rain and the rhinoceros

In his provocative article, “Communion and Otherness,”1 Zizioulas states not without a tone of lament, “The world at this moment is dominated by Western culture.”2 In a time when Western political and economic systems dominate and exert themselves on the world, Orthodoxy cannot afford to become merely another “‘exotic’ religion offering refuge to those seeking mystical and other extraordinary experiences.”3 Instead, following the ancient church as a model, Orthodoxy, especially those members living in the West, must engage and strive to transform culture. Zizioulas urges the Orthodox church “to relate tradition to the problems of modern Western man, which are rapidly becoming the problems of humanity in its global dimension.”4 The individualism that is rooted in the “very foundations of this culture” regrettably views the happiness and rights of the individual so highly that it makes “protection from the other. . . a fundamental necessity.”5 As a result, “we are forced and even encouraged to consider the other as our enemy before we can treat him or her as our friend.”6 Acceptance of the other is always conditional on the basis that this other does not “threaten our privacy or insofar as he is useful for our individual happiness.”7In Zizioulas’ assessment the values and ideals of Western culture, heralded by the United States in particular, actually perpetuate fear of the other.

This essay is broken up into two parts. In the first section, we will make the case that the Bush administration with the help of the media8 has constructed a depersonalized and stereotyped Arab/Muslim other9 to justify a seemingly unending “war on terrorism.” In the second section, we will undertake a study of Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist to support our thesis that the Eucharist enacts a vision that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping by opening up a set of human relations in which the other is affirmed as particular and unique. Our hope in this paper is to offer a small contribution to the recent retrieval of the social meaning of Christian worship.10

———————————————

1. The article first appeared in John Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38.04, pp. 347-361. A revised form of the essay appears as the introduction of Zizioulas’ recent publication Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1-12.
2. Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” 348.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid
5..Ibid., 349.
6. Ibid., 349.
7. Ibid., 349.
8. I am fully aware that the term, “the media,” carries some ambiguity. By media, I mean to refer specifically to mainstream corporate news outlets, such as CNN or The New York Times. Analysis of other forms of media, such as the portrayal of Arab/Muslims in film, literature, theatre, photography, and art is beyond the scope of this paper and has been discussed elsewhere. See, for instance, Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in film (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
9. Of course, the Western construction of an Arab/Muslim other is hardly a recent phenomenon. Here, I take Edward Said’s basic thesis for granted. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon books, 1978. See also, Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Said’s basic thesis is that knowledge of the East in Western imagination has been generated primarily by constructs that juxtapose the East as the antithesis of the West.
10. See especially William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (New York: T&T Clark, 2003) and Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998); Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells eds., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting an essay that I recently wrote in the form of a series. The full title of the paper is “The Eucharist and the ‘War on Terrorism’: John Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist and the refusal to reject the Other.” This is my first blogging attempt at posting a “series,” so bare with me. The following is the first post of the series and the beginning of the essay.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, coupled with the President’s rhetoric about the shadowy nature of the enemy, played into people’s fear of the other. The Bush administration, with the help of the media, constructed a larger-than-life “terrorist enemy” and promised to rid the entire world of evil forever through the deployment of massive military force. By exploiting this fear of the other, the Bush administration gained wide support from the nation’s citizens, including many Christians, to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later, under a related pretext, the invasion of Iraq for the second time in just over a decade.

Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas directly identifies the fear of the other with the fall of humanity. He writes, “There is a pathology built into the very roots of our existence, inherited through our birth, and that is the fear of the other.”1 Adam’s sin was the “rejection of the Other par excellence, our Creator.”2 Any hope for reconciliation with the other, therefore, relies on our first being reconciled to God. Our fear of the other is, however, reflective of a much deeper and universal fear of all otherness.3 The fear of all otherness is the fear that difference poses a threat to our individual security. Even when fear of the other is apparently overcome, when we begin to accept a particular other, for instance, Zizioulas argues that we do so only on the condition that this other is similar to ourselves. In other words, we are resistant, and indeed cannot even bare to accept, much less affirm radical difference or absolute otherness.

When we gather together in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we enter into communion with the triune God, with one another, and with the whole of creation. At the same time, in the Eucharistic celebration otherness is radically affirmed and difference no longer leads to division. In Zizioulas’ words, in the Eucharist “difference ceases to be divisive and becomes good. . . unity or communion does not destroy but rather affirms diversity and otherness.”4 The Eucharist is thus the act in which “communion and otherness is realized par excellence.”5 This series of posts will explore John Zizioulas’ notion that communion and otherness is fully realized in the Eucharistic celebration. Building on the work of Zizioulas we will argue that the Eucharist enacts a vision or an “ethos” that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping of the other by positively affirming the absolute uniqueness and particularity of each and every human person. We will show that Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist has a cosmic and profoundly social dimension which has implications for how the church should respond to the distorted construction of an “Arab/Muslim” other in the United States led “war on terrorism.”

____________________________
1John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1.
2 Communion & Otherness, 1.
3 Ibid., 2.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 7.

Fundamentalist Sacred Books, Classics, and Traditions

The Qur’an refers to the adherents of the three great monotheistic religions, that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as “People of the Book.” Certainly, this is true of Islam and its relation to the Qur’an. Perhaps, Judaism could also be seen in this light. However, the extent to which this is true of Christianity is debatable. Of course, it is important to define exactly what is meant by a religion or a people of a book. In what sense does the Christian faith relate to its scripture? There have been varying answers to this question since the earliest followers of Jesus. In fact, this was a hotly debated issue in the early church, and continues to be so among Christians today.
In the early church all sorts of questions were asked about the nature of scripture, canon, and biblical authority. During the first few centuries of Christianity there was no closed list of scripture, or what is sometimes called, a canon. While some followers of Jesus questioned whether it was right for Christians to have any scripture at all, others believed that the Jewish scriptures should continue to have authority for Christians. Indeed, it seems as though Jesus and Paul were not clear on the matter, for they were both Jews who spoke from the Jewish scriptures, yet also called the authority of the law, scribes, and the prophets into question. At a certain point, Christians decided to create a closed list of books. The list included some of the Jewish scriptures and some writings about Jesus and his early followers.
The problem has become more complicated throughout Christian history. Indeed, there is no such thing as a universal Christian canon anymore. Although most Christian canons are relatively similar, some traditions have included or excluded books over time. All Christian traditions have a recognized canon that is believed to be authoritative and inspired by God. These faith claims, however, are interpreted and applied in radically different ways from varying perspectives.
One radical way of understanding the authority and inspiration of the Bible is the Protestant fundamentalist viewpoint. While most Christian traditions accept that there are multiple perspectives on the authority and inspiration of the Bible, fundamentalists do not. Fundamentalists believe that there is only one true way to understand the nature of the Bible. They believe that the Bible is the only authority and rule for the Christian faith, because it is inspired by God. Moreover, fundamentalists believe that “inspired by God” means that the Bible is the word of God. It is commonly thought that if the Bible is the word of God (in a literal sense), then the Bible must be without error, for God does not err. Included in the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible is the concept of both theological and historical inerrancy, that is to say, the Bible conveys perfect theology, or to put it more acutely, the words of God himself, as well as an accurate account of history.
The belief in the historical inerrancy of the Bible is of crucial importance to fundamentalists, and distinguishes them from mainline Protestant faith, which might hold to theological inerrancy, but is less concerned with the accuracy of the Bible’s historical claims. It is arguable, however, that even maintaining a view that the Bible is theologically inerrant falls within the categories of fundamentalism. The fundamentalist belief that the Bible is inerrant in all respects is emphasized by its adherents. In this view, the Bible is thought to be the basis of Christian faith, doctrine, and practice. Of course, mainline Protestants insist on being biblically grounded, and even Catholic teaching speaks of this, but the main difference with fundamentalism is its unwavering insistence that the Bible is inerrant and that their interpretation of the Bible is the only correct interpretation. Indeed, some extreme forms of fundamentalism do not accept any kind of ecumenism, that is, they are not open to discussion with religious people of other Christian perspectives, much less with people of other religions.
The high place of scripture in Protestant fundamentalism can hardly be over emphasized. According to fundamentalists, the Bible ought to be the basis of faith, theology, history, and even present and future events. When I asked Pastor Kyle Stevens, the fundamentalist pastor in Coon Rapids, what word he would use to describe his church’s core beliefs, he said, “Well…the Bible!” Unlike most Christian traditions that think faith in Jesus should be a Christian’s first core belief, fundamentalists believe the Bible is central. At first glance, there does not seem to be anything inherently wrong about believing in the Bible first. Indeed, the documents within the Bible contain our best historical sources about Jesus. Moreover, Jesus and his early followers read the Jewish scriptures religiously, and the majority of Christian traditions today hold scripture in high authority for doctrine and practice. Therefore, it must be pointed out that Christian fundamentalist thought is not entirely removed from other forms of Christianity. It is also important to treat fundamentalism respectively and openly, for it is a legitimate way to practice Christianity.
We have already mentioned that the belief in inerrancy of the Bible distinguishes fundamentalism from mainline Protestantism. It is often said that the distinction lies in the fundamentalist insistence on having a literal interpretation of the text. Indeed, fundamentalist would agree with this distinction. The problem is that fundamentalists do not interpret the Bible literally. In fact, this has little to do with fundamentalist interpretation at all. The fundamentalist concern is and always has been wrapped up in protecting the inerrancy of the Bible. As James Barr rightly notes, “In order to avoid any imputing error to the Bible, fundamentalists twist and turn back and forward between literal and non-literal interpretation…indeed he has to do so in order to obtain a Bible that is error-free.”1
One reason why fundamentalists are so concerned about inerrancy is because they believe that the Bible is the word of God and cannot error. Furthermore, it is believed that if one accepts the existence of any sort of error in the biblical text, it makes the whole Bible unreliable. Of course, here one can already identify a common logical fallacy. Logicians call this the fallacy of composition: the concept that attributes of a part necessarily represents the attributes of the whole. Unreliability, it seems is one of the greatest fears among fundamentalists. For if the Bible is unreliable historically, theologically, or even geographically, then this also makes belief in God unreliable. Thus, any acceptance of error in the Bible has the potential to lead the fundamentalist to complete rejection of faith in God and Jesus. This is one reason why fundamentalists believe any one who is not a fundamentalist is not a true believer, for they do not believe that which is of ultimate importance, the reliability of the Bible and God. From this one may validly deduce that to fundamentalist faith belief in God and the inerrancy of the Bible are inseparable.
Perhaps, there are other reasons why inerrancy is so important to fundamentalists. James Barr has suggested that fundamentalists are especially concerned about the Bible in “correspondence to external reality.”2 Thus, it is believed that every event in the Bible occurred in history in exactly the way as it is recorded in the Bible. Not only does this belief refer to historical events recorded in the Bible, but also aids in the interpretation of present and future events. If a catastrophic national or world event occurs, such as a massive hurricane, a terrorist attack, or a war, then a fundamentalist might be inclined to turn to her Bible for an explanation. One might turn to apocalyptic images in some of the prophetic books in order to understand these events in the context of God’s plan as laid out in the Bible.
In order to make effective and convincing criticisms of Protestant fundamentalism, one’s argument must be biblically grounded. In other other words, one must attempt to interact with fundamentalism within its own framework and terms of thinking. Is there a biblical case to be made against a biblically centered Christianity? If a convincing case could be made, it would pose a challenge to both mainline Protestantism and its fundamentalist offshoots. For biblicism is not only found in marginalized fundamentalist churches, it is widespread among all forms of Protestantism, because the nature of biblical authority is a difficult matter for Christian faith.