Collective Blame and Ethnic Groups

"A collective agent can be responsive to reasons in the sense that I have described, and hence be a possible object of blame in the sense I am proposing, only if there are procedures through which it can make institutional decisions. Mere collections of people that do not meet this condition, such as ethnic groups, cannot be objects of blame on the account I am proposing. Since they do not make collective decisions that indicate responsiveness to reasons, there is no basis for attributing attitudes to such groups in anything other than the distributive sense, in which saying that the group holds certain attitudes is simply to say that most of its members do. This is just stereotyping." ~ T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press) p. 165

Adam Smith on Internal Conflicts

"We are capable, it may be said, of resolving, and even taking measures to execute, many things which, when it comes to the point, we feel ourselves altogether incapable of executing."

Praise and Blame, Correlates?

"It is common to speak of blame as a form of 'moral appraisal' or 'moral evaluation,' and to speak of praise and blame as if they were positive and negative versions of the same thing: similar attitudes with opposite valences. But as I am suggesting we should understand blame, it is not just a negative evaluation or appraisal of a person but a particular understanding of our relations with him or her. And if praise is the expression of a positive appraisal, it is not the opposite of blame as I interpret it. This raises the question of what the positive correlate of blame would be. The clearest example is gratitude." ~ T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press) p. 151

Blame and the Distance of Time

"Because the content of blame depends in this way on the significance of the agent and the agents' faults for the person doing the blaming, its content is attenuated in the case of agents who lived long ago and have no significance for or effect on our lives. We can judge such people to be blameworthy, but such a judgment has mainly vicarious significance, as a judgment about how it would have been appropriate for those closer to the agent to understand their relations with him. [...] Being the victim of an action by some stranger makes it the case that that person has had a distinctive role in our life, as the author of an event that we have to come to terms with. it thus gives our attitude toward that person a distinctive significance, even if we will never interact with that person in the future and therefore do not need to decide how to behave toward him or her. The fact that some historical agent, such as Hitler, caused terrible harm for people we know, or their families, can also give blame greater significance." ~ T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press) pp. 146-147.

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?

Matthew 10:16

"See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as  serpents and innocent as doves.”

Philippians 1:9-10

“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight ¹⁰ to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless”

Sermon:

          As many of you know, I’ve been preaching about the Church over the course of this summer. I’ve addressed topics like how we can be better neighbors, how we can better answer the questions our non-Christian friends might have, and a number of cultural objections that people sometimes have about Christianity. All of this has come from a concern that we, as believers, should be better at making disciples of Jesus; and that sometimes we lose sight of that and get lost in our own traditions and worldviews.

          Today is the last sermon that I am going to preach as a part of this series. In some ways, perhaps, it could be considered a conclusion. This morning I want us to reflect not only on how society is changing, but upon what kind of opportunities exist in that change. I want us to try and think about how the glass can be half-full, rather than half-empty. I want you to reflect on the question of faith. What is faith and how might we have missed it in the past? Hebrews 11:1 tells us that, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I think that this is an important thing to note because I believe that it’s something that postmodernism can remind of us – we can be reminded that faith is a lot like closing our eyes and stepping out in the trust that God will not only catch us, but guide us too.

          I am sure that many of you are not really sure what the word ‘postmodern’ really means. It’s really only been used heavily since around the 1980’s. So I want to provide a bit of clarification. First and foremost, the word ‘postmodern’ or ‘postmodernity’ refers to an issue of time in the history of ideas. Although we often refer to “modern times” when we’re speaking about contemporary moments, that term actually refers to an era that Rene Descartes heralded in the 1600’s. Modernity is actually a period of time and thought that begins with Descartes and ends sometime in the 19^th century.[1] It’s an era when Europeans built systems and ideas so all-encompassing and grandiose, that many could almost be said to resemble the Tower of Babel. Many of this era hoped to transcend our problems through the creation of better ways of thinking. It’s an era of certainty, conviction, and quite often a lot of pride.

          Postmodernity is a term that refers to the things that come after modernity. It’s a movement that challenges the certainty and presuppositions of Modernity. More than anything else, it challenges the notion that there is an objective logic that can be separated from who we are – our emotions, our self-interest, our fallibility. It doesn’t reject logic or truth, but instead focusing in on its contingency and contextuality. In the 20^th century science even moved to places that challenged modernity’s notion that everything could be explained materially. Einstein showed us that matter is in fact energy and Kurt Gödel showed us that even basic arithmetic is contingent – there is in fact more to 2+2=4 than what we might first assume.

          All of this is, in my opinion, actually a good thing. You see, modernity was really centered on trying to prove things, including faith. When you see billboards or books claiming to prove that God exists what you’re seeing is modernity’s influence on Christianity. Modernity demands certainty. It leaves little room for doubt or mystery because it presupposes that the human mind is capable of fully comprehending truth in an objective way. In other words, it demands us to only believe that which can be proven. This is why I believe that it is a bit idolatrous. This pride doesn’t leave room for faith which is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In my opinion, the shift in worldview we’ve seen, in the generations here this morning, can actually help us not only better understand our world, but also point our neighbors and friends to Jesus more effectively. But all of that requires a movement on our parts – a movement into more faith and less dogmatism.

Visual Illustration:

What is Postmodernism and what can we learn from it?

“There is nothing outside the text.”

~ Jacques Derrida

Postmodernity is “incredulity toward metanarratives.”

~ Jean-François Lyotard

“Power is knowledge.”

~Michel Foucault

Together these claims can be both surprising and frightening.

Taken out of context they can be mythologized such that, it can seem that

the devil may in fact come from Paris!

But I believe that such a conclusion is wrong.
Instead, something good can come out of Paris.

          But for our sake, and for the sake of our evangelistic efforts, I hope that we can come to a better understanding of how our faith can relate to these claims in a positive way. Early this past summer I preached on Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Acts chapter 17. In that sermon, Paul illustrates for us what is means to be a good missionary to people who think differently from us. Rather than picking apart what the Athenians believed, Paul found common ground with them and built his message of Good News around the philosophical and religious assumptions that the Athenians already had.

          Christianity has a very old analogy used to describe the benefit Christians could get from other people’s ideas. Figures like Augustine, John Calvin, and Abraham Kuyper all suggested that Christians could follow the Hebrews and “make off with Egyptian loot.” The point that they all made was that,

“just as the Hebrews left Egypt with Egyptian gold to be put to use in the worship of Yahweh (even if they misdirected its use at times), so Christians can find resources in non-Christian thought […] that can be put to work for the glory of God and the furtherance of the kingdom.”[2]

Much of our aversion to the claims that we just heard lies not at the heart of our faith, but in the thoughts we have because of the time of our birth and upbringing.

          So just as I listed each of these claims, so too do I hope to offer a suggestion for how we can learn from them and appropriate them for our own understanding of faith and Christianity.[3]

          First of all, Derrida’s claim that there is “nothing outside the text” can be taken as “a radical translation of the Reformation principle sola scriptura” which translates as, “by scripture alone.”[4] This Christian claim suggests that scriptures have more authority than other church authorities, like pastors or traditions. So if we run with this parallel between Derrida and people like Martin Luther, then we can be reminded we should recover these following convictions:

(1) The scriptures should help mediate how we understand the world.

(2) The scriptures were formed in communities and they are best understood in community.

          Secondly, Lyotard’s assertion that postmodernity is “incredulity toward metanarratives” is something that we can actually embrace. In many ways, this turn away from Modernism actually returns us to a more Ancient way of understanding the world. It’s not entirely unfair to say that postmodern thought is a bit vintage!

          That means that we can actually recover and embrace the narrative character of Christian faith, and the confessional and liturgical nature of our Good News in the midst of a pluralistic society that has many competing claims that all say that they are the truth. Although we’ve drifted away from it since the 1600’s, Christianity has almost always been rooted in a sense of faith in God, coupled with humility and self-sacrificing passion, rather than prideful certainty. The early church was far more concerned with bringing people the story of the Gospel, than a list of requirements and checklists that people had to sign off on.

          Finally, Foucault’s claim that “power is knowledge” can push us to realize what advertisers on Madison Avenue learned long ago:

(1) There’s a lot of power in cultural formation and discipline. There’s so much, that it can eve shape our ideas about truth, what we want, and how we should live.

(2) The Church needs to use counterformation by counterdisciplines. In other words, we need to think about   discipleship! Part of discipleship is following Christ’s values.

Some of you might be wondering what this really means for us. You might be wondering, “How does this relate to the Church or how we minister to other people?” That’s a question you should be asking! So let me get to the point. Christianity is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ – a story that requires “eyes to see and ears to hear.” The Church’s responsibility is not to just speak about this story, but to live into it.

          Many Christians have a hard time explaining what the church is apart from a place to worship with other believers, precisely because they’ve lost sight of many of the lessons that these postmoderns and ancients can teach us. Conceiving of Christian faith as a private affair between an individual and God is not enough. That just leads to a room full of individuals who gather around a set of ideas, rather than gathering as a living community which embodies its head.

          “Modern Christianity tends to think of the church either as a place where individuals come to find answers to their questions or as one more stop where individuals can try to satisfy their consumerist desires. As such, Christianity becomes intellectualized rather than incarnate, commodified rather than the site of genuine community.”[5]

          If we really think about the fact that Jesus is the head of the Church, then we can reclaim a religious life that’s centered around faith, rather than self-sufficiency, and in so doing capture that thing we were seeking all along. We are people shaped by context and if we do not submit ourselves in faith to Jesus, then we will be shaped by the contexts of the world (Foucault). If we do not gather as a community that confesses under Christ’s name, we fall into the trap of thinking that we are better than people who hold other beliefs, rather than recognizing that we are a people redeemed and saved not by our own actions but by God’s (Lyotard). And finally, no matter what we do we will always exist in relationship with other people. Every texts and community is continuously shaped by its relationship with others. As Christians we need the scriptures to help us understand our world, but we also need the Body of Christ to help us understand them both in their application to our lives and in their intended meaning to their original audiences in the past. The lesson in all of this is that we need each other because Christianity is a practice of faith.

“The church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery or emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us – a place where the practices of being the body of Christ form us into the image of the Son [Jesus]. What I, a sinner saved by grace, need is not so much answers as reformation of my will and heart. [The church is a place where we learn to be more like Jesus through   practice – growing in our spiritual gifts] The fruit of the Spirit emerge in our lives from the seeds planted by the practices of being the church; and when the church begins to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, it becomes a witness to a postmodern world (John 17). Nothing is more countercultural than a community serving the Suffering Servant [Jesus] in a world devoted to consumption and violence.”[6]

If we let it, postmodernity can call us back to the essence of what we claim – Faith. Let us strive to grow more together in its practice. Amen.

---

[1] I tend to believe that Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard put the final nails in that coffin.

[2] James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006), pp. 22-23.

[3] Each of the following three prescriptions is taken from Smith’s analysis.

[4] Ibid, p. 23.

[5] Ibid, p. 29.

[6] Ibid, p. 30.

Are all Christians Fundamentalists?

Isaiah 43:10

You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
    and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
    and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
    nor shall there be any after me.

Deuteronomy 30:12-14

It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” ¹³ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” ¹⁴ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

Sermon:

          This morning we’re going to talk a little bit more about what kind of issues or questions we might face as we try to build relationships with people who are unchurched. Part of this means addressing objections or prejudices they might have about Christianity.

          We, like many other religions, are perceived in a variety of ways. One of the questions that we might encounter, is that Christianity is intrinsically a fundamentalist religion. This can sometimes accompany the belief that all religions are inherently fundamentalist, or perhaps that Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity are.

          But that raises a question, “what does a word like ‘fundamentalist’ mean?” or “what might we imagine it means to different people?” Does it make you think of terrorists or backwoods hillbillies, like the ones who chased Burt Reynolds in the 1972 movie Deliverance? Or do you have a more positive impression of the word?

Ask the congregation what it means to them…

          I suspect that many of us have encountered two fairly different conceptions of the word. For some of us, we’ve probably encountered people who take a bit of pride is the word and use it as a label that identifies the things they prioritize. For others, the word is as horrifying as ISIS. The way we and others use words matters. The 20^th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that, “[T]he meaning of a word is its use in the language.”[1] That basically means that it really matters how we use words both within our own groups and among people who might be coming from a completely different worldview. If we describe ourselves with a word that the unchurched associate with violence, bigotry, or close-mindedness we are likely to be categorized as those things in those people’s minds if we place ourselves there through the use of words that inspire those ideas.

          To be balanced it’s worth noting, as well, that the word fundamentalist did not always have such a negative connotation connected to it. The term largely originates with The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of 1910, wherein they listed what they considered to be the “five fundamentals” of the faith:

1.     The verbal inspiration (and inerrancy) of Scripture

2.     The divinity of Jesus Christ

3.     The virgin birth of Christ

4.     Substitutionary atonement by Jesus

5.     The bodily resurrection and future return of Jesus

To be sure, much of this statement arose as a response to a fight that many denominations experiences in the early 20^th century, namely the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. This fight largely centered on the question of evolution, historical accuracy, and how Christianity should think about the Bible. It even came to affect the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970’s when the Conservative Resurgence purged the SBC of all ‘liberal’ inclinations.

          So I would suggest that it’s probably fair to say that our perception of the word ‘fundamentalist’ probably reflects a bit of the history that we’ve inherited. Likewise, it’s worth noting that the original five fundamentals do – in my view at least – touch on something central to our faith. If we think about Christianity, it’s pretty tough to separate the overarching tenants of the religion from things like the virgin birth, which allows for Christ’s divinity. The identity of Christ, as both human and divine, is kind of at the center of our faith and if we don’t take those fundamental assumptions or beliefs into account it’s extraordinarily difficult to claim that we’re Christian. I’m not going to say it’s impossible. I’m not always eager to make a list of things people have to believe in order to be saved, but I do believe that those doctrines are pretty central to the Gospel story.

          Likewise, substitutionary atonement (where Jesus dies on our behalf so that we might be saved) and the bodily resurrection are also pretty central to what Christianity as a whole is about. Although it’s worth noting that there’s a bit more flexibility here. Eastern Christianity has always, for example, put less of an emphasis upon the more Western legal conceptions of guilt, death, and justice that we see in the story of Christ’s execution. Instead, Orthodoxy has tended to speak more about God’s work of recreation and healing within the cosmos through Christ. The emphasis is a bit different, even though both traditions honor Jesus’ death and resurrection.

          Similarly, I find it a bit humorous and ironic that most of the early sources for fundamentalism cite a bodily resurrection. To be sure, that is the primary view of most of the New Testament’s authors. It’s also my view. Yet, many people who refer to themselves as fundamentalists now stray away from this doctrine and often seem to embrace a bit more of a convoluted view – where they try to synthesize the idea of a resurrection with a more neo-platonic idea of people which includes their body, their spirit, and their soul – which raises questions about what happens to the soul after death. Does it sleep? Or does it immediately go to heaven or hell as many fundamentalists claim? If it immediately goes to heaven, as one might hear at a funeral, then why would there be a need for a bodily resurrection? Time has the funny ability to change the way people think about themselves, even if they use the same word to describe themselves as earlier generations.

          But most of those doctrinal issues, numbers two through five on the list, aren’t really as central to what people are really talking about when they refer to fundamentalism. The real concern that comes with the word relates to the first point of fundamentalism – the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of scripture. As a quick point of reference it might help if I provided some definitions.

Verbal inspiration – the theological doctrine that a divine inspiration extends to every word of a particular text.

Inerrancy – the theological doctrine that the Bible “is without error or fault in all its teachings”[2] or, at least, that “Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.”[3]

Generally speaking, these two doctrines represent the primary concerns of the average fundamentalist. Likewise, they relate heavily to the question how one can read the Bible “literally.” But let me ask you,

What does it mean to read the Bible literally?

          A literal reading can mean many things. As I mentioned early, a words definition largely stems from its usage. But what we tend to think of when we hear the word is:

·        A reading that sticks with a strict meaning of the word or words, not a metaphorical or figurative meaning.

·        A reading that sees a text as true to fact; not exaggerated.

It is largely this kind of idea about fundamentalism that inspires both admiration and contempt for the word. More than anything else, the word fundamentalism centers on a question of methodology. How do we approach the scriptures? How can we consider them authoritative if we don’t take every word or clause super seriously and try to apply it to our life? These are the questions that Christians are faced with. Likewise, they’re the questions that inspire the following label.

          Many of you may not have seen this before. To some of you it may even be offensive. But this thing exists and it is often used to bash Christians and our scriptures. And if we really think about it and have some empathy for the perspective of someone who is not a believer this label might make sense. Why would anyone want to literally read and try to apply a book that seems to condone genocide and any number of other horrible things?

          As we all know, most Christians don’t read the Bible that literally even if they do claim to try to read it literally. We all know, intrinsically that we read different kinds of writing differently. When we speak to each other we do so in different ways: through stories, jokes, fables, histories, poetry, and song. Each of these genres comes with different rules that we as listeners or readers understand. The Bible also has genres which demand research and respect from the reader. This is something most Christians, except perhaps for the most eager fundamentalists, can agree upon.

          My own bias is to spurn the label fundamentalist. It’s a term I would never want to be associated with. Yet, I can see why some Christians have an invested interest in using the label. It signifies a commitment to a particular identity. This identity usually comes with ideas about the end times, God’s wrath, and a doctrine of scripture that I don’t agree with; and to be honest I often feel embarrassed when I have to speak to non-Christian friends who presume that all Christians hold what are in my view eccentric views. I often feel like the work of apologetics (where we defend our faith), often requires more apology than argument.

          And perhaps that’s the lesson! I could go on about what I believe about scriptural inspiration and authority. I could explain why I included a reference to John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion in this morning’s Call to Worship.[4] I could even drone on about how the Reformation wasn’t fundamentalist and how figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth have shown a keen concern to draw a distinction between the scriptures, which act as a medium and testimony to God’s revelation, and the Word of God (Logos) which is Jesus Christ. I could even go back to the quote I often pull from St. Augustine, wherein he condemns fellow Christians who make draw dangerous distinctions between the scriptures and science, provoking nonbelievers to presume that Christianity is a religion of the uneducated.[5] But I don’t think the lessons we could pull from those Christians are as important as the more fundamental one we need to address now.

          The Bible is a testimony to God’s love and devotion to his creation. It should not be used as a weapon to objectify, demean, and tear down people with whom we disagree. The Bible, like Christ, reflects both humanity and the divine. The way in which we may each go about articulating that may differ, but the central theme of love should remain. Christians should not be inspiring nonbelievers to write warning labels for the Bible. Our treatment of its contents should be respectful, but respect also demands diligence. We should be diligent in how we read the texts. We should be diligent in how closely we pay attention to the genres that are in the Bible and what kind of historical contexts shape the writings we can find there.

          I may believe that Christianity is not a religion of fundamentalism, but the real lesson is that it’s a religion with a long history of very careful and thoughtful reflection upon the things we can find in the Bible – including the difficult parts. May we pray that we, with the help of the Holy Spirit, become better ambassadors of God in how we reflect Jesus to the world, even in how we read the Bible. Amen.

---

[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4th edition, Eds. P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 43.

[2] NL Geisler and B. Roach, Defending Inerrancy: Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New (Generation, Baker Books, 2012).

[3] Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994) p. 90.

[4] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 7, Section 5.

[5] St. Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the Human Condition

"I am a psychological and historical structure. Along with existence, I received a way of existing, or a style. All of my actions and thoughts are related to this structure , and even a philosopher's thought is merely a way of making explicit his hold upon the world, which is all he is. And yet, I am free, not in spite or beneath these motivations, but rather by their means. For that meaningful life, that particular signification of nature and history that I am, does not restrict my access to the world; it is rather my means of communication with it." ~The Phenomenology of Perception

Sartre on Genent

"freedom alone can account for a person in his totality."