Contrary to popular belief and nefarious rumour, Kim Fabricius is not an alter ego or pseudonym of Ben Myers. Even I myself have occasionally doubted this – but we now have photographic evidence! Here’s Kim and me hanging out in Princeton:


And here he is expounding a few propositions…


... while some Princeton bloggers listen, and my daughter has a good laugh:

Labels: Kim Fabricius, Princeton

The American church historian George Marsden is currently delivering the Stone Lectures here in Princeton. (The lectures are being blogged – see the series of links here.) Marsden, author of the great biography on Jonathan Edwards, is creating a dialogue between Edwards’ thought and contemporary theological issues.

Although I admire Marsden’s work on American church history, I was very disappointed by the methodological framework which he set up in the opening lecture. He asked how we can learn from someone like Edwards, whose views are obviously outdated and offensive in many ways. Marsden’s answer was that we can access Edwards’ lasting insights by distinguishing between his great “perennial ideas†(e.g. his doctrine of the Trinity) and his outdated nonessential ideas (e.g. his biblical literalism, his millennialism, and so on).

I realise that Marsden was only sketching some brief remarks on historical method, but I think this represents a deeply flawed approach to the question of how we can learn from the Christian past. If we learn from the past by distinguishing the timeless “perennial core†from the nonessential (i.e. flawed) elements, then we’re acting as though our own commitments are the final arbiter of history — we’re assuming that history has found its goal in us. And one of the unfortunate side-effects of this approach is that we’re no longer in a position to be critiqued by history. This would explain the strange fact that Marsden didn’t find any contemporary critical significance in Edwards’ millennialism, his doctrine of progress, or his theology of the election of nations. (Seriously, isn’t all this just a little relevant to American identity and to US foreign policy?)

In contrast, the point of historical study (as Rowan Williams has compellingly argued in Why Study the Past?) is to encounter the past in all its irreducible strangeness — and yet to perceive this strangeness itself (not some timeless “coreâ€) as something that was actually possible for the Christian church. In other words, we need to recognise even Edwards’ most unpalatable ideas as things that it was possible for a Christian to think and say. If we can do this, then we’re placed in a position where Edwards can challenge and question our own most basic assumptions about what counts as “Christianâ€.


As Karl Barth remarks in his work on 19th-century theology: “I have to count all these people as members of the Christian Church and, remembering that I and my theological work are in the Christian Church only on the ground of forgiveness, I have neither to dispute nor even to doubt that they, like me, were ultimately concerned with the Christian faith†(p. 28).

Once we perceive that a thinker like Jonathan Edwards was “ultimately concerned with the Christian faith,†it becomes impossible to distinguish between any timeless “core†and the mere “husk†of culturally-bound ineptitudes. Instead, by encountering the strangeness and offensiveness of Edwards’ ideas, we are encountering something new and unexpected about the nature of Christian identity itself. And this means that our own assumptions about Christian identity have also become less certain and less secure. Edwards is now not merely a curiosity or the source of a few timeless verities; now, he becomes a question to us.

Labels: church history

The next issue of the Princeton Theological Review will be devoted to the analogy of being and questions of natural theology, with special reference to the dialogue between Przywara, Barth and Balthasar. They’ve issued a call for papers for articles, reflections or book reviews – more details here.

Labels: journals

I’ve always been intrigued by artistic forms in which the very possibility of art becomes an open question. The most striking example is the work of Samuel Beckett: his plays posit the absolute impossibility of drama; his work is hugely preoccupied with the urge to tell the truth, yet all his writing foregrounds the impossibility of truthful speech. In his late plays and fiction, Beckett stages and enacts the end of literature – its paralysing “endgame†– and yet in precisely this way, Beckett breaks open the possibilities of literary aesthetics, generating new forms of speech and writing.

Or, for a more recent example, take the music of Nirvana, the great “grunge†band of the 1990s. The band’s music emerged as a violent protest against the possibility of music itself. Just think of Kurt Cobain’s trademark harrowing shriek; the way his lyrics suddenly implode into tortured incoherence; the way the songs tend to collapse spontaneously under the weight of their own impossible demands. Witness the exhausted aggression of the band’s stage performances – performances that routinely culminated in the destruction of stage, amps and instruments. Nirvana didn’t merely represent another drug-induced cry for social disengagement (although obviously that’s one side of the story) – above all, the band was raging against music itself. On stage they were enacting the end of music: the final shriek of the wrecked and wasted human voice, the metallic howl of dismembered guitars, the dying moan and hiss of gutted audio speakers.

Nirvana’s protest against the possibility of music became even more pronounced after the massive commercial success of their 1991 album, Nevermind. With this album, the band had achieved international fame as the centre of the new Seattle “grunge scene†– and so the band turned all its fury on grunge music itself, and on the fans who had become consumers of this new sound. As one of their early songs, “Aero Zeppelinâ€, rather brutally put it: “You could shit upon the stage, they’ll be fans…â€

And so Nirvana’s next (and final) studio album, In Utero (1993), represented an astonishingly aggressive attempt to alienate the band’s own devoted fans. (The gesture of this album was rather like the celebrated incident in Bob Dylan’s 1966 electric concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England. In response to the angry cries of his erstwhile folk fans, Dylan turned to his band and growled – surely the greatest single moment in the history of rock – “Play fucking loud,†before launching into a devastatingly vehement electric performance of “Like a Rolling Stone.â€) Nirvana’s In Utero opens with its most difficult and most confronting songs. The chorus of “Scentless Apprenticeâ€, for instance, consists of nothing but the repeated scream, “Go away, get away,†before the song dissolves finally into the heavy hiss and oblivion of electric distortion.

Like Beckett’s great play Endgame, Nirvana here enacts the impossibility of its own artistic form – In Utero is not only the greatest album of its decade; it is the end of music itself, the collapse of any possible harmony into the undifferentiated violence and anarchy of mere noise. As Kurt Cobain had put it in the 1991 song, “On a Plainâ€: “It is now time to make it unclear…â€

Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch – but I wonder whether this can provide some help in understanding that most difficult and most confronting work of modern theology, Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans (1922). This was a sustained piece of theological writing which announced the impossibility of theology. Indeed, Barth’s prose was itself an enactment of God’s shattering apocalyptic judgment on all theological speech. If the miracle of modern literature is that writing still proved to be possible after Beckett, and if the miracle of contemporary music is that music did not cease entirely with In Utero, then the miracle of modern theology is simply that Barth’s commentary on Romans was not the last work of theology ever written.

In Barth’s commentary, theology uttered it final dying word – and yet against all odds, this proved also to be a word of resurrection, a word that both shattered and reinvigorated the possibilities of speech about God. Reading Barth’s commentary is, perhaps, rather like attending a Nirvana concert: the spectacle of sheer destruction, the violent conflagration of an entire tradition – and yet, amidst the ashes, a sudden surprising glimpse of something new.

Labels: Karl Barth, literature, music

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Isaiah 5:1-7. It’s known as “The Song of the Vineyardâ€. The prophet Isaiah, who lived and ministered in Jerusalem during the latter half of the 8th century B.C., stands at the city gates, playing the part of a minstrel who sings a ballad to the joyful crowds who are dancing their way to the Temple to celebrate the autumn vintage, that is, their Harvest Festival. He sings of a “friend†who had a vineyard. With tender loving care he did all he could to ensure a bountiful crop and an excellent wine – digging, clearing, planting the finest vines; putting a hedge around it and watching from a tower for crows and thieves; and, finally, digging a pit, a vat, all ready to tread the grapes. Alas, the grapes are withered and puny, the Beaujolais will be sour. “What’s gone wrong?†Isaiah’s friend plaintively cries. “What more could I have done?†So he vents his frustration on the vineyard itself: “I’ll turn it back into a wasteland – no hedge, no wall, no tower for protection; no hoeing, no pruning, and†– who is this guy? – “I shall make sure that next year the rains don’t come.†Now the pilgrims are edgy: has Isaiah’s mate gone mad? Like he can command the clouds! And then Isaiah delivers the punch line: his friend turns out to be God, and the vineyard is Israel itself. The song is a love song – but the love is unrequited. The Lord expected his people to yield a harvest of justice; instead, while the rich revel in conspicuous consumption – “bank robbersâ€, if you like, idolising the free, deregulated market, stripping assets, short-selling, whatever makes a profit – the streets are full of people begging, scrounging for food, searching for shelter – and ultimately carrying the can for the irresponsibility of the greedy. Harvest: a time of divine judgement on the affluent and powerful.

Matthew 21:33-46. We’re still in Jerusalem, but fast-forward eight centuries. Another prophet – and more than a prophet – is in the precincts of the new, re-built Temple, not singing a song, but telling a story. “There was once a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, built a tower, dug a pit …†And the people listening are thinking, “We’ve heard this one before!†Well, yes and no. For like all good storytellers, bringing a traditional tale up to date, Jesus re-imagines the plot and the characters. This landowner lets his vineyard to tenant farmers and heads off to the Costa del Sol. The crowd boo and hiss: absentee landlords, often outsiders, buying up the countryside, turfing out small farmers – they were not popular in first-century Palestine. But hang on – in the original story, doesn’t the landowner represent God? So are the tenants the good guys? And hang on again – when the landowner sends his rent-collectors, the tenants murder them; when he sends more, the tenants murder them too; and when he finally sends his own son – surely they won’t kill him too! – but they do. Who are these tenants? Well, whom is Jesus specifically addressing? Not the common folk but the chief priests and Pharisees – they are the tenants, the leaders the Lord has put in charge of his vineyard, his people Israel. It turns out that this landlord wasn’t trying to exploit the tenants, he was entrusting them with land that might produce fruit for all those whom Roman economic policy had made homeless and broke. And those rent-collectors – they are code for prophets. And the son – he, it turns out, is the storyteller himself. And chief priests and Pharisees – they get the message all right, that they will pay for their faithlessness and wickedness with their lives. They would have Jesus arrested but for fear of the crowds, the peasant-poor whose champion Jesus is. Harvest: a time of judgement on the affluent and powerful.

I don’t like Harvest Services. But it’s not because – as I know it is with some colleagues – because the worship can be nostalgic, sentimental, or simply, for city slickers, quite out of touch. I mean, what do most of us know about a contemporary harvest? How much of what we eat is local? And where do we get most of it? From Sainsbury’s or Tesco, now often bought on-line and delivered to our door. But, no, the reason I don’t like Harvest Services is because of the biblical image of the harvest – it’s an image of judgement, and judgement makes me nervous. Because – note well – in Isaiah and Matthew judgement falls on Israel, not pagans but believers, and for “Israel†read “Churchâ€; and indeed not just on believers but on the leaders of believers, on their “chief priestsâ€, that is, their ministers – and that means me! That’s why I don’t like Harvest Services: they tell me that God is not happy with my life and my leadership – and with good reason:
No, I don’t like Harvest Services. But then I guess we’ve all lost our innocence when it comes to food. And it’s not just trade issues. Binge-drinking is now a moral panic of a social problem, perhaps over-stated but nevertheless a growing drain on hospital and police services, costing a couple of billion pounds a year. You can’t read a newspaper or watch a breakfast programme without hearing of more alarming statistics about obesity, while it’s hard to find anyone who isn’t on a diet, or at least adjusting their diets due to high blood pressure or iffy cholesterol levels. Chefs are now celebrities, as are style gurus who have the “talentâ€, however fat we are, to make us look thin. Okay, I’m a grumpy old man – or at least I will be tomorrow when I turn sixty! – but it’s hard not to be cynical.

But for one thing. Though it’s probably down to Matthew rather than Jesus, the first evangelist incorporates into the parable one of the early church’s favourite Old Testament proof-texts for the resurrection, from Psalm 118 (vv. 22-23):

        The stone which the builders rejected as worthless
        turned out to be the most important of all.
        This was done by the Lord;
        what a wonderful sight it is!

So the word of warning, the message of judgement, it contains at its heart a promise: the vineyard owner’s slain son, death cannot hold him and he returns, not reaping revenge, but heaping forgiveness on his deniers and betrayers, who in turn are called (in the words of the hymn) to “Take seeds of his Spirit, [and] let the fruit grow.â€

I still don’t like Harvest Services. I feel like mugwort reacting to weed killer. But then when the gospel strikes, the first reaction of a sinner is always recoil. But deep down I know that the project of our gracious gardener is not just a weeding but a feeding, that we may all bear a rich harvest and good fruit. So why be a sour grape? He who is the Living Bread and the True Vine – even now he invites us to his table.

Labels: Kim Fabricius, sermons

Carl Schmitt’s 1936 book on Hobbes is now available in English: The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Chicago, 2008). I read it just last night, and it’s an astonishing work (published here with a very fine introductory essay by Tracy Strong). Chapter 4 may well be the most brilliant – and most “contemporary†– analysis you’ll ever read on war, the power of the state, and the state’s demand for obedience. Here are a few excerpts:

“With the incredible development of the technical means of disseminating communication, information, and weaponry, the power of the state’s command mechanism grew in a manner that was astonishing. One can thus believe that the power of a modern state in comparison with that of ancient communities is proportionately much greater and more intensive, as, for example, is the range and piercing power of modern artillery in comparison with the effectiveness of a crossbow or a siege machine.†(p. 42)

“The state machine either functions or does not function. In the first instance, it guarantees me the security of my physical existence; in return it demands unconditional obedience to the laws by which it functions…. Resistance as a ‘right’ is in Hobbes’ absolute state … factually and legally nonsensical and absurd. The endeavor to resist the leviathan, the all powerful, resistance-destroying, and technically perfect mechanism of command, is practically impossible…. [Resistance] has no place whatsoever in the space governed by the irresistible and overpowering huge machine of the state.†(pp. 45-46)

In international law, “wars become pure state wars, that is, they cease to be religious, civil, or factional…. From this follows the question of the just war, for such an interstate war is just as incommensurable as the question of just resistance within the state. In contrast to religious, civil, and factional wars, wars between states cannot be measured with the yardsticks of truth and justice. War between states is neither just nor unjust…. The state has its order in, not outside, itself…. The state absorbs all rationality and all legality. Everything outside of the state is therefore a ‘state of nature’. The thoroughly rationalized mechanisms of state command confront one another ‘irrationally’…. There is no state between states, and for that reason there can be no legal war and no legal peace.†(pp. 47-49)

Labels: Carl Schmitt, politics

Bob Dylan’s forthcoming album, Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased, 1989-2006, is now available for free online listening – a week ahead of its release!

This isn’t just a random collection – it’s a stunning album with its own very distinctive style and flavour (the first disc is especially good). There are some wonderful songs, including two outtakes of the 2001 masterpiece, “Mississippiâ€. (Is “Mississippi†the best song ever written? Yes.)

One of the new songs, “Red River Shore,†has got me completely smitten. Here are some of the lyrics:

Now I’m wearing the cloak of misery
And I’ve tasted jilted love
And the frozen smile upon my face
Fits me like a glove
But I can’t escape from the memory
Of the one that I’ll always adore
All those nights when I lay in the arms
Of the girl from the Red River shore
...
Well, I’m a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I’ll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will give me a song
Though nothing looks familiar to me
I know I’ve stayed here before
Once, a thousand nights ago,
With the girl from the Red River shore

Labels: Bob Dylan

Labels: here and there

Richard points us to a list of “10 commandments for bloggers†which was drafted at a recent evangelical blog-conference, and which has attracted some attention in the news. There are just a few things wrong (ten things, actually) with this list of commandments; so I’ve decided to reveal my own Ten Commandments for Bloggers:

Labels: blogging, humour

Many thanks to David for alerting me to this wonderfully funny – and surprisingly touching – online TV show: Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. An absolute delight! Here’s my favourite line: “And by the way, it’s not about making money, it’s about taking money. Destroying the status quo, because the status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to ... rule it.â€

Oh, and I also like this piece of pedagogical advice from Captain Hammer: “It’s not enough to beat in heads, you’ve got to beat in minds.â€

You can view the whole program online here – a 42 minute musical extravaganza!

Labels: humour

The latest issue of Reviews in Religion and Theology features the journal’s new section of foreign-language book reviews – an excellent and important new endeavour, edited by Philip McCosker. This issue includes my own review of Michael Korthaus’ Kreuzestheologie: Geschichte und Gehalt eines Programmbegriffs in der evangelischen Theologie. Here’s an excerpt:

“If the cross is accorded such soteriological primacy, then it follows that a theology of the cross will not merely be one christological option alongside others, but it will be a fundamental explication of the gospel itself. And for just this reason, a theology of the cross will always be assertive, polemical, antagonistic. The word of the cross is a word of contradiction; it opposes every worldly power and every 'theology of glory'. At a time when much theological discourse has been hijacked and neutralized by the demands of liberal politeness and political correctness, Korthaus's call for a more assertive, more agonistic mode of speech – a discourse which corresponds to the 'word of the cross' itself – is especially to be welcomed.â€

Labels: book reviews, cross

In addition to Stanley Hauerwas’ glowing endorsement, here’s an excerpt from Mike Higton’s foreword to Propositions on Christian Theology: A Pilgrim Walks the Plank:

“You will find some propositions in this book on dull sermons and others on holy laughter, some on the Nicene Creed and others on the nature of heresy, some on human sexuality and others on all-too-human hypocrisy, some on the role of angels and others on the location of hell, and still others on fasting and feasting, peace and policing, grace and gratitude – but don’t be fooled into thinking that it is simply a scattershot miscellany. Proposition by proposition, aphorism by aphorism, this book provides a solid training in how to think theologically – how to break and remake your thought in the light of God’s grace.â€

Labels: Kim Fabricius

Kim Fabricius’ delightful “propositions†are well known to F&T readers. Kim starting posting his propositions here back in early 2006 – and he went on to write dozens of posts, exploring everything from prayer and preaching to hell and heresy, from pacifism and ecumenism to Barth and baseball. Kim’s posts have always attracted a lot of attention (they are by far the most widely-read and widely-cited posts on this blog) – in fact, his writing was so popular that the folk at Carolina Academic Press approached him about turning his posts into a book.

And so I’m very happy to announce that Kim’s book will be hitting the shelves very soon: Propositions on Christian Theology: A Pilgrim Walks the Plank (Carolina Academic Press, 2008), 228 pp. It’s currently available from Amazon, or at a pre-publication discount from the publishers.

Propositions on Christian Theology comes with a foreword by Mike Higton, and it features revised versions of Kim’s various propositions, accompanied by hymns on the same themes. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

“In this little book, a kind of contemporary enchiridion, Kim Fabricius engages some of the main themes of Christian theology in prose, poetry, and song (his own hymns). It does not aim to be systematic or comprehensive; rather it goes straight to the main contested areas in the church today, the red-button issues in doctrine, spirituality, culture, ethics, and politics. Fabricius’s imaginative vision and lively conversational style – moving freely between the interrogative and the polemical, the playful and the profound – invite us all to the vertiginous experience of faith. The book’s concise format and no-nonsense approach make it a perfect guide for inquiring Christians as well as committed disciples and an ideal discussion-starter for both church groups and college classes. The author’s passionate commitment to a self-critical faith is a provocative invitation to religion’s cultured despisers to join him – if they dare – on the plank.â€

And here’s what Stanley Hauerwas has to say about it:

“With wit, wisdom, and deceptive learning, Fabricius has written the book we have desperately desired, that is, a book we can give a friend who asks, ‘What is all this Christian stuff about?’â€
—Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School

Labels: Kim Fabricius

At last! I’ve been waiting eagerly for Rowan Williams’ new book of poems, and it’s finally here: Headwaters (Oxford: Perpetua Press, 2008), 72 pp. The book includes 25 collected poems, plus a sequence of sonnets responding to ten of Shakespeare’s plays, plus Williams’ striking translations of several Welsh and Russian poems. (It doesn’t seem to be available yet in the US, but it can be ordered direct from the publisher, or from Abebooks, or from Amazon.co.uk.)

I’ve only read through the collection once so far, but I can tell I’ll be spending a lot more time with these poems. Here’s one of my favourites – an astonishing poem entitled “Sin,†translated from the Welsh of D. Gwenallt Jones:

Take off the business suit, the old-school tie,
The gown, the cap, drop the reviews, awards,
Certificates, stand naked in your sty,
A little carnivore, clothed in dried turds.
The snot that slowly fills our passages
Seeps up from hollows where the dead beasts lie;
Dumb stamping dances spell our messages,
We only know what makes our arrows fly.
Lost in the wood, we sometimes glimpse the sky
Between the branches, and the words drop down
We cannot hear, the alien voices high
And hard, singing salvation, grace, life, dawn.
Like wolves, we lift our snouts: Blood, blood, we cry,
The blood that bought us so we need not die.

Labels: literature, Rowan Williams, sin