Over at Homebrewed Theolgoy last week there was a post on this report by the Heritage Foundation, which questions the Federal definition of poverty, because poverty should be limited to those who can't provide at all for the necessities of life for themselves and their families. Warren Buffett also wrote a piece last week calling for more taxes for himself and the wealthiest Americans. Today on NPR there was this discussion on Welfare 15 years after Clinton signed into law a major overhaul of the welfare system. And also today Harvey Golub has a rebutal to Warren Buffett's piece saying he pays plenty in taxes thank you very much.
There are a flurry of claims and counter claims here. There are statistics, some very disturbing like the amount of wealth held be smaller and smaller percentage of Americans, and yet Harvey Golub claims he still pays 80% to 90% of his income to some form of taxation.
There are I competing assumptions and presuppositions hidden in all of this. On the one hand there are those that simply assume that it is the role of Government to provide for and take care of the poor, ie the Nation as a whole through the operations of the State. There is the assumption that money I earn is mine and most if not all of it should be at my disposal to do with it as I see fit or desire. Taxation itself flies in the face of this, but one can of course argue that an entity like a nation and a government creates the stability necessary to be able to live and work without being robbed and ensuring agreed upon standards of business and law etc. So one pays through taxation into this stability that allows one to earn money. A government could care about the poor and provide for them to further ensure said stability. By this view though there may be reason to limit aid to poor, if it is seen that this aid keeps people who should be in the workforce from entering it. This was one reason given for the Clinton Welfare Reform. But what about when there isn't a robust economy and there are fewer jobs than there are people who want to work? But should everyone be in the workforce? and might the Government have an interest in supporting people who are doing work that doesn't earn them the money they need to live on? But why should those who are working and/or in positions to earn vasts amounts of wealth through taxes and the State support those whose life work does not earn them a living? Or more to the point should this form of support come from other segments of society than the State?
Unfortunately our discussion on these issues tends to either be Statist (or State collectivist in some fashion) or individualist and opportunist. Also, these discussion divide the world up between Employers (the wealthy) and the employed (everybody else). We seem to be unable to conceive making a living that doesn't involve either making money off other people or receiving a paycheck from those who are making money through being employed. Granted that is what we are dealing with largely, but few in my experience find this situation ultimately fulfilling.
This is rambling, because I'm attempting to get at something that is obscured. There is a tendency among Christians both liberal and conservative when talking to the Middle Classes in comparison to the rest of the world that they are incredibly wealthy (granted liberals and conservatives say this to elicit differing responses, for liberals it is to drum up support for the State taking care of the poor, and for conservatives it is to drum up donations to help alleviate poverty). But (and this was my own reaction to the Heritage Foundation report) when someone suggests that maybe most poor in this country are in comparison to those who can't provide for the necessities of life quite well off, it is offensive. Eugene Cho today is talking about downward mobility and simplicity. He has a point, but if he can ask and continually ask what is needed to live in our context as a pastor and someone of the Middle Class (?), why is it wrong to ask about at what point should the government step in and provide aid to people?
And yet I can't help but think that when you ask "Well if their poor, why to they or their children have X." this is asked from a place of privilege and out of a resentment based upon an assumption that the poor are poor because its their own fault. People are wealthy not on the backs of others but because of their hard work. But what if this isn't either or. What if both are actually true? And what if hard work isn't always rewarded and what if welfare does at times reward irresponsibility?
I also wonder if as much effort and energy went into attempting to reform the current system and funnel peoples greed into altruistic paths through the bureaucracy of the State went into people seeking to create alternative ways of being and living if we'd find that we don't need solutions to poverty just alternative ways of living.
Or to put it another way: I'm not convinced any longer that biblical and eccelsial teaching on care for the poor is about getting any particular state to so care for the poor. Rather it is the people of God, those gathered out of the nations who are to be a light to the nations, showing forth an alternative to the ways of the world and the realms humans continually create in their own image. Just a thought as we rightly wrestle with wealth, poverty and the role of government.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Bonhoeffer a Man for Our Times?
Here I want to pick up an undeveloped thought in my previous post. Bethge's subtitle of his Bonhoeffer biography has been rolling around in my head "Theologian Christian Man for his time". It is the last phrase "man for his time" which is in contrast as it seems we wish Bonhoeffer to be a man for our time. Yet what if Bonhoeffer in some sense can only be at play in our midst if he is never ours, never easily and simply for us and our time. What if we are perhas people of his time? We perhaps belong more to Bonhoeffer than Bonhoeffer will ever belong to us. I doubt he will ever serve our purposes: mainline, academic, evangelical, fundamentalist, post-Christian, post-modern, post-Christendom. If we allow Bethge's presentation of Bonhoeffer as someone given up to his time it may free us to an encounter with Bonhoeffer that allows him to be at play in our midst, and will never possessed by any of us. Can we allow Bonhoeffer to be other and still speak to us, who ever we ar? Can we be lead to Christ through Bonhoeffer's witness as a man for his time. Will we allow Bonhoeffer the place of the continually unsettling saint, who shows us an undomesticated God.
Bethge's subtitle summarizes his own sense of a progression and thread in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life. First he was a theologian, who as he developed as a theologian also became a Christian. The theologian and Christian then become a man for his time, which lead to his (early) death at the hands of the Nazis. While Bethge sees a progression, it isn't that the early Bonhoeffer the theologian wasn't a Christian or a man for his time, but as things progressed in his life he was lead upon a certain intensifying trajectory, that lead (rightly) to a flouring of things that were only in bud at an earlier period of his life. In some sense one may say that Bonhoeffer's life was one of continual conversion, where he continually sought to take up the cross of Christ anew. In a sense it is this Christocentric and cruciform understanding of the theologian Bonhoeffer that made him a Christian, and this way of being a Christian, one who answered the call to come and die, lead him to be a man for his times and his death.
Another way of saying all this is to say that Bonhoeffer was a man for his time, because he was taken up into Christ, because Bonhoeffer surrendered himself wholly up to Christ. He was a man for his time because Dietrich Bonhoeffer the theologian and Christian took up his cross and followed Christ where Christ lead. Where Christ lead was into conspiracy, prison, and execution.
This is the challenge of Bonhoeffer for us: he followed Christ and simply(not unthinkingly) and radically calls us to that same discipleship. This means though that Bonhoeffer stands apart from us and our time. Bonhoeffer's witness is then to open us up to the cruciform nature of our existence before God so that we may be people of our times, in this same radical way of taking up of the Cross and following Jesus Christ.
We who might lament the fragments of his letters and papers from prison, the unformed thoughts and theologies - "religionless Christianity"- are then called to see his life as offering which give us a whole and complete Bonhoeffer, meaning that on their own his last words are meaningless. There is only Bonhoeffer who did not survive the Nazis. There is no Theologian after for us. In that sense Bonhoeffer can not speak to us who are wishing and seeking to be freed of our agony by some solution that will save our petty Christianities, our precious fragmented identities we unthinkingly call Christians and label "church". Bonhoeffer will always be other than what we feel we need. Bonhoeffer will never speak life into our tightly held human identities we wrap in spiritual language of self-justification. He wont even breath life into our lifeless theologies and piety. He can only stand outside all our fragments and agony's that as often as not have little if anything to do with the suffering of Christ, and call us to the only identity that matters for the world. Bonhoeffer stands as one who allowed Christ to be all in all, that he could give his all to his time, and proclaim, as one who wholly belonged to Christ, Christ to the world.
Bonhoeffer can't offer us any answers to our troubled times, except in the offering of his life to Christ for the World. This is the silent proclamation of the one who is for others, Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we in the same way we will take up the Cross and follow Christ, and struggle and suffer as Christ Suffered. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we are for our times by being taken up into Christ. For in the end Bonhoeffer was a man for his times because he gave himself over to Christ and the Cross as being for others.
Bethge's subtitle summarizes his own sense of a progression and thread in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life. First he was a theologian, who as he developed as a theologian also became a Christian. The theologian and Christian then become a man for his time, which lead to his (early) death at the hands of the Nazis. While Bethge sees a progression, it isn't that the early Bonhoeffer the theologian wasn't a Christian or a man for his time, but as things progressed in his life he was lead upon a certain intensifying trajectory, that lead (rightly) to a flouring of things that were only in bud at an earlier period of his life. In some sense one may say that Bonhoeffer's life was one of continual conversion, where he continually sought to take up the cross of Christ anew. In a sense it is this Christocentric and cruciform understanding of the theologian Bonhoeffer that made him a Christian, and this way of being a Christian, one who answered the call to come and die, lead him to be a man for his times and his death.
Another way of saying all this is to say that Bonhoeffer was a man for his time, because he was taken up into Christ, because Bonhoeffer surrendered himself wholly up to Christ. He was a man for his time because Dietrich Bonhoeffer the theologian and Christian took up his cross and followed Christ where Christ lead. Where Christ lead was into conspiracy, prison, and execution.
This is the challenge of Bonhoeffer for us: he followed Christ and simply(not unthinkingly) and radically calls us to that same discipleship. This means though that Bonhoeffer stands apart from us and our time. Bonhoeffer's witness is then to open us up to the cruciform nature of our existence before God so that we may be people of our times, in this same radical way of taking up of the Cross and following Jesus Christ.
We who might lament the fragments of his letters and papers from prison, the unformed thoughts and theologies - "religionless Christianity"- are then called to see his life as offering which give us a whole and complete Bonhoeffer, meaning that on their own his last words are meaningless. There is only Bonhoeffer who did not survive the Nazis. There is no Theologian after for us. In that sense Bonhoeffer can not speak to us who are wishing and seeking to be freed of our agony by some solution that will save our petty Christianities, our precious fragmented identities we unthinkingly call Christians and label "church". Bonhoeffer will always be other than what we feel we need. Bonhoeffer will never speak life into our tightly held human identities we wrap in spiritual language of self-justification. He wont even breath life into our lifeless theologies and piety. He can only stand outside all our fragments and agony's that as often as not have little if anything to do with the suffering of Christ, and call us to the only identity that matters for the world. Bonhoeffer stands as one who allowed Christ to be all in all, that he could give his all to his time, and proclaim, as one who wholly belonged to Christ, Christ to the world.
Bonhoeffer can't offer us any answers to our troubled times, except in the offering of his life to Christ for the World. This is the silent proclamation of the one who is for others, Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we in the same way we will take up the Cross and follow Christ, and struggle and suffer as Christ Suffered. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we are for our times by being taken up into Christ. For in the end Bonhoeffer was a man for his times because he gave himself over to Christ and the Cross as being for others.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Bonhoeffer: Two Biographies of the orthodox saint of "Religionless Christian"
I finnished, at long last, this week Eberhard Bethge's biography of Bonhoeffer, Deitrich Bonhoeffer a Biography: Theologian Christian Man for his Times. As I have said elsewhere I had read portions of Bethge's biography of Bonhoeffer, but not all the way through. Bethge of course came up when I posted on having read Metaxis' biography of Bonhoeffer. Some suggested I just should have read Bethge and been done with it. Yet. critics I read seemed to indicate that Metaxis was too close to Bethge's presentation of Bonhoeffer while also saying Metaxis brought Bonhoeffer too close to American Evangelicalism and the Religious Right. It is true to say that Metaxis' audience was the American Evangelical. Metaxis presents a Bonhoeffer who can be received (again) by Evangelicals. Yet, Bethge is also writing his biography so that Bonhoeffer maybe received into a certain fold(or folds): that of the theological academy and the German Evangelical Church. Bethge's and Metaxis' presentation are close to each other because each are apologists for Bonhoeffer for their times and groups, and they diverge from each other because of the differences between their times and groups into which they wish Bonhoeffer to be received.
Bethge on several occasions mentions how Bonhoeffer has been ignored by the theologians and theological academy of his time. Much of the volume (and this contributes to its voluminousness) is taken up in presenting and defending Bonhoeffer as an academic, a theologian and critical thinker on par with the giants of his time. Bethge defends Bonhoeffer's thought and theological work. First and foremost then we are to see Bonhoeffer as a a Theologian who could have had he chosen and had he not lived in Nazi Germany followed an illustrious academic career. The problem is that one of the reasons Bethge must mount this defense is that Bonhoeffer himself seems to have been unconcerned with his theological reputation. He was pursuing something else, and in part we may not know exactly what that was since that pursuit led him into a particular confrontation with the Nazis, and thus ultimately his death at their hands.
However, Bethge is not solely concerned with Bonhoeffer's reputation as a theologian among the academic theologians, but also Bonhoeffer's reputation among Christians particularly those in the German Evangelical Church. Here there are several sticking points: His role in the Church Struggle, his role in the assassination plot(s) against Hitler, and his fragmented thoughts on "Religionless Christianity" presented in some of his letters from prison. Here Bethge presents Bonhoeffer in terms of great integrity and willingness to sacrifice and undergo suffering for the truth and in order to preserve the church's authentic witness to Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer's harsh criticism's of those in the German Evangelical Church who did not side with the Confessing Church or who left the Confessing Church at certain points in the struggle, are softened by this presentation of Bonhoeffer's intense commitment to Jesus Christ, and the demands of following Christ truly. This is done in part by showing the consistency between Bonhoeffer's stance in the Church struggle and his already widely received Discipleship (Cost of Discipleship).
More challenging is Bonhoeffer's participation in the political conspiracy to remove Hitler by assassination, and "Religionless Christianity". Bethge though points to the continuities between Bonhoeffer's fragments in Prison and his previous writings and actions. The main thread of this continuity is for Bethge Bonhoeffer's Christology and ecclesiology. "Religionless Christianity" is the means by which the church witnesses to Christ in a world come of age. Also, Bethge limits the definition of "religion" for Bonhoeffer in such away that "religion" is not synonymous with theism, but is a sort of distorted theism.
Metaxis had similar concerns, but he is also attempting to rescue Bonhoeffer from certain uses among certain segments of the academy and theologies, like "death of God". He also, wants to present Bonhoeffer as someone with whom Evangelicals can relate. Metaxis suggests the strong possibility of some form of conversion for Bonhoeffer during his first time in New York as a student when he spent "nearly every Sunday" at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem church (Bethge pg 150). Even Bethge marks this as a point of transition though Bethge has a more extend period of Bonhoeffer's becoming a Christian. Metaxis veiw and bias is partly supported by Bonhoeffers own actual disapointment with the preaching he found and Riverside Church, and his having chosen to spend most of his Sundays while in New York at the Abysinian church.
Some Critics have said that this above interpretation and that Metaxis follows Bethge so closely is a weakness in that we encounter nothing new in Metaxis' work. Which is perhaps true to a degree but Metaxis style and desire to present a consistent person of faith who was killed for his faith, means that we actually have an account that follows the lead of Bishop Bell's own sermon at the memorial service for Bonhoeffer, namely giving us a Bonhoeffer who is a martyr and a saint. For me the value in Metaxis' biography is that it is an hagigrphy, or a martyrion. Metaxis, more consistently than Bethge, presents us with Bonhoeffer as a man of faith whose faith lead him to die for Christ and that faith is expressed in part in the act of political resistance. Thus it also rescues martyrdom and sainthood from needing to be purely apolitcal. Metaxis biography shows how martyrdom and the life of faith must be grounded in the world and even politics while also transcending them, and thus transfiguring said actions into witness to Christ. In that sense showing us how "religionless Christianity" is a filling out of the sufferings of Christ.
Bethge on several occasions mentions how Bonhoeffer has been ignored by the theologians and theological academy of his time. Much of the volume (and this contributes to its voluminousness) is taken up in presenting and defending Bonhoeffer as an academic, a theologian and critical thinker on par with the giants of his time. Bethge defends Bonhoeffer's thought and theological work. First and foremost then we are to see Bonhoeffer as a a Theologian who could have had he chosen and had he not lived in Nazi Germany followed an illustrious academic career. The problem is that one of the reasons Bethge must mount this defense is that Bonhoeffer himself seems to have been unconcerned with his theological reputation. He was pursuing something else, and in part we may not know exactly what that was since that pursuit led him into a particular confrontation with the Nazis, and thus ultimately his death at their hands.
However, Bethge is not solely concerned with Bonhoeffer's reputation as a theologian among the academic theologians, but also Bonhoeffer's reputation among Christians particularly those in the German Evangelical Church. Here there are several sticking points: His role in the Church Struggle, his role in the assassination plot(s) against Hitler, and his fragmented thoughts on "Religionless Christianity" presented in some of his letters from prison. Here Bethge presents Bonhoeffer in terms of great integrity and willingness to sacrifice and undergo suffering for the truth and in order to preserve the church's authentic witness to Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer's harsh criticism's of those in the German Evangelical Church who did not side with the Confessing Church or who left the Confessing Church at certain points in the struggle, are softened by this presentation of Bonhoeffer's intense commitment to Jesus Christ, and the demands of following Christ truly. This is done in part by showing the consistency between Bonhoeffer's stance in the Church struggle and his already widely received Discipleship (Cost of Discipleship).
More challenging is Bonhoeffer's participation in the political conspiracy to remove Hitler by assassination, and "Religionless Christianity". Bethge though points to the continuities between Bonhoeffer's fragments in Prison and his previous writings and actions. The main thread of this continuity is for Bethge Bonhoeffer's Christology and ecclesiology. "Religionless Christianity" is the means by which the church witnesses to Christ in a world come of age. Also, Bethge limits the definition of "religion" for Bonhoeffer in such away that "religion" is not synonymous with theism, but is a sort of distorted theism.
Metaxis had similar concerns, but he is also attempting to rescue Bonhoeffer from certain uses among certain segments of the academy and theologies, like "death of God". He also, wants to present Bonhoeffer as someone with whom Evangelicals can relate. Metaxis suggests the strong possibility of some form of conversion for Bonhoeffer during his first time in New York as a student when he spent "nearly every Sunday" at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem church (Bethge pg 150). Even Bethge marks this as a point of transition though Bethge has a more extend period of Bonhoeffer's becoming a Christian. Metaxis veiw and bias is partly supported by Bonhoeffers own actual disapointment with the preaching he found and Riverside Church, and his having chosen to spend most of his Sundays while in New York at the Abysinian church.
Some Critics have said that this above interpretation and that Metaxis follows Bethge so closely is a weakness in that we encounter nothing new in Metaxis' work. Which is perhaps true to a degree but Metaxis style and desire to present a consistent person of faith who was killed for his faith, means that we actually have an account that follows the lead of Bishop Bell's own sermon at the memorial service for Bonhoeffer, namely giving us a Bonhoeffer who is a martyr and a saint. For me the value in Metaxis' biography is that it is an hagigrphy, or a martyrion. Metaxis, more consistently than Bethge, presents us with Bonhoeffer as a man of faith whose faith lead him to die for Christ and that faith is expressed in part in the act of political resistance. Thus it also rescues martyrdom and sainthood from needing to be purely apolitcal. Metaxis biography shows how martyrdom and the life of faith must be grounded in the world and even politics while also transcending them, and thus transfiguring said actions into witness to Christ. In that sense showing us how "religionless Christianity" is a filling out of the sufferings of Christ.
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