William A. Walker III

Pastor, Professor, Theologian, Spiritual Director

Month: November 2013

My Dissertation Abstract: Globalization, Violence and Salvation

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On November 24, 2013

In Dissertation

Dissertation Prospectus

GLOBALIZATION, VIOLENCE AND SALVATION: TOWARD A TRANSMODERN POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF NEIGHBORLINESS AND RESISTANCE

“To be against globalization as such is like being against electricity.  However, this cannot lead us to resign ourselves to the present order of things because globalization as it is now being carried out exacerbates the unjust inequalities among different sectors of humanity and the social, economic, political and cultural exclusion of a good portion of the world’s population.” – Gustavo Gutierrez

Understood within an analytical framework and mediating theory of economic, political and cultural globalization, the purpose of this dissertation is to critically, socially and theologically reflect upon the violence and injustice that has been enacted and endured by people in Mexico and the United States in recent years (2008 to present) as a result of the so-called drug war.  To begin I will attempt to outline the various dimensions of the phenomenon of globalization and the drug war more specifically, the latter of which is presumed to epitomize major negative aspects of the former.  This part of the examination will rely on the work of several leading social scientists who have extensively studied the U.S. – Mexico underground political economy and its genealogy. Secondly, an ethical-political critique from a view of Christian salvation will be conducted as it pertains to this particular conflict, principally but not exclusively in its social sense.  My method and hermeneutical approach will be guided by what has been called the transmodern thought of Enrique Dussel and Hans Urs von Balthasar, respectively – Dussel with regard to historical and ethical-political concerns, and von Balthasar with attention to his theological aesthetics and the dramatic structure of his doctrine of salvation as symbolized by the theological significance he gives to Holy Saturday.

Dussel’s re-reading of the history of modernity as “coloniality” from a Latin American “border thinking” perspective, as well as his Levinasian and arguably Schellingian-Marxist interpretation of social relations will be the primary lens through which I will try to situate and appreciate the more particular problem of globalization and the drug war itself.  Subsequently, in an effort to sensitize Dussel’s approach to a view from “the eyes of faith,” it is von Balthasar’s meditation on the beauty of the Christ-form that will be appropriated in order to convey a less anthropocentric and more trans-temporal, thoroughgoing Christian theo-political imagination. The study will culminate in an attempt to synthesize several key contributions of Dussel and von Balthasar by drawing on additional soteriological and ecclesial insights from Dorothee Soelle, Jon Sobrino and Gustavo Gutierrez. It will be argued finally that only a properly historical-critical (Dussel), aesthetic and christocentric (von Balthasar) liberationist soteriology (Sobrino) of communion (Gutierrez) can confer the adequate theological and ethical vision of neighborliness – one that is necessary for the inspiration of faithful Christian and ecclesial resistance (Soelle) in this crisis and others.

The Radiance of Christ and its Effect on Human Beings: Theological Aesthetics in St. Thomas and von Balthasar

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On November 18, 2013

In Theology

Below I’ve included an excerpt from Aidan Nichols’ little book on Hans Urs von Balthasar.  One of the chapters in my dissertation will take up certain aspects of von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics and dramatics so as to attempt to give a fuller picture of Christian social justice and the Church’s vision for striving after it in circumstances of violence and oppression — a fuller one, at least, than many modern and postmodern depictions tend to offer, in my view.  For this reason, I’m borrowing the term “transmodern” to describe it.  Of course, to whatever extent this is achieved, it will be due to the thinkers I’m writing about rather than anything original to my own thought.

Descartes was in love with what he called ‘clear and distinct ideas’.  Balthasar’s concept of clarity, however, is taken from Thomas, for whom clarity – radiance – is one of the essential traits of the beautiful, along with proportion and integrity.  This is a very different sort of ‘brightness’.  The brightness of the beautiful is something that overwhelms us, impelling us and enabling us to enter further into the depths of being than the unaided intelligence can venture.  And whereas the Cartesian ‘idea’ is, in Scholastic terms, an intuited potential essence – something that may or may not be the case about the world, the Thomistic ‘radiance’ is expressed by a form actually enacting its own existence, its being-in-act. — p. 17

St. Thomas explains that Christ has radiance through being the Art of the Father, where the Word illuminates the mind that contemplates him.  He has proportion because he is the fullest likeness of the Father.  He has integrity because his form is the Father’s form.  And for Aquinas precisely those three qualities – radiance, proportion, integrity – are the hallmarks of the beautiful.  St. Thomas was speaking of the pre-existent Son, who is with the Father from all eternity.  Balthasar, by contrast, wants to apply pulchrum to the incarnate Son, precisely in his sensuous as well as intelligible form, a form that is well accommodated to our finitude so that we may grasp it.

Though [artworks] function within the analogical network of being whose indefinitely extended character . . . though they belong to immanent being – the realm of being that suitably proportioned to the human mind, they also participate in the transcendentals, and thus they have a relation to the transcendent, divine Being that is all creation’s source.  Aesthetic beauty, we can say, strives towards transcendental beauty, and this is a token of its spirituality.  Yet aesthetic beauty cannot spiritualize itself.  It is ordered to the delight of the embodied human mind of everyman or everywoman – toward the satisfaction of the imagination as earthed in this world.  It can, then, only receive a direction toward the transcendent, and do so, accordingly, from beyond itself.   The supreme, altogether unified, and yet interior experience the Romantics were looking for is not self-shaped.  Rather, it is shaped by a transcendent and supernatural form.  The subject of religious experience, the human self, can be, ought to be, and has been, re-formed by its transcendent object.  Human experience enters true synthesis through receiving an objective revealed form that brings it to fulfillment.  The self becomes re-formed divinely when it lets Christ’s archetypal experience form its own.  — p. 26-27

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Paul Helm on Miracles: Signs of Grace, not Violations of Nature

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On November 11, 2013

In Theology

Cover of "The Providence of God (Contours...

Cover via Amazon

It’s not often that I find myself reading a Calvinist’s take on Divine Providence, but I’m currently doing so in preparation for my PhD comprehensive exams (which will include questions about the theology of John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas, among others).  Paul Helm’s discussion of miracles below is a good one, at least as far as theological determinism and much of classical theism goes (see his blog here):

It is important to note that the Bible does not employ a rigid distinction between the natural and the supernatural.  Nor does it operate with a technical and precise definition of a miracle as a violation of, or suspension of a law of nature.  Rather, ‘signs and wonders’ (some of which have no scientific explanation) function as powerful expressions of God’s power and grace.  Their meaning is bound up with the meaning of the other events and teachings to which they point, and with which they are integrated.  They do not have a scientific or magical significance of their own.

Moreover, miracles must not be regarded as divine tinkerings, as the way in which God deals with an emergency situation which has arisen unexpectedly . . . some philosophers and theologians have objected to the occurrence of miracles because they seemed to be dishonoring to God, as if the machinery of the universe were defective and God had to make running repairs.  Whatever the shortcomings of this general approach, it quite correctly recognizes the inadequacy of supposing that miracles are needed because God’s providential order is in danger of breaking down.

We may agree with Leibniz that God is perfect and that [God] does not do anything without having a sufficient reason to do it.  It does not follow,  however, that God cannot have a sufficient reason to perform a miracle; to act, that is, in a way that involves unprecedented changes in physical nature [e.g., the resurrection?].

If miracles are not metaphysical first-aid, what are they?  They are signs, signs of God’s grace, and of its urgency and power.  They do not occur apart from the history of God’s dealing with [God’s] people, but they are integral to that history.  They invariably accompany new phases of God’s redemptive activity, and their significance cannot be understood except in terms of the significance of the history of which they form a part.

As we have seen, the history of Israel and of the church is built upon covenantal promises which God fulfills by, among other things, providentially ordering the affairs of [God’s] people.  The purpose of that history is to reveal God’s grace in the redemption of men and women.  Miracles are not signs of the power of God in the abstract, or magical tests of strength, or entertaining exhibitions of divine cleverness; but they are signs of grace.  They are intended to make those who believe that God orders the affairs of nature for their good gasp — not only at the power of God in the miracle, but at power of a deeper magnitude in the revelation of saving grace which the miracles signal.

The Providence of God, pp. 106-7

Spirituality, Prayer and Mortification according to Evelyn Underhill

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On November 4, 2013

In Spirituality

English: Evelyn Underhill. Author given as Wil...

English: Evelyn Underhill. Author given as William Edward Downey (1855–1908) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature with its small ideas and adventures in the center foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity. . . .

We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.  Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having or doing, is the essence of a spiritual life. . . .

[or] Mortification and Prayer.  These are formidable words, and modern humanity tends to recoil from them.  Yet they only mean, when translated into our own language, that the development of the spiritual life involves both dealing with ourselves and attending to God.  Or, to put it the other way around and in more general terms, first turning to Reality, and then getting our tangled, half-real psychic lives – so tightly coiled about ourselves and our own interests, including our spiritual interests – into harmony with the great movement of Reality.  Mortification means killing the very roots of self-love; pride and possessiveness, anger and violence, ambition and greed in all their disguises, however respectable those disguises may be, whatever uniforms they wear.  In fact, it really means the entire transformation of our personal, professional and political life into something more consistent with our real situation as small dependent, fugitive creatures; all sharing the same limitation and inheriting the same half-animal past. That may not sound very impressive or unusual; but it is the foundation of all genuine spiritual life, and sets a standard which is not peculiar to orthodox Christianity.  Those who are familiar with Blake’s poetry will recognize that it is all to be found there.  Indeed, wherever we find people whose spiritual life is robust and creative, we find that in one way or another this transformation has been effected and this price has been paid.

Prayer means turning to Reality, taking our part, however humble, tentative and half-understood, in the continual conversation, the communion of our spirits with the Eternal Spirit; the acknowledgement of our entire dependence, which is yet the partly free dependence of the child.  For Prayer is really our whole life toward God: our longing for him, our “incurable God-sickness,” as Barth calls it, our whole drive towards him.  It is the humble correspondence of the human spirit with the Sum of all Perfection, the Fountain of Life.  No narrower definition than this is truly satisfactory, or covers all the ground.

— From The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill

Bill is the Director of Vocation at Christ Church of Austin. He also teaches Christians ethics in the Business School at Baylor and theology as an adjunct professor at Truett Seminary. His first book, "A Theology of the Drug War: Globalization, Violence and Salvation" was published in 2020 with Lexington-Fortress Press. Read More...

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