Sub Ratione Dei

The Divine Farce, Or, On Not Finding God in Holes ** Contains Spoilers **

Michael S A Graziano, The Divine Farce, Leapfrog Press, 2009.

It is I think telling that Graziano's The Divine Farce features within its pages a multitude, and quite possibly an infinitude of bodies that eat, drink, and copulate with Sage (the novel's narrator) there are only three actual characters and even here the name's are Sage's own inventions.

I don't generally "get" fiction, this book being the first novel I have read in at least a year. In spite of this I did find this short book (only 125 pages) immensely compelling. Of the reviews I have read most seem to read this book as an allegory the human condition, and I am sure they're right. However, and I suspect this interpretation is a consequence of my own neuroses, I could not help but find in the text an allegory of the humanity's metaphysical search, it's search for the grand arche that, once discovered, makes the seemingly complex clear. While notions of deity are only implied the reference to the divine in the title seems to point in this direction. But before interpreting the text let me introduce it.

The novel opens with three people ensconced in a concrete cell, not enough room to stand or sit but instead three tangled bodies lumped together for time immemorial and, quite possibly, for eternity. A prison, with no knowledge of what preceded the incarceration, a living hell for no discernible reason. The only sustenance being a pear nectar that ran down the cell walls. Existence, to the extent that there was any existence, was hopeless - the narrator, Sage, opines:

We should have been grateful for the nectar, but it didn't succeed in mollifying us. We stamped, we shouted, we pounded on the walls. Of course we did. We felt sick with panic. We shook with rage. We sobbed. But none of it helped. If I hit the wall, slamming it with the soft part of my palm, lunging at it with my shoulder, I accomplished nothing more than a wet slapping sound, a dull ache, and a bruise that I could feel afterward for a while. None of us could hear any indication of a hollow space behind the wall. its solidity was so absolute that I lost the ability to imagine emptiness outside the microcosm. In my mind the the universe was filled up infinitely with concrete, and at its center was one tiny bubble in which our randomly assorted souls had been entombed (p. 9-10).

What is interesting about the text is that for all the anger and futility quite soon anger turns to resignation, and even contentment and the developing "mutual harmony" of the cramped conditions. And this is where, in my own neurosis God enters the fray. The mutual harmony is shattered when the previously impenetrable cell is revealed to be penetrable after all and in a cruel twist just as Sage is resigned to an eternity of horrid but not quite unbearable existence locked together with his two companions the wall begins to slowly show signs of degradation. At first this was just a gritty residue on the tongue after drinking the pear nectar that dripped down the walls but with the possibility that the hitherto impenetrable cell is in fact vulnerable Sage is left with an existential dilemma. The possibility of escape therefore becomes both intriguing, hopeful and terrifying. What the hole in the wall however indubitably showed that sooner "or later, the entire surface was going to wear away around [them]. [They] were evidently not in eternal stasis" (26). Despite protestations from his companions and the inherent terror of entering the unknown the hole "had to" be developed and the wall torn down so as to see what, if anything, lay beyond it.

It is here that I felt such empathy with the Sage character, for it seems an analog of my own feelings regarding religion/God. Life, however constricted and shitty, would seem so much more amenable without the "God Hypothesis", and yet I must still engage theology. It is both a matter of reluctance and compulsion.

And so Sage digs his way out of his heaven/hell (Graziano maintains a real ambivalence throughout the text). However, on escaping one prison even though he does with his fellow detainees Sage falls to a far more expansive prison. Even though he had been cramped, unable to cramp or stand, the cavernous expanse prefigures a more severe confinement as soon the "mutual harmony" of the three co-prisoners is shattered as Sage overcome by the need to explore becomes detached and although surrounded by a multitude of bodies there is no mutual interaction on a 'real' level - even sex is impersonal.

And yet the desire to question, to seek what lies beyond continues and Sage spots another hole high in the Cave's ceiling, another window into what could but probably won't be a portal to a better future. In this way the story continues. The metaphysical search continues but it would be easier to cease, and yet Sage continues to move beyond the result is a yet deeper level of hell/heaven.

In this way the novel reminds me of Camus' interpretation of the Myth of Sisyphus although inverted, there is always a search for an arche, it will never be found, we know it will never be found, the search for it is itself regressive but nevertheless the search must go on. To refuse is suicide. 

Highly recommended, it is definitely among the most thought provoking texts I have read this year.

Putting the Problem Back into the Problem of Evil

Review of Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Cornell University Press, (1999). ISBN: 0801486866.  REPOST

This book has been sitting on my to read list for over a year and I am still not sure what motivated me to pick it up when I did. Although a Priest in the Episcopalian church and, at the time of publication Professor of Historical Theology at Yale (she has since moved to Oxford where she is Regius Professor of Divinity) Adams is best known as a philosopher within the analytic tradition. That is normally enough, particularly with my more recent continental leanings, for occasion disinterest. Coupled with this the fact that the title itself is less than appealing and that the language and argument is quite complex and difficult to follw in parts I read this with some trepidation.All of the above goes to show, to quote a cliche, that one should not judge a book by its cover. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God is an superb book, particularly in terms of how the book's argument is constructed. J L Mackie's argument in his 1955 essay "Evil and Omnipotence" is taken by Adams to be the work that set the agenda for five decades of philosophical reflection on problem of evil. Briefly stated Mackie put the problem the following way: (traditional) theism posits that God, is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. However, in addition to the first proposition it is also the case that evil exists. These two statements are, according to Mackie, inconsistent to the point that it is the case that to hold both together is evidence against the reasonable belief in God. In short, the problem of evil makes theistic belief irrational. Adams begins by retracing (analytic) philosophy's attempts to respond to this argument. The second problem, "evil exists" is not generally challenged (although I guess Augustine's idea of evil as the privation of God rather than a separate entity does tip its hat in this direction) Some argument's, such as those of Rolt [in 1913, hence before Mackie's paper] and Hartshorne in their own way question Mackie's first premiss: the idea of omniscience and especially omnipotence (see Hartshorne's Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes), evil is in some sense a force that God is impotent against because s/he cannot prevent this. However, the majority of responses to Mackie's problem of evil do not agree with both of his propositions; where they differ is in the conclusion that the two are incompatible with each other. Adams offers a brief summary of each of the main trajectories of responses by Christian philosophers to Mackie's problem including the Free-will theodicy of Plantinga and the soul-making (Ireneaen) theodicy of John Hick. In and of itself this brief survey of Christian approaches to the problem of evil is a helpful introduction and overview to the current state of academic thinking on the subject; however, Adams' intention is not just to offer another "introduction to philosophy of religion" type of book but to actually advance and even more interestingly change the intellectual parameters within which the debate is played out. At the heart of Adams' objections to these contemporary approaches to the problem of evil is her contention that they simply do not appreciate the full force of the problem of evil. Evil is not merely a phenomenon that can serve as an intelluctual defeator of theistic belief for those philosophically minded it is something that can cause immense epistemological and existential (why the response to evil can be existential will, I hope, become clear in the course of this review). Part of the problem with contemporary theodicies, argues Adams, is that they simply do not take the terror of evil into account in their deliberations, evil is dealt with in the abstract apart from the anguishes and pain of modern life (and death). Consequently Adams critises Plantinga's startling admission that his "generic and global approach" enables one to "avoid specific consideration of evils, so appalling and so horrifying that we not only do not know why God permits them, we cannot conceive of any plausible candidate reasons" (p. 25). This leads us to Adams' introduction of horrendous evil back into the philosophical responses to the problem of evil. Horrendous evil is not however best understood as a particular category of evil (as opposed to minor and 'really bad but not quite horrendous' evil. Against the tendency toward abstraction Adams argues that an intellectually coherent theodicy must tackle the worst of evils; Adams suggests that horrendous evil should be understood as "evils the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole" (p. 26). This turn to the individual is one of the interesting features of Adams' approach. She is insistent that a more abstract answer to the problem of the compossibility of divine goodness and inexlicable evil will not do. In each case the question is the compossibility of evil with God's goodness to a particular individual. It is this problem, which the process theodicy of Hartshorne in particular ignore, that is at the heart of the existential problem of evil. Adams summarises her basic argument on this score as follows:

I contend that God could be said to value human personhood in general, and to love individual human persons in particular, only if God were good to each and every human person God created. And Divine goodness to created persons involves the distribution of harms and benefits, not merely globally, but also within the context of the individual person's life. At a minimum, God's goodness to human individuals would require that God guarantee each a life that was a great good to him/her on the whole by balancing off serious evils. To value the individual qua person, God would have to further to defeat any horrendous evil in which s/he participated by giving it positive meaning through organic unity with a great enough good within the context of his/her life.

Adams' criticism is not limited to Christian respondants to Mackie, however. The problem of evil as Mackie presented it is aperversion from the Christian view of God. For this reason Adams critises both the theologian and the atheologian for their presentation of the argument on 'neutral' terms. Consequently Adams writes concerning Mackie that "insofar as [he] wished to show the believer's view contradictory and irrational, he must take an interest whether (1) [God is omniscient,omnipotent, and perfectly good] and (2) [evil exists] can be understood as compossible on the believer's construal of these claims" (p. 13 - empahsis added). It is in this area that Adams made what was for me the most surprising departure in the text. After many chapters of analytic philosophy Adams changes tack to a smattering of historical theology/mysticism and good doses of biblical theology and social anthropology. The reason for doing this, as hinted in the quote above, is to paint a Christian understanding of the place of evil within the Christian narrative; a significant part of which, like David Bentley Hart's recent piece of popular theodicy, is to turn the the aesthetic, particularly the beatific vision. Against the doctrine of divine impassibility Adams presents a Suffering Christ (in both human and divine hypostases) as integral to an adequate doctrine of at-one-ment. All of the preceding argument leads up to answering one question: is the existence of horrendous evil compossible with God's goodness to individual participants in such horrors? Adams answers in the affirmative:

On my account for God to be good to a created person, God must guarantee him/her a life that is great good to him/her on the whole and one in which any participation in horrors is defeated within the context of his/her own life (p. 156).

Given Adams' language of God's guarantee of a life (both ante and postmortem) that is a great good it will not come as a surprise to see that Adams links this guarantee to a soteriological universalism and a God who has taken the initiative and suffered just as we have suffered.  It is a fascinating argument, and one that I am at least sympathetic to. However, it is also at this point that Adams lets go of some of the rigorous scholarship that she has demonstrated throughout the rest of the text. An appeal to universalism is obviously not unique in philosophy of religion (see Hick for example, although Adams' is clearly of a different kind) but the justification for this development was surprisingly vague. However, beyond all of my initial expectations Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God is an excellent and intriguing book, and, as a result Marilyn McCord Adams is certainly on my radar in terms of future reading.

Anxious Souls

Review of John W Matthews, Anxious Souls Will Ask ... The Christ-Centered Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eerdmans, (2005).

Bonhoeffer's prison diary Letters and Papers from Prison was the first writing of his that I had read. More than anything else what first attracted me to his thought was its honesty; the faith that was so important to him was also for Bonhoeffer a source of much doubt and questioning. However, no doubt because of the honesty with which Letters and Papers was written it was also, for me at least, a profoundly unsettling experience. How is one to read Bonhoeffer's call for a religion-less Christianity in a world come of age, for example. John W Matthews, a Lutheran Minister in Minnesota, attempts in this short book (it only runs to 80 pages). Matthews argument is that Bonhoeffer theology has strong continuities with his earlier work and that Bonhoeffer's prison reflections are an important resource in spurring contemporary Christianity to a more authentic faith. In the prison writings of Bonhoeffer Matthews identifies 5 "pillars" which, if appropriated by the contemporary church, will enhance its witness and mission. I will not outline each of these here (the book's short enough for you to pick these up in one sitting, in any case) other than to say that a key theme that runs through all is the need to the Church to take a 'reality-check' and be honest about its own context and vision and, mirroring the mission of God as incarnated in Jesus, take an approach in which suffering and vulnerability are to, if not welcomed then accepted so that, like Jesus, the church may become authentically human. In the her endorsement printed on the back cover Jean Bethke Elshtain writes that this book is "a powerful and poignant companion to Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison. Newcomers to Bonhoeffer's text and Bonhoeffer scholars alike will benefit from the fruits of John Matthews's pilgrimage alongside Bonhoeffer". There is no doubt that Anxious Souls will Ask ... does have some merit but I am afraid that, contrary to Elshtain's opinion, it is not anything like a "must-read". I am not at all sure anyone who has read even a moderate amount of Bonhoeffer (whether in primary or secondary literature) will find anything of real value. However, for the genuinely beginning reader, particularly one in the immediate unsettling aftermath of reading the Letters and Papers, then the albeit brief forays into Bonhoeffer's other theological work will be of assistance even if Matthews is more confident than me of the clear line of continuity that exist between, for example, Life Together and Discipleship with Letters and Papers.

American Evangelical Christianity

Review of Mark Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction, Blackwell, (2000).

Note: The bulk of this review was written in 2003, I have recently discovered and it is reproduced here with corrections.

American Evangelical Christianity is composed of three main sections. Noll adopts the definition of evangelicalism put forward by David Bebbington is his study of British evangelical context. Evangelicalism is founded on the following four (variously interpreted) tenets: 1) crucicentrism, 2) biblicism, 3) conversionism and 4) activism (p. 31). In part one, “who are the evangelicals?” Noll, after a brief historical overview, quantifiably demonstrates through interpretation of the 1996 Angus Reid and other related surveys that lack of homogeneity American evangelicalism possess apart from Bebbington's four-fold core. In doing so Noll demonstrates two things: First, American evangelicalism is not synonymous with any one of its manifestations and second, evangelicalism is an immensely potent cultural force. Indicative of this is the startling research that 31 per cent affirm three of four of the above tenets and describe themselves as evangelicals (p. 34).

Part two constitutes the core of Noll's survey; it is also, however, the most disappointing section. Noll's contention is that the issues Roman Catholicism, politics and science offer a representative insight into the plurality of contemporary American Evangelicalism. As a historical phenomenon evangelicalism's anti-catholic polemic has undoubtedly loomed large. However, the wider, although undoubtedly linked issues of ecumenicity and the increased acceptability of soteriological inclusivism has surely loomed larger in recent evangelical thought?

Noll's discussion of evangelicalism's relationship to science is an illuminating one. Particularly interesting is the sympathetic reading of William Jennings Byron and the 1925 Scopes Trial and Noll's social and historical contextualisation of this case. In his discussion of evangelical politics Noll again returns to the Angus Reid survey to show the plurality of contemporary political sympathies, albeit with a reasonable majority voting Republican. However, somewhat alarmingly Noll offers no analysis bar a couple of off-the-cuff remarks on the political careers of Falwell, Dobson or former evangelical Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson. Given the earlier valuable discussion of the externally politically neutral career of Billy Graham this would have proven a helpful comparison of the development of the changes in evangelical politics over the previous two decades (although note William Martin suggests Graham was more politically partisan than Noll suggests). A major drawback of Noll's study is its failure to engage in a study in the ways evangelicalism has with the dynamics of political liberalism (for example, the resurgence in Fundamentalism with a political face). That said, however, Noll's discussion of the evangelical hagiographical reading of the founding of the American constitution and its discontinuities with accepted historical accounts is helpful in highlighting the presuppositions inherent in these (Fallwell et al) attempts to recover a largely mythical “golden era” is excellent in spite of the failure to specify the contemporary implications.

In part three Noll puts to one side all claims of historical objectively and consciously speaks as an evangelical on the future of evangelical. There are chapters on evangelical politics, the differences between American and Canadian evangelicalism and on popular hymnody. Most insightful is the chapter on the prospects on a future evangelical politics (and I think in the 7 years since the book was published things have been moving this direction). Noll asks what it would mean for evangelical politics to be christocentric and, more specifically evangelical vis-a-vis crucicentric. It is true that this will not result in a radically different politics viewed externally (I am not so sure of this!), however, it does mean that “Christians ... should never forget that they are not God” (p. 213), it is wise and pertinent advice indeed.

Overall American Evangelical Christianity good introduction to that peculiarity that is the American flavour of evangelicalism, however, what it gains in its wide ranging approach it lacks in detailed analysis.

Walking Away from Nuremberg

Walking Away From Nuremberg: Just War and the Doctrine of Command Responsibility, University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Walking Away from Nuremberg is a carefully crafted and intricate thesis on the regrettable evolution of military ethics and its relation to Augustinian Just War Theory. Among Just War theorists the jus in bello requirements are commonly treated sceptically. A law if it is to be effective must have the expectation that this will be enforced when transgressed. Historically, as Oliver O'Donovan (UK Link) notes, nobody expected jus in bello offences to be punished until the rise rise of International Humanitarian Law in the nineteenth century. This development in the just conduct of war reached its apotheosis in the Nuremberg trials with its clear enunciation of the doctrine of command responsibility in the trial, and subsequent execution, of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The “Yamashita precedent” of command authority held that

It is absurd ... to consider a commander a murderer or rapist because one of his soldiers commits a murder or a vicious rape. Nevertheless, where murder and rape and vicious, revengeful actions are widespread offenses, and there is no effective attempt by a commander to discover and control the criminal acts, such a commander may be held responsible, even criminally liable, for the lawless acts of his troops, depending upon their nature and the circumstances surrounding them (cited on p. 80).

However, the reference to Nuremberg in Walking Away From Nuremberg is misleading, International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is only the subject of Rockwood's thesis by derivation. For the purposes of the US military it was not the command responsibility of IHL, as expounded in the Yamashita precedent, that is the tradition from which the US walks. Instead, Nuremberg was merely the international culmination of national policy antecedents. This is one of the most interesting and positive aspects of Rockwood's thesis. IHL is still a nascent collaboration whose future is uncertain; hence even among its humanitarian agencies who may be among its natural supporters the implementation of IHL by the United Nations has drawn criticism. Conor Foley (UK Link) , for example, has shown the ICC among other tribunals to be ineffectual, what has proved more constructive is a return to more local , and often pre-legal conflict resolution. More common is the the argument that IHL can represent either the usurpation of the democratic will seen in communitarian critiques or that the IHL cannot even be seen as law such as pluralist facets of the English School of International Relations.

Much has been written regarding the changes in US foreign policy and whatever the moral judgements regarding its utility undoubtedly represents a retraction from previous isolationist policies. This which Barber (UK Link) defines as the policy ambition to impose "a universal peace imposed by American arms" (p. 53). With the swift dismantling of Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration it is clear that from the Commander in Chief at least Command Responsibility is in this instance taken more seriously, however while the means utilised may change there are no signs that Pax Americana itself has a foreign policy goal is. It is in this milieu that the jus in bello arguments become significant. Drawing on an antecedent tradition stemming from the Lieber Code, named after Francis Lieber's General Order 100 which was promulgated in 1863, Rockwood makes a convincing case that command responsibility, that Rockwood takes to be a pivotal area of the jus in bello, has placed the developments that were later delineated in Nuremberg. Hence for Rockwood the US military has in its recent history been guilty of crimes against humanity, or at least complicity in the same and in doing so and in this has not so much walked away from Nuremberg but away from Lieber whose jus in bello principles the Nuremberg doctrine explicated.

What makes the argument so compelling is the partiality of its author.In his lengthy foreword Stephen Wrage, Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy demonstrates that this book had its origins in the personal experience of its author, formerly a Captain in the Tenth Mountain Division (US Army). In September 1994 Lawrence Rockwood, then a Captain of the Tenth Mountain Division deployed to Haiti. In his role as a counter intelligence officer Rockwood received reliable intelligence that human rights abuses, including murder, were taking place within the jurisdiction of the US military but despite repeated requests by Rockwood to intervene, no remedial action was taken by his superiors. Subsequently, in disobedience to military orders Rockwood inspected the prisons; an action that was to lead to him being court-martialled and eventually dismissed from the US Army.

On receiving his sentence Rockwood commented on the US Army's legacy which, he suggested, had been compromised by recent departures from the jus in bello ideals that had informed it's actions. The US Army was "the greatest human rights enforcer the world has ever known. The United States Army is the institution that brought the end to slavery in North America. The United States Army, together with its allies, put the end to the concentration camp system. That is the true legacy of the United States Army" (P. xix). The 'Golden Age' rhetoric of Rockwood's eulogy may be debatable; however, in delineating the history of military ethics rooted in Just War thinking Rockwood has, in addition to producing a work of solid scholarship makes a good argument for 'just warmaking' from a specifically intratextual narrative that does not rely on IHL to reach the same conclusion. Rockwood has, in Walking Away From Nuremberg, offered an important contribution the literature on Just War of the Augustinian-realist persuasion.

Fotion on Legitimate Authority - Who Decides?

In his recent restatement of Just War theory Nicholas Fotion differentiates the process principles from the de facto freestanding principles in the jus ad bellum (the term de facto is not actually used):

[The principle of legitimate authority] identifies those who have been given the power to engage in the decisionmaking process. That power might reside in a king, a chancellor, a dictator, a council, or a legislative body. The locus of authority varies with the nation. If the legitimate authority sanctions a war, one step in going to war legally has been satisfied. If, however, the war is authorized by some individual or group other than the legitimate authority, then the war is automatically unjust (p. 18).

I have recorded before that I have experienced a development in my thinking to the point where I am more sympathetic with JWT approaches but the proceduralist approach of Fotion here bothers me (which is marked out by the rest of what I have thus far read, namely the first c. 60 pages of the book). JWT seems to be reduced to a checklist of sorts and, certainly if applied in its entirety the world would be less violent that it is but justice seems to be periphery of the theory's application.

However, what interest me here is Fotion's differentiation of the freestanding principles over and above the proceduralist principles. For Fotion there are four procedural jus ad bellum principles before entering a war, all of which must be met for the the given conflict to be a just war: Just Cause, Last Resort, Proportionality and Liklihood of Success. Hence a war can have high likelihood of success but be for unjust causes (e.g., the German expansion into the Sudetanland), alternively, a war can be for just reasons but be entirely didproportional (e.g., the Hiroshima and Nagasaki capaigns). However, what unites the proceduralist principles is there conditionality - the context determines their applicability in a given case.

Over these proceduralist principles Fotion includes two de facto principles that will always be met in a just war. The first, Right Intentions is on my reading of Fotion's account pretty meaningless a just cause is essentially synonymous with tight intention. However, it is Fotion's account of legitimate authority (quoted above) that I want to focus on here. In particular, there are three facets that strike me:

First, the legitimate authority refers to those who have "been given the power" to decide.  Second, while the mode of legitimate authority may vary, its sole location does not - it is the nation state that goes to war. While I may quibble exclusive situatedness on way as the prerogative of the nation state, as though the nation state fell, God-given and immutable from the sky these two statements do not by themselves concern me too much. However, Fotion's closing caveat, namely his assertion that if, however, "the war is authorised by some individual or group other than the legitimate authority, then the war is automatically unjust"  seems to me entirely unsatisfactory.

Think about that - "automatically unjust". That seems to me to be a very dangerous caveat. Certainly there should be a presumption against such non state actors but a foundational and absolute illegitimacy? Taken together with the previous two points this seems to catapult JWT back into a sort of modified divine right of kings. While there may be a tip of the hat toward democratic engagement in the decision to go to war in the reference to "those who have been given power" when taken together with the absolute illegitimacy of a non-nation state being a legitimate authority even if, as is conceivable within a totalitarian scenario the national "legitimate authority" speaks with marked from the national will. In which case what meaning does "legitimate" have in this context? It can't mean any form of democratic consensus instead it must represent a deification of the nation state.

Following this point Benedict Anderson expands on the sovereignty of the nation state:

It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage of this freedom is the sovereign state. (p 7 emphasis in original).

Hence my point that there is a sense in which the nation has substituted the monarch as the absolute unquestionable authority, a divine right on nation. The result of this is JWT, to the extend that it is an instrument of justice, relies on a top-down implementation. I would rather contend that if JWT is to be at all useful (and I am not convinced it is) then this fetishisation on the nation state as the only possibly valid legitimate authority should be dispensed with.

References ...

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev ed. (2006).

Nicholas Fotion, War & Ethics: A New Just War Theory, Continuum, (2007).

Review of “ Spirit-Shaped Mission: A Holistic Charismatic Missiology ”

by Andrew Lord, Paternoster, (2005). ISBN: 1842272640.

For a tradition that has had such a primary role for mission (loosely understand) the Pentecostal/Charismatic Tradition/s (Lord treats them as co-travellers on the same path) have not been particularly adept and constructing a viable theology of mission. Pentecostal scholarship is however currently on the rise (although still often divorced from the local church context). Speaking from a predominately Anglican-Charismatic perspective Spirit-Shaped Mission aims to assist Pentecostal-Charismatic (hereafter P/C) missiology develop a holistic gospel that is both faithful to the biblical text and P/C tradition while also cognisant of the cultures and changing global balances of religious power (ie. is less Anglocentric).

In part one Lord offers a thumbnail sketch on the primary motifs in P/C missiological thinking. He begins this be offering a brief synopsis of the charismatic concept of mission in the thought of John Wimber and a number of Wimber-influenced British Anglicans such as David Pytches. In the following chapter focuses on the Classical Pentecostal approaches recognising its more christological focus over the charismatic approach as well as its greater individualism.  Largely speaking there is nothing really new here whilst some of the emphases are developed further later if you are familiar with the P/C tradition you will not really miss out of this section is skipped over.

It is in section two that Spirit-Shaped Mission gets more interesting and relevant to contemporary missiology. Lord's contention is that a P/C missiology needs to take account five facets: Holism, Experience, Context, Community, and Spirituality. In each of the subsequent chapters Lord assesses each of these in relation to recent thought. In the process of this Lord dialogues with important scholars such as Moltmann, Yong, Chan, (N.T.) Wright and offers some good signposts toward the development of a holistic P/C missiology.

In sum however Lord's analysis, while useful, fails in its aim to present a promising missiology. Whilst the discussion does at times present a compelling argument (the holistic chapter for example) the discussion and investigation is simply not sustained enough to warrant the grand conclusions. I would also state that the while Lord is clear that his is a charismatic missiology the differentiation with classical pentecostalism could have been elaborated further, this could have been particularly useful in his discussion of the voluntary principle.

Overall though while far from being the last word on the subject this is an encouraging volume that is further evidence of the Pentecostal academy's waking from their dogmatic slumber. This would be a good entry text into pentecostal theology's appropriation of missiology to a pneumatological key.

Apologetics 101, may require kittens ...

If i wasn't a believer then i would be now ...

Brillent eh? HT Exploring the Matrix.