I'm currently working full-steam ahead on a seminar that a partner and I will be teaching on Stanley Hauerwas. In the course of reading loads of his stuff, the pieces finally came together for me in how to explain why it is that I'm growing weary of reading protestant theological writing, particularly (for reasons that will be explained) the writing of the 'emergent' church and neo-protestant variety.
To put it in a nutshell, a synopsis, it's the same old protestant writing, only dressed up in different clothing. It's like protestant churches that strap on an image of liturgy without embodying the theology that organically created those beautiful churches and liturgies. The only difference I've found, ultimately, is that several of those writing neo-protestant theology have more hubris than the average protestant in being able to 'out-protest' their peers - that is, in being able to distinguish themselves not only from the Catholic Church but now also from the other protestant ecclesial communities. Yet what is it about [neo-]protestant theological writing that bugs me now? why did this sort of theology seem so rich to me in the past?
'If the LORD Does not Build the House. . .'
Protestant theology isolates Jesus unto Himself and comes close to succumbing (if it does not eventually succumb to) a sort of Docetism and Gnosticism - diminishing-to-nonexistent Jesus' humanity and treating physicality/particularity as evil. Neo-protestant theology ends up unknowingly effecting the same Docetic/Gnostic outcome but sometimes manages to throw in a little more pride as well. As Karl Barth correctly suggests in his Church Dogmatics, Jesus should be acknowledged as the undisputed centre of salvation and the Gospel. The 'emergent' church and other neo-protestant theological flavours have embraced Jesus' humanity, often to the point of even emphasising the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yet these movements continue to slice Jesus apart from His human context as it extends through the particular Church. The problem with this, as I will gradually explain, is more than just this framing, but the framing is evidence of and contributor to the heretical picture within it.
These writers and thinkers - these people - do not let our Lord Jesus Christ, His works, and His actions make literal statement for themselves as the true and complete Gospel - particularly God's selecting of a certain Virgin, Jesus' selecting twelve particular apostles, and Jesus' living among the Church He was establishing and His talking again and again (especially toward the end) about the Holy Spirit and Christ's ministry through the Church as it would take shape. Instead, disappointed in the massive failure of protestant theology to manifest anything, these writers seek to reform protestantism; they read from their own idealisms and concepts and search for the words in His mouth. Hence, Jesus taught a certain ideal community that transcends particularities, and we are to be the Church by being the ecclesial community of Christ that attaches ourselves to the ideals of Christ and lives by these ideals and principles. It's protestantism realising that works are important in the life of the Christian, but somehow (and some of the writers grow frustrated with this) it's not enough.
The reader may wonder: what is so heretical about these teachings of ideals and transcendence? What are we to say of Jesus as the centre of the Church? What about His call to follow Him and obey what He taught? What are we to say of the Kingdom of God which transcends earthly kingdoms? What are we to say of His disciples' and even apostles' oblivious and contradictory attitudes toward Christ? Jesus is the centre of the Church, let us agree, if we are saying that He is in Himself the fulfillment and full embodiment of the Kingdom of God, the nexus and indwelling of God's Will/Word as the very God and very Man. Let us also agree that He called us to live as citizens of a transcendent Kingdom, and that we are called to something beyond earthly kingdoms. Let us finally acknowledge that the disciples and apostles took every opportunity they seemed to be able to take in order to miss Jesus' boat. Yet, all this said, we are still citizens who are living on earth and in a particular physicality. We are also not saved simply by our adherence to ideals, nor saved on the power of our good works. Jesus did not set out to establish a jingoistic motto but a Church, and He who had all authority in heaven and earth exercised all authority in the commissioning of His apostles and disciples to carry out Himself to the world.
John 6: An Ikon, within which We Find an All-too-familiar Drama
The mistake of the 'emergent' church and neo-protestant gnostics and arians is the same as that of the idealists in our Lord Jesus' ranks as spoken of in John 6. When Jesus the Lord of us teaches a very startling, very particular, and somewhat quaint notion - a little piece of doggerel about eating His flesh and drinking His blood in order to live - many of the Jews in the synagogue seek clarification. But Jesus the Lord of us does not clarify what must have been elaborate and figurative and idealistic proposition that deserves volumes of theological writing to explain away and yet only receives a few words in such protestant volumes. Our Lord Jesus simply teaches it again in His stark, literal, and embodied way, and consequently many of His disciples decide to leave His Presence. His words did not have the idealistic, figurative vestments they would have preferred in such radical teaching. In the same way, protestants and neo-protestants leave His Presence and walk at a distance due to the difficult teaching.
Here is where we come to the crux of the matter. Jesus Christ turns to the Twelve and asks, 'You do not also want to go away, do you?' And St. Peter answers, 'Lord, to whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.'
Many of the Twelve, if not all of them, were idealists; I find a bit of comfort in this, as an idealist, that there is room in the Kingdom even for us and our visions. A quick look around within the Holy Church (particularly in America) will reveal a serious need for major reforms - but reform in the Chestertonian sense and not 'reform' of neo-protestantism's boring, dull, violent, incongruous, and merely idealistic flavour. As T.S. Eliot writes in his 'Choruses from "The Rock"', 'And if the Temple is to be cast down / We must first build the Temple.' I would say that we need to live in the Temple and know the God of the Temple before we start tearing down the Temple.
And there is the joke and tragedy of protestant and neo-protestant theology. I suspect many of these writers would rather Christ not have come in the flesh, they would rather He not have established the particular Church - and all of this is done for the love of Him. But He did exactly this, came and established and sent the Spirit, and it is ultimately no love to sigh and pine and do violence to Him in order to 'save' Him from the snickering caricatures of Constantine and Gregory the Great. Neo-protestant theological writers wax lengthily about the Church as an 'ecclesial space for peace' or 'the community of breaking bread' and so forth - endless sterile constructions within which the Church is supposedly supposed to find its meaning. But why 'the community of breaking bread'? what's so great about bread, divorced to itself? These people have historically left the Real Presence and the very particular and singular Church that Christ sent forth, and are henceforth out in the wilderness of their self-appointed exile sending us dispatches in smoke-signals and notes written in handfuls of dust.
Meanwhile, the organic Growth that Jesus established has (as His parable mysteriously suggested) grown and filled the world. There is a rich history of theological meditations to thrive in and do novel work within; theological writing is good so long as it finds root in the organic reality of Christ and His Bride. It's these disembodied abstractions and shots in the dark that are driving me crazy.
-r
