"Working with Words"

Yesterday, I received my copy of Stanley Hauerwas' new book Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian, a book I've been looking forward to for months.  I love Hauerwas' opening paragraph:

"In Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir I suggested--or is confessed a better description?--that I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.  That is not quite true.  I am able to write, or I find I feel I have to write, because I read.  Reading is one of the ways I learn how to think.  I am often asked how I have written so much.  The only explanation, and it is not clear to me that it is an explanation, is that my writing is determined by my reading.  Which means that I hope others will write about what I have written about about because they have read what I have read" (ix).

Academy Awards Reflections

I won’t reflect on every category, since with a few of them (like Sound Editing or Film Editing) I have no idea how to judge them.  Also, since I can’t read to Screenplays to make a judgment, there’s no point in weighing in.

AMAZING opening montage.  Loved the blending of scenes from some of the years.  I especially enjoyed A.H. winking at Colin Firth, J.F.’s “I loved you in Tron” bit, and the use of Back to the Future.

I feel torn about the Best Supporting Actress Category.  I also liked Amy Adams and Helena Bonham Carter, and I loved Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit (who I would have voted for if I was able to).  I can, however, live with Melissa Leo winning the award.  She did a great job in The Fighter.  As an aside, starting off the Academy Awards with an f-bomb; really?

I (ashamed to say) only got to see one of the animated feature films, Toy Story 3, but I still can’t imagine any animated film beating Toy Story 3, so I’m definitely happy with the win.

Christian Bale was amazing in the fighter.  It was pretty impressive that he spent so much time with Dickie and lost so much weight to do the part.  I would give a close second place to Geoffrey Rush, but I still would give my vote to Christian Bale.

Currently, my favorite directors are the Coen brothers, and I’ll always root for them to win, but this year, I’m comfortable with Tom Hooper winning Best Direction.

I’ve seen three of the films for which women were nominated for Best Actress.  While I feel bad for Annette Bening that she lost (again), I’m happy for Natalie Portman.  While Black Swan was at times difficult to watch and I still don’t know if I completely get it, she did put forward an amazing performance.

Again, I’ve seen three of the Best Actor nominated films.  Even though I haven’t seen all five, I can’t imagine anyone else winning this award but Colin Firth.  I loved Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, but Firth put forward an amazing performance.  It’s difficult to do something like act as though you have speech impediment even though you don’t and to do it convincingly.  Ok, he won.  This was one category I would have been upset about if he didn’t win.

I’ve seen nine out of the ten Best Picture Nominees (I haven’t seen 127 Hours).  I have narrowed down my top three to The King’s Speech, The Social Network, and True Grit.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t love any of the other films.  I also loved Toy Story 3, Inception, The Fighter, and Winter’s Bone.  I can appreciate The Kids are All Right and Black Swan, but I wouldn’t have given either film my vote.  I keep on going back and forth on which one of my top three I would vote for.  In the weeks leading up to today, I started to lean more and more toward The King’s Speech.  Spielberg just announcement that The King’s Speech was the winner and Cassandra shook her head in disappointment (she wanted The Social Network to win).

I don’t have many complaints this year, so my reflections are probably pretty boring, but here they are anyway.

A Secular Age: Intro

I haven't blogged since November, so I figured I should get back to work on blogging.  In my last post, I made some reading goals for 2011.  So far, I've read the two fiction books on my list, Brothers Karamazov and The Corrections.  I enjoyed them both.  I'm also reading Church Dogmatics along with J.R. Daniel Kirk's reading group (http://www.jrdkirk.com/karl-barth-reading/).  Due to some recent reading I've done, I've become more and more interested in reading Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.  What pushed me to read it now is I just read on James K.A. Smith's blog (http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/) that he's currently teaching a seminar on A Secular Age.  He made his syllabus available online and also started a blog to go along with the reading of the course (http://asecularage.blogspot.com/).  While I'm a week behind on the class readings, I'm hoping to catch up and read along with his class.  I’m reading the Kindle Edition, so I will be citing location numbers rather than page numbers in my own reflections.

Taylor begins the introduction asking, “What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?”  By “we,” Taylor is referring to those of us who live in the “North Atlantic world” (loc. 31–35).  Taylor then notes that we in the west don’t have a clear understanding of secularity.  He gives three ways in which secularity is characterized:

1. “The first concentrates on the common institutions and practices—most obviously, but not only, the state.  The difference would then consist in this, that whereas the political organization of all pre-modern societies was in some way connected to, based on, guaranteed by some faith in, or adherence to God, or some notion of ultimate reality, the modern Western state is free from this connection.  Churches are now separate from political structures (with a couple of examples, in Britain and the Scandinavian countries, which are so low-key and undemanding as not really to constitute exceptions).  Religion or its absence is largely a private matter” (loc. 35–40).  Taylor notes that this was until recently the standard view of secularity, which he calls secularity 1.  Secularity 1 is characterized by an understanding of “public spaces” that have been “emptied of God, or of any reference to ultimate reality” (loc. 49).  Secularity 1 contrasts with earlier periods in which “Christ faith laid down authoritative prescriptions, often through the mouths of the clergy” (loc. 52).
2. Secularity 2 “consists in the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to Church” (loc. 58).  Taylor says secularity 2 can be seen in the countries of western Europe—“even those who retain the vestigial of public reference to God in public spaces.”  On the other hand, Taylor notes that while the US was “One of the earliest societies to separate Church and State, it is also the Western society with the highest statistics for religious belief and practice” (loc. 55–60).  Note that Taylor does not just focus on religious belief, but also practice, and later he also discusses experience and search.  Taylor thus understands belief and unbelief as “lived conditions, not just theories or sets of beliefs subscribed to (loc. 145–147).
3. Taylor then says that he wants to examine the secular in a third sense, “closely related to the second, and not without connection to the first: This would focus on the conditions of belief.  The shift to secularity in this sense consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”  In this sense, the US is fully secularized, while most Muslim societies and India would not be, even if church attendance in the US was higher than mosque attendance in Jordan (loc. 60–65).

So, within A Secular Age, Taylor says “the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.”  While Taylor, and myself, see it as inconceivable to abandon faith, many see belief as simply one option among others (loc. 65–71).

Smith notes this on his blog about Taylor’s introduction:

One of the biggest challenges in reading a big book like A Secular Age is keeping track of the argument through the thickets and rabbit trails of such a sprawling account. One way to keep in task, then, is to keep in mind Taylor's quarry--his concern and project. The project is to answer a question that is formulated in a couple of different ways early in the book:

“How did we move from a condition where, in Christendom, people lived naively within a theistic construal, to one in which we all shunt between two stances, in which everyone’s construal shows up as such; and in which moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default option?” (p. 14)

“Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?” (p. 25)

I find Taylor’s three-fold understanding of secularity helpful.  It prevents simplified understandings of secularity.  This introduction helps see the important questions that Taylor wants to answer throughout the book.

The two questions that Taylor raises are important for contemporary people of faith.  Even though I am a devoted Christian and even serve as a minister, why is my default position often unbelief when it concerns the miraculous?  While I disagree with the dualisms of American society that tell me that my faith should be private and separated from my public life, I often do exactly that.  I’m hoping that reading Taylor will help me become more aware of some of these issues and help me see ways in which I can understand belief and unbelief holistically, rather than rationally.

Reading Goals for 2011

Over the last eight years, I have collected quite a few books due to recommendations from professors or references within other books.  Now that I'm in the midst of a break from school, I want to try and catch up on some of that reading.  I have had a tendency to read a bunch of shorter books and to put off the larger volumes that will take me a while to read.  In 2011, I want to read through some of those larger volumes that I've collected.  In order to leave room for me to also read some other shorter volumes, I am going to make a modest goal of reading 12 large volumes (by that, I mean books that are for the most part 500 or more pages).  Here's my list:

1 and 2.  I want to read volume 1 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, which is in two books.  J.R. Daniel Kirk, a Duke Ph.D who teaches NT at Fuller Theological Seminary is starting an online group to read through the entire CD in seven years (http://www.jrdkirk.com/karl-barth-reading/).  I plan to participate in this group.  He has a tentative reading plan for 2011 which includes reading through volume 1.  Since 1.1 is shorter, we'll read that in four months and then have eight months to finish 1.2.  That sounds doable to me, and since many Barth scholars encourage people to read Barth slowly, that will give me time to do that.  It will also give me time to work through the Latin passages as well.  I'm looking forward to it!
3.  Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.  I started reading this a few years ago, got a few hundred pages in, got distracted, and never got back to it.  This time, I want to read from beginning to end.  I think it will be nice to read this volume alongside Barth as well.
4 and 5.  Ben Witherington III's two volume NT theology, The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical World of the New Testament.  Volume 1 is The Individual Witnesses and Volume 2 is The Collective Witness.  I plan to read this immediately after reading Brueggemann, which I think will be interesting for two reasons.  One, I'll read an OT and NT theology.  Two, Brueggemann and Witherington have some similarities and differences in their approaches to reading Scripture.  They both would keep theology and ethics together and blend critical scholarship with readings in and for the church.  At the same time, Bruggemann is a mainline Protestant while Witherington is more or less an evangelical (even though he is ordained in a mainline Protestant denomination [UMC]).  Should be fun to work through both!
6.  Stanley Grenz's Theology for the Community of God.  I've read a few of Grenz's shorter volumes (e.g., Primer on Postmodernism) and want to read through his magnum opus.
7.  N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God, the first volume from his Christian Origins and the Question of God series.  I would like, in the next couple years to read through the three volumes that have been released so far, so I might as well start with the first one.
8.  Since a few of the Ph.D programs I am interested in are Roman Catholic schools (e.g., Marquette and Dayton), I need to do some more reading on Thomas Aquinas.  While I'm not necessarily reading one big volume, these "smaller" books ad up to one big volume.  What I want to do is read Nicholas Healy's Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life again (it was a text book in one of my classes at ESR) and Fergus Kerr's Thomas Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction.  Then I want to read Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt's Holy Teaching: Introducing the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which includes various passages from the ST with Bauerschmidt's introductions and commentary.
9.  Everett Ferguson's Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries.  As a SCM person who is interested in the sacraments and the fathers, Ferguson is a towering figure.  While I don't have a copy of the book yet, I hope to get it in the near future.
10.  A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.  I keep on seeing references to Taylor (and in particular this volume) in a lot of my reading (from James K.A. Smith to Stanley Hauerwas), so I need to actually read Taylor.  I need to either purchase a copy or borrow one from a local library.
11.  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  I've read Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, but haven't read BK yet.  2011 is the year that I finally read it.
12.  The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.  I need to read more fiction and Franzen seems like a great figure in modern literature for me to start reading.


I think this list is doable and it will also give me some room to read some shorter books, like some of Hauerwas' shorter volumes of essays that I haven't read yet, or some of Barth's smaller books, like The Humanity of God or The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life.  To get through it, however, I need to be more disciplined in how I spend my time and put this list on the wall in my office right next to the desk.

15 Authors in 15 Minutes

The Invitation Guidelines:  Don't take too long to think about it.  Fifteen authors (poets included) who have influenced you and that will always stick with you.  List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag at least 15 of your friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing which authors you choose.  To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste the rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks and tag people in the note.

1.  Karl Barth
2.  Stanley Hauerwas
3.  James K.A. Smith
4.  William Robinson
5.  William Cavanaugh
6.  Stanley Grenz
7.  Ludwig Wittgenstein
8.  Robert Webber
9.  D.H. Williams
10.  N.T. Wright
11.  J.R.R. Tolkein
12.  C.S. Lewis
13.  John Howard Yoder
14.  Michael Crichton
15.  J.K. Rowling

Canon and Creed

My review of Robert Jenson's new book, Canon and Creed, was just posted at the Englewood Review of Books (http://erb.kingdomnow.org/).  Here it is:

Canon and Creed is the second book in Westminster John Knox Press’ new series, Interpretation: Resources for Use of Scripture in the Church.  The series supplements Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.  Canon and Creed’s author, Robert Jenson, is a Lutheran theologian whom David Bentley Hart calls, “America’s perhaps most creative systematic theologian” (First Things Oct 2005, “The Lively God of Robert Jenson”).

In Canon and Creed, Jenson seeks to move beyond understandings within the church and the academy that “we can cling to Scripture or cling to church doctrine, or possibly to both in different contexts, but cannot cling to both with the same grasp” (2).  Instead, through the work, Jenson emphasizes the mutuality of canon and creed as “Spirit-given reminders of what sort of community the church must be if it is indeed to be the church” (2–3).

While some scholars might argue that a canon did not exist within the church until formal criteria for canonization developed in the fourth century, Jenson argues instead that there was a functional canon by the latter part of the second century.  He cites Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, written around AD 180, for support.  While some find such a canon vague, Jenson argues, “A canon with fuzzy edges . . . can be authoritative Scripture as well as one with absolutely set edges” (12).

Against Marcion, Jenson affirms that the Christian canon includes both the Old and New Testaments.  While some Christians have asked why Christians need the Old Testament, Jenson instead says, “The real question was and is this: ‘Can Israel’s Scripture accept this proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and this new movement within Israel?’” (20).  Jenson argues God answers this question by vindicating Jesus Christ in the resurrection.  The God who rescued the Israelites from slavery is the God who raises Jesus to life.  Jenson advocates a Christian reading of the Old Testament that avoids supersessionism and is rooted in the overarching narrative of Scripture.

In relation to the New Testament documents, Jenson notes that in addition to apostolicity, early Christians recognized their canonicity due to the fact that “they witnessed to the apostolic faith” within the regula fidei (“rule of faith”; 40).  Jenson thus notes that the relation between the canon and regula fidei is circular: the regula fidei comes from Scripture and Scripture is recognized as canonical due to its coherence with the regula fidei.

By “creed” within the volume, Jenson not only refers to the ecumenical creeds, but also to catechetical-baptismal confessions and the regula fidei in its various forms.  While Jenson advocates the importance of contemporary Christians studying Scripture in light of the creed, he does not support the creeds uncritically.  Jenson notes that no creed is a complete summary of the Christian faith.  Jenson critiques the creeds for their lack of references to the Old Testament (apart from naming God as creator) and to the life of Jesus in between his birth and death.  Jenson thus argues, “We have arrived again at a point to which . . . we will repeatedly come: the canon without the creed will not serve to protect the church against perversion of the gospel, and neither will the creed without the canon” (32).

Jenson then discusses dogma, which he says “reprises the original creedal development and participates in its authority” (63).  Dogma differs from creed, “For dogma responds to questions that did not arise in the second- or third-century church, and to which the regula fidei and the creeds may not supply obvious answers” (65).  We do, however, see the development of creed to dogma even within the Nicene Creed (AD 325), Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381), and within the Chalcedonian definition (AD 451), which sought to answer new questions raised within the church in the light of canon and creed.

Jenson also notes that in the second century, “the church received a trio of institutions to guard its identity through time: canon, creed, and episcopate” (71).  The bishops played an important role in maintaining the church’s teaching and served as delegates at the ecumenical councils.  While many Protestants from non-episcopal traditions may have difficulty with Jenson’s chapter on the episcopacy, he raises some important issues for consideration.

Rather than simply stating his case that contemporary exegetes should study the canon and creed together, Jenson gives examples of his approach in the last three chapters by exegeting Genesis 1:1–5 and Luke 1:26–38 in light of the creed and Mark 14:35–36 in light of dogma.

Throughout Canon and Creed, Jenson demonstrates that while the historical-critical method does have a place in the study of the Bible, the method is not an end in itself.  For example, Jenson criticizes some historical Jesus scholars for “mistaking a pile of scholarly reports for a person” (58).  Jenson thus follows after theologians like Karl Barth, who criticized some critical scholars for writing commentaries that discuss the meaning of various Greek words and phrases and archaeological finds.  Barth argues, however, that their work is “no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary” (Epistle to the Romans, 6).  Jenson argues that until the birth of modernity, “theology was not thought of as an enterprise distinct from biblical exegesis” (118).  Jenson thus advocates a way of reading of the Bible not simply for the academy, but one for the church, in which Christians in their reading of Scripture “seek to discern a ‘christological plain sense’” (82).

Jenson presents a balanced approach to the study of canon and creed which makes use of helpful sources both ancient and modern.  Canon and Creed is a work that would benefit preachers, teachers, and students interested in the formation of the canon, the ancient creeds, and their importance for the contemporary church.  Readers from the Stone-Campbell Movement and other free church traditions who are skeptical of creedal formulations should also consider reading D.H. Williams’ written volumes Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1999) and Evangelicals and Tradition (Baker Academic, 2005), as well as his edited volume The Free Church and The Early Church (Eerdmans, 2002).

William Cavanaugh on the Origin of the Kingdom

"It should be no surprise that the Romans treated the church as a political threat whose practices were subversive of good order in the Empire.  Pliny, in a letter to the Emperor Trajan (c. 110 CE), reports that he applied Trajan's ban on political societies to the Christian communities of Asia Minor.  In the Roman view, Christian failure to worship the pagan gods and their assumption that allegiance to Caesar conflicted with allegiance to Christ was not simply a religious matter, but concerned imperial political order.  As N.T. Wright notes, Christians did not attempt to defend themselves from persecution with the claim that they were merely a 'private club' or collegium for the advancement of particular interests.  They continued to proclaim the kingship of Christ, even if such kingship was not based on the model of Caesar's (Wright 1992: 346-57).  That Christ's kingdom is not of (ek) the world (John 18:36) was regarded as a statement of origin; the kingdom is not from the world, but it is in the world and deeply concerned with it."

William T. Cavanaugh, "The Church," in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 396.