The Uniqueness of the Cross of Jesus

As a 'blasphemer', Jesus was rejected by the guardians of his people's law. As a 'rebel' he was crucified by the Romans. But finally, and most profoundly, he died as one rejected by his God and Father. In the theological context of his life this is the most important dimension. It is this alone which distinguishes the cross from the many crosses of forgotten and nameless persons in world history.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Fortress 1974/1993), p152

Politics and Theology in the New Testament

John Byron writes a characteristically wise and informed blog post urging scholars to maintain balance in their political interpretations of the NT.  He raises the issue of how,

It has become quite popular over the last few decades for New Testament scholars to bash ancient Rome and suggest that when first century Christian writers use terms like gospel, Lord, savior, kingdom, etc, that these authors are deliberately critiquing Rome and its emperors. Some modern scholars have pushed this interpretation so far that the New Testament looks less like a theological book and more like a political manifesto. 

But to what extent are politics and theology seperate things?  I know in the USA they have a constitutional separation between church and state, but we international observers notice how big (even exagerated) a role theology still plays in US politics.  But would Romans or Jews of the first century really have distinguished between politics and theology?  When your Emporer is also divine - or at least eligible for divinity after death, when he has a cult dedicated to him, when you pray and offer sacrifices to him, how is that political situation not also theological?  And when your Jewish God claims to be King, how is that theology not political?  And when you believe that a man executed by Roman political authority at the request of the Jewish religious authorities has been raised from the dead as vindication from God how is that belief not inescapably fraught with concrete political and theological implications?

Too often some of these interpretations of "Rome's gospel" are clearly motivated by frustration with American hegemony. And while I think American policy does need to be critiqued and criticized, I am not sure that authors like Paul and others were doing same thing with Rome as some modern scholars suggest. To hear some New Testament scholars talk there was nothing good about ancient Rome and that the world would have been better off without it. 

Yes it is fair to say that the writing of Bible scholars living in a representative democracy with a proud record of free speech will not engage in the same sort of political-theological critique as Paul and others might.  There was little point in Paul trying to influence public opinion or critique a foriegn policy which made no claim to be serving any ends other than its own.  It is also fair to say that Paul was more than happy to take advantage of Roman protection and legal processes whenever it suited him to do so (at least that is how Acts portrays things).  So scholars with an axe to grind about the moral failings of the American imperial enterprise need to take care that they are not simply reading into the texts what they would like to be there to bolster their own political rhetoric.  But if we are being balanced let's not pretend that anything theological is without concrete political implications - even if sometimes those are not immediately clear.  And likewise no political creed is without its theological implications - no matter how vigorously the lady doth protest "but I'm purely secular!".  The far greater danger is to suggest that the New Testament in somehow non-political and should never be allowed to stand in judgement of our human behaviour in the public sphere.  As that great self-consciously political theologian Moltmann writes,

During the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointedly reminded the church that "only those who cry out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants," and he gladly sang Gregorian chants. The memory of what happened at that time has made us increasingly aware that we also have no right to speak of God and with God if we do not do it in the midst of the conflicts of our political world.

Or if you prefer a more secular approach spend some time with Roland Boer and see how all readings (and by implication writings) of religious texts have their political implications.  You may not agree with me that the Bible is a socialist tract but your understanding of that most influential text - and as a scholar the understanding you relate to others - is not without its repercusions in the world of politics that you inhabit.

round em up cowboy

• John Byron on beer drinking  in the Bible
• Nijay Gupta gives his book away
• Pam thinks about faith sharing and accountability groups
• Cynthia asks for Christian posts on violence
• Ali continues his series for a better evangelical response to homosexuality
• Quotes from Moltmann on universalism and Childs on Christological reading of scripture
• Mike Bird on the ethical indicative and imperative, a subject close to my own heart
• Fake Christianity is on CNN

4 line biographical poems about theologians, yes really!

My picks from Myers and Fabricus' brilliant Theological Graffiti:

Hans Frei
Replied with a sigh
To the liberal lot:
“You’ve lost the plot.”

Wayne Grudem
Had a stratagem
To define the role of women; but neglected to mention
Whether men, too, are allowed in the kitchen.

“Jürgen Moltmann,
Can
The world,” we ask, “live without hope?”
“Nope.”

Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Who studied in Heidelberg,
Is quite a stickler
For all things empirical, scientific, geschichtliche.

Totall genius, a number of other pearlers in there too, but i'll let you find them yourself.

The Missing Elements of Human Rights: A Theological Opportunity?

I've posted a fair bit about human rights and human responsibility, but generally only to be critical. I have yet to try to construct anything useful. Roman Catholic Theologian Anthony Kelly makes the same critique but with reference to some interesting and little know data:

While it is true that the terrible toll of the victims of totalitarian regimes have pricked the conscience of the international community, that conscience has not been uniformly reformed. The moral revolution that was hoped for has been frustrated in innumerable instances. One example is the prevalence of a spurious language of victimhood. Claiming “victim status” has now become a familiar manipulative technique in politics. A contributing factor in this distortion is the missing element in the UNDHR itself. As it framers admitted, there was no accompanying declaration of responsibilities—on the part of persons, groups or institutions—to assume the duty of implementing the basic rights in question. Another document was promised, but never appeared. With no reasoned grounding of universal human rights in universal responsibility, rights-language can be simply taken over by a consumerist culture. If that is the case, the appeal to rights is no more than a political machination, a useful rhetoric for the exercise of power. It balloons out into an uncontrolled assertion of rights, individual or corporate, against others, without any commitment to the common good and of responsibility for the truly powerless. And so it happens that the originally noble conception of human rights for all is trivialised, liable to exploitation by the politically adept few. Shared responsibility for the most vulnerable and powerless is thus compromised. A study by L. C. Keith sought to assess how much belonging to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affected the promotion of human rights. [Journal for Peace Research 36, no. 1 (1999): 95-118] After examining a hundred and seventy eight countries over an eighteen-year period, his conclusions were not optimistic: observable impact was minimal.

He sees this lacuna as an opportunity for constructive theological work:

The very gap in the UNDHR Declaration and the current confusion as to what constitutes the basis of human rights is an open door for Christian theology, inviting it to recover a distinctive voice. The message would be something like this: Jesus’ rising from the dead undermines the history of mutual blaming and victimisation. For he freely exposed himself to the violence of cultural forces in order to disrupt, once and for all, the old world order based on the victimisation of others. His resurrection is not a new thought, but an interuptive and communicative event. It has its effect in a human community transformed into the image of the self-giving love of God. Jesus is glorified, not so as to glorify the role of the victim, but to unmask the victimising dynamics latent in all societies. The resurrection of this victim has a disturbing but liberating effect in the human community. It demands to be taken as the decisive influence in human relationships, the inexhaustible inspiration of responsibility for those victimised by suffering and oppression. Those who have suffered (victims, martyrs), and those who have caused such suffering (the enemy), are alike enfolded in the originary compassion and forgiveness embodied in the risen One.

Extracts from the article "The Resurrection and Moral Theology".

I think Kelly is working here in the direction that Jurgen Moltmann has already taken, and I'm surprised not to see Moltmann referenced in the article (he has been heavily involved in the ecumenical movement.) The themes of hope and the resurrection' s contradiction of death and violence are Moltmann's bread and butter.

The real concern I have is that while such thinking provides an ethic for the Christian it is is not easily applicable to the political sphere where most people live in ignorance of the resurrection of Christ and its implications. Moltmann has been saying this sort of stuff for decades and many Christians have taken notice, but it has had little or no effect on such organisations as the UN because the logic on which it is founded is peculiarly Christian. I have to be honest, in my old age I think I am becoming a Niebuhrian Christian Realist. I don't like it, I especially don't like how close it seems to bring me to being a Lutheran "two kingdoms" kind of thinker, but it is better than classical just war theory (although this guy doesn't think so) because it refuses to relativise the teaching of Christ .