Resurrection and Sheol

Resurrection is central to the message of hope offered by both Christianity and Judaism. The rationale for the Christian tradition is clear and pervasive: the bodily resurrection is the foundational vindication of faith in Christ, and appears throughout its earliest doctrinal and pastoral texts. For the Jewish religion, the centrality of resurrection appears less obvious, particularly when we consider the texts of the Hebrew Bible. Here, the idea of bodily resurrection seems less basic, appearing fully-formed only perhaps as an apocalyptic afterthought in the book of Daniel. In fact, prior to Daniel 12, the notion of death looms with no apparent hope for a future reversal. Further, even when we do see rare occasions of resurrection, there is little connection in the Hebrew Scriptures with the Hellenistic (and modern) notion of the immortality of the soul. Rather, we see the psalmist ask rhetorically whether the dead can praise God. The idea is ridiculous; the appeal is for God to postpone the inevitable destruction. Likewise, Qohelet laments that “the same fate is in store for all: for the righteous and for the wicked” (Ecclesiastes 9:2).

But that is not the end of the matter. This is the question at stake in Madigan and Levenson’s Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews. They make the point that the concept of resurrection is not at all foreign to the Hebrew Bible; it does not appear ex nihilo in Daniel. Rather, when the full picture of bodily resurrection does appear, “it reflects certain key features that have long been part of the deep structure of the theology of Israel.”

It is clear that the pervasive idea of death in the ancient near east was typified by a sense of inevitable fate. As the authors mention, in one Akkadian poem, death was, without ambiguity, the “Land of No Return.” It is no surprise that this understanding colors various portions of the Hebrew Bible. The place of Sheol appears in many contexts, but never as an ideal vacation spot. There is no eternal rest to be found here, no cause for hope. As Job says, Sheol is both inevitable and permanent: once you descend all sense of place and connection with land of the living is lost (Job 7:10).

But what exactly is Sheol? Madigan and Levenson helpfully re-articulate the ancient view of death in a way that may not seem intuitive to moderns. The psalms constantly refer to Sheol and death, but in an unexpected way. While we moderns tend to think of death in medical terms, that concept was foreign to the ancient Hebrew. Rather, the primary discontinuity was between leading a healthy and blessed life and being cursed, perhaps unto death. This is why the psalmist can talk of his present place in Sheol. He cries out to God, “You have put me at the bottom of the Pit” (Ps. 88:5). Hannah equates her barrenness with Sheol (1 Samuel 2). Jonah cries out from the “belly of Sheol” (Jonah 3:5). Sheol can plague those who are biologically alive, but still downtrodden by enemies, disease, and fruitlessness. While we moderns tend to see a yawning gulf between life – even life ravaged by suffering – and death, the ancient Israelites distinguished between life, and then the varying stages of death (or Sheol). The terms used for this ancient “death” – the grave, the pit, the uttermost places of the earth, and so on – are situated this side of biological death. When the psalmist writes that God has put him in the Pit, he equates that perilous place as the boundary of Sheol (88:4). Madigan and Levenson point out that having been abandoned by God and man alike, the psalmist in deepest darkness is – to use an idiom for familiar to moderns – as good as dead (Ps. 9:10). And the dead can do nothing of use.

Church as polis?

Peter Leithart asks whether there’s a better way to put it:

Erik Peterson points to the NT language about a heavenly Jerusalem of which Christians are citizens. He compares the church to the pagan cults this way: “One might perhaps say, that as the profane Ekklesia of antiquity was an institution of the polis, so the Christian Ekklesia is an institution of the heavenly city, of the heavenly Jerusalem.”

That’s sharp: On this view, the church is never absorbed into earthly political order, never reduced to a national cult, even if the nation is thoroughly Christian. The political order to which the church belongs is the eschatological political order of the heavenly city. At the same time, this view seems to avoid some of the separationist tendencies that sometimes infect church-as-polis theories. The church isn’t defined over-against the earthly city, but as the sacrament and “cult” of the city that is to come.

Tradition, praxis, and Scripture

While the praxis of the sensus fidelium is central to the Church’s preservation of tradition, it’s not the last word. As Congar admits, the authenticity of our tradition cannot be fully democratized, on account of the human propensity for syncretism. The sensus fidelium should not be uncritically idealized. Congar suggests that there is a special value to what Christians declare when under the threat of persecution, when the espoused beliefs endanger the quality of life itself. However, this assertion is complicated by the history of many heterodox communities which have suffered greatly for their theological witness while still confessing doctrines outside the pale of Christian orthodoxy. Or, along the same lines, there is the problem of the Reformation, in which both rival parties suffered greatly and formulated rather divergent theologies and practices. If both sides equally imperiled “the pleasures or amenities of life,” which consensus fidelium was authentic?

Therefore, on one hand, we want to avoid an entirely hierarchical and intellectual presentation of faith. On the other hand, once we allow that our tradition is “lived” in history and praxis, we seem to be left without a definite authenticator.

At this point, Tillich’s “Protestant principle” may point us in the right direction. Tillich suggests that the Church must always be self-critical. Even while we adopt changing doctrinal language, liturgical symbols, or practices, we should recognize that ours is a mission of approximation. Doctrine is an interpretive task, and therefore one that should be done with humility.

While the Church is limited in that sense, however, God is not. Therefore, returning to Congar, we might reframe his primal norm in this way: Truth is found in God’s communication of saving faith. Therefore, as His creatures we are always the recipients of truth, and not its originators or its final authenticators. We recognize our authentic living faith through the revelation of God in the Spirit, and are continually open to the chastening of the Scriptures and the proclamation of the Church’s faithful witness of Christ.

In light of this, the Protestant doctrine of Scripture becomes a starting point for discussion, as Karl Rahner also points out. While certain hermeneutical difficulties are still present, we can confess that even if we cannot conclusively authenticate the validity of our living tradition on our own, God authenticates Himself. And He has promised to continue speaking through Scripture and the full testimony of Christian reality in each age. The responsibility of the Church, therefore, is to continually position itself in submission to God, ready to receive His correction in the Scriptures, and to proclaim with humility the full apostolic testimony which it has inherited.

John Webster is again helpful in contrasting the respective presentations of the development of dogma in Catholic and Protestant theology:

What is said about the nature and functions of creeds and confessions must be rooted in talk about the Triune God in the economy of salvation, tracing these human texts back to their source in the church’s participation in the drama of God’s saving self-communication in Christ through the Spirit’s power.… It is simply to say that the history of the creeds is part of the history of the church – part, that is, of that sphere of human life invaded and annexed by God and characterized by astonished and chastened hearing of the Word and by grateful and afflicted witness.

In the Protestant view, there does seem to be a more transcendent, invasive quality to Scripture, whereas Vatican II Catholics like Rahner seem more concerned with the Church’s ability to make necessary cultural adaptation to meet the needs of its present historical moment.

Congar and authentic tradition

If we allow that the Christian tradition is a much fuller reality than propositional statements or dogma, and that our faith must encompass our historical practice as well, we are left wondering how we can still identify authentic tradition. The variance in the expression of living tradition over the ages certainly complicates the matter.

Herbert Vorgrimler proposes that a unified witness of faith-content and Christian praxis amount to a theological and ecclesial proclamation of “historical revelation in God’s word.” Praxis is arrived at via the sense of faith (sensus fidei), and through the community (sensus fidelium) presents a relevant judgment (consensus fidelium) for those outside, viz. “heretics” and even Christians who refuse to participate in the practice. This is useful, as far as it goes. But is it possible that there is still a missing element? Does the unity of praxis and faith-content give us a reliable standard? And what would determine at what point the praxis and faith-content truly became the consensus of the Church? What of other traditions with differing practices and faith-content?

Yves Congar is helpful at this point. He speaks of the necessity for “norming” standards (Congar, “Toward a Catholic Synthesis”). The primal norm is saving faith itself, which is most fully expressed in confession of Christ as Lord. By setting saving faith as the primal truth, Congar aims to reframe the issue of magisterial infallibility by making it a “function” of truth itself. Magisterial authority must therefore be integrated into the ecclesial witness of divine truth, rather than setting it apart as a distinct hierarchical standard. This serves to undermine the contentious rivalry between the people (i.e. the theologians) and the magisterium, since both are subject to the norma normans of canonical Scripture.

The entirety of the Church’s life in Christ therefore testifies to the original traditum. This gives us, in effect, two historical perspectives on our living faith: First, we have a sort of theological anamnesis in our confessions, by which we restate the truths originally expressed by our fathers in the faith. Second, we can also acknowledge that our living tradition is at all times fully historical. Every confession speaks to a specific time and cultural context. This latter idea does not lead to theological relativism, Congar argues, but rather helps us to recognize our own hermeneutical development. Truth – that is, saving faith in Christ – remains constant even while we approach it by various historical means.

Congar also wishes to stress the role of the entire Church in pursuing truth: “It is the whole Church that learns… that teaches, but in different ways.” In this sense, the practice of the faithful can be its own testimony to various truths, which is sometimes “more important than what is said about them.” Vorgrimler would likely agree with Congar that praxis has its own “eloquence.”

Paul, liturgy, and theopolitics

Somehow I missed this post from Creston Davis back in August. Next year, Brazos will be releasing a book on St. Paul, liturgy, and political theology, co-authored by Milbank, Zizek, Pickstock, and Davis. Looks like a must read for anyone who loves or hates (is there any middle ground?) any of the above (not sure that Davis has any haters yet; but anyone who hangs out with Billy Collins and Zizek simultaneously is okay in my book).

This book’s basic thesis is that the Church (especially in the United States) has completely lost the radical edge of Christianity that both Jesus and St. Paul announced and in the wake of which the Church was founded by the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead, the Church has more and more appealed to an indifferent and consumeristic outlook that neutralizes a politics of the Event of Incarnation.  St. Paul’s view of the Cross and Resurrection, this book argues, keeps alive a “subject of the Incarnational Event” that lives faithfully into the cosmic irruption.  The logic of the Earth-Shattering Event is precisely what the Church has lost and replaces the radical politics of Love for the status quo.  Consequently, the Bible and Church teachings too have been held captive to this the politics of indifference premised on keeping the Church “clean” from the stranger and the sinner–making it feel more comfortable and materially empty.  So, in the final analysis this book re-focuses the Church’s need to resist a postmodern politics of indifference to the status quo and challenges the Church to embrace a politics of Love in the wake of the Incarnational Event of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Public theology before another god

John Bowlin’s lecture at the 2007 convocation of Princeton Theological Seminary is a gem. I only read it this past week, but I would highly recommend taking the time to read the entire piece. I’m going to break blogging protocol and post a lengthy quote. Please do pardon me.

If St Thomas is right about the persistence of established religion, then we should expect this age of religious disestablishment to pass with the coming of the next American political establishment. We may have to wait a while…. Yet a new political establishment will eventually emerge, and a new established piety will almost certainly come in its wake.

It is at this moment, after thinking along these lines, that a problem with theology that goes public comes into view. If it is, in fact, difficult to image a political society without an established piety that united powers beyond with affairs below, then one wonders which piety will play that role in the next American political establishment. If I had to guess, I would not pick mainline Protestantism; indeed, I would not pick any particular variety of Christianity at all…. Many speak of the advantages of post-Christendom, of the benefits that the Protestant churches enjoy now, free of the burdens of establishment. But I suspect that these perks come precisely because we live in an age of disestablishment and pluralism, an age when no coherent politics holds sway, when no piety in particular legitimates our common life, and when the public square is a cacophany of competing voices and competies pieties. Change the facts on the ground, imagine the establishment of some other politics and some other piety, and I suspect that the advantages of post-Christendom will be harder to recognize. Indeed, as the Lukan story of Paul’s ministry makes plain, it is rarely easy, and often quite dangerous, to speak the substance of our faith in a public square dominated by the ceremonial rites and court theologians of some other religion.

This, I take it, is the coming problem of public theology. The question is this: how will Christians find a public theological voice in an age when some other piety legitimates our political affairs? How will we speak in a public square occupied by the prayers and sacrifices of some other god?

Items of note (Reformed edition)

• Kevin Davis asks why some Reformed folk are respecters of persons, at least when it comes to Ridderbos and Barth.
• Epistole: “the Reformers were not iconoclasts simpliciter.”
• Tim Enloe on revelation and the authority of Scripture.
• Scott Kirkland posts an excellent quote from John Webster on the freedom of divine revelation.
• Brad Littlejohn on evangelical attitudes toward homosexuality … and usury.
• Friday audio: Derek Webb’s “What Matters More” [audio:http://www.theopolitical.com/data/What_Matters_More.mp3]