Category Archives: Christian Culture

The Particularity and Concreteness of Christ: Against Cultural “Christianities”

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A genuine Christianity is not pluriform, it does not have multitudinous realities at its core. It is not a cluster of beliefs that likeminded people rally around. A genuine Christianity—its inner reality—is in fact a person; it is God for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. When people exit or walk away from this or that perceived form or expression of the “Christian existence,” they aren’t walking away from Christianity’s inner reality, per se, if in fact they believe that to be exhaustively represented in the form of that, as they have come to experience that, in this or that Christian tradition. In other words, if someone believes, when they walk away from Christianity, that they have done so by walking away from their immediate experience of that, they are sorely in error; and in error, in such a way that it potentially could have, or will have eternal consequences.

There are certainly damaging and erroneous forms or expressions of a self-proclaimed Christianity, but much of those are simply socio-cultural constructs masquerading as THE form of Christianity; at least in the way that it is presented to and received by its adherents. If someone has a personal relationship with the living God in Christ, walking away from Christianity becomes a much different thing than walking away from an experience of a so-called Christianity.

Make sure, if and when you walk away from something, you know what in fact you are walking away from. And just as important, make sure you understand what you are walking into as an alternative.

Against the Secular Christians: On the Supranatural

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In our “come of age” period of post-enlightened history, secularists want to believe that we have “evolved” beyond the superstitious enchantments of our primitive ancestors, and allow scientism to become the new religion wherein a disenchanted world becomes normative.

In response to such rubbish, I wrote the following (short) Facebook post about two weeks ago. It isn’t an argument, per se; but instead, it is simply stating the facts coram Deo.

The Bible is way more factual, particularly as it portrays the supranatural realities of the world, than people want to think it is; even many Christians. Enlightenment thinking has seeped deep into the tissues of our culture, conditioning it into softening the supranatural events and scenarios referred to in Holy Scripture. Many Christians live as if the Bible, and the world it depicted, was under an enchantment of primitive superstitious beliefs. But that’s the enlightened and post-enlightened way of thinking. In point of fact, peoples’ hearts are just as wicked; and people in power and the “elite” are just as committed to ritualistic paganism as the kings referred to throughout the Old Testament.

What I’m really wanting to press with this is the exact opposite of what the secular world has come to believe of itself. The Word of God, Holy Scripture, is surely communicated in an ancient near eastern and second temple Judaic (Roman-Graeco) sitz im leben, but that’s of no bearing when it comes to peoples’ hearts. People are just as evil and wicked today as they were the second after Eve and Adam partook of the forbidden fruit. World leaders, and their pawns in the entertainment, political, scientific etc. communities, have a desire to construct a Babel-like city of man once again. They use occultic symbolism, and engage in pagan ritualistic practices right in front of our faces (in the name of art), in order to signal who their dark lordmasters in fact are. Christians know, or ought to be able to recognize the power that stands behind these “world leaders”; you know, Jesus refers to him as the “father of lies,” and Scripture in general, refers to him as the “god of this evil age,” or the “prince of the power of the air.”

Many Christians, let alone their secular counterparts, essentially scoff at such figments; as if humanity simpliciter has surpassed its primitive family of origin, and moved onto much more elevated ways of engaging with the natural order. Again, this is the result of people, of any pedigree, uncritically receiving the spiritual and intellectual categories they have been born into; as if said categories are the “just is” of reality. And yet the world and reality of Holy Scripture contradicts such categories, resoundingly! The world has a supranatural (Christological even) origination; the world has a supranatural continuing sustenance, that if that was removed it would evaporate into oblivion and nothingness. As such, the world is inherently supranatural precisely because it is ‘upheld by the Word of HIS power.’ Consequently, Christians, of all people, ought to be those who look out at the world and discern just how evil and rotten the infrastructure of said world is in fact. They ought to have the capacity, by the Spirit, in union with Jesus Christ, to recognize that the world leaders are under the spell of their father the devil.

If what I am writing causes you to squirm: I simply rest my case.

Religion as the Tower of Babel

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“Human righteousness, in whatever form it is found, is a Tower of Babel.”

“Religion—and Barth is here speaking pre-eminently of Christianity—is at its heart, an exercise in self-delusion.”

-Bruce McCormack, on Barth’s theology[1]

 

This is hard teaching, who wants to hear it? The first clause (above) conditions the second in Barth’s theology. He is referring to the role that human subjectivity plays in the construction of religion. We create expressions, settings, bells and whistles, verbiage, pews, cathedrals, flying buttresses, smiles (even while in agony), so on and so forth. In the end, do any of these things bring us close, or closer to the living God? As Barth would rightly say: Nein. The only reality that brings us into union with the triune God is indeed the triune God for us in Jesus Christ. These other constructs, while part of sociological reality, in themselves have no bearing on whether or not we have become participants with Christ in the bosom of the Father. They reflect instantiations of various periods of culture and development in the history of the Church, but in themselves are not the Way, the Truth, and the Life. They might give us a sense of individual and even corporate transcendence, vis-à-vis God, but these are feelings, that apart from the concrete ground of God’s life for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ, are simply ethereals floating around in our navels, and potentially as high as the clouds above our collective heads.

 

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 133.

The Mythology of the Academicians: They’re Just Regular People

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The following was recently tweeted by Dr. Peter Sloane:

In response to things I see here: academics are no more intelligent than the general population and no more skilled than a plasterer or electrician. We don’t do a PhD because we are super bright, or become so because of it, we just happen to love our vocation as others do theirs. I don’t enjoy the narrative that universities are filled with exceptionally bright people. They are filled with people highly specialised and with time to devote to the intricacies of a discipline and no more.[1]

Sloane is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Buckingham in the UK. I could not resonate more with the sentiment he has articulated above. Indeed, as any reader who has followed me for any amount of time knows, I have oft criticized the theology of glory that often attends theological academia (and all of academia in general). As Sloane rightly notes, the academic is not necessarily smarter than anyone else; indeed, they generally aren’t. Just as any swath of humanity will demonstrate, there are smart people, mediocre people, and dumb people along said continuum of humanity; this holds true among the academic guilds just the same. As Sloane’s tweet also highlights, and rightly so, is that the academic is a specialist; especially in the 21st century (indeed, to a fault these days). And so, when we apply this principle to theological academia what someone can expect is some level of technical and specialized language as that relates to the artistry of theological communique. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the specialists in this particular craft, as in any craft, begin to buy into the idea that their specialization, because of its already limiting and liminal language (and the conceptual matter it symbolizes), by definition narrows the discussion to “them.” That is to say, when the non-specialist Christian attempts to enter this particular fray, what ends up happening is that they might end up sounding unintelligible, maybe even dumb, because they aren’t schooled in the linguistics, logics, and lexical aspects that go into the theological academic game. As such, a type of boundary is set up, such that the academics talk among themselves, using their technical parlance, which necessarily, in a certain way, keeps the laity, in the ecclesia outside of the “deeper” discussions that only the specialists can really have (or so the specialists pride themselves into thinking).

As I have described the above scenario, what I haven’t engaged with yet is what makes theology unique. Theology, if it is genuinely Christian theology, is not for the so-called specialists alone. The specialists, if there are such a thing in the theological sphere, are really supposed to be “doctors for the Church.” That is to say, they have a teaching role to play, a role that really reduces to, as its sine qua non, discipleship. And yet because of the strictures that help define academia in general, and then theological academia in particular, the theological specialist starts to live and breathe in an atmosphere that never “comes down” and attempts to be “non-specialist.” As a result, an ethos of elitism takes hold in the hearts of the specialists, such that they often either retreat back into their ghetto, with “their people,” or they attempt to drop into the fray of “regular church people” only to feel rejected, or so misunderstood that they begin to think that either they are too smart for such people, or that the people they are attempting to engage with in the churches are just too dumb to really understand what they, as the trained specialists, can grasp.

The gap between the academic and the regular church person is reinforced by many variables, a complex that is not easily addressable. Even so, at the end of the day, as Sloane has rightly noted, as far as intelligences go, neither the academic nor the regular church person is necessarily smarter or dumber than the other on a continuum.

Ultimately, it is sin that keeps these seemingly disparate groups from a meeting of the minds and hearts that is supposed to obtain among the fellowship of the people of God. The Lord, ultimately, is not concerned about smarts, but the state of the heart. God wants our whole being (which the heart, in Hebrew and Greek represents in canonical Scripture) to be overcome with the beauty and ways of God in Christ. He loves us as a Father loves His Son. It is this relationship that funds anything following, including intellection. The Father shows no partiality, neither to the smart or dumb person (intellectually). His relationship to, for, with, and in us, in Christ by the Spirit, has nothing to do with what we so often wrongly place priority on. He doesn’t look outwardly, but at the heart; He loves the total person. There is no elitism in the Kingdom. If anything, the elect in the Kingdom are the impoverished, the bruised reeds, the so-called “dumb” among us. When any air of elitism, no matter how that is given expression, enters into the Church as a bad yeast, God is not there. He is with the broken, downtrodden, and humble.

23 Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord. -Jeremiah 9:23-24

[1] Peter Sloane, Twitter, accessed 05-30-2023.

What Hath Christology to do with Politics and the State?

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What is the relationship between politics and Christian theology, is there any? Understandably, many Christians want to simply shy away, and have nothing to do with the political order in the world. But the fact of being human entails that we are “political animals,” that we are necessarily social beings, and as such, we cannot escape the reality of being political in some way. Indeed, the kerygma, the Gospel reality Hisself, which of course is God become flesh in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, is the greatest political act of all time. This was not absent from the early Christian experience, indeed, as it was just burgeoning, wrestling over the implications of just who Jesus was had staggering political implications (one way or the other) for the subsequent trajectory of the Church’s reality, vis-à-vis the state, in the following centuries right into the present. Many Christians don’t recognize just how deeply entrenched they are as an “ecclesiopolitical” people, and thus, as a consequence, they shirk back at their responsibilities of being responsible “political animals,” and ambassadors for Christ, in intentional and intelligent ways.

Andrew Willard Jones offers a really nice taxonomy of how the various Christological theories of the early Church, as those developed in the midst of a Constantinian Roman empire, implicated the political theory and actions of the state. These same realities continue to implicate our political climate today. The difference, of course, is that we live in such a secularized state of mind, that it becomes difficult to parse these things out, unless one has eyes to see and ears to hear. The following comes just on the heels of Jones’ sharing the text of the Chalcedonian creed (circa 451 ad).

Here, finally, was a definitive statement on who Christ was, on what really happened at the Incarnation. It had taken over four hundred and fifty years and the concerted efforts of Christianity’s greatest minds to come to this definition. That is how difficult the problem was. The problem was not merely speculative, however. As we have seen, it bore directly on the social order of the now-Christian empire. The conversion of the empire away from paganism in both doctrine and “political” form was a part of the process of coming to understand the fully meaning of the Incarnation. The rejection of Arianism was the rejection of the superiority of the temporal and material. The rejection of Nestorianism was the rejection of the idea that the temporal and spiritual were entirely separate, operating in independent realms. The rejection of Monophysitism was the refusal of the possibility of the spiritual entirely absorbing the temporal into itself. Sorting out Trinitarian and Incarnational orthodoxy was, at the same time, the sorting out of the relationship between what would eventually become known as the temporal and spiritual powers, the powers of the laity and of the priesthood, within a united Church that was a polity. Political theology was integral to fundamental dogmatic theology.[1]

Without getting into the nitty of the Christological theories, which Jones has done prior, what this passage should alert the reader to is just how integral Christology and a Theology Proper were to the development of the Latin and Greek political states. These are the same bases upon which our state is built, indeed the entirety of the Western world. It’s just that we have immanentized the eternal Logos ensarkos (the eternal Word enfleshed) into our own humanity. Following the antique taxonomy, as Jones has laid it out, the state now has fallen prey, once again, to the Arian heresy, wherein the leaders become the gap-fillers between heaven and earth. No longer is the Son of Man elevated as the King of kings, but the Son of “they” has displaced Him with Arian and Bab-elic vigor, elevating their state-being as the Being of all being, as the Godhumanity for all humanity. It is important that we begin to retexture our thinking in these “Christian” ways, such that we come to have a ‘social imaginary,’ once again, that allows us to see things in light of the God’s Light for the world in Jesus Christ. We need to ‘reenchant’ the world, such that we see God of God in Christ as Lord, and ourselves as His emissaries in the midst of a broken state that attempts to see itself as God’s highest creature; to the point that they are the bridge between God and humanity.

What does it mean to be a responsible and intelligent political animal in the 21st century coram Deo (before God)? It means to understand where we are situated in the Kingdom of God, in the heavenly places, and recognize that we stand as ambassadors for Christ, as witnesses, as prophets, through the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; that Jesus is Lord of lords, and the lords aren’t. Even so, with this realization, we understand that ultimately our witness will end up as the ancient witness of the first Christians, as a witness of the martyrs’ blood. Many of us may never experience a martyr’s death for the sake of Christ, but we can live in such a way, in the state, that under different political circumstances (from now) would warrant such a witness sealed in the shedding of our own blood in echo of our King’s shedding for us. But the matter is a matter of living, and how we do that in this world.

The political state, as Jones helpfully signals for us, is a state rooted in the implications of the Incarnation of God, in a Theology Proper that implicates theories of power and authority. Christians need to learn to recognize this, and think in these terms. This will allow them to better understand their place vis-à-vis the “secular” state. It will allow them to see that ultimately there really is nothing secular at all, and that we are here to bear witness to that ultimate fact of life.

[1] Andrew Willard Jones, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2021), 79-80.

The Hellenic, the Neo-Thomist Origins of Modernity

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When Divine grace is separated from its reality in God, when grace becomes a thing, a substance, a quality infused into the accidents of humanity, it is only one small step removed from being integrated into the essence of what it means to be human. If this step is taken, and it has been in the ‘modern-turn,’ the turn-to-the-subject, the Gifter of grace no longer remains necessary, in a transcendent sense, as grace becomes materialized, immanentized, horizontalized into an ‘immanent frame,’ as Charles Taylor grammarizes. Indeed, Taylor writes with reference to what it means to be human in a frame wherein grace has become the possession, the generative reality of what it means to be a self-determined, self-constructed modern person in the 21st century:

There is another facet of this narrative of secularity which it is worth mentioning here, because of its ubiquity and importance in the “closed” spin on immanence. The story line here is this: once human beings took their norms, their goods, their standards of ultimate value from an authority outside of themselves; from God, or the gods, or the nature of Being or the cosmos. But then they came to see that these higher authorities were their own fictions, and they realized that they had to establish their norms and values for themselves, on their own authority. This is a radicalization of the coming to adulthood story as it figures in the science-driven argument for materialism. It is not just that freed from illusion, humans come to establish true facts about the world. It is also that they come to dictate the ultimate values by which they live.1

Once the secular person came to imagine, through their new ‘social imaginary’ (cf. Taylor) that in fact the classical God was really just a projection of their own imagination, an inner to outer extrapolation of their best selves onto a cipher by which they might live and adjudicate life, they were able to bring diremption for themselves and determine that in fact they were God and thus gods after all. What secularism ultimately brings, this ostensible ‘come of age’ moment, is really just another expression of polytheism, a serpentine belief that humanity itself possesses godness, and thus are the creators of their own reality and existence (in a world where existence and essence have become a singular reality).

As I suggested at the beginning there is a theological origin story behind the secular-turn. Ironically, this turn has a Christian source, albeit as that source has been dressed down by a synthesis of Christian theology with speculative philosophical categories; such categories derived from the classical philosophers like Aristotle et al. The abstraction of grace from the giver or reality of grace, God, takes form most notably in the Catholic theology of Thomas Aquinas. Here we finally get a codification of a burgeoning philosophical frame baptized in the Holy water of the Church. It is the notion of ‘quality’ that takes decisive stage, or in fact ‘substance’ within an Aristotelian frame whereby Divine grace comes to lose its Divine character, at least in the sense that its reality is necessarily grounded in the triune being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Once this move is made, as I asserted earlier, we are only a few small steps, a few small centuries away from ‘coming of age,’ among other contributing factors during and post-Enlightenment. But I find this abstraction of grace from the Divine life to be an interesting development towards modernity, ironically, even as that is given dye within the early mediaeval and Catholic sitz im leben of Thomas Aquinas (and those who received him, whether Catholic or Protestant Reformational). Helmut Thielicke describes the scenario this way:

We can see clearly at this point that what takes place in man, and not merely what happens to him, has become the object of theological observation. It is again evident, as was clear already with respect to the concept of the imago Dei in man’s original state, that the ontic element in the human ego pushes itself into the foreground. Then the theme of theology is not just the relation between God and man; on the contrary, theology then includes as an independent concern a treatment of “anthropology.” Here is where the fault lies.

The crack, or better, the cracks are themselves produced by the belt of tension which necessarily arises where men attempt to combine ontological and personalistic thinking. The greatest strain and the most evident rupture are undoubtedly to be found at the place where grace ceases to be a divine attribute and becomes an effect distinct from the divine attribute from which it emanates, ie, where grace ceases to be a personal relation to man (the “gracious God”) and becomes something which is ontically infused into man and which is thus present in man, demonstrably present. For it is precisely this distinction between the gracious God and the grace given [gratia data] which is the starting point of the distinctively “Roman” development of the doctrine of grace. To put it epigrammatically and therefore with tongue in cheek, what men want is not primarily God himself, but “divine powers which may become human virtues and qualities” (von Harnack). At this point where grace “visibly” passes into man in accordance with certain well defined practices, eg, sacramental operation, it ceases to be exclusively a subject and becomes a material object, “medicine.” This materialization expresses itself in a variety of ways . . . .2

It would surely be reductionistic to blame Thomas and Aristotle for the modern-turn to the self, and what Taylor identifies as ‘the coming of adulthood story.’ That is not my intention. I am simply noticing a Christian turn made at least within the lifetime of early mediaeval developments, that can plausibly help explain how this ‘enlightened-turn’ finally came to fruition. There are many other contributing ideational and socio-culture pressures that finally brought this turn to consummation, but I think it is notable that we already see these fault lines developing as far back as the Hellenic period of the classical philosophers; and then developed more Christianly with the arrival of Thomas and the Romans.

I am only minimally attempting to illustrate how secular ideas can be traced back to a Christian lineage. Charles Taylor, Michael Gillespie, my personal friend, Derrick Peterson, among others have done further work, more substantially, to demonstrate that my point is not ill founded. Christians have as much to do with the secularity of society as anyone else. Indeed, we might go so far as to say that what it means to be a secular-atheist in the 21st century is really just an expression of a Christian heresy that has attended the Church catholic by way of various expressions; whether those expressions be understood within the Church proper, or in society-at-large as the theater of humanity’s glory, albeit, devoid of the Spirit. Ultimately, when grace is abstracted from God and made a quality capable of being understood purely from the immanent frame of the ‘flatlander,’ it is at this point that Genesis 3 once again receives breath to breathe and make another attempt to elevate itself with zigguartic flare to the ‘high places’ of the living God.

 

1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 580 kindle.

2 Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Foundations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 238.

 

 

Against the Theologians of Glory

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I’ve written against theologies of glory ever since (and before) I heard of them. A life verse of mine (among a gazillion) is the following: “For I’ve determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” This typifies the staurological life I live the Christian as, from the cruciformed life of the risen Christ’s (or at least the one I aim for). Because of this I have an acute allergy to anyone who chooses instead to be a theologian of glory. Jesus identifies theologians of glory this way: “I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (John 5.41-4) He also has theologians of glory in mind here: “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.” (Mt. 6.1-4) These characteristics, where the person seeks praise from other men, rather than God, these typify theologians of glory. I rebuke that; I say ‘get behind me satan,’ when I encounter such putrid displays of self-seeking and glorification; whether I see that creep in myself or others.  

When this hits close to home, particularly with someone, or others who are supposedly your friends, your colleagues in the theological task, this becomes that much more difficult to stomach. It leaves you feeling disillusioned, wondering just how farcical so much of your time and energy might have been because you were unknowingly associating yourself with theologians of glory. I just had a really hard example of this hit me, one that hit very close to home. I’ve been entertaining the idea of putting a particular person on blast, and I have, in muted ways, on Facebook and Twitter, but putting them on the public and open world wide web for the whole world to see just how gross a theology of glory looks in real life living color. But I have chosen not to do that here now. Some people have been giving me grief, either by omission or commission, in regard to the honorary doctor of theology I received. You see, theologians of glory get really concerned about optics. They think that if you receive an honorary ThD from an internationally based denominational consortium of theological schools, that the degree itself isn’t worth much; that in fact, it is a fraudulent degree not worth the paper it’s printed on. If the school that awards you said degree isn’t a White Euro/Americo/Westerno school with grand tradition, deep funding sources, with name recognition among all the elites in the world, that the school is pretty much worthless. In fact, if you can’t find said school on a superficial google search, then the theologian of glory feels free to call you out for the whole world to see. You see, the theologian of glory knows that they have already been sanctioned to do that, they have all the rich White elites standing behind them; yeah, the paper they have hanging on their wall, and their published dissertations that five people might have read says so.   

Ultimately, the problem with theologians of glory is that they have drunk the theological industrial complex’s kool-aid. Indeed, they are so drunk on themselves, and their various accolades, they think they are so smart and couth, that they believe the whole world ought to simply get down on their knees and kiss their feet with every step taken. In other words, theologians of glory are deluded by their own echo-chambers. They have been called “the Dr.” for so long, they have become the go-to guys and gals so much in their respective institutions of higher learning, that they simply believe everyone ought to worship the ground they stand on; and the amazing thing about the theologian of glory, is that they will take this attitude all in the name of Jesus. They will claim to be doctors in service of the Church. Indeed, this is the most deluding factor for the theologian of glory. Their self-projected, self-elevated statuses have become so conflated with Christ that they can no longer distinguish between the real Jesus, and the Jesus they say they are witnessing for. They believe they can talk skubalon about others who they think are not their equals, and in fact they think they ought to talk about others in service of the Church. Until a person jumps through the hoops they had to, you know, to become a theologian of glory, these guys and gals, in their hallowed halls, look upon the rest of the Christian world as the plebians that they are.  

The moral of this story is this: only be a theologian of glory if you’re interested in receiving all of your praise and rewards and unbelief right now. Once the eschaton hits, and the Bema judgment comes, all of those rewards will be burnt up and judged as the straw that they are. Sure, you’ll be ‘saved,’ but as by fire; and Grandma Ethel’s rulership in the Kingdom will be multiple times greater than the theologian of glory, and his/her rulership. But that’s the sobering thing about everything: we are talking about eternal verities. We are talking about magnifying Jesus, and only genuine theologians of the cross do that; theologians of glory mock the “least of these,” and they do so in the name of Jesus Christ—a stricter judgment awaits.  

Don’t Be a Normie “30s and 40s” German Thinker: There is No Agendaless Thinking

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The following comes from a William Shirer, a war correspondent, and someone who lived in Europe (Germany) during the events leading up to Nazi Germany, and during the actualization of those events under the Third Reich. Indeed, he has written an award-winning book, among others, entitled The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The reason I want to share his insight is because it is apropos to the current global moment vis a vis COVID, and its political response. I recognize that I have many readers here at the blog, for which I’m grateful; some in fact are MDs. In my last post one of these MDs encouraged me to read Biologos etc. as if a neutral source of information regarding COVID and its entailments. The reality, as Kant knew so well, is that there is no such thing as an agendaless Switzerlandish mode of being in this world. We all are bounded by preunderstandings that have come to us tacitly through our own various formations as human beings in a very active world. As a result, we must engage in the process of what has been called distanciation, as much as possible. This is the process of gaining critical distance from our own presuppositions and preunderstandings about reality, insofar as that is possible, and thus come to have the critical valence necessary to be discerning. Even then, we are still pressed about by various external stimuli and pressures that define our subjectivities. But this does not need to result in a normative relativism of the sort that we are unable to critically discern truth from falsity, insofar as things have discernable correspondence to extramental or mind-independent realities that are true with or without are assent. I mention all of this, leading into this passage from Shirer, because my hope is that by reading what he has to say the critical person will come to have a capacity to see how history just might repeat itself; insofar that peoples’ hearts, unchecked, don’t change. Here Shirer writes about how it was that an otherwise highly educated German population became subject to a psychosis that led them to believe that whatever the state fed them was right, and that all other dissent was incredulous:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but … one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were. – William Shirer (in Adolph Hitler’s Germany)

I am presenting this again because I want to be clear about my approach to things in this current world moment. I believe the sort of delusion that came over Germany in the 30s and 40s has once again swept across the world. To simply appeal to untethered asserted narratives without any public debate is neither Christian nor safe. The Christian mind has brought about much of what we consider to be the Enlightened world, for better or worse. But, as with anything, the spoils gotten can quickly become spoiled gain that only brings rot to the soul. That’s largely what I see taking place currently in the world, and even among professing Christians. They have lost the plot, and as such have joined in with the state narrative that whatever our Big Brother says simply is the truth. But this is not the way the truth works, not for the Christian. We discern light from dark, and have the capacity to do that in Christ by the Spirit. But there must be a humility to accept that we might be considered foolish, not part of the mainstream institutional thinking, if we are going to actually come to have the capacity to think critically about things.

I recognize that many of you don’t read me for my political views. But it is precisely because of my theological commitments, indeed, my radical commitments that I am against any form of natural theology as I see it. When the American church (and the Western church in general) comes to conflate the state’s pronouncements with the Gospel truth, it is at this point that I become highly suspicious. My suspicion motivates me to seek out, often, dissenting voices, voices that are experts in their fields; but voices that are dissenting (and thus being smeared by the state) from the mainstream political narratives afoot. I consider churches participant in forwarding state narratives to be antiChrist. I consider failure by Christians to discern this to be telling about their intellectual if not spiritual commitments.

I will no longer have comments open on anything political I might post forthcoming. My straight theology posts will always have comments open, but honestly, I am not interested in dialoguing here at the blog about political matters (which COVID most definitely is, it also has a highly religious and ethical component tied into it of course!). My admonition: don’t be the type of person Shirer writes about; that isn’t limited to the 30s and 40s, it is about the human condition in general.

PS. The primary reason I will have comments on such posts closed is to protect me, and potentially you. I get too triggered and very quickly on these issues, and I’m afraid of what I might say in the heat of the moments.

Hebrews 2:14-18 and Agamben on Fear, Death, and The Truth: Applied to the “Pandemic”

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There is lots of fear in the air; indeed, there is so much fear in the air that masses of people are afraid to breathe the unmasked air. But this isn’t the Christian’s mode of existence. We are people of the Truth, as such we of all people ought to be reflecting lives that are characterized by at least two things: 1) fearlessness and 2) truthfulness—not to mention loveliness, which the former two are adjuncts of. I just read a short book by Italian social commentator and philosopher: Giorgio Agamben. The book is entitled: Where Are We Now? The Epidemic As Politics. Surprisingly to me he is in line with the way I see things ongoing in the world currently (even as far as seeing the tyranny underway as parallel with the sort that we saw in Nazi Germany, except the current attempts at tyranny being magnitudes greater given its scope). But I digress; let’s return. Agamben offers an insightful perspective on the role that fear of death is playing in allowing the current climate to fester; he gains his insight through interaction with of all people: Heidegger. Agamben writes:

How is one to deal with this fundamental attunement, in which man seems always and constitutively to be in the act of collapsing? Since fear precedes and forestalls knowledge and reflection, it is quite useless to try and convince the frightened with rational arguments and evidence; more than anything, fear denies them access to a reasoning process that would preclude fear itself. Heidegger writes, fear “bewilders us and makes us ‘lose our heads’”. So much so that, in the face of the epidemic, it was evident that the publication of irrefutable data and opinions from trustworthy sources was being systematically ignored and discarded in favour of others that, by the way, did not even feign scientific credibility.

Given the originary character of fear, the only way we can ever untangle it is by accessing an equally originary dimension. Such a dimension does exist . . . .1

Agamben hits upon various threads of interest, but let us focus on two: 1) the way fear functions in regard to mitigating people’s capacity to think rationally/critically; 2) what is the way out of this fear? On the latter point Agamben moves in a strictly humanistic direction devoid of the Spirit, and in abstraction from the Christian answer, Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, he identifies an ongoing peril that the world faces, and the Christian, again, of all people ought to have the capacity to witness to the world that Jesus is Lord and all subsequent “truths” are His.

The author to the Hebrews hits upon the very esse of what is driving the current climate of fear (Agamben writes elsewhere in his little book on how the “leaders” capitalize on this fear). Ultimately, people are afraid of their own mortality. They don’t like being reminded of it, even if the “reminder” is couched in an intentional deception. What isn’t a deception, as Christians of all people ought to know best, is that we are dying and going to eternally die without being subjectively in union with Jesus Christ. But this is the blessed answer that the Christian has to offer the world; indeed, it is a two-pronged (at least) answer wherein: it addresses the very foundation of ultimate fear, and in the process, as it reveals that answer to that fear, it does so by exposing other attending truths that dispels the mythology the fearmongers (and thus children of satan) are deploying in an effort to magnify their own wanton and perverse desires. The author to the Hebrews:

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. –Hebrews 2:14-18

In nuce, the answer is the Incarnation (the consubstantiality of the person of Christ who is both fully God and fully human in his singular personalis). In other words, the answer to the fear of death, the fear that casts humanity en masse into a morass of putrid irrationality that has the capacity to lead them into subjecting to tyrants, is to become united to Jesus’ resurrected humanity for them; wherein they are now united to the indestructible and eternally durable life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the way out of not only living a life of inaffective irrationality vis-à-vis God, but ultimately, and most significantly this is the way to experience a life charged with the very LIFE of God. When the world sees Christians living lives of utter resistance to the Father of Lies, they might glimpse into an ‘otherworld’ that they never knew, but might have hoped existed. This is the basis and the purpose for which the Christian has been built. We are here to bear witness to the Truth, and all attending truths as those correspond to real reality, that Jesus is LORD, and that there is literally nothing to fear; especially death itself.

Instead, what the world is primarily being subjected to, is a Christian Church so ensnared by the trappings of the culture, that they are being led to believe that there really is no other answer, but to be subject to ‘thisworldly’ system of behaviors and irrationalities. In other words, it is far from “loving” to wear a mask, take vaccines (that aren’t vaccines), participate in lockdowns, and other irrationalities (in proportion to what the actual virus is), because none of these things are grounded in the truth. Instead, as Agamben underscores, elsewhere in his book, falsity is now masquerading as the truth; so much so, that anyone who stands against the falsity, even actual scientists in the critical world of such studies (V the ones paraded for the world on mainstream news), are considered to be conspiracy theorists. Unfortunately, in order to reiterate, Christians en masse are submitting to whatever they are told by the so-called news sources. They aren’t even doing due diligence to see if what “they are being told” actually corresponds to concrete scientific data—they are simply satisfied with being told that it is (and this without any further consideration on their part). But this is and never has been the Christian way. Maranatha

1 Giorgio Agamben, Where Are We Now?: The Epidemic As Politics (Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield, 2021), 94.

 

Barth’s Theological Existence Against State Church Leaders Like: David French and Russell Moore

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People like David French, Russell Moore et al continue to operate as mouthpieces for the state church. When I say state church, in this context, I am referring to the churches who have taken money from the state in order to remain open during the so-called pandemic, commonly known as: COVID. As a condition of taking this money, millions of dollars worth, in some instances, these churches must abide by every state and federal mandate handed down in regard to COVID recommendations and suggestions. They are now duty-bound to promote the state narrative, inclusive of mandatory vaccines. Both French and Moore, have recently, and over the last eighteen months, been pushing their evangelical audiences to get the still experimental gene therapies (which they call vaccines, per the state narrative), which are known to cause sudden death, slow death, adverse reactions, and a host of other unknown consequences given their lack of long term study and testing. French and Moore are promoting a culture, within mainstream evangelicalism, wherein people are denominated as either “vaxxed” or “unvaxxed”; the latter, being framed as unloving, selfish, and even murderous towards the mass population. In nuce, both French and Moore represent a broader cadre of state church proponents who have accepted the state narrative without any consideration of how that might or might not be funded by the Gospel reality itself. It is to this mode and attitude that Karl Barth’s own theological existence doth protest! 

The following account comes from Christiane Tietz’s telling of Barth’s precarious and early situation as he faced off with Hitler and the state church of his time. His situation, equally, has to do with a narrative that segregates people, in this case, not on “vaccine status,” but, of course, on ethnic status, and the ostensible purity of the Aryan classification of people (as identified by the National Socialists, or Nazi regime of Hitler). The parallel between what Barth et al was standing against, and what we are currently standing against in people like French and Moore, as church leaders who are proponents of the state narrative, is rather uncanny (although I know that most people who are Barth people have themselves swallowed the state narrative in regard to COVID, and its ostensible “cure” in the so-called “vaccines”). Tietz writes at length (with reference to Barth): 

Barth was pressed by different sides to comment on the situation. He wrote his opinion between June 14 and 25, titled Theological Existence Today!, as the situation intensified. His publisher Lempp insisted on going to press quickly, so that the text was already available on July 1, 1933. It met with an enormous echo. By July 1934, when the text was confiscated, 37,000 copies had been printed. 

Barth began his essay by reporting that he had been urged to state his position on the current “church concerns and problems.” But: “the decisive thing that I am trying to say today about these concerns and problems” consisted 

very non-currently and impalpably simply in this . . . that I am attempting to proceed here in Bonn with my students in lectures and exercises to do theology and only theology, just as before as if nothing had happened—perhaps in a slightly raised tone but without making a direct connection. Somewhat like the Benedictine chanting of the hours in the nearby [abbey of] Maria Laach is doubtlessly proceeding, even in the Third Reich, according to the rules without interruption and diversion. I am of the opinion that this too is a statement, in any case a church-political statement and indirectly even a political-statement! 

Barth continued that rather than speaking “to the situation” it would be better as a theologian to address “the issue.” For the church it was essential that it meet the claim of the word of God “to be proclaimed and heard.” The danger of the current era was that 

amidst the power of other claims we no longer understand the intensity and exclusivity of the claim of the divine word as such, and therefore suddenly we no longer understand this word at all . . . That under the stormy impression of certain “forces, principalities, and powers” we seek God elsewhere than in God’s word, and God’s word elsewhere than in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ elsewhere than in the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, and are therefore those who do not seek God at all. 

Each church reform, including external forms, must emerge from the “life . . . of the church itself . . . from obedience to God’s word, or it is not church reform.” With the appointment of a state church commissar however this had been taken out of the church’s hands. And with the establishment of a superior bishop’s office in the Protestant church, the state’s “Fuhrer principle, embodied in the figure of Adolf Hitler and his subordinates,” would introduced into the church. 

Barth accused the “German Christians” of subordinating the church’s purpose to the German people. The church indeed believed that God installed the state to be the bearer of law and order, but it did not believe in a certain state or specific form of state. The church proclaimed the gospel “also in the Third Reich, but not under it and not in its spirit.” Correspondingly: 

The community of those who belong to the church is not determined by blood or through race, but rather through the Holy Spirit and baptism. If the German Protestant Church were to exclude Christians of Jewish descent or treat them as second-class Christians, then it would have ceased to be a Christian church. 

With that Barth took a clear position against the adoption of the “Aryan paragraph” from the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service (April 7, 1933) for church law.  

Barth concludes his text with a warning to German theology and the church: 

For that reason the church and theology cannot hibernate, even in a totalitarian state, and cannot accept a moratorium or be conformed to the state. The church is the natural boundary for everything, including the totalitarian state. For the people live even in a totalitarian state from the word of God, the content of which is: “forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the flesh and eternal life.” Church and theology have to serve this word for the people. Therefore they are the boundary of the state. They are this for the salvation of the people, for the salvation that neither the state nor the church can create, but which the church is called to proclaim. The church must be allowed to remain true and must want to remain true to its characteristic objectivity. In the particular concern that has been assigned to the theologian he must remain awake, a lonely bird on the roof, that is on earth but also under the open, wide and absolutely open heaven. If only the German Protestant theologian would stay awake, or, if he happens to have fallen asleep, today, today would awaken once more!1 

There are churches in America, currently who are only allowing the vaccinated to attend services; and this under strict protocols required by the state. There are countries like Australia, that are in absolute totalitarian lockdown; and it has multiples of church leaders complying with these lockdowns, and even in agreement with them. The same is true of states like Canada, France, and many others across the globe. These totalitarian states are operating under the same statist logic that people like French and Moore are operating from, and promoting for the American evangelical churches at large. 

Indeed, the totalitarianism currently underway has greater technological sophistication associated with it, than did the Reich’s takeover. Nonetheless, when you reduce things to their logical conclusions it is the same operation; except this time its global, and the segregation is based on whether or not people will submit to taking a “vaccine” that has no long term study or testing associated with it. Beyond that, it is a vaccine that doesn’t protect people from the disease it says it does: people who are vaccinated (look at Israel) are more prone to receiving heavier loads of COVID than those who aren’t. And further, COVID itself, under even the manipulated numbers (i.e. COVID death counting), has a 99.97% survivability rate without any treatments (therapeutics or otherwise). And yet French and Moore forward the state counter-narrative, based in unwarranted fear, that people should take the jab in the name of love for the other. They follow the logic that leads to totalitarian states like Australia, not to mention the level of that we are seeing ourselves right here in America (i.e. mass firings, unemployment, vaccine caused deaths, and adverse reactions [see VAERS]). But they are not self-reflective enough to either see through the evil behind the state narrative (the same state who promotes the annihilation of babies in the womb), in regard to COVID; or they are, and are on the ‘take.’ 

Barth’s warning to those who subordinate the proclamation of the Gospel to a state narrative ought to be taken seriously by these types of state church leaders. When the message of the state becomes conflated with the Word of God, with the Gospel reality itself, the church ceases being the actual church, and becomes only one more tool for the state. When people like French, Moore (not to mention Ed Stetzer) and others are promoting the logic that supports a totalitarian state in the name of “health freedom” and responsibility for others, as this is based on the state narrative to begin with, these leaders need to be called out for what they are: false prophets!  

If the parallel I’m drawing between Barth’s period in Germany, and ours in the globe today, doesn’t resonate with you, then maybe you ought to re-consider how you think of the status of humanity outwith Jesus Christ. The depravity of humanity is the same yesterday, today, and forever without the check of God’s life in Jesus Christ. Barth came to this realization, and so should you: state church leaders.  

1 Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 211-13 kindle.