Archives For Karl Barth

The Best Thing about the Catholic Church

Jason Micheli —  May 22, 2013 — 1 Comment

BELIEFS-popupI recently posted a reflection vis a vis Karl Barth on ‘Why I’m Not a Catholic.’ 

I took some crap from my Catholic brethren for being unfair to the Holy, Mother Church.

To do penance for that post I thought I’d mention a recent story that is indicative to me of what I take to be the greatest gift the Catholic Church presently offers the world.

In case you missed it, Pope Francis recently spoke about the need for global financial reform “along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. Money has to serve, not to rule” Francis said.

The new Pope went to excoriate Western society for its relationship to money and its worship of the free market, saying the worship of the golden calf of old, has now a new image, “in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.” 

You can read the rest of the story here.

To get back to my reason for writing, Pope Francis’ strong words against unfettered capitalism remind the world that though the Catholic Church advocates against abortion and homosexuality it (the Catholic Church) does not fit into the  ’conservative’ category, at least as its given to us in American culture. The very same seamless garment of life that prompts the Church to protect the unborn provokes it defend the prisoner and the poor.

The Pope before him took a dim view of America’s unprovoked war in Iraq and the current Pope just reminded everyone that the Church’s understanding of economics is both older than Milton Friedman and at odds with him.

And, to my mind, that’s the best thing going about the Catholic Church right now.

While all Christian bodies self-present as a global church, seldom do they meet that assertion.

My own Methodist tradition IS a global stream of Christianity yet that stream is comprised of myriad rivulets and eddies, with each taking the character, perspective and loyalty of their nation and culture. So in the United States we have United Methodism and in Korea we have the Korean Methodist Church and so on.

People called Methodists are not a singular global body with a unified witness.

We’re more like managers and employees of a franchise lacking a CEO.

What United Methodists, for example, say about a particular issue- conservative or liberal- inevitably sounds like what any one else from the United States would say, Christian or not.

jefferts-schoriNo where is this more true and obvious than with the situation in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican “Communion.” In case you missed it, (story here) the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church (USA) used the holy day of Pentecost to cast the Apostle Paul (you know, author of most of the New Testament whether we like it or not) aside as a ‘bigot’ using the Book of Acts of all things to make her case.

One would think she could used a text actually authored by Paul for the one formerly known as Saul gives ample ammunition the cause. While I may have sympathies with the issue behind her sermon even someone who agrees with her on the issue of sexuality must admit the ethnocentrism inherent in her perspective, for to liken one’s position to a fresh outpouring of the Spirit is to put those other sincere Christians who disagree in what sort of light?

While I acknowledge all the flaws and imperfections in the following, I nonetheless believe:

Only the Catholic Church with its bishop among bishops, who is beholden to no other government, politics, military or culture, offers a voice free to be, firstly and thoroughly, Christian.

This is why, I think, on issue after issue, from war to sexuality to torture to economics, the office of the Pope is so routinely ‘all over the place,’ refusing  easy secular categorization.

Pope Francis’ words on economics would get pilloried (actually probably yawned at) as ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ language if a United Methodist had said them.

Fact is, he’s just speaking Christian. 

That Francis’ words on economics sound ‘political’ to us (or even ‘partisan’ when on another’s lips) is but an indication of how we’re more captured by our politics than we are by our Great High Priest.

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1.1 §7.1: Why I’m Not A Catholic

Jason Micheli —  May 15, 2013 — 3 Comments

karl_barth_1167312313122810A while back someone asked me for some reasons why they should not leave the United Methodist Church. I didn’t have time to respond and, frankly, I couldn’t come up with any answers that wouldn’t sound cliche or, worse, prejudicial.

The truth is the issues that once ruptured the Body of Christ are now largely resolved.

How justification is understood in the Catholic Church now resembles how justification is understood in most Protestant churches and that, of course, was the primary dispute.

So I didn’t come up with any real, urgent reasons. People should go to the church where their faith is most alive and activated. That said, Karl Barth gives his reasoning in this section of the Dogmatics.

Again and again in 1.1 of the Church Dogmatics, Barth comes back to the question ‘what is the word of God?’

What does the Bible have to do with the word of God?

And how does Bible direct what the Church says about the faith?

In §1.7 Barth locates what he’s said thus far within the rubric of Dogmatics. In doing so, Barth distinguishes what he takes to be Protestant Dogmatics from both the dogma of modernism and dogma of Roman Catholicism. By contrast, in Barth’s view at least, Protestant Dogmatics is unique in the role the Bible exerts as a word that can always stand as a witness over and against the finite words of people. In a nutshell, this is Barth’s assertion:

In fact Church proclamation is not an undertaking which can come under other criteria than God’s Word in respect of its content. Other criteria cede ground, building the identity of the church on something other than that which truly defines it.

Barth thus aims his polemical ire at Roman Catholicism.

*It should be noted, however, that Barth respected Roman Catholicism; he was invited as one of the lone Protestants at Vatican II and he counted Hans Urs Von Balthasar as one of the best theologians of the 20th century. 

For Barth the difference between Protestant and Catholic dogmatics comes down to whether or not the church has been entrusted with dogmas that must be believed- apart from the word.

Barth argues that to place our belief in ecclesial dogmas is to place our belief in the words of men rather than the Word of God.

Barth goes so far as to assert that their very character as dogmas, which are often logically derived, differentiates them from the dogmatics that emerges out of strict obedience to the Word. 

For an example of the kind dogma Barth might have in mind, consider the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception. Protestants (and Catholics for that matter) often erroneously assume the immaculate conception refers to Christ’s conception by the Spirit. Not so.

It actually refers to Mary’s sinless conception, which is a logical necessity- so goes the doctrine- if Jesus is without sin and sin- so goes the antiquated doctrine- is passed down to us biologically.

The immaculate conception is entirely logical when considered in its own and perhaps it’s defensible theologically for what it tries to convey.

Nonetheless, Barth would insist the Church should not be given dogmas which it must believe which themselves do not come to us by way of the word.

Before you think Barth’s just jumping on Roman Catholicism, note how his critique could just as easily be leveled at certain strands of Protestantism today. Within the so-called neo-Calvinist movement, fidelity to the Reformers’ (mis)interpretation of justification transcends an honest reading of justification as its given to us in scripture. Many neo-Calvinists do not do what their predecessors did, always reforming and reexamining assumptions, but instead reify doctrine in the precise way Barth insists we should not do.

Or consider how many evangelical fundamentalists hold to a doctrine of scriptural infallibility- and require others hold to it to be considered legitimate Christians- that scripture itself does not give us and which is itself a relatively recent product of anti-modernism.

Barth’s other target in this section is modernism, which is the air most Christians in the West breathe. Modernism refers to theologies that begin with ‘secular’ knowledge and then proceed to the Bible, often forcing scripture to fit into a-scriptural categories and jettisoning anything that doesn’t fit: ‘We know resurrection can’t happen so this must be a story of the disciples’ own interior experience of Jesus being with them still, in their hearts.’  

This type of theology, with its feigned sophistication, is everywhere in and out of the Church. The world becomes the measure of what we say when we speak of God. No doubt, this is a necessary to an extent.

We can’t just assume a 1st century worldview, but neither can we afford to lose the Bible’s freedom to stand against us in judgment.

 

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Clergy Robes and Anonymous Notes in Church

Jason Micheli —  May 14, 2013 — 23 Comments

3.19.PastorsDoAnonymousLetters_855603649When I was a student at Princeton, I got the chance to hear a lecture delivered by Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian whose work I knew only from the snarky comments I heard whispered by certain professors as I waited on their tables during faculty lunches.

Hauerwas was a like a breath of fresh air: robustly Barthian, absolutely not a Calvinist, and he had a mouth dirtier than my own.faith4

During the lecture, which was on discipleship, Hauerwas shot from the hip and offered what has continued to be a guiding maxim of the pastorate for me:

“Ministry is like being nibbled to death by ducks.

It’s just a nibble here and a nibble there but before you know it you’re missing a leg.”

I’m grateful for those auspicious words and have never forgotten them.

I once again recalled them when this morning this little gem found its way to my desk:

photo

Context:

In December I preached a sermon in which I used folding chairs to illustrate my point. In the first service, the cincture of my robe kept getting caught in the chairs so I took it off for the following services.

I wasn’t making a statement.

I wasn’t trying to ‘go contemporary.’

I wasn’t trying offend traditional sensibilities.

I wasn’t trying to do anything but avoid breaking my leg on the altar steps.

Not wearing my robe that Sunday elicited such bad behavior, in the form of anonymous notes left in my box, under my door, in the pew pads, and on the pulpit, as well as gossip being brought to me fourth-hand (‘so and so is concerned..’), that I decided not to encourage such behavior by putting it back on.

To date, in over four months, only 1 actual living, breathing human has approached me face-to-face to tell me how they feel about the robe. The ratio of anonymous complaint to face-to-face encounter is about 1/300.

Before proceeding, I probably don’t need to, but I will do so anyway and point out that 98% of my congregation are wonderfully sincere Christians who are supportive, encouraging and want nothing but to partner in furthering God’s mission in the world. I love working with those 98% and I think (fingers crossed) they appreciate me, warts and all.
Back to this week’s latest note.

I could point out that leaving an anonymous complaint in the offering plate- the plate that gets prayed over and dedicated to the Lord’s reconciling work in the world- suggests something far more disturbing than my lack of vestments.

I mean- would you ever stick a cranky post-it note on the communion bread?

That’s bible bad.

I could point out how anonymous notes by their very nature are antithetical to Christian practice for they represent a refusal to be in relationship with another. They make the other an object and thus deny our mutual in-Christ-ness. This is exactly what Jesus was commanding us away from in Matthew 18 when he insists we confront those we’re upset with face-to-face.

And yet time and again we blithely dismiss congregants’ disrespect and gossip as ‘that’s how churches are.’

Meanwhile, most people my age want nothing to do with church exactly because ‘that’s how churches are.’

I could point to what’s missing in this note. Like appreciation. For example, I spent roughly 20 hours- outside the normal work day- writing the sermon I then had to deliver 4 times after also writing a funeral sermon for a tragic death. It wasn’t the best sermon in the world but it was faithfully prepared and preached. And that was just my contribution to the service. This doesn’t even include the hours the other music staff and volunteers put in to making it a meaningful service. To notice only clothing is trivial to the extreme.

I could point out that Methodists only started wearing robes in the 1940’s and 50’s when we ceased being a frontier church and aspired to be a downtown church like the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. *Interestingly, the advent of the robe in Methodist worship coincides with our inability to make new Christians.

And don’t even get me started about tattling to get the other pastor to make me do something that anonymous complaints have heretofore not solved.

The observation I do want to make, however, is about the irony within this note, suggesting that a clerical robe is a sign of my respect for said anonymous complainer rather than the robe being a sign of the respect due me by virtue of my ordination.

The note is correct. It is about respect. Towards me. My office.

And on this point I lay blame not on the anonymous individual but on the United Methodist Church. 

I spent countless summers working as a lifeguard at a country club. I know what it feels like to work at a country club, sporting the emblazoned, obligatory uniform. Sure, the uniform served a helpful function. I was the guy who could help save people.

The uniform did something else too.

It identified me as ‘labor’ and everyone else as ‘ownership.’

I would argue that same dynamic, dichotomy, marks many a Methodist church.

The downside of the United Methodist Church having never fully claimed the Reformation mandate of the ‘priesthood of all believers’ is that in most congregations the ministry is owned by the pastors and staff.

We do ministry for the members not with them; consequently, the constituency becomes the congregation rather than the community.

A delineation between clergy and laity grows until it becomes ingrained.

What was once anathema to the early church becomes ‘how we do church.’

The clergy robe marks us in many minds not as a vicar of Christ, not as someone who might help people get saved, but as ‘labor.’

And as I know from working at a country club, owners can treat labor however they please.

The difference between a church and a country club is that I don’t care who pays the bills (though I’m grateful they do) it doesn’t change the fact that the church belongs to Jesus Christ. And I report to him not the authors of anonymous notes.

When it comes to churches, unlike country clubs, membership has no benefits.

Other than taking up a cross.

 But as I said I blame this on the UMC not on the individual. 

The United Methodist Church gives a lot of lip service to laity sharing in the ministry of Christ but the denomination places such requirements upon the local church (mandatory committees and admin positions) that ‘sharing in the ministry of Christ’ most often gets realized in the form of serving on committees.

Having raised their hand to vote, most lay people don’t have the time to do anything else in their church.

And then we wonder why lay people can’t even pray out loud without blushing and deferring to the pastor.

It gets worse on the flip- side.

The polity of the UMC tacitly encourages this division of ‘labor’ and ‘owners.’

The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church lays all the responsibility of the local church upon the pastor- you should Google the Discipline’s summary of the expectations of a pastor, it’s endless.

At the same time, the Book of Discipline gives those same held-responsible-pastors virtually no official leadership authority. As a pastor, I’ve no real role (nor do any staff) at a church council meeting, for example.

To make us even more impotent, itinerancy moves preachers at such a frequency that most pastors are kept from serving in one place long enough to ever cultivate organic leadership authority.

The only solace I derive from this is that our bishops are similarly neutered into irrelevance at General Conference.

Since this note was anonymous I can’t (in biblically mandated Jesus fashion) confront the person face-to-face. Instead I I thought I could pass the note on to my true source of frustration, the denomination. I could forward the note to my bishop with my thoughts on the real problem behind it all:

‘the priesthood of pastors and the ownership of members.’

But then, that would be a waste of time.

The bishop too is powerless to do anything about it.

 

 

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Is Suicide Really Unforgivable?

Jason Micheli —  May 7, 2013 — 1 Comment

Chagall-1I’d been a candidate in the United Methodist ordination process for a year and a half. I’d been a seminary student for two semesters, and I’d been a solo pastor for three months when a member of my tiny little congregation at Linvale United Methodist Church outside Princeton, New Jersey went home one Sunday after the 10:00 worship service, climbed downstairs to his basement, spread out the plastic tarp that was still dirty from a long ago family camping trip, unlocked the deer rifle with which he’d once taught his son to hunt in the Pine Barrens, sat down in a wrought iron lawn chair, and killed himself.

It had been seven years since I’d given my life to Christ. I had ten ‘Master of Divinity’ courses notched on my transcript. I’d been a minister for a dozen or so Sundays. And, suddenly, one of my first tasks in that role was to minister to the family of a church member who had taken his own life.

The man was elderly, and he was terminally ill with cancer, painfully so. This was my second direct experience with suicide.

The first came had come at the church at which I’d interned just a few months previous.

A friend recently lost a good friend the same way and asked me the question that always comes up in those situations:

What does the Church believe about suicide?

 Is suicide really an unforgivable sin?

Before anyone goes about answering such a question to distinguish suicide as a rational choice and suicide as the result of mental or emotional illness.15-Javert-commits-suicide-because-he-has-lost-his-hat

There is a deep difference between, say, Inspector Javert and Rick Warren’s who tragically suffered mental illness and recently sucumbed to it.

With the former example in mind, the Christian tradition has historically held suicide to be morally wrong because the act of suicide represents a refusal to live moment-by-moment. In this sense, in suicide, the creature seeks to exercise the autonomy of the creator. Thus suicide marks a rejection of our status as finite creatures made by God. Because it’s not solely “my” life that I’m taking, suicide can, theologically speaking, be understood as an assault or affront to God, the One to whom “my” life belongs. For Christians, this kind of suicide is an attack on someone else’s property.

Suicide is an issue around which many painful myths cohere so it’s important to point out that, from a Christian viewpoint, suicide does not necessarily condemn one to irretrievable punishment.

God no more judges a person on the single sinful act of suicide than God judges any one else solely on a single sinful act.

Rather the Christian understanding that even with those commit suicide God takes the measure of a whole life and judges based on the sum of that life.

When it comes to the first sort of suicide, the sort I encountered in my first parish difficult though it was, what is important for a Christian ethical perspective is that Christians refuse to speak the culturally dominant language of independence. This is hard.

The language of individual autonomy, though common, is deceptive. It may sound true that my life is my life, yet a family’s experience of suicide proves just how false a claim that really is. The language of individual autonomy is limiting because the fact is our lives are bound together with family and friends in a number of ways.

My life is not just my own because it’s a life that exists in relationship with scores of others: many who love me, many who depend upon me, many who understand their life in relationship to my own.

I learned this fact firsthand while ministering to the church member’s family I mentioned above. His suicide was hardly a solitary act with limited consequences. On the contrary it caused pain to all those others to whom his life belonged.

Christian tradition, then, defines suicide as a moral wrong first because it’s a rejection of our created-ness and hence an assault on God and, secondly, Christian tradition defines it as a moral wrong because, whether it’s intended or not, it’s an assault on others too.

Having said all that, it’s critical to stress that most of us have more experience with examples like the heartache Rick Warren and his family are presently enduring.

To listen to a very good and pastoral conversation about this topic, I’d encourage you to take a listen to the recent podcast at Homebrewed Christianity.

logoTo take a step back, I think what’s critical to remember in all cases is that suicide isn’t so much a question what a person will suffer in God’s eternity rather suicide is but one example of how God’s creation continues to suffer- groan, Paul says- under the power of Sin and Death.

The saving power of the cross is both perfect and yet mysteriously it’s still most definitely NOT YET.

karl_barth_1167312313122810As in most things, I think Karl Barth puts it well.

This is from Church Dogmatics 3.4:

“Sickness, like death itself, is unnatural and disorderly. It is an element in the rebellion of chaos against God’s creation. It is an act and declaration of the devil and demons. To be sure, it is no less bound to God and dependent on Him than the creature which He created. Indeed, it is impotent in a double way. For like sin and death, it is neither good nor is it willed and created by God at all, but is real, effective, powerful and menacing only in its nullity, as part of that which God has negated, as part of His kingdom on the left hand.…

“The realm of death which afflicts man in the form of sickness … is opposed to His good will as Creator and has existence and power only under His mighty No. To capitulate before it, to allow it to take its course, can never be obedience but only disobedience towards God. In harmony with the will of God, what humans ought to will in face of this whole realm on the left hand, and therefore in face of sickness, can only be final resistance.… Those who take up this struggle obediently are already healthy in the fact that they do so, and theirs is no empty desire when they will to maintain or regain their health.”

“When one person is ill, the whole of society is really ill in all its members. In the battle against sickness the final human word cannot be isolation but only fellowship.”

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Doubt

Jason Micheli —  May 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

Myers Karl Barth painting 1Derek Rishmawy who follows this blog has post on his blog, outlining Karl Barth’s 3 Aphorisms on Doubt as found in Barth’s little book, Evangelical Theology.

Two Types of Doubt

Barth begins by noting two types of doubt that might arise for the theologian. First, there is the very “natural” doubt that comes with the territory, which is “susceptible to treatment” (pg. 121). When you’re doing theology, you’re asking questions about the nature of the faith. You’re taking things apart in order to put them back together again in a rational, coherent fashion. It is inevitable that in the process of taking things apart, you struggle or question as to whether the original shape made any sense. This is the doubt that comes with working everything through as thoroughly as possible because we do not possess God’s own knowledge of himself. Even though we work from revelation, we must eat “by the sweat of our brow”. The danger here is being a “sluggard” that fails to put things back together.

There is a second form of doubt, however. Barth says this one is far more dangerous, which is troublesome because his long-winded explanation of it makes it hard to pin down exactly. It seems to be an uneasiness that there is even any point to the enterprise of theology at all. It is the introduction of a note of embarrassment at the outset that renders the whole conversation suspect. It is the swaying between Yes and No as to whether there is anything to even discuss, or whether we’re not simply engaging in an exercise of trying to describe our own “pious emotions” (pg. 124). It’s not the honest doubting that comes naturally with the asking of questions, but the doubting that asks, “Did God really say?” (Gen. 3:1) It doubts the connection between God’s works and words to the task of theology itself. It is the kind of doubt that isn’t dealt with in answers, but must be “healed.”

Three Sources

Barth then “briefly” notes three reasons this latter form of doubt might arise. (As if Barth could ever “briefly” do anything.) First, it might rise in the face of “the powers and principalities” of the world. In looking about at the worlds of economics, politics, art, the newspapers–the world of “real life”–the theologian might be tempted to doubt the relevance or reality of the message he preaches. What can the Gospel really say to that world conflict? Who has time for theology in the face of the truly pressing issues of the day? Could it ever really have said anything in the first place?

The Church itself is another source of doubt in theology. Theologians and preachers have to look at the church, its history, with all of the disunity, ugliness, and petty weakness on a regular basis. Unsurprisingly they may come away jaded at times. In the face of ecclesiastical horrors, wars, heresy trials, and nonsensical squabbles, it might seem perverse to labor at theology.

Saving the deepest root for last, Barth points out that it might not be that “the world impresses him so much or that the Church impresses him so little” (pg. 128), but that his own innate flaws as an individual might be the chink in the armor of his faith.  Complicating things, yet again, Barth subdivides this into two possible iterations.

The first is that of a theologian whose public theology does not match his private practice. He has a very solid public theology that is ordered under the word of God, but his practical life  is ordered by any passing whim or principle. In this sense, he has put himself in the place of a wounded conscience.  Of course, this source of doubt is not unique to theologians, but is the common provenance of all Christians.

The inverse possibility is that he has so engulfed himself in theology, he’s failed to have a normal life. His interests do not extend into the normal range of human affairs, to the point where theology or church-life all but consumes him. At that point, he is but a step away from burnout or boredom, which can lead to doubt.

Three Aphorisms on Doubt

At the end of these meditations Barth gives three “aphorisms” on doubt for theologians worth quoting in full:

 

  1. No theologian, whether young or old, pious or less pious, tested or untested, should have any doubt that for some reason or other and in some way or other he is also a doubter. To be exact, he is a doubter of the second unnatural species, and he should not doubt that his doubt is by no means conquered. He might just as well–although this would certainly not be “well”–doubt that he is likewise a poor sinner who at the very best has been saved like a brand from the burning.
  2. He should not also deny that his doubt, in this second form, is altogether a pernicious companion which has its origin not in the good creation of God but in the Nihil–the power of destruction–where not only the foxes and rabbits but also the most varied kinds of demons bid one another “Good night.” There is certainly a justification for the doubter. But there is no justification for doubt itself (and I wish someone would whisper that in Paul Tillich’s ear). No one, therefore, should account himself particularly truthful, deep, fine, and elegant because of his doubt. No one should flirt with his unbelief or with his doubt. The theologian should only be sincerely  ashamed of it.
  3. But in the face of his doubt, even if it be the most radical, the theologian should not despair. Doubt indeed has its time and place. In the present period no one, not even the theologian, can escape it. But the theologian should not despair, because this age has a boundary beyond which again and again he may obtain a glimpse when he begs God, “Thy Kingdom Come!” Even within this boundary, without being able simply to do away with doubt, he can still offer resistance, at least like the Huguenot woman who scratched Resistes! on the windowpane. Endure and bear it!

-Evangelical Theology, pp. 131-132

Derek continues:

As I mentioned, I’ve been giving some thought to the problem of doubt. There is a natural place for the first kind of doubt in the Christian life, as Barth notes. It’s fine to pick things apart and re-examine what you’ve learned–in a sense, doubting in order to believe. At the same time, I’ve also found that our culture, and recently certain wings of Evangelicalism, have taken to valorizing nearly all doubt to an unhealthy degree. Doubt is never to be talked about as something to be resisted, endured, struggled through, but is rather celebrated and romanticized as a sort of rite of passage into relevance and authenticity. It is either subtly or openly commended as a pathway to a “particularly truthful, deep, fine, and elegant” form of faith, brave enough to doubt even God himself.

The problem is, I don’t see scripture anywhere commending doubt in God. It allows for it. It acknowledges it. It forgives it. Much as Barth teaches us, there is room for it–there is a justification for the doubter. And yet, the state of doubt is not the end for which we strive. It is not a good place to be or even to praise. This is why I found Barth’s aphorisms to be filled with much biblical good sense. For those struggling or looking to counsel those who struggle, we find here a pastoral, humble note that acknowledges our frailty and sin, yet still exhorts us onward in hope and faith for that coming day when doubt will be overwhelmed by the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

 

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§1.6.4: Faith and the Faithful One

Jason Micheli —  April 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

Myers Karl Barth painting 1 In 1.1 §6.4 of the Dogmatics, Barth lines up nicely with our sermon series through Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

As I’ve posted about previously, Protestant thought sometimes so prioritizes ‘faith’ that Christianity becomes a religion solely about a human disposition rather than about the Word of God, Christ, to whom our faith is directed.

In fact, this is an issue behind disputes between present-day interpreters of Paul like NT Wright, on the one hand, and John Piper on the other. In question:

How does faith as the disposition of my heart relate the Christ event (‘the Righteousness of God’ Rom 1.17) as as the means of salvation?

Whereas Protestantism since Luther has tended to assume Paul’s primary theme in Romans is our faith- as in, our faith in Christ- NT Wright has insisted that, read within the context of 2nd Temple Judaism, Paul’s chief subject is the faith of Jesus Christ, or Jesus, the faithful one.

In Church Dogmatics 1.6.4, Karl Barth hashes out the relationship of faith to the word of God. And when “word of God” means, Christ the word of God. So for Barth it’s a question of the relationship between Christ as the object of our faith and our own faithful response to that Word.

Just as he does in his reflecting of the meaning of “word” and our “experience,” when it comes to ‘faith’ Barth wants to insist that what is true about how God is at work in the world is never true in and of itself, but only as a ongoing act of God.

Barth begins with one of his terrific small-print excursions, this one on faith, pistis, as firstly the faithfulness of God (Rom 3) and then through Christ’s work, the human response, our faith.

When talking about faith as the our response to the gospel, Barth draws us to a reality that faith is not ‘natural’ or inherent in us automatically.

It is not, despite what liberal theology holds, a dimension of our createdness.

True faith is defined and determined by its object, God, not by an inherent human disposition.

For the Christian, faith is not merely a one-time experience.

It must be exercised anew continuously.

From faith to faith as Paul says in Rom 1.17.

Faith is real, Barth says, because God, who is real. God has disclosed to us his Word, Jesus Christ, and we have seen and heard him. And faith is real for it is lived and experienced anew by the Spirit’s work.

Now that he’s established the knowability of God’s word, Barth is ready ready to move on to the project of his Dogmatics itself.

 

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§1.1.6- Magic Genie Lamp Jesus

Jason Micheli —  April 20, 2013 — 2 Comments

14luhrmann-art-articleLargeKarl Barth believed all of Christian belief is premised on three little words at the Bible’s beginning: ‘…and God said.’ 

Ours, Will Willimon likes to say, is a loquacious God.

He calls Abraham. He puts words on the lips of prophets. It’s his word, scripture says, that was with God in the very beginning and it’s the Word that kicks in Mary’s pregnant belly.

We can only speak of God because God has spoken.

If God had not spoken, then we could say nothing about God- even if God still existed, we should remain silent.

Our words could never hope to capture even a hint of truth about God had God not spoken.

But because God has spoken our speech about God does correspond to something real and objective.

Our knowledge of God is knowledge of God, and not of ourselves, because God acts, God speaks, and God enables us to hear and to receive.

This is the lynchpin of Christianity for Barth, not the resurrection or the incarnation or the atonement. It’s whether or not ‘…and God said…’ is true. If God didn’t speak, then everything else collapses like a house of cards.

‘…and God said…’ is the lynchpin of contemporary skepticism too. 

Consider this excerpt from T.M. Luhrmann’s editorial in the NY Times about evangelicals’ experience of God in prayer. She’s an anthropologist, who recently released a book, When God Talks Back, on the same subject.

I soon came to realize that one of the most important features of these churches is that they offer a powerful way to deal with anxiety and distress, not because of what people believe but because of what they do when they pray.

One way to see this is that the books teaching someone how to pray read a lot like cognitive behavior therapy manuals. For instance, the Rev. Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life,” one of the best-selling books of all time, teaches you to identify your self-critical, self-demeaning thoughts, to interrupt them and recognize them as mistaken, and to replace them with different thoughts. Cognitive-behavioral therapists often ask their patients to write down the critical, debilitating thoughts that make their lives so difficult, and to practice using different ones. That is more or less what Warren invites readers to do. He spells out thoughts he thinks his readers have but don’t want, and then asks them to consider themselves from God’s point of view: not as the inadequate people they feel themselves to be, but as loved, as relevant and as having purpose.

Granted she’s an anthropologist so this is the angle you’d expect her to take (and I share her assessment of The Purpose Driven Life), but notice: her initial presumptions are:

A) God doesn’t actually speak and

B) Religious experience originates not in God but in us. 

This is exactly what Barth is trying to say no to in his heavy-footed, dense, wordy way.

Barth would say no to T.M. Luhrmann who can’t imagine that ‘and God said…’ could true.

Myers Karl Barth painting 1But Barth would also say no to Rick Warren et al who imagine God can be reliably/predictably called upon and experienced.

For Barth, just as the words of scripture aren’t the word of God until God chooses, in freedom, to make them so, our experience of God is also dependent on God’s freedom to act or not act upon us.

Sometimes, you go to God in prayer and God is silent.

Not there.

Dark nights of the soul happen.

This has to be the case for Barth because God is never under our control, not in the pages of scripture and certainly not in our religious experience.

And, Barth would caution, just as in scripture we enter ‘a strange new world’ not like our own, when God enters our experience and self-knowledge- through prayer- it’s equally strange.

Back to Luhrmann:

In many evangelical churches, prayer is understood as a back-and-forth conversation with God — a daydream in which you talk with a wise, good, fatherly friend. Indeed, when congregants talk about their relationship with God, they often sound as if they think of God as some benign, complacent therapist who will listen to their concerns and help them to handle them.

Barth would respond to this by opening up a great, big can of NEIN.

Nein: prayer isn’t a back-and-forth conversation with a therapist who’s always in his office, waiting for you.

For Barth, God is more like Jacob on Lost, sometimes he’s there.

And sometimes he’s elsewhere.

But he’s always worth searching after.

Barth would say, nein: if the God you experience in prayer is like the one above, a benign therapist, it’s a god you’ve created in your image- it’s not the God who created you in his image.

Only the God who sometimes doesn’t speak back to you in prayer is the real God. Only the God who sometimes scares, startles, upsets and judges you with what you hear is the God of the Bible.

Barth for Dummies Summary:

The Bible is not a magic genie lamp. 

Prayer is not a magic genie lamp. 

God is free to act- or not- as God wills. 

Were it not so, prayer would cease to be an act of faith on our part.

And it would cease to be grace, an unmerited gift, on God’s part. 

And when God does act in our lives, just like in the bible, what God wills seldom corresponds to what we want. 

 

 

 

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§1.5: Karl Barth and the Boston Marathon Bombing

Jason Micheli —  April 16, 2013 — 1 Comment

family-vacations-boston-marathonLike you, the news from Boston- especially the images and the ‘gruesome’ descriptions of the carnage- brought me once again face-to-face with the sin of the world.

All you need is a headline like ‘3 Dead, Including a Child’ to conclude that, of all the Christian doctrines we espouse, Original Sin is a doctrine whose existence we can objectively demonstrate.

We can’t prove that God took flesh in Mary’s womb, and neither can we prove if or how  ‘God’ created ‘flesh’ in the first place.

We have no empirical evidence that God raised Jesus from the dead, which isn’t as big a deal as it sounds when you stop to consider that before we can prove Easter we first have to prove God’s own existence.

And the jury’s still out on that one.

But we can prove ‘Sin.’ 

Sin is real. 

Sin is an actual, objective, demonstrable fact of life. 

Or is it?

As you may know, I’ve begun reading through Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics along with a group readers like you.

A number of motifs (theological dispositions) run throughout Barth’s CD like a nervous system that together give his project life and movement. Knowing these motifs can clarify your understanding of Barth.

More than that, after yesterday, I believe knowing these motifs can help Christians think through events like the Boston Marathon Bombing.

One such motif is Barth’s ‘Objectivism.’ 

The question behind Objectivism is:

‘Who sets the terms for what is real?’ 

Who’s to say the ‘real world’ is really the ‘real world?’

For Barth, Jesus Christ is the definitive, final, binding act of God’s revelation; that is, in Christ, we see all of God there is to see. There’s no other mystery behind the curtain.

God was fully in Christ, reconciling the world to himself says scripture.

If Christians believe that God was fully present in Christ, says Barth, then, because of Christ’s atoning victory, humanity is fully present in God too.

Right now. Yesterday. Today. And we’ll be there tomorrow too.

Christ changes our relationship in and with God. Objectively.

Our in-Godness, therefore, is our true reality- whether we believe in God or not.

This leads Barth to a different use of the word ‘faith.’

For Barth, faith doesn’t incorporate us into God, as we so often think. Faith is the acknowledgment that we have been incorporated into God already.

It happened on 33 AD. On the cross.

In Christ, ALL died.

We’re all of us in God because God was in Christ.

That, says Barth, is the hidden truth of our world. Our true humanity lies not in us but in him:

“never at all apart from him, never at all independently of him, never at all in and for itself”

Faith then isn’t a sort of mechanism that gains us access to God. 

Faith is more like Neo going down the rabbit hole and discovering his real world a complete fiction that hides the truth of the ‘Matrix.’  

Faith is our being awakened, having our eyes opened, to what was there all along.

We tend to think of it the other way around.

We believe more in the reality of sin than we believe in the reality of our in-Godness.

Headlines like ‘3 Dead, Including a Child’ constitute what we think is the cold, hard reality of our world.

Barth would counter us by suggesting that there would be far fewer headlines like that one if more people believed that the more realistic headline is:

‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’

You see, for Barth, what we take as the givenness of our sinful ‘reality’ is instead a kind no-reality. To Barth, even believing in sin constitutes a kind of unbelief.Myers Karl Barth painting 1

Because as soon as you start believing in sin as an unavoidable, inevitable given in our world, you stop trying to offer the world the more ‘realistic’ Christ. 

 

Looking through Barth’s eyes then, the true tragedy of events like the Boston Marathon Bombing isn’t that ours is a sinful, fallen world in need of God’s redemptive activity. 

The true tragedy is that ours is a world that has been redeemed. 

 Ours is a world where Sin has already been defeated. Ours is a world that’s loved by and is this very second- just as it was yesterday afternoon- in God. 

And yet our world doesn’t know it.

That’s what makes the victims in yesterday’s bombing just that: needless victims. 

Needless, because Sin is like the White Witch in Narnia, not realizing that Aslan (God-in-Christ) has landed and the snow (the Power of Sing) has already begun melting.

As Paul says, Christ has brought down the Principalities and the Powers.

Already.

It’s finished.

Now before you start thinking that Barth is hopelessly naive, just remember: it was Barth’s ‘Objectivism’ about Christ that enabled him to oppose Nazism.

How you define ‘reality’ in the world determines what you judge to be a ‘realistic’ response to the sin and pain in the world.

That is, if you think the way of Christ is the ‘unrealistic’ choice in this world then you’ll quickly stop bothering to abide by it.

If ‘reality’ is what you find on the front page of the NY Times then your engagement with the world will never veer too far from the ways of the world. Love, mercy and peace will always seem like hopeless ideals.

I think this morning’s headlines ably demonstrate that what our world needs is not more people who believe in the cold, hard reality of sin and death.

I think the morning headlines show just how badly our world needs more people who define ‘what’s real’ in terms of Jesus Christ.

Our world needs more people who practice mercy, show compassion, and offer peace. 

Our world needs more people to tell the world that it’s the world: that its loved, that it’s redeemed, that it’s in-God. 

And because we exist in him, we’re most ourselves when we exist like him. 

For others. 

 

 

 

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§1.5.4: Karl Barth, John Piper and Homosexuality

Jason Micheli —  April 11, 2013 — 3 Comments

barth_1_3Okay, so my blogging worlds collided this week as my ‘Surrendering My Wedding Credentials’ post provoked questions from people about how I understand scripture and homosexuality.

Meanwhile, my posts about ‘Barth, Piper and the Word of God’ prompted questions about whether Barth’s construal of scripture’s authority allows room for an acceptance of committed homosexual relationships.

At least those aren’t, like, loaded, controversial questions. Psyche.

Barth’s understanding of the word of God functions not only as a program of rethinking  what the word of God itself might be, but also of deconstructing common ways of conceiving the word that allow us to presume that we have mastered it–rather than always being in a position for it instead to master us:

‘Is it clear to our generation in life as well as thought that the serious element in serious theological work is grounded in the fact that its object is never in any circumstances at our command…?’ 

Behind the curtain of the Church Dogmatics, I think, is Barth attempting to assert a Doctrine of the Word of God (as living and authoritative) after the advent of modern, critical study of the Bible.

Over and against modern, critical scholarship which approaches deconstructs scriptural texts as dead, historical documents, Barth paves a middle way, acknowledging the human element in scripture’s authorship- and thus its imperfect nature- that is central to modern, critical scholarship, yet all the while stressing the freedom and power of God to incarnate afresh today the fallible human words of texts and people.

Here’s the crux of the matter as I see it:

If Barth’s understanding of the “word of God” is on target, it frees room for God to speak differently at different times through the same human words.

If scripture is human testimony to the One Word of God, which God can put to use in different times and different places, then there is no reason why God cannot speak a different word using the very same words of scripture.

Indeed did God not do this in the first century as the first disciple communities went back to their old familiar Hebrew Bible and discovered that God was using them to speak a much different and surprising word of a crucified Messiah?

For Barth then, there is both the binding of God to the story of Scripture but also the freedom of God in its use and reception in the church. 

Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God contains resonance with how my teacher, Brian Blount, advocates the position that certain biblical ethical prescriptions may be modified by the contemporary church, and, in their modified form, they may more faithfully reflect Paul’s own theological perspective. Blount1

In his essay, Reading and Understanding the New Testament on Homosexuality, Blount cites Paul himself as the precedent for such ethical re-evaluation.

Blount points out that the Gospel writers are all unanimous in their presentation of Jesus’ views on divorce. Jesus, according to the Gospels, is unambiguously against divorce. 

But in his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul acknowledges Jesus’ teaching on this matter (7.10-11).

Nonetheless, in that same passage, Paul claims his own apostolic authority and allows for a reevaluation of Jesus’ teaching based on the context of the Corinthian congregation.

The church at Corinth was struggling to apply their faith in a thoroughly pagan culture. Aware of the destructive effects pagan culture potentially posed to an individual’s and a church’s faith, Paul changes Jesus’ tradition and allows for divorce in the case of Christians who are married to unsupportive pagan partners.

In light of the Corinthian’s cultural context, and even though it stands in contrast to Jesus’ own teaching in the Gospels, Paul believes this ethical modification to be consistent with his larger understanding of God’s present work in and through Jesus Christ.

Such ethical deliberation and re-evaluation is not dissimilar to the process of discernment that the Christian Church later undertook with respect to scripture’s understanding of slavery. Just as the Holy Spirit guided Paul to re-evaluate Jesus’ tradition in light of a different present-day context, Brian Blount posits that the Holy Spirit can and does lead Christians to such discernment today.

Or, as Barth might say: God didn’t speak once for all in scripture. God spoke definitively in Jesus Christ, the One Word of God, but God still speaks today. 

When it comes to the matter of homosexuality, Blount argues that Romans 1 understands homosexuality as one symptom among many of the fallen world’s idolatry. Our contemporary situation is different, according to Blount.

If it is possible for contemporary Christians to concede that a homosexual person need not be an idolater, then Paul’s chief complaint may be removed, opening the way for Christians to re-evaluate Paul’s ethical prescriptions in a faithful manner.

It becomes possible then, Blount says, for Christians to conclude that faithful, monogamous, homosexual relationships can be consistent with God’s present-day redemptive activity.

What’s important in Barth’s and Blount’s views is that the Church’s discernment on the topic of homosexuality cannot be a one-dimensional ‘the Bible says X,Y or Z’ assessment. What Barth and Blount would caution, I suspect, is that in the name of fidelity to the word of God (scripture) Christians inadvertently shackle the freedom of the One Word of God, Jesus Christ.

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§1.5: Getting Spanked by John Piper’s Minions

Jason Micheli —  April 10, 2013 — 5 Comments

barth_1_3

“The equation of God’s Word and God’s Son makes it radically impossible to say anything doctrinaire in understanding the Word of God…[Scripture is not] a fixed sum of revealed propositions which can be systematized like sections of a corpus of law” (CD, 135).

Monday I posted a Barthian response to what I considered John Piper’s inane and antiquated exegesis of 1 Timothy 2’s stipulation against Christian women teaching Christian men. You can read that post here.

Judging from my Inbox, John Piper has fans out there and across everywhere.

Lots of fans, judging from the emails in my inbox, all of which subjected me to a rhetorical spanking.

That’s fine. I dish out. I can take it too.

One email, after taking me to task for being ‘offensive and crude,’ ‘insulting,’ ‘disrespectful to a fellow Christian’ and ‘irresponsible’ for thinking the word ‘johnson’ is appropriate vocabulary for a pastor. 

The email concluded by asking:

‘I thought Karl Barth had a high view of scripture?’

For starters, I don’t accept the premise that Barth’s 3-Fold Form of the Word of God constitutes a ‘low view’ of scripture. The doctrine of a literal, infallible Bible is a modern, 19th century doctrine- only a generation older than Barth himself. Biblical infallibility, therefore, should neither be allowed to drive the bus of biblical interpretation nor should it be permitted to stake out what we mean by ‘high view of scripture.’

While refusing to accept the premise, I think a better way to respond to the question is to say that Barth’s (high) view of scripture is predicated upon his still higher view of Jesus Christ as the One Word of God. 

For Barth, the manner in which God reveals God’s self in Jesus Christ is the pattern by which God reveals God’s self in the Word written (scripture) and proclaimed (preaching). And that manner of revelation, according to Barth, is characterized primarily by paradox; that is, God reveals God’s self in such a way that even in this revealedness God remains hidden in weakness.

This ‘paradox’ Barth hints at is what we call Christmas.

The incarnation.

God’s absolute, perfect, for all time revelation of himself happens in, with and under the ‘veil’ of imperfect, finite human nature.

So then, if this is how God reveals the One Word of God, Jesus Christ, to us then it follows for Barth that the other two forms of the Word of God adhere to this paradoxical pattern. 1101620420_400

God’s Word in scripture and proclamation comes to us by way of imperfect, finite, sometimes inadequate human words and testimony.

For Barth, this is the true ‘miracle’ of the Word of God. It requires the grace of God ‘to take flesh’ each and every time scripture is read or proclaimed. Each and every time, says Barth, the miracle of the incarnation gets repeated anew.

And, Barth’s view, this is precisely the flaw in the sort of lawbook literalism exercised by folks like John Piper.

Literalism denies this miracle of the Word of God, this paradox of God being revealed in the flesh.

It denies that God, in the present, uses weak and errant human words to become God’s Word.

Instead, argues Barth, biblical literalists shift the miracle elsewhere, positing “a sinless, flawless text.”

Barth scholar, Trevor Hart, suggests this mistaken shift in miracles is akin to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary whereby the Word of God (Christ) can’t possibly be revealed to us through sinful humanity.

His mother, Mary, so goes the doctrine, must have been herself free of sin. She must have been ‘immaculately conceived.’

Analogously, literalists can’t possibly believe that God can use flawed, partial human testimony to speak his Word. God’s Word, so goes the doctrine, must be free of sin.

Meaning, us.

The scandal of Jesus Christ, however, is the selfsame scandal of the Word of God.

God comes to us, veiled in the weakness of humanity.

And the Word of God comes to us veiled by human words.

It only becomes revelation by God’s making it so.

For Barth, the Bible, then, is not a little like the bread we break in the Eucharist.

No one would argue that the bread is already in and of itself a sharing in Christ’s Body. And only Roman Catholics would argue that our ministrations can make it so- there’s no reliable, magical formula.

No, the real presence of the Word in bread or in human words cannot be guaranteed or coerced.

It can only be prayed for and received in faith. 

Back to Piper.

It’s not that I advocate picking and choosing which scriptures we’ll deem authoritative and which we’ll toss in the garbage.

Rather, if Barth’s right and the BIble is less like a lawbook and more like the elements in the Eucharist, then what God said (to Timothy) need not necessarily be what God says today to us.

The God who spoke, Barth believes, has the power to speak, using the very same words of scripture, a different Word today.

And that, I admit, is an answer that only begets more questions.

Questions whose responses will have to wait another day.

 

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