Christians and Unbelievers

Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goes to every man when sore bestead,
Feeds body and spirit with his bread;
For Christians, heathens alike he hangeth dead,
And both alike forgiving.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: Fontana Books, 1959) 174.

The church-as-polis

In his excellent book Christ, History and Apocalyptic Nate Kerr criticizes the “church-as-polis” model in favor of a missionary conception of the church. For those schooled in the world of Stanley Hauerwas the “church-as-polis” model marks a basic conviction. In fact, if Kerr is correct in his criticisms, then many of us will need to radically rethink not only our indebtedness and relationship to Hauerwas, but also our theology of the church more generally. But Kerr’s criticisms do not apply only to Hauerwas and his followers, they also apply to John Howard Yoder.

Kerr’s criticisms of Hauerwas and Yoder revolve around two key points: 1) the political ontologization of the church and 2) the instrumentalization of worship.

What Kerr calls “the political ontologization of the church” is a way of conceiving of the church as an ontologically “stable” political body that exists prior to “encounter” with the world. In this perspective, the church’s worship is instrumentalized insofar as it tends to correlate or even identify specific practices of the church with the work of the Spirit. When the Spirit is identified with the specific practices of Christian worship, then the Spirit is domesticated precisely as the possession of the church. For Kerr, however, “worship only ‘is’ as an apocalyptic pneumatological event” (Kerr, 170). As apocalyptic event the Spirit refuses domestication and possession. If the church is constituted by the Spirit, who exists only as event, then the church, in Kerr’s perspective, never really “is” at all. The consequence of such a view of the Spirit’s relation vis a vis the church is the loss of any identifiable continuity. The “tradition” of the church is never stable, never certain, and can always be called into question by the ever newness of the Spirit’s action. Lest this view be misconstrued as another form of liberal Protestantism (think of the UCC slogan “God is still speaking”), the Spirit’s work, for Kerr, is precisely not in discontinuity with the “apocalyptic historicity” of Jesus of Nazareth.

Kerr’s worry is not only that the identification of the Spirit with the practices of the church stablilizes the church’s interior identity and domesticates the Spirit, but that such a view usually involves an instrumentalization of Spirit by positing “the church” as a counter political identity over-and-against “the world” (i.e. liberalism, capitalism, secularism, modernity, whatever). Such a move, according to Kerr, amounts to an inversion of Constantinianism. As Kerr puts it, “The ‘meaning’ of Christ’s lordship is displaced from the operativity of Jesus’ ‘independence’ and onto the operation of the church as a polis in history, such that the meaning of history is borne along precisely by the ‘social function’ of the Christian community, which is now bound to the world precisely as ‘a microcosm of the wider society’” (Kerr, 170). Kerr is worried about Yoder’s claims that “the ultimate meaning of history is to be found in the work of the church” and that “the meaning of history is carried first of all, on behalf of all others, by the believing community” (See Yoder, Royal Priesthood, 118, 151). Such claims are, however, absolutely central to Yoder’s ecclesiology. Contrary to Kerr, for Yoder, the church is a polis, almost paradoxically, precisely in its dispossession and deterritorialization. The meaning of history is to be located in “the church” not because of an easy identification of Jesus or the Spirit with the church and its practices of worship, but because redemption and reconciliation happens and this is what “the church” names. The church’s existence is always unstable—Jesus indeed remains independent—but the church is no less a political body. Moreover, the church-as-polis in Yoder’s vision resists the political ontologization of the church precisely because of its proleptic and secular character. The claim that the church is what the world is called to be ultimately is not a statement about the ontology of the church but about God’s work in the world to judge and redeem humanity.

Religion: some initial thoughts on terminology

It seems to me that what we have in Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison is some thoughts that are largely underdeveloped. That is not to say that the questions he raises in his letters represent a drastic departure from the rest of his work. Yet, there is a distinct sense in Bonhoeffer’s letters that at least some of these ideas seem new to him; perhaps, we can say, at the very least, Bonhoeffer had some flash of new insights while in prison–one’s that he would have obviously wanted to develop himself. But this was not to be.

One of the problems one encounters in reading the prison letters is a matter of terminology. Much of the terminology is ambiguous, even when interpreted within Bonhoeffer’s intellectual context. The case is not helped by the fact that Bonhoeffer’s terms are often taken out of the direct context in which they were written. It seems to me that in order to understand what Bonhoeffer means by “religionless Christianity,” and a “non-religious interpretation” of the gospel, it is important to first of all come to some kind of grips with what Bonhoeffer actually means by “religion.” Unfortunately, I am not at all confident that Bonhoeffer himself knew precisely what he meant by “religion.”

One thing is certain, from Sanctorum Communio on it is clear that theologically understood, the visible community, what the New Testament calls church, is not properly called religious. Even from his earliest work, then, it is evident that Bonhoeffer sought something of a “religionless Christianity,” though perhaps in a differing sense. In Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer’s concern was to distinguish his project from sociological accounts of the church, stemming from Weber and Troeltsch, which attempted to categorize the church from “without” so to speak. Bonhoeffer distinguishes his own project in Sanctorum Communio from the sort of “objective” non-confessional social-scientific perspective that viewed Christianity under the category of “religion” and the church as a “religious institution.” For Bonhoeffer, a theological study of the church is a really different undertaking than a non-confessional study of the church as a religious institution. I think even at this early point Bonhoeffer saw such a distinction between church and religious institution as crucial. To speak of the church is already to assume in a certain sense the reality of God’s self-revelation in Christ. The church itself is a revealed reality–in other words, to speak of the church is already to speak within the context of faith. Thus, to see the church as “religious” is already to suggest a sort of unfaith.

The Shadow of Tegel Haunts Me

If there was one thing I was intent on avoiding as I ventured into a thesis on Bonhoeffer, it was spending too much time analyzing what the hell he meant by “religionless Christianity” and a “world come of age” in his letters from prison. In all honesty, it just seemed like too much work to sort through all the secondary literature on the subject, from John Robinson’s Honest to God to the “death of God” theologians. The general consensus today seems to be that Bonhoeffer was misunderstood by Robinson and most everyone else, and perhaps that is the case, but I just didn’t feel like getting into it. I didn’t feel like getting into an already convoluted discussion about a few letters Bonhoeffer sent to Eberhard Bethge. The letters, after all, are short and unclear, and open to a variety of interpretations, as the history of Bonhoeffer interpretation has aptly demonstrated.

I thought I was relatively safe in making this move; after all, doesn’t Bonhoeffer deserve a careful interpretation of his much-neglected published works? The first chapter of my thesis, following Philip Ziegler, focuses on the “apocalyptic” character of Bonhoeffer’s entire oeuvre, extending Ziegler’s argument (which is limited to Ethics). Drawing from Nate Kerr, David Toole, and Douglas Harink, my second chapter is devoted to highlighting the work “apocalyptic” does for Yoder. But when I ran across this old presentation Yoder gave on Bonhoeffer, I realized that I had found a real gem here for my last chapter. Thinking back on it now, I suppose I should have drawn the line myself, but I have to say I was surprised to see Yoder speaking highly of Bonhoeffer’s references to a “religionless Christianity” in his prison letters. The secularity of Yoder’s Christ, that Dan Barber and Nate Kerr have highlighted so well for us, may indeed mark a rather serious point of connection between Bonhoeffer and Yoder. This is good news for me–because I was really searching for some point of connection, some reason to bring the two together in a thesis. This is bad news for me–because it means I have to explore the dirty waters of Bonhoeffer’s prison letters.

So, here’s my question to you all: what do you make of Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” and which Bonhoeffer interpreters have it right? John Robinson? Harvey Cox? Eberhard Bethge?

Discipleship and Secularity

In the previous post I quoted from a paper that John Howard Yoder presented to the Bonhoeffer Society at the 1987 American Academy of Religion conference. There are two points that I want to highlight about this quote, which pertain to the key differences and perhaps points of convergence between the theology of Yoder and Bonhoeffer: discipleship and secularity.

In his paper Yoder explores the concept of “discipleship” in Anabaptism and in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yoder concludes that the concept of discipleship carried a variety of different meanings within the Anabaptist heritage. The term, discipleship, took on something of an identity marker for Anabaptists especially after Harold Bender listed it among the key “principles” of the Anabaptist vision. This is not to say that discipleship was not important to Anabaptists before Bender, only that the term itself took on a more self-identifying function after Bender. Yoder, I think, rightly asks if Bonhoeffer had some role in bringing this out for Bender, as a core “principle” of Anabaptist faith.

Now, Yoder concludes that “Bonhoeffer neither began nor ended with a vision of discipleship cognate with that of the Anabaptists.” He makes this assertion on the grounds that what motivated Bonhoeffer’s Christology was “more dogmatic than exegetical or historical.” According to Yoder, Bonhoeffer “was not driven either to concreteness about the pre-passion Jesus nor to any abiding challenge to the axioms of Constantinian political ethics.” And this is Yoder’s central challenge to Bonhoeffer’s conception of discipleship. Bonhoeffer, according to Yoder, paid more attention to the dogmatic significance of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, while tending to sideline the concrete historical life of Jesus of Nazareth. For Yoder, if discipleship in some sense means a following after, then we must be given some clue as to what kind of person we are following. In Yoder’s interpretation, Bonhoeffer focuses heavily on the importance of obedience in his conception of discipleship. In Yoder’s words, “At the core, the issue put to a person by the ‘call to discipleship’ is a concern not first of all with how he will behave if he follows Jesus, but with the renunciation of self-determination and of one’s own reasoning.” The demand to renounce self-determination and one’s own devices is certainly a key feature of Bonhoeffer’s work, especially in Discipleship. Yet, Yoder points out that such demands could be made by any lord, or any moral teacher. Such a demand is not “intrinsically linked with how that particular master himself behaved, or with whether what he asks of me is the same as his own behavior.” Yoder does note that in Bonhoeffer’s discussion of discipleship he does speak of the importance of the cross. The disciple will suffer as Jesus suffered, by rejection. Yet, even here, Yoder does not think Bonhoeffer is concrete enough, as the discussion remains too much on the level of “existential self-understanding” and not enough on the behavior and concrete decision-making that leads the disciple to rejection and the cross. Other key questions remain for Yoder: will the disciple that follows Jesus by going to the cross be “a monk or a politician? An emigrant or a conspirator? Or does the meaning of bearing the cross exist on a level unrelated to such concrete decisions?” Even at the point when Bonhoeffer brings the Beatitudes into the discussion, it is still not concrete enough. The discussion of the Beatitudes focus more on disposition and tend to be stated by way of negations: the disciple is called to renounce power, honor, and violence, but there are no concrete examples in the affirmative about the way the disciple should then live.

In all of this, Bonhoeffer’s understanding of discipleship runs parallel to the “mystical” and “moralistic” strand of Anabaptism which manifests itself by the logic of renunciation and obedience without question. According to Yoder, however, the most “original” and “socially realistic” strand of Anabaptism is the position that the church must be ready to “give up her control over society.” In Yoder’s words, “This realism perceived that the model of Christian social participation is not simply the cross of Christ in some symbolic or emotional sense, but also the attitude toward political office which helped to bring him, the Jesus of the gospels, to the cross.”

Yoder’s concern is that Bonhoeffer’s Christology leaps “from the crib to the cross.” What is perhaps most interesting in all of this is that Yoder finds Bonhoeffer’s suggestions about a “religionless Christianity” in his prison letters to point in exactly the right direction. An awareness of the secularity of Christ, the immanence of God’s action in Christ, opens up Christological reflection to attend to the constitutive life history of Jesus. Yoder points out that Bonhoeffer’s leap “from the crib to the cross” is “precisely to leave out of one’s christology the substance of (”secular”) social living in occupied, rebellion-torn Palestine.” Thus, the much disputed meaning of Bonhoeffer’s letters about “the world-come-of-age,” “secularity,” and “religionless Christianity” is perhaps the most interesting point of contact between Bonhoeffer and Yoder.

Yoder on Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer neither began nor ended with a vision of discipleship cognate with that of the Anabaptists . . . As his christological preoccupations were more dogmatic than exegetical or historical, he was not driven either to concreteness about the pre-passion Jesus nor to any abiding challenge to the axioms of Constantinian political ethics. Such a concretization would have been eminently compatible with the ‘non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts’ (for what could have been less cultic or otherworldly than Jesus’ social style?) but it did not occur to Bonhoeffer then. It would have put ‘God’s suffering in the world’ into the form of a politically relevant, ‘non-religious,’ ’secular’ paraphrase; but instead those slogans were left to the Bultmannians, who somehow think that ‘existential interpretation’ is non-religious, and to Hanfried Müller, who assumes that socialist promises for party-led history are the same as ‘Mundigkeit.’

John Howard Yoder, “The Christological Presuppositions of Discipleship,” unpublished paper presented  at the 1987 AAR Bonhoeffer Society.

The benefits of good advisors

I have had the good fortune of having the brilliant Gerald Schlabach as my thesis advisor. Among the many benefits of having Gerald supervise my thesis on Bonhoeffer and Yoder, have been the various personal anecdotes Gerald has shared with me about the man John Howard Yoder and the broader Mennonite context in which Yoder lived and breathed. It is difficult to convey how mind-boggling it is to talk with your advisor about your thesis and have him respond with, “Oh, so and so, was my neighbor, my father is actually writing a biography on him right now…” Another excellent benefit is the access Gerald has given me to a vast array of unpublished Yoder material.

I’ve now spent two years working on an MA at an ultra-conservative Catholic seminary with a whole host of issues. I have to say Gerald has been all too patient with me through the height of my rather serious misgivings about Catholic theology–assuring me that one can be both Catholic and politically radical!–and he’s been supportive of my decision to become a member of the Mennonite church of which his wife, Joetta, is a pastor. If all goes as planned, I’ll be completing my thesis within the next month or two, teaching as an adjunct instructor at St. Thomas in the Fall, and preparing doctoral applications.

Yoder and Apocalypticism: toward a “non-analogical” mode of theological reflection?

A growing number of books and articles have highlighted the centrality of “apocalypticism” in the theology of John Howard Yoder.  That Yoder frequently drew on apocalyptic imagery should not come as a surprise to any one with even a cursory knowledge of Yoder’s most famous work The Politics of Jesus. Indeed, Politics devotes a number of chapters to explicating the theological and sociopolitical import of the New Testament’s apocalyptic language of the “principalities and powers” and the “lordship of Christ.” Yet, only recently, it seems to me, has apocalyptic as such been identified as among the driving categories of Yoder’s entire theology.

In a recent discussion in Political Theology Daniel Barber and Nathan Kerr make the provocative suggestion that the work of John Howard Yoder provides an “exemplary test case” for a “non-analogical” mode of theological ontology.  Barber wonders whether Yoder has something of an ally in Gilles Deleuze insofar as both, according to Barber, attempt to think politics “along the lines of immanence.”  Contrary to Barber, Kerr, I think rightly, asserts that Yoder’s so-called “non-analogical” mode of thinking is not reducible to an ontology of pure immanence akin to Deleuze, but rather offers us an altogether different way of conceptualizing the operation of God’s transcendence.  In Kerr’s view, it is precisely Yoder’s apocalypticism that helps us overcome the divide between analogical accounts of transcendence and univocal accounts of pure immanence. In this perspective, Yoder’s non-analogical mode of theological reflection is seen as providing the necessary resources to resist “the ontological machinations of the analogia entis.”

Despite the fact that Yoder himself never entered into debates about the doctrine of the analogia entis, I find Kerr’s suggestion about the function of apocalypticism in Yoder compelling on this point. For, when seen in this perspective, Yoder’s apocalypticism and perhaps even apocalypticism more generally refers to much more than merely a retrieval and generous use of certain kinds of obscure biblical imagery—though it most certainly includes this. Indeed, it takes on something of a formal, or foundational, character. Or, perhaps, more to the point, apocalyptic comes to name a sort of anti-formalism—particularly, a rejection of the metaphysical formalism of the doctrine of the analogia entis.

Such an interpretation of Yoder should not strike one as entirely surprising considering the influence of Karl Barth on the theology of Yoder. I wonder whether what Barber and Kerr call Yoder’s “non-analogical” mode of theological reflection is similar to Barth’s rejection of the analogia entis. I wonder whether what Kerr means by apocalypticism in this context is perhaps akin to something along the lines of Barth’s analogia fidei or Eberhard Jüngel’s “analogy of advent.”  In other words, it is not analogy that Yoder is dispensing with tout court—but analogy as a tool for an ontological mediation between transcendence and immanence as such, that is, analogy as conceived of autonomously from the act of God’s apocalypse in Jesus Christ.

Whether or not one finds Barber and Kerr’s admittedly rather original appropriation of Yoder’s theology convincing in all of its details, there is certainly wide agreement that Yoder, following Barth, was deeply committed to seeking ways to avoid what they perceived to be the pitfalls of metaphysical systems that decide in advance the terms and mechanisms of ontological relation and mediation between God and creation. More precisely, Barth and Yoder were certainly both in the business of calling into question any and every philosophical or theological maneuver—whether it be under the dogmatic heading of “orders of creation” or “natural theology”—that eschews the definitive authority and normativity of God’s definitive self-revelation in Jesus Christ. When viewed in this perhaps more familiar context, I think the thrust of Kerr’s proposal—that apocalypticism generally, and particularly Yoderian apocalypticism, opens up the possibility of reconceiving the relationship between transcendence and immanence that in effect resists both the doctrine of the analogia entis as well as univocal accounts of pure immanence—becomes much less controversial.

Moreover, it should be noted that such a connection between apocalypticism and reconceiving the relationship between transcendence and immanence is not merely a speculative appropriation of Yoder for ends foreign to Yoder’s thought pattern. For instance, in the 1994 epilogue of chapter eight of The Politics of Jesus, “Christ and Powers,” Yoder explicitly states what I take Kerr to be maintaining: “It would not be too much to claim that the Pauline cosmology of the powers represents an alternative to the dominant (‘Thomist’) vision of ‘natural law’ as a more biblical way systematically to relate Christ and creation.”  Apocalypticism, for Yoder, then, provides an alternative framework for developing what has traditionally been called a “doctrine of creation.”  Yoder understands apocalypticism as a way of avoiding both Catholic Thomistic accounts of natural law and Protestant accounts of the “orders of creation.” For, in Yoder’s view, underlying both the traditional Catholic and Protestant approaches is the presumption that something called “creation” can be viewed on its own, that is, abstracted from redemption.

Is Obama Niebuhrian?

Theologians tend to find it interesting when political figures invoke the name of some theologian. That is why many ears perked up when Obama claimed to have read and been influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr. Perhaps this is surprising to many of us because theologians don’t seem to serve a particularly important function in contemporary politics–unless, of course, you’re willing to count Rick Warren or Dobson among the theologians. Of course, political speeches often invoke names and it is not at all unusual to allude to some famous and universally well-regarded religious figure. Indeed, a lot of energy goes into finding the right theo-religio-rhetoric to employ in a political speech. But, it seems to me that it is more rare to find a political figure actually invoking the name of an academic theologian. I suppose this says much about the place of academic theology in U.S. politics and the place of academic theology in popular culture in general. Back in the day it seems like folks like Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr were not only respected scholars, but they were something like rockstars at a popular level and among the political and cultural elite. We simply don’t have a Tillich or a Niebuhr today.

There has been some commentary on Obama’s relationship to Niebuhr. One particularly bad one on Speaking of Faith featuring David Brooks a conservative columnist for The New York Times, E.J. Dionne a liberal columnist at The Washington Post, and an invocation by the neoconservative theologian Jean Bethke Elshtain. So, it came as a bit of a relief to see this wonderful post on Niebuhr and Obama by the always brilliant and balanced Gary Dorrien at The Immanent Frame. In this post Dorrien distinguishes between the many competing Niebuhrs–the liberal, moderate, conservative, radical, and even neoconservative interpretations of Niebuhr–in order to situate Obama’s alleged Niebuhrianism. Against the neoconservative (mis)appropriation of Niebuhr, Dorrien rightly states, “If the neocons had absorbed even half of Niebuhr’s realism, we might have been spared the very bad idea of invading Iraq.” In Dorrien’s assessment, “the key to Niebuhr, and to Obama’s interest in him, is the idea of combining a realistic understanding of politics and human nature with a religiously inspired idealism.” For Obama, according to Dorrien, Niebuhr symbolizes the “possibility of a progressive realism that defends America’s interests more prudently and advances the cause of social justice.” Both figures “blend liberal internationalist and realist motifs, contending that multilateral cooperation is compatible with the power-seeking clash of nations. The case for a strong international community has a realistic basis, that the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs and risks of not working together. All parties are better off when the most powerful nations agree not to do everything that is in their power and nations work together to create new forms of collective security.”

I think this is entirely correct. Now I am no Niebuhrian–in fact, rarely do I agree with Niebuhr, especially when it comes to politics. But I think Dorrien is correct on this and indeed such a politics strikes me as a much better way forward than the last eight years. In seems that in Dorrien’s perspective Obama actually knows his Niebuhr quite well and to at least some extent is faithful to Niebuhr. If only our politicians would take seriously the opinion of Time Magazine and read a little more of “America’s Best Theologian.”

Zizek on capitalism and new age spirituality

I recently acquired Creston Davis’ The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic, which features articles by Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank and contains an introduction by Creston. If you’ve ever read Zizek you know how much he loves to rip into New Age spirituality. Here’s a gem from his article in the volume:

Postcolonial critics like to dismiss Christianity as the “whiteness” of religions: the presupposed zero level of normality, of the “true” religion, with regard to which all other religions are distortions or variations. However, when today’s New Age ideologists insist on the distinction between religion and spirituality (the perceive themselves as spiritual, not part of any organizationed religion), they (often no so) silently impose a “pure” procedure of Zen-like spiritual meditation as the “whiteness” of religion. The idea is that all religions presuppose, rely on, exploit, manipulate, etc., the same core of mystical experience, and that it is only “pure” forms of meditation like Zen Buddhism that exemplify this core directly, bypassing institutional and dogmatic mediations. Spiritual meditation, in its abstraction from institutionalized religion, appears today as the zero-level undistorted core of religion: the complex institutional and dogmatic edifice which sustains every particular religion is dismissed as a contingent secondary coating of this core. The reason for this shift of accent from religious institution to the intimacy of spiritual experience is that such a meditation is the ideological form that best fits today’s global capitalism.

Slavoj Zizek, “The Fear of Four Words: A Modest Plea for the Hegelian Reading of Christianity,” in The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic, ed. Creston Davis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) 27-28.