Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 6

Nate Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalyptic has been something of a theoblogical sensation, generating thoughtful online conversation in ways I haven't seen before (see, for instance, here, here, and here).  And Nate has been generous in responding to critics and friends alike.   I have found the book provocative, pressing me to think about matters that I haven't previously, and wouldn't have otherwise--surely the sign of  a good book.  However, this also means I'm being stretched beyond my expertise and venturing into some new territory.  So I offer some reflections here very much in the spirit of conversation and "thinking out loud."  My assignment is chapter 6, "Towards an Apocalyptic Politics of Mission."  However, I'll also take some license to comment on other themes raised in the book, particularly since Kerr's critique of modern historicism engendered, for me, a number of questions and issues. 

1. Politics, Mission, and the People of God

Let me first say just a couple of things about chapter 6.  This chapter is very much the outgrowth of chapter 5--the chapter on Yoder which is really the fulcrum of the book.  One of the burdens of chapter 6 is to show how a "genuine" (132) apocalyptic yields a politics which is not just "anti-Constantinian" (as Kerr sees Hauerwas), but positively diasporic.  The church is not just called to be a counter-polis but to an exilic mission of encounter with the world--not a "centered" polis but a "nonconcentric" ("Jewish") "diasporic existence...that emerges as its people move out into and encounter foreign social contexts and settings" (183).  Playing off Certeau, Kerr such an exilic ecclesia as dispossessed--a church without property, without place, without centre, deprived of a homeland.  The faith cannot be identified with a place (181); rather, the church-as-mission is "the very 'non-site' of the church's gathering" (192).   The church is a sent people constituted by this encounter with the world: "Such an encounter, in fact, really is prior to any identifiable 'gathering' as a people" (183).  Such would be a people who can "embody the truth of the gospel" such that "the world can perceive it...without having to learn a foreign language" (184).

This picture of the church as mission provoked several lines of thought for me:

(a) I have to say that part of me felt like the dichotomy and distinction between "church-as-polis" (Hauerwas) and church-as-diasporic-mission (Yoder) was somewhat labored only because throughout the book I was never quite convinced by Kerr's critique of Hauerwas.  That's not to say Hauerwas is beyond critique.  But I felt like Kerr's argument hit a caricature that wasn't quite Hauerwas.  For instance, I couldn't buy the whole "ontologization of the church" line.  And I think there's an over-reading of "church-as-polis" here which is reductionistic: it makes the church-as-polis theme seem entirely parasitic, as if Hauerwas only knows what the church is NOT (e.g., NOT liberalism, NOT Constantinianism).  But of course such matters are entirely relative: if Hauerwas emphasizes the NOTs, it's not because the church-as-polis is only some parasitic inversion of liberalism or Constantinianism, but because those are--in his time and context--particularly dangerous threats.  The church is called to be the polis of God even if there's no alternative; in other words, the church is only contingently and not essentially a counter-polis.  When we appreciate that, I think the church-as-polis and church-as-mission models--so starkly contrasted in chapter 6--are more like kissing cousins.

(b) I found the Certeuaian (?) rendition of exile as not only dis-placed but non-placed felt more like Derridean "religion without religion" than Jewish exile.  What could it mean when Kerr claims that their "encounter" with the world is "prior to" their gathering as a people?  In what sense?  Isn't it already "their" encounter?  This feels like exilic Judaism without synagogue. 

(c) Finally, let me tentatively raise a concern I have with Yoder, and thus Kerr (insofar as he seems to affirm Yoder on this point).  In chapter 6, we hear Yoder emphasize that because this exilic ecclesia is not tied to any particular homeland, it's also not tied to any particular place or language or semantic world.  Rather, it can "embody" the "truth of the gospel" in such a way that the world can "perceive it to be good news without having to learn a foreign language" (184).  Does that mean the "truth of the gospel" transcends language?  I have suspicions about a rather naive hermeneutic implicit in such a claim.  I had the same concerns when Kerr invoked Yoder's claims about the "objective reality of salvation" (113) and the "independence" of Jesus.  In this context, Kerr criticizes Hauerwas for "elevating the language and culture of the Christian community to a meta-historical level which 'orders' the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth" (114)--an account he'll describe as "ideological" later on (117).  That sounds like it must be a bad thing, until one asks: what's the alternative?  What alternative picture is assumed behind this critique? 

For instance, Kerr counsels that "we will need to eschew the 'community-dependent' understanding of apocalyptic which is intrinsic to Hauerwas' narrative ecclesiology" (116).  OK.  But what's the alternative? (One can imagine a sort of Winston Churchill paraphrase: a 'community-dependent' understanding is the worst kind of hermeneutic--except for all the others.")

Just who is this "we" that's not dependent on communal structures of meaning and signification?  Does Yoder/Kerr think there can be an "irruption" that is given in such a way that the conditions of interpretation are suspended?  (One could restage Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments at this point.)

I think this issue is crystallized on pp. 108-109: There Kerr criticizes Hauerwas' "ecclesiocentric" apocalyptic for subjecting Jesus to conditions (I think one could find something analogous in Jean-Luc Marion's critique of ontotheology): on this score, "[t]he focus of the narrative thus comes to centre less upon the question of who Jesus of Nazareth is, and more upon that of 'the kind of community his story should form'" (108).  Thus Kerr accuses Hauerwas "of subordinating Jesus of Nazareth himself to a more 'metanarrative reality,' namely, the alternative polis of the church" (109).  But what if the formation of such a people, such a polis, is the goal of creation?  What if this 'metanarrative reality' is God's own story?  And what if this is not an idolatrous subordination, but rather God's incarnational condescension to inhabit this story? 

2. Creation, History, and Apocalyptic

Well, there's much, much more to be said.  Permit me to hastily sketch just one other line of thought/questioning that Kerr's book gave rise to for me--namely, how we think about history in relation to creation and eschaton.  I confess that in this regard, while reading Nate's critique, I felt sort of "Hegelian," but didn't quite feel free to relinquish that.  That is, I find myself not quite willing to give up on "development" (forgive me, father, for I have sinned!)  My thoughts here are half-baked at best, so I throw this out in the spirit of blog imprecision.  Here's the line of thought:

It seems to me that "development" is a primary target of "apocalyptic."  The Kingdom, in other words, is not the fruit of a steady development or progression, but breaks into history.  The Kingdom of God is not a "teleological-historical ideal" (102).  And history is not the steady march of the Spirit toward consummation.  This seems absolutely right to me.

And yet.  I wonder if, even affirming this core point, we might introduce a little more nuance and care into how we employ a number of related terms such as "progress," "development," "teleology," "immanence," etc.  I suggest this because, at points, I worry that Kerr has constructed some false dichotomies because of equivocation on these terms.  For instance, sometimes I picked up vibes of the following sort of dichotomies:

• apocalyptic vs. development (58, 75, 123)
• apocalyptic vs. the 'universal' (26)
• apocalyptic vs. teleology (123, 126, 135)

But all of the latter terms need to be carefully qualified if the dichotomy is to hold.  For example, Kerr is right to oppose a modern historicism which saw in history the confident, progressive, march of "development"--a sort of whiggish history of Geist's machinations.  However, I don't think we can demonize "development" per se.  Development is not synonymous with "progress," but Kerr sometimes seems to treat them as if they were (58).  Nor is "development" necessarily "immanental" (91) or autonomous. 

In a similar way, I don't think we can demonize teleology as such.  Sure, apocalyptic rightly criticizes notion of teleology as automatic, programmable guarantee.  But that's not the only way to think telos.  Why let modern historicism have the word? 

Part of what motivates my call for nuance here is a sense that something development and teleology is integral to the story of creation.  In other words, I think we can rightly discern a kind of "canonical" development in the narrative of Scripture which is not synonymous with modern stories of progressive development.  It seems to me that creation comes loaded with a telos, and that in God's covenantal relations with humanity (Adam, Abraham, Israel) there is a kind of canonical development which is not "progress" but is still developing--unfolding (which is also why I think an "ecclesiocentric hermeneutic" [cp. Hays] is consistent with, and grows out of, this developing story). 

I suppose that ultimately what we need to carefully consider is what an apocalyptic theology of creation.  At times, this Yoderian apocalyptic felt like it had little if any room for an affirmation of the history that begins to unfold at creation.  Is apocalyptic anti-historical?  And if so, is it anti-creational?  That's not meant as a plea or defense for some "creation order"--but it is a question about how we can fit creation into this apocalpytic.

Comments

[Nate Kerr]

Jamie:

Thank you for your engagement with my work and for your critical questions. It is already late and I'm tired and I will need some time to think about some of your questions, but I did just want to address a couple of things very quickly, if off-the-cuff and as a way of "thinking out loud" (as you have here):

(1.) On the idea of the church-as-polis. I know you have written on this and have affirmed this notion as a way of thinking church today. But I just find this to be a theological false-start. That is to say, it is already to have missed the fundamental importance of the fact that the church is nowhere (as far as I can tell) explicitly referred to in Scripture as a "polis" in itself and as such. Where the word polis is used in the New Testament, it is used to refer to that "Jerusalem above" that "New Jerusalem" that will come down from heaven at the last day; that New Jerusalem is the "city" in which God will be all-in-all. There is no biblical grouds at all, it seems to me, to speak of the church in-itself as a polis. Furthermore, to do so is to miss the sense in which the church "is" only as the sign and sacrament of the eschatological city which it "is not" in-itself. Or, if we are going to affirm that the church as such is that city, then we are going to have to deal seriously with the problem of supersessionism. I don't deny a way of talking about the church as the sacrament of the coming city of God (as sacrament of the Kingdom), but to identify the church with that city is actually to foreclose on the question of the church-as-sacrament, as well as of the church as sacramentally constituted qua "church."

(2.) You are right that there are other uses to the word telos, particularly in Scripture as used in reference to Christ and God. However, there is a very clear sense in which I am using the word "teleology" in the book. And that is to critique the idea that history is teleological oriented to a "goal" as imbued with a certain entelechy. That is, it is a critique of the idea of telos as the given "end" of an historical process, towards which end that history was naturally oriented from the outset. Again, I will point out that where telos is used in the New Testament, especially of Christ, it is not of Christ as the "end" of an historical process. (And it is certainly never used of the church as the "end" of an historical process as such.) Jesus is referred to as the first (arche) and the last (telos), the beginning and the end (eschaton). But "first" and "last" here are not terms of historical progression or sequence, they are "cosmic" terms, and they are meant to say essentially that nothing is "left out" of Christ's work. Greek "teleology" is getting worked over here; the word telos as meaning "perfection" is being used in such a way as to say that in this one man, this singular history, all is fulfilled, all is perfected, nothing is left out. It is as the "eschaton" that he is related to what we would call "history." And so, I would indeed agree with you that there are nuances to the word "telos" that I don't necessarily explore in my book. But that is because I am using the word "telos" only in relation to history and its teleo-historical sense. The nuances of the word telos that I don't explore actually deepen my critique of teleological accounts of history, rather than to soften them, as you seem they must.

So, while there is certainly a kind of hermeneutical sophistication at work that grants a certain philosophical complexity to terms like "polis" and "telos" in such a manner as to allow one to go on deploying them in the manner that we have all-too-easily become accustomed to, I'm more concerned about the exegetical naivate that underwrites this supposed hermeneutical sophistication.

[James K.A. Smith]

Thanks for your reply, Nate. Just a couple of quick replies:

(1) Regarding the church as polis, I simply don't share your exegetical primitivism, I guess. So the fact that a term doesn't appear in the Scriptures is not sufficient to say that it isn't scriptural. To say that God is creating and calling "a people" is already to say he's calling and creating a polis--a civitas, a holy nation. And I think we agree that the ecclesia is really just called to be the foretaste of what it means to be human. There's not a special "ecclesial" way of being like some sort of addendum or supplement. Rather, the ecclesia is called to be what Adam (and Abraham and Israel) was--the image-bearers of God. Which is now to say they are called to be image-bearers of Christ, who showed finally showed us what it looks like to carry out the mission (not the property) of being "imago Dei." (I think we need to grapple with themes of election here.)

2. I agree that Christ is not the programmable end of some historical process--in a sense. But I also find myself somewhat persuaded by the Eastern notion that the Incarnation would have happened even if there wasn't a fall or a failure of humanity to image God as they were called. I guess I can't quite shake the notion that creation is "loaded" with some sort of entelechy--though I also have a sense that a radical fall is precisely what twists and perverts that teleology. (That now has me thinking back: what's the role of "sin" in your picture? Right now, I don't have any recollection of how/whether that played a role.)

[Dave Belcher]

Jamie,

It certainly would not be "exegetical primitivism" to suggest that polis is not a "scriptural" designation of ecclesia -- and not simply because it does not appear in the New Testament, save for in eschatological settings, but because the term "polis" especially conveyed a very specific meaning in the first century: a Greco-Roman city-state! In fact, the entire reason in which Paul does use the term in an eschatological setting, but not elsewhere, is to indicate the cosmic battle between the powers of the age (especially those powers that are wielded in "divine" form in the godly-ordained civitas) and the power/wisdom/weakness of God...that is to say, that any "polis" but the heavenly, eschatological "polis" are false, non-existent expressions of a grasping after sin, and thus passing away. So, the "exegesis" required is not simply one of where the term does and does not appear, but for what reasons. Simply because God has created a "people" demonstrates in no way that "church-as-polis" and "church-as-mission" are "kissing cousins." In fact, a Scriptural (especially New Testament) exegesis in my mind would demonstrate such to be a "false proposition," to use quite unscriptural language.

[James K.A. Smith]

Would you feel better if I said "church-as-civitas"? Again, I don't understand the lexical narrowness here about the connotations of polis. Clearly no one who speaks of the church as a "polis" means to suggest that it is a Greek city-state. So obviously the users of the term see more lexical elasticity to the word. I take it to be simply a short-hand way to say that the ecclesia is a _political_ entity--that the confession that Christ is Lord is a political statement about the shape of a people: a people with a distinct politics, etc. (See, e.g., N.T. Wright on "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Gospel.")

Am I right in hearing Nate claim that the church is a political entity? And if so, are we just disagreeing about whether it's proper for it to be called a polis? And if so, are we now wrangling about how much a word can be stretched? For instance, when the church is described as a "nation" in the New Testament, there is already a clear lexical stretching going on, and yet something is being said.

Or is it perhaps that I'm just not part of a generation of younger theologians who feel an imperative to show that they are NOT Hauerwas?

Maybe what I'm asking is this: at the end of the day, on the ground, does the Kerrish (?) church-as-mission look that much different from the Hauerwasian church-as-polis? If it does, I'm guessing that the former will be less Catholic, less tied to hierarchical structures and "centered" institutions--it will be "free church" I suppose. But in the book, it felt to me that this free church, "nonconcentric" exile was not sufficiently demonstrated. Or let me put that differently: I consistently and persistently felt a kind of anti-Catholic strain in the book (no Catholic interlocutors really--it's quite a Protestant book) which, to me, stems from Yoder's rather un-incarnational claims about the "independence" of Jesus. I was unpersuaded by this "objective" apocalyptic (for the same reasons I'm unpersuaded by Barth about revelation), and thus I was unpersuaded by the "exilic" ecclesiology that stems from it.

But do let me say again: I'm grateful that Nate's pressed me to think about these things, which is why I throw out these thoughts in the spirit of dialogue. I should say that I really came to the book trying to be open to the critique, and I think I read it in a fairly "open" manner (I have no stock in Hauerwas, Inc.). And at the end, I just didn't feel persuaded to drop my nets and follow Yoder. But the book did give me pause.

[Dan T.]

Perhaps Prof. Smith's reading of Augustine is less shaped by Augustine himself than by John Milbank's misreading in Theology and Social Theory. You will note that the imperative that provokes Augustine's reflections in City of God is that the the City of Man is in the church, meaning that the civitas dei is a decidedly eschatological reality for Augustine, too.

But it would be helpful with regard to such a conversation if Prof. Smith would engage Kerr's argument for why "church-as-polis" is the wrong way to think about the church as a political body. Simply suggesting that words are more "elastic" seems more like an evasion than an argument -- at least that's how it appears. I cannot seem to find any other reason he gives for why the argument is "unconvincing."

Incidentally, I thought it was quite obvious that Kerr's invocation of de Certeau in relation to Yoder was intended to disturb the decidedly Troeltschian trajectory in both thinkers, and in such a way that Derrida's religion without religion would merely repeat without qualification.

Responses like this clearly do not suggest that the problem lies with "a generation of younger theologians who feel an imperative to show that they are NOT Hauerwas."

[Dave Belcher]

Jamie,

First of all, I was responding only specifically to your claim that to say "polis" is a non-Scriptural locution is "exegetical primitivism," not to its (mis)use in Hauerwas, Milbank, et. al. Even so, I am certainly not convinced that Milbank in particular (upon whom Hauerwas is indeed indebted here) does not mean a Platonic polis (even if using the Latin translation of civitas -- and no, that is not helpful, in my mind). But, again, that was not my point.

Secondly, I just want to state categorically that I have no axe to grind with Hauerwas as such in my above comment, and if there is such a thing as a "generation of younger theologians who feel an imperative to show that they are NOT Hauerwas," I haven't encountered them. Nate's book clearly demonstrates that there are elements of Hauerwas's theology that are not only helpful, but integral to his own; it is simply obfuscation to suggest that he is only standing against Hauerwas in a dialectical manner (especially your tendentious claims that all that is going on here is "anti-Catholic" because of a lack of Catholic sources on the score of a distinctly Protestant genealogy...even as perfunctory claims, they're unwarranted in my mind).

I won't respond to the question about politics yet (mainly because I'm procrastinating on my own work right now!), but I would say that if "church-as-polis" is indebted to an understanding of politics rooted in a "covenantal nomism," or "New perspective on Paul" (viz., your reference to N.T. Wright), then I think this is being called into question in Nate's "apocalyptic" perspective...the constant references to Louis Martyn are an indication of that, I believe.

[Halden]

Hell of a discussion here, guys. Seriously.

[Eric]

is that 'seriously' serious? i can't tell!

[James K.A. Smith]

Er, I've struck a nerve when I didn't intend to. So please disregard my bit about a "younger generation"--I have encountered them, but I'm not on some sort of mission to categorize and tag, so I apologize for being unnecessarily glib on that point.

Just time for two other things:

1. To Dan T.: Did I mention Augustine somewhere here? I can't find the reference for the life of me. So I'm not sure to what you're referring. I certainly don't deny there's an eschatology at work in Augustine's account of the city of God. Further, I did try to articulate why I found the argument unconvincing: because I found the claim for a "proper" apocalyptic to be unconvincing. I take the church-as-mission ecclesiology to follow from that rendition of apocalyptic. But in all of this, please keep in mind I'm a philosopher and it's in such conversations of these that I'm sorely reminded of my ignorance on these matters.

2. To Dave B, a few things: (a) Point taken re: Hauerwas. (b) I didn't suggest that Nate is "only" standing against Hauerwas in a dialectical manner; (c) I didn't say that "all" that was going on here reduced to anti-Catholicism. Those little superlatives you inserted say something quite different than what I suggested. (d) I am certainly not suggesting that the church-as-polis is indebted to N.T. Wright. I only meant to indicate that quite disparate discourses that try to take seriously the church as a political entity employ "polis" language without being too concerned about it.

Finally, just to clarify: the only reason I'm curious about these issues is because it felt to me like, on the ground, Nate and Stanley might pursue very similar strategies of witness, which made me wonder whether we're not over-amplifying the differences. That's not to say there aren't differences, only that for someone like me, who isn't heavily invested in this particular conversation, it's hard to feel the difference.

[mshedden]

Before I begin I should note I am a theological hack. I don't have the skill or breath of reading most of the people who are commenting here. But there are two points that have bugged me that I feel like could be usefully considered for the sake of this discussion.
1) I think one of the critiques of Hauerwas' project is that because of its 'ad hoc' nature it can appear overtly sloppy (Stout has made this point). This problem becomes worese if you are trying to make into a coherent whole. Chris Huebner has shown how this is an offense to Yoder's project and I think it is to Hauerwas as well. So when you talk about theme of 'church as polis' it becomes important to critique all of the ways it has functioned for Hauerwas. I think Hauerwas can read at many points as referring to 'church as form of life' (via Wittgenstein, Burrell, Lindbeck). If the 'church as form of life' reading is sustainable throughout much of his work (and I think Brad Kellenburg has given a reading of how it is) you have to critique him on this basis as well. If 'church as polis' can mean this as well, I think we have to raise the question that a 'form of life' maybe exactly what the church needs to function in the kind of exile Yoder and Kerr are suggesting.
2) Doug Harink has given a good reading of how even For the Nation and Against the Nations aren't entirely seperate projects and can if you are willing be read as one whole perceptive rather than two fundamentally opposite ones. If this is the case (and I think it is especially if you forgive both writers for not attempting to be systematic) than I don't really understand driving a wedge between them. If they can be read as complimentary to each other a book that attempted this might be more helpful.

[Nate Kerr]

Jamie:

I have to be honest in saying that I do not know how to respond to your post in general, and especially in light of some of your comments re: exegetical primitivism, a "younger generation," etc. If I had known that my book was going to be put on review for not doing all of the things that my interlocutors would have rather seen done themselves, or for not giving a full-blown doctrine of this or that (creation, sin, etc.), I might have taken the time to write a magisterial tome and to then attach a minor dogmatics to it. But then again, I probably would have refused to do so, if simply for the fact that such would have done as much to get in the way of the simplicity, starkness, and critical severity of the theological questions I am raising in the text (many of which have been passed over in silence), as the banal reply "I am not convinced" does to evade them.

However, I will begin address once again the Hauerwasian question and the issue of the church-as-polis, given that much of your post turns on your dismissal of my critique of Hauerwas as a critique of a "caricature." Apparently, it must needs be pointed out that my critique of Hauerwas' ecclesiology is rooted in the Hauerwasian text itself; it flows out of a deep immersion in that text, and out of a deep concern to remain true to Hauerwas' insistence that our truest vocation as Christians is to witness to the truth of Christ's lordship. Insofar as this is the question I am concerned with in the book, as well as the question of apocalyptic as it so centrally bears upon the nature of that Lordship in the writings of Hauerwas, then my choice of the themes of narrative, and of the church-as-polis, as well as of his anti-liberalism are precisely a propos, for it is in relation to these points precisely that Hauerwas develops his apocalyptic understanding of Christ and of the church in mission. Mshedden is thus right to suggest that there are other themes at work in Hauerwas, but to make the case that I would need to treat of such themes (like the idea of a "form of life) my own critique of the ideas of church and polis to which Hauerwas hitches his understanding of apocalyptic, of Christ's lordship, and of the church's mission would have to be dealt with in light of the argument that I am making, and then it would have to be shown that this alternative theme (the idea "form of life") functions in Hauerwas to open onto a different articulation of apocalyptic, of Christ's singular historicity and his lordship, and of the mission of the church in the Hauerwasian text itself than he provides elsewhere. I do not see that alternative articulation at work in Hauerwas' deployment of this theme, and so that is largely why I needed not to treat it in depth for the purposes of the doctrinal themes I was dealing with in Hauerwas' oeuvre, and so could relegate his relation to someone like Lindbeck to the footnotes. I would not necessarily disagree in principle with Mshedden's point that the church's existence in exile that I am seeking to articulate requires a "form of life," and I have acknowledged as much in the last chapter (though not in those precise terms). And I do not doubt that that idea might open onto a different account of the the church-in-mission than we find articulated in Hauerwas' text as it now stands. But that account would itself be moving beyond Hauerwas. I think it would be an interesting way of thinking with and beyond Hauerwas as from within the Hauerwasian corpus (as I am largely trying to do with Yoder), and I think it is a project worth pursuing. I'd learn much from Mshedden were the way in which that theme supplements what I am seeking to do with the diasporic vision of church-as-mission to be articulated in more detail.

Now, to Jamie's lack of persuasion. To the point that Hauerwas explicitly makes clear that the church exists as an "ontological necessity if we are to know rightly that our world is capable of narrative construal," that is, for the world to be given a story that out-narrates its ontology of violence, and to the extent that this requires that the church's necessity be construed as constitutive of a "counter-ontology" (claims made in both Christian Existence Today and Wilderness Wanderings), it must indeed be admitted that there is clearly a certain "ontologization" of the church going on in Hauerwas' writings. To dismiss it and say that one is "not convinced" of this claim and not to take account of how it functions in Hauerwas' writings is not to prove that what I am offering is a "caricature" of Hauerwas. It rather suggests, I think, that you are probably placing all too much trust in a certain positive caricature of Hauerwas that you have gotten from other readers than the Hauerwas you might yourself encounter through a richer immersion in his text.

This point about the ontologization of the church-as-polis is what is central to my critique of the notion, as well as for its incongruity with the account of mission that I am seeking to articulate. It is clear that, on the basis of Hauerwas' account of the church-as-polis, ordered as it is by an ecclesiological appropriation of the notion of habitus, that the church's main concern must be with the sustaining and the profliferation of the church's own cultural space. Christian practice, and indeed Christian witness itself, thus takes the form of an ever-intensified internal focus, for the point is to habituate one into the type of character by which the church might be distinguished as a holy people (see "Worship, Evangelism, Ethics" in A Better Hope. This actually perpetuates a structurally Donatist mode of Christian witness(to refer back to the previous thread). The point here is that mission occurs as ancillary to and as a kind of by-product of the church's holy distinction from the world, to the point that the intra-cultural life of the church-as-polis exists as logically and ontologically prior to the external act of mission. As such, the church's own intra-cultural life thus itself becomes the focal point of mission itself. And so we have statements from Hauerwas to the extent that the church is "most relevant to society" when it is "intentionally self-regarding" (Vision and Virtue), 216), that mission is a "survival mechanism" for the church living in liberalism, and that mission is a mode of "extending" the story of the church in such a way that that story can be seen to "engulf the world." Thus, on Hauerwas' church-as-polis model, mission is an external extension of a prior, inwardly oriented ontological identity. Whereas for me mission "makes" the church as a kind of ongoing conversion to the other in Christ, for Hauerwas mission is about maintaining the "truthfulness" of the church's narrative, which occurs by way of being able to receive and "integrate" the other into its own story without fear or loss of identity (see Community of Character, 129-52). Wheras Hauerwas' ontological conceptualization of the church-as-polis leads him to an account of mission as a kind of "enculturation" of the other, an out-narrating that over-accepts the other into its given story, for me mission is about a church turned inside-out, a church that happens as it seeks the peace of the city in which it finds itself, that "is" in its seeking the transformation of that city's culture, its own conversion to the heavenly city to come, as Yoder puts it in his late writings on diaspora.

My assessment then of the association of the church-as-polis motif is that it perpetuates an illegitimate self-reflexive, "ecclesiocentric" account of mission. As the Dutch Reformed missiologist J.C. Hoekendijk put it, "Church-centric missionary thinking is bound to go astray, because it revolves around an illegitimate centre." As such, for Hoekendijk, the call to mission "is often little else than a call to restore 'Christendom,' the 'Corpus Christianum,' as a solid, well-integrated cultural complex, directed and dominated by the Church." For Hoekendijk, the movement of mission had been construed ecclesiocentrically as one of God-Church-World; he argued rather that it exists otherwise as a movement of God-World-Church. His point: Church happens at the point of the world's transformation and conversion to the coming Kingdom, and it is precisely in the ongoing eccentric movement of mission that the church lives as sign and sacrament of that Kingdom. There is, as I have noted already, a missionary understanding of sacrament that needs to be worked out at this point, and I am aware of that. But this should at least suffice to show the decisiveness of my reason for departing from the conceptualization of church-as-polis here, and how what I am suggesting cannot, whatever else it might be, its "kissing cousin."

Briefly, on the point of the church of the church as being called to be the polis of God even if there existed no alternatives. I don't doubt that Hauerwas would say this, and that he doesn't want his account of church-as-polis to exist parasitically. But my point is that to insist upon the ontologization of the church-as-polis here below, you are forced into an account of "the political" that unwittingly grants validity to the false political ontologizations of violence that are liberalism, Constantinianism, etc. This was my point about Schmitt, and about how the church-as-polis replicates the friend-enemy distinction and maps it onto the church-world distinction. This is to misunderstand the apocalyptic nature of the coming new Jerusalem as a subversion, dissolution, and new creation of the polities of this world. To identify the church with that coming polis is to place the church in such a position to bear the burden of such dissolution and new creation, to place the point of apocalyptic action in the church itself. It is not that the church does not exist independently of the political powers and principalities of this world; the church is called to exist independently of and so subversive of these powers by way of its participation in the singular historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. But by incorporating Jesus' identity into the existence of the church-as-polis, and so as making the church itself coextensive with that polis to come, Hauerwas ensures that his church cannot exist independently, as such. By definition, within the apocalyptic framework he himself deploys, the church must now itself do the work of invading the powers of the enslaved cosmos and of liberating the world from them into itself as (what will be) the new creation. The church is not now the sign of our real liberation from those powers as accomplished in Christ, but the agent of this accomplishment. I cannot see this as anything other than entailing at least some equivocation on the fact that the victory of the powers is precisely what has been accomplished by God's singuarly decisive act of God in Christ's cross and resurrection (and here a chastening of Hauerwas with Barth is important).

Finally, a couple of personal notes, if you will. First, I find it somewhat disingenuous of you to say that you are "not heavily invested in this conversation" when you yourself have written and published something of an apologia for the church-as-polis motif as proposing the way forward for thinking about evangelical ecclesiology today. Are you really suggesting that on the heels of such a publication that you're only a philospher and that you are out of your league here and not particularly invested in this conversation, qua theological? Surely we can be more honest than that -- or some one or another disavowal would be in order here: either of your published position as a respected theological authority, or of your supposed "non-investment" in the issues at stake.

And secondly, as regards the "younger generation" comment. I am quite happy to take on the "punk" label (though you didn't put it in those terms, I like it better, and I think gets at the intent), if in the true sense of "punk," viz., as calling for a more authentic theology in an age of pop-religion where most of what passes for theology is mere theological journalism, to such an extent that the actual doing of theology is hardly recognizable anymore (as, for example, the manner in which the actual making of rock music was hardly recognizable anymore when Johnny Rotten came along). I am pretty sure I am not self-consciously concerned to distinguish myself from Hauerwas. But I am pretty sure that I am self-consciously concerned to do theology with a critical urgency that I think is demanded of within time and climate in which the real work of theology (doctrine, dogmatics) is hardly recognizable anymore.

[James K.A. Smith]

Nate,

I'm sorry you don't feel like you can respond. I have to tell you: I was just throwing out some comments and questions that I would have done if we were able to shoot the shit over a beer--and I feel like that's been reciprocated with some pretty brusque commentary (not just from you, Nate). Perhaps that's from a complete lack of awareness about how things are taken. But the fact is, Nate, that I think it's a great book. I think I said as much, and then said: so, let's think about some things. I'm not trying to "call" you on anything, I'm not trying to defend any turf, I'm not trying to referee between different parties, I'm not trying to "pin" you on anything. I was just saying, in the form of a blog post, "Hey, here's some thoughts that came to mind when I read this book."

And the fact is, I took the time to read it cover to cover, when--like all of us--I have lots of other commitments. I did that because I knew that it was an important book. And because this isn't a scholarly forum, and because I just can't devote that much time to this, I simply offered my "experience" in reading the book, threw out some questions/reactions, and am glad to hear your replies and listen in on the conversation. If I've missed the boat, fine. No big surprise: I just don't know Yoder or Hauerwas the way you do. So I'm open to being taught on this score. And I read the book at swim meets for my kids, on the bus, and on a train ride to Chicago.

I apologize if that's not taking it seriously enough. It's not at the center of my work, and yet I wanted to read the book. You know I think you're one of the sharpest theologians of your generation.

As for my "investment": you're right, I have published on, and am sympathetic to a church-as-polis model. I suspect from my misunderstandings that what I meant by that might actually be different than what Hauerwas means. So when I say that I wasn't convinced, I'm just giving a sort of testimony: on a quick read, when I got to the end of the book, my world hadn't been rocked. (Unlike, say, when I finished Stout's _Democracy and Tradition_.) But perhaps if I have a chance to read it more slowly and carefully, that will change.

But I also am not beholden to what I published 4 or 5 years ago, I hope. In any case, I continue to affirm the substance of that, but I certainly wouldn't say I'm proposing this as a way forward for "evangelical ecclesiology." I don't think there's any such thing as an evangelical ecclesiology.

In any case, I hope you'll think I'm honest when I say I don't put any stock in my having a "published position as a respected theological authority." And that's not just false humility. I'm a hack who, at the end of the day, is just trying to muddle through in order to help the church be faithful. I think I've got a few years of that left in me, and then I'm retreating into poetry and short fiction. But I'd actually be the first to concede that I'm not a "scholar's scholar"--you probably have the cajones for that. I don't. That's not a punt: I'm still willing to argue for positions, etc. But I honestly still feel very much like a student with respect to just about everything. That's not because I don't feel any investment or commitment to the church--quite the opposite: I'm just trying to figure out how to be a servant of the church in this respect.

As for the "younger generation" comment; I've retracted it. I have experienced--particularly in the blogosphere--that Hauerwas can become something of a whipping boy, which I just find unhelpful. I didn't mean to suggest that you were doing that in your book. I see that you take Hauerwas seriously.

In short, I'm sorry that my off-the-cuff remarks seem to have affected our friendship, which would have been my last desire. Taking your book seriously was meant to be an expression of that friendship.

[Halden]

Jamie, if I may chime in here, I feel like this last response to Nate is utterly unhelpful, and at points sounds quite condescending and patronizing. Assuring someone that you know they are "one of the sharpest theologians of your generation" while throwing down anecdotal comments about how you are really just an average Joe who spends all your time at your children's sporting events isn't helpful, or to my mind even true. Have read and appreciated your published books to date, I think any attempt to duck under Nate's substantive response on the claim that you are not a "scholar's scholar" is a pretty unfair dodge. At best.

I also feel like your third to last paragraph is quite unfair in what it implies about Nate. You pass yourself off as someone who is "ust trying to figure out how to be a servant of the church" in contrast to Nate who you bill as some hightower academic. I don't want to presume to speak for Nate overmuch here, but I do feel compelled to say that to the best of my knowledge, everyone who has commented here is "just trying to muddle through in order to help the church be faithful." To attach that status to yourself and attempt to contrast that with something else that Nate is purportedly up to is uncharitable to say the least. Certainly Nate's book does not answer all question about the mission and shape of the church, but to frame the issues in the way you have is simply a rhetorical injustice. We are all trying to help the church be faithful, I know for a fact that that is at the heart of Nate's work.

So lets be a little more real here. We all care about the church. We all still feel like stufents. We all have families, real lives, commutes, and none of us are academic rock stars nor should we want to be be. Given that, I think the real order of buisiness is to let the dialogue really happen. Nate's last response to you was rich in content, particularly in filling out his objections to Hauerwas. I'm not saying that you are obligated to answer him point-by-point on this, since this conversation is, as you say, off the cuff. However, finding out what difference this makes "on the ground" will best be served by actual discussion of such relevant points. And it is positively disserved by the kind of posturing that is present in your last post.

[Halden]

Apologies about the typos there, chaps. Also, in regard to my first comment, I wasn't being facetious, I do think there is good potential in this conversation. I hope it doesn't go sideways any further.

[Nate Kerr]

Jamie:

Let me begin by saying, if I may, as I did with John Wright and Steve Long previously, that I take this whole conversation to be rooted in and flowing out of a certain kind of friendship, one of trust in our shared concern for real theological faithfulness. I do not consider that friendship to be affected by your remarks and I do indeed take your engagement of my book as an expression of that friendship. I trust that you will understand that and also understand that I was not writing out of a sense of having that friendship affected or threatened; nor did I intend to threaten or affect it from my end. To the extent that our friendship is rooted in the charity that makes us brothers and sisters in Christ, that friendship for me is assured in Christ. I would be more concerned about offending you as a brother; and to the extent I've done that, I apologize. Neither your post nor your comments offended me; certain dimensions of them did, however, confuse and frustrate me, especially your comments about dealing with a caricature of Hauerwas and about exegetical naivate. Those kinds of comments always confuse me when they are made and not elaborated upon, not because I think that I am not being taken seriously when they are made, but because I find them much of the time to be a way of evading the serious challenge of actual points made. That is what I meant in saying that I did not quite know how to respond to some aspects of your post, especially in light of certain subsequent comments. "I'm not convinced” tends to be a converstaion stopper. And I'd rather think that, especially when one's critique of someone is so deeply rooted in an immersion in and sympathy with a thinker's text like my critique of Hauerwas is, the burden would be to show how such criticisms actually do not hold, or how we might think our way through them. I think Matt Shedden's (I now know his name -- hi, Matt) comments are suggestive and could perhaps be followed up on in this regard, as a way of responding to my critique; and I'd be grateful to see him follow through on some of his line of thought in light of what I said further about my reading of Hauerwas in my previous comment.

With that, I'd like to suggest that the conversation move forward in relation to the substantive points I made in my previous comment, as well as in relation to the substantive points that have been made by other commenters. I will attempt as the conversation goes forward to deal with your substantive questions as much as I am able (and I invite commenters to assist me in doing so), as I have tried to begin to do above in relation to your question about why church-as-polis shortcircuits the way I want to think church-as-mission, as well as in your relation to the question of why I do not think that the church can be conceived as a "polis" in-itself as such in a way that does not involve it in a certain oppositional understanding of the political, to very deleterious theological effects. Despite my difficulty in knowing exactly how to respond to some aspects of your posts and comments, I have tried very hard and labored for some hours to try to begin to address just a few of the many questions you put to me in your post; and I will continue to try to respond to as many of them as possible as I am able and as the conversation unfolds.

Jamie, I did not mean to imply that you did not or were not taking my book "seriously." I am grateful for your “giving the time” to engage my work (and I say that out of the very real conviction that not one of us actually have “time to give,” but that we nevertheless are given it to receive, and so must and can only “give” it), and I genuinely am appreciative to you for your probing questions. And I could not be more grateful for (as well as more humbled by) the many contributors to this symposium. I have learned and am learning much. I don't presume to know whether or not my book "deserves" such attention; but in the face of such attention I don't know what else to do as a theologian except to give myself to that conversation with abandon, with all of the energy I can muster, at every turn and in relation to every word that is said. Not because I have to, or because I am necessarily capable of it, but because that is the only way I know how to be faithful to my vocation as a theologian as servant of the church, the very vocation out of which this book emerged and which I trust drives these conversations. I take it to be an expression of an equally genuine desire for theological faithfulness on behalf of my readers that the book is being received and engaged as it is (including by yourself). Whatever else our conversations are about and whatever other turns they may take, if it doesn't always return to that shared struggle for faithfulness, with all the grittiness and tireless laboring and anxiety that requires, involves, and induces, then I honestly would not know what we're doing.

[Doug Harink]

A couple of thoughts that, I hope, take the conversation back to the issues. I am just coming off of a long engagement with 1 Peter. Peter presents us with the briefest dogmatic ecclesiology I have encountered when, in 1:1, he addresses his letter to "the elect, to the exiles of the diaspora." I think these three designations certainly root the church in the identity of Israel; in so doing they speak of the being, holiness and mission of the church. None of these terms is complete without the other two, but I think it is important that Peter puts "elect" (eklektos) first. The church has its being in God's election, and just so it is among the nations as both holy and sent. There, it seems to me, you have the core emphases of Barth, Hauerwas and Yoder respectively. Further, in 1:2 Peter further shows how each of these three terms indicates a participation in the Trinity: "chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ."

I think we might also say that the household code in 2:13 -- 3:7, is the explicit outworking of that ecclesiology as dispossession.

In other words, I think Peter in good measure says what Nate is saying -- or rather, vice versa...

Nevertheless, in 2:4-10, Peter also brings other terms into his ecclesiology: oikos, genos, hierateuma, ethnos, laos (sorry, I don't know how to italicize in a blog). To be sure, Peter does not precisely speak of the church as polis, but do these terms not amount to something like that? In other words, does Peter not in some sense "ontologize" the church here, i.e., indicate something more than the church as what sheerly "happens" in the event of its missional encounter with the world? So I think Jamie is also onto something, if we take this aspect of Peter's ecclesiology into account.

What is the apocalyptic status of the worldly enduringness of the church? That is the question that Nate's book leaves me with -- a real question, by the way, arising from my own apocalypticized theology, and one for which I do not have any really good answer.

Perhaps as a marginally related question: If I am walking down the street of my city and a stranger asks, Is there a church around here? and I say, Yes, right over there on the corner of First and Main, am I simply lying, theologically speaking?

[Nate Kerr]

Doug:

This is a helpful post. And I am going to be very brief, as I'm quite tired right now and if I don't be brief I'll ramble.

But, I do not want to deny that the church "has" being as such. It is a question rather of how the church "has" its being. As a "spiritual house" that exists for and by way of the offering of "spiritual sacrifices" (1 Peter 2:5), I would say that the church "has" its being in unhanding it to (or in beind unhanded by) the apocalyptic action of God. The church "is" as such, "has" its being in this mode of unhanding, in a manner that exceeds ontological capture. That is to say, the church "is," but precisely in such a way that its being is not constitutive of an "ontology." It is that move, of the church's being as consitutive of a (counter-)ontology that I am resisting, for a whole host of reasons, not least of which for the way in which it forces our conceptualization of church into a vicious dialectic of being and act.

[James K.A. Smith]

Halden,

I'm getting pretty tired of being called dishonest, disingenuous and "unreal" by commenters here. And like Dave B., you insert these little words into what I said (e.g, "all") that completely transforms the meaning.

I agree that this conversation needs to get back to the substance of Nate's book, but let me just clarify a couple of things to you first:

1) Why must you assume I'm being dishonest and untrue here? Look, this isn't some facade or pity party. The fact is, I am quite an unabashed generalist. I simply don't know Hauerwas and Yoder the way Nate does. So as the conversation gets into technicalities, I simply don't have the know of the relevant corpuses (corpi) to answer, which is why I'm eager to listen in to others who do. I suppose this means that I shouldn't have agreed to blog on the book. Duly noted. I have found that generalists very quickly get themselves in over their head.

2) How the hell would you know what is "true" about my life? So let's be "real" here, Halden: what do you think my life looks like? I wasn't claiming to be a regular Joe, and I didn't say I spend "all" my time at children's sporting events. But what does this look like? Maybe this could be a helpful, holistic reminder, since all of us could narrate something similar: I have 4 children, including two high schoolers; I have a day job teaching philosophy that takes up quite a bit of time; I have a research program in philosophical theology; I have a writing program doing some "popular" stuff; I serve on committees and national boards; I like to find time to read the New Yorker and NYRB; I like to enjoy wine with my wife and friends; I have commitments at church; I have to travel to speaking engagements, etc., etc.. The upshot? Nate's book on Yoder & Hauerwas lies outside the center of those obligations, but I wanted to read it. The blogosphere ranks very low on my commitments, but I wanted to honor Nate's work by contributing here. So the fact is, in addition to not having expertise in Yoder and Hauerwas, I also don't have time to now make this the center of my attention (and have already violated that). Unfortunately, that looks like not being able to engage the "substantive" issues. I fear that's true. Also duly noted for the future. I've learned alot from this exchange.

This, of course, is more fodder for you to think me dishonest, inauthentic, etc. C'est la vie.

But that's my last digression in this respect. Nate and I shall hopefully correspond privately about some of these dynamics. But it's my hope, with Nate, that this space can return to "the issues." The book certainly deserves that from those who can give it. I shall happily listen in (and perhaps contribute) as I'm able.

[Halden]

Jamie, my apologies for being unclear. It was not my intent to say that you were being dishonest about your life or something like that. Rather my point was that what I felt was innacuraate or untrue was the way you counterposed your own self-description with who you seem to think Nate is and what his work represents. I was certainly not trying to claim that I "know" what your life is all about, only trying to respond to you on the basis of the rather lengthy description of yourself and your habits you gave above which clearly implied that you, in contrast to Nate, are "just trying to figure out how to be a servant of the church." I felt that the way you were framing the issue was unfair. I am, however, sorry if the superlatives I seem to have dropped were out of line, that wasn't intentional.

[steve long]

I hesitate to write on blogs because I cannot affect tone -- can't smile, shrug, etc. Better to have these conversations over beers, which many of us on this blog have enjoyed together. But I venture forth again because I think it important for me to understand the next generation of theologians, which I am not. I am invested in the critiques of Stanley, not only because he is my mentor and friend, but because his work made mine and that of many of my friends possible. Gerald Schlabach suggested that Hauerwas's project can best be defined as "making Catholics more Anabaptist. Anabaptists more Catholic. And no one Protestant." I find that vision compelling, even though I've only served, worshipped and worked in liberal Protestant churches. This vision entails a church that is visible, institutionally identifiable as a trans-national reality. Nate's book seems to call that into question and this is the reason, I think, for some of the 'angst' it creates among us (at least for me.) Here I need some help.
1. Is this true?
2. Is this what is meant by 'ontologization'?
3. What is the understanding of ontology and metaphysics in this apocalyptic event of the church? Are they always negative, attempts to totalize and colonize?
4. What is 'ideology'?

Having only worked in liberal Protestant churches, perhaps you might understand that claims like "there is no in or out" and what seems to be a lack of concrete specificity with the church cause me to see a continuation or emergence with that tradition. So here are another set of questions that will help me understand the above 4.

1. Does the Church as apocalyptic event have any stake in disciplining its members on questions of sexuality, abortion, fetal tissue experimentation, unjust practices of war (at least), participation in torture, racism, sexism, etc? Should there be means to do this?
2. Does it recognize the need for a common confession such that anyone who could not confess the Nicene Creed should not be baptized?
3. Would it acknowledge the necessity of the relation between baptism (and thus a commitment to a life of discipleship) and the Eucharist?
4. Would it acknowledge that the transnational or catholic church should have an identifiable common life -- creeds, worship, practices, liturgical time, even structure?
5. Does it require us to work toward these ends?

Blessed Lent,
Steve Long

[Joshua Davis]

This has been the most consistent critique of Nate's work that I have encountered, and I have seriously never understood it.

It seems to me that preoccupation with the kinds of questions asked by Steve Long represent an anxiety over an "absent" church that Nate simply doesn't share. His is not a church that needs to be "conceived" in order to be present and active. And this is the entire reason that an ecclesiology is not essential to the argument of the book.

Why does it not strike people as odd to suggest that without such conceptualization Nate doesn't "have" a church. Isn't this more your problem than his? Isn't this the force of the point about ideology? What is so provocative about this?

[Doug Harink]

I'll just chime in here to say that Steve Long has asked precisely the questions I think I would like to ask about where Nate's book goes ecclesiologically. I tried to ask similar questions, but in a much more obscure manner, in my posts on chapter 5. I think my reflections on 1 Peter, however, lead fairly directly into Steve's questions.

[Halden]

Josh, I think that perhaps a little more grace is due to people that have these kind of questions. As one who instinctively agrees with pretty much everything that Nate is up to, and is also deeply committed to intentional eccleisal life and practice, I don't think these questions are simply anxiety or hand-wringing. Such concerns are birthed out of a real situation (often in the context of the liberal protestant church) in which the church is very much a defunct and languishing reality, both in terms of discipleship/formation and mission. That state of affairs is seen as something needing to be addressed theologically and there are questions about how Nate's book, given its oeuvre, addresses these things. I don't regard this as illegitimate or mere angst, and given that Nate's own next project seeks to take up precisely these questions indicates to me that he doesn't regard them as unimportant either.

To that end, I think I'm going to try, for my own part to take up Steve's questions on my own blog, simply for the sake of not inundating this thread of comments with my own thoughts.

[Joshua Davis]

Halden,

There is a very real sense in which you comment rather proves the point. It seems to me that a claim like this is integral to the critique of ideology. When the question of how the church engages its mission in this context is raised, it seems to me that Nate can, as he will, respond quite concretely.

However, the assumption that he does not "have" a concrete church strikes me as decidedly not his problem. Perhaps the question to ask him, then, would be whether he takes the situtation of the church seriously enough -- that maybe he is too optimistic.

[Halden]

Well, in fairness to Steve and Doug above, I don't see them saying that they don't think Nate "has" a concrete church. What I see them asking for is an explication of how the apocalyptic framework that Nate deploys speaks to concrete issues that churches are facing in this context. I agree that I think Nate is able to respond concretely to these things, my only point is that the kind of questions Steve is asking above simply cannot be avoided, and any theological trope that we deploy hermeneutically, the way Nate does with apocalyptic out to be able to address those things.

In other words, the question is really pretty simple, it is simply, how does this form of apocalyptic historicism speak to concrete issues of discipleship in the context of the life of the church? Perhaps there is the kind of angst you describe in some of these responses, but I don't detect that in the latest comments by Steve and Doug. Rather their questions seem like honest questions that folks dedicated to the ecclesial practice of Christianity have to be asking.

[Doug Harink]

I would be inclined to make some distinction (though not separation) between an ecclesiology in the larger sense, and the politics of mission. But it seems to me that Nate (and Josh) would consider that distinction illegitimate, insofar as they would absorb ecclesiology fully into the politics of mission, which is the obverse of the Hauerwasian move (as Nate describes it). That is indeed the reason why Nate doesn't need to "conceive" an ecclesiology apart from a politics of mission -- he "has" a church in that sense; I understand that. But I am reluctant to make this choice between Hauerwas and Yoder, and I don't think NT apocalyptic requires it. Jesus comes to Israel -- what is this thing that Jesus comes to? Even in its unfaithfulness it is "there" in some sense. Paul writes to the church in this or that place -- what is this thing that Paul writes to? Even in its manifest failure of witness it is there in some sense. It seems that there is in fact some distinction being assumed here between the being and the act of Israel and church.

At the same time, to be sure, the work of the Gospel -- the politics of mission -- is to dissolve that distinction in the reign of God. But I think the distinction is worth dwelling on, perhaps as the relation between providence and apocalyptic. Nate rightly rejects liberal Protestantism's absorption of apocalyptic into the doctrine of a progressive divine providence (Schleiermacher, quintessentially, but does it already begin with Calvin? -- cf. Gerrish's reading). But does apocalyptic eradicate all accounts of providence, for example, as God's patience? Do we find Israel and the church, as well as the nations, also as the objects of God's patience, a patience sustained within the greater and more original apocalypsis Theou in Jesus Christ?

[Doug Harink]

And, yes, Josh, this is my problem. And of course Nate doesn't have to solve it for me. I'm just saying that these are questions Nate's book presses upon me. It is a problem for me, in the sense that I need to wrestle with it, only because I am so fundamentally in tune with the apocalyptic theology that Nate sets forth. Nate has boldly gone where I thought I should go, and left me with some worries about going there.

[mshedden]

Hey Nate,
Thanks for reading my comment. It appears at this point the conversation has shifted elsewhere, so I don't want overload you with thoughts to respond too. I unfortunately have not been able to purchase your book yet (so many books so little money) and since I am still getting acquainted with your primary sources I am very much over my head. I was hoping by raising the points someone smarter than me (like James, Doug, Steve, or Halden) would take it further.
The problem at hand I think exists because you came at Hauerwas attempting a reading that I don't think the Hauerwas text was meant to undergo. But what I think exists as his overall project, helping provide a form of life for the church that enables those within to understand what it means to live with this God (or as he said he is "teaching language") is one that would be a strong benefit to Yoder's reading of a church in exile. One that I think is complimentary. Another person who has used this project remarkably well is James Smith (although without using the term exile), but I'll let him speak for himself.
From what I have gathered from reading about your book here, on Ben Myers blog, and other forums is that you point to a different kind of ecclesiology than Hauerwas. However, I think if your project moves past this phase towards building a vision of how this church is to live following this God, the resources that a different reading of Hauerwas would give you might be beneficial. You maybe right in suggesting that it might be a move past his project, but I think it is one that doesn't require much of a leap.

[Nate Kerr]

There are so many good questions here, and questions that I really do think have their place and importance. And I want to address them as fully as possible in this context as much as this forum allows for it. For now, I must beg your patience, as I have a project that is already well over-due and that I am afraid I must commit this evening and tomorrow to finishing. I just do not want you to take my silence as an ignoring or an evasion of Steve's and Doug's questions especially. I think I can address Doug's question about apocalyptic and providence more directly in this forum, and I promise to do that as soon as I get some time freed up. Steve's question is more difficult, because my response will be more nuanced and will come at more of an angle to things.

Let me say this: the reason I don't do "ecclesiology," and probably never will as such, is that I think the ecclesiological task is a determinedly modern one that is reactionary in the face of a supposed loss of the church in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. That is, as Robert Jenson puts it, "Ecclesiology became a direct object of theological concern when the threat appeared that the communal presupposition of theology might not be in place." For me, however (and this is the point I think Josh was gesturing towards), that communal presupposition has never been in question; it is the guarantee of our participation in Christ by which he promises never to be present in history without his church (and here's where I'd address the apocalyptic-providence question). The point for me is how we live out that ecclesial communion that is given and promised in Christ. The problem of ecclesiology arises, however, when that "communal presupposition" comes to be something that needs institutional security.

I do and will theologize about the church, however. And for me, to theologize about the church is to do something other than to find ways of securing and demonstrating its comprehensive meaningfulness for its member's lives. I think that to theologize about the church is to preserve a certain "edge of conflict" (to use Rowan Williams' phrase) between the ideology of institutional confidence and its institutional commitment to that which cuts across and shatters all systems of religious meanings and all ontologizing attempts at accounting for the whole in terms of the church's own "being." So, Steve, for me the question is not whether or not the church does all the things you mention, but rather how we do them. The question for me is whether or not we can do these things genuinely in the posture of what Bonhoeffer calls "prayer and righteous action," not for the sake of the church's "self-preservation," but for the sake of so speaking the word of Christ's reconciliation that the world will be changed by it, even if this transformation means to risk losing our instruments of institutional security for the sake of receiving them again as genuinely signs and sacraments of God's coming Kingdom. For me, all these practices you are talking about are not institutionally secured; they commit us to what one might call an "institutional in-security" -- but it is still nevertheless an institutional insecurity.

It is for this reason that I will not admit a disjunction of being and act, of ecclesia and mission, of institution and witness, precisely because whenever this occurs, it appears to me that the separation cannot but be a way of acting in such a way as to secure a prior, given being.

Now, as regards the question of what this ecclesiology of dsipossession looks like, which is a question Halden has raised, I welcome the conversation. It is important to me. I'll briefly say, however, what I said to Halden in a separate email. In short, I would say it looks like a certain kind of "church of the poor," but significantly worked out in relation to a missionary conception of the sacraments. For me, dogmatically and theologically, the latter will have to precede the former in the working out; or the former will have to proceed as the concrete working out of the latter. (And I am actively engaged in working out these questions.)

Let me end by recalling Georges Florovsky's insistence that "the church is always the indispensible foundation of the whole dogmatic structure." But for Florovsky, this is because "the church is more a reality that one lives than an object that one analyzes."

The reason I'm reticent directly to address the question of "what does this look like?" is because I think it cannot be separated from the question, "how do we live this?" And I think the separation is often for the sake of securing in answers to the former question as a way of evading the force of the latter. Many people have asked me, for example, upon reading my book, "What does this look like?" Very few, if any, have asked me: "How do we live this?"

[Joshua Davis]

Re: "I would be inclined to make some distinction (though not separation) between an ecclesiology in the larger sense, and the politics of mission. But it seems to me that Nate (and Josh) would consider that distinction illegitimate, insofar as they would absorb ecclesiology fully into the politics of mission, which is the obverse of the Hauerwasian move (as Nate describes it)."

I will not speak to Nate's way of conceiving this, but this is not how I think of the matter -- and this may be coloring how I read Nate. So I can only speak here to the nature of my comments above.

My point was not that there can be no distinction between ecclesiology and the politics of mission, only that ecclesiology does not nor can it mediate ecclesial identity -- Jesus does. This seems to me to be a baseline for the beginning of all sacramental theologies, especially baptism. This does not suggest to me that there is nothing constant or perduring about that identity, only that it is not conceivable prior to or apart from that act, that deed of fidelity to that charge. I do not understand this to place a ban on abstraction, either; I think it simply means that ecclesiology cannot supply a "principle" of identity to be deployed. For reasons I wish I could, but just can't get into in this forum, I judge this way of thinking to be tantamount to a denial of just such identity.

This is the substance of my probing above. All kinds of reflection upon the nature of the church are possible from that space.

[Doug Harink]

Where my questions differ from Steve's is that I have generally been asking about the church in its unfaithfulness and ungodliness, in fact precisely in its innumerable attempts, against the call to dispossess, to establish and secure and perpetuate itself in so many ways. I am certainly not arguing for an ecclesiology which is predicated upon, fosters, or seeks to perpetuate such a church. I am simply asking whether it is in any sense theologically legitimate, on Nate's terms, to look at such a thing and say, There (in some sense) is the church. Now, taking Josh's point that only Jesus Christ mediates ecclesial identity (which I agree with), perhaps we could look at such a thing and call it the church only insofar as we recognize it as the body of the ungodly, justified through the cross of Christ, and even sustained as such in order that it might by the Spirit be recreated as a true witness. That, of course, is no justification whatsoever for its continuing ungodliness. God forbid.

[mshedden]

Nate,
How do we live this?
Matt

[Nate Kerr]

Matt:

Thank you for the question (I knew someone would ask that as soon as I posted it!). Let me say a few things that are as liable to raise more questions as to settle them, I'm sure.

As I was early on in the writing process of the book, I was reading Ralph Ellison's novel The Invisible Man (I have Hauerwas to thank for teaching me the importance of reading novels!), when I came across this question by the narrator: "Can politics ever be an expression of love?" That question haunted me throughout the writing of my book, and by the time I came to completing chapters five and six, I had decided that that was perhaps not the question I was to be about. Perhaps it is rather about how love, as charity or agape, might find expression as a "challenge" to "the political" or "politics" as such, as the positive sign and sacrament of the coming Kingdom of God. Ellison's question for me, as a Christian theologian, became: "How is love at all a matter of politics?" How can we genuinely live indepedent of the powers and principalities as sign and sacrament of a new order to come. And that "how," I decided, had to be the "how" of God's own agape, the charity which is alone made possible in Christ. To be made to love in this way is to be made to participate in God's own self-giving agape in Christ by which God is bound to the other as other for the sake of that other's own conversion to participation in that love. "Church" happens as the gathering of those whose lives, by God's grace, have been and are being broken open and apart and unhanded to the other, to be received anew as a people gifted by and to one another (by each and to each qua other) in love -- in Christ. That "unhanding" is faith. And that "grace" is justification. So, dogmatically, for me, the "how" is our participation in the perfect agape of God that occurs as we justified/rectified to one another in and by the faith of Jesus Christ. The "how" is really the kenotic unhanding of ourselves to participation in the love of God that is our faith in Jesus Christ. The "how" is our faithfully kenotic outgoing of love for the other that is our participation in the missionary being of God in Christ. It is the how of God's agape; which happens from our side as a how of Christian charity. (And so you can see, how, for me, the "how" and the "what" are inseparable, unthinkable apart from one another.)

Thus, it is from out of the context of this "how" that I think we can ask the questiof "What does this look like?" But in focusing on the question of "how" I am wanting to situate the question of "what this looks like" within the context of the Kierkegaardian context of directness/indirectness -- the point being that if this how really is a matter of faith, and of the faith that works through love, then this "how" cannot be directly communicated as such. The question, "what does this look like?", is precisely the question that last chapter is meant to evoke -- and not to avoid. What I wanted most intently to articulate with my idea of the liturgy of mission and the missionary church is the refusal of yet another theoretical prescription for what the church should be, but the compulsion to an act or event that, as I put it in the preface, "cannot but occur outside the writing and reading of a text -- outside of and beyond the two covers of a book." I really do mean it when I say with Yoder at the end of the book that "the only to see how this will work will be to see how it will work." The position I found myself in after having written the book I wrote was to resist the temptation to prescribe for the church a new (yet another?!) "ecclesiology" as such; that for me is risking a false concreteness, one which is idealist and is the truly docetic and ephemeral. The best I could hope for in concluding my book was to compel one to the missionary decision, to the risk involved in learning what it means, in forgetfulness of oneself, to be bound to Christ in kenotic, self-giving love for the other. There is no lack of concreteness here, for me. It is a matter rather of the only genuine concreteness that I believe there is, the concreteness of an act, which, insofar as the mission by which church is made is the apocalyptic mission of God in Christ, is an act of God, whereby the church-in-mission is given as our mode of participation in that act. In that sense, the visibile identity of the church need not be something we are anxious about securing, or propogating, or producing, for the church is truly given, to be received anew as the sign and sacrament of God's coming new creation. We can thus act freely and in faith according to the agape love by which we are bound together as the body of Christ in the world because we trust the promise of God that the Christ in mission has elected to be in mission "not without" the visible, concrete happening of this body, the visible, concrete happening of this love -- that is, "not without" the Spirit.

So in emphasizing the question of the "how" ,and of directness and indirectness, I am not here wishing eschew the description of genuine practices by which the church is said to happen as mission. What I would want to do, however, is to think of these as practices of kenosis. In some sense, insofar as I understand Christ's kenosis as bound up with who he is as apostolos, then I think we must think the apostolic church as a kenotic church. Here I find Donald MacKinnon's Gore lecture on "Kenosis and Establishment" in The Stripping of the Altars to be very helpful. What I want to avoid is the temptation to think that practices are given to us as a means of securing an already given reality, the temptation to think that in and through them we are somehow "getting things right" -- or, "getting the story straight," as Hauerwas might put it. Practices of kenosis are instead practices of being "unhanded" to an ever-new mode of receptivity. The point I want to make here then in placing the question of the "what" within the "how" (and I'd have to work this out more fully) is that what we describe are practices which do not directly "give" us the church in and of themselves as such, but are those practices by which we are given to receive who we are as the people of God everanew in the missionary movement and encounter. It is in these terms that I am wanting to concur with those who are asking the question of "what does this look like": I do believe that we can have an account of practices through whose description we witness to the truth of church as event. But I want to be very careful that our description of these practices does not abstract from the concreteness of the act by which God in Christ constitutes the church. Such description would again involve us in "misplacing" the concreteness of the church (I find Nicholas Healy's critique of the new "practice" ecclesiologies of the likes of Hutter and Hauerwas helpful here).

Take, for example, the practice of Eucharist. It is not that I think we should or could ever "do away" with the practice of Eucharist. I think that is the wrong way to think about it. It is rather the case that we cannot do away with the eucharist. For the eucharist is neither some thing that we "do" as such, nor is it a possession that we might "do away with." Eucharist is rather the happening, the event, an "apocalyptic ricochet" of the divine act by which occurs the sacramental gathering of those whose lives are are given over to one another as other as the sign and sacrament of that Kingdom table fellowship that is precisely the good news at the apocalyptic heart of the gospel (I am thinking Galatians here). Eucharist happens as the celebration of the fact that in Christ God's Kingdom has broken in as precisely the liberation from those powers which hold back the freedom whereby in Christ we are given to be for active love of the other. Where "the Eucharistic rite" becomes a means of delimiting and producing conditions, apart from or supplemental to faith in Jesus Christ, according to which participation in this table fellowship is defined and secured, and not rather a sign of its happening, then it is itself one of those powers that must be named as the refusal of that agape of which Christ himself is the sacrament of sacraments -- the refusal of justification/rectification, of faith, and of charity itself (and I am thinking of Augustine here, vis-a-vis the Donatists). I suppose that what I am saying is that in the Eucharist understood rightly as the event that it is, we have precisely the coming together of the "what" and the "how" -- the impossibility of their dichotomization. Eucharistic table fellowship is the fact -- the what -- of the reality that we have died to the need to secure an identity which is "our own" by the reception our identities through Christ in whom we now live in the mode of self-giving to one another in love. And this, at the same time, is the how of Eucharistic table fellowship: faith in Jesus Christ working through love. In fact, the reality of this "how" is the only basis at all for eucharistic table fellowship; it is the very reality of our participation in Christ's self giving love (the res) of which the eucharist is the sign and sacrament (signum).

Or, as Kierkegaard says somewhere (and I paraphrase from memory -- I can't remember whether it is in one of his Communion discourses or in his journals): "The point of communion is this: Upon leaving the altar, not to have left the altar."