Pickles and Warsi on secularism

In an earlier post I discussed Cameron’s speech on a Christian Britain. Now Eric Pickles and Baroness Warsi have made similar noises. Pickles said that under labour ‘Political correctness replaced common sense, people were left afraid to express legitimate concerns and frustrations.’ ‘We must be unafraid to insist on the common ground and common values that we all share.’

What’s good about this is the idea of mutual criticism, dialogue and interaction. What’s bad is assuming that the common ground and common values that do exist should be based on Christianity. This conflates the holding of the same view with the deriving of the same view in different ways. Rawls’ hope was that different individuals and groups could sign up to the same values but justify them from their own point of view. Greater dialogue and mutual criticism may generate that. For instance, many, though not all, religious people would support human rights by reference to their religious beliefs. As a result of Britain’s history, its values were derived largely from Christianity but in contemporary society how, if at all, would people justify their beliefs in values that are widespread, such as fairness, honesty, the right to a fair trial? Probably not from Christianity. Thus, to suggest that a return to Christianity will ground or secure a common set of values is a mistake because it fails to appreciate the extent of secularism.

To be fair to Pickles, having a high incidence of religion in a culture does not necessarily produce intolerance or oppression, though it certainly can. The Queen’s remarks that the Church of England is supposed to ensure religious freedom for all religions is an example of religious support for religious freedom (insofar as Anglican see their institution that way, which many do). A state government that understood itself to be religious could also legislate religious freedom as part of its belief-driven policy. It is increasingly recognized, of course, that religion and politics (and morality) are impossible to separate completely. Yet they are significantly separate in Britain, and whilst it is a good idea to seek to increase religious and moral considerations within politics, it is wrong to impose religion or to be blinded to the minority position that religion is in Britain.

Pickles wants to allow prayers at the beginning of council meetings, which is a point in favour of religious freedom but it seems a confused application of his principles: how does re-instating prayer at council meetings help? That is the least bit of common ground you could find in a largely secular country. I suspect Pickles’ confusion arises from the way in which the government and the judiciary seem to regard religion as primarily about beliefs. It isn’t. It is primarily a set of practices and a belonging to a religious community. Religious beliefs, like philosophical beliefs, are difficult to understand and make coherent, and most religious believers don’t have the time or energy (or ability in some cases) to hold to anything more than a relatively straightforward account of some beliefs. Many religious believers have at least this conceptual advantage over (often more educated) government ministers and judges: they know that in religion practice matters more than belief. Whilst beliefs and values, especially moral ones, may be shared quite widely, practices tend not to be. Atheists and Muslims can agree on the value of generosity, but not on praying five times a day. Christians and Buddhists may even agree on the importance of meditation, but they will do it in quite different ways. And so on.

Now onto Warsi’s speech. Warsi wants to promote social harmony and ensure faith has a ‘proper space in the public sphere’. Fine. Her method for achieving this is doubtful however: ‘People need to feel stronger in their religious identities, more confident in their beliefs. In practice this means individuals not diluting their faith and nations not denying their religious heritage. If you take this thought to its conclusion then the idea you’re left with is this: Europe needs to become more confident in its Christianity.’

As long as the majority faith and culture still make ‘equality and space for minority faiths and cultures’ then justice is being done in that respect. Secularism can do this, and so can many forms of religion. Equally, some forms of secularism and some forms of religion can suppress minority rights. At the risk of sounding parochial or nationalistic, the current British settlement strikes me as preferable to France’s more aggressive secularism or the near conflation of religious and national identity prevalent in America. We should be able to have our identities, but also recognize that we have multiple identities. Warsi seems to appreciate the first point but not the second. In France, national identity overpowers religious identity (from a policy viewpoint). In America, religious and civic identities are conflated or get along too easily. Rather, what is needed, as Andrew Shanks has suggested, is more of a dialectical relation between identities, not just religious and national but also gender, racial, class, membership in charities or parties, etc. This is not a dialectic that reaches a synthesis, but a dialectic that recognizes that our efforts will never be perfect, but keeps trying to improve or change as necessary. Warsi is right that confidence in identity can help fuel tolerance, but it can also fuel intolerance as the 19^th century American-Christian imperialist-missionary approach shows. We need not just confidence in identity but a way of being able to doubt it and question it, too. Again, that is what Shanks suggests.

Warsi doesn’t want religious discrimination against the ‘majority religious heritage’. Not wanting discrimination against the majority religion is fine – no faith should be discriminated against. And in some cases opting for current values or practices rather than accepting the values or practices of another religion or culture is also legitimate, for instance, refusing to accept forced marriage or honour killings, or allowing abortions. In order to do that, however, we need some justification for why we prefer our cultural values and practices, and for the vast majority of people in Britain that will not be based on Christianity but on secular arguments, even if the values in question have initially come from Christianity (though they may not have). For example, autonomy and the value of the individual are arguably nascent within Christianity, but it took the 18^th century revolutions and the Enlightenment to enable Christians to see that. So does valuing autonomy come from Christianity or the secularising Enlightenment?

I agree that we shouldn’t cover up our religious history but I’m  not convinced by her claim that ‘what drives us, what binds us and what inspires us is a history we are in danger of denying’. I don’t think most contemporary people are driven or inspired by the history of Christianity. Also I’m not convinced that secularism is as bad as she makes out: it’s telling that she didn’t give examples of this so-called ‘militant secularism’. But it is true that religions don’t understand themselves as private assent to a list of propositions; she does better than Pickles on that point.

Insole on Burke and natural law

I attended recently a paper given by Christopher Insole (one of my supervisors) on Burke. I was surprised by how much the Burke that emerged reminded me of Hegel (or some versions of Hegel at least). I’ve not read Burke but I was impressed: he is a thinker who gives particulars great weight, who is very focused on time and experience, who thinks reason is contextual and tradition based but also capable of reflecting critically on that tradition; who is aware of the unintended consequences of social action; who was willing to change his mind. Those familiar with Insole’s book The Politics of Human Frailty will know some of the story he tells here, a story about an alternative version of liberalism, one that is neither Hobbesian nor Kantian, one that is aware of human weakness and has a mistrust of power and so wants it to be dispersed, but also one that thinks policy should be tested by the subjects not the rulers. This is an important addition to the stories that are told about liberalism and modernity, especially in theological circles. Insole is very good about being fair to the different ‘textures’ within genealogies (his phrase) and I felt in this case it was particularly important because it appears (to me at least) there’s still so much in Burke that could be appopriated now that would improve things.

At some point this year the Cambridge Companion to Burke will be released that Insole has co-edited and his chapter will focus on Burkes natural law heritage. Before I’d encountered Insole’s work the only Burke I knew was the Tory Burke and so I had an unfavourable knee-jerk reaction to him. I’ve now discarded that attitude. This paper also addressed Burke’s natural law and it made me re-think my attitude to natural law. Burke’s natural law was integrated with a teleological view of anthropology but emphatically not of history; it was very flexible but also provided a way of critiquing state violence (Burke worked very hard to curb British oppression in India, America and Ireland).

Heideggerian inflected spirituality

Not only is one of the key terms in the title almost impossibly vague, but I’m going to deal here in possibly hopeless generalisations. I do so because, despite the massive caveat, I think there is a certain character to some contemporary Anglican theologians, reflecting the influence of Heidegger (more or less explicitly), that is preferable for the Christian theist to many other current options. I use the term spirituality because this is not just a matter of intellectual acrobatics but deeply bound up with the way people live, with personalities and sensitivities, with the ‘visceral register’ (William Connolly).

 

In Being and Time Heidegger suggests that from the very beginning of the western philosophical tradition seeing has been considered the main mode of understanding. Platonic philosophy aimed at contemplating the Forms, and this fed into Christian conceptions of contemplation and prayer. Aristotle considered contemplation the highest human activity, but, in contrast to Plato, seemed to have pictured it as a mental review of and rumination on ideas within the mind. Heidegger also remarks on the two contrasting postures or moods of ancient and modern philosophy as wonder (thaumazein) and doubt respectively. Heidegger makes various moves to get beyond the Cartesian doubt and detached gaze. His notion of truth as unconcealment and disclosure in some ways re-activates the ancient posture of wonder and receptivity before phenomena, but he cannot ignore modernity’s doubt. It seems to me that in Heidegger a receptivity to Being through disclosure, combined with a hermeneutical spiral and awareness of the thrownness of Dasein, combine both wonder and doubt, producing a tertium quid.

 

I’m not sure what to call this philosophical posture (I’ll drop the term ‘mood’ because it could be confused with Heidegger’s own use of it). I take it as attempting to be receptive and open to the disclosure of Being through the immanent world (in contrast to an invisible realm), whilst refusing certainty in the expectation of constant revision. In theological terms one could describe this through a mixture of negative theology, repentance as a regulating principle of theology, and a certain balance between transcendence and immanence. This posture seems common to Andrew Shanks, Rowan Williams and George Pattison. They share a certain reticence and reserve in the manner in which they handle metaphysical speculation. This does not mean they do not believe in, say, the resurrection or the communion of saints (answers will differ depending on who you ask), but that they do not overestimate the importance of such beliefs nor assume they can be held with certainty. Shanks takes directly from Heidegger the notion of truth as openness rather than truth as correctness, which downplays formulations of belief in favour of openness to shaking experience. Pattison, who has written extensively on Heidegger, authored Thinking about God in an age of technology, foregrounding the nature of the need to pose the question of God in as fruitful a way as possible. Hardly a rallying cry for the troops.

 

And there’s the rub. These theologians handle Christianity and theology with great sensitivity and sophistication, but precisely those virtues seem to make their version of Christianity difficult for many to follow. Even academics have remarked on their difficulty following some of Williams’ arguments. Perhaps, however, this is where vague terms such as spirituality or posture may help. Perhaps others may be able to share a posture even if they cannot follow the intellectual erudition. But this too seems unlikely. Perhaps this form of spirituality is only accessible to the highly educated, and perhaps it helps to be in a pluralist society (and politically liberal? and middle class?). There are other reasons for disagreement. Few have the stomach for such a reticent theism. Fundamentalists prefer certainty. Evangelicals seem to be more optimistic, more willing to stake a claim that God has done this or that, more likely to feel ‘assurance’. Radical Orthodox, avowedly Platonic-Christian, retains an edge of certainty too, and triumphalism in some forms. Others go the way of Christian atheism or a Cupitt style post-Christian-Buddhism. But for those not yet willing to abandon theism and averse to triumphalism and certainty, and with a different experience of faith (or lack of experiences!), these Anglican writers offer a viable alternative.

Meditations on Redcrosse

Redcrosse is part St. George celebration (and so celebration of England) and part Anglican liturgy. It is a liturgical meditation on English identity and history based on Edmund Spenser’s (c.1552-99) The Faerie Queen and the mythology of St. George, the patron saint of England. It allows for public meditation on what England and Englishness are in a way designed to stimulate thought and counteract propaganda; in a way removed from any party political agendas or racism. It is not accidental that St. George is also the patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia and Serbia [Ewan Fernie, Michael Symmons Roberts, Andrew Shanks and Jo Shapcott, Redcrosse liturgy, 3. All further references will be paranthetical in the text. The liturgy was celebrated at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 17/03/11 and at Manchester Cathedral on 08/08/11.]. Or that he is ‘honoured by Muslims, as ‘Al Khidr’, and by Jews, as ‘Eliyahu ha Navi’.’ (3) Nor is accidental that the giant Catalonian figures created for the liturgy have George as a black man in a football shirt. The symbolism is meant to reclaim Englishness from its associations with football hooliganism and to subvert racist nationalism. Its thoughtful nature, which includes significant amounts of apophatic theology (unusual in public liturgy), is meant to undermine the dangerous forms of religious nationalism that the secular modus vivendi so rightly wishes to contain and curtail. Any kind of linkage of national identity and religion could seem prima facie alarming, precisely because of the reactionary social conservatism or outright violence it can so often involve. So this is a risk, but a risk worth taking for at least three reasons. First, it is extremely unlikely in secular Britain 2011 that any form of Christian religious nationalism will gain sufficient social or political power to cause any actual violence. Second, to the extent that socially conservative Christian religious forces do gain political traction it is all the more important for there to be an alternative Christian voice speaking up for thoughtfulness and against propaganda. Third, the issues of religion, civic life and national identity cannot be separated and so must be thought about. How should religious people think of their national identity? And why shouldn’t this be addressed in religious liturgy?A good example of the anti-propaganda nature of the liturgy is the elaboration of Blake’s critique of the Establishment in the introduction: ‘The Church of England being part of the Establishment, he would have seen this event as taking place within such a [satanic] ‘mill’.’ (3) The liturgy’s introduction therefore explicitly invites critique of Christianity. It is, furthermore, a newly composed liturgy, which includes not just new poetry but new music and art. [The music was primarily jazz, the improvisational musical form par excellence, which, whether intended or not, symbolizes nicely the improvisational nature of any understanding of Christianity and civic identity. (For an interesting reflection on the relationship between jazz and the Christian notion of tradition see J. Kameron Carter’s comments here: http://jkameroncarter.com/?p=787. Accessed 09/05/11). Tim Garland, the composer, composed both new music and music that incorporated subtly altered hymn melodies and the liturgical phrases ‘Lord have mercy,’ and ‘Kyrie eleison’.] The Catalonian giants were built by homeless people working with a charity in the Cathedral itself, which symbolizes the liturgy’s focus on a passion for renewal in places of urban deprivation, its openness to other cultures, and its recognition of the rightful multivalency of St. George (and symbols in general). Writing new liturgies itself embodies a certain ethos and theology; in this case one that attempts to be open to the lessons of history (it is dialectical) and open to the involvement of people of other confessions (including atheists) as having something to teach the church. In short, writing new liturgies is a way of recognising that the church is not and has not always been right, that it needs to learn, and that the Christian task is not simply to repeat past behaviours and linguistic formulations but to take up the responsibility of creating new meanings and praxis.

Andrew Shanks has written in Civil Society, Civil Religion of the need for liturgy to be indigenous in the sense of working through those historical memories that are most live for a particular culture or nation. One of the ways Redcrosse tries to build on English history is by incorporating the elements of the forest, air, water and fire into its symbolism. The four elements could be seen to echo the Celtic Christianity that existed in Britain before it was replaced by the Roman form. This Celtic Christianity was more in touch with nature, understood as creation. Indeed, the forest section of the liturgy and its corresponding canticle could be seen as beginning to recuperate some of what was lost when Druidism, with its sacred groves, was marginalised by Christianity. Air (wind/breath/spirit/pneuma), water and fire all have Christian resonances as well, of course, whilst wood principally recalls the cross within the Christian imaginary. By having four elements, the authors are able to make a link between them (as perhaps encompassing all of life) with the four sections of the English flag. This in turn is connected to the red cross of the flag, which is taken to symbolize blood: ‘our own lifeblood, not earned but given us; and of God’s blood’ (15). This blood refers as well to St. George’s wounds in the fight with the dragon, based on one of Spenser’s wounded knights falling into a pool of water but thereby gaining the strength to fight on.

The use of Spenser’s poem enables a vital conceptual and political shift. ‘Spenser’s particular contribution…is to make St. George…a symbol of spiritual life as an unceasing, restless, troubled yet hopeful, quest for holiness’ (3). Following Spenser, the quest is a major theme of the liturgy, which is physically enacted in travelling around to the four elemental stations. Yet what is most significant, in my view, is the re-fashioning of holiness into a form of spirituality concerned with national and civic life, with the attempts to counter propaganda and ideology through thoughtfulness and an apophatic sensibility. Holiness has often been seen as an individual concern with an inward morality, and it is not surprising that ‘holiness churches’ have not always avoided sectarian tendencies. Redcrosse seeks to avoid this danger by understanding the question for holiness (which is in fact an important aspect of Jewish and Christian scripture) as a quest for maximum thoughtfulness and engagement with civic life.

The quality of writing was very high. The musical composition and performance (by Acoustic Triangle and the Choir of Royal Holloway College) was excellent. Redcrosse was a very affecting experience that I will continue to reflect on. I would appreciate comments as an aid to further reflection and conversation.

Anti-fundamentalist trinity?

According to Andrew Shanks the first person of the godhead is experienced most clearly in instances of serious cross-cultural hospitality; especially when that involves re-thinking our lives in the light of the encounter with the other person and culture. One example is the way in which the early church theologians tried to negotiate between their Greek and Jewish heritages. The second person is most clearly encountered in instances of building solidarity; especially with those with whom we do not normally associate (so across ‘confessional’ boundaries of all kinds). One example is the way the early church had to build solidarity amongst slaves and masters, Jews and Greeks, males and females. The third person is encountered most especially in those attempts to organize groups and institutions in a creative manner to meet new challenges and conditions. One example being the way the early church had to invent new forms and rules as it went along to express its ideas about how they should live together.

Shanks readily admits that one doesn’t need to be a believer in any sort of theism to regard these as virtues, so what does it mean to say that, not only are these virtues, but that in them we encounter three concrete instances of god? It means, he says, that the demands here are infinite. There can never be enough hospitality to others, or solidarity across boundaries, or improvement of institutions.

I think this is a fascinating and brilliant use of trinitarian theology. What strikes me is the way that it seems intrinsically anti-fundamentalist because it keeps itself open to others and the truths they have found both in vulnerable hospitality and in solidarity. This requires a certain kind of honesty, the kind that looks for truth more in self-critique than in self-assertion (as he says elsewhere). And so that self-critique can be applied to our institutions in order to improve them.

The fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives?

This may be old news to everyone else but I’ve come  up with a new working hypothesis for myself about the most fundamental different between Christian liberals and conservatives (although those labels are so plastic as to be quite unhelpful most of the time). I think the different that drives all the others is whether someone feels tied to the metaphysics of the scriptures or whether they feel able to move beyond them and reformulate them. For instance, some take the idea of God’s covenant with Israel as a real relationship that tells us about God’s character and acts in history, that partly explains the atonement, and feeds into ecclesiology in a major way. Such thinkers will often take statements in the new testament as metaphysical principles and seek to work out theories around them (perhaps the boldest in this regard is Jenson). Others, by contrast may think of the covenant as an ideological tool to secure monarchic power in ancient Israel that was then refigured repeatedly through history including within the early church, but which doesn’t need to be primarily determinate for thought today. On the one side the bible then contains key information from God about the world around which to build theories; on the other, it contains historical formulations of the impact of the divine on humanity that are well worth taking into account but which in a different historical and philosophical period cannot be slavishly followed. On the one side tradition therefore becomes crucial, on the other there’s a bit more freedom with respect to it. And so on. Now this is vague and simplistic but I think it has it’s uses as a heuristic for getting to the nub of many issues. The crucial issue usually isn’t a particular interpretation of a biblical passage, or of an aspect of tradition, or of a doctrine, but all of these are underlaid by one of these positions, and it probably helps to bear it in mind.

a god neither omnipotent nor dead

How should we respond to the theodicy question? Affirm traditional divine omnipotence or take the option of a dead/weak god? Neither seems quite right. The former doesn’t feel sensitive to the atrocities of history, the latter has to ignore all kinds of religious experience. One could say that although reports of the death of God have been greatly exaggerated they were not outright fabrications. What if the truth is closer to a via media here: God has some power but depends upon us for its exercise and realization? What if God constrains herself to act only when we make space for her in the world, only when we achieve some transparency to the divine, whether consciously or not? This could be summarized in the gospel saying in which Jesus could not do many miracles in his home town because of the lack of faith found there. This would perhaps go some way towards explaining why it is that religious experience seems to work on the personal level but not on larger group levels. It is possible for individuals to act on the basis of self-sacrificial love and kenotic service but it seems unrealistic, perhaps impossible, to posit this as a basis for a polity of any large size (as Niebuhr recognized). Hence I have been involved in decision in which a local church decided to give up money owed to it and to forgive qua a group, to take two examples. Yet churches, which are in theory founded on such kenotic ethics, to embody and preserve them, at the larger institutional level find it difficult to work according to what should be their own logic. And so such divine kenotic logic is almost never seen at work at national or international levels, in which a Hobbesian state of nature seems to hold sway and politics is inseparable from violence (as Weber pointed out in ‘Politics as a Vocation’).

It is sometimes difficult to tell when one’s ideal speculations, such as the above, are insightful or worthy of a crackpot. Yet in the most recent issue of Philosophy and social criticism there is an article by Richard Kearney on Paul Ricoeur which may suggest just what I had been wondering. ‘God is all he is able to be’ but ‘this enabling depends for its actualization on human will acting in accord with divine grace’. ‘…God as posse, in contrast to theodicy and cosmological externalization, is not a panacea for history’s victims…[but] a God who is willing to efface his own being for the sake of giving more being to humans…The notion of divine posse – of an enabling God who says ‘You are able!’ – repudiates all forms of theodicy and theocracy by returning power and responsibility to humans…Such a divinity is ‘capable’ of making us ‘capable’ of an increasingly abundant existence; and it does so by emptying divine being into non-being so as to allow for rebirth into more being’.

This seems to capture what death of god theologians want – the avoidance of immaturity and irresponsibility that can be fostered by religion – without making a patently false claim: that religion makes people necessarily immature (clearly some of the most clear-sighted and mature human beings have been religious). It even grants the notion of a kind of death of god, but one followed by re-birth in a different form. Now I don’t know if Kearney means this as some form of realist theism, which is how I had been thinking of it, but it sounds stunningly fascinating and promising.

 

On the sinlessness of Christ

A strong version

Christ never thinks nor feels nor acts wrongly, either by omission or intention.

Objection: if we are all born into a fractured social world that socializes us into sinful behaviour, how can Christ escape? (If his mother is sinless and brings him up alone that only sets up an infinite regress and fails to acknowledge that others than our parents affect us). If he is fully human, he cannot. This is simply docetic and implausible (doesn’t the name ‘the sinlessness of Christ’ rather than of Jesus hint at this?). Note also that we probably have some different views about virtues and vices than in Jesus’ culture (c.f. the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman).

A weak version

Christ does not consciously sin but does make mistakes for which he has to apologize.

Implications: not all moral wrong is sin; only that which fundamentally hinders the work of redemption. In support of this version:

Oliver Quick, Doctrines of the Creed, London: Nisbet & Co. ltd, 1938

171 ch 17 ‘the moral perfection of Jesus’

‘It is a postulate of the truth of the incarnation that Jesus can never have thought, said, or done anything that was either unfitting for God in the state of condescension to manhood, or unworthy of man as raised into union with the Godhead.’

172 the NT is interested in Jesus as God’s means of salvation. His ‘holiness and righteousness’ is a corollary.

172-3 either we can’t be perfectly moral unless everyone is, because we’re social beings; or we can only be fully moral if we sacrifice a lot and exercise moral heroism (and in the perfect society there is no morality).

175 ‘our broad judgement of the moral perfection of Jesus will be based, not upon a minute examination of particular acts and sayings in reference to some generally accepted rule of human conducts, but rather upon our recognition of the fitness of his whole life to be the human instrument of the divine love for that purpose of salvation which is revealed in it.’

So Jesus can still reveal God and complete his messianic vocation with some moral imperfection. As we accept that God is shown through the lives of imperfect people through history. In order for Jesus to be fully human he must do moral wrong and experience forgiveness.

But is this distinction between moral wrong and sin correct? Is sin simply refusing repentance rather than moral wrong doing? Could Jesus have committed murder and repented and still have performed his task? (Note that in the desert temptation narratives there is no sexual temptation even though that is a prominent one in our culture. This suggests these temptations are about Jesus’ understanding of his messianic vocation rather than about him overcoming all possible temptation at that point.)

–

In terms of atonement models, Jesus represents us before God, re-orients human nature, fits us to receive the Holy Spirit. Why do any of these require sinlessness? If a strong version of sinlessness is required to make atonement models work why not change atonement models?

Anselm: Jesus makes up for infinite dishonour to God. Surely the cross is a rejection of honour as a regulating principle for God?

Christus Victor: If the victory is over political authorities (including metaphorical understandings of the demonic) then we can trace the historical effects of Jesus and Christianity, but why posit sinlessness? If the victory is over the demonic conceived as really existing spiritual beings then perhaps sinlessness does matter but how and why?

Recapitulation: since no-one is ever perfect, unless this means no deliberate wrongdoing, why does Jesus need to be sinless to re-orient human nature?

Marilyn McCord Adams: if sin is a property of being a creature then Jesus is a creature and so sinful.[1]

The crux of the problem is how one understands the divine-human relation in Jesus rather than the question of the atonement. Is it the case that one cannot be in the presence of God if one has any sin? But we are all in God’s presence all the time and ‘have sin’. Is Jesus ontologically God all the time, in which case he cannot sin, or

A Žižekian alternative

What if we say Jesus does sin and brings sin and death within the Godhead? Is it that God achieves subjectivity like us by overcoming alienation and so needs Jesus to sin and die to experience that for Godself? If God can overcome death by taking it within himself, surely she can do the same with sin?

Objections: does this subject God to the same rules as humanity and deny her unique nature (the doctrine of analogy)? In what way does this change in God help either God or us?

Reply: we are created in God’s image and share this process on that basis. This helps God achieve full subjectivity that God did not possess ‘before’ [implications about time and divine being here].

(This is based on Hegel’s idea of evil being a necessary stage on the way to good).

A Shanksian alternative

What does Christ teach us about sin? That is, what does he shows us about what sin is that we didn’t know before? And so, what is redemption in the concrete?

What does it mean to affirm that Jesus is ‘sinless’?

It’s a matter of definition. Jesus-as-Christ is ‘sinless’ because, for the purposes of theology, it’s his story that defines what ‘sin’ is, by way of contrast.

He’s sinless as Christ. That is, as our Saviour from the power that sin has over us, by our not properly knowing what sin is. And as Christ, he’s quite rightly further affirmed to be the incarnation of God: so definitive is this event, both of sin and of salvation.

But how, exactly, is he Christ? I take it to be in two ways:

• He’s Christ, first, by virtue of his dying as a crucified dissident; and then being seen to be raised by God, in symbolic refutation of the pagan Roman message of the cross. Could he have been Christ had he died in any other way? No. Everything here depends upon the pre-existent meaning of crucifixion, what it symbolically meant every time the Romans crucified someone; and the way in which that symbolism is symbolically reversed here. So that sin comes to be metaphorically defined as whatever tends towards crucifixion.
• Secondly, his Christ-nature is further confirmed by the record of his teachings, and illustrative miracles, insofar as these also are full of the spirit of agape; that is, the sheer antithesis to everything the pagan Roman-imperial message of the cross represents.

To say that the historic Jesus was uniquely Christ in the specific sense, however – and in that role sinless – is by no means necessarily to claim that he was Christ, and therefore sinless, entirely infused with the spirit of agape, in every aspect or every moment of his life.

For how would we know? We weren’t there.

Rather, the affirmation that, for the purposes of theology, he simply is Christ essentially serves to define the proper limitations of theological interest in the details of his life. For theology’s only interest in Jesus concerns his Christ-role. Therefore, a basic rule of the game, ‘theology’, is that one never criticizes the Jesus of the New Testament. One interprets every ambiguity in the record as generously as possible, in terms of the primary gospel truth encapsulated in the symbol, resurrection-of-the-crucified. The more detail that can be, so to speak, mined from the NT – for the purposes of salvation so defined – the better. And whatever in the gospel picture of Jesus may perhaps still remain recalcitrant to one’s theological understanding one is, as a matter of principle, simply silent about…

Theology is only properly interested in what we need to understand in order to grasp the proper meaning of ‘salvation’, and his role as revealer of that. But not every detail of the historical record regarding his life is actually relevant here.

If questions like ‘Who moved the stone?’ are treated as having any theological significance, they become a sheer distraction.[2]

 

Now that we have recognized the Unhappy Consciousness because of the experience of subjectivity and its freedom, we see Christ symbolically dramatizing that as the union of human and divine. So Christ is the religious validation of regarding the Unhappy Consciousness as sin, perhaps one of the primal sins, with all of the consequences that follow (anti-propaganda, the need for Honesty, etc). Christ also consciously understands and refuses the scapegoat and allows us to see that. This comes from the Jewish prophetic tradition, especially the Servant Songs. So we do not need to posit an ontological union between Jesus and God that entails a strong version of the sinlessness doctrine. Redemption in the concrete is the overcoming of the Unhappy Consciousness and scapegoating.

On the relation between the divine and human natures in Christ:

In what exact sense is Jesus ‘Christ’?

Again, let’s distinguish the symbolic from the pre-symbolic. [‘Symbolic significance: the meaning that matters to theology; that which relates to the salvation of our souls today. Pre-symbolic significance: discerning, in detective fashion, what most likely happened, originally, to give rise to the symbolism.]

Symbolically, for the purposes of Christian theology, the historic Jesus simply is Christ. There’s no theological point in questioning this. The only theological question is what it implies.

For my part, I would define ‘Christ’ as: ‘the embodiment of the truth decisively revealed in the symbol, “resurrection of the crucified dissident”; representing all the values deriving from that symbol’.

Pre-symbolically, to what extent was the historic Jesus, at every moment of his earthly life, Christ, in this precise sense?

Who knows? For the purpose of theology, this is really a pointless question, a mere distraction.[3]

But can this cohere with this statement:

In symbolic terms, it’s crucial I think (a) to insist that the resurrection isn’t just the same as the followers of Karl Marx, say, would have in mind were they to affirm that Marx’s spirit lives on, in the life of Marxist political parties. No, it’s about a physically enacted judgement, the symbolic statement embodied in the act of crucifixion, being reversed. It isn’t just that a doctrine survives. But, far rather, that a new symbolism is created. In other words: raw material for art; precisely in the sense of an assemblage of physical images, expressing that reversal.

(b) The message of crucifixion is reversed: what Pontius Pilate symbolically affirms is no longer allowed any validity at all. It isn’t as though there’s a lower, merely ‘physical’ domain of reality, the domain of this-worldly politics, in which the values Pilate represents remain valid, in the sense that we just have to resign ourselves to their domination; from which however we’re invited to escape by becoming ‘spiritual’, basically in the sense of ceasing to care about what happens in that domain. No, the liberation represented by the symbol, ‘resurrection of the crucified dissident’, is also an event with urgent this-worldly political implications. The Docetic heresy sought to ‘spiritualize’ the symbol, by dissipating its physicality; thereby purporting to spring from a wisdom that rose above politics. Against that primordial error, we need forever to reaffirm the physicality of the symbol – inasmuch as physicality in this context connotes political urgency. (Or anti-political urgency: if ‘anti-political’ is understood to be the opposite of ‘depoliticizing’.)

In pre-symbolic terms, however: who knows just what happened? And why should it matter, theologically?

If I understand this correctly, the resurrection must be physically enacted to gain its symbolic value, but then this physicality seems to be understood as a political interpretation rather than as a historical event (hence the last sentence). This seems to be a tension.

Summary

The strong version is untenable. The weak version is interesting and possible but is it a fudge? Žižek’s idea is very interesting and suggestive and would require major reworking of the traditional ideas if taken in a realist theistic sense (which he does not intend), which is not at all a strike against it. Shanks’ version is plausible and interesting but would perhaps take fire from some of the more conservative elements of the tradition intent on emphasizing the ontological union of the two natures in Christ. That is not necessarily a problem, though I think his position on the resurrection needs to be clarified.

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[1] Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Sin as Uncleanness’, A Reader in Contemporary Philosophical Theology, ed Oliver Crisp, London: T&T Clark, 2009.

[2] Private communication, March 8^th 2011.

[3] Private communication, 30^th March 2011.

 

stuttering theological thoughts on Egypt et al

I haven’t said anything about the unrest in North Africa and Middle East because I’m under-qualified, knowing almost nothing about the politics or history until now. But I’ll try to at least hazard something theological about it (largely inspired by the (much underrated) work of Andrew Shanks I’ve been reading lately). Insofar as these movements and revolutions express the desire for greater freedom for individuals and political cultures I think we should see God in this, a potential moment of revelation in history, though it’s probably still too early to assess it properly. Insofar as there has been trans-confessional solidarity, between Muslims, Christians and secularists, this again is surely a sign of God, God at work perhaps. (The apparent spontaneity of of this solidarity only makes it more remarkable and impressive). Insofar as people are putting forward ideas for the concrete shape of a new political culture, and attempting to build a political culture more open to dissent, to individual freedom of action, of greater transparency in the function of law, and of a government subordinate to law, this surely we would also want to see as involving God.

I think we could go a step further and say that the surge for greater freedom is in some way especially connected to what Christians think of as the second ‘person’ of the trinity, because of the way it is tied up with the symbol of cross and resurrection, seeing this with Hegel as a universal affirmation of individuality. We could say that the trans-confessional solidarity generated here is especially connected to the first ‘person’, as the prime symbol (within Christian theology) of the universality of God, God as god of all people irrespective of doctrinal belief. And further, this trans-confessional solidarity, is it not an important moment of ‘salvation’ (to use the now much jaded language, but to use it hopefully to freshen it up a bit)? And if so doesn’t the very trans-confessional nature of this salvation point to the need to cut the link between salvation and metaphysical schemes? That is, it is not the doctrinal beliefs of the Muslims/secularists/Christians that matter so much as their willingness to join in solidarity and be open to hearing one another’s voices. And, finally, if they continue to do listen to one another, especially if they are enabled to contribute to a new constitution and the like, isn’t this (to use the traditional language again) a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit: building better institutions?

How has this helped? Yes, most of us are for freedom, etc, but doesn’t the linking of various aspects of these movements to various persons of the trinity just distract attention from more important matters such as political strategy for the people, etc? Probably it does, and probably theology, like philosophy, will only be able to assess it all after the fact, when the owl of Minerva has taken flight. I’m in no position to offer strategic advice to protesters. But this sort of thinking does serve one purpose, at least. In identifying these uprisings with the work of God and/or as a revelation of God (which is not by any means to say one should give democracy divine sanction!), one puts the priority very much with freedom, dissent, the value of individuality and good institutions (that are good partly because they can recognise and respect that individuality). And this at least is a contrast with those who value, above all, whatever keeps the current order in place. For instance, the way in which the US has been more concerned with its interests than supporting the various peoples. As understandable as that may be from a politician’s point of view it points up an important contrast between realpolitik and what I would regard as a proper religious attitude to the current events. (I’m also thinking a little bit of the tone of the Economist’s coverage last week (esp.) and this, though perhaps that is slightly unfair as an example). One recalls Hegel’s speculative statement of the identity of religion and state, i.e. we don’t yet know what either could be.

If theology is an interpretation of history we clearly don’t yet have the historical distance to do the theology with any modicum of assurance, but I think this is where I would begin.

Theology and Human Rights

Catherine Shelley recently gave a seminar at Manchester university on theology human rights. She was a lawyer working on child protection issues for a council in Manchester and is now ordained and doing her PhD part time at Manchester. She became interested in the issue of rights, especially rights for children, when working on cases involving forced marriages and honour killings. Many of her legal colleagues regarded these cases as straightforward human rights abuses but Shelley realised that the idea of human rights simply did not fit the ‘worldview’ of the people involved. She realised that unless people were engaged at on the level of their theology they would never accept human rights, and that their theological views had to be taken seriously if any dialogue between them and believers in rights was to proceed.

Shelley did a good job of responding to the critiques of Hauerwas and MacIntyre. She challenged their construal of rights as individualistic on the grounds that rights since the 50′s have been less about property and more about protecting individual human beings in response to genocide and statist inhumanity. She also raised the point that in order to claim my rights I should logically recognise yours, so that rights are intrinsically mutual rather than individualistic. Hauerwas is well known for advocating communities with strong identities and traditions, and apparently has an essay in which he discusses the Hasidic Jews as a good example of this, especially in the way they teach their children. Some may wonder whether this adds weight to the charge against Hauerwas that he avoids facing fully the challenge of pluralism.

Towards the end Shelley argued against natural rights and any essentialist grounding of rights in any sort of natural law thinking, mostly out of concern for gender race issues, and in favour of a version of rights that would be grounded on human distinctiveness (rather than, say, equality). She defined human distinctiveness as bodily presence as a communicative system, including affective and not just rational capacity. Shelley did this out of a concern to capture children and those without fully mental capacity in her definition, which is certainly commendable but presumably this definition would also include some animals. In which case it is no longer about human distinctiveness. In any case, it was good to see human rights being defended theologically, because, although I think there is a lot to the theological and feminist critique that must be taken on board, human rights have proved enormously powerful and useful, so that writing them off can’t be a good idea.