#372 Von Balthasar Against Apologetics

Previous posts have quoted Ignatius of Antioch, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, Joseph Ratzinger, Michael Spencer, and John Hobbins as either against the enterprise of apologetics all together, or at the very least relativizing it.  Here's Hans Urs Von Balthasar continuing the time-honored tradition:

"But the essence of the matter is faith, not a (neutral) looking on or a desire to experience something (for oneself).  One who snatches at psychological experiences (presumably perhaps "in the Holy Spirit") will reach into a void.  And one who gropes for the flame will get burned by it.  Faith is reverent; it allows the light space in which to burn.  Still more: it receives from the light the eyes with which it sees the light.  Si comprehendis, non est Deus*: and if you think to have grasped it, you are not one whom God has grasped...

Jesus has no need of apologetics: he shines through.  He shines upon everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9) and does not deliberately look away (John 1:12).  The Church should not pursue any apologetics for herself, but should instead endeavor to make her Lord visible."

-- Von Balthasar, "Does Jesus Shine Through?", Communio (1968), 319ff

* from St. Augustine, Sermo 52, 16: PL 38, 360; roughly translated: "If you understand, it is not God."

#371 In Leviathan We (Selectively) Trust

In my experience, I've found that supporters of the recent wars, perpetual U.S. military presence in far reaches of the globe, and the National Security apparatus (may it's name be praised) that has grown up in the years since 9/11 (which includes but is not limited to the Orwellian P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, the Homeland Security Department, or Minipax, warrantless wiretaps, torture by any other name, etc.)  often happen to be simultaneously be for limited government.  Of course, how you can have an open distrust and hostility toward big government with one half of your brain, while not letting said half in on the secret that the other half of your brain vociferously supports an empire that even ancient Rome would've envied, is beyond me.

Similarly, it's oddly consistent that most advocates of the death penalty also happen to be pro-life.  So a question for those pro-life/pro-death penalty persons out there: how can a culture that fails to take seriously and with appropriate gravity the life and death of one helpless segment of its society (the unborn) be trusted with the power over the life and death of another helpless segment?

Regarding the death by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner just a year ago, Joseph Bottum writes at First Things,

"There is, in fact, only a single reason that Ronnie Lee Gardner died last night—a single explanation that makes any sense at all. And it is that he deserved it. The murder he committed twenty-five years ago still cries to the heavens for justice.

And maybe it does. Certainly it does. But where, exactly, does the State of Utah get the authority to answer the calls on heaven? Where, exactly, does a modern nation, founded on no deliberate godly principle, derive its power to kill in the name of high justice? This is a nation, after all, that refused—with the infamous “mystery” passage in Casey v. Planned Parenthood—to protect the unborn, precisely because, the Supreme Court said, no such metaphysical foundation can be imposed by government. So where do these assertions of divinely based power for the death penalty come from?"

He goes on to answer the obvious objections that arise based on the standard reflexive and careless use of Romans 13:1-7 to legitimate the act and then closes by bringing it steering his post toward the direction in which I started mine, i.e. trust/distrust (which is it?) of government and the devolution of society's moral consciousness:

"More to the point, there is nothing in Paul that demands death in every situation of punishment. And if we don’t have to kill a prisoner, in the ordinary social justice that demands protection of citizens, then we have a responsibility not to kill a prisoner. The death of Ronnie Lee Gardner last night, four .30-caliber bullets in his heart, was unauthorized, wrong, and foolish.

We have so devolved that we kill even while we cannot explain how we are allowed to take matters of life and death into our hands. And that is a door I fear to watch our government—or any government—walk through."

#370 Treason

"If a man slanders his people... you shall hang him on a tree and he shall die.  On the testimony of two witnesses and on the testimony of three witnesses he shall be put to death and they shall hang him on a tree.  If a man... curses his people, the children of Israel, you shall hang him also on the tree, and he shall die.  But his body shall not stay overnight on the tree.  Indeed you shall bury him on the same day.  For he who is hanged on a tree is accursed of God and men."

-- Dead Sea Scrolls, The Temple Scroll, Column LXIV

"Then he began to speak to them in parables: 'A man planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a pit for its winepress, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and went on a journey. At harvest time he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his portion of the crop. But those tenants seized his slave, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. So he sent another slave to them again. This one they struck on the head and treated outrageously. He sent another, and that one they killed. This happened to many others, some of whom were beaten, others killed. He had one left, his one dear son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, "They will respect my son." But those tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and the inheritance will be ours!" So they seized him, killed him, and threw his body out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.'"

-- Mark 12:1-9

#369 Election Year

A parable about American elections in these latter days of the empire, from Judges 9:

9:7 When Jotham heard the news, he went and stood on the top of Mount Gerizim. He spoke loudly to the people below, “Listen to me, leaders of Shechem, so that God may listen to you!

9:8 “The trees were determined to go out and choose a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king!’ 9:9 But the olive tree said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my oil, which is used to honor gods and men, just to sway above the other trees!’

9:10 “So the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come and be our king!’ 9:11 But the fig tree said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my sweet figs, my excellent fruit, just to sway above the other trees!’

9:12 “So the trees said to the grapevine, ‘You come and be our king!’ 9:13 But the grapevine said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my wine, which makes gods and men so happy, just to sway above the other trees!’

9:14 “So all the trees said to the thornbush, ‘You come and be our king!’ 9:15 The thornbush said to the trees, ‘If you really want to choose me as your king, then come along, find safety under my branches! Otherwise may fire blaze from the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!’

You won't find olive trees, fig trees, and grapevines on-stage for political debates.  So voters, every four years like a dog returning to its vomit, take shelter in their favorite brier patches.

#368 What if it were true?

In an essay that is worth at least a couple reads, Robert Jenson asks, "What if it were true?"  Here's an excerpt:
“In 451 the Council of Chalcedon set out to establish Cyril of Alexandria’s teaching, in the less alarming of its forms, as the norm of teaching about the person of Christ. It was Cyril’s great concern that everything the Gospels say about their protagonist is to be taken as true of one and the same concrete subject, that whether the Gospels say Jesus told a parable or forgave sins, whether he wept for Lazarus or raised Lazarus, we are talking about the same personal protagonist. So the council, starting off on Cyril’s line, laid it down as its primal doctrine that 'one and the same' is the subject of the whole gospel-narrative.

“Particularly, in the council’s polemic context, it is one and the same one who is born of Mary in Bethlehem and born eternally, begotten of the Father. And we can very straightforwardly continue with Cyril: it is one and the same who has the divine attributes displayed in the Gospels and who has the human attributes therein displayed, one and the same who forgives sin and who is tempted, one and the same who prays in anguish and rules all history, one and the same thought it took a few more councils to say it out loud who is crucified and who orders the galaxies, one and the same who as Luther loved to say lies muling and puking in his mother’s arms and the while restrains Satan.

“Chalcedon begins with the `one and the same,’ and so far, one may say, so very good. But when the fathers at Chalcedon moved on to the necessary work of setting boundaries for the contending schools of theology, outlawing the errors that each side feared the other must really be thinking, they did not quite dare carry on from their beginning. The formulas they produced have been memorized by centuries of theological students and have frustrated all of them, by their surface profundity and material elusiveness. Notoriously, the council stipulated that Christ has two 'natures,' one divine and one human, which while remaining unmixed, unadulerated, etc., are united in 'one hypostasis.' The trouble is, that they refrained from unpacking the notion of `one hypostasis,’ which one would have thought was more or less the whole point. Chalcedon’s formulas fulfill some ecumenical and occasionally disciplinary functions, but conceptually they are close to being empty.

“Then finally the council appended the famous letter of Pope Leo as an authorized interpretation of the whole, which at least on its face says something rather different than the face value of the council’s primal teaching. According to Leo, one entity, 'the divine nature' does the glory bits and another entity, 'the human nature,' does the suffering bits, each 'with' the other. Ever since, at least in the West, we have found great relief in the notion that each of Christ’s natures does its own thing. We have been relieved to think that while of course it is the one hypostasis of Christ who died on the cross, he did it in such fashion ‘according to his human nature' that we do not need to think that the God the Son himself was ontically affected. We have been relieved to think that while of course it is the one hypostasis of Christ who rules the universe, this is in such fashion 'according to his divine nature' that Jesus qua human participates in this rule only by way of special but nevertheless creaturely human endowments. Christology, we have supposed, is a matter of discerning the relation between two entities, Christ’s `divine nature’ and his `human nature,’ and we have exploited that way of thinking to shy away from Cyril’s blunt faithfulness to the narrative unity of the Gospels.

“But what if Cyril’s teaching, and the teaching with which the council began its decree, were true in the dumb sense? What if, given the Incarnation, there were not two entities for Christology to relate to each other, but just the one person for Christology to describe? Perhaps indeed with such analytical terms as `divine’ or `human’ or `nature?’ What if talk of distinct human and divine `natures’ of Christ were therefore only a sometimes useful, or even necessary, abstraction from what is actually given? What if it were the unadulterated fact of the matter, that this particular human individual with all his peculiarities, the executed Palestinian Jew, the prophet and rabbi from Nazareth, is the second identity of God? Getting down to the level I want to probe: that he is the being who appears in Scripture and theology as the Logos of God and God the Son?”

#367 One Hitters IV

1. Denominational lines don't seem to matter much in theological discourse anymore, if they ever did.
2. Joseph said God meant it for good.  God means things.
3. The Westminster Confession started as a parliament commissioned revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  Can you imagine a U.S. congress-commissioned revision of any religious document being considered legitimate by evangelical reformed Christians now or 300 years from now?