Our whole cast is back for the latest Mere Fidelity podcast on the subject of weekly worship and its purpose. I lost connection to the call early on, and the others had to go on without me.
You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.
My latest guest post has just gone up over on Political Theology Today:
Sovereignty has historically been manifested and exercised in no small measure through spectacle and through glory. The regal finery with which monarchs are attired, the imposing grandeur of government buildings, the elaborate ritual, ceremony, and pageantry of state occasions, the extravagance of titles and honours, the grandiloquence of state speeches, the exactitude of official etiquette, the lavishness of the provisions for state banquets, the grand exhibitions of marshalled might in military reviews: in these and many other ways sovereignty, power, and authority express and exert themselves in the mode of glory. The spectacle is the clothing of power and sovereignty, the manner in which it manifests itself to the world. As sovereign majesty and might present themselves to be gazed upon in the spectacle, populations can be entranced, enthralled, and arrested, bound together in a sense of reverence, deference, awe, fear, solemnity, delight, or admiration, the public’s imagination captivated.
In the spectacle the quasi-transcendence of sovereignty is affirmed and displayed. A constant lurking fear is that the mortality and weakness of the king’s ‘natural body’ might appear beneath the majestic clothing of the ‘body politic’ (Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies is a significant treatment of this distinction), the latter proving to be naught but a fragile and fading façade over an underlying impotence, or that the mask of the state’s glory might slip to expose its face of brutality. Maintaining the spectacle imbues realities with dignity and symbolic purchase in the popular imagination that they might otherwise lack.
The Transfiguration is a spectacle displaying royal glory and majesty, a manifestation of a rule that is operative in the world. Yet Christ’s kingship, while gloriously displayed in the Transfiguration, is no masquerade beneath a tissue of symbolism and spectacle: his is no ‘hollow crown’. Christ is a king who divests himself of the spectacle of the Mount of Transfiguration, being raised up in the immediacy of his naked mortality on the Mount of Calvary. The dazzling body of the Transfiguration and the whip-furrowed body of the Crucifixion can only truly be understood in relation to each other—they are one and the same.
Read the whole thing here.
In the latest episode of Mere Fidelity, four effete academics—Matt, Derek, and I are joined by our friend Matt Milsap—discuss the ethics of American Football, especially in light of research suggesting its connection to long term brain damage. We also briefly discuss the corruption of soccer’s governing body and the surpassing glories of the sport of cricket.
You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.
The fourth part of my ten part treatment of the Transfiguration and Christian reading of Scripture went online earlier today on Reformation21.
The claim in John 1:18–‘no one has seen God at any time’–is a statement that needs to be qualified (cf. Exodus 24:10-11, which explicitly says that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel ‘saw’ the God of Israel). Exodus 33:20 helps us to clear up what might be meant here. No one can see God’s ‘face’ and live, while Moses could see God’s back. Ezekiel saw the figure of a ‘likeness with the appearance of a man’ (the accumulation of phenomenological terms is important here, serving as linguistic veils at points beyond which direct expression dare not tread) in Ezekiel 1:26-28. However, while the body is described both above and below the waist, no description of the face is given. Moses saw the pre-existent Son, but not as we see him. The face is the focal point of the person’s identity–their countenance. By contrast with the theophanies of the OT, Jesus’ face is central at the Transfiguration (this is also the case in Revelation 1, which shares with Matthew 17:2 the description of Jesus’ face shining like the sun in its glory). In Jesus, God’s face is finally seen.
Read the rest here.
A guest post of mine has just gone up over on Mere Orthodoxy. Within it I respond to claims that Donald Trump’s supporters are merely driven by racism, xenophobia, a hunger for unjust power, and enthralment to celebrity culture. I make the case that a more attentive examination will reveal unflattering truths about American politics and the deep yet often dissembled classism of American society more generally and the responsibility that Trump’s opponents and critics have in preparing the ground for him.
The success of Trump, if I am correct, is in no small measure a result of the failure of other politicians and the establishment more generally to take a number of genuine public concerns seriously, to treat the working class with respect and dignity rather than self-righteous superiority, to address the ineffectiveness of government, to resist the special interests of lobbyists and business that undermine the government’s commitment to the public interest and the common good, to stand for America as a nation, and to encourage a society of robust civil discourse rather than officious and censorious speech policing and pathologization.
When the establishment has demonstrated its lack of genuine respect or concern for a large segment of the population, it is not surprising that such pronounced anti-establishment sentiment should arise. Much as one might wish that Trump supporters—especially the evangelicals among them—followed politicians that sought to maintain a well-ordered and dignified political system, the appeal of Trump is at least as unflattering a revelation of the failure of the establishment to serve the common good and its captivity to party interest as it is of the sentiments of people who will vote for him.
Read the whole thing here.
A very short piece of mine has just been published over on the Political Theology Today blog, on the question of the relationship between religion and violence.
Here, I believe, we find a helpful place to begin a discussion of the association between religion and violence. Religions directly concern themselves with the sphere of self-transcendence and sacrifice, with all of its elevating and destructive potential. They neither create nor monopolize this realm, but they are peculiarly focused upon it, sensitive to it, and active in the formation and confirmation of people within it.
That is one of the reasons why the task of political theology is such an important one: it unearths the forgotten and dissembled roots of the state in the soil of sacrifice and exposes them to the light of critical examination. As Halbertal remarks, it is in religion that we discover means by which to challenge misguided self-transcendence: ‘idolatry … is the utmost sacrifice to a cause that is not worthy of the corresponding sacrifice.’
Within the very brief scope of the piece, I suggest that we should attend, not only to religion as a cause for which people kill and die and to religion’s explicit support of the state in its wars, but also to the way in which religion shapes human solidarities within which people find self-transcendence and the way they negotiate the differences between their solidarities and those of others. Read it all here.
In our latest podcast, Matt, Derek, and I discuss this recent article about Hillsong NYC.
You can also follow the podcast on iTunes, or using this RSS feed. Listen to past episodes on Soundcloud and on this page on my blog.
An article of mine on the subject of infant baptism and Reformation debates concerning the relationship between grace and the administration of the sacrament of baptism has just been published over on Reformation21.
In characterizing magisterial Reformed objections to the Roman Catholic understanding of baptism at the time of the Reformation, some commentators have often focused too narrowly upon the theme of baptismal efficacy. While firmly opposing notions of ex opere operato, few of the magisterial Reformers resisted the notion of baptismal efficacy as such, but rather insisted upon the necessity of faith for the reception and enjoyment of this efficacy, upon God’s freedom in the bestowal of his grace, and upon the Word-based character of the sacraments. If we mistakenly equate baptismal efficacy with an ex opere operato mode of efficacy, we are in danger of missing the fact that the magisterial Reformers presented a higher and more efficacious doctrine of baptism than their Roman Catholic interlocutors.It is at this juncture that the significance of the ‘when’ question should be recognized. The Roman Catholics related the grace of baptism to the performance of the rite itself. For them, the grace signified in baptism was a grace received through the performance of the rite. The answer to the ‘when’ question was ‘at the point of baptism itself.’ Yet the grace of baptism received through the ex opere operato performance of baptism–so powerfully efficacious at the time of the performance–swiftly lost its efficacy. The grace of baptism, once given, was radically at the mercy of the baptismal candidate’s subsequent behaviour. The Canons of Trent (Session XIV in particular) reveal that, the grace of baptism being easily forfeited by sinners who failed to persevere in it, it was necessary to supplement its grace with that of another sacrament–penance. Penance was the answer to the acute problem of post-baptismal sin and to the (temporally) limited efficacy of the grace of baptism. The result was the diminishment of baptismal grace within the sacramental economy: beyond giving an initial impetus, baptism was swiftly substituted for by other sources of grace.
Read the whole thing here.
My latest post over on Political Theology Today is a discussion of the lessons that we may learn about political representation from Paul’s teaching about the Church in 1 Corinthians 12:1-11:
Woven throughout the passage is an account of both unified and unifying divine action. The Spirit is given by God and is the one through whom God gives to form the body of Christ (verses 8-11). The Spirit of God bears witness to the Lordship of Christ (verse 3). All activity finds its origin and end in God (verse 6). Diverse spiritual gifts publicly manifest the shared Gift of the Spirit; differing ministries are devoted to the common service of our one Lord; varied operations are all brought about by God’s effective working. As the Church and its members are caught up in something greater—the divine mission—they will become partakers in a divinely wrought unity.
The unity that Paul describes is not one clearly apparent to sight; it requires a spiritual act of recognition. This act of recognition transforms both our perceptions of ourselves and of our spiritually gifted or office-holding brothers or sisters. In particular, Paul’s approach involves a reconception of the other party: no longer am I to regard them as the private owner of some peculiar spiritual possession or privilege, nor as one enjoying office by virtue of some spiritual entitlement or individual expertise. Rather, I must learn to appreciate their gift as a re-presentation and ‘manifestation’ of the one Gift that has been given to all of us in the body of Christ, a re-presentation and manifestation that exists for the ‘common good’ (verse 7).
Conversely, Paul’s teaching requires a transformation in the self-conception of spiritually gifted and ordained persons. Those with particular spiritual gifts must learn to perceive their exercise of those gifts as differentiated manifestations of the one Gift that has been given to us all, to serve the benefit of everyone. Likewise, the office-bearer within a church must recognize themselves as re-presenting the one ‘pre-structured’ and unitary witness and service of the Church in an particular and institutionally structured manner.[4] Neither the spiritually gifted person nor the ordained minister create or establish a new reality: they present ‘something which is already there’—the common Gift and ministry of the body as a whole.
Read the whole thing here.
The third part of my series (parts 1 and 2) on the Transfiguration and our reading of Scripture has just been published over on Reformation21:
When the Angel is accompanied by the Glory, it is the Glory-Face of the LORD that is seen. Moses’ theophany upon Mount Sinai is of a distinct character from previous theophanies. While the Angel of the LORD laid aside his Glory in previous theophanies, Moses witnessed the Angel in his Glory-form. As Moses saw the Glory-Face of the LORD he was transformed by the sight, his own face bearing a reflected glory so dazzling that the Israelites could not bear to look upon it. To spare the Israelites from the sight, Moses covered his face with a veil, only removing it when he went into the Glory-Presence of the LORD to speak with the LORD again (Exodus 34:29-35).As I have observed, Luke narrates the Transfiguration of Christ in a manner that accents Exodus themes. The relationship between the Transfiguration and Sinai is found primarily in the theophany, although the contrasts here are as important as the similarities. The most significant of these contrasts is that, while Moses’ face is changed as he reflects the LORD’s Glory-Face, Jesus’ Transfiguration isn’t a reflection, but is an unveiling of God’s own Glory-Face. This is a point of no small significance: in his Transfiguration, Jesus is implicitly disclosed as the Messenger of the LORD, the archetypal divine prophet, the radiant Image or Face of God, the one witnessed by the people of God in the Old Testament.
Read the whole thing here.
n. pl.
A miscellaneous collection of notes, remarks, or selections.
Alastair's Adversaria 