Well, if you thought that I was extreme on this issue; you might want to ask Robert Hart about where he sees the inclusive language agenda taking the Church - and then duck! He points to pantheism as the ultimate destination of feminist theology and he explains just exactly why feminine images of God were rejected by Scripture and what the implications are of embracing them today despite the Scriptural witness. He discusses the New Revised Standard Version in a post entitled "God the Father." He writes:
"I have commented about The New Revised Standard Version of the "Bible" (NRSV) quite critically in previous essays: "In fact the first mistake is in combining the first two verses of Genesis into one sentence, making it seem as if the world may have existed before God’s creation [as follows:] 'In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form…' The Hebrew simply does not justify this 'translation.' The first two sentences are not joined in the original. The older 'And, the earth was without form and void...' is literally correct, and it cannot be used to suggest Pantheism." If I erred at all when writing this, it may be in using the word "mistake."
. . .
Nonetheless, just because the trendy renderings are wrong does not mean they are a mistake. I think it more likely that an agenda has been behind this, something quite deliberate.
. . .
It has never been enough for promoters of "Feminist Theology" to take Inclusive Language only as far as human beings are concerned (which is itself unnecessary and confusing at best). In ways subtle, or at times not subtle, the agenda has been to replace God the Father with a goddess (about which I written before). To teach Creatio Exnihilo, "creation out of nothing," is to teach that God made everything by his Word, that He willed everything that is not God, every nature that is not Divine Nature, into existence, being alone Uncreated and eternal. This is God the Father, by His Word and by His Spirit making all things and giving them life. Against this revelation of Scripture, Feminist Theology teaches a universe equally eternal with God, indeed a universe that is God, in which life comes forth. In many parts of scripture where the active word "made" is found ("without him was not anything made that was made"-John 1:3), newer versions say something passive, such as "came into being." If instead of God the Father we have a Mother Goddess, a universe that is itself one with Divinity, such passive language takes the ideology of Inclusive Language to that ultimate realm of Godhead. Even regeneration is no longer the work of a Father who has begotten His children, so that "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth," (James 1:18) is made passive: He "brought us forth." God the Father becomes a fossil, and a new Mother Goddess, a pagan deity, takes over.
This may be new to western people with a Christian background. But, it is very ancient and has precedents that are rooted in Pagan cultures as diverse as the worshipers of the Ashtaroth and of Kali. To one infant sacrifice was offered, and the other consumes and destroys with demonic violence. Whereas genuine motherhood, as God created it, is about life and even nourishment and care, this demonic sort of Mother Goddess worship has always been about destruction. There is no logic to this, but history proves it to be a kind of demonic theme. Our culture, at the same time in which God the Father has been rejected in favor of increasing tendencies towards Pantheism and a Mother Goddess, has become very much, as Pope John Paul II phrased it, the Culture of Death."
Read the rest here.
No one can prove that each and every feminist or feminist-sympathizing theologian has this long term agenda consciously in mind and no one needs to try. This is not conspiracy theory; it is something rather more pedestrian. This is a case of small, seemingly insignificant errors compounding until the foundations are shaking and no one seems to know exactly where it all went wrong.
The confused and dazed conservatives in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church fit into this category. How did we get from being sympathetic to a movement for equal rights for women to normalizing homosexual activity and de-gendering God? Fr. Hart's point is not necessarily that anyone consciously willed this outcome; it is simply that one thing leads to another. Which is why we are exhorted in Scripture:
"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Col. 2:8)
"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not plut up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep you head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." (II Tim. 4:2-5)
"What you have heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you - guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." (II Tim. 1:13-14)
Showing posts with label Robert Hart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Hart. Show all posts
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Doctrine of the Atonement: False Choices
Fr. Robert Hart (brother of David Bentley Hart) writes an incisive and clear article on the atonement that contains a historical perspective that is a relief after reading much of the contemporary literature on the doctrine of the atonement with its hand-wringing fear of offending post-modern sensibilities. As usual my comments are inserted into the text in [bold and brackets].
__________________
"The following are offered as statement of undeniable fact. [I love a theologian who occasionally passes on the overly common false modesty evident in the guild today in order actually to assert the truth with conviction!]
1. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was the kippor (atonement) typified by the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, as foretold most clearly in the Suffering Servant passage (Isaiah 52:13-53:12), and by his title Lamb of God. [In the comments, Hart responds to a critic by saying that he ought to have used the term "propitiation" and did not mean to imply that he did not hold it by not using the term here. So, yes, Hart means what he writes here seriously.]
2. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was forensic, because God's Law is perfect justice. Therefore, our salvation required a sacrificial victim (as it proved to be, the self-offering from love). [Justice and love are rightly held together here.]
3. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was a ransom to free those held hostage to sin and death.
4. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was the victory, as Christus Victor; and that it is one act with his resurrection.
In modern times, theological writers have set points 1 and 2 against points 3 and 4. [This is an unfortunate move, but a common one. It is an attempt in most cases to explain salvation without explicitly affirming our moral guilt due to sin, which is highly offensive to late modern Western man.] In this scenario points 1 and 2 are attributed to St. Anselm and considered to be uniquely western, whereas points 3 and 4 are considered to be uniquely eastern. [This east versus west thing has gotten entirely out of hand and Hart is going to counter it effectively.] Furthermore, in this modern scenario that reinvents history, Anselm is believed to have written that God was infuriated with us until Jesus pacified the Father's rage. In even worse misrepresentations of Anselm, God is said to have taken pleasure, in the modern sense of the word, from his Son's crucifixion. Of course, these last two ideas are expressed with most certain conviction by those who, apparently, do not know Anselm from Popeye the Sailor Man. [Well said! There is altogether too much equivocating on this point even by those who do or ought to know better.] His writing very clearly sets forth the Atonement as the will of the whole Trinity (for God had one will), and therefore Christ's self-offering as the manifestation of the love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost (as St. Paul taught, Rom.5:8). The images of God the Father as a raging tyrant pacified or pleased (in the modern sense of the word) by his Son's agonies, has never been western theology at all, and was never taught by Anselm. [Right; it is about time someone defended the Western theological tradition, especially St. Anselm, against the calumnies being hurled against it even in publications by Evangelical publishing companies.] Use of Biblical language that is metaphorical, such as "wrath," does not change this fact.
Having read the Bible over and over since I was 14 (and I am now, in 2009, 51), and having studied for well over three decades the teaching of the Church, east and west from Antiquity forward, it is obvious to me that all four points are true, and that the people who insist that we must choose between either 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, suffer from deficiency of logic or from blind spots in their knowledge of the Bible. [I would only add that the blind spots in some cases appear self-induced as part of a campaign to discredit the whole Christian doctrine of the atonement in stages. Normally, one ought to adhere to the rule "Never attribute to malice aforethought what can more simply be explained by stupidity" (a form of Occam's Razor usually applied to university administration). However, in some cases, heretics sieze on #1 and #2 and appear outraged by them in order to sink the whole ship. Never trust anyone who denies #1 to faithful to #4 for long.]
________________
Final Comments:
Fr. Hart is to be commended for a fine article. I have only quoted part of it and you can read the rest here.
__________________
"The following are offered as statement of undeniable fact. [I love a theologian who occasionally passes on the overly common false modesty evident in the guild today in order actually to assert the truth with conviction!]
1. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was the kippor (atonement) typified by the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, as foretold most clearly in the Suffering Servant passage (Isaiah 52:13-53:12), and by his title Lamb of God. [In the comments, Hart responds to a critic by saying that he ought to have used the term "propitiation" and did not mean to imply that he did not hold it by not using the term here. So, yes, Hart means what he writes here seriously.]
2. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was forensic, because God's Law is perfect justice. Therefore, our salvation required a sacrificial victim (as it proved to be, the self-offering from love). [Justice and love are rightly held together here.]
3. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was a ransom to free those held hostage to sin and death.
4. The Church has always taught and known from Scripture that Christ's offering of himself was the victory, as Christus Victor; and that it is one act with his resurrection.
In modern times, theological writers have set points 1 and 2 against points 3 and 4. [This is an unfortunate move, but a common one. It is an attempt in most cases to explain salvation without explicitly affirming our moral guilt due to sin, which is highly offensive to late modern Western man.] In this scenario points 1 and 2 are attributed to St. Anselm and considered to be uniquely western, whereas points 3 and 4 are considered to be uniquely eastern. [This east versus west thing has gotten entirely out of hand and Hart is going to counter it effectively.] Furthermore, in this modern scenario that reinvents history, Anselm is believed to have written that God was infuriated with us until Jesus pacified the Father's rage. In even worse misrepresentations of Anselm, God is said to have taken pleasure, in the modern sense of the word, from his Son's crucifixion. Of course, these last two ideas are expressed with most certain conviction by those who, apparently, do not know Anselm from Popeye the Sailor Man. [Well said! There is altogether too much equivocating on this point even by those who do or ought to know better.] His writing very clearly sets forth the Atonement as the will of the whole Trinity (for God had one will), and therefore Christ's self-offering as the manifestation of the love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost (as St. Paul taught, Rom.5:8). The images of God the Father as a raging tyrant pacified or pleased (in the modern sense of the word) by his Son's agonies, has never been western theology at all, and was never taught by Anselm. [Right; it is about time someone defended the Western theological tradition, especially St. Anselm, against the calumnies being hurled against it even in publications by Evangelical publishing companies.] Use of Biblical language that is metaphorical, such as "wrath," does not change this fact.
Having read the Bible over and over since I was 14 (and I am now, in 2009, 51), and having studied for well over three decades the teaching of the Church, east and west from Antiquity forward, it is obvious to me that all four points are true, and that the people who insist that we must choose between either 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, suffer from deficiency of logic or from blind spots in their knowledge of the Bible. [I would only add that the blind spots in some cases appear self-induced as part of a campaign to discredit the whole Christian doctrine of the atonement in stages. Normally, one ought to adhere to the rule "Never attribute to malice aforethought what can more simply be explained by stupidity" (a form of Occam's Razor usually applied to university administration). However, in some cases, heretics sieze on #1 and #2 and appear outraged by them in order to sink the whole ship. Never trust anyone who denies #1 to faithful to #4 for long.]
________________
Final Comments:
Fr. Hart is to be commended for a fine article. I have only quoted part of it and you can read the rest here.
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