Category: The Church

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CRITIQUE AND EDIFICATION

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The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (Ephesians 4: 11-13).

St. Paul describes the church as the body of Christ in which those within it are given gifts to use to build up that body so that every person is brought to Christian maturity. 

May 1, 2022, marks the 41st anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. When I graduated from seminary in 1979, I felt called to ordained pastoral ministry and to a ministry of teaching. I have not always found it easy to combine these mutual vocations. After graduation, I spent one year in clinical training as a hospital chaplain. Following that, I was placed in charge of two congregations in rural Oklahoma as a lay vicar. Five months later, and four days after our first child was born, I was ordained to the diaconate. During this time, I wrestled with the idea of a vocation that combined both ministry and teaching.   Six years later, after working in St. Louis for a couple of years, I decided to go back to graduate school to pursue a doctorate in theology and ethics at Duke University. Within a few months of my arrival in Durham, North Carolina, I began to serve as regular supply priest in rural congregations. Soon I was serving in part-time interim ministry, sometimes in more than one congregation at a time. My working life was divided between teaching at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill and work in interim parish ministry. I mention this because these experiences provided me with a perspective from which to see the church in a different light. 

The purpose of the church at its best is to build us up so that we become knitted together in the body of Christ. Its purpose, therefore, is to edify us, that is, to build us up, both personally and communally. Moving between these two environments in my career provided me with the insights I would like to share with you here. 

The purpose of the university at its best is to critique every idea or procedure and from that process to arrive at new understandings in every area of our lives, from the medicine we need to heal our bodies, to an understanding of our universe in all its complexity, to questions concerning the meaning of our lives.  

In the academic world a distinction is made between “criticism” and “critique.” Criticism points to minor errors and inconsistencies in the work under examination. Critique, on the other hand, seeks to find if and how the entire work under examination is inconsistent with its own principles, and whether as a result the work or project is flawed from the start. In graduate school, students are taught how to tear academic positions on any topic to shreds. They are taught, in other words, to critique everything they read or hear. Graduate education teaches students to categorize thought and quickly make suggestions as to the error, faults, and even the impossibility, or utter contradiction in the work under examination.  

I remember a particular graduate seminar I taught at Temple University in which we examined the work of the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu.  I was trying to make a point using an idea suggested by Bourdieu.  My students rushed in to condemn the way in which Bourdieu constructed his argument. I tried to defend the usefulness of his position despite its inherent weaknesses, but my students would not hear of it. When I reflected later in the day on the feeling and emotion behind their arguments, I realized that they were only doing what they were being taught to do. They were demonstrating to me that they could engage in a vigorous philosophical critique of their assigned readings.  

 This emphasis on critique is why university professors and other academics are often charged with being nihilists. If every position is equally flawed, then how can one ever endorse any position or idea? How then does one live her or his life? That is one of the dilemmas one faces in the university environment.

The life of the university thrives on critique, that is, on the process of challenging dominant assumptions and formulating in their place different and oftentimes unpopular ways of looking at things. This is an important task and I by no means want to belittle it. New ideas and approaches to more ancient problems, more often than not, are enriching and enlivening.  

In contrast to the university, the central task of the church is neither critique nor criticism, although that is how life within it often feels for lay and clergy alike. At its worst the church is a critical and unsupportive place. Because we all are imperfect people, it is not surprising that we often see the fault in others, before we see that same fault in ourselves.  Jesus recognized this when he asked his hearers, “why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” 

At its best, the task of the church is not to tear us down but to edify and to build us up. If we want the church to become a supportive place, we must pay attention to the ways in which we respond positively to the needs and desires of others.  If we ourselves want to be supported, we first must learn to become supportive of others. Together, and only together, can we grow “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

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“THE LORD LIKES BLUE CHEESE”

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Many people are committed to working for God in the church. As they go about the tasks at hand, they hope that they are doing what they call “God’s will.” In my experience, persons on Vestries and other committees of the church facing difficult decisions don’t often stop their meetings to ask aloud what “God’s will” might be for their church in the decision at hand. And so, they figure that if they just proceed as they normally would, God will bless all their endeavors done in God’s name with success.

If you find yourself having to make decisions like this, I would like you to ask yourself this question: are you doing “works for God” or are you doing “God’s work”? There is a difference. Works done for God may be performed merely out of self-interest. Doing God’s work means that you have taken the time to discern with your sisters and brothers in Christ exactly what “God’s work” might be at a particular time and in a particular situation.

Thomas Green, a Roman Catholic priest who served in the Philippines, illustrates the difference between God’s work and works done for God. He develops his ideas in two inter-connected books, When the Well Runs Dry and Darkness in the Marketplace.1 Citing the story of Mary and Martha in the gospel of Luke, Green observes that Martha was busy doing works for Jesus while Mary was sitting at the Lord’s feet “listening to his teaching (Luke 10:38-42). While both of their labors were important, Martha, as Jesus reminded her, needed to stop her busy-ness and listen to the words of her Lord: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.”

Fr. Green remembers how, when friends travelled back to the United States for visits, they would often ask him if he would like them to bring anything back for him. He told them he would love some blue cheese, an item not easily found in the Philippines. Many of his friends who themselves did not like blue cheese would return with something “better” in place of the cheese he had requested. Fr. Green observes that he knew he had a true friend, that is, one who truly cared about him, when the friend who personally hated blue cheese nonetheless brought some back as a gift. Fr. Green concludes that God is like that. God often asks us for blue cheese but we feel the need to do something “better.” When we try to do something “better”, are we busy doing works for God or are we doing God’s work? Are we so “anxious and troubled about many things” that we do whatever we want, or are we doing what “is needful?, that is, what God may be asking us to do.

As you think about what God wants from us, take time to reflect on the difference between “God’s work” and “works for God.” Remember: “the Lord likes blue cheese!”

1Thomas H Green, S.J., When the Well Runs Dry: Prayer Beyond the Beginnings (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1979); Darkness in the Marketplace: The Christian at Prayer in the World (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1981).

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A NEW PUBLICATION OF MINE

Martin Luther’s original grave marker in Jena, Germany. Photograph by Craig A. Phillips

This week my essay, “Freedom from the Law: From Luther to Agamben” was published in Ecumenical Perspectives Five Hundred Year after Luther’s Reformation. It was first presented at a conference of Ecclesiological Investigations international Research Network conference held in 2017 in Jena, Germany.

In the chapter, I examine how the Pauline concept of “freedom from the law” is interpreted by Italian philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben and contrast his secular use of it with Martin Luther’s theological understanding of the same concept. I contrast the passive righteousness that Luther finds in Christian freedom with the freedom Agamben finds in law that has been made inoperative. For Luther and Agamben, I argue, the way to genuine freedom is accomplished not through action, but through inaction.

To date, I have published chapters in six separate books in the Palgrave Macmillan series, “Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue.” (The details of these publications can be found on the “Academic Publications” page of this blog.)

As I wrote in an earlier post, I don’t often write about my academic publications in this blogspace, but because these publications allow me to address both the academy and the church at the same time, they may be of interest to some of my readers.

Additional information about the book may be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68360-3

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THREE RECENT PUBLICATIONS OF MINE

  • Images copyright of Palgrave MacMillan / Springer Nature

Three chapters of mine have recently been published in separate volumes of the Palgrave Macmillan series, “Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue.” The books in this series derive to a great extent from expanded conference presentations at meetings of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. Two of the three chapters published recently arose from conference presentations, and one was written especially in memory of a departed colleague, Gerard Mannion of Georgetown University. To date, I have published chapters in five separate books in this series, with one still forthcoming. (The details of the publications can be found on the “Academic Publications” page of this blog and in the links at the end of paragraphs below.)

I don’t often write about my academic publications in this blogspace, but because these publications allow me to address both the academy and the church at the same time, they may be of interest to some of my readers.

All three of these chapters employ the work of the Italian philosopher and political theorist, Giorgio Agamben, to engage specific theological topics and issues. While Agamben writes from outside the church, his writings often illuminate ideas and themes from the Christian archive, that might otherwise go unnoticed by those working from within a Christian perspective. In using resources from Agamben for my own purposes, and not necessarily in the way that he deploys them, I aim to craft new perspectives on Christian theological themes and issues.

The title of the chapter in Changing the Church, “To Live according to the Form of the Holy Gospel: St. Francis of Assisi’s Embodied Challenge to the Institutional Church,” is taken from the words St. Francis of Assisi used to describe his manner and form of life, that is, he sought solely to live according to the form of life described in the Holy Gospels (forma sancti Evangelii). The chapter explores what the contemporary church can learn from Francis of Assisi and the monastic traditions of the church so that by focusing less on itself as an institution, the church might offer concrete resources to help contemporary Christians find continuity between who they are and what they do. The second half of the chapter examines “The Way of Love,” promulgated by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, understood as practical ways of living out the gospel in the modern world. This contribution was part of a volume in memory of Georgetown Professor Gerard Mannion, a founder of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network, who died unexpectedly, in 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53425-7_29

My chapter in The Church and Migration: Global (In)Difference entitled, “The Refugee as Limit-Concept of the Modern Nation State,” contrasts the work of two of the most influential contemporary international voices on behalf of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers, Giorgio Agamben and Pope Francis.  After an explanation of the the way that Agamben understands the refugee to be the “limit concept of the modern nation state,” I examine a few of Pope Francis’ statements and comments on the status of migrants and refugees in light of Agamben’s analysis of the refugee crisis and its integral connection to the nation-state. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9_11

Finally, my chapter in Stolen Churches, or Bridges to Orthodoxy, Volume 2 was first presented at a 2019 conference in Stuttgart as part of an ongoing dialogue between Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians. The chapter entitled, “Giorgio Agamben’s Stasis (Civil War): An Illuminating Paradigm for Ecumenical Dialogue?” examines how Agamben’s paradigm of stasis (civil war) might shed light on contemporary conflicts and engagements between Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55458-3_3

I will make a similar announcement, when another chapter of mine is published in Ecumenical Perspectives Five Centuries after Luther’s Reformation later this year.

 

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THE VIRTUE OF SELF-CONTROL

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Over the past few months, I have reflected on what St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians calls “the fruit of the Spirit.”   This fruit refers to the virtues evident in the lives of those who have truly patterned themselves on the example of Jesus Christ. The reason that the New Testament writers focus on the virtues, is so that Christians can live and work joyfully and productively in community.

We find a similar list of virtues in 2 Peter presented as a plan for those who seek to make progress in the Christian life.

[Y]ou must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:5–8 NRSV).

To help understand the flow of the argument in 2 Peter, it is helpful to arrange the words in a different, more structured, way.

You must make every effort to support your:

Faith with goodness (lit. virtue)

Goodness with knowledge

Knowledge with self-control

Self-control with endurance

Endurance with godliness

Godliness with mutual affection (Gk. Philadelphian, lit. “brotherly love”)

Mutual affection with love

Love….

In the classical Greek thought of Aristotle, the word “virtue” refers literally to an “excellence,” a behavior, that we develop over time.  We gain virtue from practice.  Virtue, in other words, is gained much like a skill.  We learn as we fail and as we succeed, always building and growing.  We don’t gain virtue all at once but rather we develop it over time.

In 2 Peter we find the outlines of a program for the formation of Christian virtue; it begins with faith and ends with love, the pinnacle of Christian virtue (“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1Cor. 13:13).  The purpose of the program is so that we may not be “ineffective” or “unfruitful.” In more positive terms, the program is presented so that our lives in Christ might bear fruit, genuine fruit.

When we compare the list of virtues that St. Paul identifies in Galatians 5:22-23 (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) with the list in 2 Peter, we find some similarities and differences.  “Patience” and “endurance” have similar, but not exact, meanings as do “gentleness” and “mutual affection” (lit. “brotherly love.”). [The virtue of endurance refers to the ability to hold up under difficult circumstances.  For that reason, I wrote about that virtue previously relating it to the “resilience” we need to bounce back from upsets, disappointments, and failures.]

The only two words, however, that are precisely the same in both Galatians and 2 Peter are “self-control” and “love.”

I would like to focus further attention on the virtue of “self-control.”  “The virtue of self-control” “involves the restraint of one’s emotions, impulses, and desires.” *

The New Testament writers were familiar with Greco-Roman philosophical ideas about moral virtue of self-control.  The idea was common to the Greek philosophies of Epicurus and Zeno, the father of Stoicism. It is also found in the “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament. In Proverbs 25:28, for example, we read: “Like a city breached, without walls, is one who lacks self-control.”

A staple of Hellenistic moralism, we find self-control central to the argument of 4 Maccabees, a book not found in our Bible, but one that is canonical in some Eastern Orthodox Churches.

[I]t is evident that reason rules over those emotions that hinder self-control, namely, gluttony and lust, it is also clear that it masters the emotions that hinder one from justice, such as malice, and those that stand in the way of courage, namely anger, fear, and pain (4 Mac. 1:4).

Modern psychological study and research now recognize that reason does not always go hand in hand with self-control, especially when it comes to addiction. People facing addiction realize all too readily that they have no power within themselves to control themselves. That is why the beginning of treatment starts with the recognition of the powerlessness of the human will in the face of addiction.

To live and work with others productively in community, we have to exercise some measure of self-control.  We should always think before we speak. In James 1:19 we find just such an admonition: “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger….”  Notice it does not say quick to speak and slow to listen, but “quick to listen and slow to speak.”   Here a practical example is given to help us understand what it means to exercise self-control in our dealings with others.

The New Testament is full of advice on how to live together in community.  While there is much more I could say about this, the words of St. Paul sum it up best when he says that we should “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”  Striving to do that first and foremost lays the foundation for the “self-control” of our impulses and emotions.

*Michael J. Harrington, S.J, Jude and 2 Peter, Sacra Pagina Series. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003), p. 244-5.

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LOVE— PART 2

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This reflection is the second part of an exploration into the meaning of love in the letters of St. Paul. It is part of a larger collection of my reflections on what St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” This fruit refers to the virtues evident in the lives of those who have truly patterned themselves on the example of Jesus Christ.

The Fruit of the Spirit — Love, Part 2

The most familiar passage in the New Testament about love is perhaps the description we find of it in the 13th chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

In the film “Wedding Crashers” the two main characters, played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, crash the wedding ceremony of an unsuspecting couple. As the pastor invites a reader to the lectern, Wilson whispers to Vaughn: “20 bucks, 1st Corinthians.”  Vaughn replies, “Double or nothing, Colossians 3:12.” Then, in the background, the reader begins reading the first verse of 1 Cor. 13 — “Love is patient, love is kind…” — and Vaughn having lost the bet, pays up.

This vignette shows just how popular and well known the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians is to the general public, even to folks who may not know much about the contents of the New Testament.

While we immediately see the applicability of this passage from 1st Corinthians to the marriage of two people before God, in its original context this beautiful passage of Scripture was not written to describe Christian marriage.  St. Paul was writing to a Christian community to teach and direct them in the ways that they should love and respect each member of the church.  St. Paul addressed 1st Corinthians to a church divided by factions, each with its own set of conflicting interests, that bore witness to division and not to the mutual love and respect that should have been on display in that particular community.  St. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church members, gently chastising them where necessary, but always with love and great respect.

At the beginning of the letter, he writes: “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1 Cor. 1:10. Throughout the ensuing letter, Paul urges the people of the church in Corinth to treat one another with mutual respect, as for example in 1 Cor. 10:24 when he writes, “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.”

St. Paul hopes to form a Christian community built on mutual respect and love.  In this community, each person is invaluable and irreplaceable.  For St. Paul, when we respect another person, we not only show respect to our own self, we respect the person of Jesus Christ who has called and incorporated the other into his own body, the Church.  That is why St. Paul can write the following sentences:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. … But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it(1 Cor. 12:12; 24-27v).

It might escape our notice, on first reading the beautiful words about the meaning and practice of genuine love in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, that the attributes of love that Paul describes in 1 Cor. 13 are those that usually are ascribed to God. St. Paul, however, desires earnestly that this sort of love be embodied in the behavior of the Christians living in the church to which he writes in Corinth.[1]

“Love is patient, love is kind….”  The description of what genuine love looks like on the ground in 1 Corinthians can also be used to flesh out the meaning of the virtues

St. Paul lists in Galatians 5: 22-23: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  The fruit of the Spirit refers to the virtues evident in the lives of those who have truly patterned themselves on the example of Jesus Christ, and love is first and foremost on that list.

Let’s examine St. Paul’s description of love one more time:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor. 13:4–7). One thing that stands out that often runs counter to our own expectations is St. Paul’s statement that love “does not insist on its own way.”  This statement is often overlooked.  We sometimes seem to think that if someone truly loves us that they should agree with us in everything.  Personal relationships often falter on this very point. When we love someone, it does not mean that the other person always has to do things just the way we think they should be done.  Genuine love allows for genuine difference in our relationships. As long as there mutual respect and love exist, people can agree to disagree and still live together in loving relationships with one another.

A church that is faithful to Jesus Christ is a community shaped by the love of Jesus Christ in which people can agree to disagree on some things, but not on the essential character of the church, which is always formed by mutual respect and love for one another.

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13: 13).

[1] Raymond F. Collins; Daniel J. Harrington, ed., 1 Corinthians, Sacra Pagina Series, volume 7 (Collegeville, MN, The Liturgical Press, 1999), pp. 476 ff.

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EUCHARISTIC COMMUNITY


Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash

Note: This is a follow-up to my post “We are Eucharistic Beings” from November 20, 2018.

All of the promises made in the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer are important. But the question that always stands out for me as a parish priest is, “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?”

Making this promise puts us in continuity with the earliest church, the church of the apostles. In Acts 2:42 we read that the members of the earliest Christian community “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The central aspects of my ministry are shaped by this promise. I strive to teach and proclaim the apostolic faith of the church and to foster a Eucharistic community in which fundamental respect for the dignity of every person is not only welcomed but essential.

The other promises made in the Baptismal Covenant fall under this “devotion,” this commitment to living in a community formed by the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. We can only “respect the dignity of every human being” when we respect the members of our own community, the people we often know best but find most difficult to live with. In my ministry,  I find that people long for genuine community. They long for a place where they can love and be loved in return. This recapitulates the whole story of the Bible: God desires to form a people, first Israel and then the Church, who will love God and whom God will love in return.

In community, we have to learn to love people we do not necessarily like. That is why Christians need the Church. We need its community and fellowship if we are to grow and mature in our Christian lives. Christians need the church to teach them how to love others fully and to “seek and serve Christ in all persons.”

The response to the baptismal questions is important to keep in mind: “I will with God’s help.” Remaining in communion and fellowship with others is not always easy. We can only do it with God’s help, and God is always present to assist.

When we promise to continue in “the breaking of bread” we acknowledge that we are Eucharistic “companions,” literally, persons with whom we share bread. In a true Eucharistic community, we do not have to agree on everything. We only have to agree to continue to break bread and share it with one another. In a Eucharistic community, I believe, genuine diversity and differences of opinion can live side by side because in community we fundamentally live for one other.

Finally, when we promise to “continue in the prayers” we make a fundamental commitment that we will lift up and honor all of God’s people, and the world in which we live, before God. Prayer reminds us that everything we have comes from God and that nothing we have comes from ourselves alone. We are “Eucharistic beings” who are created by God to give thanks. It is only when we offer prayer and thanks to God and when we care to the utmost for those who are different from ourselves — always respecting the dignity of every human being — that we live into our full humanity.

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