To Stake A Claim

The problem with staking a claim is that in the end you are staked to that claim.

Perhaps the greatest characteristic of the age we live in is the primacy of doubt and the admission of limits to knowledge as the key markers of credibility. Nowhere is this more marked that in the intellectual enterprise called science, which is built on questioning every assertion, seeking evidence, and always assuming that knowledge is incomplete.

Nowhere is this less evident than in theology, which seems to be based not on theories but on doctrines, not on the expansion of knowledge but on defending doctrinal borders.

In our time this is most evident in Christian evangelical theology, which has confidently advanced doctrines of human personhood, and the origin, purpose, and end of the natural order with no basis other than shifting interpretations of supposedly inerrant scripture. 

The result has been what would be, if dogmaticians were capable of embarrassment, a series of embarrassing drawbacks from claims that finally proved so inane in the court of public opinion that they had to be withdrawn simply to maintain the credibility of Christian witness. A few of these? 

There was the claim, still extant in some Evangelical circles, that the King James Version of the Bible  represented the oldest and best textual tradition. (This claim was still being taught into the 1990s by Dallas Theological Seminary) Closely related was the claim that the Bible read in its plain literal meaning was true, and flowing from that a series of embarrassing claims about the age and natural history of the world. (The Institute for Creation Research in my home town still holds a candle for many of these claims.) 

As it stands most Christians have backed down from a literal seven day creation to long periods of creation following roughly the plan of Genesis, to guided evolution, to creation science. The final redoubt of Evangelicals, apparently unassailable, is an arcane mathematical analysis of probabilities that is supposed to demonstrated that Someone or Something other than natural law guided the unfolding universe. But in building this redoubt Evangelicals have simply flown into the hands of science, and far from offering dogma, are offering just another theory in search of further experimental proof. Why not admit that the so-called doctrine of creation is really just a theory of creation subject to revision?

And what about the nature of the human person? Having failed to stake any defensible claim about the natural order can Christian theologians stake some kind of claim about the nature of being human? Well they have certainly tried. Fortunately the most embarrassing claims about human nature, that persons of non-European descent were sub-human, was rejected rather early in the modern era by some Christians, and by the early 19th century by most Christians including Evangelicals. But of course a few held on, notably Evangelicals in the southern United States and perhaps the last public holdouts - the loathsome bigots who used theology to justify apartheid in South Africa. So why not admit that theological anthropology is actually just a theory of human personhood that may be subject to revision?

And then there is marriage. Until the modern era almost all Christians regarded marriage to be indissoluble within the Divine order, and many Evangelicals and all Catholics still regard divorce and remarriage as a willing and continued state of sinfulness disqualifying such a person from leadership in the church. Yet in the last few decades Christians, including those who held on longest to the traditional view of a lifelong marriage commitment have changed their minds. A divorced and remarried Protestant pastor isn’t nearly as remarkable as the unrepentant attitude of those theologians whose minds were changed only after causing immeasurable heartache for countless people by calling them sinners and adulterers. So why not admit that the traditional view of marriage was actually a theory about human relationships subject ultimately to revision? 

The more serious and difficult area of human personhood is one where Protestant Christians are divided most. The vast majority of Evangelicals have staked a claim in relationship to sex, gender, and sexuality. Most Evangelical Christians still believe the differentiation of social roles according to sex is part of God’s created order. And thus many if not most Evangelicals will not ordain women. However, American Evangelical theologians have mostly fallen back from this and have modified their theology of gender, even recognizing that gender roles are a cultural rather than a divinely ordained construct. Why not admit that for 2000 years the theological assertion of distinct gender roles was actually just a theory of human relationships based on cultural norms and thus ultimately subject to change. 

And what about human sexuality? Here we find that Evangelicals continue to take a hard dogmatic line. Some, notably United Methodists recognize that there are individual humans who identify themselves as possessing a sexuality, not merely a sex. In other words they recognize that humans self-identify as straight, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans-sexual, or queer. But their dogmatic construction of human personhood does not allow them to admit sexuality as an essential attribute of human personhood. Unlike sex, or even gender, it is not part of God’s plan for humanity. So while self-identified LGBTQ persons must be accepted (like all sinners) into God’s house their self-understanding must be dogmatically denied. But really, isn't this just another theory that may be and probably will be revised in the future? Aren't we facing, as we were with gender, concepts of the human person rooted in culture rather than revelation? And if so, why make one stance on human sexuality an essential doctrine of the church? 

Scientists have, as they have demonstrated over the last century, the humility to admit that human personhood is more complex than than their own earlier understandings. The AMA has admitted that its earlier characterizations of homosexuality as deviant were wrong. Scientists recognize that older understandings of human sexuality are inadequate and that more study is necessary before theories can be fully formed, much less tested experimentally. Thus the latest scientific studies yield complex understandings of the origins and innateness of sexuality. And as one might expect, a healthy disagreement among colleagues that leads to more research rather than institutional fracture. (Scientific American has a book that explores this in depth: The New Science of Sex and Gender. As one might expect it explores a variety of viewpoint rather than simply reinforcing a long standing dogma.)

But evangelical theologians will have none of this. They have a confidence in their ability to interpret revelation that appears completely unjustified in light of their previous mistakes in understanding the natural and social orders. So evangelical theologians have staked a dogmatic claim that sexuality is not essential to human personhood, and that what is called homosexuality is just a decision about human behavior made under the influence of sin.

And to be fair, their progressive opponents have staked similar dogmatic claims, in some realms more and in some realms less acceptable but equally likely to be embarrassing in the end.

The result is the appearance the Christians possess an unjustified epistemological hubris, an unjustified confidence in the human ability to fully understand God's order. 

Small wonder that our contemporaries increasingly find the Christian religion unpalatable. It lacks the basic humility of its founder and assumes the pride of his adversary.

Or if that is too strong: it is because whenever Christians have ventured beyond their knowledge of Christ and him crucified they have embarrassed themselves. As theologians we keep trying to speak of things about which we have no knowledge, and then when we inevitably are forced to change our minds it looks like another case of foolish pride.

The truths about creation, human society, and human personhood that we know don't arise from Biblical descriptions of God's order, which are inevitably reducible to the culture in which they are advanced. They arise from our knowledge that Christ has redeemed everything from bosons to galaxies, from hunting and gathering bands to empires, from the child in the womb to the last breath of life.

Theology must give up the absurd claim to be the Queen of the Sciences and become just another servant of humanity, offering the one thing it knows to a world in desperate need of just that knowledge. I expect that when we quite trying to know everything we'll find what we actually know is respected for the genuine contribution to human knowledge of reality that it is. That is certainly my experience in the University. And if this takes away our aura of certainty, it will thereby restore our credibility. 

The Christian Extinguishing of Identity

“We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.”
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile . .”

Those present at Pentecost were all Jews, and yet hearing their native languages at the Temple was clearly remarkable. It affirmed a real diversity, anticipated in prophecy, but obscured by the dominance of Hebrew as a unifying liturgical language.

Paul’s letters dating from little more than a decade later attest to the diversity of the Christian community even as they seek to define a transcultural unity in Christ. But note the negative in the quote above from Galatians. Being one in Christ means giving up an identity, specifically a Jewish identity tied to being part of a people created by the Covenant at Sinai. The word Gentile (sometimes mistranslated as “Greek”) isn’t ethnic, it's simply a generic term for non-Jews. “Neither Gentile” doesn’t negate anything anybody cared about. “Neither Jew” does.

Being Gentile wasn't intimately bound up in idolatry or immorality, the only things forbidden to those reclothed in Christ. Nor did Paul expect men and women to quit acting out the sexual identities. He didn’t expect slaves and masters to cease the relationship that defined them socially.

Only Jewish identity, an identity centered on the covenant at Sinai, was  extinguished by accepting Christ as Messiah. Paul’s history of salvation in Galatians and Romans leapfrogs Sinai to move from Abraham to Jesus. Yet Sinai, present in the Jewish community as the written and the oral Torah, is exactly what makes a Jew a Jew.

True, in Romans Paul affirms that because of the covenant at Sinai Jews have many things. But note well that Paul redefines the covenant at Sinai, the “Law,” in a way that no Jew as a Jew could possibly affirm. And all these things the Jews have fade into obscurity in light of Christ. He grants the Jews their covenant, but only by redefining it in Christian terms. And what he gives the Jews on one hand he takes away with the other.

This is a major shift away from the Jerusalem Council which allowed a way into the Jesus movement for Gentiles. At Jerusalem Gentiles were to be accepted into the Christian community, but on Jewish terms. They would have to follow the covenant of God with Noah as understood in the rabbinic tradition.

By the time Paul is fully engaged in his mission to the Gentiles he has significantly changed the ground rules. Gentiles are now the dominant culture, and Jews are only allowed in on Gentile terms - as the introduction to the book of Romans makes clear. Paul frames his mission in terms of the Gentiles, and in Paul’s churches it is the circumcised who must conform, not visa versa.

The result was inevitable as Gentiles came to dominate the church: Jewish Christianity disappeared, because the gospel Paul proclaimed undermined and in fact denied Jewish identity at its core.

It would be nice if, in fact, Christianity was a genuinely new identity that equally undermined and replaced all the old ethnic identities. Such was the argument of Tertullian, but the claim was specious. By the time of Constantine Christianity had become a new religion laid on top of first Greek, then Roman cultural roots. Later ethnocultural groups were likewise affirmed. A small tweak in their pagan customs and they too could be Christian. Sure, there would be efforts at hegemony in terms of using the Latin Bible and mass, but this was less cultural hegemony than a means of concentrating power in the hands of the emperor and the Bishop of Rome.

Until the era of modern missions and their hegemonic advancement of European culture, it was only Jewish identity that was extinguished by conversion to Christianity. And the reason for this is that the essence of orthodox Christianity has been the repudiation of the covenant at Sinai as a witness to God’s righteousness. True, a Jewish Christian could always keep the law as a cultural memento, in the same way I as a Texan can still wear cowboy boots up to the altar to receive communion. But keeping the law doesn't mean what it means to those for whom it is God’s witness to God’s righteousness. It doesn't mean what it means for those who understand that living out the covenant at Sinai is precisely how the Jews are a light to the Gentiles and a blessing to the nations.

Given these reflections Messianic Judaism can now be seen more clearly for what it is: a modern way of being Christian. Modern because it appears to treat Jewish identity in terms of cultural mementos and ethnic legacy rather than as participation in God’s mission cemented at Sinai. It is a Judaism that, by accepting the Pauline perspective, reduces the Law as understood by rabbinic Judaism to mere customs. Because in the orthodox Christian understanding the Law is a witness only to sin, while it is the Messiah who reveals the true nature of righteousness “to faith for faith.”

In short, Messianic Judaism is possibly only because it redefines Judaism in terms that most Jews cannot recognize. And in fact a constant theme in my dialogue with Jewish partners has been exactly this; I’ve never met a rabbi, orthodox or otherwise, who would affirm that Messianic Jews are Jews.

And yet - well modernity brings another complication - the redefinition of Judaism precisely as an ethnic identity tied to the promise of the land that need not be enacted in affirmation of God’s covenant at Sinai. The Zionist movement of the 19th century, coupled with the Nazi effort to exterminate world Judaism, and completed with the birth of the modern nation of Israel brought about new complexities in Jewish self-understanding.

Both rabbinic Judaism and European and American anti-Semites defined Judaism based on ancestry rather than belief or practice even if they disagreed on just how the identity was passed down. (The rabbis had stricter rules.) Zionists added the promise of the land, but without necessarily the cultic worship originating at Sinai. (Yossi Klein Helevi has documented the crisis posed when modern Israel actually came into control of the Temple Mount.)

In the state of Israel the concept of a “secular Jew” became possible, so that for the purposes of state of Israel one is Jewish based on parentage rather than either belief or practice, and being a Jew is the only qualification for becoming a citizen of Israel. The only exception, and one that is fascinating, is that even for the state of Israel a Jewish convert to Christianity ceases being a Jew. One can be an atheist and a Jew, or a Buddhist and a Jew, but not a Christian and a Jew.

And there is a reason for this exception that bears consideration: the fundamental conflict between the claims at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is defined by its claim that the Messiah has come in Jesus. A fundamental claim of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism of the Talmud, is that the Messiah has not yet come. Or as one rabbi at a large synagogue in Dallas put it to me: "The day you accept that the Messiah has come you cease to be a Jew."

Which really gets us right back to what the rabbi Paul said, “in Christ there is neither Greek, nor Jew.”

The challenge for Christians is to now develop a theology that doesn’t effectively lead to the extinction of Jewish identity - whether now or in some anticipated future when all the Jews will acknowledge that the Messiah has come. And that, it seems to me, will require we that learn to affirm that Sinai, and not just Golgotha, is a witness to the righteousness of God. But of course when we do that we’ll have opened the way for other witnesses to the righteousness of God beyond the narrow history of the children of Abraham.