Carnal Faith
In yesterday’s Commencement Address, President Obama suggested that regular readers of the New York Times might occasionally scan the Wall Street Journal. Having subscribed to both for a good number of years, I heartily endorse the President’s proposal.
Transferred into a religious context (though, as another thread has suggested, the Times does tend to don an ecclesiastical mantel), one might invite readers of Commonweal to dip occasionally into First Things. (And, certe, vice versa.) Even more daringly, the partisans of dotCommonweal might intermingle (at least in cyberspace) with the proponents of First Things Online.
There they might chat amicably about a recent post by R.R. Reno. He reflects upon the influence exerted on him, and other graduate students of his era at Yale, by the work of the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Michael Wyschogrod. Here is some of what Reno writes:
Therein, perhaps, lay Wyschogrod’s more subtle influence over young Yale theologians of my generation. As did Robert Jenson, the Christian theologian most similar to him in style and substance, Wyschogrod performed postliberal theology rather than theorizing it. The Holy One, Blessed be He, is not a God of Particularity, not a God committed to History, not a God with narrative identity. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Therefore, according to Wyschogrod, “Jewish theology arises out of the existence of the Jewish people.” Such a theology cannot be theory-driven, because the specific gravity of the Jewish people is more primitive and primary, and the career of that people in the flesh remained open and finished. This does not prevent Wyschogrod from undertaking an ambitious analysis of basic concepts in theology and philosophy. But it means that all his reflections are constellated around the thatness of God’s choice of the children of Abraham as his beloved people.
Christians believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. It is our Easter faith, a conviction invested in the carnal realities of life, perhaps to a degree even greater than the Jewish doctrine of the election of Israel. After all, what could be more frightfully fleshly than the hungry worms awaiting us in the damp soil of our death-darkened graves? Where and how does this carnal reality make itself seen and felt in Christian piety and practice?
I’m not sure where Reno ends and the good father begins again, but the operative word in his post is ‘believes’. It’s not the opposite of ‘knows’, but the difference between the two makes all the difference in the world.
Hello Fr. Imbelli (and All),
Much as I appreciate your contributions here, I can’t bring myself to visit the First Things site again. I used to visit this site occasionally to read an article or look at a chat thinking that as a Commonweal subscriber, it might be good for me to get the occasional dose from First Things, just as you have suggested. But some of the items I have seen there are so outrageous I decided it would be better if I did not visit their site anymore. For me the last straw was an article by Mary Eberstadt claiming that the one good consequence of the abuse scandal is that liberals no longer think pedophilia is “cool”. No I’m not making this up.
But I am glad you have found items of value there Fr. Imbelli.
I just read a bit about Eric Voegelin’s political theory. Seems he thought that Gnosticism is at the root of both Communism and Naziism. Makes a great deal of good sense to me. ISTN, his basic description of Gnosticism also seems to fit 20th century super=conservative Catholics. I mean the ones who think that they, because they alone have a special, undoubtable intuition of the message of Jesus, are infalliblel interpreters of the Faith. The rest of us get it wrong, so we’re damned if we think they can make mistakes. You’ve heard of it here as knowing “the TRUTH”. Wikipedia’s article puts it this way::
“The primary feature that characterizes a tendency as gnostic for Voegelin is that it is motivated by the notion that the world and humanity can be fundamentally transformed and perfected through the intervention of a chosen group of people (an elite), a man-god, or men-Gods, Übermensch, who are the chosen ones that possess a kind of special knowledge (like magic or science) about how to perfect human existence.”
ISTM that this sort of thinking is implicit in the recent (400 years or so) thinking of the Vaticanistas who have no respect for the wisdom of the people of God. Vatican II is therefore, for them, the greatest threat to what they view as the message of Jesus and “the” Christian life. Sort of an “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” sort of ideology.
Voegelin also thought that Gnostics have an impulse to control, which is certainly typical of of the Gnostic Catholics who want one and only one style of liturgy. Lots of parallels there, I think.
But not all of the folks at First Things are like that. There is an occational good article, usually about one of the arts, but not about theology or politics.
Ann,
Aside from Voegelin, whom I greatly admire, mention has been made before on these threads of Hans Jonas, whose “Gnostic Religion” shows that gnosticism is a perennial temptation of the human spirit.
But, relating this more specifically to the essay by Reno, I think that gnosticism, in its various forms, manifests a deep suspicion of and unease with the “flesh.” It is fundamentally anti-incarnational, indulging in what Charles Taylor calls:”excarnation.” Hence I titled the post “carnal faith.”
A key scriptural reference is the First Letter of John where the author writes: “every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God” (4: 2 and 3).
Recently, the Times columnist, Ross Douthat, has had some interesting columns relating some contemporary cultural phenomena to gnostic sensibilities.
Fr. Imbelli –
Yes, that makes sense.
I like what I’ve read of Douthat in the Times, most of it anyway. Sometimes he’s too conservative on politics and economics, though. (By the way, it certainly wasn’t anti-Catholic of the Times to hire him.)
I should add that the conservative celibacy requirement and the anti-contraception requirement substantiate your contention about the “suspicion and unease with the flesh”. It’s one of the very biggest problems with the institutional Church, I think.
Voegelin thinks that the midset springs from alienation from the rest of the culture. That has also been true of the official Church since the Enlightenment. Voegelin thinks that the conservative’s craving for power springs from that cultural alienation. I’m not so sure of that.
If I understand Wyschgorod correctly, I can’t agree with his separation of abstract thinking and factual thinking. Generally we get to know the factual by means of the abstract. I think a better division would be between the sensuous and the spiritual, though even that can be over-emphasized.
Bob,
I presume that in the interest of considering other people’s point of view you might want to look at this letter to the bishops.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0416/1224268448283.html
Dear Ann,
If I may offer another reading. It can certainly be that formation for celibate life may be inadequate and even “anti-body.” But celibacy, lived authentically, should be the embodiment of humankind’s transcendent destiny. I think that in the body of Christ it is essential to have embodied witness to both the transcendental and the this worldly dimensions of “carnal faith.”
Further, is it not possible that the option for artificial contraception itself represents a repugnance concerning the limitations of the flesh and a symptom of the “control” mentality?
“But celibacy, lived authentically, should be the embodiment of humankind’s transcendent destiny.”
This is basically stoic language and has no foundation in scripture. The Fathers of the church with their platonic philosophy idolized virginity.Paul preferred celbacy because it gave him more time for preaching and evangelizing which is the real benefit. We can put pedophilia aside and we can still see that mandatory celibacy has given us serious problems. The flowery language still exists. But the pracice belies it.
Dear Fr. Imbelli –
Speaking as a single, never-married, I respect both the celibate life and the married. Some of the holiest people I’ve known have been celibate. But some of the other holiestt people I’ve known have been married.
Perhaps I’m reading your post wrong, but you seem to be saying that celibacy gives a religious a relationship to the transcendent that married (and singles?) lives cannot have. I can’t agree. We are all called to a relationship with the transcendent here on Earth, not just eventually in Heaven. Some would say that the opportunity for prayer is greater in the religious life, and perhaps that is true. But there are many kinds of prayer. I’m thinking here especially of Brother Lawrence, who says in his “The Practice of the Presence of God” that he contemplated not only in church and in his cell but when answering the door and working in the kitchen. Theresa of Avila too says somewhere that she also could experience the presence of God.
I’m convinced, with Fr. Keating of Centering Prayer fame, that many who pray the rosary are led into as high level contemplative states as are some who do Centering Prayer. And look at Unagidon’s post today on his praying the rosary. His is obviously a relationship with the Transcendent.
In a nutshell, I simply think that there are different roads for different folks.
I also think that historicallyy there has been a very strong strain of Manicheeanism in the Church, largely by way of Augustine, whom I love anyway, and, more recently, by way of Bishop Janssen. The Vatican, I think is quite hung up on sexuality and that is one major reason that the young are leaving in droves. Not that the young are very wise about it, but they know enough to see that many in high places in the Church (and in some not so high places) have unhealthy, unChristian attitudes towards the subject.
About anti-contraception mentality, I don’t understand what you mean by “the option for artificial contraception itself represents a repugnance concerning the limitations of the flesh and a symptom of the “control” mentality”.
Oops — “Theresa of Avila too says somewhere that she also could experience the presence of God.” shuld have been “Theresa of Avila too says somewhere that she also could experience the presence of God working in the kitchen.”