O Lord, who else or what else can I desire but you? You are my Lord, Lord of my heart, mind, and soul. You know me through and through. In and through you everything that is finds tis origin and goal. You embrace all that exists and care for it with divine love and compassion. Why, then, do I keep expecting happiness and satisfaction outside of you? Why do I keep relating to you as one of my many relationships, instead of my only relationship, in which all other ones are grounded? Why do I keep looking for popularity, respect from others, success, acclaim, and sensual pleasures? Why, Lord, is it so hard for me to make you the only one? Why do I keep hesitating to surrender myself totally to you? Help me, O Lord, to let my old self die, to let die the thousand big and small ways in which I am still building up my false self and trying to cling to my false desires. Let me be reborn in you and see through you the world in the right way, so that all my actions, words, and thought can become a hymn of praise to you. I need your loving grace to travel on this hard road that leads to the death of my old self and to a new life in and for you. I know and trust that this is the road to freedom.- from A Cry for Mercy by Henri J. M. Nouwen
Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.
The song now rises as high as the flames of hatred
now whispers softly, kind and tender,
Now glows like the sun and glitters like the lodestar
Now thunders down the prisons
Trang, “The Rising Song”
Thank you, Dr. Taylor for your forceful, rich and inspiring presentation.
In his paper, Sing it Hard, Mark L. Taylor begins by briefly describing the problem of mass incarceration both in terms of the sheer number of people it affects in this country (per capita) and with regard to the significantly disproportionate population of minoritized groups and people of color that are imprisoned in the U.S. or controlled by the penal state in various ways. Using James Samuel Logan’s study on the subject, Taylor lists four primary causes of the rise of mass-incarceration in the U.S., each of which interact together in the greater national and global context:
An “ever-increasing social policy commitment to incarceration and draconian criminal justice policies as a control solution geared toward exploiting fear about insecurity and containing and regulating the frustrations of the nation’s most exploited residents…”
growing privatization of prisons and the profit that can be captured as a result
Secondly, in order to explain how mass-incarceration can be understood specifically as a decolonial struggle, Taylor frames his analysis of this problem both historically and internationally: historically from the standpoint of U.S. politics in the latter half of the 20th Century, contending that mass-incarceration is part of the repeated necessary sacrifice (Dussel) of surplus populations (Mike Davis and Christian Parenti) inherent in the rise of modernity itself dating back to as early as the 15th century and following with the so-called discovery, or as Dussel likes to say, the “invasion of the Americas.” Internationally the issue is situated with respect to globalization on the one hand and the on-going dominant role of individual nation-states like the U.S. in the West on the other.
I find this to be an especially significant point – acknowledging the growing power of trans and supranational capital and financial mobility that characterizes globalization, but not overlooking the persistence of geopolitical, nationally based centers of power that govern these financial and capital movements – Taylor recognizes, in other words, that to speak of Empire or neoliberalism as if it exists solely in the aftermath of the declining rule of nation-states is premature (otherwise we might not see such disparate imprisonment numbers in the first place) Furthermore, by examining the problem from a global perspective, Taylor does not, in my view, abstract from the concrete situation but rather adds clarity and depth of engagement to it.
(Citing Wacquant and Gilmore) Additionally, Taylor means to show that mass-incarceration is the inevitable byproduct, and to some extent even the engine, of U.S. economic growth since WWII, as well as that it is a consequence of the continued neo-colonial project of American exceptionalism and imperialism in general.
While there have been some praiseworthy underground resistance in the Christian tradition over the centuries, Taylor notes as well the extent to which many of Christianity’s most vocal proponents have been complicit in this militarist-expansionist project of the U.S., often under the guise of speech about “liberty.”
Similarly, while getting popularized by rhetoric about “individual responsibility,” the subsequent withdrawal of social support services and the augmentation of deregulatory economics only compounded the problem and has further lead to the development of the penal state.
Then, following several post-colonial theorists (Wallerstein and Mignolo) and in particular the thought of the Peruvian Anibal Quijano, Taylor expands the issue of mass-incarceration by conceiving of it not only the traditional Marxist, materialist categories of labor and class, but also the ambits of subjectivity, sexuality and collective authority, each of which he expounds upon and are interacting and overlapping dimensions through which mass-incarceration exercises symbolic power (Bourdieu) over its victims, is expressivist (Durkheim), and functions as a dominant policing and economic force controlling human bodies.
And herein lies the key connection to decoloniality: seeing the U.S. prison population “as an important segment of the “world precariate,” those peoples who belong to the long history of regions, subject to Western and, more recently, U.S., imperial formation and enforcement.” This, for Taylor, is what warrants that the struggle be named- decolonial.
Attention to these additional dimensions of coloniality coincides with Taylor’s call for a response in theo-poetic fashion – which is not reducible to the level of political economy but is also concerned with affecting culture and stirring artistic expression of creative story-telling, artistic, dramatic and performative acts of resistance to both express and catalyze a social movement against the oppressive force of mass-incarceration. So just as coloniality broadens and deepens the configuration of this particular form of exploitation – in mass-incarceration – so too will an appropriate resistance movement take broader and deeper forms than mere advocacy for change in policy at the political-economic level. It will be more total than that, Consisting of at least three visible marks of critical resistance, a Christian decolonizing effort according to Taylor is constituted by dynamic social existence moving from
1. Owning of agonistic being (ontology of struggle)
2. Cultivating of artful reflex
3. Fomenting of counter-colonial practices
The fomenting, Taylor stresses, is dependent upon the owning and the cultivating.
Finally, tracing the distinctives of a Christian Theo-Poetic challenge to mass-incarceration, for inspiration Taylor deliberately makes no reference to a transcendent Other or to knowledge that is dependent on some kind of revelation from beyond or outside. Instead, Taylor wishes to invoke a neither fully immanent nor transcendent mode of trans-existence or trans-immanence (Nancy) that is in-finite, opposing any attempt to lockdown the world as is or close it off, as it were, and envisaging the world as unfolding…
A theo-poetic challenge, however, is nevertheless firmly grounded in the way of the cross for Taylor, and there are three main features to this way. It is:
1. Politically adversarial – Taylor makes a strong case for why this can be taken straight from Jesus’ own life and ministry.
2. Mimetic (theatrical: off-setting the unpredictable, theatrical performance of the state, creatively dramatic – this dimension is crucial, Taylor says, for unleashing a counter-vailing power much like Jesus crucifixion did by challenging violent mechanisms of power.
3. Kinetic (moving and dynamic) Using Taylor words, this sets in motion an organized embodiment that sought to “sustain life-renewing activity and communal work” by extending Jesus’s own “radically inclusive love that transgressed the ways of the religio-political state”
Anticipating the likely pushback from those whom Taylor might dub guild theologians, Taylor does not deny that power for resistance can be derived from an idea of the God who is found and testified to in Scripture and the creeds, but this is not what Taylor is doing. Taylor firmly believes that the power of a vulnerable, networking people who bear the weight of produced social suffering is sufficient (and more suited?) to ignite and organize a counter-carceral movement, and he finishes by giving two good examples of this.
Now while one might identify this paper as a work of political theology, it is certainly more political and social in its content than theological (– though Taylor prefers to redefine both of these terms as set forth in his most recent book, The Political and the Theological). One can appreciate that Taylor distances himself so much from the theologies of Christendom. When Taylor employs the ontology of transimmanence, he does not appear to be making a case for this ontology as such here, so I’m going to briefly respond to a few of his apparent assumptions that are made rather than take issue with the notion of transimmanence as it might defended.
Without taking anything away from his socio-cultural-political and post-colonial critique and proposal I hope – and conceding full well that Christianity itself needs to be decolonized, and that ontological otherness has perhaps more often than not been appropriated to numb or to excuse inaction on behalf of the oppressed – to reinforce coloniality in all its ambits – I would prefer to join other more traditional theologians, even if it is predictable and unoriginal, in retorting that faith in God as transcendent and benevolent, and faith in the prospect of eschatological hope, can still be a great catalyst for social change – just as perhaps, I think, it could even be argued that a theology of trans-immanence is susceptible to becoming closed-in, totalizing or despairing in some sense. In sum, I’m not sure why the neither/nor approach to transcendence and immanence is more desirable than a both/and understanding. Can’t transcendence strongly criticize idolatry, say, in the form of fetishized domination and over-securitization? Can’t transcendence be the source of courage for Christian communities to enact resistance without fear of death? And then conversely, doesn’t a concept of a transcendent God’s immanence promise hope to the victimized in that God can be said to suffer with and relate to the victim in Christ?
– I want to pause now though to emphasize something: namely that these doctrinal questions are secondary concerns for me. They come after, as Taylor puts it, as interpretations – not first (existentially rather than chronologically). First, there is a choice to be made. Most importantly I want to reiterate and affirm what I interpret to be one of the most compelling points and contributions in Taylor’s presentation – namely, his assertion that “everything hinges on what kind of social existence what kind of communal embodiment, those who call themselves Christians, who identify their lives and groups with the way of Jesus, will present in the world. In particular what kind of social existence will they present vis-à-vis the coloniality of power in which current mass incarceration is inscribed?“
This, it seems to me, is the battle cry, if you will, that can mobilize people in the Christian tradition regardless of their theological persuasions. In my view, this is a profound and compelling theological statement about an urgent issue today, even in spite of what some might consider to be Taylor’s otherwise-than-orthodox ontology. Moreover, this is an attempt to not only include but to join the other, to rally anyone in the struggle for liberation from the chains of imprisonment, irrespective of identity or affiliation – to summon all who are unwilling to stomach, as Taylor says, the injustice and the racism of the penal system. While the issue of Christian identity in the respect that it was raised yesterday by Anselm Min is left somewhat untreated here, one does find both Christian agency and agenda operative in this proposal. It is an invitation to people of the way of Jesus to deploy their resources, language and practices “so as to find their place within the larger, and not just Christian, movement of critical resistance” to dramatically contest this neo-colonizing strategy of rule. And I should add: I share Taylor’s concern that not nearly enough Christians are involved in this struggle, in the arts of protest and prayer that might “thunder down the prisons” and sing hard that “flesh can wear out chains.”
One last political comment to close:
Just to indicate one direction in which the discussion could be extended, in the same way that the nation-state cannot be properly understood apart from globalization, perhaps neither can mass-incarceration be thoroughly criticized without examining it alongside of violence in neighboring Central American countries that is being at least indirectly incentivized by these broken criminal justice policies. At one point Taylor speaks of how de-socialized wage labor is managed by hyper-incarceration. Hyper-incarceration is only a domesticate system, however, while de-socialized wage labor is being propagated around the globe by U.S. foreign policy and the behavior of certain U.S.-based corporations. In unstable regions of Mexico, for example, the management system is not hyper-incarceration but murderous competition between drug cartels for control of smuggling routes and the labor of disposable traffickers.
But finally I just want to comment in closing that this paper was very moving for me and has incited my somewhat dormant creative imagination and thinking about this issue as I further explore the problem of the drug war.
I got to hear Javier speak at Loyola Marymount University last week, and he made a call for a peaceful but courageous North American resistance effort to end the failed war on drugs (he also spoke at Pomona/Claremont and the LA public library while he was here). Below is his letter to us. For those who don’t know, Javier is a well-known poet in Mexico whose son was tortured and killed last year by narcotraffickers. Javier has since been instrumental in mobilizing hundreds of thousands Mexicans in a movement to oppose narcoterrorism and the Mexican government’s strategy of aggression that only seems to be causing further violence. Now he is taking on the biggest culprit…
Dear Neighbor,
The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, MPJD sends greetings to you and your organization.
We are a movement that emerged last year in response to widespread violence in Mexico stemming from the policies of the war against drugs and drug cartels. The 60,000 deaths, the 10,000 disappearances, and the 160,000 internally displaced people during the past six years is a tragedy caused directly caused by failed security policies. Importantly, only 2% of all crimes committed in Mexico are investigated and solved.
We are dedicated to giving voice to the families of victims of this violence and to publicizing the real costs of this war. We have made it clear that the Mexican state must stop denying its responsibilities, which it does by criminalizing the victims of violence. Instead, it must accept that there are victims, and that it is the Mexican government’s responsibility to provide justice and reparations to them. With this in mind, we have asked for a change from the current security strategy to one focused on human security.
To these ends, the Movement has organized two “caravans” that have traversed the North and South of Mexico. These actions prompted meetings with the President and Legislature to seek policy alternatives to war. These experiences have allowed us to see first-hand the grave situation we face as a society.
As part of our quest for peace and justice, the Movement would like to extend to you a cordial invitation to be part of a new endeavor: the US Peace Caravan. This caravan will leave this August from San Diego, CA and arrive in Washington, DC in September. This initiative seeks to promote dialogue with American civil society and its government regarding the following themes: the need to stop gun trafficking; the need to debate alternatives to drug prohibition; the need for better tools to combat money laundering; and the need to promote bilateral cooperation in human rights and human security in two priority areas: promotion of civil society and safety, as well as protection and safety for migrants.
The MPJD seeks the support of the diverse array of groups we believe would be interested in promoting and end to, or alternatives to, the aforementioned policies. We believe that the solutions must emerge from within civil society and from a regional dialogue. For these reasons, we invite you to be our counterpart in an exercise of civilian diplomacy that can return peace, justice and dignity to the victims of this war. We hope we will be able to count on your valuable participation as an ally and partner in this historic event.
In fact our human society and economy is now so large we have passed the limits of our planet’s capacity to support us and it is overflowing. Our current model of economy growth is driving this system, the one we rely upon for our present and future prosperity, over the cliff. This in itself presents a major problem. It becomes a much larger challenge when we consider that billions of people are living desperate lives in appalling poverty and need their personal “economy” to rapidly grow to alleviate their suffering. But there is no room left.
This means things are going to change. Not because we will choose change out of philosophical or political preference, but because if we don’t transform our society and economy, we risk social and economic collapse and the descent into chaos. The science on this is now clear and accepted by any rational observer. While an initial look at the public debate may suggest controversy, any serious examination of the peer-reviewed conclusions of leading science bodies shows the core direction we heading in is now clear. Things do not look good.
Below is the schedule from a conference in which I was able to participate this past weekend, and I’m going to be posting some of the notes from my response to Mark L. Taylor‘s presentation in the coming days. The papers and responses will be submitted for publication this summer.
APRIL 20-21(Friday and Saturday), 2012
ALBRECHT AUDITORIUM
Claremont Graduate University
(Between Dartmouth Ave and 10th Street)
Sponsored by the School of Religion, Claremont Graduate University
Funded by The Margaret Jagels Fund for Catholic Studies
CONFERENCE CHAIR: ANSELM MIN
Maguire Distinguished Professor of Religion
The purpose of this conference is to discuss the most compelling issues facing Christian theology today. Eight distinguished theologians will speak on what each considers to be the most compelling theological issue today and how she or he proposes to deal with that issue. Each presentation will be followed by a response and a general discussion. A very lively debate is expected. It is hoped that the conference will bring clarity, vitality, and urgency to the situation of contemporary theology that seems rather confused, fragmented, and exhausted. The conference is free and open to all.
Friday, April 20, 2012
9:00-9:10 Welcome, Tammi Schneider, Dean, School of Religion, and Anselm Min,
Conference Chair
9:10-10:40 Chair: Michael Saad (Chair of the Board of Advisors and Chair of the Coptic
Council, School of Religion)
John Behr (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary): “Let us Return to the
Word Delivered in the Beginning” (Polycarp)
Response: Rhys Kuzmic (Ph.D. candidate, Claremont Graduate University)
10:40-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-12:30 Chair: Nancy van Deusen (Claremont Graduate University)
Anselm Min (Claremont Graduate University): “Deconstructing and Reconstructing
Christian Identity in the World of Differance”
Response: Joseph Prabhu (Cal State U Los Angeles)
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 Chair: Stephen Davis (Claremont McKenna College)
Robert Schreiter (Catholic Theological Union): “The Repositioning of a Theology of
the World in the Face of Globalization and Post-Secularity: Prophecy and Crisis“
Response: James Fredericks (Loyola Marymount University)
3:30-4:00 Coffee Break
4:00-5:30 Chair: Patrick Mason (Claremont Graduate University)
Mark Wallace (Swarthmore College): “Christian Animism, Green Spirit Theology,
“[O]nly if the form of Christ can be lived out in the community of the church is the confession of the church true; only if Christ can be practiced is Jesus Lord. No matter how often the subsequent history of the church belied this confession, it is this presence within time of an eschatological and divine peace, really incarnate in the person of Jesus and forever imparted to the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, that remains the very essence of the church’s evangelical appeal to the world at large, and of the salvation it proclaims.” – David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite
About a decade ago, Princeton theologian Mark Lewis Taylor wrote a book called The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America. “Executed,” refers to the death penalty and the provocative claim that Jesus too was executed. As one reviewer remarked, Taylor is reminding Christians that they follow an “executed God,” not just a crucified one; Jesus, like many of America’s and the world’s “surplus populations” died because of the self-interest of imperial and religious authority. And while we say that Jesus was certainly innocent, according to Taylor’s research and others I’ve read, there has also been the shocking estimate that as many as 1 in 9 death row inmates are thought to be innocent of the crime(s) for which they have been sentenced to die.
I’m going to have the privilege of responding to Taylor at a conference coming up in Claremont in just a few weeks. His paper is entitled, “U.S. Mass Incarceration as Decolonial Struggle: A Theo-political and Theo-poetic Challenge.” Obviously, the fact that he’s still writing about this reflects the unfortunate reality that the problem has only gotten worse. Having written some on the Drug War, I’m very interested in his topic. In many ways, the violence in Mexico and the overpopulation of our prisons are two sides of the same coin (for more on this, see the manuscript from my presentation on this subject at the American Academy of Religion conference in 2011 here). In Columbia and Mexico, Cartels pay assassins called sicaros to execute rival gang members. In the process, many innocent victims have been executed as well.
As a Christian, I affirm the creeds of orthodoxy. I believe in the resurrection, and I confess that Jesus is Lord. As many believers throughout the centuries have remarked though, this confession is vacuous apart from a life and a community that is striving to follow in the way of the cross. The church is called to testify to the reality and hope of the resurrection by existing as a sign, a witness, and a foretaste of God’s dream for the world (see Alan Roxburgh’s Introducing the Missional Church).
And as one friend of mine Tad Delay recently argued, this means that church, faith, and theology are always political. Of course this doesn’t mean only political; nor does it mean partisan, necessarily. Nor again does it mean coercive. Two extremes of passive resignation on the one-hand and partisan over-identification on the other are much easier and much more appealing than the narrow, sub-versive, transcendent path and vision of the executed One.
Taylor explains:
The very notion of gospel, eungelion, is a case in point. It is a term that originates neither from the early Jesus movement(s), nor from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew testament dating from third-century B.C.E.). Gospel was a term for the glad tidings that announced and eulogized military victories of Roman campaigns or the celebrations and sacrifices made on behalf of the emperor, who was uniquely proclaimed as soter (savior), one who brings world peace, the enforced peace of Roman power, the Pax Romana [which Taylor again provocatively compares to Pax Americana]. Glorification of the emperor, indeed his deification, “gives euangelion its significance and power. . . . Because the emperor is more than a common man, his ordinances are glad messages and his commands are sacred writings. . . . He proclaims euangelia through his peace. . . . The first eugelion is the news of his birth.”
When Paul forged a grammar dynamically structured around the terms gospel and soter, he was, in effect, laying down a gauntlet to the standing political powers of Roman jurisdiction and to its own divine charter myth. Paul’s couching the good news of Jesus as gospel and his talk of Jesus as savior (soter) bringing salvation, soteria (see 1 Thess. 5:8-9, Phil. 1:28; 2:12; Rom. 1:16; 10:1; 11:11; and 13:11), would certainly be heard as an alternative claim not only about the cosmos but also about victory and power in very concrete domains of earth and politics. Paul’s gospel set forth an alternative lord to the imperium’s claims to possess saving power, a clear challenge to the imperial cult running from Caesar Augustus to his successors. Our enforced distinctions between religion and politics, church and state, often render us tone deaf to both what Paul was saying and what the people were hearing: a theological-ethical-political challenge to the claims of the empire that structured their daily lives (82).
Other words worth mentioning that Paul appropriated from the public context:
Pistis (this word often appeared on coins) – God’s faithfulness or loyalty to all people, not the emperor/Rome’s faithfulness.
Kyrios – Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar.
Eirene – “Peace and Security”: proclaiming peace when there is no peace.
Obviously, these too are politically charged terms, set in the context of his discussion of the coming “day of the Lord,” an event to “shatter the false peace and security of the Roman establishment.” As this indicates, his famous apocalyptic orientation is not an otherwordly discourse but a theopolitical challenge. [Nor are these] inconsequential terms. They are central to our concept of faith. And bear in mind that this message is meant to be taken neither as a call for violent tactical maneuvering nor passive endurance. By and large, however, we’re far too caught up in the latter (83).
This is why Taylor discusses adversarial politics and the need for a theatrics of counter-terrorism and resistance to empire for a movement in the United States against mass incarceration, and, as I want to appropriate it, against the drug war.
Ok, so the gospel was political. But it was also eschatological, meaning future and salvation-oriented for not just individuals but all of creation. Taylor addresses this dimension as well:
Yes, Paul has a cosmic Christ, and the powers of evil he addresses have a kind of cosmic and even metaphysical beyondness, if you will, vis-a-vis the politics of Rome. Yet, and this is crucial, we neither understand the apocalyptic Paul nor his cosmic Christ except through the adversarial stance he assumes and sharpens by critically engaging the political claims of the imperial cult. Recall that the imperial cult, for all its political ideology and practice, also made cosmic, religious claims. Rome’s gospel and Paul’s gospel do not represent an opposition between a political force and a religious force. No, this is a struggle between two visions and two communal ways of inhabiting the earth, both of which are inextricably political and religious. Both are freighted with this-worldly concern for flesh-and-blood human beings; both are full of cosmic and religious meaning and aspirations (84).
In sum, I would just say this: a lot of people are tired of talking politics, but that’s because the media and our electoral process has co-opted what should otherwise be the deeper, fuller, and more robustly theological importance of the political realm. It’s hard to imagine a more profoundly political statement than the willful submission by the son of God to imperial torture and execution. I guess in my experience I just get concerned that talk of peace and quiet in the shadow of a national superpower by the relatively affluent can quickly become an excuse for doing/saying very little to actually transform the world. At the same time, as long as we’re making a concerted effort to live the mission of God faithfully in our context, the still, silent mourning, set apart from the clamor of society’s shallow conception of democracy and freedom, might be the perfect way to honor and host of the crucified/executed One on Good Friday.
Friend: this atonement stuff is FLYING over my head
Sent at 1:40 PM on Monday
me: ha – in those last two posts i’m really not writing to people who aren’t already studying it at all. I plan to simplify later on actually. I had a good talk with [another friend like you] about a lot of this recently, and I think he understood what i was getting at. It’s just a vocabulary problem, in the same way if i were to try and read certain legal jargon… i’m working on a response to Matt Chandler’s new book that will break down what i’m saying much more clearly i hope.
Friend: I guess what I’m saying is I literally don’t even know how you are defining atonement, so the rest of it is jibberish to me since i have no experience with any of those writings
Sent at 2:24 PM on Monday
Friend: but don’t waste your day trying to get me on your level, haha
Sent at 2:26 PM on Monday
me: yeah… as if you’re not smart enough! (this friend is very smart) well in a sense thats exactly the problem – how do we define atonement. In many of our experiences – for those of us with evangelical backgrounds – atonement is simply the idea that jesus paid/satisfied the “price”/sacrifice/penalty for our sins on the cross – and that is understood as the gospel, end of story. Many Christians have said much more than that though, and the Bible itself seems to be saying more than that. A lot of it boils down to the way this teaching positively or negatively affects the Christian conception of the church’s purpose and mission in the world, and that is what i’m primarily concerned about
Sent at 2:29 PM on Monday
Friend: Ok. So what you are mostly talking about is how much further it might go
Sent at 2:30 PM on Monday
me: sure, or maybe we could say how there’s another side
Friend: got it
Sent at 2:32 PM on Monday
me: it’s something many people already implicitly might know, but in certain circles it’s deemphasized if not intentionally downplayed – particularly in the most influential big (and affluent!) churches in the country with lots of younger people in attendance
Friend: that makes sense
Sent at 2:33 PM on Monday
me: the other side, in brief, could be described as the way that jesus – as God – experiences suffering with all those who have suffered – and in this way is also accomplishing salvation from injustice. not just salvation from our wrong-doings or sinful nature. Without taking it too far, God takes responsibility for the world, out of love, even though God doesn’t have to.
Friend: yes – that makes sense
Sent at 2:35 PM on Monday
me: so it’s a matter of emphasis for me – i’ve heard the first part a lot, and it’s still [important, though i want to reinterpret a bit], but a failure to talk about the second, has left a lot of people wondering how the cross is really good news in a world full of violence, war, etc.
Friend: yeah – i understand what you are getting at now
Not so much “why do bad things happen to good people”
but “how does Jesus relate to good people who bad things are happening to?”
me: well said
Friend: got it
me: and then, what is the church’s response as community called to bear witness to this
Moving closer to good Friday, and in light of Tony Jones’ recent request for sharing more posts on the subject, I’ve adapted this passage from a section in a final paper I wrote for a class called, “Theology of Globalization” with Anselm Min. By drawing on the work of a few other figures, it expounds upon the solidarity idea in Moltmann that was highlighted in my previous post on Jones’ book, A Better Atonement.
The Salvadorian Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino contends that “the New Testament does not insist that the pain of the cross, in itself, produces salvation . . . What we must not do is to theoretically equate love and sacrifice . . . The cross, as a historically necessary component of love, is part of its historical fullness, and what God was pleased by was this fullness of love. This means that what is pleasing to God is not just one event.”[i] It is Jesus’s whole life combined with his faithfulness to the point of death that pleases God. Sobrino adds:
“In the Greek philosophical outlook, the incarnation can be understood as a “participation” in human nature, from which we get its famous maxim: “What has not been accepted cannot be redeemed.” In this way the cross is sacrifice, death, and the supreme expression of negativity – the acceptance of which, in Latin theology, is the condition that alone makes it possible to overcome the negativity, though the specific models used to explain this have an excessively legalistic and formal ring to them.”[ii]
Sobrino is clearly struggling with the tension between an unwillingness to relinquish the function of and need for atonement on the one hand and the inability for any metaphor or human language to fully capture and do justice to Christ’s saving death on the other hand – a death that has so often been misunderstood and manipulated, distorting the image of God that Christ reveals. There is ever present in the cross a dialectic of mercy and justice, grace and judgment, forgiveness and condemnation. The cross expresses and embodies each aspect at once. As Sobrino further elucidates, Jesus is both the Suffering Servant and the one who establishes righteousness and law.
There is a tendency even in Sobrino, however – no doubt in light of his context and immediate concerns for victims, and in fear of making God out to be an oppressor – to err on the side of reading the crucifixion in terms of mere symbolic causality rather than efficient causality. While one must exercise extraordinary caution so as not to anthropomorphize God’s judgment, there is a very understandable preoccupation with whether one can praise and consistently envisage a God who allegedly reviles violence but also atones for sin through violence.
But even if the cross is conceived as necessary for many other reasons already mentioned (criticism, solidarity, etc.), to completely eradicate atonement and reduce Jesus’s death to a demonstration or to symbolism – however powerful – is for Christians to risk depriving the tradition of its soteriological depth. S. Mark Heim makes a critical distinction in a reflection on Isaiah 52-53: “When we inflict iniquities on a victim, it is not same event as when God lays those same iniquities on him.”[iii] The imperative is to guard well the distance between our human notions of jurisprudence and that which we imperfectly attribute to God for the purposes of reaching finite intuition about God’s nature, activity and relationship to the world. It is easy to forget that one can only speak analogously about the manor in which the cross is a mechanism of God’s redeeming action.
This is not to say that one cannot construct new models and theories of atonement necessarily. Nor is it to reify traditional concepts. Jurgen Moltmann in turn provides what I think is a helpful additive with regard to the problem of violent, unjust sacrifice. In “seeking to retrieve some aspects of the traditional theological reading of the cross while remaining faithful to the liberationist thrust of his earlier work,” Moltmann compliments the theme of solidarity with the theme of atonement for the perpetrators.[iv] Christ’s death on the cross is only properly understood as atonement for the sins of perpetrators if God is present in Christ. This death is endured by God vicariously for all who have fallen victim to death. It is atonement for the purpose of reconciling a hostile, sinful world:
“The love of God wounded by human injustice and violence becomes the love of God which endures pain; God’s ‘wrath’ becomes his compassion.”[v] Indeed, “God suffers injustice and violence as an injury to his love because and in so far as, he holds fast to his love for the unjust and the person who commits violence. So his love must overcome his anger by ‘reconciling itself’ to the pain it has been caused. This is what happens when God ‘carries’ or ‘bears’ the sins of his people.”[vi]
This “carrying” or “bearing” is described in Scripture in terms of expiation as well as propitiation. In the former instance, the people’s sins are ritually transferred to a scapegoat and it takes them away to the wilderness. In the latter, it is the prophetic vision of God’s Suffering Servant who “carries” the sins of the people in his vicarious suffering. In a similar vein, Miroslav Volf has developed the theme of “divine self-donation for the enemies and their reception into the eternal communion of God.”[vii] Elsewhere even Sobrino seems to agree: “As historical violence come from injustice, we [too] have to bear injustice, which means taking the side of the victims of injustice and its violence, the poor majority, and bearing their fate: violence cannot be redeemed unless it is borne in some way.”[viii] It seems that with this language, and with a return to a more thoroughly Trinitarian vision, Christians might be able to assuage the uneasiness with talk of substitution.
What is more though, as others like Hans Urs von Balthasar and more recently Adam Kotsko have shown, for example, discussion about atonement does not end with Christ. Without meaning to imply that human beings in any way contribute to their salvation in eschatological terms, there is nevertheless an important sense in which we must speak of the church’s participation and sanctification in the process of being made at-one with Christ (as in, at-one-ment) on behalf of the world.
Kotsko prefers the word “redemption” to “atonement” because the substitutionary connotation of the latter stands in the way and can perhaps delimit human involvement – not in the soteriological and initial divine action, but in the response and on-going sanctification that is also part of the “politics of redemption.”[ix] The notion of Christ as representative (Dorothee Soelle) can also be an improvement on substitution language. In either case, the shift is to a more relational and even social conception of divine-human interaction. Hence, Jesus models how to live without fear, without [causing suffering and shame], and without the lustful domination of others.
God desires that human beings have free enjoyment, not dominance by possessive relations. Christ represents this possibility. Christ “transcends the dialectic of [suffering] and sin….[with an] authority [that] is based in his radical openness to others.”[x] According to Kotsko, Christ restores connections that have been cut off, and he does not try to control the outcome of his interventions.[xi] Kotsko stresses the responsibility human beings have to take up and repeat Christ’s self-effacing actions as opposed to the tendencies to reach for control.
In order to close and return to God’s agency, however, one can borrow a bit from the process perspective defended by Majorie Suchocki, as Austin Roberts explains – and this is where a theodicy is made explicit: “Precisely because God in the consequent nature feels every sin and knows our situations in full, God can then graciously offer us redemptive possibilities in the next moment of our existence. Suchocki concludes, ‘Through God’s crucifixion, God provides us with a resurrection fitted to us in a love that demands our well-being. Who would think of a God whose love involves God in our pain?'”
Over the past five years or so there seems to have been a climax and subsequent decline in optimism and enthusiasm surrounding the Emergent Church conversation. Of course those on the conservative evangelical side have always dismissed the movement as heterodox and a return to theological liberalism, but even some of the more sympathetic critics that often describe themselves as “missional” have expressed concern about a lack of theological leadership. There’s been no shortage of deconstruction and even ecclesial innovation amid this group, but the common question remains: what is it exactly that so-called emergents believe?
One way to answer this question has been to point to someone like Peter Rollins, for example, who argues very persuasively that we have to get beyond belief. I think many would concede this, myself included, and the adage of “belong, behave, believe” (as opposed to the traditionally reversed order) has since been well-received. Nonetheless, I think we’ve also learned that it’s helpful and maybe even essential to know what beliefs we’re trying to get beyond in the first place. Even Brian McLaren, whose significance and example for me and many others I’m sure can hardly be over-stated, has been decidedly hesitant to spend much time putting forth specific formulations of systematic theology. Indeed, the trend, and rightly so, has been to uphold narrative before proposition, and transformation before information. But my contention is that the signifance of what we believe is no less urgent now than ever before – especially when it comes to being organized as a movement (just look at the successes and failures of OWS!) – even if the issue of how we believe continues to take center stage, as I agree it should.
I’d like to think that I’m a pretty strong believer in the centrality of Christian praxis; BUT, emphasizing orthopraxis to the detriment of orthodoxy – at least to the extent that ecclesiological unity is concerned – may be running out of steam. Are the two not mutually interdependent? This is why I’ve been especially appreciative of figures like Rachel Held Evans, David Fitch and Roger Olson, for instance (check out Olson’s most recent posts in response to a TGC publication on “the gospel”). In his own more scientifically sensitive way, Philip Clayton has similarly pioneered a way forward for those of us who are not quite ready to be done with the creeds. Then there’s the oft-cited work of N.T. Wright of course. Many others could be mentioned, and it is good to remember the limited cultural and ethnic context of this little North American middle-class discussion. Nonetheless, I think we disaffected, homeless, progressive but not quite post-Christian folks in this region of the world might still have an important role to play in the global future of our faith.
With this in mind, the voice I’m recognizing here is that of Tony Jones and his very short new book, A Better Atonement. I wouldn’t say that Jones is trying to be particularly original with this work. And if you’re looking for the next cutting edge theory or criticism of Christian atonement, this is not it. If that’s what you want, check out Kathryn Tanner, Delores Williams, Mark Heim, Andrew Sung Park, etc. No, Tony’s book is far simpler and more useful than that.
No doubt I’m probably in danger of painting with too broad of strokes here, but…
As has frequently been noted, a major problem in many evangelical contexts continues to be the degree to which “the gospel” is equated with the penal substitutionary theory of atonement (PSA). I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the future of the emergent church depends on its ability to articulately refute, and concisely recast, this reductive tendency among our more conservative friends. No matter what kind of social justice projects (KONY 2012, etc.) get tacked onto this message, and regardless of how much Relevant Magazine emphasizes “rejecting apathy,” so long as PSA is depicted as the full picture or main event of the good news, the church will fall well short of expressing Jesus’ vision for it. (By the way, I’m talking to people who still care about preserving something like the Christian church that isn’t just Mainline version 2.0… if this isn’t you, that’s fine!). An adequate response, however, will take more than just ignoring or only deconstructing Bebbington’s evangelical quadrilateral (conversionism, Biblicism, crucicentrism and evangelism).
Because even if you’re convinced PSA is the devil, the language is in the Bible even when re-interpreted, so it’s probably not going away. Tony Jones knows this, and he also knows better than to dismiss it. Instead, as others have tried to do (e.g., Scot McKnight), he’s merely attempting to dethrone it, and I would like to join him. Unless “emergent” is to become forever irrelevant even to the most open-minded evangelicals, this is the path that should be taken. I’m very appreciative of the various feminist criticisms of traditional atonement readings, but if you want to engage the other side of the debate, you can’t just throw out PSA. It has to be dealt with even if you revise it. If this is too conservative for you, sorry! 🙂 At the same time, Tony is also careful to point out that, generally speaking, atonement theory (not christology) has never really been a dividing debate in church history and shouldn’t be now. Compared to the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, atonement is secondary. I’m not as sure about this, but he could be right. I’m simply saying that, just as mainliners might need to meet emergents halfway, so too can emergents be generous enough to “go to the middle” for evangelicals so to speak.
I feel like there’s been a heavy slew of blog posts and books lately on why young adults are leaving the church (see Frank Schaeffer, Christian Piatt, Dianna Butler Bass, etc.) This is a good conversation to have, and I think the practical issues definitely need to be addressed. We should talk about aesthetics, music, liturgy, values, programs, etc. But the two biggest factors, I would want to say, are still identity and purpose, and surely we get these from our theology, and perhaps more precisely, our christology. Without this, the church might as well become an arts interest group or a social service club.
The first thing Jones does is to (convincingly, in my view, and biblically!) debunk original sin without neglecting the seriousness of sin as such. Again, this is not new, but sin must be understood structurally and socially (war, violence, oppression, inequality, environmental degradation, etc) without forgetting about it individually. This is crucial for an emergent church theological project.
Secondly, Jones directly challenges Driscoll and Piper on this issue for their hyper and irresponsible, Calvinist PSA. I am so glad he’s not ignoring them. They are way too powerful and influential to ignore if we care about the North American church. And here’s what we have to see: a lot of people who go to their churches aren’t even like them because they don’t know better! The response: offer an alternative that isn’t reactionary.
Thirdly, after outlining the major theories of atonement throughout history and testifying to both their necessity and finitude, Jones turns to a better theory for our time, despite its shared limitation (see below).
Anyone who has studied 20th century theology already knows what Jones is saying here. Jon Sobrino and the liberation theologians said it. Jurgen Moltmann and other political theologians have said it. Scholars like Theodore Jennings, Miroslav Volf, and Joel Green have made cases along the same lines. People who like the Girardian “Last Scapegoat” take will obviously appreciate Mark Heim or someone like Ingolf Dalferth. And this is one of the positions that Jones defends. More emphatically though, Jones follow’s Moltmann’s notion of atonement as solidarity through the Philippians 2 hymn and The Crucified God. Now to be fair, the best proponents of penal substitution (e.g., von Balthasar) can also say this, but think substitution without the penal, or what Volf calls inclusive substitution, in which Christ is not a third party inserted between God and humanity, but the very God who was wronged:
“Jesus’s life, and particularly his death, show God’s ultimate solidarity with the marginalized and the poor,” Jones explains, “with those who most acutely experience godforsakenness . . . in his death, we are united with his suffering. And in identifying with his resurrection, we are raised to new life.”
My interpretation of A Better Atonement goes something like this: The real hole in our gospel for conservatives is the failure to proclaim the saving significance that Jesus andtherefore God participates fully in and understands human suffering, while for liberals it is that Jesus does this as Christ. This means three things: we affirm incarnation, we affirm resurrection, and we declare the prophetic meaning of the crucifixion loud and clear. Yes, we’ve read and written about this, and it might even be old news for some, but surprisingly enough, most people sitting in the pew as it were still haven’t really heard it preached or seen it in action, either because we’re too distracted as ministers with preaching salvation as a legal transaction on the one hand or using it as mere exemplary inspiration on the other. The justice of God gets sidelined in both cases, as the parables about the Kingdom of God are either overly eschatologized or mystically internalized. The cross and the kingdom must be reconnected, and it can’t just be social. It has to be soteriological. This is what Jones is saying. This is what we have to claim (for a better Scriptural understanding of what this looks like, I recommend N.T. Wright’s most recent book, How God Became King).
The book reads like a blog – very informal, but still clear and free from overly simplistic caricatures, which is a difficult balance to find. This is reliable, timely, and bold theological leadership for the emergent church that is desperately needed. I must confess that I wish it had come sooner, as I feel too many people have already moved away from the conversation before listening to what might be a tenable alternative to the monolithic PSA gospel of conservative evangelicalism. Nonetheless, this should be a welcomed and appreciated little book for easy reference and for prompting discussion in an intelligent and accessible fashion. What could be more appropriate as we approach Easter? In sum, Jones lays out what in my view is the most compelling theory of atonement for our situation in light of the overwhelming crises we face as a North American church in the midst of what Walter Brueggemann has perceptively called a culture of therapeutic, technological consumer militarism.
It is the crucifixion of Jesus that is the decisive criticism of the royal consciousness. The crucifixion of Jesus is not to be understood simply in good liberal fashion as the sacrifice of a noble man, nor should we too quickly assign a cultic, priestly theory of atonement to the event. Rather, we might see in the crucifixion of Jesus the ultimate act of prophetic criticism in which Jesus announces the end of a world of death (the same announcement as that of Jeremiah) and takes that death into his own person. Therefore we say that the ultimate criticism is that God himself embraces the death that his people must die. The criticism consists not in standing over against but in standing with; the ultimate criticism is not one of triumphant indignation but one of the passion and compassion that completely and irresistibly undermine the world of competence and competition. The contrast is stark and total: this passionate man set in the midst of numbed Jerusalem. And only the passion can finally penetrate the numbness.
The cross is the ultimate metaphor of prophetic criticism because it means the end of the old consciousness that brings death on everyone. The crucifixion articulates God’s odd freedom, his strange justice, and his peculiar power. it is this freedom (read religion of God’s freedom), justice (read economics of sharing), and power (read politics of justice) which break the power o the old age and bring it to death. Without the cross, prophetic imagination will likely be as strident and as destructive as that which it criticizes. The cross is the assurance that effective prophetic criticism is done not by an outsider but always by one who must embrace the grief, enter into the death, and know the pain of the criticized one.
This understanding of the significance of cross was foreign to me until only a few short years ago. It seems along the way we created a church culture in which the crucifixion was solely understand as either a substitutionary payment for sin (conservative) or a tragic ending to an exemplary life (liberal). This message above, on the other hand, is deep, powerful, and compelling to anyone who has a sense that the world has gone awry and wonders whether God cares and has acted. To the extent that we put faith in this story, we can surely trust God’s answer as being one of judgment, solidarity, consolation and promise of a victory in the future hope of the coming reign of justice and peace. Of course we also have an important responsibility in partnering with God to make this reign a reality. I believe God will have to decisively act on our behalf for this hope to be confirmed, and that we will not be able to just rely on ourselves, but I also believe that our participation is critical. This is the tension that disciples live in.
The prophetic imagination can have profound implications for eschatology if we really take it seriously. What are the greatest threats to this promise? Can we really just depend on God absolutely regardless of how we take care of creation and each other? This is what many people seem to want to do instead of striving to eradicate the biggest problems we are facing – crises of energy, militarism (security), consumerism (prosperity), inequality, and spirituality – spirituality that actually engages the world in a systematically transformative way. The proper response can be found, it seems to me, in a church setting that recognizes and appreciates this meaning of the cross – the criticism of royal/imperial consciousness – just as much as the one that many evangelicals grew up with about penal atonement.
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...
Recent Comments
MegaMAGAloveUSA!
"Lord God Almighty, please let us Christians wake up with empathy, compassion and ..."
MegaMAGAloveUSA!
"Thank you. Trying to learn a way through this all. CHRISTIANS ..."
Deb
"Thank you for this important critique of JHY's theology of the cross lived ..."
ReaderV
"There is no doubt abortion is tragic . I don't believe anyone ever ..."
Sandra
"Wow!!! I love this guy! Peacemaking is so dear to my ..."