My head is filled with their faces most nights, when I first lay down and my day rushes through my mind in process form. Their faces are always the first images, mostly her face. She's looking away, eyes down. Then her eyes are fixed on mine, unable to look away, eyelids caught open. Then her head is fallen forward and her eyes are the only thing holding her head up, and she whispers, "I'm sorry." Fear-full. Shame-full.
And I wonder if my guilt is well founded, or if this must be how they learn to follow rules. I attempt to comb through that day's frustrations, that day's angers. Maybe I should yell less. Maybe she should never feel shamed.
I comfort myself with promises of reduction of yelling and shame-inducing looks. And I reach for the echoes of laughter, the seconds pregnant with grace and innocence and abandon. And I usually fall asleep.
Perhaps this is a good definition of original sin - knowing the evil so well that it turns to habit then using the good to deaden the pain.
Mar 17, 2006
Mar 9, 2006
Transcendence
Christian tradition has generally understood transcendence as a movement beyond human borders, either as God coming into the everyday and our somehow experiencing that or as humans reaching beyond themselves to God or as the crossing over into new life after death. This traditional understanding of transcendence, as being “above and independent of the universe,” is epitomized in Pascal’s challenge. He concludes that if there is a God then everything that occurs here on earth occurs according to a logic outside of our knowable reality. If one chooses to believe and trust this God’s non-human logic, one loses nothing. But if one rejects this transcendent God, then one might lose everything. As a youth evangelizing in shopping malls I was taught to unwittingly use Pascal’s challenge.
This understanding of transcendence, however, has been in question for a long time. In Martha Nussbaum’s challenge to traditional transcendence in her book Love’s Knowledge she examines Odysseus’ encounter with Calypso in The Odyssey. When offered a beautiful, goddess companion, the lack of any need, and eternal life, Odysseus refuses and continues his journey home. Nussbaum asks, Why? and why do we identify with that choice? We all say that we want eternal life, without trouble, and we do, but when faced with the problem of what that really means, do we want that life? Nussbaum’s conclusion is that we get “the feeling that the other life would just not be comprehensible as a life for a human being with human virtues and human heroism.” The reason for this is that “[h]uman limits structure the human excellences, and give excellent action its significance.” For example, a great deal of what we consider to be good morals has to do with our response to suffering. In a transcendent world free of suffering, what need would there be for such morals? Ultimately, Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche’s analysis that humanity’s (particularly religions’) desire for a “true” world different from our own ultimately leads to our non-concern and inaction in the world we have. In answer to Pascal’s challenge, Nussbaum would claim that something very significant is lost if one gives assent to traditional transcendence. Her answer is “a transcending by descent, delving more deeply into oneself and one’s humanity, and becoming deeper and more spacious as a result.”
The ultimate denial of traditional understandings of transcendence came in 1882 when Nietzsche pronounced that God was dead. The nihilism that resulted from this pronouncement reached its literary zenith in the writings of Kafka and Camus. In Camus’ The Stranger, for example, the main character, Meursault, mirrors the choice made by Odysseus. Meursault is convicted of murder and facing a hanging in a couple of days. The priest is sent and gives Meursault Pascal’s challenge, asking him what good it will do him to not accept God. Meursault refuses the priest’s offer, saying that it was of more comfort to him to be sure of his couple of days and of his death than to have the priest’s false security. The priest asks him what he would want heaven to be like, and Meursault responds that it would be a place where he could sit and remember this life. Admitting these things gives him great peace, and he lies on his prison cot more full of life than he has ever been. His transcendence comes through a refusal of the traditional understanding of transcendence. Meursault is the fictional embodiment of Nussbaum’s questioning of the significance of an afterlife.
In Camus’ The Plague, the plague that strikes the city is a metaphor for the absurdity of the human condition. The only hope of transcending the ill effects of the plague comes through choosing solidarity with other humans over and against any benign explanation from another world that is not really our own, such as is offered by the town’s priest. Concerning why the plague exists and why it must be fought, the main character says, “a man can’t cure and know at the same time. So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job.” This is again a fictional representation of transcendence through descent into humanity, not a reaching beyond humanity. Camus suggests, in the line of Nussbaum and Nietzsche, that to ask why or to focus at all on any transcendent reasoning necessarily takes away from the work at hand. The world is full of more trouble than we can deal with; all we can do is cure as quickly as we can. Wallace Stegner also portrays this understanding of transcendence in his works where relationships pull people through difficult times, not any transcendent understanding of God’s purposes.
Secular philosophers and writers are not the only people who have found transcendence through descent interesting, or necessary. As early as 1975 Sallie McFague began to apply these concepts to her understanding of theology and literature. In her book Speaking in Parables she takes as her model of transcendence something very basic to our human understanding – language, and more specifically metaphor. She writes,
Metaphor is, for human beings, what instinctual groping is for the rest of the universe – the power of getting form here to there. We use what we have, who we are, where we are to grope toward what we dimly feel, think, and envision we might have, who we might be, where we might be. We do this through a process in which imagination is the chief mover, setting the familiar in an unfamiliar context so that new possibilities can be glimpsed.
“The meaning of the gospel is generated through metaphor, through words which we ‘know’ but which are now put into a new context so that we see ‘what is’ in the light of ‘what might be,’ the ordinary emerges shaped by a new context. Thus we move, through metaphor, to meaning; metaphor is a motion from here to there.” Jesus is par excellence the metaphor of God, and so his story is the way to God.
Each of these authors demand to one degree or another a transcendence through descent. They claim that paying attention to the hereafter takes away from what we could be doing in the now. These authors make excellent points and each of them greatly affected my view of what transcendence can be. I grew up in a Pentecostal, fundamentalist sub-culture that concentrated greatly on transcending to the next world, which I believe at times contributed to the detriment of this world. I thus found myself agreeing with much of what Nussbaum wrote and found parabolic theology to be a healing corrective for my personal understanding of God. However, I also see tremendous limitations. For example, my Pentecostal roots were born in social struggle. Pentecostalism flourished in the poor south only a short time after being beaten in the Civil War. It particularly flourished among African-Americans who had learned under the heavy yoke of slavery to long for the world beyond this one, to which the great spirituals are testimony. Today Pentecostalism especially flourishes in third-world countries that know only suffering and have little or no hope in anything they find in this world. What shifting context within this world would give them hope? If you told a mother in Africa whose husband, brothers and half her children have died from aids that she must descend into herself to find the answers to her struggle, or that understanding herself in a new context here and now would save her, from where would she find hope or salvation? The Pentecostal focus on the soon-to-return Christ in power and glory to wipe away God’s enemies and bring about his Kingdom of peace would much more likely be useful to her, especially if physical healing were offered to rid herself and her remaining children of HIV.
McFague’s theory does work well on most of Jesus’ parables, and I appreciate her resistance to over-spiritualization. However, the theory only works when Jesus’ parables are separated from the rest of his life. Christ’s healings were not mere metaphors. His raising of Lazarus from the dead was not a mere metaphor, much less so was God’s raising of Jesus from the dead. Christ’s ascension was not a metaphor, nor was his promise to return, nor his giving of the Spirit to empower his followers. Most of Nussbaum’s critique of religion is very strong, except in one place – when she considers the doctrine of the Incarnation in Christianity. She writes, “Christianity seems to grant that in order to imagine a god who is truly superior, truly worthy of worship, truly and fully just, we must imagine a god who is human as well as divine, a god who has actually lived out the nontranscendent life and understands it in the only way it can be understood, by suffering and death.” She goes on to note, “the universal compassion for human suffering that one associates with Christianity is difficult to imagine apart from the paradigm of human suffering and sacrifice exemplified in Christ.” It is God’s transcendence through descent, the incarnation, that most appeals to her.
I think we need a dual understanding of transcendence. Transcendence by descent is by no means sufficient for our understanding of who God is; however, it is helpful in reminding us to focus on this life, in reminding us that God is concerned with this life.
Christian tradition has generally understood transcendence as a movement beyond human borders, either as God coming into the everyday and our somehow experiencing that or as humans reaching beyond themselves to God or as the crossing over into new life after death. This traditional understanding of transcendence, as being “above and independent of the universe,” is epitomized in Pascal’s challenge. He concludes that if there is a God then everything that occurs here on earth occurs according to a logic outside of our knowable reality. If one chooses to believe and trust this God’s non-human logic, one loses nothing. But if one rejects this transcendent God, then one might lose everything. As a youth evangelizing in shopping malls I was taught to unwittingly use Pascal’s challenge.
This understanding of transcendence, however, has been in question for a long time. In Martha Nussbaum’s challenge to traditional transcendence in her book Love’s Knowledge she examines Odysseus’ encounter with Calypso in The Odyssey. When offered a beautiful, goddess companion, the lack of any need, and eternal life, Odysseus refuses and continues his journey home. Nussbaum asks, Why? and why do we identify with that choice? We all say that we want eternal life, without trouble, and we do, but when faced with the problem of what that really means, do we want that life? Nussbaum’s conclusion is that we get “the feeling that the other life would just not be comprehensible as a life for a human being with human virtues and human heroism.” The reason for this is that “[h]uman limits structure the human excellences, and give excellent action its significance.” For example, a great deal of what we consider to be good morals has to do with our response to suffering. In a transcendent world free of suffering, what need would there be for such morals? Ultimately, Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche’s analysis that humanity’s (particularly religions’) desire for a “true” world different from our own ultimately leads to our non-concern and inaction in the world we have. In answer to Pascal’s challenge, Nussbaum would claim that something very significant is lost if one gives assent to traditional transcendence. Her answer is “a transcending by descent, delving more deeply into oneself and one’s humanity, and becoming deeper and more spacious as a result.”
The ultimate denial of traditional understandings of transcendence came in 1882 when Nietzsche pronounced that God was dead. The nihilism that resulted from this pronouncement reached its literary zenith in the writings of Kafka and Camus. In Camus’ The Stranger, for example, the main character, Meursault, mirrors the choice made by Odysseus. Meursault is convicted of murder and facing a hanging in a couple of days. The priest is sent and gives Meursault Pascal’s challenge, asking him what good it will do him to not accept God. Meursault refuses the priest’s offer, saying that it was of more comfort to him to be sure of his couple of days and of his death than to have the priest’s false security. The priest asks him what he would want heaven to be like, and Meursault responds that it would be a place where he could sit and remember this life. Admitting these things gives him great peace, and he lies on his prison cot more full of life than he has ever been. His transcendence comes through a refusal of the traditional understanding of transcendence. Meursault is the fictional embodiment of Nussbaum’s questioning of the significance of an afterlife.
In Camus’ The Plague, the plague that strikes the city is a metaphor for the absurdity of the human condition. The only hope of transcending the ill effects of the plague comes through choosing solidarity with other humans over and against any benign explanation from another world that is not really our own, such as is offered by the town’s priest. Concerning why the plague exists and why it must be fought, the main character says, “a man can’t cure and know at the same time. So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job.” This is again a fictional representation of transcendence through descent into humanity, not a reaching beyond humanity. Camus suggests, in the line of Nussbaum and Nietzsche, that to ask why or to focus at all on any transcendent reasoning necessarily takes away from the work at hand. The world is full of more trouble than we can deal with; all we can do is cure as quickly as we can. Wallace Stegner also portrays this understanding of transcendence in his works where relationships pull people through difficult times, not any transcendent understanding of God’s purposes.
Secular philosophers and writers are not the only people who have found transcendence through descent interesting, or necessary. As early as 1975 Sallie McFague began to apply these concepts to her understanding of theology and literature. In her book Speaking in Parables she takes as her model of transcendence something very basic to our human understanding – language, and more specifically metaphor. She writes,
Metaphor is, for human beings, what instinctual groping is for the rest of the universe – the power of getting form here to there. We use what we have, who we are, where we are to grope toward what we dimly feel, think, and envision we might have, who we might be, where we might be. We do this through a process in which imagination is the chief mover, setting the familiar in an unfamiliar context so that new possibilities can be glimpsed.
“The meaning of the gospel is generated through metaphor, through words which we ‘know’ but which are now put into a new context so that we see ‘what is’ in the light of ‘what might be,’ the ordinary emerges shaped by a new context. Thus we move, through metaphor, to meaning; metaphor is a motion from here to there.” Jesus is par excellence the metaphor of God, and so his story is the way to God.
Each of these authors demand to one degree or another a transcendence through descent. They claim that paying attention to the hereafter takes away from what we could be doing in the now. These authors make excellent points and each of them greatly affected my view of what transcendence can be. I grew up in a Pentecostal, fundamentalist sub-culture that concentrated greatly on transcending to the next world, which I believe at times contributed to the detriment of this world. I thus found myself agreeing with much of what Nussbaum wrote and found parabolic theology to be a healing corrective for my personal understanding of God. However, I also see tremendous limitations. For example, my Pentecostal roots were born in social struggle. Pentecostalism flourished in the poor south only a short time after being beaten in the Civil War. It particularly flourished among African-Americans who had learned under the heavy yoke of slavery to long for the world beyond this one, to which the great spirituals are testimony. Today Pentecostalism especially flourishes in third-world countries that know only suffering and have little or no hope in anything they find in this world. What shifting context within this world would give them hope? If you told a mother in Africa whose husband, brothers and half her children have died from aids that she must descend into herself to find the answers to her struggle, or that understanding herself in a new context here and now would save her, from where would she find hope or salvation? The Pentecostal focus on the soon-to-return Christ in power and glory to wipe away God’s enemies and bring about his Kingdom of peace would much more likely be useful to her, especially if physical healing were offered to rid herself and her remaining children of HIV.
McFague’s theory does work well on most of Jesus’ parables, and I appreciate her resistance to over-spiritualization. However, the theory only works when Jesus’ parables are separated from the rest of his life. Christ’s healings were not mere metaphors. His raising of Lazarus from the dead was not a mere metaphor, much less so was God’s raising of Jesus from the dead. Christ’s ascension was not a metaphor, nor was his promise to return, nor his giving of the Spirit to empower his followers. Most of Nussbaum’s critique of religion is very strong, except in one place – when she considers the doctrine of the Incarnation in Christianity. She writes, “Christianity seems to grant that in order to imagine a god who is truly superior, truly worthy of worship, truly and fully just, we must imagine a god who is human as well as divine, a god who has actually lived out the nontranscendent life and understands it in the only way it can be understood, by suffering and death.” She goes on to note, “the universal compassion for human suffering that one associates with Christianity is difficult to imagine apart from the paradigm of human suffering and sacrifice exemplified in Christ.” It is God’s transcendence through descent, the incarnation, that most appeals to her.
I think we need a dual understanding of transcendence. Transcendence by descent is by no means sufficient for our understanding of who God is; however, it is helpful in reminding us to focus on this life, in reminding us that God is concerned with this life.
Mar 8, 2006
Responding to my post on theology and culture, a friend replied that there is "another side to this story." I thought he made some good points, and I think it is an imortant discussion, so I decided to post his thoughts and my reply to him here.
Tim,
There is another side to this story. I understand your feelings as it regards this kind of "run for the hills" sort of sanctification from the world..."circling the wagons," so to speak.
At the same time, there is a very real danger in all of this "cultural engagement" talk running through various veins of the church today - at least in the way it is being adopted.
James tells us that, "Friendship with the world is hatred toward God." In another place we are told that, "Religion God accepts [includes] keeping oneself from being polluted by the world."
From what I can tell, this sector of Christians who choose to "engage the culture" are not really engaging it at all. Rather, using a lot of empty philosophy and jargon, they are actually doing nothing more than justifying their desire to have all this world has to offer without losing out on the Kingdom of God in the process.
We cannot be "friends of the world." We were called out of the wolrd and we are no longer "of" it. At the same time, you are correct in this: the culture cannot be allowed to languish in this hopeless estate because Christians were scared to look it in the eye.There is a balance and like all things of great and monumental import, we have a wonderful Scriptural example of that balance.
In the book of Acts we have the account of Paul engaging the Greeks. The first thing we notice is that Paul went to them. The second thing we notice is that Paul reasoned with them by relating the Gospel to the world in which they lived.
But we also notice something else. Paul did not BECOME one of them. He didn't put on a toga and drink wine in the temple of pagan gods. What we actually see is quite the opposite. Within a relatively short time, Paul was able to make a clear distinction between what he believed and who he was as a Christian vs. what they believed and who they were as Greek philosophers and pagans.
The result was that a number were moved to stay and hear him further, while the others wrote him off and moved on.
Our job is not to integrate with the culture, to salvage it, or to save it. Our job is to bring Christ to it and our interest is in those who PEOPLE "want to hear us further" - not "culture" as an organism or an entity.
Blessings!
Jason
Jason –
I don’t have time for a full response at the moment, but let me make a few brief statements.
I was bothered by these two sentences in your response: "From what I can tell, this sector of Christians who choose to "engage the culture" are not really engaging it at all. Rather, using a lot of empty philosophy and jargon, they are actually doing nothing more than justifying their desire to have all this world has to offer without losing out on the Kingdom of God in the process." I was bothered by them because what I wrote calls for an engagement with culture, so these words are directed at me. However, it seems you are imposing an outside philosophical dichotomy upon what I wrote instead of engaging with the specifics of what I wrote.
You are right in that I do want all that this world has to offer, because when God created the world God said, “It is good,” and I want what is good. Drunkenness, however, is not what God meant when God said, “It is good.” Rather, drunkenness is part of our sinful ways of being, which I don’t consider to be much of an offering from this world in any good sense. It is certainly not an offering I have any desire to receive.
I like the reference you made to Paul at Mars Hill, because when Paul goes to the Greeks, he does not impose some outside understanding of who God is and then expect them to either accept that or reject it. Rather, Paul begins with an altar they already have there in their culture. He then quotes to them their own poets and engages in dialogue with them, attempting to explain who Jesus is in relation to these cultural items. These cultural items are even used to shed light on who God is. That is the type of dialogue I am talking about in this post, not an engagement "in all this world has to offer” in some negative sense.
I think you have a reversed eschatology that sees Christ’s salvation as calling us away from this world into another realm, which I believe is the opposite of the purpose of the incarnation and Christ’s teachings concerning the Kingdom of God. I believe Christ brought God’s Kingdom into this world, and that Christ’s death and resurrection was meant for the restoration of this world unto relationship with the Father. Eschatology is the study of end things, and I believe Jesus brought the end things (such as peace, love, and transforming power) into the current world in which we live, and to be Christian means to follow Christ in doing exactly that – taking God’s light into the dark places of this world so that all may see Christ and be reconciled with God so that their lives may be affected here and now. I do not believe that Christ came just to draw us out of this messed up world. Rather, Christ wants us to engage this world and redeem it.
I appreciate your dialogue on this matter.
Tim,
There is another side to this story. I understand your feelings as it regards this kind of "run for the hills" sort of sanctification from the world..."circling the wagons," so to speak.
At the same time, there is a very real danger in all of this "cultural engagement" talk running through various veins of the church today - at least in the way it is being adopted.
James tells us that, "Friendship with the world is hatred toward God." In another place we are told that, "Religion God accepts [includes] keeping oneself from being polluted by the world."
From what I can tell, this sector of Christians who choose to "engage the culture" are not really engaging it at all. Rather, using a lot of empty philosophy and jargon, they are actually doing nothing more than justifying their desire to have all this world has to offer without losing out on the Kingdom of God in the process.
We cannot be "friends of the world." We were called out of the wolrd and we are no longer "of" it. At the same time, you are correct in this: the culture cannot be allowed to languish in this hopeless estate because Christians were scared to look it in the eye.There is a balance and like all things of great and monumental import, we have a wonderful Scriptural example of that balance.
In the book of Acts we have the account of Paul engaging the Greeks. The first thing we notice is that Paul went to them. The second thing we notice is that Paul reasoned with them by relating the Gospel to the world in which they lived.
But we also notice something else. Paul did not BECOME one of them. He didn't put on a toga and drink wine in the temple of pagan gods. What we actually see is quite the opposite. Within a relatively short time, Paul was able to make a clear distinction between what he believed and who he was as a Christian vs. what they believed and who they were as Greek philosophers and pagans.
The result was that a number were moved to stay and hear him further, while the others wrote him off and moved on.
Our job is not to integrate with the culture, to salvage it, or to save it. Our job is to bring Christ to it and our interest is in those who PEOPLE "want to hear us further" - not "culture" as an organism or an entity.
Blessings!
Jason
Jason –
I don’t have time for a full response at the moment, but let me make a few brief statements.
I was bothered by these two sentences in your response: "From what I can tell, this sector of Christians who choose to "engage the culture" are not really engaging it at all. Rather, using a lot of empty philosophy and jargon, they are actually doing nothing more than justifying their desire to have all this world has to offer without losing out on the Kingdom of God in the process." I was bothered by them because what I wrote calls for an engagement with culture, so these words are directed at me. However, it seems you are imposing an outside philosophical dichotomy upon what I wrote instead of engaging with the specifics of what I wrote.
You are right in that I do want all that this world has to offer, because when God created the world God said, “It is good,” and I want what is good. Drunkenness, however, is not what God meant when God said, “It is good.” Rather, drunkenness is part of our sinful ways of being, which I don’t consider to be much of an offering from this world in any good sense. It is certainly not an offering I have any desire to receive.
I like the reference you made to Paul at Mars Hill, because when Paul goes to the Greeks, he does not impose some outside understanding of who God is and then expect them to either accept that or reject it. Rather, Paul begins with an altar they already have there in their culture. He then quotes to them their own poets and engages in dialogue with them, attempting to explain who Jesus is in relation to these cultural items. These cultural items are even used to shed light on who God is. That is the type of dialogue I am talking about in this post, not an engagement "in all this world has to offer” in some negative sense.
I think you have a reversed eschatology that sees Christ’s salvation as calling us away from this world into another realm, which I believe is the opposite of the purpose of the incarnation and Christ’s teachings concerning the Kingdom of God. I believe Christ brought God’s Kingdom into this world, and that Christ’s death and resurrection was meant for the restoration of this world unto relationship with the Father. Eschatology is the study of end things, and I believe Jesus brought the end things (such as peace, love, and transforming power) into the current world in which we live, and to be Christian means to follow Christ in doing exactly that – taking God’s light into the dark places of this world so that all may see Christ and be reconciled with God so that their lives may be affected here and now. I do not believe that Christ came just to draw us out of this messed up world. Rather, Christ wants us to engage this world and redeem it.
I appreciate your dialogue on this matter.
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