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. 

What's the connection between the Sermon on the Mount and religionless Christianity?

This weekend I will be presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco to the Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis section.  I have time to present just the final section of an almost 50 page paper that traces the development of the Sermon on the Mount throughout the entirety of his writings.  My presentation will focus on how the Sermon on the Mount is a key to understanding Bonhoeffer's concept of religionless Christianity in a world come of age.  The full version of the paper will be archived in the Bonhoeffer Collection at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

I've included a paragraph from the paper below.

... The previous sections of the paper demonstrate that the Sermon on the Mount occupies a prominent place throughout much of Bonhoeffer’s theological thought.  It forms the foundation of his peace ethic, helps him describe the life of discipleship, and nuances his understanding of a Christian ethic.  Moreover, the Sermon continues to influence and shape Bonhoeffer’s emerging theological direction, especially as it is worked out in Letters and Papers from Prison.  To be sure, in Bonhoeffer’s later writings, the Sermon on the Mount itself is not nearly as dominant and pressing an issue as, say, the implication of religionless Christianity.  At this stage in Bonhoeffer’s thought, the application of the Sermon may not have remained of much concern to him.  At times, Bonhoeffer himself wonders at his own previous understanding and interpretation of the Sermon.  In a letter to Eberhard Bethge, for example, he admits that he cannot learn to have faith simply by living a saintly life, and “I suppose I wrote Discipleship at the end of that path.”[1]  Has Bonhoeffer, then, finally found it necessary to move beyond the Sermon in order to articulate his new theological direction?  On the contrary, the Sermon retains a vital position in his writings both leading up to and during his time in prison.[2]  It is the fact that Bonhoeffer’s theology is founded on the Sermon on the Mount that allows him to press for the emerging concept of religionless Christianity in a world come of age.

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[1] Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 486.

[2] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940-1945, vol. 16 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Mark S. Brocker (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006).

Almost Christian

As I continue to reflect on the urgent task of discipleship formation, I am taking some time to revisit the work of Kenda Creasy Dean, one of my professors from Princeton Seminary.  I appreciate her research, writing, and teaching because it focuses on youth ministry as a vital indicator of the wider church's faith practice.  She rightly understands the too-often mediocre faith of our youth not as a symptom of teenage apathy and indifference, but as the reflection of our own faith communities.  Basically, she says that a hip youth pastor is not the most important factor in the development of faith obedience in our youth; rather, the faith of the particular church community as a whole is a reflection of the adults' and parents' faith, and this often low-commitment faith is reflected in the low-commitment faith of the youth.  But the tragedy is not just that this faith is apathetic; what is happening instead is that a new form of spirituality is replacing traditional and orthodox Christianity in our youth ministries and churches.  The Christian Faith is rapidly disintegrating into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

In her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, Dean summarizes the five guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Diesm: (Note that this entire book is based on the ground-breaking National Study of Youth and Religion)
1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (See page 14).

Does any of this sound familiar?  More and more youth in more and more churches are defining their "Christian" faith in these terms.  And, with Dean, I believe that this trend must be stopped with a clear and deep theology and practice of discipleship.  At the center of this change will be the distinct affirmation of the mission of God.  To participate in God's ways means to love others as God loves; it means a turning away from self and a turning towards the world.  This is an easy thing to say and write, but it will take an immense paradigm shift in the culture of our churches. 

I am full of hope - because of the promise and power of God's Spirit to move among us.  My prayer is that as God's Spirit moves, we will learn to listen, and we will learn to believe and obey - not only understanding but also living in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  When we take seriously the call of following-after Jesus Christ, the life and witness of our churches will shine the bright light of hope and redemption.  God will continue to pour out his Spirit, and "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). 

Discipleship needs the raw reality of friendship

One of my dilemmas in thinking about a theology of discipleship is the very practical "what" question.  What does this actually look like in the life of a church, for a small group ministry, even within an academic institution like a seminary or college?  This often ultimately comes down to a question of curriculum - a group after all needs something to do when tackling issues of discipleship.  However, I am often quite dissatisfied with the standard "discipleship" curriculum that is in current use.  Now, I believe that such curriculum has its place, and I am sure that it has played a crucial role for people in establishing key components of the Christian life.  But most discipleship curriculum also runs the grave risk of perpetuating a very narrow and limited view of discipleship, often just schooling people in the basic spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, worship, and fellowship.  These disciplines certainly must never be neglected, but they can also never be simply the end of our "discipleship" training.  And my fear is that when we lead people through these types of discipleship workbooks, we perpetuate a tragically limited practice and theology of discipleship.

The argument of course is that people need to start somewhere, and so they need to start by building good spiritual habits.  Again, you won't hear me saying that there is anything wrong with personal spiritual disciplines - but when we talk about discipleship, we are talking about something much greater, something that encompasses the entirety of our lives.  We are, after all, talking about what it means to follow-after Jesus Christ.  And I certainly hope that a life of following Jesus Christ means more than reading my Bible everyday. 

But what do we teach people to do in their following Jesus?

Here we come to the heart of the issue - that is the wrong question.  Discipleship is not a task; it is how we live life.  It is a worldview.  It is a set of beliefs that so permeate our lives that every decision we make is a part of our discipleship.  After all, if discipleship is following-after Jesus Christ, how could our every move and every relationship be anything but another unique aspect of the life of discipleship?

I want, then, to propose that discipleship requires much more than a curriculum and workbook.  It needs relationships; and more, discipleship needs dear friendships.

This hit me the other night talking with - who else - some friends.  There we were, informally hanging out, but I would say quite formally talking about the real hardships, joys, and questions of life.  As friends, we could be honest and share hurts and struggles.  As friends, we could laugh and relax.  As friends, we offer prayers and encouragement.  And I want to say that as friends we were in that moment growing in the life of discipleship.  We were not only learning from each other, but experiencing quite tangibly what it means to live life following-after Jesus Christ.

I went home that evening with a renewed energy to read and meditate on scripture and pray - and I had this desire not because of a curriculum workbook, but because I had, through my friends, pressing issues to pray and think on.

So, what I want to say is that when we are teaching people about discipleship, we really need to teach them how to be a good friend.  As disciples, we are called to journey with each other and be with and for each other.  Bonhoeffer describes Jesus as the man-for-others, and so we as Christians are called to be ultimately for-others - for our friends, our neighbors, and ultimately for all the world.  This is the "loving more" theme that I wrote about last time.

I wonder if discipleship can be separated from friendship?  It's curious - Bonhoeffer participated in the conspiracy against Hitler in large part because his close family and friends were deeply involved in the plot.  So, Bonhoeffer's discipleship was intricately linked to his relationships/friendships.

I guess I am trying to get at the fact that discipleship is most potent when it rubs up against others in our life.  And life is not a series of habits.  Life is the journey of discipleship, best experienced in the raw reality of friendship.

The "what" question of teaching people about discipleship just got a lot more complicated and nuanced.  And more fulfilling.

Turning away from loving less

I'm constantly amazed with the people that God puts in my path.  We've moved quite a bit in the last few years, but God always blesses us with special and unique friendships.  Last night I was out late with a couple of these friends, just sitting out in the warm evening talking about life and, in this case, the difficult joy of trying to follow God's call on our lives.  We inevitably end up talking about the church when we get together, and we are all burdened with a longing for the church to be something more - or, to put it a better way, to live into what it really is.

So when I got home late last night, I felt I should meditate a little on John's letters to the seven churches in Revelation.  I only had to read about the church in Ephesus in chapter 2 before coming upon my prayer, in verse 4: "Nevertheless, I have this complaint to make: you have less love now than formerly."  That stings.  Less love now than before.  How true is that, in my own life, in all our lives, and so subsequently in the churches.  Now, I'm not trying to be a downer on the church.  The church is real, it is alive, but God certainly weighs in a complaint every now and then.  And so, I'm praying first that I can repent of my less love, and I'm praying that the church will repent of less love.

But what does this mean?  Less love than what?  Than when?  The text says less love than before...  Perhaps, before, when I was more zealous, or more trusting, or more willing.  Perhaps before, when the church reached out to those in need, when it believed in and was laser focused on its mission to be the gospel in every nook and cranny of society.  Before, when the church did not exist to subsist as an institution, but as a living witness to the very reality of God's revelation in Jesus Christ.

So, this has been my prayer today.  That I would repent of loving less, and that the church would repent of loving less.  And I meditate on the promise in Revelation 2:7: "Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying: those who prove victorious I will feed from the tree of life set in God's paradise."  Certainly the fruit from the tree of life will be bursting with the fullness of love.

And I'm finally struck because one of my friends from this late night hang out is preparing to set off for Santa Cruz to plant a church.  And he's picked up on this - that the Christian life is about loving more.  I think he's on to something.  New City Church Santa Cruz is about loving God, loving people, and loving more; and that is the truth and reality that we all need to bear witness to and experience.

Leadership Development and Discipleship

I just had a few quick thoughts I wanted to get down...

I'm starting to think more about the relationship between discipleship and leadership development, especially in the context of ministry and church planting.  What is the difference between them?  Can one take place without the other?  At the moment, I feel like the questions of discipleship need to be addressed prior to the issues of leadership development, because I think that leadership development will come naturally out of discipleship.  Maybe focusing on leadership development without first establishing a clear sense of discipleship among potential leaders is like putting the cart before the horse.  But I'm thinking that a first step of discipleship formation is learning how to listen both individually and collectively to God's call.  Leadership development can have a sense of go-go-go (at least, that's how I can feel about it).  And there's certainly nothing wrong with urgency and leadership growth.  However, the urgency can sometimes overwhelm us, and we can lose sight of (or even never really grasp) the work and will of God in our unique situation.  I believe that starting with discipleship serves as a sort of guard against just developing leaders for the sake of having leaders.  More importantly, I think, is the issue of discernment.  How do we learn, and how do we teach our leaders a posture of listening and of the subsequent readiness to respond to God's unique call.  When we talk about leadership development in ministry - and especially in church planting - I want to talk first about discipleship.  Because I sense that all too often we can develop leaders apart from disciples; but I think it would be difficult to develop disciples apart from leaders.

Revelation as the Foundation of Discipleship in the Theology of Barth and Bonhoeffer

Here's the introduction to my recent seminar paper...

            It is a fascinating theological exercise to investigate the places of contention, disagreement, and misunderstanding between the two theological giants Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  While belonging to the same dialectical-theological camp, and united in their opposition to the National Socialists as leaders in the Confessing Church, there are striking theological differences.  A natural place to start to investigate this question is at the end of Bonhoeffer’s career, when he accuses Barth, his mentor, of “positivism of revelation.”[1]  Barth is aghast, and perhaps rightly so, for he feels misunderstood and misinterpreted; he then offers his own less-than-enthusiastic critique of the mysterious direction of Bonhoeffer’s “worldly” theology in Letters and Papers from Prison.[2]  Further divergences can be traced to different emphases within their respective Reformed and Lutheran traditions, as in their differing explanations of the dictum, finitum non capax infiniti – the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.  As a Lutheran, Bonhoeffer feels he can challenge the Reformed interpretation, and Barth makes his own defense of it in his Church Dogmatics.[3] 

Most of these issues have already been thoroughly explored in Barth and Bonhoeffer studies.  Scholars such as Charles Marsh, Andreas Pangritz, and Heinz Tödt offer valuable in-depth analysis and evaluation of these and other issues.[4]  What is more, while Barth and Bonhoeffer clearly have their differences, these differences seem to be a matter of nuance and emphasis, rather than points of major theological divergence.  Most of the seemingly glaring disagreements can be settled as nothing more than misinterpretations or misunderstandings.  In fact, both men are, in large part, pursuing similar theological projects, and their differences are often not much more than matters of focus.[5]  The German theologian Heinz Tödt suggests that a way forward in the Barth and Bonhoeffer discussion is instead to focus on the meeting and merging of their understanding of revelation and the world and its impact for today.[6]  This paper builds upon Tödt’s suggestion by exploring the convergence of the concept of revelation as it relates to a theology of contemporary discipleship in the thought of Barth and Bonhoeffer.

Barth introduces his concept of revelation in a lengthy chapter entitled, “The Revelation of God” in Church Dogmatics I/1 and I/2, and he continues to treat the concept throughout the entirety of this work.  Bonhoeffer’s approach is quite different.  Never having produced a systematic theology, his explanations of revelation are scattered throughout his books, papers, and letters, building and working off of each other.  It is admittedly difficult, therefore, and at worst inaccurate, to organize the convergence of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s understanding of revelation into three over-arching movements, as in this paper.  However, the purpose here is not only to describe the similarities and unique nuances of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s respective concepts of revelation, but to explore these understandings in terms of setting a foundation for a contemporary theology of discipleship.  With this goal in mind, it is appropriate and necessary to propose three aspects of revelation that are readily present in both Barth and Bonhoeffer: revelation is first and foremost Trinitarian; revelation is then Christological-ecclesial; and revelation is finally ethical, in its existence as faith and obedience.  These are certainly not comprehensive categories for describing the concept of revelation in Barth and Bonhoeffer.  What they attempt to offer, however, is a clear framework for understanding a theological foundation for a life of following Jesus Christ.

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[1] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. John de Gruchy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 364, 373, 429.

[2] Cf. Charles Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology (Oxford: University Press, 1994), 25f.

[3] Cf. Joachim von Soosten, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” in Sanctorum Communio, vol. 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Clifford Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 302.  Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, vol. 2 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 84 and editor’s note 7.  Cf., for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (CD) I/1 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), 407f.

[4] Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 3-33; Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000); Pangritz, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Within, not Outside, the Barthian Movement’,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 245-282; Heinz Eduard Tödt, “Belief in a Non-Religious World: Must One Choose Between Barth and Bonhoeffer?” in Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context, English edition, ed. Glen Stassen (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), 30-39.  Additionally, see Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 175-177; Ralf Wüstenberg, A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 60-65.

[5] Marsh, for example, suggests that “the way to make sense of Bonhoeffer’s theological relationship to Barth is to distinguish, as Barth does, between the primary and secondary objectivity of God.”  Barth stresses the primary objectivity of God’s aseity while Bonhoeffer focuses his attention on God’s promeity.  Cf. Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 31.

[6] Tödt, “Belief in a Non-Religious World: Must One Choose Between Barth and Bonhoeffer?” 39.