Tag: Richard Hays
0 By Grace Alone?
For our sermon series on ‘The Seven Truths that Changed the World: Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas’ we’re talking about Justification by Faith (vs. Works).
In Thomas Aquinas’ three-fold understanding of grace, grace begins with God. On that starting point there’s no difference between the Catholic perspective and what Luther fleshes out in his re-formation.
The second procession of grace, sanctifying grace, is grace that is in us. But how do you know if you have sanctifying grace? That question starts to get at Luther’s criticism.
The third procession of grace, according to Thomas, is our response of faith, hope and love that sanctifying grace makes possible. Again, if you don’t really have sanctifying grace- if perhaps you’ve deceived yourself and only thought you did- then necessarily you can’t possess genuine faith, hope and love.
Thomas’ formulation of grace, though it boasted a pedigree that went all the way back to the church fathers and though there appears to have been no other reformation era critics of it, in Luther’s mind placed for too much on us.
Whereas Thomas believed sanctifying grace is bestowed upon us in baptism and through the sacraments, Luther re-conceives grace’s movement.
Grace, first of all, names God’s favor, loving inclination, towards us. This is where Luther and Thomas agree. Second, grace is a Word addressed to me, a declaration. For Luther this declaration is the Gospel. Rather than a gift God implants within us, this Word God declares to us is the gift. Third, this word-gift is what enables me to respond in faith.
Part of the difficulty in the reformation debates is the confusion of terms. Thomas and Catholic theology in general use the term ‘justification’ to name the entire process of God’s favor towards us, God’s sanctifying grace and our response. Luther and the reformers after him instead use ‘justification’ to refer exclusively to God’s inclination and declaration to us. Our healing and response tend to get treated separately as ‘sanctification’ or ‘vocation’ or, in Wesley, ‘perfection.’ So, often, when Protestants accused of Catholics of ‘works righteousness’ it’s because Protestants thought Catholics were speaking of justification when, really, Catholics were talking about sanctification. And when Catholics thought Protestants were eliminating any role for works of faith and making faith totally passive it’s because Catholics thought Protestants were speaking of sanctification when, really, Protestants were speaking specifically about justification. That both sides tended to be led by stubborn, recalcitrant men didn’t ameliorate the confusion.
What’s essential in the divergence of views is how, for Luther, there’s nothing inside me that is different or changed. There’s nothing inside me that empowers me to respond to God with faith, hope and love. Luther did believe that eventually our trust in God would create a new life but that new life would never be the basis of our justification. It would never be why we’re pleasing to God.
Again, this gets back to Luther’s spiritual crisis. For Luther, what’s important is that we don’t look within ourselves to determine if we’re saved.
For Luther, looking within is the problem because, basically, inside we’re messed up. Within us, no matter how much we trust God, is a whole stew of conflicting motives. Obviously this is an incredibly autobiographical insight on Luther’s part. According to Luther if we want to know how we stand before God we look, not within, at the promise of God.
Justification, then, in this classical Protestant formulation is objective (in that it depends not on our apprehension of it) and it is passive (in that it God’s act outside of us).
1 A Better Conversation about Abortion #3
A Better Conversation about Abortion #3
Thanks to what’s-his-name Akin in Missouri, a campaign season that was supposed to be dominated by economic issues instead now feels like every other divisive, social-issue election. Ross Douthat had a piece in Sunday’s NY Times, questioning whether this development is bad for both parties and not just the Republicans.
I don’t know about the politics of it, but I do know that Christian conversation on the issue should rise above what’s offered by pundits and politicians.
Earlier this week, I posted about a girl named ‘Rachel’ who was my first pastoral encounter with abortion as a moral dilemma.
Rachel was the first person who impressed upon me the truth and urgency of Stanley Hauerwas’ comments that, for Christians, “abortion is not fundamentally a question about law, but about what kind of people we are to be as the church and as Christians.” In other words, to rephrase Hauerwas in the context of my anecdotes: what if Rachel- pregnant and addicted to drugs and alcohol, without a job or an education- had belonged to a Christian community dedicated to embodying the example of Acts 4? If Rachel had had such a community, then I believe all our cultural debates about “rights” and “privacy” and “the sanctity of life” would have become less immediate.
What Rachel most needed was not to be compelled by the law in any certain direction. She desperately needed a community who would care for her, who would refuse to judge or condemn her, who would hold her accountable and who would do so by bearing her burden with her.
Certainly Christians have a right and a responsibility to advocate for our beliefs in the public square, but our calling, first and foremost, is to be a community. The Holy Spirit gave birth not to a group of believers who first lobbied for their convictions to be reflected in public policy. The Holy Spirit gave birth to a community in which the wider world might see the Gospel of Jesus Christ lived. The Holy Spirit gave birth to a community that would, by divine design, look different from the larger world- a community where the New Creation inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ was embodied.
As the Didache indicates, the early Christians- much like today’s Christians- practiced their faith in the context of an empire that did not share their beliefs or ethics. One of the ways those first Christians embodied the reality of the New Creation was by adopting the unwanted babies that the empire abandoned to exposure and death. The early Christian community was characterized not by laws, platforms or positions but by witness.
So too today, I believe the world most needs to be shown, not forced by law, a different possibility of life. The world needs to be shown a community where the wants and impoverishments that often pressure women to have abortions no longer exist because this particular community shares all of its possessions together. The world needs not to be told by force of law that there is no right to the privacy of the body. Rather the world needs to be shown what a community looks like where its members, by virtue of baptism, all belong to one another.
I do not think that Christians will ever persuade others to our convictions until Christians learn how in community to embody a more persuasive form of life. In other words, if the energy and time that so many Christians now devote to enacting their beliefs in the public square were instead given to creating the sort of community we find in Acts, then I believe what would emerge would be a true place of refuge and a light to the nation.
0 A Better Conversation about Abortion – #2
While I was still in seminary, I served as the part-time pastor of a tiny Methodist church in New Jersey. One fall afternoon, while I was in the sanctuary preparing things for Sunday worship, a middle-aged woman wandered inside. I did not know her or recognize her. Appearing nervous, she asked if she could speak with the minister.
Because the small church did not have an office for the pastor, we sat down in a pew. I could tell she was uncomfortable being in the sanctuary, talking with a pastor. I could tell too that she was exhausted and that she had been crying. The woman proceeded to tell me about her nineteen year old daughter, ‘Rachel,’ who had a drug and alcohol problem. ‘Rachel’ did not have a job, was not in school, and had recently become pregnant. Rachel’s mother cried and shared how confused and overwhelmed she felt. Rachel was her only family. She had no one to whom she could turn. Rachel, she knew, was not able to raise a child and, given her addictions, she worried what would be the resulting health of Rachel’s baby.
Rachel’s mother suddenly asked me if it was wrong for her daughter to get an abortion. “Does the bible say that it’s wrong?” she asked me.
Looking back at that conversation, what most strikes me is not the inadequacy of my answers. What strikes me most is that this woman and her daughter had absolutely no community to turn for comfort, help or discernment.
Last week I mentioned in a post that abortion is an issue that calls for discernment because there are no scriptural texts we can use as direct references. Texts, for example, that speak of God ‘knowing us even in our mother’s womb’ are primarily poetic texts that speak volumes about God’s providence but say very little about how that broad confession applies to a particular moral question.
The best text to apply to the question of abortion, I believe, is one that, on the surface, would seem to have nothing to do with the issue.
Biblical scholar, Richard Hays, argues that Christians looking for moral guidance on abortion can read scripture in a paradigmatic mode. In other words, the New Testament, in particular, contains several key texts that, while they do not speak to abortion explicitly, do commend certain behaviors that can inform how Christians approach multiple moral issues, including abortion.
The first paradigmatic text that Hays turns to is Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, which is found in Luke’s Gospel (10.25-37). In Luke’s telling, Jesus is asked by a lawyer how he might inherit eternal life. Jesus replies, in good rabbinic fashion, with a reference to the Shema from Deuteronomy 6.5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; you shall your neighbor as yourself.”
This would not have been a surprising answer to the lawyer; he probably anticipated just this reply from Jesus because he pushes back, pressing Jesus to be more precise: “Who is my neighbor?” Most likely, the lawyer also knew that, according to the Jewish law, ‘neighbor’ in this case meant a fellow Israelite.
Luke tells us that by asking Jesus this question the lawyer sought to justify himself. That is, the lawyer wanted Jesus to narrowly and specifically define who counted as his neighbor. With the parameters of moral obligation more narrowly defined the lawyer could be comforted that he was a righteous, justified person.
Jesus instead surprises the lawyer with an unexpected, upsetting story about a Samaritan showing loving mercy where righteous Jews did not and then turning the question back onto the lawyer: “Who was the neighbor?”
Samaritans, in the first century world of Jesus, were not only hated and mistrusted outsiders, they were non-Jews. In telling this story, Jesus refuses narrow definitions of our ethical obligations. Jesus expands the reaches of our moral duty and, by casting a Samaritan (a non-neighbor by Jewish law) as a neighbor, Jesus actually creates a new moral obligation where none existed before.
How does this story inform Christians’ reflection on abortion? It’s not simply that unborn children are our neighbors. Richard Hays notes that this parable reminds Christians that our call to show mercy to the helpless extends beyond the obligations defined by convention or by culture.
Our obligation to be neighbors to the helpless includes both the unborn and the mothers and families of the unborn.
Jesus’ parable also cautions Christians against approaching the abortion debate with the same questions that the culture often asks. Hays argues that when Christians become preoccupied with asking questions such as: ‘When does life begin?’ and ‘When is a fetus a person?’ we risk casting ourselves as the lawyer in Jesus’ story instead of the Samaritan. We risk limiting the scope of our ethical obligation rather than recognizing the expansive reach of our call to be merciful.
The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that, when it comes to the issue of abortion, our first step as Christians is to resist the culture’s definitions of neighbors and to recognize that we have a duty to all involved.
0 A Better Conversation about Homosexuality- 4
Some of you- fairly, I’ll admit- suggested to me that my previous post on this subject needed to provide a closer look at specific scriptural passages and show how two Christians might apply them to their viewpoints.
Here you go:
Viewpoint #1
Using Paul as a Model for Ethical Re-Evaluation:
In his essay, Reading and Understanding the New Testament on Homosexuality, biblical scholar Brian Blount advocates the position that certain biblical ethical prescriptions may be modified by the contemporary church, and, in their modified form, they may more faithfully reflect Paul’s own theological perspective. Blount cites Paul himself as the precedent for such ethical re-evaluation.
Blount points out that the Gospel writers are all unanimous in their presentation of Jesus’ views on divorce. Jesus, according to the Gospels, is unambiguously against divorce. Only in Matthew’s Gospel does Jesus allow the stipulation of divorce in cases of sexual infidelity (5.31-32). In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul acknowledges Jesus’ teaching on this matter (1 Corinthians 7.10-11). Nonetheless, in that same passage, Paul claims his own apostolic authority and allows for a reevaluation of Jesus’ teaching based on the context of the Corinthian congregation.
The church at Corinth was struggling to apply their faith in a thoroughly pagan culture. Aware of the destructive effects pagan culture potentially posed to an individual’s and a church’s faith, Paul changes Jesus’ tradition and allows for divorce in the case of Christians who are married to unsupportive pagan partners.
In light of the Corinthian’s cultural context, and even though it stands in contrast to Jesus’ own teaching in the Gospels, Paul believes this ethical modification to be consistent with his larger understanding of God’s present work in and through Jesus Christ. Such ethical deliberation and re-evaluation is not dissimilar to the process of discernment that the Christian Church later undertook with respect to scripture’s understanding of slavery. Just as the Holy Spirit guided Paul to re-evaluate Jesus’ tradition in light of a different present-day context, Brian Blount posits that the Holy Spirit can and does lead Christians to such discernment today.
When it comes to the matter of homosexuality, Blount argues that Romans 1 understands homosexuality as one symptom among many of the fallen world’s idolatry. Our contemporary situation is different, according to Blount. If it is possible for contemporary Christians to concede that a homosexual person need not be an idolater, then Paul’s chief complaint may be removed, opening the way for Christians to re-evaluate Paul’s ethical prescriptions in a faithful manner. It becomes possible then, Blount says, for Christians to conclude that faithful, monogamous, homosexual relationships can be consistent with God’s present-day redemptive activity.
Viewpoint 2
Experience as a Lens for Scripture Not as a Counter-Balancing Authority:
In his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Richard Hays acknowledges that the New Testament provides no definitive, applicable “rule” on homosexuality. The New Testament, as in the case of Romans 1, offers only theological principles against homosexuality, yet Hays stresses that scripture’s negative prohibitions regarding homosexuality be read against the larger backdrop of the male-female union, which scripture presents as the normative location for love and intimacy.
However marginal or unclear are the bible’s teachings on homosexuality, the scriptural canon clearly and repeatedly affirms that God made man and woman for one another. Any contemporary discernment over homosexuality must struggle with this positive norm that is the overwhelming witness of the scriptural narrative.
For example, Hays turns to Acts 10 and 11, Luke’s story documenting the entrance of Gentiles into the fledgling (Jewish) Christian Church. In the story, God directs the apostle Peter in a dream to understand that God desired the inclusion of the Roman, Cornelius, into the community of Jesus. Cornelius’ inclusion represents God’s invitation to all Gentiles, an invitation that shatters all of Peter’s preconceptions about sin, purity and righteousness. Advocates for the acceptance of homosexuals frequently point to this story from Acts as evidence that God desires the church’s fellowship to extend to those previously judged sinful, impure and unrighteous.
Richard Hays, however, argues that such a reading of Acts 10 and 11 misses the mark, for the early church did not conclude from Cornelius’ story that the biblical witness had, up until then, been wrong on the issue of the Gentiles. Instead Cornelius’ inclusion prompted the church reread their scripture and discover that the welcome to the Gentiles had been consistent throughout scripture. Homosexuality is not an analogous issue, Hays would argue, because no where in scripture does the narrative advocate the inclusion or acceptance of homosexuals.
Because scripture consistently adopts a negative view of homosexuality and affirms the heterosexual norm, Hays, unlike Blount, argues that any change to the church’s traditional teaching must come only “after sustained and agonizing scrutiny by a consensus of the faithful.”
The Catholic biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson echoes Hays’ urging of consensus-building caution and discernment, writing that:
“The burden of proof required to overturn scriptural precedents is heavy, but it is a burden that has been born before. The Church cannot, should not, define itself in response to political pressure or popularity polls. But it is called to discern the work of God in human lives and adapt its self-understanding in response to the work of God.”