BEING BAPTIZED

 In class the term "being baptized" is often used in some way.  Since baptism is an important concept in Christian Ethics, I probably should have spent more time teaching how to understand what baptism means.  There is so much to say about this, but I think the writer in the following essay describes very well why baptism is no mere ritual.  What follows is just the opening of an excellent review essay written by an acquaintance of mine, James K.A. Smith, who was working on his doctorate in philosophy at Villanova University when the events he described took place.  I encourage you to read the whole review at http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/philchristi.pdf 

 

Epistemology for the Rest of Us: Hints of a Paradigm Shift in Abraham’s Crossing the Threshold

James K. A. Smith

Department of Philosophy / Calvin College / Grand Rapids, Michigan 

 

I would like to invite you to a tiny little mission church in north Philadelphia.  It is the site of one of my most treasured memories of ministry, but also an event that constantly challenges my inherited paradigms in philosophy of religion.

 

It is an early winter evening, so darkness presses against the windows of the rented sanctuary as a small group of believers are gathering; light and song push back against that darkness and oozes out of the cracks of the aging, tiny structure. We have gathered for an evening service of celebration as several members of a neighborhood family, new to the church, have presented themselves for baptism. Over the past several months we have witnessed a transformation in the mother and some of her children and tonight they make public profession of their newfound faith by dying and rising in the waters of baptism. The father and some uncles have come for the service to honor those being baptized, but as with previous visits to Sunday worship, they remain aloof, distant, and unengaged. But tonight that will change.

 

Baptism in a Pentecostal church brings together the charismatic and the sacramental: their baptism is situated in a narrative enacted through song and sermon, echoed in the story of their testimonies as they present themselves for baptism. And as they are baptized, Pastor Billings draws upon the materiality and physicality of the sacrament as a picture of the Gospel itself. Tonight it’s not just a matter of telling, but a matter of showing. As the mother emerges from the water it feels as if we are witnessing the resurrection itself.  Pastor and parishioner embrace in tears as the congregation can no longer contain its “Hallelujahs!” and shouts of praise; their songs and prayers become the sound track of resurrection. He is risen! She is risen! As the teenagers are baptized, they each renounce the Evil One and pledge allegiance to the coming King. They have a new story, a new love, a new desire.

 

And then we notice that slowly the father has made his way to the front of the sanctuary. He has been gripped by something in what he has witnessed.  As others notice, a hush comes over the congregation. His brothers with him, we see the father quietly but urgently speaking with the pastor, and then a laugh of surprise and joy breaks across the pastor’s face as he embraces the father and assures him, “Of course!” The men have come asking: “Can we be baptized, too? Can we become Christians?” The waters of baptism stir once again and the sound track of resurrection becomes even louder as an entire family is enfolded into the family of God.

 

Just what happened there? More to the point, to what extent can the regnant paradigms in philosophy of religion think or make sense of a scene like this one? This father’s desire to embrace the Christian story—and be embraced by Christ—was not an instance of intellectual resolution. Christ was not the “answer” to a “question.” Jorge was not drawn to “theism,” and when he, too, emerged from the waters of baptism he did not rise with a new “perspective” or “worldview.” He didn’t die to skepticism and rise to “knowledge” (cf. Rom. 6:1–14). Something other, something different, something both ordinary and extraordinary was witnessed there. Are the dominant frameworks in philosophy of religion able to do justice to what happened there in that tiny sanctuary on a winter night? Or are they plagued by a kind of reductionism and rationalism that is poorly calibrated to understand a scenario like this one? What picture of the “believer” is assumed in our philosophies of religion?

 

 

Abstract:

William Abraham’s “canonical theism”calls into question standard strategies in philosophy of religion

which

(1) strain out the particularities of Christian faith, distilling a “mere theism”

and

(2) position Christian faith within a broader, “general” epistemology.

 

I evaluate Abraham’s call  for a philosophical approach that honors the thick particularity of Christian faith

and makes room for the unique epistemological status of revelation.

I conclude that

Abraham’s promising project could be extended to more radically call into question

the “intellectualism” that characterizes contemporary philosophy of religion.

BECAUSE IT SHOWS

A Brief Consideration of Pornography

in light of “The Theology of the Body”

February 2004

In a course examining John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body,” each student was to designate the following statement as being true or false:  “Pornography is wrong because it shows too much of people.”  

The following essay is a brief consideration of my initial response to that statement, with further discussion regarding how the whole course affected that response and how some pertinent concepts in the Theology of the Body shed light on the question.

The question, as posed, immediately elicited two responses when I first read the statement.  The statement begins, “Pornography is wrong”, then continues “because it shows too much of people.”  Responding initially to the beginning portion of the statement, I thought, “True, pornography is wrong.”  After reading on, I figured this response was intentionally provoked by how the statement was framed rhetorically.  I immediately had to revise my initial response in order to consider whether I agreed with the reason given for why pornography is wrong; that is, was showing “too much of people” the reason why pornography is wrong?  My response changed due to obscurity of the phrase “it shows too much of people.”  I could no longer consider the whole statement to be true.  That phrase provoked further consideration.

Having already considered the question of pornography prior to taking this course, I would immediately agree with the statement, “pornography is wrong.” Having been raised in a family for whom Scripture was the moral compass, I have an inbred aversion to anything condemned in Scripture.  If one defines pornography as “the graphic representation of fornication,” then I am led to conclude that pornography is to be condemned because it involves one imaginatively in fornication, filling one’s mind with lustful thoughts.  Rather than being “transformed by the renewal of [one’s] mind,” one becomes “conformed to the world” as it is portrayed pornographically (cf Romans 12:1-2;. Ephesians 5:1-5).

But how was I to interpret the phrase “it shows too much of people”?  Regarding pornography, I had to first ask what “it” is.  And again, what does it mean to say “it” “shows” something?  The statement presumes that pornography “shows” something “of people” and merely declares that what pornography “shows . . . of people” is “too much.”  What is it that is being shown? Is one assumed to already know what pornography is?  One recalls the man who, when asked to define pornography, said, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it!” 

My initial response, therefore, was to disagree with the whole statement as it was worded.  Called upon to elaborate on that response, one could very well venture the following counter-statement, “Pornography is wrong because it shows too little of people.”  In other words, pornography is deceptive because it conceals rather than reveals; pornography is a superficial showing of people, hiding what is deeper than the skin, disguising what is below the surface of sexual activity with a manipulative masquerade of explicit, and even illicit, bodily behavior.  There is more to what is shown in pornography than what meets any of the senses being titillated.  Pornography is wicked on account of its denial of there being more to one’s body than mere sensation.  That denial perversely imitates the wickedness of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, wickedness that led, and continues to lead, to deadly shame (cf Genesis 3:1-8).

Further study of the “Theology of the Body” reinforced my initial response.  I discovered that the “Theology of the Body” presents a vision of the human person that integrates body, soul, and spirit.  This integration is a much-needed corrective to the disintegrating influence of pornography, influence that has adversely affected me, as a person in community with others, and society, as a whole.  During the course, class discussion and reading assignments provoked me to consider how I need to integrate my own thinking so that it is consistently conformed to the revelation of God’s creative order, especially in relation to Jesus Christ.  God is love and expressed his love bodily in Christ Jesus (cf 1^st John 4:7-11), being born of a woman, living as a man, suffering and dying, then rising again, showing himself alive to his followers.  Showing himself, Christ showed God’s love.  Such graphic expression of love is the essence of Christianity.

Pornography intentionally confuses love with concupiscence. Christopher West discusses the source of this confusion in his Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body” (Boston: Pauline, 2003; pp 183-186, “The Grave Error of Manichaeism”):

Manichaenism particularly devalues all things sexual. . . . Hence, [John Paul II] firmly and repeatedly stresses that “the Manichaen way of understanding and evaluating man’s body and sexuality is essentially alien to the Gospel.” . . . This assignment of the Manichaen “anti-value” to the body can be seen in the tendency to describe sex or certain body parts as “dirty.” . . . While it may be unconscious or unintentional on the part of [one scolding another viewing pornography for looking at “dirty pictures”], the assignment of evil is [put] on the body . . . instead of on the evil of lust behind the production and the viewing of pornography.  As John Paul says, pornographic portrayals of the body “arouse objection . . . not because of their object, since the human body in itself always has its inalienable dignity – but because of the quality or way of its reproduction,” which is intended to incite lust.

It is pornographic to present lust as love.  Pornography is a concupiscent contradiction to the nakedness without shame that is expressly intended by God (cf Genesis 2:25) to be experienced uniquely by husband and wife: “the concupiscence of the flesh . . . distorts the truth of the ‘language of the body’ ” (quoted by West in Theology of the Body Explained, p 446).  The word “pornography” was derived from the Greek, pornea, which is also the root of the English word “fornication.”  One particularly pertinent text can be found in Ephesians 5:1-5 (New King James Version):

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ also has love us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

 

But fornication and all uncleaness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints: neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.  For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not be partakers with them.

Jesus Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, NAB); yet, embodied in flesh, God in Christ did not despise the body:  “though he was in the form of God, . . . he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:6-7, NAB).  He then lived just as humans must live, suffering the limitations of the body yet still able to please God.  Those who follow Him are called to do likewise: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (John 12:15, NAB).  Having such a graphic role model, Christians must become “imitators of God” by living their lives as Christ did, as “an offering and a sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2, NKJV). Rather than walking in lust, as do those who “are alienated from God” (Ephesians 4:17-20, NAB), Christians are to “walk in love, as Christ also has loved us” (Ephesians 5:2, NAB).

What pornography shows is not merely too much or too little of people; pornography deceitfully shows an image of the human body that is indubitably false.  It is this false showing that is wrong, making pornography have no place in the theater of Christianity: “we have become a spectacle [Greek theatron] to the world . . .” (1 Corinthians 4:9, New American Bible).  The Christian show must not be pornographic, but philographic, or rather agapographic, showing in how we live with one another, not the lust of man or woman, but the love of God in Christ.   Others, seeing our witness, can then come to know God’s love in which we share through Jesus Christ, because it shows: “For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Colossians 2:9-10, NAB, italics mine). 

 

THE PROTECTION OF CONSCIENCE

Cardinal Francis George met with President Obama to discuss some of the current ways that the Church can help promote the good of the people of America … as well as some of the serious “challenges” the current administration is presenting. 

The effort to “remove” the protection of "conscience” is a matter of consequence for everyone.   

This is Cardinal George’s brief “you tube”   clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NoCRwMqVzQ    

Notes re MORAL THEOLOGY according to VERITATIS SPLENDOR

Christian Ethics

Moral Theology

 

The moral life, has an essentially teleological character,

since it consists in the deliberate ordering of human acts to God,

the supreme good and ultimate end (telos)of man.

(n. 73)                                         cf. 2 Corinthians 5:10 re: "Last Judgment"

 

Moral action concerns human will, the act of free choice.

A moral object is the object of human will.

 

Moral actions are those freely chosen acts that are ordered to the goods of human persons.

Human actions  have an existential and religious significance

                  and  are primarily specified by the object chosen.

 

The morality of the human act

depends primariliy and fundamentally on

the 'object' rationally chosen by the deliberate will.

(n. 78)

 

In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally,

it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person. 

The object of the act of willing is in fact a freely chosen kind of behavior.

To the extent that it is in conformity with the order of reason,

it is the cause of the goodness of the will; it perfects us morally....

By the object of a given moral act ... one cannot mean

a process or an event in the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of

its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world.

Rather, that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision                                                               cf. Romans 3:8

which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person

(n. 78).

 

The "object" primarily specifying an act morally is precisely

what one "chooses."

It is                                                         the "object"  of one's choice,                                              

of what one freely wills to do                        

and,                               by freely willing to do  this specific deed,

one makes oneself to be the kind of person willing to do this.

Thus,       if the object of my choice is knowingly to have intercourse with someone other than my spouse,

                I freely choose to commit adultery and make myself to be an adulterer.

 

The "object" is not a mere physical event, a "piece" of behavior in the external world.

It is a moral object 

only because

it is the object of human will,

the act of choice.

A human act is not a "thing" having a nature of its own independent of how any human will act.

A human act, precisely as human and moral, flows    from a person's "heart,"

                                                                                    from a person's will.

How do moral norms protect human rights?                                      cf. n. 96

Moral norms prescribe the free choice of acts ordered to the goods of human persons.

Human personhood holds inherent human dignity which is upheld by human rights.

Human rights are inviolable; if it is absolutely wrong to violate a person’s human rights,

than it is apparent that some objects of human choice are intrinsically evil.

Thus, the moral norms proscribing intrinsically evil acts must be absolute and without exception.                          cf.  n. 80

Were there no absolute moral norms proscribing intrinsically evil acts, there would be no inviolable human rights

 

How does the Crucified Christ provide the answer to

why we must obey “universal and unchanging norms”?

Through His Crucifixion, Christ Jesus suffered evil rather than do it. 

As Christians, we must be willing to be witnesses of His perfect example in our own lives. 

Such witness can very well lead to martyrdom (martyr being the Greek word for witness). 

Martyrdom is senseless unless there are absolute moral norms prohibiting evil acts.

 

It is false and illusory to attribute “human meaning” to an act morally evil in itself, even in exceptional circumstances. 

To do so is a violation of any person’s “humanity.”                                                                                     cf. nn. 90-94

 

It seems humanly impossible, at times, to avoid doing evil to prevent some alleged greater evil.

At such times, what the Church teaches may appear to be harshly rigoristic.

How is the Church's teaching on human dignity and on moral absolutes NOT rigoristic or harsh?

The grace of God which has been made available to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

 

The Church's teaching on human dignity and, precisely because of the inviolable dignity of the human person, on moral absolutes always and everywhere prohibiting the free choice of acts intentionally opposed to the goods of human persons is not, as some maintain, rigoristic or harsh.

 

God never abandons us and will give us the grace to resist any temptation.            cf. nn. 84-87

 

We are called to imitate Christ through faithful Christian witness.

Christ Jesus suffered evil rather than do it.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ makes the grace of God available to us.

God promises that He will give us the grace to resist the temptation to do evil 

even when doing so is intended to prevent some alleged greater evil.

 cf. nn. 102-105

 

Evangelization ... involves the proclamation and presentation of morality.        

DON'T BE UNBELIEVING. BELIEVE.

In class I read from THE MESSAGE, Eugene H. Peterson's translation of the Bible in contemporary language.  In explaining why he had undertaken this task, Peterson, a long-time pastor and teacher, said, "I had taken on as my life work the responsibility of getting these very people [in the congregation] to listen, really listen to the message in this book."  The passage I read came from the Gospel of John, beginning at 5:19 through the end of chapter 6, then 20:18 through the end of that chapter.

See http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=65 for Peterson's full answer and also for links to the actual passage in THE MESSAGE.

The following is the last part of what I read in chapter 20: 

 

 ^24-25But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, "We saw the Master."

   But he said, "Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won't believe it."

 ²⁶Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you."

 ²⁷Then he focused his attention on Thomas. "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don't be unbelieving. Believe."

 ²⁸Thomas said, "My Master! My God!"

 ²⁹Jesus said, "So, you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing."

 ^30-31Jesus provided far more God-revealing signs than are written down in this book. These are written down so you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in the act of believing, have real and eternal life in the way he personally revealed it.

A VIEW TO ACHIEVING SOMETHING ... GOOD

I recently read the following quote from Aristotle's POLITICS:

"Men do all their acts 

with a view to achieving something 

which is, in their view, good." 

It reminded me of what I have said after one of the many times I did something incredibly foolish: 

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

WORSHIP & ETHICS

Worship is absolutely essential to a proper understanding of Christian Ethics.

Worship is what Christians do - faith is worked out in worship; worship is the work of our faith. 

Without worship, one’s conduct will not please God.

Christian ethics describes conduct pleasing to God.

Thus, the conduct of Christianity, Christian ethics, is worship. 

 

The Catholic understanding of worship is described by the word “liturgy.”

Liturgy refers to more than mere ritual.  [This is often how the word is misunderstood, as it was in my own upbringing.]

The word comes from the Greek word λειτουργία (leitourgia) meaning "public work".

It is derived from two Greek words,          leitos ,    the word from which we get “laity”, i.e., people or public,

        and                                               ergo,       the word from which we get “urge”, working power to do.

The word had a different sense in the Greek city-states:

some public good which a citizen arranged (at his own expense, if wealthy), either voluntarily or by law.

Through Christian theological development, liturgy became associated with worship.

Liturgy – the work of the Church, the people of God – is our worship before God.

cf. .Romans 12  “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” ^latreian

Let us define worship as that which one finds worth doing.  What then, is worth doing?  Doing that which is pleasing to God is always worth doing.  Those who do not worship cannot please God in that what they find worthy falls short of what is worthy in the sight of God [see discussion of THE LAST JUDGMENT].

Being free to choose what to do, we need to decide which of many options can be considered worthy of our time and energy.  Others judge us by what we do; if we are observed doing something, others will assume that we consider that which we do as worth doing.  

Perhaps this why we are exhorted as follows in Colossians 3:17: "And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

Read the whole chapter from Colossians here: http://usccb.org/nab/bible/colossians/colossians3.htm 

All we do is proper worship as it brings glory to God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is the primary claim of Christian Ethics!