Don't Talk to Strangers

    "Don't talk to strangers, 'cause they're only there to do you harm" so starts the song Don't Talk to Strangers by Dio. Oddly enough, I think Ronnie James Dio is on to something. For there is something inherently dangerous about talking to strangers. Actually, there is something dangerous about talking to anyone. As soon as you do, you invite them into your world, and sometimes, they can become your world. Dio continues, singing, "Don't talk to strangers, they're only there to make you sad." When we reveal ourselves, we make ourselves vulnerable, and there is always a chance of harm, both for the other and for you.

   "The communication of a name is the disclosure of one's self to the other, and thus the establishment - or at least the beginning - of a personal relation and communion." (Pg. 123) Here, Emil Brunner seems to be in agreement with Dio, or vice versa. When we reveal ourselves to another, we enter into a communion and relation with them, and we can never be sure if this is a safe call\invitation. Even by merely stating our names, we have possibly said too much. "We human beings have proper names, by which we present ourselves to each other as something that cannot be expressed in general terms." (pg. 123) By you knowing that my name is Daniel Jesse, you know something about me, something more than if you knew I was 5'10, 260lbs, and have curly blonde hair and a beard. For the first reveals my being, who am I, where the latter reveals facts about me. The former is who I am, the latter is what I am. There is a big difference here. The former is something which cannot be defined, and the latter is the definition.

   Something more is going on here. There are many out there that fit the description of my height and weight, even my hair color and the fact that I have a beard. Knowing these things about me may say something about me, but they do not invite you into a relationship with me. My name, however, invites you to figure out the u mystery of who this "Daniel Jesse" is. When I give my name, I give myself to be known. "When one gives oneself to be known, one gives oneself away." (pg. 123) To know my name is a gift. I have given a part of myself away to you. You then have a certain power over me, to call me, to engage me, to understand me. This is the power of the name.

   When asked by someone what are name is, we sometimes exercise the power to withhold from them what our names are. As a college professor, I am not Daniel Jesse to them. I give them another name, another entity to create communion and relation with. I keep them at bay, so I do not feel obligated towards them. By telling them to call by my title, and not my given name, I take a step back from them, and erect myself above them.

  Thankfully, God does not reveal Himself to us as only a title or a rank. He reveals Himself to us as Yahweh and as Jesus. There is more given to us then a title could ever give. By telling us His name, He invites us into communion and relation with Him, and gives part of Himself to us. "He reveals Himself as the Lord. "I am the Lord, thy God."...He addresses us as One who is Himself, and this address which begins with "I" is in itself the revelation." (pg.  137) Brunner is stating that it is not in the title of Lord that God reveals the fullness of Himself to us. The fullness of revelation is in the calling Himself an I, a person to have relationship with. It is paramount that God does not reveal Himself to be an "It" but as a "Thou" (For more one the It-Thou relationship see Martin Buber's I And Thou). "This implies that God is Subject: addressing us, making Himself known to us." (pg. 139) "He is not an Ens, a "Substance", like the Godhead of metaphysical speculation; He is not an object of thought but the Subject who as I addresses us as "thou". God is the Personality who speaks, acts, disclosing to us Himself and His will." (pg. 139) 


  Now, this raises a question: By speaking of God as a Person, as having a Personality, are we not engaging in anthropomorphic language? Brunner's radical answer to this is an emphatic No! If we were able to put God into our categories, He would not be God. He would be an idol. The question, according to Brunner is wrong. "The question is not whether God is personality, but whether man is. It is not the personal being of God which is "anthropomorphic", but, conversely, the personal being of man is a "theomorphism." God alone is truly Person, man is only person in a symbolic way, as a reflection of God, as the Imago Dei."(Pg. 140)


  Brunner, in the above passage is saying that we are only persons because God has deemed us worthy to enter into personhood with Him. God invites us to commune with Him in a way that no human can. Although some have tried, we cannot give or remove personhood. That designation is not ours, it is a gift of God. What we do with this gift is up to us. We can invite others to share in the communion of God, or we can follow Dio's advice, and not talk to strangers.

The End of Dogmatics

       Dogmatics is interpretation. In fact, everything is interpretation. There is no way to avoid interpretation in this world. We may fool ourselves by saying that we are translating the words spoken to us, but we never truly hear the words as they are spoken. In fact, according Soren Kierkegaard, as soon as we try to speak our words, we enter into interpretation which gets rid of the truth that we are trying to express. Even when approaching doctrine, we must and only can interpret.

   Brunner states that "Dogmatics is interpretation."(pg. 70)  There is no way to understand the message of Holy Scripture in it's pure form. In fact, there is no pure form of Holy Scripture. What Brunner means by this is that Holy Scripture was revealed in a particular time, at a particular place, to a particular person. When that person wrote the words that were later canonized, the message had been changed. The testimony of the apostles reflects their human character. And their human character "means that it is coloured by the frailty and imperfection of all that is human." (pg. 34) Now, we wonder if our task as faithful readers of Scripture should try to peel away the layers of frailty and imperfection.

  The answer to this is a triumphant No! in the vein of Barth's response to Brunner. (see Natural Theology: Comprising "Nature and Grace" by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply "No!" by Dr. Karl Barth) Brunner continues to say "ideas which our forefathers in the Faith used to express the truth we hold in common, must be freshly translated by us, and be replaced by others, in order to make clear what they meant." (pg. 70) He follows this assertion by asking what sense does it make in this day and age to speak of the "Three Persons of the Trinity"? When we speak in this way, the doctrine of the Trinity laid out in Scripture and by the early church "sounds really heterodox and polytheistic." (pg. 70) For Brunner, when we do not interpret the doctrines of the church in a contemporary way, we lose our understanding of the ideas being expressed, and therefore can jettison the ideas themselves.

   Now, this might sound like we are trying to make the Gospel relevant for our age. That is not the case! In fact, we are trying to make our age relevant to the Gospel. What is at stake is not whether or not the Gospel is relevant, but whether or not we understand it. For "What is so often offered to us as 'genuinely Biblical theology (that is, theology without translation) is the very opposite; it is a stale and lifeless theology, which is unable to make the Gospel intelligible in the language of the day." (pg. 71) According to Brunner, the world and words of Scripture become something historical, and artifact to be studied and examined, which takes the life away from it. More strikingly, "to give up translation means to abandon the effort to make the message our own." (Pg. 71) Simply stated, until we put the Scriptures and dogmas in our own words, they are someone else's words that have little connection to us.

    Yet, we have to be careful as we go about translating. The danger in translation, any translation, is that we might lose or even betray the central concern and message. Thus, we need to give a "faithful" rendering. We, as part of a faith community, need to be careful how we read the text and how we apply it to our lives and thoughts.  "The ideas which serve the process of appropriation must remain subordinate to the subject which is the writer's main concern. When these ideas become independent, when they are erected into a system, into a form or a mould, into which the content of the Christian message is to be poured, there the Gospel has been violated." (Pg. 71-72) In short, when we try to make the Gospel say what we think it should say so that it fits our ideas and our personal preferences, we have left the realm of translation and have entered the world of the author. Even though this idea or personal preference can be "biblical", we have lost the essence of what is Biblical.

      This thought can signal the end of trying to have a dogmatic, over-arching system. Brunner says again, "Wherever dogmatics becomes a system, or is systematically dominated by a fundamental idea then already there has been a fatal declension from the attitude of the faithful translator. The very thing that makes such an impression, and attracts people with good brains: rigid unity of thought, in dogmatics is the infallible sign of error. Revelation cannot be summed up in a system." (pg. 72)


   I see this latching onto a fundamentally biblical idea present in the Church today, trying to read everything into a neat formula (perhaps catch-phrase?). The major formula or catch-phrase in the Reformed world that is steadly making it's way through non-Reformed churches is the meta-narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption. Now, I do not question that this is biblical, though I wonder, through Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives, if we can separate these ideas out. And I understand why Al Wolters put this forth in Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview. Yet, I think we have to ask ourselves, due to Brunner's posthumous prompting, are we using it as a mould? What else are we using in our churches today in this manner?

  To Brunner the last word, "faith means the destruction of human self-will, so also is it the destruction of human systesm. Dogmatics as a system, even when it intends to be a system of revelation, is the disuised dominion of the rational element over faith" (pg. 72) 

Dogmatic Problematics

Today, I sat down and started to read Dogmatics: Volume I - Christian Doctrine of God (Library of Theological Translations) (v. 1) by Emil Brunner to officially start my season of Lent. Now, the mere fact that I am reading such a work for Lent presents a problem. For most Western Christians, Lent is a time of spiritual renewal and they spend their time reading books Show Me the Way: Daily Lenten Readings by Henri Nouwen or Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster. Now, I have no problem with devotional works, and find them helpful on my journey. However, as an academic, I have a hard time feeling connected to the spiritual world that these authors find themselves in. I am, though, comfortable in the realm of academic theology, so I choose to stay there this year. (Maybe next year I will engage in an academic Lent.)

     Now, I find myself with a dilemma, and that is how to avoid merely intellectualizing the faith as it is presented by Dr. Brunner. A friend asked me how I would be avoiding this problem, as in the West, you do not read with your heart, but with your mind. I replied curtly that I reject the division of heart and mind, but honestly, I do not. It is easy when learning an idea to only learn it for the sake of learning of it, and not for the sake of it having an impact on you. This is a relatively new idea, as pre-Enlightenment thinkers would not understand the point of knowledge qua knowledge. In fact, the Greeks (excluding the Sophists) prided themselves as being students and lovers of wisdom and not of knowledge. This seeking after wisdom changed when Descartes uttered his famous cogito. In it, he states, "Ego sum res cogitans, id est dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque sentiens." (Quoted in Jean-Luc Marion's The Erotic Phenomenon, pg. 6) All the activities he lists (thinking, doubting, willing, non-willing, imagining, feeling) is done by the mind. Post-Cartesian Enlightenment, there is no longer a reason to apply thought, the purpose of thought is found in and of itself.

    Regrettably , I am stuck in the Cartesian tradition, even though I am trying leave. Even sadder, a clean break is not possible, so I need to face this problematic head on. Thankfully, Dr. Brunner is on my side, writing that "this kind of academic or intellectual knowledge or research (is) only possible within the community of believers."(Brunner,pg. 5) Thus, I am not located as an isolated mind like Descartes presupposes, but I start out in a place, an unique place, and that place is the Church, both local and universal. I am not alone in this project: I have the church surrounding me and informing me, asking and answering questions while I read. Due to this, I have an obligation not only to myself but to the church to not keep this knowledge for myself. Actually, I do not have an obligation. I have something stronger than that, and that is a covenant relationship with the church.

    Brunner starts his dogmatics out with an outline of his project, and how he is not trying to reduce the doctrine of the church down to a dead letter. He is trying to keep it as a living word, as a testimony to The Living Word. For, "The Christian message is, first of all, narrative, not doctrine." (pg. 35) Thus, to start with doctrine is to the lose the story and tradition that courses through it. It is then my hope to never let this out of my sight, that I am not studying a logical syllogism that floats abstractly in the realm of pure idea, but I am meditating on a narrative that I am a part of. On top of this, I have to read the text as not only an invitation to the world of Reformed theology (at least Brunner's understanding of Reformed Theology). I have to read the text as an invitation to participate in the life of Christ and his church. Brunner states that "no longer are we content to 'believe it', but our one concern is to come to Him, to trust Him, to be united to Him, to surrender to Him. Revelation and faith now mean a personal encounter, personal communion." (pg. 26) The Triune God revealed in Holy Scripture does not allow us to only think about and affirm Himself. When we are doing this, we are participating in idolatry instead of worshiping.

This is how I am trying to solve the problem of reading a dogmatic text for Lent. For "Doctrine and teaching (The German word Lehre means both teaching and doctrine) continually passes into worship, thanksgiving and praise." (pg. 39) For in the end, if I read Brunner's dogmatics correctly, I cannot make it a mere intellectual exercise. Not only would I be doing violence against the text by reading it as such, I would be doing violence against myself, and worst of all, violence against the church.

Homo Viator

         Humanity, is on the way, always moving towards something. At least, we should be. The classic theological concept for this is "Homo Viator", or Man on the Way. For life is a journey, an adventure that we are always a part of. We do not choose to be on the way, it is our existential situation. We are not at home, we are are on the way home.

       We long to be at home, in a place of comfort, yet we are not. For there is "an inherent 'not-yet' of finite being" (Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, pg. 93) As finite beings, we are cursed and blessed with statu viatoris, or the status of being on the way. The blessing of this is that we are not made to be stagnant, but to always be on the way to finding rest. This is the inherent curse also. We feel as we are called to suffer, to not be at peace, instead of to be at home and prosper. According to the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, (in his book, Theology of Hope (SCM classics)) we are kept in "that unreolved openness to the world" which will only be resolved when the "God that promises fulfills His promises."
  
     This means that not only are we journeying, but we are waiting. We cannot create the rest and the home that we long for. We need to keep moving, but we are not the ones that create the end (τέλοϛ). However, we often ignore this, and indulge in Presumptio, the idea that we can create the end, and call where we are, and take refuge in our ideals, in what we think is rest. Due to the fact we live in the 'not-yet' of fulfillment, we try to make fulfillment happen through our actions. By positing this false fulfillment, we pervert what we really want, what it really means to be at rest, and give into a watered down version of life.

       To put it another way, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon talk about life as an adventure in their book, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. According to them, "Jesus invited ordinary people to come out and be part of an adventure, a journey that kept surprising them at every turn in the road." (Pg. 49) They continue that "The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief. As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression." (Pg. 49) As a member of the Church, I must confess that I have lost the sense of journey and adventure that they speak of. I feel at times that my journey has ended. I have read the story of Scripture, and I intellectually comprehend the gist, thus, why go further? Yet, that is not the point of Scripture, to just have a basic outline of life. (The motif of Creation, Fall, Redemption is a good heuristic tool, yet I find myself being satisfied with this simple formula.) Hauerwas and Willimon continue that "The Bible is fundamentally a story of a people's journey with God. Scripture is an account of human existence as told by God. In scripture, we see that God is taking the disconnected elements of our lives and pulling them together into a coherent story that means something" (pg. 53), not just for the individual, but for the community.

      What I am trying to do through this blog is invite you on a journey with me through works of philosophy and theology that keep us on the way, in statu viatoris. For we do not journey alone, and we need faithful companions with us to keep us moving and to help us resist becoming complacent in this life.  I invite you to comment on the posts, to email me, to talk to me, to correct me as I make my journey. I do not have the answers, nor do you, yet together we can move towards them. My Lenten project is not just for self-betterment, but for the betterment of the community, of the Church. Please join me in trying to understand the coherent story of Scripture and how my life fits into it. It is false to think that Scripture should fit into my life, and I hope to avoid this error with your help.

Lent as a Journey

   As Lent approaches, I find myself wondering where I am inside of the Christian tradition. I want to say that I have made the move from Baptist to Reformed, but this is not true. I am still trying to figure out how I am shaped by the theology of my childhood (Baptist), and how that has changed through my time in college and graduate school (Reformed). It would be false to say that I have left behind my roots, as they are always with me. I am always inside of the hermeneutical circle created in my youth. What I mean by this is that what I grew up believing will always continue to influence how I read the world around me, and I can never, nor should I ever want to, get rid of this influence.(Hans-Georg Gadamer makes this point in Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts))
   
     Thus, it is my goal during the Lenten season (Ash Wednesday-Holy Saturday) to try to explore where I am in the Christian Tradition. I started this discipline two years ago after reading an article by Merold Westphal, entitled Atheism for Lent (http://theotherjournal.com/2008/02/20/atheism-for-lent/). In this short article, which is a summary of his book, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism[Image]. In the article, and the book, Westphal encourages Christians to take the time of Lent to explore our fundamental beliefs through the philosophers of suspicion (Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx) in order to question why we believe what we believe. This exercise was challenging, as I was implicitly taught not to question my beliefs in such a fashion. It was also challenging, as I have been a Christian for what seems all my life, being born into a Christian family, a Christian church, and by extension, a Christian tradition. What I learned from this spiritual exercise is that we need to be always reforming, always questioning what we belief and why. It was an attempt to take the charge given by St. Peter, " always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15, NASB). By taking seriously the charges and questions of Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, I found that I was better prepared to not only defend the hope inside of me, but I re-discovered the hope given to me by the Triune God.

       Continuing on this theme, the next Lenten season, I explored the works of Paul Van Buren, Thomas JJ Altizer, William Hamilton and Gabriel Vahanian. Collectively, these authors founded the Death of God theological movement. This movement was brought to the attention of the American public in the October 1965 issue of Time Magazine that chronicled it. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941410,00.html)  By reading these thinkers on what it would mean if we have replaced God, I searched my life to see if what I held about God was idolatrous, and to see if I was contributing to the removal of God in my life and the life of others.

   This year, I am taking a different approach to the same problem that I started two years ago. (Understanding our faith is not a mere Lenten project, but an on-going journey) I am going to read Emil Brunner's Dogmatics. I am reading this to help me understand not just the Reformed faith, but the Faith. As a philosopher, by training and vocation, it is easy to let theological ideas remain under-defined while trying to shore up my philosophical acumen. Thus, for this Lenten season, I am attempting to de-compartmentalize my mind and heart.

   I am trying then, to embark on a journey towards being a more faithful follower of God: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is not a mere intellectual journey that I am embarking on. I am approaching the subject academically, yet, I will also be using my reading as devotions, to be able to not just think through complex doctrines, but to meditate on how to live them out.