Liberalism’s Orthodoxy: Or Why We Should Defend Miss California

Dr. Stephen Long wrote in his book, The Goodness of God, “Liberalism has now become a dogmatic form of orthodoxy incapable of change.” Indeed, consider this for a moment. Theological liberalism seems to have no room in the inn for its own virtue of tolerance, only canonized dogma: God must suffer to love, missiology is eschatology, biblical miracles are literary myths, newer is better, and of course women and homosexuals must be able to be ordained or the Church is both oppressively patriarchal and an apostate.

Indeed, liberal theology has indentified numerous inviolable theological planks, crafting, slowly, a dogmatic platform. It has becomes an ideology demanding capitulation to hold-outs who have not yet converted. Outside of theology, we see that secular liberalism demands this same type of iron-clad orthodoxy. Recently, if not also infamously, Miss California was asked if she supported the recent ruling in Vermont that allowed for same sex marriages. Before answering that she in fact did not agree with same sex marriages, she opined, “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose.” Indeed, while Aquinas thought a democracy was only a moderate well functioning government, as it was slow to act toward the good, and could only be moderately assured to enact the good, it nevertheless, was also slow to enact evil. More importantly, where is the well-spring of tolerance for Miss California that liberals so often demand be extended to everyone (and everything) else. Instead, the reaction was indignation. A particularly – if not peculiarly – urbanized cry of, “she didn’t, did she?!” was heard round the blogosphere.

Of course, the reason for the intolerance was that she was intolerant. And only intolerance can be matched with more intolerance. Here we realize the impossibility of diversity (liberalism). That no political claim can equate to perfect tolerance. That all beliefs – even beliefs in tolerance – are ultimately divisive. Otherness (diversity, liberalism) only identifies by being separate. The problem of perfect liberalism also makes us equally realize the impossibility of unity. No taxonomy will be able to perfectly organize everyone (and everything) into a single category. This is the problem of relationships – and it is also the mystery of Trinity and the Incarnation. We are the same and we are different. Oliver O’Donovan offers the term ‘pluriformity’. It offers to explicate the paradoxical claim that we are all one and all other. We realize that particularity rents violence in its necessary act of exclusion, but our limitedness – our humanness – does not offer recourse. Pluriformity is an anthropology for understanding theology that need not capitulate to late modern liberalism (our difference unites us), or conservative theology (our correct belief unites us), but rather a way to recapture the theology of the Body of Christ as the body of believers that are both diverse and universe.

We live in the tension between diversity and unity. However, I think some of my friends would argue that perfect diversity and unity come under God. And, I hope, they are correct. But it is an eschatological hope. Fidelity may hold more promise than either equality (liberalism) or certainty (conservatism).

A Serious Cosmological Theology

Today I was reading the transcript of Carl Sagan's Gifford Lectures in the book, "The Varieties of Scientific Experience.” I think Sagan is thoroughly modern, eschewing all notion of faith or belief. However, he helpfully critiques the narrowness of Western-religion's cosmology.

He writes, "The number of external galaxies beyond the Milky Way is at least in the thousands of millions and perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of millions each of which contains a number of stars more or less comparable to that in our own galaxy. So if you multiple out how many stars that means, it is some number - let's see, ten to the... It's something like a one followed by twenty-three zeros, of which our Sun is but one. It is a useful calibration of our place in the universe. And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religions and especially no Western religions." (27).

The immensity of the universe begs the question of the uniqueness of life. And if life is rare, but not unique, what of the arc of the salvific history espoused by Christianity? Does all life inevitably trace this story line? Thomas Paine wrote of this question, "From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who has millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world because, they say, one man and one woman ate an apple? And on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation has an Eve, an apple, a serpent and a redeemer?" While Process Theology has enumerable and intractable problems, the tradition has at least taken cosmology seriously. Michael Lodahl, and, of course, Alfred North Whitehead, come to mind. Though, this tradition then usually jettisons the salvific history, for an endless processing history, which seems to reform the very historic Christianity into just another universal (read, ahistoric) religion. In comparison, Radial Orthodoxy has not shown that they are open to accepting modern science. The reunification of faith and reason stops short of evolution. This is a strange demarcation line considering the Catholic Church, which strongly influences R.O., has long held that evolutions and faith are fully commensurable. More broadly, C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy seems to suggest that the chapters of history play out on all planets that inhabit life, and God, rather than abandoning all others for the sake of one, provides His Providence and, ultimately, Salvation, to all.


Perhaps more concerning is the finite-tenancy we have on the Earth. Sagan writes, "Some 5, 6, or 7 billion years from now, the Sun will become a red giant star and will engulf the orbits of Mercury and Venus and probably the Earth. The Earth then would be inside the Sun and some of the problems that face us on this particular day will appear, by comparison, modest. On the other hand, since it is 5,000 or more million years away, it is not our most pressing problem. But it is something to bear in mind. It has theological implications." (20).
Indeed, theological implications abound.

While addressing the important theological questions of ecological-stewardship, some attention should be given to cosmological-theology in general, and cosmological-stewardship in specific. More broadly, issues of eschatology, economy, and revelation all garner relevance in this endeavor.

To end, Sagan has some helpful thoughts: “In fact, a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much les of a universe.” Here Sagan and I are in complete agreement. He continues, “I don’t propose that it is a virtue to revel in our limitations. But it’s important to understand how much we do not know. There is an enormous amount we do not know; there is a tiny amount that we do.” (30). Christians may respond that what they do know is that God’s creation is good – no matter how vast or how dark, or how empty it might seem to be.

Fides et Ratio: Part I

The questions boils down to this: Is all belief mere opinion? Even more basic: Is there Truth?

It would be telling to see how Catholic and Protestant laity would answer the question. In a secular society that has only two holy words - Ego and Tolerance - 'Yes' is an incredulous and an audacious answer. Such an answer is blasphemy agaist the two holy words.

Truth for the Ego is enveloped and limited to the experiential - there is nothing past the phenomenological. Or in another way: there can be no metaphysics because there is nothing 'beyond' or 'past' physics. Personal experience is the irrefutable grounds of knowledge. So, meaning is made, not destined.

Tolerance is the natural disposition that follows from such a construction of Truth. It is atomized to the point that it is individualized. Universalism is only in particularity. The vicissitudes of life and myriad of cultures necessarily force each person to live a unique life. As each experience is different than so too is each conception of Truth. Overtime, people accept that Truth is nothing more than personal experience. Truth is amber-hardened opinion. The great motto of society becomes: We can agree to disagree.

This current malaise of secular culture that sees Truth as either dangerous, irrelevant, or relative is something to be regretted.

Though not all see Truth in such sinister and cynical ways. Radical Orthodoxy and Catholicism are both more than happy to say with conviction that the Word is Truth.

Pope John Paul II's Encyclical, "Fides and Ratio" (Faith and Reason) tried so show how the theological tradition of Scholasticism can correct current Christian relativism and cynicism. It opens with a beautiful line:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

In my next post I'll discuss how the encyclical and Aquinas can help re-invigorate Christian belief, evangelism, and community, and most importantly move the Body of Christ past the debilitating stance that Truth is relative.

Nyssa: Your God Is Too Small

A passage by Gregory of Nyssa on the Abundance and Infinit nature of God (or why Process Theology will ontologize evil and make God complicit in suffering) from Life of Moses

II, 236. "He learns form what was said that the Divine is by its very nature infinite, enclosed by no boundary. If the Divine is perceived as though bounded by something, one must by all means consider along with that boundary what is beyond it. For certainly that which is bounded leaves off at some point, as air provides the boundary for all that flies and water for all that live in it. Therefore, fish are surrounded on every side by water, and birds by air. The limits of the boundaries which circumscribe the birds and the fish are obvious: The water is the limit to what swims and the air to what flies. In the same way, God, if he is conceived as bounded, would necessarily be surrounded by something in nature. It is only logical that what encompasses is much larger than what is contained."

II, 237. "Now it is agreed that the Divine is good in nature. But what is different in nature from the Good is surely something outside the Good. What is outside the Good is perceived to be evil in nature. But it was shown that what encompasses is much larger than what is encompassed. It most certainly follows, then, that those who think God is bounded conclude that he is in enclosed in evil.

On Peter Pan Discovering the Eucharist

In Steven Spielberg’s 1991 movie classic “Hook”, a now grown Peter Pan, played by Robin Williams, returns to Neverland. Ensconced in his practical and mature demeanor he tries and fails to rekindle his connection with the Lost Boys.

During dinner, one night, the Lost Boys and Peter sit down to eat supper. Though the plates and baskets on the long table are empty the Lost Boys quickly begin, ostensible, to eat from the empty plates and drink from the empty cups. Peter looks on incredulously. The boys continue to merrily eat and drink. Finally, Peter and another Lost Boy begin to sling school-yard insults at each other; Peter finally begins to embrace a youthful vim and vigor. Peter as an afterthought to particularly pointed jab takes up a spoon and throws an imaginary pile of food onto the other Lost Boy, and to the surprise of Pan, he finds the boy covered in food.

At that moment a Lost Boy exclaims, “You’re doing it, Peter!” “Doing what?” asks Peter. The Lost Boy replies, “Using you imagination!”

The camera pans over the table, its contents are now transformed; no more are the plates and baskets empty, but are now filled with roasts, chesses, breads, pies, and exotic fruits. The empty table is now a royal banquet. A seeming cornucopia has appeared from nothing, and Peter with astonishment and haste begins to sample the many foods. The abundance of the table has no end, and in the excitement of the moment the food is used not just for sustenance, but also a way to express sheer joy, as the children and Peter soon after begin a food-fight.

The Lost Boys’ table is analogous to the Church’s altar at which the Eucharist is consecrated and given to and eaten by the faithful. The faithful are those who can imagine that such simply elements such as bread and wine are transubstantiated into the real and abundant presence of our Lord God. It is to believe that an empty table can become a royal banquet. To faithfully imagine such a possibility is not easy. Just like Peter who had to resign himself from the constraints of the world he so strongly believed in, so too must Christians. The moment of recognition caught him by surprise and with joy, just as it did the disciples who did not recognize that they were traveling with the Risen Christ to Emmaus. Not until the supper feast when the bread was broken did the disciples recognize that their companion was Christ (Luke 24:13-35).

The ecclesial table that seems empty to a passerby is a royal banquet to all Christians and this new sight comes from the faithful imagination of God’s people. Samuel Wells is right when he talks of the importance of Christian imagination. The Eucharist is the moment when Christians proclaim that in the midst of simply bread and wine is the eternal, sovereign and loving God who gave the world His only begotten Son.

And yet, the familial table may be scarce of food and drink. The consequences from famines and droughts are realities whose effects may be mollified, but never completely avoided. The fruits of the spirit are bountiful, but at times the empty stomach will go unfed and the parched tongue will stay dry. The ecclesial altar and the familial table do not hold the same promises. This is only to say we do not live in Neverland. That though the Kingdom of God has grown near it is not fully realized. This does not deny the importance of Christian imagination; instead it makes it even more important. More important because it is how one unlocks the Eucharist for what it truly is; the body and blood of Christ, shed for us and for all so that we may be forgiven of sins. The abundant forgiveness of God is a testament to the abundant love of God.

The foretaste of the Kingdom of God comes through the Eucharist. Just as for Peter Pan the way to find the real banquet was to first imagine it – to think as a child. The theological key to the Eucharist – the full abundance of God on earth – is faithful imagination. Certainly it should remind one of Luke 18:16, “But Jesus called the children to him and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’”

Theological Limericks

Coming back to theology this week. I am sharing some of the limericks I wrote sometime last year for the poetry contest at Garrett.

Milbank
Milbank was writing a book on 'RO.'
Which hoped for a chruch long ago,
so, with the help of Aquinas,
and his wit and his slyness,
he changed the church status-quo.

Nietzche
There once was a man who praised God.
Thinking Him worthy to worship and laud,
but after hearing it said
that God was found dead,
He cast down his head and he bawled.

Long v. Young
(Young asked,)"Does God on His own ever suffer?"
(Long said,)"No! Oh my no! He's much tougher!"
But He's all passion and love?
No. Hes the power all of!
And oh how theology did suffer.

SIS
In researching a doctoral exegesis,
a girl wanted an original thesis,
but all the ideas had been done,
so she turned into a nun,
and began a spiritual askesis.

Khali
There once was a god named Khali.
Who's presence started a rally.
The students screamed, "burn!"
And the profs grew in concern,
so they baptized her as a finale.

Does God Suffer? No!

Today Fr. Thomas Weinandy lectured at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He was the culminating speaker for the Forum for Evangelical Theology’s series on the question of God’s Sovereignty.

During last year’s presentations God’s sovereignty was critiqued through the lens of a number of traditions: Patristic, Calvinist, Moltmannian, Open Theist, Process, and Thomist.

Fr. Weinandy’s lecture was not especially surprising, but was “illustrating” – as he seems to hold a penchant for drawing diagrams of the divine. Nevertheless, God’s impassability was defended, evil was stopped before it could become ontologized, and the distinction between Creator and creation was upheld.

It would be unduly discursive if I were to simply describe the lecture in total, so I will simply touch on two – while scourging the theological and rhetorical power of three – issues in his lecture: 1) God’s immanent workings pointed to God’s wholly Otherness, and 2) God’s love is in absolute action, constantly.

First, God's transcendence can be found in how God immanently related to the world. As Weinandy stated, "Thus, while he is intimately present o and dynamically active within the created historical order, God has revealed, through his very presence and activity, that he exists in a manner that differs in kind and not merely in degree to that of everything else within the created historical order." The biblical theophanies and the sanctification of God's peoples are examples of such immanent workings of God that distinguish God the creator form creation.

Second, God's immutability supports God's ability to be love. Usually the contrary is argued that only a suffering God can love. However, Weinandy noted, "God is immutable or unchangeable in his love and goodness not because his love and goodness are static or inert. That would be a contradiction of terms. Love and goodness are, by their very nature, dynamic and active. To say that God's love is immutable is to say that God's love and goodness are eternally perfectly in act and no further act of love could make his love and goodness more perfectly in act.... the divine attribute of impassibility specifies that God's love and compassion are so ardent that no change could enhance the ardor of his love or compassion." He unfortunately went on to use the metaphor of God as the eternally perfect kisser who is always ready to lay a wet one on you; as I said unfortunate.

During the question and answer session Dr. Vaux asked if this wasn't 'whole-sale Greek metaphysics.' The Fr. responded, "This is whole-sale revelation! If I thought I started out with Greek philosophy and just added revelation, I would give up."

A good friend of mine noted that he loved how the whole lecture seemed to be a doxology, not an opportunity for the Fr. to show his knowledge per se, but a time to preach the truth of God: that God is all loving, all knowing, eternal and unchanging. And appropriately the lecture ended with, AMEN.

Pagan Gnosticism and Christian Revelation

Augustine in his early and wayward years was a Gnostic. He allied to the common dualism between the enslaved material corpus and the liberated spirit. Later he would rightly turn to a God who made the heavens and the earth and saw both as good and a God who would make Himself truly man, scourging the docetic Christology of others, like Marcionites.

However, more than the penchant anti-materialism that defined the early Gnostics, there name sake also helped to define them: they believed themselves the bearer of gnosis – the bearers of secret knowledge.

And who doesn’t enjoy being the keeper of a secret?

However, this gnosis is what separates Christians from pagans. The knowledge Christians hold – that Christ is Lord – was never meant to be a secret. While paganism is gnostic, Christianity is revelational. The Great Commission is essentially to continue the revelation: preach, baptize and teach to the nations (Mt. 28.19-20).

There are then two sides to this Christian currency. On one hand being Christian is to share the gospel (to be revelatory), and on the other hand being Christian is to know that Christ revealed all (to reject gnosis).

Though Christianity is to be revelational it does not always succeed: sometimes not being honest about the knowledge it has and sometimes coveting the knowledge.

In a secularized society it is often not fashionable to share the knowledge of Christianity. Instead the knowledge is unduly (and heretically) bifurcated. Often Christians talk of ‘Jesus’ as a wise and worldly teacher in public, but stop at proclaiming his radical and salvific message. Personally, I muse at the number of times I have shared that I am an atheist to a Christian and their response is something resembling affirmation. To be Christian is to witness, not in partial, but in total.

Other times Christians seem to covet their knowledge, seeing the gospel more as secret than as revelation. My beloved friend wrote a sermon recently that feared as much: “I love the parable of the prodigal son, but it also scares me. It troubles me because it ends with the older son outside the party, refusing to come in. Sometimes I worry the church is like the older son, wanting to keep God all to themselves, wishing that God would not be so forgiving to those who don’t deserve it, questioning whether they really want to follow a God who throws such outrageous parties.” Perhaps the message is just too radical; we can’t fathom such audacious mercy. So, instead we covet the Father, believing the younger son gone for good.

However, it is not enough to simply share the revelational message – it is to rebuke those other teaching that believe in a secret knowledge that extends outside of the Word.

Paganism ultimately tries to give meaning to history – in a word, Astrology. Slavoj Zizek rejects this cosmic – if not still somewhat inscrutable – ordering. Thus, part of his resonance with Christianity is that both reject the secret ordering of the world that can only be gleamed (or, if you prefer decoded) by understandings of planetary alignments and seasonal happenings. Christians thus are called to render history intelligible as if a Janus Bifrons (note the irony of using pagan Gods as an example): always looking back to the incarnation as the beginning of history, but also looking toward the future and the promised Parousia, which will mark the end of history. Reinhold Niebuhr also makes this distinction warning that Christianity (and humanity at large) often tries to rationalize history as some slow march to a culmination that humanity itself wills. For the secular world this is embodied in the belief in technological progressivism, and for Christianity (as Niebuhr saw it) the Social gospel’s post-millennialism. Of course, both are to be rejected. As Mark reads, “But about the day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do no know when the time will come” (Mark 13.32-33).

Moreover, there is a current trend in popular fiction that emulates Gnosticism, and which should be repudiated. Three books that exemplify this are: Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Even the titles of these books suggest a gnosis, and promise that the secret can unlock some fulfillment that can come from outside the Church. The Secret and The Alchemist both uphold a dualism between the mind and body, as if purposing a peculiar anthropological ‘big-headed’ Apollinarianism – in that the body becomes only some vessel for the Mind, which need only take cue from the fanciful flight of Peter Pan and, “Think happy thoughts.” Yet this is at the same time to reject the materialism of the world in-and-of-itself while also rejecting the limits of materialism. Certainly, this is not a Christian message.

The Da Vinci Code can be differentiated. The other two books offer a gnosis extra ecclesiam Brown offers a gnosis intra ecclesiam. Thus nominal Christians don’t really have the knowledge of Christ and God, but rather a politically and patriarchal version. Only a few carefully selected persons – most who aren’t particularly religious – become the bearers of the secret. In the end however, Brown’s Christianity falls into worshipping the symbols and signs themselves, rather than Christianity that use the symbols and signs only as mediation that points to God. And most importantly the meaning of these symbols – such as the cross – is not masked to hide the importance behind it, but prominently displayed and proclaimed to all, so that all might know the knowledge.

Christian revelation that comes from Christ and continued by the Holy Spirit is not to be coveted, but to be shared. That Christ is Lord was never meant to be a secret. The implication of that gospel is that there is no other secrets to be found out. We are all equally welcome to know the good news and share it with others.

Rooting for Religion

In Chicago it is not uncommon to see a Cubs fans clad in blue, white and red appareal screaming anathemas toward a White Sox fan. Within workplaces across Chicago this rivalry continues; co-workers mock one another for their misplaced allegiances. To suggest that both are essentially baseball franchise teams that have little difference except logo, roster, and stadium would be blasphemy. To be a White Sox fan is categorically different than being a Cubs fan, each would assert. It would surely be suggested that if you didn’t see a difference between the teams you necessarily couldn’t be a fan of either. And all of this sports hoopla and franchise worshiping is pretty common practice.

So, why can’t someone rout with the same fervor for their religion as they do for their baseball team?

This brings us to the Catholic Church. On July 7th Pope Benedict XVI authorized the use of Latin services. However, it is not the lingua franca issue that caused concern. Instead, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League protested the also reinstated Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of Jews.

On July 10, the Pope restated language in a document issued in 2000 that essentially proclaimed the primacy of the Catholic Church and it the sole salvific mediator.

On Friday, the Cubs will be playing at home against Houston with nearly 40,000 loyal fans in attendance. All of them will be sharing two beliefs: More Cubs fans are good, and the Cubs are the best baseball team ever.

The Pope was merely suggesting a similar sentiment for his Church: More Catholics are good, and the Catholic Church is the best religion ever.

So what is so surprisingly about such developments?

Cubs and Sox fans would never agree to disagree as to which team is the best. It would be disloyal even to suggest another perspective was possible. So why can't one share the same fervor for their religion?