A. Roy Eckardt on the Resurrection

If I remember correctly, the United Methodist theologian A. Roy Eckardt (1918-1998), late in his career, reaffirmed the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, after having denied it in earlier writings (within the context of post-Shoah  Christian theology).

This is from his For Righteousness' Sake (1987), p. 310:

If it is so that God is on the side of the poor against the rich, and of Jews against their persecutors, what may we say concerning a conflict between the Sadducees and the Pharisees? We are given to understand that the Sadducees insisted that there is no resurrection (e.g., Matt. 22:23) - contra Pharisee teaching. To introduce a light note (and perhaps therefore an especially serious one):  We are advised that the One who sits in the heavens is not above laughing certain parties to scorn (Ps. 2:4). What would be a better joke on those reactionary Sadducees than for God to raise her own Pharisee-liberal Son from the dead! She would be having a go at one of her dearest truths, and would also be giving at least a few of her people a foretaste of the things that are to come. Maybe best of all, she would be reminding the Sadducees exactly what she thought of them, meanwhile assuring her good friends the Pharisees that she was on their side . . .

double-edged

Orthodoxy today still wrestles with the anti-Judaism of the Fathers. I made the following point at a summer school session once nearly six years ago, and it was predictably not well received then. Likely it won't be now either, but I still think it's important to say:

Supersessionism cuts both ways. If Christians claim that the church has replaced Israel (the people, not the nation-state) in God's plan, I don't see how they can deny Muslim claims for the finality and perfection of the revelation to Mohammed.

I may we be repeating a point made by Muslims in Christian-Muslim debate in the middle ages. I don't know enough about the subject to say.

not common knowledge?

Today I read an article in the Guardian about the forthcoming book by the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury. In it he criticizes the drive toward ever-greater production and consumption in modern-day capitalism. The article portrayed this critique as something new. What's so new about it?

purpose, goal

No, this isn't about teleology, at least not in the classic sense. ;-) My dear sister, who is extremely knowledgeable about all things having to do with online presence, asked me recently what the goal of my blog was.

I'd never really thought about it in those terms. But she's right: there ought to be some kind of driving purpose behind this blog, one that I can articulate to others - to my potential audience, as it were.

I write in advocacy of a catholic interpretation of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. As an Orthodox Christian I have been disturbed by the narrow way in which some in the Orthodox world today interpret Orthodoxy.  I think that a catholic view of Orthodoxy is not only possible and supported by the tradition itself. It is a necessary interpretation of Orthodoxy if Orthodoxy is to be able to live out its vocation today.  I know that I've just begged a lot of questions here, and raised others. I hope to address as many of them as possible in this blog.

I'm contrarian by nature. I don't fall into line easily, and I find myself raising uncomfortable issues others think are best left alone. I also have the bad habit of wandering outside the boundaries of the discipline or disciplines in which I was educated. I mistrust boundaries, borders, and party lines. My first instinct is to make connections between fields rather than build walls around them. I think that when it comes to doing theology, more things are fair game than people realize.

I'm also a populist. I distrust elites and I value education. Truth is great, and we do not need to fear it, wherever it is found.

face

I've been returning to Levinas in the past few months. From the perspective of Orthodox theological traditions, seems to me that his concept of face has a lot of potential in the areas of pastoral care, ascetical theology (i.e., spirituality), Christology, and of course ethics underlying it all. There have been several Protestant and Anglican theologians who have explored Levinas's ideas for more than ten years now, but not many Orthodox so far.

Gillet, Christian spirituality, reunion

I've quoted this text many times in several different contexts, but not so far in a blog. It's from the introduction to Lev Gillet's ("A Monk of the Eastern Church") little 1968 book, Orthodox Spirituality (pp. viii-ix). It's prophetic. To my knowledge there is no comparable statement by any other Orthodox theologian.

Gillet says:

It cannot be too often repeated:  there is no chasm between Eastern and Western Christianity. The fundamental principles of Christian spirituality are the same in the East and in the West; the methods are very often alike; the differences do not bear on the chief points. On the whole, there is one Christian spirituality with, here and there, some variations of stress and emphasis.

The whole teaching of the Latin Fathers may be found in the East, just as the whole teaching of the Greek Fathers may be found in the West. Rome has given St. Jerome to Palestine. The East has given Cassian to the West and holds in special veneration that Roman of the Romans, Pope St. Gregory the Great (our Gregory Dialogos). St. Basil would have acknowledged St. Benedict of Nursia as his  brother and heir. St. Macrina would have found her sister in St. Scholastica. St. Alexis, "the man of God," the "poor man under the stairs," has been succeeded by the wandering beggar St. Benedict Labre. St. Nicholas would have felt as very near to him the burning charity of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Vincent de Paul. St. Seraphim of Sarov would have seen the desert blossoming under Father Charles de Foucauld's feet, and would have called St. Therese of Lisieux "my joy".

In the same way the Eastern Church can value the achievements of "evangelical" Christians. She can acknowledge and honour  all that is so deeply Christian - and therefore "Orthodox" - in such men as (to name only a few) George Fox, Nicholas Zinzendorf, John Wesley, William Booth, the Sadhu Sundar Singh . . . .  A genuine and intense spiritual life is the shortest and safest way to re-union.

pressing needs

What is the area of contemporary life that most cries out for theological analysis? Technology? Anthropology in the context of networked life? Economic injustice? Ecclesiology? Spirituality?

Even as I write this, I feel a certain unease. Is "theological analysis" really what is needed? If we take the phrase in the sense of examining a problem through the lens of a theological system or structure, I would have to answer no.

But if we mean by theological analysis a view of contemporary problems from the perspective of the journey of drawing near to God and our neighbor in love, then maybe the answer is yes.

theology without names

Some years ago an Orthodox student of mine expressed the wish that an Orthodox theologian would write theology in such a way that nobody could tell that it had come from an Orthodox pen.

I sympathized with the wish then, and I sympathize with it now.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible. It's impossible to write from a neutral perspective. It's a truism, but still worth repeating:  we all write from the place or places we inhabit - mentally, spiritually, traditionally, emotionally, geographically.

I think that my student's desire was for an Orthodox theologian to write in a non-sectarian way. In other words, to write from a catholic perspective. This I think is possible. It's not only possible, it's necessary. There is still a debate within Orthodoxy about the meaning of catholicity. Unfortunately, that debate has been shaped by nationalism and the desire to articulate a distinctive identity in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I think it was Afanasiev who famously defined Catholicism and Protestantism in terms of A and not-A. I wonder, though, if Orthodoxy hasn't become the "not-A." That is, we have defaulted to self-definition in terms of negation.

ecclesiology, Rosenzweig

For whom or what does the church exist? That the entire world become Christian? I don't think so. To answer this question, we must ask a prior question: for whom or what do the Jewish people exist? Franz Rosenzweig offered an answer in The Star of Redemption. My point here is that the question of ecclesiology requires Christians to answer the question about the Jewish people. Without reference to that prior question, ecclesiology is at best incomplete; at worst, defective.

impetus

Where is the impetus for people of different Christian traditions to gather together to pray together? There is none that I can see. It is a radical act that goes against the grain of our contemporary tribalism. Sometimes I think Soloviev was right, that such an act will happen only when the churches find themselves against the eschatological wall, as it were. At the end of the world, in other words. If I embraced a realized eschatology, I would feel my back against that wall here and now.

Mariazell

Visited Mariazell today, the most important pilgrimage site in Austria. In the aula of the basilica was a poster commemorating a visit by the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew. The visit was in 2009 or 2010, I think.

Such visits are important, I know. They are signs of the progress of ecumenical dialogue at the highest levels. Would an Ecumenical Patriarch have felt himself able to pay a visit to Mariazell sixty, or even fifty, years ago? I doubt it, though I'm happy to be corrected.

But do the Orthodox and Catholics here pray together? Not just once in a while, but regularly?

more on the 30s

Economically at least, we don't seem to have learned much from the 1930s. Socially or societally either. With some economists warning of a new Great Depression with its attendant social upheaval on the horizon, I read the news these days with a sense of dread.

Yes, I know that the second decade of the 21st century is not the 1930s. However, have we really learned, theologically and ecclesially, what it requires to live faithfully in an age of economic and social alienation, deprivation, and greed?

30s

The economic conditions we face today are more like than unlike the 1930s. Maybe it's time to revisit some of the theologians from the 1930s - perhaps their time has come. I'm thinking of Bonhoeffer, St. Maria of Paris, Bulgakov, Berdyaev.

welcoming the stranger

One of the negative side-effects of church as subculture is the lack of welcome for the stranger that can result. To take in the stranger is not a matter of social etiquette. God commands it of Israel, and Christ makes it a criterion of eschatological judgment in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25, a pericope much used in the Byzantine tradition).

Taken together, the gospels contain a tension between the command to Christ's disciples to love one another, and the command to love the stranger.

Mobility, war, economic and social violence have made our age the age of the stranger.

for whom is it?

I understand the importance of education when it comes to doing theology. Yet I still wonder for whom theology really exists, and who are its proper practitioners. Must one have a doctorate in theology before one can possess genuine theological insight? I don't think so. But at the same time, genuine theological insight implies the ability to think within the tradition one inhabits. That habit of thought is not acquired overnight. Does this habit of thought not ultimately come down to the "mind" which was in Christ according to the author of the kenotic hymn of Philippians 2?

esoteric

I'm aware of an academic discipline of western esotericism studies. But is there really a practiceable tradition there? Or does anyone claiming to practice a western esoteric "tradition" essentially have to create one for use today? I'm aware that, in one sense, all religious or spiritual traditions do that - it's unavoidable.

letting go (cont'd)

To be sure, the kenotic strain in Orthodoxy isn't the only one. The nineteenth-century embrace of nationalism, and the ensuing heresy of phyletism, prevent any easy or unequivocal identification of Orthodoxy with a theology of divine self-emptying.

To say this is to acknowledge the challenges contemporary Orthodoxy faces.

letting go

In the context of the ecumenical movement, it was a mistake for the Orthodox to put themselves forward as "the church of the Fathers" and as one of the so-called "ancient churches." Such designations allowed the Orthodox to be marginalized.

Even outside the context of the ecumenical movement, I think a kenotic approach is truer and more fruitful. Do we have the courage to let go of such designations so that we can embrace the One who emptied himself?