On Being Subject to Authority

The church-community has, therefore, a very real impact on the life of the world. It gains space for Christ. For whatever is “in Christ” is no longer under the dominion of the world, of sin, or of the law. Within this newly created community, all the laws of this world have lost their binding force. This sphere in which brothers and sisters are loved with Christian love is subject to Christ; it is no longer subject to the world. The church-community can never consent to any restrictions of its service of love and compassion toward other human beings. For wherever there is a brother or sister, there Christ’s own body is present; and wherever Christ’s body is present, his church-community is also always present, which means I must also be present there. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (DBWE 4), 236.

An interesting take on political theology: rather than being subject to two kingdoms (Church and World) as Lutherans hold, Bonhoeffer says that we as Christians are only subject to Christ, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. There is no sphere in which we stop being Christians, united to Christ and to one another; wherever one Christian is, the whole body of Christ is with them.

Does this mean that Christians are not subject to the laws of the land? Yes! Does that mean that we should not obey them? By no means! We are subject to Christ, who demands even more of us than any law; all just laws still fall short of the demands of discipleship, and so obeying the law is the least service to Christ. If a law is unjust, then it is contrary to Christ and must not be obeyed. Even though we should not obey an unjust law out of a sense of patriotism, refusal to obey an unjust law is again the least service to Christ. Whether we obey just laws or disobey unjust laws, in either case we do so incidentally, not out of service to the law or to the nation but out of service to Christ, to whom alone we are subject.

This can be seen in the way Christians live in community without coercion. Acts tells us that they held all things in common and gave to everyone as they had need, providing for widows, etc. They did not collect taxes amongst themselves to do so, but everyone gave as they were able, voluntarily. What the law requires under coercion, Christians give freely as service to Christ. In this way we are not subject to even the best laws, because we surpass them in Christ.

There is no such thing as a Christian criminal in this sense, because if we transgress so far as to break the law, we have long since failed to fulfill the demands of Christian discipleship, that is, to follow Christ. And when we break the law in service to Christ, we are not called criminals but martyrs, prisoners of conscience or faith.

So in all things seek first the kingdom of Heaven, and the law will be satisfied.

Bonhoeffer’s Double Standards

I’m finally working through Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, which has been a long time coming. It’s the last book I need to read for the course I took in January, Reading Bonhoeffer, but I feel like it should have been one of the first Bonhoeffer books I read. It’s certainly one of the more accessible of his writings, though that doesn’t mean that it isn’t difficult. Perhaps challenging is the better word.

In Bonhoeffer’s day, German Lutherans had (apparently) been enjoying Luther’s doctrine of salvation by grace alone for a long time, to the point where grace had become an assumption, and thus had little power in people’s lives. Bonhoeffer starts his book by talking about “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” He holds that costly grace, or real grace, comes as a result of obedience in faith. Faith cannot be separated from obedience. Faith and obedience are a sort of chicken-and-egg situation: do you obey because you believe, or do you believe because you obey? Ultimately, the answer is both, which can be hard to get your head around. In obeying, you show that you believe at the same time that you learn to believe.

This discussion of cheap and costly grace has helped me tremendously to understand Luther. Living hundreds of years later and never having actually read Luther, all I know of his thought comes through a massive game of Telephone, distorted by time and retelling. I know mostly about the abuse of the doctrine, but Bonhoeffer put Luther in perspective for me.

Luther was a penitent monk who had given up everything to follow Jesus (Monks aren’t exactly known for their wealth and worldly ways), had trained for years in spiritual disciplines, and then realized that he was saved by God’s gift to him, which he received in faith. None of his training or renunciation of the world, none of what he gave up to be a disciple, was what actually saved him. It was just Jesus, from the start. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone is not a renunciation of works – he’d probably do it all again – but rather a strong recognition that works in themselves will not save anyone. Even the most pious works can be done with self-serving attitudes or purposes, but even right purposes and attitudes are evidence of Christ working in us and not something that we ourselves can be credited with.

Does this mean that works, even if good, are not necessary? Not at all; as has already been said, faith cannot be separated from obedience. It was only after Luther had gone through all of those acts of obedience in faith that he could properly recognize that faith was all that was required. His life of obedience had been the soil in which faith grew (a notion that still provides the foundation for the Catholic doctrine of grace, in which we grow in grace by works of obedience that make us into people capable of receiving more grace from God). Luther, as a veteran disciple of Christ, was able to say truly and with full force that salvation is by grace through faith, and that works themselves are of no value to salvation; the same phrase coming out of the mouth of a new or lukewarm disciple is not true in the same sense, if at all. Luther’s grace was costly, coming after toil and sacrifice; but assuming grace as a principle and eschewing works altogether is cheap grace, or not grace at all. I see this as somewhat of a double standard, but a good one.

In chapter 3 Bonhoeffer talks about “simple obedience,” and again I see a double standard here. He uses the example of the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what he must do to be saved. By asking this question, Bonhoeffer points out, the young man is actually trying to avoid the question: he knows the law and has followed it all his life. He’s looking for something more. Bonhoeffer says he’s looking for a way to avoid the question, to turn a commandment into a philosophical question to be discussed rather than obeyed. I was always under the impression that he was just insecure and wanted guidance. In either case, Jesus turns him back to simple commands that should be obeyed just as simply. Sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, then come and follow me.

We have a way of interpreting Jesus’ commands in an inward, spiritual way, that doesn’t actually require us to simply obey him. We don’t really need to sell everything we have and give it to the poor in order to follow him, we just need to hold our possessions so lightly that they have no hold over us, so that we could hypothetically sell them and give all our money away. Rather than actually doing so, it might actually seem better to hold on to our money and things so that we can remain in this state of hypothetical “obedience.” Our method of “obeying” can thus often mean doing the exact opposite because of our insistence on reinterpreting the command. Bonhoeffer points out that if we obeyed our parents this way, or obeyed the authorities this way, we’d be in serious trouble.

Again, there is a double standard here. We don’t all need to give our money away, and we don’t all need to take a vow of poverty. Doing so might even be a type of self-righteousness, or legalism, or some other negative thing. There are other commands in the New Testament that talk about holding our possessions lightly. But once again, it’s easy for some people to “obey” Jesus in this paradoxical sense, obeying spiritually but not actually. Bonhoeffer holds that this is cheap grace, claiming to obey but actually being disobedient. Those who have actually obeyed Jesus simply, though, and followed him, are capable of obeying spiritually. It’s one thing for a long time disciple who has been practising simple obedience for some time to talk about and practise obeying the spiritual intent of Jesus’ literal commands; it’s quite another for a less mature disciple to use it as an excuse to avoid Jesus’ straightforward commands.

The key to it all is formation: obeying Jesus in faith makes us into the type of people who have enough faith to obey.

W5 with Bonhoeffer

I’m reading Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures…very, very slowly. I can only do about two pages before I have to write a post. My assignment is an analysis of a 23 page chunk, and I thought “that’s pretty short – should be easy.” Right.

So, for the first six pages Bonhoeffer is introducing the topic of Christology by talking about the kinds of questions that we can ask. It’s not quite W5, but he goes through several different questions that humans ask to find the one that is appropriate for the task of Christology. I’ve already written a few posts about it over at iheartbarth, if you’re interested; here I’ll try to be a bit less meandering, but I’m still working through the concepts. Most of what I’ll say here is Bonhoeffer, but much of it is interpreted and expanded upon as I work it out.

1. How

This seems to be the only question that human beings are capable of asking on our own. Whether we’re examining the world through the lens of the sciences, the soft sciences, or the humanities, all of our questions are a type of the question “how?” Knowledge, in the sense of what we can learn about the world through studying it, involves cataloguing the world into different categories. These categories, though, occur within our own heads: we can really only understand anything else in its relation to other things, but ultimately we understand all things in relation to ourselves. This is a limitation we have, a result of our limited perspective. All questions boil down to “how” because ultimately we’re asking “how does this other thing relate to me?”

This is a useful question when dealing with objects, but when we are confronted by an other, another subject, it will no longer do. When we ask “how” of another person, we are in a sense objectifying them because we treat them as something whose primary feature is its relation to ourselves. We are at the centre of our own universe, a position from which we cannot respect the other as other; they instead become a mere projection of ourselves. I may have much in common with you, and so I have a sense that I know you or have knowledge about you; but in reality, I’m only projecting myself onto you because my knowledge of you is only in relation to myself.

2. Who

When we are faced with an other, the “how” questions no longer suffice. Not only does it objectify the other, but it does not obtain any actual knowledge of them, because it only allows us to project ourselves onto them, to co-opt them. No, the only sufficient question for an other is “who are you?”

The trick is, we cannot ask “who are you?” until the other has revealed themselves to us. As long as we are asking from within our self-centred universe, in which all knowledge is categorized by the relationship of objects to ourselves, “who” is actually just “how” in disguise. But when another reveals herself to us, we can suddenly transcend our self-defined paradigms: knowledge has come into our self-contained universe from outside! Only then is there any fruit in asking “who are you?” because now we have a basis for asking the question, and a new paradigm for the knowledge that the answer will bring.

Bonhoeffer hasn’t mentioned it in this lecture so far, but I don’t think it’s wise to read Bonhoeffer without keeping in mind his concept of the ethical encounter with the other. I think that is precisely what he’s talking about here. In short, to Bonhoeffer ethics cannot take place in our minds, as if we’re sitting around a table debating ethical questions and hypotheticals; rather, real ethics takes place in the ethical encounter with the other. We cannot act ethically all by ourselves, because the ethical question only arises when we meet an other. The other provides a boundary for ourselves, a place where me-ness ends and other-ness begins, and this boundary is where life takes place. It is at this boundary that ethical questions arise, but they arise here because it is at this boundary that the other can make claims upon me: I have responsibilities to the other. Bonhoeffer spends some time in his first dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, developing this notion; here we can add that this boundary is also the place where I can gain genuine knowledge that is more than just a projection of myself, because this other not only provides a boundary for my me-ness, but they also provide a boundary for my self-centred paradigms and categories. In the encounter with the other there arises an ethical claim on me; when the other reveals herself, there arises an ontological challenge: there exists something outside of me!

But we can get around that. Bonhoeffer points out how clever we are at assimilating the other into ourselves, and says that we can even do so with God, or his self-revelation in the Bible. But the challenge that Christ poses to us is greater, and more insistent, than that of any other:

But what happens if the counter Logos [that is, Christ] suddenly presents its demand in a wholly new form, so that it is no longer an idea or a word that is turned against the autonomy of the [human] logos, but rather the counter Logos appears, somewhere and at some time in history, as a human being, and as a human being sets itself up as judge over the human logos and says “I am the truth.” I am the death of the human logos, I am the life of God’s Logos, I am the Alpha and Omega? Human beings are those who must die and must fall, with their logos, into my hands. Here it is no longer possible to fit the Word made flesh into the logos classification system. Here all that remains is the question: Who are you? – DBWE 12, 302

We can treat God as an idea, and categorize him in our self-centred paradigms; we can treat the Bible as an object, and do the same. But in Christ, God confronts us as a concrete other, a human being. Now, though other human beings can confront us with the end of ourselves and make ethical claims on us, Christ makes much greater claims! He is much more difficult to ignore. Faced with Christ as the self-revelation of God, “how” is completely insufficient, and we cannot help but ask “who are you?”

3. That

“That” isn’t to be questioned; he goes so far as to say that questioning it is “prohibited” in the Christological enterprise. Once we have asked “who are you?”…

Two questions are prohibited:

(1) Whether the answer that is given is the right answer. This question has no right to be asked, because there can be no authority for our human logos to cast doubt on the truth of this Logos. Jesus’ own witness to himself, then and now, stands on its own and substantiates itself. The “that” in “that God was revealed in Christ” cannot be theologically questioned.

(2) The second prohibited question is how the “that” of the revelation can be conceived. This question leads in the direction of trying again to get behind Christ’s claim, and to ground it in our own. In doing so, our own logos is presuming on the role of the Father of Jesus Christ himself, when all we actually know is the fact of God’s revelation. – 303

As I’ve already written about this, I’ll keep it short: we have no basis on which to question whether God has actually revealed himself in Christ. Aside from Christ’s self-revelation, we’re pretty much stuck inside our own heads. We can’t question Christ’s answer to our question of “who are you” because it actually comes from outside of ourselves; and we can’t question how we can know Christ’s answer to our asking of that question, because we have no epistemological basis for doing so, because it does come from outside ourselves. It transcends all of our categories and classifications, and we can only accept it or reject it. Anything else is just another attempt to return to the “how” and assimilate Christ into ourselves – or kill him. It doesn’t make for a good Christological endeavour, either way.

What happens again if the claim of the counter Logos is questioned. The human logos kills the Logos of God, the Word become human, which it has just questioned. Because the human logos does not want to die itself, the Logos of God, which is death to the human logos, must die instead. The Word become human must be hung on the cross by the human logos. The person who was causing the worry has been killed, and along with that person, the question.

But what happens when this counter Word, though it has been killed, raises itself from the dead as the living, eternal, ultimate, conquering Word of God, when it rises up to meet its murderers and rushes at them again, appearing as the Resurrected One who has overcome death? Here the question “Who are you?” becomes most poignant. Here it stands, alive forever, over and around and within humankind. The human being can still fight against the Word become human and kill him, but against the Resurrected One the human being has no power. We ourselves are now the ones who stand convicted. Now our question has been turned around. The question we have put to the person of Christ, “Who are you?” comes back at us: who are you, that you can ask this question? Do you live in the truth, so you can ask it? Who are you, you who can only ask about me because you have been justified and received grace through me? Only when this question has been heard has the christological question been definitively formulated. – 305

The claim that Christ makes on us when we encounter him is greater than the ethical claims of other humans: it is judgment and grace at the same time. Because of the judgment of that encounter, our question of “who are you?” springs back on us, as we become aware of ourselves before God as one judged. We can’t handle this, so we undermine the question, destroy it – we kill Christ so that the penetrating question “who are you?” will go away. But he returns, more glorious and more terrible than before, and his question “who are you?” remains. We can’t ask him, without the question returning to us. That is the judgment of encounter with Christ; the mercy and grace of the encounter with Christ is to hear his answer to the question. “Who are you?” is answered: the Son of God.

His answer, then, can only truly be heard in faith. To question his answer is to kill him, to reassert our own autonomy, to keep asking “how.” If we want to seriously ask “who are you?” we need to listen in faith to actually hear the answer (otherwise, we will only experience the question rebounding upon us in judgment). That is why Christology can only occur in the context of the church.

4. What

Finally, Bonhoeffer finishes up his introduction with the question of authority.

There are two contrasting types of authority in the world: the authority deriving from office, and the authority inherent in the person. When these two authorities confront each other, then the question posed to the authority of the person is “What” are you? The “what” means, what office do you hold? The question of the individual person to the person in authority is where do you as an individual get your authority? The answer is from myself, since I recognize your authority over me. Both questions about authority are derived from the “how question.” All people are holders of some office, of some community, of themselves. Even prophets are only bearers of the word; they are not the word itself.

What happens, then, when someone appears who claims not only to bring the divine office and Word but actually to be that very office and Word? That is, not only to have authority but to be authority itself? Here a new existence breaks into our existence. Here the highest authority in the world, that of the prophet, is superseded. This is no longer the saint, the reformer, the prophet, but rather the Son himself. Here we no longer ask, What are you, where do you come from? Here the question asked is that of the very revelation of God.

Once again, then, the only question we can ask of Christ is “Who are you?” We define ourselves and each other by our office, by our authority – authority that is, like our knowledge, derived from how things relate to ourselves. But Christ transcends all of that, because he is authority. “What” no longer has meaning, only “who?”

Christ transcends all of our categories and classifications, and therefore our knowledge and basis for knowledge; he also transcends our personal barriers, being an Other whose claim upon us judges us and gives us mercy and grace at the same time. In this way, Christ allows us to see ourselves, and our world, truly. The question “who are you?” is thus the question of transcendence and existence: we can only really know who we are in relation to Christ. Our classification system has become reversed, for now all things are known in relation to Christ rather than in relation to ourselves; and our sense of authority is reversed, for now authority is recognized to come from God rather than to be something that I give to others.

In this encounter with Christ we see the world as it truly is, and we see ourselves as we truly are, but only if we can ask in faith, “Who are you Lord?”

On the Position and Posture of Politics

Faith and politics is a perennial problem, and one that’s on the minds of many people in Manitoba these days. Bill 18 has brought it to mind, but it’s always been there, taunting us. How should Christians view, or be involved in, politics?

Secularism is a narrow road, and often misunderstood. It was created by Christians (and probably deists) as a way for different denominations of Christians to come together and agree to disagree. It doesn’t actually demand that we stop practising our religions, but only that we limit the ways that we do so for the sake of everyone else. It’s not the worst system, by a long shot, but every now and then it demands more of us than we’re willing to grant it. Its spirit is to lay aside peripheral issues that divide us when we come together so that we can focus on the greater issues that unite us, allowing us to move forward together. But sometimes the demands of the gospel are simply too great to lay them aside or compromise on them under public pressure.

Some Christians hold that we shouldn’t be involved in politics at all; they’re called Christian Anarchists, and their ranks include such greats as Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day. Others hold that we shouldn’t get involved any more than we have to, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and then leave him alone. Greg Boyd, a pastor in Minnesota, preached that during an election year and watched a thousand people leave his church. See his book Myth of a Christian Nation for the story, it’s pretty good. On the other hand, many Christians hold that we should be as involved in politics as we can, that it’s our job to ensure that our nation’s laws honour God. Historically, this was called Christendom. That word doesn’t have a very good reputation anymore, but nobody complains when their government stops persecuting them and makes their religion the official, national faith. It’s only really from the perspective of freedom that we can criticize Christian privilege.

I don’t think that there’s a single answer for all Christians on this point. I don’t think that Jesus wants us all to be politicians, or even political; nor do I think that he would stop us from doing so. But while there might not be a clear call for all Christians to be political, there is a clear call for all Canadians to do so. We live in a democracy, which is both a privilege and a responsibility: the decisions we make together affect all of us, and the rest of the world. Whether or not we think that God is commanding us to do so, we have the opportunity to create laws that honour God.

At issue, then, is not whether or not we are Christians; a Christian can be no less. Nor is the issue one of whether or not we are Canadians; we do ourselves and our nation a disservice by being silent in the public square, and we are responsible for one another and to one another. The issue is the extent to which we are willing to lay aside what may be peripheral things for the sake of greater unity, and the extent to which we must insist upon holding a position that our consciences will not allow us to let drop. These are decisions that we all must make for ourselves, and we will all land somewhere on the spectrum between secularism and Christendom. No matter what position we fill on that spectrum, we are not in a position that allows us to judge where anyone else ought to fall on it. But that’s not what this post is about.

There are two things that affect the way that we do politics, whether we’re Christians or not: position, and posture. These two things will dramatically affect both the style of our political engagement, and its character.

Position

Where do we stand in the world? What is our relationship to power? There are two main positions in politics: above and below. At different times and in different contexts, we may be in both positions, perhaps even at the same time.

Politics from above, or top-down politics, is an excellent way to change the world. A few strokes of a policy-maker’s pen can do more than years of grassroots campaigning. Think of government regulations, for example: a grassroots campaign to get people to waste less energy, drive less, turn off lights, take shorter showers, and buy smaller cars, may have little effect even if it runs for years. But one regulation that requires automakers to produce vehicles with better mileage can have tremendous effects on the same issue, without most people even noticing. World Vision campaigns for international aid year-round, but one government program can provide for more food and medical aid than just about any other source. Politics from above can make a difference in the world, and do so quickly.

Of course, politics from above can also enslave people. If you want to make changes and choices on behalf of the people, and you don’t have their support to do so, then you have to control them in order to rule over them. Communism is a great idea, in theory, but in order to work it needs everyone to do their part. When you begin to enforce things on an unwilling population, we call that tyranny. That is, in large part, why we need politics from below.

Politics from below is the grassroots movements, the true democracy, that we in North America value so much. We should. We have unprecedented freedom, in many senses of the word. This is the result of us all coming together and collectively agreeing on a course of action. Inherent to this notion is the implied agreement that the majority shall rule, as well as the implied agreement that we’ll be able to talk things over and try to convince one another. Also implied is that if I can’t convince the majority to agree with me, then I’ll have to be satisfied with what they decide until I manage to sway them to my side. This is a recipe for peace and freedom, provided we have a functioning system of government and people at the top who agree to play by the rules. It also needs a majority that knows what the heck it’s talking about.

Some (cynical) people say that democracy is merely the tyranny of the majority. Certainly, it’s not always great for the minority. Others are frustrated at the slow pace of democratic change: it takes generations to change enough people’s minds about issues to actually change our world, and governments are often deadlocked with the opposition parties.

Ultimately, of course, we need both of these at the same time. Politics, to be effective, must come from above and below. Christianity started as a grass-roots movement, and for the most part it still is, but there was a long period during which it was passed down from above as the official state religion of every Western nation. The latter was a much more effective method of evangelism(!), but meant much less than the genuine choices of people to follow Christ. In our politics, too, Christians will come from both sides: Stephen Harper claims to be a Christian, and Christians may well find themselves called to politics, but far more common is the kind of politics that occurred at Steinbach Christian High School just over a week ago, when 1200 people showed up to pray about Manitoba Bill 18, the Safe and Inclusive Schools amendment. Is one better than another? What kind of position should Christians take?

Posture

Sit up straight. Stand tall. Keep your head up, kid. These references to our physical posture are metaphors for the way we interact with others. These examples of how we carry ourselves speak volume about how we perceive ourselves: confident people have straight backs, push their chests out, and look people in the eye.

Politics uses postural and positional metaphors. Seeing eye to eye, knowing where we stand, standing together, crossing the aisle, etc.

Christians use posture metaphors more than anyone. We sing “we raise our hands, we bow our knees,” even though we rarely actually do either of them; raising our hands is a posture of celebration, while bowing our knees is a posture of humility. We do both of those things before God, at least metaphorically, because we want to be humble and joyful. We open our hands to God to receive from him, and we open our hands to God to give to him. We shake each other’s hands at church and pass the peace, not out of greeting but because the action of doing so opens us up relationally to those around us. Doukhobors bow to each other, bowing to the image and presence of Christ in one another. We bow our heads to pray.

Like position, our posture is in relation to power and people, particularly in politics. If we have it, do we hold it in a closed fist? If we don’t have it, are we grasping for it? Are we treading lightly, or stepping on toes? These postures don’t always amount to one or the other; it might well be possible to charge ahead without stepping on toes, and it’s certainly possible to tread lightly and still crush others underfoot. “Walk softly, and carry a big stick,” as Roosevelt said – but that doesn’t always work either.

In his book To Change the World, James Davison Hunter looks at Christian attempts at social change from the past few decades. He breaks Christian politics down into three different groups: the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the Neo-Anabaptists. The Christian Right is defensive against the world, which it sees as a corrupting influence on Christian society. The Christian Left speaks out for the world (and defends against the Christian Right), even while it attempts to court the world, even compromise with it for the sake of the other. And Neo-Anabaptists have removed themselves from the world altogether, opting for their own society instead. Ultimately, in spite of their different postures toward the world (people), their posture toward power remains largely the same: grab it, and hold on to it. Remarkably, that’s the opposite of what Christ did.

What was the posture of Christ toward the world?

The Position and Posture of Christ

I hope that the controversy over Bill 18 makes it clear that it’s possible to hold to many different positions and still be a Christian. In fact, there are many Christians who support Bill 18 for exactly the same reason that many Christians oppose it: because they feel that Christ demands a choice from them on the matter. The idea that there are multiple Christian views hasn’t been coming across very strongly so far, but I hope it will. Regardless, my point here is that there can be all sorts of Christian politics, and I’m not trying to convince anyone to my view on Bill 18 here, or any other particular issue. What I want to talk about is the way we do politics: what position and posture should Christians take when we interact with others?

Christ is the ultimate example of power from above: he’s the king of all kings, the lord of lords, creator of the universe. The heavens are his throne, and the earth is his footstool, and all of his enemies are under his feet. Remarkably, this is also the position that Christians hold in the universe: we are co-heirs with Christ, and share fully in his inheritance. When did we forget this? I’ve heard a lot of defensive apologetics (and whining) from Christians lately. We complain that our religious rights are being trampled or done away with. Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t just let other people take our rights, but I have two reactions to such complaints: 1) Christians in Canada are among the most privileged people in the world, and even among the most privileged people in Canada; even if we’re losing essential rights (which I’m not sure is really happening), we’re at most being brought down to a common level with others. And much more importantly, 2) do you really believe that the NDP government of Manitoba, or the Liberal government of Ontario, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels or demons or any other power, NDP or Liberals, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nero could not stop Christians from worship, so who’s concerned about Greg Selinger or Nancy Allen? Christians are, and always will be, in the ultimate position of power in the universe, whether or not our regional governments recognize it. We have absolutely nothing to be defensive about, hallelujah!

So our position is, with Christ, from above. But of course, Christ didn’t stay above! He willingly gave up his position, and all of its glory, to become the lowest of the low and start a grassroots movement. Since the beginning of time, God had been ruling from above but gradually giving more and more power to those under him (angels, nations, kings, prophets). Christ took power all the way to the bottom, to the lowest of the low, and in so doing he inverted the pyramid of power. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Christians do not lord it over one another as the pagans do; instead, whoever would be first among you must be the servant of all. Christ, being secure in his position as king of kings and lord of lords, humbled himself to the lowest position, making the lowest position the highest position. That is the position that Christians are to have, not only with one another, but most especially to the world, and not least in politics!

And what of posture? We’ve already seen that Christ did not lord it over others, but made himself a servant – a humble posture if ever there was one! And secure in the knowledge that all power belonged to his Father, Christ did not see power as something to be grasped, but instead emptied himself. Ultimately, his posture is that of cruciformity, the posture of one hanging on a cross. Christ did not defend himself against the world. He turned the other cheek, gave up his shirt when someone sued him for his coat, and walked an extra mile when forced to walk only one. Christ also didn’t cozy up to the world and compromise his teachings for the sake of popularity; rather, in the confidence of his own power, compromised completely with people by forgiving them and seeing past their sins, even while they were killing him. And he definitely did not remove himself from the world; the gospel begins with the amazing fact that he not only came here, but made himself fit in completely, giving up all of his own glory and security to do so.

Marva Dawn’s book Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God speaks very well about the posture of cruciformity. Read it expecting to be humbled.

So what is the position and posture of Christians in politics today? We rule the universe with Christ, from the cross. We hold all of the power, for the purpose of giving it away. Our position as kings is only made apparent when we serve others as slaves. Our dignity and glory comes from our ability to humble ourselves before our enemies. Our rights are secure in heaven, but here in Canada we give them up for the sake of others.

We must never forget that we are crucified with Christ. Can we grasp at power when our hands are nailed to the cross? Can we lord it over others when we are naked and exposed? Can we separate ourselves from the world when we are, in fact, living and dying on their behalf with Christ? Whatever political choices we make, if we express them from the position and posture of Christ – that is, from the cross – we will honour God AND our nation.

Manitoba Bill 18, and Stereotyping our Enemies

If you’ve been paying attention to recent Canadian provincial politics (who doesn’t, right?), you can’t help but be aware of Bill 18, Manitoba’s anti-bullying bill. Or perhaps you’re more familiar with Ontario’s Bill 13, which is largely the same. Both of these bills have provoked a lot of opposition, specifically from Christian conservative sources. I can’t claim to speak for these Christian conservatives (particularly since I don’t see this bill as problematic), but I’m also increasingly discovering that I can’t align with Christian liberals on this issue. This is an issue that carries a lot of baggage, and both “sides” of the debate seem eager to throw all of it at each other.

You can read the bill here: http://web2.gov.mb.ca/bills/40-2/b018e.php

The gist of the bill is that schools in Manitoba are required to have anti-bullying policies in place that must allow for students to start their own anti-bullying groups at school, including gay-straight alliances. Christian conservatives aren’t too keen on that last part, and they may have a point. Whether or not they’re able to make their point is another question entirely.

I first heard about this bill when a member of my church forwarded on an email newsletter originating at a large church in our area. This email perpetuated every possible stereotype of Christian conservatives as homophobic, xenophobic, angry, intolerant, and altogether un-Christ-like, just by example. It repeated lies and assumptions about homosexuality (inconsistently, mind you), argued that this was a slippery slope that would lead to school-mandated clubs for bestiality and paedophilia, and implied that this was the NDP’s plan all along (NDP being Canada’s major left-wing party, which is currently in power in Manitoba). The email was so full of misinformation, projection, and assumption that it took me a minute to realize that it was actually lacking the information that was most important: it had no reference or link to the actual bill itself, nor did it have any reference to what a gay-straight alliance actually was.

I was disgusted at the blatant manipulation in this email, which included a link to a website that this church had set up to facilitate sending emails to elected representatives in protest of this bill. The email also included notice of a meeting to be held at Steinbach Christian High School, last Sunday.

I went to this meeting with fear and trembling, expecting the worst. I could only get one of my friends to come with me, as most of my friends on the moderate-to-liberal side refused to even come, because they also expected the worst and saw it as a waste of time at best. They were concerned that they’d only be offended and enraged for nothing. As we arrived, my anticipation increased: the parking lots were full, and the streets were lined with cars for blocks in every direction. We parked in an industrial park several blocks away. When we arrived inside, we were told that there “may be a few seats left in the balcony.” We got the last two seats in the balcony of the chapel, which itself was overflow from the event that was actually taking place in the gym. People were spilling out into the hallways, with over 1200 present: that’s ten times more people than have ever showed up for any political event in Steinbach’s history. If this meeting is anything like that email, I thought, then it’s going to end in a riot.

My apprehension wasn’t anxiety; I wasn’t afraid at any point. These people were mostly Mennonites, and being pacifists, I figured it wouldn’t come to that. My apprehension wasn’t eased by the first speaker, however; he started by saying that our religious rights and freedoms are under attack, which is never a good sign. He went on to thank God for our heritage, as people (Mennonites) who came to North America to avoid religious persecution, and worked so hard to ensure that we’d have religious freedom, which was now under attack. Then we were urged to give a round of applause to the principal of the school, who had set up the meeting in opposition to the bill, as well as the Christian MLA, Kelvin Goertzen, who had also publicly opposed the bill on the basis of religious freedom. Then we were urged to give a round of applause to Jesus, our true Lord (implying that our government is not); he received a standing ovation. It was starting to look like this might be the start of a Mennonite uprising, which would certainly be a singular event in Canadian history!

Thankfully, my fears were allayed almost immediately. The next speaker, who I think was the principal of the school, reminded us that this was not a political gathering but rather an information session and prayer meeting. He read the relevant section of the bill, and outlined their concerns about it. Their concerns are, in short, that the bill would require schools to allow meetings of groups on their premises whose values might directly conflict with the values of those schools, and further that the definition of bullying in the bill is broad enough that it might lead to people being charged with bullying in instances of what was unintentional offence. That is, they’re concerned that if they teach that homosexuality is sinful, it might be construed as bullying under the law. Given the current wording of the bill, that’s a possibility, however unlikely.

People were then gently urged to take action, by writing letters to the relevant ministers and representatives. They were urged to do so prayerfully and calmly, to wait 24 hours to send any letter they wrote to give themselves time to calmly reflect on it, and even to get a friend to read it before sending it. They urged respectful dialogue. Then we prayed for half an hour in small groups, and many of the prayer requests (on a handout) were for wisdom. It was an excellent example of Christians taking action together, and the exact opposite of what I had feared (and what that email had led me to believe).

What I experienced at the meeting was nothing like I had been led to believe by either side of the issue. It was not rabid fundamentalists arguing for the right to hate gay people, as some have assumed it to be. Nor was it assumed by those at the meeting that the government had a secret agenda of making us all into gay pedophiles who have sex with animals in elementary school. Even if some people who attended the meeting harboured some of those suspicions (either way), they managed to overcome them long enough to pray together for wisdom and insight, and the best possible bill to protect our kids. Now, if only the rest of us could get over the baggage, stop trying to read between the lines so much, and take each other seriously as human beings long enough to talk it out.

We don’t seem capable of disagreeing with other human beings. We can only disagree with heathens or monsters. Therefore, if we disagree with someone on an issue like this, they must be less than human somehow. It’s somewhat ironic that we’re having this problem in a debate about bullying, which is fundamentally a dehumanizing act. It’s even more ironic that we’re having this issue between groups of Christians, as being a Christian is supposed to be fundamentally humanizing, and demands that we humanize others. So please, friends from the left, let’s humanize the fundamentalists; even if their fears are overblown or illegitimate, they’re still human beings just like us who want the best for their kids – even the gay ones. Only when we’ve recognized them as our sisters and brothers can we be in any position to have a real discussion about homosexuality. And friends from the right, let’s not vilify the government, the NDP, Nancy Allen, or anyone else Christ died for. They’re not perfect, certainly, but they’re doing their best, and would probably welcome constructive feedback.

I suppose this post isn’t explicitly theological, but it needed to be said. I know I needed to hear it as much as I needed to say it. Fellow Manitobans (and Ontarions), blessings as you work through these issues.

With love,

Jeff

Reading Bonhoeffer: The End! (Of Religion)

This is it: tomorrow is the last day of class, and I’ve just finished my last required chapter of the Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (chapter 13, “Christianity in a world come of age” by Peter Selby), which discusses Bonhoeffer’s notion in Letters and Papers from Prison of a “religionless Christianity” in “a world come of age.” (See LPP, letters from May 5-6, 1944, and especially June 8 and 30 1944)

A World Come of Age

When Bonhoeffer talks of “religion” in this context, he’s not talking about Christianity itself, but rather a certain notion of religion in general that nobody would aspire to, yet nevertheless existed quite strongly in the German Evangelical (Protestant) Church: outward proclamation combined with inward piety, and generally without much of an ethic or a politic at all. In a word, irrelevant, perhaps even hypocritical. But of course, Bonhoeffer had been answering this kind of empty religion his entire life: when as a child he told his family that he would be a theologian, and they were unimpressed due to the bourgeois nature of the institutional church, his answer was “then I will reform it!” His radical ecclesiology, stemming as it does from his robust christology, certainly was answer enough to a church that simply lacked engagement with the world.

The problem, though, was not simply that the church had lost relevance; rather, it was that the world (at least the world of modern intellectual Germany) no longer needed it. In the modern age of science, art, and social thought, the boundaries of knowledge had been continually pushed back, and with them, society’s reliance on God.

It’s not that God himself is irrelevant, but rather that “religion” tended to only present God as a deus ex machina, a God of the gaps, the answer to all things mysterious. In Bonhoeffer’s time, science was believed to have prevailed almost entirely, answering all of life’s questions. Without gaps in human knowledge, the God of the gaps was unnecessary. Humanity needed no intellectual crutch to lean on: it had come of age, and was now independent of God.

Religionless Christianity

Bonhoeffer recognized that the world had come of age, and was no longer dependent on the notion of God. Rather than rail against this, he embraced it, seeing it as something that God himself demanded of them. Rather than seeking God in unanswered questions, as “religion” did, Bonhoeffer held that we should seek God precisely in the answered questions. Rather than having a church that required people to come to it, and required people to lean on it, Bonhoeffer had already proposed a church that was radically “missional” (to use today’s language – see yesterday’s post for clarification), sent out into the world to exist on its behalf.

Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” still had a church – the type of community he proposed in all of his works, but particularly Sanctorum Communio, Discipleship, and Life Together, infused with the responsibilities outlined in Ethics. It also still had the necessity of a strong faith, discipleship, and spiritual disciplines. What it didn’t have, what it had given up, was proclamation: the proclamation of “religion”, and even of the Confessing Church who had held true to the gospel in the face of the Reich Church’s misuse of it to support Nazi ideology, had failed entirely. He held out hope that someday the time for proclamation would return, but in the meantime he suggested that Christianity in a world come of age would be a hidden church. In place of proclamation, which under “religion” had often been empty moralising, would be the radical existing-for-others ethic which required incredible discipline and spiritual/ethical formation. This church would bear witness through its actions, through its being-for-others, through its devotion to the God who had allowed himself to be pushed out of the world and onto the cross in order to be weak and suffer along with his creation. This suffering would be the mark of Christianity in a world come of age.

I sense in Bonhoeffer here a notion of progress (though perhaps that word is too loaded with conceptual and historical baggage): the world had begun to become self-sufficient, building societies and making discoveries and having laws and justice and occasionally peace – all “as if God didn’t exist.” We were getting along just as well without the notion and motivation of the existence of God as we were when we were shackled to religion, and this itself could be a testament to God at work in the world, allowing Himself to be pushed out of it while still upholding it, for the sake of our maturity. If the world can get by without being beholden to religion, should not also the church? It seems to me that Bonhoeffer is suggesting that we should be able to grow up to the point where we are good to one another, not because piety demands it or to avoid the hypocrisy of having proclaimed it without acting upon it, but instead because we have been shaped into the form of Christ and have actively chosen to participate with him in caring for others out of our own maturity in Christ. Rules are for children; continued dependence on laws even when we already know not to break them is thus infantile, or else legalistic (Bonhoeffer compares “religion” to Paul’s discussion of circumcision as legalism). We should no longer go through the forms of religion upon which we used to rely, when we are instead capable of living in a state of Christ-likeness to which those old forms were to point!

Now, I should be clear that Bonhoeffer never really set out a design for the church, he only worked out a theology of the church. The actual form of the church, I’m sure he would say, would depend on the context and people involved. He was definitely not a fan of uncontextualized principles, urging instead that people live out of their basic convictions, which of course were to be theologically informed. In Letters and Papers from Prison he was engaged in the task of dreaming about a Germany after the war, a Germany he never saw; he was not dreaming of Canada in 2013.

That’s up to us.

I haven’t seen this one before…might have to pick it up.

p.s. I’ll be back tomorrow with some final reflections, but this is the end of my summaries from the Cambridge Companion. Don’t go away!

Reading Bonhoeffer: Politics and the Aryan Paragraph

Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for: Bonhoeffer’s political theology! This can be hard to define, because almost all of Bonhoeffer’s writings are rich with political implications and veiled references to Nazi ideology and policy, but the Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer collects his political ideas and attitudes in chapter 10, “Church, state and the ‘Jewish question’” by Ruth Zerner.

The Givens: Bonhoeffer’s Inherited Views

Bonhoeffer was raised in a nation that had a very strong sense of tradition and heritage, not least of which was the legacy of Martin Luther. In fairness to Luther, the views of Bonhoeffer’s day were mostly twisted versions of Luther’s ideas, but nevertheless they found their roots in Luther. Two views in particular are relevant here: antisemitism, and the “two kingdoms” theology.

It’s a bit shocking for Bonhoeffer fans of today (like me) to see him write about the “Jewish problem” or refer to and seemingly affirm notions such as Jewish guilt for deicide (the killing of Christ) and God’s punishment for it. Though he also wrote that there is no justification for a state who takes the task of this punishment on itself, the idea that he even used those terms is shocking, especially when he was usually so careful and clever to avoid using Nazi-esque language in other settings. Bonhoeffer himself was involved in rescuing 14 Jews, and it was evidence of this act that later caused his arrest, which eventually led to his execution, so clearly he wasn’t antisemitic. But even so, it makes me wonder if his vehement arguments against the Aryan paragraph, which excluded all non-Aryans from holding any public service positions including pastorates, was not a sticking up for the Jews as much as it was sticking up for the independence of the Church. At least initially, it seems like his arguments are based on the principle of the matter – not that he was indifferent to the sufferings of the Jews, but that they were of secondary importance after the freedom of the Church. Bonhoeffer’s later statements, including “only he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chant!” shows that he felt strongly about the treatment of the Jews. In the worst case, I suppose this shows that his theology made him a better person and overcame his inherited prejudices; may we also be so affected by our theology!

The other view that Bonhoeffer inherited that had a profound impact on his political theology and activism was Luther’s theology of Two Kingdoms. Luther’s view was (very basically) that God had ordained two different kingdoms to order reality, the Church and the State. Each of these two separate realms were given authority over different aspects of human life, reflecting their different purposes. By Bonhoeffer’s time, this notion of their separation and different purposes had morphed into the notion that they were mutually independent, and could not even criticise each other. As such, Bonhoeffer felt that it was not the place of the Church to criticise the State, much less demand certain policies or elements of justice. Bonhoeffer also used this doctrine to argue that the State had no right to apply the Aryan paragraph to the Church, as pastors were not servants of the State (even though they received government salaries in Germany) but of the Church. To Bonhoeffer, this meant that the Nazi regime had overstepped a sacred boundary, which it did increasingly (eventually requiring all pastors to pledge allegiance to Hitler!), prompting Bonhoeffer to suggest that salvation was of the Confessing Church (as opposed to the Reich Church), implying that those who gave in to Hitler’s demands were cutting themselves off from the true church.

A New Political Theology

I wonder what Bonhoeffer would have (or could have) done if he had not assumed and supported Luther’s theology of Two Kingdoms. (Jurgen Moltmann picks the Two Kingdoms view apart quite nicely in On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, though in Bonhoeffer’s time Moltmann was reading the Bible for the first time in a British POW camp). As it was, he got around the apparent prohibition against the Church criticising the State by saying that individual Christians could still do so (though he generally avoided emphasis on individualism in all other respects).

In Ethics he subverted this doctrine further still when he replaced the doctrine of the orders of creation (the notion that things such as “blood and soil” – or race and nation – were the givens of creation, orders created by God) with the notion of divine mandates: church, work, family, and government (sometimes there was a fifth mandate, “culture”, but it is not always mentioned). Note that he says “government” instead of “State”. He draws a distinction between government and State, with State remaining a God-ordained institution, while government describes a particular instance of it, which is fully capable of falling and is open to critique. In fact, the purpose of the divine mandate of Church is to critique the other mandates, drawing them back to their purpose under God. This gave the Confessing Church not only the license to critique the Nazis, but the responsibility to do so!

There are times when obedience to the State requires resistance to the government.

New Directions

Where would Bonhoeffer’s political theology have gone, if he hadn’t been executed? His ethic and notions of discipleship and Church were highly political, and the implications of them are still being worked out in political theology today. A few notable directions his thoughts lead include:

Human rights: his notion of theological anthropology, his inclusive and active-for-others notions of Church, and his speaking out for the Jews were all forerunners for the notion of universal human rights. Zerner points out that it was some of Bonhoeffer’s friends and students who had a hand in building our notion of human rights, so it’s not hard to imagine that he would have been part of it himself had he lived.

A theology of the Powers and Principalities: his notion of divine mandates sounds incredibly similar to later scholars’ definition of the Powers and Principalities, and his ethic of fighting or restoring the mandates as a duty of the Church is very similar to today’s ethics of the Powers (which I’ve been writing about for a while now; see most of my posts from the past six months for more info!). I’d love to find a way to work Bonhoeffer into my thesis on this subject, but alas, his theology is just different enough that I can’t justify it.

Christian anarchism. Bonhoeffer himself would NOT have supported this movement – he was still too committed to the Two kingdoms theology – but his incredibly robust ecclesiology combined with his powerful criticism of his government certainly lend themselves well to the concept. His “religionless Christianity” would do rather well as the foundation for a new world order, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it has been used as such to some extent.

I can’t wait to study this some more in class tomorrow!