Boethius, trans. Victor Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy

Penguin Books, 1999, 155 pgs.

Summary: Written by the Christian Boethius (c. 480-524) just before his execution by bludgeoning. It is a mix of prose and poems in a dialogue between Lady Philosophy and himself about free will, the sovereignty of God, Fortune, sanctification, and the role of reason in theology.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Boethius’ writings on philosophy, logic, and Plato and Aristotle to Medieval and early Renaissance theology and philosophy. He clearly articulates the medieval belief that the world was round and almost infinitely small in comparison to the universe (41, II.vii) and takes an Augustinian stance on the freedom of the will (118).

Benefits/Detriments: Often times both Christians and scholars in general step in to a conversation that’s been going for a long time without going back and carefully reviewing how the conversation has unfolded. In the same way that a group of friends might laugh at someone mentioning “the Dairy Zone,” because of a shared experience, so the study of theology and philosophy have a developed vocabulary and history. Boethius is one of the key components of the later conversation in the Reformation and modernity, and he needs to be read to fully participate in the conversation. He helps us understand why Machiavelli’s Prince is so blatantly anti-Christian and to grasp the significance of Reepicheep’s comments to Eustace about the wheel of Fortune in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I agree strongly with his philosophical method: “we should draw closer to everyday language to avoid the appearance of having moved too far from common usage” (112). His solution to the problem of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will is very helpful and I think ultimately true, as I currently understand his argument. As Philosophy summarizes, it is “unfitting if our future is said to provide a cause of God’s knowledge” (137).  Touché—semi-Pelagians and Pelagians everywhere!

Recommended for pastors reading the scholastics, students carefully reading Lewis’ fiction canon, and as an introduction to the primary source documents of Christian philosophy for late high school students and up. It should be read with Augustine’s Confessions.

Anthony C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980, 484 pgs.

Summary: A brilliant overview and critique of the philosophical description of hermeneutics from Heidegger (cf. review s.v.), Gadamer (1900-2002), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Thiselton includes brief overviews of Kant and the secondary writers that influenced the authors. He also reviews the work of the major interpreters—critical and admiring—with a close summary and critique of Bultmann (1884-1976) as the most public synthesizer of Heidegger’s thought.  The theologian Panneberg (1928-  ) tends to reside in the background providing Thiselton his epistemological foundation. Thiselton then argues for the acceptance of portions of Heidegger and Wittgenstein’s insights as corrected by Panneneberg, Gadamer, and others as a part of New Testament hermeneutics.

From Heidegger he draws the recognition that the writers of the Bible had different horizons from ours and that we must be aware of the horizons or pre-understandings and the authors’ as we approach the text. Panneneberg’s insight that the part cannot be known separately from the whole allows Thiselton to avoid the passive relativism of Heidegger. He clearly finds Wittgenstein’s descriptions more useful in Christian hermeneutics than Heidegger.

The most important insight that he draws from Wittgenstein is considering the “logical grammar of a concept” (386, italics in original). Logical grammar occurs in three classes. Class one are universals: it is always the case that A=A and Romans 4:4, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.” Class two are statements that are “a foundation for research and action” (392, italics in original) and they are rarely questioned by those within a particular language context. These are the hinges, nails, or “the scaffolding of our thoughts” (ibid). And can be illustrated by Hebrews 6:18, “it is impossible for God to lie.”

Finally, class three which are “linguistic recommendations, pictures, and paradigms” (401). “[T]hey concern the elucidation and the application of concepts, and are not statements about the world” (Ibid, italics in original). Contextual class three statements also turn on “institutional facts” (402), such as God’s relationship with Abraham as revealed in the Bible and assumed by Paul in Galatians 3:7. These statements also provide the picture or our attitudes towards the thing being discussed.  The pictures essentially function as the orientation of thought towards something and includes attitude—for instance, Muslims’ picture of Crusaders, Communist of the middle class, the middleclass towards Bolsheviks.

As we study the text of the Bible, the three classes allow us to consider the difference between James 2:24, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” and Romans 3:28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” If Paul and James are both speaking of class one statements, then we have an absolute contradiction, because the two universals cannot both be true. And then to decide if there is an apparent or formal contradiction between James and Paul, we must correctly identify the type of statement and the place it holds in the mind of the authors.

Thiselton summarizes his understanding of the James/Paul conflict this way: “James is not merely attacking an inadequate view of faith, but is also giving what amounts to a fairly sophisticated and positive account of the logical grammar of his own concept of faith. James is neither merely attacking someone else’s view of faith, nor is he merely saying that faith must be supplemented by works. He is saying that his concept of faith would exclude instances of supposed belief which have no observable backing or consequences in life. In other words, whereas in Paul we see an internal or grammatical relation between faith and justification (because faith is entailed in the very concept of justification for Paul), in James we see an internal or grammatical relation between faith and works, because the very concept of faith entails acting in a certain way” (424).

Both Paul and James' “concept of faith would exclude instances of supposed belief which have no observable backing or consequences in life” (cf. Rom. 6:1-2). Here is the universal that is true in all contexts for both James and Paul. The issue for James is that a “faith” lacking “observable backing or consequences in life” cannot include justification because it is not true. And for Paul true faith cannot exclude justification. There’s no contradiction between the two men but the complexity of faith and the different context being addressed leads to the apparent contradictions.

Benefits/Detriments: I once asked a scientifically minded friend about the mathematics behind an inverse universe. (“For each point in the universe, measure its distance r from the centre of the earth and move the point along the centre-to-point line to a new distance 1/r.” Byl, God and Cosmos, 206.) His comment was, “I think the math works, but it gives me a headache to think about it.”  I find myself in a similar situation—I think the philosophy and theology works, but I lack the background in many of the primary and secondary sources.

Having stated this caveat, I know of no better academic overview and critique by an apparently evangelical Christian of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Bultmann. Most of the author’s appropriations from philosophy seem to be helpful. I am a bit apprehensive of Thiselton’s use of Wittgenstein, but I’ve never interacted with Wittgenstein’s writings. I can say the same of his use of Panneneberg, but a bit more emphatically given Panneneberg’s theological outcomes.

It seems to me that many of the philosophical insights of especially Wittgenstein are merely corrections of past philosophical missteps within the Enlightenment tradition. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are both attempting to work within a shared and failing philosophical tradition which is falling apart as the truth of things presses in on it through the observation and criticism of other philosophers. (Both philosophers, especially Heidegger, see themselves as overturning the current system, but I am not convinced it is as fundamental as they believe.)  They’ve found some fixes to the leaks, and Thiselton has borrowed some of the elements to defend or allow Christianity. Yet, the older theologians have already done much of this work from a different perspective but with essentially the same outcome. The tools Thiselton provides are helpful but substantial only within the Enlightenment system and the heirs of Enlightenment.

If there is a weakness to Thiselton, it is statements like this, “We cannot put the clock back to the era before Kant” (441). Kant’s insight that we could not “leap outside the confines of our finite or ‘historic’ existence” (27).  What Heidegger and Kant apparently mean by this is there can be no sharing or very limited sharing between Paul and the reader, God and reader, and this is simply not exhaustively true. And I doubt that Thiselton believes it is true in the sense of Heidegger or Kant.

I can’t change Paul’s “world,” or his historic existence but Paul can change me. Paul’s horizons are stable and traceable, but my world, my ‘historic’ existence is open to Paul or whomever I am willing to think with. The text changes me, because I come to the text willing to think with the author of the text. I can walk towards the author’s horizons; Paul cannot leap towards me, but he and all great authors anticipate the reader’s limited world, the diverse worlds, and work to fuse the horizons. So Paul writes, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will’” (Rom. 9:19), speaking to a reader who does not share his understanding of realty, and he is taking steps to correct it.

To continue expanding beyond the confines of this book review, all reasonably thoughtful authors recognize the two horizons and fight against it. Moses is constantly cajoling and arguing with the Jews that they must remember God’s breaking into history and that their understanding of reality must not revert back to the confines of materialism (cf. Deut.1:27-28) or paganism (cf. 4:3-4;), and that the means of maintaining God’s description is through the text (4:9-10; 6:6-7). And our critic Einstein tells us, “If however the reader despairs of the business of finding his way through Spinoza works, here he will find a reliable guide” (Spinoza Dictionary). Einstein is telling his readers, “My suggestion is that you listen to Spinoza first; see if he speaks to you clearly, and if he doesn’t then fall back on this dictionary. But Spinoza is important so be willing to struggle to understand him.” Moses and Einstein anticipate their readers' needs and their limits and then provide them recommendations and commands.  They don’t share the philosophical language and baggage of Enlightenment hermeneutics, because they are simply doing it.

Good readers and good writers anticipate and work with each; the reader anticipates the difficulty of the author’s life situation and abilities and reads accordingly. And the authors anticipate their readers. (And I have said nothing of the Spirit that teaches us.)  The study of hermeneutics has the potential of sharpening good readers, perhaps moving a mediocre reader to the good category, but it also has the potential of destroying a good reader and reinforcing the arrogance and errors of the bad reader. The Two Horizons offers to sharpen good readers, correct bad readers, and perhaps challenge the mediocre reader, and in general Thiselton achieves a positive contribution as a Christian within the Enlightenment tradition.

The book is written at a post-graduate level and assumes at least a graduate level knowledge of modern philosophy and theology.

Marjorie Grene, Heidegger

Bowes and Bowes, 1957, 128 pgs.

Summary: A brief and devastating critique of the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and existentialism in general. Heidegger somehow managed to be an unrepentant Nazi and the philosopher of post-modernity. His early training was as a Catholic and his dissertation was on the medieval scholastic Duns Scotus.

Dr. Grene thoroughly and competently shows in what sense he asks and answers some important perennial questions about human existence or existential experience, and how he fails completely to do anything significant in ontology. His greatest contribution seems to be located in taking Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism and attempting to make it an atheist system.

Heidegger defines the human experience as: “facticity; being-always-already-in –a-world; existentiality: being always in advance of itself in essential relation to its own possibilities; forfeitures: distraction by the insistent claims of everyday moods and everyday interests and everyday companions, are the essential aspects of human being. But the three aspects are not separable. They form, as we have seen, one unified structure. It is to this single, indissoluble nature that Heidegger gives the name Sorge, cura, concern or care” (26).

This existence is not an authentic existence as it is currently framed; the only way that it can become a good-faith existence is if the human being in the contemplation of death recognizes himself as alone and responsible for his current condition. In this solitude, he is faced with his relationship and responsibility to Being and must recognize his absolute freedom.

The above summary paragraph is basic existentialism.  And I am summarizing a summary—Heidegger is much more interesting with lots of pedantic protests of authenticity and full of dashes and transliterated German. The problem as Grene notes: “It is a doubly self-centered philosophy: a philosophy of the individual centered in his own responsibility to become himself, of man in his own unique relation to his own Being. It is a philosophy in which the concept of the person is all-important, yet it can give us no account of any reaching out from person to another. It is a philosophy which birth and life and death are all important; yet it admits no kinship between man and any of the other things that are born live and die” (58). All of nature, humans and the cosmos, are merely a tool for the individual to discover himself and his relationship to Being.

The issue is not merely one of the egoism of the system, but the scheme only functions within a simplistic understanding of the human experience: “by singling out the act alone by which a man faces his own freedom, the existentialist isolates part of the total situation which cannot be so isolated. It is true that it is ‘I’ who have always-already-chosen the values by which I live. But I have chosen, not created them; if they were not some sense there to be chosen, if something did not compel to choose them, they would not be values at all. . .Every act involves at the least some references to values which, beyond itself, make a claim on the agent and perhaps, at least indirectly, bind him to other agents or to those affected by his acts” (54).

Once Heidegger has established his foundation for analyzing the human experience, he then turns to Being-in-itself or being as it is. And at this point he gets what should be described as silly or incoherent, but so many people take it seriously, we must trudge on. The authentic person is the person who has overcome the “enframing” of Being which was foisted on the West by Aristotle. Heidegger’s proof of this is simply, and he openly admits, reading back his own conclusions into history (cf. 105). When the authentic man overturns the “enframing” he can then “shepherd being” (110) through the mystical process of writing poetry and reconnecting to our pre-Socratic state.

A closing quote from Ms. Grene: “And it may be that Heidegger, in turning away from [Kirerkegaard’s concern about] finitude, is turning again to religion of a sort. . . And always he is a petulant and over-anxious self-apologist: concerned to tell us that this high, unintelligible search is all he has ever undertaken—that what he did achieve he never intended or achieved at all. Were it not for his arrogance , it would be a tragic story; the tragedy of an artist who has destroyed his own work (125).”

Benefits/Detriments:

An assessment of Heidegger is important because he is one of the foundational thinkers behind “post-modernity.” Heidegger has influenced biblical theology and hermeneutics through Bultmann and the proponents of the emerging church.  Dr. Grene’s assessment of his work is particularly important to Christians, because she, as a secular philosopher, accurately portrays Heidegger as a teacher of evil and sophistic or bad philosopher.

Heidegger is only helpful as a catalysis for better philosophers. His efforts to get behind Socrates terminate in returning to pre-Socratic Greek religion and the poets “inspiration.”  On a practical level there is little difference between traditional Greek religion and Hinduism. Heidegger is as much an apologist of a westernized Zen Buddhism as he is a legitimate philosopher.

Existentialism as taught by Heidegger is a handful of critical and interesting thoughts on the human experience combined with some nonsensical observations on Being and a corrosive attitude against both philosophy and Christianity—perhaps even against language and reason. He has a missionary zeal for the incoherence of traditional religion (Greek/Hindu) as “enframed” by poetry. He is not the friend of good science, good philosophy, or Christianity.  Dr. Grene comes to these conclusions as a philosopher with no religious loyalties.

Grene’s critique is accessible to the thoughtful reader with some background in philosophy. I would suggest it for college pastors working with artistic and philosophically minded students and undergraduates with an interest in philosophy.

The greatest weakness of this work is that it deals very little with Heidegger thoughts on language or hermeneutics which tends to be the portion of his work which is most readily absorbed by Christians. The foundation of his hermeneutic is exposed, but not the later rhetoric and development.

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Cambridge Publishing, 1964, 231 pgs.

Summary: Lewis gave a series of lectures at Oxford on the cosmological model or the understanding of reality as it was generally understood in the Medieval and Renaissance period. The textual source of the model was the Bible and classical sources synthesized into a single mostly non-contradictory system. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the others all participated in building the model through the writings of men like Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500) and Boethius (c. 480-524). Lewis defends the later two as Christian writers.

It must be stressed that the model is not anthropocentric or even Terra centric if correctly understood. Instead the model was “anthropoperipheral.” “Earth is in fact the ‘offsourings of creation’, the cosmic dust-bin” (63). The weighty and the gross, the dross, descends to the center: in the intelligible universe, “the Earth is the rim, the outside edge where being falls on the border of nonentity (116). The earth was widely understood as round and insignificant “as a mathematical point—puncti habere rationem” (83) through the work of Boethius.

It is of particular concern to Lewis that the reader understand not only the model of the medieval period but of modernity. Lewis believes that the modern model is a spoilt model in the sense of arrogance and ignorance of the past. It provides a hermeneutic which keeps the reader from enjoying the full richness of the Medieval and Renaissance works. Throughout The Discarded Image he offers an illustrations of the two models:  “In modern, that is, in evolutionary, thought Man stands at the top of stair whose foot is lost in obscurity; in this, he stands at the bottom of a stair whose top  is invisible with light” (74-75).

The difference is something like this: the modern man is in the process of becoming something better, but the medieval person was journeying towards someone better. The modern man looks into the heavens as if the universe were infinite; medieval man’s universe was “unimaginably large, was also unambiguously finite. And one unexpected result of this is to make the smallness of the Earth more vividly felt” (99). The modern man feels the angst of potential chaos and meaninglessness, but the medieval man found a well-ordered and stable model. In the older model the “human imagination has seldom had before it an object so sublimely ordered as the medieval cosmos” (121).

A further difference is in the issue of the human past; modernity, and to a lesser degree post-modernity, turns on what Lewis calls “Historicism: the belief that by studying the past we can learn not only historical but metahistorical or transcendental truth” (174-175). The modern turns to history to discover the process by which we are becoming. He judges the past as muted and lesser. The medieval man turned to history to see himself actualized to his full potential:

Medieval and nineteenth century man agreed that their present was no very admirable age; not to be compared (said one) with the glory that was, not to be compared (said the other) with the glory that is still to come. The odd thing is that the first view seems to have bred on the whole a more cheerful temper” (184-185).

Lewis closes with a brief consideration as to why the medieval model passed away; and his answer is extremely important for Christians to grasp:

There is no question here of the old Model’s being shattered by an inrush of new phenomena. The truth would seem to be the reverse; that when changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support the new one will obediently turn up. . .The new Model will not be set up without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the inner need for it becomes sufficiently great. It will be true evidence. But nature gives most of her evidence in answers to questions we ask her. (221-223).

The basic and most fundamental change between the modern model and the older model was an issue of axiomatic truth. (The difficultly with axioms is that they are considered self-evident truths from which we infer other truths. They are defendable, but rarely provable.) When the axiom moved from “‘all perfect things precede all imperfect things’ to one in which it is axiomatic that ‘the starting point (Entwicklungsgrund) is always lower than what is developed’. . .” (220) then the old was replaced with the new.

Lewis’ cosmological plea concludes with this: “I am only suggesting considerations that may induce us to regard all Models in the right way, respecting each and idolising none. . . We can no longer dismiss the change of Models as a simple progress from error to truth. No Model is a catalogue of ultimate realities, and none is mere fantasy” (222).

Benefits: Any reader attempting to understand the contributions of Medieval and Renaissance literature (art, science, theology, and philosophy) will find this a helpful guide in defining the model behind the inferences.

As an example of assisting in reading the primary source documents, some of the Renaissance theologians will strike out against Epicureanism by saying that man is a microcosm or world in and of himself. This bizarre statement to modern minds is explained on two cosmological issues: the first is that humans have all three forms of being according to Gregory the Great (540-604),“because man has existence (esse) in common with stones, life with trees, and understanding (discernere) with angels, he is rightly called by the name of the world” (153). The second is that the human beings includes the “four contraries” which “combine to form the elements—fire, air, water, earth” (169). Humans are a microcosm of the world, because we have all the possible elements of being within ourselves.

I believe that it is extremely important that Christians begin to address modern cosmology as a possible description of reality and the hermeneutical outcomes (textual and scientific). Further, we must pound away at the false narrative of the march of truth created by the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment propaganda.

Detriments: Lewis is a subtle thinker and some of his comments about history, story, and myth seem to work out in his other works as undermining the inspiration of Scripture. I don’t believe this is a necessary element of his wider teaching on cosmology. I am still trying to grasp if Lewis is using his understanding of story/history/true myth as an apologetic device to speak to the “prevalent psychology of [our] age” (222) or a personal conviction on his part. Regardless, I think his view is a dangerous misstep.

On the issue of cosmology, the Christian thinker must have some privileged elements within whatever cosmology with which he conceptualizes the universe to remain Christian. These elements must include the existence of God and the bare fundamentals of the faith, including the veracity of Scripture. The privileged elements or revealed elements require that a cosmology which fundamentally denies the Christian faith must be repulsed.

The axiom “the starting point (Entwicklungsgrund) is always lower than what is developed” excludes the possibility of Christianity. It requires either that God is evolving with the universe or that there is no God. While many of the descriptive elements of modern cosmology may be accepted by Christians, the axiomatic foundation and its corrosive effects must be guarded against. Due respect of modern cosmology ought to include an appreciation of the destructive nature against the faith and its technological advancements.

I love Lewis dearly, yet too often I find in his handling of Scripture the hermeneutic “the starting point is always lower than what is developed.” There are occasional flashes against this sort of thing—his heart likely believes better than what he understands, but let the reader enjoy and learn from Lewis with an appropriate degree of caution.

Ronald M. Henzel, Darby, Dualism, and the Decline of Dispensationalism

Fenestra Books, 2003.

Summary: The author argues that Darby’s development of Dispensational theology was due to his assuming an absolute dualism between heaven and earth. The presupposition of dualism then became his hermeneutical key for understanding the Scriptures and led to his development of an earthly people, the Jews, and a heavenly people, the church. It also enforced an absolute distinction between law (earthly) and grace (heavenly), New Testament/Old etc.

As Darby developed a theological system around this duality, he created a rubric for interpreting prophecy: prophecy must be interpreted dualistically (heavenly/earthly); prophecy only concerns the earth; the church is never mentioned in prophecy; the prophetic clock does not run while the church is on earth. Henzel notes the logical contradictions between the first statement and the second.

The rubric was flexible enough to allow Darby to harmonize a large amount of Scripture within his dualistic scheme. However in the opinion of Henzel, this dualism and his rubric cannot cope with the use of Jeremiah 31 on the New Covenant in Hebrews 8.

Henzel also argues that neither Irving or Lacunza had much influence on Darby, though they are representative of the theological currents of the day.

Benefits/Detriments: This book is the most careful consideration of Darby’s theological writings that I am aware of. (I personally have failed to penetrate his opaque style.) Henzel highlights the differences between Darby’s stringent dualism and the simplified church/Israel division of his theological heirs. The literalism found in Scofield and other more modern Dispensationalists is secondary in Darby’s writing to his dualism.

Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism

Moody Publishers, 2007.

Summary: An update of the earlier “Dispensationalism Today,” it has been expanded and in many ways improved. (I don’t have a copy of the earlier work and must rely on my memory.)

The author argues that Dispensationalism springs from a normal or literal hermeneutic. “The nonliteralist is the nonpremillennialist, the less specific and less consistent literalists are covenant premillennialist and the progressive dispensationalist, and the consistent literalist is a dispensationaslist” (102). He then attempts to defend normative or historical Dispensationalism, against progressive dispensationalists, non-premillennialists, and covenant premillennialists.

The marks of a Dispensationalist are then teaching a separation between Israel and the Church and literalism.

Benefits/Detriments: The spirit of the work is generally irenic. There seems to be a lack recognition of the role of presuppositions in Dispensationalistional hermeneutics. I was amused to discover that the only systemic theology of my childhood home (besides the Scofield and Ryrie study Bibles) was by an “ultradispensationalist,” Charles F. Baker.

Tremper Longman III, Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

vol. 3 in Foundations for Contemporary Interpretation, Zondervan, 1987.

Summary: An introduction to literary approaches in biblical interpretation by a conservative Christian who maintained a high view of Scripture. [My understanding is that his view of Scripture has dropped considerably in later publications. Added--03/08/12] Longman engages with literary critics secular, liberal, and orthodox and attempts to draw insights from their work.

Longmen’s own summary “We have recognized a tendency among some scholars to reduce the Bible to literature and to deny history. Other scholars, particularly those of us whose doctrine of Scripture is conservative, must resist the temptation to ignore the literary aspect of divine revelation by reducing the Scripture to history and theology. I have intended this book to stimulate all of us to a more balanced reading of the Bible” (152).

Benefits/Detriments: Incredibly helpful.  A must read for handling historical narrative and poetry.

Fictional stories are powerful literary devices because history is linear and the human mind can encapsulate the whole without exhaustive knowledge. Because God is omnipresent and omniscient, his view of reality is the only exhaustive perspective, and his inspired narrative, poetry, parables, and the like while sharing commonalities with other literary works exist as separate though similar categories. The difficulty and perhaps even danger of literary approaches to the Bible is accepting genre categories of non-believers without recognizing the belief policies that drive the definitions. Yet there is also the danger of adopting an uncritical literary interpretation from the enculturated habits of mind which are independent of the Bible and right reason. Both the non-believer and believer can misinterpret the Bible through faulty definitions and presuppositions and both are real threats to the church.

Longmen is aware of this tension, but I am concerned that he sometimes forgets the uniqueness of God’s perspective and authorship when handling the Bible and the critics.

The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne

Shane Claiborne, the author of The Irresistible Revolution, is a man of great moral clarity and bravery. He not only espouses and evangelizes for communal living, public protest, and pacifism, he lives it.

He’s not just writing about an irresistible revolution, he’s trying to lead one. And while he is not a complete stranger to the radical chic lifestyle, he’s willing to poke fun at himself and others for resort conferences and self-absorbed navel gazing. He’s articulate, passionate, well educated, and widely read. Quoting with appreciation Che Guevara, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mama T (a.k.a. Mother Teresa), Jim Wallis, Dorothy Day, Gandhi, John Yoder, Bono, Bonheoffer, Rich Mullins, and the red-letter Christian brigade, he discloses his broad philosophical and theological influences. Tracing the potential trajectory of all these ideas is like observing a cognitive dissonance cluster bomb, and it led me to the conclusion that he truly believes what he teaches: that great social change can come through hokey street theater, the use of sidewalk chalk, and blowing bubbles at bemused police officers (189).

Moral Authority

After reading his report of funky antics as a “theological prankster” (281), it’s tempting to pat him on the head and tell him to grow up and buy a shirt with buttons. But this misses how deadly serious he is: he has spent time in jail, risked his life protesting the war in Iraq, and makes every attempt to live his life as consistently around his confused ideals as possible. This alone gives him a great deal of moral authority.

And we must not miss the other reason for his moral authority. Much of his critique of the American evangelical church is accurate. In general, we are fat, insulated, and isolated from the poor and disenfranchised. We have compromised with our culture on the issue of civic religion. Our churches are characterized by the market’s brand of statistically-driven pragmatism. And our theology and practice can be an incoherent mess. When our bright young people notice all this, they begin looking around for a way to follow Jesus that is less staid and less compromised, and Claiborne intends his autobiographical manifesto to be a how-to-guide for them.

The Major Problem

The major problem is the cluster bomb I mentioned above. His theology is an unbiblical and incoherent synthesis which might be described as popularized Christian anarchism for young, disaffected, middle-class Americans.

I don’t say this to be mean spirited. Claiborne has asked to be critiqued from a theological perspective. He writes, “the answer to bad theology is not no theology but good theology. So rather than distancing ourselves from religious language and biblical study, let’s dive into the Scripture together, correcting bad theology with good theology” (169). I agree. If he’s accurately following Scripture, we should follow him. If he’s not, then he needs to stop the “theatrics of counterterror” (188) and join us in a rather different task.

Warrior King Or Slaughtered Lamb?

To begin with, Claiborne calls Christians to correct our “distorted understandings of the warrior God by internalizing our allegiance to the slaughtered Lamb. . .” I am all for internalizing my allegiance to the warrior God, because he is the slaughtered Lamb. But that’s not what Claiborne means, he means something like, don’t understand Jesus Christ through the Old Testament’s descriptions of an angry God, because Jesus was a pacifist “Mediterranean peasant revolutionary” (112). This view squares badly with Revelation 6:15-17, where the kings, the generals, the poor, and the free all attempt to hide themselves from Jesus Christ while begging the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

The Bible teaches that Jesus came as the Suffering Servant the first time. When he returns the second time, he will come with his sword drawn as the Warrior God to tread “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Rev. 19:15). In Claiborne’s desire to correct one distortion, he introduces an opposite but equally distorted view. He wants us to exchange Christian militarism for Christian pacifism. But neither can bear the weight of the entire Word of God.

“Sell All” Or “Health and Wealth”?

Claiborne also calls the church to correct “the health-and-wealth gospel by following the Homeless Rabbi.” The “health-and-wealth gospel” is a pox on the church in all its variants. But Claiborne continues his theme by quoting Rich Mullins: “We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too” (98-99). A bit of head scratching is in due order when one reads such statements. How does one make the universal need of salvation identical to the particularized need of the rich young ruler? And how does one interpret the Gospels so that the redistribution of wealth is equated with salvation?

At some point while reading The Irresistible Revolution, the hermeneutic becomes clear: the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the Mount, are to be read “literally” (77) or radically—as long as they support modern liberalism. It’s only a literal reading of any passages that lead to something like Christianized socialism with a dash of anarchism. The cure for the “health-and-wealth gospel” appears to be a gospel that confuses salvation by faith alone with the redistribution of wealth to the poor.

But there is a second layer to Claiborne’s attempts to follow Jesus “literally.” He believes that much if not most of Jesus’ ministry can be summed up as prophetic street theater. In other words, Jesus wasn’t crucified for claiming to be God, rather, “Jesus was crucified not for helping poor people but for joining them” (144). Jesus’ example and actions were “like street theater at a protest” (f. 9, pg. 281) and the “dazzle of the resurrection” is described as the “theatrics of counterterror” (281-282).

Suddenly the bubbles and sidewalk chalk make sense. Shane Claiborne believes that he is literally following Jesus’ example by his “prophetic” protests which often unfold as passing out spare change on Wall Street, getting arrested for minor civic violations in support of the homeless, and shilling on behalf of Saddam Hussein. The irresistible revolution at its silliest is outdoor drama with a fancy name; at its most theologically serious, it fails to make distinctions between the deserving and the undeserving poor (as required by 2 Thes. 3:10), between the megalomaniac dictators and the management of Taco Bell, between Christians and non-Christians.

Not Really a Radical

Perhaps the most ironic issue is that Shane Claiborne has strait-jacketed himself into a theological paradigm that cannot escape the confines of popular Western culture. His avowed interest in the anti-establishment rock band Rage Against the Machine, with their two Grammy Awards and Sony corporation contract, may be entertaining, but it neither furthers the cause of Christ nor social justice. He might like to quote Che Guevara, but Che’s contribution to Communist thought amounts to having an iconic photo taken of himself (by Alberto Korda) and being shot by the C.I.A. while wearing two Rolexes. Clairborne’s moral earnestness and passion are exemplary, but street drama as theology hinders his ability to think carefully about complicated issues; instead he claims that Jesus’ teaching on paying the temple tax in Matthew 17:24-27 is illuminated by the statement “when the emperor passes, the peasant bows. . .and farts” (185, n. 12).

Since Claiborne has accepted the Christian Century crowd’s romanticism of popular leftists revolutionaries, he has missed the true radicals—like that Protestant scholastic who risked his life by sneaking into Catholic controlled Paris to share the true gospel with an arch-heretic; like the Covenanters who were burned at the stake for refusing to worship bits of bread during the masses that Claiborne enjoys attending (325); like Christian police officers and soldiers who have the challenge of simultaneously “loving their enemies” while also loving the people they protect; like Christian business men who provide millions of people with jobs and the dignity of supporting their families through the creation-mandated activity of work, and doing so with honesty and integrity in a fallen world.

The fundamental issue is not that Claiborne is too radical or even rebellious. No, it’s that he takes the easy way out. It’s hard to spend your money in a godly way and to give it to the poor wisely, so he scatters it on the ground as a “jubilee” and abrogates a responsibility given to him by God. It’s no fun to hold a job and legally purchase abandoned buildings for the homeless, so he “reclaims” them as a squatter. It’s difficult to be patient under the current regime of sin and death, and so Claiborne pretends that swords can be pounded into plowshares and poverty can be eliminated without the return of Christ.

In Shane Claiborne’s revolution, flatulence jokes become theological reflection, the crucifixion morphs to a lampoon, and prophetic preaching is reduced to heckling presidential candidates. It’s not much of a revolution, but perhaps it’s the revolution a compromised American Church deserves.

By Shane Walker

Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning

Oxford University Press, 2004.

Summary: Fundamentalism is a response to Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment and includes particularly religious people of all conservative stripes. Fundamentalists behave as if will-to-power is necessary to establish the regimes or the public space they feel is necessary for them to practice their faith. Individual Fundamentalists may not be stupid, but their behavior leads to stupid outcomes—“they are selfish, greedy and stupid” (pg. 217). “Protestant fundamentalism is a dangerous religion” (ibid.) as are all other forms of fundamentalism.

Malise Ruthven lacks any sense of epistemological or philosophical humility or irony. As far as I can tell, he is what he loathes in “fundamentalists,” only well-educated, sophisticated, and published by Oxford Press.

Pierre Rousselot, The Problem of Love in the Middle Ages: A Historical Contribution

Marquette University Press, 2002.

Summary: Rousselot argues from the primary sources that in the Middle Ages there were three basic positions on love: Augustine, Thomas, and Abelard or eudemonistic, natural, and ecstatic. Thomas view is natural because love seeks the “natural unity” provided by the source of being. The ecstatic view is found in the medieval mystics and Abelard and Duns Scotus. This view is irrational, violent, and egalitarian. Oliver O’Donovan teaches that “ecstatic” and “natural” love both require a corrosion of self and lead to pietism and mysticism, but Rousselot believes that the self can be maintained in natural love if a neo-Thomist understanding of the part’s participation in the whole is maintained. Because a Christian’s view of love helps define both his theology proper and anthropology, this is an incredible important discussion.

The book appears to be competently translated, but the reviewer lacks the language skills to make a judgment—readable and scholarly.  Latin quotes are kept in text and footnotes, but translated.