Religious Pluralism 2: the ABC on Christ's Finality

After last week's post, I thought that we might appreciate a slightly different point of view from our own Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. We're liking to a copy of a lecture he gave, titled "The Finality of Christ in a Pluralist World." You'll see that he attempts to strike a slightly different ground than simple exclusivism (one faith is correct) and inclusivism (all faiths are correct). We'll leave it to all of you to decide how successful he is. Here's a taste:

And so out of these two powerful and heavily-charged texts comes the classic Christian conviction: what we encounter in Jesus Christ is simply the truth. It is the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Not living into that truth and accepting it, has consequences because this is the last word about God and God's creation. So we speak of the finality of Christ. There's nothing more to know. Or we speak of the uniqueness of Christ. No one apart from Jesus of Nazareth expresses the truth like this.

That is what is so problematic for so many people in our world today. It's not just a question about people of other faiths (though it's partly that). It's also a question about how we in general communicate what we believe, and about what we believe God is doing in the world. And in the last forty years or so, the problems around the classical interpretation of these texts have been more and more highlighted. They fall into three broad groups, and in the first part of what I'm going to say I just want to look at the kinds of objection that have been raised to those classical interpretations of the texts.

The first difficulty is moral. What kind of God is it who makes salvation or eternal life dependent on what's always going to be a rather chancy matter? What about all those people who never had a chance of hearing about Jesus? What about all those who have heard about Jesus but have not understood or waited to find out?

A Note on Thanksgiving

Moses said to all Israel: For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you. ---Deut 8:7-10

As the holidays approach, it is increasingly common to hear two notes begin to sound in our culture. One urges us towards expense and enjoyment of all the good things we tend to look forward to at this time of year, as if we deserve some indulgence at the end of another difficult year. The other sounds a note of caution regarding consumerism and materialism, a tendency to focus on worldly goods to the detriment of the spiritual nature of the season, and what sometimes seems to be a kind of selfishness inherent to our festivities, as if the season is about getting what each one of us desires.

Of course, we are probably more likely to hear the latter note in most churches at this time, particularly as we move through the observances of Advent, which seems increasingly countercultural. But I am glad that Thanksgiving precedes Advent and, indeed, that Advent is “bookended” by both Thanksgiving and Christmas, both times of great celebration in our country. For I cannot help but think that we must learn to strike a balance between feast and fast, or gain some better understanding about the celebration of all things. At the very least, even to attempt to balance these two things will teach us much about ourselves and about the proper way to relate to the “goods” of life.

As we enter Advent, in the wake of Thanksgiving, I hope that we may hold in our hearts the vision which we see in the reading above from Deuteronomy 8. God brought his people Israel into a good land, brimming full of food and drink and resources, where they lacked nothing. And, if we read the next section of the chapter, it seems that the problem of which God’s people are warned ahead of time, is not always about over indulgence in the good things set before them, though this is surely true. Rather, it is in receiving these good things and suddenly failing to keep God’s commands, lacking gratitude for the good received, and imagining these goods stem from our own strength. As the passage then reads:

Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes... When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." Deut 8:11-17.

Let us, then, remember the commandments of God and his grace as we enter our observance of Advent. Let us remember that we have received all good from God’s hand, and let us turn our hands to bringing that good to others, to those who have nothing and who are alone as much as to those whom we know and love. And let us give thanks to God for all things. 

New Series on Religion Pluralism

Every few weeks, we feature a series of posts from other blogs and websites that either focus on one topic or on one group. Given a few conversations and events at the Chaplaincy recently (like the talk given by Miroslav Volf on Christian-Muslim relations), I thought that it might be useful to link to short articles from various Christian standpoints on the different types of pluralism, along with some from other faiths.

This first post is from Relevant Magazine, an evangelical magazine from a theologically conservative, but somewhat progressive standpoint (their motto is God, Life, Progressive Culture). The article is called "It's OK to Say Jesus is the Only Way." Here's a taste:

The claim that all paths lead to the same God actually minimizes other religions by asserting a new religious claim. When someone says all paths lead to the same God, they blunt the distinctives between religions, throwing them all in one pot, saying: “See, they all get us to God so the differences don’t really matter.” This isn’t tolerance; it’s a power play. When asserting all religions lead to God, the distinctive and very different views of God and how to reach Him in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam are brushed aside in one powerful swoop. The Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhism, the 5 Pillars of Islam and the Gospel of Christ are not tolerated but told they must submit to a new religious claim—all ways lead to God—despite the fact that this isn’t what those religions teach.

Zack Guiliano

Kellogg Fellow

The Movement

As part of our final post from the SSJE preaching series, I have here a message from Br. Kevin Hackett, titled "The Movement." This post will close our sample from SSJE, and we'll be looking for some more content to highlight in the coming weeks. If there's anything our readers have found particularly interesting, please send it our way.



Here's a sample of the post:


I do not know if you claim a denominational identity, but I think we would do well to ask ourselves a couple of questions at this point. How different is it to say, “I am a member of the Episcopal Church (or use your own denomination of choice),” than to say, “I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.”  I do not think the two claims are necessarily mutually exclusive, and while the Episcopal Church, as well many other denominations, have stressed Christian faith and practice as a way of life, I cannot get past the differences of connotation between being a member of an institution (which suggests a kind of stasis and status quo to me) and being a follower of a movement, especially the one which was inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth (which, from my own experience, suggests some pretty rugged engagement with the unknown).

The Message

As mentioned last week, we will periodically re-post from blogs here and there on the good old Inter-webs. This post continues our coverage of the preaching series at the monastery of SSJE last month: Conversations on the Way. This one is written by Br. Mark Brown, whose picture is below, and is called "The Message".



Here's a sample:

When we say we believe in the Resurrection we usually are thinking of what we might call the Great Resurrection: our entrance into life beyond the gateway of death, our eternal life.  I want to state unambiguously that I believe in that Great Resurrection. But I don’t know much about it and have little to say, just that I’m sure it will be wonderful beyond our imagining.

But resurrection is woven into the texture of life in the world we live in now. 

Numbers 31: a Preface

Numbers 31:7 "And the Israelites killed every male among the Midianites."

Well, dear friends, we only have had one question for the past few weeks, and it is a doozy.

Q: "How should we read and understand Numbers 31?"

A: Often described as the "Massacre of the Midianites," Numbers 31 tends to rank high on anyone's list of difficult Scriptural passages. Due to the complexity of this question, then, we are going to break up the response to it over several weeks. One could practically write a whole book about this passage, which raises all sorts of questions. In this first post, I simply want to note some of the necessary details to consider and note some of the groundwork which must be done before answering anything about this passage. In the next week or so, after we have had some more time to reflect on this passage, we'll roll out a few more posts on the topic.

First off, we want to recommend that anyone reading this post considers the full text of Numbers 31 first, along with Numbers 25 (and, indeed, most of the second half of the book is relevant). The important backstory is this: the Israelites are on the way to the Promised Land, where they will drive out the inhabitants of the land, with God as the warrior leading the charge. Along the way, however, they are beset by a whole range of different peoples and situations which complicate that task, ranging from tribes that attack them first to the Israelites' rebellion against their own cause and against God. From ch. 22 onwards, the Israelites are beset by attacks from the Moabites and Midianites. The attacks by these two groups differ, however, from Israel's battles with other people along the path to the Promised Land. Rather than attack them in direct, hand-to-hand combat, the Moabites and Midianites first hire Balaam, a local seer and (it appears) sorcerer, to try and curse Israel.  However, the conflict between Israel, Moab, and Midian arguably culminates in Numbers 25, with the involvement of the Israelites in worshipping (with the Midianites) another God beside the Lord at a place called Peor, in violation of the first commandment. They worship Baal with both ritual feasting and, it appears, ritual sex, a combination not uncommon in Ancient Near Eastern religions. This is the backstory to Numbers 31, in miniature.

Second, though, we want to note something else about this passage as well: it is not difficult to interpret simply because of the moral issues we've briefly mentioned (e.g. the "massacre"). It also offers some confusing textual details which are difficult to understand on any level. For instance, after the battle, we might note that the spoils of war which the Israelites capture are outrageously large (32:31-47). They seem to seize over half a million sheep, among other massive captures. Now, while we don't have statistics on what was "normal" for animal husbandry in the Ancient Near East, particularly among small, nomadic tribes like the Midianites, this number seems a little overblown. It is only since the population boom and the advent of new farming techniques in the modern period that we have seen such a huge amount of sheep in one place. In other words, it is hard to believe that it was even possible for the Israelites to have captured such a high level of spoils from another tiny nation. We bring up these details only to note some features of the text which must be puzzled over, when we come to answer what's going on in the portrayal of this incident and when we decide "what to do" with this passage. There are several other, similar questions this text raises.

The reason we are puzzling over these features, though, is rather important and leads to the point I want to bring up. Several times in the past few weeks, while chatting with a few of you about this topic, I have mentioned why I think it's fruitful for us to dwell on this for a while. One thing I have tried to note in those conversations is how this passage doesn't do much for most interpreters. For conservatives, it is often viewed as an untroubling example of God's wrath on human sin. The various textual difficulties and moral quandaries generate no commentary. On the other hand, for more liberal interpreters, this passage is often brought up as an example of what we believe we have transcended. It, again, serves little theological purpose. The book of Numbers also doesn't feature largely in the ancient, medieval, and Reformation commentary traditions prior to the modern period. For us then, this passage can be a site for tremendous new theological reflection, if we can but wrap our minds around it. It is, in many ways, largely untrod ground.

So, that is what we will try to do. We're going to have a few different posts, outlining some relevant information and questions related to this passage. Emily, first of all, is going to note some of the relevant moral quandaries this passage raises. I will likely, then, note some ancient and contemporary responses to these quandaries. We'll have a post on the historical-critical approach to the passage. And, hopefully, we plan to cap off our little series on Numbers 31 with a post which synthesizes all the details, questions, and issues, before sketching a theological exploration and response to the whole passage.

Another Feast Day: Richard Hooker

Today is the feast day of Richard Hooker, Anglican priest and theologian. The readings for his day include one of my most favorite Psalms, which says the law of the Lord is more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey. We hear, too, from 1 Corinthians, where Paul says they speak wisdom—“not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age”, but rather “God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.”

Both of these readings speak of a love of truth and rightness as revealed to us by God in the law and in our hearts—a perfect fit for Richard Hooker.

He was born in 1553. In 1594-7 he wrote what Lesser Feasts and Fasts calls “a comprehensive defense of the Reformation settlement under Queen Elizabeth the First. This work, his masterpiece, was entitled Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.” This included one of the earliest defenses of The Book of Common Prayer. The prayer for Hooker says he defended Anglicanism “with sound reasoning and great charity,” and asks that we maintain this “middle way” of our church—which is both catholic and reformed—“not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth.”

I’ve loved Hooker since I first heard of him during my freshman year at Princeton. I was in the (speedy) process of falling in love with the Anglican tradition, and so was bombarding our Episcopal chaplain, Steve White, with every question I could think of. (E.g., What is the purpose of living? Why do you wear robes? Why do people suffer?)

In one of his responses, Steve explained to me the idea of the three-legged stool, an image taken from part of Hooker’s Laws. He said that the three legs upon which we stand are Scripture, reason, and tradition (in particular, the traditions of the Christian church). Archbishop Rowan Williams, in a 2005 speech, explains Hooker’s overall argument thus:

“Put very plainly, the Bible does not give us an alibi for the use of common sense, ordinary discretion, imagination, willingness to learn from experience and whatever else belongs to mature human reflection on behaviour. The 'sufficiency' or perfection of Scripture, argues Hooker, is a matter of its perfect capacity to do what it is meant to do. . . . [I]f we suggest, for example, that nothing except what is commanded in the Bible can be other than sinful, we paralyse a great deal of ordinary human life.”

            What appealed to me most was that Hooker (as Williams says) was “opposing . . . any picture of these things [law and revelation] that refuses the work of interpretation or that pretends that history has come to a halt.” What an idea!

            In my freshman year, I was stunned that there were not only scholars but also priests and parishioners who held this view—and who still prayed before meals, sang hymns, and meant it when they said “Amen”! Raised in fairly conservative Evangelical churches and schools, I had been taught that there was one obvious way to interpret the Scriptures—i.e. in a mostly literal manner—and that this had always been the way of interpreting them. Furthermore, any alternative was not wholly Christian, but a version watered down by extraneous thinking and weak character. (Perhaps it’s better to say that even if my pastors hadn’t meant to teach me this, it’s certainly what I learned.) As I grew older, I had more and more questions, but those who read the Bible in this way couldn’t answer them; this was the beginning of a longer story which finds its end in the Anglican tradition.

I’ve discovered that there have always been many ways of interpreting the texts and traditions of Christianity. I’ve learned that there are many human fingerprints all over the words and ideas of the Christian churches, and that any way we choose to interact with them is an interpretive choice.

And lo and behold, I am still a Christian! I still lean on the grace of God, and still praise his statutes, his law, and his judgments, which are “sweeter far than honey” and dearer to me than gold. There are many reasons to celebrate Richard Hooker; I celebrate especially his ideas which came across the years and showed me a new way of thinking.

The second image is of a gold coin with Queen Elizabeth’s profile, minted in England between 1597 and 1600; you can find more info on the British Museum’s page.