The Little Friar

1.  The doctrine of penal substitution is a theory -- or, better, a model -- of the atonement, an extended metaphor that narrates how God reconciled the world to himself in Christ.  It is one model, but it is not the only model.  Indeed, without radical recalibration, it is a theologically repugnant model with potentially vicious and disastrous social and political implications .  For now, however, the point is this: while the church dogmatically defined its Christology at the Council of Chalcedon (451), it left its soteriology underdetermined.  Therefore penal substitution -- or any other doctrine of the atonement -- should not be deployed as a litmus test of faith.  Stan Hauerwas says, "If you need a theory to worship Christ, worship your f---ing theory!" (edited for content). 2.  The doctrine of penal substitution finds its classical expression in the theology of John Calvin , and its definitive form in the theology of Charles Hodge...

This past weekend, I attended an event from one of those quite-popular Christian teen rallies.  The music from City Harmonic was amazing.  I'm not normally a fan of contemporary Christian music, because so much of it contains lyrics that tend to be emotional more than faithful.  But not City Harmonic. It was the preaching that left me jarred, though. There are lots of Baptists and evangelicals in east Tennessee.  Because of that, I've grown accustomed to attending religious events and listening to the standard evangelical appeal to respond to the Gospel.  Specifically, if you want to respond to Jesus, you're expected to pray for forgiveness, invite Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior, and prepare for a life with him in heaven.  There seems to be a nearly-obligatory question:  "If you died tonight, do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether you'd go to heaven?" And that question nearly always -- no, if I'm honest, it always ! -...

As part of some on-going thinking theologically with a friend, hell  has come up in passing a couple of times.  So I want to reflect a bit more intently on it.  What follows is less a fully-developed theology of hell as some scribbles.  Take them as such.  1.   What is "hell"?   It can't be known as Dinge-an-sich .  As a negative to a positive, hell can only be known and named in relation to heaven .  Heaven is life-with-God, therefore hell is existence-without-God.  2.  Or, more accurately, because "God is love", hell is lovelessness .  At its essence, hell can't be hot.  It is, as Dante said, cold -- ice cold.   Or if, with most of Christian tradition, hell be aflame, "Yet from those flames / No light, but rather darkness visible" (Milton,  Paradise Lost , 1.62-63).  In this way, hell may be something experienced here, in life, even as it may experienced after death.  3.  The opposite of love is ...

It seems rather odd to some folks that I commit myself to the Christian confession: "Jesus is Lord". It seems to them a big stretch to make from intellectual commitments and curiosity to committing my life to that confession and resolving to discovering the Kingdom of God in the world. What makes me so convinced? Why be a Christian and an intellectual? (Let's leave aside, for the moment, the intellectual problem of Enlightenment objectivity . If there were some standard of reason to which I might appeal to convince and persuade that Jesus is Lord, that standard would be more-true than the confession itself. In other words, there's no way to judge the truthfulness of that confession except from the inside. You just have to commit -- even if it means following Jesus on the margins and judging for yourself. That, I think, is even the witness of the NT itself. Not everyone who followed was part of those closest to Jesus. And not everyone that followed was convin...