Romans Disarmed – a review

This is a review I did of Sylvia C. Keesmaat and Brian J. Walsh, Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019 that was recenly published in the journal Studies in Christian Ethics.

My description and critical assessment are contained in the review so I won’t repeat here what is said below – save to say that while I was unpersuaded by the authors’ relentless politicisation of Paul, many important and controversial questions about the meaning and contemporary relevance of the apostle’s magnificent letter to the Romans are addressed within its pages.

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This ambitious book stands in continuity with Keesmaat and Walsh’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (IVP Academic, 2004). I use the word ‘ambitious’ in that since probably no other New Testament book has had as much written about it than Romans, it is a daunting task for anyone to write seriously on the letter, let alone do what the authors are attempting to do in this volume. Namely, to use that historical, theological and exegetical work as a basis for articulating a comprehensive anti-imperial interpretation of Romans (ch. 1 ‘Reading Romans and Disarming Empire’) from which to explore how the apostle’s words continue to challenge various expressions of what the authors identify as ‘modern imperialism’ such as: colonialism and the conquest of the Indigenous peoples of Canada (ch. 3 ‘Empire and Broken Worldviews’); home and homelessness (ch. 4. ‘Homeless in Rome’); ecological destruction (ch. 5 ‘Creation and Defilement in Rome’); the economic destructiveness of modern capitalism (ch 6. ‘Economic Justice and the Fabric of Life’); systematic injustice against the poor and marginalised (ch. 7 ‘Welcoming the Powerless’); a culture extolling nationalism, racism, identity politics, power and violence (ch. 8 ‘The Pax Romana and the Gospel of Peace’); and injurious and exploitative sexual behaviour (ch. 9 ’Imperial Sexuality and Covenant Faithfulness’).

But Romans Disarmed is ambitious in other ways as well. The authors note that the ‘disarmed’ in the title is a deliberate double entendre on the way Paul’s epistle ‘disarms’ both the violence of the first-century and modern empires and the way in which Romans itself needs to be disarmed, ‘after centuries of being used theologically as an instrument of oppression and exclusion’ (p. xiii). What they mean by this surfaces regularly throughout the book. The following gives a flavour of the emotive strength of this critique. ‘For this is a text that has been used to justify the tearing of the church asunder … Romans has been wielded as weapon, often in service of theological violence’ (pp. 105-06). Romans has been domesticated by ‘a pietistic interpretation preoccupied with individual salvation or personal righteousness’ (p. 278). As ‘the church has wielded this epistle as a sword within its own theological wars, the letter itself has been strangely (and paradoxically) rendered powerless’ (p. 252). The text has been ‘betrayed’; the church’s preoccupation with the ‘justification’ of the ‘sinner’ has led it to lose sight of Paul’s ‘radical message of how in Jesus Christ those who are unjust are made to be anew, equipped and empowered for lives of justice’ (p. 252). ‘If we are going to disarm Romans, then we will need to disarm the language of salvation and of its exclusionary judgmentalism’ (p. 368).

Chapter 1 is key to the authors’ project in that it unpacks and defends their reading of Paul intentionally seeking to confront and undermine the story of the Roman empire. They do this through a fictional dialogue with a sceptical observer who asks a series of questions. The questions are obviously ones that the authors are anticipating from scholars, readers and reviewers (such as this one). How convincing one finds their answers will largely dictate how persuasive one finds the rest of the book and so I will pay particular attention to this chapter.

Debates about ‘empire criticism’ have been swirling around New Testament studies since the 1990s, particularly associated with Richard Horsley and the ‘Paul and Politics’ group at the Society of Biblical Literature and later with N. T. Wright. Via their interlocutor, the authors engage with John Barclay’s critique of Wright’s account of Paul and Empire (pp. 13-14). They reject Barclay’s argument (Pauline Churches and the Diaspora Jews. Mohr Sieback, 2001, ch. 19) that, for Paul, the Roman empire was effectively insignificant in that it was merely an unnamed bit-part player in a much bigger cosmic conflict between God and the powers (death, sin and the defeat of evil through the victory of God in Christ). They side with Wright in seeing this cosmic battle being embodied in the specific form of Roman idolatry and injustice (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, book 2. Fortress, 2013. pp. 1307-19). And so Romans is interpreted as a deliberate counter narrative to that of Empire; ‘the symbols, vocabulary and structure of the empire underlie the world’ that Paul describes in Romans (p. 14). Despite Paul never mentioning Caesar and his empire, the original recipients living under the cruel injustices of Pax Romana would have ‘got’ the message loud and clear. It is modern readers who need the epistle’s clear anti-empire implications spelt out – which is what the authors then proceed to do in great detail in the rest of the book. They do so in a highly political manner, going beyond Wright’s softer view of implicit subversion to seeing Paul engaging in a systematic programme of cultural, social and political negation against Rome. The result is that Rome is everywhere in Romans. To give one example, ‘Greet one another with a holy kiss’ (Rom 16:16) is a kiss ‘breaking down the racial, political, gender, and economic boundaries of the empire … the loving and respectful kiss that characteriszes the family of Jesus, in contrast to the imperial family of father Caesar’ (p. 137).

The force of this political hermeneutic is earthed in imaginary stories of Iris (a slave) and Nereus (a Jewish believer named in Romans 16:15). It is also expanded in a number of lengthy ‘Targums’ imagining how Paul would write Romans today in our context of empire, racism, nationalism and economic injustice. It shapes a reading of Romans through the lens of home, homelessness and homecoming where traditional themes such as justification and the status of Israel are set in the context of how a diverse community make home together amid empire. It reads creation groaning as Paul referring to destructive Roman environmental practices. It interprets economic themes as crucial to Paul’s letter that then speaks directly into the injustices of contemporary global capitalism and Pax Americana and related issues such as MAGA. It sees Paul’s ‘creational vision and prioritizing of economic justice in the face of imperial economics’ as underpinning a contemporary ‘economy of care’ that will require ‘full-scale paradigm shift in economic life’ (p. 263). It rearticulates salvation as ‘nothing to do with an eternal home in heaven or the release of a guilty conscience’ but as a matter of justice, especially for the poor (p. 368). It interprets the ‘dominion of death’ of Romans 5:14-17, not as a cosmic power, but as ‘an end to the imperial rule of death’ (p. 369 emphasis original).

On a related, but different tack, the authors contrast the degradations of imperial sexuality against a calling by Paul to sexual relationships of faithfulness, justice and covenant love and conclude that committed, faithful Christian homosexual relationships should be seen, not as a threat to marriage but as a witness to its restoration.

Keesmaat and Walsh write with a passion to see Paul’s ancient words speak with relevance and power into our 21^st century world. Whether you agree with their arguments or not, a strength of this book is to ‘defamiliarize’ Paul and make readers think afresh about their prior reading of Romans. Few would disagree that the call of all in Rome loved by God to be saints (Rom 1:7) involves participation in a profoundly subversive way of life within diverse communities bonded together by love. Many readers may find themselves in broad agreement with large swathes of their politics. However, if you sense an impending ‘but’ you would be right. In fact, there are several.

Despite the authors’ anticipation of objections of confirmation bias, it is difficult not to conclude that their methodology is open to such criticism. If you are looking for Rome ‘behind every bush’ then you are going to find it. Repeatedly through the book there are arguments from inference. For example, Paul’s words about creation in Romans 8 ‘could only’ have been understood as a critique of the ‘land-destroying’ practices of empire because he visited Judea and Roman cities and must have been aware of the environmental impact of Roman economic exploitation (pp. 172-3). This is a threadbare basis for such firm conclusions. In this vein, the Targums are in significant danger of literally re-writing Romans along the lines of what the authors judge Paul should be saying. I suspect there is not a lot of daylight between the authors’ politics and those of Paul reimagined for our day.

As noted above, there are highly polemical statements made about how others have ‘armed’ Romans. However, apart from general assertions there is no critical engagement with specific representations of such voices. This weakness extends to a lack of detailed engagement with exegetical scholarship, a symptom of where the scale of the book’s ambition becomes problematic. If such a radical re-reading of Romans is to stand up it needs critical dialogue with alternative voices. It also, dare I say, could do with a more gracious tone.

It is not clear what place is left for eschatology in Romans Disarmed. When death in Romans 5 means imperial rule, creation groaning is primarily about Roman environmental malpractice and salvation equals justice, this question becomes a very real one. There is little discussion of the ‘first fruits’ of the Spirit, life in the Spirit versus life in the flesh in the overlap of the ages, divine conflict with hostile powers, nor of the eschatological implications of resurrection, baptism, the Adam / Christ contrast, Israel in the plan of God, and God’s wrath and future judgment – all significant themes in Romans. At one point angels, demons and the powers are specifically excluded from Paul’s list of things unable to separate believers from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (pp. 378-79). The book closes with an invitation to imagine the future world in the present, but such is the weight put on economic justice that one cannot but feel that Paul’s pervasive eschatological emphasis has been flattened out into a this-worldly horizon.

Paradoxically, given the authors’ critique of Christendom and the captivation of the church to the imagination of empire, the broad political ambitions of this book raises questions about how consistent it is with Paul’s understanding of the church’s mission. Such is the strength of the apostle’s focus on the inner integrity of the community, it is a moot point how much room there is, if any, for transforming the Roman world. Based largely on Romans some scholars like T. Engberg-Pedersen (‘Paul’s Stoicizing Politics in Romans 12–13: The Role of 13:1–10 in the Argument’, JSNT 29 (2006): 163–72) and R. Thorsteinsson (‘Paul and Roman Stoicism: Romans 12 and Contemporary Stoic Ethics’, JSNT 29 (2006): 139–61 and Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism: A Comparative Study of Ancient Morality.Oxford University Press, 2010) argue that, in contrast to the universal scope of Stoic ethics there is no ‘love for others’ ethic in Paul, the furthest he goes is exhortation to treat outsiders well. Others, like D. Horrell (Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics. 2^nd ed. Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016) see some common universal ethical norms such as a shared recognition of the good. But generally, the vocation to be an alternative peaceable community in a world ruled by empire is much closer to Barclay’s judgment than Keesmaat’s and Walsh’s expansive political programme. Paul’s silence about Rome may be the most counter-imperial stance of all.

This is the Original Submission of the review. The final published edition was first published online April 20, 2021. Issue published 01 May, 2021. Studies in Christian Ethics 34(2), pp 267-270.

Becoming a Community of Resistence in a Consumer Culture

I can honestly say I love teaching all my modules on the undergrad and post-grad courses in IBI. But it’s when you get ‘in’ to the nitty gritty of teaching and interacting with students that a module comes alive – and every time is different because every group of people has its own dynamic.

We’ve recently begun ‘Faith in Contemporary Culture’. But it could just as easily be called ‘Everyday Discipleship’, or ‘Being Resident Aliens’ (re quote Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon) or even perhaps ‘How To Develop Your Love Life’ – but I suspect that might lead to disappointment.

We try to set the historical context and also consider what culture is and how it works in the first 3-4 weeks. The idea here is to look at the ‘big stories’ that have framed Christian faith and experience for centuries: Christendom (Irish style) to post-Christendom; modernism (human progress, reason etc) to post-modern scepticism and disenchantment. I used to spend more time on these big stories. Another major one is nationalism (again Irish nationalism was a very particular expression but still typical of a of modernist metanarrative of the onward march of the nation leading to a utopian future).

But I’ve shifted to spend more time in the present – in the contemporary stories that shape our culture. Here’s the overall framework.

Several ideas lie behind this approach

One is that we are storied people – identity and purpose are found in and through narratives of meaning.

Old narratives are in the process of fragmenting in all directions.

The narrative of the free self, with love at its core, is probably the dominant story of Western culture.

We are first and foremost ‘lovers’ – people who are shaped by desires and loves. To quote JKA Smith, we are what we love.

Contemporary culture is a desire factory. Consumerism is first and foremost, after our hearts.

Christian theology needs a robust theology of love and desire if it is going to even begin to grapple with the pervasive reach of contemporary consumerism.

Augustine’s theology of love and desire is a profoundly important entry point to begin to think theologically and critically about contemporary consumer society.

A theological response of what it looks like for Christians to be ‘resident aliens’ or a ‘community of resistence’ will need embodied practices that reflect an alternative narrative. In other words, to live as disciples of Jesus, to live to his kingdom and not the kingdom of the market, means intentionally resisting the corrosive story of consumerism. It means living to another story.

To even begin to do this requires first recognising consumerism’s power, its pervasive reach, and unmasking its ‘invisibility’ – how consumerism is taken for granted as a perfectly ‘normal’ way of envisioning a fulfilling life. It’s the air we breathe every day.

[I’m not the first to say this, but my sense here is that swathes of modern Christianity have a comfortable and uncritical relationship with the values, story and destructive impact of contemporary consumerism. A gospel of personal salvation has little or nothing to say about the idolatry of the market. If an illness is undiagnosed and we don’t even know we are sick, then we aren’t going to pose much of a challenge to the marketeers and gods of mammon.

More positively, the Christian faith has a positive vision of what it means to live a flourishing, good and happy life – and it is not a consumerist one (to put it mildly). Christians follow a crucified Messiah after all.

This course encourages and facilitates students to work out that Christian vision for a flourishing life for themselves.

So that’s a flavour of what’s going on – comments and suggestions for reading welcome

The pandemic is exposing the myths of Western individualism

This post is sparked by reading Douglas Campbell’s marvellous Pauline Dogmatics.

If asked to diagram social relations, very likely most of us would typically use a number of circles to represent individuals.

Each person is imagined as a self-contained ‘unit’, a discrete individual, separated off from other individuals by a social space.

This is a picture of the person as a self-sufficient person, with clear boundaries delineating them from other individuals. Others exist in their own spheres, perhaps bouncing off each other now and then, but essentially each of us are our own island.

Margaret Thatcher famously took this to its logical conclusion in stating that there is ‘no such thing as society’. Or, in Campbell’s words;

Personhood exists in isolation and society is a game of marbles

p.50

But with even a little analysis we soon realise this is a myth. All of us are incomplete, indeed we are crippled, without a network of social relationships. Our very identity and sense of personhood depends on interaction with, and recognition of, others.

This simple diagram begins to hint at how who we are is bound up with with relationships. The self cannot exist in splendid isolation.

^{By Wykis – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1618169}

This is why the pandemic is so hard to bear – we are being forced to actually live like the isolated individuals of Western consumerism / capitalism. And it shrivels the soul and breaks the heart. There is something deeply alien to our humanity to be in enforced lockdown.

For those us locked away with family members that we actually like and get on with this is just about survivable! But we still miss 1001 things about everyday life – its vibrancy, life, and delicious complexity, not to mention hugs, food with friends, and endless fascination of meeting new people.

For those trapped in spaces characterised by toxic relationships, it is unimagineably difficult. For those living on their own it is a lonely wilderness experience, unsustainable in the long term.

Douglas Campbell wrote his book long before Covid-19 was known about. So his words have perhaps attained extra prophetic weight in the meantime. He speaks of the connection between our social identity and the nature of God – Father, Son and Spirit.

We must let this revelation concerning the true nature of personhood sink down into out theologial bones, since it will pervade all that follows. People are relational beings because the personal God that is the Trinity is a relational communion, and we are made in the image of God …

At the heart of all reality lies an interpersonal and hence fundamental familial God. We are involved with a divinity that is interpersonal in the most committed and relational fashion.

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Lockdown is necessary. But it comes at great cost – and I am NOT talking money here. It’s an issue of love. I say this because Christians believe, as Campbell says that

At the heart of the universe is a play of love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

p. 55

We are embodied beings, made by a relational God of love to be in relationships of love with him and with each other. Of course we can still love others we can only see on a computer screen, but it is a pale imitation of a fully functioning relationship.

And so, from a theological perspective, we long for the ending of lockdown, NOT so we can save the economy (although we need it to work in order to live) but so that we can love – for that is what we have been created to do.

And, even more remarkably, as God’s children love they ‘witness’ to the truth of who God is. God takes the ‘risk’ of choosing people like you and me to reveal or demonstrate his love to the world.

So in this pandemic, let us be asking ourselves, how can we as individuals and as church communities mediate something of the love of the triune God to a coronavirus world.

Comments welcome

Unbridled captialism and the erosion of civil society

From The Atlantic

An article analysing the destructive effects of long hours combined with unpredictable schedules now commonplace among corportations intent on maximising profit by utilising their workforce most efficiently.

“Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore: Our unpredictable and overburdened schedules are taking a dire toll on American society”

This concluding paragraph

It’s a cliché among political philosophers that if you want to create the conditions for tyranny, you sever the bonds of intimate relationships and local community. “Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals,” Hannah Arendt famously wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. She focused on the role of terror in breaking down social and family ties in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. But we don’t need a secret police to turn us into atomized, isolated souls. All it takes is for us to stand by while unbridled capitalism rips apart the temporal preserves that used to let us cultivate the seeds of civil society and nurture the sadly fragile shoots of affection, affinity, and solidarity.

How kick back against this on a societal scale for the common good?

And if community is crucial within Christian faith, how does that community flourish and be sustained if significant numbers of people are unable to participate on a weekly basis due to long hours and unpredictable work schedules?

The Message of Love (3)

This is the last of a couple of posts about The Message of Love, which was published this week.

A flavour of the chapters

Each chapter was a challenge and joy to research and write and gave a distinct contribution to an overall theology of love in the Bible.

Introduction

What is love? Contemporary beliefs about love. Reasons for the book.

Part I: Love in the Old Testament

Much of Part 1 explores divine love – God’s covenant love for his people. How does he respond to human failure? Divine love and judgement. Chapters 4 and 5 shift to human love: love for God (ch 4) and the Bible’s unrestrained poetic celebration of the joy of sexual love (ch 5).

1. Abounding in love, punishing the guilty               Exodus 34:6-7
2. God’s love for the outsider                                        Deut. 10:12-22
3. God, the betrayed, yet persistent lover                  Hosea 1-3
4. Love the Lord Your God                                             Deut.6:4-25
5. Erotic love                                                                     Song of Songs 4-5

Interlude

This sets the scene for interpreting love in the New Testament including the shift to agapē language.

Part 2: The Love of God Revealed in the Mission and Death of Jesus Christ

Given that the sending of the Son is the climax of the triune God’s redemptive action in the world, Part 2 focuses on how the NT talks about Jesus’ mission, and particularly the cross as God’s supreme demonstration of love.

6. ‘You are my Son, whom I love’                                 Mark 1:1-15
7. God is love                                                                   1 John 4:7-10
8. Love and justification by faith                                Romans 5:1-11
9. God’s great love                                                          Ephesians 2:1-10

Part 3: Love in the Life and Teaching of Jesus

Jesus does not talk that much about love, but when he does his words carry enormous weight and profound challenge. Part 3 examines the searching demands of ‘discipleship love’ – utter commitment to Jesus; the command to love enemies; a beautiful story illustrating what wholehearted love for Jesus looks like; and how remaining in God’s love is linked to obedience.

10. The cost of love                                              Matthew 10:34-39
11. Enemy love                                                     Luke 6:27-36; 10:25-37
12. A woman’s great love                                   Luke 7:36-50
13. Remain in my love                                        John 15:9-17

Part 4: The Church as a Community of Love

Love only exists in relationship with others. The majority of love language in the Bible is about the church and its calling to be a community of radical, counter-cultural love. Part 4 unpacks the searching character and supreme importance of love; the connections between humility, faith, love and the Spirit; how love is God’s weapon in a spiritual war; and how Christian love within marriage subverts the world’s assumptions about status and power. A major theme in the Bible is idolatry – where God’s people love the wrong things. A final chapter looks at a modern example – the love of money and the relentless persuasive power of consumerism.  

14. The searing searchlight of love                          1 Cor. 12:31-13:13
15. The liberating power of love                             Galatians 5:1-23
16. Subversive love: Christian marriage               Ephesians 5:21-33
17. Love gone wrong: money                                   1 Timothy 6:2b-10

Conclusion

The conclusion is a synthesis of themes that emerged within the chapters, outlining a biblical theology of love and the central role of the church as a community of love within his overall redemptive purposes.

Theological, pastoral and missiological questions

Three strands of love and associated questions emerged during writing.

Divine love:

Is God really loving and utterly good? How can God love if he allows such suffering in the world? How is divine love compatible with divine judgement? Is God’s love unconditional? How does God show his love for the poor and marginalised? How is God’s love revealed at the cross?

Human love for God:

Can love be love if it is commanded? How do faith, love and the Spirit connect together? How can the love of money be ‘de-idolised’ within the church today? If love for God requires humility and submission, is Christian love a denial of life and our full humanity (Nietzsche)? How is love for God costly?

Human love for one another:

Why does the Bible overwhelmingly concentrate on love within the community of the people of God? Is loving enemies an impossible ideal? What does the Bible have to say about erotic sexual love? What is the relationship between knowing God and loving one another? What does a loving Christian marriage look like? How is love God’s most powerful ‘weapon’ in a conflict with powers opposed to his will? What is the relationship between love and future hope? Where are you being called to walk in the difficult yet life-transforming path of love?

My prayer is that this book will help to put love where it belongs – at the centre of Christian teaching, preaching, worship, ministry and individual experience.

Consumer culture, Identity, the Church and the Rhetoric of Delight (8)

The final chapter of Mark Clavier’s book is called ‘God’s Orators’.

In it he engages particularly with Augustine’s On Christian Teaching, written at the turn of history as the Roman empire faded and the Dark Ages beckoned. It would, centuries later Clavier, argues, as a work of rhetoric on Christian teaching and preaching, have an enduring legacy in the rebuilding a Christian world.

Fast forward to the early 21^st century and Clavier sees us as facing another historical turning point. He references the pessimistic end of Alistair McIntyre’s After Virtue (1981) and his bleak prognosis for Western moral discourse (as with the fall of Rome, the barbarians are now in power; the resources for forming people of virtue have dissipated).

And so to Rod Dreher’s 2017 Benedict Option – in the face of culture wars that have been lost, churches should withdraw from those battles to form new communities where Christian virtues can be preserved. As with Benedict’s monasteries, Christians can best survive and flourish through strategic withdrawal to teach and propagate the faith within a hostile world.

Clavier (rightly) isn’t convinced by Dreher’s alarmism and lack of confidence. He refers to Hauerwas’s criticism of Dreher, that his withdrawal strategy is an illusion – there is no-where to withdraw to.

But Clavier does agree that we are at a significant juncture in the history of the church (in the West at least).

Unless the church can reclaim its identity from consumerism, it will become little more than an organization for those who make Christianity a lifestyle choice … For the church to prosper again it shouldn’t engage in a ‘strategic withdrawal’ but rediscover how to proclaim the gospel in fast changing circumstances. In other words, rather than withdraw into monastic seclusion, expending their energies trying to become pure communities (when has that ever turned out well?), churches should seek to become rhetorical communities that can contest the destructive rhetoric of our world. (128)

A nice line – if I suspect a controversial one for many – the church does not need another Benedict, ‘it needs another Augustine.’ (129)

So what does it look like for churches to become these alternative rhetorical communities of delight?

Clavier answers this question in dialogue with Augustine’s On Christian Teaching and The City of God.

In CT, Augustine unpacks the task and resources for Christian orators. Christian teachers are not the source of eloquence and wisdom – that belongs to God. Their vocation is to be formed into people through whom

‘… God may teach, delight and persuade the faithful to love him and their neighbours. In that sense, they’re sacramental: they and their words are the outward, sensible signs of God’s inward, invisible truth and delight.’ (129)

This is where Augustine is powerfully relevant to the church in any age. What is the overall goal of all Christian teaching and preaching? Of study of the Scriptures? His answer is unequivocal – love.

Anyone who thinks he has understood the divine Scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up the double love of God and neighbour, has not yet succeeded in understanding them. (CT 1.36.40, quoted in Clavier 130).

Amen to that. This is true wisdom – building up the community of the church in the love of God. Love, not theological or scriptural knowledge is the goal.

But such teaching is to be done persuasively – drawing listeners in to the delights of God’s wisdom. Teaching is not to be dull and boring! Such speech makes Scripture inaccessible to all bar a (nerdish?) minority interested in theology regardless of how heart-numbing the teaching may be!

There are some wonderful (and challenging) principles of communication here. Good Christian teaching and preaching will move and delight the hearers. Such eloquence fosters understanding, it elicits a response of the heart as well as the mind. Augustine again,

A hearer must be delighted so he can be gripped and made to listen, and moved so he can be impelled to action. (CT 4.12.27, Clavier, 133).

Instruct. Delight. Persuade. These are the goals of Christian oratory.

But ‘behind’ this oratory lies the character and virtue (we might say integrity) of the teacher. Augustine has searching words for any preachers and teachers today in how before speech comes prayer:

He should be in no doubt that any ability he has, and however much he has, derives more from his devotion to prayer than his dedication to oratory; and so by praying for himself and for those he is about to address he must become a man of prayer before becoming a man of words. (134)

And so Augustine’s Christian orator must excel in three areas:

1. Study of the Scriptures ‘to discover the wisdom to teach others how better to love God and neighbour.’ (135)
2. Know how to communicate eloquently.
3. Be a person of prayer – only in prayer will the teacher be filled with God’s delight and the humility and love to build up others.

This is an exalted view of the ministry of Christian teaching. (Clavier notes that nowhere does Augustine limit it to the vocation of the priesthood).

So what does it look like for 21^st ministry today?

Clavier sets out some boundaries:

It is not just a matter of advanced biblical studies – knowledge of the Bible, as if knowledge is enough. Rather

‘… it is primarily a matter of perceiving reality that’s rooted in Scripture and builds people up in the love of God and neighbour. (138)

Nor is it helpful to define Christian teaching too narrowly and individualistically. Yes ‘full-time’ ministry roles are important, but all believers are called to the task of teaching, delighting and persuading each other to pursue the love of God and neighbour.

Yes, Clavier says, the ministry of teaching is crucial, but

‘Teaching, however, must be something that characterizes every aspect of a church’s life. Formation isn’t just (or even primarily) information but rather the rooting of hearts, minds, and bodies in the imaginary, habits, and practices of the church. When people worship they are learning; when they pray, they are learning; when they serve others, they are learning … these activities aren’t extraneous to their beliefs but are forming them to be the kind of people who can love God and neighbour in a world that seeks to persuade them to love themselves.’ (139)

Such a church is not to be sectarian (my word not Clavier’s) – he calls for stewardship of creation and living for the benefit of others.

This is no Benedict Option, but a call to proclaim the gospel and contest ‘the destructive rhetoric of this world’ (141) – the false and unsustainable gospel of consumerism that is going one day to come crashing down.

The mission of the church is to demonstrate ‘to the world an alternative manner of living’ that people

‘experience in the very life of that church a wisdom and delight that’s unlike anything they’ve found elsewhere.’ (142).

Clavier acknowledges that some readers may be disappointed that he is not offering a roadmap of how to delight in God rather than destructive illusions of consumption, but to offer a ‘how to’ is to miss the point that delight and love can’t be prescribed.

St Paul gets the final word – his words sum up the purpose of mission and ministry

8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)

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As I said in the first post, there are significant areas of overlap with what Clavier is arguing and themes that emerged in my The Message of Love. Some of these include:

• Love as the purpose of all ministry and mission
• Discipleship as much more than knowledge, but a formation of the whole person – head, heart and hands.
• The relevance of Augustine on love in dialogue with contemporary consumerism as that which seeks to capture our hearts (and this is not to say there are not serious issues with Augustine’s dualism when it comes to love, sex and the body in particular)
• The mission of the church to be the church – in other words its primary mission is to be an authentic community of worship and love.
• A strong theology of the world: the church’s mission not to be conformed to that world but to embody a different story to that of the world.  Clavier sounds pretty Anabaptist for an Anglican.
• The need for humility if we are to love well.
• The Christian life as communal – lived in relationship with others.
• And the sheer good news of God – who is to be loved and delighted in

All this makes me like his book! It is also short and readable. Sure there are points you might want talked about more (particuarly the content of the gospel) but in a consumeristic, post-Christendom world he rightly is calling for the church not to be in negative, fearful, defence mode but rediscovering its calling to bear witness to the good news of God.

Consumer Culture, Identity, the Church and the Rhetorics of Delight (7)

Chapter 6 The Church as a Rhetorical Community

I am pretty sure that you haven’t heard of your local church being described as a Rhetorical Community. Neither have I. So what does Mark Clavier mean?

To get to that, first some context. He argues, that despite all sorts of efforts by churches to be more culturally relevant over the last generation or two, the demographics (he uses stats from the USA) continue to show alarming decline, with millennials opting out in large numbers.

Such churches, Clavier says, have adopted the strategy of the market. They have ‘retooled’ themselves to meet the spiritual needs of their customer base. How’s this for a criticism?

Some strands of Evangelicalism, for example, have tried to adopt and reorient the practices of consumerism towards the gospel – in effect, repackaging the substance of the faith in forms developed by consumer culture. They present worship in more entertaining formats, draw from popular tastes in music to compose praise songs, and use the resources of marketing to develop brand loyalty. In a sense, these churches have created an alternative consumer culture where the presence of Jesus is pervasive; indeed Jesus himself becomes a kind of logo that assures shoppers that their goods and services are wholesome and permissible: a brand Jesus. (105)

Ouch.

He makes a telling point that the impact of consumerism reaches deep down to what issues preoccupy the Church.

Questions about identity, personal freedom, psychological wholeness, and personal spirituality have tended to eclipse traditional concerns about doctrine and salvation. (106)

He’s right – we need only to look at how issues of sexual identity and personal authenticity are tearing churches apart for an example. Themes like sin, the cost of discipleship and judgement don’t tend to sell too well (and I’m not saying that is where the gospel begins, but without them the gospel is incomprehensible).

Clavier brings in Stanley Hauerwas’ call for the church to a colony of Resident Aliens who transform the world, not be conforming to it, but by being a faithful alternative to it –  a community formed by the story of Scripture issuing in radically distinct ethics and way of living.

Clavier agrees with Hauerwas call to be Resident Aliens and that this is not a sectarian withdrawal from the world since there is nowhere to withdraw to. But he thinks Hauerwas does not go far enough. It isn’t that the church can’t withdraw because it is already surrounded, it can’t withdraw because it is already overrun by the rhetoric of consumerism.

And this brings us to the church as a rhetorical community.

For the church to reclaim its mission, therefore, it must first strive to be an intentional community of rhetoric that eloquently calls people to participate in its story of redemptive reality be appealing to their imaginations and their hearts. (107)

After discussion of Augustine, Charles Taylor, Oliver O’Donovan and JKA Smith, this is where Clavier is headed in terms of the mission of the church in a consumer dominated culture.

The church is called to be a formative community, that embodies an alternative to the destructive delights offered by consumerism.

The mission of the church, therefore, is fundamentally a mission of delight: to strive to be a formative community of rhetoric that can persuade the dispose Christians to pursue the love of God.  …. Broadly speaking, this is accomplished by beginning to think about how to proclaim Scripture, worship God, and love one another in ways that either delight or challenge anything that seeks to mask God’s delight. (121)

The church does this through communicating eloquently its own story, practices, habits and symbols with imagination and creativity in a way that resonates with people’s hearts. So Clavier wants to find a central place for art, music, architecture, story-telling, forms of liturgical worship, ritual and the ceremonial as ways to help people experience delight.

The goal is to develop habits that root believers in God, bind them together in community and develop a love for beauty. Children are to be inducted into the stories and habits of the church, engaging them imaginatively with the Bible and worship of the church. When it comes to children’s and youth work

Churches should long ago have given up on trying to out-entertain consumerism. (122)

It is only from such delight in God that Christians will make virtuous, moral choices that reflect God’s love. This is true freedom.

I really liked his description of the ‘outcomes’ (my word) of Augustine’s ‘earthly city’ (consumerism) and the ‘heavenly city’ (the city of God):

The earthly city’s self-love produces a reality manifested by a desire for glory that ends in violence, war, empire and perpetual restlessness. On the other hand, the heavenly city’s love of God produces a reality characterized by a humility that engenders communion, justice, happiness and peace. (119)

Is this all rather idealistic? How can it be enacted in day to day practice? These are some of the questions addressed in the final chapter.

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Chapter 5 The Divided wills of Christian consumers

Did you watch Game of Thrones? Should you have watched GoT? Clavier starts this chapter referring to this sort of Christian debate about how to stay pure in dark world. What constitutes being ‘in the world but not of it’?

Such debates are as old as Christianity itself. How should the Christians in Corinth be ‘in’ the city but not of ‘it’ when it came to eating meat sacrificed to idols or going to pagan temples (1 Cor 8)?

Clavier’s bigger point here is that the context of such debates has radically changed in an internet age of global marketing. Whatever we like to think, it is now virtually impossible to somehow ‘stand apart’ from the world.

Consumer culture has already stormed the ramparts, leaving even Christian sectarians nowhere to hide … in a broadband world old strategies for sustaining a Christian identity no longer work (if they ever did) … unless we decide to join a Christian community that is disconnected from both technology and society, our struggle to resist the allure of consumer culture is relentless and mostly private. (85-86)

This all means that churches are, in effect, ‘weak’ cultures that have long lost the ability to enforce the beliefs and behaviours of their members. They are largely powerless to shape an alternative identity in the face of an all-embracing consumer narrative that offers a life of freedom, delight and self-fulfilment.

The reason for this, argues Clavier is that churches typically target issues of right belief, whereas consumerism targets the heart – our desires and loves and delights. The result is that the church becomes just one more leisure activity for the few. Fewer people feel any desire or need to belong, after all

‘… church communities provide little that can’t be found elsewhere in consumer culture.’ (87)

Clavier has a useful discussion of Christian world views here, and particularly the Bible as story. Indeed, I have just come out of a first year theology class teaching on the Bible as a grand, dramatic narrative in which the story of our individual lives find their significance and meaning.

Clavier references Richard Middleton, Michael Goheen and others. The argument is that a key to resisting the world (and the pull of consumer culture) is to know our place in the story. Knowledge of this worldview and our place in it will enable us to live to a different story.

I have a lot of sympathy for this – and so does Clavier. But he adds that there are two fatal problems. One is that it oversimplifies how we see the world. But a second reason is that it fails to take account of how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. Christianity is not a worldview we learn intellectually and then we live by that story. This reduces it down too much to ‘correct thinking’ and understanding of key concepts. Think of it this way – a world view can inform and educate; it helps us to see reality and how it works. But it does not have the power to transform thinking and behaviour because it leaves our desires and loves untouched.

Consumerism is much more like a deep allegiance that touches emotions and woos our hearts, turning us into willing consumers experiencing its joys and (temporary) fulfilments.

Augustine recognized that the Christian faith is confronted by persuasive appeals to the emotions more than intellectual appeals to the mind. To base the Christian response on choice is to show up too late to the battle. By then the market has already disposed people to make the choices it prefers and to pursue a vision of happiness that it has prepared them to desire (95).

Such is the power of consumer delight that few churches or Christians teach or reflect about consumerism – it is omnipresent and taken as a natural given of our way of life. Few consider that there is anything strange or troubling about the way we see ourselves in the world. And rare is serious reflection on radical changes in lifestyle needed in light of the present (not future) ecological catastrophe.

 ‘… few imagine that conversion to Christianity might involve a conversion away from anything other than a vague notion of non-belief (i.e. atheism, agnosticism, or another religion). (97)

And even if there were, argues Clavier, it is unlikely that study of Scripture, the Creeds and worldviews will challenge the powerful rhetoric we are formed by every day. It may make us aware that we are in bondage, we may have a sense that there is an alternative,

Yet, translating this knowledge into a manner of living is more difficult, not least because the obligations of being a Christian are less persuasive than the apparent freedom and fun offered by the market. Why would anyone embrace obligations if their notion of happiness is based on the total freedom to be whomever they want to be? (98)

So believers are caught between two rival rhetorics of delight.

If this all sounds too negative, Clavier concludes the chapter by setting up Part 3 of the book – ‘The Mission and Ministry of God’s Rhetoric’. Christians are not left on their own – they have the Holy Spirit.

The call for churches, he argues, is to be communities of delight: people who are transformed by the story of Scripture, whose identity and hearts are orientated towards God, whose joy is beyond the reach of the market

… love expressed through prayer can’t be monetized: the market has no means for making grace a commodity. This rhetorical context occurs within the theatre of the heart rather than the mind and the laurels of victory go to the rhetoric that lays greater claim on the affections. (100)

It will be interesting how Clavier unpacks this alternative rhetoric of delight that can subvert and challenge consumerism at its ‘own game’ of winning our hearts …

Consumer Culture, Identity, the Church and the Rhetorics of Delight (4)

In chapter 3 Clavier turns to the ‘Rhetoric of Consumerism’. By this he means the persuasive story / stories which shape our Western consumer culture – and people like us in it.

And I’ll say upfront, if you want to be critically informed about the world in which we live read this chapter.

He starts by referencing the atheist philosopher A C Grayling, one of the few thinkers to attempt to offer a robust defence of the good of consumerism. This quote gives a flavour. Comparing consumerism to religion Grayling says,

Both the language and the symbols offer what religion once did – a common structure. But as a community bond it is … more democratic and equitable. For consumers are not fools, not victims of dogmas taught by a priesthood. They are their own priests, they know what they want and are getting it. (42)

So in this vision consumerism is freedom and enables autonomous individuals to construct their own identities and happiness. But such freedom is only for the select who can consume as they wish. As Clavier notes

Graylings’ ethics are at best meaningless and at worst insulting to low income people or the vast majority of people who live in the developing world. (42)

It is also a vision which imagines that we are somehow detached, above the fray, and able to make free rational choices unaffected by a culture intensely manipulated by the market.

Clavier draws nice parallels with Cicero’s orators. Today consumerism works through charm and eloquence rather than rational argument. The entire superstructure of Western prosperity demands relentless and ever-evolving consumption. Buying becomes more than a purchase, but an activity of self-expression and self-fulfilment. And so desire is the driver of the consumption cycle – desires must be created, stoked and refreshed in an endless cycle of wants.

Frugality, ‘enough’, satisfaction and contentment are therefore the enemies of Western capitalist culture. They threaten the very basis of economic sustainability.

Personal dissatisfaction, therefore, isn’t a byproduct of consumerism but the very essence of it. A contented public would be the ruin of Western economies … Billions of dollars are spent on consumer behaviour research to find new methods for convincing people that they’re yet to find true happiness and that they have needs yet unmet.  (46)

And so consumerism is effectively a desire factory – new needs and new desires create new commodities while old ones are thrown out. And so our vast waste disposal problem and the destruction of the physical world. The rather inconvenient truth about consumer dreams is that they are destroying the real world at a catastrophic rate.

A major difference from Cicero’s time is that powerful rhetoric would have been rarely heard, yet Western culture is one of unceasing rhetoric, we live in a society of perpetual persuasion, telling us stories about reality and our ideal place within it.  

Clavier unpacks in more detail the processes of consumer persuasion. In such a world of endless manipulation, choice becomes a burden rather than a freedom. It is a culture of never-arriving, never-resting and never-enough (my description).

In a desperate competition for attention, marketers analyse and study us as never before. Data is gold-dust and is used to inform the stories we are sold so that they connect with us at a personal and emotional level.

The heart rather than the mind is the object of their appeal … Delight is the key to connecting emotions to information and stories intended to persuade. (53-4)

This echoes Augustine, “a hearer must be delighted to he can be gripped and made to listen” (54, quote from On Christian Teaching, 4.12.28)

And Clavier links here to the power of mass entertainment in creating delight and selling us things in the process. This includes films, box sets and such like of course, but boundaries are increasingly blurred between information like news and marketing. Everything is shaped around pleasing the customer – the market is ‘on our side’ and there to help us experience life to the full.

And so sources of delight are ‘systematically commodified’ – this is the strategy of ‘inform, delight, engage’. We are not bullied but delighted into being loyal consumers of favourite brands. Virtually nothing is beyond commodification.

Take your life for example. The genius of Facebook, followed by other social media platforms, is that our delight in sharing our lives with others has been monetized. As Clavier says, we are ‘willing (but unwitting) marketers. Delight is the key to getting them to share their experience with others’ (57).

Increasingly we are becoming aware of just how deeply Google, Facebook, Amazon and others are able to exploit our personal data, but most of us just don’t mind. It’s a trade-off – our delight for their profit. We don’t feel oppressed, in fact it is

a bondage of delight … we enjoy it. If given a choice between being middle-class consumers and any other identity, almost everyone in their right mind would choose the former … so long as we feel free, does it really matter if we aren’t? (59).

So while the planet burns and extinction rates rise; while we are increasingly aware of the hidden dark side of consumer goods made in sweat shops far away; while we may fret about the breakdown of community and social bonds and we worry about the impact of social media on mental health – we still feel that the market ‘works’ – what, after all, is the alternative? Clavier again:

Where may one go to escape from being primarily a consumer within the rhetorical community of consumerism? … (59)

The answer many conservative Christians give is choice – we must choose to resist (somehow) the all-pervasive embrace of the market. But for Clavier this is inadequate,

The contest isn’t between choices but between the suggestions and delights that give rise to choices. In short, if Cicero and Augustine are right, that what’s needed isn’t just a different choice but, more fundamentally, a rival rhetoric powerful enough to persuade people to be something else than a consumer. (60)

And it is that rival rhetoric articulated by Augustine that the next chapter gets into. We’ll discuss how successful this move is at the end of this series.

On Consumer Culture, Identity, the Church and the Rhetorics of Delight (3)

In chapter 2 Clavier unpacks Augustine’s ‘rhetoric of self-destruction’. In other words, we are in the theological territory of the human will, love, desire and choice. On the one hand, we are lovers who find our true identity in pursuing our desires. On the other hand, pursuing those desires leads not to freedom but to bondage. 

Clavier traces the early career of Augustine: small town Thagaste in modern day Algeria, to Carthage to study rhetoric, of being deeply impressed by the great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), a career move to Rome where, after impressing an influential Roman senator he was appointed imperial Rhetor in Milan.

“… a kind of PR expert for the beleaguered court of the emperor Justinian II” p. 24.

In a sense this is a very modern story of ambitious young man forging a career in places of power, of getting noticed and having significant patrons. While we may struggle to understand the power and appeal of eloquent rhetoric in the ancient world, we still admire great orators today. Regardless of politics, Obama is one such example. The same, um, can’t quite be said of the present incumbent of the White House – but I digress.

The key theme here is the ancients had a profound understanding of human nature and of the power of persuasion, emotions, desires, and language in shaping beliefs and behaviour.  It is the will that follows the heart. Given the power of rhetoric, it was recognised that there is need for the orator to be moral – to use such power well for the benefit of his hearers, rather than for self-interest.

It was these sorts of insights that probably helped Augustine develop ‘what might be termed as a psychology of sin’ (p. 27) that

“… took seriously the unarticulated forces that motivate people to pursue particular ends. This in turn led him, probably unintentionally, to describe redemption as a kind of rhetorical contest between an eloquent God and an eloquent devil. Satan lures sinners to consent to sinful and earthly pleasures through the promise of delight. The experience of these illicit delights in turn binds sinners either to sin or to the world. Sinners delight in their own perdition, just as a captivated audience might delight in agreeing with incompetent or malevolent orators. The dreadful irony of an eloquent devil for Augustine is that people mistake their own bondage for happiness and this subsequently leads them to identify closely with the very things that destroy them.” p. 27

And of course this all ties in with Augustine’s own experience. After his encounter with the Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, he has come to accept the Nicene Creed with his head, but not his heart. He remains a man ‘caught between two opposing forces’ (p. 32) – two competing delights.

If all these offer equal delight at one and the same time, surely the divergent wills pull apart the human heart while we are deliberating which is the most attractive option to take (Confessions 8.10.24, quoted p. 32).

And so conversion for Augustine is primarily a matter of the heart, of what delights he gives his life to. There is a cost associated with this – to embrace one is to say no to the other.

In other words, his conversion to Christianity when it came wasn’t a victory of the intellect over his emotions but a conversion of the heart to a more appealing Christian faith. p. 34

Clavier unpacks how Augustine’s understanding of the power of delight led to a robust theology of the power of sin (the bondage of the will).

Think of it this way: what delights you? What do you love doing?

I might love DIY, you may not. I might love writing and you may find that incomprehensible. The point is our delights are complex and mysterious – what delights one may bore another senseless.

Such delights can be ‘dark’ as well – what sins and addictions I struggle with you may have no problem with and vice versa. For example, I remember being in Las Vegas some years ago and being utterly mystified how people could spend all their days (and money) pulling the handle on a slot machine. Gambling seems such a fool’s game. But just because that particular ‘delight’ does not attract me does not mean I am not attracted to other destructive delights.

The very reason we struggle with sins is because they are delightful – they appeal to us at a deep level, they offer freedom and joy and pleasure …

The point is that our delights ‘choose us’ more than we choose them. We feel most free and ‘ourselves’ when we get to do what we love. All this means that we are less free than we like to think.

So, according to Augustine Clavier says

“… we are already enslaved to delights, and not just any delights, especially those that ultimately dehumanize us. Left to our own devices, sinful, illicit delights continue to draw us inexorably to our ruin.” p. 40.

Clavier will return to how Augustine spoke of the good news of God’s liberating grace (chapter 4). But first he turns in chapter 3 to how Augustine’s theology of freedom, delight and slavery speak theologically into the power and appeal of modern consumerism.