Being People of the Prince of Peace: A Christmas Reflection

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

                                                ~ Isaiah 9:6

If you’ve been to church around Christmastime, you’ve almost certainly heard the above verse.  You’ve also undoubtedly heard about angels announcing Christ’s birth to shepherds and proclaiming “Peace on Earth.”  The phrase is in our Christmas carols and splashed across our Christmas cards. 

I’ve spent this Christmas season with a broken heart.  We Christians claim to be people of peace, but all around me, I hear people constantly speaking words of violence, hatred, and war. 

Perhaps we’ve heard Jesus called the Prince of Peace so many times that we don’t think about what it might mean for us.

In Matthew 22:36-40, a man asks Jesus,

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

When a man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” Jesus told a story about two strangers from different religious traditions (Luke 10:29-37), so let’s think of neighbors broadly as other people in general, especially considering how connected the world is by various media.

So what’s happening with our neighbors here and abroad?

African Americans are gunned down with impunity by police, politicians demonize minorities and call for Muslims to be kept out of the country, gun violence dominates the news, and bombs fall on terrorists and civilians alike.  Poverty, exploitation, and gender violence are commonplace across many places in this country and around the world.  If we truly love our neighbors, how can we let these things stand?

Where is the peace? 

Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9), and at the heart of the Christian message is reconciliation and peace between God and humanity (and us with one another).  The peace of God is not just supposed to be an inner one, it is meant to engulf the world.  If the Church is the people of God, charged with advancing His mission, then where are we?

We don’t all agree about the solutions to the problems around us, but I hope we can all see their deep significance to God and to ourselves as followers of Christ.

We have to speak out, and we have to do something.  But how can we begin to address the serious and heart wrenching issues around us?  More specifically, how should we speak against those responsible for violence, hatred, and exploitation, and how should we speak with those whose goals we share but with whom we disagree?

Here are a few words of Jesus that I think need to inform our intellectual, social, and political lives as Christians:

Luke 6:27-8

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Our enemies are neighbors too.  We may disagree with others.  We may struggle against those who say and do terrible things, but God loves them as much as He loves us, and he expects us to do the same. (cf. Matthew 5:43-8)  The very heart of the gospel is that no one is beyond redemption.

Matthew 7:3-5

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

We’re all wrong sometimes, and often we’re accidentally hypocritical.  Many times we fail to see in ourselves the same faults we condemn in others.  Sometimes to defeat monsters we become monsters ourselves.  Sometimes we become the very things we hate.

Humility becomes us, and we need to be willing to admit and correct our own mistakes and wrong ideas so that we can clearly see to tackle those and other issues in society as a whole.

And again:

Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Being a peacemaker doesn’t mean not speaking out or arguing; it means showing love and kindness to even your most painful adversaries, being quick to forgive slights, slander, and mistreatment, and seeking reconciliation whenever possible.

In this new year, I hope that we can truly be a people of peace: bold advocates for kindness and justice, while civil and loving in our arguments and in our struggle for a more Christ-like world; that we might preach and live the politics of love over the politics of fear and hate; and that we might self-sacrificially seek peace over violence and the good of others above ourselves.

God grant us the strength and love.

Why "Unsystematic Theology"?

The gospel is…a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced.  It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.

 – Walter Bruegemann, in Finally Comes the Poet, pg. 1

In this post, I want to address the title of my blog, Unsystematic Theology. 

Why is my theology (or at least the bits and pieces of theology I offer here) unsystematic?  What is systematic theology anyway?

Systematic theology aims to describe the Christian faith as a comprehensive, cogent, and more or less complete system of logical propositions, generally resulting in sets of some very thick books.  Beginning with works like John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and continuing to the present day, Protestantism (my faith tradition) has constantly added to the literature of systematic theology, joining the works of great medieval theologians and writers like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of Damascus.

Systematic theology is a noble effort and often yields useful results, but it is also a flawed and ultimately impossible one.  I see two main objections to the idea of systematic theology, or at least reasons to take systematic theologies with a grain of salt, one relational and intellectual:

A Relational Objection:

As Donald Miller notes in Searching for God Knows What and elsewhere, one of the greatest problems in trying to describe God and our relationship with Him as list of propositions is precisely that it is a personal relationship.

After all, what if I tried to describe my relationship with my wife in a series of ordered propositions?  How could I possibly succeed?  It kind of misses the point anyway.

I have friends whose theologies have been upended by their personal experiences of God, with the spiritual certainty of experience and guidance leading to propositional theological uncertainty.

Some Intellectual Objections:

Systematic theology describes Christianity in a series of logical propositions.  Its purpose is to describe Christian belief as a system. 

Systematic theology implies that it is, for the most part, a closed system, a framework which we can know with certainty. 

Is this practical or even possible?

The truth is rarely simple as simple as it seems, and our intellect has limits.

The heavens may proclaim the glory of God (Psalm 19), but how easily is their speech understood?  Can an infinite God be described and understood by the finite mind?

Is God fundamentally unknowable?  Yes and no.  Can anyone apprehend Him in His infiniteness?  No, surely not.  Has He revealed Himself to us in knowable ways?  Yes, He has.  After all, Christ is the “Word made flesh.”  God has shown Himself to us, but our vision is forever limited.  What finite being can grasp the infinite? 

Can we truly build a logical and propositional framework that can truly encompass God and His relationship with us?  How much can we truly comprehend?  What can our minds really grasp?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

                                     – Isaiah 55: 8-9

Most, if not all, theologians or readers of systematic theology will claim that theirs is based upon a close reading of the Bible and is, therefore, both correct and reliable. 

But everyone says that and backs up many different and even contradictory theological statements and frameworks with Scripture.

And how does each respond to the others?  “Ah, but we read it correctly.  They’re mistaken.”

I will address issues with how we read Scripture and other texts in a later post, but we should take our own and others’ biblical statements with a grain of salt and a spoonful of humility.

Of course, though, we do believe in common and central theological truths.  A relatively early and widely accepted statement of Christian beliefs is the 4^th century Nicene Creed, which remains a standard and foundational formulation of Christian orthodoxy and is regularly recited in liturgies used by the majority of the world’s Christians.

The Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,

The Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

      the only Son of God,

      eternally begotten of the Father,

      God from God, Light from Light

      true God from true God,

      begotten, not made,

      of one Being with the Father.

      Through him all things were made.

      For us and our salvation

he came down from heaven:

      by the power of the Holy Spirit

                  he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,

                  and was made man.

      For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

                  he suffered death and was buried.

                  On the third day he rose again

                        in accordance with the Scriptures;

                  he ascended into heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

                  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

                        and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

      who proceeds from the Father (*and the Son).

      With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.

      He has spoken through the Prophets.

      We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

      We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

      We look for the resurrection of the dead,

                   and the life of the world to come.  Amen.

Beyond the basics, though, agreement breaks down quickly:

Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the dead to give us eternal life, but how does that work?  Did Jesus avert God’s wrath and punishment in a police-court situation, did He cheat death and Satan, ransom us from the Devil, die to kill death itself?  (Historically, including in the Patristic Period, there has been a lot less agreement on this that we might think.)

Do we choose to accept God’s salvation or does His irresistible grace compel us apart from free will?  Does free will even exist?

What is church polity supposed to look like?

What is the relationship between faith and works?  Scripture and Tradition?

Scriptural arguments are flung in every which direction.  We may think we have (and may truly have) definite answers to these questions, but humility becomes us.

Furthermore, we are constantly learning new things from all around us, including the sorts of ostensibly non-theological sources of knowledge this blog is meant to explore.

Since the days of early 20^th century Fundamentalism, the idea of a literal six-day creation approximately 6,000 years ago has not only become a dogmatic cornerstone for many Evangelicals, but also a litmus test of orthodoxy.

For the Roman Catholic and Mainstream Protestant Churches, however, this is not the case.  Faced with an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, these many Christians acknowledge that the universe is old and that Darwinian evolution provides a mechanism by which life around us came to be.

But what does this mean theologically?  Does it take God out of the equation?  No.  Does it mean throwing out the Bible?  Not at all.  The Fundamentalist/Evangelical creation dogma has never been the unanimous opinion of Christian theology.  Not even close.  Many, including the great theologian St. Augustine, understood the creation story allegorically.  For some of his words about it, see my first post, “Welcome to Unsystematic Theology.”

While science may rule out a particular theological interpretation, it leaves us with many questions about God, His creation, and how to make sense of it all theologically.

Today an overwhelming consensus of scientific evidence shows that our actions are warming the earth at a rate unprecedented in the known history of our planet.  A rapidly warming planet threatens severe weather, drought, famine, and rising sea levels that will affect billions of people.

What is our proper relationship with the world we live in?  The Bible tells us that God gave us care of and dominion over the earth and the things that live in it.  Are we being good stewards of what we’ve been given?  We are also told to love our neighbors.  Are we doing that when we wreak havoc on the world they live (or will live) in?

Even if things aren’t as bad as they seem, shouldn’t we err on the side of good stewardship and love of our neighbors?

And how do we understand this all in a broader theological context?

Less is settled than we like to think.

We know less than it seems.  Humility becomes us.

Are we in a position to write systematic theologies or even speak of such a thing?

Can we help ourselves, though?

Trying to understand the world around us and seeking rational order are basic human cognitive imperatives.  The search for systematic explanation is both inescapable and ultimately impossible.

If our theologies are systems, they are systems in flux.

Indeed, perhaps what we need are theological networks or theological constellations rather than systems.

That is why the theological reflection here is unsystematic.  I want to challenge and expand our theologies.  I have no all-encompassing system to offer you.  It would be antithetical to the sort of explorations I want to make here.

* The filioque clause (“and from the Son”) was inserted by the Western Church without consulting the Eastern Churches and is not recognized by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.


An earlier version of this post listed St. Isaac the Syrian as a prominent systematic theologian.  I was thinking of St. John of Damascus.  My bad.

Bells and Smells

 

Then [God] said, “Come no closer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.”  – Exodus 3:5

In this post, I want to talk about worship and the environments in which we worship.   

New Oxford American Dictionary (Which came preinstalled on my laptop, huzzah!) defines worship as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.”

That works alright, I guess.  While writing this post, I’ve found that coming up with a satisfactory definition of worship in practice is not easy.  Sometimes it’s talked about as a psychological state of reverence.  At other times worship is seen as deliberately choosing to do a particular thing (e.g. obey or praise), even when we don’t feel very warm and fuzzy about God.  Trying to synthesize the various ways in which Christians (and the Bible itself) speak of worship is more difficult than it sounds.

I would, however, like to propose the following definition:

Worship is (re)enacting/performing/embodying/remembering/affirming a relationship between ourselves and God.

For example:

Through the Eucharist, we partake of bread and wine to commemorate Christ’s sacrifice and physically reaffirm our acceptance of the salvation offered to us through it.

In Episcopalian churches, most of the Scripture readings each week (there are four) are read from the lectern in the front of the church, but when the Gospel passage is read, the priest brings the words of Jesus into the middle of the congregation and proclaims them there as a way of embodying Christ’s incarnation.

I would like to use this definition of worship to emphasize that we worship in ways that go beyond intellectual assent and inner emotion, we (re)enact/perform/embody/remember/affirm with our whole selves, whether we realize it or not.  This is important, because I want to discuss some of the ways that we engage in worship in an expansive, more holistic sense.  To do so involves creating, recognizing, and using sacred spaces

The place of worship is a sacred space, a place where Heaven meets Earth and humans commune with the divine. 

To be sacred is to be set apart.

Reading the book of Exodus is a bit strange.  You start out with stories about burning bushes and plagues and slavery in Egypt.  Then it starts to get really boring to the average reader.  The narrative pauses, and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to meet with God, who then gives Moses a ton of commandments (including the special set (the Ten Commandments) we normally think of). 

They cover all sorts of things from civil law to dietary restrictions to some very, very specific instructions about worship, how to worship, and where to do it.

In addition to describing rituals to be performed, God’s words to Moses incredibly detailed instructions on how to build a special structure in which to worship and even about the minute details of the clothes His priests were to wear.  This all seems like a little much, until we realize why God is saying this.

The place where God meets humanity is a scared space and is continually marked out as such. 

The sacredness of the space and the corollary perceived presence of God were to meant induce awe and command worship.

While our modern Christian worship is far different from that prescribed in Exodus, we also mark out the spaces in which we worship as sacred and worship in them because we recognize their sacredness.

I want to examine some of the ways in which we mark out spaces as sacred and how the markers of sacredness themselves motivate us to worship.

To do this, I draw on ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino’s use of semiotics, based in turn on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914).

Semiotics is the study and theoretical explanation of how things are assigned, hold, and convey meaning – in this case, how various things cause us to understand a place, time, or action as sacred and worshipful.

To continue with Turino:

Following Peirce, a sign can be anything that is perceived by an observer which stands for something else and by doing so creates an effect in the observer.  Thus, any sign situation has three aspects: (1) the sign or sign vehicle, (2) the object or idea indicated by the sign, and (3) the effect or meaning of the sign-object relation to the perceiver.  The actual effects generated by signs can range from a feeling to a physical reaction to a thought or idea in the mind…  (Turino 2008: 5-6, 11)

In this case, the object need not be a physical object, it can be an idea, a person, or anything else represented by the sign.

While words themselves are some of the most obvious signs, for the purposes of this post, I will mostly be talking about nonlinguistic signs – in this case, a wide variety of elements of the many ways we practice worship and the contexts in which we worship.

The objects represented are God Himself, His attributes, and the act of worshipping itself.

Some of the effects of perceiving these signs are a sense of the sacred and the presence of God, a psychological state of worship, and conscious thoughts, words, or acts of worship – that is, the (re)enactment/performance/embodiment/remembrance/affirmation of a relationship between ourselves and God.

In this system of semiotic analysis, there are three types of signs: icons, indexes, and symbols (completely set aside the normal meaning of the word “symbol” for this).

Icons

An icon is a sign that represents its object through resemblance.  For example, when we look at a crucifix, we see Jesus on the cross.  We may recognize a building as a church because of its architectural style or display of religious imagery.  Because it looks like a church.

Indices

An index is a sign that signifies its object because our personal experience of the sign and its object together.  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Because of their dependence on personal experience, indices can be intensely personal and elicit strong emotions.  This can have a huge impact on how we perceive the sacredness of a space or situation and are motivated to worship or not worship.

For example, for me the smell of frankincense is indexical of worship of great spiritual significance.  At the Episcopal church I attended for a number of years, the incense came out when we celebrated some of the most important events of the Church Year, such as Easter and Christmas, times of both solemnity and jubilant celebration.  (A friend refers to it as “bells and smells,” hence the name of this post.)

Symbols (Again, ignore the normal meaning of the word for now.)

Symbols are signs that relate to their objects through linguistic definition.  The most obvious type of symbol is a word, although words can function as other types of signs as well.  Symbols work based on a general social agreement of their meaning.  The word “cat” signifies a particular animal, because we in the English-speaking world have collectively adopted it to signify that animal.  Symbols are used to signify abstract or general concepts, e.g. “cat,” while “this cat” is an indexical representation of co-occurrence. 

Much of the speech involved in preaching or discussing theology consists of networks of symbolic signs.

What do these signs mean for us?

Peirce outlined three basic types of effects created by sign-object relations: (1) a sense or feeling; (2) a physical reaction or response; and (3) “a more developed sign in the mind” including sonic, tactile, olfactory, and visual images as well as word-based symbolic thought. (11)

A single hymn might remind us of a spiritual mountaintop experience or a time of great personal difficulty, we may lift our hands or fall to our knees, or lead us to picture Jesus and contemplate His sacrifice.  Each of these might themselves become signs bringing about other effects, which then may act as signs themselves.

Furthermore, all of these types of signs, especially icons and indices mark out a space as sacred and recognize, represent, and promote worship.

So, what’s the point of all this?  I’m not particularly interested in bringing the language of Peircean semiotics into everyday church use.  What I want is for us to be conscious of how even seemingly small and insignificant things, especially icons and indices, can mean a lot to ourselves and others.  Again signs do a great deal to represent sacredness and can help us to worship in significant ways.

Consider the sacred semiotics in the following two situations:

The Evangelical environment in which I grew up and stayed in through much of college emphasizes a highly personal relationship with God and the joy that results from that relationship.  Cheerful, upbeat worship music in a relatively vernacular style (guitars and drums, etc.) represents that relationship iconically and indexically, (re)enacting/performing/embodying/remembering/affirming the nearness and personhood of God, His love for us, His personal revelation to each of us, and our increasing integration into such a relationship.

There’s a lot of great stuff there, but over time it became increasingly difficult for me to personally worship in such a setting.

I’ve struggled with depression for about as long as I can remember.  My undergrad years were particularly dark days.  Where was there a place for me in a space where the sense of sacredness and practice of worship were so defined by positive emotion?  It was as if a lack of joy was equivalent to a lack of a strong relationship with God.

Many Evangelicals view more liturgical traditions with a suspicion that liturgical worship is little more than empty rituals standing in for a real relationship with God, a sentiment deeply rooted in the Protestant tradition, and I have certainly heard individuals who came to Evangelicalism from liturgical churches describe things in this way.

I, however, found a world of semiotic richness.  Nearly everything represented something about God and His relationship with humanity.  Robes, candles, incense, and ceremony marked out a place of sacredness that wasn’t based on me, a place I could come when I had nothing left emotionally.  When I was barren, the liturgy offered me prayers to lift up, and words said and sung for the better part of two thousand years reminded me that I was not alone.  The (re)enacting/performing/embodying/remembering/affirming was all around me in a way I hadn’t really experienced before.

Of course, my point in sharing this is not to advocate for one type of worship or way of doing church over another.  Rather, I want to illustrate some of the ways that what we often consider incidental can make a huge difference.

As we learn to live and worship together, we need to remember that even the little things matter to someone.

References:

Turino, Thomas.  2008.  Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Welcome to Unsystematic Theology

Hi, my name’s Jason.  

Welcome to my blog.

I’m a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology (kind of like the anthropology of music) focusing on music in the Indian Himalayas.  Studying human cultures – not just music, but also things like anthropology, post-colonial studies, history, and social theory – has given me a lot of unique (or at least pretty unusual) perspectives on my faith.  I’d like to share some of those on this blog.

Christians have a complicated relationship with academic scholarship. 

I grew up in conservative, (very) white, middle-class, suburban Evangelical churches, youth and college ministries, etc., so to an extent, what I’m about to say might skew a little in that direction, but I think it’s hardly limited to any one group.

Many Christians seem to think that because they have read the Bible or inherited a theological tradition, they have all the answers, or the important ones anyway.  One of the results of this is the implicit assumption that their theological understandings have little, if anything, relevant to gain from other sources of knowledge.

I’ve seen students sent off to college prepared to tell their biology professors how the earth was really created or confident that postmodernism is an evil and dangerous threat to Christianity without any real understanding of what postmodernism (much less modernism) is.

It’s as if their professors are idiots, as if the many years of rigorous study and new research it takes to obtain an advanced degree ultimately mean nothing.  On the contrary, too often these students not only lack well-informed answers but may not even know the real questions to be answered.

Sometimes, however – more often than we would like to admit – our biblical arrogance is a mask.  Behind it we’re often scared and insecure.  What if our faith is disproven, some of the things most precious to us ripped away, and we are left broken, alone, and without comfort?

But perhaps we need not be so scared, perhaps accepting other sources of knowledge isn’t necessarily inviting the danger we think it is.  We often mistake our own interpretations of the Bible for the Bible itself.  When someone says something that contradicts our interpretations, we feel as though it contradicts the Bible and must be wrong and combatted, but really, it may only be that our understanding of God and the world is flawed and incomplete.  It is, after all.

The way that many of us deal with extra-biblical sources of knowledge right now is dangerous, both to our own faith and to the faith we show the world around us.

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), one of Christianity’s most influential theologians wrote:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Our arrogance and insecurities are nothing new. 

I like to think about all of this in a different way, though. (Not that I’m free of doubts and insecurities.)  New information means new possibilities.  The universe is full wonder and awe and meant to be explored.  Each new discovery is a new opportunity to learn something about God, even if doesn’t seem that way at face value.

After all, all truth is God’s truth.  “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

Psalm 19 says:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

      night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;

no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

When we learn something revolutionary, it provides an extraordinary opportunity for theological reflection, refinement, and exploration.  If fact or idea X is true, what are all the things it could possibly mean for our understanding of God, the universe, and ourselves?  Might it help us to understand these things better?

It’s a theology of possibilities, rather than one of defensiveness.

On this blog, I want to share some of the things from my academic studies that have given me opportunities for reflection and exploration, insights from disciplines outside of ostensibly non-theological disciplines that have ultimately given me a more sophisticated understanding of my own faith.

I hope you’ll keep reading.