Today I came across a blog article by an acquaintance from the Church in which I grew up. This post was written in order to set straight the apparent confusion that was seen in the broadly practiced liturgies and practices of self-denial of Ash Wednesday and Lent. In short (very short to be fair), his message is that he perceives a ‘religious’ pietism that is accepted by many who practice the liturgy and discipline of Lent and that such a religiosity is but a distraction from the true salvation by grace and the freedom of the believer which occurs therein.
To be fair to this author, his views are held by many in the American Evangelical fold whom worship in largely non-denominational or Churches with a low sense of universal accountability. Such is the way of syncretistic theology with regard to classically liberal notions of freedom and autonomy.
While there are several aspects of my friend’s post that stick out theologically (as ‘bad’ theology), on the whole, what strikes me as most troubling is what has just been mentioned above; the incredible (false) sense of autonomy and entitled freedom in how one is to relate to God and to the Church in worship as being theological/ecclesiological fact. The assumed dichotomy between acts of liturgy, spiritual discipline and Church instituted seasons has yet to be justified in a way that moves beyond an Enlightenment concept of the autonomous subject.
Such a notion of the human subject is, as William Cavanaugh illustrates in his book “Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism”, an explicitly political device of the early forms of the modern nation-state. In so ‘liberating’ the average person with a sense of autonomy and individual rights, and creating a political structure which functions by playing one another’s entitlement off one another in a defensive posture, classically liberal political ideology was successfully able to relegate the holistic Christian virtues into either optional practices undertaken by the elite (see Bonhoeffer’s ‘Cost of Discipleship’) or as vices by which a true Gospel of direct communion with Christ was obscured.
It is my contention, along with what I believe to be Cavanaugh’s, that these events have shaped the Church in America for the worse in many ways. I stand in the Anglican tradition, so I am obviously a product of this split on the side of the protestant reformers. With that being the case, the astounding lack of philosophical, and especially, theological nuance to the common (popular not academic) denunciations of liturgy and tradition, in favor of a concept of ‘free’ and ‘sporadic’ worship, strikes me as simply arrogant. Not only are such denunciations historically and theologically ignorant (in general) but they end up bastardizing classically liberal political language into a new law by which to enslave Christian worship and, to use the favored word of my contemporary friends, ‘freedom’.
Let us as the Church, be the Church and claim our historical identity. As Alasdair MacIntyre notes, a tradition is a historically embodied argument about the goods and practices which constitute that tradition. Whether Catholic, Orthodox or Evangelical, tradition shapes worship and we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Peace be With You,
Lucas
P.S. Here is the link to my friends post. I figure it is unfair to write about it without linking it 
http://terryltripp.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/giving-up-lent/
A Post On Being Insignificant and Hopefully, Meaningful
It has been a number of months since I last decided to post something on this blog. With that being the case, I am hoping to “re-Christen” WeepingPhilosopher as a blog in dialogue with certain other blogs and ideas.
When I first began posting online, sometime in my freshman year of college, I was interested in what I suppose many young ‘progressive’ evangelicals in America were, and perhaps still are interested in. Without divulging too much detail, the fact that I utilized the word ‘postmodern’ in almost every post, without actually having read any real critical theory, ought to indicate the sort of weak theological and philosophical reflections I put forth. Sometime between that period and the time of my last post on WeepingPhilosopher there was a transition in my thinking. Perhaps it was the death of my mother in conjunction with a number of other crisis that arose (existential crisis anyone?) that contributed to this shift. Regardless of the cause, I was faced with the fact the so-called ‘theologians’ of both evangelical and emergent persuasions (such a label in itself indicating the fact that a group of white guys in progressive middle-America/CA churches had too much time on their hands) had left me with what may be best described a sort of bastard hybrid of mocked caricatured positions of Orthodoxy and just bad or misinformed opinions philosophically. Such popular notions of American theology, which lack the bite of any truly subversive theological project, no longer satisfied my interests nor seemed to contribute to theological discourse with any sort of longevity.
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As I reflect back upon this journey (I cringe even at this word due to its overuse and romanticized portrait in contemporary pop-theology) I am grateful. Grateful that there are theologians engaging the most pressing philosophical, political and social justice issues in way that display the true power of a thinking theology (one particular project I favor being that of Radical Orthodoxy). In so being grateful, WeepingPhilospher aims to be one of the many insignificant blogs contributing and dialoguing with other students and seekers whom aim at engaging the issues and thinkers of substance (no, Rob Bell’s book will not be featured, nor will the loud cries of the New Reformed group).
I am excited to begin cataloging pieces of writing and to hear from you, the three or four people who might actually take an interest in this blog.
Peace be with You,
Lucas
I met a mother and her son today. I am ashamed to say that I cannot recall their names, perhaps this is due more to a problem with name recollection on my part than a failure of ethical virtue in the moral sense, I do not know. This mother and her son, approaching me as I exited my car stood not only visibly homeless and devoid of monetary means, but putting it slightly, smelling of a homeless circumstance. This woman asked me if I might lend her change to catch a bus to a homeless shelter she had been only told of but did not even know the location of. She and her son had been on the streets for a number of nights following their abandonment by the man who at one time took an oath of fidelity as husband and then father. Following the initial encounter comes food, a phone number exchanged, and money found for a room in which she and her son might wash and sleep without threat of violence from local gangs for a night.
I write of this not to tell of anything I may have done or not done, nor to rant as many seem to do when speaking of justice relating to theological utterance in a seeming arrogance and thoughtless application. I write of this, because as I heard the woman’s story and looked at her young son, I am broke by her stories of churches who merely called other agencies rather than take them in, the people who just minutes before I arrived scoffed at her and told her to get a job in between curse words, and my own failure to act immediately without regard for my own situation in selfishness.
Paralleling this experience my reading in theology and philosophy has been varied but has centered upon that of critical theory, theological ethics, and Liberation theology. As I sat drinking and reading following this encounter (the drinking failing to placate my anger and pain at the situation) I realized that there were two parts to my reaction. The first was my identification with the relationship between boy and mother struggling together, recalling the period of my own life when my late mother and I were on our own as a single parent and child, as well as my identification with the theological conviction as I saw Christ in the boy and mother. While I fully endorse academic theology and philosophy it struck me that so much of what I was reading in the Liberation movement just seemed to ring as truth in the sense that the experiences of poverty and inhumanity, as well and the praxis-based epistemology moving out/through such experiences seemed to connect in the act of service as opposed to a disconnected analysis of theory and conception.
As a devoted Anglo-Catholic I am committed to maintaining, as Hauerwas would say, “the particularity of the Church” amidst the alternate conceptions of morality, ethics, and even metaphysical and political systems put forth in the world. With this however I see that many of the questions philosophical theologians of the west ask are perhaps missing what Gustavo Gutierrez hits on when he writes,
“… the question in Latin America will not be how to speak of God in a world come of age, but rather how to proclaim God as Father in a world that is inhumane. What can it mean to tell a non-person that he or she is God’s child”?
This I believe must be a legitimate point of departure for any theological reflection, however I am now left with the reality that such questions and theological method of reading scripture text with acknowledgment of the “prior text” of exerience must not be allowed to fall into universal categories of peace, justice, or the poor as a class of people per say since, as Hauerwas writes in his The Peaceable Kingdom A Primer in Christian Ethics with regards to such attempts in a liberal democratic context,
“Attempts to secure such an ethic inevitably result in a minimalistic ethical and often one which gives support to forms of cultural imperialism…Indeed, we overlook to easily how the language of ‘rights’, in spite of its potential for good, contains within its logic a powerful justification for violence. Our rights language ‘absolutizes the relative’ in the name of a universal that is profoundly limited and limiting just to the extent that it tempts us to substitute some moral ideal for our faithfulness to God”.
Rather, as our hearts break over the injustice of systematic and individual sin and oppression again the imago dei in each person we must ask, as the distinct and peculiar people of God, how we may proclaim God in full as Father amidst such inhumanity, while maintaining such a distinct identity. I admit, I do not know how to walk such a line other than to appeal in prayer to the concept of myself as a historically contingent agent, accepting my history and making it my own, in the context of the community called the Church which exists as the sacrament of Christ’s grace amidst a world of injustice and inhumanity…
A Post
The past year or so has been one of drastic change in my life. In brief the central events that I suppose would define the change have to do with the death of my mother to breast cancer, the upheaval of what I knew as my home, and certain romantic encounters. All of this together has led me in a direction of severe internal wrestling with ideas like faith, love, justice, violence, and I suppose much of what falls under typical evangelical moral questions. Perspective…I think that is the most appropriate word to describe what I have acquired and am still acquiring as a result of this wrestling.
A perspective that rejects the easy answers of what I suppose can be described as the annoying over-burdened filters of certain Christian perspectives, and a rejection of the more ‘progressive’ forms of faith that for lack of a better way of saying it, are just fucking stupid and offer no comfort nor hope for anything but cloistered culture that will soon be the tradition to rebel against. I long for community, I long for true faith in myself and my community. I am, I think, on my way to this. I am learning the importance of humility and true traditions of orthodoxy. No longer burdened by the asinine evangelical moral conscious that was drilled into my brain in the typical fashion, and no longer in burdensome intellectual and spiritual arrogance aligned with those who so arrogantly rebel for the sake of rebellion. I long to see the Church be the Church.
A Postmodern Conversion
A Postmodern Conversion
Once I was a tourist.
On a journey to nowhere,
Only the journey matters,
To escape the dark despair.
My life has no meaning,
Except that which I create,
Trusting my sovereign self,
To invent truth for my own sake.
The writer and director,
The star of my own story,
Mapping my own plot,
Searching for my own glory.
But the longer that I travel,
The more I am afraid,
Too silly for a funeral,
Too sober for a parade.
Then the miracle came,
Life invaded from above,
A message so powerful,
A message of crucified love.
Now I am a pilgrim,
On a journey with an end,
A journey without loneliness,
Walking with the Friend.
Trusting in His guidance,
Clinging to His hand,
A stranger in this world,
A citizen of another land.
No longer the star,
Just supporting cast in His story,
Finding life’s true meaning,
In delighting in His glory,
And the longer I travel,
The more I discover,
Strength for this life,
And sure hope of the other.
-Dr. D
A Thought Provoking Short from Mr. Peter Rollins of Ikon
This is a very interesting post from Peter Rollins (amazing philosopher, leader, and lecturer) of the Faith Collective Ikon. It is from a future work in the process of the being created and is very thought provoking. Enjoy!
As my latest book progresses I thought I would offer you another little sample (between us of course). This is a story that I wrote to explore the themes of the first few chapters. Again I will hold off from commenting on its philosophical connotations. All reflections welcome,
There were once two lovers who would spend each waking day together. At the same time every day the man would stop what he was doing, look his beloved in the eye and say, ‘Tell me, do you love me with all of your heart’. And each day he would receive the same answer, ‘yes, my dearest, I do’. He would then follow this initial question with another, ‘But tell me, do you really love me’. To which he would receive the same reply, ‘yes, my dearest, I do’ .
Eventually the woman tired of this ritual and thought to herself, ‘if I am really to convince him of my love then I will need to give him access to my deepest inner thoughts. Then he will know and not doubt my honesty’. So, later that day, she went to a well known wizard who lived on the outskirts of the city and asked that he concoct a potion that would enable the drinker to hear another’s inner voice.
The wizard accepted the challenge and told her to come back in three days with a bag of gold coins. When she returned he took the money and, in exchange, gave the woman a small veil full of odourless liquid.
The next day, like clockwork, her beloved stopped what he was doing and asked his girlfriend, ‘Tell me, do you love me with all your heart’? ….
Read the whole post here: Sometimes What We Think Might Not Be Who We Are
An Excerpt From Karl Barth
An engaging framework for what Christian theology is:
Dogmatics is a science … I purpose that by science we understand an attempt at comprehension and exposition, at investigation and instruction, which is related to a definite object and sphere of activity. No act of man can claim to be more that an attempt, not even science. By describing it as an attempt, we are simply stating its nature as preliminary and limited … Even Christian dogmatics is an attempt-an attempt to see, to hear and to state definite facts, to survey and co-ordinate these facts, to present them in the form of a doctrine. In every science an object is involved and a sphere of activity. In no science is it a matter of pure theory or pure practice; on the other hand, theory comes in, but also, on the other hand, practice guided by this theory. So by dogmatics, too, we understand this twofold activity of investigation and doctrine in relation to an object and a sphere of activity – Dogmatics in Outline
The Uniqueness of Christ and Postmodern Uncertainty
Here is an interesting article in Christianity Today written by Dr. John Franke who co-authored with Dr. Stanley Grenz Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context and who recently wrote the book, Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth from which this article is inspired…
What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Truth in a world filled with competing truth claims, as well as people who doubt the very existence of truth? Convoluted and inconclusive speculation about truth has led many to become, like Pilate, cynical about the very idea—”What is truth?” The Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the Truth suggests a hopeful answer.
Truth is not finally to be found in abstract notions or theories, but rather in the person of Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God and the living embodiment of truth. From this perspective, knowing truth depends on being in proper relationship to this one person who is divine truth. Jesus is categorically different from all other prophets, witnesses, and messengers from God. Jesus is all of these things, yet more. Along with the Father and the Spirit, Jesus himself is God.
Here is the full article:
Writing Is Passion
Writing is something of a mystery I should think. By way of written word, one is able to elicit from and impose upon the reader emotions and thoughts through some created intimate connection most people rarely may share face to face. Writing seems to have more to its existence that mere speech. It has a way of lingering past the author and it exists in a state of independence. As I think of what it means to construct something that may be vaguely considered writing I am struck by the lack of passion and subversiveness found in the culture in which I am situated, as well as my own contribution to this sort of weary and droll authorship. Given this is the first post I think it appropriate to cite one of the great linguistic philosophers of the last century and hope it may offer some inspiration to my own bland and vane works called blogs.
Writing is breaching. –Derrida
Writing is breaching–a crossing inside that is not only unplanned, but unable to be remedied. It is an explosion beyond the border of safety that leaves one paralyzed with trauma. Life is about breaching–about the moments of crossing–where there is something inside of you that leaves you helpless. Life is about breaching–about one–another–something–crossing a border and leaving you traumatized in a speechless paralysis.
When it is love–we call it beautiful. When it is a lover, we call it by screaming its name. When it is not–we call it death–or something like it. We call it worse than death because it traumatized in a way that means we are still here to experience it…..
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