Dissident Dispatches

by Andrew Fraser

  From that perspective is seems clear that both the NRSV and NKJV are addressed to a more scholarly audience than either the NIV or the NEB, both of which are attentive to the needs of less well-educated readers. The NKJV, for examples, italicises words or “expressions in the original language which require clarification by additional English words.” By contrast, the NIV and the NEB stress ease of understanding by a popular audience.

  Appendix: Translations of Deuteronomy 5: 8–10, 17

  New Revised Standard Version

  8. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

  9. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me,

  10. but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

  17. You shall not murder. (Note: Or kill.)

  New King James Version

  8. You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water underneath the earth;

  9. you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

  10. but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

  17. You shall not murder.

  New International Version

  8. “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters below.

  9. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

  10. but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

  17. You shall not murder.

  New English Bible

  8. You shall not make a carved image for yourself nor the likeness of anything in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.

  9. You shall not bow down to them or worship (note: Or or be led to worship) them; for I, the LORD your God am a jealous God. I punish the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

  10. But I keep faith with thousands, with those who love me and keep my commandments.

  17. You shall not commit murder.

  3. Scripture Essay

  How is the Bible Authoritative for Christian Theology?

  Consciously or not, the assigned readings on this topic deal with the authority of the Bible in a post-Christian society. Migliore suggests that “the problem of the authority of authority in Scripture is part of the wider crisis of authority in modern Western culture.”25 Accordingly, Barth, Moltmann, and Pauw share Migliore’s view that “a major task of theology today is to develop a liberative understanding of the authority of Scripture.” The post-Christian theology of liberation stands in stark contrast to the theology of dominion characteristic of medieval Christendom.

  Given the combined impact of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, churches have become private voluntary associations; religion experience has been pushed out of the public square and confined to the private, inner life of individuals. In the High Middle Ages, however, Christianity was a way of life, a communion, and a faith practiced in public and private by all manner of men and women. The holy, catholic, and apostolic Church exercised dominion over the spiritual Kingdom of Christ; the Scriptures provided the sacred charter for its ecclesiastical authority. The Bible did not then serve individual believers as witness to the word and work of God; the Church had a vested interest in maintaining its priestly monopoly over interpretation of the Bible. But medieval Christendom has been relegated to the dustbin of history. The Bible no longer provides the Church with a warrant to “go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 24: 18–20) in order to transform all the kingdom of the earth into kingdoms of Christ.

  In Barth’s theology, the Great Commission to baptize all of the “nations” (Matthew 24:18–20) has been abandoned. Evangelical theology inhabits a pluralistic, post-Christian society; it looks to Scriptures as the primary source of witness to the Word in its encounter, not with nations, tribes, and peoples, but with individual “human beings.” Theology is concerned with an abstract, individualized, “human response to the divine word.”26 For Barth, the Word became incarnate in only one “event in time and place.” The biblical witnesses alone “could hear the Word of God in its glory” and see the divine Logos in the “flesh” of Jesus Christ. Removed in time and space from the apostolic experience, modern theologians “cannot and dare not presume that [their] human response stands in some immediate relationship to the Word spoken by God himself.”27

  Indeed, contemporary theologians confront in Holy Scriptures not only “an extremely polyphonic…testimony to the work and word of God” but also a cacophonic “hermeneutics from below” in place of the once-received “hermeneutics from above.” The result is a theological relativism in which “the authority” of Scriptures becomes highly problematic. Accordingly, Moltmann distinguishes between the formal text of the Bible and “the matter of scripture” which brings “scriptures” into being, a process which continues today in the “interfaith feminist community.”28 Another such “hermeneutic from below” leads Moltmann to elevate “the matter of scripture” over “scriptural text” in his reading of the history of Israel and its covenant with God.

  When the Church exercised spiritual dominion within Christendom, Scriptural authority was invoked routinely to support the orthodox view that Old Israel had been excommunicated by a righteous God, cut off from the Old Covenant by its stubborn and, in the end, murderous rejection of Christ. After the false Israel was cut off, a New Israel found its spiritual home in the “new heavens and new earth” constituted within the New Testament Church. For that reason, the Book of Revelation twice calls Jews who reject the lordship of Christ the “synagogue of Satan” (see Revelation 2:9 and 3:9).

  Moltmann and Barth, however, portray God as a relativist, “constantly faithful to his unfaithful human partner” and upon whom he is unwilling to pronounce a last judgement. Accordingly, Moltmann suggests, the Old Covenant with the Jews is still in force: “Until the coming of the Messiah in glory, the church and Israel remain distinct, each of them witnessing in its own way to the divine Name.”29 This messianic doctrine of Israel illustrates the relativism inherent in “liberative” theology.

  The revolutionary eschatology of liberation theology receives even more extreme expression in the work of Amy Plantinga Pauw, for whom “the matter of scripture” always trumps “scriptural text.” For her, it is axiomatic that “the cries of the needy and the oppressed” should take priority over “troubling texts” in Scripture allegedly “poisoned” by earthly principalities and powers “for their own death-dealing purposes.”30

  Liberation theologians are, therefore, eager to “exorcise” any “scriptural text” that lends support to, inter alia, slavery, supersessionism, and traditional Christian understandings of the sexual division of labour. As a consequence, liberation theology seems to have entrenched a new-modelled theology of dominion set in opposition to the foundational authority of the Bible — the dominion of the politically correct in a post-Christian society ever-ready “to adopt a hermeneutic of generosity towards our religious other.”31

  In these circumstances, orthodox Christians can only pray for the postmodern rebirth of communities of faith in which the Bible becomes the charter of a reformed theology of dominion.

  4. Theology Reading Blocks

  Reading Block # 1

  1. Simone Weil “Reflections on the Rig
ht Use of School Studies”

  Based on the premise that “prayer…is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God,” Weil urges schools to teach subjects such as geometry, Latin, and so on as if they are an apprenticeship for those who pray. She recommends that “the soul” of a believer empty “itself of all its own contents” so that God may possess it. The emphasis in her mystical understanding is on an intensely inward experience available to those who work only through “the endurance of long-drawn-out suffering” (she doesn’t condescend to mention those who fight). Small wonder, then, that to bring God down to her she chose to starve herself to death.

  2. Karl Barth, “The Word” in Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

  In this piece Barth uses “Israel” as a metonym for “mankind” or “humanity” at large. He appears determined to show that theology must be stripped of all cultural particularity if we are to grasp the meaning of the Word and the covenant it proclaims between God and all men. Israel was summoned into existence to hear God speak. The old covenant between “a holy and faithful God” and “an unholy and unfaithful people” was fulfilled through Jesus Christ; “the Word become flesh” by a new covenant with “a holy and faithful human partner” (the church?). When Christ’s Jewish flesh became the Word incarnate, the covenant was extended “to all peoples and nations of all times and places.” Afterwards, however, the Word is no longer incarnate in the flesh and blood of any particular people, least of all the Germans — hence the Barmen Declaration.

  3. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, “Living Trinitarian Faith”

  LaCugna presents a feminist account of the Trinity. A radically egalitarian version of the social gospel heavily influences her argument. She claims that the trinity provides the framework for reflecting not just “on the relationship between ourselves and God” but also “on the nature of the human person [and] on the relationship between humankind and all other creatures of the earth.” It is, however, difficult to distinguish her position from Unitarianism, especially when she insists that God and all his creatures “live together as one” in a “common life” in a “common dwelling place.” Clearly, she is determined to deconstruct the trinitarian social structures of European Christendom in which “those who prayed” were united in a shared faith and communion with “those who fought” and “those who worked.” Needless to say, there is no place in her neo-communist vision of Christian community for the “slavery” of “patriarchal” households.

  4. Hendrikus Berkhof, “Contexts within the Perspective of Faith”

  Berkhof contends that Christian faith must be rooted in three related contexts: the Bible, the Church and its confessions of faith, and the ecumenical dimension in which believers open themselves to other expressions of faith through osmosis and exchange. He warns of dangers and missteps in each of these contexts. In reading the Bible, for example, an overly intellectual approach can be just as unfruitful as literal or fundamentalist interpretations which brook no possibility of contradiction. Christian “dogmatics” must also be situated within the traditions of the church which have been transmitted to us. Theologians in pluralistic societies are free to break with those traditions but they are constrained by the need to maintain “a root-system in the living church.” He finishes with an invocation of the need for ecumenism that is thoroughly redundant in Western societies which no longer seek to defend their own traditions and faith from the corrosive impact of globalisation.

  Reading Block # 2

  1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Lectures on Christology” in id., Berlin, 1932–1933

  Bonhoeffer contends that “Christ is the new creation,” the Word become flesh “which makes all other creatures into the old creation.” After the advent of the God-Man “it is only with reference to God that human beings know who they are.” Only through Christ, his Word, and the sacraments administered by his church can we touch the transcendent source of our being. As the only truly human being, Christ transcends all the concrete particularities of family, nation, and race that define worldly identity of mere mortals. As a consequence, not even “the power or objective spirit of the church-community” can ever hope to incarnate the Risen Christ in a worldly community. Only one nation can claim to have been “the hidden centre of history, put there by God.” For Bonhoeffer, “Israel stands alone” as “place where God fulfils his promise.” No wonder he was willing to assassinate Hitler for daring to discern a glimmer of the divine in the German Volksgeist.

  2. William T Cavanaugh, Torture and the Eucharist

  Cavanaugh provides an interesting analysis of the role of ecclesiastical discipline in generating the unity essential to the survival of the early church. Effective discipline within the body of the church required effective discipline of the body of individual believers. He links that socio-historical analysis to a theory of the Eucharist. “For much of the ancient church” an arcane discipline “formed the church into a visible body of people whose outward conduct was, in effect, to be ordered by the Eucharist.” The altar at which the Eucharistic ritual is performed became “the key to the identity of the community, exclusion from the altar is used to locate that identity.” The argument appears to be a Catholic version of Bonhoeffer’s theology in that it is only through the Word and the sacraments that “humans” can touch the divine.

  3. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions

  This piece follows the logic of Bonhoeffer’s theological humanism to its inevitable conclusion. If Christ is the only truly human being, then the essence of every other more or less flawed “human being” must be defined by his relationship to the Messiah. It becomes possible, then to identify Christ as The Crown of Hinduism. Why then should one believe that “salvation is to be found only in Christianity, and, more specifically, only in the church?” Tolerance and pluralism become watchwords for ecumenically-minded Christians who shrink from any suggestion that Christendom can or should be restored. The then Archbishop of York deplored the narrow-minded intolerance of the past when “[o]ther faiths used to belong to other lands” and the Church of England embodied the Volksgeist of a particular Christian people. Nowadays the Archbishop of York himself incarnates the worship of the non-white Other in England’s once fair and pleasant land.

  4. Daphne Hampson, “Feminist Approaches to Sin” in The Christian Theology Reader

  Ms Hampson appears to have much in common with Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady who burst into song when wondering “why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Reinhold Niebuhr, on the other hand, would most likely indict the good professor of sinful pride. Indeed, sin “in its basic form” is pride in Niebuhr’s view. For Hampson, this is a characteristically male form of sin associated with “the isolated male who would be free of others.” Woman’s characteristic sin, on the other hand, is that they are just too nice. Women typically fail “to take responsibility for self-actualization.” Instead, they have sacrificed “their own potentialities” in their relationships with others. As a “post-Christian theologian”, Ms Hampson favours a Marxist-Hegelian “social conception of the human.” Humanism appears to be the tie that binds among contemporary academic theologians, whatever their nominal faith may be.

  5. Whiteness as a Problem in Theology

  J Kameron Carter on Race

  Introduction

  Mainstream Christian theology today seems determined to confuse the worship of Christ with the worship of the poor, the suffering, and the marginalized. Such confusion reflects the influence of modern Christian humanism which dissolves differences of race, class, gender, or sexual orientation into a common “humanity”. In Migliore’s words, “human beings” are created in the “image of God…to be persons in communion with God and others”. But “[i]f we are created for relationship with God who is wholly different from us, sin is a denial of our essential relatedness to those who are genuinely ‘other’”. A sinful “human intolerance for difference” leads many to reject “th
e victim, the poor, the ‘leftover person’”.32 In the social gospel of liberal Protestantism, as taught by Migliore, human beings deny Christ — the Word incarnate in poor, suffering flesh — when they assert the will to power over the “other”. Black American theologian J Kameron Carter asserts, however, that “privileged” white folks, in particular, compounded that sin by transforming the desire for domination and mastery over others into a science; as a consequence, their communion with God can be restored only by uniting themselves with the poor, black victims of scientific racism “since that is where Christ is”.33

  Naturally, Migliore, too, deplores the heavy over-representation of black people among the underclass in American society. He also attributes the condition of black America to the sinful “spirit of mastery over others” that is responsible for the dismal history of patriarchy, racism, and colonialism in modern Western history generally.34 Carter issues a more pointed indictment, charging that the modernist political theology of “whiteness” “created an analytics of race that tyrannically divides creation” between a Western overclass and the underworld inhabited by those whom Frantz Fanon sanctified as the “wretched of the earth”.35

  The Divinity of Black Flesh