That's Amore!

The scene etched in my mind comes from the 1980 film A Christmas Without Snow, starring Michael Learned and John Houseman. In the film, Houseman plays Ephraim Adams, a strict choirmaster striving to inspire and coach a rag-tag church choir in inner-city San Francisco into rendering a tolerably decent performance of Handel's Messiah.

One choir member is the high-strung Mrs. Burns, a professionally trained opera singer, who is overconfident that she, with her eminent qualifications, would easily land the soprano solo parts in the oratorio. To Mrs. Burn's evident pique, Adams taps the modest, sweet-voiced Mrs. Kim as the soloist. Mrs. Burns storms out in a huff, dissing the choir as a "bunch of amateurs."

Then comes the choirmaster pep talk:

Mrs. Burns is right, of course; you are amateurs, unlike certain pseudo-professionals like myself who insist on slave wages. Your voluntary and steadfast attendance at these rehearsals fully qualifies you for any definition of the word "amateur". What Mrs. Burns and many others are wrong about is the meaning of the word, which has to do with motivation, not quality. Remember "amo, amat, amas", the Latin verb "to love". The meaning of "amateur" is "he or she who does a thing for the love of it". There is no higher reason for singing than the love of doing it. In that respect, you do qualify as amateurs. And I salute you for it.

(I'm not meaning to diss professional musicians, by the way.)

A little cloying, to be sure. But today I'm in a (slightly) less cynical mood than normal, and the scene captures something about why I -- try as I might to extricate myself -- still find myself loving and studying theology. I'm coming more and more to see my relationship with theology as, well, a relationship -- and one that bears the status "it's complicated."

To help frame this, I've tried to create an ideal, personified image of theology, just like Boethius does with philosophy. Inevitably, though, all my mind can conjure up is the portrait of some wrinkly white male divine, such as Bultmann or one of the Niebuhrs -- an image that puts the kibosh on any kind of Eros for theology.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of my serious interest in modern theology, an interest that was sparked and then fanned into flame while I was an undergraduate studying journalism. All this has given more grist for my reflections on the question: Why do I do pursue this stuff, anyway? The answer just is: I can't help it.

In the opening pages of his Protestant Theology in the 19th Century, Karl Barth argues that historical theology must be treated as a theological project, whereby the researcher enters the living stream of an ongoing conversation rather than merely day-tripping through a museum of antiquated thought systems. In other words, the serious student of 19th century theology must share a kind of existential commitment to the theological enterprise to really understand what her theological forbears were trying to accomplish.

All that's required, Barth is suggesting, is a passion for the subject matter, not any kind of specific positive beliefs or intellectual commitments. Thus, even a skeptic such as Feuerbach belongs in the story of 19th century theology: Even if his own theological conclusions were expressed in largely negative terms, he was still existentially related to theology and it's problem. The stance of objective outside observer was simply an impossible one.

Paul Tillich, I think, is expressing the same matter -- albeit a bit more abstractly -- when he writes about the thinker who remains within the "theological circle" despite (or perhaps because of?) entertaining the most withering intellectual doubts about the contents of the faith.

That's exactly right.

So now I find myself, at the start of this 20th anniversary year, "coming out" as an "independent scholar." I do so without any disrespect for my friends and mentors who are employed as full-time academic theologians. But I do so, especially, in solidarity with other folk out there:

Pastors, religious education workers and other church-employed folks who read and write books, articles and blogs and attend theology conferences with very little support (or even comprehension) for these pursuits from their colleagues, denominational leaders or members of their parishes.

Confessional theologians who have to wear the hat of the "religious studies" scholars to make a living, including those driven to teach the Analects of Confucius (not that there's anything wrong with it!) in order to feed their families and pay their student loans.

Curious "laypeople" who probe ever deeper to find out just what the faith is all about and who pester their pastors with all those questions nobody really seems able to answer.

Independent scholars (like me) who are just stuck, who just own too many books and are just too damn invested to get unstuck, even though we earn our bread by tent making outside both the church and the academy.

Here I stand. I can do no other.

All you need is love.

Nagging Question

Dorothy Butler Bass has written this fine column for the Huff Post that I commend to you. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, she explores the two most common "answers" proposed to the "Where was God?" when such senseless things happen: 1) God was present in and with the sufferers, in and with the acts of compassion and courage, etc., in a loving and co-suffering presence. 2) God was absent as an expression of divine judgement for human sin.

Interestingly, unlike a number of liberal-progressive religious folk, Bass doesn't lightly dismiss option 2. Indeed, one finds biblical precedents for both conceptions -- in the prophets and the psalms, for example.
But her response is to pose a third alternative, proposing that God was not (exactly) present or (exactly) absent at the Newtown tragedy. Rather, God was "hidden." She evokes the classic theological tradition of the "hidden God" (Deus absconditus). It is an appeal to the mystery that permeates all of life and to the salutary notion that we human beings don't have "answers" for everything that happens -- perhaps we have explanations, ultimately, for very little.

A number of my former peers at Chicago have worked on the "hidden God" tradition with such scholars as Bernard McGinn, David Tracy, Susan Schreiner and Jean-Luc Marion. Luther and Calvin were strong proponents of a form of the hidden God argument -- Luther, for example, invoking the notion that divine providence is inscrutable in the face of such events as the advances of the Turkish empire (sorry, I don't know the appropriate textual references).

But my question for Bass (and other proponents of the hidden God notion) goes along these lines: My hunch, on the face of it, would be that the figures like Luther and Calvin would understand the Deus absconditus dialectically: They had no qualms about affirming divine presence and judgment as well.

But what of the contemporary theological interpreter? Why has it become increasingly difficult for many contemporary Christian thinkers -- I'm speaking in generalities here, not necessarily with Prof. Bass in view -- to articulate or even affirm, in any clear sense, notions of God as present in direct acts of providence or as withdrawn in judgment of sin and evil? I'm not just being rhetorical: I'd be interested to get some feedback on this question.

In other words, in our contemporary context (name it "postmodern," "late-modern," "postliberal" or whatever you prefer), what is the advantage of espousing a view of God as "hidden" over a plain, old-fashioned, consistent and more Occamite agnosticism? Is there a future for contemporary theology qua theology -- as something more than ethics, political theory or "religious studies" (whatever that is)?

How is the Deus absconditus superior to the God who simply is not there, just because....just because he just isn't?

Muisca 451: A Modest Grant Proposal

An Open Letter to
Mr. Rocco Landesman
Chairman, National Endowment for Arts

Dear Mr. Landesman:

What follows is a sort of rough draft for a NEA grant proposal. Despite my mercenary work as a bookkeeper, I'm actually not that great with numbers, so this is a grant proposal without any dollar figures. This seems apropos to me, given the looming fiscal cliff: It would be truly disheartening to see my pet project gutted along with the national defense, social services, money to keep poor people from freezing to death, etc.

"Experts" claim that the fossil fuel supply is finite and, thus, some day we will hit "peak oil" when our major source of fuel runs out -- I hate to bring up an awkward subject that the CEO of your corporation (the U.S. federal government) and his opponents in the G.O.P. would prefer not to discuss. And the scientists have probably made it all up anyway, as they are wont to do, to keep themselves occupied, since blogging in an of itself is not sufficient to do so. But just humor me.

Each year, the music industry, in both its non-profit and proprietary iterations, expends millions and millions of dollars in producing recordings, electronic broadcasts and podcasts, etc. The old timey crank-it-up phonographs being in short supply today, all of these recordings and broadcasts require electricity. But what will happen to all of this when the (ostensible) peak oil apocalypse occurs? Essentially, music lovers like you and I will be screwed. (Incidentally, I wouldn't put too much stock in that pipe dream they call "clean energy." I don't have a lot of confidence, for example, that scientists will ever come up with a way to convert the sun's rays into energy.)

So here's what we should do: Let's start redirecting our national resources away from the electronic media altogether.  Let's appropriate some grant money for the following projects:

1. Your bio on the NEA website doesn't say whether you read science fiction, but perhaps you'll recall Ray Bradbury's classic book, Fahrenheit 451, a distopic vision of the future, in which books are banned and are subject by law to burning. A secret cadre of subversives living out in the woods -- I know living in the woods is a physical impossibility, but this is, after all, a sci-fi novel -- where they memorize and recite entire books.

Why couldn't we do the same thing with music?  When our electricity is rationed and we can't run all our IPads and hi-fi systems 24-7 anymore, how will we be able to enjoy the world's music? We should pay musicians to memorize all the world's great music. When I was growing up, MTV taught me that even rock music -- well, some of it, at least -- can be rendered with acoustic instruments. I assume the same is true with country music as well, one of your own passions. (Alas, there will be no more Taylor Swift videos when peak oil comes! But her music may live on in the voices of young women for generations to come.)

Classical music (the experts tell me), blues and even jazz have learned to make due without electronic instruments. So let's have our best musicians in all genres allocate some of their practice schedules to memorization so they can make all manner of joyful noises when the end of civilization as we know it arrives.

2. In order to have enough musicians to memorize everything we need to have, well, more and better trained musicians. So we need to spend the money to train them.  And, since all those fancy computers that convert sounds into sheet music won't work without electricity, we also need to teach musicians how to read and write music. I've heard the theory that written music can printed on sheets of paper and even bound in books.  I'm not sure how printing will be possible without electricity, so I'll have to leave that problem for more mechanically minded people to ponder.

3. In the old days, people used to read something called a "newspaper." These newspapers used to have a searchable database of classified advertising that one could access (somehow) without a computer screen or keyboard. Such ads often had listings for used pianos and guitars that people were trying to unload. Well, why couldn't we put some government money toward buying up old musical instruments and reconditioning them and selling them at low cost to the new trained musicians (see no. 2 above)?

4. Finally, I propose we allocate some of this grant for the construction of front porches on houses (assuming anyone can afford to live in them anymore). Let's face it, when the power gets shut off, it's going to be too hot stay inside. So lets build front porches with rocking chairs so people can go out on a hot winter's evening in New England (which the "global warming" mythologists say we'll have to endure) and sing and play Taylor Swift songs on their reconditioned banjos and fiddles.

Your thoughtful consideration would be much appreciated.

Yours truly,
A Fellow Musicphile

To Boldly Think What No One Has Thought Before

Recently I've been rereading a biography on a thinker whom I haven't seriously read for many years. His thought gets mixed reviews in my assessment.

But what is striking me most as I review this material is not so much the content itself as the way that it is described, the way many proponents of this man's views have received his ideas. Philosopher T (let's call him) is described as a "bold" thinker, a "visionary" thinker, an "original" thinker.

This gives me some pause. It sets off a warning signal.

Let's briefly consider the question: To what extent are boldness and originality virtues in the realm of thought. Of course, it all depends upon context. Clearly, when old ideas clearly are not working, creativity and nerve in exploring new options are the dispositions that the moment requires. Certainly, too, one can admire courage: the courage, for example, to claim one's convictions, to articulate difficult truths against opposition, etc.

What about "boldness" in the sphere of thought? I have philosophical and theological discussions in view primarily, but consider an analogous situation which calls for thought: You exhibit a bizarre combination of symptoms. Your physician can't figure out what's wrong with you, but makes a couple of tentative hypotheses. You get a second opinion, and the second doctor is confused too, but has his own theories. In utter frustration, you see a third position. This one is young and brash. He is "bold" both in his diagnosis and prognosis and in his prescription for a cure. He expresses his views with a confidence and clarity that the previous two professionals lacked. What's more, he recommends to you a "bold" new experimental procedure -- and a risky one, at that.

In this scenario, whose view do you trust? Of course, many factors come into play. The situation would seem different, too, if you had followed the first two doctors' suggestions and your suffering had only worsened. But there is a difference between boldness and desperation.

There's a difference between throwing the Hail Mary pass when your team is behind six points with 10 seconds left in the game and calling this play in the second quarter when your leading by six points and are just five yards out of your own end zone. In the first instance, the long pass is your only realistic hope of winning. In the second case, the call (most coaches would agree) is "bold" indeed, but idiotic.

This is my question: In the spheres of theology and philosophy (one might include the social sciences as well), which virtue, overall, is more a propos: boldness or humility? An unqualified answer is impossible, but much can be said for the latter option. My ideas are bold. But what if they're wrong? What if they're really wrong. Tyrants can be quite bold.

Another thing I've noticed in reviewing this thinker's following: He has quite a fan club. A well-organized professional society with scholars from a broad array of disciplines is dedicated to exploring his thought. Part of its mission statement is to "defend" Dr. T's ideas.

Really? Is this in keeping with the spirit of inquiry? Should a professional society of scientists, let's say, dedicated to the work of Einstein, Planck or Darwin strive to "defend" it's foundational thinker's legacy? Explore, certainly. Debate, to be sure, if any serious challenges to the theory exist. Such is the spirit of scientific inquiry.

As I understand scientific theory, it needs to be proven and tested continuously to account for new data. Eventually, if the data demand it and our tools for interpreting it improve, a paradigm shift might be in order, and that move may very well requires creativity, boldness and vision. But what if a group of followers is defending ideas that are basically fantastical or just plain crappy?

Listomania: Theologian Biographies

What would a blog be without lists? Here's my first one.

The topic: My favorite biographies of theologians (note, I didn't say the best available biographies, but rather, the ones that I've most enjoyed).

1. Peter Brown -- Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. This is indeed one of the finest books I've ever read. Simply essential, a masterwork. Since most everyone out there seems to agree with me on this, I don't really need to say more.

2. Roland H. Bainton -- Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. This choice may surprise some Luther aficionados, but in my estimation, this book delivers. The purist would perhaps lift up Oberman's work over Bainton's. Both, indeed, have a privileged place on our bookshelf -- the one in the living room, where most of the really good stuff (excepting Barth) can be found.

I think the attraction of Bainton for me is colored by a positive memory: In 2000 -- back before the terrorists had starting turning all of us into terrorists, torturers and the like -- I took a delightful study trip exploring famous Luther sites in Germany. The facilitator was the New Testament scholar Eugene Boring of TCU's Brite Divinity School. Prof. Boring assigned us two books for background reading -- the Bainton bio and the Dillenberger anthology. This pairing offers what is, probably, the most painless introduction to Luther you can get. I caught a G.I. bug when we were staying in Göttingen and was leveled flat out barfing miserable. You might say it was a bad case of Lutheran Anfectung.

Prof. Boring schlepped out in the middle of the night to the only emergency pharmacy in town to acquire medicine for me. For this virtuous deed, he had to endure the taunt of "Das ist nicht in Ordnung!" from the piqued pharmacist. One appreciates American pragmatism at such moments.

3. David Daniell -- William Tyndale: A Biography. Daniell is virtually a one-man guild of scholarship on the too-little-known English reformer. This book emerges, clearly, from a deep love for and devotion to its subject. It is a delight and a must read for anyone interested in the history of English vernacular Bible translations.

The work has two problems: One is the paucity of actual information we have on the elusive Tyndale. Daniell handles this lacuna admirably by giving quite a bit of background detail on early 16th century Oxford and Cambridge, Erasmus, etc. One also meets Thomas More in these pages (but, if you're a devout Roman Catholic, let me warn you: You aren't going to like the portrayal too much).

The other problem is that Daniell's apologetic fervor for his subject pushes the work dangerous close to hagiography. Now, I'll fess up and say that Tyndale is one of my heroes, so I don't mind it too much. But some of the exposition tends in the direction of suggesting "a greater than Luther is here."

4. William J. Bowsma -- John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait. This very readable book presents Calvin as a man of his own times. The portrait is about one half intellectual history and one half existential psychology. The consensus out there is that Bernard Cottret's biography is the standard work so far in this area (see this Calvin enthusiast, for example). I will admit, with embarrassment, that I had taken a copy of this out of the library but got kind of "Calvined out" that fall and ended up returning it unfinished. But Christmas is just around the corner!

5. Eberhard Busch -- Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts.  I would be remiss not to mention this text. My list was about to give you the false impression that I'm a Reformation historian and not a troubled (post)modernist like everybody else. Not so. The 20th century is my go-to period, for better or worse. This is the standard work for probing the life of the most important theologian since Schleiermacher.

But this is not an easy read. Because of his tremendous archival work, Busch is one of the most important Barth scholars alive today. This is a chronologically ordered rendition of biographical materials drawn, mostly, from Barth's own writings and tied together in a loose narrative framework. It is not a critical biography. Such a work, to my knowledge, does not exist. For my part, I really consider this more of a primary source than a secondary evaluation of Barth. But the material here is crucial for setting Barth in his historical context.

6. Richard Wightman Fox -- Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography.  Who would have guessed that this country's most important Protestant public intellectual of the past century was a driven workaholic with a persistent German-American immigrant's anxiety about fitting into American culture? An amazing, brilliant and (in some respect) tortured figure emerges from these pages: Deeply ethical, with a profound sense of political realism, with an early passion for social and economic justice so vigorous that it is vulnerable to morphing into the disillusioned cynicism of an old warrior. Nieburhr's life story is a window into every important social and political crisis from World War I to Vietnam.

To-Do List

In addition to Cottret, here are a couple other books I have dipped into without having yet finished them (but I hope to remedy that shortly): Diarmaid McCulloch's Thomas Cramner and George Marsden's Jonathan Edwards.

Ontotheology* 101

S: "Do you believe that God 'exists'?"

L: "Of course."

S: "I mean, couldn't we say, with Prof. Jean-Luc Marion, that God transcends existence, that the one we call 'God' far exceeds the very category of being itself. That we can talk of God only as pure gift, absolute beneficence, pure self-giving love, utter agape beyond being? Just like some of the mystics of the past and some deconstructionist theologians today say?"

L: "I never bought into that."

S: (Voice rising) "You mean to tell me that we, mere creatures, share with the Creator of the universe the category of 'existence' as a predicate of our reality? Doesn't this subsume God within some overarching metaphysical schema?"

L: "Whatever."

S: "Well, I guess we could go the route of Thomism and say that God is self-subsistent esse, a pure unity of being and action, and that our creaturely existence is a finite participation in God's transcendent esse. But, again, that commits us to some sort of analogia entis -- some notion that there is within our existence as such something that links us existentially to God, by virtue of our very creaturehood and apart from Christ and  historic revelation. And I'm just not sure I'm ready to go there."

L: "I thought you were going to write about William Stringfellow. How's that going?"

(Pause)
S: "I really love this weather we've been having."

L: "Have you paid the phone bill yet?"



(* I haven't found online any clear, rough-and-ready definition of "ontotheology." I take the term generally to mean the attempt to relate the reality of God, the subject of theology, with a general metaphysical account of the cateory of "being" as such.)

Nevermind. Some Apologies are in Order.

I feel like this blog is starting(!) to lose its focus -- that I'm edging more and more into the "heat" rather than the "light" category.

So let me start today by making some amends, by way of an attempt to get back on track.

First, let me apologize to anyone who works on Hegel (though I doubt such folks would bother to read this blog). Despite what I've been saying, I'm not really going to engage him now. I'm 40 years old and, if I had wanted to seriously engage Hegel, I probably would have done so already. It was intellectual hubris on my part to suggest I can do a whiz-bang refresher course in 19th century philosophy and theology as a preamble to reading Barth. Grad school is over.

There has been a good deal of interesting work in recent years attempting to give a genetic account of Barth's development in relationship to its 19th century intellectual background. Prof. McCormack's work stands out in this vein. For now, I'll content myself with Barth's own book on 19th century Protestant thought and see where I go from there.

Second, let me also apologize for some snarky comments I made about Prof. Pannenberg, especially to any students out there who may be working through his imposing corpus. His work deserves careful and thoughtful engagement, but I'm not going to do that here, at least not anytime soon. So I had best be quiet.

I will admit that some of this snarkiness comes from a sensitive personal spot: The only exchange I ever had with Prof. Pannenberg was brief and did not go very well. During my qualifying exam year, the eminent  paid a visit to the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he gave a couple lectures. At an informal luncheon talk, during the Q & A, I embarrassed myself with a question that he lightly dismissed. Everyone got a good laugh out of it -- at my expense! I still think it was a good question and that he didn't really answer it. But the exchange probably failed because of my own failure to articulate it and to persist with a clarifying follow-up.

Third, and this is the most important point I want to make, let me apologize to the conservative Neo-Calvinists, again targets of my snarkiness. Several of my friends belong to this camp, so this requires eating a particularly bitter bit of crow. There is some serious theology going on in this area, and I might have some cause to engage with it at some point. Actually, some of the Neo-Calvinists have become pretty perceptive readers of Barth.

My undergrad alma mater is Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Down there, among the restive Baptists, some conservative Presbyterian money has built a fine conservative Protestant seminary called Beeson Divinity School. Amazingly, the div. school building was constructed from the ruins of my crappy first-year college dorm. Anyway, when I worked for the Samford student newspaper, I had the privilege to interview its dean, the very fine historical theologian Timothy George: What a kind, calm and reasonable man he is!

Part of my conflictedness, too, comes out of my own Southern Baptist roots. Though I'm a confirmed, prayer-book carrying Episcopalian, I'm still genetically Baptist. That's where the orneriness comes from. My dad has been a Baptist minister since age 17. Can you imagine that! We went to a lot of SBC national convention meetings during the height of the fundamentalist takeover of the denomination, the early '80s. Our side lost: Big time.

The intellectual leading lights of the SBC makeover were and are Neo-Calvinists, including the very prominent president of the flagship SBC seminary, who, through his amazing Internet presence, has himself become something of a phenomenon within evangelicalism today. Is there a little residual pique about all this informing my petulance? Probably. Some folks want to reenact the seventeenth century Synod of Dordt. I'm not sure I'm one of them, but who knows?

But I will say this, for now, about the Neo-Calvinist movement: Some of the rhetoric about gender -- about "biblical manhood" and "womanhood" -- that flies under this banner has me alarmed. I would urge all evangelicals to keep both their minds and their Bibles open. And also, if you want to know where my sympathies in the gender debates lie, please read Rachel Held Evans.