Dan Hugger

Christian Morality as the Morality of Christian Persons

2012-02-09T11:44:00.000-05:00

Brian LePort has an interesting post up centered on how to think about moral questions in Christian ethics through the lenses of scripture and tradition.

This got me to thinking about just how a question becomes a “moral question” with our answers reflecting our “moral values.”

Brian believes ones position on same sex marriage is a moral question and it reflects our moral values. The overturning of Proposition 8 was in fact the occasion that motivated Brian’s thoughts. Brian’s not alone in this. His concerns about this issue are concerns shared by a great many Christians. The church into which I was baptized, the PCUSA, is in the process of splitting over issues centered on the place of homosexuality in the life of the church.

Why is this a moral issue for Christians? Brian and many conservative Christians would answer that the biblical witness and the teachings of the church throughout history make this an issue.

I don’t really follow that line of argument because, when I try, I keep coming back to the Sabbath.

The Sabbath, like homosexuality, is dealt with extensively in the holiness codes of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and in the history of the church and yet when one does a blog search for “Christianity homosexuality” you get over three times as many hits for “Christianity Sabbath”.

Why?

The simple answer is that the issue weighs more heavily on the hearts of most Christians on all sides of the issue. They feel convicted. It is a matter of conscience. So when Brian states,

“First, one must decide what one thinks about the authority of Scripture and the tradition of the church. Another way of framing this is “Where do I derive my moral values?”

I think he’s putting the cart before the horse. First, you have to decide whether or not an issue is a moral one before one asks any question about the source of ones moral values, and here one begins with what Barclay would call the testimony of the Spirit.

Because of this subjective turn, this acknowledgement that the very positing of the question necessarily begins with the questioner themselves Brian’s question, “Is it useful to talk about “Christian” morality without Scripture and the church of years past? If so, how?”, seems strange. When we talk about Christian morality we’re talking about the morality of Christian persons and most Christian persons will, of necessity, have a relationship with both Scripture and the church of years past. But a Christian person is never merely a composite of Scripture and the church of years past but rather a person whose experience is shaped by Christianity. A person who experiences what Christians throughout the ages have called the grace of God, Barclay calls the “testimony of the Spirit”, Schleiermacher calls “a feeling of absolute dependence”.

So we must begin with a person, their reason (Or more generally being) and their experience (More generally their ‘being in the world’) (Which includes but is not limited to Scripture and the church of the past.) That’s how we begin to speak of Christian morality as is exists in the world, incarnate in Christian persons.

If you can look into the seeds of time... Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate.

2010-10-18T22:09:00.000-04:00

Back in my teaching days the lecture I enjoyed giving most was on prophecy and MacBeth. It wasn't even my class (another teacher's with whom I shared a room) and the students were having trouble with issues of MacBeth's motivation. After all, the witches had told him he would be king, why's he sweating it, why the incessant scheming, the moralizing? Why not just let it happen? Jai Babba, don't worry be happy! This is, they reasoned, in the bag. MacBeth should just be letting the corporal sounds of Bobby McFerrin wash over him while he drinks Mai Tai's on the moors.

I laid it all out with Jonah then but if you're going to lay down primordial blame, blame it on Cain.

Cain made a classic mistake when he rose up and killed his brother, he hated the player not the game. Dejected by the Hebrew God's lack of respect for his offering, unable to overcome his anger and follow the Lord God's council to do the right thing, he stewed. Here again is the cycle of return. There's a way in which he enters into a kind of eternal recurrence, and reliving the imagined slight it devours him whole.

What's interesting to me is that the killing is so matter of fact, "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."

This is merely the end of a process. The action, the pathological fixation, ends in a reaction. A reaction that in the end, out of necessity, seems comparatively minor. It's the classic double bind, the anxiety caused by an inability to predict the favor of the Lord God leads to the death of the brother/rival. There is no risk in destruction, entropy takes over. The risk, risk is found in the creative act of offering oneself, here one is always open to others, their joy, their sorrow, and their indifference.

When the Lord God questions Cain as to the whereabouts of his brother the answer is telling, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" Here there is a reversal. When both brothers brought offerings before the Lord God they were in Cain's mind linked. The offerings together should have been respected together. He fixated upon the brothers offering and its acceptance, then it mattered, and then very much was he his brother's keeper. Is the killing of Able not the greatest possible admission the he is his brother's keeper? That he is wholly his?

We'll skip the blood crying out, I think it's better to address in Deuteronomy, and I need to find some sweet Gwar videos for that and cut straight to the curse,

"And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth."

Cain is horrified at the curse as he believes, "Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me." This parallels nicely with Cain's own murder. Cain understands how these things happen.

"And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." This can be read as a promise but also a prophecy. Like the witches of MacBeth the Hebrew God understands not merely the future as a series of material events but the future as conditional. As an if-then statement bound in the very logic of human decision. How could the murder of Cain not result in an intensification, a spiraling out of control of the same process that led to Abel's death. Does the mark offer protection? Yes. But as a mark, as a sign which shows where all violence must lead. Where all doubling back must end. The sign points to Lamech, and it is, as Lamech is, straight gangsta.

I Want You to Want Me

2010-10-14T21:06:00.004-04:00

The Japanese know a good thing when they see it. When others saw a drunken washed up wine pitchman, they saw Unicron Destroyer of Worlds. The Japanese beat us to recognizing the greatness of Cheap Trick embracing the master slave dialectic that is 'I Want You To Want Me' with the fervor of kamikaze schoolgirls within the seething fleshpot of what is known as the Budokan. A once lite popy cover played in dive bars before audiences so small as to render its pretensions desperate was now transformed into a riff driven orgasmic deluge of arena rock by sheer force of audience.

Hegel saw this coming, "On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other." Cain didn't.

After having expelled the man and his wife from the garden for their sin the Hebrew God blesses the couple with a child, a man gotten from the Lord whose name was Cain. Soon a brother follows, Abel. It's important to remember that though man and his wife had been expelled there remained in them a love of the Lord God. This was reciprocated and he even gave them parting gifts (coats of skins) before setting a flaming sword to bar them from the garden.

It was only natural then that, being raised by pious parents, the boys would bring an offering to the Lord God. Cain a tiller of the ground brought the fruit of the ground, while Abel a keeper of sheep brought the firstlings of his folks and the fat thereof. But there was a a snag,

"And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect."

As a child I had a books of Old Testament stories. Sending baby Moses down the river made sense, Joesph's brothers selling him into slavery made sense, and the picture of the valley full of skeletons was just too bad ass to question. This was my first question about the Bible. Years later at a Christian summer camp, a camp that concluded with a dramatically staged battle between the Risen Christ dressed in a white t-shirt and the Prince of Darkness clothed in a tight black turtleneck, I got what I have come to call the NIV Study Bible answer from a gentle camp councilor. It's something about the importance of them being firstlings of the flock, or it being an animal sacrifice, or the fat thereof. Which made sense, in a choosy mother's choose Jiff sort of way. I was uneasy with this answer, after all, years of making macaroni Christmas ornaments as gifts had instilled in me the idea that it was really the thought that counted. A month later I read Leviticus 2 and it all fell apart. He's PROSCRIBING grain offerings just two books later!

The again if I had been paying attention during the boring part of Exodus I would have realized that the Lord God had broken this down already, "And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy." Cain missed this part of Exodus too. He's Zander pre-Budokan, "And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell."

And the Lord God responds,

"And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

Which is basically the Hebrew God's way of saying that it's not you, it's me. By the way, stop staring at me like that, it's creepy.

But that's not what you want to hear when you want you to want me. We like to think that for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gifts deserve thank you cards and offerings deserve respect. Love deserves love. Doesn't it? Well, the dirty little secret here is that there's a whole lot of arbitrary going on (In the Girardian sense). These things don't necessarily follow. And when we feel like they do, that's when sin lieth at the door. That's the precise moment we enter the dialectic. That's when you begin to double back, to take your eye off the ball. That's not important. Always do the right thing.

Mookie and Cain have similar problems... but I have a salad to make.

Hungry Lovers Out Back Intent on Sharing a Snack

2010-10-13T20:35:00.003-04:00

This is going to be a little bulimic. I'm not sure if it's because I've eaten very little that isn't plant material and diet shakes in the past 72 hours or if it's simply the fact that I have managed to locate a copy of Nick Lowe's currently out of print and always bitchn' Nick the Knife. His jacket collar (which is so deadly it's been banned in Berkly, Eugene, and the livable parts of Texas) is the least of your worries when you sink your ears into this. It is, the the obvious exception made, the tightest collection of love songs outside of Dave Frank's pants. It begins, of course, with Burning.

Which brings me to the question of sin. I've been turning this around for the larger part of a year. Operative categories broke down in the years following collage. Unworkable not at a theoretical level but at the level of my experience, being, or as Thomas J. J. Altizer (available for the low low price of $0.85!) would say Existenz (italicization his). This has not been as fun as it would seem! This is not a question of ethical categories, these have grown in the years only stronger and more tentatively spoken at the same time (Lest ye be judged!). No this is the sort of thing which unto me shall be his desire, liething at my door, so to speak.

Unless we switch this and remember Elvis Costello's Stranger in the House. Turns out he looks a lot like me. And this is the suspicion, the hunch, the idea that's been liething at my door for months now, the idea of sin as guilt. I like this idea very much and Rahner works around the question while Freud secularizes it. The idea here is, of course, theoretically problematic (i.e. Sociopaths) and theologically... well... strange.

But maybe not. There's an old story about a man (Adam if you're nasty) and his wife who violate the only commandment that the only person they know ever gave them, the person who made them, made them for each other even, and when he stops by they hide. Why? This is how the man answered, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." No mention of the commandment, no mention of the fruit of the tree, and no mention of the woman. The fear that caused him to flee the only friend he had ever known, the friend who created a help meet for him, a help meet for whom he was so grateful that he sung the first song ever sang by his kind; what caused the man to hid wasn't a fear of him, it was a shame in himself. A guilt.

When questioned about the commandment, about the tree, about the fruit, he responds, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." Here is exasperation. The feelings which run through him for the first time, the feelings of guilt, self doubt and confusion. The woman thou gavest to be with me. The person whom you made for me. The person who made me feel whole when I was so alone. Here the King James really shines. Many modern translations render this as "the woman you put here with me" which rings more accusatory and misogynistic, even angry. What it is, rather, is an unraveling. Consumed with the guilt of his nakedness the man recounts that, "he did eat."

What is this fruit? It is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But are we speaking here of the knowledge of ethical categories? Are we speaking of clean and unclean? Prohibition and sanction? My suspicion here is that we're not. That what we're really seeing happen is an unraveling of man. An explanation for the foundation of the sort of paralyzing neurosis that cause us to double back on ourselves. To forget the commandments in our own anxiety. To hide from the one person who you cannot hide from.

This is the kind of thing that lieth at the door. That makes you forget what's worth remembering and remember what's worth forgetting.

And as I have to make tomorrow's lunch (Romain Lettuce, cherry tomatoes, half a can of tuna, and two tablespoons of light Caesar dressing) I'm left thinking of Shakes, "The fault... is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Is there a Text in this Church?

2010-09-28T23:12:00.000-04:00

The Holy Grail of Bible translation is the attainment of both accuracy and readability. The question becomes then what is being rendered. There is, on the one hand, the idea that the meaning of the text must be made clear. On the other hand there is the idea of rendering the ambiguity of the text. Is a better translation one that gives us the most probable reading of the text or one that gives us the most possible readings of the text?

A case in point, Ezekiel 20.25-26:

"I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn —that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD." -New International Version

"Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD." -King James Version

The significant "meaning" difference comes in what the LORD has done. Has he given them the statutes, statutes that might find their origin in his revelation to the people or has he given them over to statutes whose origin remains mysterious? Has he polluted them or let them become defiled? The Hebrew text strongly indicates the former in both cases. The why has the NIV gone with a rendering that excludes the possibility of such a reading?

There are a couple of possibilities:

1) Theological - It would not be in God's character to give, "statutes that were not good."

2) Inter-textual -

"And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart." - Jeremiah 7.31 King James Version

"And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD." - Leviticus 18.21 King James Version

3) Consensus reading - The vast majority of commentators (from Calvin to Rashi) agree that the NIV's rendering is the proper interpretation of the text.

These are all very good reasons to interpret the text the way that the NIV has rendered it but does that mean it is a good translation of the text? Theologically speaking this method seems problematic for faith traditions which believe the text (as distinct from the meaning of the text) to be a form of revelation. Inter-textual reasons also seem suspect as these texts were composed separately and often enough have inner-textual tensions and contradictions (See Saul's rise to kingship in 1 Samuel 9.1-10.16, 1 Samuel 10.17-24 & 12.1-5, and 1 Samuel 11.1-11 &11.15). Theological arguments for the essential unity of the texts still suffer the same theological problem outlined above. Following the consensus reading of the text, while faithfully adopting the majority commentators reading, makes the commentators adopting the majority reading superfluous and makes dissenting commentators non-nonsensical.

The very things that give the text meaning to the religious: its theological status, its textual consistencies and inconsistencies, and its traditional interpretations are subsumed when one attempts to translate the meaning of the text instead of its ambiguity. If the meaning can be collapsed into a translation, what of the church itself?

The Return to Marx

2010-03-13T15:53:00.001-05:00

In the early nineties all my favorite books were from the mid-sixties. Paperback encyclopedias delivered to my father as a boy my age from the National Geographic Society of Washington D.C. They came in cardboard slip cases which fit about five volumes. Five maroon and gold slip cases in all. The books themselves were stapled together and all the pictures were on large stamps. These stamps I dutifully licked and attached to the appropriate blank spaces, a paste by numbers job completed about thirty years late. I still remember the taste. I liked the volume on ice age mammals the best, dinosaurs second, and the one on wildflowers hardly at all.

Which brings me back to Marx. He was part of a latter batch of hand-me-downs from my grandfather which included the full report of the Warren Commission, a government report on the early studies of the effects of LSD, and the World Book yearly editions from 1965 to 1979 (Coincidently spanning the entire life of Rhodesia). The slim red volume with the hammer and sickle on the cover is the only one of these books I still have.

Should an eleven year old read the Communist Manifesto? I’m still not sure. It was a revelatory experience. My first experience of theory.

Here was a book that sought to explain, briefly and succinctly, everything. I loved it for that (I love it for that). And this is why I keep coming back. Not for the historical materialism, not for the false consciousness, and not for all the labor theory of value in the world. I come for the ghost, I come because I think the fundamental suspicion is right. That there is something spectral that lurks just beneath the surface. Something that if we look hard enough, close enough, explains everything. Explains it so well that the explanation, even though we already know ahead of time its going to due the trick, surprises us.

The idea that there is no theory and practice but only theory in practice. Always and already just underneath the surface.