Fewer Toys 'R' Us 4 U

I apologize for not keeping my commitment to keep folks informed about the Toys 'R' Us bankruptcy. But, frankly, it hasn't been as exciting as the Chapter 11 of Family Christian Stores. Here's some news from CNBC, however, that suggests that Toys' R' Us may not ultimately survive: "Toys R Us is planning to shutter roughly 180 stores across the country, or about one-fifth of its U.S. store fleet, in a bid to restructure the company and emerge from bankruptcy protection."

It's not that closing underperforming stores isn't a good idea, it is. The problem is that Toys 'R' Us suffered through a lackluster Christmas sales season, which bodes ill for the future. Bricks and mortar stores generally, and especially those catering to a shrinking demographic, are probably not long for this world no matter how carefully they are managed.

Plato on Transhumanism

Michael Plato, that is.

Over the years I have posted on the transhumanist phenomenon here, here, and here. For a thoughtful and even more up-to-date piece go here to read his post, "The Immortality Machine: Transhumanism and the Race to Beat Death."

As Plato observes, "That so many atheist transhumanists look at death with hostility and hunger for immortality should be, at a very basic level, encouraging for Christians." On the other hand,

Transhumanism sharply diverges from Christianity in its rejection of the idea that our human bodies are good as is because they are created by a good God. That Christ himself has a human body and possesses a human nature affirms the goodness and completeness of the human. In this, transhumanism is more akin to the Gnosticism of centuries past, which treated the body as malleable or even outright repugnant and disposable.

Victory over death won't come by prolonging and even enhancing the lives we have. Human life, even as wonderful as it can be, is deeply flawed and death is the final exclamation point on its flaws. We need something more than more of the same and the gospel of eternal life in Christ promises more than perduration. "Eternal" partakes of the nature of Life of the one who is life and that life will transcend the paltry imitation hoped for by the transhumanists.

One more random thought. Plato references several pop cultural (TV and film) items that deal with transhumanism. FWIW, this season's X-Files does, too. And it's not flattering.

Blogging Jamie Smith: An Occasional Series on "Awaiting the King" 7.0

(You can read my comments on chapters 1 through 6 of "Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology" (AtK)  here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Reaching Smith's concluding remarks fully justify reading the previous six chapters. My previous posts have suggested something of a mixed response to Smith's venture into political theology. His critique of neo-Kuyperian transformationalism in light of a biblical eschatology (the now and the not-yet of God's work of restoration) was trenchant. I hope hIs introduction to Oliver O'Donovan will send many to O'Donovan's works. And his frank acknowledgment that reviving serious liturgical practices is not a panacea for what deforms the loves of Christians is consistent with this book's title: awaiting the king.

On the other hand, I have criticized Smith's dismissal of the insights of the natural law tradition. The proponents of natural law, from the Stoics to the Medievals to post-Reformation Christians, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, understood natural law as a set of mid-level principles derived from human nature that should be applied in each polity with an eye toward the history and practices of its particular people. Smith (and O'Donovan, for that matter) pick up the story of natural law from its nineteenth-century despisers. I wish Smith had done better on that score. Other criticisms have included some confusion about the separation of church and state and some overuse of movie metaphors. But these were minor nits in the grand scheme of AtK.

Smith brings his Augustinian insights to his conclusion that is dialectically clear. Dialectical because Augustine, drawing from a biblical eschatology, correctly frames Christians' penultimate political concerns in light of their ultimate eschatological telos. On the one hand, "both the Religious Right and the Christian Left are evidence that evangelical Protestants have shed their otherworldly quietism. ... Politics is affirmed as one of the 'spheres' of creation over which Christ resolutely says, 'Mine!'" On the other hand, those same Evangelical political activists need to be reminded that "one of the dangers of eagerly diving in to the political sphere is that it tends to underestimate the strength of the currents already swirling around in that 'sphere.'" In other words, "the political" is not simply something we "do;" political activity does something to us. And the direction in which the formative activities of politics bend can be deeply deforming.

Enough on-the-one-hand-and-the-other, what are Smith's take-aways? How does he recommend we calibrate the tension between penultimate public interest and the ultimate love of God? Summarizing his concluding points:

1. Recognize that even the disordered loves of the earthly city attest to creational desires. The idolatrous loves (and lives) that find expression in the practices of politics are derived from the ontological reality that human beings were created to love.
2. Every critique of the practice and results of political activity is ad hoc; there is no such thing as the one-size-fits-all Christian theory of penultimate earthly justice. Because there cannot be (and certainly should not be) a Christian "theory" of how to harness misdirected earthly loves, the only "theory" of Christian political activity is "Come quickly Lord Jesus.
3. Yet we should be able to recognize penultimate convergence even where there is ultimate divergence. Practical compromise (as I discussed here) to make our earthly sojourns less bad, less deformed, and more just should be pursued.
4. "Don't lose your eschatology: cultivate a teleological sensibility." Since for the time being the City of God and the City of Man are intermingled, "it is in the interest of the 'pilgrims' of the city of God to seek the welfare of the earthly city."
5. Nonetheless, there are limits to political participation by Christians. We must always ask the question of the extent to which the configuration of a polity's political practices--"these secular liturgies--deform and deflect the people of God from their longing for the heavenly city."

Even before I reached the end of AtK I concluded it is an excellent book that I recommend to everyone reading this post. My criticisms notwithstanding, AtK is more than an onramp and it is deeper than a roadmap to reforming public theology. It provides thoughtful readers with a means by which to frame and guide our lives and loves in the City of Man while waiting for the full and final revelation of the City of God.

Blogging Jamie Smith: An Occasional Series on "Awaiting the King" 6.0

(You can read my comments on chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of "Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology" (AtK)  here, here, here, here, and here.)

Chapter 6 of AtK ("Contested Formations: Our 'Godfather' Problem") extends across a long 43 pages (compared with a mere 13 pages in the preceding chapter). It begins and ends strong but the lengthy middle tries to cover a lot of ground and fails fully to develop its arguments. Its lengthy middle may keep some folks from the fundamental--and excellent--point of the chapter.

Chapter 6 begins with Smith's description of "The Godfather" problem: if liturgical character formation is all it's cracked up to be, then how do we account for its obvious and stunning failure in the life of fictional character Michael Corleone? Smith succinctly describes a scene from The Godfather that depicts the contrast between the baptismal liturgy of his young child and the simultaneous series of hits on his enemies ordered by young Michael. As Smith explains,

While I extol the formative power of historic Christian worship practices, it would seem that there can be--and are--people who have spent entire lifetimes immersed in the rites of historic Christian worship who nonetheless emerge from them not only unformed but perhaps even malformed.

The frank acknowledgement of this conundrum introduces the long middle section of Chapter 6 where Smith leaves behind Oliver O'Donovan's careful theological work and turns to the race-informed sociology of Calvin College grad Willie James Jennings. Jennings is the real deal when it comes to the origins and meaning of race in Western society. Even more than we see in Smith's reliance on O'Donovan for his political theology, however, we see his dependence on Jennings for his understanding of the place of race. This isn't to say that Smith (channeling Jennings) is wrong but only that we don't really hear Smith's voice for many pages.

Coupled with the derivative nature of his sociology, at least some of Smith's prescriptions for the role of a pastor seeking to re-form the Christian characters in a congregation are unhelpful. For example, to counter the deforming effects of nationalism, Smith suggests a service of anti-nationalism on the Fourth of July (although he acknowledges to so might cost a church much of its congregation). Heck, I've been in churches where it took years of education before removing the national flag from the worship space. Perhaps Smith wrote tongue-in-cheek but modifying long-practiced modes of worship involves more patience than sociology.

More broadly, Smith urges that leaders in congregational worship "'read' the practices of the regnant polis, to exegete the liturgies of the earthly city in which we are immersed ... [on a] local and contextual level." Exactly how do we expect the average pastor to do this, at least in a way that's not simply pandering to the SJW side of evangelicalism?

Here's my liturgical 2 cents: how about having worship leaders stick to worshiping in accord with the Word and even doing it twice every Lord's Day? After all, restoring a worship-bracketed approach to Sundays would double the formation opportunities and help combat the idolatries of spectator-consumer-consumption.

At last, Smith comes to the end of Chapter 6 and makes an extremely important point: ecclesiastical liturgy is not about character re-formation. Let me quote Smith here:

Finally, the argument about the centrality of worship and the importance of historic Christian liturgy is not, ultimately or only, a claim about effectiveness. In other words, Christian liturgy is not just a strategy of discipleship or an instrument of formation. ... Worship is ultimately and fundamentally a theocentric act, commanded and invited by the King.

Amen. While worship done well, thoughtfully, and regularly should mold the loves of its participants, worship is not a means to such an end. Its end (telos) is God and it is the Triune God we worship "who will ultimately transform us and hence undo the injustice we've wrought."

 

Report on a Regional Convivium

Faithful readers may recall that I have posted brief reports on the papers presented at the annual summer convivia sponsored by the Davenant Institute. (Go here, here, here, and here for the concluding posts for the past four years.) With the surfeit of great papers, Davenant decided to add several regional off-season convivia to the roster. The most recent one took place at Davenant House in Landrum, South Carolina January 5-6.

Morning View from the Deck

In addition to great food, worship (including singling psalms a cappella), fellowship, and libations, we enjoyed plenary speaker D. Blair Smith of Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte) on "The Fatherhood of God in Fourth-Century Pro-Nicene Trinitarian Theology." Quite a mouthful but Christians today need to recall that it took the church centuries to develop concepts and their ramifications and interrelations we now take for granted. Except when we forget what certain expression meant and re-fill them with our own, contemporary meanings (more on this phenomenon below).

Other papers included "John Owen: Proto-Barthian?" by Thomas Haviland-Pabst, in which Thomas showed that Barth could have avoided the excesses of his "Christo-monism" had he read the Christo-centric Trinitarian theology of seventeenth-century Puritan theologian, John Owen. Both Barth and Owen serve as good reminders, however, that the Christian God is Trinity and that failing to begin theology proper with Trinity can lead to either a functional modalism or tri-theism.

Nathan Johnson presented "The Polyphonic Melody of Grace: Identity, Consecration, and Deliverance in the Passover and Eucharist” in which he developed a rich, biblical-theological understanding of the Lord's Supper that, if taken seriously, would help restore the sacrament to a meaningful place in the liturgy. Next, Zachary Groff, talked about his paper, “The Ancient Branch: 17^th C. Scottish Presbyterian Commentaries on Romans 11:26." How to understand Paul's prophecy of the salvation of "all Israel" has perplexed commentators for over a thousand years but the seventeenth-century Scots had a take on it that was new to me. 

Mark Olivero gave his paper on “The Eternal Sovereignty of the Son: The Co-regency of Christ Reveals the One Absolute and Indivisible Authority of the Triune God” in which he revisited last year's dust-up over the alleged eternal subordination of the Son to the Father (see above) with a careful review of 1 Corinthians 15, the putative proof-text for subordinationists like Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem.

Finally, I read my paper, "Unconscionability: Reciprocity and Justice" and received valuable comments on my theological arguments.

All in all, great edification and a great time.

Lengthening Shadows at Davenant House

Blogging Jamie Smith: An Occasional Series on "Awaiting the King" 5.0

(You can read my comments on chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 of "Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology" (AtK)  here, here, here, and here.)

Smith continues his slow advance into his take on the specifics of a Christian public theology with "Redeeming Christendom: Or, What's Wrong With Natural Law." If the preceding chapter was a critique of Neocalvinist pluralism, chapter 5 represents an attempt to rehabilitate the notion of Christendom. Long discredited in the Liberal tradition (early or contemporary), Christendom is enjoying something of a comeback in Protestant circles through the works of Peter Leithart. (You can go here to read one of my posts about Leithart from six years ago.)

Smith's Christendom is hardly the sort popularly identified first with Constantine and then onto the Christianized culture of Western Europe. At least I don't think so. On the one hand, he quotes approvingly from Augustine's City of God:

We Christians call rulers happy if they rule with justice ... if they put power at the service of God's majesty, to extend his worship far and wide, if they fear God, love him and worship him ...

And then in his own words Smith writes "Our imaginations have been sufficiently disciplined by the assumptions of liberalism to be uncomfortable about and embarrassed by such forthrightly Christian hopes for temporal government." Duh.

But does Smith really mean that the only truly happy civil ruler is one who seeks to extend the worship of the one true God across the globe? I don't think so for in the course of the remainder of this chapter he walks back the Christian witness in political life to something like faithful presence: "The church is now the site for seeing what Christ's kingly rule looks like; and it will be from the church that the authorities ... of this world might come to recognize their own penultimacy." For Smith, for at least the foreseeable future, quoting (again) Oliver O'Donovan, "Christ conquers rulers from below, by drawing their subjects out from under their authority."

I'm not sure where that leaves us, which is one of my problems with AtK. Smith invites multiple readings by failing to define his terms and work out their implications. AtK is more a pastiche than a full-fledged program, or even the architecture for a program, of the relationship between the Church and the civil powers of the world.

Which leads me to my greatest objection thus far, Smith's offhanded and ill-considered rejection of natural law as a part of an architecture for a program of political engagement. Smith criticizes natural law for being insufficiently "evangelical" while his own approach reduces Christian involvement to a winsome well, I'm not sure what:

Christendom, then, is a missional [sic] endeavor that refuses to let political society remain protected from the lordship of Christ while also recognizing the eschatological distance between the now and the not-yet. From the center of the church as a political society, Christendom bears witness to how society should be otherwise in a way that imagines the possibility of conversion--not only of souls but of our social imaginaries.

(If you want to know what natural law really is (and isn't) don't look to AtK but instead see the short Davenant guide titled, appropriately, "Natural Law: A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense" (previously blogged here) or watch this video.)