Theological Hermeneutics and Practice

What does Christian understanding comprise?  It is sometimes supposed that the Christian message is a sort of hypothesis, which Christians “believe.”  That is what makes Christians Christians: their willingness to accept the hypothesis as a true one.  On this model, Christian understanding might be depicted as that grasp of the hypothesis which would make a reasoned decision about it possible.  One would have a attained a Christian understanding when one had a clear view of the grounds and implications of the various historical and metaphysical claims involved in the Christian hypothesis, and of the way in which these claims are woven together into a unity.  “Christianity” is, so to speak, the object to be understood.

What such a view tends to overlook or minimize is the fact that the Christian message presents a number of concepts whose mastery takes one in quite a different direction from that just indicated.  One may set out to understand Christianity, only to find oneself confronted with the task of understanding oneself and one’s world Christianly.  And this may be a more arduous assignment than one had anticipated, particularly with regard to the self-understanding of which is involved.  What accounts for this unusual turn of events is that some of the concepts central to Christian teaching are rather complex, existentially rooted concepts whose acquisition entails particular kinds of moral and emotional growth.  Such concepts as gratitude or joy have conceptual prerequisites, in that, for example, a capacity for gratitude presupposes a particular awareness of self and other, and a capacity fr joy presupposes the capacity to care.  So to learn these characteristically Christian concepts, and thus to “understand Christianity,” involves one in what may be a fairly intensive and thoroughgoing education in human existence, particularly if one’s education has been somewhat spotty up to this point.  Lest this appear to exaggerate a commonplace, it is worth remarking that we are not born with these concepts, and that some of them appear to go against the ordinary human grain, despite the ordinariness of the terms associated with them, such as “faith,” “hope,” and “love.”  Theologically understood, faith, hope, and love are divine gifts, not to be reckoned as human achievements; yet the appropriation of these gifts, enabled by grace, just as clearly involves the development of the corresponding abilities, or clusters of abilities, which are then determinative of Christian life as lived “in the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Charles Wood, The Formation of Christian Understanding: An Essay in Theological Hermeneutics (1981), 24-25.

More of the same…

“Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you: Jesus Christ and the American Soldier.  One died for our soul, the other for our freedom.”  (a quote from a friend’s facebook status)

This is precisely the reason why Christians in America can’t comprehend what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection mean, and must turn to the nationalistic idolatry of warfare to make sense of life.

Hauerwas the Sectarian

…after September 11 Hauerwas was one of the very few well-
known public voices in America calling for a nonviolent response.
Hauerwas spoke and wrote, argued and debated the reasons for his
pacifist stance up and down the East Coast, in magazines, journals,
books, lectures,  and on the internet. The idea that a theologian who
goes to so much trouble to put in the public domain a set of extremely
unpopular arguments for the legitimacy of pacifism is a sectarian, or
is commending a withdrawal from the world, is laughable.

Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, 132.

At last…

I’m finally and officially a professional photographer.  I just made $0.28 from selling a photo through a stock photography website.  $0.28 is the lowest amount you can possibly make selling a stock photo.  It means that whoever wanted my photo only wanted to use it online in an ‘extra small’ format.  But it can only go up from here, right?!

The Religious Sphere

The ethical decision, however, is not the last word.  It leads necessarily to a crisis in which man will either despair again or turn to God.  Up to this point God has been considered too exclusively as a complement of man’s ethical life; he ordinarily recalls Him only in examination of conscience.  By admitting his faults the ethical man expresses his essential limitation before God’s transcendency and avoids falling into despair.  Religious contrition thus belongs to the essence of ethical life, since it indicates that although evil is a part of one’s self, one detaches himself from it in his ultimate choice, and asserts his fundamental ability to observe the ethical law.

At a certain point, however, my conscience will conclude that it is impossible to observe faithfully the claims of ethics, and I will be forced to abandon belief in my own basic righteousness.  My conscience accuses me of being guilty before God not only in certain respect, but in every respect.  A new decision becomes necessary, in which I will either abandon myself to despair, or throw myself entirely on God’s mercy.  Only in this moment can my commitment be called absolute, because only here do I choose my self completely, including the true relation to its Origin, guilt…This means that the choice of myself, by which I escaped from the aesthetic stage, is only fully accomplished on the religious level, where I cast myself as totally guilty before God.  The ethical stage was a transition.  My decision becomes absolute only when it is completed in absolute despair or in absolute faith.

If the essence of spirit is subjectivity, it follows that man becomes fully spirit only in the religious stage.  For in the ethical stage the subjective choice was still aimed at an objective realization of ethical values, whereas in the religious choice subjectivity abandons every hope of realizing itself objectively.  Man accepts himself as nonobjective, as an individual, completely isolated from the universal.  He is alone with his guilt before God, and finds no place in an objective universe. But in choosing himself as guilty before God he finally chooses himself and his relation to the Origin of his self.

Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, 47-48.

The Ethical Sphere

In the choice of himself as an absolute, one leaves the aesthetic stage.  Kierkegaard calls the new sphere, into which freedom has introduced man, the ethical.  As soon as  a person takes possession of himself and becomes free there arises an absolute distinction between good and evil.  For the speculative attitude (which is included in the aesthetic, because of its lack of commitment), this distinction is only relative: good and evil can be integrated in a single system.  The distinction becomes absolute when we make it so by a personal commitment.  This means that good and evil are absolute only insofar as we will them.  Such a statement does not reduce them to mere subjective determinations – they are objective and universal in themselves – but they become themselves only in the free decision of absolute choice.  Nothing but a conscious, personal acceptance can make objective standard into absolute values.

Even in their subjective acceptance, however, the objective ethical standards are a limitation of the spirit….The absolute of the ethical man is expressed as an existence which is extremely limited and, as such, relative.  Although the synthesis of the ethical personality is more balanced than the aesthetic, which refuses to bind itself to the finite, the question remains whether the ethical man will ever be conscious of the absolute as such, which is the primary condition for becoming spirit.  The very self-assurance of the ethical man makes his whole attitude somewhat suspect.  “He feels no want of the eternal, for it is with him in time.”

Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, 45-46.

The Aesthetic Sphere

The aesthetic sphere bears within itself the germ of its own destruction: the frustrated attempts of the spirit to affirmt itself cause a strange anxiety, eventually leading to despair…Only a free decision can break through the aesthetic attitude.  At this point it does not matter to what one commits onself, since the dilemma here is not between good and evil, but between choosing and not choosing.  If the aesthete has followed his attitude to its ultimate consequences, there is nothing left for him to choose other than the despair into which he has brought himself.  If he accepts it resolutely, he chooses himself and thus brings an absolute element into his existence: in his commitment to despair he constitutes a relationship to himself.

One does not fall into despair; one chooses it voluntarily.  And in choosing despair man also chooses the object of despair, himself. This is an absolute, not subordinate to anything else.  The unique character of this absolute is that it becomes real only through choice, and, on the other hand, that it must already be real to be an object of choice.  This is possible only if I am, myself, the choice, and if freedom is the very essence of my existence, for only then can I become myself through realizing my freedom.  The fact that I am essentially freedom is at the origin of the paradox that I choose the most concrete reality, myself, and that this self becomes concrete only by that choice.  In order to choose myself, I should already be myself: on the other hand, I become myself only in choosing myself.

Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, 43-44.

For those interested…

I have the most amazing fiancée.  She continually amazes me with her sharp mind, warm heart, keen perception, lively sense of humor, and a seemingly unending list of mysteriously wonderful qualities which I look forward to learning more about.  She is also, among other things, a very competent poet.  I would like to recommend her poetry blog to anyone interested in poetry written from a true sense of theological exploration of what it means to be human.

Elisa’s Place

Here is one of my favorites:

Flowers flicker light against the sapphire sea,
the sun plays the fiddle and the grass
yawns, stretching its thousand arms.

There is so much to say. So much

that floats

on the soft winds of easy silence.
But only a whisper is heard -
a butterfly brushes past:

“Rest here, rest here awhile, children.
For moments hold and gather
the real. Then comes time.”

World Cinema, by Joel and Ethan Coen

GRE Advice?

Anyone out there taken the GRE lately?  What helped?  What didn’t?  Should I be as nervous as I am?

I tend to freak out about this kind of thing.