The Work of King: A Panel in Sioux Falls

If you’re local, please attend!

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The Work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

King’s politics had real depth, driven by a keen awareness of socio-economics, theology, and the human condition. Please join Sioux Falls Seminary as it celebrates the legacy of the great civil rights leader through a panel of esteemed commentators:

Mark Blackburn, Augustana College
Ceca Cooper, University of Sioux Falls
Robin Duncan, Sioux Falls Psychological Services
Christina Hitchcock, University of Sioux Falls
Gary Strickland, Sioux Falls Seminary

WHEN: Thursday, January 23, 7:30pm
WHERE: Sioux Falls Seminary, 2100 S. Summit Ave., Sioux Falls, SD

Refreshments will be served.

The Venus Transit, Rational Christianity, and Fornicating Gods

The solar transit of Venus – when the planet gets between the earth and the sun, doing so only twice a century – isn’t eliciting much attention in the news today.  That wasn’t the case in 1769, however, when inspired Europeans invested enormous sums of money and energy sending scientists to the edges of the earth.  Those scientists were to write down the exact times Venus entered and left the sun’s field.  By taking one measurement and comparing it to a measurement taken in, say, Tahiti, a mathematician could use parallax to determine the distance of the earth to the sun.  As it turns out, explorers Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks were there in Tahiti at the time to take those planetary measurements.

 

Knowing the distance between the earth and the sun was a big deal in 1769.  Having that kind of knowledge meant humankind could peer into the heart of God’s created order.  Scientists and philosophers became something like gods in the process.  Discoveries like the distance from the sun to the earth (93 million miles, if you must know) did much to spur on the Enlightenment – an explosion of rational thought that, when taken as a religion, mutated Christian orthodoxy into deism and pantheism.  Anglicans like Cook and Banks would venture far from their doctrinal roots.

 

Not that everyone was busy rationalizing Christianity.  For Joseph Banks, basking in the Tahitian sun, there were things more interesting than planetary transits and metaphysics.  His journal says remarkably little about the astronomical observations but plenty about island culture.  He writes that after the transit he partied with a a local chieftain, and shortly thereafter came across some particularly easy women who were effortlessly coaxed into his tent.

 

So much for godhood.

Getting Intimate with Karl Barth

It is impossible to force Karl Barth, the eminent Reformed theologian of the 20th century, into any box, doctrinal or psychological. But I found this comment from Hans Frei the most perceptive I’ve read when it comes to psychoanalyzing the man.

[H]is relations with others, including many long and loyal friendships with other theologians and pastors, seem to have been forged through a sense of common vocation and common moral tasks, rather than through the art of mutual personal cultivation or direct in-depth “encounter.” His intimate relation with his long-time assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, was in its way perhaps the most striking instance of the first type of relationship in his life; his sad misrelation to his wife was his paradigmatic failure in the other kind. . . . To what extent did a sense of shared vocation govern even his intimately personal, sexual life? [Hans W. Frei, Review Article: Eberhard Busch’s Biography of Karl Barth, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 51:1 (Mar 1982): 111].

Anonymous Editor Commenting on the Rev. John Wesley (1827)

His style was nervous, clear, and manly; his preaching was pathetic and persuasive; his Journals are artless and interesting; and his compositions and compilations to promote knowledge and piety, were almost innumerable.

Athanasius: A History of the Black Dwarf

As if it were not enough that Athanasius of Alexandria was exiled time and again, an evolution of insults has followed the beleaguered fourth-century bishop.  What is pretty certain is that Julian called him “not even a man, but a common little fellow.”   Since then historians have extrapolated on his diminutive size, and speculated about his race.  The Gentle Exit, a blog, documents the odd, fairly recent historical developments which led to Athanasius being misremembered, scorned and valorized as “the black dwarf.”

Tall and Bearded: Augustine on the Resurrected Male Body

Early Christian theologians were concerned to maintain a real sense of continuity between this life and the next.  If the resurrection of the flesh meant that the male/female differentiation was erased, then it stood to reason that men and women should downplay their gendered characteristics here in their earthly life.  That was not an option for those trying to preserve a gendered hierarchy.  Patristics scholars have done work on what how the theological argument was addressed toward women.   I want to offer a few ideas on the resurrected male body in Augustine’s City of God.

Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century addressed the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, which was widely held in Christian communities but still considered scandalous by many.  In book 22 of City of God he addresses many of these objections and misconceptions, including the idea that the resurrection would mean an elimination of maleness and femaleness.  Not so, says the bishop.  They retain their bodies, including the genitals and basic bodily features.

One preserved feature of the male body is its size.  Augustine defends the resurrection of infants and children, claiming that God will fulfill their full bodily stature according to the “seminal principle” in them (22.13-15).  They will be raised in the full bloom of youth, around age thirty perhaps, after the model of Christ.  But does that imply that all be raised after the pattern of Christ in a very literal sense, viz., Jesus’ exact size?  Men and women would then all be the same height and weight.  Augustine does not allow this, claiming that the preservation of the fleshly material in the resurrection will not permit men with large mass to be raised without their full stature (22:14).  They will, presumably, be taller than women.  The sheer physical ratio is kept in the eschaton.

Beauty is also valued prized by Augustine, and he mentions male bodies as possessing this beauty in a very ornamental way.  Women’s bodies will be beautiful too, beautiful in a way that “excites praise” rather than lusts (22:17).  Their breasts and vaginas and wombs will be aesthetically pleasing in a pure way, not desired for pleasure or function.  Nevertheless, it seems that Augustine highlights even more strongly men’s bodies as those possessing beauty.  In particular, men are raised with their nipples and beards and rough skin (22.24).  Since these features do not serve any real function, thus unnecessary to the human constitution (as proved by the fact that women’s bodies are different), nipples and beards and rough skin are to be understood as ornamental, as beautiful adjuncts to the resurrection body. 

In short, the male body in Augustine’s vision of the resurrection holds onto key masculine features.  Whether the basic size of the male body or its decorative aspects, it is to be raised powerful and beautiful, and celebrated as distinctly male.

Coming to Die Like a Man

Yesterday, November 29, marked the season of Advent, the Christian holiday in which one anticipates the coming of the Messiah.  Because it looks forward to Jesus Christ’s final coming to deliver the world and raise the dead, Advent calls for a time of lament, grief, prophecy, and hope.  Because Advent is able to remember the time leading up to the first appearance of the Messiah, it is also a season of memory, promise, and joy. 

For Christian tradition, the Christmas season does not begin until December 25.  Accordingly, my absolute favorite album for December is Behold the Lamb of God by Andrew Peterson.  Most of the songs on the album are Advent songs, recalling the (broken) covenants of the Old Testament, and how they converge in two insignificant Jews named Mary and Joseph, and ultimately in an impoverished little boy named Jesus.  The whole album is bookended with a wonderful chorus based out of Philippians 2:

Sing out with joy for the brave little boy
Who was God, but He made Himself nothing
Well, He gave up His pride and He came here to die like a man

God is brave! – when men are cowards.  God is humble! – when men have spurned the covenant with their pride.  The mystery of God’s incarnation in this man Jesus Christ blows apart every category, including what it means to act “like a man.”

On Reformation, Karl Barth, and Manly Theologizing

Happy Reformation Day, for those of you delivered from the concurrent secularized-Catholic holiday.

Perhaps the greatest modern reformer was Karl Barth (d. 1968), whose protest against natural theology and insistence upon Christ-centered Christianity was, in its own way, a prolonged hammering of theses against church doors.  I find it interesting the way that one commentator describes Barth’s work:

To some, his writing appears to be an attempt to create a world of theological reality by sheer power of language, convincing by overwhelming rather than demonstrating.  To others, it seems an act of wilful defiance of modernity – doing at inordinate length what the Enlightenment had disallowed: talking of God with fluency and delight.  To others, again, the cumulative power of Barth’s writing can seem an exercise in unbridled – male – forcefulness, its repetitious and boundless energy wearing down the reader into submission  (John Webster, Barth [London: Continuum, 2000], 52).

Indeed, Barth’s Church Dogmatics are “overwhelming,” “inordinate,” “unbridled” and “repetitious” even as they are “fluent” and filled with delight.  I think there is something to the claim that Barth’s manful energies were more often than not expressed quantitatively. 

This avalanche method is nothing new, considering the frustrations of the pope with the 16th century reformers.  With the advent of the printing press, it was impossible to burn books and pamphlets fast enough to keep them at bay.  Even John Calvin, himself unwanting for words, griped that the Lutheran theologians were simply writing too much.  Which leads us back to Barth, whose demanding style feels much like a submission hold.  Moreover, like the more radical Zwingli, in him there is something unrelentingly iconoclastic, a systematic breaking of rival avenues and false gods. 

Yet I wonder if there is also something simple in the midst of Barth’s style, the economy of concepts and the summons to purity in Church Dogmatics, that also has something forceful, even masculine, about it.  Barth writes about Martin Luther’s program, which, marked by a certain theological restraint that he describes as “manly, healthy, and simple” (Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 102-3).  Luther restrains himself from excessive complexity.  He restrains himself from the violence of pan-iconoclasm.  Like a real man, his extrovertive force is matched by an internal gravity.  The same could be said of Barth.  Not that this sense of restraint hardly makes his writings any less dominant and terrifying.  There is much to be lauded – and feared – in this reformational manliness.

Karl Barth: The Alpha Male Years (1886-1911)

In tandem with this year’s Karl Barth Online Conference, I have provided an attenuated, early “masculine biography” for those interested in this man, who was clearly the greatest theological mind of the last century.  Why a masculine biography?  Because, frankly, the guy wrote so little about men and masculinity.  It’s more relevant to my blog this way – and yes, folks, it’s all true.

Karl Barth was born in 1886 in Switzerland, descending from a long line of pastors and tobacconists.  His siblings describe him as a completely dominant older brother, using anything they did as grist for his mill.  A troublesome child, “Karli” came to head a local street gang of boys, and wreaked havoc at school and in the neighborhood. 

Though raised and catechized in the Swiss Reformed church, the closest thing Karl experienced as a conversion was in the pages of Immanuel Kant, the renowned philosopher.  He was remarkably like his father in his theological outlook.  Nevertheless, Karl rebelled against the more conservative, “positive” elements, and so studied under the master of biblical criticism, Adolf Harnack, and the pious systematician, Wilhelm Herrmann. 

Known as “Skinny” to his peers, young Karl took up heavy drinking and smoking as some of his chief activities while in college.  A member (and ultimately president) of the group Zofingia, he can be found in the club picture next to the beer keg.  He didn’t have much of a stomach for dealing directly with abject poverty, yet championed progressive socialist causes, for which he earned grudging respect from his mates.

Finally came ordination, which was not without a little tension, considering his un-liberal father was leading the ordination service.  Karl ruled the roost at his first church, at least after the senior minister left for greener pastures.  For the first and only time in his life, there at Geneva he was unrivaled in his male dominance, if only because there was hardly a man to be found in the pews.  Attempts at controversies – denying the bodily resurrection of Christ, preaching socialist causes, etc. – hardly phased the congregation or the regional parish.  He did, however, snag a 17 year-old hottie out of his catechism class as a fiancee.

Then, in 1911, he moved to his new post, an electricity-less village called Safenwil.  While the militaristic rubberstamping by his theology professors of the Kaiser’s war effort would rupture Barth’s religious hubris, his manly pride was buckling before that: there he was as a sophomore preacher in the middle of nowhere, daily confronted by the holy scriptures, and living with Fräulein Hanna and her host of cats.