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February 09
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Josh
gave
to:
The One, the Three and the Many (Bampton Lectures)
by Colin E. Gunton
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in January, 2003
Josh said:
"another of my all-time favorites. gunton attempts to address the classic philosophical tension between the one & the many (is reality a unity or plurality?) through the lens of the Trinity. tracing the philosophical discussion through classical...more
another of my all-time favorites. gunton attempts to address the classic philosophical tension between the one & the many (is reality a unity or plurality?) through the lens of the Trinity. tracing the philosophical discussion through classical thought, pre-modern, modern and into the present, he highlights the massive dangers to humanity and creation as the pendulum of our societal worldviews swing from the One to the Many and back again.
he proposes the Trinity as a matrix of mediation between the One and the Many, a framework in which unity and plurality integrally co-inhere, each distinct but inseparably bound together. drawing upon the tradition of Irenaeus and the Cappadocian Fathers, he utilizes such concepts as perichoresis (mutual coinherence, the ancient idea of the life of the Trinity as "dance", particularity and unity inseparably integrated) to explore the relation between God and creation.
this book was helpful to me on a number of levels. on an academic level, it helped me understand modernity better in its rebellion against pre-modernity's unitary vision of God which was, rightly in some respects, at the heart of a totalitarian and oppressive vision of society (as all societal worldviews grounded in extremes of "the One" tend to become) not having sufficient space and grounding for diversity and plurality. it also helped critique that very same modernity of not having the resources to achieve the freedom it so longed for as "the One" of God was merely replaced by "the One" of Reason, the State, etc. in Gunton's view, the removal of God cleared the way for new unitarian visions of society even more repressive and totalitarian than the one removed (ie. "get rid of one demon in the house and seven take its place").
it likewise helped me better understand our discontent in postmodernity with the modern project through this lens of reocgnizing the default of modernity's promise on freedom, rebelling against the modern project (and in other respects continuing it to a further extreme) removing any unity which would restrict unhindered diversity and plurality. from Gunton's view however, diversity without a basis for unity comes with its own host of major problems.
on a social level, it gave me a lens for helping understand the tensions when unity or diversity is exalted in, say: the State (do the inviduals come first (democracy) or the State (communism)? marriage (do the needs of the husband / wife come first, or the unity of the marriage)? business (does the company come first or its workers)? the dangers when one is exalted over the other and they are played against each other, rather than working in mutual integration in / for the other.
on a practical level, I fell more in love with the Trinity as a beautiful Christian doctrine. all i got to say is "I Heart Huckabees" ;) i watched this movie a few months after reading it and was like "this movie is entirely about the classic problem of the One and the Many and the personal discontent we find when we try and arrange life around one extreme or the other!" while the movie called for an integration of the two (ie. the scene in front of the burned down house: "you guys [read: "One & Many"] used to get along and something happened where you split and now ever since you've been fighting; let me guess you've been working together all along!") in the Trinity I've found the beauty of a God in whom unity and diversity are reconciled for the sake of our world....less
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New comment on Josh's review of
Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church
(see all 3 comments)
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New comment on William's review of
The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam: A New Edition (Princeton Classic Editions)
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New comment on William's review of
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All
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New comment on William's review of
9-11
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February 03
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Josh
gave
to:
Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Paperback)
by Miroslav Volf
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my rating:
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read in December, 2007
Josh said:
"this book rocks, seriously loved it. while the book is filled with great insights, here's a few that stood out to me:
how do we reconcile the tension between God's identification with the oppressed and its ensuing demand for justice with God's em...more
this book rocks, seriously loved it. while the book is filled with great insights, here's a few that stood out to me:
how do we reconcile the tension between God's identification with the oppressed and its ensuing demand for justice with God's embrace of the oppressor and call for forgiveness? Volf, personally coming from a context of genocide, is very vulnerable about the dramatic tension in attempting to reconcile himself with both the God who identifies with the suffering, exploited, abused and victimized and delivers the needy (thereby critiquing the powers of victimization and holding them to account) and the God who forgives the victimizers, perpetrators, oppressors and calls us not towards revenge or isolated neutrality but towards reconciliation.
whereas moltmann and similar theological movements have done the crucial work of reemphasizing recently lost emphases on God's solidarity with the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, Volf picks up the crucial theme of atonement for the perpetrator. volf places God's self-donation or self-giving love as the broader context under which God's solidarity with the oppressed and atonement for the perpetrator must be placed.
volf explores a theology of reconciliation in the face of the challenge of "otherness" in contemporary society, in which boundaries are often created in which we exclude the other in our collective identities.
"embrace" is employed as a metaphor (along the lines of the prodigal son story and in the context of Christ's embrace of our wretched humanity on the cross) to explore God's posture towards the offender, framing reconciliation for those who have been violated to have a posture of embrace towards those who have violated them. using trinitarian language, we must make space in ourselves for the other in whom are identities are constituted--both positively and negatively. for the victim, a posture of embrace thus entails repentance for what the sin has done to our own lives.
this could easily be misunderstood as "blaming the victim" and this is where i think volf's discussion is perhaps at its most powerful, still being able to call evil evil and call it to account, while nonetheless recognizing that there is a different kind of evil, even on a lesser scale, that victimization does to us and from which we need God's healing. the result of this healing will be the strength to have a posture of embrace towards those who have wounded us and a willingness towards reconciliation.
and yet for the offender to enter and receive the embrace offered calls for acknowledgement of the offense in repentance. the call to enter the kingdom and be reconciled to God comes first with the call to repent. God's all-embracing love requires nothing of us for it to be there but everything from us in order to enter it. there is no "cheap grace" here in which the offender is free to abuse again and again under the name of "love" and "reconciliation" which are more fluffy distortions of the self-sacrificial nature such words truly mean in their biblical framework.
given his backdrop from the genocide in the former yugoslavia his story lends such a powerful voice to address the issue of "otherness" and reconciliation in today's world. i also love that he goes "through" postmodern thought rather than "around" it, drawing meaningfully from its major thinkers' often brilliant insights but unintimidated to freely critique its destructive weaknesses.
i also loved the last chapter (7?) where he attempts to reconcile the Crucified Messiah with the Rider on the White Horse, how do we reconcile the vulnerable suffering Messiah revealing God in weakness, humility and identification with the outcast, marginalized and broken and embracing humanity in its wickedness and rebellion, with the Rider on a White Horse who comes with a sword to strike down the nations and treads in the bloody winepress of his wrath? Volf argues that God's violence is a "violence to end all violence" which is hope for the oppressed and victimized around the world who seek to embrace the oppressor to no avail; Volf lambasts the Western sentimentality which has shirked from affirming the justice of God's violence and claims (this was striking to me) to truly reclaim a non-violent proactive resistance to oppression and injustice in our world we actually need a stronger reclamation of God's justice, a "more violent" God (properly framed as a "violence to end all violence" in the context of his loving pursuit to restore his creation and set the world to rights from the hands of human brutality) as the grounding of God being powerful enough to redeem creation from humanity's sin and ground our hope.
overall this book really challenged me alot to wrestle with the question of reconciliation in our world and to have a broader view of God's all-embracing, self-giving love, not only for the victimized and oppressed, but for the unjust and oppressors--and of course the lines of both these categories run through all our own identities.
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February 02
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Josh
gave
to:
Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Contemporary Greek Theologians Series , No 4)
by John D. Zizioulas
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in January, 2003
Josh said:
"this is one of my all-time favorites so figured i should put it up here. zizioulas is a prominent eastern orthodox theologian who proposes a trinitarian understanding of identity in which to truly "be" means to "be-in-relation" t...more
this is one of my all-time favorites so figured i should put it up here. zizioulas is a prominent eastern orthodox theologian who proposes a trinitarian understanding of identity in which to truly "be" means to "be-in-relation" to others. he challenges the roots of individualistic framings of personhood which start with the individual as an enclosed self and thereafter move second-hand to social relations; and proposes in its place an understanding of personhood as inherently and primarily relational: we exist as persons in and through our relations to God / others / creation.
this trinitarian framework grounded in the life of the Father, Son and Spirit as an eternal communion of self-giving love affirms distinction and union: in our relations we are distinct, but only in-and-towards the other, not as self-enclosed monads. we are united, but not as liquid absorbed into the ocean of the amorphous universal, but rather as distinct-yet-inseparable beings in integrated relationship with the world which constitutes our identity as distinct persons.
this ontological framework has tremendous implications for the nature of the church as well. while i had a harder time relating to the second-half of the book which deals more with orthodox ecclesiology, the point was well-taken that what Christ forms around himself is a communion of persons drawn into the very trinitarian life of God in union with Christ and enveloped in the Spirit as eschatological anticipation of the approaching reunion of God with his creation when God shall "be all in all".
i think this book is important to those of us in the Western church like myself who have defined our spirituality very individualistically as a "me and God" thing and Jesus as "my" "personal" lord & saviour; i'm inspired to move towards a Christian spirituality which is more dependent upon the broader diverse community that I need for my spiritual formation, and the broader need for me to be reconciled not only to God but to the humanity, city, and creation of which I am inextricably a part. The redemption of my personhood will entail the healing of my relationships to all these varied spheres of life.
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Josh
read and liked
William's
review of The Magnificent Ambersons:
"It always cracks me up that this is the #100th book on the Modern Library top 100 list. I haven't actually read very many books on that list, but I'm always proud of the fact that I've read the one that just barely made it.
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Josh
gave
to:
Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Paperback)
by Paul Louis Metzger
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in November, 2007
Josh said:
"metzger addresses how consumerism as a pervasive framework in modern Western culture has affected race & class issues in the church of contemporary America. while slavery and the jim crow laws may be no more, the cultural modes of consumer prefe...more
metzger addresses how consumerism as a pervasive framework in modern Western culture has affected race & class issues in the church of contemporary America. while slavery and the jim crow laws may be no more, the cultural modes of consumer preference, upward mobility, and the "homogeneous unit" principle have infiltrated the church's self-understanding and ideology, resulting in church growth strategies that market towards niche groups, seek to assist the American in their upward pursuit of life, liberty and personal happiness, and result in homogeneous units segregated from other walks of life (often along lines that include strong demarcations between race and class).
he proposes theological alternatives to frame the church's practice towards prophetic living in a consumer society. my favorite chapters are 3, 4 and 5, where he addresses, respectively, the following dimensions of the gospel in this regard: the structural (Christ's victory re-orders the cosmos in a way that has immense implications for challenging the powers of market / economic forces), affective (Christ's victory re-orders the affections, passions and values of the human heart from the narcissistic towards God / other / creation in sacrificial "downward mobility"), and ecclesial (Christ's victory establishes a body united to him through his eucharistic presence that is marked by heterogeneity [all races / classes:] with a particular and prophetic way of life).
the call is thus for intentionality in the church to allow Christ's consuming presence to consume the race & class divisions we have allowed to take such a strong hold in the church.
some highlights for me were the recognition that for many of us today the word "community" is extremely popular but is often a code-word for what is more "affinity"--ie. hanging out with people who think, dress, and share the same cultural ideologies as us. what would it look like for the church body to reflect the homeless dude & the CEO, the soccer mom & the punk rocker, the business exec and the cleaning lady in his office, the migrant worker and the stock analyst? i find this an inspiring vision and am convicted that i'm often more interested in pursuing affinity (developing relationship with people like me) than pursuing truly biblical diverse community. this was an inspiring call to be consumed by Christ towards the latter.
i also found inspiring the challenge to homogeneity and upward mobility, as in the comparison of Sartre's hell in "No Exit" where three self-consumed individuals are locked in a room together with no escape with eyelids that cannot close to the following scene in many of our churches "... Christians gather there, with eyes wide open, some of them hanging out around the coffee bar to check out the possibilities for future dates, perhaps in hopes of building cozy Christian homes. Some others plan evangelistic ski trips to Vail, with the only aim of showing their non-Christian homogeneous friends that Christians can have fun, too." (p.98) I'm convicted how much I adapt the Christian gospel to the pursuit of my own comfort rather than a willingness to lay down my life for the world around me.
I also found refreshing the reminder of the "theology" behind the metanarrative of the economic structure today, as in the following quote from Bigelow he builds upon (p.43): "Economics, as channeled by its popular avatars in media and politics, is the cosmology and the theodicy of our contemporary culture. More than religion itself, more than literature, more than cable television, it is economics that offers the dominant creation narrative of our society, depicting the relation of each of us to the universe we inhabit, the relation of human beings to God. And the story it tells is a marvelous one. In it an enormous multitude of strangers, all individuals, all striving alone, are nevertheless all bound together in a beautiful and natural pattern of existence: the market..." Metzger's ensuing discussion is an example of the refreshing call to question the underlying "theologies" and narratives of what we tend to culturally promote as secular or even neutral realities.
okay, there's more but this has gotten long, i should probably shut up now......less
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