Month: November 2006

Categories
Theology

Is the Church Necessary for Salvation?

In another discussion forum, someone asked, Is the Church a necessity for a personal relationship with God? I am not convinced. Are we saved by ourmembership of a church? Do we need to be a member to be ‘born again’? This person’s argument was that a Christian can and should discard “institutional religion.” My own thoughts follow:

I am not a Catholic, though I respect Catholic ecclesiology — for a billion or so Christians around the world, the ultimate answer is yes, the Church literally is necessary for salvation. Coming from more of a Reformed perspective, at some point I have to respectfully disagree with my Catholic brothers and sisters here. Yet, I don’t think this should result in an ecclesiology that guts the Church of any significance in the economy of salvation. The lines evangelicals like to draw between salvation and sanctification perhaps are too sharp sometimes. Membership in a local church body does not save, but saving faith produces the desire and need to fellowship in a local church body. The local church body absolutely is essential to the ongoing progress of a believer’s sanctification, and the fellowship, maturity and service that happen in a local church body are part of the ongoing process of an individual believer’s salvation. Being “born again” isn’t merely a one-time transaction, it’s an entry into lifelong fellowship with Christ and into the community of the Church, over which Christ is head.

Categories
Personal News

Site Back Up — and Coming Soon, the TGD Journal

My site is finally back up again. There was some sort of problem with my database. Hopefully during the few days I was offline I didn’t lose my vast readership :-b

Hopefully sometime around Christmas I’ll have version 2.0 of this site up and running. I want to keep the blog going, but I’m also planning to incorporate it into a bit of a more fully-featured site, a Through a Glass Darkly journal / community of sorts, with stories, commentary, photography, art, podcasts, videos and such from me and from others. I’ve registered a unique domain for this. Stay tuned — and if you have any of the foregoing you’d like to submit for the new site, please send them along. I hope this will be a sort of “open source” project, so any submission would be non-exclusive — exposure and no downside!

Categories
Law and Policy

Christians and Legal Theory

My friend Jeff started a series on thinking about the law, with a post titled “What is Law?” Jeff summarized a basic approach to law as follows: the law is a collection of rules.

This is a popular understanding of “law,” but it’s a rather reductionist, formalist definition. See legal scholar and Legal Theory Lexicon maven Larry Solum’s definition of formalism, which just about exactly describes law as a collection of legislated rules that judges must apply more or less directly.

Formalism is of course a viable theory of law, and it figures prominently in neconservativism. But it is subject to some compelling critiques from legal realism and instrumentalism. Legal realism says that even when judges purport to act according to formalism, they really are making the law as they want it to be. Instrumentlism says that the encoded law should be interpreted and applied according to its purposes rather than strictly according to its encoded language. Instrumentalism and realism, then, would not see law primarily as a set of written, encoded rules, but would see it more in terms of what judges and juries actually do in application.

If you are looking for a descriptive theory of what actually happens in the legal system rather than a prescriptive theory of what should happen, I’d suggest that you have to pay careful attention to realism and instrumentalism.

Of course, formalism and realism are only two ways to look at law. You also need to consider social contract theory, as expressd by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, and as presented in a contemporary Kantian form by Rawls. Rawls’ view is more prescriptive than descriptive, but in many ways it also decribes the deep Lockean roots of U.S. law as found in the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, Rawls’ view is that law should reflect what individuals who know nothing of the circumstances of other members of society would want for themselves. This basic core of rights and protections then forms the minimal social contract rules required for a just society.

Then there’s Ronald Dworkin’s “legal holism.” For Dworkin, law is not a set of discrete rules, but is a “seamless web” of social relations, such that the judge must go beyond a particular set of propositions to decide any given case.

All of these theories are essentially liberal theories of law (liberal here meant in the classical sense of essentially democratic). You also have to consider theories of law that primarily derive from notions of authority, particularly the medieval concept of the divine right of kings, and eastern concepts of law that derive authority from the social order. And, you need to consider dialectical theories of law drawn from Marxism, as well as the dialectical theories represented by the critical legal studies movement.

If you are looking for a particularly Christian jurisprudence, I’d suggest that you can’t stop at formalism, realism, social contract theory, legal holism, or authority or dialectical theories. You need to consider the Thomistic natural law tradition. In that tradition, law is not a set of man-made rules. True law is that which conforms to the deeper divine law woven by God into creation. In my scholarship, currently I’m exploring what I think is a deeper and perhaps even more truly Thomistic and Aristotelian rendition of natural law theory, which is called virtue jurisprudence. But then of course you need to consider some of the Reformed critiques of natural law theory and the common grace jurispurdence of Kuyper and others. And then there are anabaptist and other peace traditions, reflected in folks like Hauerwas and Glen Stassen. (An excellent anthology on Christian legal theory came out last year for intrepid readers.)

This little survey is only the tip of a big iceberg. Legal theory and jurisprudence is endlessly fascinating, and for the Christian thinker, demanding subject. Unfortunately, evangelicals are often quick to settle on formalism as the “right” theory of law. Formalism has advantages and disadvantages, and can’t be seen as the end of the discussion.

Categories
Personal News

40th Birthday

Tomorrow I turn 40. This can’t be possible. Where did my 20’s go? My 30’s?

Forty seems like an age when it all should come together. Finances should be secure; career should be booming; leadership should be exercised widely and sagely. At forty, a man should be a paragon, a master tactitian, a rock, a sterling example. Younger foes should quail before a forty-year-old warrior’s hard-won skill; older foes should flee before his authoritative courage and still-unbowed strength.

The real forty year old steers his horse confidently over the mountain pass, lights up another smoke, and picks a bright-eyed path into the deep, lush meadows in the next valley. The real forty year old doesn’t stumble past thirty nine like a drunken teenager. He isn’t licking thirty-nine years of unhealed wounds. His pockets are lined with silk, not lint. He owns a tuxedo that still fits. None of his dress shirts have shrunk; he still enjoys wearing fine ties; he is crisp and snappy, not seedy. He has realized his youthful goals and now plans greater, bolder adventures. He does not pine or long or wish or what-if or doubt. He knows.

So I am not really turning forty. Really, I’m still fifteen. Fifteen, afraid-yet-ambitious, cocky-yet-uncertain, focused-yet-scattered, whole-yet-shattered. But fifteen and loved and secure in love. Loved by wife, by children. Laughing out loud with the “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” jumping and dancing with three little lives, our inheritance. And yes, loved in Christ, by the immanent-yet-hidden God, revealed logos, awesome Father, mysterious pneumos. Surrounded by ineffable love.

Not really fifteen then, and not really forty. Something else, undefined by calendrical time.

Categories
Science & Technology Theology

Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Randomness

An entry on Evolution News and Views criticizing a lecture by Francis Collins caught my eye. I’ve previously offered some of my own criticism of Collins’ new book. However, the ENV criticism, I think, was unfair, and reflects a serious theological problem with some “strong” ID arguments.

On the ENV site, Logan Gage argues that Darwinism is fundamentally incompatible with theism, because Darwinian evolution is “unguided and unplanned”:

If Darwinian evolution–by definition–is “unguided” and “unplanned,” then Collins’s view seems logically incoherent. How can a process be both “guided” and “unguided” (or “planned” and “unplanned”) at the same time? Either evolution is “unguided” as the Darwinists contend, or it is guided in some way—which means that the Darwinian view of evolution must be false.

For the notion that Darwinian evolution is “unguided” and “unplanned,” Logan cites a letter sent to the Kansas State Board of Education by some Nobel laureates, which states that “evolution is “the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Logan argues that Collins’ “theistic evolution” position is incompatible with the popular view of Darwinism identified in the Nobel letter.

Logan’s criticism is unfair because, to the extent the Nobel laureates meant “unguided” and “unplanned” in a metaphysical sense, their position is not a scientific view about evolution, nor is it what someone like Collins means by “evolution.”

Whether God guided and planned evolution (if and to the extend evolution happened, a question I’m not addressing here) is a metaphysical question that is not addressed by evolutionary science. When evolutionary science speaks of planning, guidance and randomness, it means that the natural processes involved suggest no statistical correlation with any influences external to those natural processes. Even within that context, evolution is not “random” in the sense that anything at all can and does happen — evolution happens within a framework of deeper natural laws, including the laws of genetics and inheritance. As some evolutionary theorists, such a Simon Conway Morris (a Christian) observe, the operation of these laws can give rise to remarkable regularities, including the convergence of different pathways on a relatively small number of sensory organs and body plans.

I would agree with Logan, then, that if the Nobel laureates were using “unguided” and “unplanned” in a metaphysical sense, they were stepping far beyond the bounds of evolutionary science, and were suggesting something that is utterly incompatible with theism. It isn’t clear to me whether that was the sense intended. It certainly is not the sense in which someone like Francis Collins uses terms like “random” in relation to evolution.

If “random,” “unguided” and “unplanned” with regard to evolution are understood simply to mean “uncorellated with any external causes,” I don’t see how this is inconsistent with a theistic understanding of creation. As I sit here in New York typing this today, it is raining lightly outside. Meteorologists can explain this weather pattern fully in naturalistic terms. It is an “unguided,” “unplanned,” and “random” pattern, in the sense that there is no way to correlate the pattern with any external causes. It is of course an orderly pattern, based on deeper natural laws, which makes it explainable and to some extent predictable. But it can be explained solely through the apparently unguided process of natural laws.

I say “apparently unguided” because, as a Christian, I don’t believe for a moment that this weather pattern is “random” or “unguided” in a metaphysical sense. I believe in a God who is sovereign over all creation, upon whom all creation depends, and in whom all creation is held together. God didn’t merely wind up the processes that led to the rain in New York today and let them go off randomly on their own — He is above and in and through them completely as sovereign creator and sustainer. The fact that I can’t directly perceive or correlate God’s will and action in this regard with the rain I observe doesn’t mean God is elided or elidable.

In fact, this is exactly what I expect within the rich framework of the Christian doctrine of creation. I don’t expect God ordinarily to manifest Himself in miraculous ways that contradict the deep natural laws He established and sustains. Indeed, the very orderliness and normality of the everyday working of creation is one of the principal reasons I can make reliable observations and rational judgments, and is a central expression of God’s wisdom and beauty.

Given that I think and feel this way about the rain in New York, why should I think or feel differently about the natural processes through which living organisms change over time? There is no theological reason to think God should act or manifest Himself differently with respect to living organisms in relation to natural laws than He does with respect to processes such as the weather. In fact, there are very good reasons to suspect He would not make such a distinction — the reasons of orderliness and beauty mentioned above.

Does this mean I settle the issue in favor of theistic evolution? No. There are, I think, hermeneutical questions about how to understand the language in Genesis 1 and 2 concerning God’s creation of the animals and of human beings. Does the phrase “after their kinds” require separate creation and a fixity of species? Does creation of Adam from the “dust of the earth” and creation of Eve from Adam’s “rib” require a separate, special creation of human beings? These are reasonable questions. There are also, I believe, reasonable questions about whether Darwinism completely succeeds scientifically on its own merits. There is very convincing genetic and fossil evidence, in my opinion, for gradual organismal change over time and the relatedness of different species. The mechanisms posited for such change — such as natural selection and genetic drift — however, often seem like hand waving to me. But I think it’s important to be clear about the issues, and the broad theological issue of God sovereignly directing creation is not one of them.

Categories
Chrysostom Spirituality

Chrysostom — on Possession

Over the past year, I’ve been studying early Christian history and the Church Fathers. It’s been quite rewarding. One of the great pleasures of the World and Christian Imagination conference was browsing the table set up by Eighth Day Books. They specialize in works by the church fathers and other spiritual classics. I picked up a book of homily excerpts by John Chrysostom. Chrysostom lived in the 4th Century and served as a monk and as Patriarch of Constantinople. He was deposed and exiled because of his stance against the excesses of the imperial court and his defense of the poor. He was one of the great preachers in Christian history (his popular name “Chrysostom” means “golden mouthed”).

I’m finding Chyrsostom’s words on simplicity and justice deeply inspiring. Read on for a lovely excerpt from Chrysostom on owernship and possessions.

(Note — Chrystostom has been accused of anti-semitism, and a few of his sermons most unfortunately were used by the Nazis to support their evil philosophy. Apparently, there’s a debate about whether these accusations are correct; some well-known scholars aver that claims of anti-semitism against Chrysostom are false. One of the challenges in studying the Patristic period is that the rhetorical style of the day can sound strident to modern ears and much of the Fathers’ writing and sermonizing takes the form of polemics against the pagans who were claiming the Christian faith was antisocial and dangerous. The Fathers sometimes sound harsh when trying to distinguish the still-young Christian faith from the Jewish faith in this context. And, some of the Fathers likely did hold attitudes towards the Jews that thoughtful Christians today would condemn as wrong and inappropriate. Nevertheless, I think we can situate figures like Chrysostom in their historical context and mine the gems while rejecting the dross. Along with all Christians of good will and mature faith, I abhor all forms of anti-Semitism, and recognize my debt to and common bond with my friends of the Jewish faith.)

Continue reading “Chrysostom — on Possession”
Categories
Theology

World and Christian Imagination Symposium

I’m here in, uh, beautiful Waco, Texas for the World and Christian Imagination conference at Baylor University. Actually, Baylor’s campus is quite beautiful, and I’ve only seen a small part of the rest of Waco. Anyway, the conference has been fascinating so far, but unfortunately none of the rooms have computer capability, so I can’t live blog. I’ll have to do more of a report when I get back home. Last night’s highlight was a provocative talk by theologian John Milbank, father of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Another sweet bonus was that Eerdmans had a 40% off book table. This, of course, was like a siren song to all us Christian professor geek types. This afternoon I give me talk on virtue jurisprudence. It should be fun.

Categories
Law and Policy

World and Christian Imagination Conference

I’m heading down to Baylor University today for the World and Christian Imagination Conference, where I’m presenting on law and virtue ethics. I hope to live blog it. Also I hope to have some thoughts on the elections, for whatever they’re worth. Stay tuned!

Categories
Law and Policy Spirituality

"Christian" Voter Guides

Yesterday I received a “Voter’s Guide” from the New Jersey Family Policy Council. This “Guide” is supposed to inform voters about “public policies and cultural trends that impact the family.” I found it simplistic and deeply troubling.

The most troubling aspect of this “Guide” is that it contains zero information about the candidates’ positions on race, poverty, health care, the environment, international justice (e.g., human trafficking), or the Iraq war. Zero. Given that the Bible speaks more about justice for the poor and oppressed than any other topic concerning government, this is disgusting.

At the same time, the “Guide” contains many questions concerning policy positions about which reasonably informed Christians can disagree. For example, it asks the candidate’s positions on a “constitutional amendment to prohibit flag desecration.” In my view, there could hardly be a proposal more contrary to the first amendment and the American tradition of free speech. Free speech is all about the right to criticize the government. I think flag burning is vile, but I think lots of things are vile, and I don’t think the Constitution should reflect my preferences about who gets to express their vile opinions. And what does this have to do with the family? If anything, Christian families should be adamant that nothing impinge on the freedom of speech. In totalitarian regimes that prohibit criticism of the government — say, China — freedom of religious speech also is not tolerated. Today you are silencing flag burners whose message you justifiably may not like. Tomorrow you might find locks on your church doors.

In a similar vein, the “Guide” asks about legislation to permit the display of the Ten Commandments on government property. I’m sorry, but the Ten Commandments are fundamentally a religious text — the first commandment, which is the backbone of the entire Decalogue, is about serving Yahweh alone — and there are good reasons not to display fundamentally religious texts on government property, at least where the display is itself contextually religious. Honestly, I think we discredit the power of the Ten Commandments as directives rooted in worship of Yahweh alone when we try to secularize them. As messy as it is, questions about any particular display are best resolved in the courts on a case by case basis, not by blunderbuss legislation.

One of the more troubling questions, in my view, is this one:

Would you confirm judges to our courts who:
A. Seek to expand the law to include new concepts by redefining its terms, or
B. Seek to interpret law based on the original intent of the writers of the law?

This presents such a simplistic picture of what courts do that it is fundamentally misleading. Personally, I’m a judicial conservative, meaning that I believe courts should decide only the “cases and controversies” before them, and should give primary attention to the statutory language and intent when applying a statute. Often judges go off the rails here and ignore applicable statutes. There are many examples, Roe v. Wade being Exhibit A, in which courts have made policy that should be made by legislatures. That’s bad.

But the idea that judges can easily discern and apply the “original intent” of a statute in every circumstance is ludicrous, as anyone who’s ever actually litigated a statutory case in a courtroom (as I have, many times) knows. Statutes usually are messy compromises, and often are so badly written that no one has any idea what the legislature really meant — if it’s even philosophically possible to find a unified “intent” among a diverse and divided body of individuals. If courts could do nothing but apply the literal words of a statute in light of clearly understood original intent, the justice system would grind to a halt, because very often that’s simply impossible.

Moreover judges have a legitimate, ancient and necessary role in developing the common law when, as is often the case, there are gaps or ambiguities in the statutory law. To me, as someone who practiced litigation in the trenches for thirteen years, who earned two law degrees and who has taught intensely statutory courses such as patent law, a polarized survey question like this reflects either ignorance of the judicial process or something more insidious.

I could go on and on. There are some good things in this “Guide” that families will want to know, such as the candidates’ positions on parental notification requirements for minors seeking abortions. But on the whole, this “Guide” unfortunately has more to do with right wing economics and failed neoconservative policies than Christian ethics. Take it for what it’s worth, but make your own informed choices.

Categories
Spirituality

A Deciever and a Liar

This is how Ted Haggard described himself yesterday, as he admitted to “sexually immoral conduct” and a “lifelong” sexual problem. This is devastating for evangelicalism. One of the most influential evangelicals in America, recently profiled by Christianity Today as a breath of fresh air for evangelicaldom, is a “deciever and a liar.”

Or, maybe it’s not so devastating — or at least devastating in a good way. Maybe this will cause us to respond as the prophet Isaiah did when he was commissioned by God as a prophet: “”Woe to me!” [Isaiah] cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.””

Evangelicals at the levels Ted Haggard reached seem so often to forget that we are to act as agents of redemption in society because we have been redeemed and are being redeemed from the depths of our own sin. We try to use the law, public relations, power and marketing techniques to manufacture a secular constitutional state that would incorporate rules we don’t seem to want to apply to ourselves.

Those of us in the pews who are struggling to live day to day, who understand our own sins and weaknesses, should maintain a healthy distance from these public “leaders.” It’s time for authentic Christian virtues, a real evangelicalism of the transforming Gospel, to flow from the community of faith on the ground. It isn’t about influence and power. It’s about love and service.