Theology for the Masses

Christians have historically had problems figuring out how they should relate to the political establishments in which they resided. As seen in an earlier post, Christians have been too eager to align themselves with Liberal Democracies, especially the United States.  In Resident Aliens, Hauerwas and Willimon critique this notion, saying that instead of being Christianity Lite™, Liberal Democracies need war to justify and solidify identity:

“States, particularly liberal democracies are dependent upon war for moral coherence.” [1]

Damn, I think that’s true.  I had previously viewed governments as sometimes morally good, often morally evil, but most of all, morally neutral. And here was an explanation that the best of these governments have a vested interest in unjust violence [2] . [3] Their warning from history is particularly poignant:

“if Caesar can get Christians [in 30’s Germany] to swallow the ‘Ultimate Solution’ and Christians here to embrace the bomb, there is no limit to what we will not do for the modern world.” [4]

A Church that was nuked in Nagasaki.  Where do our allegiances lie?  With the USA, or with God Almighty?

1. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, 1st ed. (Abingdon Press, 1989), 35. [↩]
2. if violence is ever justified [↩]
3. Though, we should expect states to act selfishly. [↩]
4. Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 27. [↩]

Here is an interesting article about gendered language and its use to describe God at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. The blogger asks this question in relationship to a work entitled “On Beyond Gender: Representation of God in the Torah and in Three Recent Renditions into English” by David E. S. Stein, “Is the biblical God a persona beyond gender?” While the blogger and Stein would both answer “no,” the two would differ on the nuance of their answer. The post is an attempt to critique Stein’s nuance and lay out the blogger’s own nuances. I really enjoyed reading it and was enlightened by it. I’ll post the concluding paragraph to the whole post but do take the time to read the whole post.

Is the biblical God a persona beyond gender? No, but gender insofar as it is ascribed to God by the biblical authors cannot be taken to imply that God is an inherently male or female deity. The biblical authors thought of their God in all of the following categories: gender-specific, personal, and a-personal. Specific truths are conveyed in each case. We do well, should we choose to situate ourselves in the slipstream created by biblical tradition, to emulate in our own God language the range and variety of categories and social constructs through which God is described in the Bible.

Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Is the biblical God a persona beyond gender?

A few Mondays ago we completed our analysis of the two major story arcs in the Acts of Thecla.  Today we’ll take some time to recap the two previous posts.

The first arc of the Acts of Thecla serves to introduce Paul and Thecla and to begin the critique of the opponents of the writer’s community. The ideals of the state, of the family, and of Paul himself are being questioned. The second arc repeats this process and intensifies it, demonstrating the victory of Thecla and what she represents. The interesting thing here is what the Acts of Thecla does with gender roles of the day. Interpreters have often said that Thecla moves into maleness to overcome her opponents, thereby subverting the male under the female. [1]   In reality, something much more subtle is occurring than a mere gender critique.

Acts of Thecla is not equating the feminine with the masculine, nor lifting the one above the other. Instead, the Acts of Thecla is critiquing the very notion of gender itself! Notice that Thecla attacks male dominated society at almost every turn, but also uses the category of feminity to critique Paul. [2]   Paul increasingly become feminized and his feminine passivity is being critiqued! 

By doing so, the Acts of Thecla argues that neither construction of gender categories is adequate. Friday we will conclude this post series on the Thecla tradition by traveling farther back in time and look at what created the ideological hole that Thecla was trying to fill.

1. Ibid., 271. [↩]
2. Ibid., 272. [↩]

Friday we looked at how Thecla began her journey from the standard Roman passive feminity on through standard Roman active masculinity toward the early Christian ideal of nongendered activity.  Today, we will look at the second arc of the Acts of Thecla and see how she completes her journey.

The second arc begins in much the same way the first one does, but with a furthering of the themes presented at the conclusion of the first arc. Instead of merely passively watching Paul, Thecla is now actively following him. Paul, and therefore the branches of Christianity that claim him as an authority, claims to not know Thecla when Alexander asks about her, receding farther into femininity by becoming even more passive. When she is accosted by Alexander, “the first man of Antiochenes,” instead of tacitly rejecting him as she did her fiancé, she explicitly rejects the advances of this male, going so far as to “rip off his chlamys, an imperial or military mantle,” to “denude him of his crown, making him appear as one conquered,” [1] and to humiliate him in public. She effectively steals his honor at this point in the narrative.  We need to mention that power in antiquity was always taken from someone else, not earned or obtained by any other means.  In addition, she finally gains her voice. Up until this point she has been silent in the narrative. This rejection of male dominance enrages Alexander, the symbol of male and state dominance, at which point he hauls her in front of the governor demanding justice.

In the second episode of the second arc, the 2^nd trial of Thecla, maintains the same structure as the first trial, but continues add agency to Thecla and to further critique the standard notions of family and civic values. Queen Tryphaena becomes her replacement mother, Paul is nowhere to be found, and the female crowd comes to her defense against the absurd accusations of the court.

The climax of the second arc in the third episode is the most dramatic yet. Everything is aligned against Thecla. She is stripped naked, attacked by a lioness, an assortment of wild beasts, and almost pulled apart by the legs by two bulls that have fires lit under the “appropriate spot[s]”. Through each of these attacks on her honor and body, she is delivered by god or its agents. A cloud of fire reminiscent of the cloud that hid the glory of god during the 40 years of Israel wandering in the desert hides Thecla’s nakedness from the crowd. The lioness sent to attack befriends her and saves her from the assortment of wild animals. The cloud of fire burns the ropes connecting her to the bulls. Thus Thecla is saved once again. During the course of all of this and fearing for her life, Thecla performs the ultimate act of Christian agency, she baptizes herself. In doing so, she fulfills Paul’s foreshadowing speech in chapter 25. This climatic episode serves to signal the complete and utter victory of Thecla over her opponents.

The fourth episode brings resolution to the second arc and to the story as a whole. After her deliverance from her execution, she dresses like a male and finds Paul again. Paul still is concerned with her temptation, even though she has remained steadfast through incredible trials. Yet, perhaps because of the numbers of people who were thronging around to hear Thecla speak, Paul relents and commands her to go forth and preach. She, though her transformation, has won over that which she became enamored with at the beginning of the story.

On Wednesday we will sum up the effects of the rhetoric.  Stay tuned and tell me where I am wrong!

1. Ibid., 268. [↩]

As I am wading through In Memory of Her [1] I came across this quote from Fiorenza where she outlines what she considers to be the goals of good feminist scholarship. Given some of the issues that came up in another post, I thought this was appropriate.

The debate between feminist “engaged” and androcentric academic “neutral” scholarship indicates a shift in interpretative paradigms. Whereas traditional scholarship has identified humanness with maleness and understood women only as a peripheral category in the “human” interpretation of reality, the new field of women’s studies not only attempts to make “women’s” agency a key interpretative category but also seeks to transform androcentric scholarship and knowledge into truly human scholarship and knowledge, that is, inclusive of all people, men and women, upper and lower classes, aristocracy and “common people,” different cultures and races, the powerful and the weak.

Methods and implementation aside, the above is a worthy and necessary goal in biblical interpretation. Historically, scholars have viewed women as a variation of men, often as incomplete version of a man. Accordingly all scholarship and philosophical reflection is colored with this lens.

1. and I do mean wading – right now I am trudging through the barrow-downs of her survey and critique of all previous feminist biblical scholarship [↩]

Today’s link of the day comes from iamjoshbrown.com ::The Consumptive Church: Appeasing The White Man’s Guilt. I wish I could quote the whole thing for you, but here is a bit to whet your appetite.

In hindsight, choosing to buy nothing like I did, had less to do with my critique of consumption and more to do with the privilege that has been afforded to me as a middle-class American. It had more to do with me wanting to appease my guilt for my consumption throughout the rest of the year than it did with me challenging the systemic injustices of hyper-consumption itself.

I get that. I really, really do.

While I think The Consumptive Church is only possible in an affluent white man’s world, I am also becoming painfully aware that critiques like mine are only possible because of the larger framework of that same affluent context. Perhaps these critiques really are more rooted in appeasing my guilt than they are in deep fundamental change.

In these critiques of mine . . . these “opting-outs” of conventional consumptive patterns, I’m afraid that the larger myths of consumption to satisfy might still go un-critiqued.

[read more]

Here is a link to a video where Mark Driscoll gives his critique of Joel Osteen’s HWP “gospel” (although I think Paul says in Galatians 1:7 that there really isn’t a different gospel and that what Osteen & co. preach shouldn’t be called euangelion).

H/T: FIDE-O

Dr. Denny Burk here offers a critique of Osteen’s appearance on Larry King and relates it to gnosticism.