Why not extend the trajectory of Kris' comment below? When I fed the poor I was declared a saint; when I asked why they were poor I was called a communist; when I continued asking why they were poor and bothered learning something about economics to address the problems more effectively, they called me a neo-con.

Speaking of which, the First Things blog had an excellent write-up over the weekend of one of several gallery walks I enjoyed recently (despite my being "quick to contradict and confute"). Reno shows much more charity than did I.

The Uncool Doctrine

To continue this blockbusting "wake up and smell the church history" series, a word might be said in defense of the doctrine that gets almost as much abuse as its critics say it inspires: Substitutionary atonement. AHHH! Just writing it terrifies me.

Should its said critics fail to abandon Christianity entirely due to their allergy to the idea, another strategy is to appeal to the "dynamic diversity" of early views of the cross. To be sure, the cross is an inexhaustible mystery, and no angle - provided it's a true one - is entirely unhelpful. Still, some angles are more helpful than others. Those who wish to go back to the earlier Christus Victor model (à la Aulén) may not realize what they're asking for. Enter Rachel Fulton:

"The Christ of the early Middle Ages, it has often been remarked, was a god far more comfortable on the battlefield than in the heart, a war-leader rather than a pitiable victim of human sin, his Cross not so much an instrument of torture as a weapon of victory, a 'royal banner' purple with his blood, 'trophy' on which his triumph took place" (54).

Against such a backdrop emerged Anselm, whom Fulton paints almost as a proto-Martin Luther:

"It was because he was oppressed, quite possibly as much as [the infamously self-flagillating] Peter Damian, by the fear of answering Christ as he came in Judgment that Anselm was able to write the prayer[s] that he did, with this difference: Anselm, unlike Peter, had convinced himself that there was, in fact, no debt to be repaid because there was nothing, not even fear, with which he could pay" (146).

Such a liberation was only possible through the doctrine of substitutionary atonement (AHH!) that Anselm recovered from Hebrews and Paul. Or if Paul's too harsh for you, there's always the Johannine tradition. Should that not inspire, take Jaroslav Pelikan's word for it:

"Vivid and homiletically useful though such [Christus Victor] analogies may have been, they could not withstand closer scrutiny. Did Christ carry out the work of redemption, 'so as to deceive the devil, who by deceiving man had cast him out of Paradise? But surely the Truth does not deceive anyone?'" asked Anselm.... "the interpretation of Christ on the cross as the victor over man's enemies had to yield to the identification of Christ in his suffering and death as a sacrificial victim" (134-6).

Concludes Fulton rather suggestively,

"The transformation accomplished by Anselm was as much a matter of emphasis as it was of novel understanding (even the Fathers used the image of debt), but it was, in the end, irreversible. No longer would medieval Christians look upon the crucified body of their Lord and see primarily an opportunity to pray for help in their adversity and for liberation from the torments of hell. As Anselm's meditations and prayers circulated throughout the monasteries and pious households of Europe... pious Christians would learn to think of their relationship to Christ in terms of an obligation to praise not simply the God-man but the man who had died in payment for their sins." (190).

Substitutionary atonement then, seen in historical context, provided the exact opposite of what its modern/postmodern critics claim - liberation from guilt and shame. While the card may have been overplayed by Evangelicals, abusus non tollit usum. As a corrective, may I suggest reading Anselm instead of contemporary Reformed theologians.

Then again, complaining about Evangelicals can get you a book deal.

The Missional Eucharist

In talk and print about "Missional" congregations, the bogeyman is often the forced-conversions of the 9th century and sacramental doctrine that makes the Eucharist an end-in-itself. As is often the case, careful historical investigation, which U of Chicago's Rachel Fulton provides at length, complicates the matter considerably:

"To be sure, Frankish missionaries were initially far from averse to using threats of violence against reluctant converts.. [but] what is all the more remarkable is that by the beginning of the ninth century, the Saxons did convert, or at the very least accepted baptism along with its institutional entailments... Various reasons, in addition to fear and exhaustion, may be adduced for this acquiescence: hope for material rewards from both their new king and his powerful God, wonder at the exemplary lives of the missionaries, admiration for the civilization of their conquerors. But is is also possible that, at least for some, persuasion conquered fear as the Christians now in their midst developed more effective methods of translating the tenets of the new religion (the immortality of the soul, the certainty of final judgment, belief in the Holy Trinity, and the narrative of the Incarnation) into terms more comprehensible within the expectations of the old (the inexorability of Fate, the dependence upon the gods for fertility, healing, and the protection in one's earthy life)..."

"This is not to say the the Frankish Christians did not systematically eradicate pagan shrines... It is to say, however, that for whatever reasons the Saxons initially accepeted baptism, within a generation or so they had made their religious expectations known to their Christian teachers, and that the teachers, in an effort to answer the questions put to them by their students, responded as Augustine suggested they should : sympathetically" (26).

To exemplify such concessions, Fulton posits that the doctrine of the real presence, promoted in this era by Paschasius Radbertus (and attacked by Ratramnus), was in fact a catechetical response to the Saxons who had less of a framework for historical memory and needed divine love to be liturgiclly manifest. Should Fulton be correct, a high Eucharistic doctrine is not ecclesial baggage from the thirteenth century, but the fruit of missional engagement and gospel translation to a pagan world in the ninth. (Not to mention its manifold anticipations.)

This is not to say the doctrine was invented to please pagans, but that positive doctrinal development and definition - of which the real presence is most definitely an example - is often made only in response to discerning engagement with the world.

As it seems the discussion over Beckwith's reversion could use comic relief, here's some from Harper's Weekly, c. 1870.

update: And now perhaps a bigger fish than Beckwith. This is getting strange.

Webber's third group

From Robert Webber's Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality Through the Christian Year (Baker, 2004):

"We now live in a transitional time in which the modern worldview of the Enlightenment is crumbling and a new worldview is beginning to take shape. Some leaders will insist on preserving the Christian faith in its modern form; others will run headlong into the sweeping changes that accommodate Christianity to postmodern forms; and a third group will carefully and cautiously seek to interface historic Christian truths in the dawning of a new era... The way into the future, I argue, is not an innovative new start for the church; rather, the road to the future runs through the past."

update: The question is, of course, can the third group stay Protestant?

update 2: Interesting commmentary on the Beckwith kerfuffle from RJN (scroll down a bit).

Spidey gets religion

Here at millinerd, we often try to point out hidden gospel themes in films (sometimes despite them). Having been coaxed to Spider Man 3 tonight against my will (I thought it'd be lame), I'm sorry to be unable to perform my usual task. There is no hidden gospel theme to point out in Spider Man 3, because the theme is completely unhidden, even obvious down to forgiveness only possible through the cross or demons weakened by the sound of church bells. Despite ten thousand eulogies, American Christian culture somehow persists.

The questionable effort to make a sci-fi Christian production company now looks all the more bizzare, as it's already been done... well.

A Shared Pedicament

To continue the theme of theology and art (and shameless self-linking), it appears something I wrote has been taken up by the First Things blog.