Month: April 2008

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The primary subject of politics is the human person

Because politics, in the vision of the Church, deals with the good of people, individually and collectively, the primary subject of the political system is the human person. As a result, there are matters and issues that arise which the Church considers fundamentally
related to the dignity of the human person.

These matters are life, the family, education, religious belief, justice and protection for those most in need in society. The Church’s approach to such issues is based above all in the very nature of the human person as created in the image and likeness of God.
Consequently, you can certainly understand why the Church takes such an interest in these questions. It does so, not in an attempt to impose its views or doctrines on society, and even less on any legislative body, but rather it does so in a spirit of service to the common good and the nature of the human person, realities which transcend institutions, but which must rely on the good intentions of institutions to be protected and safeguarded. In that context it is even foreseen that at times the Church can offer its own expertise on these universal questions in collaboration with public authorities while always respecting the distinct competencies that each has.

Obviously, I am very much aware of the challenges facing you as lawmakers, in a pluralistic society, which has so many voices and different points of view about a whole range of issues. Yet, a convergence can be found in keeping in mind those principles whose goal you have as legislators in a spirit of service to your country: to promote the common good and to respect the nature and dignity of the human person.

Address of Apostolic Nuncio His Excellency Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz to the Scottish Parliament

That is how to do it. Always praise politicians for being public servants, talk up this vocation and thank them for taking on such an onerous responsibility.

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Communion, sacrifice and atonement

Reconciliation in Christ? Atonement and Sacrifice
Touchstones of disunity or the pathway to communion?

Saturday 14 June 2008 10.30 – 3pm
Cheyneygates, Dean’s Yard
Westminster Abbey, London SW1

Canon Nicholas Sagovsky
Westminster Abbey

Douglas Knight
Theologian and Author

The doctrine of the atonement has been controversial within Anglican thinking in recent years, marking the different principles held by evangelical, Anglican Catholic and those in the liberal traditions. In 2005 too, the Evangelical Alliance’s stakeholders looked closely at the differing emphases and positions among its members.

The concepts of sacrifice and atonement also go to the heart of catholicity in the Roman Catholic tradition and the nature and purpose of the Church in other Churches and Communions, as well as in relation between them. The centrality of Christ’s sacrifice is common to many of the Churches’ celebration of the Eucharist – yet it is the very point on which they have most disagreed.

What of the Jewish origins of our concept of sacrifice, and our relation with contemporary Judaism? And seeing that self-sacrifice and martyrdom are at the core of Christian’s common faith in Christ, how does that reflect on our understanding of Islam in the contemporary world where similar ideas remain potent?

Nicholas Sagovsky, Douglas Knight and other distinguished thinkers from across the Church help us to understand where unity can be found and how we might reach it.

I have copied out the flier before me, without comment. Make up your own jokes, but kindly book via ecumenicalstudies@btinternet.com. The day promises to end well – Evensong is at 3pm. I shall hang everything I say on the prospect of Evensong, and the privilege of being able to raise our voices to God in song. Come along, and if you have any idea how to answer any of these questions, mail me.

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Church on pavement

Chris made me blog this too:

A number of Catholic lay people have joined with some local religious communities to plan a welcome that evening. The event will combine prayer, evangelization and singing, which organizers hope Pope Benedict will hear.

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the Knights of Columbus, the Sisters of Life, Communion and Liberation, the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, the Daughters of St. Paul and other Catholic groups are organizing what they are calling a â??massive street evangelization eventâ?? at three locations in Manhattan. Their idea is to stand outside churches and invite people on the street to â??encounter the Lord in Eucharistic Adoration and Mass.â??

After Mass, those at each church will process to the 72nd Street residence of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vaticanâ??s permanent observer to the United Nations, where Pope Benedict will be staying, and join together for a candlelight vigil and singing.

Evangelization is scheduled for two and a half hours, culminating with Eucharistic adoration at 7:00. Priests will be available for confessions. Mass begins at 8:30.

Notice the prevalence of relatively new orders and movements. Notice that the focus is on sharing the love of Christ and worshipping the Lord, rather than making sure the Pope is aware of and appreciates our diversity, very unique speciallness, and Extremely Urgent Needs and Concerns.

See, I told you. The future is processions. This is from Amy Welborn. She’s a darling.

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Facing the hard questions helps

In addition to reshaping the dialogue between Catholicism and Islam, Benedict XVI has made significant changes in the Vatican’s intellectual approach to these volatile issues. Catholic veterans of the interreligious dialogue who did not press issues like religious freedom and reciprocity between the faiths have been replaced by scholars who believe that facing the hard questions helps support those Muslim reformers who are trying to find an authentic Islamic path to civility, tolerance and pluralism. Thus Benedict XVI has quietly put his pontificate behind the forces of Islamic reform–and may have found a crucial ally with a Saudi king who is wrestling with Wahhabi extremism in his own domain.

The pope is thinking in centuries here: a reformed Islam capable of living with religious and political pluralism could be an ally in the struggle against what Benedict once called the “dictatorship of relativism.” In any event, an Islam recognizing religious freedom and affirming the separation of religious and political authority would be good for Muslims who want to live in peace with their neighbors, and good for the rest of the world.

George Weigel How Benedict XVI Will Make History

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Benedict in the US

The premier example of this was his Regensburg lecture of September 2006 in Germany, widely criticized at the time as offensive to Islamic sensibilities. That lecture, in fact, has shifted both the course of inter-religious dialogue and the internal dynamics of the intra-Islamic debate, precisely as I believe Benedict XVI intended it to do. It has shifted the course of the dialogue by setting in motion a process that has now led to the formation of a Catholic-Muslim forum that will meet twice a year, once in Amman, Jordan, once in Rome, and that will focus its attention on the issues that Benedict XVI has put on the agenda – namely, religious freedom as the first of human rights and a right that can be known by reason, and secondly, the imperative of separating spiritual and political authority in a justly governed state.

There have been attempts from parts of the Islamic world to deflect the conversation off of these two issues, which Benedict regards as at the very heart of inter-religious dialogue, and indeed the Islamic encounter with the modern world, and he refuses to budge. He very calmly and quietly brings the conversation back to these two points, which obviously have a great resonance here in the United States.

In terms of shifting the dialogue, I would also point to the recent initiative by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who proposes to gather in his country a new forum of dialogue among the monotheistic religions, and the Vatican’s reported negotiations, about which John might have some more to say later, with the Saudi government over the unthinkable, or the hitherto unthinkable, namely the building of a Catholic church in Saudi Arabia.

* * *

On the pope and the church in the United States and on American society and culture, very briefly. As you read the works of Joseph Ratzinger, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years as he has become more and more concerned with the corrosive impacts of an aggressive secularism in Europe, you have to be struck by the fact that he comes on several occasions in his writing to the point that it was in the United States that the problem of church and state was first resolved. And when he says problem of church and state, he doesn’t simply mean institutional relationships, questions of establishment and non-establishment, legal relationships; he means more broadly the problem of religion and modernity.

George Weigel The Pope comes to America

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This is a great book

Colin Gunton in his The One, the Three and the Many (Bampton Lectures) sought to offer a theological analysis of modernity while at the same time calling Christian theology back to the heart of its faith, the Triune God. In The Eschatological Eschatology: Time and the Hospitality of God, Douglas Knight has similar goals, though here he follows the recent trend of eschatologicizing doctrine by mapping an eschatological ontology onto Gunton’s Zizioulasian trinitarian ontology. This book does a lot. Knight reconceives the task of theology, the role of Scripture, christology, the Trinity, pneumatology, Israelology, ecclesiology, hermeneutics, and so many other topics. It also redefines so much basic terminology such as time, being, person, place. But I think it is most expedient to view this book as a theology from the view of sanctification, for the goal is to better understand how God transforms us into participants in his life.

Essentially Knight believes that we need an ‘eschatological’ rather than ‘protological’ ontology because humanity is in the process of becoming human. This is Irenaeus’ vision of Christian transformation. He coins a ‘doxological ontology’, which employs the relational personhood theory, now so common to the literature (see two popular theologies that make this theory applicable Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity; and Trinity In Human Community ), Knight believes that our personhood is constituted by our relationships. Likewise, our knowledge is mediated by the communities in which we participate. Thus, God transforms us by altering the formative relational structures according to his eschatological end for creation. In other words, God creates a new community – Israel/Church – and institutes new practices – temple, sacrifice, sacrament, liturgy, worship, etc. – so that humanity can become holy under his provision and grace. God teaches us to be human, and as we worship we become what we are doing.

This conceptuality allows Knight to engage in some anthropologically attuned biblical exegesis of Israel’s sacrificial cult and temple. Knight is very sensitive to the political challenge marked by Israel’s actions. As Israel becomes holy, the world is judged and demythologized. Israel’s sacrificial cult, for instance, teaches us not to participate in human sacrifice.

On the basis of this, Knight offers a suprisingly thorough criticism of modernity. For starters, Knight dislikes modernity’s static conception of ‘being’ (as a function of natura) and its ‘immediate’ epistemology. He also disdains the way it cannot account for embodiedness.

This is a great book. It makes use of much recent theology – Zizioulas, Gunton, Jenson, for example – but it does so in such a way so as to recover classical Christianity. Knight has an impressive ability to connect and assemble doctrinal themes. I hope to see him develop this portrait more. I’d be particularly interested in how his admittedly more Eastern view can cohere with Reformed theology, especially since he is a self-described ‘catholic-evangelical’…

James Merrik reviews The Eschatological Eschatology: Time and the Hospitality of God.

A ‘mini-dogmatics’? James really is an excellent judge of books. I am very grateful to him.

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Hovey on Mark

Craig Hovey To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church

“Craig Hovey challenges Christians to be worth persecuting, but he does so without romanticizing suffering or the church. Every church is called to be a martyr-church, not to glorify death, but to declare that death means nothing in the light of what God has done in Christ. In taut prose, Hovey unpacks the logic of Mark’s Gospel and helps the church discern what God is doing in history, both in Mark’s day and in our own. This book is lean, penetrating, and wise. Every page rewards the reader with fresh insight.”

William T. Cavanaugh, associate professor of theology, University of St. Thomas

“Truly an extraordinary book. Some will not be convinced by all of Hovey’s exegetical or systematic theses. But before worrying about such things, readers should simply delight in the sudden insights and revelatory turns of thought that appear on every page.”

Robert Jenson, professor emeritus of religion, St. Olaf College

The blurbs are at Brazos

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Middle-class families: an existential threat to big government

The news that Poole council used surveillance powers designed to track down terrorists to spy on an ordinary middle-class family they suspected of not living in the correct catchment area for their chosen school is not as surprising as it first seems. The government is, after all, fully aware that there exists in this country an organised group that propagates an infectious ideology which considers government officials to be mere obstacles to their goals. Arranged in tightly knit ‘cells’ (usually of two senior operators and one or more younger members), the group as a whole communicates via an informal network of personal contacts, workplace colleagues and Internet forums.

Despite their minority status, they have highly placed members in all the major professions: medicine, law, teaching, business, even politics. The senior members tend to be radicalised while at university. Their main purpose of communication is to target vulnerabilities in the state, and share knowledge of resources that will allow them to pursue their fanatical goal that they are willing to sacrifice all to achieve: the education of their children. The government’s greatest fear is that their ideology, of self-improvement, responsibility and working hard for the future, could spread round the whole of the UK, making much of government obsolete and without a client group to control.

Civitas – blog

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‘Abortion and religious-related content’

Not quite as bold as ‘The man who sued God’, but it is manifestly a David and Goliath battle which is to be admired, for the outcome has considerable implications for Christians in the areas of equality and freedom of expression.

The Christian Institute simply wanted to pay Google so that when the word ‘abortion’ was typed into the search engine, a link to a web page on its views popped up on the right hand side of the screen. It is a perfectly legal transaction, concerned simply with matters of trade in services.

But it transpires that Google does not allow adverts for websites which contain ‘abortion and religious-related content’, and so it has blocked this pro-life advertisement for the Institute’s website – christian.org.uk – because it is a ‘religious’ site. Apparently ‘religion is not “factual” on abortion’.

Setting aside that Google now presumes to judge on epistemological matters (are all its links filtered and censored for ‘factual’ accuracy?), it is curious indeed that it is only when abortion is presented via a religious site that the material is banned: Google permits abortion-related advertisements from the secularists, atheists, irreligious, non-religious and the mentally depraved (if some of these terms are not mutually inclusive). Needless to say, the perspectives of these are overwhelmingly ‘pro-choice’, and all must be considered by Google to be ‘factual’.

Cranmer Christians who sued Google