Closing thoughts on Robert Capon

Well I just finished The Mystery of Christ by Robert Capon and must say it has been a delight. Part of the reason is that he writes one chapter as a pastoral counselling session and the following chapter is a discussion with him and a couple of people that question why he did what he did. 

For the most part I am drawn to the mystical understanding of God. What I mean by that is that God cannot be explain away/proven by the rational people. To often in certain Christian circles they feel if certain things can be known without a doubt more people would have faith in Jesus. This is a very modern view on how people know (ie epistemology).  The other matter is that I believe in Grace and do not understand how the sinner's prayer became the way a conversion begins(or maybe that too often the sinner's prayer is seen as the end of a conversion and not the beginning).

The book in essence is about faith and what does it mean when the Bible talks of faith. I think one of the problem is that the Bible talks about faith in a drastically different manner than it is expressed in the Western world. Or faith is used so commonly by people that its meaning has been eroded to the degree that faith in a Christian context needs to be re-understood as much in post-modern context.

I am drawn to Capon's interpreting of the parables that make Grace all about what God has been doing from the creation of the world through Jesus. Too often the parables are turned into what people need to be doing to gain God's favor. The problem is if one believes Sin is a problem then their is nothing we can do, but have faith(trust) in Jesus. This faith does not alter what Jesus did with the sins of the world. It does alter how we live in the world. Do we believe that their is no reason to have guilt, do we forgive others, do we seek punishment for wrongs done to use. The list could go on and on.

Faith is important is that even if scholars could prove that Jesus was resurrected from the dead beyond a shadow of a doubt it still requires an act of faith.  

Thoughts on "Who's Afraid of Post-Modernism?"

I'm not going to summarize the entire book, but rather point to why James K. Smith's Who's Afraid of Post-Modernism is the most accessible  and helpful book on the post-modernism for the Church. Smith is a professor of philosophy and the three major french philosophers he engages (Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault) are part of his world. He recognizes when they are falsely represented by other it is the same when people outside the Church attempt to explain theology and Church history  they miss the point. 

Each of the philosophers have ideas that are useful for the church to reclaim it's vision for this new world. Naturally each philosophers have ideas that Christian need to disagree with, Smith at  no point hails the three as saviours for the church and tongue in cheek calls them "an unholy trinity of postmodern thinkers." To write them off as having nothing to say would be a grave error and could give a glimpse into why the church is thriving in all areas of the world except in the West.

The answer Smith gives is Radical Orthodoxy, which in of itself is hard to understand. My only direct interaction with Radical Orthodoxy is John Milbank's "The Other City" found in Theology and Social Theory. While the chapter was hard to grasp, because of its utterly unique language. That is inaccessible to a degree, but I believe it is done purposefully. Is the Church the same as the rest of the world do we have the same values and ideas of the world. Naturally the answer needs to be an emphatic NO.

The three ideas that Smith puts forth are Redeeming Dogma, Recovering Tradition and Renewing the Body. The first emphasises a need for renewal of Dogma in the sense that we live in a world where certainty is met with skepticism on all side. This is problematic for forms of Christianity in the West. This idea of certainty is a problem and as Smith asserts that Derrida once said " I don't know..I must believe." In other words, the postmodern theologian says, "We can't know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The best we can do is believe." The second is similar in the sense we need to be Historical Christians. Many have been advocated this idea particular the late Robert Weber in his Ancient-Future series. This fact struck me during my time studying Historical Theology at Providence College how I am a Christan, but do not know the Christian Tradition very well. While Tradition is always superseded by Holy Scriptures at times we need to heed Tradition as the on going interpreting of these Holy Scriptures. The last point is that the place of the world that God deemed good in Genesis need to be taken serious by the Church. Too often in my former experience in the Evangelical world the only thing that mattered was the soul. The stuff of the world matter as well(and equally) and this requires a renewal of the arts, the neighborhood and all the other areas of life.