The Jew and the Negro

It is not without significance that Cone spends a lot of time discussing the power Negro Spirituals (which famously impressed Bonhoeffer when he taught in New York).

Here is Paul Robeson singing a Hasidic Jewish chant that speaks very much to the concerns of Black Liberation Theology. Dare I say it is Black Liberation Theology, which can, of course, only be sung.

 

Derrida On Christianity’s Relation to Itself

One should understand that in saying that Christianity has not been thought right through Patočka intends that such a task be undertaken; not only by means of a more through thematization but also by means of a political and historical setting-in-train, by means of political and historical action; and he advocates that according to the logic of a messianic eschatology that is nevertheless indissociable from phenomenology. Something has not yet arrived, nether at Christianity nor by means of Christianity. What has not yet arrived at or happened to Christianity is Christianity. Christianity has not yet come to Christianity.

- Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (University of Chicago Press, 1996), 28.

The Old Testament and Liberation Theology

Israel’s Yahweh religion arises in the liberation process of an oppressed outsider group of Egyptian society; its world of religious symbols is therefore directly related to the process of historical and political liberation. From the start that gives it a historical and political orientation and a clear leaning towards the social, which was to remain a characteristic of the religion of Israel. In contrast to the state religions of the ancient Near East, which derive themselves from earliest mythical times, Yahweh religion has a historical foundation and did not from the beginning have the function of legitimating rule and stabilizing the existing social order.   Rather, as the symbolic world of a social outsider group fighting for its right to life, it serves to provide internal solidarity for this group and to detach it from a integration which makes possible a freer and more equitable social life. This starting point explains the bias against domination, transcending present social circumstances, which was to become established time and again in the history of Israelite religion.

- Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period: Volume I: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy (Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 47.

On Being a Disingenuous Christian

I often say that I’m a disingenuous Christian. While I realize that many of the claims that Christianity makes are subject to empirical falsification (or, alternatively, verification, if you don’t like Popper), it does not really matter to me whether Christianity is true. I would still be a Christian even if I knew that “Christianity” was manifestly untrue.

I am here, of course, trying to undercut the enterprise of modern apologetics. While I admit to having a  tremendous love for almost all aspects of the Christian tradition (hence my church posts), even in all its many myriad foibles and despicable moral failings, the central factor of Christianity remains for me the liberating potentially of Jesus Christ as proclaimed in the gospel for the poor and oppressed, and not how philosophically convincing it is in explaining how the universe came to be. Ultimately, then, my Christianity does not hinge on whether Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity or any other equivalent theological minutia. Theodicies are a particularly disgusting example of this, and they should be recognized as standing firmly outside the Christian tradition.  The Christian response to evil and injustice is not to philosophically downplay its existence and excuse God from any culpability in its reality, but to look to Jesus Christ and fight to overcome it.

I am not trying to insulate Christianity’s claims from empirical investigation or corroboration. Heaven forefend, I think all theologoumena – the doctrine of creation, for example – should be subject to the most rigorous investigation possible. While I may be a disingenuous Christian, I am not a self-deluding one. I certainly want to know whether it is true or not, but its truthfulness is not a condition for me being a Christian. If Christianity is recognized as being un-true, the only truly Christian response to that is to loudly and forthrightly admit it.

Even then, though, I will still with the church confess Christ as κύριος.

When the Man Comes Around