Archive for March, 2011
March 31, 2011 at 7:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: lst, nonviolence, theology
In Matthew 5:39, Jesus tells his followers in the Sermon on the Mount “do not resist an evil person.” Of course, Jesus didn’t say it quite like that, and Matthew didn’t record it in the English of the NIV. Matthew uses the word αντιστηναι in greek – ‘antistenai‘. If I tell you that ‘stenai‘ means to ‘stand’, you can guess that it literally means ‘stand against’. ‘Resist’ seems like a good translation until we look at the cultural context of the word.
I’ve been reading Walter Wink for a seminar tomorrow and I discovered this series of videos called ‘Nonviolence for the Violent‘. Wink explains how the word also had a technical usage. When two ancient armies met, they would ‘face off’; posturing, shouting, waiting for the battle to come. As battle started, the two lines of soldiers would advance at each other until the lines collided. There would be swinging of swords and axes, blood, severed limbs, disembowelment and finally one of the lines would break and flee. This was called ‘taking the stand’; whoever could resist would win.
Jesus says ‘do not violently resist evil. For example…’
Wink goes on to suggest that one of the purposes King James had at the end of the 16th Century in commissioning the the ‘Authorised Version’ was to combat the teaching of the Geneva Bible, imported by the Presbyterians. They taught that it was permitted to overthrow a tyrant – the very opposite to the ‘divine right’ that James wrote two books on. His authorised version was to teach that there were two options when faced with evil – fight or flight. Fight is not permitted, so flight, passivity and being crushed is the only option. Wink says that Jesus in the following sentences shows that there is a third way, a non-violent resistance that means we do not ‘take a stand’ violently and militarily, but we do not allow evil to run amok.
His teaching is sound; James did hate the Presbyterians, Jesus did teach non-violent resistance (see the second video for his explanation) and this is a message that dictatorial governments do not want to be heard. But the Geneva Bible (1587) uses the same word ‘resist‘ as the KJV. King James’ scholars may not have given us the best translation, but neither did Geneva. Wycliffe says ‘against-stand‘ in a direct translation; Tyndale uses ‘resist‘; the evidence for this political translation is not good.
In another example of confirmation bias, I found a post from Peter Rollins that says “Fundamentalism isn’t too violent, it isn’t violent enough.” When fundamentalists (largely looking at the US here) defend the use of violence it is in a conservative way (small ‘c’) Defending the status quo is an impotent kind of violence. Resisting evil with violence continues the cycle of violence and oppression. Rome knew what to do with Zealots, they knew what to do with invading Goths, but killing Christians did not diminish them. Regimes know how to handle terrorism, but people peacefully sitting in the biggest square they can find will bring down tyrants.
The violence of conservatism isn’t violent enough for Jesus – it brings no change. Real change comes (says Rollins) from “people like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King who, in their pacifism, are truly violent”. By attacking ‘the powers’ with weapons that they can’t handle, structural change happens as it is brought in through a vision of a better world.
Thus, the next time we hear of some blustering speaker attempt to bolster their support by making themselves sound like the follower of a cage-fighting, bodybuilding Jesus, we should avoid the trap of arguing that their image of Jesus is too violent and instead show how it isn’t nearly violent enough. Drawing out how, amidst all their seeming machismo they are little more than a timid sheep in wolves clothing.
March 29, 2011 at 6:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: creativity, jazz, lst, thelogy
I’m glad to say that no-one in the seminar balked or said ‘nothing at all’! Creativity is key in expressing our own ideas in new ways and must not be left only to the worship leaders in Church. In Bloom’s Taxonomy, Creativing is the highest level thinking skill and includes synthesis, which is something that theologians might be more comfortable admitting to. Creativity is all about seeing links where others might miss them, re-presenting things in different ways.
But creativity must be employed with limits. In graphic design we might call the limits a ‘brief’ – not there to stifle creativity but to ensure that it leads to an end that is appropriate. There are ways of combining text and images to create things that would not be helpful to communicate effectively. The boundaries will be different according to the situation of the design – what you are making and who it’s for.
In drama or music, it makes more sense to talk about ‘improvisation’. A Jazz musician can’t just play anything, they are improvising ‘around a theme’.
“It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.”- Dizzie Gillespie
The talented soloist must play notes that harmonise with the rest of the band – dissonance is important but is resolved. A good jazz musician learns the scales and arpeggios until they can play in any key without thinking, until it becomes part of them.
Theological improvisation is the same. We drench ourselves in the dramatic narrative of the scriptures and in relationship with God until improvising ‘in the key of Jesus’ is the most natural thing we can do. We improvise always with an ear on what the band behind us are playing, what the church is saying through history and today. Each bar sounds different. Each note must be thought through but not intellectualised. Each note must be felt. Every one contributes to an ongoing harmony of such ecstasy that even the angels long to sing alone.
March 23, 2011 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: heaven, lst, theology
In the weeks since Nathaniel was born, Jane and I keep seeing buggies everywhere we go. I’m sure they weren’t there a couple of months ago, but now we see them round ever corner! We’ve even got to the point of walking along and just saying ‘buggy’ (no points involved, sadly).
It’s amazing how simply thinking more about something makes it pop out of the background noise more clearly. Another example in the last week has been two ideas that resonated with me from my reading of Kevin Vanhoozer – ‘translating’ and ‘improvisation’. As I’m sitting in a tutor’s office at college, the first book I glance at on his shelf is ‘Improvisation: the Drama of Christian Ethics‘ (I’ve not read it, so don’t take that as a recommendation!) I get home, click on a couple of tweets and start reading a sample chapter from Krish Kandiah of his new book, Route 66. It’s all about reading and understanding the Bible and it seems very helpful. In the preview chapter he talks about translation as not just how we move from ancient texts to modern vernacular, but further as how we put it into place in our own lives. As soon as these ideas take root in your brain you start seeing them everywhere! (And I suppose I should get on and write about those two as well…)
Sometimes seeing what God’s doing is exactly the same – when we’re engaged in it and it’s on our minds, it’s easy to spot all these different things and see God behind them. When we’re thinking about other things, it’s those other things that dominate what we see. We talk about scientific observation being theory laden – on a day-by-day basis this means that we see what we look for. So I see buggies everywhere, but I know what I’d rather be seeing!
March 13, 2011 at 8:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: empire, lst, nonviolence, theology
I probably don’t have the time or place in my course to investigate this question properly, but it’s a really interesting one. What happens when the Emperor becomes a Christian?
First of all, some of the assumptions that I’m making.
- Jesus primarily teaches groups, not individuals (the exception that proves the rule – John 3)
- These groups are mainly made up of the lower socio-economic groups – labourers, peasants etc. The ‘super rich’ (e.g. the Saducees) are rarely spoken to directly but sometimes taught about
- Jesus’ message was not simply about how to get to a remote heaven after death, but establishing the Kingdom of God from that moment onwards
- Jesus was not trying to set up a competing Empire
- Jesus was not teaching the lowest classes of Galillee and Judea how to run the world or the/an empire – and nor was Paul
- A mature approach to the question will not blindly apply the sayings of Jesus literally in a totally different context.
My thinking at the moment is that Jesus teaches the poor and oppressed how to seek justice in the context they find themselves in, and when we seek to translate into a different context we must try to understand the kind of justice that Jesus wants to see rather than blindly take (for example) the Sermon on the Mount as a legal pronouncement for all people of all times to obey. It is that process of translating that will be contentious and difficult, but this is the job of all theologians of every era.
Being a Christian Emperor will be different to being a Christian farmer in rural Palestine. Many have criticised Constantine as a pivotal point that Christianity ‘lost it’s way’, but I haven’t yet read those same people articulating how an ‘Emperor’ should be a Christian. We may live in a ‘Western Empire’ that has no real Emperor, but many of those who have leading positions in politics and business (claim to) have a Christian faith. What it means for a world leader or a CEO of a multinational to follow Jesus will necessarily be different to what it means for a single mum on a council estate.
To read: Leithart, Defending Constantine, reviewed at http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/yoders-jeremian-dispersed-missional-ecclesiology-what-yoder-got-right-according-to-leithart/, the blog post that got me thinking.
March 11, 2011 at 12:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized · Tags: lst, theology
When I’m preparing for seminars at LST I end up running down all kinds of rabbit holes. I’m also trying to reconcile the historic and often conservative teachings of scripture that I’ve been brought up in with the expanding view of God that I am embracing. My narrow view of the gospel has too be blown apart to accomodate the things I hear Jesus teach and the things I feel God doing. That process might start with some of the key words of the ‘evangelical gospel’ – ‘repent’ and ‘believe’.
‘Repent’ is often heard as a precursor to faith, as a prerequisit to meeting God. It’s framed as ‘admitting I’m wrong, that I’m utterly helpless, that I need God’. While I don’t question any of those ideas – in fact every one of them is important and useful to understanding Christianity – I’m less convinced that they summarise the entire meaning of the word. The greek word in the New Testament is ‘metanoia‘. Yoder explains it as ‘a new mentality’[1] as he’s trying to explain the Jubilee program of Jesus. N.T. Wright often tells the story of how he found ‘metanoesein kai pistos emoi’ (repent and be faithful to me) in Josephus[2]. It comes as Josephus is negotiating with a Jewish rebel (called Jesus) in Galillee (some 30+ years after Jesus of Nazareth’s death), trying to persuade them not to keep fighting against Rome. He explains to them why it’s impossible to win, what the results will be, how the rebel will be forgiven if he changes his allegiance. He asks them to change their viewpoint to match his, to trust that he sees things correctly – to repent and believe.
So two things strike me about this understanding. ‘Repent and believe’ is not just about admitting guilt or ‘utter depravity’. It may include that, but it goes far beyond, to accepting God’s view of the world, transforming my perspective to match what I percieve him to say about it. Because of this, metanoia (I hesitate to use the word repent, it has too much baggage) is something we continually need to do. Second, trusting God is not a one-time event or a switch of sides as it might have been for Josephus or the Galillean rebel. It becomes an on-going process of shifting my view of the world to match God’s, trusting that not only will he redeem me, he can redeem every situation.
