Sneak Peak: A Reading List for Advent 2016

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and forever. Amen.

What I'm (re)reading (though maybe it's a little ambitious):

Karl Marx. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, ed. by Dirk J. Struik (New York: Internaitonal Publishers, 1963).

William Stringfellow. Essential Writings, ed. by Bill Wylie-Kellerman (New York: Orbis, 2013).

Bayard Rustin. Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, ed. by Devon W. Carbado and Donale Weise (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2003).

H. Richard Niebuhr. The Kingdom of God in America, (Hanover, NH: Weslyan, 1988).

John Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress, (New York: Pocket Library, 1957).

Ἀμήν· ἔρχου, κύριε Ἰησοῦ.

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon the the Woman Cothed with the Sun (1805).
(Via Wikimedia Commons, PD-1923)

Yes, the Reformation Still Matters

Luther before Cardinal Cajetan (Holzschnitt, 1557)
(PD-old, via Wikimedia Commons)

"Does the Reformation Still Matter?" So asks the headline of an RNS from earlier this week by Jacob Lupfer. The author lifts up shifts in society and culture, especially recent developments in U.S. cultural history, that pose the question whether the Protestant Reformations (not the plural) that began 499 years ago are still germane to Western Christians today.

For example, according to Lupfer, ecumenical relations between Rome and Protestant bodies have warmed under the pontificate of Pope Francis (I welcome this development, by the way). What's more, markers of identity have shifted in recent decades, such that like-minded Protestants and Roman Catholics are more likely to find common cause politically and socially across the confessional divide than they are to do so with members in their own respective communions with whom they clash ideologically. Lupfer also quotes Stanley Hauerwas, who alludes to the ways Roman Catholic theologians have creatively rethought their doctrinal tradition to answer the critiques of the early Protestant movements. One thinks, for example, of promising ecumenical statements between Lutheran and Catholic theologians on the question of justification. Again, all this is true, as far as it goes, and I wouldn’t want to minimize or dismiss any of it.

This is a brief piece, of course, aimed at a popular audience. Still, it invites response. My answer is "Yes." From where I sit, the Protestant Reformations indeed still matter. Lupfer doesn't address what is, for me, the decisive area: Ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.

It's a much more complicated question, of course, than I can deal with in a little blog post, but here is the rub for me: The Roman Catholic Church -- much as I love, admire and (indeed!) envy its richness, its traditions, the better aspects of its socio-political witness and spirituality, and its inimitable, trans-cultural global reach -- still holds that the church is infallible -- that, in some way, there is some corner of its life and witness that are beyond human error (of course, through the power of divine providence, and not from its own finite resources).

Note what the Catechism says about the Magisterium, about the authority of its historic teaching office:

(889) In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith.”

And again:

(891) "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council.418 When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed,"419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith."420 This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.

The retort, for example, that papal infallibility rarely has been invoked -- though that is fortunate, indeed -- is not to the point. The claim, if I understand it correctly, is that Jesus Christ has endowed his earthly body with a share of the infallibility that is proper to his Lordship to his human followers, whether collectively, as a whole, or to some portion of it.

I cannot accept this doctrine. To that extent, count me still a "Protestant." That makes me and my community vulnerable – absolutely defenseless, in fact, under the Word of God who is Christ himself. Devastatingly vulnerable, under the sign of the cross. But what can I do but cling to that Word?

"Hier stehe ich!"

Orange You Glad I'm Not a Scientist?

In writing, as in life generally, it's felicitous to branch out on occasion.

Today, therefore, on this blog (where I hardly post anything anymore anyway), I'm going to take a short break from theologizing and explore a field of inquiry that's always interested me: Natural science.

My young son enjoys "fact books." In perusing one of these recently, we came across this factoid: It is possible to start a fire using only the contents of an orange

Really? I wonder how that's even possible.

(One caveat: Many of the purported "facts" in these books are undocumented and remain, on the face of it, suspicious to me -- for example, this notion that the earth spins on its "axis," whatever that might be. When in doubt, this is my fallback rule: If an ostensible scientific fact is not affirmed in the national Republican Party platform, I don't buy into it.)

(Another caveat: Need I say, don't try this at home, unless you happen to be a Girl Scout, duly supervised, and your parents have signed all the requisite medical release forms?)

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that it is indeed possible to start a fire using an orange. When pondering this, something struck me, and I flipped to another page in the book, where we learn that a grape, sliced in half and cooked in a microwave will burst into flames.

Boom. There you have it.

I freaking love science!

The "Good" Samaritan as Antiracist Parable: A Bishop's Sermon, Ripped from the Headlines.

My bishop, the Right Rev. Douglas J. Fisher of Western Massachusetts, has posted this sermon, which we heard at the Episcopal cathedral in Springfield yesterday. The title is: "There is no 'us' and 'them'. There is only 'us.'"

The main text for the homily is the parable of the Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37.

Bishop Fisher writes

By telling the story that he does, about a man beaten, robbed and left to die in a ditch, Jesus changes our question about Eternal Life by “plugging us into a world of violence.” Following Jesus will not mean escaping violence – it will mean engaging it. Sound like 2016 yet?

Read the rest here.

Le bon Samaritain (1880), by Aimé Nicolas Morot
Image in public domain in USA
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Tributes to Professor John Webster (via DET)

I have not posted here in a while. Unfortunately, this is a sad post . Last week Professor John Webster, an inimitable scholar and constructive thinker in the field of Reformed systematic theology -- and, I would also point out, an Anglican clergyman -- died suddenly at the age of 60. He was one of the greatest interpreters of the work of Continental theologians Karl Barth and Eberhard Jüngel.

May light perpetual shine upon him.

I commend to you this post, compiled by W. Travis McMaken, which links to numerous online tributes to Prof. Webster, including remembrances from colleagues and students of his.

My Latest Book Review: Christ Crucified in a Suffering World by Nathan Hieb

Check out the newly revamped website for The Center for Barth Studies There you will find, in addition to many excellent resources for the Karl Barth researcher, my latest publication, a review of Nathan D. Hieb's superb study, Christ Crufied in a Suffering World: The Unity of Atonement and Liberation. In this volume, Hieb provides one model for doing what I should very much like to accomplish constructively: He integrates a Christocentric theology, complete with a strong doctrine of the atonement, with contemporary efforts on socio-political transformation and liberation. As I write:

All too often contemporary theologians create a false binary between traditional atonement doctrines and theologies of liberation. Nathan Hieb seeks to bridge that gap by means of a fresh reading and retooling of Karl Barth’s doctrine of atonement.

I hope this might whet your appetite to read the review and, more than that, to get a hold of Hieb's book for yourself.

Picasso, La Crucifixion (1930)

The Gospel According to Elizabeth Warren Running for President

I have always longed to inhabit sacred ground, but alas, I live a very long way from the Holy Land.

True, I have lived in Alabama and Georgia (the Bible Belt), Illinois (Land of Lincoln) and Pennsylvania (Penn's Peaceable kingdom, except in election years). Now I live in Northampton. According to the internet, Northampton is 5,580.1 miles away from Jerusalem. For you international readers, that's 8980.3 Kilometers (or Kiloumeters, British spelling) and 4845.8 Nautical Miles. Nor have I ever been anywhere near Isreal-Palestine, where the Lord lived, ministered, died and rose again.

But I've learned it does't really matter, because when the Messiah returns, her home base is going to be much closer to home -- Cambridge!



No, no, silly! Not THAT Cambridge. Cambridge, Massachusetts, a mere 102 miles from where I live in Northampton.

No MASSACHUSETTS!

Yes, that's more like it. And the one who will save us, the one for whom we have hoped will come from none other than the hallowed halls of Harvard.

Mike Huckabee's views on the matter notwithstanding, Harvard is not a dirty word in this neck of the woods. Harvard is where we send and brightest and best (=most richest) to earn A minuses and learn how to rule the world. Because legacy.

Who is the Child of Promise, then, who emerges from this esteemed institution -- in particular, from its faculty? Why it's none other than Elizabeth Warren Running for President. For those of you unfamiliar with the U.S. national political scene, Ms. Warren is one of two Democrats representing Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. She's fiesty, confrontational and reform minded. And she formerly taught at Harvard. But this piece is not about her per se. Note my language carefully: I didn't say that Senator Warren herself is the fulfillment of our messianic hopes and dreams. Only the most clueless space cadet among left-liberal punditry could imagine that Warren could ever actually be elected President of the United States. Rather, what I'm arguing is that it's the very idea of Elizabeth Warren running for president itself is the mechanism that, in the last days, will finally turn the wheels of history and redeem the unfulfilled American dream for freedom, peace and democracy.

You see, the prophecies go something like this: The idea of Elizabeth Warren Running for President will emerge in the last days of 2016. All the elect will rise up in concord and the sleeping beast known as the national Democratic Party will be awakened from its globalist, militarist, centrist slumbers and get about the business of establishing the Millenial reign of Democracy in the United States, a notion that is implied by certain obscure passages in the U.S. Constitution but that has never been even remotely realized in the present evil age.

"And the Chosen One shall arise in the Back Bay, and the Great Donkey shall awaken, and an internet petition drive shall lead them," according to one version of the prophesy.

And, just as in California politics, it all begins with a petition drive. The details can all be found in the Sacred Oracle, "Run Warren Run," from an outfit known as moveon.org.

Hear what the Oracle Saith:

In the wake of the Great Recession, Senator Warren stood up to the big banks and led the successful fight to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an act that’s already recovered more than $1.5 billion for Americans who were ripped off by Wall Street predators.

This is all true, by the way. It's all been fulfilled. I checked it out.

And furthermore:

Senator Warren is leading the fight for students and graduates who are struggling under the weight of crippling student loan debt and is transforming the Social Security debate from whether to cut the program to how to grow it.

Also true! Are you starting to get excited yet?

Here's the key bit, the John 3:16, if you will, of the Gospel According to Elizabeth Warren Running for President:

Our country will be better off if Elizabeth Warren runs for president.

Cryptic? Yes, apocalypses always are. Note the key thing, though: It doesn't read our country will be better of if Sen. Warren becomes President. That would take a divine miraculous intervention that would make the Red Sea incident look like a wading pool in an Orlando hotel. No, the true change will come from her running for President. Or perhaps even just the idea of her running itself.

Of course there are always naysayers and skeptics. Our age abounds in them. That's why it's important to have faith -- to trust the Gospel of Elizabeth Warren Running for President. But to all of those folks, the preacher saith: "Quit your braying and get with the program."

And all the people said, "Amen."

If you give a birthday party for Jesus....

If you give a birthday party for Jesus

just be aware he might show up

not the gauzy gazed at infant

not the gaudy glowing saint

but the fleshy mess of breath and bones

holding banners, singing in the cold

what would happen if he came inside

the room, the candles would they sputter?

or turn to tongues of flame?

-- Leah C. Gregg

The Bible in one hand, The Nation in the other

In the thick of the Detroit auto boom in 1927, the young pastor Reinhold Niebuhr wrote this entry into his journal:

I believe every preacher ought to take several radical journals, preferably the ones which are extremely inimical to religion. The ethical ideals of Christianity are so high and the compromises which the average church and the average minister has made between these ideals and the economic necessities of society are so great, and self-deception is so easy, that we need the corrective and perhaps cynical evaluation of religion in modern life.

I should like to recommend this kind of reading who are so easily obsessed by a messianic complex because of the compliments they receive. Let them remind themselves that there are astute observers who think that all their preaching is superficial and never touches the fundamental defects of modern society, and that these critics are at least as near the truth as their too generous devotees (Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Meridian Books, 1957, p. 204.)

Were you aware, gentle readers, that Niebuhr wrote prodigiously for such secular journals as The Nation and The New Republic as well as the newly established Christian Century? If you wish to take up Niebuhr's advice, doubtless you can find what you need via the blogosphere and Twitter. But if you are still a little perplexed, allow me to get you started with this.

Niebuhr at the Supermarket

I wish to report to y'all, gentle readers, that I've had a genuine moment of (Reinhold) Niebuhrian self transcendence to report in my own life.

This weekend, while shopping at the local Pause-'n-Pay Grocery Store(™), I deliberated briefly between two options in the dairy case: Should I buy the store-brand milk and save money or spend an extra dollar for the Local Hero option (I don't typically consider myself a hero, local or otherwise). Then it happened: In a moment of genuine self transcendence, poised between the existential polarities of my finitude and freedom, I allowed my narrow self interest to be checked by the demands of a higher, more universalizing ethical framework -- an action that would have been virtually impossible for me had I been representing a larger social aggregate, such as a nation state, wherein collective egoism -- typically masked by the machinations of ideology and hidden power plays -- thwarts any such self-sacrificing ethical behavior.

In other words, I opted for the local brand.

Alas, though, for I am undone! For now, gentle readers, my own self interest has become an (unjustified, I think y'all will agree) occasion for bragging rights and an overweening sense of my own superiority vis-a-vis the woman next to me who bought the cheaper milk (that's the "sin of pride," people).

The only solution? A countermeasure: Please excuse me while I bury my head in a vat of Cheese Flavored, Partially Hydrogenated MSG Puffs(™) (oops, that's the "sin of sensuality").

A Little Niebuhring

I'm rereading Reinhold Niebuhr, which I admit I haven't done to much of for a little while -- say, about 15 years or so, though I did get a lot out of reading the fine biography by Richard Wightman Fox a couple of years ago (I mentioned that reading here) . I'm reading him with fresh eyes -- or perhaps I should say somewhat jaundiced eyes. Apparently, if David Brooks and President Obama are any indication, it seems there is no way around dealing with Niebuhr for anyone interested in what Christian faith might have to say today about the political order.

I both sincerely admire this man and am deeply ambivalent about his political theology.

My recent read is late Niebuhr, Man's Nature and His Communities (1965). I admit that I find it somewhat difficult to come to terms with Niebuhr once and for all: Once I start to find myself disagreeing strongly with a particular point, he then tries to counterbalance it with an opposing perspective. One key area where this plays out is the way he seeks to balance political realism (that is, a commitment to accurately describing the dynamics of power and collective egoism in the real world) with idealism (the conviction that these power dynamics are somehow checked within a more encompassing sphere of ideal ethical principles).

This book, of course, was written during the thick of the Civil Rights Movement. Niebuhr argues that the individualistic, evangelical religious heritage in the United States (at least, up to that point) had offered precious little aid in the struggle against institutional racism. For my part, as someone who grew up as a white Southern Baptist, I really want to push back against that claim; yet, I have to admit the force of it. But I hope this is not the last word on the subject. For my part, I am seeking resources for answering Niebuhr's, constructively if not historically. Maybe some of the recent, promising conversations in evangelical post-colonial theology can help me here. I'll write more about all this later.

Nobody Writes About Prayer Like this Anymore

Here's Rauschenbusch on prayer (emphasis mine):

If the moral demands of our higher social thought could find adequate expression in prayer, it would have a profound influence on the social movement. Many good men have given up the habit of praying, partly through philosophical doubt, partly because they feel that it is useless or even harmful to their spiritual nature. Prayer in the past, like the hiss of escaping steam, has often dissipated moral energy. But prayer before battle is another thing. That has been the greatest breeder of revolutionary heroism in history. All our bravest desires stiffen into fighting temper when they are affirmed before God.

As is often the case with WR, I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

I think his theology is mostly mistaken.

And I think he's probably a bit naive about the nature of power politics.

But I find his social acuity and passion for justice contagious.

Go figure.

_____
Source: Walter Rauschenbusch, For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1910) pp. 11-12.

The Secret Revealed At Last

What was this secret that made this eminent German Church historian lose sleep at night?

Get ready for the bombshell that's going to rattle the playground of the theo-blogosphere.

I'm about about to share with you, loyal readers, the real reason this blog exists. (Come on, you were starting to wonder: Admit it.)

First the context:

Some time back in the 1920s, Karl Barth wrote a letter to his best pal, Eduard Thurneyson, grousing because Adolf von Harnack, the great church historian, had labelled Barth as a reincarnation of the Gnostic heretic Marcion in a review of Barth's Romans commentary.

(You can read about this, I think, in the volume of Barth-Thurneyson correspondence titled Revolutionary Theology in the Making. But I can't remember the page number. I'm good, but I'm not that good.)

Well, as it happened, Barth stumbled into an evening gathering where loyal doters were arrayed around the great Harnack and, apparently, the U of Berlin scholar had just been disposing of Barth as some sort of flash-in-the-pan enthusiast who would probably found some sort of prophetic cult and then, essentially, fizzle out.

What is not recorded in that correspondence or in the Barth biography by Eberhard Busch that also relates the incident is what happened next.

The young Barth walked right up to the eminent Harnack and whispered something in his ear -- the definitive answer to the scurrilous (as it used to be back in those days) charge of Marcionism that made the elder scholar veritably quake in his boots.

This answer is so secret and amazing that Helmut Gollwitzer, Eberhard Busch, Eberhard Jüngel and some other student of Barth named Eberhard made a secret pact that the message would never be revealed.

I'm in possession of this secret message and I'm ready to disclose it to you:

(Now lean in.) There are now 55 published pieces on this blog. (There are 28 pieces that are in "draft" mode that are simply just too awesome to publish here. Sorry, you'll just have to wait until I'm dead to read those). Scroll through the post titles and take the first letter of each title and write it down. At first blush, it will seem like gobbledygook, like ancient Greek manuscripts before the spaces and punctuation are added by diligent scholars.

Be patient and persevere. Never give up. You won't be disappointed.

Stranded Bibliophile: Can You Help?

This is a very personal plea on my part to you, gentle readers of the interwebs.

You see, I commute by bus to the day job. Today I was running late and I ran out the door without any books to read on the bus! And to make matters worse, I don't even have the dog-eared Gideon's New Testament (KJV) that's in the pocket of my winter coat, since spring has finally sprung (sort of) here in western Massachusetts (emphasis mine) and I've traded out my coat for a crimson-red hoodie. Moreover, I don't know how to access the interwebs on my very un-smart phone, where I could, at least, read Slate's "Dear Prudie" column and calm myself down a little.

So I'm not "stranded" exactly, but you get the idea: I'm in need of serious help.

My best friend has graciously offered to text to me a copy of a major work of systematic theology that's approximately 9,000 pages long. (I'll keep the text anonymous for now, to avoid the possibility some of you might get turned off and not hear out my request). She has unlimited data for texting, she points out.

But that's way to much for one person to do. So I'm enlisting you, my readers (all half dozen of you) to help her out. Would y'all, each of you, agree to text at least a portion of this major text? I'm not tech-savy -- I've only just this month learned how to make paragraph breaks in HTML -- but I can say this is what you'll need, should you choose to accept this assignment:

1. At least three type-faces.

2. A Greek font.

3. A "cut-and-paste" feature would be most helpful, as this work is agonizingly repetitive.

4. A good sense of humor, as someone who enjoys laughing with the angels.

5. A solid collect of Mozart CDs. (That's not really essential. It could be anything, really, whatever suits your taste: e.g., Cold Play, Willie Nelson, Shostakovitch -- well, maybe not that. But maybe it's just good to go along with the Mozart as reputable scholars claim this text resembles his music.)

6. A quaintly odd predilection for typing longish Latin quotations from 17th and 18th century Dutch Reformed federalist theologians.

7. An certain sort of disposition that doesn't mind typing several thousand pages or so before stumbling, to your delight, upon a small-print passage in which the author has inserted an excursus on Pure Land Buddhism. For no apparent reason. (It is the only passage on Buddhism I can recall seeing in the entire work, but I may be wrong. If you're really fond of Eastern religions and philosophy, this may not be an assignment for you to take on.)

8. But if you are into world religions, and you're game for this task, you may have to endure a longish discussion, about 1,500 pages in or so, about why religion is bunk. Then you might come to find out that number of scholars are now saying that, no, in the original German he's saying pretty much the opposite of that. But you're typing directly from the English. So deal with it.

9. Some sort of quick, key-stroke macro that will automatically insert the name Jesus Christ, because, let me tell you....

So now you're really curious and dying to know what this text is?

Here's one little hint: It's not this one.

Die Evangelischen Theologen: Snatched from My Bookshelf

Some of my winter reading, recapped over at DET blog.

Die Evangelischen Theologen: Snatched from My Bookshelf: One friend of DET has issued an appeal for all of us to communicate more about what we're reading, so to honor the spirit of that requ... ================================== Follow @WTravisMcMaken

Cranmer Redux

Here's something I wrote last year to commemorate the feast day of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Death Came to the Archbishop

Credo (By Way of Some Anecdotes)

The pain of the world moves me -- the rat-cage of our late-modern, imperialist, consumerist, capitalist "civilization." Especially its sheer brutality and utter disregard for any genuine human values. The vapidity and indolence of its popular culture and the aloofness of much of its "high culture." Another friend, or friend of a friend, has contracted some form of cancer. Another acquaintance has lost a young member of her family, snatched away from life too early by caprice or malice or negligence. (On everybody else's behalf) all the indignation of the wounded agnostic wells up in me, and I cry out: "What sort of a provident god would set things up this way!"

But to whom am I protesting so virulently?....Check.

***

It's a rainy summer morning, and I'm running to catch the bus for work. I have no boots. Or raincoat. Or umbrella. I'm angry, partially at myself. But at someone else as well. Who? (I recall the Zen saying where a boater feels the jolt of another boat crashing into his boat. Anger wells up in him and he jerks himself around only to find that the other boat is completely empty.) It rains on the just and unjust alike.

Still, by the time I get to work, grumpy, I've worked up myself to quite a lather. In my mind, I began cursing, and pounding on something. That something is a wooden stake.

And the cross is not empty, but I'm pounding the person affixed to it to a bloody pulp....Check.

***

Another time, back when we still had a car, my wife and I have the 1:30 a.m. munchies, so I hop into the minivan and head down the street about one mile to the closest 24-hour convenience store, where the clerks make less than $15 an hour, to purchase an ice-cream-cookie sandwich wrapped in cellophane (for me) and a bag of smart food (for her). It's snowing, and the flakes are making long streaks like comets in my headlights. I'm listening to the overnight classical station. It's something from the Renaissance.

And time stands still....Check.

***

It's a Sunday morning at a church we used to attend. One of the grumpiest persons in the community, one I can never seem to get along with, is kneeling next to me at the communion rail. The Eucharistic ministers comes to her first and offer her a wafer and a sip and say a few words.

Then they come to me and offer me a wafer from the same plate and a sip from the same cup and they say the same words....Check.

***

Flash forward to earlier this week. A friend who struggles calls in the wee hours of the morning. She's in the ER with severe pain. Her toddler is staying with the neighbors. She doesn't know whether she'll be admitted or not. "Surely, they'll just admit her, at this hour of the night, when there are no buses and the cab companies aren't running. And it's single digits outside," I assure my wife. (Because I speak with authority.)

Surely.

I awaken with my early alarm and realize I'd missed her call. We find out she's still in the ER waiting room because, of course, they wouldn't admit her. We give her a number for the cab company and offer to pay the modest fair when she comes. When she arrives, she's wearing one thin layer of clothing and is wrapped in a sheet. She's in almost too much agony to climb the three steps to our front stoop. She slouches onto our couch to get a little sleep and wait five hours until she can call another friend to come pick her up.

That morning she texts me while I'm at work, thanking me for our hospitality. I smile because, what did we do anyway? It wasn't really that much of an inconvenience. Just a little cab fare.

"Hospitality." I smile because, actually, she doesn't know me that well, really. The day before when we had a house full of people, I hid upstairs and buried my head in my blankets. I just couldn't face anybody.

She doesn't know me, really. If it were just up to me, truth be told, I'd probably never let anyone into our house at all.

If it was just up to me....Check.

***

Flash back about nine years ago. An older couple had moved into town just a year or two before. To enjoy their retirement. They had come to our church and gotten very involved. We all became good friends and got together in their home frequently.

Then one day, he complains that he's not feeling well. Then there are tests. And a diagnosis. And a shock. And a temporary remission. And gratitude for some time to prepare and say goodbye to his children and grandchildren. And there's much sadness, but still he has such a zest for life, clinging with a certain resigned joy to every last minute of it. He recounts that a priest had said to him, "You already died long ago when you were baptized."

Toward the end, we're together with our friends. He's at peace. He's smiling. He talks about a walk in the woods. He can see something I can't see, but I see the reflection in his face. But I want to see it too. And somehow I know I will see it too.

Someday....

Checkmate.

DET: My New Gig

Ce n'est pas un théologien.

I'm delighted to announce that I'm going to be blogging from time to time at Die Evangelischen Theologen. Check out my first post, complete with an embarrassing mug shot. (The editor included that picture with a solemn warning: If I fail to produce posts on a regular basis, he's going to copy and upload additional pictures from my Facebook page).

Even though I'm going to be over there (presumably) a lot, I'm still going to post some stuff here at Theology of Freedom. Actually, the spatial metaphor "over there" is somewhat misleading. Both blogs show up on my Blogger dashboard as tabs that are only about one centimeter apart. So you might plausibly think of the two sites as one really one blog. And since it's common now to think of theology as a collaborative effort, and postmodern thought has so problematized the notion of individual authorship, it's plausible to think of the 900 or so posts at DET, in some sense, as my very own work as well.

You will still find content here on this blog for your reading pleasure and edification (or bemusement), though the focus might be a little different. Here you might find material that wouldn't survive an editorial override (such as this post, for example).

To ease the transition for some of you gentle readers who may not be familiar with DET, I've provided this rough guide for the newbie:

1. Don't let the title fool you: The blog is actually written in English, not German.
2. Nonetheless, a number of contributors and guest posters study German theology and will throw in the occasional word or phrase auf Deutsch.
3. The basic function of German terms in Anglo-American theology -- and this is important -- is to cover up the fact that we don't really know what we're talking about.
4. Perhaps no theologian really knows what she's talking about (you know, "learned ignorance" and that sort of thing.) Nonetheless, the Germans have developed particularly adept idioms for naming what no one really understands. Throw in or take away an umlaut and you can turn one meaningless concept into two very easily. And you have also thereby created a "distinction" (theologians from Aquinas onward have always loved distinctions).
5. And while we're at it, let's parse the blog title itself: "Die" is (fortunately) not cognate with English. It's just the plural form of the German definite article (so translate it simply as "the"), and it signals the editor's intent that the blog be a truly collaborative enterprise. That makes good sense, as some of the better blogs out there are group blogs. One of these blogs goes by the name of "Itself". Now that has always puzzled me. But the authors read and write a lot about Continental critical theory, so I chalk it to being a postmodern thing. Another group blog, one of my favorites, goes by the acronym WIT, which I find to be cunning and a propos. Another great blog is mainly a collaboration of two fellows, an older and a younger guy. Still, I've sometimes wondered if the older guy character (his name seems made up) is a literary construct and alter ego of the younger one, or maybe there's some sort of Kierkegaardian-type thing going on here with pseudonymity. But I'll just take the blog at face value and leave it at that.
6. The German Evangelische differs so markedly in connotations from the term Evangelical has in North America that I don't even know where to start, and it's getting late.
7. The German "Theologen" is pretty much cognate with English and means, basically, individuals who write learned things about matters no one understands. 

But seriously, I am excited about this new blogging opportunity. DET is actually a fairly respectable site.

Or at least it was until yesterday.

Rauschenbusch at the Oscars

Your meditation for Oscar night:

The idealization of evil is an indispensable means for its perpetuation and transmission. But the most potent motive for it's protection is its profitableness. Ordinarily sin is an act of weakness and side-stepping, followed by shame the next day. But when it is the source of prolific income, it is no longer a shame-faced vagabond slinking through the dark, but an army with banners, entrenched and defiant. The bigger the dividends, the stiffer the resistance against anything that would cut them down. When fed with money, sin grows wings and claws.

-- Walter Rauschenbush (The Theology of the Social Gospel.  Nashville: Abingdon, 1917, p. 66)

A Rising Tide Lifts...One Boat

Top 10 reasons we should all go see Russell Crowe as Noah next month:

1. The movie is directed by the director of Black Swan -- clearly, someone who understands animals.
2. Great date flick -- that is, a great movie to view in pairs.
3. Neither Bill Nye nor Ken Ham were consulted in the making of this film.
4. It was painful to watch Crowe fight the wild beasts in Gladiator, and now it will be heart-warming to watch him make up with them.
5. Crowe, to my knowledge, doesn't sing in this one (‪#‎Putting‬-the-"Misery"-in-Les-Mis).
6. If you beg her, your church youth group leader might pay for the ticket.
7. Fortunately, everyone's forgotten Waterworld by now.
8. There's a happy ending...um...sort of.
9. This film continues the venerable Hollywood tradition in which older male leads are paired with much younger female actors: Emily Watson's character clocks in at a youthful 350 years old.
10. Marvel Comics films, eat your heart out! I'd like to see Magneto pull off something like a world-wide flood.