The Little Friar

The prophetic witness of Christians in the face of the State is muted, I think, by a serious misreading of Romans 13.  Particularly 13.1:  "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God".  I want to explore what it means to read Romans 13 in light of the rest of Scripture, in order to help us understand that we don't necessarily have to accept every line that proceeds out of a particular politician's mouth or every policy proposed by any certain politically reigning group. A caveat lector is probably in order here, though:  What you're about to read is the way I read Romans 13, which is informed by the way folks like Bonhoeffer and Barth read Romans 13 and resisted the Nazi German agenda.  It's the foundation of why I resist Donald Trump (and, before him, Obama and lots of other American politicians).  To let the cat out of the bag early:  ...

One of the several places at which American Christianity fails is in regard to economics and work.  The greed of capitalism has overcome a "proper desire".  According to Barth: It is here that the revolutions of empty and inordinate desire take place:  of the lust for a superabundance which is not the natural and beautiful abundance of life but the overflow of nothingness, which does not decorate anything but only pretends to do so, like a stage-prop instead of the real thing; of the lust for possessions which will not be used even perhaps for the purposes of luxury but are desires only as a security and pledge against future use, or perhaps only for the sake of the idea of possession, as if this were a guarantee of life; of the lust for an artificially extended area of power over men and things in the form of artificial instruments, as if it were not conceit or deception to regard the acquisition of the power of even the mightiest instrument as an increase o...

One of those remaining questions in Bonhoefferian scholarship is what Bonhoeffer meant in his Letters and Papers from Prison , toward the end of his life, when he wrote that Barth was unable to address the concerns of modern people.  Theologians like Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and even Bonhoeffer concerned themselves with the question of how we can proclaim the gospel in an age that cares less and less about God, the church, or theology.  They searched in vain for an answer to this in Barth's works -- or, rather, they were disappointed with the answers they found .  Some years later, Barth had written a letter to Bethge, after the publication of the latter's magisterial biography of Bonhoeffer, asking Bethge what Bethge thought Bonhoeffer had meant in accusing Barth of a "positivism of revelation". The problem Bonhoefferian scholars have in appreciating Barth is that, if we take some of Barth's earliest writings alone, we can be left with the same impressio...

I've recently ordered my own copy of Barth's Church Dogmatics -- it's only $199 for the set at christianbook.com right now.  So this morning I've been planning how to go about reading the full set in the coming weeks and months.  I haven't read the full collection since college; I read them over the summer one year, and have read each of the volumes individually since then, but it's been so long since I've worked through the Dogmatics as a whole. That made me think:  What have I done to absorb so much Barth without owning the Church Dogmatics ?  What would it look like for someone who's unfamiliar with Barth, and doesn't have the $200 bucks to put down for hardbacks, actually read to familiarize themselves with good ole Karl? Books by Barth 1.  First, there's Evangelical Theology:  An Introduction .  It's a simple, straightforward, heart-warming discussion of what it means to practice "evangelical theology".  This book probabl...

I love reading Barth.  That's no surprise. So I thought this brief introduction might be of help in getting the gist of Dogmatics : I/1:  Before I ever thought of God, before I opened my mouth to speak, God is, God speaks, and what God says is "God!" I/2:  God's mighty Word is humbly hidden in the human flesh of Jesus, the human words of scripture, and the boredom of the Sunday sermon. II/1:  God's friendly Word is unconditioned by anything in us.  That's why God is better than anyone, because God is free to love everyone. II/2:  Why is God so good at freely loving us?  Because God had so much practice before we ever existed. III/1:  We were summoned into being by God's freely loving Word.  From that day on, God has spared no expense in trying to befriend us. III/2:  Our nature fits God like a glove:  God wore it first then let us try it on, and Jesus shows us how to wear it right. III/3:  God's freely loving...

Some days, if you're like me, you just need a little encouragement, especially when you've stopped to take notice of how the days are flying by and your life is marked more by the years that have passed than by the years you are promised.  Today, is one such day.  So, Karl Barth: [We] have no option but to take what we are given -- a limited life in an allotted span of time.  And this simply brings us back to the starting-point.  Does life really have to be like this?  And when we raise this question again we again shake what we think are our prison bars and angrily or anxiously contrast our determination with the conditions under which we are forced to live.  And the question itself is still unresolved. We still do not see why things have to be as they are, and not otherwise.  The whole picture changes, however, if we are not concerned abstractly and generally with the limitation of our life, but with the God who limits it; if we are not ...

In the debates over Christianity vs. unbelief, I don't have much constructive to add.  All I can say for myself is that I find the stories about Jesus to be the most profound and captivating thing I have ever encountered.  This is not to say I understand everything in the gospels or that there aren't things I find troubling or perplexing in them, even things about Jesus.  But there are moments -- the teachings and actions of Jesus -- that defy my ability to describe how they affect me, in the vision they cast and inspire and provoke within me.  Having searched far and wide, I've encountered nothing like Jesus.  Nothing in the history of philosophy.  Nothing in the other world religions, admirable and profound as they are.  I experience Jesus as a singularity.  Unprecedented.  Unreplicated.  This man is, as the early Christians knew and remembered him, Emmanuel, God-with-us.  And I think they're right.  So I worship this man by ...

I realize the trend is to ask, "What would Jesus do?" And expect a clear answer.  But I'm not so sure, in our case at least, that Jesus would even vote.  So I'm skeptical of claims that tell me what Jesus would vote for.   Instead, I want to subvert that question by asking a question my favorite t-shirt asks: What would Nietzsche do? Consider this aphorism from Human, All Too Human :  " Leave to speak.  All political parties today have in common a demagogic character and the intention of influencing the masses; because of this intention, all of them are obliged to transform their principles into great frescoes of stupidity, and paint them that way on the wall.  Nothing more can be changed about this -- indeed, it is superfluous even to lift a finger against it [. . . .] Now that this has happened, one must adapt to the new conditions, as one adapts when an earthquake has moved the old limits and outlines of the land, and changed the value of property". ...

Teaching theology classes is some of the most exhilarating things I've ever had the joy of doing.  And teaching Trinity and Christology are why  that's true.   In teaching Christology, I always draw together what I call my "12 grammatical rules".   I mention them here today because much of what I've been reading lately -- on preaching -- has had so much to contribute to thinking about Christian speech, that I think these bear repeating for pastors on occasion.  (This post is really Karl Barth's "fault", since I just finished Dogmatics in Outline  again this month.) Each of these rules are offered here in both a negative and a positive affirmation.  The negative addresses temptations of Christian speaking that don't speak of Jesus Christ biblically.  These are temptations of preaching that preachers must avoid.  The positive is the simple message of the Good News we proclaim.  1.   Not to speak of Christ in any way that sidelines his...

Lots of folks have described me as an "odd" sort of theologian.  I prefer to think of myself as an eccentric  Christian.  Jesus Christ is, as Bonhoeffer famously and rightly declared in his Christology  lectures in 1933, the center of all human life (" menschliche Existenz"), the center of history, the center of all creation.  Hence, Jesus is the middle or heart of all Christian being.   I think this geographical image -- this "eccentricity" -- is a fertile ground for tilling some ideas I'm thinking today.  The word eccentric comes from the Greek combination of  ek  (out of) and kentron  (center), with  ekkentros  meaning "out of center".  In the late Middle Ages this term -- eccentric -- was mainly an astronomical term describing orbital systems where the earth was not placed at the center.  Thus, Copernicus' theory was "eccentric", the earth was displaced from the center of the solar system.  It's an astr...

I'm neither a Conservative nor a Liberal.  I'm neither a Fundamentalist nor a Progressive.  Funny enough, though, I'm often accused of being one of those four, depending upon who my conversation partner might be at the time.  I think that's because I'm Christian.  My allegiance to Jesus comes first.  Being a "conservative/fundamentalist" or a "liberal/progressive" are flip sides of the same coin.  Both respond in their own way to the Enlightenment ethic of historical progressivism -- either it's good or it's bad.  I reject both because I reject that ethic as a lie.  So let me answer charges often laid to me in as direct a way as might be possible.  1.  "Why do you hate America?  Why are you trying to make Anerica less Christian?" I don't "hate" America.  I do, though, challenge the idea that we can draw lines on a map.  I challenge the notion that those lines become determinative for our identities.   America is no...

For some years, I've slowly been getting out of the marriage business. I'm bound by church law -- and by conscience, if I'm completely honest -- to have "due counsel" with both parties of a couple.  And I've found, over those years, that most folks only want that counsel when there's a financial incentive:  My home state (Tennessee) offers a discount on the price of the license if you go through with only a minimum (which is to say modicum ) of counseling.  But the older I get, the more determined I become:  I'd like to see the church stop its custom of benignly validating the institution of marriage .  The investment of marriage with a pseudo-religious quality has long diminished the witness of the Church:  The state authorizes a legal union, and then calls upon the Church to bless this union with a thin veneer of religiosity.  Here, as elsewhere, the Church proves itself to be the state's faithful servant:  "Sure, we'll vali...

A friend asked if I'd suggest the best bits of Barth's Church Dogmatics .  I still think there's nothing better than diving into the whole (the traditional T&T Clark set is pictured above), but all the volumes can be overwhelming, unless you have about 3 years to finish. So, that said ... Here are five sections, that, for me, are the great peaks of the Church Dogmatics , the sections where you meet Barth at his very best.  And these are the bits that I tend to revisit most often myself: from II/2:  §33 (on election) from III/2:  §47 (on time) from III/3:  §50 (on the nothingness) from IV/1:  §59.1 (on the Son in a far country) the IV/4 fragment (on baptism) So, what have I forgotten? Any other sections that stand out for you? Anything else that can be mentioned in the same breath as these great meditations?