The Little Friar

Clayton Lockett was convicted in 1999 of the murder of Stephanie Neiman.  Lockett was also convicted of the violent rape of Neiman's friend.  Both of them had disturbed Lockett, who'd broken into Neiman's home in a robbery.  According to the prosecution, Neiman had been buried alive and left to die.   Lockett's "botched" execution in Oklahoma last night has sparked the American debate over the death penalty.  This post is not  about coming down on one side or another of that debate.  Nor is it an attempt to defend Lockett.   Instead, I want to reflect theologically  on the death penalty.  I do intend to present a stark theological account for Christians  against the death penalty.  I opened with the storied facts of Lockett's conviction.  But let's be honest, for we Christians there's no way those facts can cover over the sheer, bloody horror.  I'm not recounting the plot of a novel or some movie.  This isn't CSI...

Conservatives tend to promote orthodoxy  (right belief).  Progressives/Liberals tend to promote orthopraxy (right behavior).  That polarity, of course, is simplistic.  But it highlights in stark contrast that Christianity largely wants to privilege the head.  That is, for most Christians, our faith is a "head trip", a mental checklist for getting the right ideas boxed up (theological conservatives), or the right behaviors like social justice (theological liberals) lined up.  And both, at their cores, have an element of truth.  But -- and here's the kicker -- they aren't enough.  Here's why.  Christianity isn't rooted in the head.  It's rooted  in affective, narrative epistemic practice.  Christian faith isn't a head trip.  It's rooted in the heart and traffics in the stuff of story.  And lest someone misunderstand me, I'm not promoting anti-intellectualism in a religious guise.  Christian faith isn't an...

There are two numbers etched into the American psyche that have forever changed how we think about public policy (foreign and  domestic):  9/11.   In fact, that Tuesday was such an apocalyptic event that Christians in America have never been able to ignore that the only real equivalent in Christian memory is Good Friday.  In the days after 9/11/2001, we were just like the disciples on that Good Friday:  Dazed, confused, disbelieving, grieving, angry.  We were all  afraid of the terror.  The disciples were sure that the Roman terror unleashed on Jesus would be unleashed on them.  And we Christians in America were afraid that the terror of that day would become "business as usual". For the followers of Jesus, there were two days of eclipse then -- resurrection!  An even more apocalyptic event for them than Jesus' crucifixion.  Why? The resurrection of Jesus in the Jewish mindset made them think it was the end-times.  God would no...

" If ... all true theologians also participate in the leadership of the church, and all who are active in church government live also within the theological arena, it follows that both an ecclesial interest and a scientific spirit must be united in each person.  If the opposite were the case, then the scholar would no longer be a theologian.  Likewise, the clergyman's activity would lack both the skill and the foresight of good leadership, degenerating into a mere muddle of attempted influence" From Friedrich Schleiermacher's  Brief Outline on the Study of Theology  (Atlanta:  John Knox, 1966), §12.

I put this together for a friend.  It's a template for a pastoral ministry job description.  Those who can use it should feel free to download and adopt/adapt as needed.

Kendra and I recently began to discern God's calling to leave the church we have called "home" together for the past year.  While I await churches to whom I sent my pastoral profile to continue in their searches for pastor, we've begun visiting other local churches to figure out where God may be calling us in the short term.  That process has caused us to think on a particularly important question:   What is church? Maybe you've seen the Simpsons episode, "She of Little Faith".  Homer is responsible for accidentally burning down the church that he and his family attend.  The church community sells their collective soul to the nuclear power plant owner (who is the devil in disguise) to refinance and rebuild the sanctuary.  The result is a "faith-based emporium" with comfortable theater seating for religious consumers, a pulpit bearing a screen for advertisements, and a money-changing booth. That particular episode draws attention to the problem ...

My focus in biblical studies has been largely historical and I have only approached theological questions well-after thoroughly engaging the historical horizon of the biblical texts.  At school, I read OT under a Barthian who had us reading Gerhard von Rad.  In seminary, my education was thoroughly Barthian with a Wesleyan twist.  So the theological interpretation of Scripture -- and its value -- has always been on my mind.   I understand theological interpretation to be the model of interpretation that focuses on the ecclesial context in which Scripture was written and its utility for answering the theological questions confronted by its ecclesial readers, ancient and modern, when reading these texts.  That means that one consciously approaches the Bible not simply as a historical artifact as any other, nor as a source book for creating religious dogma, but as a document created by Christians and for Christians that speaks fundamentally a word from God and abou...

Perhaps it's the first lesson a minister should teach:  How to read.   Reading the Bible is such a tricky thing that it brings with it a host of other practices.   Saying that seems almost seems basic to me, but I've learnt over the years that it isn't obvious.  Prayer, loving and serving others, participation as the Body of Christ -- all those come before, with and after reading the Bible with understanding . If we are to "read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest" Scripture (as the old prayer petitions God teaches us to do), we need to think long and hard about what it means to "read". I have a thesis about the difference between being literary and being literal:  The more  literal , the less  literary  a person is likely to be -- and vice versa.  To plagiarise Paul, the literal crucifies, the literary resurrects:  The world's (and Word's) Meaning, lest we forget, walks through closed doors.  "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant" (E...

I've gone without saying much here about Milton's Paradise Lost . I first read Milton as a senior in high school.  And, I have to admit, as a literary character, I was impressed with Milton's depiction of Satan.  Not heavily biblical, mind you, but he casts a long shadow down the literary tradition.  So any talk about evil and the demonic has to deal with this tradition.  Some of  our greatest modern characters (e.g. Melville's Ahab) are in fact precisely reincarnations of Milton's Satan.  But my own favorite  contemporary incarnation of Milton's Satan is found not in literature, but in the 1997 film Devil's Advocate .   The Satan-character in this film (a lawyer named "John Milton") is modelled very closely on  Paradise Lost , and he is brilliantly brought to life by Al Pacino.  Like Milton's Satan, this lawyer is above all a rhetorician -- he loves to make long, egocentric speeches.  He's self-important and long-winded about his s...

Everything I wrote yesterday about the demonic and Satan sounds all well and good -- odd, for sure, in that I take spiritual warfare  seriously, but do so only as a way of re-enchanting and reconnecting the physical with the spiritual.  And, let's admit it:  That's different in lots of Christian circles these days.  But , even if it all sounds oddly reasonable, there's still a looming question:   It's all well and good to align "the principalities and powers" with human (generally political) power structures, but how does this account fit with the gospel narratives where Jesus appears to encounter evil spirits inside of people? In keeping my sketchy-note theme, let me lay out some ideas here.  This isn't meant to be a full-blown book-length theology of the demonic or spiritual warfare.  (I'm tempted to pull together lots of different, scattered posts here into just such a work.  If you think it'll sell, let me know.  I still may do it.) ...

Let me continue my thoughts on the trinitarian re-enchantment of the world, miracles and the demonic with some notes -- I'm sure these will be more scattered! -- on the Satan.  Throughout  the Bible, the satan is portrayed as being a creature ordained and directed by God, fulfilling his function of being an adversary.  In fact, the Hebrew word  satan  means "adversary", and in its earlier usage it carries the definite article ("the satan", or "the adversary").  Satan is portrayed as a courtroom prosecutor, and God is the judge; Satan looks for evidence against God's people (e.g. Job 1-2), and God even lets him use entrapment and sting operations.  Over time, however, the portrayal of Satan shifts from being God's servant to being God's enemy, as Satan takes his efforts to accuse God's people further, breaking the boundaries that God puts on him (think for example of Daniel 10).  By the time we get to the NT, Satan is God's enemy, ye...

A friend asked today what I thought about demons, angels, and the like.  I sketched out a few remarks that covered a lot of territory before we had to call an end to the conversation.  So let me lay out here a few more of the specifics of how I think about demons and the demonic.  And let me begin with some of the usual ways these things are constructed.  First, there are the Literalists.   The Literalist takes the passages in the Bible about demons and spiritual powers literally.  The Literalist, thus, has a robust notion of spiritual warfare and believes in the reality of demonic possession (although they might believe this to be a very rare and extreme event).  I have a couple of problems with this position.  First, ontologically, it's just hard to believe in demons in the modern, scientific age. To quote Walter Wink's Naming the Powers :  "We moderns cannot bring ourselves by any feat of will or imagination to believe in the real existenc...