DISQUS

Maria,

Because we have gently sparred a bit in the past, and because you have taken the time to share your thoughts in this way, I thought I'd take a moment to say that I'm more sympathetic than I was, say, six months ago. My reasons are almost certainly different from yours, but that doesn't matter so much. Like you, I retain an admiration for those who maintain a consistently radical outlook.

Me, I've had to make peace with the realization that I'm more of a liberal. It's not as sexy, but the shoe fits. You? Well, I can't represent you -- that's your prerogative. Keep it up.

Peace to you,

Ted

Maria,


Because we have gently sparred a bit in the past, and because you have taken the time to share your thoughts in this way, I thought I'd take a moment to say that I'm more sympathetic than I was, say, six months ago. My reasons are almost certainly different from yours, but that doesn't matter so much. Like you, I retain an admiration for those who maintain a consistently radical outlook.



Me, I've had to make peace with the realization that I'm more of a liberal. It's not as sexy, but the shoe fits. You? Well, I can't represent you -- that's your prerogative. Keep it up.



Peace to you,



Ted

You might add Hardt and Negri's Empire to the recommended reading list.

You might add Hardt and Negri's Empire to the recommended reading list.

Yikes -- that first sentence should read, "...especially as I read and re-read the last half of this article..."

Yikes -- that first sentence should read, "...especially as I read and re-read the last half of this article..."

It may be semantics, especially as read and re-read the last half of this paragraph, but I wonder if "our job as the Church isn’t to redistribute wealth" is too strongly stated. Purely at face value, I'm not sure it's true. It serves its rhetorical purpose in the article, and sets up some fantastic observations in the remainder of the piece -- the idea that both oppressed and oppressor are set free by the gospel is a gem. So I don't want to go off on a Ghandi tangent, but I'm a wee bit leery of such a pronouncement.

Wealth redistribution is not the primary focus of the church, to be sure, especially if by this we mean overseeing or advocating for programs intended to redistribute wealth on the systemic level. But the early church certainly seems to be involved in some sort of rudimentary wealth distribution. This is, in fact, at the heart of the jubilee ethos invoked in Jesus' messianic platform -- or the Jesus Manifesto, if you will.

Whatever replaces capitalism (if anything can) will almost certainly reiterate the oppressive structures of empire. Whatever new shape the human self-aggrandizement project takes, somebody will get screwed. I think our fallenness pretty much guarantees this. "The poor you will always have with you" was an ad hoc reply to Judas' snarky comment -- a comment that only makes sense if Jesus and co. were about helping the poor (which implies a kind of voluntary redistribution). The truth of Jesus' reply simply points to the perennial nature of the church's opportunity.

Forms of oppression that don't involve an economic component are rare. As we "imagine a world set aright and stubbornly live that out", it would seem that some kind of redistribution of wealth is necessary. So I guess I'm not sure how freedom from the machine precedes the kinds of things -- sharing wealth, speaking to the powers, recognizing freedom from oppression -- by which such a freedom would seem to be defined.

Or, to put it as a question: what is the existential character of this freedom that would allow us to think of it as distinct from its constitutive praxis?

It may be semantics, especially as read and re-read the last half of this paragraph, but I wonder if "our job as the Church isn’t to redistribute wealth" is too strongly stated. Purely at face value, I'm not sure it's true. It serves its rhetorical purpose in the article, and sets up some fantastic observations in the remainder of the piece -- the idea that both oppressed and oppressor are set free by the gospel is a gem. So I don't want to go off on a Ghandi tangent, but I'm a wee bit leery of such a pronouncement.


Wealth redistribution is not the primary focus of the church, to be sure, especially if by this we mean overseeing or advocating for programs intended to redistribute wealth on the systemic level. But the early church certainly seems to be involved in some sort of rudimentary wealth distribution. This is, in fact, at the heart of the jubilee ethos invoked in Jesus' messianic platform -- or the Jesus Manifesto, if you will.



Whatever replaces capitalism (if anything can) will almost certainly reiterate the oppressive structures of empire. Whatever new shape the human self-aggrandizement project takes, somebody will get screwed. I think our fallenness pretty much guarantees this. "The poor you will always have with you" was an ad hoc reply to Judas' snarky comment -- a comment that only makes sense if Jesus and co. were about helping the poor (which implies a kind of voluntary redistribution). The truth of Jesus' reply simply points to the perennial nature of the church's opportunity.



Forms of oppression that don't involve an economic component are rare. As we "imagine a world set aright and stubbornly live that out", it would seem that some kind of redistribution of wealth is necessary. So I guess I'm not sure how freedom from the machine precedes the kinds of things -- sharing wealth, speaking to the powers, recognizing freedom from oppression -- by which such a freedom would seem to be defined.



Or, to put it as a question: what is the existential character of this freedom that would allow us to think of it as distinct from its constitutive praxis?

He might have been, though I suspect not.

I think I see a clash here between a way of thinking about ethics that presupposes it to be about universal application (which is the normal way of thinking about ethics), and a particularist ethics that seeks to work out how the church is to behave as the vanguard of the eschaton. I assumed that Brandon was speaking only to the latter.

Christian ethics is normative only to the extent that it prefigures and participates in the life of the age to come. To the extent that such an age has not come in fulness, there will always be the world, against which the church defines itself and for which the church exists (in both cases, this is because the church wages war against the principalities and powers to which the world is held captive; it does so by embodying the alternative).

The world might learn from the church, which bears witness to the reign of God, but it cannot fully embrace the church's ethics or calling without becoming the church (which would not be such a bad thing, but is not likely to happen).

By the same token, the church cannot undertake actions that are necessary for the world without becoming the world, or becoming problematically of the world -- which is to say, becoming (or remaining) captive to the very powers against which it should be fighting.

He might have been, though I suspect not.


I think I see a clash here between a way of thinking about ethics that presupposes it to be about universal application (which is the normal way of thinking about ethics), and a particularist ethics that seeks to work out how the church is to behave as the vanguard of the eschaton. I assumed that Brandon was speaking only to the latter.



Christian ethics is normative only to the extent that it prefigures and participates in the life of the age to come. To the extent that such an age has not come in fulness, there will always be the world, against which the church defines itself and for which the church exists (in both cases, this is because the church wages war against the principalities and powers to which the world is held captive; it does so by embodying the alternative).



The world might learn from the church, which bears witness to the reign of God, but it cannot fully embrace the church's ethics or calling without becoming the church (which would not be such a bad thing, but is not likely to happen).



By the same token, the church cannot undertake actions that are necessary for the world without becoming the world, or becoming problematically of the world -- which is to say, becoming (or remaining) captive to the very powers against which it should be fighting.

I don't know. What if the hipsters are pissed that Christian "radicals" are copping their style?

Okay, so I couldn't resist that.

This really is a fascinating topic, and when I first read it my reaction was "welcome to the desert of the Real." It would seem that there is nothing, not even anti-capitalist resistance, that capitalism can't co-opt and then market back to you as an identity marker. If global capitalism (neoliberalism) is the new shape of Empire, there is basically no outside. It really is a life-size map of reality. It's like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is resistant to treatment because anything can become fodder for one's narcissistic drama. If the hipsters have an edge, it's that they get this -- at least the more self-aware ones that SarahLynne mentioned.

All of which is to say that you're right to feel this tension, to sense the ironies, to lament the contradictions. I look forward to the next installment.

Brandon, with all due respect, you're not getting it. What you're supposed to do is give away your nice clothes to a homeless shelter or the Salvation Army so some genuinely poor person can look nice while you spend money trying to look poor.

Ouch, I think I bit my tongue, I had it crammed so hard in my cheek there....

Brandon, with all due respect, you're not getting it. What you're supposed to do is give away your nice clothes to a homeless shelter or the Salvation Army so some genuinely poor person can look nice while you spend money trying to look poor.


Ouch, I think I bit my tongue, I had it crammed so hard in my cheek there....

I thought drinking Pabst was a form of penance, like wearing a hair shirt.

I thought drinking Pabst was a form of penance, like wearing a hair shirt.

I'm not sure how much I expanded -- I mostly riffed on something that was probably not the main point. Scott is way ahead of me in continental philosophy.

I'm not sure how much I expanded -- I mostly riffed on something that was probably not the main point. Scott is way ahead of me in continental philosophy.

Being advocated by whom? Me? Or Jesus? I don't pretend they're the same. :)

More seriously: I think the primary context of things like "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", or the whole cheek/cloak/extra mile montage, or similar admonitions from Paul, including his quote from the OT, "'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' says the Lord", or not waging war against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, or how their weapons were not of this world, and so forth, is a call for YHWH-worshipping communities not to respond to oppression with violence.

And I'm not sure this means "non-violence against", if the use of "against" is anything more than an arbitrary word choice. It's more like non-violence in contrast to, which is one way of trying to make sure that resistance doesn't simply become the very thing it is fighting. Historically, of course, this is what happened: if there really was a pristine non-violent believing community, it lost the struggle to define Christianity, which became a recapitulation of Empire (most of it still is).

As for Ananias and Sapphira, I haven't thought of that story in this light. Mostly it seems to be a cautionary tale about proper (and honest) participation in the community. Apparently sharing property had enough cachet that A&S wanted to at least look like they were doing so, but their dishonesty is judged. It is, however, God who does the judging, and I don't think this is inconsistent with Paul's insistence that judgment is the exclusive prerogative of God, denied to the church.

Peter may be the moutpiece in this instance, and as much as might look like he force-choked them like Darth Vader (which makes the episode much more interesting), that's clearly not the case and I'm not sure it has altogether that much to do with the keys of kingdom (unless the whole pericope is really a sensationalist way of narrating a much more mundane process of communal discernment, but then I'm showing my 'liberal' cards...).

Being advocated by whom? Me? Or Jesus? I don't pretend they're the same. :)


More seriously: I think the primary context of things like "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", or the whole cheek/cloak/extra mile montage, or similar admonitions from Paul, including his quote from the OT, "'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' says the Lord", or not waging war against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, or how their weapons were not of this world, and so forth, is a call for YHWH-worshipping communities not to respond to oppression with violence.



And I'm not sure this means "non-violence against", if the use of "against" is anything more than an arbitrary word choice. It's more like non-violence in contrast to, which is one way of trying to make sure that resistance doesn't simply become the very thing it is fighting. Historically, of course, this is what happened: if there really was a pristine non-violent believing community, it lost the struggle to define Christianity, which became a recapitulation of Empire (most of it still is).



As for Ananias and Sapphira, I haven't thought of that story in this light. Mostly it seems to be a cautionary tale about proper (and honest) participation in the community. Apparently sharing property had enough cachet that A&S; wanted to at least look like they were doing so, but their dishonesty is judged. It is, however, God who does the judging, and I don't think this is inconsistent with Paul's insistence that judgment is the exclusive prerogative of God, denied to the church.



Peter may be the moutpiece in this instance, and as much as might look like he force-choked them like Darth Vader (which makes the episode much more interesting), that's clearly not the case and I'm not sure it has altogether that much to do with the keys of kingdom (unless the whole pericope is really a sensationalist way of narrating a much more mundane process of communal discernment, but then I'm showing my 'liberal' cards...).

Scott,

Thanks for this. I fear this post will get overlooked in the (admittedly sexier and more accessible) discussion on "The Style of Subversion", but I think the two posts are more related than might meet the eye, since both deal with the contradictions of identity construction.

Your penultimate paragraph raises a couple of questions: One, have you read any Ernest Becker (particularly Denial of Death)? His work as an anthropologist took something like Heidegger's speculation on death as a starting point for assessing human behavior, particularly human violence. Dan Liechty's Reflecting on Faith in a Post-Christian Time connects Becker's work with the idea of the fetish for an interesting perspective on Christian origins.

Two, you mention the Tibetan Buddhist expectation of ongoing consciousness, but what about conventional Christian understandings of the afterlife? Or St. Benedict's reminder to his monks to contemplate their own death? I bring these up not to scold you for leaving them out, but to ponder: what are the similarities? Or the differences? Do you ever wonder why the Tibetan Book of the Dead is so full of explicit detail of the postmortem experience of consciousness (if indeed that's what it is about) while the Bible has very little arcane information on such things (depending, I suppose, on how you read it)?

Those, at least, are questions that come to mind.

Ted

Scott,


Thanks for this. I fear this post will get overlooked in the (admittedly sexier and more accessible) discussion on "The Style of Subversion", but I think the two posts are more related than might meet the eye, since both deal with the contradictions of identity construction.



Your penultimate paragraph raises a couple of questions: One, have you read any Ernest Becker (particularly Denial of Death)? His work as an anthropologist took something like Heidegger's speculation on death as a starting point for assessing human behavior, particularly human violence. Dan Liechty's Reflecting on Faith in a Post-Christian Time connects Becker's work with the idea of the fetish for an interesting perspective on Christian origins.



Two, you mention the Tibetan Buddhist expectation of ongoing consciousness, but what about conventional Christian understandings of the afterlife? Or St. Benedict's reminder to his monks to contemplate their own death? I bring these up not to scold you for leaving them out, but to ponder: what are the similarities? Or the differences? Do you ever wonder why the Tibetan Book of the Dead is so full of explicit detail of the postmortem experience of consciousness (if indeed that's what it is about) while the Bible has very little arcane information on such things (depending, I suppose, on how you read it)?



Those, at least, are questions that come to mind.



Ted

Is it just me, or is the emphasis on Ghandi -- whose position was obviously more complicated than a sound bite deconstructed as a conceit for an article about something else -- missing the point just a smidge?

Is it just me, or is the emphasis on Ghandi -- whose position was obviously more complicated than a sound bite deconstructed as a conceit for an article about something else -- missing the point just a smidge?

There may be some wiggle room here.

The eschatological focus is connected to the circumstance of oppression: freedom from oppression was available existentially in the liberating and supportive practices of the church, whereas ontological freedom from oppression -- what we might call "revolution" -- was deferred eschatologically, to take place at the hand of God. Throwing off the yoke of oppression through violence -- roughly, the Zealot option -- was rejected.

This becomes complicated for two reasons. One, most of us are not oppressed or associated significantly with people groups that are. This means that our theologizing is taking place in a bubble of power and privilege and relative security that is alien to the NT's early audience. True, the wealthy and powerful were not unknown among the early Christians, but the overall makeup of the early Christians as a group was quite different from the demographics of contemporary Christianity. This is nothing to feel guilty about, but it is a difference. Many of the questions we ask presume our position, not theirs.

The second complication is that it is not entirely clear how Jesus' response to oppression translates into a reaction to the "random acts of violence" often referred to in discussing the limits of nonviolence. In previous discussions none of us offered responses that take "do not resist an evil person" altogether literally, partially because even to the ardent pacifist this seems too quietistic and partially (perhaps) because the "evil person" presumed by Jesus and his audience was most likely a Roman soldier (or some other symbol of oppression) and less likely a garden variety dark-alley attacker.

I think we would do well to admit and embrace this ambiguity. The pacifist position is attractive for its consistency at a certain level, and for the clarity that is afforded by simplicity. It is defensible, but it is not a slam-dunk. Maria is right to invoke the difficulty of interpretation, and I would suggest that "Some things are obvious and all Christian agree on them" is probably still too optimistic. :)

There may be some wiggle room here.


The eschatological focus is connected to the circumstance of oppression: freedom from oppression was available existentially in the liberating and supportive practices of the church, whereas ontological freedom from oppression -- what we might call "revolution" -- was deferred eschatologically, to take place at the hand of God. Throwing off the yoke of oppression through violence -- roughly, the Zealot option -- was rejected.



This becomes complicated for two reasons. One, most of us are not oppressed or associated significantly with people groups that are. This means that our theologizing is taking place in a bubble of power and privilege and relative security that is alien to the NT's early audience. True, the wealthy and powerful were not unknown among the early Christians, but the overall makeup of the early Christians as a group was quite different from the demographics of contemporary Christianity. This is nothing to feel guilty about, but it is a difference. Many of the questions we ask presume our position, not theirs.



The second complication is that it is not entirely clear how Jesus' response to oppression translates into a reaction to the "random acts of violence" often referred to in discussing the limits of nonviolence. In previous discussions none of us offered responses that take "do not resist an evil person" altogether literally, partially because even to the ardent pacifist this seems too quietistic and partially (perhaps) because the "evil person" presumed by Jesus and his audience was most likely a Roman soldier (or some other symbol of oppression) and less likely a garden variety dark-alley attacker.



I think we would do well to admit and embrace this ambiguity. The pacifist position is attractive for its consistency at a certain level, and for the clarity that is afforded by simplicity. It is defensible, but it is not a slam-dunk. Maria is right to invoke the difficulty of interpretation, and I would suggest that "Some things are obvious and all Christian agree on them" is probably still too optimistic. :)