The Little Friar

"The trouble with kids today ..."  "When I was their age, I ..."  "Remember the days when ..." You get the idea.  Old people talking about young people.  And ever has it been so between one generation and the next.  Old folk look back and see the time of their own youth if not as a golden age, then certainly as a better age than the world of today’s little creeps.  We tend to view time from the then to the now as one of decline and fall.  And young people, in turn, look at grown-ups and see people out of touch, who don't understand them, who don't understand anything .  One word sums it up:  We're " boring", and, if you're parents, you're embarrassing" too.  "The young think the old are fools, and the old know the young are fools" -- that's one George Chapman, writing four  hundred  years ago!   Plus ça change, plus la même chose.    "Whatever", teenagers would add! Me, I think this is a healthy st...

One of my responsibilities over the years in the Church has been to examine candidates for ordination, to enquire into their fitness for the Church's ministry and to promote and encourage the continued growth of those who already serve -- including myself.   As we approach Easter and Pentecost, those examinations are already in full-swing again.  The Church is looking to discern who among us has been called, equipped and commissioned with such a vocation.  Since several of my students and friends are headed long into this process, some reflections might be in order.  In 2001, I was asked to contribute a report on the nature of ordained ministry. My assignment was to write on, "What are ministers for?"   I began by deconstructing the question, suggesting that its pragmatism (as I would now put it) is theologically vulgar, and that, in any case, it begs a couple of questions:  Namely, that before we can say what ministers are  for, we need to know what t...

Thomas Mann once said that a writer is simply someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. I wonder if it's the same in theology.  Theologians are people for whom the Christian faith is especially difficult, incomprehensible, infuriating.  As a rule, we aren't especially talented or spiritually adept individuals.  We're people whose minds have been hurt by God, and we're restlessly searching for -- what?  Healing perhaps, or catharsis?  To expect so much from the study of theology would be futile or even dangerous.  At any rate there's no lack of opportunities for theological catharsis:  Often our worship services seem calculated to remove the difficulty of believing, to make God easy and accessible, more a cure than a wasting sickness. I was asked recently to help craft liturgies for parishes whose focus is to be God's grace.  So I've been wondering lately where that grace is most tangibly, most realistically real . ...

I heard a sermon recently on a Gospel text about the "rich young ruler" in which the preacher did three things:  (1) He recounted the basic story.  I had my usual response here.  I get nervous each time I hear Jesus' words.  Because each time Jesus speaks, the earth shakes.  Here's a guy out to change things, including me .  Then, (2) proceeding with great warmth and sensitivity, the preacher told a balanced moral story that comforted my fears and warmed me from the inside out.  Until, finally, (3) we were assured Jesus wasn't teaching about possessions  but about the state of our hearts . This kind of preaching always irks me.  It leaves me cold.  My own psychological response to his sermon goes like this:  First, the parable would be told in all its starkness and simplicity, and I would feel my heart pounding in dread and anticipation at the challenge of Jesus' words.  Then, by the end of the sermon, all my fears would be all...

Someone asked recently why I chose Bonhoeffer to spend so much of my academic career studying.  To respond is part biography and part theology.  I came to Bonhoeffer through his Discipleship .  But the story of being captivated by Bonhoeffer begins much earlier and in a different place.  It begins as a senior in high school, reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil .  Herr Fredrich's account if ethics as the attempt of others to control and lord over the weak explained a good deal of my world, in teen angst.  As Nietzsche maintained, it is only in moving "beyond good and evil" -- beyond the ethics of Kant's "categorical imperative" and Mill's "utilitarian calculus" -- that true human flourishing happens.  In college, then, I discovered the existentialist psychology of Paul Tillich.  Tillich's synthesis of Nietzschean ethic (what he calls "the courage to be") along with a very complex re-reading of Christian theology, made bein...

I want to begin with a quote from CS Lewis' Mere Christianity :  "E nemy-occupied territory -- that is what this world is.  Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage".  I begin here because I think this captures exactly what the NT means by the notion of "spiritual warfare" against the powers and principalities of the world.  Too many Christians unnecessarily and wrongly envision this in spiritualist terms. Think Frank Perretti's This Present Darkness  or the movie, The Exorcist .  We lack a robust Christian faith that is engaged with the real world -- this  world -- in confronting the many powers that seek to diminish and destroy human thriving.   The weapon of our spiritual warfare isn't spiritual, either.  It's very earthy -- made of wood and stained in blood, forged in state-sanctioned violence and the death penalty: ...

Since I've focused lately on topics that relate to worship (preaching and baptism and prayer), I thought it only appropriate to come up with 10 theses on worship.  My primary area of academic training is the intersection of theology, ethics and liturgy.  So, here are some of my thoughts about liturgical theology.  1.   Why? Why worship God?  Because God is to be worshipped.  Worship is a holy tautology.  "To be a self is to have a God" (Richard H Niebuhr).  To have a God is to worship.  2.   Does worship make God present? No.  W orship presupposes God's presence.  But God's presence is unlike any other.  "God does not exist", said Kierkegaard, "he is eternal".  Compared to all existents, God's presence is an absence.  The Holy of Holies is empty.  If worship is fundamentally eucharist, you could say that it's "thanks for nothing".  Without this apophatic point of departure, worship inevitably becomes id...

Doubt matters.  As I've written here often, I don't think doubt is nearly as destructive to Christian faith as some do.  Several of my friends are currently in a season of doubt.  They're not sure what those doubts mean.  When I then encourage them to follow those doubts, they're not sure why I -- a pastor and theologian by vocation -- wouldn't simply denounce doubt and insist on faith.  So let me lay out why that is.  And I want to begin with a quote from  Wendell Berry: [T]here are an enormous number of people -- and I am one of them -- whose native religion, for better or worse, is Christianity.  We were born to it; we began to learn about it before we became conscious; it is, whatever we think of it, an intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, and our dreams.  We can turn away from it or against it, but that will only bind us tightly to a reduced version of it.  A better possibility is that this, o...

A couple of days ago, my friend Tim and I sat in our living room, talking theology.  It was a revisiting of the days of mentor-student discussing the "joyful science" (we're both Basically Barthians); it was also in preparation of his next step toward joining me in ordained ministry as my colleague.  So, we spent some time talking theology and theologians.  The next day, Kendra asked that next time I try to be a little less academic sounding.  So I thought I'd give it a try here, with a topic that infuses and enlivens my theology:   The Trinity.   The Trinity can, after all, sound like an unnecessary and even unbiblical idea.  So here are 10 theses that try to make the doctrine of the Trinity more accessible to non-academic-theologian types.  1.   The Trinity is essential for Christians.  It grows out of our experience of Jesus.  It is the language of salvation.   The Trinity is not an  optional  doctrine, it is ...

It's a well known fact that Karl Barth began his day with breakfast, coffee, the newspaper, and Mozart.  In my estimation that's why he was the theologian he was:  His wisdom in listening to Mozart each day before he began his work.  Productive minds spring from the ground of productive soil.  And nothing feeds the mind like excellent music (and it also feeds the soul).  So, which compositions are essential for theologians?  What are the compositions not only without which theologians cannot do their work, but without which life itself becomes frivolous and empty? 1.  Mozart's Requiem (KV 626) 2.  Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, 4th Movement (Ode to Joy) 3.  Michael Haydn's Divertimento In C Major For Violin, Cello, & B.C. (P99) [3] Menuet 4.  Mozart's Symphony in No. 32 in G major (KV 318) 5.  Michael Haydn's Symphony Number 18 6.  Michael Haydn's Symphony Number 26 7.  Mozart's Clarinet Concerto A Major, (KV 622) -- I. A...

A friend (and former student) has been in the process of standing for examination of his fitness for ordination and "probationary membership" as an elder in The United Methodist Church.  We sat and talked Sunday night as he prepared to meet with his examiners, and most of our conversation was dominated by talk about sacramental theology -- especially infant baptism.    Truth be told, it's always been a close run thing what I've thought about infant baptism.  For nearly the longest time, I've had problems affirming the baptism of babies with any gusto.  It's always been through guarded and grated teeth.   Episcopalians baptize infants, of course.  But I've hardly been thoroughly convinced.  As obedience to my church and bishop, I've baptized plenty of small ones.  But if I'm honest with the world and myself, that's sometimes been a hard thing to do.  Biblically, it's notoriously difficult to justify infant baptism.  There are a few b...