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A Revolutionary Community :: Repositioning Justification by Faith

In a way similar to the destruction that Pauline Christianity wrought on the Roman Empire, Zizek wants to use a reconfigured Christianity to ease the grip of liberal-capitalist hegemony. “What Christianity did with regard to the Roman Empire, this global ‘multiculturalist’ polity,” he confides, “we should do with regard to today’s Empire.” (George Mason)

Introduction

Amidst the onslaught of New Age spirituality and a surfacing religious awareness within philosophic deconstructionism, what is a poor ‘dialectic materialist to do? When Capitalism is taken for granted as a force of nature, where might an ailing Marxism find support? For Slavoj Zizek, shelter is found under the wings of an unlikely source. Zizek sees the most important repositioning in these ‘postmodern times’ lying in a reconciliation of Christianity and Marxism. In The Fragile Absolute Zizek attempts to appropriate the subversive core of the Christian legacy as a means of breaking out of the logic of Capitalism: the desire of “unbridled productivity” and “unbridled consumption”. Given the historically apolitical (and/or apathetic) standpoint of the Western church, Zizek’s view of Christianity as a politically revolutionary approach is particularly surprising.

Zizek’s Revolutionary Community

According to Zizek, Marx was not radical enough in his break from capitalism because he assumed, along with capitalism, the goal of “unbridled productivity.” “Socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism, an ideological attempt to ‘have one’s cake and eat it’, to break out of capitalism while retaining its key ingredient.” So the criticism that Marxian Communism is an impossible fantasy is correct. Zizek explains that Communism/Socialism is the utopian dream, or fantasy of Capitalism, the desire of limitless productivity, which is consumed by limitless desire. According to Zizek, Marx’s mistake was to think the object of desire (unbridled productivity) would remain even when its cause/obstacle (oppressive capitalist social relations) was abolished. However, as actual existing Socialisms reveals, this was not the case. Marx was merely extending Capitalism to its idealized form rather than escaping its logic.

Through many twists and turns, weaving together Marxism and Lacan psychoanalysis, Zizek points out how the Christian legacy “breaks out” of the vicious cycle of (symbolic) Law and Desire. As he notes, “There is always a gap between the object of desire and its cause, the mediating feature or element that makes this object desirable.” This cause/obstacle makes the object desirable, but not in or of itself. If you take away the obstacle then the desire dissipates. Capitalism thrives within the production and maintenance of this cause/obstacle. The Christian legacy escapes this logic not by denying/fulfilling Desire, a Desire caused by the Law, but by means of Love, which unites the object of Desire and its Cause. “In love, the object is not deprived of its cause; it is, rather, that the very distance between object and cause collapses.” Love is directed toward the object of desire in and for itself, even in spite of itself. Love desires the object, in a sense, in spite of its lack of desirability; Love loves in spite of what it loves, not because of it. This breaking out of the cycle of Law and Desire begets an alternative community, “un-coupled” from social hierarchy and oppressive relationships. This revolutionary community, not regulated by the Capitalist production of desire and difference, offers universal humanity to all. This “authentic psychoanalytic and revolutionary political collective” is Zizek’s redemption of Christianity.

What is to be done with this suggestion? Do we affirm this appropriation of Christianity as a politics of love beyond desire, or reject it as the hopeless task of joining religion and politics? By means of a detour through “justification by faith” we can evaluate Zizek’s proposal and reposition the real “break out” of Christianity.

Luther’s Desire and Justification’s Degeneration

In his short book, The Justice of God, James Dunn briefly outlines how part of our understanding of “justification by faith” was obscured during the Reformation, becoming overly individualistic, exceedingly introspective, and excessively judicial in imagery, thereby losing its communal and relational focus. While an Augustinian monk, situated within a Roman Catholicism of indulgences and purgatory, Martin Luther’s conscience ached with guilt over his sin before “the justice of God,” i.e. that God punishes all unrighteousness. God, for Luther, was to be feared, not loved. But under a prolonged reading of Romans, grappling with the strange manner in which Paul refers to “the justice of God” as a means of salvation, Luther made his critical ‘discovery.’ Luther realized the decisive (f)act of God is not that He is “Just” (condemning the wicked), but that He is also “Justifying” (acquitting the wicked). From this emerged his doctrine of “justification by faith” not by works, along with attendant theories of substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness. However, it seems that Luther read much of his own Medieval Roman Catholic situation into Paul’s letters distorting what the Apostle was really saying. He held two faulty assumptions.

Luther assumed Paul had gone through the same agonies of conscience and guilt over sin before a blameless and just God. Luther also assumed that Judaism, like his own Catholic Church, was a legalistic religion of human striving, or works righteousness, from which he reasoned that the doctrine of “justification by faith” set him free from the system of earning God’s favor through receiving God’s righteousness, i.e. justified by faith.

The problem with this view, as Dunn and many others have recently pointed out, is Paul does not read as if he is plagued by a guilty conscience, and Judaism does not read much like a works based religion. Paul nowhere sounds like he has a guilty conscience before God because of his sins. Instead he says he was blameless in regards to righteousness within the law. Also, the Judaism of Paul’s day, and the one we can read about in the OT, was based in God’s gracious election of Israel, His giving of the Law as a means of a covenant relationship, and His continued dwelling with Israel even in the midst of their sin. The prophetic recalling of God’s continuing righteous actions toward an unworthy nation bear witness to this. So it seems Luther retrojected his context back into Paul’s situation distorting his understanding of “justification by faith,” and turned it into a doctrine concerning personal salvation which then marched toward Enlightenment individualism.

Israel’s Desire and Law’s Degeneration

Luther, however, was not the only one who misunderstood God’s purposes concerning salvation. Within Paul’s context, the doctrine of “justification by faith” is not meant to answer the question “how is one saved?” but rather “who is in the covenant community of God?” As N.T. Wright notes, “The purpose of the covenant was never simply that the creator wanted to have Israel as a special people, irrespective of the rest of the world. The covenant was there to deal with the sin, and bring about the salvation, of the world.” The point of the covenant was the restoration of God’s righteousness in the world, and the reconstitution of humanity to its radical potential. However, during Paul’s time, “while Gentiles are discovering covenant membership, characterized by faith, Israel, clinging to the Torah which defined covenant membership, did not attain to the Torah. She was determined to have her covenant membership demarcated by works of Torah, that is, by the things that kept that membership confined to Jews and Jews only, and, as a result, she did not submit to God’s covenant purposes, his righteousness.”

Therefore, back to Zizek’s point, Israel’s vicious cycle of Law and Desire did not deal with sin and guilt as Luther believed (and as many Protestants still think). The Law was certainly the cause/obstacle which sustained their Desire, but the object of this Desire was not for what the Law forbade. Rather their object of Desire was initially God, who gave them the Law. But the (covenant) Law degenerated into the (symbolic) Law when Israel allowed her Desire for God to collapse into the maintenance of a boundary distinguishing Israel from the Gentiles, becoming a justification of Jewish nationalism. The maintenance of Law became their object of desire, which led to their failure to attain the universal purposes of God. The logic of the Law was inverted from its universal intention, degenerating into a boundary delineating Jewish particularity.

Paul’s doctrine of justification

Now continuing again with Luther, for Paul the issue at stake in the doctrine of “justification by faith” is not one of soteriology (how one might be saved), but mainly of ecclesiology (how we define the covenant community). As Dunn states, “the Christian doctrine of justification by faith begins as Paul’s protest not as an individual sinner against Jewish legalism, but as a protest on behalf of Gentiles against Jewish exclusivism.” Paul’s Damascus road experience was a conversion from a ‘zealous’ attachment to Israel’s distinctiveness set up according to the Law (as a boundary marker b/w Jew and Gentile, particularly expressed through circumcision and food laws). Paul was a rigid nationalist who had forgotten that Israel’s election was meant for the benefit of the Gentiles also, not to their exclusion. But through his dramatic encounter with Jesus, Paul was converted from the particularity of Judaism (a nation), to the particularity of Jesus (a man) through whom universality was made available.

For Paul, justification by faith was therefore not merely the conviction that sinners cannot rely on their own merit to earn God’s favor (although Paul would certainly agree with this). Rather, it is the conviction that God’s grace is no longer limited to a particular people (defined as those who follow the Law), but that God’s goodness and mercy are made universal, to all peoples regardless of social hierarchies, through Faith. Through Christ, all are justified, because God’s grace is not locked into a certain people, but mediated through a certain person, our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Messiah, Savior.

Christ’s Universal Community

This then is the “break out” of Christianity; this is the formation of an alternative community. Beyond the structural antagonisms, differences, and desires of consumer Capitalism which splinters race/class/gender, the universality of humankind is offered in the community gathered around the particular man, Jesus. It is through faith in this work of Jesus that we are un-coupled from social hierarchies, not merely through a Love beyond Desire. Israel affirmed the universality of God through the particularity of their human community according to Law. Zizek, denying God, affirms the universality of mankind beyond the Law through Love. But Christians affirm the universality of mankind through faith in the particularity of God, i.e. the particular identification of Jesus as divine. This community, uncoupled from social hierarchy and oppressive relationship, is based in Christ, through whom the law of sin and death (desire and difference) has been destroyed, through whom all antagonistic relationships have been subverted, and true humanity is offered universally.

Or to put it differently, only through an individual can individualism be subverted (that menace of modernity); only through the particular man can we enter a community beyond the particular differences of mankind. If Luther is a type of consumer individualism, and the Judaism of Paul’s day a type of global/tribal sectarianism, then the community of Christ breaks out of both, fusing the particularity of the man Jesus with the universality of God’s grace to all humanity. Christ is the only basis for a revolutionary politics beyond the Capitalist production of desire. He is the only basis of an alternative politic which can “ease the grip of the liberal-capitalist hegemony.”

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What are the Sevens interviews? Sevens are a unique series of micro-interviews, conducted and published on the blog of A. J. Swoboda, that seek to accomplish the following three goals: (1) Sevens seeks to introduce the latent thinking of cultural leaders and influencers to Christian leaders, readers, and learners. (2) Sevens, as well, will attempt to create a network of people who really should know each other. (3) Finally, Sevens is a venue to further dialogue of learning and exposure. It will never seek to end the conversation, rather, to begin it.

The Sevens interviews are called micro-interviews. The interview itself is conducted over the span of two or three days (via email). To begin, the interviewee determines at the forefront an area of conversation they would desire to have a conversation about. For instance, an interviewee may choose to want their interview to be centered on Theology, or Mission in the City, or God and Science. The interviewee names it. Once the interviewee has determined their area of discussion, the initial question is posed (Q1). After the interviewee responds, the second question will be offered. So on and so forth. There are seven questions. No more. No less.

We ask that each answer to the questions must be no more than 250 characters (with spaces). This serves two purposes. First, it forces the interviewee to formulate their answers in a “Twitter-esque” format that the reader will find easy to engage and process. Second, again, it seeks to beckon dialogue rather than end it. The interviewee will be encouraged to dialogue with those who have responded to their interview.

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Q1: What is missional theology?

What is narratively implicit in Matthew, Mark, and Luke and propositionally explicit in John, missional theology makes central: God is a sending God on a mission. This mission is not an incidental act but the essential being of God, such that mission for all others is not a mere matter of commission but participation. Not distant as judge nor everywhere as justice, God works missionally in the proclaiming and presencing of the just ways of God.

Q2: What is a picture of this that might make sense to any reader? (i.e. a movie or book image?)

After racking my brain, the best image that comes to mind is Christ’s baptism—but most depictions are too tame: No longer contained, the Father tears open the heavens and through this “gracious gash” pours forth the Spirit. And just as the Spirit hovered over the waters of creation, the Spirit also rests on the one bringing new creation, the Son coming out of the waters. From now on the Triune God is loose in the world—the mission of re-creation.

Q3: It sounds like the church is missional like Christ. Is it possible for the church to NOT BE missional?

Yes, to follow Christ is to be missional like Christ. But for some this means if a church (or person) is not missional it (she) is not the church (or a Christian). This feels very works oriented to me, that I must be missional or I’m not in Christ.  This leaves no place for grace. Rather I think every church must be moving into mission (i.e. sanctification).  But of course there is still room for missional works of faith, as James reminds us.

Q4: What are two of the greatest enemies to being missional?

The two greatest are a big idea and a little God. It seems like a big idea (ending world hunger, transforming a city, including the excluded) often keeps us from a simple conversation, taking time to care for someone, or offering a word of encouragement.  And having a little God makes us scramble around because everything must change. Rather everything has changed in Christ, and thru the Spirit everything is changing.  Mission starts close by.

Q5: it sounds like mission is simply being present. What’s one way someone can we practically do this kind of missionality?

How about two? First, know/be yourself: are you an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, or teacher?  Be missional in that way (don’t be someone else’s gifting). The Spirit has given you a specific way of being missional (in community of course). Second, find a place to live out of: a shelter, a coffee shop, a neighborhood, or a campus. Don’t manufacture missionalness (a contradiction). Unfortunately, being more specific is impossible.

Q6: What does missional evangelism look like in these sorts of places?

We need to practice affirming the things/people around us and seek to flourish them on the way to new creation, rather than pointing the fruits of the fall. Too often we preach pessimism, rather than holding out hope. Missional evangelism begins in hope (not despair), joy (not sadness), love (not hate).  And while it will circle back to sin, the fall, death, it need not start there.  After all, God is the God of the living, not the dead!

Q7: Geoff, I call this being “born again”, not “born against.” Is there a way to allow the gospel to prophetically critique culture while affirming other elements of culture that reflect God’s kingdom?

I think we need to leave behind the idea of prophetic critique and move back to the posture of witness. For me, prophetic critique is more Old Testament and reflects a Christendom perspective. It seems the more dominant category in NT is witness. We need to witness to what God has done (in Christ) and is doing (thru the Spirit), and look for how God has already given witness to Himself in culture. Critique and affirmation follow from there.

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What Things Want

by Robert Bly

You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee

Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.

You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?

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So next week I’ll be teaching my first of two section of “Biblical and Theological Foundations of Ministry” at Northern Seminary. It is a week long intensive for their Doctor of Ministry program.

I’m really excited and a little nervous. And if you are wondering why I’m not blogging much, well that is the reason.

(I put that giant Fitch head for fun!  Because David Fitch is big time at Northern!)

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The Old Year
by John Clare

The Old Year’s gone away
To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
In either shade or sun:
The last year he’d a neighbour’s face,
In this he’s known by none.

All nothing everywhere:
Mists we on mornings see
Have more of substance when they’re here
And more of form than he.
He was a friend by every fire,
In every cot and hall–
A guest to every heart’s desire,
And now he’s nought at all.

Old papers thrown away,
Old garments cast aside,
The talk of yesterday,
Are things identified;
But time once torn away
No voices can recall:
The eve of New Year’s Day
Left the Old Year lost to all.

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But I’ve been working hard on the transition of the “Church and Postmodern Culture” blog over to The Other Journal (which has been great!), and I’m writing my dissertation, and I’m writing a book with David Fitch, and of course I’m still pastoring and all that.

So, to say the least, I’ve got tons of other places that I’m writing so of course this is the place that I’m falling behind, unfortunately.

But please follow my on twitter or facebook as that is where I’m still lurking quite often.

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How Beastly the Bourgeois is – D.H. Lawrence

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species–

Presentable, eminently presentable–
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn’t he handsome? Isn’t he healthy? Isn’t he a fine specimen?
Doesn’t he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn’t it God’s own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn’t you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man’s need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species–

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable–
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.

And even so, he’s stale, he’s been there too long.
Touch him, and you’ll find he’s all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty–
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can’t all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.

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“Water”
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

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I don’t know how I found this, but I did.

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Like many of us, I’ve been longing for something beyond the “bridge illustration” to share the gospel (with others, and my children).  Something short, visual, clear, explaining the gospel in an appropriate way.  But of course, the more I learn and grow in the Kingdom the more difficult it is to summarize, especially when you have all these old, truncated ‘gospels’ bouncing around in your brain that you are trying to overcome (the gospel of sin management, the gospel of health and wealth, the gospel of going to heaven, etc).

But then Soren (8 years old) comes home from a church basketball camp yesterday super amped about the ‘bridge illustration.’  It’s all he can talk about.  He pulls out our white board and insists on drawing it out for us and explaining it to us (of course as a seasoned evangelical I’m filling in some of the forgotten steps and verses…).  So I had to step back and rethink my loathing for the ‘bridge illustration.’ (If you are not familiar with the ‘bridge illustration’ check it out here).

Making Peace

I guess this is something that I have know for awhile, but haven’t wanted to admit very loudly (or publicly).  The ‘bridge illustration’ really is a good presentation of the gospel, even if it is just part of the gospel.  I have seen the light come on for children and adults where they begin to understand what God has done for them in a deeper way.

And especially for children who are in the black and white stage of moral development, the ‘bridge illustration’ makes sense.  “We are over hear because of sin.  God is over there because he is perfect.  But in Jesus we can be with God again.”  It makes sense.  It is simple.  It helps them put in place a piece of their spiritual puzzle.

And it fits especially the intellectual development of children Soren’s age.  They haven’t yet reached the world of complexity and abstraction which causes the ‘bridge illustration’ to breakdown or be known as incomplete.

For Now

But the whole point is that children would grow up, and their faith along with them.  Too often we have adults who have prayed a prayer after hearing the ‘bridge illustration’ and 20 years later their faith is still at the same stage.  The problem isn’t in the ‘bridge illustration’ itself but the underlying theology of atonement which is exhausted in the illustration. Certain understandings of the gospel see the bridge not merely as an illustration, but the entire reality.  This leads to the spiritual immaturity and stunted grow of so many believers (which has led to my own discomfort with the illustration).

It is one thing to say that for “now” the bridge is a helpful and, dare I say, true explanation of the gospel.  But only for now.  Not for always.  At the beginning it is true, but faith must grow here and now, and not merely wait for heaven.  We can’t remain stuck on the level of the ‘bridge’ for our entire spiritual lives, just like Soren isn’t going to remain stuck as an 8 year old.

Bridge to the Kingdom, not merely Heaven

We for “now” I’m very pleased that Soren is excited about the bridge, that it has helped him organize some of the biblical stories and ideas that we have been brainwashing him with (ha).  But are already laying the ground work for that spiritual development.  After Soren explained about crossing the bridge in Christ and receiving eternal life (which that church of course links with ‘going to heaven’), I started to redirect from ‘going to heaven’ to ‘life in the kingdom’ here and now.  And I reminded him of the Lord’s Prayer, which we prayer everyday, and how it talks about God’s Kingdom coming to earth from heaven.  The goal is that Soren would come to know all that all those who cross the bridge in faith enter Christ’s Kingdom, which is now!

But filling that all out will come later, and through example, and prayer, day by day, year by year.  But for “now” the bridge will do.

For now.

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