Incarnation

Review: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture

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Cover image for "Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture" by Gordon E. Carkner

Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, Gordon E. Carkner (Foreword by Iain Provan). Wipf & Stock (ISBN: 9798385203772), 2024.

Summary: The Incarnation and our quest for identity, addressing the rootless identities of modern gnosticism and expressive individualism.

We expressed it as “finding ourselves” in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. But the quest for identity didn’t end with Baby Boomers. Over the course of my life, I’ve witnessed a succession of “quests” to find identity in acquisitiveness, political causes, one’s ethnicity, sexuality and gender, and in a kind of designer spirituality cobbling together beliefs and practices drawn from diverse source into a personal enlightenment package. Yet, as Charles Taylor has observed, the fragility of our identity is evident in the ways we wall ourselves off from others as “buffered selves.” We find ourselves at times alienated even from our embodied life let alone an objectively existing Transcendent.

Gordon E. Carkner, drawing on the insights of Taylor, Christopher Watkin and others identifies this fragile identity as rooted in modern forms of Gnosticism and articulates a robust alternative rooted in the Incarnation. He begins by contrasting both ancient and modern forms of Gnosticism with spirituality rooted in the Incarnation. He notes the disdain of Gnosticism for the body and for the Transcendent entering our embodied existence. It is an attempt to achieve a spirituality both apart from the body and a God who created bodies.

Carkner proposes instead that identity may be rooted in a God who has spoken, in an I-Thou relationship brought to its height in the incarnate Christ, marrying the spirit and embodied life. Thus, he gives dignity to our embodied lives. Going on, he explores the idea of Christ as the Wisdom of God. Jesus embodied wisdom, the fulfillment of our quest to live well. Specifically, Carkner draws on the work of Hans Urs Von Balthasar in elaborating six pillars of incarnational wisdom. He points to James Davison Hunter’s idea of “faithful presence” as an example of how Christians incarnate that wisdom in culture.

Whereas Gnosticism is evident in a “will to uniqueness” or “expressive individualism,” Incarnational spirituality leads to embodied communities, expressed in “one-anotherness.” The quest for autonomy truncates the self, leaving people open to manipulation while embodied communities provide stability, perspective, and resilience. And finally, the Incarnation brings a Transcendent connection to our ethics and understanding of goodness, rather than the individual defining and sourcing their ethics within themselves.

In summing up, Carkner has distilled extended philosophical discussions into a vision for incarnational spirituality. Consequently, every sentence is loaded with meaning, requiring close reading. He offers an alternative to the fragile and fragmented identities of post-modernity. All of this is rooted in the ancient Christian belief in the Incarnation. Carkner frames our contemporary quest for identity in terms of the classic contrast between Gnostic and Incarnational spirituality. That God became man addresses our alienation from ourselves, from others, and the Transcendent. And it provides a basis for community and the pursuit of the good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: That I May Dwell Among Them

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Cover image of "That I May Dwell Among Them" by Gary A. Anderson

That I May Dwell Among Them, Gary A. Anderson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883063), 2023.

Summary: A study of the tabernacle and sacrifice connections drawing out the idea of the incarnational presence of God in the physical structure of the tabernacle and the significance of the daily sacrifices for our understanding of atonement.

The passages detailing the construction of the tabernacle and the institution of sacrifices for many of us are a “flyover zone” in our reading. After all, the tabernacle instructions are repeated twice in almost identical detail. Yet Gary A. Anderson proposes that these passages are rich with detail for the development of the Old Testament theology of both incarnation and atonement that will become important in our understanding of the person and work of Christ.

Regarding the tabernacle explores how in the construction, layout, and furnishings of the tabernacle, God indeed dwells among Israel in physical form. The tabernacle in some sense participates in the deity of God. Anderson shows evidence for this in the language used to describe the proper handling of the physical articles that furnish this “house.” While Anderson would certainly not confine God to this structure, he would suggest that in it God is in some way “embodied” in the midst of his people.

He then explores the sacrifice instructions arguing that the central sacrifice is not that of atonement but rather the daily offerings each morning and evening that began on the eighth day of the inauguration the tabernacle and the Aaronic priesthood. In his discussions he explores the intricacies of the procedures, the problem of the “strange fire” of Nadab and Abihu, the golden calf, and the connections in language between the tamid instructions and the Aqedah of Genesis 22. Ultimately, Anderson argues that what is central in sacrifice is the self-giving of Israel rather than the substitution of the death of an animal for sins.

While there was much in Anderson’s study of the tabernacle and in the connections he draws to Abraham, his de-centering of atonement in favor of tamid seems to me driven by his idea that penal substitution must be cruel and we can’t have that. Certainly it is true that there is a self-giving, indeed self emptying aspect to the work of Christ. Might this suggest ways that all the sacrifices from tamid to atonement point to him? But why does Jesus self-empty but to die for sin, acting both in love for the father and humanity through the instrument of the genuinely cruel human actions of whipping and crucifixion that brought about his death? Penal substitution actually makes sense of the cruel death Jesus died, that he could have evaded. Anything else to me appears masochistic on the part of Jesus and truly cruel of God.

What Anderson does offer is an invitation to closely study these “flyover” passages, pointing to their central importance in the life of Israel and in the theology of the church. In particular, he shows how there is no divorce of matter and spirit, no distant deity of the deists in scripture. He insists that we ask what the meaning of Israel’s sacrifices are and that their relevance hasn’t ceased even though they have.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Holy Longing

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The Holy Longing (Fifteenth Anniversary Edition), Ronald Rolheiser. New York: Image, 2014.

Summary: A discussion of Christian spirituality rooted in an understanding of desire and the incarnation.

I owe the discovery of this book to my sister, who first asked me if I was familiar with the work of Ronald Rolheiser. I’m so glad she asked because it led to the discovery of this work on the nature of Christian spirituality. In it, I discovered a writer able to express profound ideas in clear terms. It reveals to me someone who has lived through to the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Far from the denial or suppression of desire, Rolheiser recognizes that desire, or eros is a fire within us and central to our spirituality. He expresses it in this way:

“Spirituality is about what we do with the fire inside us, about how we channel our eros. And how we do channel it, the disciplines and habits we choose to live by, will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our bodies, minds, and souls, and to a greater integration or disintegration in the way we are related to God, others, and the cosmic world.”

We struggle with imbalance that is rooted in several divorces: between religion and eros, spirituality and ecclesiology, private morality and social justice, the gifted child and the giving adult, and the divorce by contemporary culture of its paternalistic, Christian heritage. In ensuing chapters he will reconcile those divorces, restoring balance. He begins by articulating four essential aspects of Christian spirituality: private prayer and private morality, social justice, mellowness of heart and spirit, and community as a constitutive element of true worship. He contends that these need to operate together and that where one or more is absent, one will have an unbalanced and unhealthy spirituality.

He then comes to one of the most important contributions of the book. He roots our spirituality in the incarnation of Jesus. It is precisely this God in human flesh aspect of Christ that distinguishes a truly Christian from merely theistic (and I might add gnostic) spirituality. It shapes how we allow God to put flesh on our prayers, how we reconcile in families and communities, how we receive God’s guidance through community, and indeed understand the crucial role flesh and blood communities play in our spirituality.

The final part of the book then elaborates various aspects of this incarnational spirituality that channels desire toward life-giving ends, He explores ecclesiology and very practical reasons we need the church. He unpacks the paschal mystery, and how death and resurrection plays itself out in our spiritual journeys. He elaborates on why we need both private morality and social justice. He offers a searching exploration of the connection of our sexuality and spiritualty–actually the disconnect of the unconsummation we all experience even of sexuality at its best and how treating it as a sacred gift, bounding it in marriage, allowing ourselves to be formed in marriage and parenting, and guarding the gift in chastity allows us to live in a creative and transformative tension.

His final chapter concerns spirituality for the long haul. He offers several commandments:

  1. Be a mystic, cultivating the life of prayer
  2. Sin bravely–that is to honestly bring who we truly are to God rather than to pretend to what we are not.
  3. Gather ritually around the Word and break the bread
  4. Worship and serve the right God–to accept God’s forgiving embrace and His delight in us.

There is a wealth of riches in this work. It is written for the ordinary parishioner and not the spiritual leader, although its probing exploration of desire and living honestly before God speaks powerfully to the “professionally” religious. Finally, it focuses us neither on a list of practices, though these follow, but on Jesus, our Incarnate Lord and what it means to live incarnationally–as desiring human beings following Jesus. This is a book to which I want to return.

Review: Sinless Flesh

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Sinless Flesh: A Critique of Karl Barth’s Fallen Christ, Rafael Nogueira Bello. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020.

Summary: Drawing upon the doctrines of inseparable operations, grace of union and habitual grace, and original sin, argues against the contention of Barth and Torrance that the Son of God assumed fallen human flesh in the Incarnation.

You probably never discussed this question in Sunday school: was the human nature assumed by the Son of God sinless or fallen? We may have discussed this in seminary, but if so, it made no impression on me. Nevertheless, it distinguishes two giants of the twentieth century, Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance from most theologians in church history including Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin.

The author of this monograph argues that Barth and Torrance get it wrong. He doesn’t see this as heresy because both affirm the orthodox convictions that Christ was without sin and the relation of the two natures in one person. However, he would argue that this proposal has impact upon trinitarian relation, weakens the orthodox understanding of the hypostatic union of the two natures, and reflects a flawed understanding of original since with implications as to how Christ can act as the second Adam on our behalf.

Bello draws upon three doctrines to highlight the deficiencies in the idea of the Son of man assuming a fallen nature or what is considered non assumptus. First, the doctrine of inseparable operations is the idea that all three persons of the Trinity act as one. The assumption of a fallen nature would require separate operations of the Spirit to perfect what is effected by the Father and Son. Likewise in orthodox theology, the grace of union precedes habitual grace in the life of the incarnate Son. This is reversed in Barth and Torrance involves a growth in grace before the grace of union but raises questions about the hypostatic union of these natures if one grows into union with the other. Finally, the non assumptus view reflects a defective view of original sin. If, as is held in post-Calvin Reformed theology, original sin includes original guilt (that all of us sinned in Adam and are therefore guilty with him, then assuming a fallen nature means assuming Adam’s guilt and raises the question of whether Christ can act as the second Adam through whom we are made righteous (Romans 5:19).

Bello makes a strong case if one accepts the logical inferences drawn in his theological discussion. My hunch is that Barth and Torrance would not accept these inferences. At the beginning of this monograph, Bello quotes Gregory of Nazianzus, who in another context stated, “that which He has not assumed He has not healed.” He sees Barth and Torrance applying this idea to the fallen human nature. I fail to be convinced by Bello’s argument that a Son who had assumed a sinless human nature could “learn obedience” and be like us in all ways except for sin. It seems that one who bears Adam’s guilt without recapitulating Adam’s sin but rather bear’s humanity’s sin and Adamic guilt is truly the second Adam whose obedience makes the many righteous.

What my challenge is, being new to this discussion, is thinking through his argument. Does non-assumptus necessarily compromise inseparable operations? Does non-assumptus jeopardize our understanding of the hypostatic union of the two natures. Does original sin imply original guilt (which Calvin did not affirm)? And even so, does this call into question Christ’s fitness to serve as the second Adam? Bello makes a careful and rigorous argument deserving careful consideration. It both made me think, but also reflect on how what we believe about one thing has implications for other matters. I am also grateful for the irenic spirit of Bello’s argument. Difference is not always heresy, and one’s perception of a real weakness in the thought of another does not, for this scholar, diminish his respect for the substantial contribution of Barth and Torrance to the theological enterprise. All in all, this is a fine monograph and I look forward to further theological writing from this scholar!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Surprised by Paradox

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surprised by paradox

Surprised by Paradox, Jen Pollock Michel. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Summary: In a world where things are often defined in either-or terms and a quest for certainty, Michel proposes there are many things, beginning with basic biblical realities that are both-and, inviting our continuing curiosity.

Whether it is schism in the church, political divides, or just a good old marital conflict, the parties often have defined things sharply in either-or terms, one way or another. Jen Pollock Michel explains how she began to look for a third way, and to write this book. A family member had been lying to her, repeatedly. She described her dilemma to her counselor.

“…I needed light for groping my way out of this tunnel with two exits: should I suffer lying or sever the relationship?

‘What if there’s a third way?’ she asked gently. Her language sounded like a struck bell, especially because ‘third way’ language was something my spiritual director often used with me. It was as if here was yet another invitation to find a sure-footed way on some undiscovered path–to find and where I had previously imagined only either and or. Here was an invitation to ‘lean not on my own understanding’ and find wisdom in the way of paradox” (pp. 22-23).

She discovered that paradox ran through the pages of scripture, that Christian orthodoxy is full of and, beginning with the incarnation, this idea that the Son of God came to earth, fully God, and also fully human. If paradox is at the heart of the nature of the Lord we trust and follow, might we look for God in the and, rather than insisting on answers to either-or questions. This paradox also suggests that we find the spiritual in the material, the living God in the stuff of everyday life. It also suggests that to conform to God’s ideal for our lives, is to live fully the “one wild and precious life” that is ours, expressing in our own uniqueness, the image of God in our lives.

She goes on to explore three other paradoxes. There is the paradox of the kingdom, which is already here and not fully come, where the least are the greatest, where we both give lavishly and enjoy lavishly what we are given, and where strength takes the form of vulnerability whose crowning hour is the cross. Grace confronts us with other paradoxes. Treasured, yet not for any personal excellency. Finding favor when the wrath we deserved falls upon his favored Son. Michel writes, “We don’t get grace because we change our lives–but our lives are indelibly changed because we get grace. Finally there is lament, the raw, unvarnished plea to God of people in pain that God has not shielded them from, that is a paradoxical kind of faith. It takes God seriously enough to become angry, to speak with blunt honesty rather than pretty pieties when what has happened in one’s life doesn’t square with our understanding of who God is.

Michel is a compelling author, one who can relate the depths of theology to teaching her daughter to drive, and her need for grace. She weaves scripture, teaching of the theological “greats,” contemporary realities, images, and personal stories into a narrative that sings and helps us examine with fresh eyes what we thought we knew down pat, helping us by asking, “did you notice this and this?”

A friend once observed that when we try to get rid of the tensions in our faith, or our lives by getting rid of one side of the tension to focus on the other, we make life simpler, but also smaller and more confined. Jen Pollock Michel invites us to live with paradoxes, and to celebrate the ands of God. She proposes that this opens us up to mystery, to surprise, and to the depth of the riches of knowing our God and what it means to live in the and of his purposes, to experience how grace transforms our work, and how our laments in all their perplexity may be among the most robust acts of faith. What might this “third way” mean as Christians are present to a world mired in “either-or?”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

 

Review: Incarnate

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Incarnate

Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement, Michael Frost. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Frost explores what it means to be incarnational people in an “excarnational” world, one marked by increasing focus on disembodied, virtual experience, and disconnection from physical community.

We are becoming a culture that increasingly disengages from embodied experience, that objectifies others and encounters the world via a computer or smartphone screen. This has significant implications for the church, which is also shaped by this “excarnate” culture. Michael Frost explores this “excarnate” world we are increasingly fashioning for ourselves, how excarnate life has unhelpfully shaped Christians and the Christian community, and what it we can learn from Jesus about becoming truly incarnational people.

He explores the fascination of this culture with zombies, and the morally ambiguous state of being the walking dead. All this stems from a mind-body dualism that detaches what we think and experience mentally from what we do through our bodies. It explains how people can embrace immoral behavior and not think it affects anything about their spirituality.

True Christian faith is different in that the central figure was an embodied Messiah who calls people to follow and for whom believing and behaving walk hand in hand. Because we are desiring creatures (drawing on the work of James K. A. Smith) the central matter in discipleship is not merely believing certain things but the ordering of desires and our behaviors along the lines of our beliefs. We become what we worship, for better or worse. Mission then, which is a big focus for Frost, becomes a move beyond click activism to embodied presence. The challenge is not growing bigger churches, but Christians living out faith in all the dimensions of “silos” of life–economics, agriculture, education, science and technology, communications, arts, politics, and family life. This is aided by living as “placed” people, who settle down in a physical community and become part of its life for a long time.

The concluding chapters focus on the missional, communal, and spiritual practices that nourish an incarnational life. At the same time, Frost includes some important warnings about the difference between healthy and unhealthy religion, using the Jim Jones cult as an object lesson, because in fact at the start they were pursuing an incarnational ministry, first in Indianapolis and then San Francisco. What is chilling is how often unhealthy ministries are organized around “taking a stand” rather than training people to think for themselves, inviting us to be humble about what we think we know, focuses on what we are for, and stays in tune with reality. The epilogue concludes with the rhythms of life of a community, the value of liturgies and embodied practices of life together.

Frost provides an insightful glimpse into contemporary culture and the ways it leads to disembodied, excarnate expression in the church. It even made me stop and muse about blogging on books rather than simply getting together with some friends over beverages and good food to talk about what we are discovering. Actually, I do that as well, and so don’t feel so bad about sharing the riches online. But I do find myself wondering about online community supplanting the particular place and space and people I live among. He also challenges the kind of click activism that makes you think you’ve done something simply because of what you’ve done online. And yet these tools have aided recent political revolutions that have resulted in embodied change. It seems the challenge is how to use these tools incarnationally rather than to eschew them altogether, and how to lay them aside when we need to do so.

Thanks, Michael Frost, for this reminder that we are incarnation people and the difference this can make in an excarnate world.