Book Review: David Hollenbach's "The Common Good and Christian Ethics"

The Common Good and an Uncommon Response

What’s at Stake?

            Is the common good a “dead issue” in the minds of most Americans today?  Has toleration pushed questions of morality and religion into the private and “non-public” realms of society? (see pgs. 24-25) Does pursing a united vision of the common good risk neglecting or even coercing the values of other religions or traditions?  In many ways, the answer is “yes” to these questions.  But David Hollenbach demonstrates in The Common Good and Christian Ethics that even with these challenges, all is not yet lost in regards to the common good.  Hollenbach has hope that a Christian approach of “dialogic universalism” can greatly contribute to a shared national and global vision of the common good.  And he has such hope because of his basic conviction in the interrelatedness of human beings to each other.  This communal emphasis on human nature provides a strong foundation on which to build a vision of the common good.  The paper will thus argue that Hollenbach’s basic conviction of human nature provides a robust and compelling way forward specifically in pressing urban and global issues of the common good.  Further, where Hollenbach’s application may require further detail or nuance, the paper will capitalize on Hollenbach’s own opening of the door to the resources of the Calvinist and Lutheran theological traditions to suggest that Christian disciples must play a decisive role in formulating and implementing a vision of the common good.

The Necessity of a Vision of the Common Good

            Hollenbach argues in chapter 2 that the problems of urbanism and globalism are too big for the Western dominant values of tolerance and non-judgmentalism.  While toleration has helped form a society committed to equality, it fuels a suspicion that pursuing a stronger notion of the common good will lead to oppression and violence (pg. 32).  While carefully recognizing the inherent dangers of the common good in terms of coercion, Hollenbach demonstrates that historical examples of such coercion need not negate the positive possibilities of the common good.  What’s more, a vision of the common good is necessary to take our nation and world beyond the stalemate of tolerance.  For example, while tolerance has done much to open avenues of healing and opportunity among some of the urban poor, it has also left too many political and economic structures in place that continue to exclude the urban poor from participating in the fullness of life.  In terms of race, Hollenbach points out that even after the great gains of tolerance and acceptance from the Civil Rights Movement, there is a paradox in America today: “it is the best of times for the black middle class but among the worst of times for the poor blacks in America’s central cities” (pg. 41).  Tolerance has removed many of the personal barriers of racism, but it has left intact – and perhaps even strengthened – mentalities and structures that keep the poor ever poor.  Tolerance can perpetuate injustice through beliefs like “we make our own fate.”  For when the urban poor face the dire obstacles of inferior education, jobs with wages that cannot meet living standards, and the related behaviors of despair like drug-use, “making your own fate” can simply be too difficult a task.  A vision of the common good, however, can be strong enough to break even the societal structures that keep all but a few from making their own way.

            We need a vision of the common good because our current national values system is not up to the task of solving the problems we face as a society.  Hollenbach’s proposal of the common good can be a successful alternative because it is foundationally based in a strong conviction of what it means to be human.  Hollenbach traces the long tradition of the common good back through Ignatius, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Cicero, and Aristotle.  In these thinkers, the common good is based on how humans are connected to each other to form a society.  In Cicero’s republic, for example, it is presupposed that “persons are envisioned as bound together by strong connections” (pg. 65).  Hollenbach provides a theological explanation of Cicero’s insight, and in so doing shows how the common good can be both a Christian and universal concept.  In fact, he argues in chapter 5 that the promotion of a strong understanding of the civic good and full commitment to Christian faith are “essentially related” (pg. 113).  Augustine, for example, makes this argument using the concept of differentiation in The City of God: the Christian community is separated from the public square “without being either isolated from or dominant over it” (pg. 121).  Augustine is not looking for the church to control polity but he is also not interested in the church withdrawing from society.  Instead, the church, by its nature, strongly supports the virtues and values that are required in a republic (pg. 122).  The common good of the commonweal can only be realized when the people are “bound together by a love whereby each citizen loves his neighbor as he loves himself, for love of neighbor is the active work in the moral domain that gives expression to love of God” (pg. 123).  But Augustine is careful to distinguish what can be accomplished for the common good on earth and what is the eschatological hope of the city of God.  Hollenbach explains that Augustine’s emphasis on the transcendence of God rightly desacralizes politics; “it distinguishes what can be achieved politically from what Christians ultimately place their hope in” (pg. 125).  Certainly such an understanding is necessary to protect against the religious coercion that is one of dangers of pursing a notion of the common good.

            There is more to the church, however, than loving God and neighbor.  Thomas Aquinas (and Jacques Maritain’s social-political development of Aquinas’s ideas) can provide helpful grounding for a Trinitarian understanding of human nature and community.  Maritain, for example, “concludes that the essential relationality of personhood has its supreme exemplification in the unity of the three persons of the divine Trinity.  He follows Aquinas in affirming that the divine persons are “subsistent relations” – persons whose very identity as persons is their relationship one with the other” (pg. 131).  Now we begin to see the possibilities of deep theological interaction with the notion of the nature of persons as it relates to the common good.  If a defining attribute of personhood is contained in being in relation to the other (as it is in the Trinity), then, the common good becomes not just an idealistic pursuit, but a necessity.  If the Trinity serves as analogia entis, then we can rightly couple this with the Great Commandment to love God and love others to pursue a vision of the common good.  Now, certainly theologians debate whether Aquinas provides the best understanding of the Trinity, but, however we nuance the Trinity, it seems to me that if we try to base our understanding of personhood on anything less than God’s image, our pursuit of the common good can do nothing but fall short.

Implications of Intellectual Solidarity

            Hollenbach rightly places a great emphasis on the Catholic tradition of the common good.  His insights into the reforms of Vatican II, in particular, I think are incredibly valuable contributions to real solutions to the urban and global problems we face.  The Catholic idea of “dialogic universalism” does much to affirm the unique contributions of Christianity while affirming the necessity of deep intellectual and cultural exchanges (pg. 152ff).  I want to affirm Hollenbach’s work and suggestions in this area.  But I also want to pry open the door a bit more in terms of Hollenbach’s passing suggestions that Protestantism has some key resources to contribute to the notion of the common good, especially in the Calvinistic and Lutheran traditions.  Hollenbach briefly mentions these two traditions (see pages 116 and 150), but does little to engage their ideas.  Rather than fault him for this oversight (you can’t do everything in a book, after all), I want to pick up on his methodology and offer a few suggestions for how evangelicals might look to their own Protestant tradition for resources to help shape the vision of the common good.  What Hollenbach does affirm are the ideas of “orders of creation” and “common grace” in Calvin and Luther (even though their followers, he says, “are less confident in our ability to discern [these structures in creation] without the aid of revelation than are Catholics”) (pg. 150).  But I would argue that an evangelical appropriation of the common good that has a strong commitment to revelation would be an asset.  The Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, for example, relies significantly on the notion of common grace to affirm the pluriform structure of society.  In that God has revealed himself as sovereign over all, his grace sustains creation and supports human flourishing.  The role of the church is to shine its light brightly and broadly in the world and for the world.  But the church need not coerce the world to be the church.  God’s sustaining grace also affirms its multiform existence.  The church witnesses, but it also contributes to the “intellectual solidarity” of the global conversation of the common good. 

We can also look to the Lutheran tradition for similar insights.  In Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer appropriates the Lutheran concept of the orders of creation to propose the four divine mandates of church, state, marriage and family, and culture.  The four mandates are not an outgrowth of history, or an expression of human power, but express “the reality of God’s love for the world and for human beings that has been revealed in Jesus Christ” (Bonhoeffer, Ethics, pg. 391).  Bonhoeffer coins the term “Christonomy” to explain the implications of his understanding of the mandates.  Christonomy, at its base, is a way to overcome the conflicting pressures of autonomy and heteronomy.  An autonomous view of reality, as Kuyper would also have contended, finds its triumph as each individual acts on his or her own free will.  On the other hand, heteronomy understands that actions are based upon external forces and obligations, like a principled Christian ethic.  Neither of these worldviews was, for Bonhoeffer, an accurate interpretation of reality.  Rather, reality is in Jesus Christ, and so individuals and societies are finally liberated and free to be with-one-another, for-one-another, and over-against-one-another.  The divine mandates exist to manifest this reality of freedom.  And this reality of freedom is a key to the formation of an understanding of the common good.  For Bonhoeffer, there is freedom and liberation for the church when it exists with, for, and over-against the state.  Likewise, the state flourishes when it can support culture, be in culture, and yet receive and incorporate culture’s critique.  All four mandates – church, state, family, and culture – and thus the major structures of society, reach their full potential when they operate in the reality of Jesus Christ, who is with, for, and over-against the world.  There are vast implications here for Christian discipleship in and for the world.  And my last word for Hollenbach would be that perhaps a greater emphasis on just this kind of for-others discipleship is the catalyst needed to address the political, economic, and societal structures plighting the poor and marginalized in our cities and across the globe.  A uniting notion of the common good can give vision to what’s possible, but Christian disciples have a unique obligation to make something of that vision.

Book Review: Adventure Ethics - Stanley Hauerwas' "A Community of Character"

Basic Convictions for the Story

            Stanley Hauerwas’ main argument in A Community of Character has the dressing of ecclesiology.  The opening sentences of the “Introduction” reveal that his one concern is “to reassert the social significance of the church as a distinct society with an integrity peculiar to itself” (pg. 1).  Indeed, the compelling characteristic of Hauerwas’ ethic is its commitment to the particular narrative of Christian history as revealed and experienced in the church community.  However, I think we miss the fullness of the argument if we just focus on the community level of the Christian narrative.  What is needed is an understanding of the foundational beliefs that support that community; Hauerwas would agree, writing, “I contend that the only reason for being Christian … is because Christian convictions are true; and the only reason for participation in the church is that it is the community that pledges to form its life by that truth” (pg. 1).  With this in mind – that the Christian community is nothing without a firm grasp of the truth of its basic convictions – I contend that chapter 2, “Jesus: The Story of the Kingdom,” is the hermeneutical key to understanding how the character of the Christian community is formed and lived throughout history.  The narrative ethics that Hauerwas proposes is certainly about the community of God’s people, and so clearly ecclesiology plays a key role in the discussion.  However behind the ecclesiology (really, behind any good ecclesiology) is Christology; and so the basic conviction that supports the development of Hauerwas’ ethic must be about Jesus Christ before it is about the church.  Hauerwas accomplishes this balanced ordering throughout the book by timely reminding us of the lordship of Jesus Christ.  In so doing, he draws the Christian community into the daily adventure of following after Jesus Christ.

A Story to Tell

            In chapter 2, Hauerwas reminds us that “to be Christian implies substantive and profound convictions about the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth” (pg. 36).  These convictions, however, must not just say something about what we believe, they must dramatically inform how we act.  This space between belief and act is most readily bridged, for Hauerwas, by recovering the gospel story.  This move shifts the question from “did Jesus have a social ethic” and instead allows us to see that his story itself is a social ethic (pg. 37).  As the church proclaims the truth of Jesus’ story – that the Kingdom of God is present – it then also sets out a way to live.  The community has no direction apart from the gospel narrative; there is no separation of Christology from ecclesiology (pg. 37).

            Hauerwas is concerned to hold up a “high Christology” while also recovering the centrality of Jesus’ life.  He is not content to choose either between the “Jesus of history” or the “Christ of faith”; for him, it is both (pg. 40).  The identity of Jesus is then only grasped in learning to follow him.  In so doing, Hauerwas affirms that “Jesus’ person cannot be separated from his work, the incarnation from the atonement” (pg. 43).  The challenge comes in anchoring Jesus’ universal Kingdom in actual history.  There is a narrative to the truth of God’s sovereignty and lordship, and that narrative is lived out by Jesus’ work in the church of history.

            Beyond navigating the “christological” or “historical” questions of Jesus, Hauerwas is after something quite unique in his approach of viewing Jesus as a social ethic.  “If we pay attention to the narrative and self involving character of the Gospels, as the early disciples did,” writes Hauerwas, “there is no way to speak of Jesus’ story without its forming our own.  The story it forms creates a community which corresponds to the form of his life” (pg. 51).  Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom of God formed not just the community of disciples, it continues to form the church community today.

           

A Story to Live By

            The basic conviction that God’s sovereign lordship is manifest in Jesus’ proclamation of the present Kingdom drives the narrative of character-forming communities.  And this narrative, for Hauerwas, breeds adventure.  I’ll admit that “adventure” is not a theological or ethical concept that first comes to mind when I think of the Kingdom of God; and it is not a point that Hauerwas necessarily hammered home throughout the book.  But as I read through these essays, I became more and more convinced that a sense of the divine-human “adventure” is just what the church needs.  Hauerwas foreshadows this theme of adventure in the acknowledgement section of the “Preface.”  He writes, “Finally, I wish to thank my son Adam for his relish for life and his unflagging enthusiasm to get on with the adventure” (pg. x).  On the surface, this could mean any number of things.  After all, an acknowledgment is for the particular person, and likely Hauerwas has a certain nuance in mind when writing to his son about “the adventure.”  But soon, “adventure” becomes a key descriptor of the character-forming community that bears witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

            Watership Down, for example, is not just about any kind of story-formed community; this is an adventure-story-formed community.  Hauerwas’ ten theses toward the reformation of Christian social ethics (see pgs. 9-12) are not just narrative based, but they are based on the adventurous narrative of Israel and Jesus.  What’s interesting to me is how this adventure theme is so subdued throughout Hauerwas’ argument.  But perhaps that’s what makes it all the more compelling.  “Adventure” ties us to something bigger than ourselves in a way that few other narrative-descriptors can.  Watership Down demonstrates that the survival of the community is based on the re-telling of their own adventurous history.  But is the gospel often told as adventure?  Hauerwas’ narrative ethics brings the gospel into this light, and it does so to offer something not just substantive but truthful to the public social dimension.

            To show this, Hauerwas calls Christians to “courage” in chapter 8 “The Moral Value of the Family.”  Courage is required to navigate any adventure, much less the Christian adventure.  More than just courage, however, Christians need to cultivate the courage of their convictions – especially in the context of the family.  Hauerwas gives an example: “Morally I am convinced that Christians are necessarily committed to the ethic of non-resistance.  Yet the temptation is for me to teach my son that such an ethic is but one option among others” (pg. 173).  Here, Hauerwas is calling for the type of community support that calls on the truth-telling revealed in the Christian narrative.  Family values and morals are soon tossed about indifferently without a courageous community to speak and teach their basic convictions.

            Similarly, the Christian community needs to speak more candidly and courageously about sex.  Young people, explains Hauerwas, want a compelling reason as to why they shouldn’t roll around in the backseat of a car.  Trying to remember complex ethical arguments don’t do much good in such a situation – and Hauerwas doesn’t have an “ethic” in and of itself that will solve such behavior.  Rather, he explains, “what the young properly demand is an account of the life and the initiation into a community that makes intelligible why their interest in sex should be subordinate to other interests.  What they, and we, demand is the lure of an adventure that captures the imagination sufficiently that conquest means more than the sexual possession of another” (pg. 195).  Hauerwas suggests in this particular essay that marriage and singleness for Christians is such an adventure – and it is an adventure grounded in the hope-filled presence of the Kingdom of God.

            Hauerwas’ approach to abortion draws upon a similar narrative conviction.  He presses the church to understand “why abortion is incompatible with a community whose constitution is nothing less than the story of God’s promise to mankind through the calling of Israel and the life of Jesus” (pg. 224).  This focus on the community, and the community story, re-calibrates our moral questions.  Instead of starting with “why abortion is wrong,” we can ask, “what is it about this community that causes us to exclude abortion?”  Hauerwas explains that it is the basic conviction of the lordship of Jesus Christ: life is not ours to take (pg. 225).  What’s more – this creator is also our redeemer.  What then does this mean for the mothers who are considering abortion – what does a redemptive community that values the sovereignty of God over all of life offer?  For the Christian community, children are our hope; they are our history.  “Children are a sign of the trustworthiness of God’s creation and his unwillingness to abandon the world to powers of darkness” (pg. 227).  Welcoming children into the world then, for the Christian, comes not from just a “sentimental fondness” for babies.  Having children is a significant political act.  Children are “an indication that God, not man, rules this existence, and we have been graciously invited to have a part in God’s adventure and his Kingdom through the simple action of having children” (pg. 228).

            The Christian narrative of Israel and Jesus is not just an old dusty collection of stories.  It is a living adventure that continues to form communities of deep conviction and character.  The Kingdom of God is present in Jesus Christ, and the Christian community remembers its history as it lives in the hope-filled adventure of following after Jesus Christ.

Book Review: The Immanence of God in Larry Rasmussen's "Earth Community, Earth Ethics"

Locating Basic Conviction

            Larry Rasmussen takes us three-quarters of the way through his Earth Community, Earth Ethics before revealing the most important variable of his interpretive method: the immanent nature of God in the cross of Jesus Christ.  However, placing near the end of the book his in-depth discussions on the nature of God in Jesus Christ arguably does not subordinate this theology to an afterthought in his ethical argument.  Rather, the placement serves to illustrate the power and implications of a radically earthbound view of Christ.  Rasmussen’s entire treatise is an outworking of the theology of the cross that he details in the later chapters of Part II on Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Luther’s and Bonhoeffer’s insights on the immanence of God through the cross are powerfully illustrated by looking both back and forward on the path that Rasmussen treks through the book.  What is subtly implied throughout much of the book is finally made explicit in these chapters on the nature of God in Christ.  In the final analysis, though, I wonder if Rasmussen’s sensitivity to ecumenical and multi-faith audiences inadvertently undermines some of the power and thrust of his argument, an argument that is remarkably cohesive throughout the book.

Earth Implications for an Immanent God

            Rasmussen sets out a key aspect of the nature of God in the chapter “Returning to Our Senses” (pp. 270-281).  He uses the theological concept of finitum capax infiniti to show that “being with the gracious God means loving the earth” (p. 272).  In brief, finitum capax infiniti is the Lutheran understanding (argued by Luther and Bonhoeffer, Rasmussen shows) that “the finite bears the infinite and the transcendent is utterly immanent” (p. 272).  This is in contrast to the Calvinist view (and advocated by Barth), which insists just the opposite: “the finite cannot hold the infinite (finitum non capax infiniti)” (p. 272).  The Reformed concern is to proclaim and maintain God’s majesty by placing him at a distance; Lutherans want to proclaim this same majesty, but by bringing God utterly close.  Rasmussen’s summary of infinitum capax infiniti is also, I believe, an apt statement of the theme from Part I of the book: “God is pegged to the earth.  So if you would experience God, you must fall in love with earth” (p. 273).  Part I “Earth Scan” is just such an exercise in falling in love with earth.

            “Earth Scan” comprises just about half of Rasmussen’s material in the book.  In this section, he sets the stage for his pinnacle claim of sustainability by offering a compelling history of Earth’s creation – and of humanity’s recent abuse.  While it is the composite of “Earth Scan” that really makes the case for “falling in love with earth,” there is presently room only to engage with one of Rasmussen’s metaphors.  By describing Earth as “A Slow Womb” (pp. 25-37), Rasmussen offers Earth as a living image of intimacy and dependency.  There is no life without the cradle of the womb; earth’s is a history of formation, growth, and life, and humankind has no history apart from what the earth has provided.  And yet, all so recently and all so quickly, “Think how the crown of earth’s creation / Will murder that which gave him birth, / Ripping out the slow womb of earth” (Vikam Seth’s The Golden Gate, footnote 1, p. 25).  Rasmussen’s scan of earth is a poignant commentary on Seth’s poem.  Rasmussen describes an awesome, mysterious, and lovely earth, and then shows its violent destruction at the hands of humankind.  His underlying argument, then, is that if humanity would love the earth – which humanity should because it was birthed by the earth – then humankind should do everything possible to protect and sustain the earth.  Further, by later arguing for the theological concept of finitum capax infiniti, Rasmussen implicitly connects experiencing God with loving earth.

            I connect Part II “Earth Faith” of Rasmussen’s book with his chapter “The Cross of Reality” (pp. 283-294).  This chapter in particular sets a basic conviction for the nature of God that can serve as a foundation for Rasmussen’s vision of earth community.  It is a unique and unifying chapter because it describes the earth-bound revelation of God in Jesus, the Christ of Nazareth.  Rasmussen is more precisely interested in whether or not the symbols of Jesus’ cross and resurrection add to a formative understanding of loving the earth.  He writes, “In Jesus, we see the kind of God God is” (p. 284).  While we may expect to see a majestic God in glory, power, and triumph, in Jesus we see a God, says Luther, “in weakness and wretchedness, in darkness, failure, sorrow, and despair” (p. 284).  Certainly God is more than this – God is the God of not just the cross but of resurrection – but God’s presence in the turmoil and pain also means that God is there in a loving and saving way.

            It is not enough to just fall in love with the earth, Rasmussen argues.  Earth faith means falling in love with Jesus as well (p. 284).  When we do this, our attention shifts to a new and decisive way of approaching ethics.  Instead of focusing on our own resources and our own power to effect good, the way of Jesus means, “as the starting point itself, entering into the predicaments of others who suffer” (285).  Rasmussen’s earth faith is saturated in compassion – in suffering-with.  There is a simple reason for this: “Until we enter the places of suffering and experience them with those who are entangled there, as God does, we will not be co-redemptive” (p. 286).  Creation will not be healed apart from humankind entering in and experiencing earth’s suffering.  But there is hope here because God is present in the twisted pain of creation’s suffering (p. 287).

            Rasmussen’s basic conviction of God necessitates that we love the earth and that we enter into the suffering of the earth in order to participate in its redemption.  Part III “Earth Community” is a final outworking of the Lutheran conviction that Christ stood “at the center of life” (307).  Rasmussen turns to Bonhoeffer’s theology in the chapter “Song of Songs” (pp. 295-316) to set the stage for an earth ethic of sustainability.  Bonhoeffer’s is a “cosmic Christ, ‘in whom all things cohere’ (Col. 1:17) and in whom ‘the fullness of God was pleased to dwell’ (Col. 1:19)” (p. 299).  The reality of Christ at the center of life means that one cannot experience the reality of God without the reality of the world.  Yet, the fullness of reality is only Jesus Christ, the center of “nature, humanity, and history” (p. 299).  Salvation and redemption are cosmic concepts, where “enslaved nature and broken humanity are redeemed together” (p. 299).  An earth community committed to sustainability can do so with the reality of Jesus Christ at the center of all of life.  Christ at the center means responsibility, action, justice, and compassion.  It means casting off “otherworldly” eyes and remaining grounded on Christ’s very earth (see p. 303).  It is this belief that drives the vision of sustainability for Rasmussen.

            Part III “Earth Action” is an exercise in placing Christ at the center of sustainable practices.  Rasmussen’s sketches of earth communities are implicit examples of the possibilities for embracing and living out the reality of Jesus Christ.  The Danish community of Kalundborg, for instance, exemplifies how businesses can work together to create “cradle-to-cradle” in place of “cradle-to-grave” designs for sustainability (p. 323).  This, then, is a redemptive community in the model of Christ, healing what was destructive to the earth (and to humans).  The suffering of the earth is addressed by abandoning the linear models of industrialization and turning to cyclical and spiral models “that mimic nature as a community” (p. 327).  Community is another key to Rasmussen’s earth ethic.  He rejects sustainable development as green globalism (see p. 328) and instead seeks to advocate for the local tending and healing of the earth.  This is not only healthy for the environment, it strengthens local communities and can provide avenues for holistic redemptive possibilities, in the model of Jesus Christ.

Making Explicit the Implicit

            In sum, Rasmussen argues for the necessity of a moral frame of sustainability: “A world within to match the world without is a requirement of sustainability itself” (p. 344).  Rasmussen reveals that the basic conviction of God as radically immanent supports a strong morality of loving care for the earth in the way and reality of Jesus Christ.  However, he is wont to avoid saying as much and as explicitly.  Rasmussen is after an earth ethic that appeals to and reaches a broad ecumenical and multi-religious constituency.  As such, he writes, “So while cosmologies do matter immensely – we know and act through guiding symbols in significant degree – what matters most are our actions themselves and the world of which they are part and parcel, whether or not they express who we are deep down” (p. 321).  This quote could serve as Rasmussen’s own critique of how I express my argument in this paper, but it also focuses my critique of Rasmussen.  While I suspect that Rasmussen may hold the Lutheran theology and symbols closer to his own heart and convictions than he readily reveals (hence my argument for “implicity”), he seems to argue ultimately that actions make much more of a difference than belief.  I think he makes this argument in part to cast as wide a net as possible for participation in his earth ethic.  He rightly draws on and affirms a wide variety of religious and cultural traditions in affirming earth-sustaining care.  In doing so, he is more interested in offering “symbols” and “stories” than truth claims.  This levels the playing field, but I wonder if it undermines somewhat the power of his argument.  I am not looking for exclusion of other cosmologies, but perhaps for a more unapologetic appropriation of his own.

            Another look at Bonhoeffer’s own theology of belief and obedience also calls into question Rasmussen’s claim that “what matters most are our actions themselves… whether or not they express who we are deep down” (p. 321).  In his book Discipleship, Bonhoeffer writes, “The concept of a situation in which faith is possible is only a description of the reality contained in the following two statements, both of which are equally true: only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe (Bonhoeffer, p. 63).  Here, Bonhoeffer binds faith to action in a way that I find problematic for Rasmussen’s emphasis on action above faith.  For Bonhoeffer, action can only come from a place of belief, just as belief must contain action if it is truly belief.  Partly, I think Rasmussen just wants people to step up and do something for the earth; figuring out one’s cosmology could take years – years that could be spent working towards earth-sustainability.  Also, I think Rasmussen again is proposing a universal earth ethic, and not just a Christian one.  But I would argue that connecting faith and action as Bonhoeffer does actually enhances action and participation in such things as earth care.  I am convinced that belief forms sustaining passion, which can drive an incredibly strong earth-sustaining work ethic.  If we neglect the hard work of indentifying our cosmological foundations, then I think that our action will not have the basis to overcome the persistent suffering that we are bound to face when working for sustainability (or, for that matter, any number of other ethical causes).  Working for the sustaining and ultimately the redemption of the earth requires a deeply held foundational cosmology.  I want to affirm Rasmussen’s description of the nature of God revealed through the reality of Jesus Christ as an effective and formative theology for furthering a sustaining earth ethic.  And I think his argument would be stronger – even ecumenically and multi-religiously stronger – if he explicitly did the same.

Just How Augustinian is Bonhoeffer?

 

Eberhard Bethge’s definitive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer runs to over 1,000 pages in length, and contains only three references to St. Augustine.  Bethge first mentions that Bonhoeffer took a seminar on Augustine’s City of God from Adolf von Harnack in the winter semester of 1925-1926.[1]  During the same period, Bonhoeffer was reading Reinhold Seeberg’s Textbook of the History of Doctrines, from which Bonhoeffer first gained his knowledge on Augustine.[2]  Lastly, Bethge mentions that Bonhoeffer had an affinity for Augustine’s saying that “the heart is restless until it rests in God”; while an assistant pastor in Barcelona in 1928-1929, Bonhoeffer used this quote in several different sermons.[3]  By Bethge’s account (and there is little reason to take issue with it) Martin Luther and especially Karl Barth played a much more prominent role in the shaping and development of Bonhoeffer’s theology.  This seems to suggest that Augustine is present in a number of ways, especially early in Bonhoeffer’s development, but does not readily stand out as a key figure that had a direct and lasting influence on his theological formation.

            Bonhoeffer does make explicit and significant use of Augustine in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, but the great Church Father seems to fade quickly into the background of his subsequent theological work.  Bonhoeffer scholarship at large consequently limits the discussion of Augustine to the early period.[4]  Yet, careful analysis of the primary sources reveals a lasting Augustinian influence in Bonhoeffer’s thought.  The direct citation and appropriation of Augustine retreat after the Barcelona sermons, but the foundations are set for a lifetime of creative and direct application of Augustine’s theology.

            Augustinian influence on Bonhoeffer’s work is particularly evident in regards to his consideration of the Psalms – his favorite portion of Scripture.  The Psalms helped shape his devotional life and influenced his theology, especially during times of considerable hardship and anxiety.  Bonhoeffer was particularly attentive to the message of the psalmist during his time as director of the preacher’s seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 to 1937.  Life Together and the short essay Prayerbook of the Bible were both composed during this period and both contain significant reflections on praying the Psalms.  Here, Bonhoeffer employed a decidedly Augustinian approach to exegesis and hermeneutics; he placed Jesus Christ and the church at the very center of interpretation.  This was Augustine’s approach, in common with many of the Church Fathers, and even Luther much later, but entirely out of step with Bonhoeffer’s education at the University of Berlin, where historical-critical methodology was commonly (if not universally) employed.

            This paper proposes that Bonhoeffer’s commitment to a Christ-centered interpretation of the Psalms derives in part from his continuing appreciation of – and interaction with – Augustine.  Admittedly, Augustine is not the only or even the most important influence upon Bonhoeffer’s Christ-centered approach to exegesis; surely both Barth and Luther played a more active role in this regard.  But to minimize (or overlook altogether) Augustine’s influence on Bonhoeffer’s theological development would lead to a distorted view of Bonhoeffer’s own theological reflections and constructions, especially in regards to Bonhoeffer’s work on the Psalms.  More specifically, the unique meaning of his Prayerbook of the Bible and a pastoral document titled “Meditations on Psalm 119” from 1939-1940 is revealed only when they are read alongside Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms.  Not only is Bonhoeffer’s interpretive methodology for the Psalms clearly elucidated through the lens of Augustine, but Augustine’s own exegesis of Psalm 119 finds surprising parallels in Bonhoeffer’s “Meditation on Psalm 119.”  Scholars have recognized that Bonhoeffer had in his possession a marked-up copy of Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms from 1936.  Even though Bonhoeffer neglected to make reference to (or cite) Augustine in his work on the Psalms, this paper will illustrate that Augustine remained a faithful and vital theological and pastoral interlocutor for him at this crucial time in his life.

            To make this argument, it will be necessary first to set out the specific origins of Augustine’s thought on Bonhoeffer.  Of particular importance will be Bonhoeffer’s discovery of the Augustinian use of the concept sanctorum communio.  Not only did this become the title of Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation, the concept became a defining aspect of his entire theology.  Next, the investigation will describe how Augustine and Bonhoeffer each came to significant interaction with the Psalms.  Their similar, yet distinct, interpretive methods will then be displayed in a comparison of their exegetical work on Psalm 119:1-3.  Finally, the conclusions of Bonhoeffer’s work with the Psalms will be applied to a larger theological project that is seeking to describe the development of Bonhoeffer’s theology of discipleship.  For Bonhoeffer, praying the Psalms was an integral aspect of the “action of discipleship,” which found its true form as Christ-centered belief-obedience.

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[1] See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 67.

[2] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 70.

[3] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 112.

[4] See Barry Harvey, “Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 11-18.

Is Pride the Root of All Sin?

Pride and Sin in the Augustinian Tradition

            Augustine argues that pride is the root of every sin.  In Book XII, chapter 6 of City of God, pride is identified as the cause for the evil angels’ misery; in Book XIV, chapter 13, writing of the first human sin, Augustine similarly asks, “could anything but pride have been the start of the evil will?”[1]  In both sections, Augustine employs the logic behind Ecclus. 10:13: “the beginning of all sin is pride.”[2]  Fallen angels and the first humans both turn their gaze inwards, towards themselves, and in doing so they demonstrate a longing for “a perverse kind exaltation.”[3]  Instead of fixing their gaze upon the immutable God, these creatures – created ex nihilo[4] – seek a change within themselves.  This prideful desire is the beginning of the evil will and quickly leads to the first evil act of disobedience.  Conversely, then, the sign of obedience is humility, and it is humility which in actuality exalts.  For Augustine, this is because, “devout humility makes the mind subject to what is superior.  Nothing is superior to God; and that is why humility exalts the mind by making it subject to God.”[5]  This dichotomy between humility and pride are defining characteristics of Augustine’s two cities.  Love of God is the first prize in the heavenly city, while those abiding in the temporal city seek only to love themselves.[6]

            Augustine’s understanding of pride establishes what becomes a classic theological formulation of sin.  The notion that pride caused the original rebellion against God can be traced from Augustine, through theologians like Thomas Aquinas,[7] and well into twentieth century theology.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, works from the same Ecclus. 10:13-14 passage in his 1939 book Life Together to argue that “the spirit and flesh of human beings are inflamed by pride, for it is precisely in their wickedness that human beings want to be like God.”[8]  Like Augustine before him, Bonhoeffer claims that confession of our inherently selfish pride only comes through identifying with the humiliation of the cross of Jesus Christ.  This theological tradition certainly has its merits; it seems quite clear that pride plays a crucial role in humankind’s rejection of God.  However, recent feminist theology offers a needed critique of the simple notion of equating “pride” with “sin.”

A Necessary Critique

            Bonhoeffer scholar Lisa Dahill points to the abuse and exploitation of women as a warning against a simplistic insistence that one must always humble oneself to overcome any and all sin.  She recounts the story of Shirley, who attended a lecture at her church that explained how Bonhoeffer’s concept of loving one’s enemy involved complete and utter surrender to the “other,” even to the point of surrendering one’s life.  Afterwards, Shirley remarked to the lecturer, “if I had been hearing this theology thirty years ago, I would be dead right now.”[9]  Bonhoeffer’s specific historical and contextual theological expositions on the necessity of self-denial had been universalized by the lecturer to suggest that someone like Shirley, who one night found herself being strangled by a male aggressor, could only overcome the evil through selfless humiliation.  Fortunately that night, Shirley forcefully exerted herself and was able to flee to safety.  Dahill’s point is that Bonhoeffer’s (and thus Augustine’s) unchallenged notions of the relation between selfhood, pride, and sin need to be reassessed, particularly taking into account the experience and theology of those outside a tradition that is so often dominated by Western males.

            It would not be historically and theologically fair to assert that the entirety of Bonhoeffer’s and Augustine’s understanding of sin can be reduced to pride.  Certainly both theologians argue that pride ushered in the first acts of sin, and they both frame their argument around the claim in Ecclus. 10:13 that the root of all sin is pride.  However, William Mann points out that Augustine “is careful to insist that pride is not a component in all sins.”  Some sins, for example, “are committed in ignorance or desperation.”[10]  Mann cites Augustine’s De natura et gratia in offering this clarification.  In City of God, on the other hand, Augustine does not seem to find it necessary to explore conceptions of sin beyond the inherent connection with pride.  And it is this exposition in City of God that serves, at least in part, to establish a dominant and lasting theological understanding of sin. 

Context is the Root of Application

Bonhoeffer certainly relies on this Augustinian tradition of interpretation, but Dahill is right to insist on the necessity of critical contextualization in the appropriation of Bonhoeffer’s theology, especially around the issue of selfhood.  She argues that such a claim “is consistent with Bonhoeffer's own lifelong insistence that truth is never abstract, absolute, or fixed, but requires prayerful, concrete discernment in every new context within the flow of highly complex social-historical circumstances.”[11]  Contemporary theology would then do well to appropriate the likes of Augustine and Bonhoeffer’s claim that pride is the root of all sin with careful nuance.  Application of this theology must be met with deliberate awareness of the potentially disastrous consequences that an unfettered equation of “pride” with “sin” could wreak on the life of someone like Shirley.

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[1] Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (Penguin Classics, 2003), 571.

[2] Augustine, City of God, 477.  The translator renders the verse as “pride is the start of every kind of sin” in the second instance, 571.

[3] Augustine, City of God, 571.

[4] For Augustine, that God creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – is decisive in explaining how sin could have entered the world through God’s good creation: “But only a nature created out of nothing could have been distorted by a fault.  Consequently, although the will derives its existence, as a nature, from its creation by God, its falling away from its true being is due to its creation out of nothing.”  See Augustine, City of God, 572.  William Mann explains that Augustine’s concept of good creation ex nihilo is especially important to Augustine’s work in resolving the problem of evil.  See Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, eds. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41-42.

[5] Augustine, City of God, 572.

[6] Augustine, City of God, 573.

[7] The editor references Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, 2a-2ae, q. 162, a. 7 and Augustine to illustrate the trajectory of this doctrine in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, volume 5 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 111.

[8] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 111.

[9] Lisa Dahill, “Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 3, no. 8 (August 2003), para. 3, http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/August-2003/Readings-from-the-Underside-of-Selfhood-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-and-Spiritual-Formation.aspx (accessed April 17, 2012).

[10] Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” 47.

[11] Dahill, “Reading from the Underside of Selfhood,” para. 6.

Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology Lectures: Liberal and Dialectical Theology on the Way to Discipleship

            The 1933 summer semester at the University of Berlin opened with a massive bonfire of burning books.  Students and professors joined the SA in celebrating May 10 as national “will to live” day by tossing the works of Einstein, Freud, Rathenau, Heuss, and others into the flames; the same spectacle could be observed in university towns all across Germany.  Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, concluded the anti-intellectual ceremony in Berlin by exclaiming, “Oh century, oh scholarship, it is a joy to be alive!”[1]  Among those whose name was ritualistically shouted by the crowd as his book went up in flames was Heinrich Heine.  A century earlier he had written: “When they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.”[2]

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a junior lecturer at the University of Berlin that summer, and he offered a lecture series on Christology.  He considered the course his most demanding and difficult because, as his biographer Eberhard Bethge explains, “he had to bring together all of his thoughts, statements, and experiments and test their validity and foundation.”[3]  Bonhoeffer was now at the high point of his academic career, and the series on Christology forced him to articulate succinctly this aspect of his theology.  However, the course was not carried out in theological isolation.  The stirring events around the rise and rule of Hitler and Nazism were a constant combatant against the core of Bonhoeffer’s being and beliefs.  At one point during the semester, Bonhoeffer chose to cancel a lecture in order to organize and prepare leaflets for church elections.  He led a group of students and German Evangelical church sympathizers in forming the Young Reformation movement to act against the rising influence of the so-called German Christians in church leadership.  The church election was largely rigged in favor of the German Christians, who were swept into power in July of 1933.[4]

            In the midst of these early tumultuous months of Hitler’s rule, Bonhoeffer presents an original and cohesive Christology.  The Christology lectures certainly build and work from concepts developed in earlier works, like his dissertation Sanctorum Communio and his habilitation Act and Being, but they also offer a clear way forward for Bonhoeffer’s emerging theology of discipleship.  Bonhoeffer addresses the central question “who is Jesus Christ” in the lectures.  In doing so, he provides insights that, as was noted by Bethge above, work to bring together all of his experimental thoughts and ideas.

Two sources specifically force Bonhoeffer into the creative work of theological construction: liberal theology and its nemesis dialectical theology both exert a strong influence on Bonhoeffer’s development.  The Christology lectures afford the opportunity to examine how successfully Bonhoeffer appropriated the two divergent theological traditions.  Liberal theology, espoused by his eminent teacher and mentor Adolf von Harnack, relied solely on the science of historical study to discover the human Jesus of Nazareth.  Theologically, however, Bonhoeffer was much more drawn to the emerging work of dialectical theology and its commitment to revelation, represented by Karl Barth.  But Bonhoeffer was never so critical of liberal theology as to dismiss its insights.  Instead, he works, especially in the Christology lectures, to coherently incorporate liberal theology into dialectical theology.  The result, this paper argues, are critical Christological formulations that serve to frame Bonhoeffer’s larger development of a theology of discipleship.  This theology of discipleship acts as both a summary of Bonhoeffer’s driving question, “who is Jesus Christ,” and it provides a compelling way to help formulate a contemporary theological construction of discipleship.[5]

            The paper will proceed in three phases.  First, it will address the historically decisive divide between the liberal theology of Harnack and the dialectical theology of Barth in order to show how Bonhoeffer seeks to provide a critical but fair incorporation of liberal into dialectical theology.  Second, it will show how this move of incorporation propels his construction of a “positive” Christology in the lectures.  Finally, the paper will argue that this positive Christology in turn provides an important framework for Bonhoeffer’s emerging theology of discipleship.

(Excerpt from Winter 2012 seminar paper)

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[1] See Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress: 2000), 279-80 and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932-1933, vol. 12 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 4.  Subsequent references to the English edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works will be abbreviated as DBWE.

[2] Bonhoeffer, DBWE 12, 4.

[3] Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 219.

[4] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 293-95.

[5] This paper is part of a larger historical and constructive theological project that offers the development of a theology of discipleship as a key hermeneutic in the life and thought of Bonhoeffer.

Fully Human and Fully Divine: Searching for Reasonableness in the Mystery

One of the classic challenges of Christology is trying to articulate how Jesus Christ is both and at once fully human and fully divine.  There have been 2000 years of debate on this issue, and much effort was expended especially in the early church to preserve the truth of this seeming contradiction.  One of the classic definitions of the Christian faith came at the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451, with the affirmation of the "hypostatic union," wherein it was upheld that the one person Jesus Christ fully maintained a divine nature and a human nature.  Since that declaration, theologians and philosophers have been trying to metaphysically explain this reality.  And some have been more convincing than others.

Marc A. Hight and Joshua Bohannon are two contemporary philosophers who claim that the metaphysical philosophy of the immaterialist George Berkley (an 18th century Anglican bishop) is the best way to explain the nature of reality and the nature of the Incarnation. (Immaterialsim claims that there are no material things; everything is immaterial, consisting of ideas.)  However, they offer, in my estimation at least, a curious rationale for their study and adoption of an immaterialist ontology.  In their article, “The Son More Visible: Immaterialism and the Incarnation,” they aim to employ Berkeley’s immaterialist framework to offer a “more reasonable way” to explain the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  Doing so, they claim, will show that, “there are strong reasons for thinking that if one wants to be a Christian one ought to be an immaterialist.”[1]  I find their rationale curious because they want to affirm the mystery that is inherently necessary to the Christian faith, but they insist on guarding against any hint of absurdity (i.e. anything that is contrary to reason).  Immaterialism, they argue, provides enough reason to explain the mystery of the Incarnation (and by extension the Christian faith), while leaving enough of the mystery intact for faith to fill the gap.  Just what constitutes “enough” reason and “enough” mystery to be palatable is not explicated.  And I find this curious (if not unsatisfactory).

I am much more sympathetic to an understanding of the Incarnation that is willing to fully embrace the mystery of, in the phrasing of Chalcedon, the hypostatic union.  That Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine is indeed perplexing, and there is certainly room for reasonable debate about how this mysterious union could come about.  But this union is a mystery which no amount of reasoning can satisfy.  I certainly am not advocating for abandoning the theological, historical, and philosophical task of investigating the mysteries of the Incarnation, but I want to be careful to remember that they are first and foremost mysteries.  In this sense, I find a theologian like Dietrich Bonhoeffer helpful.  His “Lectures on Christology,”[2] delivered in the summer semester of 1933 at the University of Berlin, are careful to affirm the mystery of the hypostatic union while offering compelling (and reasonable) explanation and critique of pertinent historical and philosophical issues.

So I return to the question of finding the balance between the mystery and the reasonableness of, specifically, the Incarnation.  Both Hight and Bohannon and Bonhoeffer operate within an internal threshold of what is appropriately reasonable and what should be left to mystery in the Christian faith generally, and the Incarnation specifically.  Both offer thoughtful and coherent arguments, and both offer something productive to the present conversation on models of the hypostatic union.  Just how convincing their arguments are, I suppose, are left to how much mystery I can stomach.  The issues that Hight and Bohannon present really come down to identifying one's level of commitment to reason and mystery as governing principles.  Hight and Bohannon offer important (and largely cohesive and coherent) inner arguments in favor of immaterialism, but I believe their argument is flawed from the beginning because of their assumption that the hypostatic union as traditionally conceived is "absurd."  Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, makes as his starting point the "incomprehensibility" of the Incarnation.  He searches and strives to understand the comprehensible, always knowing that it is most reasonable to grant mystery the upper hand.  In a very real sense, Hight and Bohannon (following Berkeley) are most interested in the "how" question of the Incarnation.  However, if we take our cue from Bonhoeffer, we keep our focus on the "who" question, and that which is absurd and incomprehensible becomes not only reasonable, but alive and at work in the reality of our world here and now.

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[1] Marc A. Hight and Joshua Bohannon, “The Son More Visible: Immaterialism and the Incarnation,” Modern Theology 26.1 (2010): 120.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Lectures on Christology,” in Berlin: 1932-1933, DBWE 12, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 299-360.