Against the Stream

The Elusive James Comey/Reinhold Niebuhr/Twitter Connection

As long as I'm posting about things Niebuhr-related this week, I might as well draw your attention to this weird little story, via Gizmodo. Apparently FBI Director James Comey has Twitter and Instagram accounts, and they are named after Reinhold Niebuhr:

Among the various Comeys, only two of the suggested accounts lacked both real names and profile photos. And only one of these had anywhere near the “nine followers” that James Comey claimed to have. That account was reinholdniebuhr.

Can we be sure? Well the circumstantial evidence in the article is pretty compelling, particularly this:

By senior year, Comey was a double major in religion and chemistry, writing a senior thesis on theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and televangelist Jerry Falwell and on his way to the University of Chicago Law School

Hm. Fascinating. Of course, the account is private, so good luck using this information to learn anything about what the FBI knows about Trump and China, or Reinhold Niebuhr for that matter.

Was Reinhold Niebuhr a "Real Theologian"?

As I mentioned the other day, there is a new movie being released on the life and work of Reinhold Niebuhr. As a result, we are seeing the reemergence of the perennial question of whether or not Reinhold was a "real theologian." Most recently, this question was raised again  on the blog Die Evangelischen Theologan by J. Scott Jackson, who writes:

Just how theological was Niebuhr's work -- at least the main body of it? To what extent did specifically Christian theological and moral commitments shape his vocation as public intellectual? From what I've read, I'm inclined to answer the later question: "a very great deal." But the earlier question seems a little more ambiguous. To be sure, Niebuhr, who never earned a doctorate, did not write extensively, say, about the intricacies of trinitarian dogma; nor did he offer in-depth analyses of atonement theories; nor did he offer a thorough critique or defense of two-natures Christology. That said, I do have to point out that Niebuhr was a prolific and world-class preacher, who could engage biblical texts with extraordinary sensitivity and insight.

As Jackson's comment indicates, he is well aware that Niebuhr was a very biblically literate preacher, and was able to work with a biblical text in order to produce some genuinely stirring sermons (and for those who are interested in doing so, I highly recommend Niebuhr's book Discerning the Signs of the Times, which contains several examples of his sermons). So an important preliminary question to answer is "what do we mean by theologian?" And it turns out, that depends on who you ask.

Most of those in the "Niebuhr was not a theologian" camp are barthian -- followers of, or strongly influenced by, the work of Karl Barth. Barth's theology, of course, is vast and encompassing. His magnum opus, The Church Dogmatics, which was unfinished at the time of Barth's death at fourteen densely packed volumes. Barth is generally understood to be a "dogmatic theologian" or as we Americans might say, a "systematic theologian," and thus approaches theology with the goal of examining the theological enterprise as a comprehensive whole. Paul Tillich, while very different from Barth, is a theologian in the same sense: Interested in the doctrinal dimensions of Christian thought and their implications. Additionally, both Barth and Tillich saw theology as the work of the Christian community as manifested in the Church.

Probably the most trenchant critique of Niebuhr on this point, at least in the last few years, has been Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas, while clearly having carved his own theological identity, is among those for whom Barth's theology was a major influence, and this shows particularly in his treatment of Niebuhr. In his Gifford Lectures, With the Grain of the Universe, Hauerwas writes the following:

For Niebuhr, theology was tested -- or to use his language, validated -- by its ability to provide provocative accounts of the human condition. Accordingly, Niebuhr's theology seems to be a perfect exemplification of Ludwig Feuerbach's argument that theology, in spite of its pretentious presumption that its subject matter is God, is in fact but a disguised way to talk about humanity. (115).

In a similar vein, Shirley Guthrie, a student of Karl Barth's wrote his dissertation on Niebuhr's theology and ethics, and concluded as follows:

Nevertheless, we have seen that both on the basis of what Niebuhr has said and on the basis of what he significantly has not said, the questions we have raised about the "independent" character of his theology and ethic can and must be asked. Moreover, we have seen that they may all be summarized in one single question. It is the question, based on the New Testament faith itself, of the place of the person and work of Jesus Christ in Niebuhr's thought. An answer to the questions we have raised must begin above all with the question of his person and work as the risen Lord, and with the Church as the particular place in which he reveals himself and through which he works. For the problem of the Christian ethic, like that of any other ethic, is "what shall we do and say now?" and the Christian answer depends directly on what christ is today. We have seen again and again that this is the crucial point for evaluating Niebuhr's ethic and theology, the crucial point for judging the validity or inadequacy of his "mythical" or "symbolic" interpretation of the Christian faith, and for measuring his success or failure in fulfilling his own criteria. ... Is it not so that Niebuhr does not, and on the basis of his presuppositions neither need nor can, recognize the reality of the living, self-revealing, working Lord, Jesus Christ; and is it not so that just for this reason one must say that his presuppositions themselves as well as the theology and the ethic which follow from them cannot be independently Christian?

Guthrie packs a great deal into a short passage, but the implied answer to his question is that Niebuhr's thought cannot be understood to be "independently Christian," which is to say for Guthrie, as for barthians generally, it is rooted in some source outside of the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and thus not authentically Christian or in a real way genuinely theological.

In the Facebook conversation on Jackson's article, George Hunsinger recommended Guthrie's take on Niebuhr, asserting that it demonstrated that "all of Hauerwas's worst fears were realized." All of which is to say, all the barthians agree that Niebuhr was not a theologian. Though what they are really saying is that Niebuhr was not a barthian, which is self-evidently true, and a point that Niebuhr would not only have acknowledged, but celebrated.

But the accusation runs deeper than the idea that Niebuhr was not a theologian, even in the broad sense that he was not a dogmatic or systematic theologian. What is really being asserted by both Guthrie and Hauerwas (and, though I suspect he'd deny it, tacitly affirmed by Hunsinger) is that Niebuhr's work was not even genuinely Christian. Rather, there are three specific ways in which, for the barthians, Niebuhr fails the Christianity test.

First, they argue that he did not really believe in God, but was a form of religious naturalist, of the Feuerbachian sort. Hauerwas makes this accusation explicitly above. However, this is a drastic misreading of Niebuhr. As Gary Dorrian has noted, Niebuhr had a very strongly transcendent view of divinity:

Epistemologically, Niebuhr posited a divine ground of meaning and coherence beyond all finite notions of meaning and coherence; ontologically, he asserted the transcendence of God’s being over all contingent and temporal being while affirming that God is continually present to God’s creation in the workings of providence, the history of judgment, the grace of renewal, and the stirrings of individual moral conscience (The Making of American Liberal Theology, vol. 2, 468).

I've written on this topic myself in other places. In an article published in Political Theology, I wrote the following:

It is simply not credible for Hauerwas to attempt to paint Niebuhr as a “naturalist” for whom God was simply a projection of human desires and virtues and Christ was simply a good man. When Hauerwas makes such statements as “Niebuhr’s god is not a god capable of offering salvation in any material sense,” one wonders how Hauerwas can interpret such Niebuhrian statements as “the significance of a Christ is that he is a disclosure of the divine purpose, governing history within history,” or “the self-disclosure of God in Christ is significantly regarded by Christian faith as the final ‘word’ which God has spoken to man. The revelation of the Atonement is precisely a ‘final’ word because it discloses a transcendent divine mercy which represents the ‘freedom’ of God in quintessential terms.” ("Being Wrong and Being Right," 480-1)

Furthermore:

Given Niebuhr’s own emphasis on the human need for and longing for God as emerging from a realization that we are incapable of attaining our highest possibilities, it is difficult to understand how he could possibly see any version of “naturalism” as providing a solution to the problems endemic to the human condition. One might understand if Niebuhr were to reply in the spirit of exis- tential resignation, that the human condition is insoluble, but to posit God as the solution to the particular problems that Niebuhr identifies necessitates a rejection of religious natural- ism, not an embrace of it. (481)

Indeed, Niebuhr explicitly and emphatically rejects religious naturalism directly:

The trouble with religious naturalism is not only that it obscures the whole mystery of the divine, the mystery of creativity and grace, but that it also falsifies the whole drama of human history with its increasing heights of good and evil and in the paradoxical relation of persons to this drama. For persons are both the creatures and the creators of the process. Professor Wieman is under the impression that a classical Christian faith is merely a crude, pre-scientific way of looking at the world, God, and the self. He, with the help of modern science and the ontology of Dewey and Whitehead (more Dewy than Whitehead, for Whitehead did not understand the mystery of creation beyond the temporal process and consequently agonized about the relation of the "primordial" to the "consequent" God) will construct a more adequate view of God and the world. H will define either the temporal process itself as God, or that part of it which is value-creating. Since Hitler's day his is not so certain that the process of "integration" is of itself "value-creating."

This suggests that Hauerwas was far too eager to read Niebuhr through the Feuerbachian lens, and left on the cutting room floor any ideas or passages of Niebuhr's that didn't support his preconceived notion of what Niebuhr's theology, not being barthian, must necessarily be.

Second, they argue that Niebuhr did not have an adequate Christology. Though here again, the passages quoted above give a very clear indication of the way in which an incarnation Christology was central to Niebuhr's soteriology. And the entire second volume of The Nature and Destiny of Man is given over precisely to the question of the significance and character of Jesus Christ. As Langdon Gilkey notes:

This intimate relation in Niebuhr between social theory, political ethics, and "high theology" (Atonement and Christology) is nowhere more event than in Niebuhr's discussion of "powerlessness," the powerlessness and so the ultimate vulnerability of Jesus as the Christ. Here the agape of God, which represented the pinnacle of the divine transcendence and mystery, becomes in historical enactment the apparent opposite of transcendence, its paradoxical partner, powerlessness and vulnerability. In the divine love the ultimately unconditioned becomes the absolutely conditioned. And this paradox of unconditioned majesty and radical conditioned vulnerability, of ultimate power and absolute powerlessness, is for Niebuhr the center of the Christian gospel and of the Biblical message. (On Niebuhr, 186).

Paul Lehman as well, saw Christology as central to Niebuhr's thought, stating: "Christology has been and is the principal passion and purpose of his theological work ... Christology is pivotal, not peripheral ... a remarkably evangelical view of the person and work of Jesus Christ" (in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, quoted in Fackre, The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr, 104).

Third, it is often argued that Niebuhr did not have an adequate vision of the role of the Church in Christian ethics. Now here, his critics do have a point. Niebuhr did not write extensively of the role of the church or its place in Christian ethics. Both Hauerwas (for whom the Church often seems to be about the only thing that does matter) and Guthrie hammer Niebuhr on this point. Yet, two things need to be said about this. First, Niebuhr himself was a lifelong church-goer and was a pastor for many years. He regularly preached in churches around the country. Clearly Niebuhr was, in his life, very closely affiliated with the church. Secondly, Niebuhr's innate suspicion of the way in which group egoism and self-deception functioned in institutional settings was no doubt a factor in his lack of attention to the church as any kind of exceptional institution. Indeed, the sad fact is that the Church as quite often remarkable precisely to the extent that it is not an exception on these fronts.

However, Niebuhr did recognize this as a deficit in his own thought, writing:

I think that I have increasingly recognized the value of the Church as a community of grace which, despite historic corruptions, has the 'oracles of God,' as St. Paul said about Israel. The church is the one place in history where life is kept open for the final word of God's judgment to break the pride of men and for the word of God's mercy to lift up the brokenhearted. Inasmuch as this has been only a growing recognition, Professor Wolf's criticism is justified. But when I see how much new evil comes into life through the pretention of the religious community, through is conventional and graceless legalism and through religious fanaticism, I am concerned that my growing appreciation of the church should not betray me into this complacency. (Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, 437)

While it was never the subject of sustained attention in his thought, it was always in the background of his reflections, even if not viewed that way by Hauerwas and Guthrie, for whom the only validly Christian ethic is precisely one that takes place in and through the church. Of course, Niebuhr's ethic was in and through the church. As Gabe Fackre notes:

Critics often accuse Niebuhr of lacking an ecclesiology. As a pastor and teacher in the church he helped to found-the Evangelical and Reformed Church-I saw for myself his deep immersion in and love for the Church. This ecclesial context is basic to who he was and how he thought, especially so his shaping by both the Reformed and Lutheran traditions of his church. While Niebuhr never attempted to construct a systematic ecclesiology, his life and faith cannot be understood without a grasp of the functional ecclesiology in which they are grounded. (The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr).

What it was not was by and exclusively for the church, which seems to be the bone of contention for Hauerwas.

To return to the question of what makes a "real" theologian: If the only definition of "theologian" that is acceptable is "dogmatic" or "systematic" theologian, then I suppose Niebuhr wasn't a theologian, but then I'm not sure that Augustine was either. Both wrote occasional theology, writing in context and seeking to illuminate the particular pressing theological themes with which they were confronted in their own time and place. While Augustine's range may have been greater than Niebuhr's, that hardly detracts from the idea that Niebuhr was a theologian in the same vein as Augustine, any more than one can say that, because Tom Brady has won more Super Bowls than Payton Manning, that somehow means Manning isn't a quarterback.

Sometimes, the "Niebuhr is not a theologian" argument is grounded in an assertion that Niebuhr himself denied that he was one. This of course, requires taking his words out of context. In the volume of critical essays about his theology, to which he responded, he took specific note of Paul Lehman's critique of him:

Thus the Christological center of my thought has become more explicit and more important. But, as Professor Lehmann declares, I have never pretended to be a theologian, and so I have elaborated the Christological theme only in the context of inquiries about human nature and human history.

This would seem perhaps to settle the case, until one turns to Lehman's article, because Lehman was specifically noting that Niebuhr was not a systematic theologian. His statement? "Reinhold Niebuhr is not a systematic theologian (Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought).

Honestly, the whole argument is intensely annoying to me precisely because it is typically used as a way of delegitimizing Niebuhr as a Christian thinker -- undermining his status not only within the field of Christian theology generally, but even as a Christian. At the end of the day though, I think, for all I've written here, I probably can't answer the question better than Langdon Gilkey:

To my knowledge, no one has tried to present Niebuhr's political and ethical views in the light of his entire theological viewpoint -- which was, I believe, the way that he always saw those views. that is to say, he understood politics and ethics theologically, in relation to what he regarded as the Christian understanding of human being, of the creativity and the ambiguity of freedom, and of the course of history under God. As he argued repeatedly, this theological framework is essential for any valid comprehension of the puzzles and paradoxes of our ordinary experience.

That sure sounds like a theologian to me.

 

Complexity and Nuance in Arguments About Abortion

Two articles in today's Religion Dispatches address Tom Groome's New York Times editorial urging Democrats to back away from their strong official support for abortion rights. Groom argues, as the title of his post asserts: "To Win Again, Democrats Need to Stop Being the Abortion Party." In the editorial he writes :

If Democrats want to regain the Catholic vote, they must treat abortion as a moral issue, work for its continued reduction and articulate a more nuanced message than, “We support Roe v. Wade.”

Both Patricia Miller and Myiram Renaud take issue with Groome's (or as Miller repeatedly, and I assume unintentionally refers to him, "Broome's") argument. Both note that Democratic politicians have repeatedly over the years sought to nuance their support for abortion rights with various qualifications, perhaps the most of famous of which was Bill Clinton's affirmation that abortion should be "Safe, Legal, and Rare." As Renaud states:

But for those with ears to listen, prominent Democrats like Obama and Clinton do articulate a more nuanced message than “We support Roe v. Wade.” They treat abortion as a moral issue because, for them, it is one.

The truth of the matter is that, no matter how much nuance any pro-choice candidate puts into their position, it will be unsatisfactory to those who are inveterately anti-abortion. If the only answer to the question of what to do about abortion is "prevent it entirely" then there is no pro-choice position that has a chance of succeeding in that argument. At the same time, as Miller notes, there is no evidence that a more "nuanced" position would have won Clinton the votes of that many Catholics, and that in fact the loss she suffered among white Catholics in the Rust Belt states had little to do with her stance on abortion to begin with. What's more, if the goal is to create a winning strategy, it's virtually guaranteed that Clinton would have lost more support among pro-choice voters than she would have gained among Catholics if she had altered her fundamental support for Roe v. Wade.

That said, the Democratic position on abortion is already plenty nuanced. As Miller notes:

The Democratic Party signed on wholeheartedly to so-called common ground efforts to find ways to decrease the need for abortion and promote adoption in the mid-2000s. The “Reducing the Need for Abortions and Supporting Parents Act” was introduced in 2006 and included increased funding for family planning programs, improved insurance coverage for pregnant women, and tax incentives for adoption. It was supported by NARAL, Catholics for Choice and the Christian Coalition. It was Republicans who walked away from these efforts when they realized they could make political hay by opposing Planned Parenthood and insurance coverage for contraception.

At the same time, the allegedly "pro-life" position is belied by the utter lack of genuine support for the care of infants once they are born on behalf of conservatives, which was revealed nowhere more clearly than in the debacle of the Trump/Ryan American Health Care Act. Again, Miller notes:

Political restrictions on women’s access to abortion aren’t about protecting life or realizing the “moral complexity” of abortion. Nowhere was this more obvious than the fight over the ill-fated AHCA, which would have banned coverage for abortion, and if the “Freedom Caucus” had their way or Republicans had a shot at a clean bill, also would have stripped maternity coverage and newborn care as essential health benefits. That’s right. The “pro-life” party would have made it impossible to terminate your pregnancy and impossible to get medical coverage for that pregnancy or your newborn. That sure is some moral complexity.

There are lot of reasons Clinton lost in November. And Trump's support among evangelicals is one of them, and certainly tied to his support for abortion restrictions. But Groome's analysis, as Miller and Renaud each show, radically misplaces the role abortion politics played in the outcome, at at least as it relates to Catholics.

Why Go Niebuhr?

Last January I did a live streamed "webinar" with Tripp Fuller at Home-brewed Christianity. As always with Tripp, I had a blast, and if you missed it, you can now check it out at the link below!

Why Go Niebuhr?

Meanwhile, in other Niebuhr news, last night DePaul University hosted a showing of the new documentary about Reinhold Niebuhr, An American Conscience. The director, Martin Dobelmeier was on hand to speak about the movie, and I was on a panel with Reggie Williams from McCormick Theological Seminary. The movie great and I highly recommend you check it out. Here is the trailer.

Trailer: An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story from Jen Quintana on Vimeo.

Tying these two events together, last night after the panel discussion, Jeremy Sabella, who wrote the excellent companion book for An American Conscience, reminded me of something I said in the January podcast that I had completely forgotten about, but which clearly remains relevant as we reckon with the continuing disaster of the Trump presidency: We don't need a new Niebuhr, we need a thousand Niebuhrs!

Eric Metaxas, Your Bonhoeffer Privileges Are Revoked!

 

Bonhoeffer can't even with Eric Metaxas

 

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about Eric Metaxas's egregious misuse of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology in order to condemn liberal, pro-gay and lesbian Christians, arguing that these Christians, rather than the anti-gay conservative evangelicals that are Metaxas's gravy train, were akin to Nazis. At the time, I ended my post with these words: "So now, let us finally be done with Eric Metaxas. May I never have to hear his name or discuss his "work" ever again."

Alas, this was not to be. As Metaxas has spent the last few years capitalizing on his absolutely abysmal, morally bankrupt, and historically inaccurate biography of Bonhoeffer in order to cement his place as a conservative Christian public intellectual. It would be bad enough if he had simply written a poor biography and then moved on. But having positioned himself now as a go-to "Bonhoeffer scholar," he sees fit to invoke Bonhoeffer's legacy in the name of whatever ax he happens to be grinding at the particular moment (as in the above case of Christianity and homosexuality).

And now, it's come to this: Metaxas has now decided to thoroughly sully both his own, barely salvageable to begin with, reputation, and the legacy of a genuinely great Christian theologian and moral exemplar by arguing that Bonhoeffer's theology should lead Christians to support Donald Trump. No really. This was his argument.

In The Wall Street Journal he recently wrote the following:

The anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer also did things most Christians of his day were disgusted by. He most infamously joined a plot to kill the head of his government. He was horrified by it, but he did it nonetheless because he knew that to stay "morally pure" would allow the murder of millions to continue. Doing nothing or merely "praying" was not an option. He understood that God was merciful, and that even if his actions were wrong, God saw his heart and could forgive him. But he knew he must act. 

Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer knew it was an audience of One to whom they would ultimately answer. And He asks, "What did you do to the least of these?" 

It's a fact that if Hillary Clinton is elected, the country's chance to have a Supreme Court that values the Constitution -- and the genuine liberty and self-government for which millions have died -- is gone. Not for four years, or eight, but forever. Many say Mr. Trump can't be trusted to deliver on this score, but Mrs. Clinton certainly can be trusted in the opposite direction. For our kids and grandkids, are we not obliged to take our best shot at this? Shall we sit on our hands and refuse to choose? 

If imperiously flouting the rules by having a private server endangered American lives and secrets and may lead to more deaths, if she cynically deleted thousands of emails, and if her foreign-policy judgment led to the rise of Islamic State, won't refusing to vote make me responsible for those suffering as a result of these things? How do I squirm out of this horrific conundrum? It's unavoidable: We who can vote must answer to God for these people, whom He loves. We are indeed our brothers' and sisters' keepers. 

We would be responsible for passively electing someone who champions the abomination of partial-birth abortion, someone who is celebrated by an organization that sells baby parts. We already live in a country where judges force bakers, florists and photographers to violate their consciences and faith -- and Mrs. Clinton has zealously ratified this. If we believe this ends with bakers and photographers, we are horribly mistaken. No matter your faith or lack of faith, this statist view of America will dramatically affect you and your children. 

For many of us, this is very painful, pulling the lever for someone many think odious. But please consider this: A vote for Donald Trump is not necessarily a vote for Donald Trump himself. It is a vote for those who will be affected by the results of this election. Not to vote is to vote. God will not hold us guiltless.

It is hard to underestimate how genuinely horrific this argument is. Leaving aside the rehashing of numerous distortions of Hillary's record, the argument boils down to: Hillary is wrong on abortion and gays, so Bonhoeffer would have us vote for a crypto-fascist, racist, misogynist, islamophobic buffoon with no impulse control, no knowledge of anything regarding public policy, ominous ties to Russia, and a demonstrated penchant to lie constantly without any provocation whatsoever.

It's worth nothing that Metaxas mentions abortion only in passing (and, in the process, bears false witness against Planned Parenthood by accusing them of "selling baby parts" -- a widely debunked lie), and then proceeds to his real agenda: Fear of TEH GAY.  This is all couched in the language of "genuine liberty and self-government" which he claims will be "gone forever" if Hillary Clinton has a chance to ... what? Appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court? Really? Or more judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Really? The Notorious RBG is the greatest threat to our democracy? Somehow Metaxas has convinced himself that if Hillary Clinton gets to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices this will be, despite every rational indication otherwise, the complete and utter end of the American experiment. Having to give equal treatment in public accommodation to gay couples will lead to the gas chambers, apparently.

And, lest you think that Metaxas doesn't really make that kind of equivalency. Here is what he tweeted* mere hours ago:

The fascistic globalism of HRC/Obama is similar to the threat that German fascist nationalism was in Bonhoeffer's day. Both are anti-God.

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) October 19, 2016

As an alternative, he not only proposes Trump, but indeed argues that Bonhoeffer would support Trump. And Bonhoeffer, he argues, would support Trump because Bonhoeffer knew that we all ultimately are answerable to God. Never mind that Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Nazis early precisely because of the kind of racist rhetoric that Trump uses toward Mexicans and Muslims. Never mind that Trump's authoritarianism and disdain for democratic processes, even to the point of threatening to jail his political opponents, would have reminded Bonhoeffer chillingly of Germany in the 1930s. Never mind that Trump's desire to control and punish the press would look a lot, if he got away with it, like similar events with which Bonhoeffer was directly familiar. Never mind Trump's connections to the alt-right movement which explicitly connects itself to Nazism. Never mind that Donald Trump embodies quite literally the opposite of everything Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood for. Leave all of that aside. Metaxas is appropriating Bonhoeffer in order to further argue that God wants us to vote for Donald Trump!

Bad enough as it is to see Metaxas continue to stain the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it's even worse to see him do so in order to argue for a privileged Metaxas-only pipeline into the mind of God. Bonhoeffer was never, never so arrogant as to claim he knew what God demanded of him. On the contrary, much of his personal struggle was precisely about the moral ambiguity of determining what he should do as an individual of conscience in the absence of such knowledge. He participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler not because he thought that God was demanding it of him, but in spite of the fact that everything he knew about the Christian tradition impelled him in the opposite direction. He did so because he felt the burden of responsibility in the face of God's silence and his own knowledge of just how bad the Nazis were. He was determined to stand before God, not with clean hands, but with the knowledge that he could face God's judgement knowing he had acted responsibly on behalf of those who could not act for themselves, unwilling to hide his dirty hands.

Clearly Metaxas has elevated the perceived threat of a Hillary Clinton presidency to such a level in his own mind that he believes the struggle to elect Donald Trump is equivalent to the struggle of the Confessing Church against the Nazis. But that's a transparently ridiculous claim. And making it requires a complete distortion of Bonhoeffer's legacy. On the other hand, if Hillary isn't Hitler, neither really is Trump -- Despite his authoritarianism, despite his racism, despite his xenophobia, despite the violence of his followers. He is, at worst, a down market Silvio Berlusconi, more of a fool and a travesty than an actual threat. Nevertheless, to attempt to deploy Bonhoeffer in order to argue that God is commanding us to support such a clod, despite the fact that he stands in opposition to everything we know Bonhoeffer stood for, it's more than simply a shame. It's an insult, and it demands action.

Therefore, Eric Metaxas, in the name of all who value the theology and the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I hereby revoke your Bonhoeffer privileges! And may God have mercy on your soul.

*Interestingly, it turns out that Eric Metaxas has blocked me on Twitter, which I find terribly amusing, since I don't think I ever tagged him in anything, and didn't even follow him on Twitter. I guess it was a preemptive blocking, just in case I ever decided to call him again on his total nonsense and horrible misuse of Bonhoeffer.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Not a Religion

Earlier this week, a Federal District Court ruled that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CFSM) should not be considered a religion under U.S. law. According to an article on the ruling by the Religion News Service, this was based upon the fact that the Church was clearly intended to be satire, and not anything that could be considered a "genuine" religion.

In a 16-page decision, the U.S. District Court of Nebraska ruled that Pastafarianism is satire, not sacred, and that anyone who thinks it is a religion has made an error “of basic reading comprehension.”

“This is not a question of theology,” the ruling reads in part. “The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a ‘religious exercise’ on any other work of fiction.”

What I find interesting in the ruling is the fact that it makes a clear demarcation between something that is transparently satirical, and what would commonly be considered "genuine" faith. It raises a number of sticky issues, not least of which is "how can one go about distinguishing "genuine" from "inauthentic" religion. However, I don't think that the problem is nearly as difficult as the ruling's detractors are seeking to make it.

In the view of the CFSM's supporters, it is impossible to distinguish between a "real" religion and the CFSM, since everything that appears absurd about that faith is, in their estimation, no less absurd than the doctrines of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology. By ruling against Pastafarianism (as the church is sometimes referred to), they argue that the court is  making declarations about what constitutes "true" versus "false" religion.

However, that's not how I read the situation. The question is not whether the object of the religion is true or false, but whether the belief in the object of religious faith is sincerely held by adherents. The problem isn't that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's that absolutely no one really believes that there is one. As an act of satire, the CFSM has done its job too well. It has set itself up as such a transparent attempt to troll genuine religious belief, that no one can possibly take it seriously as a religious faith, to the extent that, even if someone were to claim to believe it sincerely, it would be quite clear that this is simply part of the act. (And if you don't believe me, try listening to or reading someone affirm the doctrines of Pastafarianism without conveying an obvious smirk).

This is in distinction from, say Scientology, which I have in the past defended as an "authentic" religion. By this I do not mean that I believe its doctrines to be true, or even remotely plausible. Rather, in thinking of Scientology as a religion, I recognize that there are many people who, for better or for worse, hold it as a sincere matter of faith. Now, I have heard from former Scientologists that much of the leadership of the Church is corrupt and abusive. This is probably completely true. I've heard enough similar reports to grant that a high degree of probability. But it's irrelevant to the question of whether it constitutes an authentic religion, because again, it's not about the truth or falsity of the doctrines, it's about the sincerity with which they are held. It's not about the virtuousness of the church's leadership, it's about the degree to which they are genuinely held in esteem by their followers, or can at least make a credible case that they are.

And this is the problem with the CFSM. One respondent in a conversation about this asked "why must it be the case that a belief is held sincerely in order for a religion to be authentic," to which I responded, "because the very nature of the word "belief" implied the idea that the thing believed is sincerely held to be true. There is simply no such thing as a genuine "belief" which is not sincerely held. Since nobody claiming to hold to the beliefs of the CFSM has been able to make even the most basic case that they hold those beliefs sincerely, it cannot be considered to a genuine religion. It's too successful as an act of satire. If the CFSM had wanted to be held as an actual religion, it would have had to do a better job cultivating a base of followers that could credibly claim that they sincerely believe it.

This, to be clear, has nothing to do with the question of whether one can "prove" the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster any more than one can "prove" the existence of God. The response that the FSM is just as credible as the Christian or Muslim God is, from a legal perspective, beside the point. This is not a matter of philosophical proof or comparative theology. It's a matter of what the courts often call the "reasonable person test." Would a reasonable person, looking at the CFSM conclude that its adherents held its beliefs sincerely, or merely for the purposes of satire. On that basis, I think a court could validly conclude that the CFSM is not a religion because it's precepts are not sincerely held.

Now, there may be other grounds on which one could make a case for the validity of the CFSM as a religion, but I'm of the opinion that, as New Religious Movements go, it's really not very interesting precisely because it's so obviously satirical. What I'd be interested in seeing would be a case where, for example, someone who followed the Jedi religion wanted that to be officially recognized. There are, after all, those who hold that Jedi-ism is a genuine religious belief, and they hold it sincerely. I think one could make a very compelling case, in a way that one can't for the CFSM in favor of adherents of Jedi religion, on much the same grounds as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Scientology.

Once More Into The "One God" Breach Dear Friends

Benjamin Dueholm has a piece in Religion Dispatches today that adds a bit more to the ongoing Wheaton College controversy over whether Christians and Muslims worship the "same God." A few points that he raises are worth accenting. First, on the subject of how "monotheism" has traditionally functioned in Christian theology, he writes:

To some extent this may reflect the relative decline of classical philosophical monotheism in Christian discourse. Aquinas and his non-Christian influences had a common language for the nature of God—one, transcendent, necessary, eternal, not subject to change or decay, and so on. This language was at one time believed to be logically prior to revelation, and to be valid even if no revelation had confirmed it (this led thinkers of all three faiths into some risky territory with their co-religionists).

Moreover there were aspects of the revelations themselves—the “book” of which Dr. Hawkins spoke, quoting a common Islamic formula for the adherents of the monotheistic religions—that cohered in broadly shared themes. The world has an origin and a conclusion; humans are made for relationship with God; moral precepts are ordered to the knowledge and service of this God.

This philosophical language and these intertextual themes are less prominent in Christian thought today, especially among Protestants.

This point cannot be stressed enough. The theological positivism represented by way that Wheaton's administration has chosen to interpret Professor Hawkins' statements represents a failure to recognize the continuity of tradition in thinking about the question of monotheism. What Medieval Catholic theologians and Medieval Muslim scholars shared in common with one another allowed them to actually argue over the substance of their theological claims. These scholars were actually having a disagreement, whereas Wheaton College can't actually be said to be "disagreeing" with anyone because it's refusing to even engage in a substantive conversation with Islam over the nature of its differences. The best that can come -- the best -- from a religious dispute of this sort is a set of mutually dueling monologues, in which religious traditions talk past one another and refuse to recognize any common ground from which they can speak. Of course, the more common result of this refusal to engage on a set of common terms is violence, coming from both sides in the dispute. But if the goal of speech is understanding, then recognizing a common language for conversation is a necessary first step. We once had that in the conversation between Christians and Muslims, but we don't any longer.

Ben goes on to make another point:

Where Christianity’s similarities with the monotheisms—whether of Greeks, Jews, or Muslims—were once central to Christian interfaith apologetics, now it is the distinctive marks that predominate. Some evangelicals have adopted a sort of slogan that Christianity is “not a religion but a relationship,” fully severing the anguished familial bonds with Judaism and Islam.

In other circles it is now more common to describe religion as constituted by its practices and its distinctive narratives, diminishing the abstract notion of God to something of a cipher.

This point is even more perplexing to me coming from an evangelical institution such as Wheaton. Given the focus on conversion, and the need for apologetics, the fact that they would abandon what has been, since Paul's speech at the Areopagus, the central apologetic strategy of Christianity is really rather mind-boggling. It also raises troubling questions, as several commentators have noted, about the relationship between evangelical Christians and Jews, suggesting as it does that they do not believe that Jews worship the same God as Christians any more than Muslims do. As Daniel Kirk has noted, throwing around accusations of Marcionism is a bit of a cottage industry these days, yet I cannot be the only one to find traces of Marcionism in this implication. I was rather startled in my own exchanges over the past several days on this topic to realize that many Christians are actually quite happy to abandon the claim that Christians and Jews worship the same God, if that means that they don't have to accept that Muslims worship the same God as well.

But what this demonstrates is how the commitment to the exclusion of Muslims has led to an incoherent and tribalistic rhetoric in some evangelical circles, where evangelism simply consists of responding to every question with a Bible verse (as though that would convince anyone who didn't already hold the Bible as authoritative in some way, and as though those passages themselves don't require contextualization and interpretation), and where there is not even a scintilla of rational engagement with those with whom we disagree, or even an acknowledgment of a shared language. The problem is not, I think, that there are some people who just can't be bothered to rationally engage on these questions. There will always be people whose capacity and desire for such engagement is limited. The problem is that those who can't be bothered occupy positions of power and influence in educational institutions intended to represent the Christian intellectual tradition at its best.

For now at least, Wheaton's administration seems to have decided that it's given up on the business of education, in name of indoctrination. More's the pity for its excellent faculty and students.

Christians, Muslims, and God Take Two

Much as I've appreciated Miroslav Volf's defense of the argument that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, one passage in his Washington Post article jumped out at me as rather dissonant, but I didn't really feel qualified to comment on it. However, it turns out that my Catholic Theological Union colleague Scott Alexander noticed the same thing, and he is qualified to comment. Here's the passage from Volf:

In addition to contesting the Trinity and the Incarnation, Muslims also contest the Christian claim that God is love — unconditional and indiscriminate love. There is no claim in Islam that God ‘justifies the ungodly’ and no command to love one’s enemies. But these are the signature claims of the Christian faith. Take the redemption of the ungodly and the love of enemy out of the Christian faith, and you un-Christian it.

Clearly, Christians and Muslims disagree, just as Christians and Jews do, on the questions of the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity. These are rather basic disagreements, though profound as they are, they do not nullify the underlying argument. Christians and Muslims may be said to worship the same God, even if they disagree about the nature and attributes of that God. However, what about this business about Muslims not believing that God is Love, or that God commands us to love our enemies? Scott Alexander writes in response to these assertions:

My experience with Muslim interlocutors of various types have taught me that, although they may reject the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, Muslims have their own different but equally powerful expressions of God’s love in profound divine-human intimacy.

Muslims personally testify in an abundance of ways to the immanence of God in their lives—the God whose active will is felt in the pulse of the very blood coursing through their veins. This sense of intimacy with a God who loves (His) creation is also echoed in classical interpretations of the two divine attributes attested in Islamic discourse above all others: “The One Who is (Him)self Compassion” and “The One Who Ceaselessly Acts Compassionately in (His) Relationships with All Creatures.”

I discussed this point with a Muslim colleague who pointed out that the Islamic emphasis on God’s rahma or “mercy” is the equivalent of Christian agape in that it is “flows eternally with no expectation of reciprocation.”

Alexander then goes on to address the assertion that Muslims aren't commanded to love their enemies:

In the context of burgeoning Islamophobia in the U.S. and rhetoric which propagates the falsehoods that Islam is an inherently violent faith and that Muslims are uniquely prone to violence in the name of their religion, Volf suddenly resurrects another age-old Christian anti-Muslim polemic. He declares, by way of implicit contrast with Islam, that “love of enemy” is “the signature claim of the Christian faith.”

This highly spurious declaration raises at least two questions.

The first is whether Prof. Volf is familiar with verses such as Q 41:34:

وَلَا تَسْتَوِي الْحَسَنَةُ وَلَا السَّيِّئَةُ ادْفَعْ بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ فَإِذَا الَّذِي بَيْنَكَ وَبَيْنَهُ عَدَاوَةٌ كَأَنَّهُ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمٌ

“[Given the fact that] goodness and evil are not equal, defend yourself [against evil] with what is greater in goodness, such that the one between whom and yourself there is enmity may be as though s/he had always been your intimate friend.”

He goes on to ask how any religion can be said to have a singular "central claim," the absence of which would make it cease to be what it is. He then concludes:

Volf seems to imply, Wheaton and other Evangelical Christian institutions and theologians can then get about the more important business of truly loving Muslims by showing them just how flawed their understanding of the God they worship really is.

As a Christian committed to the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim dialogue, I must respectfully offer my “thanks, but no thanks” to Prof. Volf’s well intentioned but ultimately troubling intervention in the controversy over Prof. Hawkins’s suspension.

I'm not as willing to throw over Volf's whole argument because of these flaws, but I do recognize that they are flaws in his argument. What Volf, Alexander, and I all share is a commitment to the creation of an ongoing conversation between Christians and Muslims, which recognizes and addresses the genuine core differences between them, but also engages in an honest assessment of what we share in common. When Volf argues that "Many Christians and many Muslims worship the same God," I understand him to be saying that those of us who recognize God as the common source and originator of our distinct faiths, and affirm that God wishes us to live in peaceful community with one another, then we are worshiping the same God. Of course, by that same argument, it can be said that Christians and Muslims who desire this share more in common with one another than they each do with members of their own faith that are committed, as far too many are, to the perpetuation of violence and conflict.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Wheaton College has made the news this week for putting a tenured professor on "administrative leave" for having asserted that Christians and Muslims worship "the same God." Here's a brief account of the details via Inside Higher Ed:

Wheaton College, a Christian institution in Illinois, has suspended Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science who has attracted considerable attention for saying she would wear a hijab throughout Advent to express solidarity with Muslims. A statement from the college said the suspension was not for her wearing the hijab, but because of "significant questions regarding the theological implications of statements" she has made. "Wheaton College faculty and staff make a commitment to accept and model our institution's faith foundations with integrity, compassion and theological clarity. As they participate in various causes, it is essential that faculty and staff engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the college's evangelical statement of faith," said the college's statement on the suspension.

The particular statement that got Professor Hawkins into trouble, as described by Christianity Today is this: "“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book, ... And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

There are a number of strands of this controversy which are difficult to unravel. On the one hand, there's the question of academic freedom, in that as a faculty member at a university, Professor Hawkins should be permitted to make statements in her capacity as a professor without fear of institutional reprisal. Yet, at many religiously based colleges and universities today, those rights are to one degree or another curtailed. Yet it undermines Wheaton's credibility as the "Evangelical Harvard" as it claims to be.

Then there is the issue of Professor Hawkins' decision to wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims. Wheaton insists that this was not a factor in their decision. And perhaps it wasn't, but it's hard to disentangle her public display of solidarity from the words she used to express that solidarity. It seems that Wheaton was uncomfortable with the degree to which professor Hawkins was acting "too Muslim" for them. As Miroslav Volf noted in the Washington Post today: "When Hawkins justified her solidarity with Muslims by noting that as a Christian she worships the same God as Muslims, she committed the unpardonable sin of removing the enemy from the category of 'alien' and 'purely evil' other. She also drew attention to the simple fact that most Muslims aren’t enemies."

Then there is the issue of whether Professor Hawkins' defense of her position is "too Catholic" for Wheaton, given the school's history of firing faculty for the "crime" of converting to Catholicism. But at bottom, the school's claim is that she has violated its statement of faith via her assertion that Christians and Muslims worship "the same God." But why should this be controversial?

Certainly there are Christians who are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Christianity has anything at all in common with Islam, as well as those who can't comprehend how Christians and Muslims could worship the same God. However, Islam has always insisted that the God it worships is the God of Abraham, the same God attested to in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. Thus it places itself firmly in the Abrahamic religious tradition. But the fact that Muslims believe they worship the same God as Christians and Jews doesn't necessarily require that Christians believe that, does it?

Well, Muslims assert that they worship the God who was revealed to Moses and the Prophets, just as Christians and Jews do. They assert that the God they follow is one God, just as Christians and Jews do. In many respects in fact, the way that Islam conceives of God is much closer to the Jewish conception of God than the Jewish conception of God is to the Christian conception of God. If Christians and Jews worship the same God, then in what sense would Muslims not do so?

Indeed, as Professor Hawkins statement notes, this position has been officially recognized within the Catholic Church. According to Nostra Aetate:

“The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth (Cf. St. Gregory VII, Letter III, 21 to Anazir [Al-Nasir], King of Mauretania PL, 148.451A.), who has spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his Virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.

Of course, as noted above, Wheaton has some issues with Catholics as well. But there is certainly nothing alien to the idea that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. Of course, this is not the same thing as saying that we understand God in the same way. Our conceptions of God are relevantly similar, but not identical. This is again, clearest when one contrasts the Christian conception of God as one, but also triune, as eternally spirit, but also incarnate in the flesh of Jesus Christ. And in terms of salvation, as Christians we affirm that God saves humanity through Jesus Christ, while both Judaism and Islam believe that it is accomplished through God's law and covenant as attested in the Torah or the Quran. These are deep and relevant differences between these traditions, but acknowledging these differences is quite distinct from saying that each tradition is not, in its own way, seeking to follow the same God.

What's more, if, as many Christians affirm, all truth is one, then anyone seeking to faithfully follow God, whatever tradition they embrace, is following the same God. This position, which was powerfully illustrated by C. S. Lewis in his book The Last Battle implies that one can be mistaken in the substance of one's belief, while still truly following the true God. As Volf states:

All Christians don't worship the same God, and all Muslims don't worship the same God. But I think that Muslims and Christians who embrace the normative traditions of their faith refer to the same object, to the same Being, when they pray, when they worship, when they talk about God. The referent is the same. The description of God is partly different.

A key problem in understanding what is going on at Wheaton has to do with how they understand what it means to "do theology." This is a perennial problem within the evangelical community, and one that I've encountered in conversations with conservative Christians time and again. The problem, in a nutshell, is this: from the conservative Christian perspective, theology is not something that takes place in the context of a particular time and place. It is not a response to the revelation of God. It is not an attempt to engage in an understanding of the tradition to which we belong. Rather, conservative evangelical theology is about obedience to and adherence to authoritative texts, whether those texts from the Bible, particular creeds and confessions, or -- as in this case -- your school's statement of faith. This "received theology," is then declared to represent an uncrossable line, and the decision about who has or has not crossed that line winds up residing with authoritative bodies, like church bodies or university administrations. It constitutes a form of dogmatic theological positivism which does not allow allow any room for actual response to the contextual arena in which God is actually live and moving in the lives of believers.

Contextual theology, by contrast, recognizes that theological work is an ongoing and imperfect project, which takes place in the life of the church, in conversation with tradition and scripture, but always in light of the current situation in which it is being done. What it means to think contextually is to ask the question, as James Gustafson has put it: "What is God enabling and requiring us to do here and now?" This requires us to be open to the leading of God into new situations, to be willing to take risks on behalf of our faith in God, and to act confidently in God's grace when we stumble and fall. While the received, dogmatic theology of conservative evangelicalism is rooted in fear -- specifically fear that God will abandon us if we affirm the wrong propositions about the divine nature -- contextual theology reaches out to new situations in love, acting confidently in the knowledge that "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Professor Hawkins was engaged in a contextual theology, rooted in love for her Muslim brothers and sisters, and in recognition that, as the God of Jesus Christ was the God of Abraham, both Christians and Muslims must worship the same God. Her response wasn't a rejection of Wheaton's Statement of Faith, but it also wasn't simply a dogmatic adherence to it. Rather, it was a contextualization of that statement in light of what God is enabling and requiring of us today.

In the final analysis, there is no good reason for Christians to assert that Muslims follow any other God than the one God who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, even though they do not recognize our account of that revelation, or what we understand it to be telling us about God. What Wheaton has done is shameful, and as Volf notes, has more to do with Professor Hawkins' attempt to "de-other" Muslims, than with any matter of substance having to do with Christian faith or Wheaton's Statement of Faith. Professor Hawkins has done an admirable thing, and by doing so she has drawn attention to the continuing relevance of this key theological question to the ongoing relationship between Christians and Muslims in the United States. More's the pity that there are plenty of Christians around, happily condemning others to hell, who refuse to see the commonality between us and our Muslim brothers and sisters.

Note: This essay has been updated and expanded.

Religion, Violence, and Rene Girard

Rene Girard, the anthropologist and social critic, died shortly before last month's Paris bombings. Today Religion Dispatches reflects on his life and legacy. A key paragraph on the relationship between religion and violence:

For over three decades, scholars of religion have drawn on Girard to inform their work. Christian theologians and New Testament scholars have found Girard’s insights on the scapegoat mechanism of special salience. Girard has argued that myths attest to the scapegoat mechanism from the perspective of persecutors: the victim of mob violence is guilty. By contrast, the Gospels break with myth to present the victim as innocent. Living at a time of social crisis, Jesus is the victim of mob action; but his innocence, attested to by the Gospels, breaks apart the scapegoat mechanism, forever shaking the foundations of a culture built on sacrifice. Even scholars who disagree with Girard about his insights attest to his influence on their work; as a consequence, Girard has had a pervasive impact, especially on scholars who want to understand the dynamics of ritual, the meaning of myth, the origins and history of violence, and the relationship between violence and religion.

For my part, I've always appreciated Giard's ability to interpret and translate the anthropological substance of religious ideas in creative and socially constructive ways. His work has also be extremely useful to me in understanding and interpreting the idea of the atonement in Christian theology. He will be missed.