Category: Contemporaries

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The enlightenment lives from its Christian roots 2

We asked ourselves two questions: if rationalist (positivist) philosophy is strictly rational and, consequently, if it is universally valid, and if it is complete. Is it self-sufficient? Can it, or more directly must it, relegate its historical roots to the realm of the pure past and, therefore, to the realm of what can only be valid subjectively?

We must respond to both questions with a definitive “no.” This philosophy does not express man’s complete reason, but only a part of it, and because of this mutilation of reason it cannot be considered entirely rational. For this reason it is incomplete, and can only be fulfilled by re-establishing contact with its roots. A tree without roots dries up.
In this connection, the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith…..

Christianity must always remember that it is the religion of the “Logos.” It is faith in the “Creator Spiritus,” in the Creator Spirit, from which proceeds everything that exists. Today, this should be precisely its philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not, therefore, other than a “sub-product,” on occasion even harmful of its development or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal.

The Christian faith inclines toward this second thesis, thus having, from the purely philosophical point of view, really good cards to play, despite the fact that many today consider only the first thesis as the only modern and rational one par excellence. However, a reason that springs from the irrational, and that is, in the final analysis, itself irrational, does not constitute a solution for our problems. Only creative reason, which in the crucified God is manifested as love, can really show us the way.

In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the “Logos,” from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational.

Cardinal Josef Ratzinger Europe’s crisis of culture

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The enlightenment lives from its Christian roots 1

The Muslims, who in this respect are often and willingly brought in, do not feel threatened by our Christian moral foundations, but by the cynicism of a secularized culture that denies its own foundations. … The same is true for the reference to God: It is not the mention of God that offends those who belong to other religions, but rather the attempt to build the human community absolutely without God.

The banishment of Christian roots does not reveal itself as the expression of a higher tolerance, which respects all cultures in the same way, not wishing to privilege any, but rather as the absolutizing of a pattern of thought and of life that are radically opposed, among other things, to the other historical cultures of humanity.

The radical detachment of the Enlightenment philosophy from its roots becomes, in the last analysis, contempt for man. Man, deep down, has no freedom, we are told by the spokesmen of the natural sciences, in total contradiction with the starting point of the whole question. Man must not think that he is something more than all other living beings and, therefore, should also be treated like them, we are told by even the most advanced spokesmen of a philosophy clearly separated from the roots of humanity’s historical memory.

Cardinal Josef Ratzinger Europe’s crisis of culture

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Benedict at the university of Regensburg

There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a “dies academicus” (open debate/general studies day?) when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of “universitas”: The reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason — this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the “whole” of the “universitas scientiarum,” even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: It had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: This, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

Pope Benedict Faith Reason and the University

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The Pope is concerned by the threat of fideism and radical scepticism to the university, to rationality, and to our aspiration to know reality. (Even the way web-names are assigned makes it clearer in Germany that there is really just one university – one universe of knowledge – not ultimately divided by its many campuses.) It is a speech on faith and reason. Benedict regards Christianity, Judaism and Islam as three traditions of faith and reason. He tells us that ‘science’ and social science are also traditions of faith and reason. All these traditions (‘scientific’ as well as ‘religious’) are tempted by fideism (which leads eventually to irrationalism and even violence). But although these traditions are all sometimes tempted to avoid the public examination of rationality within which they can remain truly reasonable and rational, they all have the resources to resist that temptation, and they should all do so, and do so together in the university. If the modern university does not allow the intellellectual exploration of the Christian gospel, the university will operate on a greatly reduced concept of reason and science, and more than that, on a greatly reduced concept of man, which would be impoverishing for that society and for all mankind.

Any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be “scientific” would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: It is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by “science” …

In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it.

Benedict says that God has made himself known, so we do not need to despair of knowing anything about him or about the creation he has set us in. This makes our knowledge of this physical world, his creation, also basically reliable and reasonable. The Christians (often along with Jews and Muslims) can point out that they are the guardians of reason against what Benedict calls ‘de-hellenisation’, modern irrationalism’s retreat from the Logos, and so from the assumption that the world is an ordered and reliable place. The university needs Christianity, and any other tradition that reasons about faith, in order to allow full exploration of the creation and of man, the creature of God.

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Freedom detached from moral truth

John Paul II decoded the new threats to the “mystery of the human person” in the post–Cold War world, and he spent much of the decade of the 1990s trying to explain that freedom detached from moral truth—the “freedom of indifference” that dominated the high culture of the triumphant West—was, inevitably, self–cannibalizing.

Freedom untethered from truth is freedom’s worst enemy. For if there is only your truth and my truth, and neither one of us recognizes a transcendent moral standard (call it “the truth”) by which to adjudicate our differences, then the only way to settle the argument is for you to impose your power on me, or for me to impose my power on you. Freedom untethered from truth leads to chaos; chaos leads to anarchy; and since human beings cannot tolerate anarchy, tyranny as the answer to the human imperative of order is just around the corner. The false humanism of the freedom of indifference leads first to freedom’s decay, and then to freedom’s demise.

George Weigel John Paul II and the Crisis of Humanism

Gresham College in London has a day conference on John Paul II as Philosopher in November

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Christian Worship

wainwright

The Oxford History of Christian Worship is 860 pages of wonderfully perceptive and accessible historical scholarship in the service of Christian theology. The book is sympathetic to every strand of Christian worship: there is nothing dry or patronizing here. The masterly Introduction by Geoffrey Wainwright is not only theological, it is positively evangelical: if we do not worship the true God we worship false ones.

The book starts with the apostolic tradition, the ancient oriental churches, and goes on to Orthodoxy. I was most impressed by Alexander Rentel’s fifty pages on Eastern Orthodoxy, by André Haquin on changes in Catholic worship in the twentieth century, and by Karen Westfield Tucker’s forty page chapter on North America. Other chapters deal with different ecclesiologies (Mennonite, Charismatic), territories (Africa, Asia) and themes (Music, the Spatial Setting, Women), and there are seven chapters on church and worship in the global south. The chapters lay out the theological logic of each form of worship: the content and structures of worship services are discussed, with some information laid out in boxes, and lots of illustrations.

Several chapters discuss the twentieth century, in which worship underwent rapid changes in every church. The Roman Catholic recovery of the idea that whole church is the people of God, communion ecclesiology (an unnoticed reformation?), meant that Vatican II was not simply the Catholic church ‘catching up’ with change outside it; it has also been the impetus to liturgical revision in every other (Protestant) denomination. Revision of lectionaries, service books and hymn books shows an increasing Evangelical understanding of the role of the lectionary in cementing the unity of the Church, and thus a growing Protestant realisation of the catholicity of Church. There is an intelligent discussion of Pentecostal and charismatic worship and a tentative look forward, perhaps to a church led by the charismatic churchmanship of the global south. The Oxford History of Christian Worship is a compelling read, and I was gripped even by subjects that I thought I had no interest in. It
is the best purchase I have made this year.

See The Oxford History of Christian Worship at Knight’s Amazon Store

Geoffrey Wainwright, an English Methodist, has been master of this field since the appearance of his systematic theology of Christian worship, ‘Doxology’. As one Amazon reviewer said – “After reading Wainwright’s book, you will want to look for another one just like it – only it doesn’t exist.” Though it has been universally admired, ‘Doxology’ has not had enough of an impact, so much theology is still studied as though it had nothing to do with the public worship and confession of the Christian community. See Wainwright at Wikipedia and at Duke.

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Finding theology in London

There is plenty of good Christian theology going on in London. It is true that theology was driven out of the one place in London that could claim to offer academic Christian teaching at an international level, the theology department of Kings College London. But it is still going just going on informally outside the university. I’ll give you some examples of good Christian theologians at work in London.

My first example is Crispin Fletcher-Louis.

Crispin

Crispin Fletcher-Louis is a New Testament scholar. He has made it his task to show that Israel understood that man is the representative of God in creation, the living breathing icon of God, who sums up all creation and is able to articulate and return all creation’s praise to God. This colossal definition of man as the creature, officer and right-hand man of God was made visible in the Jerusalem temple, and in particular in the figure of the high priest. Fletcher-Louis sees this priestly imago dei theology not just where you would expect to find it, in the Book of Hebrews, but in every book of the New Testament. Watching Fletcher-Louis opening up a passage of Scripture is as exhilarating as your first encounters with Tom Wright were. That’s right, the theological ambition of Fletcher-Louis’ project is comparable with Tom Wright’s.

Fletcher-Louis has been constructing this thesis with considerable patience through a large number of articles and Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology. He should be in a large theology department with a team of postgraduate students around him, and getting on with this project by writing some big books.

But these are funny times.

So instead Crispin has been setting up the Westminster Theological Centre, which intends to bring the training of Anglican clergy back to London. The Westminster Theological Centre has been set up in-house by St Mary’s Bryanston Square, and it is not the only large charismatic evangelical Anglican flagship to start a new theological college. Who else but the charismatic evangelicals have the energy? Theological training has to come back to the churches, and this is a start. Of course it raises all sorts of questions, but we can look at these another day.

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Anyway, just to give you an idea of the Fletcher-Louis product I’ll give you a paragraph from one of three brief and very accessible little studies he did for Third Way:

“We can now explain why ‘idolatry’ is forbidden: the only physical reality that embodies the divine presence is (ideal) humankind. Idolatry, according to the Old Testament, may thus be defined as giving to some thing else not only the worth and respect that belong to God but also those that are due to us, because it is humankind that represents and bears God’s presence… Humankind is called to be an ecstatic embodiment of divine creativity, filling the world with the presence of God’s glory and thereby providing the order and stability that God’s own authority naturally entails. … This interpretation may sound like an arrogation of divine rights which only adds to centuries of human claims for independence from God, but it is quite the reverse. This image-of-God theology disallows any identity that does not glorify the one true God. True humanity lives for the other, for the Creator it represents.”

Crispin Fletcher-Louis Genesis 1.26 & Ephesians 1.22

Here is an article on Jesus and the High Priest (in scruffy PDF) that nicely summarises the Fletcher-Louis project. Next time, another theologian in working London.

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Pelikan – Continuity and Creativity 2

It is into that ongoing life and history that we were baptized, and into its preservation, transmission, and communication that you, as priests of the Church, are to be sent. Your priestly ministry will be the daily re-enactment of the story of salvation, the daily
repossession of the heritage. It will become a truly creative re-enactment and repossession not by cutting itself off from dogma and liturgy and discipline, but by having the courage to assert what the faith means as well as what it has meant. Those of us who have had the privilege of growing up in immigrant communities know the problems, but also the gratifications, of being bilingual: sometimes it is language A that best expresses what we want to say, and at other times it is language B, but one of our tasks was always to foster communication between those who, unlike ourselves, were so unfortunate as to be able to speak only one language. The priesthood of the Church is, in a sense, called to be bilingual, speaking the language of the tradition and maintaining continuity with it, but then creatively bridging the gap of communication with those who speak only “modernese.” This is a risky enterprise. It is much easier to live in the past or, on the other hand to capitulate to modernity and, as the saying goes, to “let bygones be bygones.”

It is to neither of these that we have been called, but to discipleship and to faithfulness and to continuity with the faithful
disciples of the Church in all ages. Grounded in that continuity and making that tradition our own, we are set free to speak and to work as those who, through the Incarnation, have been privileged to share in the very nature of God the Creator and in His freedom.

The charter of this continuity and of this creativity is the summons and the promise of Our Lord Himself: If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31.32).

Jaroslav Pelikan Continuity and Creativity

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Pelikan – Continuity and Creativity

For what we have received as a heritage from our Fathers, we must earn if we are really to possess it. Each generation of the Church has had to learn this lesson anew. Continuity is not the same as archaism, and over and over the Church has reacted to the challenges of heresy and unbelief by stating its historic faith and restating it, and, as Maximus Confessor says, “giving it an exegesis and working out its implications” (PG 91:260). It, in response to Christological heresy or to attacks upon the holy icons, it was appropriate for the Fathers to recite the Nicene Creed with an extended paraphrase that spoke to these false teachings, then it remains appropriate for us also to locate ourselves within the continuity of the faith of our Fathers and, in the name of that
continuity, to speak the Word of God to the world of today. For what a world intoxicated with each fleeting moment needs to sober it up is the message of the apostolic faith, but we are not simply pipes and conduits through which that message passes, but living, responsive, and, yes, creative participants in its ongoing life and history.

Jaroslav Pelikan Continuity and Creativity with thanks to Matthew Baker

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Rowan Williams The truth of Christ

I have found these three dicta from our Archbishop in from a speech on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They are not trite.

1. Christ equips us to say no to those falsehoods which allow us to ignore the places where he is to be found.

2. The Bible is not interested in resolving personal dramas of choice. What matters is that what we say or do or choose points to the truth of Christ.

3. Christ will find us as and when we are ready to be found by him, and not when we are certain that we can make him speak for our party or our programme.

Here are the paragraphs in which they appear:

The temptation is that we borrow Bonhoeffer’s language to give dignity and seriousness to some of our current controversies, when the truth is that it is only in the face of a real anti-church that these matters come fully into focus, when there is an active programme aimed at destroying the Church’s integrity and expelling or silencing those who hold to that integrity. And Bonhoeffer himself warns us about being too ready in advance to spell out what would constitute an anti-church. What is essential is the work that prepares us for discernment: the common life of adoration and confession, the struggle to bring acts and policies to the judgement of Scripture, the freedom, above all, to stand against what actively seeks, inside or outside the Church, to prohibit the proclamation of the Gospel, confident in what God has irrevocably given to the community of faith.

In October 1938, Bonhoeffer addressed a conference of younger pastors associated with the Confessing Church and serving in illegal pastorates; his subject was the question of what obedience to Scripture meant. He warns against using Scripture to demonstrate the rightness of an action or policy, making Scripture serve a programme of our own, a conception of our righteousness. It is not that we can solve the dramatic personal question, ‘What shall I do?’ by a simple appeal to the Bible, so that we are relieved of the burden of human ambiguity and even human sinfulness and error. The Bible, says Bonhoeffer, is not interested in resolving personal dramas of choice. What matters is that what we say or do or choose points to the truth of Christ. In itself it is always going to be in some degree in need of forgiveness; but it is ‘right’ to the extent that it displays the truth of Christ. ‘It is our way to let Jesus Christ find us in this way. Christ is the truth. The sole truth of our way is that we should be found in this truth’ (The Way to Freedom, 176).

As a programme, as a set of solutions, this is not going to be the answer to our divisions and quarrels as churches today. But if this is the language in which we are prepared to think about and pray about our struggles, we shall have learned from Bonhoeffer what above all he has to teach us: Christ equips us to say no to those falsehoods which allow us to ignore the places where he is to be found. Christ can lead us through culture and piety and ecumenism to a place where we must say no to any aspects of them that make falsehoods easier. Christ will find us as and when we are ready to be found by him, and not when we are certain that we can make him speak for our party or our programme, left or right. Inexorably, we are led to that twofold commendation of prayer and justice with which the Prison Letters leave us – a commendation not of abstract spirituality and busy activism, but of immersion in Christ through Scripture and the struggle to act so that God’s act will be visible. It is a legacy that will not easily let us be satisfied with ourselves; which is why it is a gift from Bonhoeffer’s Lord and ours.

Archbishop Rowan Williams Speech at the opening of the International Bonhoeffer Congress, University of Wroclaw, Poland

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What Christianity gave the West

George Weigel on Michael Burleigh

Christianity gave the West cosmopolitanism and egalitarianism, for it recognized â??neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor freeâ?? as relevant social categories â?? and thus blazed a path beyond tribalism and toward the end of slavery, that ubiquitous human institution. Modern feminism notwithstanding, Christianity also gave the world … feminism, for St. Paul completed his instruction on Christian egalitarianism by reminding the Galatians that, in Christ Jesus, neither â??male nor femaleâ?? had a superior dignity â?? which, in that context and in much of the world today, means that Christianity is the great liberator of women.

Christianity, as Pope Benedict reminded us recently, gave the West the idea of charity as a personal and social obligation; think of the world of cruelty graphically captured in Gladiator and youâ??ll see the point. Christianity also gave the world a politically viable concept of peace, the peace that St. Augustine first defined in the fifth century as the â??tranquility of order.â??

Christianity taught that rulers were responsible, not to themselves alone (as so many rulers liked to think, then and now), but to transcendent moral norms. Would the concepts of the rule of law, and of rulers responsible to the law, have evolved in the West if, as Professor Burleigh reminds us, â??the redoubtable Ambrose, archbishop of Milan … [had not] tamed the Emperor Theodosius?â?? Or, to cite the more familiar example, if Gregory VII had not confronted Henry II and forced him to recognize the freedom of the Church â?? a freedom that implies limits on state power? It seems unlikely, not least because these ideas didnâ??t gain currency in the rest of the world until they were brought to the rest of the world by Christians.

Why was this insistence on the Churchâ??s liberty so socially, and ultimately politically, important? Because the freedom of the Church meant that the state (or some other form of concentrated political power) would not occupy every available social space â?? that there would be room in society for other institutions and other loyalties. And that, in turn, made both civil society and the limited, constitutional state possible…

Christianityâ??s contributions to the civilization of the West have been ignored or caricatured as â??divisive, fraudulent, or oppressiveâ?? … This caricature of a vibrant public Christianity as inherently dangerous for democracy is a caricature in service to the idea that secularism is the only possible â??neutralâ?? ground on which a democratic political community can conduct its life.

George Weigel What Christianity gave the West