he notes the resonance between Barth’s anthropology and object-relations theory. Allow me to limit what follows to the final two chapters.

In order to outline object-relations theory, Price begins with Freud. He compares and contrasts him with Kant then Fairbairn. Price quotes Freud [193], ‘Kant’s Categorical Imperative is ... the direct heir to the Oedipus Complex’ [James Strachey (editor), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIX, (London: The Hogarth Press, 1961), 166-167 ]. But whereas Kant elevates man to the angels, Freud reduces him to the apes [201]. Yet both are left with a dualistic anthropology. Whereas Kant operates with a dualism between the phenomenal and noumenal selves, Freud operates with a dualism between the id and super-ego.

So turning to Fairbairn, Price notes that whereas libido for Freud finds fulfilment in self-gratification, libido for Fairbairn finds fulfilment in the other [203]. Price writes, ‘raw libido could not explain itself; it made sense only as it bore the mark of an interpersonal relationship’ [205]. Whereas Freud draws on Newtonian categories, Fairbairn draws on Einsteinian ones [211-212]. Energy [id] and structure [ego] are separated by Freud, but not so by Fairbairn [258].

And whereas Freud must account for sociability, Fairbairn must account for anti-sociability. This is because Freud reduces man to the animal, whereas Fairbairn begins with categories that are interpersonal. For Freud, whereas the gratification of instinct is beneficial to the individual, the repression of instinct is beneficial for society [185]. But ‘if every person stands against culture on the deepest psychic level, how can a composite sketch of so many innately antisocial individuals form a society?’ [186].

Fairbairn, on the other hand, must account for anti-sociability. Whereas Freud (and indeed Klein) posit a death instinct (thanatos) to complement libido (eros), Fairbairn does not. ‘Fairbairn attempts to explain the so-called death instinct by appealing to the libido’s ability to attach not only to good objects, but also to bad objects’ [220]. So ‘“aggression,” as Freud defined it, represents not so much a positive endowment as a distortion of the normal drive to attach to objects’ [222].

(Price tends to talk about the death-instinct in terms of “aggression”. Technically, however, aggression concerns the intensity of behaviour; and both this behaviour and its intensity can be either “good” or “bad”; for example: aggressively tackling a problem can be a very good thing, but perhaps not to the point of obsession. That is why I prefer to talk about “anti-sociability” rather than “aggression” in debating the death instinct.)

Thus Price sets Fairbairn up for an intriguing comparison with Barth. He centres this around Barth’s concept of the analogia relationis (analogy of relations). Whereas the analogia entis (analogy of being) contains a tendency for grace to perfect nature, which affects the relationship between biblical and scientific psychology [15], the analogia relationis does not. Rather than beginning with what is not God in order to reach out towards God, the analogia relationis begins with the trinitarian interpretation of revelation [CD I/1 §8], and then notes analogies within the created order. Similar analogies are found between Barth’s anthropology and object-relations theory.

Both Fairbairn and Barth have a dynamic conception of the self, where “dynamic” connotes an interpersonal dimension [234]. For both, dynamic anthropology is open-ended [235-236], relational [236-238], “historical” (in the sense of Geschichte) [238-240], and encompasses both relation and differentiation [240-244]. But whereas ‘Barth recognizes the importance of the male and female differentiation as the basis for intimate interpersonal communion ... Object relations pays closer attention to the relation between a child and parent’ [245].

For both Fairbairn and Barth, the self is a psychosomatic unity. Price has already noted the importance of the senses for Barth’s anthropology [146f.], and he notes the importance of touch for object-relations theory. It is primarily through touch that the self-consciousness of an infant develops [272; cf. John MacMurray, Persons in Relation (London: Faber, 1961), 75-77]. This is far removed from Descartes concept of the disembodied ego. Thus self-knowledge always depends on a prior relationship with an other.

‘Rarely would an adult become aware of the fact that earliest object relations had facilitated later cognitive processes. However, this does not mitigate the fact that most adults could not perform their abstract reasoning processes effectively had not their mothers, or some parent or parent figure, bonded to them by talking, caring, holding, and generally being available for them in order that they might become psychologically attached’ [271].

Indeed, ‘MacMurray proposed that one of the epistemic implications of object relations could be distilled into the affirmation that “all cognition stems from recognition”‘ [268]. This is true for both object-relations theory and for Barth.

‘In Barth’s thought, the human ability to be percipient is endowed by God. In the case of object relations, the percipient ability is endowed by the mother: in both cases the capacity for perception and cognition is teased out by a primary relation to an other’ [274].

Price then explores the relationship between theology and psychology more generally, using the concept of sin as a case study. He notes that Fairbairn does not state whether bad-objects arise from nature or nurture, and Price considers that this to be the task of the theologian [282-283]. Nonetheless, the theologian would be wise to continue listening to the psychologist:

‘For while the psychologist has nothing to say about the doctrine of original sin per se, neither have theologians found a thoroughly acceptable alternative to the crude insistence by Augustine and others that original sin is transmitted through the physical human seed’ [283].

Price continues,

‘While I would hesitate to equate sin with “bad object relations” univocally, who could deny that there must be some relation between them? The fracturing of the originally “pristine ego” is not to be equated with the Fall, but it nevertheless bears some analogical relation to the theological concept of the Fall, although in quite different language from that given in Romans 2, 3, and 5. Both signify a brokenness of relations between persons, a fracture of the shared experience of human life’ [283-284].

We will return to this shortly (but see also Henri Blocher’s stimulating discussion in Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), 63-81.) Before that, however, Price considers the implications of Freud for theology. He notes that even if, in principle, Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependence is more than a hangover from our “absolute” dependence as infants, in practice, the concept is not easily differentiated from the latter. Therefore Barth’s methodology is to be preferred [290]. Price also notes that, for Freud, belief is a construct of the desire for one’s father [290-291]. But since relationships with fathers are ambivalent for Freud, perhaps unbelief is no more than a construct of the desire to rid oneself of one’s father. Therefore, in the relationship between psychology and theology, the latter need not be psychologised away.

Finally, Price fleshes out the concept of sin a little more. Allow me to make an extensive quotation by way of conclusion. I think this well illustrates the worth of Price’s work.

‘Barth’s description of depersonalized sexuality as “demonization” gives us some insight into his own description of evil as “nothingness” (das Nichtige), or “non-being.” “Non-being” is a way of designating that a relationship has been breached. What else could it represent, since for Barth being itself is a relationship? The riddle of sin is the riddle of a broken relationship. Sin is enigmatic because it indicates a lapse of being caused by a lapse of vital relationship. In light of the Christian doctrine of redemption, human sin is even more paradoxical because God has done everything necessary to repair the brokenness of the relationship between himself and the human race. “Nothingness,” “non-being,” and other such terms designate Barth’s attempt to give the paradox of sin a dynamic definition. Since our being is contingent on our relations, the absence of relation would have to result in our nonbeing. It is not wholly surprising then that Barth would allow the term “casting out demons” to denote a means of restoring human wholeness. For Barth, the term “demonization” is used somewhat metaphorically; yet he does not discount the possibility that demons are “real,” even though their reality is ontologically negative. For Fairbairn, the demons are psychological. Yet they might not be exhaustively described in terms of endopsychic human states, for they represent an unhappy interpersonal history, and a history of bad object relations can readily become repressed and stored in the unconscious with the result that they may become a sinister psychological force in the life of the individual. Who knows if such a sinister psychological force might not begin to assume a life of its own – acting independently of the person whose soma-psyche it occupies? In the theology of Barth and the psychology of Fairbairn, this seems to be an open possibility’ [301].

Engagement Story

2009-04-08T00:20:00.005+01:00

In January I asked Kathy's Dad for permission to marry her. So I knew that she knew a proposal was coming. What's more, since we only see each other every few months, I knew that she knew it would come the next time we met, which was now. The challenge was to surprise her when she knew it was coming.

A couple Kathy know (Andy and Jenny) invited Kathy and me out for an early dinner. They gave us two venue options: Coronado or La Jolla. Their preference was the former, mine the latter. But unknown to Kathy, all this was planned, even down to the different venue preferences. It was important to keep Kathy guessing.

I had already set my heart up the Hotel Del Coronado as a venue for proposing. It was the setting for Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe; and you can read more about it here.

So Kathy and I met Andy and Jenny for an early dinner there. At around seven Andy and Jenny said they needed to relieve their baby-sitter, so they left. This was the cue for the waiter to bring over two glasses of champagne and a small black box. He dutifully brought them over ten minutes after Andy and Jenny left, and I waited. I waited while Kathy stared at the box, stared at me, stared at the box, and so on and so forth.

After what seemed like an eternity, Kathy opened the box, and inside was a message: "Sweetheart, will you marry me? X." She wrote, "Yes," and I gave her the box with the ring. There was one more surprise to come, but I want to say a word about the ring first.

My grandmother on my father's side died when he was born. These were the times of D-Day, and my grandfather was in the RAF. He was given seven days' leave to bury his wife and find someone to care for his son. This turned out to be his sister-in-law, and she – a spinster – raised my father.

"Now it just so happened" [Ruth 2:3] that her cousin, Peggy, was a Christian. Peggy, another spinster, was the one who gave my dad spiritual input. Just think – I might not be writing this as a Christian, if at all, if it were not for her. The ring was hers, and before her, her mother's. So it is a victorian ring – one diamond either side of a sapphire – that I had plated in white gold for Kathy.

Kathy put the ring on, and I told her that there was one more surprise. I took her by the hand and walked through the lobby of the hotel, where a dozen of Kathy's friends were waiting. Jenny, myself, and another friend Cheri had spent the past fortnight gathering this bunch together, without Kathy knowing a thing.

I think she was still in shock the next day.

Anyway, while Kathy has been wondering where we should go on honeymoon, I've been wondering which volume of Barth's Church Dogmatics I should take: II/2, III/2, or IV/1? Any suggestions?

The Forgiving Self

2009-03-30T00:41:00.009+01:00

Robert Karen, The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 298 pp.

There are many good things about this book. Karen knows that forgiveness is not as straightforward as pop-psychology makes it out be. He writes ‘that it is not always so clear who needs to apologize and who needs to forgive’ [6]. Forgiveness is not a formula [8]. Forgiveness is not a “one-size-fits-all” choice, especially for those who struggle to make choices for themselves [13]. He also grounds The Forgiving Self in both object-relations theory [15, 70-72] and attachment theory [91-92]. This grounding in psychoanalytic theory steers the work well clear of pop-psychology.

In a nutshell, Karen argues that successful negotiation of the paranoid-schizoid position is a precondition of forgiveness. If you recall object-relations theory, the first three to four months of life are lived from the paranoid-schizoid position. We perceive the world as either good or bad, and when we perceive it to be bad we have no recourse to the good, and vice-versa. Even in adult life we can revert to such splitting.

And whereas the Jungian Wink illustrates splitting through comic book heroes [Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 17-25; Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 42-56], Karen appeals to Rambo. ‘If a suffering infant could compose a screenplay, this would be it. It drips with paranoia, with purity and evil, with parents who care only about themselves and leave their children to be done in by monsters’ [151]. All these heroes forsake forgiveness.

However, successful negotiation of the paranoid-schizoid position gives rise to the depressive position from which we learn to negotiate ambivalence – that the world can be both bad and good at the same time. Allow me to quote Karen at length,

‘For the child in this new ambiguous world, love and hate still exist. But they no longer exist separately all the time, the love being directed toward a perfect, idealized parent, the hatred directed at a monster who cares only about herself and devours her young. The child has achieved the ability to transcend this binary state; he can bring the love and hate together. There is now an imperfect parent who can lose her temper, who can make a lousy meal, who can talk too long on the phone and yet remain a good and loved person. In addition to love and concern, we are able to feel a range of negative feelings toward this integrated parent, including fury and hatred, but all within an envelope of love. I’m hurt precisely because I love you and because I need you to love me. I’m angry because I love you. I criticize you because I love you. I hate you because I love you. I want you to be different because I love you’ [73].

For the child to move successfully from the paranoid-schizoid to depressive position, it is important that the child experience anger tempered with love from at least one caregiver, and that the caregiver contain the anger of the child [74-77].

Our entire lives are lived from one or other position; the predominating position depending on how successfully we negotiated the former as an infant. The importance of this for forgiveness is as follows. ‘The ability to live with ambivalence – with both love and hate but with the love predominating – is perhaps what distinguishes the forgiving from the unforgiving personality’ [168].

In light of this, Karen’s first target is the mentality of “love the sinner, hate the sin”. Such mentality reflects the paranoid-schizoid tendency of dividing the world into good and bad. Again, allow me to quote him at some length.

‘… this is not a human response. In fact, I suspect that most people who report such responses are voicing what they believe they should feel, rather than what they do feel. I would be more encouraged about the possibilities of eventual, authentic forgiveness in the subject who says he wants to “kill the fiend” or “string him up for eternity.” … I think people who [“love the sinner, hate the sin”] … tend to be afraid of their own aggression – afraid of what will happen to themselves or others if they express it - and so they straitjacket themselves into a strict, unnatural goodness. In such a rigid state, where you are not allowed to be bad, where, in fact, you are determined to be so pure that you dare not indulge any wish to hurt, to be mean, or to hold a grudge, hatred - denied, hidden, disfiguring - hardens into rock’ [23].

Against this, ‘anger is not anathema to forgiveness. It can coexist with it. It can be its harbinger’ [24]. ‘The inhibition of anger, the abuse of anger, and the unconscious acting out of disavowed anger are pervasive aspects of our everyday reality, greatly complicating and confusing the issue of forgiveness. What is not asserted cannot be resolved’ [32-33].

Karen also makes the conceptual link between forgiveness and psychoanalytic theory by linking the former with loss. How we deal with the loss of a parent through our own independence – or perhaps through their death – will influence our capacity to forgive, since forgiveness is a response to some loss. (Again, our ability to deal with loss is premised on our ability to negotiate the paranoid-schizoid position as an infant. Successful negotiation realises the depressive position, which coincides with the awareness that others are separate from us. Only if we are aware that others are separate from us can we begin to negotiate their loss.)

Karen also appeals to attachment theory. Whereas object-relations theory is primarily concerned with the internal psyche of the child, attachment theory – itself grounded in object relations – is primarily concerned with its external behaviour; for example: securely attached one-year olds receive their parent’s attempts to soothe them after a brief separation, whereas insecurely attached children do not. ‘The protests of these babies have a built-in futility ... They act as if they can never be certain of Mother’s love, as if it might be taken away at a moment’s notice’ [91].

As a result of insecure attachment, ‘[t]he most important things do not get said and people allow their unconscious fantasies to take over’ [195]. Those with insecure attachment do not believe that they can change things. This requires more than assertiveness, because the underlying script that they act out – the one that says Mother’s love might be taken away at a moment’s notice – also needs to be explored. In contrast, ‘The secure child ... can say, “I’m so angry at you, Mommy, I want to hurt you now,” with no thought of acting it out and no thought that he is in any danger for speaking it’ [197 cf. 76].

(If one understands Israel’s anger towards the Babylonians in Psalm 137 as also anger towards God, then this anger is reminiscent of the anger of attachment. So whereas Psalm 137 expresses Israel’s anger of attachment towards God, perhaps Job experiences God’s anger of attachment towards Israel. This is so because God believes in Job, and also if Satan is seen to mediate God’s anger – a questionable “if”, I know. But if so, it shows that God has a secure attachment to Job, as indeed does Job to God – evidenced by Job's wrestling.)

I know of no other book that links object-relations and attachment theories to forgiveness. Whereas the former provide the content of my counselling studies, the latter provides the content of training that I run in the workplace. Karen writes insightfully, and always with an eye for a good illustration. His examples are composed from a mix of case studies and a number of references to popular culture, such as Ma Vie en Rose and C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. Incredibly stimulating.

Seven Virtues: Postscript

2009-03-26T00:08:00.001Z

A more complete picture might be:

Love
Wisdom
Discipline/PATIENCE
Courage/Faith
Forgiveness/PEACE
Generosity/Gratitude
Hope/JOY

Seven Virtues

2009-03-22T17:34:00.005Z

I noted in the previous post that we see three corners of a triangle reflected in culture: comfort through kitsch, persecution through zombies, and jealousy/despair through vampires. This is because we continue to experience life at any particular point from one of these three corners.

But this is not the end of the story since the successful negotiation of each corner produces character. Successful negotiation of the left-hand corner produces discipline (in the face of the quick fix). Successful negotiation of the right-hand corner produces courage (in the face of anxiety) and forgiveness (in the face of anger). (Perhaps we could add faith in the face of doubt to parallel our negotiation of anxiety.) And successful negotiation of the apex produces generosity (in the face of jealousy), gratitude (in the face of the corollary of jealousy: envy), and hope (in the face of despair).

Also, successful negotiation of the passage from the horizontal axis to the apex requires wisdom (to know the difference between ourselves and others). So if each is an expression of love, then, by including love, we have seven virtues or virtue-clusters:

Love
Wisdom
Discipline
Courage/Faith
Forgiveness
Generosity/Gratitude
Hope

Kitsch, Zombies, and Vampires

2009-03-22T17:33:00.003Z

It occurred to me that recent posts about kitsch, zombies, and vampires provide one way of talking about our emotional development. Imagine an equilateral triangle with a horizontal base. Kitsch represents the left-hand corner, zombies the right-hand corner, and vampires the apex.

The horizontal base represents our first three or four months of life. During this time we experience life as all good or as all bad. When we experience one we have no recollection of the other. Kitsch represents the comfort of the good, and zombies the persecution of the bad. We might associate feelings of satisfaction with the former, and feelings of anger or (persecutory) anxiety with the latter. These are some of our most primitive emotions.

From the third or fourth month of life we begin to integrate the good and the bad. We have hitherto experienced the world as an extension of ourselves. But as our primary caregiver loves us despite our bad feelings, we learn that they are separate from us. This enables us to integrate the good and the bad because we learn that the good (caregiver) can contain the bad (us). Because of this more sophisticated emotions such as jealousy and despair can develop. These are the emotions that we may experience in the absence of our primary caregiver. They are also emotions often explored by vampire mythology.

Thus we see the three corners of this triangle reflected in culture: comfort through kitsch, persecution through zombies, and jealousy/despair through vampires. This is because we continue to experience life at any particular point from one of these three corners.

By extension, kitsch might also encompass comfort foods like McDonalds or the traditional comic-book hero. Persecution might also encompass conspiracy theories or the traditional comic-book villain. And jealousy and despair might also encompass a whole genre of tragedy in literature.

Called Out of Darkness

2009-03-17T11:33:00.002Z

Anne Rice, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (London: Chatto and Windus, 2008), 260 pp.

When I worked for UCCF (Universities and Christian Colleges Fellowship), one of my colleagues told me that a student had stumped him. The student had challenged him with a perspective largely derived from Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil. I subsequently read the first five of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles culminating in the aforementioned Memnoch. (If you recall, the first book, Interview with the Vampire, was made into a film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.) Allow me something of an overview.

It dawns on the vampires Louis and Claudia in Interview that there is no God. ‘… no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil … the only power that exists is inside ourselves … there is no meaning to any of this’ [Interview, 257, 258, 259]. As such, Rice’s vampires make an excellent archetype for sin. Life without God marks them out.

This realisation occurs during their search for meaning. Searching for their place in the world presupposes that they are disengaged from it. Vampires, after all, are nocturnal creatures having no direct affect on the events of the day. Such dis-ease could be seen to be a second mark of sin, because it is not unlike Adam’s exile from Eden [Genesis 3:23-24].

A third mark of sin is that without God, gender distinctions begin to collapse. By trying to take the place of God in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve take the place of each other. Perhaps analogously, Rice’s male vampires are somewhat epicene, although Rice writes that, ‘The work wasn’t about literal sex … The work was about my own fierce polymorphous view of the world in which an old woman might be as beautiful as a young child’ [Called Out of Darkness, 138]. But however noble this might be, it nonetheless results in a collapse of gender distinctions.

In the fourth volume, The Tale of the Body Thief, Lestat seeks redemption – a right place in the world – by becoming human. Yet in the quest to find meaning, vampires are required to kill humans in order to survive, and so they become less human. Indeed the longer a vampire lives, and therefore the more people they kill, their body becomes something akin to porcelain, and they might even develop the ability to fly. Neither is particularly human, and so both lead to further disengagement from the world. (No wonder the mark of Cain [Genesis 4:15] has become the mark of the vampire in other vampire mythology.) Killing, therefore, is a fourth mark of sin, following life without God, exile, and the collapse of the distinctions of sex.

Note that each of these involves a broken boundary. Without God, we become gods. We violate the boundary between God and ourselves. Exile involves being on the wrong side of the boundary from Eden. The boundary is “broken” in this sense. Collapsing gender distinctions entail broken boundaries between male and female. And killing involves breaking the boundaries of others. A world without boundaries, the world east of Eden – the ‘savage garden’ as Rice calls it – gives rise to absurdity. Now, since vampires are evil, then they are also searching for a place for evil in the world. ‘There has never been a place for evil in the Western world’ [Lestat, 505 (italics in original)]. So Rice well illustrates absurdity as she explores evil in relation to both art and God.

First, Rice explores art as a place for evil. The Theatre of the Vampires in The Vampire Lestat perform as themselves. So they have a place in the world as artists. Similarly, Lestat attempts to become a symbol of evil as a rock star. He exclaims in the third volume in the series, ‘Allow me my significance! I am the symbol of evil; and if I am a true symbol, then I do good’ [The Queen of the Damned, 139]. This highlights absurdity because evil is good if one is true to oneself.

Second, in Memnoch the Devil Lestat asks Memnoch:

“So you are telling me that you’re not evil …”
“Exactly.”
… “The Devil is a famous liar.” [136]

The Devil educates souls in hell to enable them to forgive God for suffering. This is suffering that the Devil puts down to God’s imperfection, but God deems a necessary part of his plan for man’s evolution [Memnoch, 259-280]. So is the evil Devil aiding a good but imperfect God? Is that the place of evil? Or is the Devil lying because that is his nature? These questions mean that both evil and God still have no place by the end of Rice’s fifth book in the series. After Memnoch she went on to write five more sequels, none of which I ever read.

In Called Out of Darkness, Rice reflects on her Vampire Chronicles. Rice describes this work as ‘eccentric’ and ‘postmodern’ [143, 137]. Perhaps some do find lace-frilled vampires eccentric. But if Satan did kitsch then this would be it. (And I couldn’t help but notice a connection between her porcelain-becoming vampires and her love of kitsch-Catholic statues.)

She describes Interview with the Vampire as ‘distinctly postmodern in its use of nineteenth-century characters, opulent sets, and ornamented, adjective-laden prose. It was distinctly postmodern in its use of old-fashioned plot and straightforward narrative, and in its use of heroic characters’ [137]. Its heroic characters are antiheroes.

In addition, her work is distinctly postmodern because of the questions it raises (above). ‘These books transparently reflect a journey through atheism and back to God’ [147], or more correctly back to the God of her Catholic upbringing. Lestat was ‘the voice of my soul’, she writes [207].

And this work is also postmodern because of the way in which Rice collages together different periods of history – something possible because her vampires have been around since ancient Egypt. Indeed, researching different periods of history laid the groundwork for her return. ‘In particular, the survival of the Jews … was talking to me about God … If any one “thing” in all my studies led me back to Christ, it was His people, the Jews’ [148].

Although a more succinct account of her conversion can be found at the back of Christ Our Lord: Out of Egypt [429-466] – the first of a projected trilogy about Jesus, reading Called Out of Darkness is like listening to an old friend. And in that sense, its appeal is probably to Rice aficionados only.

A Profound Weakness

2009-03-17T11:04:00.003Z

Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Carlisle: Piquant Editions, 2005), 448 pp.

In a recent post I suggested that kitsch was a scar pointing to psychological hurt. ‘The influence of unconscious phantasy on art, on scientific work, and on the activities of every-day life cannot be overrated’ [Melanie Klein, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963 (London: Vintage, 1997), 252]. And so with this in mind, we turn to Betty Spackman’s book on kitsch.

She begins by revisiting four ‘Kitsch Bitch’ choruses. ‘#1: “We have to take the arts back from the Devil”’ [8-10]. The problem is that this creates an unhelpful “us-and-them” dichotomy between Christians and non-Christians. It leads to judgmentalism rather than love. ‘Take the arts back? I don’t think so. God still has them. The question is, does he have us?’ [9]. ‘#2: “All this kitsch is crap – we need to have more excellence in our work”’ [10]. This is the chorus that Spackman seems to be qualifying in the current work. ‘#3: “We need to be more visible, more powerful, more effective”’ [10]. Here, Spackman heeds the advice of a friend: ‘Perhaps you don’t need more power, just more grace’ [10]. ‘#4: “Let’s get art back into the church”’ [11]. But despite being an artist who ‘would welcome visual expression in any form, in any denomination,’ Spackman is ‘more interested in getting the church out into the streets … the church is not an art gallery but is a place of refuge for the artist’ [11].

Spackman describes kitsch as a profound weakness. By “profound weakness” she explicitly states that kitsch is a profoundly weak art form. This is because kitsch is ‘any form of popular art or entertainment that is a sentimental, cheaply made trivialization of something else … a defining characteristic of kitsch is that it tends to reinforce ideas and convictions rather then either generate or challenge them’ [5]. It therefore has a comforting function. It ‘is a kind of faith in drag … the male disguise to express feminine tendencies’ [13]. In this sense a “profound weakness” implies the need to be comforted from something. So in despising kitsch are we not despising the need that it meets? And if so, the question is begged: who are we to make such a call? [16] Who am I to psychoanalyze kitsch?

This is especially so since Spackman notes that kitsch can express the depth of humanity. Let me give two examples. First, kitsch often expresses grief; and where this expression is raw and immediate, such as 911, Spackman is understanding [206-211]. But where there is time for reflection and thought (such as the writing of the The Shack, might I suggest) kitsch is inexcusable. Second, Spackman notes that Christian kitsch expresses a desire to affirm our faith [99]. Although the motivation is good, its expression leaves something to be desired.

Spackman presents a series of reflections on faith, souvenirs, consumerism, symbols, sentimentality, authenticity, the blue-eyed Jesus, angels, WWJD, tattoos, church buildings, death, etc. These are best digested in small portions; and they are also pervaded by other definitions of kitsch. I particularly liked Matei Calinescu’s ‘Kitsch may be conveniently defined as a specifically aesthetic form of lying’ [120]. Spackman also writes, ‘Swear words play the same role in the vernacular as religious kitsch does in popular culture: cheap clichés that are used too often and flatten meaning. They serve only to provide a vehicle for the release of emotion that has nowhere else to go’ [283].

I only found two weaknesses about the book itself. The first was the typesetting. It would be far better to have two columns of text across 215 mm rather than a single block of san serif font. I found the latter difficult to read. The second weakness was Spackman’s expansion of kitsch to encompass technology. It is surely one thing for technology to be a necessary condition for the production of kitsch, but it is another to keep finding technology itself as an example of kitsch. Spackman cites internet dating [313], Gunther von Hagens’ ‘Korperwelten’ [397-400], and a rabbit genetically modified to glow in the dark [401] as examples of kitsch. But I remain unconvinced that any of these qualify. It all left me wondering whether the author was some kind of technophobe, which wasn’t the point of an otherwise excellent book.

Redeeming Psychotherapy (Wrestling with God)

2009-03-08T09:42:00.013Z

This post follows Redeeming Psychotherapy (Wrestling with Zombies).

Before turning to jealousy and despair, I want to consider what wrestling with God might mean for anger. To do this, I need to introduce the categories of “fallen” and “redeeming”. Crudely, “fallen” signifies the movement of an emotion apart from love; and “redeeming” signifies the movement of an emotion in the light of love. “Redeeming” is also a floating participle. It means that the emotion itself is being redeemed, and that the emotion is an agent of redemption. As we will see, love expresses itself as various virtues, depending on the emotion with which it is mixed.

For example: in 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul writes, ‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ Perhaps we could say that faith is love expressed in the midst of doubt, and that hope is love expressed in the midst of despair. And so because doubt and despair will pass away, then so too will faith and hope. That is why “the greatest of these is love”.

So in returning to anger, allow me to make a distinction: fallen anger seeks to destroy its object, whereas redeeming anger seeks to transform it. The latter is an expression of love through anger. Some might call this forgiveness. Again, there are at least two conditions for character change, so that a fallen emotion might become a redeeming one. The first is wrestling with a psychotherapist through therapy (or with any other person, for that matter, who can contain us). During therapy a psychotherapist will seek to contain a client’s anger, thus fulfilling the maternal function.

We have already seen that by three to four months of age an infant whose mother contains its anger learns two things: the infant learns that anger did not destroy mother, so it learns to integrate the “good” and the “bad”. Both are necessary prerequisites for forgiveness. A psychotherapist will seek to replicate these prerequisites through containment, whatever the psychotherapist happens to believe about forgiveness. Anger expressed through forgiveness does not destroy, and it invites change (“good”) for something “bad”.

Psalm 137 illustrates the second condition: wrestling with God. This Psalm records a burst of Israelite anger towards Babylon – and it does so before God. Whereas wrestling with a psychotherapist involves wrestling with a psychotherapist’s containment of our phantasies, much more is at stake with God. With God, we are wrestling with our emotions towards others, which signify our attitude towards him. If I want to kill a Babylonian child, then part of me wants to kill God. So the part of us that is against God – sin – wrestles with the part of us that seeks to thank him for who he is. That is the pattern of the Psalms: honesty and thanksgiving (by remembering what God has done). But if we do this, if we wrestle with God, then in time we might find that fallen anger becomes forgiveness. What sought to invade boundaries now seeks to invite change by touching boundaries. And that, if you recall, is an expression of love.

Turning to anxiety: again, by three to four months of age an infant whose mother contains its anxiety learns two things: the infant learns that anxiety does not mean that mother persecutes it, so it learns to integrate the “good” and the “bad”. Again, a psychotherapist will seek to replicate these prerequisites for courage through containment. Perhaps the psychotherapist will simply encourage the client to be honest about how they are feeling. That can require courage. Courage is about doing (“good”) despite persecution (feeling “bad”). Courage is the aspect of love that emerges in the midst of anxiety (or fear). So we can see that love is more than emotion, because courage is about doing “good”. (What this then means in war is the subject of much debate.)

The second condition concerns wrestling with God. Fearing God is about facing up to him despite our fear that life – and inkling that God – is against us. We meet him in the darkness because if anxiety "falls short", then that is where it falls: into the darkness. But the darkness is where we can meet, wrestle with, and over time be transformed by him. Genesis 32 contains the biblical example par excellence of what wrestling with God in deep fear looks like.

So far we have considered the kinds of feelings that we most readily associate with the first few months of life, and with the beginnings of psychotherapy. (Of course, these feelings also accompany us right through our lives.) But whereas anger and anxiety arise when something moves against us, we might experience jealousy or despair if something moves away from our boundaries. As such we more readily associate these emotions with – but not exclusively so – the end of relationships or, at least, with a change in relationships.

A client may experience jealousy or despair towards a psychotherapist if the psychotherapist is absent for any period of time. Yet this absence might have triggered jealousy or despair because of some loss in the past. A psychotherapist may well consider that such a loss occurred – or was never allowed to occur – during the client’s Oedipal phase. This is when the client first negotiates the loss of one parent to the other. That is, the client first realises that they do not have exclusive rights to one parent, but rather are excluded from the parental relationship itself.

The conditions for these feelings begin to develop after the first three or four months of life. This is when we begin to appreciate our parents as “other” than us, and so as objects that can be lost to us. Again, a psychotherapist may well be called upon to contain a client’s jealousy or despair, especially if they have not negotiated the parental relationship well. But these emotions also have a “vertical” dimension.

Before we consider that, note the subtle distinction between jealousy and envy: jealousy does not want to give up what it already has, whereas envy wants what it does not have. So as an object moves away from us, jealousy becomes envy. Both move us towards what is moving away. Both want to possess that object. Both violate its boundaries.

Despair, on the other hand, has given up hope of ever engaging the object again. So somewhat symmetrically, despair moves us away from what is moving away.

Taking jealousy first: love expresses itself as generosity in the midst of jealousy. (And, although we won’t pursue it, perhaps we can say that love expresses itself as gratitude in the midst of envy.) Redeeming jealousy is often seen in marriages. Rather than both spouses disappearing up each other’s backsides, they are generously inclusive in their relationship. They are a blessing to those around them. This is because they trust each other to remain passionately committed to the relationship. The blueprint for this is Christ’s relationship with the Church. That is the model of marriage that marriage seeks to mirror. Only by wrestling with God, by expressing our jealousy, and by giving thanks for what he has given us, can our jealousy be redeemed.

Similarly love expresses itself as hope in the midst of despair. It is important to be honest before God, even if hope seems absent. Psalm 88 is an ample example of that. (Since I have written on this elsewhere, I will not pursue it here. See ‘A Talk to Artists on Handling Rejection and Success’.)

The task of the psychotherapist is to tune into the transference of the client. Transference is that which the client transfers onto the psychotherapist from other relationships. By tuning into the transference, the psychotherapist can reconstruct the client’s relational patterns.

However, for true transformation to take place, it is important to relate these “horizontal” patterns to a “vertical” pattern with God. Only by being honest with God about our feelings and where we are with him, only by giving thanks for all he has done for us, only then can we truly become who he made us to be.

Drop Dead

2009-03-08T00:23:00.004Z

I grew up near death metal central (Birmingham). So when I became a Christian in 1990, I prayed that I would find decent death metal performed by Christians. One of those bands was Drop Dead. Their finest hour was Our Forgotten Destiny (1990), which contained the following tracks:

1. Our Forgotten Destiny
2. A Man of the Forlorn
3. Clouds on the Horizon
4. The March of Empire
5. Oppression
6. Falling from Grace
7. Peace
8. New Frontier

Anyway, this was later re-released along with their previous demos as Death by Fusion (1994). So you can imagine my delight when I found this second product available to download here. Never mind their early stuff: Our Forgotten Destiny simply hasn't dated. Standout tracks like Oppression sound like they were written and recorded last week. Timeless. A true gem.

Redeeming Psychotherapy (Wrestling with Zombies)

2009-03-07T22:43:00.012Z

The task of the psychotherapist is to tune into the transference of the client. Transference is that which the client transfers onto the psychotherapist from other relationships. By tuning into the transference, the psychotherapist can reconstruct the client’s relational patterns.

Such patterns inevitably involve boundaries. Boundaries are like the surface of our body. On the one hand, they separate us from other people (by keeping the insides in and the outsides out). On the other hand, they connect us with people. (Our body does this through our senses.) Boundaries simultaneously connect and separate.

Touch is an essential component of love. Touch occurs when two boundaries meet. But love fails when we fall short of a boundary and when we transgress it. Since these movements (from and against) evoke different emotions, our emotions can help to illuminate the boundary problems in our lives. (Movements “from” tend to evoke jealousy and despair, and movements “against” anger and anxiety. As we shall see, each emotion is a movement in its own right.)

As such, the psychotherapist will be particularly sensitive to the boundaries of the sessions. Does the client come on time? (If they come too early, or too late, or not at all, what does this say about their movement in relation to boundaries?) Is the client stepping over a boundary by asking about the psychotherapist’s private life? How does the client respond to breaks in the counselling? (Which emotions does this evoke?)

Like all relationships, the relationship that a psychotherapist has with a client has a beginning and an end. In some ways, this reflects the relationship that an infant has with his or her parents. Initially, according to Melanie Klein, the infant experiences contentment, anger and (persecutional) anxiety, only later to develop emotions like jealousy and despair.

Similarly, a client may initially feel anxious about seeing a psychotherapist, only later to develop other emotions: perhaps jealousy because the psychotherapist has other clients and other relationships; and perhaps despair because the relationship will eventually come to an end. Let us take anger and anxiety first.

In our first three or four months we experience life as either “good” or “bad”. When we experience one we have no recollection of the other. We have little objectivity. So when we feel “bad” feelings, we experience the world as “bad”. If a baby could speak, perhaps they would say that the world is persecuting them. Unconsciously, the baby is trying to rid itself of “bad” feelings by projecting them outside.

Many of us still do this at times. Contemporary zombie films perhaps illustrate this. They illustrate the way in which we project anger onto (or into) others, producing paranoia and anxiety on our part. This is a similar dynamic to young infants, who create a “bad” mother in their minds. (I have posted elsewhere about the parallel creation of a “good” mother, and its emergence in kitsch.)

But as a mother contains her infant’s anger and anxiety, the infant learns that “bad” feelings do not entail “bad” mother. Similarly, they learn that “bad” feelings (like anger) do not in themselves destroy things (like “good” mother). They learn that they are not omnipotent. They learn that there is a boundary between them and the outside world. They learn objectivity. They learn that “good” and “bad” mother is the same mother. And so they learn to integrate “good” and “bad”.

Now, turning to “bad” feelings at the beginning of psychotherapy: if a client perceives a psychotherapist to be a threat, then that client might experience anger or anxiety towards the psychotherapist. And since our emotions move us, anger is a movement against that threat, whereas anxiety is a movement away from it.

It is important for the psychotherapist to take a maternal role, and to contain these feelings. Such containment causes the client to wrestle with the psychotherapist. On the one hand, the client (unconsciously) transfers other relationships onto this relationship. We might call the patterns behind these relationships “phantasies” – unconsciously scripted stories that we play out. So a client might bring their anger into the session, and expect to be rejected because of it. This is what happens on the one hand.

On the other hand, the psychotherapist seeks to contain these emotions. Containment is a function of love. So they do not reject an angry client. Rather, they encourage the client to explore their anger, and the boundary patterns that they perceive. So by wrestling with the psychotherapist’s containment of our phantasies, we are also wrestling with our phantasies. We are literally fighting our demons – or wrestling with our zombies. (The zombie, if you recall, represents the phantasy that others will persecute us. That is, the fantasy of the zombie represents the phantasy of paranoia.)

Although containment might be necessary for change in the client, I do not believe that it is sufficient. This is because the psychotherapist is only dealing with the “horizontal” dimension of relationships – the dimension between human and human – and not with the “vertical” dimension – the dimension between human and God.

If you were an engineer, and a bridge you built fell down, then you might find yourself praying about what went wrong. But even if you believe that prayer is necessary, it is almost certainly not sufficient for repairing the bridge. The bridge will not rebuild itself and, in any case, mistakes when building the previous bridge need to be noted.

Similarly, if our psyche is in need of healing, then we need both psychology and prayer. Wrestling with a psychotherapist (through therapy) and wrestling with God (through prayer) are both necessary. (And if you were to push me hard enough, I would add community as a third ingredient.)

In a later post we will look further at the second ingredient: wrestling with God.

10 Theses concerning the Cross

2009-03-01T11:13:00.004Z

With Easter approaching, I thought I would turn my attention to the cross. Here are ten theses about the death of Jesus:

1. Incarnation. The death of Jesus cannot be abstracted from the incarnation. (a) It is only because Jesus is God that he can forgive us. A Jesus who is not God cannot forgive us on behalf of God. Only God can forgive sin [Mark 2:7]. (b) It is only because Jesus is a man empowered by the Holy Spirit that he lives the holy life we cannot live. Jesus is empowered by the Spirit (at least) at his conception [Matthew 1:18] and his baptism [Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32-33].

2. Life. The death of Jesus cannot be abstracted from his life. If he did not live the holy life we cannot live, then he could not be our mediator. If he did not live the holy life we cannot live, then he too would need a mediator.

3. Resurrection. The death of Jesus cannot be abstracted from his resurrection. Jesus is raised from the dead because he lives the holy life we cannot live. When he is raised from the dead his Spirit mediates forgiveness to us and, indeed, through us [John 20:22-23; thesis 10].

4. Israel. The death of Jesus cannot be abstracted from the history of Israel. The history of Israel points to Jesus because he is the Jewish Messiah. The history of Israel provides the categories through which we can understand the death of Jesus – like the Exile and the Exodus.

5. Sin. It is inevitable that a holy God suffers a violent death at the hands of sinful humanity. Sin is rebellion against God [Genesis 3]. Sin is why we cannot live a holy life like Jesus. Sin is why we need God to forgive us.

6. Penal Substitution. Jesus suffered the punishment of man so that man need not suffer the punishment of God. (a) The darkness over the land is a sign anticipating the punishment of God [Exodus 10:21-12:29; Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:24]. (b) Jesus endures capital punishment at the hands of Romans and Jews so that this judgment does not come to pass. He is the Passover Lamb [Exodus 12:1-28].

7. Wrath. The punishment (or wrath) of God is sometimes mediated, sometimes not. Sometimes it has an immediacy to it like the deaths of the firstborn in Exodus [12:29-30]. Sometimes it is mediated like God’s handing us over to the consequences of our own actions [Romans 1:18-32]. The latter has followed since Genesis 3.

8. Exile. Jesus suffers the mediated punishment of God. The consequence of rebellion against God is separation from God, which is signified by exile: first from Eden [Genesis 3:23-24] and later from Israel [Deuteronomy 28:15f.]. The punishment of God is therefore mediated by exile. Jesus suffers the curse of exile by dying on a Roman cross. This Roman cross signifies that Israel is still in exile.

9. Forgiveness. The death of Jesus is the cost of forgiveness. It would have been just for God to rescue Jesus from the cross, and then punish humanity for what it had done. But God forgives rather than punishes, and this costs Jesus his life. (This is a restatement of thesis 6 in the language of forgiveness.)

10. Response. The cross demands a response. Either we accept his forgiveness and are transformed, or we do not believe and are ultimately destroyed. Either way, justice is done because justice means making things right. If we accept, then we receive his Spirit who empowers us to forgive. Witnessing and forgiving are two sides of the same coin, because witnessing is the first thing the disciples do after being commissioned to forgive [John 20:21-25].

The Shack (A Psychoanalysis)

2009-02-19T22:34:00.009Z

Although Freud (pictured) is most frequently associated with psychoanalysis, this post takes its lead from the work of Melanie Klein. The raison d’être for such an analysis corresponds with two previous observations. I previously noted that the message of The Shack concerns incarnation. ‘But the medium of the transfigured shack suggests escape from the world rather than incarnation.’ There is therefore a tension between the message and its medium. That is the first observation. The second is that ‘justice is what happens outside the transfigured shack, whereas love is what happens within it’.

Taking the second of those observations first, we see a dichotomy between justice and love, between good and bad. Even when good things do happen outside of the transfigured shack, they happen because of the shack; for example: Mack seeks to visit his daughter’s killer [253]. So the inability to integrate the good and the bad – a symptom of Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position – is evident in Young’s work.

Klein supposes that all of us oscillate between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. The former splits the world into “good mother” and “bad mother” (hence its “schizoid” tag), and seeks refuge in an idealized “good” from a persecutory “bad” (hence its “paranoid” tag). The latter integrates “good” and “bad” such that if we seek to destroy a “bad” object we become anxious lest we also destroy the “good” (hence the “depressive” tag).

The former is all we know through the first three or four months of life, after which the depressive position comes to the fore. The latter does so as the mother helps us to integrate the “good” and the “bad” by taking all our crap. Although the depressive position is more mature than the former, the failure of mother to take all our crap can cause us to get somewhat stuck in the schizoid-paranoid position. As a result, we separate the “good” from the “bad” by projecting all of our crap onto (or into) the world outside, and by seeking refuge in an idealized “good mother”.

Agoraphobia well illustrates this. The agoraphobic projects all of their anxiety into the outside world, so that the outside world literally persecutes them. They seek refuge by never going out. Such traits are evident in The Shack to the extent that ‘justice is what happens outside the transfigured shack, whereas love is what happens within it’.

Now I want to take the first of my observations second: there is a tension between the incarnational message of The Shack and its transfigured medium. Since this is a literary-theological judgment, it does not fully explain why the kitsch nature of the medium causes me such unease. (The psychoanalytical name for such a reaction on my part is known as counter-transference.) So I have explored this further.

Kitsch often concerns nostalgia. When it does, it concerns a return to the halcyon days of our childhood. And therein lies the rub. On entering the transfigured shack Mack meets an African-American woman. Given that the split between the “good” transfigured shack and the “bad” outside suggests something of the paranoid-schizoid position, this woman seems to represent the idealised mother. Now, I have no theological quibble with God the Father or “Papa” being represented by a woman. But I do feel some unease about an encounter with the idealized mother in the context of this good-bad dichotomy. Why? Because this seems to signify early psychological wounds. After all, the author (Young) notes something of himself in the protagonist (Mack) [260].

‘… my history was a series of train wrecks. From a childhood rife with sexual abuse, abandonment, and night terrors, to an adolescence of addictive behaviours and secrets, an adult burdened with lies, compulsive perfectionism, and pervasive shame and throughout a fine line between suicide and flight, all under a mask of adequacy, spirituality, and health’ [257].

So my unease is similar to that which ugly physical scarring – or perhaps excessive cosmetic surgery – might evoke. But it is not a wish that Young had used a different medium. (My wish that he did so follows strictly from a literary-theological judgment). Rather, it is an opportunity to explore why, on this occasion, kitsch might make me want to puke.