Christianorum

“God’s Truth”, the Politics Within Theology

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In a previous post, I addressed the potential undesirable social consequences of putting too much weight on the particularity of narrative and political language for God, at the expense of more philosophical and metaphysical language to clarify it and make it universal. My concern there was that the narrative and political, when left alone, would lead to factionalism or sectarianism, and might breed either misanthropy or else a contempt for a very large out-group.

At the popular level, this can be a greater problem than at the more elite levels, but the elite levels are not at all immune. The importance of this was driven home to me in one of my visits to Facebook. There were two events of note.

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Reinhard Hütter: The Church as Public (& not as Voluntary Association)

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Several weeks ago I posted a summary of Steve Bruce and Roy Wallace on the “orthodox model” of secularization. In that work, Bruce & Wallis argue that the defining mark of secularization is the diminution of religion’s public influence, and, we might quickly conclude, the loss of its public character (they distinguish the process of secularization from the trends of modernization, such as inclusion into a national center, &c.). Regarding this loss of public character, there is a section from Reinhard Hütter’s book, Bound to be Free, where he asks some very pointed questions about the Church as public: he thinks the Church is essentially public, and ponders what it means for her to lose this characteristic feature. Continue reading →

Unification in the Gospel According to Mark

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Across cultures and traditions, across temporal and national epochs, people express a desire for perfect unity, simplicity, and integration. Not everyone, of course — and yet the desire cannot be brushed off as peculiar to a tradition or a time period. The expression is colored by a number of cultural features, and so the metaphors used for this unification and simplification vary from mostly natural imagery (Daoism) to mostly political imagery (Christianity). The predominant metaphors are important, and weight a tradition in a certain way. Traditions can overlap, of course, and the boundaries between them are not always quite as neat as either cultural taxidermists or identity politickers would like; and yet, the desire for unification remains. Nor is it simply a desire: in (neo-)Platonism, Daoism and Christianity (to offer three examples), the ethical drive for unification is connected with both cosmological speculation about the characteristic features of the world as a whole and ontological reflection on the nature of being itself. Specifically within the Christian tradition, the desire for unity, and the accomplishment of unity, is tightly connected to Christology.

The imagery of God as a king at war against the agents of injustice, chaos, and death surrounds all Christology. Because of this, there is an inescapable political element to Christian models of the unification of the person; a sloppy reading of this can lead to some very unethical social, religious and political positions. Here I will trace the twin themes of integration and unification in Mark, which signal the health that is found in redemption (itself a loaded economic, political and military term for liberated captives), and a return from an unnatural slavery under dark powers. I will occasionally ask about the consequences of this political language, sometimes with regard to the pursuit of unification in non-Christian traditions. Does the non-frustrated pursuit of integration in non-Christian traditions indicate that Christology is superfluous to this project? What does Christology assume about the good, about the world, and about reality? Continue reading →

Peter Berger on Protestantism and Disenchantment

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I posted earlier about Charles Taylor’s presentation of disenchantment; here is a long excerpt on the same topic (taking a slightly different angle) by Peter Berger from his book, The Sacred Canopy:

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Charles Taylor on Catholic and Orthodox Christianity

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“What can Orthodoxy learn from the Catholic intellectual tradition,

and what can Catholics learn from the Orthodox,

specifically in light of the secular cultural condition we find ourselves in,

and given the vast heritage that we share?”

During his 2011 appearance at Boston College, after the final Q&A session was over, I hustled straight over to the podium, and asked Charles Taylor this question after he finished packing to leave.

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