I Don’t Know About That 🤷🏻‍♂️

"Christianity helps society because its metaphysical claims are true; they are not true because Christianity helps society. When Christians lose sight of this, the Church's power and durability is lost," @timkellernyc writes: https://t.co/gHKzLJ0Eq4

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) February 5, 2023

My title is reacting to the quote in that tweet, but it could refer to the whole article. I could quote from the article but it’s behind a paywall now. I had my chance and read it, but I didn’t leave it open and now I can’t. All I can do is relay in fragments my impressions.

One is of a child afraid of the dark telling himself just-so stories in order not to be afraid. The tenor of that tension is there in that quote. To cut out the introduction, the question is: is metaphysics the “truth” upon which Christianity prevails? Even as ardent a Lutheran as Soren Kierkegaard over 150 years ago would have said: “Nope, that ain’t it.” I have Kant’s “Metaphysics of Morals” on a bookshelf somewhere in this house (it’s time to remove books again. I promise myself I’ll get around to reading it someday. I’ll be the only person alive outside philosophy majors in college to do so. The simple fact is, metaphysics is simply no longer a live issue in the contemporary age.

Jesus didn’t care about metaphysics. Paul never discussed the metaphysical nature of God. Christian metaphysics was invented by apologists who had to put Hebraic thought into Greek minds. It worked for as long as it worked, but as the old E&R prayer asked, may God rescue us from institutions which no longer serve their purpose.*

That’s a very hard prayer to pray. It’s like Niebuhr’s famous “Serenity Prayer.” That prayer doesn’t ask God to do anything for us; it asks that we realize we must do it. I’m not cutting God out here, but God is not the essential element in accomplishing the goals of that prayer: we are. And that’s what the prayer recognizes. It is addressed to God so we can hear ourselves say that only we can have the wisdom to know the difference. It is not addressed to God for God’s sake, but for ours. It does say to God: “Grant us.” But even if it’s a matter of God granting, we have to accept. And then we have to do. That’s what makes the prayer hard. We are asking God for something, which lets us off easy. If God doesn’t give it, how can we do it? In fact, God should give it by making us do it, or better yet doing it for us. God should give us wisdom; that would make things much easier! We shouldn’t have to earn wisdom, God should just give it to us! Isn’t that what prayer is for? Isn’t that what God is for? To shortcut everything and just serve up the world we want to live in?

We’re talking now about the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging, as opposed to the Church of Meaning and Belonging. The terms are from sociology, but the article’s analysis rests heavily on Bellah’s thesis that religion teaches, or inspires, a sense of community and connection to others without which American society fragments as Keller sees it doing today. I think my sociologists are more on point with Keller’s concerns than Bellah is.

The Church sans sacrifice is just a social club. The churches I knew in childhood required some sacrifice, mostly of my time ; but I found meaning and belonging there and no small amount of discussion of my sinful nature (in good Reformed traditions). I had friends there, always the sinews that hold a congregation together. Metaphysics were conventional and traditional, too; mostly because nobody paid much attention to them. It was only after Kierkegaard (granted, that was in high school) that I started to think metaphysics was not exactly a tool of evangelism anymore. Nor a tool of apologetics, either.

But the traditional sacrifice a church demands, fealty to a set of ideas that may be more obstacle to Christianity than gateway, are precisely what Keller wants in order to prove his hoped for, longed for, desperately needed Great Awakening is, indeed, an awakening. Now, my professors in seminary were hoping for such a thing 30 years ago. They were positively anxious for signs of it. I’ve begun putting such expectations in the same category as those who think they see the signs of the end times: wishful thinking that takes the burden of reality off their shoulders, and replaces it with a world where what they value is valued again.

A world that has never existed, in other words. And a world that serves them, rather than they serving the world. I told you there would be sacrifice. God grant me the serenity…

What Keller wants is not even a reformation of the church or the world. His article posits the other old idea that if the Church (any church, though he is clearly partial to evangelical Reformed churches. He barely mentions Catholicism at all. Orthodox? Not even an honorable mention.) can just come up with the right words/ideas, we can get the band back together again! But the band members are too old and some of them are dead; and the magic isn’t there anymore anyway. You see where this metaphor is going. We don’t need the old band, or the old music. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need music and musicians. 🎶 

And new styles of architecture, and a change of heart. Or that human society doesn’t need a morality, rather than an ethic. Aristotle had bugger all to say about right and wrong, but a great deal to say about seeking out what’s right for you. The more things change… Myself, I prefer a morality based in the traditions of the ancient Hebrews instead of the ancient Greeks.

And I think honestly if you put the metaphysics of Christianity at the heart of Christianity (what else is that quote asserting?), you make an idol of your ideas, and call them “God.” The scriptures have very little to say about metaphysics, but a great deal to say about false idols.

Which is not to say the scriptures are full of scolding about the jealousy of God, or even about getting “it” right, whatever “it” is. The guidance of scripture is that there a way to live that provides guidance and comfort and meaning and blessing. And it’s as simple as “love one another” and as subtle as “beware false idols,” because you have to think about what those are and why they are a problem. Mostly it’s about living in a world with other people who are not you, and how best to do that. Which, if you are paying attention, has bugger all to do with metaphysics.

Take love. We talk about it all the time. It’s the primary subject of most of our culture, especially pop culture. We have whole industries dedicated to trading in the idea of it, we recognize a countless number of forms of it. Yet, can you weigh it, measure it, point to it like you can the screen you’re reading these words on? A crank or two will insist “love” is just brain chemistry, but does anyone really believe that, accept that, live by that? No. Love is real. It’s as real as it gets. But love is not merely physical. Love is metaphysical. And yet is anybody really concerned about the metaphysics of love? Would you change hearts and minds, become famous and influential, draw the attention and discipleship of millions, if you came up with a metaphysics of love?

Do you really think so?

Is love an idea, or is live action? Aye, there’s the rub. Love as a profession of a feeling is a fairly empty thing.  When you say you (romantically) love someone based solely on desire or their status/stature, or who you think they are: we all recognize that as "not love." It's a staple of fiction where the profession comes from an emotionally immature person, or a stalker; or someone who simply "doesn't know what love is."  Which is a pause to consider:  what is "love"?  We all know it when we experience it.  Or most of us do.  We know love when we finally "find it" (I'm speaking of romantic love, still).  And it is real, when you "fall in love," especially if it lasts, if it is, in Sondheim's wonderful lyrics, "as pure as breath, as permanent as death, implacable as stone."  And then there is love for one's children, another kind of love (not romantic!) you only experience with parenthood (biological or adoptive).  Not a love as widely discussed in pop culture, but just as profound and life changing.

And that's the thing about love:  it is life changing.  It will alter who you are and who you want to be, and most importantly, what you want to do.  It will guide you, inspire you, instill you with goals and dreams; but it won't do anything for you.  The doing is up to you.  So you may feel love, be in love, love one another or just one other person, love your children and your parents and your family:  but without any effort, any action on your part, does anyone see/know/believe your professions of love?

Why would they?

A favorite song of my adolescence had the chorus line "And they'll know we are Christians by our love."  It was the chorus, the repeated center, the thesis of the song.  And how do they know "by our love," exept by our actions?  And that's where the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging, steps in.

That church can take almost any form, from the hierarchy of the Church of Rome to the determinedly congregational nature of the Primitive Baptist church of my grandparents.  Their "church" (it was really a congregation) had church buildings from time to time (with steeples and all), but it also met in meager rented structures, usually very plain and almost bare spaces except for tables and chairs.  From time to time they had a part-time preacher, who was paid for his services.  Or they just had a lay preacher; my grandfather served that role more than once.  They had no organ, but sang from shaped note hymnals.  They called other church members "Brother Madison" (the first time I heard my grandfather addressed that way  I wondered who they meant) and "Sister Leonora" (my grandmother).  That was a marker of who was of the body, so to speak.  It was a marker of family.  It was an intentional designation of relationship (another important factor to churches and Christianity).  Of relationship, and of responsibility.  Who are you more responsible to, than family?  I am, for better or worse (on my part, I mean), my brother's keeper.  He is my brother, after all.  My point about my grandparent's church is not that it was perfect, but that it was sacrificial.  Giving up all the trappings of church except the people and their relationship as church members, it was as valid a church as any mega-church packed to the rafters to hear another sermon on the "Gospel of Wealth" (not, ironically, Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth, which also required individual sacrifice for the greater good.).  Church is about relationship, and relationship requires sacrifice (some denial of my wants in order to serve the needs of others).  Not abject negation, or poverty, or vows of silence and obedience; church is not a monastery, nor is meant to be.  But the threshold of sacrifice has to be crossed in order to enter into the glory of the clouds of witness.  It requires action.  "They'll know we are Christians by our love."  Not by our metaphysics.

If you get the idea I'm down on Christian metaphysics, you're right.  I could give you Karl Rahner-esque reasons for my position, but I'm comfortable with the position that metaphysics are not really the be-all and end-all of Christianity, and that since the world is still comfortable with the concept and importance of love (as well as Santa Claus and charity and "the Christmas spirit," however much we trammel those ideals in the annual keeping of them), the world is still comfortable with metaphysics, and always will be.  Emotions, after all, are metaphysical.  The reductio ad absurdum of making them merely chemical reactions in brain cells due to hormones and nerve receptors is unlikely ever to be a replacement for love poems and laments over human evil (ballads, operas, murder mysteries, tragedies).  We accept metapysics without requiring a metaphysics that taxes reason itself.  Metaphysics, new or old, is not going to save Christianity.  And Keller doesn't even want a "new" metaphysics; he wants to dress the old up in new clothes and call it "fresh!"  There's something about new wine and old wineskins in the scriptures about that kind of thing....

So what will "save" Christianity?  God.  God will.  And how?  Who knows?  Constantine established Christianity as a major religion when he converted in the 4th century, and literally brought the whole of his empire with him.  That wasn't exactly predictable or expected, until it happened.  Had it not, Christianity might have remained a minority religion to this good day; or it might have vanished altogether.  History, as Auden said, might say to the defeated "Alas!", but it cannot help nor pardon.  The survival of Christianity after the 4th century was not guaranteed.  It took human action.

Lost in that wonder is that it was the model of Paul's house church, just transposed to the pinnacle of the patronage system Paul lived under 4 centuries earlier, too.  In Paul's "churches" a paterfamilias determined the course of the "family," where family meant not just the modern nuclear one, but servants and those who called the head of the family "patron."  They lived in the household, too, with their families.  "Household" was more like a modern apartment building than the single family dwelling (even mansions) that we think of today.  Still, when Paul "converted" a family and established a "church," it wasn't what we imagine, at all.  Church buildings and groups of strangers were the common model by Constantine's conversion, but they weren't what Paul rejoiced over or wrote letters to.  Constantine ruined us, in that sense.  Anything less than an empire, or today a thousand member mega-church, is too small a reach, and a failure.  But is it?

God tells Israel that God is about to do a new thing.  God says this to Israel in Babylon, in the midst of exile.  It took a long time after that proclamation for the "new thing," which was Cyrus coming to power and allowing Israel to return to Jerusalem, to take place.  Keller wants his "new thing," which is actually just the same old thing but working this time!, to take place in his lifetime.  It probably won't; or if it does, odds are he won't perceive it, because it's not what he wants to see.  Jesus preached the basilea tou theou, which many took to mean heaven or in the bye and bye, or at the end of time; certainly not here and now.  But Jesus was clearly speaking of then, when he was alive; and of now, and of all the time between then and now.  "Seeing is believing," we say; but Jesus was preaching the believing is seeing.  "Even now it breaks forth!  Can you not perceive it?"

Perception is an action, too, you know.  So is prayer:

O eternal God, who didst send thy Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, we pray that as thou didst strengthen their hearts with daring and fortitude, so thou wouldst confirm in us their faithful labors, their high vision, their holy purpose. Grant us so to live, that the generations to come may find their memorial not alone in graven tablets, but may read it in the living record of an active faith, an unswerving loyalty to truth, a self-forgetting service of mankind. Be this the gift of thy grace bestowed upon us; be this the memorial of the just, transmitted to their children's children through the long centuries to come: and thine shall be the kingdom and the power and the glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end.

AMEN

(Yes, from the same prayer as the section below.)

Responding to comments:

Jesus said to the messengers sent by John, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. Blind people are now able to see, and the lame can walk. People who have leprosy are being healed, and the deaf can now hear. The dead are raised to life, and the poor are hearing the good news.

Today we would say:  "We got a really nice church building!  And a preacher who's really entertaining!  And a very traditional metaphysics!"

 

*Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.