Wrestling with texts at a midweek Eucharist

When I read the texts for tonight my first response was O Lord why these texts? I bring my wrestling so you too can wrestle…

Luke 13: 22-30

Jesus is asked ‘will only a few be saved’ and we want him to answer, ‘No everyone will be saved. God is love. God is not willing that any should perish’. But Jesus offers no reassurance to those who question him this time. He doesn’t exactly answer the question either. He doesn’t want them to assume that they will get be part of God’s kingdom.

Jesus obviously hasn’t done pastoral 101. He tends here to cast doubt on their ultimate salvation. The way is narrow. Many will come and want to enter, but be unable to. Apparently because it’s too narrow. Diet, diet! Strive to enter in.

And then the master of the house closes the door, and Jesus questioners start knocking… Jesus is putting them into his story, not very encouraging to those who come asking theological questions…. The master replies ‘I don’t know where you come from’. It reminded me of the modern phrase, “I don’t know where you’re coming from.”…. Strange people!

What sort of pastor has no interest in telling people they are ok. If someone comes to me and says, Bruce, I’ve done terrible things, my life is a mess, I think I want to die, I’m a waste of space. Will I get into the kingdom of God? Everything in me wants to respond. Rubbish, you’re ok, you’re not so bad. There are lots of people worse than you. The way is broad. But when I think about it, my response has more to do with my needs than the other person’s situation. They might not be ok. They may need most of all to repent.

Many, will come from east and west and north and south… and will eat in the kingdom of God… This sounds a bit more hopeful. Now Jesus imagines many feasting (perhaps after all the dieting to get through the narrow door).

Perhaps many do get in, after the initial rejection … it’s just that some get in first and some last… The whole thing reverses everybody’s expectations.

Jesus concludes ‘some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last’. Jesus the revolutionary speaking. The world of the kingdom will be a stark contrast with the sense of what it is to be successful in this world.

Just when all our carefully nurtured ideas lie wounded on the ground Ephesians sticks the knife in somewhere else…

Eph 6: 1-9

My initial question is “How dare the writer accept slavery without raising an eyebrow?!

Then it occurs to me that perhaps here is where we see the revolutionary impact of Jesus. Jesus last words to his disciples, before he was taken away by soldiers, of an empire which enslaved the world by the sword was ‘put down your sword’.

As he said elsewhere, ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword’ and ‘It will not be so among you.’

The one who refused the violent revolution inspires Paul (or the writer of the letter to Ephesus) to encourage subversion by love. Paul does not renounce the evil of slavery, but then neither does he expend a lot of breath denouncing the evil Empire that maintains it. Perhaps he knows that the empire and the institution of slavery will fall, not by the sword but by love. Perhaps he knows that even if it doesn’t fall, this response is the one that Christians are called to. So if slaves start to serve their masters not as if their master owned them, but because they are first of all slaves of Christ, and in the real world of God’s kingdom they stand alongside their masters together as brothers and sisters under the Lordship of the risen Christ. And if masters start to treat their slaves as brothers and sisters in Christ… If these things happen the world will change… just as the household and public divisions between men and women changed.

There was no Wilberforce in Paul’s day… it was very different. But the same Gospel ended up inspiring William Wilberforce many centuries later.

Maybe the real revolution happens when the world is subverted from within and slaves and their master sit together around the same table… the table of the Lord.

Will there be any widows at Copenhagan?

Do preachers have time to blog… sometimes not. So here’s tomorrows sermon.

Taking the Widow Seriously

Mark 12: 38-44

This reading really picks up from what I said last Sunday at Caversham… I talked about the Most Important Commandment – Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And I spoke of this attraction called love as a form of giving – giving yourself.

And this week Jesus give us an example, a very striking, perhaps too striking an example – the widow who gave everything. Did she really give everything she had? Is it a good idea to give away your life and make yourself dependent on others? Perhaps the story exaggerates; perhaps she just gave away what she had for that week’s food? Surely Jesus wouldn’t condone such recklessness? Does she have no concern for those who will feel obliged to pick up the pieces of her life, now that she has given all her resources away? Shouldn’t she be realistic about the consequences of her actions? Shouldn’t she realize that what she has done will not do anyone any good really – just create more social chaos? Does she not realize that all she will do is put more money into the coffers of the rich religious leaders Jesus has just been criticizing. That’s a very rational question to ask – a very rational response….

Let’s begin by recognizing that we feel uncomfortable about this passage. Jesus does not make it easy for us. The thing about the women is that she gave everything. That’s her hidden truth.

Perhaps we should begin by acknowledging that realistically speaking we are not going to go out from this place and give all our money and savings to the first poor person we encounter, or donate it to Oxfam or put it in the offering plate. Probably because we don’t believe it would be the right thing to do. Perhaps we should acknowledge that… Perhaps it’s the truth… it might not be the right thing for us to do.

But wouldn’t we be missing the point? Wouldn’t that acknowledgement be just a little too easy for us? We have come here to hear the Word of God not to be comfortable.

I’m not sure that’s the point of the story… that we should all go and do what the widow did… the point is less simple, but no less challenging.

Let’s think about the context for a moment. Two stories are placed together. Let’s imagine the scene… in the temple… up the front are the leaders all in a row with flowing robes bright colours and high hats (whatever they wear – imagine it how it was in your childhood bible story books), There’s probably quite a bit of noise and activity in the temple. The prayers are being recited above it all. The dealers are in the background. What we call politics, religion and economics are all merged together here. Jesus is also in the background observing and talking quietly with his disciples, his eyes light up with passion as he talks of the leaders who do what they do for status and public profile and who rip off the poor, especially widows…

And then we immediately cut to scene within a scene – a poor widow arriving and shuffling up the queue to make her offering. She is a member of these dispossessed victims – a widow – offering up all she has. What is the poor widow thinking as she walks up in the line of givers? How does the coin feel in the widow’s pocket?

Jesus says “Look, here’s an example”. The group around Jesus turn their heads in her direction. Just as Jesus has been talking about the injustice of this world and the hypocrisy of its leaders… enter a woman who represents, in her person, the victims of it all. Jesus says… the truth is, the others in the queue have money to spare for their offering. She has nothing but what she is giving.

Who is this woman? Is she herself a victim, of her own self-destruction, or religious guilt? Or is she the only free person?

[pause for reflection – share in groups what crossed your mind]

We could speculate about her… But it would only be speculation.

We want to jump into the story and say to her, don’t do it, don’t give your money away to those hypocrites, look after yourself, protest against the system, stand up for your rights. But those possibilities don’t feature in our story… All we have is an irrational act of total self-giving. Why?

The cynic in us says, she must be bound up in guilt… but why would we let the cynic within us determine the purpose of Jesus story… Jesus points out to us a women who not only gives up everything… but who does so, in contrast to the religious leaders, as an example of someone who gets no recognition, because her gift is small. When in fact she has given away everything… And so we also discover that she even gave away the reward that comes from being recognized for having been generous… There’s the rub.

Why such extremism about faith? Here’s where our story links with last Sunday. Faith is extreme because it is a matter of love… and love is not about rational response as we usually know them.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul and strength and mind”. The widow is not simply an example for us to go out and imitate in an identical manner… the widow is an example of someone who loves God with all her heart and soul and strength and mind… with no interest in recognition.

Either the world is driven by the freedom to give, which flows from God’s very self, or it is driven by the fears which end up taking from others, the fears drive us to secure our status…and our power… BUT if some of us give in ways that make us vulnerable what good will that do anybody?

Discussion point: What if we likened the poor widow in our story to our little country going to Copenhagan to make our donation to the future of the planet? [discuss]

What does it mean if a small country like NZ decided to take a lead in reducing carbon emissions at Copenhagen, in bearing the cost of the environmental crisis?… What if we, like the widow, gave away what we had? Would that be a good thing? It’s certainly an unlikely scenario isn’t it? I can’t imagine it happening, I certainly can’t imagine it happening without us taking the credit (in contrast to the anonymity of our widow).

You see in her own way the widow provided an example of Jesus own life… into shame and ignominy, killed as a criminal without even the recognition of his giving… Were it not for the resurrection the world as usual would remain… the Pharisees in their flowing robes and the roman soldiers with their swords and spears would continue to represent politics and religion as usual…

When Jesus tells us the truth about this widow, it’s like God raising Jesus from death. Here is the truth about the world! Here is the truth about God! Even if very few listen, and everything appears the same, in truth, nothing is ever the same again.

The truth about the world is that we are likely, like the leaders in their flowing robes, to destroy this planet and the third world… weather conditions will get more extreme, thousands more will die in Tornadoes in the Philippines and so on.

This is the truth about the world… but it is a truth which has come out of hiding. And in the midst of the world-as-usual there is a witness to another world. God who is different, has interrupted… and there are those who have drunk at the same well as the widow, for whom death has lost its sting. I wonder if any widows will get to Copenhagan?

(preached Caversham Presbyterian Church 8.11.09)

Church noticeboards as they should be

I was thinking about Church noticeboards and publicity and how embarassing they are. It got me to thinking about some slogans I think would be more appropriate on a church noticeboard. Here are a couple of suggestions

#1

Christians are weird!

….so there’s room for you after all!

#2

Here, every Sunday at 10am!

… a chance to practice hanging out with losers

A spot of Auden

It’s time to start putting some of my favourite poems out there… From the brilliance of W H Auden this second poem of the Horae Canonicae series is certainly near the top of my list

Terce

After shaking paws with his dog
(Whose bark would tell the world that he is always kind),
The hangman sets off briskly over the heath;
He does not know yet who will be provided
To do the high works of Justice with:
Gently closing the door of his wife’s bedroom
(Today she has one of her headaches)
With a sigh the judge descends his marble stair;
He does not know by what sentence
He will apply on earth the Law that rules the stars:
And the poet, taking a breather
Round his garden before starting his eclogue,
Does not know whose Truth he will tell.

Sprites of hearth and store-room, godlings
Of professional mysteries, the Big Ones
Who can annihilate a city
Cannot be bothered with this moment: we are left,
Each to his secret cult. Now each of us
Prays to an image of his image of himself;
‘Let me get through this coming day
Without a dressing down from a superior,
Being worsted in a repartee,
Or behaving like an ass in front of the girls;
Let something exciting happen,
Let me find a lucky coin on a sidewalk.
Let me hear a new funny story.’

At this hour we all might be anyone:
It is only our victim who is already without a wish,
Who knows already (that is what
We can never forgive. If he knows the answers,
Then why are we here, why is there even dust?),
Knows already that, in fact, our prayers are heard,
That not one of us will slip up,
That the machinery of our world will function
Without hitch, that today, for once,
There will be no squabbling on Mount Olympus,
No Chthonian mutters of unrest,
But no other miracle, knows that by sundown
We shall have had a good Friday.

Reference and the name ‘Father’

 

I suggested in my previous post, it is important to distinguish between a metaphor and a name, even if some names have metaphorical associations (eg Father as a way of naming God). This is because ‘names’ play a key role in ‘making reference’ and ‘making reference’ is logically prior to metaphorical description.

 

The distinction I am concerned to think about here is that between ‘making reference’ and ‘describing’. ‘Making reference’ is a process of identifying what is being talked about. Thus the distinction between ‘making reference’ and ‘describing’ presupposes a relationship between the two. To describe (or ‘talk about’) about something relies on a logically prior act of identification (‘making reference’).

 

The key question for the question of language and metaphor in Christian theology is: How do orthodox Christians make reference to God? To put it another way, What is the specifically Christian way of identifying the one they call ‘God’ and thus speaking of God’s identity? When we put the question this way we are reminded that other people use the term ‘God’ in other ways and thus ‘make reference’ differently. It is prima facie absurd to assume that different ways of ‘making reference’ have the same referent. What Christians end up wanting to say about God is irreducibly bound up with the way they make reference to God and identify God in the first place.

 

The starting point for Christian theology is the experience of the resurrection of Jesus. God is the agent of this event in all its density. Thus to identify God they tell a ‘gospel’ story which goes something like this. The God of Israel (universe-transcending creator) raised Jesus from death, interrupting history with his life death and resurrection, and continues to interrupt the lives of particular people and communities with the experience of Jesus Christ so that they participate in his life and are conformed to it, in anticipation of the final restoration of creation to life with God.

 

Because this identifying story says ‘God did this’, it also says, ‘this is God’s identity’. In short there is a three-fold character to the events by which God is identified and therefore to God’s identity. The one who raises (and sends) Jesus, Jesus himself, and the one who brings us (the witnesses) to participate in Jesus, constitute together the referent of the term ‘God’.

 

To retell this story this story explicitly every time we talk about God is, of course, impractical. So we require names. What’s more to address this God also requires names. However, not any name will do. Names have no ‘ontology’ apart from the practice of referring and addressing. In short, my name is simply ‘what I am called’ (or ‘how I am addressed’). The Christian practice of addressing God as ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ thus arose straightforwardly enough out of the memory of Jesus own address to the God of Israel as ‘Father’ and the memory of his own self-identification as ‘the Son’.

 

The dilemma this history gives rise to is that in naming ‘the one who sent and raised Jesus’ as ‘Father’ (as Jesus did) and thus providing the referential foundation for all descriptive and metaphorical God-talk (properly understood as analogical) we also risk suggesting that the universe-transcendent God is somehow more like those creatures of male gender than those of female gender. What ought to be a reference-fixing designation intended to function as a ‘proper name’ is also commonly used generically to refer to men who have children. In short, the question raised is a practical one. How do we ‘make reference’ to the triune God without suggesting that God is more like men who have children than other creatures? It seems to me that if you start at this point in the history of Christian theology and share the same commitment to ‘making reference’ as those first witnesses had, then the problem is a practical and pastoral one whose difficulty is often underestimated. I have no easy answers. The difficulty of changing a name, while maintaining the same reference, is enormous. What’s more maintaining the reference is the crucial issue, since the story of the triune God is nothing less than the gospel of the liberation of men and women. To change the name and lose reference would be to undermine the point of the name change in the first place. What’s more this difficulty is most often underestimated by those who imagine that reference can be made to God apart from the triune gospel.

Metaphor and Theology

I have been writing some introductory level stuff on theological language… here is my work to date.

Metaphor is a way of doing things with words. It is basically descriptive but can occur in the context of doing things like commanding e.g. ‘Cast out those whitewashed tombstones’. It is the way language is  ‘stretched’ in new ways. Thus the primary difference between metaphorical and literal use of words has to do with the standard way words are used. Metaphor occurs as a novel comparison against a background of more familiar usage and it is only against that background that metaphors arise. To put it another way; the meaning of a term in use is dependant on a tradition of shared ‘literal’ usage. If it were not so we could not communicate.

It is from this common base that language can be stretched. From a scientific point of view it is by means of metaphorical stretching that new discoveries are made and shared. Inasmuch as these discoveries are shared and prove fruitful the metaphorical becomes, in time, literal. The literal is thus a graveyard built on the bodies of shared metaphors, but it is also the soil in which new metaphors arise. Where there is contest about what is true (say for example, when it is contested whether smacking is violent or not), this is also a contest about whether certain ways of speaking/writing should be regarded as literal. This is not to say that all common literal usage is true, just that those who do not contest these usages also do not contest their bearing on the truth but rely on it.

The question of what one can say literally about God includes the question about which metaphors are a valid and fruitful extension of the current usage. It may also be a question about the validity of currently accepted literal usages. However, the notion of a metaphor loses all meaning without the background of literal usage – as, for example, when people say that “all language about God is metaphorical”. The theological meaning of ‘metaphor’ thus occurs at the intersection of two issues, namely, the issue of how language changes over time and the issue of how language relates to reality, and in particular to God.

The Christian tradition assumes, consistent with the monotheism of the Hebrew tradition and its Trinitarian transformation in the early Church, that God is not of the same order as the universe. In the words of Herbert McCabe [cit]: “God and the universe do not make two.” God is no ‘thing’, either comparable to and over against the world, or within the world. God is that on whom the world depends for existence.

It is not that nothing can be truthfully said of God, but that God’s kenotic (see Philippians 2: 6-8) self-manifestation is the starting point of Christian claims to speak of God truthfully. When it comes to contested language and the question of a new metaphor, the reference-point lies in God’s own self-disclosure. Thus theological language is not defined by the continuum between literal and metaphorical language, but by the mystery of the relation between God and the world. To speak christianly of God (and thus to mean by ‘God’ what Christians mean), whether metaphorically or literally, presupposes two things. Firstly, it presupposes a perspective informed by participation in God’s life as Trinity in the world. For Christians our point of contact with God, and so meaningful speech about God, lies in the process of salvation by Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. This is the experience which grounds our existence. Secondly, to speak christianly of God presupposes an understanding that any emerging ways of using words (i.e. metaphor) is always qualified by God’s ever greater dissimilarity from creation. This is what theologians mean when they say that theological language is analogical rather than, say, necessarily metaphorical.

Of course in saying that theological language is analogical before it is either metaphorical or literal we are talking about descriptive language. However, names, properly speaking, are not descriptive. They coordinate a point of reference. For example, the question of whether I am truly Bruce is similar then to the question of whether God is truly Father. It depends on whether that’s what people call me (or God). It does not follow that God is being described as ‘a father’ any more than it follows that I am being described as ‘a bruce’. The question of which metaphors can be applied to God should be clearly distinguished from the question of how we call God by name.

In the case of descriptive language, the most widely and ecumenically accepted way of describing the being of God is that God is Trinity. This is, we could say, the standard accepted usage and the most literal way of talking about God. This language arose out of reflection on the theological significance of Jesus who called the God of Israel, Father. Thus the whole question of talk about God finds its most complex issue at the point where the gender-transcending (rather than multi-gendered or trans-gendered!) God is named. It is complicated primarily because God is also described in scripture (metaphorically!) as a father (‘our father’) and so likened to other fathers, and only more rarely and obliquely as ‘mother-like’.

In summary then, the fact that God is Trinity – a conclusion arising from the significance of Jesus and his relation to the one he called Father – is a starting point from which Christian descriptive language about God begins. The doctrine of the Trinity is ‘the literal’ in relation to which all God-metaphors are metaphorical. This history and its corresponding naming process cannot be left behind. What we can do is learn to distinguish carefully between a name and all language which is descriptive of what is named. To do this is to begin to do Christian theology.

On distinguishing between ‘Church’ and ‘Ecclesial Existence’

I have been working away on ecclesiology and thought I would check out some thoughts on the world – or perhaps on the few passers by who might read this. Any comments on the distinction I am trying to make here

 

 

… the New Testament places the church not just alongside the cosmic mission of God to restore creation and reconcile the world to God, but rather as an integral element of this mission. It depends on the context whether the church is described as serving mission or mission serving church (the bride for whom Christ died).

 

This is understandable in the context of a thoroughly historical understanding of salvation. As Irenaeus stressed, in addressing the Gnostics, God’s salvation is the salvation of the world. It is not salvation from the world. However we talk about church we are not talking about a gateway to escape from the world nor the bearer of a message of escape from the world. We are talking about a human social reality inasmuch as that reality is both a consequence of and a participant in the mission of God for the salvation of the world.

 

At this point, right at the beginning of our reflection, we need to take cognizance of the dual aspect of the reality of the church. We have to do here with a correlation between divine and human agency. Although it is the agency within history of the Son and Spirit which creates what theologians call church, this church is also a social reality constituted by a human action and interaction. Moreover it is common linguistic practice to refer to this social reality as ‘the church’ quite independently of the ‘eyes of faith’ which might discern the reconstituting work of the Son and Spirit.

 

This duality means that we are caught in a dilemma. If we are to accept this linguistic practice then go on to attribute to that entity cosmic and soteriological qualities, we will tend to be caught between a Scylla which offers idealized models of an actual and less than ideal church (thus talking about what the church ‘is’ which takes no account of its failings) and a Charybdis which accepts the reality of the historically identified church but effectively fails to treat that actual existence as being intrinsically related to divine action (thus talking about what the church is ‘called to be’ rather than what it is by divine action).

 

So before going further I propose that we resolve to refer in the first instance to ‘ecclesial existence’ when seeking a theological account of the social outcome of salvation. We will thus reserve the term ‘church’ for its common usage to refer to that socio-historical entity which identifies itself as ‘church’. Since, as we suggested above, ‘ecclesial existence’ refers to an event of correlation between divine and human agency, this ecclesial existence will take social and historical form and our task will be to explore and consider the nature of that form. However, it does not follow that the church (socio-historically identified) will necessarily correspond to events of ecclesial existence.

 

In distinguishing thus between ‘ecclesial existence’ and ‘church’ we are not making the same distinction as is commonly made between the visible and invisible church. Both ‘ecclesial existence’ and ‘the church’ are visible. The former term identifies a reality according to criteria which are theological and the latter does not, but simply accepts the self-designation of participants. The value of this distinction is seen for instance when we note that the paradoxical truth that it is important to discern when the church is not the church, can be interpreted as indicating precisely this distinction. The church does not necessarily embody ecclesial existence. However, what matters here is not the terminology per se but the nature of ecclesial existence and its functioning both within and beyond what we are now referring to as ‘the church’.

 

Clearly this distinction is relevant not just at the level of sociality but also at the level of individual personal existence in community. Just as ‘the church’, inasmuch as it is bound up with ecclesial existence, is a corpus permixtem, so the individual conceived as an agent within a network of relations is also both a sinner and a new creation in Christ. In this sense ecclesial existence holds together individual actions and the sociality constituted by them

A Gift Ontology: contra Derrida and Nygren

A section of Hart’s book The Beauty of the Infinite which I really like is his critique of both Derrida’s gift argument (“Etant donne: Essai d’une phenomenology de la donation” – Paris” Presses Universitaires de France, 1997) and Nygren’s conception of Agape (Agape and Eros, trans Philip S. Watson – London: SPCK, 1982). Here are some highlights:

“After all, there is no reason why it is more correct to say that the gift forces a return than to say that the gift allows or even liberates a response, and so is the occasion of communion. One’s self is perhaps nothing but the gift of the other’s otherness, defined by what one receives from the other and by what style of receiving one adopts: received as gift or as burden, eliciting delighted response or merely guilty indebtedness (or ingratitude), the gift is the occasion of the self, the event of a self, and to consider first the self that is obligated by – rather than the self that is born in – the gift is to invert the order of what is given and what restored. One becomes a “person”, one might say, analogous to the divine persons, only insofar as one is the determinate recipient of a gift; one is a person always in the evocation of a response…it is in the priority of the gift that a giver is born into the measure of charity and a recipient is born into the measure of delight and gratitude, because God has given out of a charity and a joy that is perfect in the shared life of the Trinity, and in him desire and selfless charity are one and the same…” (p. 263)

Similarly drawing on his own theological ontology and conception of analogia entis Hart responds to Nygen’s conception of Agape as follows:

“But in what sense, precisely, is an agape purified of eros distinguishable from hate? Or utter indifference? In what sense is the bounty of such a love distinguishable from the disposal of the superfluous?… The emaciated agape that gives without reserve but also without desire of return can never be anything but the energy of an absolute debt… but if divine agape is generous in another sense, if it is actually charitable by giving way to otherness, by desiring the other dearly enough to give in a way that liberates the other even as it “binds” the other – by desiring the other, that is, as the very impulse of charity, and thereby relieving the other of any debt of pure and disinterested return – then the idea of the gift may yet prove resistant to too astringent an ethical purism. Truly, only when a giver desires a return, and indeed, in some sense desires back the gift itself, can a gift be given as something other than sheer debt; only the liberating gesture of a gift given out of desire is one that cannot morally coerce another, and so can reveal the prior, aneconomic rationality of giving that escapes every calculation. Absolute “selfless” gratuity, which will not submit to reciprocation, is pure power; but interested exchange – even though sin inevitably corrupts all exchange with the shadow of coercion and greed – is not simply an economy over against which the impossible gift stands as dialectical counter, but is able rather to manifest a more primordial free gesture (free because it seeks a return and is not simply “necessary”) that underlies and ultimately exceeds any economy. In simple human terms, a love that is inseparable from an interest in the other is always more commendable, more truly selfless, than the airless purity of disinterested expenditure, because it recognizes the otherness and delights in the splendour of the other. (p. 264-5)”

Caption Context

This billboard is disturbing on so many levels it deserves an award. Does it not demonstrate that Tim LaHaye is, if not the true ‘antichrist’ then perhaps Nietzsche-in-a-suit-and-tie. In honour of the sheer ugliness of this billboard I declare a caption contest for this picture now open.

HT: Richard Davis

Rereading David Bentley Hart

I’ve just been rereading selected parts of The Beauty of the Infinite and as previously finding it very hard to put down. I don’t know anyone with a better grasp of the English language among theologians. I plan to throw up a few citations as provocations over the next few days.

There is this quote near the beginning of the introduction for example:

“It is only as the offer of this peace within time, as a real and available practice, that the Christian evangel (and in particular, the claim that Christ crucified has been raised from the dead) has any meaning at all; only if the form of Christ can be lived out in the community of the church is the confession of the church true; only if Christ can be practiced is Jesus Lord. No matter how often the subsequent history of the church belied this confession, it is this presence within time of an eschatological and divine peace, really incarnate in the person of Jesus and forever imparted to the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, that remains the very essence of the church’s evangelical appeal to the world at large, and of the salvation it proclaims. (p. 1-2)

Initially this made me wonder if he ends up in the same boat as Stanley Hauerwas apparently does (cf Nate Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic; John Webster, “The Church and the Perfection of God” and Nicholas Healy “Misplaced Concreteness” ) of sacrificing the “independence” of Christ for a ‘community dependent’ Christology/Soteriology. The important word, though is ‘can’. “Only if the form of Christ can be lived out…”. Truth, here, is not a function of propositions per se, but of the possibilities of the eschatological Spirit. For Hart the gospel itself can never be ecclesiologically dependent, since the impartation he talks of is never a possession but it is the church’s constant dependence on the eventuation of the rhetoric of the infinite which is both beauty and peace.

“Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape , rather than merely the way in which a lesser succumbs to a greater in the endless epic of power.” (p. 3)

What’s more on the form of Christ (the beauty of the infinite) imparted ‘only as gift’ he further comments:

“That the power of the Spirit to communicate this beauty anew is infinite is an article of faith; that human beings resist the Spirit with indefatigable ingenuity is the lesson of history… God’s election of creation in Christ is an “aesthetic” action, which expresses the Father’s pleasure in the Son, and the response of the church can only be  ”aesthetic” as well: that is to say, Christ bequeaths the church neither simple ethical principles nor “facts” of heaven, but a way of being in the world, a form that must be answered “gracefully”… (p. 338)

What do you reckon?