re-thinking Christendom

A lot of the intellectual issues I try to deal with our fundamentally about the relationship between the Church, it's theologies and political practice. Recently I have decided to try and work through something that John Milbank poses in an interviewover at the The Other Journal:

"And that means of course, re-think Christendom. But now in more festive, pro-body, yet more interpersonal, less fearing terms and ones celebrating much more excellence and virtue in every realm including those of craft, farming and trade. And having a greater will to the democratization of excellence."

Considering the anti-Christendom strain in my thinking and the traditions I have been apart of (Anabaptist,evangelical,anarchist and missional) this quotation is directly challenging. The political thinking intrinsic to Milbank is that theology has a place in the economic, social and political world beyond the position of prophetic utterance or face-to-face relationship. Examining my thought it seems that the ecclesiology I pertain to puts a monopoly first on the personalist 'face-to-face' and the Anabaptist/liberationist 'prophetic utterance'. For me Milbank has effectively de-stabalized these two monopolies in my mind.

In Missional Church, a book I have mentioned before, Darrell Guder describes the relationship of the church, the people of God, to the reign of God as "the sign,foretaste,instrument and agent of God's rule in Christ" (pg 221). The church is not identical to the reign of God, but is certainly related and the relationship is not easily severed. I will call 'Christendom' a social arrangement which is not identical to the reign of God and neither identical to the Church.

Milbank seems to mention some of the harsher criticisms of the Christendom arrangement including the less festive,anti-body,impersonal,fear-mongering,lack of virtue and lack of respect for the common person as citizen and worker. He is open about the reality that historic Christendom has major flaws but does not abandon the project altogether after the failure of both socialism and liberalism in avoiding both wide-scale genocide,economic injustice and nihilism.

As a member of those various traditions above I would argue about, or more precisely add to, his constructive politics of a re-thought Christendom is a heavy suspicion of power, a rejection of violence, a need to reconcile localism with global technocracy and a recognition of cultural diversities. I would also caution that european imperialism has been an experienced reality of the last five centuries partially out of the failures of the old Christendom.

Re-thinking Chistendom means for me thinking through my cautions and additions to what Milbank is saying. Much of what seems to me to be 'post-Christendom' political theology seems to bubble out of a dialect between an ethical aim (to respond to the other, to have justice) with political suspicion (which comes out of a lived reality of imperialism - such as the Anabaptist persecutions by the state churches in Europe). Yet at the same time in quite clear terms Post-Christendom theology must come to the realization that it is not politically neutral and that even the concept of 'Christendom' is the recognition that our theology will inevitably, if taken to their the logical conclusions, will produce or support some sort of social arrangement which although neither the reign of God nor the Church is something related to the two.

First of all, following Macintyre and also Milbank and 'Theology and Social Theory', we must recover a robust understanding of virtue. But I would caution that this must be 'textured' by the Scriptures and should be more from the Spirit than Aristotle. This means both practice and understanding arising out of the New Testament, especially Paul's epistles. Perhaps love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" can be the virtues of this new order.

Secondly the suspicion of power and rejection of violence must be taken into account, especially as informed by the New Testament. This means both the development of virtues and communities of nonviolence and a communal respect and distrust of power. There are practical ways of exploring this including favouring the local and de-centralized institutions, including economic and politics ones.

Thirdly - learn from De Certeau and Ellul about technology and it's use. Technology is not a bad thing intrinsically but has the potential, as is shown in actual history, to be very alienating. There are ways to use technology to build community, strengthen the local economy and build towards what Illich call 'conviviality'.

Two things in those whole Christendom discussion:

First - it is secondary or ever tertiary. Not in the sense that it does not matter but in the sense that ethics come before politics. What matters primarily is not the setting up of an order but the spiritual flourishing of individuals and the church in the willingness to suffer and love the last,the lost, the least,the widows, the orphans and the enemies.

Secondly we must head Illich's warning "Responsibility is the soft under-belly of power".

Hermeneutics of a Sent Disciples : a proposal

I recently picked up Hermeneutics: An Introduction from the EBC library.

Here I intend to propose my own hermeneutics before I begin reading the book and then, in about a weeks time, respond to what I have read and re-formulate my hermeneutic based on what I have learned. The project is not too ambitious, but I do hope to critique and better my own hermeneutic.

The author's definition of hermeneutics is
"Hermeneutics explores how we read,understand,and handle texts, especially those written in another time or in a context of life different from our own. Biblical hermeneutics investigates more specifically how we read,understand,apply, and respond to biblical texts."

First of all let me state my belief that hermeneutics is one of the most important issues facing the Church today, specifically as Christians try to engage personally and corporately in a world of diversity, violence, injustice and confusion. The divisions between high church and low church, 'Christian realist' and 'Peace Church', first world and third world, Emergent and Established seem to be caused by how we interpret the Scriptures.

Secondly I can not say I believe in a 'pure' hermeneutic, one separate from historical and social conditions. Even the concept of 'hermeneutics' can not be separated from the recent history of Christianity,the western academy and continental philosophy. Basically what I am saying is that any possible hermeneutic is text-ured, meaning that it is formed and built under the influences of certain texts. The primary one of these texts is the Scriptures themselves but also certain philosophical and theological texts - even the unconscious influence of Schleiermacher on Christians who have never read him. Finally even the personal and communal experiences we have are like 'text's, a metaphor I find appropriate.

Thirdly if a hermeneutic is text-ured it should also have a strong memory. Not only of the tradition of the church but of the tradition's hermeneutic. In the ancient Church, in the age of the patristics, one hermeneutic was the rule of faith which was basically a general understanding of the Gospel which guided the interpretation of scripture. Other 'rules of faith' or sources of authority include the Wesleyan Quadrilateral and the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on Theoria.

Now to my hermeneutic itself -

First of all I adopt and adapt the patristic Rule of Faith. An issue with interpreting scripture through the gospel is that a primary text of the gospel is scripture itself. This new part of the the rule of faith I will call the Missio Dei. That concept already has a history of it's own, as illustrated by the wikipedia article, but I am using it here as part of my hermeneutic. Why? Where as the rule of faith interpreted as the Gospel is certainly a step in the right direction often in talking about the Gospel the references to the New Testament are abundant but reference to the Old Testament is scarce. The missio dei is an altogether better concept. Through the work of both NT Wright and Christopher Wright (which I have yet to read) the connections between the incarnation,life,death and resurrection of Christ and God's work through the old testament is profoundly connected under the Missio Dei, which is latin for the sending (of) God.

I will not go into it here but the basic belief that the sent-ness of missionaries is part of the deeper character not only of the church, or the scriptures, but of God himself. Thus the Missio Dei becomes the first part of my hermeneutic. Thus the sent-ness.

The second aspect is an adoption and adaptation of Theoria and Theosis. Both of these presuppose a God who not only acts but also reveals himself to and transforms people. Theoria is this vision of God and theosis is becoming like God (in the sense of Character). I want to build on these concepts with the ideal of discipleship. Discipleship not only acknowledges both theosis and theoria, albeit perhaps in Methodist-evangelical fashion, but also is grounded in the scriptures as a call of Christ to the apostles. Discipleship builds on the concepts of theoria and theosis as possibility by also acknowledging ecclesia in the form of community as well as the call to political discipleship. Here I can once again point out the text-ured part of this hermeneutic, as community is a value coming out of much discussion in the Emerging Church and political discipleship coming out of liberation theologies and Peace Church type thinking.

So here then is my hermeneutic: one of sent disciples.

Ecclesial Alliances

This is another in my series of posts on Peace Church type stuff.

The point of this post is to point to emerging alliances between Peace Church theologies, practices and organizations and other Church traditions and movements. This is not meant to be comprehensive, but a meager list.

Alliances:
- the thought and work of Walter Brueggemann -- > the reason seems to be that he focuses a lot on what it means to be the ecclesial community in post-Christendom. At certain points, in his criticisms of consumerism and militarism, comes close to Peace Church ethics on economy and nonviolence.
- Liberation theologies -- > not necessarily of the Latin American variety but the kind that do theology from the perspective of the marginalized as do Anabaptist theologians
- Black Church --> Martin Luther King Jr.'s transformation of nonviolent nonresistance to nonviolent resistance is especially impacting
- Postcolonial theologies --> any theology that engages with "Empire" and builds it's ethics around that subject
- Missional Church --> coming from the perspective of the Missions movement and Missiology this type of theology critiques Christendom ecclesiology

Missional Church, Scripture and Tradition

The great gift/distraction of the internet to people who like to learn are sites like Wikipedia and Google Books. Thus it was a gift/distraction for me to be able to read part of the book Missional Church.

The final chapter had this quotation which I have been thinking about a lot the last three days:
"One of the most important and earliest ways in which the church's universal connectedness witnessed to the gopel was the process of canonization of scripture itself." (pg 251)

What the author is saying here is that in order to be missional, to organize both personally and corporately underneath the Missio Dei, the church essentially created the Bible. This is an alternative understanding compared to the usual discussion concerning the authority of Scripture. Though I feel those discussions are important I feel this different way of understanding it can be a better way forward both theologically and practically in terms of witness.

It also got me thinking about a lot of other things like how this can relate to Ordination, denomination and what is commonly referred to as the Wesleyan quadrilateral. There's a lot of potential here and I hope to explore it further.