Nevertheless, I've become more convinced about the "invisible" influence of Civil religion. Often this is clearly visible to us in the Nazis:

However, I find the conflation of Nazi Civil religion and their nationalistic Faith with Christianity all too similar to American Civil religion with its own form of Faith and Christianity. We ought not confuse Civil religion and Christian faith. In years past, American Civil religion was called manifest destiny -- racist colonization by another name. Today, we find this coming straight from the lips of Messianic politics -- quite obvious with Sarah Palin in her closing remarks for the VP debate, asserting with McCain an American exceptionalism and moral superiority based in some sort of faith (albeit not the Christian God, and I've already dealt with it here some months back) and less obvious with Obama's assertion about the state in his closing remarks on that speech about race months back.

There is so much rhetoric this election cycle, I'm getting sick. Seriously, it makes me nauseous. To so easily confuse state salvation and justice with a Christian idea of salvation and justice, and to speak it over and over through the TV -- functioning like theologians for the state -- will kill us and thousands around the globe. How do we as participants in the Kingdom of God -- peacemakers -- really compete with this or is this country simply lost?

Jesus is Lord, and therefore, Caesar (our state) and Mammon (our economic system) is not.

Just moments ago on Friday afternoon, October 10th, Dr. Greg Thornbury of Union University in Jackson, TN gave an address at "The Politics of Jesus" conference at the First Baptist Church of Durham, NC entitled "Marriage: If Not Sacred - What?"  The young theologian of rising renown spoke with characteristic eloquence and punch in his talk, questioning as he went along the helpfulness of natural law theory, the state of marriage in the current, the need to evangelize through biography, and the duty of the church to place itself in the midst of society as a light in darkness. 

“Marriage: If Not Sacred – What?”

I. Opening Excursus on the Promises and Disappointments of Natural Law

a. Key Matters

With the foundational consensus crumbling, how can the church even speak of marriage in the culture in a manner which would gain a hearing?  Is marriage within evangelical life flourishing to the point that it commends marriage to the unbelieving world?  In what way can a common language be advanced in the matter of public law, and how should local churches respond to this cultural change?

b. 2008 may well be remembered as the year when the apple lost its shine relative to natural law theory and marriage

c. Evangelical media personalities are now the stuff of parody

d. Henry—conservative evangelicals never heeded his call to social responsibility but had adopted posturing, overheated rhetoric, and “logically irreconcilable one-liners”

Bad: “Not Adam and Steve, it’s Adam and Eve in the Bible”

e. Neo-thomists are legion, for they are many—Sproul, George, Geisler

                        Hope for natural law is high now

f. We Christians like the “silver bullet” idea—we seek the one solution that will cure all our problems

1. Some now think that pure reason, cool analysis, is the answer for evangelical political woes; natural law is the answer!, some say.

2. (Sarcastically) Shame on Carl Henry, Karl Barth, Jacques Ellul and Stanley Hauerwas for their biblical idealism

3. Thornbury: I had an opportunity to speak to a Washington legal group and was told that my talk could not include any Scriptures; I am skeptical that such an approach could work

g. Is Optimism in the power of Natural Law justified?

1. Straussians, Stephen Pinker, Leon Kass, Roman Catholic Intrigue, and Jabba the Hut

i. Pinker: Concept of dignity is natural ground on which to build a ground for bio-ethics. 

ii. Church is franchised to guide people in the most important events of people’s lives.

iii. Thornbury: If you want to cite Roman Catholics this much, just go ahead and cite Scripture

iv. Sooner or later, you will encounter a Jabba the Hut who recognizes that natural law theorists are ultimately Catholic or Catholic-influenced

2. Also, while truth may be objective (ala natural law), knowledge is always personal (cf Polanyi)

i. Also, do we really trust public reason?  We should not be too optimistic about pure reason; 30% of Americans believe in UFOs

ii. I do not dislike natural law theory altogether but I do think it is a bad fit for a postmodern age

II. The Foundational Consensus on Marriage Crumbles

a.      Bans in trouble

1. California State Court overturned the marriage amendment

2. Marriage issues are off the radar due to the economic crisis

3. 33% of evangelicals have no problem with same-sex marriage in some polls

b.      Evangelical’s house not in order

1. Evangelicals divorce at the same rate as the culture

2. Barna Group: in area of divorce rates, evangelicals are just like the culture

3. What can help us regain credibility in the culture?

III. Community, Narrative, Biography, and Public Policy

a.      Our weakness on the marriage issue is in the area of authenticity

1.       How about a seminar on how to forgive as a Christian?  To forgive as a spouse?

b.      The language of life action almost always speaks louder than speech—we need to acquire a Jesus “skill set”

c.       The remarkable claims of Athenagoras

1.       Recounted injustices Christians suffered

2.      Implored persecutors to examine the lives of Christians—prayed for the country, group did not commit abortions, no accusation would stick to the group

d.      Defending the Power of Narrative Theology

1.       Some evangelical leaders have recently said that Christianity is not a life, but a body of doctrine

2.      The Christian life tells a body of doctrine better than any other medium!

3.      Biography is an ideal medium for the current day; could not stories of inspiring lives mean as much as syllogistic arguments?

                                          i.    We know that we are sinners; we need to tell our own stories of sin and redemption

                                          ii.    We should tell stories with moral clarity and courage, just like numerous Hollywood movies (Juno, for example)

IV. Four Questions for Testing the Authenticity of Narratives in Public Policy

a.      Is there “articularity”? (literary data) Can you tell the story articulately?

Charles Taylor: the key power of an idea’s power is articularity, not inarticulateness

b.      How deeply rooted in the tradition of the culture in question is the story? (biblical data) Scriptures are part of our culture, so we should use them; they are part of our cultural literacy

How well have the Islamic scriptures contributed to society?

c.       What is the shape of the narrative? (sociological data) Sociological data continues to suggest that a home with a dad and a mom is the happiest of all forms

Example of a salesclerk who did not know what a wedding was like and wanted to find out; natural curiosity

d.      Is there explanatory power to the story? (natural law) Can we not say that nature creates an inherent complementarity between the sexes?

Knowledge can be experienced by communities, individuals, societies; in this sense it is strongest, not when it is merely cognitive

V. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Time”

a.      The confessing church struggled mightily in Nazi Germany to stem the tide of evil

The broad majority of citizens trusted Hitler and his government; Bonhoeffer did not

b.      “Do not seek great things for yourselves” (Jer. 45:5) Bonhoeffer quoted this line from Jeremiah to establish the fact that God would save the soul and that even if God destroyed Germany, He would save the souls even as the building burnt to the ground

Conclusion

1. The church stands not at the boundaries of culture, but in the middle of the village

2. The church does not stand in the halls of power; it does not seek power; it must stand in the midst of the village, giving biographies to those who desperately need the Lord Jesus Christ

"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. What does this mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means, second,  a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity."

Life Together
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Pg. 21 

After God gave the promise to Abraham, he gave the law to Moses.  Why?  Simply because he had to make things worse before he could make them better.  The law exposed sin, provoked sin, condemned sin.  The purpose of the law was, as it were, to lift the lid off man's respectability and disclose what he is really like underneath -- sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgment of God, and helpless to save himself.  And the law must still be allowed to do its God-given duty today.  One of the great faults of the contemporary church is the tendency to soft-pedal sin and judgment.  Like false prophets we 'heal the wound of God's people lightly' (Je. 6:14; 8:11).  This is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it:  'It is only when one submits to the law that one can speak of grace ... I don't think it is Christian to want to get to the New Testament too soon and too directly.'(1)  We must never bypass the law and come straight to the gospel.  To do so it to contradict the plan of God in biblical history.  Is this not why the gospel is unappreciated today?  Some ignore it, others ridicule it.  So in our modern evangelism we cast our pearls (the costliest pearl being the gospel) before swine.  People cannot see the beauty of the pearl, because they have no conception of the filth of the pigsty.  No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself.  It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin that the gospel shines forth.  Not until the law has bruised and smitten us will we admit our need of the gospel to bind up our wounds.  Not until the law has arrested and imprisoned us will we pine for Christ to set us free.  Not until the law has condemned and killed us will we call upon Christ for justification and life.  Not until the law has driven us to despair of ourselves will we ever believe in Jesus.  Not until the law has humbled us even to hell will we turn to the gospel to raise us to heaven.

(1) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Letters and Papers from Prison" (Fontana, 1959), p. 50.

--From "The Message of Galatians" (The Bible Speaks Today series: London and Downers Grove: IVP, 1968), p. 93.

Sola Dei Gloria

you constantly hear negative associations made with "organized religion", or just religion in general.  and right now the king of smugness, bill maher, is releasing his "documentary" religulous, lampooning people of faith.  but gandhi is an example of how that religion is not only not the "opiate of the masses" or a refuge of scoundrels, but it is the greatest inspiration for good mankind has known, and has a far more positive then negative effect on the world.  think of the 20th century, and all the figures who did the most to work for peace and a positive change in our world - gandhi, martin luther king, jr., mother teresa, nelson mandela, the dalai lama, pope john paul II, jimmy carter (yeah, that's right, jimmy carter!), dorothy day, gustavo gutierrez, thich nhat hahn, haile selassie, mother jones, maharishi mahesh yogi, bhaktivedanta swami prabhupada, bono (what?!?!), thomas merton, desmond tutu, dietrich bonhoeffer, bob marley (his influence is far greater then just being an amazing musician - i'm living proof), and on and on - they were all motivated primarily by their faith.  whereas the worst dictators and greatest monsters - mao, stalin, hitler, mussolini, pol pot, etc. (and yes, hitler & mussolini were "raised catholic", but neither was a practitioner of the faith, if anything hitler was an occultist) all lacked faith.  and look throughout history and see the lives of all the saints and their examples and they far outnumber those who abused the christian faith for political gain.  and look at all the teachings of the greatest religious leaders - jesus, the buddha, lao-tzu, confucius, zoroaster, mahavira, guru nanak, and the pantheon of hindu deities.  read their teachings and you see the heart of the faiths they represent and that these are positive forces in this world.  yes, we have a fundamentalist crisis occuring in the world today, particularly in the middle east and in the islamic religion, but i still stand by my belief that faith and religion or spirituality or whatever you want to call it makes a person better.  people can and do use these things to further their own agendas and for their own gain, and a negative minded person can make a positive thing negative, but they are the exceptions i say.  and now, some words of wisdom from the mahatma.

Faith gains in strength only when people are willing to lay down their lives for it.  Faith is not like a delicate flower which would wither away the' slightest' stormy-'weather.  Robust faith in oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so-called or real, is the best safeguard.  A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of majority.  What is faith if it is not translated into action?  Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart.  Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live. Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs matchless and pure strength of faith.  Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God.  My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.  My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness.  Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.  Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion -human religion- but any number of faiths.

Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self controlled.

All your scholarship would be in vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions.

Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.  Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be cruel joke.  Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless corrupt.  Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering without the intoxicating excitement of killing.  Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.  Disobedience to be civil implies discipline, thought, care, attention.  Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation.  Non-cooperation and civil disobedience are different but branches of the same tree call Satyagraha (truth-force).

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.

The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation.

The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.  (attn:  u.s. government!!!)

Unless discipline is rooted in nonviolence, it might prove a source of infinite mischief.

For a nonviolent person, the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.

The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal.

Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realization of the "Kingdom of God" within you and on this earth.

True nonviolence should mean a complete freedom from illwill and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.  This freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth.

Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.

Moral results can only be produced by moral restraints.  Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.  True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.  To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions.  Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible.

My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all-embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount the distress or exploitation of other nationalities.

Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms.  Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used.  Passive resistance is a misnomer for nonviolent resistance. It is active than violent resistance.  Passive resistance, unlike nonviolence, has no power to change men' s hearts.  The sword of passive resistance does not require a scabbard.  Jesus Christ, Daniel and Socrates represented the purest form of passive resistance or soul force.

A person who has realized the principle of nonviolence has the God-given strength for his weapon and the world has not yet known anything that can match it.

I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor.

The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory.

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.

Truth is what the voice within tells you.  Truth is the right designation of God.  Truth and nonviolence will never be destroyed.  Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it.  Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.  Truth and untruth often con-exist; good and evil often are found together.  Truth is self-evident, nonviolence is its maturest fruit, it is contained in Truth, but is not self-evident.  Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength.  Truth, which is permanent, eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history.  Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be.  Truth is the first to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you.  An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.  Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.  The quest of truth involves self-suffering, sometimes even upto death.  Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.

God never made man that he may consider another man as an untouchable.  To say that a single human being, because of his birth, becomes an untouchable, unapproachable, or invisible, is to deny God.

If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Each one has to find peace from within.  And to be real, peace must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Peace is its own reward.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Hatred can only be overcome by love.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS.

There are loads of great quotes and here are a few

"Only those who give thanks for little things receive the great things well."

"Pastors should not complain about their congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God.  Congregations have not been entrusted to them in order that they would become accusers of their congregations before God and their fellow human beings.  When pastors lose faith in a Christian community in which they have been place and begin to make accusations against it, they had better examine themselves first to see whether the underlying problem is not their own idealized image, which should be shattered by God."

"Like Christian sanctification, Christian community is a gift of God to which we have no claim.  Only God knows the real condition either our community or our sanctification.  What may appear weak and insignificant to us may be great and glorious to God."

hmm.  Things to think about.

"There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God's reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world. The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. The world has no reality of its own independent of God's revelation in Christ. It is a denial of God's revelation in Jesus Christ to wish to be 'Christian' without being 'worldly,' or to which to be worldly without seeing and recognizing the world in Christ. Hence, there are not two realms, but only the one realm of the Christ-reality,  in which the reality of God and the reality of the world are united."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 58.

"The whole world is the Holy Grail, for it recived into itself and contains Christ's precious blood and water [John 19:34]. The whole world is the chalice of Christ's blood and water; the whole world partook of them in communion in the hour of Christ's death. And the whole world hides the blood and water within itself. A drop of Christ's blood dripped upon Adam's head and redeemed Adam, but also all the blood and water of Christ that flowed forth into the world santified the world. This blood and water made the world a place of the presence of Christ's power, prepared the world for its future transfiguration, for the meeting with Christ come in glory."

-- Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist (Hudson, NY: Lindsfarne, 1997), 44.

What do others think of these sorts of Christological construals of the world, revelation, and eschatology?

Ich habe dann nachgelesen und durfte feststellen, dass der erste Unterschied darin besteht, dass die Seraphim sechs Flügel haben, die Cherubim nur vier. Zudem seien die Seraphim die Engel, die Gottes Thron unablässig das „Kadosh“, das „Heilig“ singend umkreisen. Die Cherubim, die in der Rangfolge den Seraphim folgen, seien dagegen vor allem damit befasst, Gottes Thron zu tragen.

Mit dem 29. September feiern wir den Festtag des Erzengels Michael und aller Engel. Die Erzengel und die restlichen „normalen“ Engel kommen erst ganz am Ende einer streng hierarchisch gegliederten Aufstellung, wenn man den angelologischen Systemen folgen will.

Der Erzengel Michael ist der Namenspatron der Kirche, in der wir regelmäßig die alt-katholischen Gottesdienste in Erfurt feiern: Der Michaeliskirche. Ich nehme an, dass dieser Name damals gewählt wurde, weil die im 12. Jahrhundert erbaute Michaeliskirche anfänglich die Kirche der aus dem jüdischen Glauben zum christlichen Glauben konvertierten Christinnen und Christen war, und Michael als der Schutzengel des Volkes Israel gilt (vgl. Daniel 12,1 & apokryphes Henoch-Buch).

Uns Christinnen und Christen der heutigen Zeit in die Vorstellung von Engeln mittlerweile etwas fern. Und das, obschon sie uns alleine im Neuen Testament an 175 Stellen begegnen, davon alleine 67 mal in der Offenbarung: Sie begegnen uns als Überbringer von Botschaften und Aufträgen Gottes, als diejenigen, welche die Apostel nach Ostern stärken, als Wesen, die Jesus jederzeit zu Diensten stehen, als Begleitung des Menschensohnes beim Vollzug des Endgerichtes, ein paar mal auch als Schutzengel und nicht zuletzt auch als „gefallener“ Engel.

Dennoch haben wir das Spielfeld der Angelologie, der Lehre von den Engeln, eher esoterischen Kreisen überlassen. - Und damit befinden wir uns in guter Gemeinschaft mit der Urchristenheit. In den ersten drei Jahrhunderten gab es im Christentum keine besondere Lehre von den Engeln. Sie wurden zwar mit großer Selbstverständlichkeit als existent angenommen, aber die Frage nach ihnen wurde nicht groß reflektiert. Erst im 6. Jahrhundert tauchte schließlich eine erste systematische Angelologie auf.

Wenn wir uns nun über die Frage Gedanken machen wollen, ob die Vorstellung von Engeln auch heute noch für unseren Glauben eine relevante Größe ist, sollten wir vielleicht ganz einfach bei dem Begriff „Engel“ ansetzen. Übersetzt heißt das griechische Wort „Angelos“, von dem sich unser deutsches „Engel“ ableitet schlicht „Bote“ oder auch „Botschafter“. Ein Botschafter, der immer in der Funktion auftritt, stellvertretend für Gott etwas mitzuteilen. Die Engel repräsentieren die himmlische Welt und ihr Erscheinen ist eine Offenbarung der jenseitigen Welt in die irdische Welt hinein. Eine Offenbarung des Reiches Gottes mitten in unserer Welt. Der Beginn von Heil in unseren unheilen Strukturen.

Ich denke, in vielen Vorstellungen von Engeln drückt sich dann auch diese Sehnsucht aus: dass dieses Heil Gottes in seiner Fülle hier und jetzt geschehen möge, und nicht nur etwas Jenseitiges ist, auf das wir uns vertrösten lassen müssen.

In solch einer verständlichen Sehnsucht nach der Fülle des Heils, nach absoluter Reinheit und Geisterfülltheit erinnert uns der Theologe und Schriftsteller Fulbert Steffensky allerdings auch daran, dass Jesus selbst nicht unbedingt engelhafte Züge trägt: „Was ist schon engelhaft an einem, der in einem Stall geboren ist; der seine staubigen Lebenswege geht; der versucht werden konnte wie wir alle und der umgebracht wird wie viele von uns. Die Engel sind die Fernen, die Leidlosen, die Starken und die bisweilen Schrecklichen. Sie mögen helfen, zumindest hier und da. Aber sie sind keine Geschwister. Geschwisterlich ist nur ein Wesen, das leidet wie wir selber; das liebt, wie wir lieben, und das stirbt, wie wir sterben.“

Vielleicht ernüchtern diese Worte etwas, aber sie setzen den Glauben auch mit beiden Beinen wieder auf den Boden der Realität, den man über dem Phantasieren über die Welt der Engel vielleicht unter den Füßen zu verlieren droht.

Uns Christinnen und Christen ist es mitgegeben, dem Nächsten zur Schwester und zum Bruder zu werden. In Worten und Taten, die mit dem ganz realen Leben, und dem Leid, was es nur zu häufig mit sich bringt, zu tun haben.

Schenken wir der Gewissheit, dass Gott auf diesem Weg der Nachfolge mit uns ist, uns stärkt und bewahrt, was sich in der Vorstellung von den Schutzengeln ausdrückt, doch ganz einfach Bodenhaftung. Eine Bodenhaftung, mit deren Hilfe wir selber alle zu Engeln werden, zu Botschaftern von Gottes Heil in dieser Welt, zu Offenbarungen von Gottes Reich auf dieser Erde. Indem Menschen durch unsere Blicke, unsere Liebe, unsere Barmherzigkeit und Weitherzigkeit, und nicht zuletzt durch unser anpackendes Tun erfahren, dass Gott präsent ist, dass wir in allem Unheil - wie Dietrich Bonhoeffer das ausdrückte - immer auch von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen sind, behütet und getröstet wunderbar.

Gott ist mit uns am Abend und am Morgen und ganz gewiss an jedem neuen Tag.

Fotograf: depone - Quelle: www.flickr.de

So how are we to pray for those brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering the attacks of serious illness like terminal cancer? I'm not the first to ask this question, and I certainly won't the last. Who hasn't struggled, as I do now, to know what to say and how to pray for my friend who is face-to-face with this ravaging disease? Sure, I email him once in a while, and give him a phone call, but even in those brief contacts, I'm usually at a significant loss for words. And to be frank, I'm not always much clearer in how to pray for him either. 

I am confident from Scripture and from the stories of God's people that God can and will sometimes heal people of their illnesses, but I'm also very aware of the reality that he often doesn't. When God does heal, we rejoice, realizing that healing in this present age is a sign of eschatological hope of the kingdom of God to come when these sicknesses will be finally over. But when God doesn't heal as we wish, we lament and mourn, realizing that we still live in a world groaning under sin and awaiting its final redemption. So we try to give and take comfort in the promise that those who mourn will be comforted (Matt 5:4)--even if at the present time that comfort may seem so distant.  

Our pastor is continuing his series on Paul's prayers, and this morning was preaching from the prayer found in Romans 15:5-6. Scripture there says,

 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)

I had started writing this before the sermon, and though Pastor Blayne didn't mention sickness per se, it struck me as I listened that it is precisely "endurance and encouragement" that the terminally sick brother or sister in Christ needs most. But the question is: How can we pray so that such endurance and encouragement might come? 

In the first place, it is vital that Christians struggling with sickness sense in our interactions with them that our words and our actions are done in the name of Jesus Christ (Cf. Col 3:17), in whom we are spiritually unified with that person. Let's face it: In and of ourselves, we have nothing to offer. We cannot bring healing, we cannot enter the depths of the person's heart and drive out darkness and despair. In fact, the words that we do say often slip off our tongues sounding so empty. Ministry must therefore begin with the theological realism of our human inadequacy. So as we haltingly enter into those situations where we walk alongside and pray for those who suffer, we must do so continually asking the Spirit to reveal to both sickand well person alike the unity we have in Christ. But why is this important?

Though I cannot speak from first hand experience of having gone through the valley of the shadow of death myself, I have sensed that critically, and especially terminally, ill people are constantly enshrouded in shadows--especially shadows of loneliness and helplessness.   Even if there are many people surrounding the sick person, terminal sickness tragically tends to isolate persons in their helplessness. Because neither sick person nor companion is able to "do" or "say" anything to change the situation, this helplessness may actually paradoxically result in an intensifying of the person's loneliness and his overwhelming feeling of darkness. So even in the presence of friends and family, whose own helplessness is often palpable, the sick person can potentially end up feeling lonelier than ever.  Consequently, it at such times of loneliness and darkness that the reality of the unity the brother and sister in Christ has with the sick person is so vitally important to focus upon.  And though sickness may isolate, it is only as we pray for the Spirit of unity found in Christ alone that "endurance and encouragement" may come. 

But if the unity in Christ is the issue at stake, then we who are left to deal with the ever increasing realization that our loved one is fighting a losing battle are probably in need of a good dose of "endurance and encouragement" ourselves. Consequently, we shouldn't be surprised that sometimes we may leave the room feeling strangely encouraged by the spirit of peace mysteriously made manifest in the sick person. I saw some brief manifestations of joy in the last days of my mother-in-law's life, and though I missed it with my Dad, my family tells me that this also happened with him in his last hours, even in the midst of his pain. And I know others have told me similar kinds of stories of saints gone home. Thus, perhaps we should not hesitate to interpret those brief moments, however fleeting, as a reminder that even in the face of death, the unity we have with the person in Christ is not broken. Death is still the final enemy to be conquered, but even death cannot rob the Christian of his or her joy. In fact, sick persons who have already come to the end of their own resources may sometimes sense in a more intense and acute way the presence of Christ more than well people ever could.  In such times, though it may be us who have come to minister to the person, we may find that we have to humbly accept being ministered to.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes, "The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile, sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the Triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body." (Life Together, 20) (This highlight as well that we must remember that theologically it is never us who ministers, but Christ who ministers through us. The fact that a sick person--even a sick person barely able to communicate to us--can actually minister to us is good evidence that ministry is finally the work of Christ).

But note secondly that Paul does not pray primarily for endurance and encouragement; rather, his primary request is that God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ might be glorified. Yes, we can pray for endurance and encouragement for the person who is sick, but in so doing, we may need to remember that these are by-products that arise as we sense and experience the unity of spirit in Christ and pray that God would be glorified. And so, though we may not be able to know what to say or do for the seriously ill, we can know how we can pray--that in the midst of sickness, whether through healing or even through death, that God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ may be magnified in and through it all. After all, the final purpose of both the healed or sick Christian is one and the same: to witness to the glory to God. Whether we mourn in loss, or rejoice in the triumph of healing, it is all pointless and seriously misdirected if we do not direct both our mourning and our praise to the God of encouragement and endurance. 

So my practical pastoral advice for praying with the sick is this: First, when called upon to be with those in serious sickness, by all means, do not hesitate to remind the person that you are there not just as a friend or even family member, but first and foremost as a brother and sister in Christ. It is this bond which is the most important, even more than being a relative or even a spouse. Second, pray with the person--even if it is short. Remember: Ministry is Christ's to accomplish, not ours, and Jesus is able graciously to take our stammering tongues and to use them for his purposes. So by all means, pray that God would restore the person to health if you feel so led by the Spirit. But in praying for that, don't neglect to ask God for the greater thing, mainly,  that  the sick person might have a renewed sense of her or his belonging to the body of Christ. And third and most importantly, pray with the person that in all things, whether in life or death, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would have the glory. By praying this way,  we can wait expectantly that God will come in his own way to give endurance and encouragement both to the person in his or her suffering, and to those of us praying alongside.

A guest post from Gifford Grobien

Dietrich Bonhoeffer claimed: "The knowledge of good and evil appears to be the goal of all ethics. Christian ethics has, as its first task, to overthrow this knowledge.... Mankind in his origin knows only one: God." Without this last sentence, Bonhoeffer's statement seems nonsensical, appalling, or brash. But it may be the way to revive ethical reflection among Lutherans.

To put it another way, the goal of ethics is not the knowledge of good and evil, but the knowledge of good. For the human person, to know good and evil is to want to determine good and evil. To know good and evil is to know something other than the good, and thereby to have the apparent choice to distinguish between them. Eve did not need to eat the fruit of the tree to know the good thing to do; she had the Word of God. To eat of the fruit, though, would mean to sit in judgment over good and evil, to weigh them in balance, to determine which action to make. In so doing, she would no longer be doing simply what was spoken and given to her by God, but she would be doing what she judged to be good and right. For her to presume the need for this judgment therefore implies the need to make a new, different judgment from the speaking of God. She would not know good as pronounced by God, but she would determine a new good and evil.

So all ethical reflection that has as its goal the knowledge of good and evil must be overthrown. James describes the faithless man and the sinner as double-minded (1:8, 4:8), in contrast to God, who is unable to be tempted, invariable, and without shadow of change (1:13, 17). God does not vacillate in deliberation, requiring reflection to determine what is good and what is evil. He cannot be tempted with evil, but thinks, speaks, and acts according to what is good. There is no question or hesitation. He acts according to the goodness of His nature.

Man never need seek the knowledge of good and evil, but only the good. The irony of this is lost on most ethicists. We should never seek the knowledge of good and evil because we already have it. We have eaten of the fruit. We sit in judgment of what is right and wrong. We deliberate, consider, exercise casuistry, and invent new conditions in order to question the validity of the law. We already determine. We do not need to develop our knowledge of good and evil; we need to be restored to the knowledge of the good.

To be restored to the knowledge of the good suggests also that our will is restored to act in accordance with the good. The bondage of the will in Lutheranism has become a slogan-an unchallenged aphorism that denies the legitimacy of the Christian trying to pursue the good and of the preacher exhorting the Christian to pursue the good. But to confuse the fallen will that is unable to seek, fear, or trust God with the will of a human person that is able outwardly to choose to do good things is to have departed from biblical and traditional Christian anthropology. Luther and the Confessions continued to insist that the Christian must try to do good works and overcome temptation.

Ethical reflection wants to know the right thing to think, to say, to do. Ethics is the realm of the law. We should not shrink from this, but make it clear. Nor should the reality of ethics as law disturb the Lutheran. Too many pages have been wasted arguing the particular functions of the law, particularly its use among Christians. That argument will not be resolved here. Nevertheless, we must recognize that ethics fundamentally has to do with the law. When we do this, we have preserved the gospel of Jesus Christ and kept pure the basis of our forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Yet in speaking of the law for the Christian we speak of more than the law, for the law is fulfilled. Christ is the end of the law resulting in righteousness for all who believe. He is our wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification. The same Christ who dwells in us is the Christ who performs good works for, in and through us. He is the one who makes our works good. Christ transforms the law from being merely a condemning tutor--hedging us in from this direction and that direction--into love. In Christ we owe nothing to anyone, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. By faith, then, we do not overthrow the law, but we uphold it.

We uphold the law because we are led by the Spirit and we walk by the Spirit. The Spirit teaches our hearts, but he works as he always does, through means. His inner teaching to our hearts comes through outer, preached words. Furthermore, he places me in relation to others so that my neighbor is not only the one whom I happen upon during my morning jog or in front of me in the checkout line (although he is these), but also the one to whom I am particularly bound by nature and station.

Man is placed in a family first by his mother and father, and later, typically, through marriage. He is given coworkers, bosses, and employees with whom to till and keep the land in an orderly fashion. Especially after the Fall, man is given governing authorities to restrain all of us who are subject to the Fall. These relations are the stations in which we not only work our tasks, but love others. Our tasks are themselves acts of love.

It is in these stations of love that we walk by the Spirit and the commandments he teaches in our hearts. Consider your place in life according to the commandments, says Luther's Small Catechism. This is not theoretical reflection. It asks us to recognize our place and the people God has given us to love. Are you a father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker? The answer is yes. You have parents; you probably have or will have a spouse, and you may have children. You have the civil authority, or if you serve in this office, you have citizens to defend and care for. You have a pastor to hear, or you have laity to whom you preach. Above all of these, you have the command to love, which calls you to act in love toward anyone whom God places before you.

These stations, Luther says, are sanctified by the word of God. Just as the water, wine, and bread of the Christian sacraments are included in God's command, combined with His word and received in faith, so your earthly stations are commanded (and thereby sanctified) by God's word as your place to act in love. The sacraments are the sign and visible presence of Christ and His Word received in faith; the stations are the incarnation of Christ presented in love to the neighbor, worked out in love by us.

Ethics is learning to love and doing it. Ethics does not forsake the gospel or overshadow it; ethics lives in the power of the gospel. There is only One who is good, and all good action comes out of this One who is good. So he works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

]]> http://aneyemadequiet.wordpress.com/?p=275 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:26:17 +0000 Nathan http://aneyemadequiet.de.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost/ '...[L]ook around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face - in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes...'


- Milan Kundera




'When we come upon beautiful things... we find that we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us.'


- Elaine Scarry




'We are uprooted from our own existence and are taken back to the holy history of God on earth. There God has dealt with us, with our needs and our sins, by means of the divine wrath and grace. What is important is not that God is spectator and participant in our life today, but that we are attentive listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the story of Christ on earth.'


- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"we of the faith no longer take up sword against nation, nor do we learn war any more, but we have become the children of peace." ~ origen of alexandria

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.  where there is hatred, let me sow love.” ~ st. francis of assisi

“there was never a good war or a bad peace.” ~ benjamin franklin

“peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free…when we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.” ~ tenzin gyatso, the dalai lama

“mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” ~ john fitzgerald kennedy

“we must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.” ~ martin luther king, jr.

“the real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.” ~ ralph waldo emerson

“each one of us has to find peace within, and this peace must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” ~ mohandas gandhi

“we have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.” ~ eleanor roosevelt

“peace, like charity, begins at home.” ~ franklin delano roosevelt

“peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. it demands greater heroism than war. it demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.” ~ thomas merton

“peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.” ~ st. thomas aquinas

“the followers of christ have been called to peace, and they must not only have peace but make it. and to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. in the cause of christ nothing is to be gained by such methods, his disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. they maintain fellowship where others would break it off. they renounce hatred and wrong. in so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.” ~ dietrich bonhoeffer

“better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.” ~ siddhartha gautama

“we will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” ~ jimmy carter

“there is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.” ~ cesar chavez

“if in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. this is the most basic kind of peace work.” ~ thich nhat hanh

“in the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.” ~ st. john of the cross

“if we take the common good of all humanity as our norm, instead of individual greed, peace would be possible.” ~ pope john paul II

“if everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.” ~ john lennon

“peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.” ~ martin luther

“all works of love are works of peace.” ~ mother teresa

“finally, brothers, rejoice.  mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you..” ~ 2 corinthians 13:11

“in days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.  all nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: “come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”  for from zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from jerusalem.  he shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples.  they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war anymore.”  ~ isaiah 2: 2-4

Sou, na verdade, tudo o que os demais dizem de mim?
Ou sou somente o que eu sei de mim mesmo?
Inquieto, ansioso e enfermo,como uma ave enjaulada,
pugnado por respirar, como se me afogasse,
sedento de cores, flores, canto de pássaros,
faminto de palavras bondosas, de amabilidade,
com a expectativa de grandes feitos,
temendo, impotente, pela sorte de amigos distantes,
cansado e vazio de orar, de pensar, de fazer,
exausto e disposto a dizer adeus a tudo.

Quem sou? Esse ou aquele?
Um agora e outro depois?
Ou ambos de uma vez?
Hipócrita perante os demais
e, diante de mim mesmo, um débil acabado?
Ou há, dentro de mim,algo como um exército derrotado
que foge desordenadamente da vitória já alcancada?

Quem sou?
Escarnecem de mim essas solitárias perguntas minhas;
seja o que for,
Tu o sabes, ó Deus: sou Teu!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Go to part 1 of 3)
(Go to part 2 of 3)

Creation and Fall

Creation and Fall makes this point beautifully, I think, in Bonhoeffer's invocation of God's Creative Word across the void.  If this Word were withdrawn even for one moment, all Creation would simply cease to be.[i] Lutherans have long acknowledged the power of God's word, and it seems high time to acknowledge its continual efficaciousness in the work of Creation even in those outside of the Church.  What I think Bonhoeffer in fact suggests to us, though he does not entirely take the suggestion himself, is a way of speaking about this truth without conflating it with God's work in Redemption-that is, without creating some kind of "anonymous Christianity."

Consider for instance his work with the imago dei.  Bonhoeffer claims, actually in SC, that the image remains present in every human being because "only through God's active working does the other become a You to me from whom my I arises...One might then speak here of the human being as the image of God with respect to the effect one person has on another."[ii] Bonhoeffer is still a bit stuck in an idealist mode with his relationality.  What we must in fact affirm is that the relation touches down in the concrete, even if it cannot reside there; it does not simply pass through me to the other person in a "spirit-only" sense.  God's Word sustains the fullness of our being; He is always sustaining the image ontologically from His side, even as we drop it ontically in specific ways from ours.  Here, I am invoking something like the doctrine of privation: God upholds our being and acting, but we co-opt and warp that principle in the process in particular choices (and through those choices, established dispositions - Augustine) to do evil. We recall that in SC that Bonhoeffer suggests a Christ principle unfolding in all believers.  He also suggests there that "everyone else" belongs to an "Adam principle" that functions in much the same way, except that it unfolds in sin.  Precisely here Bonhoeffer both succeeds and fails.  He succeeds in that he maintains the relationality of humanity and shows the inescapability of ontic sin.  He fails in that he gives Christ and Adam equal status as ontological. Even in Adam, whose ontic-ness we inherit, God's ontological Word continues its work in the face of the real reality of continual co-opting by sin.

Of course, Bonhoeffer's emphasis in CF is on the renewal of the imago in Christ, which is a distinct relation from the original imago. He speaks of how this new analogia relationis sustains us ontologically from God's side.  Poignantly, this relationship makes us free for others, who are grace to us precisely in that their otherness reminds us of our creaturehood.  They reinforce the boundaries of the self that God gives.[iii] Again, the horizontal and vertical are bound together tightly in the fundamental establishment of our being (cf. Levinas above), but in the proper order.

The gift of the imago, in either of its forms (created, renewed), is a prime example of what Bonhoeffer means saying that the imperative is the indicative.[iv] God commands existence and this command unfolds in a way that indicates to the creature her way of life.  Now, as beautiful as this idea is, it is also dangerous, in that it is an idea Bonhoeffer seems to take over fairly directly from Barth.  Indeed, I think that it presages the development in Barth of the further idea that the Law is the "form" of the Gospel - the imperative is always united with the indicative.  For Bonhoeffer, as well as Barth, this means that the gift of our being always flows ineluctably into the task of our becoming in appropriate action toward God and others.  Now in one sense, I think this is quite true of the originary gift of being.  We have a being that is given as delimited (we are a self, not a confluence of cosmic powers) by its very opening toward others, indicating that communion with those others is the meaning of our being.[v] At the same time, Bonhoeffer does not sufficiently distinguish this idea from his further suggestion that the command given regarding the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in Gen 2:16-17 intends to extend the delimitation of our being.[vi] Taken at face value, this depiction could mean that task becomes equal with gift in the meaning of our being.

What we must say instead is that the gift of being opens onto further commands oriented toward our becoming in a concrete historical situation.  Here, I think we find the meaning of the so-called "third use of the law" as an original component of God's creative plan.  In essence, God always planned to give us a righteousness coram Deo as gift that could be extended coram hominibus as task by specific commands - specific commands that determine nature toward a given history.  Likewise, the original grace we receive of experiencing our creaturely being through the Other as image of God would then naturally open into service to that one according to her historical situation.  There is a foundation of being that is in essence "outside of history" and an extension of it within history - related, and yet distinct.  What went wrong in this process I think Bonhoeffer exposits rightly: disobedience meant that the imperative could no longer seamlessly orient us toward the indicative, bringing the accusation of the law.  What we receive then in Christ is twofold:  first, the gift of new being that brings back the unity of basic gift-openness.  In this new ontological eruption, we have the possibility in some given instance to hear again and enact, even if only partially, the command of God for the concrete.  This command comes to us especially the Face of the Other Person and our vocation to serve her in the concrete historical moment.  At the same time, the failure to always instantiate the indicative for the moment will always drive us back upon our general failure to instantiate the unity of imperative-indicative.  In this way, the law always accuses and we always return to the Law-Gospel movement.  At the same time, we are able to distinguish two different movements: not just our 1) ontic failure, but also 2) the ontological movement from Jesus Christ that enables us to hear the command, even in its specificity, with the joy of Psalm 119.  Both are dynamisms.  Both never come to rest.  We are simultaneously fully saint and fully sinner.

A final point, if the patient reader can stand it.  This unfolding of christological ontology, or the "Christ principle" as SC called it, opens I think a new possibility for application of the Finnish (and perhaps thereby the Orthodox) insight into theosis to the question of "virtue" as an ethical category.  I am not interested here in debating whether we can speak of justification in theotic terms.  What is clear in the Formula of Concord is that we can and should speak of God's indwelling as flowing from the God's pronouncement of us as righteous in His justifying word.[vii] The Word across the void becomes the new shape of our lives; we are sanctified.  The Finns I think rightly point out in this regard that for Luther, Christ becomes the "form" of faith within us.[viii]

Now what does this mean?  Or at least, what could we take it to mean?  Here we must take up and then depart from the Thomistic tradition, in order to vindicate some of its conclusions.  For St. Thomas, grace is something distinct from Christ himself and it comes to be a created "form" in the soul in Aristotle's sense of that term.[ix] The form is that which makes something what it is, as the rational soul is what makes a human a human rather than an animal.  The form is therefore the principle from which a thing acts "according to its nature."  Grace for Thomas is also the source of the operations of various virtues; virtues are likewise created structures ("habits," this time) that form the various faculties (intellect, will, passions) so that they are ordered rightly relative to one another, thus producing right acts when they are activated.  Thus, what if take seriously Christ "as the form of faith" as a philosophical concept?  Christ as uncreated grace, rather than created, would thereby take up the position of the "form" of our soul; he would give it his own shape.  Remember however that this is an ontological relationality, not a statically-ontic createdness.  It is Christ-existing-as-church-community, unfolding the principle of his life into the specific historical situations of believers.  In this paradigm, Christ would hold together our intellect, will, passions etc., patterning them according to his own.  Thus we can speak of virtues as the resources of dispositions trained toward a certain kind of action.  These are upheld in us through exposure to the Word in preaching and Sacrament, whereby Christ sustains our being and becoming.  To put it a little crudely, Christ is sort of like the container which shapes the "waters" of our faculties without ever becoming them without remainder.  The relation is of course truly much more intimate, but this image perhaps suggests at least something helpful.

Conclusion

Throughout the above, I have been able only to sketch out in broad outline some of the research interests toward which Bonhoeffer spurs us.    Hopefully, however, I have made one thing clear:  he enables Lutherans to engage in dialogue with both the rest of the Church and the world in a way that allows real interaction with the terms of those traditions while remaining faithful to our own.  This in fact was Bonhoeffer's vision in the Ethics: a Church and world critically engaged and mutually corrective, with Christians entering this dialectic based on their confidence in God's sustenance of both sides of the equation.

[ii] SC, 54-5.

[iii] CF, 60-7, 94-102.

[iv] CF, 40-4.

[v] Here, I think we can see how, as Luther says in the Large Catechism, faith can be the fulfillment of the first commandment.  To receive the revelation of God is to be oriented toward everything that will proceed from that relation, just as faith will then fulfill the rest of the commandments.  The first gift of being oriented toward movement toward the other is the long stressed "spontaneity" of good works at their font.

[vi] CF, 80-93.

[vii] FC, SD III.54.

[viii] Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification, ed. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005).

[ix] See ST I-II q.110.

(Go to part 1 of 3)

Act and Being

Act and Being draws out some of these insights and refines them in a helpful way.  Bonhoeffer's focus in this volume is to show how the major German thinkers including Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger all commit the same basic philosophical mistake:  they all reduce reality to the epistemological quest of the I to ground its own (self-) knowledge, a quest which entraps the I within its own consciousness.[i] They thus fall prey to the basic structural deficiency of sin in which the human being becomes curved inward on itself.[ii] Bonhoeffer by contrast develops an account, as suggested above, in which God's revelatory entry into the human person suspends her being in that act.  Importantly, however, he also gives kudos to both the Kantian and Hegelian strains of philosophy for certain correct insights.  Kant, Bonhoeffer says, was the "Protestant epistemologist par excellence,"[iii] in that he sought to delimit the person and especially her reason through the alterity of the Ought.  On the other hand, Hegel accurately recognized that the person can only exist as a mediated relation to God which has a true historical context.  The only One who can fit both bills is of course Christ; in Him, God both sustains (ontologically mediates in history) and defines (epistemologically delimits, granting a self) the human person.[iv]

What Bonhoeffer provides here is perhaps a way past a stalemate in ethics today between Kant and Hegel.  For those theologians and philosophers who follow Kant, ethics becomes simply a matter of self-legislation (that is, self-delimitation on the basis of the Ought [Moralität] that constrains based on whether an action could apply to all).  The chief value in this schema of course becomes the ability to self­-legislate, that is, autonomy.  The individual is severed from other persons as the basis of ethical actions.  Simultaneously, this emphasis pretends to a universal reason that demands commonality among all peoples and ignores historical development of various cultures and practices.  Many, finding this paradigm unacceptable, turn to Hegel for a more historically- and communally-grounded approach.  However, here they discover a dual problem: first, Hegel's communities are all conflicted aspects of a monistic principle driving toward unity.  Therefore, he also has a universalizing tendency that can become violent (rather not the point in ethics).  Second, Hegel's approach is grounded in nothing more than the ethos [Sittlichkeit] of the culture of the time.  There is nothing transcendent that can offer a corrective to the dominant opinion.  With his emphasis on God's sustenance of the world especially in Christ, Bonhoeffer can counteract both problems.  He can provide a delimitation and a communal history that are both rooted in something beyond the limited perspectives of individuals or the present times but in a way that works from within the tradition of secular discourse itself.

In a different direction, Act and Being also offers a potential, though difficult, point of connection with Catholic theology.  At one point in the text, Bonhoeffer engages Erich Przywara's version of the analogia entis as moving in the direction of the relational paradigm (analogia relationis) he is advocating.[v] He also quotes Aquinas' statement in the Summa Contra Gentiles that "doing follows upon being" [agere sequitur esse] as the "ontological, fundamental thesis of Catholic and orthodox Protestant dogmatics."[vi] While Bonhoeffer probably overreads both Pryzwara and his representativeness for the Thomistic tradition, I think there is something here.  In twentieth century Catholic theology, few questions are as important as that of what God's "ordering of being"-that is, the natural law-actually is.  A number of Catholic scholars have begun to emphasize the shift marked by Aquinas and his immediate interlocutors from a Stoic emphasis on a kind of "map" of uniform reality (the Logos) to natural law as a kind of dynamism in the human person.[vii] In the Summa Theologiae, I-II q.91, Aquinas explicates this dynamism as a kind of participation in God's "eternal law," that is, the unfolding providential plan that embraces and orders from the beginning all contingencies of human existence.  The emphasis on contingency is important; this sort of natural law definition has led these scholars to develop a more "underdetermined" notion of nature.  In my opinion, this definition could open toward the usual Protestant emphasis on the normativity of God's ongoing historical command.  It thus allows for a concept of nature with which we can be more satisfied yet which is also more robust than some of what we have used in the past.  Particularly, I think a close examination of St. Thomas yields the important insight that he really does take sin seriously as blotting out the right operation of this natural dynamism (which includes reason, etc.).  He does not endorse much of the later Catholic optimism that leaves a lot of room for reason to accomplish ordering in the world.  What he emphasizes however is that our sin still is not greater than God's power of sustenance.  I think this point is one we must work to retain.  If our very being is upheld from God's side of the equation, then we need to find a way to speak about this ontological reality in anthropological terms, without collapsing it into the ontic reality of our sin as we experience our own consciousness.[viii]

(Go to part 3 of 3)

[ii] AB, 41,46.  This is the ratio in se ipsam incurva or more generally, the cor curvum in se inherited from Luther, and Augustine before him.

[iii] AB, 34.

[iv] AB, 45.  The close of AB, pp. 157-61, has a beautiful description of how the child in baptism is the model of this ontological-epistemological reality.

[v] AB, 73ff.

[vi] AB, 103.

[vii] Particularly, though they are often at odds on other matters, Jean Porter in Nature as Reason and Natural and Divine Law and Martin Rhonheimer in The Perspective of the Acting Person.  The philosophy and theology of John Paul II also enters into this discussion in a vital way.

[viii] If we cannot, we risk falling into the Flacian error of equating our nature with sin itself.  Cf. FC I.

How Lutheran is Bonhoeffer and in what ways is he useful for theology today?  Regarding the first question, Pastor Eric Andrae has offered a fine beginning in a recent article entitled "Pro Deo et Patria."[i] His focus is on the many ways Bonhoeffer places the theology of the cross at the center of his approach to prayer, public action and discourse, and community.  Particularly helpful is the way in which Andrae reins in a lot of later speculation about Bonhoeffer's advocacy of "religionless Christianity" in a "world come of age."  Andrae draws on Bonhoeffer's close friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge to show rightly that even this emphasis is ultimately an expression of a profound christology.  This christology recognizes that reality impinges on us all prior to our conscious, systematic articulation of it and that God has definitively given shape to this reality in Christ.

What I find less helpful in Andrae is his tendency to draw a line between the very early and the later Bonhoeffer.  In his opening paragraph, in claiming that Bonhoeffer truly became a Christian only in 1932 after the publication of his early works, Andrae implies that his earlier theology is not exactly Christian (and therefore neither truly Lutheran nor useful).  While I agree with Andrae that Bonhoeffer's Christ as Center is not entirely helpful, I think some of Bonhoeffer's other works have much more to offer.  These works include his two dissertations, Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, as well as the lectures given right on the breakpoint identified by Andrae, later published as Creation and Fall.[ii] While by the latter, Bonhoeffer clearly is moving into a more devoutly Christian phase, one can still see how the thinking of the first two works undergirds this movement and its fruition in the Ethics.  Moreover, I take it as a salutary sign that, as Wolf Krötke notes, Bonhoeffer's training focused from the beginning on an intense study of Luther, so that by his lecture in 1931-32 on "The History of Systematic Theology," Bonhoeffer turns its central question - Where do we stand? - into the question Who will show us Luther?[iii] Accordingly, the following sketches a few brief reflections on themes from these three works that I think offer constructive potential for systematic and especially moral theology.

Sanctorum Communio

This volume offers Bonhoeffer's intriguing ecclesiology of "Christ-existing-as-community."  Drawing on Leibniz's Monadology, Bonhoeffer suggests that "the church is already completed in Christ" and exists principally as an unfolding of the new principle of personhood given in him.[iv] There is a completion to the ‘being' of those in the Church; in a way, nothing new is needed from the individual-the internal principle of Christ's own life is sufficient-establishing the primacy of grace.  On the other hand, "[i]n order for the church, which already is completed in Christ, to build itself up in time, the will of God must be actualized ever anew."[v] The unfolding of the Christ-life occurs on the level of the unique vocational ‘becoming' of each of the individuals in the Church.

What Bonhoeffer thus provides is a telos for human existence based on simultaneous relationality with God and others.[vi] Anthropology for him is a matter of the "social ontic-ethical basic-relations of persons" that makes personhood a mediated "responsibility" before an Other.[vii] We are directed toward Others in a way that completes our being, the first and in a sense entire completion being rendered already in Christ.  There are obvious connections here to thinkers of the intersubjective like Martin Buber (and later, Gerhard Forde, in the idea of "proclamation") who emphasize the I-You relation.  Particularly though, I think Bonhoeffer comes very close to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, a Jewish Continental philosopher.[viii] Levinas emphasizes, much like Bonhoeffer here, the infinite height of the Other as constituting the fundamental plane of human existence, which thereby becomes a "response-ability."  The relation to the Other serves to call into question the status of all human institutions and all our claims to absolute epistemological certainty (a.k.a. pride).  Levinas however writes philosophy "agnostically" and emphasizes that the Other with whom he is concerned is the other human person, a "horizontalized divinity."  Levinas' paradigm is in fact quite powerful, and I think one thing Bonhoeffer offers is a way to access this paradigm while retaining and positioning it under God and especially grace (which Levinas of course loses, despite attempting to speak of the summons of the Other as the "infinite glory" of the I).

Moreover, Levinas is the intellectual father of Jacques Derrida, whose "postmodern," deconstructive methodology so often seems troubling for the Christian claim to mediate God's activating truth through word and sacrament.  The decisive difference between Levinas and Derrida, however, is the pole to which they tether their deconstruction.  For Derrida, this pole becomes "Khora," a non-place that serves as the unsecurable "origin" of language.[ix] This means that the knowledge on which we base our action and our lives is basically only a construction which can always be interrupted by something new that calls it into question.  Levinas, while affirming something like this latter statement, shows clearly that the "pole" remains a person.  That is, when our systems of knowledge, institutions, and ways of life are called into question, there remains (though Levinas would not put it quite this way) a person-al telos toward whom we may clarify our lives.  In the Bonhoeffer-Levinas connection then, I think we find one opening for entrée into what is beneficial in postmodernism while retaining our theology in full force.  Especially for Lutherans, I think we find a way of speaking to the integral nature of ethics as a primary plane of human existence without abandoning an even more primordial plane of grace.  For what else is the rupture emphasized by Levinas if not the power of God's self-Revelation and indeed, a certain movement of Law-Gospel?

(Go to part 2 of 3)

[ii] Sanctorum Communio [1927, pub. 1930], Act and Being [1930, pub. 1931], and Creation and Fall [Winter 1932-33, pub. 1933].  Hereafter, references will be to SC, AB, or CF in the DBWE editions.  These respectively apply sociological, philosophical, and biblical insights to a similar set of issues.

[iii] "Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther" in Bonhoeffer's Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick, 53-82 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 53.

[iv] SC, 142.

[v] SC, 143.

[vi] SC, 78.

[vii] SC, 50.  NB:  Bonhoeffer's "ontic" means what today we would call "ontological."

[viii] Levinas was born in the same year as Bonhoeffer (1906), lost most of his family in the Shoah, but survived as Bonhoeffer did not, through his protected status as a "French" P.O.W.  He wrote several influential works, the most important being Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.  Bonhoeffer and Levinas apparently had no knowledge of each other, or at least neither engaged the other's work.

[ix] See Derrida, On the Name and The Gift of Death. I am vastly oversimplifying here for the sake of bringing the main point to the fore.  I also think that while Derrida is problematic, in some ways he is less so than many think and indeed quite helpful at times.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"...Our complete inability to hold the indicative and the imperative together in our minds shows that we no longer live in the unity of the active word of God but are fallen. ...Creation is not an 'effect' of the Creator from which one could read of a necessary connection with the cause (the Creator); instead it is a work created in freedom in the word" (Bohoeffer, Creation and Fall, 42; 43).

I'll admit, the first Sunday after we moved in, I malingered...alot.  I was too tired to go to church.  God saw how hard I had worked that week to get everyone settled and happy and ready to start school the next day.  He would let this one slide.  Right?

Well, of course He let that one slide.  But I couldn't.  I knew the reason I didn't go to church that Sunday was really that I was feeling sorry for myself.  I didn't want to meet anyone.  I didn't want to put the effort into finding this part of our new home.

I thought about it all the next week.  But I didn't do anything about it.  Just some good, old fashioned ruminating.

I don't know what actually lit the fire under me.  I do know that Saturday night I sat down with the phone book and looked up the denomination of church that we are interested in.  I found 2 that were apparently close by.  So I called to see what time their services started and since it was late in the evening I could do this without making any human conact, no commitment.

We decided we would try the church that was the closest to our new home the next morning.

When I woke up on Sunday morning (an hour before the alarm went off) I was full of those first-day-of-school butterflies that I always used to get.  I almost decided I was too sick to go to church again.  Instead, I made a big breakfast and reeted my family with a cheerfulness I wasn't feeling.

When we got to church, Bubba was insanely a bit clingy so I figured this was probably not going to be our new church home.  But Bubba and Lullibell left for children's church without much ado and I settled back with hubby to listen to the sermon.

The sermon series was on scary stories of the Bible...I like a good scary story...so I figured this could be interesting.  The story they were talking about was Joshua and the wall at Jericho.  The sermon was really good and Pastor John made a couple of really good points that I could feel God drawing to me.

Then we picked up the monsters and Bubba announced that this was the best church ever and he would never go to a different church!  SOLD!

Today PJ started a new series on the Revolutionary and Radical Sayings of Jesus Christ.  Now, I don't know about you but, I really like the idea of Jesus being this, wild eyed radical, bucking the system, saying these insane things about God and love and grace.  So again the sermon series was very interesting to me.

This morning, the sermon was called "Self Must Die" and is cited from Matthew 16:24-25.  For me the two major ideas that I have been kicking around in my head were the quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that PJ cited and the idea of what is my "cross".

Bonhoeffer said that "security is man's biggest idol."  Wow...that really struck me.  I would d