Archive for August, 2005
There’s a fascinating interview with John Dominic Crossan about his new book In Search of Paul over at the Journal of Philosophy and Scripture (via Michael Pahl at the stuff of earth). The section that caught my attention has Crossan commenting on the direction Christianity has taken since the early 20th Century into an apolitical gnosticism. His critique has particular relevance in the current climate of violence and empire.
“Let me put it in a larger framework. One thing that I noticed in researching for this book is that way back in the beginning of the last century, 1907, two different scholars, a British scholar named William Mitchell Ramsay and a German scholar named Gustav Adolph Deissmann, got on a train and a boat and a horse and went around the Pauline sites and saw the inscriptions that say that Caesar Augustus was divine, was the son of god, was god, was lord, was redeemer, was savior of the world. They saw all that and they said, as it were: Oh, my God! That is what it’s all about! They saw that when Jesus was called by those same titles it was not simply the result of picking up the cultural debris of his contemporary world. It was saying, in effect: these are the titles of Caesar, but we refuse them to Caesar and assign them instead to Jesus. They were not simply applying to Jesus ordinary words in everyday language. So in 1907 these scholars saw the implications. But instead of the twentieth century building a theology on this realization - which of course would have been one-hundred percent political and one-hundred percent religious, something capable of pointing to that deep basis where religion and politics coincide - we went off into existential demythologization and it was the last thing the twentieth century needed. We went into a kind of personalized, existentialized individualism when what we needed was the kind of powerful political/religious understanding of Christianity authentic to the first century. I’m not even talking about an application of it. I’m just talking about seeing what was there, seeing why Jesus was crucified, seeing that the Romans got it right. That’s part of what I see happening right now. On the one hand we have - though they are only straws in the wind at the moment, they are big straws in a big wind - a growing insistence on the political and religious implications of Christianity. I’m extremely excited. This is not just talking politics but talking about what Jesus called the kingdom of God, what Paul called the Lordship of Christ, which is simply a way of saying who is in charge of the world. And counterpointed with this I find a Gnosticism that coalesces magnificently with American individualism - inside not outside, religion not politics, spirituality not religion - everything that makes the whole thing Gnostic and safe.”
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August 15th, 2005
This morning’s Guardian gave me plenty to think about:
- Justin Cartwright writes about the meaning of life or, rather, its meaninglessness. Religious belief he sees as somewhere between pathetic and pernicious. What strikes me? I think its the tone of the piece: it sounds like its pointing out the obvious to those who should know better. It’s another sign of the intellectual marginalisation of belief in the UK — for which people of faith must bear the responsibility. The measure of the shift underway (or almost over?) is that the non-theistic perspective of belief is no longer seen as belief at all but as background knowledge.
- Maybe that why I winced especially at the report on the collection of religious jokes being assembled to test proposed anti-hate speech legislation. I think the legislation is misguided but couldn’t help feeling profoundly saddened by the implicit view of my profession. Bring back Dave Allen!
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August 13th, 2005
Indiana Jones is the key. You’ll know all about the Ark of the Covenant if you’re a fan of Indy. And you’ll have a clue why the Israelites are carrying it around today. Not just a box with stones in, the Ark is the Hebrew nuclear power plant – altogether dangerous and altogether amazing. It’ll smite you if approach it wrong or, as here, pile up the waters of the Jordan to left and right so the people can enter the land of promise the way they left Egypt and slavery a generation ago. It is the answer to the promise of presence: God is here; the Living God is with you.
In the film the uncovered Ark is put to evil use with priests and rituals to unlock its secrets and of course there’s smiting and zapping as the box is opened. But that’s where the film goes misses the mark. This isn’t Noah’s Ark—God doesn’t live inside. The Ark is a throne. The twinned angels on its lid aren’t handles but a perch, a place for the Glory of God to settle: The Mercy Seat. That was the tragedy and transgression of those molten calves back at Zion—not that they were idols or false gods but that they were rival thrones, rival resting places for God. ‘If Moses can’t handle God up there on the mountain top maybe we can lure him down with these!’
Now you may be forgiven for thinking ‘what a load of rubbish!’ And you’d be right. God isn’t some big budgie to perch in this place and not that. God couldn’t be charmed by our roosting boxes. God is everywhere.
But being everywhere has its perils. Everywhere is mighty like nowhere. The omnipresent God gets spread rather thin for our liking. … Our God does seem to like to perch and rest.
Isn’t God sometimes more here than there? Aren’t there places that seem to drip with sacredness: a church, a beach, a forest, a home? And don’t we remember moments as soaked in spirit as a Christmas cake: maybe turning a corner into sunshine, or seeing your baby born; letting a friend go at last, or simply stepping from then to now and knowing you do it un-alone?
A retreat makes a kind of sanctuary for these God’s resting places and where God dwells even for a moment there is power and living presence.
I like to think that, lacking angels’ wings to make a mercy seat, our shoulders will do: that God will get a liking for the rest we offer and wander with us, powerful and present, alighting always and wherever we go.
August 11th, 2005
A day late but still relevant: a speech by Fr. George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, who served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. He died in 1992 but spoke movingly on the 40th anniversary of the bombings.
In one of those bitter ironies of history the 6th of August is also the day the church celebrates the Transfiguration, another event of cloud and blinding light and fear.
Remembering the first nuclear detonation, J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted the the Bhagavad-Gita: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Janet Morley, in her book All Desires Known, offers a collect that mirrors the glory and the horror of the day:
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August 7th, 2005
Evolution has surprisingly become the focus of debate in Roman Catholic circles after Cardinal Christoph Schönborn produced a critical editorial in the New York Times last month. Today’s Tablet contains a response by George Coyne, SJ, head of the Vatican Observatory. The Independent picked up the story.
August 5th, 2005
There was an interesting book review in last weekend’s Guardian about the greater toxic effect of social inequality rather than poverty per se. Hat tip: Eric
August 3rd, 2005
Be afraid! Be very afraid! Who needs a police state when you’ve got Miriam’s God eavesdropping on your grumbling, ready with a punishment swift and terrible? Not exactly good news as we begin a retreat. Get too close to God, it suggests, and be afraid.
Jesus reverses that equation. Out in the sea the disciples are panicking but Jesus comes close to calm them. Peter undone by his own boldness is sinking under the weight of fear but Jesus puts out his hand and holds him. Holds him, speaks gently to him, and walks the waves back to the boat.
And, in utter contrast to the first reading, those who are sick and hurting, reach and touch and find their healing in Jesus.
Come close enough to touch. Come close enough to be held. There’s the invitation for retreat. Come close to God, feel God’s hand open for you, let God hold you. And something good will happen. Something very good.
August 2nd, 2005
There’s a lot of lousy theology out and about on the web, especially from christian and catholic sites. Usually when I’m roaming the net I get more and more dismayed by what people say they believe and even more by how they express themselves. So it is a great delight to come across a blog, Waiter Rant, that treats life, spirituality, and even God with a perceptive gentleness.
The piece that first caught my eye, Nunc Dimittis, deals movingly with the author’s leaving seminary some years ago.
August 2nd, 2005
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