Serbia

The communist graffiti is barely visible in the receeding darkness, while the early Christian motif is publically displayed, to the interest of younger Serbs like my friend Nebojsa. This picture, though took on a crappy disposable, seemed to sum up my week in Serbia. I put a little more effort into this.

Upon arrival we met up with a visiting scholar who took us to a "liturgical music group" at the Belgrade Academy. Not sure what to expect, we entered a beautiful Beaux Arts style building and found ourselves in an office crowded with families and lined with antique books. At the center was a joyful man at a piano, glad for more visitors. The group sang piece after piece of liturgical hymns from eastern and western Christianity. I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden one man recited a significant portion of Matthew 16, from memory, in Latin. If this is what the Belgrade intelligentsia are up to, then one more farewell to Yugoslavia. We left as more people joined in, and had dinner in a neighborhood which resembled Montmartre in Paris, only cheaper.

Communism and Clinton have done a number on Belgrade, and Serbia in general. Bombed out buildings and war memorials to civilians killed by the NATO campaign are common, civilians who hated Milosevic as much as the rest of the world did, probably more. The economy is struggling, but seems however to have made a positive turn. The people are friendly, the food was phenomenal. My Serbian friends who study Byzantine art and architecture aren't doing so because they had it drilled it into them when they were young, but for the opposite reason. Communist education left the subject completely neglected and now they're fascinated by a heritage long ignored. Conversely, at the monastery of Zica , we witnessed an orthodox priest struggling to convey his liturgical lesson to about fifty unruly schoolchildren. Things have changed. Medieval Serbia is a beautifully puzzling blend of East and West. One could spent a month there and still not visit all the countryside monasteries. The hospitality of monks and nuns follows what I've come to accept as the rule - you're either ignored, or treated with an almost absurd hospitality.

Nis, my host Nebojsa's (and the Emperor Constantine I's) hometown, has been through a lot. There one finds a testimony to Ottoman oppression (the skull tower), its own concentration camp from the Nazi days, and a massive Communist resistance memorial which seemed to suggest to Serbians that the only reason there aren't concentration camps anymore is thanks to Tito. Somehow the churches made it through all this (not without their own share of resistance), and in Belgrade they were even showing off a bit. The massive church of St. Sava is even bigger than Hagia Sophia.

The inside of St. Sava's is still being built. Cement grinders and cranes, workers and construction noises abound. But the people can't seem to wait, which made for a perfect parable of the Kingdom of God. A few well-placed icons and candles amidst the chaos suggested a future completion. Worshipers adored Christ despite the distractions, in anticipation of the day when their worship will be complete. I hope I'm not being too cryptic, but has it ever been otherwise?

Ocean's 13

It is interesting that all of these movies end in a monetized version of the beatific vision, specifically the scenes where the group stares blissfully at fountains or fireworks. I shall commence my practice of the one Bible verse film review (patent-pending), and the first one's easy: "...for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8). Actually, that one verse covers all three Oceans.

Back from Athens and Kansas, a strange combination.

My brain is in blog gridlock. Too much to relate. In the meantime, pictures.

The Turkish Tree

I need to get out of Turkey. The warning sign: I'm beginning to enjoy Nescafe. Nevertheless, I'm slowly warming up to the place even after getting flim-flammed. The mosaics of Chora were the equivalent to a month worth of beautiful sermons. I had some time with the relics of Gregory and Chrysostom at the Patriarchate (stolen in 1204 and recently returned) all to myself. For every Muslim who got mad at me for not taking my shoes off in the proper way or charged me to enter a free mosque, I seemed to meet a God-fearing person who is welcoming and genuinely kind. One carpet salesman I spoke to today, who looked liked he stepped straight out of the Sabado Gigante set, was slick, pushy and clearly only after cash (surprise). Another was deeply informed, kind, and spoke of the reckoning he expects on Judgment Day for the prices he charges. And I don't think that was just carpet talk.

It all gives one reason to consider Muslim-Christian relations again, but this time with the sound of the evening's call to prayer in the background. Today at the tomb of Sultan Mehmet II (who conquered Constantinople), I was given an Engish tract by an earnest young Muslim who chanted while I was in the tomb. After most significant victories in the Ottoman empire soldiers would visit this tomb, and I wonder if he was praying for a similar global turn of events. I read the tract, but haven't yet converted. It said Allah is merciful. Follow that river to it's source and you'll find just how merciful - to the tune of his having become a crucified God.

I've heard Christians refer to Allah as, and I quote, "an idol at best and a demon at worst." I can't say I agree. As I hear the calls to prayer in this city, I wouldn't exactly prefer raw secularization. I would however, prefer more Christianity. It is sad to see how many churches I couldn't get into and how many Byzantine monuments are utterly neglected (or have disappeared!) in comparison to a place like Thessaloniki. Yet in the meantime, I'll take the God-fearing Muslim to the people who scammed me anyday.

A good verse for Muslim-Christian relations is the this one. Muslims certainly do see, but not as clearly as those who know Christ. They would say, and do say the same of me (but I happen to be right). I realize that saying that in the wrong circles here could get me martyred. Good thing my Turkish is limited to "Tea, Sugar and Dream" (the way to prounce "thank you"). Still, can a Muslim be more faithful with their limited revelation than a Christian can be with a fuller revelation? Of course. Remember the Last Battle (see the second #5)?

Christ is God. My Muslim friends (yes, I do have some) are wrong about this. They say I'm wrong about this. Across that fault line genuine love and friendship is perfectly possible, perhaps moreso than across a secular gulf. The real insult is to pretend no fault line exists. So yes, I love the people of the tree - enough to show them the man they're misperceiving.

A delightful Princeton professor gave a lecture on Johannine material at our seminar in Greece last week in which he suggested that the development of Christ as God took place nearly one hundred years after Christ died. Now, even if this were true, it doesn't mean that Christ's divinity would be automatically suspect. But the thing is, it's not true. When I reminded the professor privately that some of the earliest fragments of the New Testament we have, the hymns in Phillipians and Colossians, both contain some of the hightest Christology in the New Testament - what was his reaction? Refusal to admit the evidence? No, polite and civil concession, because a calm consideration of such evidence shows it's not imaginary. John developed something that was long already there. The Jesus movement may have been wrong, but there is no disputing that it proclaimed Jesus God from a very early time - certainly well before the written evidence. "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" they once asked (in our earliest Gospel no less). What might Mark have been getting at by putting the words, "My son, your sins are forgiven" into the mouth of Christ?

Eternal salvation of humanity at large is an impenetrable matter, the shoals of shipwreck for many a young vessel of faith. But has the straw man of certainty really been granted? Best focus on one's own salvation, while still (a very important "still") spreading the message around. As Augustine said, there are many wolves within and many sheep without. But whatever concessions and surprises occur on Judgement Day, the God who makes such concessions (of which we have no guarantee), will be none other than the one who became one particular first century Palestinian Jew, full of grace and truth.

Constantinople

The last days with the nuns were revelatory, and a simple lesson emerged. Monasticism is a higher form of life. If you don't believe me, visit Prodoromos monastery. To paraphrase Thomas Merton (I think he said it in Seeds of Contemplation), monastic life is easier than lay life to lead poorly, much harder than lay life to lead well... and the nuns of Prodromos lead it well. These are extremely able women, some with advanced degrees, some who left fortunes. In obedience to the abbess they are able together to run a full time farm, constant liturgy, produce food that would impress a Manhattan restaurant critic, and consistently reach out to both their city and pilgrims from around the world, not to mention us.

The sermon in the last liturgy was as vivid as the previous one I described, but was the first one I understood in its entirety. This was because it was 1 Corinthians 13 recited in Biblical Greek from memory with passion and conviction as a charge to the nuns and all present. The nuns may be able to do a lot, but they know without agape it's worthless.

After a sad good bye I took an overnight train to Istanbul, or as the nuns insist on referring to it (which I don't quite mind), Constantinople. I proceeded then to lose my Byzantine virginity, and see Hagia Sophia. Since I've been blazing through the classic guidebook which is exhaustingly thorough, but rewarding.

Like Athos, Istanbul has already offered the extremes of rudeness and kindness. Unfortunately, on my first day I ran into some calculated unpleasantries. I can't imagine how (I blend so seamlessly), but a skilled scammer picked me out as a tourist and, with some help from other skilled scammers, scammed me quite well. I'll spare you the details, but I've since read up on Istanbul scamming and realize it could have been much worse, and have kept to myself.

However, the next day as I went to visit the Kalenderhane Mosque, I was invited for Coke and conversation upstairs by the Imam. I figured no one would be so dedicated to scamming to have rented out a mosque and large accompanying family, so I went up. I received a full tour in broken English, was declared a kardesh (brother) even though I am Christian, and was strangely given several bear hugs that lifted me clear off the ground. Theological differences matter deeply, but this is still a strategy I recommend for all future Muslim-Christian relations.

More to come.

Greetings from Greece

Here are a few reflections on not just theorizing about the other lung (which is important), but breathing with it.

After visiting Orthodox monasteries in Serbia, I've been spending another two weeks at the Prodromos Monastery in northern Greece. Interestingly, the best way to understand the way things happen here comes not from studying patristic thought as much as from experience in charismatic churches or reading Susan Howatch novels. This is a place of dynamic, long stretches of worship and gifted spiritual advisors who know what you say before you say it. Try to engage the abbess here about theology and she's likely to give you a cautious look, pointing you to experience of the liturgy instead. Echoing Maximus the Confessor, she suggests that theology is best understood as an exercise to remove obstacles to the life of prayer.

One mistake in my first visit both here and at Athos was not to engage enough in the liturgy. This year I've tried to go as often as possible, which is often, at times wearyingly so. My first stint involved a repentant realization that as a Protestant, I am but a catechumen in the Orthodox church. To protest this status as "uninclusive" seems to require an oblivious disregard of one's own shortcomings and sin. Should one not convert, catechumen status seems the most reasonable position in regard not only to the Orthodox, but Catholic church as well - whose competing claims should be more than enough to scramble any hasty conclusions. No, one doesn't get the eucharist, but catechumens do get some blessed crumbs that fall from the table which are more than enough.

The nuns invited us closer the next few times to see more of what was happening. The chandeliers spin like the cranks of a giant divinization machine in the Saint factory. The nuns, all dressed in jet black, blend into the darkness so that it's easy to bump into them, and they all line up to prepare for the great entry of Christ's body and blood through the gates - a perfect a parable of the Second Coming. It's also no small privilege to worship next to the tomb of Gennadius Scholarius, the first Orthodox patriarch after 1453, who once worshipped here as well.

Over time I grew more relaxed. When lost in the quandry of competing ecclesiologies, the theme of the Kingdom of God is of no small assistance, and is of course of certain canonical authority. To collapse it into the ecclesial structures of Orthodoxy or Catholicism requires a massive leap of faith in either direction that I'm not willing to take, but in Christ I participate in the Kingdom. The reading for that night seemed to justify such inclinations.

The liturgy is where divinization happens. One begins to slowly get lifted up into it, which is certainly helped by the polished singing and a downright evangelical priest who ended the liturgy with a tearful yet joyful sermon.

There is more liturgy to come, and more research on the near-biblical landscape (sheep, goats, figs, sparrows, cattle, thorns, vines). In conversation with some of my fellow researchers our conversations are not unheated. We're certainly not all Christian, which is alright. The nuns welcome as all. At one point we discussed trendy pomo theorist Deleuze's theory of the rhyzome as an agricultural paradigm for intellectual headway. But I the liturgy and landscape is getting to me. I'll see Deleuze's rhyzome and raise him a vine. Christ is all in all.

the other lung

In the "I must decrease" department, may I refer you to these excellent remarks by Daniel Siedell on theology and art. He ends with the need to understand the 7th ecumenical council. What I fine idea. So, greetings from the land of Orthodoxy (Christendom's second lung), specifically Serbia, from where I write. Studying Byzantine art history has its rewards.

Belgrade was amazing. Made me want to protest the war (Clinton's war that is). And incidentally, it is possible to go see the Duomo in Milan on a layover. Sporadic updates to come.

9.5 Theses

Apostles of Ambiguity, this is just too much. I have heard my Tetzel. Where is my Wittenberg door?

1. I'll say it again: He who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower. Do those who married postmodernity realize their spouse is in a nursing home?

1.5 Christians who cater their theology to accommodate deconstruction are comparable to sub-rate CCM bands who copy Green Day five years after they've ceased being cool. They'll sell, but to a subset of evangelicalism who want to be "relevant" - which is the only group they'll ever be relevant to.

2. Yes Paul said he sees through a glass darkly - but he still saw. Don't forget to keep reading.

2.5 Paul did not end his speech at the Areopagus by saying "the Unknown God" is a great idea, sorry I bothered you. Nice statue. Can I have a copy?

NEW! 2.75 At least John Shelby Spong holds a position.

3. If you're reacting to a bad experience with evangelicalism, I'm sorry. Please, stop, take a deep breath, and learn the tradition instead of reacting to a truncated (but vivid) fragment of the Christian heritage. Learn, forgive, move on. You can do it.

NEW! 3.5 A new translation has revealed what was actually the last temptation of Christ. Returning our Lord to the temple mount, Satan said: "Obfuscate whatever remains of classical church teaching in American Evangelicalism and you'll get a book deal, multiple panel appearances, and an exponential increase in blog traffic."

The offer was declined.

Revised! 4. Yes, God is at work in the world already. That doesn't mean the church needs to be like the world. The best thing the church can do for the world is to be the church, not regurgitate graduate school seminar room talk from 1985.

NEW! 4.5 Wrestling with the difficult questions of the Christian life (the eternal destiny of non-Christians, the reliability of the Bible, church hypocrisy, etc.) does not constitute a movement. It's called normative Christian maturation. It is risky business, but followed through, opens into holy mystery and stronger, more nuanced faith. Abandoned, this process can lead to faith's termination. Perpetuating those questions indefinitely, however, is another thing entirely: Frozen adolescence.

NEW! 4.75 POP QUIZ! What is wrong with the following Biblical quotation? "Seek and you shall seek."

Revised! 5. Protestantism can find hope by clinging to its birthright, a passionate focus on the written Word of God, the unique, authoritative avenue to the Word of God in Christ. Protestants are an order of the written Word (in very sad condition) within God's woefully divided church. Our guide in stewarding this threatened charism is not the "spirit of protest" but the Holy Spirit. There's a difference.

NEW! 5.5 Tom Oden is right: "A center without a circumference is just a dot, nothing more. It is the circumference that marks the boundary of the circle. To eliminate the boundary is to eliminate the circle itself. The circle of faith cannot identify its center without recognizing its perimeter."

Revised! 6. Yes, we all know what big words like hermeneutics mean. The answer to the dilemma that the science of interpretation poses is not chaos, nor a license for whatever you want the Bible to mean, but the definitive community of interpretation of the historic church. No, this does not answer every question, but it rules many fruitless questions out.

6.5 Speaking of big words, consider this one: "And." It's especially helpful when confronted with polarizing rhetoric shortsighted enough to suggest one must choose propositional/factual truth or narrative/aesthetic truth.

7. It does not "puncture the hegemony of logic" to deny the central tenets of the Christian faith. The central tenets of the Christian faith do a fine job of that already. It is not humility to deny what God has done by impenetrable obscurity masquerading as "nuance." It is pride.

7.5 To correct abuses of rationality (which are legion) by neutering epistemology is like correcting poor carpentry by outlawing tools.

NEW! 7.75 The most radical postmodern epistemology appears numbingly Newtonian next to the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 8: You can't know this kind of knowledge (verse 3), this Knowledge knows you.

8. Heresy is boring, not exciting because it eviscerates mystery. If you're attracted to heresy because it makes you feel naughty then that's kinda creepy. If you're attracted to it because you don't want to "limit God," then the religion that serves a God who became a particular first-century Palestinian Jew might not be for you.

NEW! 8.5 If religion without doctrine suits you, consider Shintoism.

9. Negative (a.k.a. apophatic) theology is not a new idea. What's new is removing it from its context withing positive theology and until it leaves you without a Gospel.

9.5 And by the way, apophatic theology does not apply to ethics.

That no car ride go silent again

There is an extraordinary amount of information out there, I'm thinking specifically of University Podcasts. A few lessons emerge:

1. Relax, the offerings of the world's Universities aren't really that exciting.
2. The need for communities of learning and conversation, a.k.a. actual friendship, persists.
3. However many courses are offered for free, you still can't beat the Teaching Company, and they're worth the price. I can't even begin to describe how good their new American History course is.
4. In light of a proliferation of information, having a broad organizational/filtering component such as Christian faith is not as much narrow as it is necessary.
5. You still need people to guide you through the morass. May I recommend the esteemed philosopher Roger Scruton on Religious Freedom, and Harvard's Owen Gingerich on a lifetime of wisdom regarding Science and Faith which nicely summarizes his book.

Please consider further recommendations solicited.

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.