The Little Friar

I just heard the news that American Methodist Theologian Tom Oden has passed away. Oden was a former liberal who turned "orthodox" after discovering the church fathers -- under the wisdom of a Jewish theologian, Will Herberg.  He was deep in liberalism, writing his dissertation on Freud and Bultmann -- Kerygma and Counseling .  But the church fathers turned him towards the light of the evangelical and apostolic faith, for which he became a key advocate. He exposed the suicide of liberalism in his book Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements -- which is the best critique of contemporary liberal theology I've ever read.  I was introduced to Oden as an undergrad.  One of my profs had written on Oden's theological return to the fathers as a pastoral theology.  Oden's Pastoral Theology shaped so much of what I understand about the pastoral life, and his three-volume Systematic Theology is a wealth of information for preachers.  For Methodists, Oden's work on ...

Theology. I'm mostly in this business because of the books. And I love them all: The great solid tomes, thicker than American steak; the slim pamphlets, as fine as the wings of a butterfly, and just as enchanting. I spend my days surrounded by books. Teaching theology, for me, feels a bit like being a kid left in charge of the candy store. We all know that I'm going to give up my responsibilities keeping the store at some point to gorge on the candy, and I can't guarantee any dignity to the whole affair when I do. I'll admit that I don't bring much refinement to the act of reading. I'm always a tumble of pages, elbows, slouches, and scribbles. More than a few of my books bear the scars of war with a tea cup. Reading, for me, is enjoyable only when it is reckless and undisciplined. All of that is what makes historical theology so fun for me. Historical theology, you see, is all about reading. Or, rather, readings, of which there are good and ba...

Abyssenian Baptist Church in Harlem During the year he lived in the United States (1930) Bonhoeffer attended and taught Sunday School at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.  It was there at Abyssinian Baptist where Bonhoeffer encountered the gospel and spiritual songs of African-American tradition.  Before leaving the US Bonhoeffer bought a crate of albums of African-American spirituals. This collection became one of Bonhoeffer's most prized possessions and featured prominently in his pastoral ministry.  Bonhoeffer played this music to poor working-class German children in his confirmation class, to his youth group in London, to his college students in Berlin and to the seminarians at Finkenwalde. To quote Bonhoeffer: The most influential contribution made by the Negro to American Christianity lies in the "Negro Spirituals," in which the distress and delivery of the people of Israel ("Go down, Moses . . ."), the misery and consolation of t...

Kevin Peraind's Lincoln in the World:  The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power is really yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln.  But it's centered around so many lesser-known aspects of his presidency that this biography offers a rich, full depiction of what that life was really like.  Lincoln in the World avoids so many of the common anecdotes that make Lincoln biographies, in favor of exploring what international affairs and their players were like in Lincoln's life -- folks like Lord Palmerston, Karl Marx, and Napoleon -- that if you miss this book, you're missing out on such a treat. Peraino assembles an impressive amount of research to shed light on Lincoln through the lenses of his foreign policy and of impressions of him from abroad, both before and during his presidency.  Lincoln in the World focuses on five key episodes that best illustrate Lincoln's foreign policy -- including his objections to the 1846 American invasion of Mexic...

1.  To  adapt a famous saying of Emil Brunner, the church exists by ecumenism as fire exists by burning.  Church unity is not an option, isn't extra, or AOB to the parish board's business.  It isn't a duty that can be relegated to professional ecumeniacs.  It's integral to the ministry of every  believer.  Ecumenism is not an ecclesial suggestion, it's a dominical command.  2.  In the Farewell Discourse in John, Jesus asks the Father to sanctify his disciples in the truth as he sends them into the world.  Then he prays: "I  ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may be one.  As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world will believe that you have sent me (John 17.20-21).  The ecumenical imperative is inherent in the missionary imperative.  How can the church, with integrity, proclaim  shalom  to...

I've been attempting over the past few days to lay out what unapologetic preaching looks like.   Let me turn to that event most discussed (as Evidence That Demands a Verdict  in building The Case for Christ ):  The Resurrection of Jesus.  Is this event something we can prove  either  historically (e.g. Pannenberg, NT Wright) or probabilistically (e.g. Richard Swinburne) or scientifically (e.g. various nutty apologists)?  In my view, such proof is neither possible nor even a good thing.  Resurrection isn't a natural or historical possibility, but it is precisely a contradiction  of the whole order of the possible.  It's not one event alongside other events within world-history, but it is the  end  and  boundary  of history as such.  I'm not talking here about all that silly Deism stuff that insists the universe is Newtonian and therefore a closed system.  "Divine intervention", as most readers here know is a...

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...

In reading the Church Fathers for 20 years, I've come across a number of theological oddities that never make it into textbooks.  I've often thought of writing a series of reflections on some of those oddities.   Today, I want to begin with John Chrysostom.  I began reading Chrysostom in 1996.  I was perticularly intrigued by his idea of "perfecting love".  It's something that influenced Wesley.  And so became the fodder for one of my master's theses.   But today I want to talk about something different.  Today I want to look at his notion of " the poison Eucharist ".  Chrysostom  described Christ's descent into hell as a kind of poison eucharist.  When Christ died, his body descended into the ground.  Death ingested his body like food.  But this was no ordinary food.  It was a fatal poison.  It brought on violent stomach cramps, worse (Chrysostom assures us) than the agony of a woman in labor.  Death could ...

I was re-watching Bonhoeffer:  Agent of Grace  yesterday.  I've always been bothered by the movie's easy portrayal of Bonhoeffer as a struggling Christian pacifist who ultimately embraces a Christian realism .  According to the movie, Bonhoeffer is finally confronted by the evils of the Nazi regime and concludes, "It is worse to be evil than to do evil".  The movie concludes that Bonhoeffer entered the plot to assassinate Hitler on the grounds of his commitment to Jesus.  As I argued in my doctoral dissertation, the popular account of Bonhoeffer depicted in Agent of Grace  springs from a  misunderstanding of  why  the Nazis killed him.  Bonhoeffer was well known as a pacifist in the years leading up to his arrest, based in part on his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount in  Discipleship .  But then, the story goes, he had a change of heart given the exigencies of Nazi tyranny and joined with the conspiracy that sought to...

I don't celebrate Veteran's Day.  And each year I'm asked why.  So, in advance of the day, let me lay out my thinking here.  Veteran's Day in the US has its roots in Armistace Day.  Armistace Day was remembered on the 11th day of the 11th month each year, as a reminder of those who died in the violent Great War (World War I).  The idea in Armistace Day wasn't to glorify the dead, but to mourn them.  The idea of Armistace Day was to reject that "old lie; Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (to quote Wildred Owen's poem that quotes Horace:  "It is sweet and right to die for your country").   It is  a lie, of course, for Christians.  Because Veteran's Day is predicated not on mourning dead and praying for peace.  It is the lie that the dead we mourn sacrificed themselves for peace.  For Christians, there is only one sacrifice that brings peace, through the forgiveness of sins like violence -- that's the sacrifice of Jesus. ...

I lamented at a family gathering the other day the news that there's now to be a reality show on Snake-Handling Churches in Appalachia.  It's a phenomenon the largest percentage of us in Appalachia consider to backward, and therefore we find it continuing the various stereotypes of those of us in the region.  (Let's bracket the various ways in which that does take place for another day.) Today, though, I want to back away from that initial fear a bit.  After thinking this through, I'm not so sure the snake-handlers are theologically naive.  In fact, I now think I have a lot in common with them.  I've posted the rest beneath the fold (it gets rather long), but with a little patience, let me lay out why I think they're headed in the right direction.

A few unorganized comments on Gregory's Unintended Reformation . In Europe and America, universities were originally Christian institutions intended to expand knowledge within the framework of a Christian worldview. I n the twenty-first century they're secular institutions from which a Christian worldview has virtually been expelled.  For years the pressure has been on Theology departments because they remain within the model of "faith seeking understanding" and no longer fit the ethos of the secular university.  Many universities would prefer Religious Studies (the supposedly neutral, scientific study of religions). In the medieval period, Theology was the "Queen of the Sciences", the subject that served to integrate all the other disciplines.  Now the knowledge generated within Theology departments is not even considered to be knowledge by the university.  Theology is no longer Queen; she is a beggar that at best gets pitying glances from passers by. ...

Continuing my political theology posts of late, here are some thoughts on Christian anarchism. First, in an important sense, all Christians are anarchists.  The word anarchism comes from the Greek αναρχος ( anarchos ) which means "no rulers" or "without rulers".  For the Christian such a description, obviously, refers to the ultimacy of human rulers. An anarchist strain runs throughout the Old and Testaments.  We see it in the Old Testament in God's unwillingness to give a king to Israel.  When God finally relents God takes this as an explicit rejection and predicts things aren't going to go well for Israel: But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us",  this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD.  And the LORD told him:  "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.  As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, fo...

I can understand why I see it more often.  With shootings happening at such a regular pace in American culture, the question of gun control laws and Constitutional "the right to bear arms", the cultural war over guns is more than a skirmish or two, here and there.  It's an all-out battle.  More and more, I'm seeing quotes or comments about Adolf Hitler's drive to keep guns out of the hands of Germans. The implication is clear:  If gun control laws are passed in the US, we'll effectively be living in the same sort of society as Nazi Germany.  The Nazis will have control of our guns.  Such tyranny is evil.  So don't support gun control. What bothers me about this meme is its "guilt by association".  To many (certainly in the US), Hitler is the very epitome of evil.  Therefore, anything associated with him is evil. So, anyone that agrees with anything associated with him is evil.  The emphasis is that if you support gun contro...