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HELP US TO BE :

A PNEUMATOLOGICAL ETHIC FOR CHURCHES OF

Dissertation

Submitted to

The College of Arts and

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Doctor of in

By

Mac S. Sandlin, M.Div.

August 2021

HELP US TO BE GOOD:

A PNEUMATOLOGICAL VIRTUE ETHIC FOR

Name: Sandlin, Mac S.

APPROVED BY:

Brad J. Kallenberg, Ph.D. Dissertation Director

William L. Portier, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader

Dennis M. Doyle, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader

Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader

John Mark Hicks, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader

______Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Chair, Department of

ii

©Copyright by

Mac S. Sandlin

All reserved

2021

iii ABSTRACT

HELP US TO BE GOOD: A PNEUMATOLOGICAL VIRTUE ETHIC FOR

CHURCHES OF CHRIST

Name: Sandlin, Mac S. University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Brad J. Kallenberg

Churches of Christ (Stone-Campbell Movement) have inherited from early thinkers in the Movement and generally operate out of an ethic which can be summarized in the maxim, “Try hard to do what the says.” This approach has two major flaws: self-reliance rather than reliance on the , and a tendency to treat

Scripture and an individual’s obedience to Scripture as ends in themselves instead of the means to an end. This ethic yields an that is at once too high and too low: too high in its assumption that we can achieve goodness without the direct aid of the

Spirit and too low in its assumption that obedience is the highest good to which we are called. To this problem, I propose a two-part prescription.

The first element of my proposed solution is recommendation of Alasdair

MacIntyre’s recovery of Aristotelian virtue . Key concepts like teleology, narrative, community, practices, and traditions help provide a more wholistic, practical, and, I argue, biblical way to think about ethics. Helpful as he is, MacIntyre presents his project in the language of philosophy, and if are to be accessible to Churches of Christ, they must be baptized and appear in explicitly Christian language.

Providentially, has already done precisely this work. His theological

iv appropriation of MacIntyre transforms teleology into , narrative to the , practices to , and traditions to the . But Hauerwas’s work, as has often been noted, tends to offer only a bare account of the Holy Spirit.

The second element of my prescription is a more robust than can be provided either by Hauerwas or by Churches of Christ but which draws on the best elements of both. Following Hauerwas’s aphoristic style, I propose a riddling methodology to explore three major themes in pneumatology: 1) the Holy Spirit as both the power/presence of and as a person, 2) the Holy Spirit’s role in and theosis, and 3) the Holy Spirit and love. Drawing on a wide range of biblical sources, the work of theologians including and Eugene Rogers, and the images and insights of patristic authors, especially Augustine I attempt to show that the Spirit is a person who helps us to become that which God is, namely, love.

I conclude by suggesting that Churches of Christ replace the maxim “Try hard to do what the Bible says” and the theological ethic that it represents with maxims such as:

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” “Love and do what you want.” And, the simple but profound , “Help us to be good.”

v

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the Beebe Church of Christ,

The , the , the temple of the Holy Spirit.

vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When a project has taken as long as this one has, the number of people whose impact on the work deserves acknowledgment becomes somewhat overwhelming. I have written this dissertation in three overlapping contexts. The first is department at the University of Dayton. The second is Harding University, the school which formed me as an undergraduate and a seminary student and where I am privileged to teach. The third is my church and family. Without any one of them, this project would not be what it is.

At Dayton, I obviously an enormous debt to my Brad Kallenberg who not only directed this project, and made suggestions at every step in the process but also prayed for me regularly as I wrote. It is an honor to study under so accomplished and impressive a scholar as Dr. Kallenberg, but it is a blessing beyond words to have a good like him ask God’s blessing on your work. Many of the major points in this dissertation first began to form in my mind in his classes. Other professors at Dayton also contributed significantly to the project. The chapter on Augustine as well as the pneumatological insights taken from Aquinas, Congar, and Ratzinger originated in classes and guided research projects led by Dennis Doyle. And, of course, I am indebted to Bill Portier whose wisdom, passion, temper, wit, and laughter have made him both a legendary teacher and a great friend. Once after class the two of us engaged in a predictably loud and intense conversation on the doctrine of mediation. Porter threw his arms in the air and shouted, “How are we supposed to love something like God!?” That question lies behind everything I try to say about the Spirit as a person in this dissertation.

vii Kallenberg frequently says that theology is a team sport, so I must thank not only my coaches, but also my teammates. Thank you to Amy Doorley, who always knew the answers I needed and was patient with me when I asked more than once. Thank you to my colleagues in the basement office without whose conversations, arguments, laughter, and encouragement I would never have made it to the end of this program. Among these, two names demand a special thank you: Laurie Eloe, who befriended me the first time I walked onto campus and poured more love and wisdom and homemade food into me that

I deserve, and Anthony Rosselli, who was and is a brother to me. In your lives and your performance of the Christian I learned things about the Spirit that words cannot capture.

I am grateful to Harding as an institution for the extensive academic leave needed to pursue this degree and the flexibility granted me while I was writing this dissertation.

Among individuals at Harding, I am especially grateful to Monte Cox who saw potential in me that I never saw and who has charted the trajectory of much of my life’s vocation, my teacher, my mentor, my hero, my friend. I this dissertation makes it into one more poem. I also need to acknowledge the tremendous influence that Scott

Adair has had on my life and my theology. Though his name never appears in the footnotes in Chapter Seven, his influence lies behind every line it. I could not have written what I have written about the Spirit had I not learned about Christ from Scott.

My appreciation also goes out to the West Wing of the Bible Department at Harding:

Nathan Guy, Jim Bury, Peter Rice, Kraig Martin, and Dale Manor. There is very little in this dissertation that has not been worked over in conversation with them, and those conversations have been some of the most formative of my life. I also wish to thank my

viii students, especially those who took seminar courses on the Spirit and on Augustine with me. Their comments, questions, and insights made this project better.

No acknowledgements could be complete without including my family. I cannot overstate my thankfulness for the tremendous and unflagging support given to me by my parents, my sister, and above all, by my best friend and wife, Jenni. The title and the prayer from which is taken are hers. I am thankful also to my children, three

“signs of hope requiring infinite ,” whose questions, insights, and beauty inspired many of my favorite lines within this work.1 But my family is not defined only by blood.

And so in closing, I must say a word about the Beebe Church of Christ, the body of believers to whom this work is dedicated. Our minister, Matthew Love introduced me to much of the poetry I cite, read multiple drafts of this dissertation for me, and organized a reading group with members of the congregation (Jeff Wisdom, Logan Thompson,

Michael Gutierrez, and Caleb Carney) to discuss both my work and significant sources within it. I am grateful to him and to them for their help and support. Hailey Pruitt provided a careful pair of eyes and helped with fine edits, catching many mistakes I had overlooked. Our elders and many members have prayed over me and over this work, and

I am confident that their played a significant role in its completion and in anything of within it.

Dayton’s theology program emphasizes the historical context within which we do theology, and the Beebe Church of Christ is my context. For my entire life, I have worshipped, studied, prayed, served, cried, hurt, and celebrated with this church. There is much within it to critique, and the ethic that I find so much fault with in this project, I

1 The quotation comes from a prayer of Stanley Hauerwas’s, “Give Us Hope So We Can Wait,” in Prayers Plainly Spoken (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 87.

ix learned from its pulpit and its classrooms. But it was also the church that gave me , taught me the Bible, gave me my earliest opportunities to preach, teach, and minister. I am that congregation’s son in the faith, and I pray that this dissertation will bless it as it has blessed me.

x TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... iv

DEDICATION...... vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... vii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ...... 1

I. Background and Audience: The and Churches of Christ ...... 1

II. Summary of the Argument ...... 3

CHAPTER II THE RECEIVED ETHIC IN CHURCHES OF CHRIST:

SELF-RELIANT BIBLICAL OBEDIENCE ...... 9

I. Introduction and Thesis ...... 9

II. Restorationists Created and Passed on an Implicit Ethic of Biblical Obedience...... 10

II.A. Alexander Campbell Passed on an Ethic Which Rejects Classical

Approaches to the Question of Goodness, but Offers no Explicit Replacement

for Them...... 11

II.B. The Received Ethic in Churches of Christ Conceives of the Good Primarily in

Terms of Obedience to the Will of God Expressed in Biblical Commands...... 15

III. Churches of Christ Have an Inadequate Understanding and Appreciation of the

Spirit’s Role in Moral Transformation...... 30

III.A. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Early Restorationist Teaching ...... 31

III.B. The Word-Only Debate ...... 34

xi IV. Conclusion ...... 53

CHAPTER III “I NO LONGER CALL YOU SERVANTS”:

ALASDAIR MACINTYRE AND THE PROMISE OF VIRTUE ...... 56

I. Introduction ...... 56

II. MacIntyre’s project ...... 58

II.A. Claim 1: Ours is an Age Characterized by Unsettled and Unsettlable

Moral Debates...... 58

II.B. Claim 2: The State of Modern Moral Conflict is a Result of the Failure of

the Enlightenment Project...... 60

II.C. Claim 3: The Moral Theories Which Dominate Ethical Discussions Today

Have the Appearance of a Rationality Which They Do Not in Fact Possess...... 61

II.D. Claim 4: and Nietzsche Represent the Only Two Compelling

Alternatives to the Modernist Moral Theories...... 63

II.E. Claim 5: The are Best Understood as Those Qualities by Which

Human Beings Achieve the Internal to Practices, Furnish Individual

Human Lives with their Telos, and Sustain Ongoing Social Traditions in Good

Order...... 64

II.F. Claim 6: The Rejection of the Aristotelian tradition Was Occasioned by a

Failure to Sustain and Pass on its Virtues...... 88

II.G. Claim 7: Aristotle Provides Both the Diagnosis of and the Prescription

for the Unhealthy State of Modern Ethics...... 89

III. MacIntyre Offers Four Promising Areas of Application for Churches of Christ. ..91

xii III.A. MacIntyre Helps Churches of Christ Rethink Our Philosophical

Foundations...... 91

III.B. MacIntyre Helps Churches of Christ Recover the Importance of Tradition. .94

III.C. MacIntyre helps Churches of Christ move beyond decisionism...... 97

III.D. MacIntyre helps Churches of Christ emphasize moral transformation...... 104

IV. Conclusion ...... 106

CHAPTER IV BAPTIZING MACINTYRE:

THE THEOLOGICAL ETHICS OF STANLEY HAUERWAS ...... 109

I. Hauerwas Christianizes MacIntyre...... 110

I.A. From teleology to eschatology: gives a radical new

account of MacIntyre’s teleology...... 110

I.B. From narrative to gospel: Hauerwas’s account of the gospel names the

particular Christian narrative and its proposed end for humanity thus allowing

for the articulation of Christian virtues...... 117

I.C. From tradition to the church: Hauerwas’s account of the Church offers a

way of understanding the unique nature of the and the

community which embodies it...... 122

I.D. From Practices to Sacraments: Prayer, Praise, , and ,

Are All Practices in the MacIntyrean Sense But the Christian Recognizes Them

as Vehicles of a Grace That Originate Outside of Practices Even If It Is

Consistently Mediated Through Them...... 136

xiii II. While the Virtue Theory of MacIntyre and Hauerwas is Useful for Combatting

a Simplistic Ethic of Individual Biblical Obedience, It Fails to Give an Adequate

Account of the Holy Spirit...... 145

CHAPTER V FROM ARGUMENT TO APHORISM:

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO PNEUMATOLOGY ...... 148

I. The Move from Character to Theosis Demands a Robust Account of the Holy

Spirit; Hauerwas Fails to Provide Such an Account but is Nevertheless Helpful to

Us by Pointing Towards Sources and an Approach Which Can Fill in What He

Lacks...... 148

I.A. The Move from Character to Theosis Demands a Robust Account of the

Holy Spirit...... 148

I.B. Hauerwas Fails to Provide a Robust Pneumatology...... 149

I.C. Hauerwas Has Acknowledged His Pneumatological Failings and Helpfully

Pointed Us Toward Resources Which Can Fill This Lacuna...... 157

I.D Hauerwas Models and Commends an Aphoristic, Riddling Approach to

Theology That is Especially Well Suited to Pneumatology...... 158

II. The Work of the Holy Spirit and the Relationship Between Pneumatology and

Ethics May be Helpfully Explored Aphoristically Via Riddles Rather Than

Through Straightforward Arguments ...... 160

II.A. Riddling Demands that We Learn to See in New Ways...... 162

II.B. Scripture Models a Riddling Approach Toward Theology Characterized by

1) , 2) Attentiveness, 3) Essential Narrative Backgrounds, and 4) Non-

terminal “Solutions.” ...... 166

xiv III. Conclusion ...... 182

CHAPTER VI RIDDLE ONE – THE SPIRIT IS A CHARACTER:

HOW CAN THE POWER AND PRESENCE OF GOD BE A PERSON? ...... 185

I. Introduction: How Can God’s Power and Presence Be a Person? ...... 185

II. What It Means to be a Character is to Have a Role in the Story of God...... 188

III. The Spirit Frequently Appears as God’s Active Power or Presence Suffused

Throughout All Things Rather than as a Particular Being Within Creation...... 190

III.A. The Spirit is the power of God...... 191

III.B. The Spirit is the presence of God...... 205

IV. The Spirit is “Another Helper” Who Enters Creation Like, Yet Unlike, the

Son and Walks Alongside Us as a Character Within the Story of the World...... 218

IV.A. The and the tradition of the Church present the Spirit

as a person with personal names and personal functions...... 218

IV.B. We can see that the Spirit is a person because the Spirit has a story...... 224

IV.C. We see the Spirit as a character with a story by attending to Trinitarian

scenes in the in which we see the Spirit’s characteristic activity of

anointing and abiding on , expressing and accomplishing the union of

love between the Son and the Father...... 233

IV.D. The Spirit is a character who speaks...... 249

IV.E. Conclusion: The Spirit is a character who unites in love...... 253

V. Seeing the Spirit as a Power and a Person Changes the Way Speak. ...254

xv VI. Conclusion: Seeing the Spirit as Both a Personal Power and a Powerful Person

is Vital to Befriending the Spirit who Befriends us...... 258

CHAPTER VII RIDDLE TWO – WHERE THE SPIRIT IS GOING:

HOW CAN CREATURES BECOME WHAT THE CREATOR IS? ...... 261

I. How Did God Become a Human? By the Spirit...... 263

I.A. Christ’s story cannot be recounted faithfully without explicit reference to

the Spirit...... 264

I.B. As a human, Christ not only participates in the story of humanity as we

know it; he transforms that story’s ending, and he does so by the Spirit...... 269

I.C. Conclusion: How did God become human? By the Spirit...... 270

II. How Can a Person Become That Which God Is? By the Spirit: Theosis and the

Telos of Humanity...... 271

II.A. The story of Jesus’s kenosis and narrates the character of

God and, therefore, it also shows the shape of our ...... 272

II.B. The Spirit Incorporates Our Lives into God’s Story of Kenosis/

Glorification by Forming in Us the Virtue of Self-Outpouring Love and by

Uniting Us to the Glory of Christ’s Resurrection...... 276

II.C. What Is It That God Is: Where is the story of God Headed? Toward the

Spirit...... 283

II.D. The Riddling Images from Depict the Pattern of Spirit-Led

Kenosis-Theosis by Which the Creature Becomes That Which God Is...... 290

III. Conclusion: How can we become that which God is? By the Spirit...... 295

xvi CHAPTER VIII RIDDLE THREE – LOVE AND DESIRE:

HOW CAN SINFUL PEOPLE WHOSE LOVES ARE DISORDERED LOVE GOD

AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER? ...... 298

I. Augustine Rightly Teaches Us That Love Is the Fullness of ...... 300

I.A. Augustine’s Moral Theology is an Ad Hoc Ethica Caritatis That Does Not

Fit Neatly into Either Virtue Ethics in the Thomistic Tradition or Protestant

Versions of ...... 302

II. Augustine’s Doctrine of the Ordo Amoris Describes the Ways in Which

Humans Are Sinful as Well as What Righteousness Looks Like ...... 305

II.A. Human Beings Are Sinful Insofar as Their Loves Are Disordered or Too

Weak...... 306

II.B. When Their Loves are Properly Ordered, Human Beings Love Both the

World and God But Do So in Such a Way That Their Love for the World is

Always Instrumentally Directed Toward Their Love for God...... 308

III. We Whose Loves Are Disordered Can Only Love Rightly Insofar as the Holy

Spirit Pours the Love Which is Himself into Our Hearts...... 312

III.A. The Spirit is the Love of God...... 313

III.B. The Spirit Who is God’s Gift of Love Binds the Christian to God in Love,

Instructs Christians on How to Live as Love, and Transforms Christians Such

that their Nature is Love...... 318

III.C. God is Love; Therefore, to Love is to Become One With God, and to

Become One With God is to Love...... 320

xvii IV. Conclusion: A Deeper Understanding and Appreciation for the Holy Spirit

Allows the Aristotelian Notion of Character to be Transformed into the Christian

Doctrine of Theosis, and Theosis is Nothing Other Than Love...... 324

CONCLUSION HELP US TO BE GOOD:

CHANGING THE ETHICAL MAXIM IN CHURCHES OF CHRIST ...... 326

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 336

xviii CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Every night my family prays together. We express our gratitude to God for the gifts of home and family, and we thank him for particular blessings of the day. Then we turn to petitions. We pray for his blessing on our rest, for safety when we travel, for healing for the sick and injured, for comfort and peace for those who are struggling.

Tucked in the middle of our prayer, just after, “Bless us as we rest tonight” and “Bless our loved ones, near and far” is the petition which serves as the title of this dissertation,

“Help us to be good.” It is as simple a prayer as one could imagine, a prayer for children.

And yet, within that child’s prayer is a wealth of theological implication. It names our telos, the end toward which our lives are aimed – being good – and it names the reality of our need for God’s help to achieve this telos. “Help us to be good” is the quintessential

Christian prayer in regards to ethics, and this dissertation is, in many ways, merely an exploration of the meaning of that phrase and a commendation of it as a petitionary aphorism to a particular faith community, the Churches of Christ.

I. Background and Audience: The Restoration Movement and Churches of Christ

Churches of Christ are part of the American religious tradition alternatively called the Stone-Campbell Movement or the American Restoration Movement. The movement began in this country in the early 19th century and is represented today by the Disciples of

Christ, the Christian Church, and Churches of Christ. Early leaders like Thomas and

Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone promoted a non-denominational ecumenical approach to which looked to the Bible and the example of the first-century

1 church as the authorizing standard for all doctrine and practice.2 These two impulses, ecumenical unity and the restoring of first-century Christianity, were frequently at odds with one another, and that tension played a major role in the divisions that occurred within the movement. In the end, Disciples of Christ have tended to emphasize unity and

Churches of Christ have emphasized restoration though neither completely abandoned either .3 Within Churches of Christ, the impulse to restore to the Church the practices of first-century Christianity was primarily aimed at the sphere of congregational , but the hermeneutic which governed the ways that the worship assembly was to be conducted also impacted the way that Churches of Christ approached ethics more broadly.

The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a critique of the received ethic within

Churches of Christ and to propose an alternative approach to thinking about Christian for that community, but one that still fits the Christian identity. I approach the

2 The Campbells and Stone came out of and had close associations with American early in their ministry. The movement has generally seen Baptists and other low-church Protestants (so called) as its nearest ecumenical neighbors. This accounts for both the connections Churches of Christ have with American and the fierce arguments that have generally characterized the relationship between the two groups. Though culturally and liturgically Churches of Christ are similar to Primitive Baptists or conservative Evangelicals, there are a number of theological points on which we are actually much closer to our and Orthodox Christianity. 3 Manifestations of this tension are explored David Edwin Harrell Jr., Quest for a Christian America 1800–1865: A Social of the Disciples of Christ Vol. 1 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003); Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ 1865– 1900: A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, Vol. 2 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003); Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

2 topic as an insider. The Restoration Movement is my ecclesial home.4 I was born, baptized, and educated within the Stone-Campbell Movement, and it is my privilege and honor to serve as a minister and a for Churches of Christ. This dissertation is specifically written from within and directed towards that branch of the American

Restoration Movement to which I belong. Thus, I use the language of “we” and “our” when speaking of the Movement throughout the dissertation when referring to Churches of Christ.

Though I write here specifically for and within the frame of the Restoration

Movement, this project remains relevant for a variety of other groups. Churches of Christ are not alone in their problematic reduction of ethics to biblical obedience nor in their neglect of the Holy Spirit. Other traditions may find that what I say about Churches of

Christ applies mutatis mutandis to their situations. Students of Stanley Hauerwas’s work will, I hope, find the pneumatological material in chapters 5-6 to be a helpful extension of

Hauerwas’s theology and ethics into a field he has all too often neglected.

II. Summary of the Argument

My argument is presented as a diagnosis and prescription in two stages. The first stage focuses on the diagnosis and part one of the prescription. Chapter 2 explores the received ethic in Churches of Christ and offers the following diagnosis: Due to their tendencies to think of ethics in terms of obedience and to minimize the direct action of the Holy Spirit in ethical formation, Churches of Christ have developed an approach to

4 The tension between and plays some role in the preference given for the title Stone-Campbell Movement over American Restoration Movement among many scholars. I use both terms in this dissertation, but prefer Restorationist over Stone- as an adjective on both grammatical and historical-theological grounds. Neither Campbell nor Stone would have wanted Christians to denominate themselves at all and certainly not under the names Stone or Campbell.

3 ethics containing a problematic anthropology that is at once too high and too low. This ethic of mere biblical obedience is represented by the maxim, “Try hard to obey what the

Bible says to do.” Such a maxim implies that moral excellence is achievable via individual human effort alone, and here is the source for the “too high” aspect of our anthropology. This self-reliant, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps ethic is deeply

American, but it is deeply unchristian and unbiblical. The maxim further implies that the fulness of our moral lives is simply to “obey what the Bible says to do” and here we see the “too low” aspect of its anthropology. Obedience is an essential aspect of Christian morality, but it is not a fit description for the telos of those who are called to be co-heirs with Christ, friends of God, and partakers of the divine nature. What is needed is more, though not less, than obedience, or perhaps better stated, what is needed is a certain kind of obedience – that of sons, rather than that of slaves. Christian morality aims at a transformation of character and nature which unites us to God in the fullness of love.

Though the tendency to reduce ethics to mere obedience and to ignore the Holy Spirit’s role in ethics are common across the movement, there are figures within the history of

Churches of Christ who offer helpful corrections to these tendencies, even if their influence has not been sufficient to overcome the general trend. Chapter 2 introduces the reader to some of these figures and ideas which point us toward the prescription proposed in the rest of the dissertation.

Chapter 3 offers the opening to stage one of my prescription by exploring the

Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre and the ways that this approach to ethics offers a helpful correction to the received ethic of obedience in Churches of Christ.

It summarizes the seven claims of MacIntyre’s After Virtue and points to ways in which

4 MacIntyre’s project is relevant to Churches of Christ. The virtue-centered ethics for which MacIntyre advocates offer an alternative way to view obedience and reintroduces concepts like teleology, narrative, tradition, and practices which align more closely to the way the Bible talks about human goodness than does the received ethic in Churches of

Christ. However, MacIntyre writes as a philosopher rather than a moral theologian, and though he is himself a Christian, his project must be baptized and put on Christian language if it is to be accessible and acceptable for a movement dedicated to “calling

Bible things by Bible names and doing Bible things in Bible ways”5 Fortunately, Stanley

Hauerwas has done just that work.

Chapter 4 focuses on the work of Stanley Hauerwas and completes stage one of the prescription by noting the ways in which his theological project helpfully recasts

MacIntyre’s virtue ethics into theological language and thereby makes it explicitly

Christian. In it, I examine the way that Hauerwas’s theology transforms teleology into eschatology, narrative into the gospel, tradition into the Church, and practices into sacraments. Hauerwas is an especially relevant conversation partner for Churches of

Christ both because of the way he bridges MacIntyre’s virtue ethics and and also because he has been so influential for a generation of young

5 The saying is common among Churches of Christ and frequently functions as a shorthand expression of the restoration plea. See Terry Miethe, “Slogans” and Jess O. Hale, JR., “The Plea” in The Stone-Campbell Encyclopedia: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Churches of Christ, eds. Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavast, and D. Newell Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 688, 598-599. Hicks and Valentine list it along with “Speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Bible is silent” and “No , but Christ” i.e. the Bible is our creed, as a common slogan among Restorationists from the earliest days of the movement. John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine, Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of and James A. Harding (Abilene, TX: Leafwood Press, 2006), 79-80.

5 theologians within the movement. However, as many students of his work have noted,

Hauerwas tends to neglect the Holy Spirit in both his theology and his ethics.

Chapter 5 begins the move toward the second stage of our prescription by noting

Hauerwas’s failure to give an adequate account of the Holy Spirit’s role in our ethical transformation and therefore his inability to move from the MacIntyrean language of character to the Christian language of theosis. Though Hauerwas does not do the full pneumatological work we need, he does point us in helpful directions both by his performance of aphorisms and by the sources upon which his pneumatological writings draw. The bulk of the chapter describes the methodology which will characterize my own pneumatology. This approach, which is in keeping with, even if distinct from

Hauerwas’s approach, is aphoristic rather than argumentative and draws on riddles as an effective way of exploring the person and work of the Holy Spirit in Christian ethics.

Chapter 6 marks the beginning of the second section of the project which focuses on pneumatology. This section aims to presents the second stage in my prescription for improving moral theology in Churches of Christ by exploring three riddles which help us see the importance and role of the Spirit in the ethical life of the Church. Chapter six explores the pneumatological lacuna in Stanley Hauerwas’s work, its sources and its implications and then, by drawing on themes and influential figures within Hauerwas’s work, it proposes a heuristical methodology modeled on ancient riddle-telling that will govern my pneumatological proposal.

Chapter 7 presents the first riddle and asks, “How can the power and presence of

God be a person?” Drawing on biblical analysis as well as the work of contemporary theologians like Eugene Rogers and Robert Jenson, it explores the ways in which the

6 Spirit is both the author’s presence suffused throughout the story of creation and also a particular character within that story. Because I am proposing a pneumatology for

Churches of Christ, I emphasize Scripture and walk through a number of passages which ought to govern the ways we talk about the Spirit.

Chapter 8 examines the doctrine of theosis and the mystery of by asking my second riddle, “How can creatures become that which the creator is?” Again, scriptural analysis plays a central role in arriving at a response of “By the Holy Spirit.”

New Testament scholar Michael Gorman provides important insights into the kentoic/theotic character of God and of our salvation which are crucial to understanding this riddle. I also explore a number of patristic sources related to the question of theosis, and their image of iron heated by fire provides a helpful depiction of the process of sanctification as I present it. I also return to Robert Jenson’s pneumatology which gives us the useful language of the Spirit as God’s futurity and the telos of the Father and the

Son as well as the creatures who partake of their divine nature.

Chapter 9 focuses on love and asks my final riddle, “How can sinful people whose loves are disordered love God and love one another?” My answer, of course, is By the Holy Spirit. Both the wording of the riddle and the response to it come from

Augustine, and this final section engages some of the major themes in both his ethical writings and his pneumatology, the Spirit as the bond of love (vinculum caritatis) between the Father and the Son. Augustine is, in many ways, an odd conversation partner for Churches of Christ, but his insights on love are essential for the sort of pneumatological virtue ethic I am proposing. Moreover, Augustine is a key source for

7 Hauerwas, Jenson, and Rogers, the three figures whose thinking have been most influential on the theology of my project as a whole.

These three chapters offer the second stage in my ethical prescription for

Churches of Christ. Though each treats a separate riddle, it is important that the reader see the three riddles not as separate steps in an argument but as something more like a triptych of paintings organized around a central theme. Throughout this section, I frequently rely on poetry, images, and narratives to evoke a pneumatology which a more straightforward argument might miss.

I conclude with a brief summary of what has come before and suggest that the pneumatological virtue ethic I have constructed from MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and a the three pneumatological riddles is a better approach to thinking about and pursuing moral excellence than the received ethic of Churches of Christ. Therefore, I propose that we

[Churches of Christ] should replace the maxim, “Try hard to do what the Bible says” and the received ethic which it summarizes with this pneumatological virtue ethic expressed in the petition, “Help us to be good.” Such a move recaptures the best impulses of our movement and better equips us to live our lives in accordance with the biblical teachings we have so long cherished.

8 CHAPTER II

THE RECEIVED ETHIC IN CHURCHES OF CHRIST: SELF-RELIANT BIBLICAL

OBEDIENCE

I. Introduction and Thesis

Churches of Christ have historically been known for their strong emphasis on the

Bible, their devotion to , and their distinctive worship practices – acapella singing, weekly communion, etc. We are a group that cares deeply about sound doctrine, especially doctrine that has immediate application to the practical aspects of in the assembly.6 We have been suspicious of philosophy, , , and emotional . As an American movement rooted in

Enlightenment of thought (even if those principles were generally assumed rather than argued), we have focused on the individual and valued rationally consistent, universal, ahistorical principles. These emphases have served us well in a number of ways, but they have hindered our thinking and teaching in regards to ethics. Our Scottish

Common-Sense heritage with its confidence in the ability of people to successfully and act on reason, our anti-Calvinistic doctrine which rejected and and emphasized , and our Kantian assumption that ethics is

6 “I charge thee therefore before God, and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim 4:1-4, KJV). The term “sound doctrine” was a common way for ministers and writers in Churches of Christ to describe Restorationist positions on issues debated with other Christians or controversies within the movement itself.

9 primarily a subject focused on the will and human decisions have all contributed to two major weaknesses in our approach to ethics. The first is our tendency toward , by which I mean our tendency to look at ethics in a way that focuses on commands, rules, and precepts and sees obedience as an end in itself instead of a means to a greater end.

This ethic of obedience helpfully emphasizes the importance of the legal elements of

Scripture and can encourage an admirable humility. However, it is less helpful insofar as it emphasizes doing over being, choice over habit, innocence over virtue, and the isolated moment over the full sweep of history.

The second problem from which our ethical approach suffers is its tendency to minimize or ignore the Holy Spirit’s role in our moral transformation. There is a certain humility inherent in our ethic of biblical obedience in that it teaches us that we are to submit to the rule of God as his subjects. But it also carries an overconfident assumption that we have within ourselves the requisite abilities to understand and to obey. Further, it leads us to believe that obedience rather than personal transformation and union with God is the goal of the Christian life. Our implicit ethic of biblical obedience contains within it an anthropology that is at once both too high and too low: too high in that it assumes that we are capable of goodness without the help of God’s Spirit operating within us “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13) and too low in that it assumes that our eternal destiny is to be mere servants of God rather than friends, slaves rather than children, subjects in the Kingdom rather than co-heirs with Christ its king.7 This chapter examines these two problems and attempts to demonstrate that, while they are present and widespread within Churches of Christ, they are not insurmountable.

7 All biblical citations are taken from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.

10 II. Restorationists Created and Passed on an Implicit Ethic of Biblical Obedience.

Though there is no document or set of documents which could be said to summarize or articulate the ethical vision of the Restoration Movement, there is nevertheless a clear and consistent assumption across the tradition that ethics is a matter of choice, of the will, of obedience to divine commands. Robert Rea, in his excellent essay on the role of holiness in the Restoration Movement notes that

Stone-Campbell Movement leaders, past and present, have generally assumed that every Christian must strive to live a life that reflects love for God expressed in obedience, [but] rarely did Stone-Campbell leaders address the subject of holiness.8

Rea rightly names the assumed nature of our ethic and performs the characteristic emphasis on the will and obedience. “Striving to live a life that reflects love for God expressed in obedience” aptly sums up the Restorationist ethic. In it, lives that reflect love for God are achieved by Christians trying hard. Love for God is expressed in obedience divorced from holy character. The goal is trying, expressing, and doing rather than becoming, receiving, or uniting. If we are to understand the dominant ethic of

Churches of Christ, we must first address the fact that it is an implicit rather than an explicitly stated ethic and then examine its emphasis on obedience.

II.A. Alexander Campbell Passed on an Ethic Which Rejects Classical Approaches to the Question of Goodness, but Offers no Explicit Replacement for Them.

8 Robert Rea, “’Holiness in the Writings of the Early Stone-Campbell Movement Leaders,” Stone-Campbell Journal, 8 (Fall 2005), 163-164. I follow Rea in using the words ‘holiness,’ ‘ethics,’ ‘moral theology,’ and ‘goodness’ as a family of terms which are all interrelated and inseparable within a Christian framework of thought, even if they convey various shades of meaning and have their own as precise jargon within academic disciplines related to them.

11 Neither Campbell nor Stone ever produced a systematic treatment of ethics, nor did any other major figure in the early period of the Restoration Movement. Indeed, even in secondary works designed to treat the ethics of important leaders there is no clear system of thought presented. Rather, these texts tend to summarize and collect quotations from major figures in the movement on a variety of issues in

(e.g. war, slavery, , and government) and offer them up as “The Ethics of

Alexander Campbell” or some such figure.9

When Campbell did explicitly take up the question of what to make of moral philosophy, he did so in a polemical that results in the rejection of classical approaches to ethics as a whole.10 He fails to actually engage the classical thinkers e.g.

Socrates, , and Aristotle, etc. Instead, he rejects them out of hand because they are not Christian. In fact, Aristotle’s is the major reason for which Campbell dismisses moral philosophy as a discipline. He points to examples of Aristotle’s failings in applied ethics to strengthen his point. According to Campbell, Aristotle supported the exposure of weak and sickly infants, encouraged revenge, and saw death as the final end for human persons; therefore, his approach to ethics is flawed and ought to be rejected.11

Plato is likewise dismissed because of his support for infanticide, his approval of bad

9 See for example, Harold Lunger, The of Alexander Campbell (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012); Terry L. Miethe, “The Philosophy and Ethics of Alexander Campbell: From the Context of American Religious Thought, 1800-1866,” PhD Diss. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1984, America History and Life Full Text (46900207). Caleb Clanton, The of Alexander Campbell (Knoxville: University of Press, 2013), 119–147. 10 Alexander Campbell, “Is Moral Philosophy an Inductive ?” in Popular Lectures and Addresses (Nashville: Harbinger Book Club, 1861). 11 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 105–106.

12 manners, his in justified dishonesty, and his ethnocentrism.12 He saw the whole tradition of moral philosophy as a shell game:

Does it not appear that moral philosophy never removed any doubts except those which she had created? Like the spear of Achilles, she healed only the wounds which herself had inflicted. That it cast not a single ray of light upon a single cardinal point in the whole science of ! … That it failed… even in the hands of the great masters – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus.13

Aristotle in particular was a target of Campbell’s invective. In an 1853 essay on education, he mocks Aristotle’s logic, his ethics, and his philosophical method in general.

Aristotle’s approach to knowledge “filled the minds of men with mere words and confused notions.”14 It led them away from the study of nature and unsettled their minds

“in an endless ferment about occult qualities and imaginary essences.”15 For Campbell,

Aristotle is “the of men’s minds” and the “enchanter of Stagira.” His logic is

“particularly his own” and carries no helpful insights for the world.16 Against this,

Francis Bacon’s approach is touted as universal, liberating, and commonsensical.17

Baconian philosophy, for Campbell, provided certainty, clarity, and a universal means of communicating that which is true and good. Indeed, he does not think of Bacon as a philosopher so much as a destroyer of moral philosophy, a destruction to which Campbell

12 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 106. 13 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 122. 14 Alexander Campbell, “Essay on Education: To our Juvenile Readers, the Sons and Daughters of our Patrons. – No. I,” no. 1 vol. 6, (1835): 20–21. 15 Campbell, “Essay on Education,” 21. 16 Campbell, “Essay on Education,” 22–23. The phrase, “Enchanter of Stagira” appears in a long unattributed quotation in the essay. The original source appears to be Samuel Tyler’s A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy, (Frederick City, MA: Ezekiel Hughes Publisher, 1844), 63. 17 Charles Taylor’s description of the mistaken notion that modernity is a series of “subtraction stories” in which the or enchanted elements of the world are removed while nothing of significance is an important critique of the approach to modernism which is characteristic of early Restorationists to greater or lesser degree. See Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 2007), esp. 26-29 and 565-579.

13 was delighted to contribute. Campbell’s entire project in “Is Moral Philosophy an

Inductive Science?” is to reject moral philosophy as a whole and appeal instead only to faith as the legitimate basis of morality.

Man is not constituted by his creator to be led by instinct, sense or reason; but by faith in infallible tradition…The science of human happiness is now before us; and if I have not shown where it may be learned, I have certainly shown where it never has been and where it never can be learned [namely, from any source outside of divinely inspired and infallible tradition received in faith].18

No principle of moral philosophy, he says, may be derived apart from divine revelation.

Anything that appears to be a legitimate moral precept or insight arising from philosophy or non-Christian religion is taken to be a plagiarized remnant of the divine revelation made to and passed down through him and his progeny on Seth’s side of the family tree or from Moses and Israel.19

The first generation of Restorationists bequeathed to the movement as a whole their rejection of systems of moral philosophy in general and an accompanying implicit approach to ethics centered in obedience to biblical commands. Campbell’s approach to the topic is characteristic of the movement as a whole, though admittedly more robust and intense in tone. His final words in “Is Moral Philosophy an Inductive Science” articulate the movement’s general attitude toward philosophical approaches to ethics:

18 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 122. Importantly, by the infallible tradition, Campbell means Scripture and not the history or tradition of the Church. 19 Campbell’s reading of Genesis takes the entirety of that book to be literal history. He supplements the sparse details of the text with an imaginative (to say the least) description of how the patriarchs would have related to each other and how they would have passed on knowledge. He depicts Adam as “The oracle of the world” for the first nine centuries of humanity’s existence. Campbell constructs an elaborate history of the ancient world of Genesis in which God verbally told Adam all that came before his creation and declared to him “the five points of moral philosophy” – humanity’s origin, nature, relations, obligations, and destiny as well as a great deal of natural science and practical wisdom. That God would not have done so or that Adam would not have passed that information down to his descendants as an oracle is, Campbell thinks, utterly incredible. Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 110–-113, 121.

14 To contemplate an eternity past – to anticipate an eternity yet to come – with full- developed minds of celestial stature, dwelling in spiritual and incorruptible bodies of unfading beauty and immortal youth, to survey the past creations of God – to witness the new- to commune with one another, and with all intelligences, on all the manifestations of the – and above all, to trace all the acts of the great drama of man’s as developed by the Divine Author and Perfecter of a remedial – to read the library of , the volumes of creation, of providence and redemption – to intercommunicate the sentiments and emotions arising from such themes, interrupted only by heavenly anthems, and fresh glories breaking on our enraptured vision – will constitute a proper employment for a being of such endowments, capacities and aspirations as man.20

For such a vision, Campbell asserts, the light of mere nature or reason is insufficient, and something more is needed.

[T]o disclose such secrets – to reveal such mysteries – and to guide man in a path that leads to such a destiny [is the province of] the peculiar and worthy object of a communication supernatural and divine…such a volume we have in the much neglected, but incomparably, sublime and awful volume – the BIBLE.21

II.B. The Received Ethic in Churches of Christ Conceives of the Good Primarily in Terms of Obedience to the Will of God Expressed in Biblical Commands.

If we are to unpack the implicit position which has governed Churches of Christ in their thinking about ethics throughout most of their history we must begin with the

Bible and obedience to it. The theme of the Bible as the all-sufficient guide to the faith and practice of the Church, the infallible and complete revelation of God, and the standard for moral and doctrinal teaching is ubiquitous in the of

Churches of Christ. A typical example is found in C.R. Nichol’s and R.L. Whiteside’s influential set of School lessons titled Sound Doctrine. The authors follow

Campbell in asserting that the Bible, and the Bible alone is the source of all morality. In their second volume they write,

20 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 124. 21 Campbell, “Moral Philosophy,” 124.

15 Not only has God given us all things necessary to life and godliness, but also all things that pertain to life and godliness. And this has been given to us “through the knowledge of him that called us” – that is, all things that pertain to life and godliness have been given to us through the knowledge revealed to us in the Bible.22

The philosophical assumption that accompanies this Biblicism is that the Bible is a book of commands and that obedience to those commands constitutes the totality of morality. “Anything in our religion which cannot be found in [the Bible] does not pertain to life and godliness.”23 This focus on biblical commands leads Clanton to describe

Campbell’s approach to ethics as “a divine command theory of right conduct,” and this approach has been typical of Restorationists ever since though it is distinct in many ways from other theories of divine command ethics.24 Given his influence on the movement, it is worth exploring in more detail Campbell’s approach to ethics.

II.B.1. Moral-positive and moral-natural commands in Campbell’s ethics.

Campbell divided the moral duties of humanity into two categories: “moral- positive commands” and “moral-natural commands.” Moral-natural commands are those

22 C.R. Nichol and R.L. Whiteside, Sound Doctrine, Vol.2, (Clifton, TX: Nichol Publishing Company, 1921), 157. Note that the knowledge of God is equated with the collection of facts and propositions revealed in Scripture. 23 Nichol and Whiteside, Vol. 2, 157. 24 Caleb Clanton, The Philosophy of Religion of Alexander Campbell, 120. Clanton and Martin later complicated this view in their treatment of Campbell’s metaethics in which they describe him as “a combination theorist” whose answer to the metaethical question, “What makes x right?” combines divine command ethics with Natural . See their forthcoming Nature & Command: On the Metaethical Foundations of Morality scheduled to be published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2022. The distinction between whether Campbell was a or divine command is not central to my argument here since in both cases the ethical approach is fundamentally deontological in nature. In both approaches, the ethical life is defined in terms of obedience to commands. On alternative approaches to divine command ethics see, John Hare, God’s Command (: , 2015); Wonho Jung, “Divine Command, Natural Law, and Redemption in Calvin’s Thought,” Theology Today 77, no. 3 (2020), 323–334; Robert Merrihew , “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in the Virtues of Faith and Other Essays in (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 97–122.

16 aspects of ethics which can be discovered in nature apart from God’s revealed word, and moral-positive commands are those that arise from revelation alone.25 Campbell lists a number of moral-positive duties found in scripture including the following: the prohibition against eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and , the appointing of sacrifices, the identification of the Sabbath as the seventh day of the week

(as opposed to another day), etc. But he also acknowledges that apart from revealed law,

Adam might know that it was right to love his wife, to cherish and protect her as himself. And now, though fallen, men perceive such virtues as truth, honesty, and common to be in the nature of things necessary and right.26

Even in those places where Campbell does acknowledge or accept the concept of natural law, he consistently sees it as inferior and subservient to the positive law expressed in

Scripture. Moreover, whether speaking of positive or natural law, he consistently describes ethics in the language of obedience. It is relevant to note that when offering his defense of moral-natural commands, he still appeals to Romans 2:15 as an authority for

25 Campbell owes this bi-furcation of moral imperatives in part to the Scottish Common- Sense Realism of Thomas Reid and James Beattie and in part to the American expression of Reformed theology. He made use of this distinction in multiple settings, the most notable of which is his debate with John Walker. The full text of this debate is available online at https://archive.org/details/debateonchristia00camp/page/n5, see especially page 45. This distinction was common among both Reformed and Restorationist preachers and writers. Hicks notes its appearance in the work of as an example of the Reformed tradition and in Thomas Campbell, J.W. McGarvey, David Lipscomb, W.H. Hopson, , and most especially Benjamin Franklin. Hicks, “Stone-Campbell Hermeneutics V.” The full text of Franklin’s sermon, “Divine Positive Law” is available online at http://articles.ochristian.com/article3643.shtml. 26 Campbell/Walker Debate, 45.

17 his position.27 Thus we see that for Campbell, even his thinking about natural law is rooted in and authorized by an appeal to Scripture.28

II.B.2. Moral-positive and moral-natural commands in later Restoration writers

This same pattern of thinking is also present in later Restorationist writers.

Nichol and Whiteside’s Sound Doctrine contains in its first volume a chapter on the notion of obedience. Their treatment of the topic emphasizes knowledge of the law, motive/intent, and submission to authority. It also prizes moral positive duties over moral natural ones. “Our obedience is the measure of our allegiance,” they write.29

Indeed, for Nichol and Whiteside, obedience is primarily a test of loyalty. God’s commands come to us as incomprehensible in themselves, and obedience to a command that corresponds to our natural reason – “Do not murder” or “Do not lie” for example – is not, for these authors, true obedience. Rather, it is when God’s commands lie outside of the natural moral order that they accomplish their real work of testing our faith. God’s command to Naaman to dip in the Jordan seven times (2 Kings 5:10) or Christ’s command to the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam (John 9:7) are two of Nichol’s and Whiteside’s favorite examples.

27 “They show that the law is written on their hearts…” (Rom. 2:15) 28 This is not to deny that Campbell saw natural law as epistemologically available to rational creatures via the created order, merely that Campbell appealed to Scripture as the secure source of information about the existence of natural law. For a more in-depth look at the associated with moral positive and moral natural , see John Mark Hicks, “Stone-Campbell Hermeneutics V: Moral and Positive Law,” Wineskins, May 31, 2008, http://johnmarkhicks.com/2008/05/31/stone-campbell-hermeneutics-v-moral-and-positive-law/ . For the role of moral positive and moral natural commands in James A. Harding (a figure we will have some cause to return to), see John Mark Hicks, “A Gracious Separatist: Moral and Positive Law in the Theology of James A. Harding.” Restoration Quarterly 42.3 (2000), 129-147. 29 Nichol and Whiteside, Sound Doctrine Vol. 1, 112.

18 As is frequently the case in such literature, the authors (both Campbell and Nichol

& Whiteside) always have the doctrine of baptism in the back (or the front!) of their minds and take every opportunity to make the case that a person must be baptized in order to be saved.30 Thus, the examples of Naaman and the blind man are especially favored because of their connection with water and baptism. The Churches of Christ emphasize baptism as both essential to salvation and as an act of pure obedience to a positive (i.e. irrational) command, and this colors their treatment of obedience and disobedience substantially. Due to this tendency to focus on baptism so relentlessly, it is frequently difficult to separate ethics from soteriology in Restorationist writings. This is common across the literature of Churches of Christ even for those who were opposed to

Nichol and Whiteside and the strand of the tradition which they represent. Members of the so-called Nashville Tradition were strident in their opposition to those whom they thought underemphasized the doctrine of grace and the work of the Spirit in Salvation, but they nevertheless failed to distinguish between “doing right” and “being saved.”

James A. Harding, for example, collapses ethics and soteriology into a single category when he writes about the doctrine of grace in opposition to the Texas Tradition which

Nichol and Whiteside represent:

30 This debate about the essentiality and efficacy of baptism constitutes perhaps the most firmly held and vigorously debated doctrine of Churches of Christ. The movement’s history is full of debates and arguments with Protestant groups over whether or not baptism is essential to salvation. See for example: Campbell vs. Walker, https://www.thechristianrepository.com /uploads/8/7/0/0/87007510/campbell-walker_-_baptism.pdf; Hardeman-Bogard Debate, (1938), (Nashville: , 1938), https://icotb.org/resources/Hardeman_Bogard1.pdf; Leroy Brownlow, Why Am I a Member of the Church of Christ (Fort Worth, TX: Brownlow Publishing Company, 1945); The Woods-Nunnery Debate on Baptism and , (July 1946), https://icotb.org/resources/ WOODS-NUNNERYDEBATE.PDF.

19 When a man understands that any command is a command of God to him, he should obey it at once, whether he understands the design of it – the end that it is designed to accomplish or not.31

Harding does not think that perfect moral obedience yields salvation. His emphasis on grace was coupled with a low view of the human ability to do the right thing. He went so far as to say that even the language of “doing one’s best” was unhelpful since no one, he argued, ever does one’s best with any consistency.32 Nevertheless, he still roots both ethics and perseverance in salvation in the human will to obey.

The Christian remains in Christ just as long as he “wills to do his will;” as long as he strives earnestly and prayerfully against the world, the flesh, and the . As soon as he wills to do wrong, as soon as he deliberately enters upon a course of wrongdoing, he passes out of Christ. He then not only with the flesh but also with the mind serves the law of .33

It is tempting to imagine that because Restoration leaders in the Nashville Tradition rejected the legalistic doctrine of “salvation by doing” that they also rejected an ethic defined strictly in terms of obedience, but this is not the case. Hicks quotes Hall as saying, “[faithfulness means] the yearning in the heart to do it right.” Here we see a grace-centered soteriology but an ethic that is still strongly tied to the Kantian deontological tradition.34 Likewise, Moses Lard writes,

31 James A. Harding, “Reply to Brother McGary,” Gospel Advocate XXIX (4): 49. See also James A. Harding, “Grace and Works,” Gospel Advocate XXV (30): 474–475; “How are we Saved? A Reply to the Liberal Baptist. No. 2,” The Way 5.2 (30 April 1903): 546–548. 32 John Mark Hicks, “The Gracious Separatists): 129–147. 33 James A. Harding, “What I Would Not, That I Do,” Gospel Advocate 25 (July 1883): 442. Quoted in Hicks, “Gracious Separatist,” 36. Harding’s intent in this quotation seems to be to emphasize the way that grace rather than law saves the Christian. He is commenting on the faith/works debate which has figured prominently in Restoration history. Despite the emphasis on grace and his rejection of legalism, it remains clear that Harding’s primary ethical outlook focused on the will and decision-making and therefore remained fundamentally deontological in nature. 34 Samuel Henry Hall, Scripture Studies (Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1931): 129-130. Quoted in John Mark Hicks, “Harding, Boll, and Grace: The Nashville Bible School Theological Tradition,” Unpublished manuscript, 8. https://mattdabbs.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/10/2013/08/boll-and-nashville-bible-school.pdf.

20 [The New Testament] is now the supreme law of both doctrine and practice; and all have reference to one or the other, or both, of these. Hence in this will must the present have its rise. It must accept this as its supreme regulating principle ....the reformation consists in an effort to induce all the truly pious in Christ to become perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment, by accepting as doctrine, precisely and only what is either actually asserted or necessarily implied in the Bible; to speak the same things by speaking what the Bible speaks, and to speak them in the language of the Bible; and to practice the same things by doing simply the will of Christ.35

This tendency to discuss ethics primarily in the context of soteriology makes it difficult to discern exactly what it is that authors in Churches of Christ think about ethics in its own right. Questions like, “What is the good?” or “How can I be good?” are largely ignored in favor of the biblical question, “What must we do to be saved?” (Acts 2:37).36

In a short paragraph in their chapter on obedience, Nichol and Whiteside do, however, come close to articulating something more than a simple ethic of obedience.

When discussing “The Purpose of Obedience,” they write,

God is fitting and preparing us for eternal habitation with him. In heaven God’s will must reign supreme, otherwise confusion and disorder will prevail. In heaven they serve him (Rev. 7:15; 22:3). Joyful, loving obedience will be there, but it must be learned here. Here we form our characters. God is seeking in his preparatory school to train us in the art of obedience. “Thy will be done, as it is in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6:10). No man can sincerely make that petition to God unless he is willing for God’s will to reign supreme in his own heart. No one

35 Moses Lard, Lard’s Quarterly 1 (1864): 10, 22, (Italics mine). 36 This is not to imply that Restorationists had no interest in ethical questions. As we have seen, they frequently engaged in questions of applied ethics, such as should a Christian serve in the military, vote, own slaves, dance, drink, tithe, have abortions, etc. On such questions, their approach was generally to ask, “What does the Bible say about x,” to discover an answer, and then to present that answer as a command to be obeyed. That such was their method is the general thesis of this chapter, and the inadequacies of this method are the raison d’être of this dissertation.

21 in heaven will urge that some of God’s commandments are non-essential. Such characters will not be there.37

Nichol and Whiteside here take a more teleological view than one might expect given the deontological approach they generally assume. Their emphasis on character and its connection to our eternal destiny of living with God hints that they have a more nuanced ethic than the chapter (and indeed the book or series as a whole) presents. The image of earth as God’s preparatory school is helpful in many ways. However, even in this paragraph we see their vision of heaven as a place where submission, obedience, and deference are necessary to restrain rebellion that would allow “confusion and disorder” to prevail. The saved are joyful in their obedience, but obedience is still the goal.38 There is something missing in this eschatology. It lacks an adequate account of the transformation

God will work (and is working) in his people. For Nichol and Whiteside, reluctant obedience is transformed into joyful loving obedience, but there is an insufficient transformation of the person who obeys. This same eschatological weakness appears in a common trope of sermons preached in Churches of Christ – the broom closet in heaven.

Preachers would talk about foregoing the gold and mansions if they could only have a

37 Nichol and Whiteside, Vol. 1, 120. This paragraph is an anomaly of sorts in Sound Doctrine, but the idea of the present moral life functioning as training for an eschatological future as rulers of the is programmatic for figures like David Lipscomb and James A. Harding. These figures (as well as others) tend to be more closely associated with what Hughes calls the “apocalyptic” side of the movement and what Hicks calls “The Nashville Bible School Tradition.” See Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 117-136; and Hicks, “Harding, Boll, and Grace: The Nashville Bible School Theological Tradition.” This strand of the Restoration Movement offers a teleological impulse that stands in tension with the wider movement, one that I will argue must be recovered and expanded. 38 Harding, Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School Tradition held to a much more robust and healthy eschatological vision than did Nichol and Whiteside. Though their eschatology was not without problems, it did provide better resources for thinking about ethics teleologically. This emphasis, unfortunately, was largely lost to the Restoration Movement, and its recovery has been a key component in the work of more recent historians and theologians in the Stone-Campbell Movement (e.g. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith; and Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come).

22 broom closet in heaven. Read charitably, this trope emphasizes humility and pushes back against a materialistic vision of heaven in which our eternal reward consists of riches and luxury. However, it misses the fundamental message of Jesus’s promise in John 14:3, “I go to prepare a place that where I am, there you may be also.” Both the broom closet and the mansions that it critiques paint a picture of eternity in which Christians remain slaves

(either rich or poor) of God rather than his children and heirs.

Contrast their account with the eschatological vision cast in passages like

Jeremiah 31,

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest (Jer. 31:33-34).

Or Romans 8,

…all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of by whom we cry, “Abba Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we might also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:14-17).

Jeremiah’s teleological vision makes clear that the purpose of Israel’s teaching was the knowledge of God. He looks forward to a time when teaching the Law would be unnecessary because its work would be completed in the internalized character of God’s people. This transcending of the Law does not mean that obedience will be exchanged for disobedience of course. Rather it will result in a new kind of obedience, one rooted in the “new heart” which results from God’s Spirit dwelling within his people (Ez. 36:26-

28). Paul imagines this final end of all things as “obtaining the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Freedom again does not result in lawlessness or

23 rebellion but in a perfected internalizing of the commands such that they are no longer boundaries and rules imposed by an authority but rather unalterable aspects of our nature and character, just as they are for God. God himself, of course, keeps the law perfectly, but he does so not out of compulsion or submission. Rather, it is as an expression of who he fundamentally is. This is Paul’s vision of our ethical telos as well. “God made him who had no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God”

(2 Cor. 5:21).

II.B.3. Obedience is an essential aspect of Christian ethics even if not its totality.

And yet, it must be acknowledged that an ethic of obedience is a healthy place to start, even if it is insufficient as a place to end, not least because obedience is so strongly stressed in the Bible. The repeatedly refers to the importance of obedience and faithful keeping of the Law. The Sinaitic Covenant that stands at the heart of the Hebrew Bible is summarized in the . Indeed, the second commandment (on the Protestant ordering), teaches that the opposite of commandment- keeping is hatred of God and that God’s love is for those who “love me and keep my commandments.”39 When Moses closes his farewell address to Israel he says,

Behold, I have put before you today life and death, . If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you by loving your God, walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes, and rules, then you shall live (Deut. 30:15–16).

39 Exodus 20:4–6 reads, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

24 And he is clear that commandments are not merely ideals unrealizable by fallen humanity. Rather, he says,

This commandment I command to you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it?” But the word is very near to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” (Deut. 30:11-14)

Likewise, the Psalmist writes,

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7-11)

Both of these passages paint a picture of the Law as something which demands more than mere obedience. The Psalms demonstrate that the Law was something to be reveled in, a feast of goodness to be enjoyed, a life-giving path to walk upon, and the means by which a person could fully experience the blessings of God’s grace. The Psalmist meditates on the Law day and night, and this practice of upon the Law is also seen as life- giving, blessed, etc. Deuteronomy describes the Law as a path to be walked and an expression of love for God. While Christians talk about the Ten Commandments, the

25 Jewish Decalogue speaks of ten words – the first of which is not an imperative but a narration of God’s faithfulness to his promises and his salvation of the people of Israel.

“I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Ex 20:2). Obedience in the Old Testament is always only a piece of the transformative work accomplished by God’s covenants, and that transformation is always initiated and accomplished by God’s gracious activity toward those whom he calls friends

(2 Chron. 20:7) and first-born sons (Ex. 4:22; Deut. 14:1; Ps. 89:26-28; Isa. 43:6, 49:14-

16). Though obedience is a key marker of Israel’s relationship to God and both a means to and indication of her holiness and righteousness, an ethic that reduces the good to obedience is foreign to the God of Israel.

We see this emphasis on obedience continued in the Gospels but with the same sorts of nuances and hints at something deeper than obedience there as well. Jesus opens and closes his greatest sermon with a call not only to hear his words but to obey them:

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 5:19).

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it” (Mt. 7:21-27).

26 When the rich young ruler asked Jesus how to obtain eternal life, the Lord’s answer was swift and simple, “You know the commandments…” (Mk. 10:19). In John, Jesus says,

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn.14:15), “His commandment is eternal life” (Jn. 12:50), and “You are my friends if you keep my commandments” (Jn.

15:14). And yet we also find passages like Mark 2:23–28 where an ethic of simple obedience is critiqued by Jesus.

When his disciples are accused of breaking the Sabbath by harvesting (they were picking and eating heads of wheat as they walked), we expect Jesus to make a legal argument. “They are not really harvesting. They have not broken the commandment at all, and they are therefore innocent.” But he does something radically different. He cites

First Samuel’s account of how David ate the showbread which the Law specifically forbade him to eat, and how he also gave some to his companions who were with him.40

He then declares that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and adds, “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk. 2:28). What may seem like inconsistency or in this story (and in others that could be cited)41 is in fact a different ethic entirely – one in which commandments are vitally important but are nevertheless insufficient to govern all of human behavior, an ethic in which laws are tools in the hands of the master rather than masters themselves.

40 A closer reading of the story presents even more complexities. David deceives the in order to get help from them by saying that he is on a secret mission from King Saul and then assuring them that his men had not defiled themselves sexually as was their custom on all such missions when in fact he is fleeing from Saul and has no mission from him at all. (1 Sam. 21:1-9). David is never condemned for such an action though he violates a great many of the commandments from the Law of Moses in this story and in the ones that follow. 41 Rahab lies and is commended for it (Josh.2). Jesus touches lepers though it is forbidden in the Law (Lev. 5:3). Samuel is commanded by God to deceive Saul (1 Sam. 16:1-5). Examples abound.

27 No biblical writer is clearer and more consistent about the transformational telos of obedience than Paul. As is consistent with the rest of Scripture, Paul has a high view of obedience and regularly describes his ethical teaching, loyalty to God, citizenship in the Kingdom, etc. in terms of obedience. Obedience to parents and masters is paralleled with obedience to God and commended as righteous in Paul’s household codes (e.g. Eph.

6). Working out one’s salvation is described in terms of obedience (Phil 2:12).

Throughout Romans, Paul identifies obedience with inclusion in the body of Christ. He speaks of his work of opening the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles as “bringing [them] to obedience” in 15:18. He describes obedience to “that standard of teaching” as that which leads to righteousness (6:16–17). He describes the gospel not merely as the proclamation of Christ’s resurrection and of God’s reign but as something which can be “obeyed” in

10:16. Yet, as Victor Paul Furnish powerfully argues in his classic study, Theology and

Ethics in Paul, obedience for Paul is not merely adherence to a set of rules or even submission to the will of God. Rather, faith, obedience, and love are all related such that

Paul can speak of “the obedience which is faith” in Rom 1:5.42 “Obedience means surrender to God’s power but not abject capitulation to it; the Lord not only asks all, but gives all.”43 Furnish connects this obedience/surrender to the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and therefore concludes,

42 Victor Paul Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul (Louisville: Westminster Press, 2009), 188f. Furnish’s provocative translation of ὑπακοὴν πίστεως, hupakoen pisteós as “the obedience which faith is” is both grammatically sound and more in keeping with Paul’s theology in Romans as a whole than the traditional suggestions: “obedience to faith” (KJV), “obedience of faith” (ESV), or “obedience which comes from faith” (NIV). For a full discussion of the translation options, see C.E.B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (, T&T Clark, 2011), 66; and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible vol. 33 (New York: Doubleday,1992), 237-238. 43 Furnish, 195.

28 For Paul love is not just an aspect of the Christian’s new life, but its whole content and mode. The believer is “love”; he has been made love in his resurrection to newness of life in Christ. As one “under grace” he has been “overtaken” by Christ (Phil. 3:12) in whom God’s own love has been bestowed (Rom. 5:8). Therefore, as he shares in that event by dying and rising with Christ, he himself becomes the recipient of that love through the Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Thereby he is brought “from death to life” (Rom. 6:13). Just as Paul views faith as the means by which grace is received, so can he speak of faith as that which receives the Spirit (e.g. Gal. 3:2,5). Because the gift of the Spirit is the gift of love, faith is itself the recipient of love (Gal. 2:20). Faith’s obedience is therefore the surrender to love. To be “obedient” in the Pauline sense means to yield one’s whole self—remade in love—to the controlling power of that love… As a new man in Christ, the believer is love; that is the total meaning of his life and the reason why his obedience is the yielding of his whole life to God.44

Or as Rabens puts it, “For Paul, obedience is neither preliminary to the new life (as its condition) nor secondary to it (as its result and eventual fulfillment). Obedience is constitutive of the new life.”45 We shall have cause to return to this theme in Paul later in our argument, but for now, it is sufficient to demonstrate that Paul follows the typical pattern of emphasizing obedience without reducing ethics to mere rule-following.

These passages (as well as others) help demonstrate that the ethic of biblical obedience inherited by Churches of Christ need not be rejected in toto but it must be nuanced and forced to grow in ways that better account for both the full witness of

Scripture and the demands of the actual lived experience of Christians striving for moral excellence. The Bible itself testifies that more than mere moral instruction is necessary for Christian character and that our destiny is greater than simply achieving perfect obedience. The Christian aims at a loftier goal than innocence, and so something more than law is given to us.

II.B.4. The Bible’s ethic aims at a union of love rather than mere obedience.

44 Furnish, 200. 45 Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life, 2nd Revised Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 280.

29

The perfection to which Christ calls his disciples in the ends in absolute union with God. John’s Gospel teaches that the culmination of obedience to Christ’s commands is the promise of friendship with God. “No longer do I call you servants…but I have called you friends” (Jn. 15:14-15). And, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (Jn. 17:22-23). Redeemed humanity’s true end is to be perfect (Mt. 5:48), perfectly united to God and to each other

(Jn. 17:22-23), righteous with the perfect righteousness of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21), perfectly glorified (Jn. 17:22), heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17), people who not only hear and obey the word of God but partake of and are united to the nature of God (2

Pt. 1:4). In order to attain to this high calling, our own powers are insufficient. God himself must act in and through the Christian to bring about holiness, sanctification, and moral transformation. Thus, we move from our analysis of the Restorationist positions on Scripture and obedience which resulted in too low an anthropology to a discussion of pneumatology in which we find an anthropology that is too high.

III. Churches of Christ Have an Inadequate Understanding and Appreciation of the Spirit’s Role in Moral Transformation.

As noted above, most Restorationists do not articulate a particular approach to ethics; however, one can find some discussions related to this topic in the context of debates about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Many influential Restorationists touched on the question of how a person grows in holiness or moral excellence because they were in opposition to the idea that the Spirit personally indwelt and directly acted upon the believer in a way that would bring about sanctification or moral growth in any way other

30 than through Scripture. Because of this, the form and content of the received ethic of

Churches of Christ is closely tied to their pneumatology. This is true both among those of the Word-Only School who denied the Spirit’s direct action as well as those who affirmed the direct indwelling of the Spirit both in earlier periods of the Movement’s life and today. Historically, the received ethic of Churches of Christ has tended to minimize the role of the Holy Spirit in moral formation, but among Churches of Christ today there is a new openness to and affirmation of the Spirit’s personal indwelling and his work in the moral transformation of the Christian.

III.A. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Early Restorationist Teaching

Pneumatology has always been a controversial subject in Churches of Christ. The

Movement has struggled with various heterodox doctrines relating to the Spirit, and the debate about the Spirit’s role in the Christian’s life is nearly as old as the movement itself. It begins with Alexander Campbell and and intensifies in the second generation of Restoration leaders. In 1835, Alexander Campbell, the intellectual fountainhead of the Restoration Movement, published The Christian System, a text which sought to articulate the theological principles by which he thought the Church could be restored to its primitive purity and oneness. It is the closest thing to a systematic theology produced by the first generation of Restorationists. In it he offers a Trinitarian

Pneumatology that is brief but orthodox from the point of view of his 19th century

Presbyterian and Baptist interlocutors.

To us Christians there is, then, but one God, even the Father; and one Lord Jesus Christ, even the Savior; and one Spirit, even the Advocate, the Sanctifier, and the

31 Comforter of Christ's body, the church. Jesus is the head, and the Spirit is the life and animating principle of that body.46

But Campbell had been less explicit about his trinitarianism and pneumatology earlier in life. A tense debate with Barton W. Stone47 caused him to more explicitly emphasize the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity48 and a conflict between two of his intellectual heirs led to confusion over exactly what Campbell thought about the nature and work of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit has always been the most mysterious person within the , and mystery was to early Restorationists. Stone even went so far as to say,

46 Alexander Campbell, The Christian System: In Reference to the Union of Christians and a Restoration of Primitive Christianity, as Plead in the Current Reformation (Bethany, VA: Forrester & Campbell Publishing, 1839) I.5. The full text of Campbell’s Christian System is available online at https://icotb.org/resources/Campbell,Alexander-TheChristianSystem.pdf. Citations of this work utilize section and chapter numbers rather than page number as is customary in Restoration Movement publications. 47 Stone led a non-denominational primitivist unity movement in the western at the same time that Campbell was forming the Disciples of Christ in the east. The two groups formally united in 1832. 48 Though Stone described the Spirit as the impersonal power of God rather than a distinct person, his Trinitarian debate with Campbell centered on the nature of the Son rather than the Spirit. Stone’s position might best be characterized as a vague sort of while Campbell’s is a fairly traditional Presbyterian Trinitarianism with the exception that Campbell denied the eternal generation of the Son (though not his eternal existence) and preferred to follow in calling the second person of the Trinity “the Word” when referring to his pre-incarnate existence. This semantic distinction did not keep him from holding to the full divinity and eternality of Son of God, but it does illustrate Campbell’s methodological commitments to calling “Bible things by Bible names,” eschewing any appeal to tradition, and his opposition to the . The debate appeared in Campbell’s The and Stone’s The in 1827 and 1828. The contrast between Campbell’s early and late positions can be traced by comparing Campbell’s response to correspondents identified as Timothy in The Christian Baptist (1827) and Boraduss and Grew in the pages of Millennial Harbinger (1833) with his The Christian System (1839) and his with responses to Stone and Unitarian doctrine in Millennial Harbinger in the early 1840s. See Mark E. Powell, “Canonical and Theological Commitments in the Stone-Campbell Movement,” Restoration Quarterly 51, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 227-238 for a summary of this debate and John Mark Hicks, “Theological Orientation for Churches of Christ: Resourcing Alexander Campbell’s Trinitarian Christian System,” Christian Studies 28 (2016): 21-36 for an analysis of Campbell’s Trinitarian theology. The most comprehensive treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Stone-Campbell Movement is Kelly Carter, The Trinity in the Stone-Campbell Movement: Restoring the Heart of the Christian Faith (Abilene, TX: Leafwood Press, 2015).

32 “Mystery is one of the names of the whore of Babylon, written in large letters on her forehead. Her daughters have the same mark.”49 While Campbell was more measured in his comments relative to “doctrines above reason,” his formation in Scottish Common

Sense Realism and the philosophy of along with his strong opposition to the emotionalism common to the revivals of his day gave his theology and biblical interpretation a strongly rationalist flavor.50 Campbell emphasized the Spirit’s power and direct action in the time of the apostles and New Testament writers, but taught that such direct action was limited to the first century. Modern people, he thought, encountered the

Spirit’s power in baptism whereby they are saved and in Scripture which presented to them all that is necessary for salvation, morality, and doctrine.

God’s voice is only heard now in the gospel. The gospel is now the only word of God – the only proclamation and command addressed to the human race. ‘Tis in this word of God his Spirit operates upon men, and not out of it. Were the Spirit to lay it aside, and adopt any other instrument, it would be the greatest disparagement of the word of God, ‘which is the wisdom and power of God,’ ‘the word of life,’ and able ‘to save the soul…’51

Campbell’s point was less about Pneumatology than about divine revelation. His worry was that Christians’ subjective experiences of God, or what they imagined to be God, would override their dependence on Scripture and that evangelistic preaching would base

49 Barton W. Stone, An Address to the Christians Churches in , Tennessee and Ohio on Several Important Doctrines of Religion, 2nd Edition (Lexington, KY: I.T. Cavins and Company, 1821) 64. Available online www..ca/rels/restmov/people/bstone.html. 50 Barton W. Stone, on the other hand, was a pietist and his contribution to the Movement was rooted in the emotionalism and open fellowship of the revivals in which he participated. This distinction between Campbell and Stone would play a major role in the Movement’s instability. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 102-116. 51 Alexander Campbell, “The Voice of God and the Word of God: The Gospel Now the Word of God,” Millennial Harbinger Vol. 1 (1830): 124-128. Campbell, of course, uses ‘gospel’ ‘word of God’ and other such terms as synonyms for Scripture rather than as a body of teaching to which Scripture bears an authoritative witness.

33 its appeal on emotionalism rather than on the “facts” of the New Testament.52 Though the had been a moment of great importance to the Stone side of the

Restoration Movement and though Campbell and his heirs emphasized evangelistic preaching, revivalism as it is typically understood in American religious history has never been a significant part of the Restoration Movement.53 While Campbell had an incredibly high view of human reason, he believed that human feelings were not to be trusted.

Thus, he emphasized the Spirit’s close connection with Scripture as a check against any sort of subjective turn, but he did not simply equate the Spirit with the Bible. However, that nuance failed to endure into the second generation of leaders within the Restoration

Movement.

III.B. The Word-Only Debate

In 1856 an aging Campbell ineffectively sought to arbitrate a fierce debate about pneumatology between two leaders within the Restoration Movement.54 was a minister and publisher from Tennessee, and Robert Richardson was a professor at

52 Campbell consistently referred to the New Testament as “a book of facts” and appealed to common sense and human reason to rightly interpret and apply those facts to the Christian life. The word “fact” appears ninety times in his The Christian System. See especially 1.1. and 1.23 of The Christian System. See also, Alexander Campbell, The Christian Preacher's Companion, or, The Gospel Facts Sustained by the Testimony of Unbelieving and Pagans (Centerville, KY: R.B. Neal, 1891). 53 For a description of the “rational revivals” of the Restoration Movement, see L. Edward Hicks, “Rational Religion in the Ohio Western Reserve (1827-1830): Walter Scott and the Restoration Appeal of Baptism for the Remission of ,” Restoration Quarterly 34 no. 4 (1992): 207-219. See also, Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 364. The style of preaching in Church of Christ evangelism tended to be analytical rather than emotional and generally contained numerous citations from Scripture. In this, as in many other things, Churches of Christ use different labels for the practice than Evangelicals in order to draw a contrast with them. Where Baptists had ‘revivals,’ Churches of Christ had ‘gospel meetings.’ Other notable differences in nomenclature include altar call vs. Lord’s invitation, getting saved vs. being baptized, hymnal vs. song book, etc. 54 For a more detailed account of this debate see Leonard Allen and Danny Gray Swick, Participating in God’s Life: Two Crossroads for Churches of Christ (, CA: New Leaf Books, 2001). esp. 39-58.

34 Campbell’s Bethany College and Campbell’s private physician. He worked closely with

Campbell as a regular contributor to the Millennial Harbinger. Richardson was concerned about the over-dependence on Locke’s philosophy within the movement and worried that some Restorationists were guilty of denying the power and presence of the

Spirit within the Christian in order to emphasize the importance of Scripture.55 He published a series of articles in the Harbinger to this effect and named Fanning as one who was controlled by Lockean philosophy without being aware of it.56 For his part,

Fanning also saw a drift within the movement, but in the exact opposite direction.

Churches of Christ in Nashville, where Fanning lived, had just been scandalized by a popular young minister named Jesse B. Ferguson. Due to Ferguson’s influence,

Nashville churches were torn apart by debates about , visions, and doctrines rejected as false by all other leaders within the movement, Richardson included.57 Once bitten by subjectivity and emotionalism advanced under the name of the Holy Spirit,

Fanning was twice shy about theological programs which credited the Spirit with any action upon the believer unmediated by Scripture. At first, Campbell sided with Fanning and publicly critiqued Richardson. When Richardson stepped down from the Harbinger and left Bethany College in response, Campbell changed his mind, apologized to his old

55 Allen and Swick note that Richardson had already identified four positions relative to the Spirit’s indwelling current in his own day: 1) Those who utterly denied the Spirit’s work in the modern world. 2) Those who made everything dependent upon the Spirit. 3) Those who believed the Spirit worked in the world but only in and through the word of Scripture. 4) Those who believed in “the reception of the Spirit in his own person, character, and office.” Quoted in Allen and Swick, 40. 56 Robert Richardson, “Faith versus Philosophy – No. 1-10,” Millennial Harbinger 4th Series, 7-8 (1857-1858.) 57 LeRoy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement (Joplin, : College Press, 1981), 268-275. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 68- 75.

35 friend, and turned his pen against Fanning.58 But despite the aged Campbell’s condemnation, Fanning’s influence on Churches of Christ proved much stronger and his

“word-only” view became the within the movement, especially in the South where most Churches of Christ were located.59 Though exceptions existed and the debate continued to pop up from time to time, it is fair to say that Fanning’s view held sway for more than one hundred years.60 The word-only position, therefore, must be unpacked if we are to understand its influence on the moral theology of Churches of Christ.

Some of the most important advocates of the word-only position included Tolbert

Fanning, J.C. Holloway, and Foy Wallace Jr. These men did not, as some of their detractors implied, teach that the Spirit did not indwell the Christian. They merely sought to identify the means or medium by which this indwelling took place. As Wallace said,

It is needless to repeat what no one disputes: That there is an indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the heart of a Christian and which operates in his life. But since no one denies it, the crux of the whole discussion is the modus operandi – the mode and the medium, or the how of the indwelling that abides within and the outgoing that flows without into the outward living.61

Wallace identifies his propositional premise as “the fact that the Spirit operates only through the Word – that every effect or emotion that the Holy Spirit generates within us, the Word of God engenders.”62 He goes on to offer thirty-one points in support

58 Alexander Campbell, “Opinionisms – No. 1,” Millennial Harbinger 4th Series 7 (1859): 434. 59 Many sympathetic to Fanning attributed Campbell’s changing attitudes during this debate to senility. Garrett, 216, 281. Garrett’s dismissal of the entire event as an unfortunate misunderstanding between two good brothers stands in sharp contrast to Allen and Swick who treat the conflict as a crossroads in the movement in which the wrong path was taken. 60 Allen and Swick, 38. 61 Foy Wallace Jr., The Mission and Medium of the Holy Spirit (Charleston, AR: Cobb Publishing, 1968), 16. 62 Wallace, Mission and Medium, 18.

36 of this thesis.63 For example, he points out how the word of God is said to beget (1 Cor.

4:15), give spiritual birth (1 Pt. 1:23), quicken the heart (Eph. 2:1,5), cleanse (Jn. 15:2), purify (1 Pt. 1:22), save (Jm. 1:21-22), justify, give knowledge, lead (Ps 119:105), bear witness in the heart, cause spiritual growth (1 Pt. 2:1), work effectively (1 Thess. 2:13), produce fruit (Col. 1:5-6), strengthen, comfort (1 Thess. 4:18), enlighten (Ps 119:130), and sanctify the believer (Jn. [17]:17). Fifty years earlier, as part of a long-running debate with James A. Harding, Holloway had similarly asserted that the Spirit works “in and by the Word as the only medium.” 64 In a style typical of Restorationist publications of the early twentieth century he literarily shouts, “THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE ONLY

AUTHENTIC AGENT, THE WORDS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT THE ONLY

MEDIUM.”65

But this view did not emerge in a vacuum. As with many aspects of Church of

Christ theology, the Word-Only School is largely a reaction against trends in other conservative Protestant groups. In this case, the Restorationist leaders were most concerned to oppose the Calvinistic doctrines of total depravity and unconditional election of the Baptists and the emotionalism, mysticism, and supernaturalism of the

Pentecostal movement.

III.B.1. The Word-Only School was a reaction against .

The opposition to Calvinism played an important role in the pneumatology of those in or associated with the Word-Only School, especially at the movement’s

63 Wallace actually titles this section of his book “The Twenty-Five Points” but ends up listing thirty-one points. 64 J.C. Holloway, The Spirit and the Word (Evansville, IN: Keller Print and Publishing, 1905), 53. 65 Holloway, Spirit and Word, 53.

37 beginning. Early Restoration preachers were influenced by the Reformed theology which characterized both their personal backgrounds in the Presbyterian or Baptist churches as well as the Reformed thought of the major revivalists in America, e.g., George Whitfield.

In the Reformed theology of their day, little was said about the person of the Spirit, but it was consistently affirmed that the Spirit accompanied the word (preaching and the Bible) in order to convert sinners to Christ and that he acted to sanctify the believer. The

Westminster Confession explicitly links the illuminating and indwelling of the Spirit with the preaching of the Word as the grounds for :

All those whom God hath predestined unto life, and those only, he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit out of that state of sin and death . . . This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man; who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call.”66

Thus, the doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit and of any direct action by the Spirit was entangled with Calvinistic notions of predestination, total depravity, and other teachings which the early Restorationists with their devotion to Scottish Common-Sense philosophy stridently opposed. Rea argues that the one key purpose early Restorationist leaders had for discussing holiness and sanctification was to explain how a Christian could grow in moral character without the Calvinistic doctrine of the Spirit operating apart from the word.67

66 Westminster Confession of Faith, 45-48. Available online at http://www.pcaac.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/11/WCFScriptureProofs.pdf. Accessed 11/26/18. 67 Rea, 164.

38 Of these first generation Restorationists, Walter Scott’s doctrine of the Spirit is perhaps the most important and influential.68 He argued that the Spirit was given only to the Church and only at baptism and therefore could play no role in the conversion of the sinner, not even in the illumination of the word of God.69 Though Scott was not a proponent of the word-only position (in fact, he vigorously condemned it)70 his opposition to the Reformed doctrine that the Spirit was necessary for a person to come to faith was foundational for virtually all later Restorationist preachers in the Word-Only

School. Scott emphasized the importance of Scripture and preaching and also because it was seen as an important critique of Calvinism’s overly pessimistic view of the human ability to know the truth via reason. These positions would be embraced throughout the movement, and thus formed the ground upon which many Word-Only arguments were constructed.

Holloway, for example, saw the Bible as so clear and human intellect so reliable that he compared understanding the scriptures to arithmetic and rejected any notion that the Christian needed the Spirit to provide illumination of them. He so closely identified the Bible with the Spirit that he said,

68 Olbricht says, “More than anyone else, including Alexander Campbell, he [Scott] formulated the point of view that has characterized all subsequent perspectives throughout the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. Specifics of his formulation have in fact dropped by the wayside, but his conclusions remain.” Thomas E. Olbricht, “The Holy Spirit in the Early Restoration Movement” SCJ 7 (Spring, 2004): 3-26. 69 Walter Scott, "Discourse on the Holy Spirit," The Evangelist (1833): 26-27. 70 “. . . there are now certain preachers affecting to espouse the cause of the Ancient Gospel, who cease not to proclaim all over their fields of labour, that there is no Spirit now; that there is no Spirit given; that the word is the Spirit! Yes, brother Campbell's brother-in-law, writes me, that the cause in certain places, which he has lately visited, is loaded just with the intolerable [sic] burden of such proclaimers; but I here protest, that such men have neither brother Campbell nor us for their examples in such sayings, and I am sure, that such individuals do neither conceive of the gospel as it has been delivered in the Holy Scriptures by the Apostles, nor as it has been lately restored again in practice to the church.” Walter Scott, "Restoration of the Ancient Gospel," The Evangelist (1833): 98-99.

39 The only sense in which men can do despite unto the Spirt of Grace, or resist the Holy Spirit, or quench the Spirit [today], is to sneer at the Holy Scriptures as “the mere WORD”; treat them with disdain; or attribute , sanctification, and the Christian’s hope to a force outside and independent of the inspired record of which he is the Author.71

The optimistic leaders of the American Restoration Movement were generally fierce in their rejection of Calvinism’s pessimism about both human reason and human goodness. In rejecting the notion of the personal indwelling of the Spirit, they were, at least in part rejecting the doctrine of total depravity which they associated with it. Tying the word-only position to a belief in free will and the legitimacy of human reason was one way that its proponents were so successful among Restorationists whose religious identity was shaped in large part by their debates with Baptists and other Calvinistic groups.

III.B.2. The Word-Only School was a reaction against revivalism and .

Anti-Calvinism provided some of the deep foundations for the word-only position, but the more immediate concern for most of its advocates was the emotionalism that characterized the revivalism of Evangelical America. These sentiments only increased as Pentecostals and other charismatic groups grew in influence.72 No one was fiercer and more tenacious in their advocacy of the word-only position than Foy Wallace

Jr. His major argument was that any account of the Spirit operating outside of Scripture was simply a description of emotional experiences in which the human being mistakes his or her own feelings for the will of God. Wallace derogatively calls the doctrine of the

71 Holloway, Spirit and the Word, 23. 72 This concern was much stronger on the Campbell side of the movement, and did not figure as prominently in the Stone side where revivalism and emotional experiences were viewed more favorably.

40 Spirit’s personal indwelling and direct action in the world “.” By Pietism, he meant those who “advocate an immediate experiential sanctification, a sentimentalism that substitutes feeling for intellect, a substitution of a religion of feeling for the religion of will.”73 His driving motive in The Mission and Medium of the Holy Spirit was to combat any claim that “psychic emotionalism was an evidence of pardon and sanctification or of the indwelling Spirit.”74 This same devotion to the intellect and the will and mistrust of emotions had animated the earlier generations of Restoration preachers to oppose the mourner’s bench, and Wallace saw himself as standing firmly within the Restorationist tradition.75 By Wallace’s time in the mid-twentieth century,

Restoration leaders had so internalized Campbell’s Common-Sense Realism that they no longer even recognized it as a philosophical tradition. It was simply “the way things were.” Wallace’s devotion to a religion rooted in the “facts” of the Bible and the clear thinking of those who read it, led him to deny that the Spirit performed any activity in the world apart from the word. Thus, he mocked preachers who attribute to the Holy Spirit serendipitous events such as a delayed flight which resulted in a Bible study and baptism or a parking spot being available on a busy street as an answer to a minister’s prayer. “In these activities they really have the Holy Spirit buzzing about.”76

Wallace denied that the Spirit gives direction or guidance to preachers and teachers in any way other than through the words of Scripture and criticized ministers who pray for the Spirit to enter them at the opening of the sermon. “How would the

Spirit enter him – and what could the Holy Spirit tell him to preach that he could not have

73 Wallace, Mission and Medium, 1. 74 Wallace, 1. 75 L. Edward Hicks, “Rational Religion,” 207-209. 76 Wallace, 2.

41 learned in the Word of God?” Wallace asks.77 He denied that the Spirit “illumines” the

Scripture or helps the preacher to understand the written word and likened anyone who makes such claims to, “Ellen White, the prophetess and female of the Seventh Day

Adventists.”78 Likewise, Wallace dismissed any hint of mysticism as mere emotionalism masquerading as spiritualism.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that no one claiming the personal indwelling or illumination of the Holy Spirit can express a truth, or a true thought or sentiment, on the subject of spiritual influence not already revealed in the written word. The concept that an indwelling illumination is necessary would mean that the Holy Spirit wrote a book – the Bible – but must still directly illuminate us to understand what he wrote! . . . It amounts to, “I know it because I feel it.”79

The concept of mystery and the belief in modern-day miracles are old enemies of

Restoration preachers, and the association of both ideas with the Holy Spirit also played a role in shaping the Word-only position.80 Campbell and Wallace contrasted mystery with knowledge and reason, describing the former as a mask for emotion or superstition and the latter as God’s gift to mankind. Thus, the Bible was able to function as a medium (or even a substitute) for the indwelling Spirit.

[The Bible is] an all-sufficient guide. Divine revelation began with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the apostles and and it was finished in the written word…Now the Word of God is in the Book – the written word – and the direct possession of the Holy Spirit is unnecessary and superfluous.81

77 Wallace, 3. 78 Wallace, 3. As in many Restorationist publications of that era, Wallace assumes that any idea originating in or held in common with denominations outside of the Churches of Christ are, to put it kindly, deeply suspect. 79 Wallace, 5, 7. 80 See for example, Ferrell Jenkins, “The Holy Spirit and the Christian,” Gospel Guardian vol. 20 no. 15.17, (1969): 15-19. 81 Wallace, Misson and Medium, 8.

42 By saying that the Spirit works only through the Word, Wallace does not mean to imply that the Spirit is somehow absent or inactive in the believer’s life. If the Spirit is the electricity, then the Bible is the wire which carries the charge. The power does not jump off the wire and through the air, but neither does it stay in the wire when touched. It reliably moves through the medium of the wire into the person, but it just as reliably acts only through that medium. For Wallace, lightning strikes were a thing of the past. Thus, he could write, “True religion is begun, carried on and completed by the Holy Spirit – but it is continued and completed in the same way that it begins – through the Word.”82

III.B.3. The Word-Only School always faced opposition within the movement.

Though the word-only position has been influential for most of the movement’s history, it always faced opposition.83 As noted above, Campbell himself can be read as supporting both the word-only position and as opposing it, and not only in his later years.

As early as 1825 he said, “I am not to be understood as asserting that there is no divine influence over the minds and bodies of men…” and goes on to argue that such a position would destroy the doctrine of divine revelation and deny the sovereignty of God. It would make prayer useless and deprive the Christian of comfort.84 But as to the manner

82 Wallace, Mission and Medium, 14. 83 Though Allen and Swick contend that “Churches of Christ overwhelmingly followed Fanning’s [word-only] road,” Allen and Swick, 40. John Mark Hicks sees the situation in more nuanced terms. He argues that the word-only position rose to real prominence in the 1880s-1920s and emphasizes the ways in which opposition to and nuance within that side of the argument existed throughout the Movement’s history. John Mark Hicks, “The Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ (1897-1907): Hoosiers, Volunteers, and Longhorns,” in And the Word Became Flesh: Studies in History, Communication, and Scripture in Memory of Michael Casey, eds. Thomas H. Olbricht and David Fleer (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 63-65. 84 Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, 2 (April 1825), 181. Quoted in Thomas H. Olbricht, “The Holy Spirit in the Early Restoration Movement,” Stone-Campbell Journal 7 (Spring 2004): 21.

43 in which God exercised this influence (apart from the word), Campbell remained agnostic.85

This did not mean, however, that Campbell was uniformly opposed to spiritual experiences or even to the existence of miracles. Raccoon John Smith reported that

Campbell was able to describe the which accompanied his

(Campbell’s) salvation in terms that “any Baptist church would have cheerfully received.”86 Even more interesting are the prophetic dreams and premonitions of danger which Campbell experienced. In 1808 while aboard a ship named Hibernia, Campbell awoke from a vivid dream and warned his family that they were all in great danger and that the ship was going to sink. At the time of Campbell’s dream in the early afternoon, the ship was anchored in a sheltered bay, and no signs of danger were discernible. That night, a storm blew in so violently that the ship drug her anchors and smashed against a sunken rock. Campbell had gone to bed still fully dressed in preparation for the disaster and had advised his family to do likewise.87 He had another presentiment of tragedy in

1847. While in , he was troubled by dark dreams and awoke with the conviction that some great sadness had occurred at his home in America. Later he was to learn that

85 For example, he wrote, “There may be questions proposed on subjects of which the Bible speaks which the Bible does not answer. For example, ‘How does the Spirit influence the minds of men?’ is a question I cannot answer from the Bible. . . I have great scrupulosity of mind in going beyond what is written…” But in the same passage he went on to argue that the focus of Christian preaching should be Christ not the Spirit. “They preach the Spirit with most success who say nothing about his work in conversion.” Quoted in Robert Richardson, The Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1868), 158. Available online at https://archive.org/details/memoirsalexande 00richgoog/page/n167. 86 Richardson, Memoirs, 112. 87 Richardson, Memoirs, 99-101.

44 his son, Wickliffe, had died at the age of ten on that same night.88 Most strange of all is the story in which a diminutive who had no tongue and no ears entered

Campbell’s room while he was in college and, by means of signs and writing, communicated to him that he would be ship-wrecked, married twice, and a speaker to great crowds of people. Campbell told the story often, and either he or an associate of his even went so far as to publish it in a newspaper.89 These three incidents tell us that

Campbell was not uniformly skeptical of supernatural events, and it is difficult to imagine that he would attribute the power behind such events to something other than God. He acknowledged and even affirmed their import in his own life and in the lives of those he loved. What he objected to was any appeal to such experiences as a basis for Christian doctrine.90 This, as we will see, was a common theme among more strident opponents of the Word-Only School.

Campbell did not follow Walter Scott’s notion that the Spirit acted upon the

Christian only after baptism, nor did he accept the absolute rejection of supernatural experience, whether miracles, dreams, or prophesy, that many in the Word-Only School embraced. Rather, he held that the Spirit could and did act in the world but always in accordance with what that same Sprit had revealed in the pages of Scripture. His views were shaped by the debates which dominated his career, and we are left to wonder how

88 Selina Campbell, Alexander’s second wife, reports the story and also tells of a dream of her own in which the spirit of their son came to her to comfort her after his death. Her husband, she says, placed great stock in the dream. Selina Huntington Campbell, Home Life and Reminiscences of Alexander Campbell (St. Louis, J. Burns Publishing, 1882): 35-36. Available online at https://archive.org/details/homelifeandremi00campgoog/page/n43. 89 Selina Campbell, Home Life, 195–196. 90 After telling Smith about his experience of salvation, Campbell was quick to point out that such experiences should not be used as evidence of salvation or prerequisites for baptism and emphasized the importance of “taking the word of God, [rather than] our feelings, as guides in such things.” Richardson, Memoirs, 112.

45 he might have responded to the more fully developed word-only position that Wallace would articulate in later years.

There were, however, other influential voices within the Restoration Movement that were more explicit in their opposition to the Word-Only School. Robert Richardson,

Campbell’s biographer, was the earliest of these, and his long-running debate with

Tolbert Fanning is, in many ways, mirrored in the pneumatological battles of later generations. Though Fanning and Wallace’s views are generally acknowledged as having been the most popular among Churches of Christ, James A. Harding, David

Lipscomb, K.C. Moser, Gus Nichols, and other influential figures vigorously affirmed the personal indwelling of the Spirit. Moser and Nichols in particular offer strong rebuttals to the Word-Only position. Their position may be summarized in five points.

1) Receiving the word is not the same as salvation, yet having the Spirit is the sign and seal of salvation. Drawing on Acts 2, Nichols points out that Peter promised that those who were baptized would receive the Spirit, and that he did so after they had already heard the word of his preaching. The Spirit, in this key text for Restorationists, was not associated with the preaching of the word only. It was also connected with the

46 act of baptism. The reception of the Spirit is therefore not the same as the reception of the word.91

2) The indwelling Spirit ought not be thought of as a miracle. Again, Acts 2 is the relevant passage. There we see that all 3,000 who were baptized received the Spirit, but there is no indication that all 3,000 worked miracles. This gift, the ability to do miracles, was frequently associated with the laying on of the apostles’ hands and thus the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which only a few possessed were distinguished from the gift

(singular) of the Spirit which was the personal indwelling of the Spirit possessed by all

Christians. Nichols also compared the indwelling of God’s Spirit to the indwelling of a person’s own spirit. “…my spirit does not dwell in me in any miraculous manner.”92

Thus, he argued, the Spirit indwells the believer in “an ordinary way.”93 , for example, was filled with the Spirit from the womb but is not described as working miracles in the womb. This “ordinary indwelling” did not conjure up any particular emotions or prompt any particular experiences. One did not know that she possessed the

Spirit because her feelings or a religious experience. She knew this because the Bible told her that she did. Here we see that advocates of the personal indwelling of the Spirit

91 Gus Nichols, Lectures on the Holy Spirit (Plainview, TX: Nichols Brothers Publishing, 1967), 167. This argument which emphasized the importance of baptism was always going to be appealing to Churches of Christ. Jimmy Allen, one of the most influential Church of Christ preachers of the 20th century, found it particularly compelling. In Allen’s personal copy of Lectures on the Holy Spirit, he underlined the bulk of Nichols’s argument and added this note to the margin, “Received word before salvation. If receiving word is equivalent to one receiving the Spirit, then why isn’t receiving word equivalent to salvation. But they received word before baptism hence, saved before baptism!!” Salvation before baptism is unthinkable for Allen, and it seems he found this argument to be the most compelling and important in the book. (Allen gifted most of his collection of books and articles on the Spirit to me before his death. Copies of these and other notes from the collection are available by request.) 92 Nichols, 156, 163. 93 Nichols, 165

47 could still deny emotionalism and belief in modern-day miracles associated with charismatic groups.

On this point James A. Harding stands somewhat apart from the mainstream of

Churches of Christ. His doctrine of special providence emphasized God’s direct, continual, and supernatural activity in the world in a way that most Restorationists would find problematic.94 Indeed, Daggett goes so far as to say that Harding and those like him in the Churches of Christ were actually closer to the of their day than to the mainstream of the Restoration Movement of which they were a part.95 This was primarily because of their emphasis on the indwelling of the Spirit and the power and direction which God gave through that indwelling. Though he sometimes denied the existence of modern miracles, he was inconsistent on the issue. When asked if answered prayers were miraculous, Harding answered in the affirmative though in a qualified way:

“What concerned Harding most was not whether miracles existed or not. What mattered most is that God did indeed come to aid and rescue the righteous.”96 He argued that the denial of God’s indwelling, help, and aid in the present age was “…one of the biggest,

94 Harding based his view of “special providence” on the teaching of Samuel Rogers, a Restoration Preacher converted by Barton W. Stone who played a major role in shaping Harding’s theology. Shawn Daggett, “The Lord Will Provide: James A. Harding, J.M. McCaleb, William J. , and the Emergence of Faith Missions in the Churches of Christ, 1892-1913,” (ThD Diss., Boston University, School of Theology, 2007), 77-85. 95 Daggett, 40-44, 373. 96 Daggett, 108. Hicks describes Harding’s position on miracles this way: “God still works miracles today, but he no longer gifts individuals with miracle-working powers. During revelatory moments in history, when God acted in redemptive ways and interpreted his acts for his people, God equipped his messengers with authenticating powers. [But today] the Bible makes such miracles unnecessary.” Hicks, “Harding, Boll, and Grace,” 25. Harding could assert God still works miracles today, but he does not empower particular servants of his with the authority to perform them as he did with the apostles.

48 shrewdest, and most effective of all the lies that ever circulated” and that the word- only position amounted to “semi-infidelity.”97 Harding argued that

There is no reason to doubt that the Holy Spirit of God, as actually and literally, dwells in the child of God now as he did in the apostolic age. And, in proportion to our faith and love, he is just as ready, able and willing to help us now as he was to help them then. We cannot work miracles now not because the divine power is not in us – power abundantly able to work any miracle – but God does not need miracle-working through men now. This gift has ceased to be exercised because God does not need it. . . But the being who wrought the miracle is here, dwelling in Christians just as able as he ever was . . . In proportion to our faith and love, God, through the Spirit, is as ready to help us as he ever was to help anyone, when we ask him in faith.98

3) Belief in the personal indwelling of the Spirit did not imply Calvinism.

Opponents of the Word-Only position all maintained the anti-Calvinism characteristic of the movement as a whole. K.C. Moser names the Spirit as the source of all righteousness in the Christian, but he does not thereby imply something like the doctrine of total depravity. On the contrary, he writes,

In designating the Spirit as the source of these graces, the apostle does not mean to separate the fruit of the Spirit from the person's effort in whom the Spirit dwells. The person being influenced by the Spirit brings forth these graces. They are the work of both man and the Spirit, but primarily of the Spirit, because he incites them.99

Here again, James A. Harding stands somewhat outside of the other representatives of the personal indwelling school. He never denies free will and he did not affirm the doctrine of total depravity, but he did hold a much more pessimistic view of human reason than most Restorationist leaders. He pushed back on the formulaic,

97 James A. Harding, “The Begetting, The Birth, and the Blessings that Follow” Christian and the Way 21 no. 12 (March 19, 1907), 8. 98 Harding, “Begetting, Birth, Blessings,” 8-9. 99 K.C. Moser, The Way of Salvation: Being an Exposition of God’s Method of Through Christ, (DeFuniak Springs, FL: Diversity Press, 1996), https://webfiles.acu.edu/departments/Library/HR/restmov_nov11/www.mun.c a/rels/restmov/texts/moser/index.html#contents.

49 mathematical, “read and obey” ethic of preachers like Holloway in ways that were more clear-eyed about the human tendency to sin even after conversion, even in the midst of diligent Bible study. “Who does not know that he is unable to care for himself, to guide, to guard and to strengthen himself?”100 Harding saw the need for direct divine help in moral transformation and guidance as rooted not in an inherited guilt tracible back to the fall of Adam but rather in the empirical fact of humanity’s weakness in the face of temptation. He read Romans 7 as a description of the inner struggle faced by all people.

“I have the desire to do right, but not the ability to carry it out!” His concern was not with whether people had the ability to do right from their own resources but the simple fact that they did not do so. In the face of the reality of human sinfulness, Harding emphasized the importance of God dwelling within the Christian and helping him to do what he wants but seems unable to perform.101 On his account, one need not embrace

Augustinian or Calvinistic notions of inherited guilt in order to believe in the human need for help in the face of temptation. We need only look honestly at our lives and at the

Scripture.

4) The personal indwelling of the Spirit does not result in new knowledge, revelation, doctrinal development, or the clarification of difficult passages in the biblical text. Even for those advocating a personal indwelling of the Spirit, the Bible and the

Bible alone was the source of revelation from God. Nichols succinct statement, “There is not a true religious idea today which is not in the word of God” would have been affirmed by all of the leaders mentioned here as opponents of the Word-Only position.

100 James A. Harding, "From Exchanges," The Way 2 (April 1900): 50. 101 Hicks, “Harding, Boll, and Grace,” 36.

50 5) The personal indwelling of the Spirit contributes to sanctification, moral excellence, and effective ministry. According to Moser, the Spirit is the power of God in the Christian which resists and overcomes sin. Leaning on his of Paul

(especially Rom. 8 and Gal. 5), Moser argues that this indwelling ought to enable the

Christian to live a more holy and blameless life than the lives lived by the people of God who were under the Law. The Spirit is “the source of all righteousness in the

Christian.”102

God does not save man and then leave him to his own resources. He abides with him to help in the struggle against sin within and without. God no more manifests his interest in and love for man as a sinner than man as a son. For this the Christian should be devoutly thankful and accept gratefully any help from on high. This help comes from the Holy Spirit's dwelling in the heart of every son of God.103

The Spirit ought not be seen as a one-time gift given to the believer at baptism as a seal or promise and then forgotten. Rather, it is through the continual abiding of the Spirit that the Christian is made holy. The fact that God himself has taken up residence in the body of the Christian ought, Moser argues, to motivate us to keep the temple clean and in good repair.

The temple of the Holy Spirit should be kept holy. When I know that God has honored me to the extent of making for himself a temple of my body by placing the Holy Spirit within me, I am constrained to live holily. The presence of even a good person has a powerful influence for righteousness upon one. How much greater influence for good is the presence of the Holy Spirit!104

On this point, perhaps no Restorationist was more committed both in word and in lifestyle than James A. Harding. Harding rejected the notion that God answers the

Christian’s prayers for holiness and sanctification by simply telling his children to read

102 Moser, Way of Salvation, chapter 7. 103 Moser, Way of Salvation, chapter 7. 104 Moser, Way of Salvation, chapter 7.

51 the Bible. Rather, he said, God is with us, and in us, empowering us, directing us, and transforming us into his image. God did this, not through new revelation or knowledge, but through power.105 As Harding said,

Scripture does not teach that the Bible alone thoroughly furnishes the man of God for every good work, but that the Bible in addition to what had already been given does so…I am as far as the East is from the West from believing that neither God, nor Christ, nor the Holy Spirit can help us except by talking to us.106

Harding practiced what he preached on this issue. His “faith missions” approach to evangelism was founded on a radical trust in God’s providence and the certainty of God’s provision in response to prayer.107 Thus, he did not collect a salary, save money, or raise funds before setting out on evangelistic endeavors. Instead, he prayed, trusted God, and then began the work in faith that God would provide.108

Despite the influential role that these ministers and writers played in the

Restoration Movement, the Word-Only position was dominant throughout most of the twentieth century. The students of Lipscomb and Harding largely rejected their teachers’

Spirit-centered theology and instead emphasized the rationalistic elements of their

Restoration heritage.109 But even today, when a shrinking minority of Restorationists hold the word-only position, pneumatology remains an underemphasized and misunderstood aspect of the theology of Churches of Christ. Much of the teaching surrounding the Spirit in Churches of Christ today continues to center around miracles

105 Hicks and Valentine, 59-73. 106 James A. Harding, “How Does God Help His People?” Christian Leader and the Way 20 (6, Feb 1906): 8-9. Quoted in Hicks and Valentine, 59. 107 Though a critic of the word-only movement, Nichols would not have affirmed the thesis that the Spirit contributes to effective ministry in the way that Harding and Moser taught. 108 Shawn Daggett’s dissertation cited above offers a full account of “faith missions” in the Churches of Christ and in Harding in particular. 109 Hicks and Valentine, 72.

52 and charismatic practices. Frequently the Spirit is talked about as one who offers comfort in the face of pain and guidance in making difficult life decisions – whom to marry, which job to take, etc. In the case of Leonard Allen’s important 2018 work, the Spirit is emphasized in connection with missions and the mission dei.110 But the Spirit’s role in moral formation remains underdeveloped.

IV. Conclusion

Churches of Christ have emphasized the Bible and its commands, and the ethical model that has emerged from within the movement tends to put the actual power for doing what is good in the mind and the will of the individual Christian who reads

Scripture. If our ethic could be reduced to a maxim, it might be, “Try hard to do what the

Bible says.” “Do what the Bible says” points toward our emphasis on obedience, and

“try hard” to our tendency to think that we can do this on our own. The Word-Only

School in particular implanted in the movement the belief that the rational individual is competent to read the Bible, correctly interpret it, and put its commands into action. The emphasis on obedience led us to mistakenly assume that doing so was the entire content of Christian holiness and morality. Because in this view the Spirit is largely confined to the inspiration of Scripture, God’s portion of the work of sanctification and moral transformation has already been accomplished, and ours is the only work that remains.

God is the gracious gift-giver, but he is an almost deistic figure whose marvelous gift was given long ago and continues to work without any direct interaction between God and humanity. Moreover, the gift given is something like a legal document or a blueprint rather than a person. This view has remained appealing to a movement rooted in the

110 Leonard Allen, Poured Out: The Spirit of God Empowering the Mission of God (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2018).

53 Enlightenment and deeply desirous of stable, universal principles which can be studied, understood, and mastered. Given these assumptions, it ought to come as no surprise that

Churches of Christ have been well-known for the intensity of their Bible study. Just as the scientists of Modernity have used observation, data collection, and testing in order to gain mastery over the natural world, so the Restoration Movement has deployed Scripture memorization, biblical exegesis, debate, and syllogistic reasoning as tools for mastering the system of Christianity delivered by the Spirit in the Bible and thereby ensuring absolute correctness of doctrine and practice.111

But as we have seen, neither the Scriptures nor the tradition of the Church nor the best thinkers within the Restoration Movement will allow for this view of the Spirit. The gift which God promised to his children is the gift of himself, the gift of his Spirit. There is, of course, a real danger of ignoring Scripture, of relying on subjective human experience instead of or in opposition to the revealed word of God. There is a legitimate fear that Christians will appeal to the indwelling of the Spirit as a way to hubristically ignore the commands of God which are given to us for our good or to replace divine revelation with our own subjective whims. But a failure to appreciate the sanctifying role of the Spirit within us who transforms not merely our actions but our character as well obscures the reality of our sinfulness and need for help and the reality of our destiny in

Christ as friends of God and partakers of the divine nature. Such is my diagnosis of the infirmities with which Restorationist ethics are afflicted.

111 To paraphrase Campbell’s beloved Francis Bacon’s comments on nature, Churches of Christ have acted as if Scripture must be “bound into , hounded in her wanderings, put on the rack and tortured for her secrets."

54 If Churches of Christ are to overcome these two problems in our approach to ethics, we will need both a healthier understanding of the relationship between obedience and character and a more robust pneumatology which speaks to the role of the Spirit in moral formation. The first of these is on offer in the renewal of Christian virtue ethics inaugurated by Alasdair MacIntyre, and so our prescription begins with an analysis and commendation of his project.

55 CHAPTER III

“I NO LONGER CALL YOU SERVANTS”: ALASDAIR MACINTYRE AND THE

PROMISE OF VIRTUE

I. Introduction

In the previous chapter we noted that Churches of Christ have unwittingly propagated an insufficient ethic which we summarized with the maxim, “Try hard to do what the Bible says,” and which has the following characteristics. First, it decisionistic, emphasizing commands and obedience to commands. It tends to abstract ethical decisions and questions from their historical situatedness and to reduce the ethical life to a series of decisions which may be labeled as either right or wrong on a strictly dichotomous scale. Second, it is biblical, or, better said, it is biblicistic. As part of the larger Restorationist project, it views the Bible as the sole authoritative source of all moral commands and as perspicuous enough to prevent any reasonable person from misunderstanding those commands. Finally, it assumes that human beings have within themselves the ability to follow these commands without help outside of the information provided by the Bible. This ethic, which has dominated the thinking of Churches of

Christ from the beginning of the movement, we determined is inadequate for three :

1) It fails to meet the biblical standards explicitly embraced by the movement.

2) It fails to give an adequate account of the moral life as we encounter it.

3) It entails an anthropology that is at once too high and too low.

56 Alasdair MacIntyre’s recovery of Aristotle provides a path out of the modernistic approach which has characterized our ethics. Allowing his Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic to ameliorate some of our weaknesses is, I propose, the first step to constructing a more helpful ethic for Churches of Christ. Though MacIntyre does not provide a correction for our underdeveloped pneumatology, he does address our problematic emphasis on obedience as an end in itself.

The weaknesses in the received ethic of Churches of Christ arise not primarily from particular interpretations of the biblical text or from Christian theology but from the

Modernist philosophical context in which Churches of Christ were born. Restoration scholars have documented the problems with Campbell’s reliance on Locke, but the issue is larger than one man’s philosophy.112 The major thinkers of the Enlightenment from

Locke to Hume and Kant to Bentham sought to set aside what they took to be the superstitious and unscientific notions of traditional morality and replace them with a set of universal and universally recognizable moral principles to which all rational people could assent. American Restorationists did not in general subscribe to either the of Kant or to Bentham’s and Mill’s utilitarianism, but they did share the basic assumptions characteristic of these projects, namely, that the good is an abstract principle or collection of principles untouched by history and divorced from the lived experience of persons, that these principles could be grasped by reason alone and then

112 For examples of Locke’s influence on Campbell see: Clanton, Philosophy of Religion of Alexander Campbell; S. Morris Eames, The Philosophy of Alexander Campbell (Bethany, VA: Bethany College Press, 1966); Billy Doyce Bowen, “Knowledge, the , and Faith: John Locke’s Influence on Alexander Campbell’s Theology” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1979). For a sympathetic treatment of Lockean approaches to Christian theology and public morality, see Nathan Guy, Finding Locke’s God: The Theological Basis of Locke’s Political Thought (: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

57 applied to real life via the will alone, and that human individuals were capable of this work unaided by either their communities or by God’s direct activity in their lives. These philosophical commitments became a lens through which to read Scripture, but it is important to note that its origins are in the philosophy of the Enlightenment rather than the pages of the biblical text.

II. MacIntyre’s project

Since many of the problems within the Restorationist ethic have been born from these Enlightenment beliefs, any corrective to that ethic must begin with a critique of the assumptions of modernist philosophy. In After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre provides such a critique and proposes an alternative framework within which I propose Restorationists might construct a healthier approach to considering and pursuing moral excellence.

Section II of this chapter will summarize After Virtue by examining its seven central claims as identified by MacIntyre himself.113 At times this material will be supplemented by MacIntyre’s other works or by analysis from sympathetic to his project, but the focus will remain on After Virtue both because of its place of prominence within the

MacIntyrian canon and because of its applicability to Churches of Christ.

II.A. Claim 1: Ours is an Age Characterized by Unsettled and Unsettlable Moral Debates.

The first central claim that MacIntyre makes in After Virtue is that moral debates in the western world today seem to be incapable of making progress, much less being

113 The list presented here mirrors that of Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue” in The MacIntyre Reader ed. Kevin Knight (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1998), 69-72.

58 resolved.114 Ethics has been a contentious field since its origins in the ancient world, but contemporary disagreements are “peculiarly unsettleable.”115

[The dominant moral culture of advanced modernity] has continued to be one of unresolved and apparently unresolvable moral and other disagreements in which the evaluative and normative utterances of the contending parties present a problem of interpretation. For on the one hand they seem to presuppose a reference to some shared impersonal standard in virtue of which at most one of these contending parties can be in the right, and yet on the other the poverty of the arguments adduced in support of their assertions and the characteristically shrill, and assertive and expressive mode in which they are uttered suggest strongly that there is no such standard.116

This intractable character of moral debate is not limited to a particular methodological dispute or a small set of practical questions. On issues ranging from abortion and euthanasia to economic and racial justice, the best minds in the modern philosophical academy not only disagree; they are talking past each other. Just as striking is the frustrating nature of moral conversations among the populace at large. MacIntyre argues that moral debates in our age display three salient characteristics.117 First, they are conceptually incommensurable. Despite the fact that arguments on all sides appear to be valid, there is no rational way of weighing the claims of one against the other because their concepts of what constitutes goodness are so radically different. “Good” in the mouth of the Utilitarian is no more than a homonym for “good” in the language of Kant.

Second, contenders in these debates claim that they are deploying impersonal rational arguments and not merely subjective rhetoric. Kantians and Utilitarians alike claim that their systems are expressions of universal reason and ought to be uncontroversial among rational people. Finally, while the various positions all have discernible historical

114 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 6. 115 MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue,” 69. 116 MacIntyre, After Virtue, ix. 117 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 8-10.

59 pedigrees connected to major figures and schools of thought, the modern iterations of the meaning of words like ‘virtue,’ ‘ought,’ ‘obligation,’ and ‘justice’ have been abstracted from their original contexts. This state of continual argument with no advancement or resolution has led some to claim that all moral argumentation is and can only always be mere emotivist assertion. The power of in contemporary moral discourse is such that, “to a large degree people now think, talk, and act as if emotivism were true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be,” and it is against this cultural reality that MacIntyre directs his criticism.118

II.B. Claim 2: The State of Modern Moral Conflict is a Result of the Failure of the Enlightenment Project.

Second, MacIntyre claims that the failure of the Enlightenment project brought about the current state of affairs identified in claim one.119 The goal of this project, in ethics at least, was to articulate universal principles of individual behavior discernible by reason alone and untethered from any particular historical, cultural, or linguistic context.

It sought to throw off, “discredited traditional and superstitious forms of morality [and replace them with] a kind of secular morality that would be entitled to secure the assent of any rational person.”120 Both on the continent and in , Enlightenment philosophers sought out some universal principle which could stand as a foundation for ethics and replace the multifarious and complicated practices, authorities, and cultural habits from which local moralities traditionally drew their content.

118 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 22. 119 For MacIntyre, the Enlightenment Project is the culmination of philosophical works from around 1630 till about 1850. 120 MacIntyre, “Claims,” 70.

60 Each camp had its own prescription. For Diderot and Hume, it was the passions that served as this universal grounding.121 For Kant, it was reason expressed in the categorical imperative. For Bentham and Mill, happiness calculations that tallied up pleasure and pain formed a new sort of ethical arithmetic that promised to bring to morality the reliable certainty of mathematics. And yet, the emergence and perdurance of multiple systems, expanded and nuanced though they were by later thinkers, demonstrates that each project was a failure, and a failure according to its own standards.

No one school of thought ever achieved intellectual hegemony or fully replaced its predecessors the way that modern astronomy and chemistry had fully replaced Ptolemaic cosmology and the magic of the alchemists. This protracted war between Kantians and

Utilitarians gave rise to both the emotivism which is MacIntyre’s primary nemesis and to the Kierkegaardian strand of ethics for which he has somewhat more sympathy.122 The exploration of the history of the failed Enlightenment project is, for MacIntyre, the best way to understand the sorry state of contemporary ethics (described in claim 1 above) which occasioned the writing of After Virtue and indeed of MacIntyre’s entire body of work which has followed it.

II.C. Claim 3: The Moral Theories Which Dominate Ethical Discussions Today Have the Appearance of a Rationality Which They Do Not in Fact Possess.

121 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 47-54. 122 Though MacIntyre still ranks him as one whose project was destined to fail, Kierkegaard’s Enten-Eller (Either-Or) marks, he argues, the discovery of the arbitrary nature of modern ethical discourse. It is a book which, MacIntyre argues, is best understood as intending to shock the common people of the mid-nineteenth century by exposing the failure of the Enlightenment project. Thus, he calls it, “the outcome and the epithet of the Enlightenment’s systematic attempt to discover a rational justification for morality.” After Virtue, 39.

61 The third claim of After Virtue is that the unsettled and unsettleable nature of contemporary moral discourse imparted to western society “a set of moral concepts which derive from their philosophical ancestry an appearance of rational determinateness and justification which they do not in fact possess.” 123 Here MacIntyre has in mind concepts like , social welfare, utility, protest, and managerial effectiveness.

Because of the inconclusive character of the moral systems upon which these concepts are founded, MacIntyre describes them as useful moral fictions. They are laws we take for granted but which cannot actually be known or demonstrated. These moral fictions are the sand upon which the foolish men of the late-modern West have built their therapeutic, bureaucratic, and aesthetic houses.124 Having shaken off the old authorities of God, nature, and king, the modern person faced a new question: Why should any other person listen to him or her? Despite the failure of both Kantianism and utilitarianism to offer cogent answers to this question, nearly everyone, whether in government, academia, or ordinary life, continued to speak and act as if one or more of these systems had succeeded.125 The ubiquity and power of moral fictions like “rights” and “utility” abstracted from any particular form of life that might give them meaning are evidence of

MacIntyre’s claim that the practice of modern morality is as faulty and incoherent as the theories used to describe it. We claim to believe in the authority of the moral fictions yet cannot help but fall into self-contradictory ways of interacting with them. For example:

123 MacIntyre, “Claims,” 70; After Virtue, 68-70. 124 MacIntyre identifies three “characters” in modern culture: The rich aesthete, the bureaucratic manager, and the therapist. Characters (the italics are original to the text) are archetypal roles which represent and display deep moral agreements in a culture and which therefore are held in high regard and given significant authority to “legitimate a mode of social existence.” MacIntyre, After Virtue, 28-31. 125 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 68.

62 Contemporary moral experience . . . has a paradoxical character. For each of us is taught to see himself or herself as an autonomous moral agent, but each of us also becomes engaged by modes of practice, aesthetic or bureaucratic, which involve us in manipulative relationships with others. Seeking to protect the autonomy that we have learned to prize, we aspire ourselves not to be manipulated by others, seeking to incarnate our own principles and stand-point in the world of practice, we find no way open to us to do so except by directing towards others those very manipulative modes of relationship which each of us aspires to resist in our own case. The incoherence of our attitudes and our experience arises from the incoherent conceptual scheme which we have inherited.126

In other words, under the authority of the moral fictions that dominate our world, freedom ironically demands oppression. This is but one of the many ways in which contemporary ethics fails to live up to the standards of logic upon which it pretends to be built.

II.D. Claim 4: Aristotle and Nietzsche Represent the Only Two Compelling Alternatives to the Modernist Moral Theories.

Fourth, MacIntyre claims that, of all the critics of modernity, Nietzsche most perceptively and most powerfully exposed the failure of the Enlightenment project.

It was Nietzsche’s historic achievement to understand more clearly than any other philosopher – certainly more clearly than his counterparts in Anglo-Saxon emotivism and continental – not only that what purported to be appeals to objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will, but also the nature of the problems that this posed for moral philosophy.127

If morality is created only by the subjective will rather than universal reason, then concepts like human rights, the greatest good for the greatest number, the value of managerial effectiveness, and the other hallmarks of modern ethics are exposed as the fictions they are. They are not the objective, universal, value-free categories the

Enlightenment supposed but the embodiments of a particular culture in a particular time

126 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 68. 127 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 113.

63 and place. This incisive critique of the problem leads MacIntyre to label Nietzsche as

“the moral philosopher of the present age.”128

The great anti-philosopher accurately diagnosed the incoherent and self-defeating nature of the Enlightenment project. Unfortunately, he also set forth his own account of nihilistic morality in which power, and only power, was the real object of ethical reflection. Nietzsche’s positive proposal is as problematic as his critique is helpful. The

Übermensch, the “will to power,” and the duty of each individual to become God in order to replace the God killed by modernity – all of this MacIntyre describes as anti-reason, absurd, silly, frivolous, and dangerous.129 The weakness of Nietzsche’s proposal and the strength of his critique lead MacIntyre to ask if perhaps the proper response to the failure of the Enlightenment lies not in the invention of a bold new system of thought but in the recovery of an older one which should never have been rejected.

The defensibility of the Nietzschean position turns in the end on the answer to the question: was it right in the first place to reject Aristotle? For if Aristotle’s position in ethics and – or something very like it – could be sustained, the whole Nietzschean enterprise would be pointless. This is because the power of Nietzsche’s position depends upon the truth of a central thesis: that all rational vindications of morality manifestly fail and that therefore belief in the tenets of morality needs to be explained in terms of a set of rationalizations which conceal the fundamentally non-rational phenomena of the will. . . Thus, the key question does indeed become: can Aristotle’s ethics, or something very like it, after all be vindicated?130

MacIntyre’s answer is yes. Thus, the choice facing the contemporary Western societies is a binary one: Nietzsche or Aristotle.

II.E. Claim 5: The Virtues are Best Understood as Those Qualities by Which Human Beings Achieve the Goods Internal to Practices, Furnish Individual Human Lives with their Telos, and Sustain Ongoing Social Traditions in Good Order.

128 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 114. 129 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 113-114. 130 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 117.

64

MacIntyre’s fifth central claim is the most complex of the seven because it seeks to articulate the web of concepts that describe virtue according to the Aristotelian tradition. There are, he argues, three distinct but related ways of understanding what the virtues are and the contexts in which they emerge. The first relates to human practices and the goods necessary to sustain and advance them. The second comes from the teleological and therefore narratively-shaped form of individual lives. The third arises from the ongoing social/moral traditions which allow for the narrative shape of individual lives and the continuation and growth of practices. From these three MacIntyre offers three complementary definitions of virtue, each of which we will examine in the sections below.

II.E.1. Virtues are discovered and defined within the context of practices.

For MacIntyre, virtues are only understandable in the context of another important concept in his thought – practices. His first definition of virtue is, “those qualities without which human beings cannot achieve the goods internal to practices.”131

“Practice” is an important concept for MacIntyre, but it is also a complicated one. He offers a definition of the word that is almost comically long and complex:

[A practice is]: any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.132

131 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 191. 132 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 187.

65 This definition has three basic concepts that we will unpack: complex coherence, internal goods, and the extension of goods.

By “complex coherence,” MacIntyre means that practices have a definite shape or character but one that is not simple. Practices must have a definite shape yet be sufficiently complex to allow for growth and mastery among practitioners. Thus, chess counts as a practice for MacIntyre but tic-tac-toe does not. Grammar is not a practice; writing poetry is. Examples abound. There are ways in which MacIntyre’s definition at this point is vague and/or overly simplistic. Exactly how coherent and complex must an activity be before it counts as a practice? Can someone not yet fully initiated into an activity know whether or not the activity counts as a practice? Etc. But questions like these need not derail MacIntyre’s larger project. It is not necessary to form a comprehensive list of all practices to understand that some human activities do in fact meet this definition and that such activities are both ubiquitous within and necessary for human society. For MacIntyre, understanding the range of practices is less important than understanding the other two components of his definition – internal goods and standards of excellence.

External goods are benefits not related to a practice itself which can nevertheless motivate people to participate in or learn it. Internal goods are rewards or excellences demanded by the practice itself. MacIntyre offers the illustration of a young boy being given candy as a reward for playing chess well enough to beat his opponent. If he is pursuing goods external to the game, like the candy, he will be tempted to cheat – to undermine the rules and betray the community of players/practitioners. But if he has come to recognize the goods internal to the practice of chess, he will avoid cheating at

66 least in part because he wants to “excel in whatever way the game of chess demands.”133

Neither his teacher nor the candy serves as his primary motivation. Instead, it is the practice itself that inspires and directs him.

Though professional writers are paid for their work, those who are in it strictly for the money are not likely to become masters of the craft. External goods like money may be necessary in order to sustain a life that allows a great author to spend his day writing, but it is not the good at which his or her writing is aimed. Thus, the literary maxim which master novelists know but which novices frequently cannot understand, “The book is the boss.”134 Unlike external goods which may be acquired in any number of ways, internal goods may only be acquired by participating in the particular practices in which they find their home. Consider the following from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”

The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre – To be redeemed from fire by fire.135

Eliot made money by writing Four Quartets, but he could have gained wealth of an identical kind and amount by engaging in any number of non-poetic activities. But the good of writing an exquisite stanza like this one is not possible outside of the practice of poetry. It is an excellence achievable only by a poet acting as a poet.

133 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 188. 134 Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 154-155. 135 T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York: Harcort Brace, 1967), 143-144.

67 Yet, the internal goods of a practice, though only achievable within the practice, serve a wider community to a greater degree than external goods can. When an individual achieves external goods, those goods are generally the “property and possession” of the individual alone.136 External goods such as money or power are therefore limited in supply such that one person’s gain is another’s loss. The achievement of internal goods, on the other hand, generally yields benefits to the whole community, both the community of practitioners and the society which recognizes and supports the practice. This does not mean that internal goods are not competitive. Major presses have a limited number of poems they choose to publish each year, and authors compete for those spots. Only a few are published, but the excellence achieved by those authors ends up being a boon not only for themselves but for their competitors and the reading public as well. This shared benefit from excellence in practices is one of the reasons that societies are organized around and encourage the development of practices.

The internal goods we have been describing are excellences of performance within a particular practice. They operate only within the practice itself, but there is another, and for MacIntyre, a more important, kind of internal good which emerges from within practices. The production of a masterpiece like “Little Gidding” is a good internal to the practice of poetry, but the greater internal good, and the one most relevant to

MacIntyre’s ethical project, is its contribution to Elliot’s living life as a poet. This type of good is available only to those who submit themselves to the standards of excellence and the imbedded rules of a practice and who allow those standards to exercise authority and judgment upon their own attitudes, decisions, and tastes.137 Subverting the Latin

136 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 190. 137 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 190.

68 maxim de gustibus non est disputatum, MacIntyre says, “In matters of taste there is disputation.”138 In the realm of practices, the authority of both goods and standards operates in such a way as to rule out all subjectivist and emotivist analyses of judgment.139

This does not mean that those standards are eternally fixed or beyond dispute. On the contrary, the growth of practices necessitates the mutability of standards. But only the one who submits himself or herself to a practice and acknowledges its authority can legitimately raise such challenges and critiques.140 There is no abstract perfection toward which practices aim.

Practices never have a goal or goals fixed for all time . . . but the goals themselves are transmuted by the history of the activity. It therefore turns out not to be accidental that every practice has its own history and a history which is more and other than that of the improvement of the relevant technical skills. This historical dimension is crucial in relation to the virtues.141

The goods internal to practices are only achievable by those possessed of certain qualities, and these qualities provide the preliminary step to understanding the virtues for

MacIntyre. How do we know which character traits are virtues? They are the ones that contribute to the achievement of goods internal to practices. For example, because practices are both social and cooperative, dispositions like honesty towards our fellow practitioners are essential to achieving the goods internal to the practice regardless of which practice we are discussing. A habit of deception would effectively destroy the communal bonds of the activity and lead to the death of the practice. Similarly, justice,

138 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 190 139 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 190. 140 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 190. 141 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 194.

69 , and other virtues are necessary for achieving the internal goods of practices.142

Rather than appealing to classical lists of virtues à la Plato, Aristotle, the New Testament, or Aquinas, MacIntyre starts the constructive aspect of his virtue ethics by attending to human activity. Activities that meet the definition of a practice help us see what virtues are and why they are essential. The virtues are those qualities and habits which allow us to achieve the goods internal to a practice. They are “those goods by reference to which .

. . we define our relationship to [others] with whom we share the kind of purposes and standards that inform practices.” These character traits must be present alongside technical skill in the community if a practice is to survive and grow.143

For MacIntyre, it is within the context of practices that we first begin to see what the virtues are and what sort of work they do. They are those qualities which allow us to excel within individual practices and which appear as necessary dispositions for excellence across multiple practices. A knowledge of classic literature and an ear for the well-turned phrase are virtues in the practice of writing but not in the practice of mathematics where an illiterate savant might achieve mastery despite having minimal skills in verbal or written communication. Creativity, on the other hand, is a virtue for both writers and mathematicians. Indeed, creativity is an excellence in most practices.

This is true for most virtues that make the classical lists MacIntyre alludes to but does not rely upon. Thus, they emerge as virtues not merely for this or that practice but for the common activity of living the human life well. In this sense they are goods which enable to us to pursue the good.

The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but

142 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 192. 143 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 191.

70 which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations, and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.144

Practices can help us identify the virtues, but they are not the only way to understand what the virtues are. The language of “quest for the good” in the quote above is indicative of the teleological shape of the human life as MacIntyre sees it and is the key to his second stage in understanding the virtues.

II.E.2. Virtues are discovered and defined by the teleological and narrative shape of our individual lives.

“Quest” is an important word for MacIntyre not only because it names the teleological character of our story-shaped lives, but also because the idea of a quest illustrates the complexity of human teleology.

The medieval conception of a quest is not at all that of a search for something already adequately characterized, as miners search for gold or geologists for oil. It is in the course of the quest . . . that the goal of the quest is finally to be understood.145

The knights who sought the Holy Grail in Le Morte d’Arthur knew something about the thing they sought (It was a holy relic; it was the cup which caught the blood of

Christ, etc.), but they did not understand the true nature of the grail until they had passed over and through the trails and trials which led to it. More importantly, in questing for the grail, they not only discovered the nature of the true grail; they learned the nature of a true knight as well. As MacIntyre says, “A quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge.”146 The human life aims at

144 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 219, (Italics mine). 145 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 219. 146 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 219.

71 something beyond itself, but it always only achieves its end through the discovery and attainment of the excellences of life lived along the way. Thus, the circular yet helpful understanding of the virtues as those qualities which allow a person to live the good life and the good life as that which is characterized by the virtues.

Because our ethical experiences take the shape of a “quest for the good,”

MacIntyre’s second definition of virtue focuses on the individual human life, specifically its teleological and narrative character: “The virtues are qualities required to achieve the goods which furnish individual human lives with their telos.”147 This definition, however, cannot be helpful to us until we understand both what a telos is and what it means for an individual human life to be teleological.

II.E.2.a. Individual human lives have a telos and that telos determines which character traits are properly called virtues.

Teleology was a central aspect of . Aristotle taught that the concept of purpose, goal, or end was just as appropriate for describing the human life as it was for describing horses, ships, or harps.148 This concept of a determinative end provided the means by which the virtues or excellences of life could be determined.

What makes honesty an excellent habit and dishonesty a bad one? Why is courage more noble than cowardice? What makes any characteristic of a thing or person good or bad?

The answer given by Aristotle and his heirs comes in the form of the teleological question, “What is it for?”

147 MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue,” 71. This second definition of virtue does not appear in After Virtue as it stands but is MacIntyre’s own summary of his argument in the beginning of chapter 15. See After Virtue, 204-219. 148 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in Aristotle’s Ethics: Writings from the Complete Works, eds. Jonathan Barnes and Anthony Kenny, trans. W.D. Ross and J.O. Urmson (Princeton, NJ: Press, 2014), 216-217.

72 Recently my watch stopped, so I took it to the repair shop. The man there said that the watch could not be made to tell time accurately due to a mechanical problem, and he returned it to me. Anyone who knows what a watch is for (accurately communicating the time) could now evaluate my watch and pronounce that it was a bad watch, that its tendency to stop running was a bad characteristic, and that this would have to change if it were to be good again.

Or consider a vocational analogy to bring the concept into the human realm. The word “novelist” is inherently teleological. To be a novelist is to have a particular function – to compose long-form prose fiction. This function or end naturally demands certain habits, inclinations, capacities, and skills, and rules others out. A writer who lacks command of language, the ability to sit and write for long periods of time, or a keen understanding of human psychology cannot be a good novelist. The grammar will be confusing and the characters wooden. On the contrary, if someone tells you that Tolstoy is the author of two of the greatest novels ever written, you can naturally infer that he was good with words, that he possessed a significant measure of task commitment, and that he was a keen observer of the human situation. As with watches and novelists, so it is with human beings. If we are able to discern (even in a limited sense) the telos of human beings, we can also reasonably determine which habits and character traits are virtues and which are .

The vocational analogy carries with it something that a non-human metaphor like my watch does not. While the word “watch” tells us about the thing’s telos and therefore provides us with certain evaluative criteria, it carries no sense of growth. A bad watch cannot not become a good one over time on its own. It does not move from a state of

73 untutored watch-ness to a state in which it excellently achieves or performs its end. But if Tolstoy were to tell you that he is a novelist, you know instantly that he has not always been so, and you also know something about the process by which he became one. This growth-process is key for understanding how human beings come to be good, that is, to be virtuous.

The teleological view allows us to see ethics as a three-part scheme. There is human nature as it is – untutored, untrained, and undisciplined. There is human nature as it ought to be, what MacIntyre calls, “man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential- nature.”149 And there are the means by which the former becomes the latter. These means include human reason which teaches us both the shape of our telos and how that telos ought to be pursued.150 Without this teleological framework, MacIntyre argues that ethics is doomed because it cannot overcome Hume’s famous is/ought distinction.

Hume’s argument, as MacIntyre sees it, is that evaluative judgements cannot be seen or treated as facts.151 That is, they are outside the bounds of human knowledge and cannot be arrived at via reason. Since reason can only speak about what is and not about what ought to be, Hume grounds ethics in the passions, and, absent teleology, it is easy to see why he must do so. If there is no human telos, no excellence of character to which we should properly aspire, then Hume is right: we cannot articulate moral imperatives rationally and must simply operate on blind preference. A ship’s captain, no matter how

149 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 52. 150 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 53. 151 MacIntyre’s real argument is not so much with Hume as with the emotivist ethics which he sees as descending from Hume. It is possible that Hume himself is less susceptible to MacIntyre’s critique than are his heirs. For an engagement between MacIntyre and of Hume, see The Philosophical Review 70, no. 2 (Apr., 1961), especially R.F. Atkinson’s “A Reply to Mr. MacIntyre.”

74 great his expertise in sailing, how precise his navigational tools, and how able and obedient his crew, cannot reasonably determine the proper heading if he does not have a destination toward which he is moving. He may sail boldly, cutting an intrepid swath across the ocean and inspiring men with his iron will and powerful commands, but his actions will be (to use an appropriately teleological word) pointless. In rebuttal, one thinks perhaps of Tennyson’s Ulysses who said,

My purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die as an admirable example of a sailor without a destination. But, the rest of the poem makes clear that Odysseus’s purpose is not to sail aimlessly, but to sail in search of adventure, a category that, if it is not filled up with some discernible end such as “being washed down by the gulfs” or “touching the happy isles upon which stands the great

Achilles,” rings hollow. The inspiring final stanzas of the poem, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” lose their glory if we imagine the king and crew sailing for months into the open sea until they pitifully succumb to starvation and die adrift at sea.

Our aimlessly bold (or perhaps mad is the better description) sea captain is, of course, meant to evoke the idea of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the figure who acknowledges the failure of reason to make sense of morality, truth, or human nature and creates his own meaning through his will to power even as he acknowledges that the meaning he creates is really just another lie. Instead of Tennyson’s Ulysses boldly declaring his intent “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” think here of Anton

Chigurh, the coin-flipping assassin of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. In perhaps the most iconic scene of the novel and the Coen brothers’ film based upon it,

75 Chigurh is debating whether or not to kill a gas station attendant and asks the man,

“What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” The reader knows exactly what is implied even if the character in the story seems confused. His life is on the line. “You need to call it.” Chigurh says, “I can’t call it for you.” The appeal to randomness and chaos is an expression of the character’s nihilistic worldview. Even though it is in his best interest to kill the man in order to evade detection, he submits to the meaningless authority of the coin-toss. When the potential victim correctly calls heads, Chigurh gives him the quarter, but is horrified when the man makes to put it into his pocket.

“Where do you want me to put it?” [he asks.] “Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin . . . which it is.”152

The final “which it is” and the use of coins are clear references to Nietzsche and make it clear Chiguhr is McCormack’s version of the Übermensch.153 That such a character possesses an intriguingly dark glory is undeniable, but the fact remains that no rational person would describe such a man as flourishing. Even for an Existentialist like Sartre,

152 The Coens masterful adaptation of the scene can be viewed in its entirely at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLCL6OYbSTw. 153 “Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.” , “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Portable Nietzsche trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1976), 47.

76 such a life is characterized by La Nauseé.154 Absent teleology, an appeal to the passions or to randomness may indeed be our only recourse. But when humanity is understood teleologically the means for rendering evaluative judgments become obvious, Hume’s critique is overcome, and Nietzsche’s Übermensch is exposed for the that he is.

Seeing humans, or anything else, teleologically is not a mere trick to overcome a philosophical objection. Teleology is not some extra property added on to a thing for evaluative purposes. Rather, it is an essential part of the nature of teleological things.

The concept of an author cannot be abstracted from or disassociated with the production of plays, poems, and books which constitutes an author’s telos. Furthermore, apart from the value-laden concepts of “good writing” or “bad literature,” the concept “author” is meaningless.155

Let me illustrate the point by returning to the story of my broken watch. I knew that it was a bad watch and that it did not tell time accurately. Nevertheless, because I was used to wearing it and because I fancied the way it looked, when the repairman returned it to me, I put it back on and continued to wear it. My wife noticed this and asked if it was working again. I told her that it was not, and she naturally asked why in

154 Sartre’s novel, Nausea, and his play “No Exit” each explore the idea that a non- teleological life, even that of an Übermensch, is a miserable existence in which one sees always only oneself reflected in the external world. Contrary to Nietzsche who sees the Übermensch to be inspiring and god-like in his embrace of the meaninglessness of the world, Sartre finds the experience pathetic. Dostoyevsky likewise depicts the would-be Over-men as tragic characters but not heroically so. They are pitiable creatures scribbling away their meaningless thoughts in Notes from the Underground or descending into madness in Crime and Punishment. Unlike Sartre (or Nietzsche), Dostoyevsky imagines an opposite of the Übermensch whose simplicity and traditional goodness deeply rooted in a traditional way of life and in the wisdom of his elders yields a “beauty that will save the world” and a life worth living. Thus, he juxtaposes Rogozin with Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Ivan Karamazov with his brother Alyosha in Brothers Karamazov. 155 Joseph Kotva, makes a similar point in, The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 18.

77 the world I was still wearing it. When I sheepishly confessed my reasons, she laughed and said, “You’re not wearing a watch anymore. You’re wearing a bracelet.” Her joke makes the point well. When a teleological thing is deprived of its telos entirely, it loses not only its virtue or excellence but its very identity. It becomes something else. To pursue the human telos, then, is to become not only a good human but also to become more fully human. Likewise, to fail to achieve the human telos does not merely make one a bad person. It makes one less and less of a person.156

What then is the telos, not of watches or novelists, but of human beings and humanity? This question, and not merely the question of which virtues are necessary to achieve the internal goods of practices, is necessary to determine which qualities are virtues.157

The classical answer is eudaimonia, a word frequently translated as happiness in

English editions of The Nicomachean Ethics, but which inevitably requires an extensive footnote or extended treatment in an introduction to explain that the term actually comes closer to meaning something like flourishing.158 This is why Aristotle, after acknowledging that eudaimonia is the standard Greek answer to the question “What is

156 It may be that Nietzsche saw this point and therefore recognized that man would have to become something other than man if he were to proceed in the world after the death of God. “Must not we ourselves become just to seem worthy of it?” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. ed. , trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2001), 120. C.S. Lewis certainly saw it and explored the implications of it both in The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2015) and more winsomely in the final installment of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength (New York: Scribner, 2003). 157 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 184. 158 See, for example: Jonathan Barnes and Anthony Kenny, “Introduction,” in Aristotle’s Ethics, 12-14; Roger Crisp, “Introduction” in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), x-xiv; Terrence Irwin, “Introduction” in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics trans. Terrence Irwin, 2nd Ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999), xvi. All future references to Nicomachean Ethics will come from the 2014 Princeton edition.

78 humanity’s highest good?” goes on to describe it not merely as happiness, as we commonly use the word today, but as “living well and faring well.”159 To determine whether a pod of whales or a crash of rhinos is flourishing or not, biologists cannot merely examine their health and reproductive abilities (though these are certainly key aspects of animal flourishing). They must determine if they are living and faring well as whales qua whales and rhinos qua rhinos. A flourishing sea turtle abandons its offspring in a way that a flourishing whale does not. Scientists could, perhaps, sedate a and keep it alive in a laboratory for a longer period of time than it would live in the wild.

They could produce offspring for it by artificial insemination or cloning and thus fulfill its evolutionary drives toward survival and reproduction, but this would also prevent it from thundering across the savannah or using its horn to defend its young from predators.

We would understand intuitively and could produce compelling evidence that our laboratory rhino is not flourishing precisely because it did not exhibit those powers and characteristics of rhinos qua rhinos.160 Likewise, human flourishing is best understood in light of human nature. The achievement of eudaimonia requires a person to realize his or her potential and to develop powers, capacities, and excellences proper to humanity.

Aristotle saw reason in its various forms as the most important of these powers.

Human beings for him were “rational animals,” and therefore our highest good must be connected in some key sense to the realization and proper exercise of our rational powers.161 MacIntyre offers four descriptions of the final end of Aristotle’s rational

159 Aristotle, Ethics, 218-220. The language of “human flourishing” is common in MacIntyre’s presentation of Aristotle. After Virtue, 152-162, 193-195, etc. 160 See Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1999), 11-20. 161 Aristotle, Ethics, 235-239.

79 animal. First, it must be “the end of rational activity as such” and must therefore result in a “high degree of self-knowledge, of what we are, have been, and can be.”162 Second, our final end must be ultimately satisfying to the agent who achieves it. It is not simply the most desirable thing, but a thing the attainment of which fulfills all desires such that a person could ask for nothing more. Third, it can be characterized apophatically. We can know that it is not pleasure, fame, power, physical health, mental excellence, etc. as

Aquinas (and many before him) argued.163 But understanding what the telos is must be achieved after a lifetime of questing for it. Fourth, it must stand against all other human goods the way that a standard stands against that which it measures. It must be ultimately and not merely instrumentally good.164

Returning to the metaphor of the quest for the Holy Grail, MacIntyre’s four descriptions of the final good of humanity might be compared to the knights’ conception of the grail at the beginning of their quest. They sketch out for us an accurate but insufficient picture of the telos of human life. But true eudaimonia can only be understood by those who endure the rigors of the quest for it and come to know both their end and themselves along the way.

162 MacIntyre, Conflicts in the Ethics of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 53. Note that MacIntyre does not say “complete” self-knowledge. This is because he that humans can truly flourish even as they grow and change over time. This idea could perhaps be extended if we understood human nature as essentially and eternally dynamic love, a topic to which we will return in a later chapter. 163 , Summa Theologiae, 2.2.1-6. This and subsequent references to the Summa are taken from Summa Theologiae, Latin-English Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. John Mortenson and Enrique Alarcón, trans. Laurence Shapcoate (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). See also Plato, , trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1992), 5: 122-156; Aristotle, Ethics, 219-223; , The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. David R. Slavvit (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2008), book 2. 164 MacIntyre, Conflicts, 53.

80 MacIntyre cautions against trying to simply name the ultimate human telos from outside the lived experience of practices and traditions. Rather than theorizing about the summum bonum in an abstract or top-down fashion, we must begin where we are, building up to it from below by reflecting first on the character of our lives as we experience them.165 MacIntyre argues that both the summum bonum and many of the important instrumental goods which lead to it are not discernible in any clear way until we are neck-deep in the work of living well. “It is only in and through these activities that we arrive at more adequate ideas of how to think about [important] ends and how to be guided by them.”166 As our understanding of ends changes by the practice of pursuing them well, so does the shape of our character and our understanding of what good character is. The requirements of moral virtues like fortitude, honesty, and justice can only be articulated vaguely at the outset.167 Paradoxically, the knowledge of what excellence is comes through the attainment of excellence.

Hence . . . in the life of practice there are no fully adequate generalizations to guide us, no set of rules sufficient to do the work for us, something that each of us has to learn for her or himself as we move toward the achievement of the ends of our activities and the end of excellence in those activities.168

For MacIntyre, we have no way of identifying our end without also beginning to realize it. We are always “backing into our concept of the telos.”169 In pursuit of this end, we do not look forwards to a fixed goal; we look backwards at the history of our

165 Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity is MacIntyre’s attempt to perform such a constructive project. 166 MacIntyre, Conflicts, 50. 167 MacIntyre, Conflicts, 51. 168 MacIntyre, Conflicts, 51. 169 I owe the phrase “backing into our concept of the telos” to Brad Kallenberg.

81 successes and failures and of those in our community who have lived well. But we are nevertheless heading towards something; our lives are teleologically shaped.

II.E.2.b. The teleological shape of individual lives results from the narrative character of human existence.

MacIntyre’s insight about the backwards-looking character of telos discernment means that we are always approaching the fundamental ethical question, “What is good?” at least in part by articulating a history in which the exploration of that question has taken place. History, by its nature, is narratively structured. Therefore, teleological ethics assumes and grows out of the concept of narrative, and narratives form the context in which ethical acts take place. “Every particular view of the virtues is linked to some particular notion of the narrative structure or structures of human life.”170

The Enlightenment attempt to make either the act or the will to act the sole focus of ethical reflection not only fails to consider the teleological character of human beings; it also fails to adequately deal with the way in which actions are embedded within larger worlds of meaning. This abstraction of actions from their contexts causes moral acts and decisions to lose virtually all of their meaning. They become, in the words of Charles

Pinches, “homeless actions.”171 That is why MacIntyre emphasizes the historical (and therefore narrative) context of human lives. Because virtue develops within concrete historical communities, we must describe it in ways that account for the historical and communal contexts in which human persons find themselves. Ethical abstractions trade relevance to actual human lives for clarity and universal application.

170 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 174. 171 Charles R. Pinches, Theology and Action: After Theory in Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 13.

82 Consider the following illustration: Betsy acts according to that maxim which she can simultaneously will to be a universal law. Though the sentence seems to be coherent, we must confess that we have no idea what, if anything, Betsy is doing. The statement is only meaningful when we connect it to particular concrete situations. As MacIntyre says,

“[Understanding] what someone else is doing always [moves] us toward placing a particular episode in the context of a set of narrative histories.”172 The statement about ethical Betsy fails to do this precisely because it seeks to avoid history, to transcend the limitations it places upon actions and our understanding of actions. In accomplishing this act of transcendence, we lose important connections to the actual world in which Betsy does or does not do something.

Contrast the sentence above about ethical Betsy with the following: Though she knew she would be punished for it, Betsy was unwilling to lie to her mother and therefore confessed that she had hidden the deviled eggs in the cat’s litter box so as to avoid having to eat them for supper. Now we have the beginnings of a human narrative with its attendant way of life that gives meaning to the statement about Betsy following Kant’s categorical imperative. We find that our ability to discuss and evaluate the moral quality of Betsy’s behavior increases as we learn more and more details about the situation – that is, as we further contextualize it and root it more firmly in a larger narrative. Let us suppose that upon further investigation we find that Betsy put the eggs in the litter box because she believed that, being deviled, they were in fact possessed by the devil. Let us further suppose that Betsy was a faithful student and of Luther and had learned from him to associate the devil with the toilet, and that she therefore felt that a litter box

172 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 197.

83 was a more appropriate location for the devil than her mouth.173 In light of even this radically abbreviated account of the historical narrative of Betsy’s life, we properly evaluate her moral decision differently than if she were simply a picky eater.174

While some branches of analytic philosophy have mistakenly treated actions as

“homeless, discrete entities that, by means of a formula, can be extracted from human life into a kind of laboratory in which they are analyzed and characterized,” MacIntyre’s approach emphasizes that actions (including the will to act) can only be understood within the human contexts in which they occur.175

In summary, MacIntyre’s second stage in understanding the virtues moves from the initial idea that the virtues are those qualities which allow human beings to achieve the goods internal to practices to understanding the virtues as those qualities that allow humans to pursue and achieve the goods which provide individual human lives with their telos. He argues that the unifying form of an individual life which is necessary for its teleological nature comes from the narrative shape which characterizes all of human experience. Telos allows us to perform the evaluative work necessary for distinguishing

173 Luther’s tendency to use scatological language when speaking of the devil or his servants is well documented. See for example Luther’s exchange with the devil in which Satan told him he could not read matins on the toilet and Luther replied, “I am cleansing my bowels and worshipping God Almighty. You deserve what descends and He what ascends!” Heike A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Wallizser Scwartzbat (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 339. For a treatment of Luther’s scatological language in theology see Daniel Mede Skjelver, “The Impact of Scatology on the Image of as a Man, 1483- 1546,” Academia, https://www.academia.edu/1016951/German_Hercules_The_Impact_of_ Scatology_o n_the_Image_of_Martin_Luther_as_a_Man_1483-1546. 174 MacIntyre’s well known and less ridiculous illustration of the principle comes in his description of the man who said, “The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histroionicus.” See After Virtue, 210. See also, Rivka Mailish, “Alasdair MacIntyre on Narrative, History, and the Unity of a Life,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History last modified Jan. 22, 2014. https://s-usih.org/2014/01/alasdair-macintyre-on-narrative-history-and-the-unity- of-a-life/#sdfootnote9sym. 175 Pinches, Theology and Action, 22-23; MacIntyre, After Virtue, 210-214.

84 the virtues, and telos arises from the narrative structure of human life. The virtues, on this definition, are the qualities which enable individual men and women to successfully undertake the quest for the good, and a quest is characterized by its narrative (and therefore teleological) structure. In the next section we examine the ways in which the structures of individual lives are necessarily embedded within social and moral traditions and thereby arrive at the third and final of MacIntyre’s ways of understanding the virtues.

II.E.3. Virtues are determined and defined within the context of social traditions.

What is it that gives individual lives their narrative and therefore teleological shape? What provides the context in which practices can grow? MacIntyre argues that the answer to both questions is the social traditions within which those lives and those practices are inevitably embedded. We are never able to seek out the good or exercise the virtues strictly as individuals. Human beings are social animals, and our individual lives are defined in large part by the social roles that we fill. These inherited social roles may come from family, nation, culture, guild, team, etc. Though the modern world has taught us to think of ourselves as the product of our own choices, the embodiment of our untethered will, our actual lives are far more communal than we are taught to imagine.

Even the hermit or the is someone’s son. Even the prisoner in solitary confinement must concede that her identity is in large part determined by the social structures that have placed her in such an isolated situation.176 We are all of us shaped by our history and our society. As MacIntyre says,

I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationship. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide. Notice

176 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 172-173.

85 that rebellion against my identity is always one possible mode of expressing it . . . What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition.177

As noted earlier, practices have a social and historical dimension to them, and as the virtues sustain practices over time, so they also sustain the larger social traditions which contain and carry practices. These traditions, if they are living, are always engaged in ongoing debate about the nature and character of the goods which constitute both the practices contained in a tradition and the individual lives of those engaged in such practices. Thus, MacIntyre defines tradition as, “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”178

To be “historically extended” means that MacIntyrean traditions have a narrative shape and that the narrative of the tradition is not completed. It is advancing toward something, even if that something is only understandable by looking backwards and asking, “Are we in a better place than we were before?”. Like practices, traditions are characterized by growth. Like individual lives, they have both purpose and direction.

Here we see that the idea of traditions in this sense already necessitates related concepts like narrative and teleology. Kallenberg summarizes the point nicely:

Just as the self has the unity of playing a single character in a lifelong story, so too the community has its own continuity – despite loss and gain of members – because the community itself is a character of sorts in a narrative that is longer than the span of a single human life.179

177 MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue,” 92. 178 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 222. 179 Brad J. Kallenberg, “The Master Argument of After Virtue,” in Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition: Christian Ethics after MacIntyre, eds. Nancey Murphy, Brad J. Kallenberg, and Mark Thiessen Nation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 25.

86

Traditions generally provide the context within which individuals and practices can meaningfully seek to develop and maintain their respective goods, and like individual lives and practices, traditions are dependent for their vitality on the exercise of the virtues of central characters, specially significant social roles that define important moral parameters within a tradition.180

Characters specified thus must not be confused with social roles in general. For they are a very special type of social role which places a certain kind of moral constraint on the personality of those who inhabit them in a way in which many other social roles do not. I choose the word ‘character’ for them precisely because of the way it links dramatic and moral associations.181

Without the virtues, traditions can and do decline and even die. A lack of wisdom or courage, justice or corrupts a tradition just as it does the practices and individual lives sustained by traditions. This, MacIntyre argues, means that all traditions demand, among other virtues, the virtue of historical awareness. Because the future of the tradition is derived from its past, those within it must know and appreciate its history if they are to advance the argument into the future.182

II.E.4. Summary of claim five

180 When using the word to describe these morally defining social roles, MacIntyre tends to set it off in italics, and I follow his pattern here. 181 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 27, italics original. In Homeric Greece, the central characters might be the proud and indominable warrior (Achilles), the crafty trickster (Odysesseus) and the king (Priam, Agamemnon). In contemporary emotivist society he identifies three central characters: the rich aesthete, the manager, and the therapist. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 24-35. See also, L.L. Mangham, “Macintyre and the Manager,” Organization 2, 2 (1995): 181-204; M. Sinnicks, “Leadership After Virtue: MacIntyre’s Critique of Management Reconsidered,” Journal of 147 (2018): 735-746. Unlike Jungian archetypes, MacIntyre’s notion of characters are specific to particular cultures/traditions and make no claims to universality. The father is an archetype that carries moral weight and social instruction across traditions. The character of the therapist so central to 21st century America is entirely out of place in the context of feudal Japan. 182 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 223.

87 Having examined this third and final stage of understanding the virtues, let us summarize MacIntyre’s fifth claim before moving on to claim six. MacIntyre argues that the virtues are best understood in three distinct but related ways:

1) The virtues are qualities without which human beings cannot achieve the goods internal to practices. Practices are defined as: a) coherent and complex forms of socially established cooperative human activity which are b) characterized by internal goods that c) result in the systematically extension of those goods and the powers to achieve them.

2) The virtues are qualities required to achieve the goods which furnish individual human lives with their telos. The unifying form of life without which such lives could not have a telos is a product of their narrative structure. Narrative structures exist only because individual human lives are embedded in social traditions.

3) The virtues are qualities required to sustain ongoing social traditions in good order. Traditions, for MacIntyre, are historically extended, socially embodied arguments about the good. Social traditions which lack the relevant virtues, including the virtue of historical awareness, become corrupted and will decline and perhaps die.183

II.F. Claim 6: The Rejection of the Aristotelian tradition Was Occasioned by a Failure to Sustain and Pass on its Virtues.

The final two statements which MacIntyre identifies as the key claims of After

Virtue are less complex and may be presented more briefly than claim five. In the sixth,

MacIntyre seeks to articulate the origins of the doomed Enlightenment project. The

183 It is important to note that MacIntyre has acknowledged that any account of the human good defined purely in terms of social goods (practices, traditions, and the narrative unity of human lives) is destined to fail if divorced from a metaphysical grounding such as that provided by Aquinas in ST, 1.5 and a biological grounding such as that which he attempts to provide in Dependent Rational Animals. MacIntyre, After Virtue, xi.

88 Enlightenment began not primarily by new scientific or technological breakthroughs, nor by the discovery of the New World, but by the failure of Europe in the later Medieval period to sustain the tradition of the virtue the West inherited from Aristotle and

Aquinas.184 Here we see exemplified MacIntyre’s claim that the truth, usefulness, and explanatory power of a social tradition are not sufficient to ensure its survival.

Reasonableness must be paired with individual and communal habits of excellence, and those habits must be maintained and passed on to new generations. If the relevant virtues are not sustained among its individuals and practices, the tradition will decline.185 This is precisely what he claims is happening to the Aristotelian Tradition of the virtues, and his project is designed to recover and reinvigorate that tradition for a new era.

II.G. Claim 7: Aristotle Provides Both the Diagnosis of and the Prescription for the Unhealthy State of Modern Ethics.

MacIntyre is bold enough to attempt a recovery of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition because he believes that neither the theories of the Enlightenment which replaced it, nor the anti-philosophy of Nietzsche and his heirs which so devastated the

Enlightenment project are able to undermine the tradition of moral . Thus, his final claim is as follows:

I conclude that Aristotle is vindicated against Nietzsche and moreover that only a history of ethical theory and practice written from an Aristotelian rather than a

184 MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue,” 72. 185 Though After Virtue does not do the work of tracing exactly how and why this abandonment of the virtues occurred, others have chronicled the historical, social, and philosophical trends that led to the decline. See for example: Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Louis Dupre, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007).Thomas Pfau, Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2013).

89 Nietzschean standpoint enables us to comprehend the nature of the moral condition of modernity.186

MacIntyre performs what he prescribes insofar as After Virtue begins the work of developing the historical awareness necessary to sustain a tradition. His other works, especially Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry and Ethics in Conflicts of Modernity, are likewise performances of looking at the actual lived experience of a person attempting to be good from an Aristotelian standpoint and contrasting that vision with what emerges from an Enlightenment or Nietzschean point of view. It is no accident that

After Virtue largely takes the form of a story about how the world lost its way rather than simply a list of claims in bullet-point fashion as I have summarized them here, and a summary such as mine necessarily loses much of the persuasive power of MacIntyre’s actual work. Nevertheless, articulating the major claims of After Virtue helps us demonstrate the ways in which MacIntyre can be a useful resource for Churches of Christ as we rethink our received ethic. In summary, the seven major claims of After Virtue are as follows:

1) Ours is an age characterized by unsettled and unsettlable moral debates.

2) This state of affairs is the result of the failure of the Enlightenment Project.

3) The moral theories which dominate ethical discussions today have the appearance of a rationality which they do not in fact possess.

4) Aristotle and Nietzsche represent the only two compelling alternatives to the modernist moral theories.

5) The virtues are best understood as those qualities by which human beings achieve the goods internal to practices, furnish individual human lives with their telos, and sustain ongoing social traditions in good order.

186 MacIntyre, “The Claims of After Virtue,” 72.

90 6) It was the failure to sustain the tradition of the virtues in the late that led to the rejection of Aristotelian ethics and politics and the emergence of the Enlightenment Project.

7) Aristotle provides both the diagnosis of and the prescription for the unhealthy state of modern ethics.

III. MacIntyre Offers Four Promising Areas of Application for Churches of Christ

Because the Restoration Movement has been so deeply shaped by the

Enlightenment, MacIntyre’s project is deeply relevant for Churches of Christ. This section will examine four major contributions MacIntyre affords to our effort to articulate a better approach to ethics for Churches of Christ. First, MacIntyre’s project helps to address the problematic form of our philosophical foundations. Second, he reminds us of the importance of the social tradition of which we are a part (the Church) and the practices of that tradition. We will specifically look at the practice of interpreting

Scripture. Third, he forces us to move beyond abstract decisions and into the realm of habit formation and character development. Finally, MacIntyre’s approach allows for an ethic of moral transformation in a way that the simple ethic of biblical obedience dominant in Churches of Christ of Christ does not.

III.A. MacIntyre Helps Churches of Christ Rethink Our Philosophical Foundations.

Though Churches of Christ as a people are different from the wider culture in many ways, the movement still reflects the instability of modern ethics. The moral crisis for Churches of Christ is less dramatic than for western culture in general because we have maintained a greater degree of social cohesion and a greater number of shared practices. Nevertheless, our moral debates frequently persist unresolved because they

91 imagine a shared foundation that does not exist. This foundation is composed of three interlocking pieces.

The first is a commitment to Biblicism - the inerrancy, all-sufficiency, and perspicuity of the Scriptures. Though the debates about inerrancy have mostly happened outside of Churches of Christ, there is little doubt as to the general Restorationist position on the topic. In our movement, inerrancy has always been assumed even when it was not explicitly stated.187 Not only have we viewed Scripture as inerrant, we have also affirmed that it was all-sufficient. The full scope of the Christian’s moral and spiritual life has been thought to be settled in the pages of the Bible. The Bible and the Bible alone must to be our guide for matters of faith and practice, and it must therefore be seen as expansive enough to speak to every issue that might arise. Finally, the Biblicist assumption that God sent the Bible to humanity as the guidebook for life, the roadmap to heaven, and the constitution of the Church implied that like guidebooks, maps, and constitutions, its language and symbols were meant to be clear and easily understood by all readers.188 Because God desired all people to be saved, and because salvation was achievable only by following the Bible’s teachings, God made the Bible self-evident.

187 It is worth noting that the doctrine of is a philosophical position rather than a biblical one and that it arises among Protestants at the same time that the doctrine of came to prominence among Catholics. Both concepts reflect the modernist quest for moral and philosophical certainty within a foundationalist epistemology. See William Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Mark E. Powell, Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Examination of an Ecumenical Issue (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) respectively. 188 The image of the New Testament as the Constitution of the Church was especially important for Alexander Campbell. “I contend that the constitution of the church and its laws are found explicitly declared in the New Testament. And that in all matters of faith and Christian practice it requires not one by-law to amend or adapt it to any Christian society.” Alexander Campbell, “To Bishop R. B. Semple.--Letter IV,” The Christian Baptist 5,2 (June 2, 1828): 444- 445. See also Alexander Campbell, “The Kingdom of Heaven,” Millennial Harbinger Extra, VII (1834): 401.

92 Second, Churches of Christ have maintained that human reason is sufficient to understand the Bible. An inerrant, all-sufficient, and perspicuous constitution is only useful if people are sufficiently gifted to read and understand such a document. Here,

Campbell’s Enlightenment influences are clearly on display. However, Campbell and his heirs held to a high view of human reason not only because of their philosophical commitments, but also because such a view was a necessary part of their theological project. Their anti-Calvinism with its attendant high anthropology emphasized that human beings were guilty of sin precisely because they could have and should have known better than to practice it.

Finally, Churches of Christ have a high view not only of human reason, but of the ability of human beings to act on that reason in consistent ways. Our high anthropology has always applied to both the intellect and the will. With this third piece in place, the foundation for Restorationist morality becomes clear. Goodness, for Churches of Christ, has historically consisted in understanding and obeying the will of God as it is inerrantly, all-sufficiently, and clearly revealed in Scripture. God had directly provided all that the contemporary Christian needed to be good – the Bible, common sense, and free will.

There is no doubt that goodness comes only by God’s grace, but this grace took the form of one-time gifts given in creation and the revelation of Scripture, gifts given in the past which each individual was now responsible to put to good use.

MacIntyre helps us see why such a foundation is destined to crumble. It rests upon a distorted understanding of what goodness is and how we go about achieving it, a distortion inherited from the Enlightenment project. Churches of Christ have seen the nihilistic threat and sought to avoid it by establishing an absolute authority in Scripture,

93 but we have overlooked the dangers of the philosophy which Nietzsche’s nihilism so powerfully critiques – the Enlightenment confidence in universal human reason and abstract moral decisionism. This Biblicist position is inadequate as an approach to ethics not least because it assumes and unwittingly draws upon a social tradition while denying that such a tradition is necessary or even helpful. Furthermore, it takes for granted a number of practices without doing the work necessary to sustain them. The most obvious social tradition it assumes is the Church and the most important practice is that of biblical interpretation.

III.B. MacIntyre Helps Churches of Christ Recover the Importance of Tradition.

The word “tradition” has long been something of a verbum non gratum in

Churches of Christ. Many in the movement have pointed to Jesus’ contrast between the traditions of the elders and the commandments of God (Mk. 7:3-13) as a way of emphasizing the importance of Scriptural authorization for the faith and practice of the church. For example, one group argues that in church worshippers may only sing acapella since no New Testament authority can be cited in support of using musical instruments in worship. The use of instruments in worship is, for them, a tradition. More recently “tradition” has been used to pejoratively describe the received wisdom and practices within Churches of Christ. This group points to the practice of acapella singing as “merely a tradition” and looks to change the practice. Conservatives and progressives are united in their disdain for anything that might be called tradition, though they disagree about which doctrines and practices deserve the label. Both groups operate out of the shared assumption that whatever the correct answer to questions like, “How ought the church to worship?” or “What is the right thing to do?” it will be found in something

94 other than the history of the Church or the received wisdom therein. MacIntyre helps us see that history is (thankfully!) inescapable and efforts to discount it result not in freedom but self-constraining ignorance. The social tradition of the Church need not function as an authority the way that Scripture does for Churches of Christ, but it is both the context in which Scripture was produced and preserved and in which it is read and interpreted today. When we ignore or deny the tradition of both the Restoration Movement in particular and of Christianity as a whole, Churches of Christ cut ourselves off from important resources that could not only help us think about ethics in more enlivening

189 ways, but also inform and improve our practice of interpreting Scripture.

Scripture, on its own terms, is not a book that can simply be read and obeyed. It is a rich and complex mosaic of literary genres of which commandments are but one part.

In pre-modern times, the process of interpreting the Bible was always understood to be more art than science, a spiritual gift and a skill rather than a precise application of technique. One of the great tragedies of the history of Churches of Christ is that our

189 The surge of interest in both Church history in general and in Restoration history in particular in recent decades is evidence that Churches of Christ are increasingly realizing their error and are more and more open to a reevaluation of the role of tradition. Authors like Richard Hughes, Leonard Allen, and Douglas Foster, have been especially important voices in this movement. See C. Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene: ACU Press, 1988); Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith; C. Leonard Allen, Distant Voices: Discovering a Forgotten Past for Churches of Christ (Abilene: ACU Press, 1999); Richard Hughes, Nathan Hatch, David Edwin Harrell and Douglas A. Foster, American Origins of Churches of Christ (Abilene: ACU Press, 2000); Gary Holloway and Douglas A. Foster, Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of Churches of Christ (Abilene: ACU Press, 2002); Douglas A. Foster, The Story of Churches of Christ (Abilene: ACU Press, 2013); This increased historical appreciation has also manifested a number of texts that draw on Restoration history in order to make specifically theological arguments for Churches of Christ today. See for example: Allen and Swick, Participating in God’s Life; John Mark Hicks, Johnny Melton, and Bobby Valentine, A Gathered People: Revisioning the Assembly as Transforming Encounter (Abilene: ACU Press, 2007); Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come.

95 commitment to philosophical principles of the Enlightenment deadened to us to much of the Bible we love so much.

MacIntyre’s project does not require or even encourage a wholesale rejection of the ethic of biblical obedience that has characterized Churches of Christ historically. His emphasis on virtue is not a cover for libertinism or an excuse for ignoring biblical commands. On the contrary, virtue ethics has an important place for the authority of received wisdom, and reminds us that wisdom is characterized by its adherence to traditions, laws, and best practices. But it also helps open our eyes to the way that those aspects of Scripture which do not fit neatly into the categories of commands, examples, and necessary inferences are nevertheless essential for moral development. MacIntyre helps us see why Torah is better translated as Way than merely as Law, and why the

Church tended to reject Gospels which abstracted the teachings of Jesus from the story of his life.190 The lens of virtue provides a helpful framework within which to read and understand the Bible as a whole. It does not reject commandments but situates them within a world in which they find their meaning. Other Biblicist traditions are already

190 “The concepts related to walking are reinforced by the word ‘Torah.’ The noun is derived from the verb, yarah, meaning ‘to throw’ (a stone, a javelin, a spear). From this angle, the noun torah does not refer to the target but refers rather to the trajectory, the flight path. This puts us in familiar territory. In the Psalter, the words “path” and “way” are used some 80 times. And the words having to do with traveling the path (words like walking, running, stumbling, wandering, stepping, falling down, remaining upright, and so on) total over 180! Add to that total the 26 times the term “blessed” (asher) occurs in the Psalter because asher derives from a verb meaning “to walk straight” (see Prov. 9:6). We are enjoined to walk the way of wisdom (Prov. 4:11). Of course, when Jesus arrives, he supplants Torah as the path, for Jesus himself is the Way, and his followers were referred to as people of “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 24:14, 22). For Christian ethics, then, life is a journey to be walked in that very Way with likeminded others (2 Tim. 2:22) even when the destination (the future) seems unclear.” Brad Kallenberg, “Deuteronomy 5:12-15: Ninth Sunday after the Epiphany,” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship Vol. B1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, forthcoming). See also “Torah” in F. Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs, The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 436-437.

96 exploring these connections, and Churches of Christ would do well to follow their example. A rich and growing body of scholarship analyzing the importance of virtue for the work of biblical interpretation has emerged in the past twenty-five years and could be of great help to Churches of Christ.191

MacIntyre’s project helpfully encourages Churches of Christ to acknowledge the value of tradition and Church history and to reframe our understanding of biblical interpretation as a practice rather than a technique. Our received ethic of biblical obedience tended to abstract both the text and the reader from the historical world in which God has placed them, but MacIntyre shows us that commands only have meaning within particular contexts, and that they can only be obeyed consistently by those whose character has been formed within a particular narrative and social tradition. By doing so,

MacIntyre’s project moves ethics out of the abstract moment of crisis and into the narratively shaped lives of individual moral actors and their communities.

III.C. MacIntyre helps Churches of Christ move beyond decisionism.

Frequently in Churches of Christ, we have come to the discussion of ethics too late in the process to be of real help. We have imagined that moral theology is a way of

191 See for example: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press,1996); Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a more theological emphasis see: Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998); Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation, Challenges in Contemporary Theology, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998); Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ed. Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005); Daniel J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God Toward Theology as Wisdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,2006); Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and especially Stephen E. Fowl, The Theological Interpretation of Scripture Classic and Contemporary Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997).

97 dealing with crises that arise in our lives or quandaries in which we find ourselves or our communities entangled. When a is in trouble, the minister gets a call asking about Jesus’ teachings on divorce. When draft cards are issued, young people begin to ask about cheek-turning and the Old Testament’s depiction of war. When racial strife erupts in demonstrations and protests, the elders of the congregation meet to discuss the ways in which the church has contributed to the problem and what their response ought to be. It is in the midst of crises large and small that we turn to the Bible looking for answers to the question, “What should I do?”

The reasons for this are varied, but at least part of this tendency comes from our assumption that the moral life of the Christian is primarily a matter of obeying the clear moral imperatives found in Scripture. If ethics is the kind of thing where one can look up the answers in a book and then apply them, there really is no need to think about morality before a decision is to be made. MacIntyre pushes back against such thinking. Both our experience and a closer reading of the biblical text also teach us that the moral life is far messier than this model assumes. The complexities of life, the nature of moral behavior, and the teaching of Scripture demand that moral theology addresses more than simply our decisions in moments of crisis. Nevertheless, the isolated decision has been the primary subject of ethical reflection among Churches of Christ as it has in the wider culture since our beginnings. James McClendon, writing in an Evangelical context, accurately names the situation facing Churches of Christ as well.

Decisionism remains dominant…both outside and inside the Christian church. For it, morality consists in decision making; learning morality means learning to “make moral decisions”; and the living of the (Christian!) moral life consists in walking a knife-edge of moral uncertainty in which, almost like the toss of a coin, the choice may turn now this way, now that. . . . Morality is presented as if it were a series of almost imponderable dilemmas, and the firm ongoing content of

98 Christian ethics is never learned . . . Modernity deprived us of the resources of Christian practical reason so completely that its rich heritage was lost to sight and replaced by others’ projects.192

Churches of Christ have followed this larger deontological tradition in defining goodness as duty and therefore focusing on the will of the individual. Their view largely conforms to Kant’s argument for deontology which MacIntyre says can be stated in two

“deceptively simple” theses:

… if the rules of morality are rational, they must be the same for all rational beings the way that the rules of arithmetic are; and if the rules of morality are binding on all rational beings, then the contingent ability of such beings to carry them out must be unimportant – what is important is their will to carry them out.193

The received ethic of Churches of Christ holds to these theses though it roots the binding force of moral rules in the commands of God rather than in reason.194 Despite their differences, Kantian deontology and the received ethic of Churches of Christ both assume the universality of moral rules and see the human will and its decisions as the true locus for morality. In these models, there are only two moral questions – What is the right thing to do, and will you do it? Churches of Christ have posited that the answer to the first question lies in the clear commands of Scripture and the answer to the second is the totality of ethics. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to

192 James Wm. McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology Volume 1, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 74-75. 193 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 43-44. In Kant’s own words, “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Good Will.” , Fundamental Principles of the of Morals trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (Minneola, NY: Dover, 2005), 9. For a fuller treatment of Kant’s view of the Good Will, see chapter III of John Silber, Kant’s Ethics: The Good, Freedom, and the Will (Boston: Gruyter, 2012), 64-114. 194 MacIntyre points out that, for Kant, a divine imperative cannot serve as the ultimate grounding for moral rules since an a priori understanding that divine commands ought to be obeyed must exist within the individual, and if such a standard already exists within us via reason, the divine commands end up being redundant. After Virtue, 45.

99 trust and obey” advises a popular Restorationist hymn.195 In that phrase, the ethical model of the movement is accurately summed up.

The assumption of this biblical deontology helps to explain why Churches of

Christ tend to address topics in applied ethics more regularly than the development of virtuous habits or the maintaining of practices which inculcate virtue. Open forum sessions at university lectureships offer a plethora of examples of such thinking. The following example from the Freed-Hardeman lectures could be multiplied many times over.

Question: Discuss the duties of a Christian in relation to the business world.

Answer: The only way that Christianity can get into business is for Christian people, in their participation in the business affairs of the world, to practice Christian precepts: Jesus taught, in one of his parables, that his disciples should be like leaven and permeate and influence all with whom they come in contact. (Matt. 13:33.) Paul admonished us to “take thought for things honorable in the sight of all men.” (Rom. 12:17.) Because his disciples would necessarily be in contact with the world of businesses, Jesus taught much regarding their duties in this respect. (Matt. 20:1-16; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 12:13-21; John 4:35-38) The all-sufficiency of the sacred scriptures is clearly evidenced in the fact that they contain instruction governing all pertinent activities for all in every sphere of life. Therein are rules touching the old and the young, the rich and the poor, and the wise and the simple, the good and the bad; and their various obligations and duties designated.196

Notice how both the question and the response are framed in terms of duties, obligations, precepts, and rules. Notice also how Jesus’ parables are converted from descriptions of

195 The hymn’s origins are Presbyterian, and it has been popular among many Christian groups since its publication in 1887. It is among the most widely sung hymns in Churches of Christ and has appeared in virtually all major songbooks (hymnals) published and used by Restorationists in the 20th century. The history of the hymn’s composition and reception is told in brief in Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings My Soul:150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 220-221. 196 Guy N. Woods, Questions and Answers Open Forum Freed-Hardeman College Lectures (Nashville: Freed-Hardeman Press, 1976), 201. Italics mine. See also Woods’s response to questions about marriage, divorce, and remarriage on 234-238 and 299, jokes 281- 282, drinking alcohol 290, and taking oaths in legal settings 305-307.

100 the nature or character of the Kingdom of God (“The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”) into commands to be obeyed (Exercise influence over those with whom you come in contact.). Authors within Churches of Christ have produced a number of books and articles on divorce and remarriage, military service, abortion, alcohol, and in which their methodology is to determine the appropriate exegesis of relevant biblical passages and then issue a call to obedience. Little is said about how one ought to go about obeying or what should be done to move us from those who obey reluctantly to those who obey eagerly. The assumed answer is, “You just do it!” and if you fail, “Just try harder.”197 Topics like honesty, courage, wisdom, and fidelity are less commonly addressed even though the cultivation of such virtues would help people avoid crises and better equip them to handle the moral quandaries which they cannot avoid.

MacIntyre reminds Churches of Christ that ethics is about more than simply the decision faced in a moment of crisis. By directing our attention to practices, narratives, traditions, and virtues, he reminds us to focus on the development of excellent habits, beneficial social structures, and moral vision and to do so long before the crisis emerges.

The question is less, “What is the law, and how do I follow it?” and more, “What is a good person, and how can I go about becoming one?”

197 Monte Cox, an influential leader among Churches of Christ today has called this, “The Just-Try-Harder ,” and has found among his audiences a general sense of familiarity with the concept among those raised in Churches of Christ. His response to this particular “heresy” is helpfully pneumatological in ways that will be explored in chapter five. One version of Cox’s sermon is available in full online at https://downtownsermons.com/2017/09/08/rushing-wind- living-water-2/.

101 illustrates this difference in his parable of the returned pocketbook.198

Blackbeard the Pirate and St. Francis see a woman drop her pocketbook full of money on the ground. Though he desperately longs to snatch the money up and add it to his hoard of treasure, Blackbeard overcomes his greedy nature and, through a massive exercise of willpower, haltingly calls out to the woman, “Arrr…” (Pirates always begin speaking this way.) “Excuse me madam, but ye’ve dropped yer pocketbook, and I wanted to return it to ye.” With trembling fingers, the buccaneer reaches out his hand and passes over the billfold bulging with cash. He quickly turns his back and hurries away lest he repent of his good deed before he can help himself.

St. Francis, on the other hand, never faces any decision at all because he is a deeply temperate and generous person. Acting on instinct, he easily fetches the wallet and returns it to the woman without even considering the possibility that he might keep the money for himself. He cheerfully hands it over and goes on about his day without a second thought.

We might debate which party is the more praiseworthy in the situation, but there is no question which one represents true human flourishing.199 There is, of course, more rejoicing over the finding of one lost sheep than over the ninety-nine who were already in the pen, but in the pen remains the proper place for sheep, and the recovered lamb is placed back among its fellows there. Moreover, the good shepherd will seek to train the lost sheep so that it does not continually wander away from the flock. We applaud

198 Peter Kreeft, Ethics: A History of Moral Thought (Charlotte Hall, MD: Recorded Books, 2004). 199 The fact that Kant would praise Blackbeard in the story and would argue that St. Francis’s act was of no moral worth since it proceeded from habit rather than intellect and will is no small argument against his ethical system!

102 Blackbeard because he, being bad, did a good thing, and we hope that this event marks a turning point in his life and that he will experience future temptations to plunder the elderly less acutely. But we admire St. Francis because he did a good thing because he was already a good man – by which we mean that he was possessed of good character.

Churches of Christ would do well to give greater attention to the means by which this sort of character is obtained.

This emphasis on being (character) rather than doing (action) in Aristotelian ethics ought not be taken to mean that actions are unimportant. On the contrary, our actions help shape our character, and virtue is “a state concerned with choice.”200 Who we are arises in part from what we choose and do.

The agent must be in a certain condition when he does [virtuous acts]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchanging character. . . Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced.201

For Aristotle, habits and character are one. Thus, in his translation of The Nicomachean

Ethics, Ross renders hexis as “a state of character.”202 Character is related to actions, but virtue ethics does not teach that we simply are what we do. Rather, in Will Durant’s famous phrasing, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”203

200 Aristotle, Ethics, 247. 201 Aristotle, Ethics, 241-243. 202 Jonathan Barnes and Anthony Kenny, “Introduction” in Aristotle’s Ethics, 15. 203 Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 61. Italics mine.

103 This change in emphasis helpfully reminds Churches of Christ that the work of ethics is not something to be taken up only when one is faced with a dilemma. On the contrary, most of our should be focused on cultivating practices, attending to narratives, and extending the social traditions that yield habits of excellence. This emphasis on being rather than deciding not only fits the lived experience of human beings seeking to be good better than the alternatives, it also more closely mirrors the Bible’s wholistic approach to moral formation.

III.D. MacIntyre helps Churches of Christ emphasize moral transformation.

This emphasis on character rather than decisions, being rather than choosing, is also helpful to Churches of Christ in that it allows for a doctrine of moral transformation in a way that the simple ethic of biblical obedience does not. Choices are isolated from one another in a way that character is not. MacIntyre’s focus on growth, virtue development, and teleology all speak to the dynamic and transformative nature of ethics as opposed to the static nature of deciding to obey.

One major reason that decisionism has exercised so much influence among

Churches of Christ (and conservative Protestants more generally) is because it maps easily onto our hamartiology and soteriology. Churches of Christ have tended to have a binary view of sin and salvation that emphasizes guilt and innocence. In this model evil or sin is an action which results in guilt and must therefore be punished. Innocence is almost a synonym for goodness. Individuals are born innocent/good because they have never transgressed a commandment of Scripture. However, when a person sins, he moves from a state of innocence to one of guilt/evil. Salvation is achieved by Christ’s vicarious on the cross and – the imputation of innocence – is

104 extended to the Christian. This binary model of thinking about sin and salvation works well as an explanation for a number of biblical themes and passages. It is a necessary component for thinking about good and evil, but it is not a sufficient one. A fuller reading of Scripture, and a more honest account of our own experience, shows that frequently sin and salvation are not merely about innocence and guilt related to our actions. Instead of a binary of guilt/innocence, we must think in terms of a continuum between imperfect and perfect relative to ourselves as a whole rather than only to our discrete actions. Salvation, on this view, is not merely the forgiveness of sins resulting in a renewed innocence but the transformation of persons resulting in friendship with God and conformation to his character.

Scripture not only describes sin as an act of transgression, but also as a state of brokenness. Rarely, does it make a sharp distinction between the two. Psalm 51 is a notable example. When David repents of his adultery with Bathsheba, he not only confesses to breaking the law, “I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me”

(Ps. 51:3), but also claims that there is something disordered about his character which predates and David’s sinful action, “I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5). When he asks for forgiveness and salvation, he pleads with God to “hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities” (Ps. 51:9) and

“Deliver me from bloodguiltiness” (Ps. 51:14) implying that what he seeks is juridical pardon resulting in innocence. But he also prays for God to change his character and repair the brokenness which has characterized his life since it began, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:11). Sin and salvation in

105 the Bible are never merely about improper actions and pardon from guilt. They are always also about falling away from the perfection to which God calls us.

MacIntyre’s emphasis on being, character, and growth allows for an ethic capable of incorporating the Bible’s emphasis on becoming. Sanctification in Scripture is a teleological process, a being made holy. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 describes the word of God as helpful for “training in righteousness” and “equipping us for every good work.” Paul calls Christians to be “transformed by the renewing of your minds that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable, and righteous” (Rom.

12:2). Peter admonishes his readers to “Be holy in all that you do” (1 Pt. 1:15-16). And

Jesus says, “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). Whether we call this progressive sanctification, moral development, or being conformed to the image of Christ, the biblical emphasis on teleology aligns much more closely with MacIntyre’s

Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics than with the deontological model Churches of Christ adopted from the Enlightenment.

IV. Conclusion

Though the social cohesion and shared practices of Churches of Christ have made them slightly less susceptible to the splintering of dialog and the unsettleable quality of moral debates that have characterized modernity, they have not been immune. The same philosophical forces which MacIntyre critiques in the wider culture have exercised significant influence on Restorationists. I have attempted to show that MacIntyre’s critique of the Enlightenment’s moral philosophy and his call for a return to virtue ethics provides a much-needed course correction for Churches of Christ. MacIntyre points us to an ethic that is not only more philosophically coherent and useful but one that allows for

106 a healthier and more faithful reading of Scripture than that which we have inherited. This call to recover the tradition of the virtues lends support to rather than demands a wholesale replacement of the ethic of biblical obedience. Virtue makes sense of obedience rather than replacing it. Moreover, a turn to virtue ethics allows for a doctrine of moral transformation in a way that a simple ethic of biblical obedience does not.

MacIntyre’s emphasis on growth, virtue development, and teleology all speak to the dynamic and transformative nature of ethics as opposed to the static nature of deciding to obey. His Aristotelian emphasis on character and habits makes better sense of Scripture’s view of sin as both transgression (the binary model) and imperfection (the continuum model) than does the traditional deontological approach of the Restoration

Movement. MacIntyre’s concept of growth conforms to the biblical model of moral development aimed at perfection in a way that an understanding of salvation merely as innocence cannot.

If Churches of Christ are to construct a more helpful and indeed a more biblical ethic, MacIntyre is an invaluable ally. However, if they are to be accessible and useful for Churches of Christ, the insights of Aristotle and MacIntyre must be made subject to

Christian language and Christian convictions. Aristotle, of course, was not a Christian, and MacIntyre intentionally writes as an academic philosopher despite his conversion to

Catholicism in the early 1980s. Fortunately, the approach to virtue ethics championed by

MacIntyre does not lack voices that speak in explicitly Christian fashion. Stanley

Hauerwas presents MacIntyre’s insights in biblical and theological language capable of aiding contemporary Churches of Christ. Indeed, his refusal to speak a language other than “Christian” is a key aspect of his approach to ethics. In the next chapter, we turn our

107 attention to the theological contributions which Hauerwas and others have made to the

MacIntyrean project we have outlined here and the ways that this “baptized” form of

Aristotle can be of use to Churches of Christ.

108 CHAPTER IV

BAPTIZING MACINTYRE: THE THEOLOGICAL ETHICS OF STANLEY

HAUERWAS

MacIntyre’s project is capable of providing a helpful corrective to the ethic that has characterized much of the history of Churches of Christ, but only if it is baptized and presented in theological language. This chapter will therefore focus on the work of

Stanley Hauerwas and his heirs since they have been the most influential advocates for a

MacIntyrean correction among Churches of Christ.204 However, we must note here at the outset that this most popular and sophisticated version of the MacIntyrean/Christian synthesis fails to adequately correct the underappreciation of the Holy Spirit’s role in moral transformation. Indeed, it can at time contribute to the weakness.205 Nevertheless,

204 It is important to note that despite his popularity with many conservative Protestants (including scholars in Churches of Christ), Hauerwas writes from a very different theological context. Any attempt to bring his work out of its home within liberal therefore runs the risk of misunderstanding him. As Larson points out, “His [Hauerwas’s] intellectual pedigree, academic concerns and institutional setting locate him as a liberal Protestant. The diffuse influence of this tradition in the context of the history of American Protestantism functions like a background at nearly every point in his writing. It would be very difficult to make sense of his work apart from it . . . His frequent critique of liberal Protestantism is part of a lover’s quarrel: his critique is strong because it is close, even internal. I do not believe Hauerwas knows how to compose on alternative backgrounds, nor has he tried. For that reason, his thought requires transposition rather than mere repetition into an evangelical or Roman Catholic setting.” Larsen, “How Hauerwas Thinks,” Scottish Journal of Theology 69, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 25-26. It also requires transposition into a Restorationist setting. Standing as they do outside of the tradition of liberal Protestantism and its battles over social ethics, Churches of Christ do not need Yoder to save them from , and this is one of the primary tasks Hauerwas has taken up in his work as a whole. This chapter will attempt such a transposition in a way that is faithful to Hauerwas but also relevant to Churches of Christ. See also Stanley Hauerwas, “Connecting: A Response to Sean Larson,” Scottish Journal of Theology 69, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 39-45. R.R. Reno, “Stanley Hauerwas and the Liberal Protestant Project,” Modern Theology 28, no. 2 (2012): 320- 326. 205 I believe a similar claim could be made in a Roman Catholic context by looking at the work of Aquinas and his recent interpreters, but such a study falls outside the scope of this chapter.

109 because he speaks in the language of the Church, Hauerwas has already done much of the heavy-lifting needed to make MacIntyre’s Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics accessible to those who speak a distinctly Christian language, and this is at least one reason why he has been so popular among theologians and ministers in Churches of Christ.206 Hauerwas’s project presents MacIntyre’s insights in Christian language capable of finding a hearing among contemporary Churches of Christ.

I. Hauerwas Christianizes MacIntyre.

This chapter will open by summarizing what MacIntyre’s project looks like after it has passed through the fire of Hauerwas’s theology. In the overtly Christian language of Hauerwas’s project, MacIntyre’s notion of teleology becomes eschatology, community becomes friendship, narrative becomes the gospel, tradition becomes the Church, and practices with their attendant habits that make up this tradition take the form of Christian spiritual disciplines like prayer, the sacraments, and worship. These changes are not merely a linguistic spoonful of sugar designed to help the medicine of secular philosophy go down. They represent real expansions and clarifications of MacIntyre’s categories, a baptism in which the concepts retain continuity with their old life but are also transformed by being taken up into the body of Christ.

I.A. From teleology to eschatology: Christian eschatology gives a radical new account of MacIntyre’s teleology.

The word eschatology appears in The Hauerwas Reader ten times as often as teleology. This is because, as Wells notes, for Hauerwas, “Christian ethics are not

206 See for example: Lee C. Camp, Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008); David L. Little, “The Aversion to Biblical Interpretation in the Thought of David Lipscomb and Tolbert Fanning,” Restoration Quarterly 44 no. 3, (2002): 159-164; as well as numerous reviews of Hauerwas’s work in The Stone-Campbell Journal.

110 teleological but eschatological.”207 The crucial difference between the two concepts is that in Christian eschatology, the end of humanity and of all things has, in some sense, already arrived in the Christ. There is “a foretaste of to come” given in the here and now to Christians who are united to Christ in his death and resurrection, and this givenness is crucial for making sense of the ethical lives of

Christian people.208

In the Church, that end which Christ inaugurated is made manifest, or at least its manifestation is the controlling narrative for the Church’s ethical vision. “The Church is a body of people whose vision of the world is retrospective from the End,” and this frees the Church from being obliged to approach ethics in such a way as to bring about a better world.209 “Christians begin our ethics, not with anxious self-serving questions of what we

207 Samuel Wells, Transforming Fate Into Destiny: The Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas (Eugene, OR: Cascade Publishing, 1998), 29. Wells is a particularly helpful conversation partner for anyone seeking to summarize Hauerwas’s larger project for two reasons. First, Hauerwas has thoroughly endorsed Wells’s interpretation of his work. His blurb for the book reads, “Wells is one of those wonderful readers who understands me better than I understand myself,” and in the foreword he writes, “Wells has provided a wonderfully fair account of what I hope I have said.” Stanley Hauerwas, “Foreword” in Transforming Fate, x. Second, Hauerwas names Wells as an important collaborator who helps extend Hauerwas’s project in ways of which he approves but which he acknowledges he could not have achieved on his own. “Wells has made me say more than I could have said. I am particularly grateful to Wells for understanding those aspects of my work that I refuse to ‘explain’. . . Sam Wells has found and made connections with me and my work that make us more than we would otherwise be.” “Foreword,” xi-xii. The two have collaborated on several projects both large and small, academic and pastoral, and each tends to name the other frequently in their work. See for example their co-edited volume, The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, 2nd ed. (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018); and “Theological Ethics” in God’s Advocates: Christian Thinkers in Conversation, ed. Rupert Shortt (London: Longman and Todd, 2005), 175-193. 208 The quote comes from the hymn, “When All of God’s Singers Get Home,” a hymn popular among Restorationists. The reference to rapture is unrelated to , a doctrine which Churches of Christ almost universally repudiated in the early twentieth century after a fierce controversy surrounding the issue in which Foy Wallace and R.H. Boll were the primary adversaries. 209 Wells, Transforming Fate, 29;

111 ought to do to make history come out right, because, in Christ, God has already made history come out right.”210 In Hauerwas’s theology, this eschatological reality is the fundamental claim to which the Church bears witness.

There is more than a slash between the words “already/not yet”: the slash is aeonic. From the perspective of the New Testament, our present age--that is, the age from Pentecost to Parousia--is the time that these aeons overlap . . . [They] exist simultaneously: the old points backward to the history before Christ; the new points forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God made fully present in [Christ]. Moreover, each aeon has a social manifestation: the former in the ‘world,’ the latter in the church.211

This reframing of teleology does not stop Christian ethicists from asking questions like, “What is x for?” or “What is the end of y?” But it does mean that in whatever answer is given to those questions, the resurrection of Jesus Christ will have to play a decisive role. As a result of the shift from teleology to eschatology, new virtues like patience and hope are emphasized, and classic virtues like courage and temperance are redefined.

Transforming teleology to eschatology injects into Christian ethics a greater role for hope. Because of what Jesus teaches us about death and resurrection, we do not easily give up on things which and people who seem to have lost the means to achieve their telos.212 A broken watch may be repaired and need not remain a bracelet. A sinner, so disfigured and disordered by his or her wickedness, can be redeemed and remade into the image of God in Christ. Likewise, eschatology is what leads Hauerwas to emphasize

210 Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 87. 211 Stanley Hauerwas, “On Being a Church Capable of Addressing a World at War: A Pacifist Response to the United Methodist Pastoral, In Defense of Creation (1988),” in The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 437. 212 This is a major theme in Stanley Hauerwas and , Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008).

112 the virtue of patience so strongly throughout his work.213 Patience is necessary for a people who know the end of the story in which they are living but who also know that the end will likely come much later or much sooner and in a different form than they expect.

Hauerwas’s account of patience is a useful illustration of how Christian eschatology names the telos of the Christian, the Church, and the world and thereby allows us to determine what the virtues are. History reimagined eschatologically provides the narrative necessary for the discernment of virtues and the particular shape that virtues ought to take. Because the final chapter of creation’s history is determined by resurrection rather than death, by Parousia rather than the infinite slog of unchanging time, and by the new creation of the Spirit rather than the nothingness at the end of our universe, Christians can name as a virtue a waiting that the world might mistake for quiescence or lack of concern.

Christian patience might be thought of as a subcategory of the classical virtue of courage because it is about bearing up under pain – the particular pain of waiting either in anxious anticipation of some happy event or of the cessation of something painful. This ability to endure pain seems to be common to Christians and non-Christians. What

Hauerwas reminds us is that Christian courage (and therefore Christian patience) is not

213 Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 205-242; The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1983), 91-95; “A Servant Community” in The Hauerwas Reader, 378-382; Stanley Hauerwas with James Fodor “Performing Faith: The Peaceable Rhetoric of God’s Church” in Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 75-110; Stanley Hauerwas with Charles Pinches, “Practicing Patience: How Christians Should be Sick” in The Hauerwas Reader, 348- 366. See also Hauerwas’s devotional writings on the subject: Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: on the Seven Last Words (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), 37-44; Stanley M. Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 77-86); Lord Teach Us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 65, 93.

113 the same as the world’s courage at all. Without eschatology, patience has no guarantee that it will be rewarded, but the Christian knows the end, and this enables her to endure tragedy – to look it squarely in the eye and deny neither its legitimate awfulness nor its impermanence.

When Aristotle identifies courage as a virtue, he does so with the of a

Hellenic soldier risking death on the battlefield in order to save or advance the life and goals of his polis. “He will be called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and

[deaths in] war are in the highest degree of this kind.”214 Drawing on Aquinas, Hauerwas

(writing with his former student, Charles Pinches) argues that courage is ultimately displayed not by an heroic death in battle but by the patience and “steadfastness of vision” embodied by the Christian martyr.215 Not only are the paradigms of courage different for Christians and non-Christians; the eschatological character of Christian ethics means that the very worlds in which they operate are different. This means that the courage of the Athenian warrior is not precisely the same virtue as that possessed by the

Christian martyr, not because they lack similarities, but because they occupy and find their coherence within different narratives.216 Part of what distinguishes courage/fortitude from its excess, rashness/foolhardiness, is that courage is informed by wisdom. It is directed toward an end which is both good and achievable. This is why a reasonable

214 Aristotle, Ethics, 268. 215 Stanley Hauerwas with Charles Pinches, “Courage Exemplified,” in The Stanley Hauerwas Reader, 299. 216 “From a Christian point of view such ‘courage’ is not courage at all but only its semblance, which when wrongly used can turn demonic.” Hauerwas with Pinches, 289. The point is illuminated by an appeal to MacIntyre’s critique of Aquinas in After Virtue, 178f. Hauerwas perhaps fails to recognize the degree of overlap which the Christian narrative and that of a particular state might have. The question of how porous the boundaries of a narrative are or of how much inconsistency a narrative might be able to maintain before it collapses are important issues relative to this question, but fall outside the scope of this study.

114 likelihood of success is so often recognized as a criterion of a just war. But the eschatological character of Christian courage as Hauerwas (and Aquinas) understands it means that the death of the martyr is different from that of a soldier because the state of affairs for which the martyr dies is not a hope in this life which may or may not come to pass. Rather it is a reality already enacted by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In this sense, it is almost inappropriate to speak of a martyr dying for Christ or dying for the Church or dying to advance the Kingdom of God. The word itself gives us better language because a martyr is, literally, a witness. The martyr dies as a witness to

Christ. She dies with Christ. Though martyrdom may have some strategic value in terms of changing the world’s attitude about the Church or strengthening the resolve of

Christians, etc., these are not the primary reasons which motivated the martyrs. They were not trying accomplish or achieve any goal. They were merely dying in the manner in which they had lived. The narrative of Christ’s life had become the narrative of their lives, so persecution and even death were predictable and welcomed aspects of the plot rather than unexpected moral crises. Thus, when the apostles were beaten by the

Sanhedrin, “They rejoiced that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the

Name.” (Acts 5:41) Their greatest fear was not physical harm or social rejection. It was that they would fail to conform their lives to the story of Christ. Perhaps no piece of

Christian literature illustrates the point as well as The Martyrdom of .

In his replies to the tribunal, Polycarp seems almost confused as to why anyone would think he might renounce Christ or fear the tortures of fire or wild beasts. He points backward to his long life in service to Christ “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”

115 And he points forward to the eschatological realities both of punishment and beatitude,

"Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour, and after a little is extinguished, but art ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly.” With this eschatological framing in place, he calls for action in the present, “But why tarriest thou? Bring forth what thou wilt.”217 The account as a whole makes it clear that Polycarp’s death came as a result of his union with and conformation to Christ. This conformation does not simply mean that the Christian becomes meek because Christ was meek or kind because Christ was kind. It is a matter of becoming truly one with him because the narrative of the Christian’s life has become the narrative of Christ’s life. His way has become the way to which Christians belong

(Acts 9:2).218 Polycarp had more than simply a personal relationship with Jesus. He was made one with Christ and nowhere more fully than in his suffering. Thus, the author summarizes the entire account by saying, “[This all happened] that he might fulfil his special lot, being made a partaker of Christ.”219

217 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson eds. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, in Ante- Nicene Fathers 1st ser. vol. 1, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 41. 218 Hauerwas’s presentation of this point runs thus: “We are called to be like God: perfect as God is perfect. It is a perfection that comes by learning to follow and be like this man whom God has sent to be our forerunner in the kingdom. That is why Christian ethics is not first of all an ethics of principles, laws, or values, but an ethic that demands we attend to the life of a particular individual – Jesus of Nazareth.” However, “To be like Jesus requires that I become part of a community that practices virtues, not that I copy his life point by point. There is a deeper reason why I cannot and should not mimic Jesus. We are not called upon to be the initiators of the kingdom, we are not called upon to be God’s anointed. We are called upon to be like Jesus, not to be Jesus. . . This likeness is of a very specific nature. It involves seeing in his cross the summary of his whole life. Thus to be like Jesus is to join him in the journey through which we are trained to be a people capable of claiming citizenship in God’s kingdom.” Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 75-76. See also Peaceable Kingdom, 76-81; and Stanley Hauerwas, “A Retrospective Assessment of an ‘Ethics of Character’: The Development of Hauerwas’s Theological Project (1985, 2001),” in The Hauerwas Reader, 75-89, esp. 84. 219 Roberts and Donaldson, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, 41.

116 Martyrs like Polycarp help make clear exactly what Hauerwas means when he says that Christian virtue ethics transforms teleology into eschatology. The end or goal of the Christian is not only known, but already in a paradoxical sense accomplished. This bizarre telos which is always already and also not yet achieved is characteristic of the type of narrative within which Christian ethics is performed – the narrative of the gospel.

I.B. From narrative to gospel: Hauerwas’s account of the gospel names the particular Christian narrative and its proposed end for humanity thus allowing for the articulation of Christian virtues.

Because his focus is on the agent rather than the action, Hauerwas argues that there can be no “ethics without an epithet.”220 There are Christian ethics or or perhaps even Texan ethics, but not business ethics or or political ethics because Christian, Buddhist, and Texan describe peoples while business, medicine, and politics describe activities.221 But to focus on the agent requires us to tell his or her story. For Christians, this story is the gospel.

Unlike the stories that shape the contours of Texan ethics – stories like the Battle of the Alamo or the first cattle drives – stories that come from below, that is, from human life and experience, the Christian story is revealed from above, by God. “This is the gift of Scripture: a story that shows the definitive workings of God, but invariably shows how

220 Wells, Transforming Fate, 40. 221 Wells, Transforming Fate, 40. Hauerwas once gave a speech to the business school at Houston Baptist University entitled, “Why Business Ethics is a Bad Idea” which focused on this idea. See Stanley Hauerwas, “Abortion, Theologically Understood,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 609. Likewise, his primary point in “Salvation and Health: Why Medicine Needs the Church” is that the ethics needed for physicians and patients is one rooted in the personal nature of the people who perform and inhabit such roles. Hence his definition of medicine as “an activity that trains some to know how to be present to those in pain.” Stanley Hauerwas, “Salvation and Health: Why Medicine Needs the Church” in The Hauerwas Reader ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 542.

117 those workings are laced around the strivings of God’s people.”222 Without denying the human elements of the gospel, Hauerwas ultimately concludes that narrative is the proper form for social ethics because God has revealed himself in a story.223 Hauerwas is fond of quoting Robert Jenson’s narrative definition of God. “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before rescued Israel from Egypt.”224 Such is the way that God presents himself in Scripture, and therefore it has the potential to resonate with the predispositions of Churches of Christ. Wells describes Hauerwas’s career as moving from a “narrative from below” perspective which he takes largely from MacIntyre to a

“narrative from above” perspective which he takes from Lindbeck and Frei.225 However, it is difficult to overstate the influence of Barth and Aquinas, both of whom emphasize a top-down understanding of divine revelation, on Hauerwas.226 The broad strokes of the

222 Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, “The Gift of the Church and the Gifts God Gives It,” in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, 2nd ed. eds. Hauerwas and Wells (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 17. 223 Narrative, for Hauerwas, is a metaphysical and not merely a linguistic category. That is, narrative names the way things are rather than merely the way we talk about the way things are. “The contingent character of our lives, indeed of all that is, is why narrative is such an important aspect of how I do ‘ethics’. But to claim that practical reason makes possible our ability, indeed the necessity to recognize that our lives are storied is a metaphysical claim.” Hauerwas, “Connecting,” 42. 224 Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology Vol 1: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 63-74. 225 Wells, Transforming Fate, 53-60. See also George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 135 and Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale, 1974). 226 Though it perhaps circumstantial evidence, it is nonetheless compelling to notice that The Hauerwas Reader which contains articles spanning the majority of Hauerwas’s career references Barth thirty-two times and Aquinas fifty-seven times. Frei is cited fifteen times, and Lindbeck’s name only appears five times. Moreover, Barth and Aquinas tend to show up in multiple essays while Lindbeck and Frei appearances are confined to articles that aim to treat their work directly.

118 narrative which Hauerwas takes to be revealed by God and definitive for the Church is characterized by the Bible’s presentation of a world with seven features.227

1) Narratively bounded time – “Creation and redemption constitute the story necessary for us to know who we are.”228 The world as we know it is narratively shaped in that it has a beginning in creation and a completion in the eschaton. The universe is thus bounded by a particular beginning and an end externally imposed upon it by its author.229

2) A contingent creation – “Christianity is the proclamation that God gives

Christians a gift that they don’t know they need.” 230 Life, the universe, and everything is fundamentally a gift of God. God’s creation is the result of his gracious freedom to act in love, and all things are dependent upon him for their continued existence.

…my being able only to begin in the middle expresses my understanding of the contingent character of our existence, but that is not just an epistemological stance. Rather it reflects my deepest conviction that all that is contingent or, put theologically, created.231

3) God’s election and calling of Israel – “…The great social challenge for

Christians is learning how to remember the history of the Jews, as part of and as essential to our history.”232 This element of the biblical story is omitted from the early creeds and minimalized in much of Christian history, but for Hauerwas Israel’s story is absolutely

227 Though this list is adapted from Wells, it is substantially expanded and supplemented with material from throughout Hauerwas’s own work. For Wells’s much abbreviated version, see Transforming Fate, 55. 228 Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 207. 229 Wells, Transforming Fate, 33. 230 Hauerwas, “Christianity: It’s Not a Religion: It’s an Adventure” in The Hauerwas Reader, 530. 231 Hauerwas, “Connecting: A Response to Sean Larson,” 42. 232 Hauerwas, “Remembering as a Moral Task,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 341.

119 essential to the larger narrative of which it is a part.233 Israel’s experience as those called by God to come out of the world is an essential precursor to the historically concrete particularity of God’s people.

4) Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnation of the Son of God –

We are called to be like God: perfect as God is perfect. It is a perfection that comes by learning to follow and be like this man whom God has sent to be our forerunner in the kingdom. That is why Christian ethics is not first of all an ethics of principles, laws, or values, but an ethic that demands we attend to the life of a particular individual – Jesus of Nazareth. It is only from him that we can learn perfection.234

The incarnation, life, and teachings of Jesus are of paramount importance for Hauerwas.

The and especially the Sermon on the Mount function as a sort of canon within the canon for him.235 Jesus’ life shows us what it looks like for the eschatological reign of God to manifest itself in in the present.236

5) The crucifixion of Christ – The cross, more than any other single aspect of the

Christian story is central to Hauerwas’s theology, ethics, and worldview. In Christ’s submissive, non-violent bearing of violence even unto death, the shape of God’s victory is made clear. Moreover, for Hauerwas, the cross is the definitive revelation of who and

233 The inclusion of Israel and Israel’s story is one of the things Hauerwas seems to appreciate most about Jenson’s narrative definition of God. Stanley Hauerwas, “Naming God” ABC Religion and Ethics, Sep. 24, 2010. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/naming-god/10102082. For Jenson’s account of the failings of the creeds to acknowledge the importance of Israel for the Church’s understanding of who God is, see Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: WJK Press, 2010), 19-32. 234 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 75-76. 235 Matthew is the most quoted book of the Bible in The Hauerwas Reader, and one of every three references to Scripture in that collection comes from the Synoptic Gospels. Hauerwas’s only biblical commentary was written on the book of Matthew. He alludes to the Synoptics more frequently than any other biblical text in his sermons as well. 236 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 71-95.

120 what God is. “Christians betray themselves . . . when we say and act as if the cross of

Christ is incidental to God’s being.”237

6) The resurrection of Jesus – The resurrection is the eucatasrophe of the gospel, the moment that redefines and makes sense of everything that came before. In the resurrection the question of whether sin or chaos or death will ultimately overcome even

God’s efforts is definitively answered in the negative. The resurrection of Jesus reshapes not merely the story of Christ, but the story of the whole world.

The witness of Christians across time would not have been possible if God had not vindicated Christ’s on the cross through resurrection and ascension. On the basis of such witnesses, Christians can rightly claim that to bear the cross is not a confession peculiar to them; rather their lives reveal the “grain of the universe.”238

7) The empowering of the Church – Pentecost and the book of Acts (especially the early chapters) bear witness to the fact that Christ has not abandoned his disciples.

Rather, he has empowered them to manifest his life and presence in the world as a witness to the Kingdom of God which is coming and has come.

This new creation aborning through the power of the Spirit does not make irrelevant all that has gone before nor make indifferent all that comes after. Rather, this apocalyptic time places all history in a new time – the time made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.239

The move from narrative in general to the gospel in particular (and to this presentation of the gospel) helps concretize the category and provides a with

Churches of Christ who demand biblical language and explicitly biblical categories in their thinking about ethics. It also helps to demonstrate how Hauerwas connects the

MacIntyrean notions of character, narrative, and community. As Wells says, “[for

237 Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 17. 238 Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 225. 239 Hauerwas, “The Church as God’s New Language” in The Hauerwas Reader, 147.

121 Hauerwas] Narrative is at the centre of both the smaller journey, from character to community, and the larger journey, individual to Church.”240 In the Church, we see

Hauerwas give an explicitly Christian and theological account of MacIntyre’s categories of both Tradition and community.

I.C. From tradition to the church: Hauerwas’s account of the Church offers a way of understanding the unique nature of the Christian tradition and the community which embodies it.

The church takes center stage in much of Hauerwas’s theology. It is “the social embodiment of the gospel” and thus, it is not possessed of a social ethic but rather comprises one.241 As we saw in chapter 3, MacIntyre defines Traditions by three key characteristics. First, they are historically or narratively extended. Second, they are socially embodied. And third, they are living arguments. Hauerwas’s vision of the

Church conforms to each of these characteristics but also makes important adjustments to them because of his theological emphasis.

I.C.1 The Church is an historically extended tradition but one which recognizes that its life in history is a gift.

The Church is historically extended insofar as it is a contingent community whose origin and continued existence come from the free gift of God; its beginning, its middle, and its end are entirely dependent on divine rather than merely human actions. Of course, Christians know that all things, traditions included, originate and continue only by grace, but ‘Church’ names the tradition that claims itself as the imperfect embodiment of graced character. That is, the Church knows that it exists only by grace. The narrative character of Christian ethics, shaped as it is by the eschatological nature of the gospel

240 Wells, Transforming Fate, 61. 241 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 96.

122 story, requires a community which exists in time – both in the past and in the future. The community of the Church is one that exists as a gift, an act of grace rather than of necessity. This contingent community of believers tells and re-tells the story that forms it and in doing so extends the narrative toward its future in God. To say that the community is contingent is to affirm that it did not create itself. In this, the Church differs from the MacIntyrean notion of community in that it does not trace its origins to human practices and pursuits or even to particular geniuses in its past (though it certainly has a place for and must give an account of its practices, pursuits, and geniuses). Rather, it was created and is sustained by God. As such, it is strange. The Church is not only something we did not think up; it is something that we could not think up. The sheer oddity of the Church is, for Hauerwas, one of the most admirable and distinguishing features of this community.242

As with teleology, Hauerwas’s account of the historical character of the Church is transformed because of Christian eschatology. The eschatological nature of the Church marks a radical change in what it means for it to be historically extended. Medicine is undeniably a tradition in the MacIntyrean sense, but it is difficult to imagine the ultimate fulfillment and perfection of medicine breaking into an operating room and manifesting itself there in the concrete community of doctors, nurses, etc. Nevertheless, for

Hauerwas, this is the sort of thing which happens when the Church gathers in worship.

“Gathering [in worship] is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the

242 “Christians ought to go to church. That’s where you learn to practice religion and be virtuous. It’s unnatural at first, but that’s what virtue is all about. . . [Virtue] requires transformation by being made humble, by letting oneself be transformed by what is strange to us.” Hauerwas, “Christianity: It’s an Adventure,” 529.

123 communion of the .”243 Insofar as the Church is a tradition which manifests the first fruits of its fullness even as it is always growing into that fullness, it is different from the traditions MacIntyre identifies. Nevertheless, the Church certainly conforms to

MacIntyre’s notion of traditions as structures which are historically extended despite the stability in time that its eschatological character grants it.

I.C.2. The church is socially embodied because God has elected a people.

One might be tempted to say that the proper designation for the tradition which

Hauerwas describes is Christianity rather than the Church. But Hauerwas consistently uses the more concrete language of Church lest we forget that the tradition, like the one whom it proclaims as Lord, is incarnate and is always situated amongst a people.

Christian thinking about ethics, Hauerwas argues, is inescapably social. The individualism of the enlightenment is an ideological foe at whom Hauerwas’s combative theology is regularly directed. Insofar as he has a word for individuals, the focus of

Hauerwas’s theological ethics is not the moral improvement of individual Christians as much as it is the situating of individuals within the story of the gospel as it is proclaimed, embodied, and witnessed to by the Church. For the community, Hauerwas emphasizes the calling of the Church to be the Church. “The moral life is about the formation of virtuous people by tradition-formed communities.”244 That Hauerwas uses “people”

243 Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1995), 139. Wells summarizes this point thus, “Community begins as a vehicle for the transmission of tradition and the teaching of virtue: but, when it becomes the Church, it becomes the indispensable location for the embodiment of truth.” Wells, Transforming Fate, 89. 244 Stanley Hauerwas, “Honor and the University” First Things, Feb. 1, 1991. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/02/honor-in-the-university.

124 instead of “persons” here is perhaps significant. It is one more reminder that ethics is always communal.

Every ethic is a social ethic. The self is fundamentally a social self. We are not individuals who come into contact with others and then decide our various levels of social involvement. We are not “I’s” who decide to identify with certain “we’s”; we are first of all “we’s” who discover our “I’s” through learning to recognize the others as similar and different from ourselves. Our individuality is possible only because we are first of all social beings.245

So far, so MacIntyrean. But Hauerwas makes a predictably theological turn at this point.

He argues that because the content of Christian ethics revolves around the notion of God’s kingdom, the social aspect of Christian ethics is even more pronounced than usual.246 “The first words about Christian life are about a life together, not about the individual.”247 And the community is bound by the narratives of Israel and the gospel.

Christian ethics “must presuppose a sanctified people wanting to live more faithful to

God’s story.”248 The story of Israel and the gospel begins not with the creation of an individual but with the creation of humanity – “male and female he created them.”

Indeed, in Genesis, the first thing which God declares to be “not good” is that the man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). Adam is not able to take his place as steward over creation until a suitable helper is made for him. As the story progresses, we find that any time

God calls an individual, the call is always accompanied by the promise to make of them or unite them to a people. Abraham is the premier example of this, but the principle also holds for other stories of calling in Scripture. Moses is alone at the burning bush but

245 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 96-97 246 We might note here that Hauerwas’s canon within the canon is on display. “The Kingdom of God” is the major feature of Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptics, but is noticeably missing in parts of the Bible that figure less prominently in Hauerwas’s theology – in the Gospel of John for example. 247 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 97. 248 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 97.

125 commanded to return there with the children of Israel whom he has abandoned in his flight to Midian (Ex. 3). Levi is called as an individual in the tax booth but immediately prepares a feast for other tax collectors to come to Jesus (Lk. 5:27-32). Paul meets Christ on the road to Damascus, but he is told to wait in that city for Ananias, a representative of the Church to come and tell him what he must do. It is through Ananias and the Church that Christ mediates both Saul’s healing and his call to ministry (Acts 9). When the servants of God feel themselves alone and isolated, God is quick to remind them that it is not so. “I have seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (1 Kings

19:18). Even on the cross when Jesus seems utterly alone, betrayed and abandoned by everyone, he accesses the language of the community when he quotes the opening lines of Psalm 22. The full humanity of Christ is nowhere demonstrated more powerfully than in the social expression of himself on the cross. Even in his solitary death, he dies as, with, and for the people of Israel, and in doing so he creates a new people called the

Church. If MacIntyre’s philosophy teaches us that the modern myth of the autonomous individual is untruthful, Hauerwas’s theology teaches us that it is unfaithful. Which brings us to the point raised earlier – the Church is an embodied reality.

I.C.3 The Church is Socially Embodied and thus, the gospel requires a community and is not reducible to the Bible.

To say that the church as a community is necessitated by the narrative character of the gospel, raises the question of whether the Bible could not sufficiently replace the

Church, a question which Hauerwas denies most emphatically. His view on the topic is much closer to Catholics than to Protestants and strikes a discordant chord in the ears of

Restorationist readers. But there is something of value for Churches of Christ to learn from Hauerwas (and Catholicism!) on this point. To be sure, Hauerwas argues, Scripture

126 takes a place of authority over the Church community and acts as a standard against which the Church must measure the truthfulness of its current telling of the gospel and the faithfulness of its witness, but it does so because the Church gives it that authority.

The Bible is the Church’s book before the Church is the book’s people. Hauerwas here is informed both by MacIntyre’s notion of the relationship between authoritative texts within traditions and by Barth’s notion of Scripture as a witness to divine revelation rather than as divine revelation itself.249 Scripture sets the limits for the Church’s conversation about what the truth is, and leadership in the Church is properly understood as service in helping the community better hear and re-tell the stories found in Scripture.

“But the Bible without the community, without expounders, and interpreters, and hearers is a dead book.”250

Hauerwas’s point here is almost right. He rightly acknowledges that the Bible is not a magical book but almost speaks as if it is the community that vivifies the words of

Scripture when in reality the text of Scripture becomes living and active by the same power that gives life and wisdom and understanding to the those who hear, and interpret, and expound upon that text – the Holy Spirit of God. Hauerwas would almost certainly not deny this point, but his failure to acknowledge it or to do so only rarely is a problem to which we shall have cause to return later. Pneumatology notwithstanding, Hauerwas rightly teaches that the Church, like her Lord, is an embodied reality whose bodily character cannot be replaced by a book, even an inspired one.

I.C.4 The church is an argument.

249 See , Church Dogmatics (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 1.2.13-15. 250 Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 98

127 According to MacIntyre, a tradition is an argument extended over time, and this is similar to how Hauerwas sees the Church. The argumentative nature of this tradition is part of what makes it so hard to nail down exactly what Hauerwas means when he says

‘the Church.’ An argument, by its nature, is unsettled and sometimes takes surprising twists and turns. The community is always in because it is always both responding to challenges from outside itself and to those that arise from its own members.

Hauerwas’s seems problematically unstable, but the inconsistencies in his ecclesiological profession and performance reflect the fact that, as a tradition, the Church is an argument and therefore unsettled and dialectical.

Hauerwas’s ecclesiology is, to say the least, strange. He is a self-described “ Mennonite.”251 A sympathizer of both Catholicism and the Mennonite tradition who was raised Methodist but switched over to the Episcopal church, Hauerwas is notorious for ecclesial homelessness. This homelessness can sometimes be a hindrance to his lofty view of the Church. Church, for Hauerwas ought generally to be capitalized.

That is, he writes about that grand mystery which is the body of Christ, the communion of saints, and the elect bride of the Lamb more often than about the denominations or local institutions most people think of when they hear the word church. This would be less surprising if Hauerwas did not place such a strong emphasis on the concrete reality of local congregations. This tension results in one of the most common questions raised in opposition to his work, “What Church is Hauerwas talking about?” Hauerwas gives a response to this question (to say that he answers it is too bold) in his autobiography,

Hannah’s Child.

251 Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1991), 6.

128 [My wife and I] not only go to church, but I try to be a church theologian. I am not interested in what I believe. I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes. I have discovered that this claim invites the skeptical response, “Which church?” I can reply only by saying, “The church that has made my life possible.” The name of that church is Pleasant Mound Methodist, Hamden Plains Methodist, the Lutheran church at Augustana, Sacred Heart, Broadway Christian Parish, Aldersgate United Methodist, and the Church of the Holy Family. I am well aware that many people will find such a response inadequate, but it is the only response I can give.252

Hauerwas’s ecclesiology toggles between the universal – The Church – and the immediately local – Holy Family – and asserts that the former is present only in and through the latter. This emphasis both on the reality and importance of the Church and its manifestation in local churches is part of how Hauerwas transforms MacIntyre’s virtue ethics into a particularly Christian ethic. The Church is a tradition in the MacIntyrean sense, but churches like Aldersgate or Broadway Christian Parish are embodiments of that tradition that serve as the communities within which Hauerwas’s Christian ethics

252 Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 254. This is an answer with which many members of the Churches of Christ can sympathize. The emphasis on a high ecclesiology in which the body takes precedence over the individual combined with a strong connection to diverse local congregations but secondary loyalty to an amorphous denominational identity matches the experience of many within the Restoration Movement. Another response to the question, “Which Church?” comes in one of Hauerwas’s introductory essays to The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics: “It is an understandable question, but not a helpful one. It is unhelpful because it encourages a sense of finality that diminishes, rather than builds up, the Church. This is a finality that suggests it is possible to “arrive” at a “right” church. Such a church would be almost bound to foster rather than honesty, complacency rather than confidence. It would resemble a too-tidy dogmatics, in that it would provide such a conclusive guarantee of God that witness would seem unnecessary and service would be neglected. It would misunderstand every aspect of worship. It would misrepresent gathering if it assumed it was the only community to which people could gather. Reconciliation would become even more problematic, because failure and guilt would seem absurdities in the Right Church. Scripture reading would be impoverished if it suggested the story could be told no other way. Communion would be impaired if it was assumed that divisions were simply the fault of others. Mission would be confused if other Christians were taken to be part of the ‘world.’ The response of Christians to the brokenness of the Church can only be to be even more committed to worship, witness, and service, hoping that in so doing they may form partnerships and friendships that concentrate less on the discordant contexts each is coming from than on the harmonious glory to which each is heading.” Hauerwas and Wells, “The Gift of the Church,” 23-24.

129 operates. The problem is that the diversity of these churches and Hauerwas’s own mixed history with them might be seen as fundamentally undermining his exalted ecclesiology.

I.C.4.a. Objection: Hauerwas’s ecclesiology should be rejected because his own life and practice testify to the idealistic and unlivable character of his ecclesiology. Hauerwas struggles to name “The Church” and every concrete example he gives

(Aldersgate, Holy Family, etc.) seems to fall short of the vision splendid that animates his theological ethics. The Methodists with whom he most closely identifies have consistently refused to follow the advice that formed the title of his book with Paul

Ramsey, Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism or to embrace the sorts of changes that

Hauerwas calls for in Resident Aliens and elsewhere. Furthermore, because of the way that at least some Methodist congregations have bought into the church growth model typified by Evangelical megachurches, Hauerwas is no longer a member of a United

Methodist Church. The have a consistent peace ethic Hauerwas sees as essential to the Church’s presence in and proclamation to the world but lack the sacramental theology and the liturgical character that his project demands.253 The

Catholic Church has the and the sacraments but deny Hauerwas full participation

253 Peter Dula’s anecdote of his first meeting with Hauerwas illustrates the point nicely: “The first time I met Stanley Hauerwas was in the spring of 1997. I was visiting Duke as a prospective student and arranged to speak with him in his office. We had barely introduced ourselves when he asked gruffly, "When are you Mennonites going to give up and admit that you need a ?" I would like to report that I responded with something clever about Methodists or something nasty about Ratzinger, but I have no recollection of my response (except being very worried that, whatever it was, it was wrong). I am grateful for that introduction. For it seems that Hauerwas was warning me. He was saying, "Just because I am profoundly indebted to and have a deep respect for the Mennonites, don't assume that our differences don't run deep. Don't assume that because you are studying with me and not Max Stackhouse that you are safe. (1) Don't assume that the Catholic and Mennonite parts of me are friends, or even equals. I am a high church mennonite, not a high church Mennonite." Peter Dula, “For and Against Hauerwas Against Mennonites” Mennonite Quarterly Review 84, no.3 (July 2010): 375.

130 in either of them. Episcopalians, with whom Hauerwas has landed late in life, do not seem any more likely than these others to provide him with a solution to his ecclesial homelessness.254

Hauerwas proposes that the truthfulness of Christian convictions should be determined by pragmatic tests, but one might see his status as an ecclesiological drifter as pragmatic evidence that his ecclesiology is flawed. He claims that the church cannot be limited to any one historical or institutional form and that the tradition must always be open to reassessment based on the honest exploration of those seeking to live within the community.255 Frustratingly though, Hauerwas lacks the means to define who exactly counts as an honest explorer and what exactly are the boundaries of the tradition under discussion. Claiming that the boundaries of the tradition may be read off of the best practitioners is little help since, as Hauerwas has famously stated, “Best is not a theological category.”256 Moreover, there is a noticeable lack of agreement among those who at least claim to be part of the tradition as to whom the experts are. Is Hauerwas one of them? Is Pope Francis or Franklin Graham? What about Alexander Campbell or

Elizabeth Johnson, James Cone or Gustavo Gutiérrez? The Christian tradition is eclectic enough that one person’s theological genius is another’s , and it only takes the barest of glances at Church history to see this pattern repeated ad nauseum. These are not merely the questions of a frightened child of the enlightenment desperately seeking

254 Hauerwas’s use of “the Church” is similar to Restorationists use of “Church of Christ” or “the Lord’s Church” in that both are deeply important yet equally vacuous terms even for those who most closely identify with the body to which they refer. No individual congregation measures up to the categories that are supposed to be the essential characteristics of the thing as a whole. 255 Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 92. See also, Wells, Transforming Fate, 67- 69. 256 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, ix.

131 an epistemological foundation; they are utterly pragmatic. Wells rightly names the problem when he says,

The question is, what is the extent of the variety of understandings that the tradition can absorb before becoming incoherent? Hauerwas may well be right that non-pragmatic criteria tend to try to bypass the Church – but pragmatic criteria have been shown to be difficult to assess.”257

Wells is somewhat sympathetic to Hauerwas’s claim that the task of the theological ethicist is to name what Christians ought to think in light of “their basic convictions and practices” and that the nature of the confrontation between Christians on both sides can represent those convictions as much as the content of the arguments. But one is forced to ask, “Who gets to name what counts as basic convictions and practices?”258

Hannah’s Child and other auto-biographical essays of Hauerwas’s contain numerous examples of situations in Hauerwas’s own life that seem to demonstrate the inadequacy of his ecclesiological epistemology. Three in particular come to mind. The first is his reaction to being denied communion at Catholic masses. Hauerwas worshipped regularly with Catholics while employed at Notre Dame and indeed many would say that Catholicism is the most natural home for him. But he has consistently been unwilling to join the , partially because of its stance on war but also for other reasons both personal and theological. The Catholic Church does not practice open communion, and as one who is unwilling to submit to the discipline and authority of

Rome, Hauerwas is therefore not eligible to take the Eucharist when he attends .

257 Wells, Transforming Fate, 68. 258 This question is of immense importance for all Christians, but is of special relevance to Churches of Christ at the present moment. A number of proposed answers are under consideration at present, the most compelling of which is Scott Adair’s brilliant analysis of Christian baptism as performance of dogma. Scott Adair, “Reading Scripture Baptismally,” Christian Studies 31 (2019): 17-28. See also Keith Stanglin, “The Rule of Faith as Hermeneutic,” Christian Studies 31 (2019): 7-16.

132 Nevertheless, he gets in line with his fellow congregants, and if a particular refuses to serve him, he just gets in a different line. The lofty rhetoric about denying individualism and submitting to the authority of the Church is hard to see in such behavior. It seems that Hauerwas and Hauerwas alone determines whether or not he is fit to take communion.

Another example is his relationship to his first wife, Anne. This issue is personal rather than ecclesial, and would be inappropriate to bring up if Hauerwas had not already published an account of their relationship and engaged in public responses to critiques of

Hannah’s Child on the subject from both Jonathan Tran and Gerald McKenny.259

Hauerwas’s description of his divorce and remarriage as well as scenes in Hannah’s

Child like the one in which he hears of Anne’s attempted suicide and responds, “I’m not going,” are powerful and dramatic. They smack of profound honesty and deep humility.

Yet, there is a sense in which, as McKenny says, Anne Hauerwas is, “a surd which resists

Hauerwas’s story of himself and his account of Christian discipleship.”260 His decisions to divorce, not to go to her after the attempted suicide, and to remarry after their divorce are all presented in Hannah’s Child as personal, private, or at most family decisions.

Hauerwas talks about how and why he kept Anne’s illness, their marriage struggles, and

259 McKenny’s concerns were expressed in a private letter partially reprinted and responded to in Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 303. Tran’s analysis can be found in Johnathan Tran, “Anne and the Difficult Gift of Hauerwas’s Church,” in The Difference Christ Makes: Celebrating the Life, Work, and Friendship of Stanley Hauerwas ed. Charles Collier (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015), 51-70. See also Peter Dula’s response to Tran in the same volume, 71-76. 260 “What Have I Done?: Reflections on God and Mental Illness After Hannah’s Child” ABC: Religion and Ethics, June 11, 2013. http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/ 2013/06/11/3779494.htm. This essay has also been published as part of an afterword in Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, Paperback Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 300-305.

133 his approach to it all private, and his reasons are compelling. But they nevertheless fail to conform to the ecclesiology that lies at the heart of his project.261

My final example of Hauerwas’s difficulty in living out his ecclesiology is perhaps the most telling. It concerns his departure from Aldersgate, the Methodist church where he worshipped for many years while a professor at Duke Divinity School. When his friend Susan led the congregation in a way that conformed to his vision of what the

Church ought to be – traditional , an emphasis on the eucharist, deliberately employing explicitly Christian language, etc. – he was committed to that body, submissive to its leadership, and faithful in attendance. But when Susan was replaced by a new whose vision did not correspond to Hauerwas’s, he left the congregation to attend somewhere else. The language with which he describes his final confrontation with the pastor is telling,

I told her that what she was proposing was against everything I was about. She accused me of being against evangelization. Surely, I wanted to bring people to Jesus. I hate that kind of pious language. . . I told her I found it profoundly embarrassing that she was a graduate of Duke Divinity School. What in the world were we doing to produce people who did not seem to have a theological clue about what they were ordained to do? Our conversation went nowhere. Her sail was set. Moreover, the good people of Aldersgate were Methodists. They assumed they should do what their pastor wanted. If Paula and I had stayed, we would have split the church. I told her we would not be back.

Where, one wonders, is the Hauerwas who is not interested in what he thinks but in what the Church thinks? Where is the fierce critic of individualism in this man complaining that the church’s new vision is “against everything that I was about”?

261 Hauerwas’s account of friendship might be the thing that saves him from these charges of individualism, and it might help demonstrate that Hauerwas discerns the Church in a variety of places in such a way that he practices better than he preaches i.e., the Spirit does the work in, with, and for him. Nevertheless, such a response is not evident either in Hannah’s Child or in subsequent public discussions in which Hauerwas has engaged the topic.

134 I am not proposing that Hauerwas was wrong to get in a different line at mass, or divorce his first wife, or to leave Aldersgate. I can see legitimate virtue in all three decisions, and it is precisely the legitimacy in these stories (and others) that demands a greater level of nuance and concreteness in the ecclesiological model that Hauerwas advances. If it is to be compelling, Hauerwas’s ecclesiology must make room for the pragmatic tests each of these examples represents.

I.C.4.b Reply to Objection: Hauerwas’s unsettled and unsettling eschatology reflects the unsettled nature of the argument which constitutes the tradition of the church. Hauerwas’s practice reflects the appropriate place of the Christian realism which his theological profession so strongly rejects.262 If the Church is a MacIntyrean tradition and therefore an argument, the tension between his ecclesiological prescription and ecclesial performance can be seen not as rank hypocrisy but as an embodiment of the unsettled nature of the argument. Hauerwas’s performance is a tacit acknowledgement of the (limited) legitimacy of the Christian realism and individualism he so ardently rejects in his proclamation. No matter how important and unavoidable it is to recognize the socially constructed nature of our selves, we cannot deny that the individual matters as well. The tension (or perhaps better, the dialectic) between the individual and the community, even the community of Israel and the Church, runs through Scripture from

262 I do not here refer exclusively to Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology, but to the wider tradition within which he operates, a tradition that sees Constantine as a and draws particularly heavily on certain strands within Augustine and Luther. See for example the work of Robin Lovin, Charles Mathews, and Oliver O’Donovan. Robin Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Charles Mathews, Evil and the Augustinian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and the Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); Desire of the Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); The Ways of Judgement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

135 beginning to end.263 Hauerwas’s prophetic posture toward the Church and the world emphasizes his individualism even as it points to the necessity of the community. His idealistic ethical demands about peace-making, patient suffering, and deference to the communal, contrast sharply with his belligerence, his divorce, and his independence from the local-communities of faith of which he is a part.264 But the Church has room for both his proclamation and practice. It has space in its story for the gritty “this-worldly” realism it took for Hauerwas to say, “I am not coming” and also for the eschatological realism of his -driven denunciation of, “an accommodated church committed to assuring Christians that the way things are is the way things have to be.”265 The tradition which we call Church is a living argument, ongoing and messy, but not incoherent. This is true whether that argument is considered in its fullness expressed over twenty centuries or in nuce within the life of a single member of that tradition. The presence of contrasting voices and practices that are at odds with one another (even within a single life) is not, or least not only, a mark of the Church’s failure to “become what [she] is.” It is also a sign that the argument which is the Church is ongoing.

I.D. From Practices to Sacraments: Prayer, Praise, Baptism, and Eucharist, Are All Practices in the MacIntyrean Sense But the Christian Recognizes

263 Man and woman (and serpent) fall as a community in the garden, and yet the curses are customized for each individual. God agrees to spare Sodom lest the innocent be swept away with the guilty, but he saves Lot’s family as a whole because of their connection to the society of the individual named Abraham. Within that family, God condemns and judges the individual who looks back, but he does not extend her punishment to the whole community. Examples could be multiplied many times over. Nevertheless, these examples must always be read alongside those emphasizing the social character of biblical ethics and of God’s promises discussed above especially in section IV.A.3.b. 264 It is relevant here that I am not simply citing moral missteps or sins which Hauerwas has confessed. Rather, these are all things which he claims, in some sense at least, as goods in Hannah’s Child. 265 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 203 and 207. The phrase “this-worldly Christianity” is Bonhoeffer’s. , Letters and Papers from Prison, Vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 485-486.

136 Them as Vehicles of a Grace That Originate Outside of Practices Even If It Is Consistently Mediated Through Them.

As we saw in the last chapter, MacIntyrean practices are characterized by socially established cooperative action resulting in goods internal to the practice and the growth of the practice over time. Hauerwas’s baptized version of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics draws heavily on the notion of practices as shared activities which are constitutive of the

Christian tradition and through which Christian character is formed, the Christian story is enacted and proclaimed, and the Church’s life together is made possible.

At Pentecost God created a new language, but it was a language that is more than words…We call this new creation church. It is constituted by word and , as the story we tell, the story we embody, must not only be told but enacted. In the telling we are challenged to be a people capable of hearing God’s good news such that we can be a witness to others. In the enactment, in Baptism and Eucharist, we are made part of a common history that requires continuous celebration to be rightly remembered. It is through Baptism and Eucharist that our lives are engrafted onto the life of the one that makes our unity possible.266

“The church is known where the sacraments are celebrated, the word is preached, and upright lives are encouraged and lived,” for “in the sacraments we enact the story of Jesus and in so doing form a community in his image.”267 This almost fits into MacIntyre’s notion of a practice, but for Hauerwas the language of “new creation” points to something more that is going on. Christian theology in general and Hauerwas’s radical eschatology specifically challenges the notion that the practices of the Church can easily fit into MacIntyre’s definition. The practices of the Church are sacramental. That is, they are works performed by God in which we participate rather than normal human

266 Hauerwas, “God’s New Language,” 149. 267 Hauerwas, “The Servant Community: Christian Social Ethics,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 383.

137 activities. As we can see by examining singing, prayer, Eucharist, and baptism, the more sacramental the activity, the more difficult it becomes to fit it into MacIntyre’s definition.

I.D.1. The sacraments are and are not coherent and complex.

MacIntyre teaches us that practices are both coherent and complex. In terms of complexity, Christian worship in song certainly seems to fit. Prayer perhaps does as well similar as it is to normal human activities like making music, writing, speaking, and listening. But the sacraments of baptism and communion are remarkably simple. Even in liturgical traditions with complex forms surrounding the rites, the Eucharist remains the most straightforward and simple of meals, and baptism is still just the application of water to the body. Bathing hardly qualifies as a MacIntyrean practice. The words given in Scripture and shared across the tradition at the rites are not complicated. “Take, eat, this is my body.” “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

The complexity comes not in the activities themselves but in reflection on the activities, the practice of sacramental theology. Valuable as it may be, a theology of the sacraments is less central to the faith than the sacramental activities themselves. Furthermore, the thing that makes these simple rites sacraments arises not from any human activity but from God’s gracious presence and his unfathomable work in and through the elements.

While the simplicity of the human side of the sacraments pushes on MacIntyre’s criteria of complexity, the divine side pushes on the criteria of coherence. Christians routinely confess with Paul that “We do not know how to pray” (Rom. 8:26). To recite the words of the Lord’s prayer is simple, but to pray it is beyond human capacity and can only be accomplished or understood by God himself. Normal practices are coherent and complex, but Christian sacraments are simple and infinitely beyond our ability to

138 understand. Even if we can gesture toward the telos which gives meaning to prayer or worship, that telos is ultimately beyond our ken. C.S. Lewis’s “Footnote to All Prayers” expresses the point well.

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou, And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art. Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream, And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert; And all men are idolators, crying unheard To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word. Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.268

I.D.2. The sacraments are and are not socially established cooperative behaviors.

The practices of the Church are undeniably social in nature. Private prayer is never actually private since one is always joining oneself to the communion of saints and angels whose prayers ascend to the throne of God and being joined by the intercessory figures of Christ and the Spirit. No one baptizes themselves or partakes of the Lord’s

Supper alone.269 The Church, whether as a congregation or in the person of the blesses the bread and makes proclamation over the baptismal waters. But the Church cannot actually establish its practices alone. God must show up. Indeed, one cannot even

268 C.S. Lewis, “Footnote to All Prayers,” in Poems (New York: Harper, 2017), 199. 269 Robert Duvall’s character, Sonny, in the 1997 film, The Apostle, provides a dramatic example of the disordered character of a baptism unmediated by the Church. Ousted by his church and on the run from the law for attempted murder, Sonny wades into a river and baptizes himself, emerging as a self-appointed apostle who adopts a new name and a new identity. However, it is only in and through the formation of a new community that Sonny actually finds himself renewed, forgiven, and given hope. The Apostle, directed by Robert Duvall (New York: October Films, 1997).

139 rightly speak of the Church as a society separate from God. However, it is important that the two be neither separated nor confused. My aim is to push against confusion without falling into separation.

When the Corinthians perverted the Eucharist, Paul did not say that they were taking the Lord’s Supper wrongly. He denied that they were taking the Lord’s Supper at all. When the Israelites of the 8th century BC lifted their hands in prayer or raised their voices in song, God declined to participate in their practices and commanded them to stop trying to carry on with worship activities he had abandoned. “Take away from me the noise of your songs.” says the (Amos 5:21). The absence of and favor transformed the hymns of Israel into mere noise.270 Similarly, Isaiah describes the assembling of the people to worship as mere “trampling of my courts.” Their sacrifices are now “abominations,” and their worship assemblies are “a burden” which

God refuses to bear any longer (Isaiah 1:12-14). Most strikingly, Isaiah says that rather than prayers, their raised hands are full of innocent blood, a sight which The Holy One of

Israel finds disgusting and will not tolerate (Isaiah 1:15). If God is not present to bless and sanctify the activity, then it is not a sacrament at all but a humanistic blasphemy.271

The practices of the Church mirror the incarnation. They always contain both a human and a divine nature. God is not merely the instigator of and object toward which

270 Similarly, Isaiah describes the assembling of the people to worship as mere “trampling of my courts.” Their sacrifices are now “abominations,” and their worship assemblies are “a burden” which God refuses to bear any longer. (Isa. 1:12-14) Most strikingly, the prophet says that rather than prayers their raised hands are full of innocent blood, a sight which The Holy One of Israel finds disgusting and will not tolerate. (Isa. 1:15) 271 Examples of the theme are pervasive in both the Old and New Testaments, but perhaps none is more powerful than the Temple Sermon in Jer. 7. For commentary on the Sermon see Gerhard von Rad, The Message of the Prophets trans. D.M.G. Stalker (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 161-188; Terence E. Fretheim, Jeremiah, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishers, 2002), 132-145.

140 praise and prayer, eucharist and baptism are directed. He is also a participant, indeed, the key participant, in them. Christian practices are therefore always socially established but they also always transcend and transform the society and the bodies of those who participate in them.

I.D.3. The sacraments are and are not systematically extended.

Christian practices grow in such a way that Christians are better able to achieve standards of excellence and to understand the ends and goods involved in those practices over time. The Church has been singing and praying, baptizing and giving thanks together for the past two millennia. The history of baptismal and Eucharistic liturgies, of prayers, and of hymns is a rich repository of wisdom and a testament to the growth of these practices.272 By growth, I mean that “human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved [in these practices have been] systematically extended.”273 Each new Sunday the Church’s prayer grows because it has one more week’s worth of life to draw upon, to offer up to God in praise and petition.

Because God is not silent but continues to speak in and through his people, the practices are capable of moving through history and flowering into the future ordained for them by

God. As they do so, God’s people are able to draw on a fuller reserve of resources to achieve standards of excellence and to better understand the goods and ends associated with prayer. That community of practitioners we call the Church has richer and deeper resources on which to draw as it crafts its prayers, its praises, and its celebrations of the

272 No work could better exemplify the importance of a practice’s systemic extension than Everett Ferguson’s magisterial Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). 273 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 187.

141 Eucharist because of the history of those practices and the insights available to use through that history as to the nature of the goods internal to them.

Practices grow as those who participate in them come to better perform them and more fully realize and appreciate the goods internal to those practices. The state-of-the- art does not exist in a static form somewhere in the but changes as it is read off of experts within the practice. This is not a straightforward process of linear evolution, but nevertheless practices can and do experience real maturation and improvement. Take the practice of medicine as an example: it wrestles with the questions as to what constitutes good health, what role death ought to play in the healthy human life, and what it is to be human. Through its long and complex history, it has grown and expanded, improved its methods and activities, and incorporated the best insights of its expert practitioners. It comes as no surprise then that the practice of medicine today is better than the practice of medicine thirty years ago, and if the practice continues in good order, it will be even better thirty years from now.

Christian practices have not grown in the same way. My baptism is not better than my father’s or his father’s. My prayers are not better prayers than Augustine’s. The

Eucharist at my home congregation this Sunday will not surpass that which was taken by the Jerusalem Church who devoted themselves to the breaking of bread in Acts 2. But this does not imply that all Eucharistic feasts are equal. As noted above, Paul is ferocious in his critique of the gluttonous performance of the Lord’s Supper which characterized the wealthy Corinthian Christians. He accuses them of despising the Church and humiliating their brothers and sisters. Yet, his most central argument is not merely that they are practicing the celebration of the Eucharist badly; it is that their practice is not the

142 Eucharist at all (1 Cor. 11:20). What is it then that transforms a shared meal into

Communion? What turns a bath into a baptism? It is not the excellence of human performance but the grace-giving presence of God. The systematic extension of excellence within and appreciation of goods internal to Christian practices is not destroyed by God’s eschatological sanctification which perfects them by grace in every moment, but it is transformed. We can rightly discern and strive for growth in our partaking of the sacraments, but only in a qualified sense – just as we can rightly acknowledge that seven is a greater number than six without forgetting that when infinity is added to either their sum is the same.274

I.D.4. The change from practices to sacraments does not abandon MacIntyre’s notion of ordinary practices and their role in virtue formation, but it does transform it.

We have seen how Christian sacramental practices are distinct from yet not wholly separated from MacIntyre’s definition of a practice, but Hauerwas also helps us see how Christianity ought to transform our understanding of those prosaic practices which Christians share with the rest of the world – raising children, painting portraits, farming, etc. In the sermon he delivered at his father’s funeral, Hauerwas argues that

Christ does not command us to be meek in order to follow him but describes the meekness achieved by those who do follow him. His father, he claims, is such a man.

However, when it comes to actually describing the activities which gentled his father, he does not point to prayers and sacraments but to the practice of bricklaying. “The simple

274 I am aware that the order of magnitude of an infinite set cannot be changed by adding any finite quantity to it, and indeed it is not even proper mathematically speaking to talk of adding finite numbers and infinity together as if they are the same thing. But the analogy gets its work done precisely because it names an impossibility in human experience which is the normal operation of God. I am gratefully indebted to Laurie Eloe for help in clarification of both the mathematical and theological aspects of this analogy.

143 gentleness of my father rested in the sense of the superior good that comes to those whose lives are honed by a craft.”275 He points to the practice of bricklaying as the source of his father’s opposition to racism, to his courage, his humility, and his patience. Of himself,

Hauerwas says, “The training I received [in bricklaying] left an indelible mark on everything I do.”276 Bricklaying remains a practice, but the Christian sees it for what it can be– a graced activity in which God and the goodness of God’s creation plays a sacramental role insofar as bricklaying can be a vehicle of divine grace by which we are better conformed to the image of God even if we are unaware of God’s activity in the practice. Though he is not explicit about the role God plays in bricklaying, Hauerwas’s theology has no room for ungraced goodness. We are therefore forced to see his argument as something like this:

1) Christian virtues are fundamentally distinct from those of the world.

2) Virtue comes to us only by God’s grace mediated to us through the

sacraments.

3) Virtue can be cultivated through normal practices such as bricklaying and not

only through the explicitly sacramental practices of the Church.

\ Therefore, normal practices must be capable of taking on a sacramental

character and

mediating to us the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

The only trouble with the argument is that Hauerwas tends to underemphasize the fourth point and, at times, to talk about practices and the Church who practices them as if

275 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 40. 276 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 36.

144 the power to shape us for the good resides in the practice itself or the community of practitioners rather than in the Spirit who works in and through them. This brings us to the final point of this chapter.

II. While the Virtue Theory of MacIntyre and Hauerwas is Useful for Combatting a Simplistic Ethic of Individual Biblical Obedience, It Fails to Give an Adequate Account of the Holy Spirit.

In Chapter 3 we saw the ways in which MacIntyrean virtue ethics provides a helpful corrective to the tendency among Churches of Christ to approach ethics from a simplistically deontological standpoint. However, MacIntyre’s philosophical project cannot accomplish the work it needs to among us unless it is baptized and made to adopt explicitly Christian language. This chapter has demonstrated that the work of Stanley

Hauerwas and his heirs has accomplished such a transformation and has attempted to name “the difference Christ makes” to MacIntyre’s project. But the correction MacIntyre and Hauerwas offer to the ethic of biblical obedience does not provide a cure to the anemic pneumatology in Churches of Christ. Indeed, MacIntyre and Hauerwas themselves have much the same weakness.

Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelian project seem to assume that human beings have within themselves (that is, within their collective selves) the tools necessary for moral excellence – that given proper training, proper communities, proper disciplines, and a measure of moral luck, humans are able to arrive at their telos. This flies in the face of a great deal of Christian theology. The language of Scripture and the Church’s liturgy speaks of the Spirit as a helper. He is the one who is both within us and alongside us in our moral formation. The Spirit is the one who infuses the Christian with virtue in surprising ways not accounted for in MacIntyre’s or even Hauerwas’s ethics. In order to

145 help Churches of Christ develop a more coherent Christian ethic, MacIntyre’s project needs to be supplemented with a more adequate treatment of the role God and God’s grace play in human goodness.

Hauerwas, as we have seen, is less susceptible to this critique, in large part because of his emphasis on the eschatological reality which is the Church and the grace- giving practices in which she participates. What Hauerwas is not explicit and emphatic enough about is how and why such eschatological hope is possible in the here and now:

How it is that God empowers his Church to be embody the gospel? What makes the

Church a present instantiation of the promised eschaton? What is God doing in the world apart from his work in and through the Church, and what, or rather who, is the actual animus behind Christian practices? We have seen how Hauerwas transforms four of

MacIntyre’s categories into substantially different and explicitly Christian concepts:

Teleology has become eschatology; narrative has become the gospel; tradition has become the church; and practices have become sacraments. But what of character?

Character for Hauerwas is relatively unchanged. It is undeniably “Christian character,” and therefore related strongly to Christ, especially in his prophetic witness, his in suffering, and his death on the cross. This is a good beginning, but Christ who was raised has promised us more. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John

14:8) and “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” (Acts 1:8)

146 This dearth of pneumatological material in Hauerwas is acknowledged by sympathetic readers277 as well as by his critics.278 Indeed, Hauerwas himself has admitted, “It may be true that my work has been so Christ-centered that I may have given the impression that the Holy Spirit is an afterthought.”279 If it is to offer a helpful corrective to the received ethic of biblical obedience among Churches of Christ,

MacIntyre’s and Hauerwas’s project must be extended such that the MacIntyrean concept of character formation is transformed into the Christian doctrine of theosis.

277 Wells, Transforming Fate, 98; Reinhold Hütter, “The Ecclesial Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas” Dialog 30 (Summer: 1991): 231-241; Nico Koopman, “The Role of Pneumatology in the Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas,” Scriptura 79 (2002): 33-40. 278 Nicolas M. Healey, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014). 279 Stanley Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” in The Work of Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 33. This essay has also been published under the (somewhat better) title, “How to be Caught by the Holy Spirit” in Theological Theology: Essays in Honor of John Webster, eds. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis (New York: T&T Clark, 2015): 107-124; and under the (much better) title “By the Catching Force: Reflections on the Work of the Spirit for Pentecost Sunday” ABC Religion and Ethics, (May 23, 2015). https:// www.abc.net.au/ religion/by-the-catching-force-reflections-on-the-work-of-the-spirit-for-/10098256.

147 CHAPTER V

FROM ARGUMENT TO APHORISM: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO

PNEUMATOLOGY

I. The Move from Character to Theosis Demands a Robust Account of the Holy Spirit; Hauerwas Fails to Provide Such an Account but is Nevertheless Helpful to Us by Pointing Towards Sources and an Approach Which Can Fill in What He Lacks.

If I am right, and Hauerwas’s project must be extended so that MacIntyrean notion of character must be transformed into the Christian concept of theosis, then we must, at long last, turn to the question of the Holy Spirit. The first section of this chapter examines how and why Hauerwas fails to provide us with an adequate account of the

Spirit, but it also identifies patterns in his thinking and sources of his work from which we can construct a pneumatological method. The second section sketches out that method in preparation for its deployment in chapter 6.

I.A. The Move from Character to Theosis Demands a Robust Account of the Holy Spirit.

Character is the Aristotelian concept that names who a person is. It is the collection of one’s habits and therefore of one’s nature – not merely the human nature common to all people but the second nature developed by each individual. Character is formed primarily in youth and primarily by one’s community, but does continue to grow and change over time through practices, disciplines, education, etc. It is also, MacIntyre would remind us, shaped by the narratives within which one operates. For Christians though, the formation of a sanctified second nature is never merely the result of discipline, community influence, practices, or narratives. Those things might be enough to improve a person’s character relative to the world and this life, but on their own, they

148 cannot enable people to reach their ultimate telos, union with God. If the telos of the human life is simply to flourish in relation to the polis as Aristotle would have it, then character is sufficient. But if the telos is, as the Christian story would have it, to be partakers of the divine nature, co-heirs with Christ, lords who sit upon the throne of God in the new heaven and new earth, etc., then something more than natural character formation is required. This process of becoming one with Christ and thereby one with the Father goes by many names in Christian theology. It is called deification, , or theosis, and while it tends to be associated with , it is a doctrine repeatedly taught in Scripture and well represented in the tradition of the church both East and West. In Scripture and in the tradition, the process of theosis is the special work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if we are to call for the concept of character to be rechristened as theosis, we must give a robust account of the role of the Spirit in ethics. Unfortunately, this is one area where Hauerwas is not sufficiently helpful to us.

I.B. Hauerwas Fails to Provide a Robust Pneumatology.

Hauerwas is frequently charged with giving too little attention to the Holy Spirit, and these charges are not groundless.280 Especially in his early career, the Holy Spirit is largely absent and even the Trinity is minimized. While the latter of these errors is

280 Wells, Transforming Fate, 97-98; Nico Koopman, “The Role of Pneumatology in the Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas,” Scriptura 79 (2002): 33-40; Arne Rasmusson, The Church as Polis: From to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jürgon Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1995): 179; Hütter, “The Ecclesial Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas,” 231-241. Hauerwas himself acknowledges the point as well. “Even if I have shown the difference that Christian convictions may or should make for how our lives are shaped, such a project does not in itself entail that the god in view be the God we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That failure, however, may not be peculiar to me alone but may be the fate of theology in modernity.” Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in Truth: Holiness Exemplified (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 37-38. The point is expanded in Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 32-36.

149 ameliorated in more recent works, the former has remained somewhat persistent.

Hauerwas has been hesitant to use explicitly pneumatological language and instead chosen to speak of Christ or occasionally the Trinity for three main reasons. First, he worried about emphasizing religious experiences in ways that prioritize the individual and undermine the community of the Church. Second, he is a disciple of Karl Barth and follows Barth’s general tendency to talk about Christ in places where one might expect him to talk about the Spirit. Third, he long overlooked the fact that (like Christ) the Spirit has a narrative in Scripture and that the Spirit’s story could provide a way of talking about his work without appealing to one’s own experience.281 In several more recent publications Hauerwas has acknowledged the pneumatological lacuna in his work and the reasons for his hesitancy to address the topic.

I.B.1. Hauerwas has an inadequate account of the Spirit because he worries about emphasizing “religious experience” in ways that prioritize the individual and undermine the community of the Church.

Hauerwas’s deep suspicion of religious experience and his worry that beginning with human experience “attenuates the Gospel,”282 “undercuts the significance of

281 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 37-38. A fourth reason Hauerwas briefly alludes to is philosophical. “Appeals to experience, even the experience of the Holy Spirit, often seemed to suggest that the experience was prior to how the experience was linguistically expressed . . . Suffice it to say that under the influence of Wittgenstein, and in particular his arguments about private language, I could not be anything but suspicious of appeals to some experience that could not be linguistically expressed.” Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 38. One is forced to ask whether Wittgenstein’s arguments against private language are relevant to an experience of the Holy Spirit if the Spirit is someone, some other, who intrudes upon the inner life of a person and whose converse within a person’s heart may be expressed in a language, not private in the sense of being a language for only oneself, but in the sense of a language not meant for outsiders, rather like the language of looks and allusions shared between a husband and wife or twins which they cannot explain to others but which nevertheless is “spoken” and understood by both of them. What we find in Hauerwas’s Wittgensteinian critique is his tendency to think of the Spirit in impersonal categories. To be fair, that tendency is also shared by many charismatics who see the Spirit as a force of experience rather than a person, and Hauerwas may simply be responding to his interlocutors in their own categories. 282 Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 37.

150 baptism,”283 “result[s] in a [weakened] understanding of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Church,”284 dismisses the Bible,285 and “degrades the importance of Christian doctrine286 is likely to elicit a hearty amen from many within Churches of Christ, including this author. However, in reacting so strongly against the excesses of the , Hauerwas has, like Churches of Christ, all too often ended up having very little to say about the Spirit other than what He is not and what He does not do.287 This lack of a constructive account of the Spirit inadvertently reinforces the very idea that it seeks to combat by ceding the battlefield to those who are at least willing to speak about the Spirit – a mistake that both Hauerwas and Churches of Christ have been trying to rectify in recent years. Correcting this mistake must not come by surrendering to the temptation to equate religious experience or emotionalism with the Holy Spirit.288

Given his strong emphasis on the Church community and the importance of habit formation as well as his deep antipathy towards American individualism, Hauerwas’s hostility toward any pneumatology which treats the Holy Spirit as religious experience or the emotional expression of religious experience comes as no surprise. Opposition to the

283 Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 34. 284 Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 34. 285 Hauerwas, The Holy Spirit, 2. 286 Hauerwas, The Holy Spirit, 2. 287 My use of masculine pronouns for the Spirit intends to reflect nothing more than a submission to the traditional language of English and the liturgical practice of in general and Churches of Christ in particular. When citing authors who use feminine or neuter pronouns for the Spirit, I will follow their individual practice in part to be true to their work and in part to provide at least a measure of awareness of and sympathy towards the important arguments in favor of using non-masculine pronouns for the Holy Spirit. 288 That is not to say that religious experience and emotions are unrelated to pneumatology or that the Holy Spirit cannot use either as a tool in his work, but the tail must not wag the dog. Sarah Coakley’s treatment of desire in God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay, On the Trinity (New York: Cambridge, 2013) is an excellent example of the incorporation of emotion into pneumatology without confusing the experience of desire with its object.

151 subjective turn in theology has been a hallmark of his work from beginning to end.289

Hauerwas describes his characteristically blunt reaction when asked by a colleague if he had experienced the new birth of the Spirit:

I responded – a response that was no doubt insensitive – that she had to understand that I was raised an evangelical Methodist, which meant by the time I was twelve I had enough “experience” to last me a lifetime. I assured her that I did not want to have an experience of salvation, even one that allegedly was the work of the Spirit. I explained that I had not only learned to distrust the staying power of such experiences, but I also thought the need “to be ” undercut the significance of baptism. Generalized appeals to the Holy Spirit, I said, could result in an attenuated understanding of the relation of the Holy Spirit and the church – a point I assumed would not be lost on a Roman Catholic.290

He goes on to say,

I would love to know how the Methodist emphasis on holiness was transmuted into the need to have an experience of the Holy Spirit. “To have an experience of the Holy Spirit” is not incompatible with an account of holiness, but neither is it an equivalent, particularly when the former underwrites an individualism that is incompatible with . . . the work of the Spirit to call into existence a commonwealth of God’s people.291

Opposition to subjective experience is a pervasive theme in Hauerwas’s writing on the

Spirit, and it is almost always his starting place for any discussion on the subject.

“Human experience is a questionable place to begin thinking about God,” he says in the opening pages of he and William Willimon’s co-authored book, The Holy Spirit, and he follows up this observation even more strongly, “Subjective experience is no place to

289 “…[A]ppeals to the Holy Spirit as the source of an individual's "experience" of God structurally can underwrite the presumption that theological claims are first and foremost about us and not about God.” Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 37. Even Nicholas Healy, who argues that Hauerwas unwittingly follows Schleiermacher into an anthropocentric rather than theocentric approach to theology, acknowledges that the Church and not the individual subject is at the heart of all that Hauerwas has written. Nicholas M. Healy, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 48-51. 290 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 34-35. The colleague was part of the charismatic Catholic movement. 291 Stanley Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 34-35.

152 begin thinking about the Holy Spirit.”292 He declares that he is not a charismatic and that the charismatic emphasis on experiences of ecstasy are all too often, “a way to try to catch, rather than be caught by, the Holy Spirit.”293 He is chary of discerning providence apart from hindsight and hesitant to claim that the Holy Spirit is at work in his life and writing because, he says, “I do not want to give the impression that the Holy Spirit is on my side.”294

I am, after all, a follower of Karl Barth. My response to my colleague at Notre Dame was one I should like to think was informed by Barth. I learned from Barth that God is God, which makes impossible the presumption, a presumption often justified by appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit, that God is ever ready and available to meet my self-projected needs . . . I am a Methodist. I come out of the belly of the beast that bears the name “pietism.” Accordingly, I found Barth’s critical attitude toward Protestant pietism liberating. I learned from Barth that I did not need to have an experience of God to be a Christian. Barth, moreover, helped me see how appeals to the Holy Spirit in order to ground theological claims by those identified with pietism was the breeding ground for liberal Protestant theology.295

And so, we turn our attention to Barth and his theology which plays such an important role in Hauerwas’s thinking.

I.B.2. Hauerwas’s Barthian christocentrism frequently displaces the Spirit with Christ or the church.

292 Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, The Holy Spirit (Nashville: Abingdon, 2015), 2. 293 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 35. 294 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works, 36. 295 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 36-37. It is worth noting that Campbell and Stone also hard critical attitudes toward the idea that one needed an experience of God to be a Christian and that they also emphasized baptism rather than such an experience as the appropriate locus of a Christian’s new birth, a move which they likewise saw as liberating. See The Campbell-Maccalla Debate, available online at http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/1824cam1.htm and comments on the debate in John Mark Hicks, “The Recovery of the Ancient Gospel: Alexander Campbell and the Design of Baptism," in Baptism and the Remission of Sins: An Historical Perspective, ed. David Fletcher (Joplin, Missouri: College Press, 1990), 111-170.

153 In an essay commended by Hauerwas, Robert Jenson asks where the Spirit went in Barth. Barth, Jenson says, tends to “announce the Spirit but discuss the Son.”296

Whether this hesitancy to speak about the Spirit comes because of Barth’s allergic reaction to subjectivity in theology and an underlying connection between the Spirit and subjectivity or from his famous obsession with Christ is debatable. It is less debatable that Jenson is to right to claim that, for whatever reason, Barth frequently allows

Christology to replace pneumatology. This problem is especially acute when Barth begins to argue from the doctrine of God to some other point. The Church Dogmatics is replete with instances in which Barth claims to be using the doctrine of the Trinity but ends up only actually talking about only the Father and the Son.297

296 Robert Jenson, “You Wonder Where the Spirit Went,” Pro Ecclesia 2 (1993): 296- 304. Jenson points to three such examples: 1) Barth allegedly grounds his treatment of gender in the trinity but his actual argument involves only the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son are in relation to one another; Christ and humanity are in relation to one another; therefore, within humanity male and female are in relation to one another. Jenson, “Where the Spirit Went, 297-298. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.2.45. 2) Barth makes his argument for the objectivity of the proclamation of salvation not by pointing to Pentecost and the descent of the Spirit as one might expect but in the Resurrection of the Son, an argument Jenson describes as “some of the most tortuous dialectic in the Kirchliche Dogmatik.” Jenson, “Where the Spirit Went,” 298. He goes on, “Barth’s more specific location of the proclamation’s objectivity in the ‘universal prophetism’ of the risen Lord would then, to be sure, more than recoup the pneumatological loss, if in Barth’s description of this prophetism itself, the Spirit had the role which surely he should have in description of a ‘prophetism.’ But despite the title of [4.3.69], Die Verhissung des Geistes (The Spirit of Prophesy), the Spirit hardly appears in the story.” Rather than addressing the Spirit himself extensively in this section, Barth explores, “the anthropological sphere” of Christ’s work, a surprising turn and one that only reinforces Jenson’s point. See Barth, Dogmatics 4.3.69.1,2, and 4. 3) In his treatment of the unique character of the Christian Church in the history of the world, in a section titled, “The Holy Spirit and the Mission of the Christian Congregation” Barth manages to never actually mention the Spirit at all or to describe the Spirit’s role in making the Church unique. Jenson describes Barth’s work in this section as, “a marvel,” but finds the Spirit’s absence as much a marvel as the genius of Barth’s theology. Jenson, “Where the Spirit Went,” 298. See Barth, Dogmatics, 4.3.72. 297 Jenson, “Where the Spirit Went,” 297-298.

154 This is a tendency that Hauerwas has inherited from Barth. “The principal work of the Holy Spirit . . . is to point to Jesus,” says Hauerwas, and he is undoubtedly right.298

His makes the point well, but the dialectical rejoinders we might expect are absent.

Statements like, “The principal work of Christ is to prepare us to receive the Spirit,” or

“and Christ points backwards to the Father who sent him and forwards to the Spirit who he promised,” would improve the statement, “The principle work of the Holy Spirit is to point to Jesus,” immensely.

Hauerwas claims that his orthodox trinitarianism ought to be sufficient evidence that he has not ignored the role of the Holy Spirit, and this claim is not without merit. He helpfully points out that it is “quite odd, that we forget when we confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit we are talking about God.”299 Too often, we talk about the Spirit as if he is some mysterious power rather than the God whom we know, love, worship, and serve. Any pneumatology that is not tightly connected to the revelation of God in Jesus

Christ cannot be a Christian doctrine of the Spirit. As Hauerwas says, “…everything that needs to be said about the Holy Spirit must be disciplined by trinitarian convictions.”300

But more is required. Hauerwas himself has admitted that, “Trinitarian reflections on the

Holy Spirit do not say everything that needs to be said about the Spirit.”301 The trouble is that very little of this “more” shows up in his work. Like Apollos, Hauerwas has spoken and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus (Acts 18:25) but needs other Christians who can help refine his teaching to make clearer the person of the Holy Spirit.

I.B.3. For much of his career, Hauerwas has lacked a coherent way to narrate the life and work of the Spirit.

298 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 39. 299 Hauerwas and Willimon, The Holy Spirit, 10. 300 Hauerwas and Willimon, The Holy Spirit, 10. 301 Hauerwas and Willimon, The Holy Spirit, 10.

155

Hauerwas’s theology is narrative theology, and part of his reluctance to talk about the Spirit comes from his inability to narrate the story of the Spirit. He said so himself in

2015. “I confess that until I read Eugene Rogers’s book, After the Spirit: A Constructive

Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West, I was unsure how best to say what the Spirit does.”302 We see this uncertainty as to how to discuss the Sprit’s work in one of the most richly pneumatological essays of his early career, “The Church as God’s

New Language.”303 In it, Hauerwas names Pentecost as the birth of the Church by the

Holy Spirit, but goes on to speak about the Spirit in almost exclusively impersonal language. He uses the impersonal pronoun “it” and leans heavily on depictions of the

Spirit as a mighty wind, cleansing fire, and emboldening power.304 While all of these are biblical and appropriate ways of speaking of the Spirit, they stand in sharp contrast to the personal depiction of Christ and the personal character of the Church.

The Spirit, to be sure, is a wild and powerful presence creating a new people where there was no people, but it is a spirit that they and we know. For the work it is doing is not different from the work that was done in Jesus of Nazareth.305

Hauerwas is comfortable with talking about Jesus as a person because he knows how to narrate the story of Jesus. He is less comfortable doing the same for the Spirit and therefore speaks of the Spirit in impersonal fashion, treating him merely as the presence or power of Christ in the Church’s story without also speaking of him as the third person of the Trinity. Hauerwas points to Barth as the source of his hesitancy to speak directly

302 Hauerwas, “How the Holy Spirit Works,” 33. 303 Stanley Hauerwas, “The Church as God’s New Language,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 142-162; originally published in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Hans Frei, ed. Garrett Green (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987). 304 Hauerwas’s use of the impersonal pronoun does not seem related to gender issues the way that say Rogers’s use of “it” is. 305 Hauerwas, “The Church as God’s New Language,” 147

156 about the Spirit and to Jenson and Rogers as figures that have helped him to clarify and articulate his pneumatology. He acknowledges that the weakness in his pneumatology is tied to a failure in his reading of Scripture.

There are, no doubt, many reasons for the absence of appeals to the Holy Spirit in modern theology, but I suspect one of the reasons may be that any account of the work of the Spirit entails a doctrinal reading of Scripture that most theologians, and I include myself in that group, are not sure how to pull off.306

What Hauerwas claims he is missing is a doctrinal reading of Scripture, but we must remember that for Hauerwas, “It is unwise to isolate doctrines from the narratives that make doctrines make sense in the first place.”307 What Hauerwas overlooked in Scripture before reading Rogers was not the articulation of an abstract pneumatological doctrine but a concrete pneumatological story. He had unwittingly accepted the liberal Protestant assumption that the Spirit is the name of a religious experience rather than a person with a particular story tied to the flesh-and-blood reality of God’s Church, a person whose story is narrated in Scripture. We can see this tendency to depersonalize the Spirit even in Hauerwas’s explicitly pneumatological works when he describes the Spirit as “a warrant for doctrinal claims” rather than a person to know.308

I.C. Hauerwas Has Acknowledged His Pneumatological Failings and Helpfully Pointed Us Toward Resources Which Can Fill This Lacuna.

His publication of two essays and a short book on the Spirit in 2015-2016 marks a pneumatological turning point for Hauerwas, but in order to move from character to theosis we will have to look beyond his own work and to the sources which have informed and prompted his new emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Like Hauerwas, Churches

306 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 34. 307 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 32. 308 Hauerwas, “How the Spirit Works,” 32.

157 of Christ are also beginning to attend more closely to the Holy Spirit, and may find nourishment at the same tables from which Hauerwas has been fed.

Contemporary writers like Eugene Rogers and Robert Jenson figure prominently in Hauerwas’s pneumatological writings. Through them, Hauerwas looks back to

Augustine and ultimately to Scripture and finds there the beginning of a doctrine of the

Holy Spirit and his relationship to Christian Ethics. Rogers teaches us that the Spirit has a story and is therefore is not reducible to merely an individual’s religious experience.

Jenson helps us understand the narrative character of God himself and the importance of attending to Scripture’s story rather than to prior metaphysical or

Goodness. Though Jenson and Rogers have differing attitudes toward Augustine, both rely on his account of the Spirit as the Love of God and both point positively to the

Augustine’s narration of God’s work in his life in the Confessions.309 Most importantly, each of these theologians draws us back to a close reading of Scripture and attention to the liturgical life of the Church. By drawing on these resources we may extend

Hauerwas’s project in a pneumatological direction in a way that is still in keeping with his larger theological/ethical project.

I.D Hauerwas Models and Commends an Aphoristic, Riddling Approach to Theology That is Especially Well Suited to Pneumatology.

Besides being a “great” theologian and ethicist, Hauerwas is widely recognized as an excellent and provocative writer. His subtle blend of Ivy League erudition and plainspoken folk wisdom gleaned from Texas bricklayers yields a host of memorable

309 Hauerwas frequently alludes to Confessions as essential reading for Christian theologians and identifies Augustine as “an intellectual friend” whose story shapes the way that he (Hauerwas) thinks and which he wants to shape the way his students think. See for example Stanley Hauerwas, “Go with God: An Open Letter to Young Christians on their Way to College,” First Things (November, 2010). https://www.firstthings .com/article/2010/10/go-with-god.

158 phrases and profound questions. Perhaps Hauerwas’s greatest strengths as a theologian is his ability to speak aphoristically, in riddles, jokes, and hyperboles that evoke a truth rather than encompass it – theology designed “to tickle the imagination.”310 For example:

What we believe does defy reason and common sense; but yet I believe what Christians believe is the most reasonable and commonsense account we can have of the way things are.311

The world of the courageous person is different from that of the coward.312

The same witness that the Spirit makes to Jesus transforms the witness of the disciples, as they are now able to see what they have seen from the beginning but not seen at all.313

Christians are required to love one another—even if they are married.314

McKenny calls the aphorism an apocalyptic genre, an attempt to create a new kind of time and space, and Hauerwas is nothing if not apocalyptic. His theological ethics, as we saw in the last chapter, flows out of a realized eschatology. Therefore, it is not surprising that aphorisms and riddles seem to be his native tongue.

Hauerwas’s aphoristic style extends beyond his pithy sayings and into his general style of writing and speaking. The essay, not the , is his preferred genre, and

310 Stanley Hauerwas, “How to be Theologically Funny,” in The Work of Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 233. For more on the role of humor in Hauerwas’s theology see Chris Heubner, “Make Us Your Laughter: Stanley Hauerwas’s Joke on Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 84 no.1 (2010): 357-373. 311 Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 14. 312 Hauerwas, “Courage Exemplified,” 299. 313 Hauerwas, “God’s New Language,” 149. 314 Stanley Hauerwas, “Love: A Sermon for the Marriage of Sheryl Overmyer and Andy Grubb,” in Working With Words: On Learning to Speak Christian (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 139. These four quotations were selected at random from Hauerwas books close at hand, and they could easily be multiplied in any of a dozen other books he has written. Hauerwas’s tendency to write aphoristically has increased over the course of his long career.

159 even his longer works tend to read more as a series of essays strung together.315 Unlike many scholarly articles or books, Hauerwas rarely gives the impression that he has exhausted a topic. There is an open-endedness to his writing that rewards the reader who returns to a piece over and over again. McKenny has described Hauerwas’s essays as

“extended aphorisms.”316 Even Hauerwas’s most straightforward narratives are riddles and parables. He describes his autobiography this way,

an exercise in ‘not saying’ what might have been said but if it had been said I would have said too much. Indeed, the most important things I had to say were not said. For I should like to think I wrote constantly with Wittgenstein in mind hoping to show rather than say. That is as close as I know how to get to prayer.317

If apocalyptic, aphorism, and sideways speech are the proper language for attempts at creating a new kind of time and space, then they may prove to be our best means for talking about the new time inaugurated by the Spirit’s work in our lives. Though

Hauerwas has not explicitly offered a pneumatology which can correct the tendency among Churches of Christ towards self-reliance and anthropocentric thinking about ethics, his performance of aphoristic theology and his recommendation of helpful conversation partners points us to a promising method for crafting one.

II. The Work of the Holy Spirit and the Relationship Between Pneumatology and Ethics May be Helpfully Explored Aphoristically Via Riddles Rather Than Through Straightforward Arguments.

315 Note the ease with which so many “chapters” from his earlier books need no introduction or context when they are arranged in The Hauerwas Reader. The Peaceable Kingdom is an especially relevant example of this tendency and With the Grain of the Universe is more of an exception. Hauerwas attributes his fondness of the essay as a genre to the fact that he is a modern writer, but he also describes it as “an effort to embody fundamental convictions about what it means to be a Christian in modernity.” Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 302. It is worth noting that he has increasingly chosen to publish short sermons and prayers instead of or within his essays, and has stopped apologizing for doing so as he does in “God’s New Language” for example. 316 Hauerwas, “What Have I Done?” 317 Hauerwas, “What Have I Done.”

160 Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind – 318

Following Hauerwas’s aphoristic example, the remainder of this chapter proposes an aphoristic approach to pneumatology that uses riddles and sideways speech to explore the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Though Hauerwas’s riddling style owes much to

Wittgenstein, the same sorts of insights which can be gleaned from Wittgenstein’s philosophy are available more generally in the stories, poetry, humor, and mythology.319

Hauerwas is often at his best when drawing theological insights from of a novel, a movie, a potent historical anecdote, or a clever turn of phrase.320

318 Emily Dickinson, “Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant,” in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (New York: Back Bay Publishing, 1976), 506. 319 This connection between Wittgenstein, riddles, and literature is strongly attested to by Stephen Mulhall. Speaking as a Wittgenstein scholar, he concludes his 2014 Stanton lectures by pointing out that Adam Roberts’s literary analysis of The Hobbit bears a “disconcerting extent of convergence” with his own philosophical work and yields in Mulhall a sense of “uncanny intimacy, of being repeatedly and (in essentials) accurately spoken for” such that Roberts’s book “exhibits the form that [Thomistic-Wittgenstein philosophy] would take in the world of literary criticism.” Stephen Mulhall, The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy: The Stanton Lectures 2014 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 129, see also 128-131. 320 “The novel remains our most distinctive and powerful form of moral instruction.” Hauerwas, “Character, Narrative, and Growth in the Christian Life,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 225. Commenting on Hauerwas’s voracious reading of novels Cavanaugh notes, “Who else can claim to have read all of Trollope’s forty-odd novels—that’s Anthony Trollope, the very Victorian English novelist who use to discharge a quota of 10,000 words every morning before going to work as a clerk in a post office—and then to have read most of them again?” William Cavanaugh, “Stan the Man: A Thoroughly Biased Account of a Completely Unobjective Person,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 25. The example par excellence of Hauerwas’s reflections on a novel is his treatment of Watership Down, Richard Adam’s episodic story of a warran of rabbits seeking a new home. This essay is exceptional both because Hauerwas’s insights are so helpful and profound and because Watership Down is among the finest novels of the twentieth century. Stanley Hauerwas, “A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down,” in The Hauerwas Reader, 171-199.

161 These categories, story, poetry, humor, and mythology, are the very ones that

Churches of Christ have, to their detriment, historically neglected (or rejected) in their interpretation of Scripture. The “book of facts” had little room for anything less than straightforward articulations of truth, and theology was merely the working out of deductive implications of biblical facts. But riddling is one of Scripture’s preferred means for talking about both God and the good life before God. Churches of Christ will do well not only to “speak where the Bible speaks” but also to learn to speak how the

Bible speaks. That means frequently speaking in riddles.

II.A. Riddling Demands that We Learn to See in New Ways.

By riddles and riddling, I do not mean merely a narrow genre of question-and- answer puzzles, but the whole range of sideways speech, a category that includes aphorisms, parables, and proverbs. The major characteristic of this broad range of riddling language is that it is not straightforward, scientific (in the Kantian sense), deductive, or systematic in approach. As Hui says, “Aphorisms are before, against, and after philosophy.”321 Riddling is a kind of language game in which the words subvert one another and yet still manage to get the work of communication done. Roberts describes the riddle as “the idiom of all epistemological process”322 and points out that,

…a riddle, formally speaking, is a small example of something unseen presenting itself to us and asking to be seen. It is, as it were, a thing wearing a ring of invisibility. Our wits are the mode by which it can be made visible again.323

321 Andrew Hui, A Theory of the Aphorism: From to Twitter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 2. By “philosophy” here Hui means systems of philosophy especially ones that present themselves as finished or totalizing. 322 Roberts, 10. 323 Roberts, 13.

162 The epistemological model which comes out of riddling is one in which knowledge comes by skill and practice, by developing the eyes to see that which was formerly hidden. Insight is gained not by gradually bringing things into focus, but in a flash of sudden revelation. Frequently, we come to see the answer to a riddle or the truth of an aphorism the same way that John Green describes falling in love and falling asleep,

“slowly, and then all at once.”324 Other times, we find that “the light dawns gradually over the whole” and upon reflection we find that we have come to see something but could not pinpoint precisely when or how we achieved the vision.325

II.A.1. Riddling involves a Gestalt switch.

This characteristic of riddles may be compared to Wittgenstein’s notion of aspect- seeing.326 Wittgenstein asks a man, “What do you see there?” and posits two legitimate responses. The first is a description, drawing, or copy of the image and the other is, “I see a likeness in these two faces.” There is, he says, a categorical difference between the two kinds of seeing. Nothing has changed in the image but the second response testifies to our ability to see a thing not merely as what it is (i.e. what could be copied) but also as it is interpreted. We look at this illustration in a text book

324 John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (New York: Dutton Books, 2012), 124. 325 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty ed. G.E.M. Anscomb and G.H. von Wright (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 141: 40. 326 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 204-225.

163 and see a box, or a cube of ice, or a set of boards forming a particular angle, etc. depending on how the book instructs us to interpret the symbol. “We interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.”327 When this seeing via interpreting happens, when it “lights up” as

Wittgenstein says, it does so all at once.328 We do not see the various interpretive options in the following optical illusions gradually.

They appear all at once or not at all. So it is with much of riddling speech.

Understanding riddling speech is akin to understanding humor – a joke is not funny when it is explained but when you get it.329 The explanation may describe why a person found it funny, but hearing and understanding the explanation is not the same as getting the joke. Like riddles, humor is dependent on a shared community, a common set of narratives, and a similar set of linguistic habits without which it cannot be understood.330 Riddles and jokes both gesture toward a thing and rely on a sort of magic to happen to the audience if the gesture is to succeed in communicating what is intended.

The fact that analysis of that magic fails to fully capture it is not evidence that it does not exist.

327 Wittgenstein, 203. 328 Wittgenstein, 204. 329 As E.B. White famously quipped, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.” E.B. White and Katherine S. White, “The Preaching Humorist,” Saturday Review of Literature, (Oct. 18, 1941): 16. The quote has been adapted (and frequently misattributed to Mark Twain) in a variety of ways. For more on the philosophy of jokes and humor see, Steven Gimbel, Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy, Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2018); and Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: Press, 2001). 330 “Humor is profoundly contextual, depending as it does on common presuppositions and habits.” Hauerwas, “How to be Theologically Funny,” 231.

164 Perhaps the fact that riddles, irony and other forms of sideways speech are offered humbly, knowing that on their own they are incapable of articulating their meaning, is why they are some of our best techniques for responding to those aspects of reality which touch upon the infinite. Roberts demonstrates that in Tolkien’s work time is a riddle.331

So are life and death,332 writing (language),333 and art.334 We might add friendship, romance, providence, and strength to the list as well.335 Most importantly, for our purposes, we can join Mulhall in saying that riddling and nonsense are the proper genre in which to speak about God.

The best way to appreciate the transcendence of God to human language is thus not to fall into silence, avoiding even the assertion that nothing is assertable of him, or to attempt some inconceivable synthesis of affirmation and negation; it is rather endlessly to employ that language in relation to him, and endlessly to experience its inevitable collapse upon itself.336

Like a ship quartering against the wind, sideways speech is often the best way to approaching that which is always out of reach.

II.A.2. Riddling Involves Attentiveness

If riddles are able to reach the heights, it is because their foundations are wide.

Riddling draws on knowledge collected from a lifetime of experience. This collection of experience is not sorted through systematically. One tends to answer to riddles by trial and error, and the answer, if it comes at all, comes via patient, hopeful expectation, by

331 Roberts 132. 332 Roberts, 133. 333 Roberts, 129-130. 334 Roberts 77. 335 Roberts goes on to point out that, for a Catholic like Tolkien, the answer to all of these riddles is found not in knowledge, but in love. This is the reason that evil is always defeated in Tolkien; it cannot guess the riddle of power rightly because it has not developed the practice of love and therefore cannot recognize it. “Even the very wise cannot see all ends,” says Gandalf. 336 Mulhall, 59.

165 attending carefully to the question while waiting for a solution which cannot be guessed.

Learning to speak and understand sideways speech is similar to learning to see the beauty in an artform. It is a skill that can be developed, but the means of doing so tends to be long exposure and careful attentiveness alongside someone who can already see that which the novice cannot. The master cannot directly show it to her pupil, but she can offer tips, additional examples, and gestures toward it until, if things go well, the student’s eyes are opened to see what was formerly hidden despite being in plain sight.

The same characteristics which Roberts identifies in Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon riddling and which Mulhall sees in Wittgenstein are also common in Scripture. As we turn to a biblical model for sideways speech, four basic themes emerge. First, Scriptural riddling is characterized by a demand for humility. Second, the student of “the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov. 1:6) must develop an attentiveness to the world and a wide base of knowledge upon which she can draw. Third, riddles draw upon and carry within them a set of narratives which they explain and which explain them. It is an integrative and holistic way of knowing that resists the specialist and rewards the curious.

Finally, biblical riddling is characterized by non-terminal “solutions” or what Mulhall calls “self-subverting language” which means that the answering of one riddle merely pulls you deeper into the game and exposes another perhaps even richer mystery. In this way, the riddles of Scripture fold back in on themselves and offer an ever-increasing body of wisdom to those who come to see their answers. The riddles grow along with the one who asks and answers them.

II.B. Scripture Models a Riddling Approach Toward Theology Characterized by 1) Humility, 2) Attentiveness, 3) Essential Narrative Backgrounds, and 4) Non-terminal “Solutions.”

166 Hauerwas’s example of aphoristic theology is helpful, but we have an even better source and recommendation for this methodology, Scripture itself. Aphorism, parable, proverb, and riddles are, of course, deeply biblical ways of approaching theology and ethics. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament, especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes seems to view riddles as the best medium for acquiring wisdom and insight,

To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. (Prov. 1:2–6)

These same approaches are characteristic of the teachings of Jesus in his parables, his sayings, and his apocalyptic discourses.337 The Johannine literature is replete with riddling language – “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God” (Jn. 1:1). John the Baptist’s description of Jesus in John 1:30 is frequently made less confusing in translation, but literally reads very much like a riddle,

“After me comes a man who comes in front of me because he was before me.”338 The

337 For more on Jesus and riddles see Tom Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler: The Power of Ambiguity in the Gospels (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). Thatcher’s thesis is that Jesus used riddles and elusive speech to establish his authority as a teacher and to communicate his message. On parables see Kylne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). On Jesus as sage see Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); Matthew, Smyth and Helwys Biblical Commentary Series (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2006), 16-21. Witherington argues that Matthew’s Gospel presents Jesus less as a new Moses delivering a new law and more as a new Solomon whose teachings are part of Israel’s wisdom tradition. These sources focus on Jesus’s teachings, but their methodology is equally helpful for an analysis of Jesus’s riddling actions e.g. eating with tax collectors, pardoning the woman caught in adultery, walking on water, riding a colt into Jerusalem, etc. 338 The translation is my own. See also Thatcher’s commentary on the riddling character of the passage. Thatcher, xv-xvii.

167 Epistle of James seems to rely directly on the teachings of Jesus and thus its aphoristic tendencies mirror his own.339 Revelation more than any other book in the Bible engages in extensive symbolic language which invites the reader to solve a series of riddles in order to discern its meaning. Even Paul, who tends to be more straightforward and systematic in his writing frequently employs riddling speech and ultimately always points to mysteries whose meaning only becomes clear by pointing to even deeper mysteries in the nature of God himself (e.g. Rom 11:33; 1 Cor 15:51; Phil 3:10).

II.B.1. Riddling demands openness and humility to receive insight as a gift.

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. (Prov. 26:12)

In order for riddling to effectively produce insight it demands a posture of openness and humble curiosity. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, “Only by seeing God can we learn humility; only the humble can see God.”340 The fool cannot understand the meaning of a riddle because he assumes he is already wiser than the sage who asks it, or, acknowledging his foolishness, he has no desire to become wise. Lady Wisdom calls out to them, but the fools, “love being simple . . . delight in their scoffing, [and] hate knowledge” (Prov. 1:12). The wise, on the other hand, cry out and beg for wisdom like a hungry man begs for food. “They seek it like silver/and search for it like hidden treasure”

(Prov. 2:3-5). An attitude of cynical suspicion, sophisticated disdain, or a hubristic

339 John A. Burns, “James: The Wisdom of Jesus,” Chriswell Theological Review 1 no.1 (1986): 113-135. 340 Bonhoeffer’s original quotation is, “Only the obedient believe. Only believers obey.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Vol. 4 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 68.

168 confidence that one has it all figured out are prohibited by the one who would engage in riddling.341

Theological riddles ranging from Anselm’s to John’s “The

Word was with God and was God” do not demand that we see the answer at once or that we see it fully.342 Their work is about the development of language, or perhaps better, the development of a way of seeing that makes sense of language, and this new vision can develop slowly by working through answers/understandings which are definitely wrong even before one has arrived at the “right” answer. We can know that whatever it means for the Word to be with God and to be God, it does not mean that the Word has usurped the Father’s position the way that Zeus overthrew and replaced Chronos. We know this through what Diamond calls, “a borrowed sense, on an advance from the solution to the problem.”343 She goes on to explain with reference to the Sphinx’s riddle.344

This capacity to reject candidate-solutions is really quite problematic. For suppose the Sphinx has asked you her riddle, and you’re groping for a solution. As a centipede goes by, you think, “Well, it can’t be him; he’s got too many legs at every time of day.” By the same reasoning though: the solution to the riddle has to be something that at some time has more than two legs. Men have two legs or one or none, and never more; so—it seems—it can’t be man either. If the sort of reasoning by which you exclude the centipede would also exclude man, and if man is the solution, then it seems you were correct in excluding the centipede only by accident, that you had no right to your certainty he wasn’t it.345

341 One thinks of Vizzini, the criminal genius from William Goldman’s The Princess Bride in the comic mode of this archetypical faux-sage and of Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov as the tragic instantiation. 342 See Cora Diamond, “Riddles and Anselm’s Riddle,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 51 (London: Blackwell, 1977), 143-168. This treatment of Anselm’s Ontological Argument as a riddle is a nearly peerless performance of the riddling approach to theology which I am advocating. 343 Diamond, 147. 344 What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? The answer is man, who crawls as an infant, walks as an adult, and leans on a cane in old age. 345 Diamond, 147.

169 Theological riddles point towards a language we cannot yet speak, one which we are unable to speak before we find ourselves in a position to speak it, “a language given to us by the being to whom it applies, and whose revelation of himself will affect the radical conversion of all our existing concepts of him.”346

One who would learn from riddling ought to smile a bit as she scratches her head and says, “Hmmm…I wonder” while biding her time in anticipation of the, “Ah-ha!” He must sit in the upper room for ten days waiting for the Spirit’s surprising descent before the flame of inspiration will anoint his head. She must appeal to the master and say,

“Where shall we go, you have the words of eternal life?” even while acknowledging that those words are a mystery, a case not yet cracked. The Gospels consistently display the apostles as confused, frustrated, and mistaken about what Jesus’s words meant, especially when they seek to understand them on their own. But in those rare moments when the apostles give the correct answer, Jesus reminds them of the gifted character of such insights, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven”

(Mt 16:17).

II.B.2 Riddling is neither deductive nor inductive and demands persistent attentiveness to a world at large in order to achieve the critical “ah-ha!” which marks its success.

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the heavens, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the heart of the sea, and the way of a man with a maiden. (Prov. 30:18–19)347

346 Mulhall, 38. is usually translated “in the midst of” in this context ( בֶלְב ) The translation is mine. Leb 347 and “heart” is perhaps overly literal, but it serves to highlight the parallelism between the “heart” of the sea and the implicit heart of the man and the maiden in lines c and d of the passage.

170 That riddling is not deductive is evidenced by the fact that there are “wrong” or

“worse” answers to riddles which nevertheless follow deductively sound lines of argumentation. One of the oldest riddles in history comes from ancient Sumer and runs thus, “There is a house. One enters it blind but comes out seeing. What is it?” An ophthalmological hospital is a deductively viable option, but a school is clearly what the riddler intends for his interlocutor to see. Like and unlike deduction, riddling produces truths which are in a certain sense certain but in another sense not. Nor is riddling simply inductive. The truth of an aphorism is not probabilistic and the means for determining which observations are relevant to its solution are more mysterious than the inductive methods employed by, for example, modern medical studies. It is neither inductive nor deductive but shares some characteristics with both.

Like inductive reasoning, riddling demands a wide breadth of knowledge gleaned from attentiveness to the world. A lack of exposure or knowledge of any one piece of the riddle’s reference makes the entire saying entirely opaque.

Until we have the solution to the riddle, together with an understanding of how it counts as a solution to it, to that extent we lack an understanding of the riddle phrase that the question employs, and so lack an understanding of the question.348

There is an old riddle that works when spoken but not when written: What’s black and white and red all over? The riddle hinges on the homophonic character of the words ‘red’ and ‘read,’ and the correct answer is a newspaper. However, young boys such as I once was and such as my son, Judah, is now, boys who delight in violence and wild animals more than in journalism, seem to prefer an alternative answer. What’s black and white and red all over? A zebra’s nose after he got sassy with me. This second answer, while

348 Mulhall, 35.

171 amusing, does not have the satisfying “click” that a newspaper has, and its inferiority as an answer is evidenced by the way that variations on the bloody zebra answer proliferate.349

When I told Judah the answer about the zebra’s nose, he laughed, but when I gave the real answer, a newspaper, the result was simply an intensified confusion on his part.

Being a child of the 21st century, he has no idea what a newspaper is. Because he has the relevant experience of exotic animals and bloody noses, he could grasp the pseudo- answer, but he could neither guess the riddle’s true answer nor understand how the answer could be true even when told it.350 The declaration that a newspaper is the right answer deprived him even of the false sense of confidence brought on by his understanding of how a bloody zebra could meet the riddle’s description. That which had made sense initially was declared wrong and that which made no sense was now declared right. Such is the way with riddles. Riddling speech is designed to delight and enrich those with the capacity to guess the answer and to frustrate and further confuse those who lack such capacity. “It’s only when one has the solution that one knows how to take the question.”351 Samson is right when he says to the Philistines, “You could not have guessed my riddle if you had not plowed with my heifer!” The Philistines who had never encountered a hive of bees in the carcass of a lion were incapable of seeing the meaning in Samson’s words.

349 When Judah told the riddle to a friend, he changed the answer to, “A white tiger after I set it on fire.” His older and less barbaric sister suggested “a penguin with a sunburn.” The reader likely can already recall one or two other potential answers from childhood. 350 The subtlety of the pun was also lost on him. When I explained that a newspaper was like a book without a cover, he nodded . . . and then asked if someone’s nose had bled on it. Wisdom is not always found from the mouth of babes whatever the proverb may say. 351 Diamond, 145.

172 How then is a person to obtain the initial information to deposit in the bank of wisdom and capitalize on its high interest rate? How can we take the first steps in learning to make the gestalt switch between duck and rabbit? Proverbs answers with the command, “Go to the ant!” (6:6). Ants and badgers, locusts and lizards, chemistry and construction, music and cooking – all are sources of wisdom to the wise in Proverbs, but only if one is willing to attend to them.352 The sage looks out from his window and observes a man being seduced (7:6-23). He attends to reports of bandits on the road and listens to their plotting (1:8). He notes the differing kinds of fire produced from burning thorns and burning logs (Eccles. 7:6). The immense variety among the sages’ allusions demonstrates that the authors of Israel’s wisdom literature were intensely curious people.

Their wisdom is related to that which is seen by attending to the world around them.

Jesus follows in this tradition, and his parables, aphorisms, and teachings demonstrate the same sort of attentiveness as Israel’s sages. He draws on the practices of farming, sheep-herding, sewing, brewing, baking, architecture, war, and parenting despite never having been a farmer, shepherd, sewer, brewer (turning water to wine notwithstanding), architect, general, or parent. He points to inscriptions on coins, the way the wind blows, and the growth of plants. He alludes to the behavior of field workers, domestic servants, rich money-lenders, and kings. Besides these contemporary examples, he has internalized the teachings of the Old Testament to such a degree that he can draw

352 “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.” (Prov. 6:6); Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise: the ants are a people not strong, / yet they provide their food in the summer; / the rock badgers are a people not mighty, / yet they make their homes in the cliffs; / the locusts have no king, / yet all of them march in rank; / the lizard you can take in your hands / yet it is in kings’ palaces” (Prov. 30:24-28). “Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house (Prov. 24:27). “Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day and like vinegar on soda” (Prov. 25:20).

173 from that rich and deep well to speak an apt word in a variety of circumstances. The same pattern holds for James and to a lesser extent for Paul.353 The wise, in Scripture, pay attention to the world around them.

This broad knowledge upon which biblical riddling is built was not merely intellectual. Scripture’s sages acquired it with their bodies as well as minds. Their storehouses of information were filled not merely with abstract content, but with practical knowledge rooted in their bodily experiences. Though he spends much time meditating, reflecting, and looking down from his window, the Solomon of Proverbs is also actively engaged in the world around him. Likewise, Qoheleth derives much of his knowledge not merely by watching but by doing. He learns with his hands and his stomach, his mouth and his body (Eccl 2:1-7). The wise woman of the speaks from the intense bodily experience of sexual longing when she advises the daughters of Jerusalem to beware of awakening love before the time is right (Song 2:7; 3:5; 3:10; 5:8; 8:4).

Much of the knowledge from which wisdom is derived is tacit knowledge, and the answer to many riddles arises from the cultivation of bodily knowledge.354 Indeed, the

353 This is not to imply that Paul is less wise than James, merely that he tends to operate in a different genre, but nevertheless does employ riddles, proverbs, and aphorisms with some regularity. 354 The bodily character of much of riddling knowledge is not unique to Hebrew writers. Roberts points to the same tacit character of knowledge in Anglo-Saxon riddling and in Tolkien. His analysis of the bodily character of riddling traces scenes from The Hobbit. In Bilbo’s riddle game with Gollum, the riddles are frequently solved via bodily clues rather than by mental dexterity. A fish splashes Bilbo’s foot and he calls out the answer. Gollum has trouble answer the riddle of the two eyes (sun on the daisies) because he has lived so long underground, and he is only saved when he (reluctantly) remembers the feel of the sun from which he fled long ago. This all comes to a climax when Bilbo’s final improper riddle is created by accident (Gandalf might prefer us to say by providence) when his “clever” fingers brush against the ring in his pocket. Riddling is thus shown to be a game closely connected with bodies and ways of life. Roberts, 126f.

174 bodily experience in some sense is the knowing of the truth toward which it points.355

Scripture does not minimize the physicality of insight but embraces it. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8).356

Their unflagging interest in the world and their close attentiveness to it provided the sages of the Bible with the stock of images from which they constructed their riddles.

They found riddles and the answers to riddles by sustained attention to nature, to human society, to craftsmanship, and to the heavens. These teachers expected their students to engage in this same attentiveness if they were to become wise. One cannot learn from the of the ant if one has no experience of ants. But neither does attention to ants necessarily and straightforwardly result in a disciplined work ethic or even an appreciation of one. Rather, wisdom emerges from or supervenes upon the wide collection of experiences which characterize the sage’s life because her heart is directed toward wisdom and filled with the fear of the Lord (Prov. 9:10). In the same way, the observations collected from our attentiveness to the world are the loaves and fishes from which the Lord makes a feast of wisdom. Riddling is always a gift and yet before the gift is given the Lord says to us, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see” (Mk. 6:38).

II.B.3. Riddling demands a familiarity with specific narratives, narratives which the riddles explain and which are also necessary to explain the riddle.

355 Wittgenstein comments that “the lighting up of an aspect seems half visual experience, half thought.” Philosophical Investigations, 207e. 356 Michael Cox, “Neither Literal Nor Metaphorical: Divine Body Traditions, Indispensable Pictures, and Wittgensteinian ‘Secondary Sense,” Modern Theology 13, no. 3 (July 2015): 445-468. Cox’s treatment of the divine body is an excellent exploration of a particular kind of sideways speech which Scripture and the Christian tradition have employed to talk about God via anthropomorphism, specifically bodily language.

175 As we have seen, riddling demands a wide store of general knowledge and experiences in the world, but it also demands mastery of a particular body of knowledge

– that of the relevant narratives. The narrative brackets of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings make The Hobbit into more than just a children’s story. In the same way,

Ecclesiastes read on its own is a radically different book than Ecclesiastes read as a frustrated lament standing between Israel’s exile and her redemption.357 Jesus’s seemingly callous comment to the Syro-Phonecian woman about not giving the children’s food to the dogs strikes the reader’s ears differently when the unity of Jews and Gentiles accomplished in the Church stands in the background. Riddle 64 in The

Exeter Book illustrates this characteristic well.

He sat at his wine with his two wives and his two sons and his two daughters, the beloved sisters, and their two sons, goodly first born. The father of each of these noble ones was there and there also an uncle and a nephew. Five in all, men and women, were sitting together.358

At first blush, it seems like a standard multiple relations riddle, a more complicated version of “Two fathers and two sons went fishing; each caught a fish, and only three fish

357 The tendency among much of biblical scholarship to ignore or reject the canonical context of biblical books in order to get at a supposedly truer interpretation that reflects the original intent of the author misses this point and thereby frequently ends up offering readings of books and passages in Scripture that are puzzling to those who know the story-world in which these books are situated. The same phenomenon may be observed in theology which attempts to isolate the insights of Christian thinkers from the wider Christian context that properly informs their meaning. For those who do not know or appreciate the narrative backgrounds, Ecclesiastes is a nihilistic farce and its final verses are merely a redaction properly excised from its pages. Similarly, the reader of Augustine’s Confessions reads his intense sorrow and guilt over stealing the pears as the psychological hang-up of an over scrupulous prude instead of identification with fallen humanity and participation in the sin of Adam. 358 Kevin Crossley-Holland trans., The Exeter Book Riddles, (New York: Penguin Classics, 1993), R44.

176 were caught.” However, the riddle does something unusual in that it asks for a name rather than simply an untangling of the relationships. Unless one is familiar with the particular narrative to which it refers, the riddle is unsolvable. It assumes that anyone asking or answering this riddle would already be familiar with the relevant story.

Because they are only answerable by those whose particular form of life has prepared them to see the answer as an answer and who already know the defining narratives of the culture, riddles function as helpful shibboleths.359

Jesus certainly uses riddling speech as a sort of test for determining one’s place relative to the Kingdom. His oft-repeated closing to parables points to this tendency, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mt 11:15; Mk 4:9, 23; Lk 8:8; 14:35). His parable of the tenants (Mk. 12; Mt. 21; Lk. 20) is a particularly apt example. The Pharisees, knowing the relevant narratives as they did, recognized themselves as those against whom the parable was directed. Modern readers lacking such knowledge, find the story confusing.

Perhaps more than any other genre, Scripture’s apocalyptic writing exemplifies the way that riddling draws upon and explains a set of narrative backgrounds. One of the

359A friend reports that his preaching among the Kalenjin people of rural Kenya was received much more readily when he was able to incorporate both Tangochik and Kalewenoik, traditional riddles and aphorisms, into his preaching, especially when he could tell the stories to which the riddles and sayings pointed. For examples of traditional Kalenjin riddles and aphorisms, see John K. Terer Tangochik Ap Kalenjin (Nairobi: East Literature Bureau, 1974; and Kiprono arap Kotut, Tangochik ak Kalewenoik ab Kalenjin (Nairobi: Jemisik Cultural Books, 1990?) – translated for the author by Monte Cox. Another example of riddles as boundary markers and tests of inclusion can possibly be seen in the Exeter Book. Riddles 74-81, sometimes called “The Obscene Riddles,” appear at first glance to be merely puerile jokes, startlingly out of place in a monastic text like the Exeter Book, but they can also be read as shibbolethic tests of Paul’s aphorism, “To the pure, all things are pure.” Examples with translation and brief analysis of these riddles is available at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/anglo- saxon/flowers/enigmata.html.

177 keys to understanding the riddling speech of the Bible is to read it through the lens of the biblical narrative. Reading Revelation is much like reading the political cartoons of a foreign culture from another era. To understand even the most straightforward of the pictures John’s presents to its readers demands an intimate familiarity with the language and stories of the Old Testament as well as a thorough understanding of the

Roman Imperial context in which the book was written. Merely the fact that we do not spend Roman coins or see Roman graffiti on the walls of our cities means that the interpretation of the book is much more difficult for even the most dedicated scholar of the 21st century than it would have been for the uneducated Jews who first encountered it at the time of its writing.360 If we did not have the stories of Abraham, Moses, the

Babylonian Exile, as well as the Evangelists’ accounts of the life of Jesus and Luke’s history of the early Church in Acts, Revelation would utterly inscrutable.

Such was the situation Paul faced on Mars Hill. Because the normal context for preaching is the synagogue, Paul struggled in Athens to find a narrative from which he can pull aphorisms to point to the truth of the gospel. The philosophers of the Areopagus did not know the Hebrew Scriptures, so Paul settled on “In him we live and move and have our being” and “We are his offspring,” lines drawn from Greek poetry which allude to the narratives of the Hellenistic . His Athenian interlocutors were more apt to puzzle out these riddles than the ones he might have employed in Jerusalem e.g., “The

360 For more on the importance of Old Testament background narratives and contemporary (first-century) allusions in Revelation see Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), 1–60; Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the (New York: Cambridge, 1993), 1–30.

178 God of our fathers appointed [me] to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth…” (Acts 22:14–15).

In each of these biblical contexts we see the point illustrated again: Riddling can only be effective once the relevant narratives are known and understood. The aphorisms and riddles of the wise interpret, extend, and reinforce the defining narratives and the forms of life of the sages who construct them. Abstracted from those narratives and these forms of life, they become at best obscure and at worst misleading. Thus, riddling approaches to theology like the one proposed in this chapter and carried out in the next are only useful to those who already know the relevant stories and bring to the riddles the relevant skills of interpretation. It is an approach for those who have ears to hear.

II.B.4. Riddling is iterative and grows through self-reinforcing insights as opposed linear thinking which terminates with the apprehension of a static truth.

“To the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Mt 13:12)

Riddling has a spiraled and self-reinforcing character such that through it those who are wise become increasingly wise while those who are fools are incapable of even beginning the path to wisdom. Those with ears to hear, hear. Those without them find in riddling only a stumbling stone and a rock of offense.

One of the best and more intriguing riddles in Proverbs comes in 4:7 where the author tells his son, “The Beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom / and whatever you get, get insight” (Prov 4:7). How can the beginning of wisdom be to get wisdom!?

Taken straightforwardly, this is utterly unhelpful advice reminiscent of telling the poor man that the trick to getting money is the acquisition of wealth. But to the one who has

179 eyes to see, the riddle rings true. The one who acquires wisdom is the one who has wisdom. The one who has it, gets it.

Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning (Prov 9:7-9).

Often, this self-reinforcing growth comes through riddles which, in themselves or in conjunction with other riddles, appear self-contradictory or paradoxical. This is why, as Hui notes, “The best aphorists never wrote just one aphorism, but almost always a great many. . . so while a single aphorism might be a hegemonic hedgehog, a collection of aphorisms morphs into a multitude of cunning little foxes.”361 In the Proverbs the reader is cautioned not to answer a fool according to his folly lest you become like him yourself and then immediately advised to answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes (Prov. 26:4-5).362 Jesus’s beatitudes have some of this same flavor to them. “Happy are those who mourn” (Matt 5:4) as does James’s aphorism, “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up” (Js 4:10). If one is seeking to be

361 Andrew Hui, “In Praise of Aphorisms,” Aeon (June 1, 2020), https://aeon.co/essays/aphorisms-tell-philosophys-history-as-fragments-not-systems, (Accessed 7/27/2020). Hui’s reference to hedgehogs and foxes nicely illustrates again the importance of knowing the relevant background narratives when attempting to understand a riddle. In this case, the relevant background is Archilochus’s aphorism, “πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα" - a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one large thing” and the history of its applications most notably in and Isaiah Berlin. 362 Traditional English proverbial riddling follows this same pattern of contradictory advice. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” but also, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” “Slow and steady wins the race,” but also, “The race is to the swiftest.” “Good things come to those who wait” but “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

180 exalted, doesn’t that undermine the humility requisite for the first clause of the aphorism?

The wise see more than simple contradiction in these riddles.

Other times, instead of appearing in contrasting pairs or containing internal tensions, the answer to one riddle opens up an entire new world of mysteries. Before the scene in which Jesus asks, “Who do men say that I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the

Christ,” Mark’s Gospel explores the nature of seeing and understanding in two stories. In the first, the disciples are shown to be as blind as the Pharisees. In Mark 8:7, Jesus rails against the Pharisees for demanding a sign immediately after he has just miraculously fed four thousand people in the wilderness with only seven loaves and a few small fish. The disciples begin an argument about what his riddle, “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees,” can mean. Their minds are in their bellies, and so they assume that Jesus’s words relate to their not having any bread on the boat with them – this despite the fact that he has just shown that he is capable of feeding his people miraculously. Their blindness is presented to the reader not in a parable but in an encounter Jesus has with a blind man. The healing of this man’s blindness is unusual in that it comes in two stages. His sight is restored, but what he sees he does not understand. “I see people, but they look like trees walking”

(Mk 8:24). Then Jesus lays his hands on the man and “he saw everything clearly.” Mark positions the story between the account of the Pharisees’ and disciples’ blindness and

Peter’s famous confession in which he gives the correct answer to Jesus’s riddle, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, but clearly does not see the full meaning of his correct answer. Jesus follows up his praise of Peter’s response by declaring that the Messiah must die and be raised to life again. Like the blind man, Peter sees something – that Jesus is the Christ – but his vision is still unclear because he

181 doesn’t understand what it means to be the Christ. His answer to the first riddle entitles him to hear the second, but it is no guarantee that he will “see everything clearly.” This same pattern of the solution to one riddle opening up another even more mysterious question is typical of Christian theology.363

III. Conclusion

We have seen in chapter 4 how Hauerwas’s theology helpfully Christianizes

MacIntyre’s project and how this Christianized virtue ethic provides a corrective to one half of the problematic ethic within Churches of Christ characterized by the maxim, “Try hard to do what the Bible says.” With their help, Restorationists have access to a sophisticated tradition of virtue ethics which deepens rather than replaces our appreciation for biblical commands. We have seen in this chapter the ways in which

Hauerwas’s theology fails to give a robust enough account of the Spirit to move from character to theosis and thereby correct the self-reliance expressed in, “Try hard to do what the Bible says. However, the chapter has also articulated a riddling methodology by which we can “go on in the same way” as Hauerwas but travel far enough to fill up what is lacking in his pneumatology.364 That filling up is the task to which I now turn.

At least some of the problem in the way that Churches of Christ have historically approached the topic of pneumatology stems from the overly systematic and straightforward approach that we have taken to the topic. Perhaps a different approach will yield a richer appreciation for the role of the Spirit in the Christian life without falling prey to the individualism, emotionalism, and subjectivism which both Churches of

363 At its best, theology is, “the graced dilation of our language under the pressures of mystical experience.” Cox, “Divine Body,” 467. 364 The quotation is from Wittgenstein, PI, 185.

182 Christ and Hauerwas have associated with talk about the Holy Spirit. Though my treatments of the Restoration Movement, MacIntyre, and Hauerwas have employed some elements of the riddling methodology outlined above, what follows in the next three chapters will be much more explicitly and intentionally gnomic.

We have seen that Scripture commends to its readers a riddling approach to theology and the pursuit of truth in general, and this approach is especially fitting for the study of the Holy Spirit. As Gregory Nazianzus says,

Now, if someone seeks to understand the heavenly Spirit’s divinity Through the pages of divinely inspired Law, He shall see many ways, close-packed, collected into one, If he has yearned and gathered something of the Holy Spirit with his heart and if his piercing mind has perceived. But if he seeks a plain assertion of his beloved divinity, Let him know this, he seeks unsensibly. For it would not have been right, … For, with beginners, it is not the time For more consummate language. Who shows a fire’s whole glow To still-dim eyes or gorges them with light insatiable? It is better if, bit by bit, you bring on the fiery glowings, Lest you even hurt in some way the springs of a sweeter light. …365

In order to “bring on the fiery glowings bit by bit,” I explore three riddles, each of which builds upon the others and none of which should be taken as the final word on the role of the Spirit in ethics. The first riddle asks how God’s presence can be a person and explores what it means for the Holy Spirit to be someone rather than only something.

The second explores sanctification, theosis, and Christian character by asking, “How can the creature become what the creator is?” Finally, we turn to the heart of Christian ethics, that which Christ says sums up the law and prophets and which John says is the one

365 Gregory Nazianzus, Dogmatic Poems 1.1.3, On the Holy Spirit 10–30, in The Theological Poetry of St. , trans. Peter Gilbert (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 43–44.

183 essential mark of those who are in Christ – love. Our last riddle is taken from Augustine.

“How can sinful people whose loves are disordered love God and love one another without merely reinforcing their own sinfulness? The answer to all three riddles is: by the Holy Spirit. To say that this is the answer means both that in naming the Spirit in the context of these linguistic puzzles we do actually arrive somewhere. There is a right answer, and there is a kind of confidence that comes with seeing that it is the right answer. But to answer these riddles correctly is not to arrive at a static finality. As James

Alison notes, “Theological thinking is slow thinking . . . It is much more like feeling your way into a new relationship than it is achieving clarity about a new definition.”366 Like learning the shape of a new relationship, there are moments in which we say, “Ah-ha!

Now I see how things are,” but we will say so without any illusion that our insights, while true, have exhausted the subject or brought us to a place where nothing more may be learned. The place where we arrive in answering these riddles with By the Holy Spirit is just the naming of a mystery which can be seen only by grace, something that can be shared and taught in hopes that others will also see but which cannot be proved to or even understood and rejected by those who do not see.367

366 James Alison, “Some Notes for a Girardian Reading of the Book of Revelation” JamesAlison.com, (Developed from a talk prepared for La Philo éclaire la Ville, Lyon, , Jan 23-26, 2020) available online at James Alison, http://jamesalison.co.uk/some-notes-for-a- girardian-reading-of-the-book-of-revelation/?fbclid=IwAR2PB8KBE9IE sje6oYwprKDiDdIomAuZmJDgUH-fK7hLqyH06Ls1Ak7-2vI. 367 A truly risky proposition for a dissertation which must be defended!

184 CHAPTER VI

RIDDLE ONE – THE SPIRIT IS A CHARACTER: HOW CAN THE POWER AND

PRESENCE OF GOD BE A PERSON?

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin (Mic. 3:8).

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you (Ps. 139:7–12).

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you (John 14:16–17).

I. Introduction: How Can God’s Power and Presence Be a Person?

If one were to ask where Tolkien is and what he does in The Lord of the Rings, two radically different answers are possible. The first is to say that he is everywhere in the book, that every word of dialog and every action of every character are in some sense his, that his presence and power are suffused through every petal of every flower in

Rivendell and every flake of ash spewing from Mt. Doom. As the author, he is transcendent over the story. In him, the whole world lives and moves and has its being.

185 The second answer is to say, that he is nowhere and plays no role in the book. No Oxford philologist appears in its pages. Tolkien is not “in the book” at all in this second sense.

This is how both Hauerwas and Churches of Christ have frequently pictured the Holy

Spirit’s relationship to the world. His presence in the story is real and potent, but it is transcendent, impersonal, and impossible for those within the story to discern. Or, to switch metaphors, the Spirit is like an expecting mother and the world like the unborn child within her womb. The world is dependent upon her, has no life apart from her, exists entirely within her, yet knows her only as a vague sort of warmth and life-giving power. They can affirm that she is a person, but they do not know her as such.

If we were instead to ask how Kurt Vonnegut is in his novel Timequake, we would see a different paradigm. He too is suffused throughout the novel, exercising the author’s transcendent role within it. But he is also the one who attends the clambake for

Killgore Trout and sits down at his table to have a conversation about the nature of free will and determinism. He is a transcendent author who delights in breaking the fourth wall and commenting upon the story as it unfolds, one who is recognized as the author and also as a character by those whose existence is utterly dependent upon him. Yet he has created, and therefore interacts with, the other characters in his story as truly free individuals capable to knowing him and being known by him as an other.368 Though all models or illustrations fall infinitely short of the reality of God and his interaction with the world, our first riddle aims to help Churches of Christ to think and talk about the Holy

Spirit more in the mode of Vonnegut than of Tolkien. Christians are well-equipped to

368 To say that Vonnegut’s characters are truly free is perhaps to give even that exceptional and wildly generous author too much credit. Perhaps it is better to say that they are as free and as real as Vonnegut can make them. God, of course, is infinitely better, infinitely wilder, and infinitely more generous than Vonnegut.

186 think of Jesus Christ in this way. The incarnation demands it. But we in Churches of

Christ are tempted to see the incarnation as a one-off, a unique event in the life of God and the world in which the infinite distance between the creator and creature was crossed.

“Wouldn’t it have been amazing to actually walk and talk with Jesus?!” we say, forgetting that Christ himself said, “It is better for you if I depart” (Jn. 16:7) so that Spirit will come. His promise not to leave his disciples as orphans rings hollow if the person of

Christ is replaced with merely the transcendent power and presence of God which was already and just as fully available to them before Pentecost as it was after the tongues of fire anointed them.

It is certainly true that the incarnation was unique and that in Christ, God did something he had never done before and has never done since. This unique event is the fulsome expression of something that has always been true about God – Father, Son, and

Spirit – namely, that God has always been both transcendent and immanent, both the author of and a character within the story of the world. What we will say about the Spirit applies mutatis mutandis to Christ (and to the Father), and indeed, we learn to speak of the Spirit in these ways because of what we see revealed most clearly in Christ.

How can God’s presence and power suffused throughout all creation, the author’s influence on the story, also be a person, a character within the story who can be known, loved, and turned to for help? By the Holy Spirit. The ethic Churches of Christ need demands that the Spirit be a person who can help us, but Christians frequently talk of the

Spirit in ways that do not seem typical of persons, even when they formally confess that the Spirit is “the third person of the Trinity.” To help see how the answer to the riddle,

“How can God’s presence be a person?” is by the Holy Spirit, we will first offer the

187 beginnings of a description (though not a definition) of what it means to be a person.

Then we will examine the ways in which Christians rightly speak about the Spirit as the power, presence, goodness, grace, and beauty of God which blesses and gives being to all things and also how Christians rightly speak of the Spirit as “another helper” who is both like and unlike the Son in his interaction with the world but who is nevertheless a character in the story as much as the Son. Finally, we will note the different ways that those who understand this riddle and those who don’t speak about the Spirit.

II. What It Means to be a Character is to Have a Role in the Story of God.

In pneumatological debates, the question of whether the Holy Spirit is a person or an impersonal force is almost as old as the Church itself. The ’ arguments against the idea that the Spirit was simply a divine wind, a force or power, or an activity of God, are evidence that the temptation to treat the Spirit as less than a character in the story of God and the world are not unique to modern times.369 Even among those who embrace and emphasize the doctrine of the Trinity the of the Spirit is frequently asserted and then subsumed under a more impersonal category such as the vinculum caritatis in Augustine or “the power of Jesus Christ” in Barth. While these

369 Two quotations typify such responses: “Just as the Light spoken of [in Scripture] is not a physical light but an intellectual light since it illuminates the mind, not the face, and just as he who is called love is not a disposition but rather a being who loves what he has made and takes care of it, so Jesus does not address the Spirit as a blast of wind, but rather presents him as an incorporeal and life-giving being.” , Fragments on John 3, in “The Bodiless Spirit is not just Wind,” Ancient Christian Doctrine Vol. 4: We Believe in the Holy Spirit, ed. and trans. Joel C. Elowsky (Downers Grove, IN: Intervarsity Press, 2009), 17. “If he were considered only as an activity of God, he would be the action but would not himself do anything and would cease to exist as soon as the action occurred. For this is the nature of an activity. How is it then that he acts and says various things, and defines, and is grieved, and is angered, and has all the qualities that belong clearly to one who moves, and not to movement?” Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 31.6, NPNF 2.7: 319.

188 categories are both true and helpful, they all too often become reductionistic, and those who rely upon them tend to treat the Holy Spirit as a presence or power associated with a more explicitly personal character like the Father or Son rather than as a person himself.370 The Son, who bears such impersonal titles as “Word” or “Wisdom”, and the

Father, who is just as unincarnate as the Spirit, do not suffer the same fate because the

Church identifies them with the biblical narratives in which they act as characters. The

Father is whoever does the creating in Genesis 1. The Son is whoever did the preaching in . But the Spirit also has a story in Scripture if we have eyes to see it.

The means by which we will counter this tendency to reduce the Spirit to a thing differs from that of the patristic authors and from the majority of modern commentators on the biblical text. While they sought to show that the Spirit was a person by exploring the essence of personhood and the nature of a hypostasis, we want instead to understand what a person is narratively, i.e., in relation to others within a shared story, the story of

Jesus Christ and his Church.371 Metaphysical arguments have their place in pneumatology, but the goal of this chapter is to find helpful ways to talk about the Spirit in the regular ethical speech of Christians today. Therefore, I am less interested here in whether the Spirit is a hypostasis/persona (which, of course, I maintain that he is) and

370 Eugene F. Rogers Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 141. 371 “… the question of the personhood of the Spirit has been deeply intertwined with the shifting paradigms of how to best understand ‘person[hood]’ in the given cultural context. Unlike in the past, the key to establishing personhood in contemporary culture and theology has to do with relationality and community. Whereas in tradition, persona was conceived in individualistic terms … in contemporary culture personhood is another way of saying belonging, relationality, communion, community. This is one of the most important insights of the contemporary trinitarian which also opens new venues for considering the trinitarian communal personhood of the Spirit.” Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Spirit and Salvation, vol. 4 of A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 33–34.

189 more in whether or not he is a character in the story which Christians tell. Such a move is both more satisfying to modern readers’ sensibilities and more biblical in its approach, even if it is not the norm among biblical scholars writing on the Spirit in the Gospels.372

The claim, “Christian ethics demands that we recognize the Spirit as a person,” speaks to the narrative logic of the gospel rather than to metaphysics. Though it may be necessary, it is not sufficient to speak of the Spirit only as an agent or rational being or an

“I-ness.”373 He is and must be spoken of as a storied agent possessed of traits and distinct gnorismata (the tokens of one’s identity such as the sword of Aegeus by which Thesus proved his heritage) as well as what might be called “habits” in his mode of interaction with the world and humanity. In Elowsky’s elegantly simple phrasing, “The Spirit has a history.”374 What it means to be a person is to have a history and a place within the history of God and the world. It remains for us then to explore whether and how it is that the Spirit of God who is frequently presented in impersonal language can still be rightly described as a character within God’s story.

III. The Spirit Frequently Appears as God’s Active Power or Presence Suffused Throughout All Things Rather than as a Particular Being Within Creation.

372 As Marianne Meye Thompson says, “On the whole, the various passages on the Spirit have not been treated within the flow of the narrative but have rather been extracted from the narrative to see if a synthetic “theology” of the Spirit could be fashioned from them. This enterprise, quite common to all manner of topics in the New Testament, should … without further ado be eschewed. It ought to follow, rather than precede or substitute for, as close reading of the narrative itself, for it is the logic of the Gospel narrative, as well as the theological reflection that shaped that narrative, that in the final analysis provides the framework that accounts for the Gospel’s distinctive representation of the Spirit.” Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans: 2001), 154, italics mine. 373 The most thorough and persuasive exploration of the metaphysics of the Spirit’s hypostatic existence and his relation to the Father and the Son in the Trinity of which I am aware is Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jokim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 53-75. 374 Joel Elowsky, “Introduction” in Ancient Christian Doctrine, xv.

190 At the outset it is important to remember that while I want to push both Hauerwas and Churches of Christ to see and speak of the Spirit as a person, I am advocating for the second piece of a dialectic rather than a unified call for personal descriptions. The Spirit is both the power and presence of God and also a person. Unlike “YHWH” or “Jesus” or even “Father” and “Son,” the name “Holy Spirit” does not feel intrinsically personal.375

Scripture undeniably speaks of the Spirit in impersonal language more often than not.376

The Bible presents the Spirit as wind, breath, fire, inspiration, presence, life, and glory and only at its climax as helper, guide, intercessor, and friend.377 In the tradition, the

Spirit is frequently discussed within the impersonal categories of grace/charism, the

Bible, or the Church/Sacraments.378 In order to see our riddle and its answer, we must first explore the ways that the Spirit appears as the infinite and transcendental power and presence of God suffused throughout the world rather than as a particular thing within it.

III.A. The Spirit is the power of God.

375 The history of and iconography testify to the point. The Father and Son are regularly depicted in human form while the Spirit is presented as a bird, a flame, a cloud, etc. See Kyle R. Hughes, How the Spirit Became God: The mosaic of Early Christians Pneumatology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020), 1–3; Eugene Rogers ed., The Holy Spirit: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), unnumbered pages falling between 176–178; Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self, 190–265. 376 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 25. 377 The Spirit is also frequently identified with impersonal categories such as truth and revelation, but because these concepts are also tightly connected to the Son and thus require a great deal of space to examine we will not explore them in this section. Biblically, the Spirit is identified with truth most closely in John’s writings, especially Jn. 14 and 1Jn. For accounts of the Spirit as truth and revelation, see the excerpts collected under the heading, “The Hands of God Fashion Humanity” in Ancient Christian Doctrine, 40–41; Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit: Vol. 1 The Holy Spirit in the ‘Economy’: Revelation and Experience of the Spirit. trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroads Herder, 2015), 49–62. 378 That the Spirit has a vital role in discussion of all three should be obvious, but the tendency has been to allow the impersonal categories to influence our thinking about the Spirit rather than to have the Spirit make personal the categories of grace, Scripture, and Sacrament. See Congar, Vol. 1, 115–172.

191 Whether as wind or fire, flowing water or shining light, Scripture and the Church regularly picture the Holy Spirit as the power of God. The primary effects of this divine power are the giving of life to and the sanctification of the world. More often than not,

Scripture seems to refer to the spirit of the LORD, the impersonal power of the personal

God of Israel rather than to the Spirit of the Lord, the third person of the Christian Holy

Trinity, and even among Christians who confess that the Spirit is a person, impersonal images, descriptions, and metaphors abound. Our exploration of these major metaphors provides some of the necessary background knowledge, the narratives, and language necessary to understand our riddle’s meaning.

III.A.1. The Spirit is the powerful wind/breath of God by which he gives life. The major observable difference between a living person and a dead one is movement. We know that animation is not possible without life. Overwhelmed by grief we may shake a dead body in imitation of the life that has left it, perhaps hoping to perform a bit of sympathetic magic and infuse our energy, movement, and life into the corpse by the motion. But such attempts only highlight the difference between a living body and corpse. The dead have no animus.

The most obvious form this movement takes is breathing. The Old Testament identifies the breath as both that which gives life and as the proof that life is present.

Though they did not have the modern understanding of how respiration gives oxygen to the entire body, the ancient Hebrews did know that the breath was not confined to the

192 nose and lungs.379 Breath is in and animates the whole body (Ez. 37). Likewise, the

Spirit of the LORD is present throughout and animates the entire creation, and while it is distinct from the bodies it animates, it is not in opposition to them.

“Ruah-breath is not in any sense opposed to ‘body’ or ‘corporeal’. Even in profane Greek and the language of philosophy, pneuma expresses the living and generating substance that is diffused in animals, plants, and all things. It is a subtle corporeality rather than an incorporeal substance. The ruah-breath of the Old Testament is not disincarnate.380

The Spirit of God is the life and movement of the world. The Spirit animates the world as the wind animates the air. It is the nature of air to move, and this moving characteristic we call wind. It is the nature of the world to live, and this vitality we call

Spirit.

and in Greek pneuma ( חוּר ַ ) The biblical terms for Spirit, in Hebrew ruách

(πνεύμα), mean wind, breath, or air, and sometimes soul. In the Old Testament, roughly one third of the 378 uses of ruach refer to wind or breath, another third to the vivifying force which distinguishes a living person from a corpse or an idol, and the final third to

“the life of God himself, the force by which he acts and causes action, both at the physical and at the ‘spiritual’ level.”381 But that which unites all three of the meanings is their common reference to movement, liveliness, and activity. “The idea behind ruach is the extraordinary fact that air should move; the basic meaning of ruach is, therefore,

379 Blood is also sometimes seen as the stuff of life. (Gen 9:4–6; Lev. 17:10–14) Like breath, blood characteristically moves and fills the whole body. Whitekettle argues that blood is sacred in the Old Testament because it has breath of life within in it and points to the tacit permission given to eating fish blood as evidence for his theory. Richard Whitekettle, “A Study in Scarlet: The Physiology of Blood, Breath, and Fish in Ancient Israel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 135, no. 4 (2016): 685–704. 380 Congar, 3. 381Yevs Congar, Vol. 1, 3.

193 ‘blowing.’”382 Still air is not ruach. Held breath is not pneuma. A static God is not spirit. This concern with the causal or directing force and principle of activity distinguishes the Ancient Hebrews from the Greeks who tended to think in categories of essence/substance.383 “When the Bible says God is spirit, its intention was to declare that

God is the only Living Being who did not receive life. He is.”384 This living, moving ruach is the means in the world by which God accomplishes his designs for the world.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their hosts by the Spirit of his mouth (Ps. 32:6).

Take away their Spirit, and they will fail and be turned again into their dust. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be made and you will renew the face of the earth (Ps 104:29–30).

This connection between the vivacious and vivifying presence of God and the movement toward the achievement of God’s purposes is common throughout the Old Testament. In

rachaph) or moves, or broods over the waters of , ףַחָר ) Genesis 1:2, the Spirit hovers creation.385 The Spirit is present with the Father who speaks and the Word who is spoken, and the Spirit’s role is to bring the world into being, to bless, and to enliven it.

The repeated phrase, “And God said, ‘Let there be,’…and there was…and it was good,” from Genesis one can be read in trinitarian fashion to show the Spirit’s role in providing the world with being and blessing. The Father is clearly visible as the speaker, and John’s theology helps us discern the Son as the word spoken with its definite boundaries and orderliness. In the words “and there was…and it was good,” the Spirit is,

382 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 25. 383 Congar,Vol 1, 3. Kärkkäinen makes a similar point in Pneumatology, 26. 384 E. Germain, Langages de la Foi á travers l’histoire (Paris, 1972), 90, quoted in Congar, Vol. 1, 13. 385 See Colin Gunton, “The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4 no. 2 (July 2002): 190-204.

194 as usual, hidden but present and potently so for those with eyes to see. Bulgakov sees the

Spirit in this creation text as, “the grace of creation” and “the life-giving force…present in all creation.”386 The Spirit who brooded over the waters of creation hatches the world in the form and beauty of the Father’s Word. “It is by the Holy Spirit, ‘the Giver of Life,’ that life is bestowed upon the world.”387

This Spirit is the being that contains all things in itself, although it does not add anything to this all from itself. . . . This Spirit is the natural energy of the world which can never be extinguished or interrupted in the world, but always bears within itself the principle of the growth of creative activity. . . This Spirit is that which pious , without knowing Him, worshipped. . . This Spirit is the world itself in all its being – on the pathways from chaos to cosmos.388

Spirit is the breath which makes the clay figure a living creature.389 It is the wind which blew upon the waters of the Red Sea and parted them for Israel to pass through and be born anew. It is the ruach of the Lord that rushed upon Samson and Saul and blew them like a storm upon the Philistines.390 With David, the same Spirit came not as a

386 Bulgakov, The Comforter, 200-201. 387 Bulgakov, The Comforter, 199. 388 Bulgakov, The Comforter, 199. neshama rather than ruach, but there is good reason to view , המשנ The Hebrew here is 389 the two as interchangeable in this particular context. Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 23. Patristic writers such as certainly saw Gen 2:7 as a spirit passage and associated the shared breath between God and man with the investiture of the clay figure with a living soul. “...with His own hands he created man after His own image and likeness from the visible and invisible nature. Form the earth He formed his body and by his own inbreathing gave him a rational and understanding soul, which last we say is the divine image.” John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith in St. John of Damascus: Writings, Fathers of the Church Series 37, trans. Frederic H. Chase Jr. (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 2 2.12 / 235. ,Tsalach), the Hebrew word translated as “rushing”, can also mean to advance) ַחֵלָצ 390 prosper, or push forward. Judges describes the breath/wind/Spirit of the Lord “coming upon” (3:10; 11:29) “clothing” (6:34) and “stirring within” those through whom God brought about Israel’s deliverance. For a treatment of the Spirit of God as God’s empowering presence in the book of Judges, see Lee Roy Martin, “Power to Save!?: The Role of the Spirit of the Lord in the Book of Judges,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2008): 21-50.

195 sudden wind that soon departed but continually from the time of his anointing onward.391

It is by in-spiration, by the living breath of God that the prophets spoke words of judgment and hope. The breath of God is that which grants liveliness to the world and which advances the story of God in the world in the Old Testament, and the text does not typically distinguish this breath/wind/spirit as a character separate from the LORD whose

Spirit he is.

This trend of speaking of the Spirit as the life-breath of God given to the world in general and to humanity specifically continued in the intertestamental period. E. Kamlah argues that in the diaspora the spirit was “a vital force divinely breathed into man and forming a distinct part of his being” virtually identical with the soul and contrasted with the body that dies.392 But Kärkkäinen points out that in Palestine, the spirit-body divide was never as strong as it was in Greece and that the intertestamental Jews continued to think of the Spirit primarily as the effective power of God in the world, especially the power to give and sustain life.393

The New Testament, too, speaks of the Spirit as a wind/breath/power which gives life. Gabriel’s annunciation links the Spirit and the life-giving power of God together.

391 “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Sam. 16:13). The uniqueness of David’s anointing with the Spirit prefigures Jesus’s baptism in which the Spirit “descends and remains” upon him (Jn. 1:33). 392 E. Kamlah, “Spirit” in The Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 692. Kamlah cites Wis. 15:11 in support of his view. 393 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 28. Thompson points out similarities between Wisdom of Solomon’s depiction of the Spirit and Stoic thought in which spirit was a sort of “rarified substance” which is mobile and penetrates all things. This comports with Paul Voltz argument that in some parts of the Old Testament spirit is a sort of “fluid or substance which can be distributed without diminishing the spirit in the possession of the one who gives it.” Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, 148; Paul Volz, Der Geist Gottes und die verwandten Erschienungen im Alten Testament und im anschliebenden Judentum (Tübingen: J.C.B.Mohr, 1910), 23-24.

196 He tells Mary that, “The Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1:35). Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the pneuma

(Mk1:12) and later on drives out demons by the pneuma (Mt 12:28). He attributes his calling and authority to preach to the Spirit (Lk 4:18–19), and promises that the Holy

Spirit which will be given to the apostles will similarly inform and inspire their preaching

(Mk 13:11).

In Acts, Jesus promises the apostles that they will receive power when they receive the spirit, and at Pentecost the tongues of fire are accompanied by the sound of a mighty rushing wind, the typical symbol for God’s power in the Old Testament. Peter tells the crowds to “Repent and be baptized. . . for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). The gift of the Spirit promised in baptism is connected to the invincible power of Christ’s life alluded to earlier in Peter’s sermon (Acts 2:24).

For Paul, the spirit is still identified with power and with life, but the focus is more on the character of that life than on the reception of it. The spirit, for Paul is the means of transformation and the power which enables the “new life” in Christ. However,

Paul’s connection with grace, justification, sanctification, and ethics is an extension of the standard biblical trope of the Spirit as life-giving power rather than a contrast with it.

His audiences have already received this new life of the spirit, and he writes to tell them the ways that life ought to manifest itself in their life together. Paul’s is, as Rabens convincingly argues, “a relational model” that “suggests that it is primarily through deeper knowledge of, and an intimate relationship with, God, Jesus Christ and with the

197 community of faith that people are transformed and empowered by the Spirit for religious-ethical life.”394

John, as much as any New Testament writer, sees the Spirit as the life-giving power of God. Thompson argues that in much of John’s Gospel, “spirit,” along with

“word” and “wisdom” may be understood as a way of speaking of God’s activity or the manifestation of a particular divine activity or power.395 In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that the kingdom is only visible to those who are “born of the wind/spirit” and that “The wind/spirit blows wherever it wills” without our knowing either its origin or its destination. This provocative exchange is one of the finest examples of Jesus’s riddling approach to pneumatology. He connects the spirit to life (being born again) and names the spirit as the means by which this life is received (born of the spirit). However we interpret Jesus’s words here, it is clear that he associates the Spirit with such impersonal categories as 1) the wind, 2) the Kingdom, 3) above/heaven, 4) birth/being born, and 5) life. Likewise, in John 20:22, when Jesus breathes the Spirit onto his disciples, he appears to be giving them something – eternal life, a share in the resurrection, the gift of

God – rather than someone.396 Johnson overstates the case but his point nevertheless points to something true in the text.

394 Volker Rabens, The Holy Spirit and Ethics, 21. 395 Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, 146. Thompson ultimately concludes that the Spirit-Paraclete in John is best conceived of as a distinct person and not merely an impersonal force but notes that especially in the narrative sections of the Gospel the case is more difficult to make. 396 Some scholars have conceived of the spirit in these and other (Pauline) passages as a substance, an almost tangible thing which Jesus gives and which the church accesses through the sacraments. See Earnst Käsemann, “The Pauline Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper” in E. Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, SBT (London: SCM Press, 1964), 108-135; and Rabens’s assessment of and response to the material concept of the spirit in The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul, 86-120.

198 The figurative speech in all these passages [about the Spirit in John] should be noted: spirit like water is a cleansing agent; spirit like breath is a vital element; spirit as teaching, guiding, defending, is a divine power. Unifying them all is surely the concept of a Christlike power that is finally in the control of God, the heavenly Father.397

This theme is present in other Johannine writings as well. In the early chapters of

Revelation, the stars, lampstands, and spirits of the churches all seem to be images of the

Holy Spirit, and all are strikingly impersonal in comparison with the images used for the

Father and the Son.398

This theme of the spirit as the life-giving breath or wind of God extends out from the New Testament to the . Chrysostom points out that the wind which “blows where it pleases” in John 3 does so,

…not as if the wind had any power of choice. He is simply declaring that its natural motion is powerful and cannot be hindered because of its power. . . The expression therefore, “blows where it pleases,” is that of one who would show that it cannot be restrained, that it is spread abroad everywhere and that none can hinder its passing here and there, but that it goes abroad with great might, and no one is able to turn aside its violence…. For if no one can hold the wind…much less will [anything] restrain the operations of the Spirit.399

But the Fathers are at pains to emphasize the personal character of the Spirit, so they generally follow up any discussion of the spirit as wind or life-giving breath with a forthright declaration of his personhood.

III.A.2. The Spirit is the living water of God which grants eternal life to humans and carries the world toward its renewed and perfected life.

397 George Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete, in The Gospel of John, Society for New Testament Monograph Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 31-32. 398 I include Revelation within the Johannine corpus here primarily for organizational convenience and to conform to Church tradition. One may reject Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse without any harm to the point at hand, but I maintain that a good case can be made for John as its author and that John’s treatment of the Spirit in his Gospel is paralleled in interesting ways in Revelation – especially in the move from impersonal power in the early chapters to personal character in the later ones. Revelation opens with the Spirit as lamps but closes with the Spirit calling with (and perhaps within) the Bride. 399 , Homilies on the Gospel of John in NPNF 1 14:91.

199

Two more images of the Spirit deserve our attention in this discussion of the

Spirit as the impersonal power of God. The first is living water. Like air, water is characterized by its movement and its connection with life. When the Spirit appears under the sign of water, it is always “living water,” water on the move, welling up, pouring out, flowing, filling, quenching thirst, and washing clean. The still waters of a cistern, pool, or well are not fitting images for the active power of God in the world.

After Jesus describes the Spirit as the wind that “blows where it wills” and tells

Nicodemus that he cannot have eternal life without being born again by this Spirit in John

3, he changes his metaphor from wind to water, but still connects the Spirit to the granting of eternal life. In chapter 4 Jesus says to the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (Jn. 4:10). The language of “gift of God,” which Jesus gives to those who know who he is, ought already to help us connect the passage to the Holy Spirit, but John 7 makes explicit what chapter 4 hints at.

If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive… (Jn. 7:37–39a).400

This connection between the life-giving power of God and living water is rooted in the Old Testament. Examples abound, but Ezekiel’s eschatological vision of the renewed temple is perhaps the most significant. As the prophet is led around the new and

400 On the relationship between the Spirit and the “living water” in John 4 and 7, see Dale C. Allison, “The Living Water: John 4:10-14, 6:35c, 7:37-39,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 30 no. 2 (1986): 143-157; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1970), 320; Tricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John (New York: T&T Clark International, 2003), 158-162; Thompson, God of the Gospel of John, 177-179.

200 greater temple the Lord will build, he notices that there is a stream of water trickling from inner courts (He hints that the altar is the perhaps the source.) and flowing over the threshold and out the gates. His angelic guide measures the water and finds that as they go further from the temple the trickle swells to a stream and then to a mighty river until it floods the dead sea, pouring in so much fresh water that its salt is removed. The river teems with life: fish swim in its waters; trees grow on its banks; and people come to it for food and medicine. “Everything will live where the river goes” (Ez. 47:9).401 Revelation takes up Ezekiel’s river of life imagery connecting its source to the throne of both the

Father and the Son and continuing Ezekiel’s theme that the living water is not contained in the temple but fills and floods the whole world.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. (Rev. 22:1–3)

In the post-New Testament era, the living waters imagery came to be associated with baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit which accompanies it. The instructs that baptism should be performed in living waters rather than still ones, as does

Hippolytus.402 Aphrahat, a fourth century Syriac author, connected the fourth Gospel’s language about living water to the rite of baptism. He notes that Christ’s baptism was the

401 “[Ezekiel] is saying that in the natural world also, it is God’s intention to bring life out of death, and the sources of that life will be the place where his presence can be known at all times. Thus, the city which houses this temple and its stream needs a new name, ‘The LORD Is There’ (Ez. 48:35).” Donald E. Gowan, Theology of the Prophetic Books: The Death and Resurrection of Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 137. 402 Didache, 2:7.1 trans. Ben H. Swett, http://bswett.com/1998-01Didache.html; Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition, trans. Burton Scott Easton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 20:44-45.

201 first “true baptism” because of the role the Spirit plays in it and links this Spirit-giving sacrament with Christ’s office as the Spirit-inspired “Great Prophet.”403

III.A.3. The Spirit is the fire of God which empowers, tests, and sanctifies that which and those who are God’s and which exposes, judges, and destroys all that is not.

The final image under which the Spirit is generally presented as the power of God is that of fire. Like wind and living water, fire is characterized by its inability to be still.

Always moving, stretching toward heaven yet resting upon matter, warming, purifying, luminescent, filling that which is dull and making it radiant with heat and light, fire is a rich symbol for the Holy Spirit and one that the biblical text and the early church frequently employed.

Most famously, the Spirit descended on the apostles at Pentecost as tongues of fire, but we also see Old Testament antecedents to this image. The burning bush is the most potent of these scenes. In it we see a miraculous fire that fills yet does not consume a common plant which would otherwise never attract attention. The symbolism is clear.

God, who is holy and spiritual, will consecrate for himself a people who are unremarkable on their own but who will be a glorious sign of his power when anointed by a fire which should, but does not, consume them. At the Red Sea, while the Spirit blows over the waters to part them, a fire from heaven separates the armies of Pharaoh from the people of God. The act of separation is not merely about keeping Israel safe; it is about making them holy. They are set apart from Egypt by the fire of God. At Sinai, the LORD descends in a cloud (wind) and in fire. The Holy Place in the tabernacle was lit by the fire on the lampstand and made holy by the burning incense on the altar.

403 Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, 489-498, esp. 492.

202 Fire in the Old Testament is also associated with the Spirit’s work of inspiration.

The tongue of the Prophet Isaiah was purified by fire from the altar of God and only after the fire was applied to his mouth was he sent forth to speak for God (Is. 6:6–7). Later

Isaiah compares the tongue of the LORD to “a devouring fire” (Is. 30:27). Jeremiah says that when he sought to resist God and refused to speak the word of the Lord it was “like a fire shut up in my bones” (Jer. 20).

In the New Testament outside of Pentecost we see both Peter and Paul using the image of fire to describe God’s purifying and saving action. In 1 Cor. 3:13, Paul describes typical activities of the Spirit, revelation and sanctification, in the language of a fire which illuminates and tests the work of ministers who have served the Church. 1

Peter 1:7 describes a refiner’s fire which tests and purifies the faith of those who follow

Jesus, making it more precious than gold.

Of course, fire is also associated with God’s judgement and righteous punishment of evil. “Our God is a consuming fire” says Hebrews 12:29, and 2 Peter 3 describes

God’s judgment upon the world as an intense fire which melts the elements. Revelation, more than perhaps any other book in the Bible depicts the Spirit as fire. In it, the Spirit is pictured as stars, lampstands, and burning torches (Rev. 1:20; 4:5). Jesus describes the

Spirit as the power by which he drives out demons (Mt 12:28) and as the one who convicts the world of sin (Jn. 16:8). It may, therefore even be appropriate to see the lake of fire in Revelation 20 as the place where the Spirit’s work of judging, convicting, and

203 separating takes place in eternity. Like Pharaoh and his army, Satan, the beasts, and their followers are separated from God’s people and destroyed by the spirit’s fire.404

III.A.4. The Spirit is the power of God. We have seen how Scripture and the Christian tradition teaches us to speak of the

Spirit as God’s power, the effective force of his will in and on the creation. Under the signs of blowing wind, running water, or burning fire, Christians follow Scripture’s pattern of speaking about the Spirit as the lively and enlivening power of God, sometimes mingling the images and connecting them with the sacraments through which the Spirit’s power is made available to them. offers a masterful synthesis of these biblical themes.

A mystery of our bodies that in the water With the fire of the Holy Spirit have been mingled The famous three in Babylon In the furnace of fire were baptized, and came forth; They went in and bathed in the flood of flame, They were buffeted by the blazing billows. There was sprinkled on them there The dew that fell from heaven; It loosed from off them there The bonds of the earthly king. See how the famous three went in and found a fourth in the furnace.

That visible fire that triumphed outwardly, Pointed to the fire of the Holy Spirit Which is mingled and hidden in the water. In the flame baptism is figured, In that blaze of the furnace. Come, enter, be baptized, my brothers, For see how it looses the bonds; For in it there swells and is hidden The Daystar of God, Who in the furnace was the fourth.405

404 The destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the red sea combines all three of the major images for the Spirit’s power. He is the fire that holds them back, the wind which parts the sea, and the waters of the sea which washes away evil. 405 Ephrem Syrus, “Hymns for the Feast of Epiphany,” 8.56, (NPNF 2/13:277).

204

What Ephrem does in poetry, Bulgakov does in prose.

This Spirit is the natural energy of the world which can never be extinguished or interrupted in the world, but always bears within itself the principle of the growth of creative activity. This Spirit is “our mother, the moist earth,” out of which all things grow and into which all things return for new life. This Spirit is the life of the vegetative and animal world “after their kind.” This Spirit is the life of the human race in the image and likeness of God. This Spirit is that life-giving principle which pious paganism, without knowing Him, worshipped as the “Great Pan,” as the Mother of the gods, Isis and Gaia. This Spirit is that which the impious paganism of our own day confesses as living and life-giving matter in the blindness of its “hylozoism,” or attempts to capture in a test tube as the “life force.” … What other energy, if not divine energy, gives life to the world?406

Proper pneumatology demands that we identify the Spirit with the power of God in the world and that the language of wind, fire, water, life, and energy are regular features of our pneumatological language. But power is not the only impersonal category within which the Holy Spirit ought to be discussed. We turn now to an examination of

God’s presence and its connections with Pneumatology.

III.B. The Spirit is the presence of God.

Scripture regularly connects the notion of power with that of presence and associates both of them with the term spirit. 1 Ch 16:11 and Ps 105:4 parallel ‘strength’ and ‘presence’ just as Ps. 51:11 and 139 parallel ‘presence’ and ‘Spirit.’407 That the word

‘presence’ appears most frequently in Scripture in connection with God or with fathers, kings, and other authorities gives us another reason to associate it with the power of

406 Bulgakov, The Comforter, 199. “Our mother, the moist earth” is a quotation from Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons. 407 For a concise and helpful treatment of the various ways in which Hebrew Poetry connects words and concepts via parallelism, see Ernest C. Lucas, A Guide to the Psalms & Wisdom Literature, vol. 3 of Exploring the Old Testament (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003), 67-78; see also Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 1–28.

205 God.408 Therefore, to our cluster of concepts associated with the Spirit (breath, wind,

panim, Grk. ἐνώπιον, enopion).409 If , נפ םי .power, life) we may now add ‘presence’ (Heb

God’s strength, power, and breath permeate all creation, then so too does his presence.

Scripture, especially the Old Testament, and the Psalms in particular, identifies God’s presence with the Spirit. The most obvious example comes in Psalm 51 which uses the two terms in synonymous parallelism.410

Cast me not away from your presence Oh Lord, And take not your Holy Spirit from me. (Ps. 51:11)

In the sections that follow we will explore how God’s presence/spirit blesses the world and then, drawing on Terrance Fretheim’s work, we will look at the range of ways that

Scripture presents the presence of God ranging from his general (omni)presence to his

“tabernacling presence” to the theophonic presence of his appearing. The goal, again is not to present the foundations for a systematic account of the Holy Spirit but to provide the necessary language and narratives to understand our riddle, “How can the power and presence of God be a person? By the Holy Spirit.”

III.B.1. The presence of God is not only his effective power but also his joy, glory, comfort, and blessing given to the world.

You make known to me the path of life;

408 Of God: Gen. 3:8; Ex 23:30; 33:14; 35:13; 39:36; Lev 22:3; Nm 4:7; 4:16; Deut. 4:37; Josh 22:27; 1 Sam 1:22; 3:1; 16:18; 21:6; 26:20. Of fathers: Gen. 11:38; 27:30; Of kings and authority figures: Gen. 45:3; 47:10; Ex 10:11; 35:20 (Moses); Deut. 25:2; 25:9; Judg. 3:19; Ruth 4:4; 1 Sam 1:22, 26, 2:11 (Eli the priest); 18:13; 19:7; 21:15; 2 Sam 3:26; 11:13; In settings related to legal or covenantal authority: Gen. 23:9 18; 31:32; Josh 8:32. See Pierre Benoit, Roland Murphy and Bastiaan van Iersel eds., The Presence of God (New York: Paulist Press, 1969). 409 Panim and enopion express the idea of being visible and focused upon. Other English translations include “in the sight of” “before the face of” “toward” “before,” etc. The parallelism of Psalm 17:2 displays the connection well, “From your presence let my vindication come! Let your eyes behold the right!” Occasionally the Greek preposition pro/πρὸ is also used for “in the presence of” as in John 17:5. 410 See also Ps. 139:7.

206 in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Ps. 16:11)

For every passage connecting God’s presence to his power, strength, or protection, there is another which points to his joy, his beauty, and his action of blessing.

Those who are in the presence of God rejoice, worship, sing, praise, and exult. They are given peace, comfort, and rest. “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.”

(Ex. 33:14).411 The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 – Love, joy, peace, etc. – are not primarily related to God’s powerful presence but to the transformative loveliness which his Spirit brings about. To be found “before the presence of his glory” in Jude 24 is to have “great joy.” The reverse is also true. To be cast out of God’s presence is to be in darkness, despair, and pain. The enlivening power of his presence brings about not just any life, but life περισσὸν, perisson (abundant). In Scripture, this full, overflowing, abundant life is characterized by,

a rich and deep awareness of God’s presence, the sense of the liberating power of his love, the upsurging response of joy and praise, the discovery of a new freshness in the [revelation of God], and the consciousness of communion with [him].412

Scripture presents God’s spirit as his beauty, his joy-giving and blessing presence in the world. But is his presence located in a particular place? Where is this place to which God’s Holy Spirit withdraws or into which the sinner is cast in times of judgment?

If we are to understand the Spirit as the presence of God, then we must wrestle at least briefly with the difficult questions regarding God’s omnipresence.

III.B.2. The Spirit of God is God’s omnipresence.

411 For a thorough and insightful treatment of the presence of God in Exodus 33, see Walter Brueggemann, “The Crisis and Promise of Presence in Israel,” Horizons in , 1, no. 1 (1980): 47-86. 412 Alasdair I.C. Heron, The Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit in the Bible, The History of Christian Thought, and Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 135.

207

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you (Ps. 139: 7–12).

The Psalmist states in Hebrew poetry what later theologians would describe in the Greek philosophical category of omnipresence. God’s presence, his spirit, is everywhere. In verses 11–12 we see the spirit/presence pictured in both of the categories we have just discussed: glory, radiance, blessing (here in the form of guidance and comfort) and also power which overcomes and destroys the darkness. The Psalm goes on to describe God’s active and life-giving presence within the womb of Nitzevet, David’s mother, knitting together the Psalmist before he was born. Because his spirit/presence is everywhere, God has a perfect knowledge of all that is or will be in the world (Ps. 139:17–18). The

Psalmist declares that God is present within not merely the material world but even within the his (David’s) own mind, searching his thoughts as well as his habits. He pictures the Lord as a fence which “hems [him] in, before and behind” (Ps. 139:5) and which extends to the edges of the universe. Fretheim calls this notion of God’s being everywhere in all creation at the same time God’s “structural or general presence” and cites numerous passages (e.g., 1 Kgs. 8:27; Job 38–41; Ps 139; Jer. 23:23–24; Am. 9:2–6)

208 to demonstrate that this way of thinking about the divine presence was part of Israel’s earliest theology which never disappears from the tradition.413

More specific modes of God’s presence are handled well theologically only in the context of this all-pervading presence of God in the creation. It is this presence which provides for the actual possibility of those more specific forms of presence in the community of faith, because it is this which places God within and related to the creation in the first place . . . God’s structural presence provides the necessary context for developing and understanding more specific and concrete ways of divine presence in the community of faith.414

III.B.3. The Spirit of God is God’s focused presence.

The omnipresent character of God’s Spirit is only part of the picture. Though one could use the word presence in a univocal way to refer to “thereness” or geographical location, that is not our normal usage, and it is certainly not how Scripture speaks of

God’s presence. Any usage of ‘presence’ entails thereness, but it can include more than that. We speak of a person’s presence in order to indicate their focus, attention, intensity, etc. When a baseball player has a bad game we say, “He didn’t really show up today,” despite the fact that his body was clearly present on the field. When we speak of charismatic leaders, we say, “She has a presence about her” and are saying nothing in particular about her geographical location. Paul speaks of his bodily presence as “weak” but of his “presence” in his letters as strong (2 Cor 10:10). When Scripture speaks of

God’s presence, it does so in the full range of these meanings.

Fretheim posits that there is a continuum with the accompanying presence of

God’s Spirit embedded in the structure of the world (structural presence/omnipresence) on one end and God’s theophonic presence (physical appearance in a particular place and

413 Terrance Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984), 61. 414 Fretheim, 61.

209 time) on the other. David’s “Where can I go from your Spirit?” in Psalm 139 represents the former and the Lord’s descent in cloud and fire and thick darkness on Mt Sinai in

Exodus 20 the latter.415 God’s “tabernacling presence” he takes to be somewhere in the middle. The sacred character of the tabernacle/temple and their furnishings relates to the fact that the presence of God is located there in a way that it is not in other places. This intensified presence may be associated with specific objects, (e.g. the ark, the showbread, the altar, etc.), places (Sinai, Jerusalem, the temple), offices (the priesthood, the prophet, the anointed king), or activities (prayer, sacrifice, holy war). Likewise, God’s presence is intensified in or his spirit is focused upon those in right relationship with God. The unclean are “cut off from [God’s] presence” (Lv. 22:3), but righteous Samuel is presented to the Lord that he may “dwell in his presence forever” (1 Sam. 1:22). A person may be

“out of God’s presence” (1 Sam. 26:20; 2 Kg. 13:23; 24:20; Ps 51:11) or be “in the

Presence/Spirit of God” (1 Chron. 29:11; Lk 2:27; Rev. 1:10; 4:2; Rm. 8:9; Php. 3:3;

Eph. 6:18; Gal. 5:25;). The Spirit of the Lord may “depart” from those whom he rejects

(1 Sam. 16:14) and be “in” those whom God favors (Ez. 37:14).

Why is it that God’s presence/spirit is spoken of as sometimes near and sometimes far off, sometimes omnipresent and other times localized? Fretheim again is helpful.

415 See also Walter Brueggemann, “Presence of God, Cultic,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia Identifying and Explaining All Proper Names and Significant Terms and Subjects in the Holy Scriptures, Including the Apocrypha, with Attention to Archaeological Discoveries and Researches Into the Life and Faith of Ancient Times, vol 4: Supplement (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976); and “The Crisis and Promise of Presence in Israel,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 1 (1980): 47-86; Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000); Terrance Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 46-49; and God and World: A Relational Model of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 22-27.

210 Such variety is not to be laid at the feet of some notion of divine incoherence or inconstancy. It is, rather, to be closely correlated with the specific needs and experiences of people in particular times and places. As human beings, God’s people are inextricably bound up in space and time, and have differing needs and experiences associated with both, depending upon life situation. Thus, for example, people experience different intensifications of both time and space. There are those times which are especially filled or concentrated, and which consequently inform all of life in a way that few other times do (e.g., a conversion experience) … certain spaces are more filled with meaning than are others (e.g., a hometown). And so God, knowing the need of people for God’s presence in the totality of their existence, has chosen to enter both time and space, to be with them there in the varying intensities of their experience, and to meet their need for the specific, the tangible, the personal, and the articulate. . . . While God is always present, God’s presence is significantly affected by human experience.416

Whether as his structural presence suffused throughout the world, his tabernacling presence which intensifies God’s focus or attention on a particular place or time or his theophonic presence that allows for an incarnational encounter with God, God’s presence is tightly connected with the notion of his spirit, and “presence” is an important piece of language for thinking and speaking about the Holy Spirit.

III.B.4. The tradition of the Church frequently speaks of the Spirit in the impersonal categories of grace/gift, Church/sacraments, and revelation/inspiration.

The biblical themes traced in the preceding sections reverberate through Christian theology, liturgy, and literature. The Spirit as God’s power and presence, his gift of joy and beauty, glory and transformation are prominent themes in the patristic writers. Cyril of writes of the spirit as the power of God, “beautifying human nature with the splendor of the divinity.”417 John the Elder poignantly weaves the biblical themes of power and presence together in his prayer.

You who are hidden and concealed within me, Reveal within me

416 Fretheim, Suffering of God, 62. 417 , “Thesaurus on the Trinity,” in Ancient Christian Doctrine Vol. 4, 34: 160.

211 Your hidden mystery; Manifest to me Your beauty that is within me, O you who have built me As a temple for you to dwell in, Cause the cloud of your glory To overshadow inside your temple, So that the ministers of your sanctuary may cry out, in love for you, “Holy” As an utterance that burns in fire and spirit, in a sharp stirring that is commingled with wonder and astonishment, activated as a living movement by the power of your being.418

Though the categories of power and presence remain in continual use across the

Christian tradition, three particular subcategories deserve special attention – Grace/gift, the church/sacraments, and revelation/inspiration.419

III.B.4.a. The tradition speaks of the Spirit as the grace/gift which God gives. Though its origins are biblical (Heb 10:29 calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of

Grace.”) and there is precedent for it in the patristics (Cyril makes the connection between the Spirit and the Grace of God.)420, the conflation of the Spirit and Grace is most closely associated with Thomas Aquinas. Like many theologians, Aquinas is orthodox and trinitarian, fully convinced that the Spirit is a person, but he tends to speak of the Spirit’s work in giving gifts rather than of the Spirit himself. In the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologiae he identifies the Spirit with the Will of God, the Love of God, and

418 John the Elder, “Prayer of John the Elder I” in Ancient Christian Doctrine Vol. 4, 161. 419 The category of “religious/mystical experience” or “charismatic gifts” could also be added, especially if one is to give an account of Pentecostalism and charismatic movements, but we will limit ourselves to these three since they have the most direct connection to Churches of Christ. 420 , “Catechetical lecture 17.5,” NPNF 2/7:125.

212 the Gift of God.421 But when he actually discusses the will, love, and gift of God in regards to salvation and ethical transformation, the personal characteristic of these terms is missing. The gifts of the Spirit, the nature of grace, and the are intimately tied to God generically but to the person of the Holy Spirit only by implication. Indeed, what is a person in the Prima Pars is elsewhere called a principle.

“The extrinsic principle moving us to good is God. Who both instructs us by means of

His law and assists us by His grace.”422 In the Prima Secundae, grace is generally a quality rather than a person. Aquinas elaborates on different meanings of the word grace and offers three: 1) Grace is anyone’s love. 2) Grace is any gift freely bestowed. 3) Grace is the recompense of or gratitude for a gift. He describes God’s grace as eternal, identifies it with God’s Divine love and Divine will, yet never reminds his reader that these are names for a person.423 The personal character of God’s love, grace, and will is minimized and they are presented as impersonal forces comparable to light. Grace is an effect, something caused by God. It is impersonal grace, a gift from God rather than personal grace, the Gift which is God, that Aquinas describes as sanctifying us, savings us, and allowing us to partake in the divine nature.424 This tendency to treat the Spirit

421 “The name Love in God can be taken essentially and personally. If taken personally it is the proper name of the Holy Spirit. …there are two in God, one by way of the intellect, which is the of the Word and another by way of the will which is the procession of Love.” Aquinas, ST I.37.1. On the question of whether the name Gift is a personal name for the Spirit, Aquinas approvingly quotes Augustine’s De Trinitate XV, 19, “As the body of flesh is nothing but flesh; so the gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing but the Holy Spirit” and adds the following commentary, “But the Holy Spirit is a personal name; so also is Gift.” ST I.38.1. 422 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I.II.90. prol. 423 Aquinas, ST I-II.110.1. 424 Aquinas, ST I-II.112.1. Aquinas and Hauerwas are similar in this regard. Both are convinced that the Spirit is a person and both are sympathetic to claims that Gift, Love, etc. are personal names for the Spirit, but both also tend to focus on the impersonal activities, gifts, and powers associated with the Spirit in their discussions of ethics.

213 under the heading of grace is not limited to Thomistic theology. It is common in much of

Catholic theology (especially in relation to the sacraments) and in Protestantism as well.

Churches of Christ follow this pattern in the way that they talk about the saving and sanctifying effects of the sacraments, especially baptism. Like Aquinas, we have tended to speak of God or Christ rather than the Holy Spirit when we name the one who gives grace, who is present in the waters of baptism or the cup of communion, and who sanctifies our lives.

III.B.4.b. The tradition speaks of the Spirit as the presence/authority of God in the Church. In , the Spirit is frequently explored in relation to ecclesiology.425 In the 19th century, J. Adams Möhler treated the Spirit as the principle of and M.J. Scheeben even went so far as to describe the Church as “a kind of incarnation of the Spirit.”426 Pope Leo XIII describes the Spirit as “the soul of the

Church.”427 Kärkkäinen notes that pre-Vatican II Catholic pneumatology tended to treat

425 Though it is especially emphasized by Catholics, this connection of course is not unique to Catholicism and has its origins in both Scripture and the patristics. Acts 2 connects the reception of the Spirit with the Lord adding persons to the Church (Acts 2:38,47). and identified the Church with the Spirit as well. “For where the church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the church and every kind of grace.” Ireneaus, Against , trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, (ANF I), 3.24.1: 458. “The Church it is true, will forgive sins, but it will be the church of the Spirit by means of a spiritual person…” Tertullian, On Modesty, 21 (ANF 4:100). 426 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 73. See also, B.E. Hinze, “The Holy Spirit and the Catholic Tradition: The Legacy of Johann Adam Möhler,” in The Legacy of the Tubingen School: The Relevance of Nineteenth Century Theology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Donald J. Dietrich and Michael J. Himes (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1997); and Michael Himes, Ongoing Incarnation: Johann Adam Möhler and the Beginning of Modern Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1997). Malachi J. Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit According to M. J. Scheeben” Theological Studies 7, no. 2 (1946): 244-280. 427 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical on the Holy Spirit, (May, 1897), Divinum Illud Munus, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_09051897_divinum- illud-munus.html. See also Pope Pius XII’s encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ, Mystici Corporis Christi, (1943), http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p- xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html.

214 the Spirit as merely the animating force of “the ecclesial apparatus.”428 Congar notes that the Eucharist, the Pope, and the Virgin Mary were regularly used in place of the Holy

Spirit, noting again how the spirit is treated as impersonal and abstract, a force and presence within (and frequently confined to) the Church or the (Church approved) mystical experience of personal piety.429

This tendency to equate the Spirit to the Church is one of several surprising connections between Catholicism and Churches of Christ. The ecclesial structures of

Churches of Christ do not extend beyond the local congregation, but within the congregation, those structures are seen as ordained and granted authority by the Holy

Spirit. Elders are charged to, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts. 20:28), and congregations are charged to submit to elders precisely because the Spirit has given them authority. Unsurprisingly though, that and authority is seen as emanating not from the Spirit as a person but from the Bible which the Spirit inspired.

III.B.4.c. The tradition speaks of the Spirit as the inspiration/authority of Scripture. We have already noted the ways that Churches of Christ have tended to conflate the Spirit and the Bible (chapter 2), but this tendency is common throughout much of

Protestantism and has its roots in the patristic writers. Scripture itself testifies that the

Holy Spirit is the means by which the apostles and prophets spoke. “Holy men spoke as

428 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 74. 429 Congar, Vol. 1, 160-164. Many of these tendencies were challenged in the years following Vatican II.

215 they were carried along [φερόμενοι, feromenoi] by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pt. 1:21).430

Hippolytus describes the prophets as those “furnished with the Spirit and greatly honored by the Word himself. Just like a musical instrument, they always had the Word, who was like the plectrum, who moved them to announce what God wanted them to say.”431 John of Damascus emphasizes the connection between the Spirit as breath and the power which enables the Word to be heard. “Having learned that there is a Spirit of God, we conceive of him as associated with the Word and making the operation of the Word known.”432

The Reformers especially emphasized the Spirit’s role in the inspiration of

Scripture and tend to treat the Spirit primarily under the heading of divine revelation.

Calvin’s Institutes, the most significant and influential systematic theology text in

Protestantism, is typical of this trend. The Spirit plays an important role in the work as a whole, but there is no particular section on the Spirit comparable to that on the Father and the Son. Rather, he appears primarily in a subsection on divine revelation in which

Calvin argues for the necessity of the Spirit’s testimony to insure the reliability and authority of Scripture.433 A significant portion of this section is given over to a discussion of how it is the Spirit, not the Church, who provides Scripture with its authority and importance. In it, Calvin assumes the more general framework of the time period – that

430 Both Jesus and Peter describe Old Testament prophets like David as being inspired by the Spirit (Mt 22:42; Acts 1:16; 4:25). Luke describes Elizabeth, Simeon, and Zechariah as being filled with the Spirit when they spoke prophetic messages. 431 Hippolytus, “Treatise on Christ and the Antichrist,” in Ancient Christian Doctrine, 270. 432 John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith,174-175. 433 See , Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 1.7: 30-35. Pneumatology is also the primary subject of a short (but marvelous!) subsection on the Spirit’s role in making the blessings of Christ available to Christians. Calvin, Institutes, 3.1: 348-351.

216 the Spirit ought primarily to be thought of as God’s power/authority to command and to save – but argues with his Catholic opponents about whether this power resides first in the Church or the Bible. He goes on to describe the Spirit as

a divine energy we feel living and breathing in [Scripture] – an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.434

III.B.5. Conclusion: The first clause of our Riddle rightly names the truth that the Spirit is the power and presence of God in the world.

The Spirit is the power and presence of God given by the Father to Jesus and given by Jesus to the disciples.435 Whether as breath or fire, flowing water or glorious light, as the power of grace or the authority of the Church and the Scriptures, the Spirit cannot be thought of apart from the impersonal categories of power and presence. To deny them cuts us off from much of Scripture and some of the richest elements of the

Christian tradition. Any temptation to reduce the Spirit to a creature must be rejected.

Christians ought to resist the urge to conceive of the Spirit as some particular thing in creation as opposed to the fullness of being itself, as a particular life as opposed to the principle of life in all things, a particularly lovely aspect of creation as opposed to beauty itself shining through all that is beautiful. The failings of Restorationist or Hauerwasian pneumatology will not be made well by the medicine of nominalism, and our riddle demands that we see the Spirit as both the power and presence of God as well as a person, not as opposed to one.

Because these depictions of the Spirit as an impersonal power or presence are so ubiquitous, it is easy to imagine that in them we see the full, or at least the clearest, vision

434 Calvin, Institutes, 1.7.5 435 The Synoptic Gospels tend to emphasize the former and John the latter. See Thompson, 159-160.

217 of what the Spirit is. We think of the Spirit as only something God does rather than as someone God is. But doing so misses a vital of element of Christian pneumatology and prevents us from seeing the full range of the Spirit’s role in ethics. We must now explore the second clause in our riddle and attempt to see how, in addition to being the power and presence of God, the Spirit is also a person.

IV. The Spirit is “Another Helper” Who Enters Creation Like, Yet Unlike, the Son and Walks Alongside Us as a Character Within the Story of the World.

Our riddle asks how God’s power and presence can be a person and posits that the answer is by the Holy Spirit. We have examined the first half of our puzzle and seen the ways that the Spirit is indeed God’s power and presence, so we turn now to the question of his personhood. This question is one that occupied a great deal of the early church’s attention and one upon which it reached a broad and well-defined consensus. The Spirit is indeed a person and not only (though not less than) a force.

IV.A. The New Testament and the tradition of the Church present the Spirit as a person with personal names and personal functions.

At least by the time that John’s Gospel was composed, the Church had already come to see the Spirit in personal terms.436 In John, Jesus is the one anointed with the

Spirit (Jn. 1:32), the one who gives the Spirit (Jn. 4:7–14; 7:37–39; 20:22), and the one who proclaims the coming of the Spirit (4:23).437 But in his he offers a new title for the Spirit, one unique to John’s writing. The Spirit of John 14–16 is the

436 An argument can be made that even before the time of Christ the Spirit was beginning to be perceived by God’s people as something distinct from the LORD and yet co-eternal and fundamentally related to him. See M.E. Isaac, The Concept of Spirit: A Study of Pneuma in Hellenistic and Its Bearing on the New Testament (London: Heythrop, 1976); John Ashton, Studying John (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994),5-35, 166-183; and Steven L. Cox, “An Investigation of a Proposed Trajectory of Old Testament Wisdom Traced Through the Gospel of John,” Evangelical Theological Society papers, 2001. 437 Congar, Vol. 1, 49.

218 Paraclete – the helper, counselor, comforter whom Jesus will send.438 Moreover, Jesus does not simply promise to send a helper/comforter, a characterization that could be read as simple personification. No, he promises that the Father will send another paraclete in

Jesus’s name, one who is like himself yet not himself.439

In his famous “ἐγώ εἰμι, ego eimi” statements from John, Jesus describes himself as a number of abstract concepts several of which overlap with concepts associated with the Spirit: “I am the light of the world” (Jn. 8:12). “I am the resurrection and the life.”

(Jn. 11:25). “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6). Yet the man speaking these words is obviously a person. Just as they share overlapping titles, Christ and the

Spirit/Paraclete perform many of the same functions. Jesus is the Truth; the Spirit is the

Spirit of Truth (Jn. 14:17). Christ is sent by the Father (Jn. 5:30); the Spirit is sent by the

Father (Jn. 14:16). Jesus teaches the apostles; the Spirit brings those teachings to their memory (Jn. 14:26). Jesus (and the Father) will be in the disciples; the Spirit is the means by which they make their home.440

The topic of the Spirit’s personhood was important for the Patristic writers and the early Church as it struggled to articulate a doctrine of God in ways that accounted for

438 The LXX’s version of Job 16:2 uses the active form of parakletor to describe Job’s three friends as “comforters.” For a further grammatical treatment of παράκλητος see Eduard Schweizer and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., “πneuma” in vol. 6 of Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 396-397. 439 In Jn. 14:16 the Father sends the Spirit at the behest of Jesus while in 15:26, it is Jesus who sends the Spirit from the Father. This raises the question of the which (thankfully) falls outside the scope of this study. For an exhaustive treatment of the topic see A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Oxford Studies in (New York: Oxford, 2010); I am sympathetic to Bulgakov, The Comforter, 75-115 and Congar, III: 49-214, esp. 213-214, but generally feel most comfortable confessing with Hilary of Portiers, “[The Spirit] proceeds from the Father through the Son.” Hilary of Portiers, On the Trinity, (NPNF2 9), 12.55: 233. 440 On the topic of names/titles/functions shared by the Son and the Spirit, it is also worth noting that Mt. 28:18 gives only one name into which the apostles are to baptize – the name (singular) of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

219 its inherited Jewish , its early and consistent practice of worshipping Christ, and its experience of the Spirit as God’s personal presence.441 Though there was considerable debate and a number of missteps,442 the Church settled firmly on the position that the Spirit was indeed a person in the same way that the Father and Son were. Cyril of

Jerusalem nicely captures the dialectic between power and person which is characteristic of the patristic writers in general and indeed of the Christian tradition as a whole going forward.

There is only one Holy Spirit, the Paraclete . . . The Holy Spirit is a most mighty power, a being divine and unsearchable. He is a living, intelligent being, the sanctifying power of all things made by God through Christ.443

441 , Rediscovering the Triune God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 7. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 53-60. 442 presents the Spirit as the Son of God. similarly conflates the Spirit and the Logos. Other early pneumatological errors that either fail to acknowledge the Spirit’s distinction from the Son, his personhood, or his eternal and divine status can be found in Lactantius, pseudepigraphal writings attributed to , a creed attributed to the Council of Sardica in 343 CE. Congar,Vol. 1, 73. In the East, the promulgated the idea that the Spirit was both impersonal and a creature similar to light or heat. Congar, Vol. 1, 74. 443 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 16.3 in Later Christian Fathers ed. and trans. Henry Bettenson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 37. Similar sentiments can be found in the following patristic excerpts: “The Holy Spirit must certainly be conceived of in the category of one who is self-existent…If he were considered only as an activity of God, he would be effected but would not himself effect and would cease to exist as soon as he has been effected, for this is the nature of an activity. How is it then that he acts and says such and such things, and defines, and is grieved, and is angered, and has all the qualities that belong clearly to one who moves, and not to movement?” Gregory Nazianzus, The Fifth Theological Oration: On the Holy Spirit in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. 2.7, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 319. The person of the Holy Spirit was of such authority and dignity that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all, that is, by the naming of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by joining to the unbegotten and to his only-begotten Son the name also of the Holy Spirit. , On First Prinicples, 1.3.2. Just as he who is called love is not a disposition but rather a being who loves what he has made and takes care of it, so Jesus does not address the Spirit as a blast of wind, but rather presents him as an incorporeal and life-giving being. Didymus the Blind, Fragments on John 3 in Ancient Christian Doctrine, 17. We know that the Spirit is a person in the proper and true sense of the word. He is the source of sanctification, the light of souls and the distributor of graces. Niceta of Remesiana, The Power of the Holy Spirit, in Ancient Christian Doctrine, 17-18.

220 The Old Testament knew the Spirit not as a person but only as the power/presence of a person, but by the help of our two paracletes, Christ and the Spirit, we can discern traces of the person of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament just as Christ and the apostles discerned the Son/Word in it.444 By their aid, the impersonal descriptions of God’s spirit may also be read in decidedly personal ways attributed to the third hypostasis of the

Trinity.

For the patristics and those who follow them, the Spirit is both the life of creation and the one who brings life to the creation.445 Ephrem the Syrian’s commentary on

Genesis demonstrates this pattern of patristic thought.

The Holy Spirit warmed the waters with a kind of vital warmth, even bringing them to a boil through intense heat in order to make them fertile. The action of the hen is similar. She sits on her eggs, making them fertile through the warmth of incubation. Here then, the Holy Spirit foreshadows the sacrament of holy baptism, prefiguring its arrival, so that the waters made fertile by the hovering of that same divine Spirit might give birth to the children of God.446

The Spirit is both the presence of God and the one who makes God present. Thus, the most common form taken by prayers to the Spirit are invitations for him to “Come!” and

444 The book of Hebrews is the most obvious example of the New Testament writers’ penchant for finding Christ in the Old Testament, but examples abound throughout Paul’s writings, most notably 1 Cor. 10:4 “and that rock was Christ.” The later Church did for the Spirit what the apostolic writers did for Christ. I propose that we, with all due caution and prudence follow them. Contra Bulgakov who argues that generally we ought not treat ‘the spirit of God” in the Old Testament as the hypostasis whose name is the Holy Spirit. The hypostasis of the Spirit, he thinks, is revealed only later in the life of the Church and proper exegesis prohibits treating the power of the Spirit at creation (and indeed, even at Pentecost!) as the Holy Spirit himself. “This constitutes a fundamental fact of the Old Testament revelation concerning the spirit of God, namely, that this revelation does not know at all the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit but knows very well the action of the spirit of God.” Bulgakov, Comforter, 156. On this, though in few other matters, I take Bulgakov to be mistaken. 445 Bulgakov, The Comforter, 194. 446Ephrem the Syrian, “Excerpt from Commentary on Genesis,” in Ancient Christian Doctrine, 39. Similarly, Bulgakov describes the Spirit as the being of the world, and as the one who produces “the proto-reality of being, proto-matter, and the earth.” The Comforter, 194.

221 make God present.447 The most lovely and powerful of these is perhaps the mystical prayer which opens St. Symeon the New Theologian’s collection of hymns.

Come, true light! Come, eternal life! Come, hidden mystery! Come, nameless treasure! Come, O ineffable thing! Come, O inconceivable person! … Come, O eternal joy! Come, O unwithering wreath! Come, O purple of the great king our God! Come, O crystalline cincture, studded with precious stones! Come, O inaccessible sandal! Come, O royal robe and truly imperial right hand! Come, you whom my wretched soul has desired and does desire! Come, only one, to one who is alone, since you can see that I am alone! … Come, you who have yourself become desire in me and have made me long for you - The absolutely inaccessible one! Come, my breath and my life! Today, then, O Master, come pitch your tent with me; until the end, make your home and live continually, inseparably within me, your slave, O most-kind one, that I also may find myself again in you O Master, stay and do not leave me alone, so that my enemies, arriving unexpectedly, they who are always seeking to devour my soul, may find you living within me and that they may take flight, in defeat, powerless against me, seeing you, O more powerful than everything, installed inwardly in the home of my poor soul. … Amen.448

The Spirit is the joyful love and beauty of God, but he is also “the Artist of the world,” the one who gives joy, beauty, and blessedness.

447 The most popular of these are the hymn, “Veni Creator,” the antiphon, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, and the sequence, Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Congar,Vol. 1, 108-110. 448 St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Mystical Prayer” in Divine Eros: Hymns of St. Symeon the New Theologian, trans. Daniel K. Griggs (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 2010), 34.

222 When the Spirit was moving on the water, the creation was without grace; but after this created world underwent the operation of the Spirit, it gained all the beauty of that grace by which it is illuminated. The grace of the universe cannot remain without the Holy Spirit.449

The Spirit is the power, grace, and life of the Church, the power of the Church’s preaching (1 Cor. 2:4), the truth of the Church’s doctrine (1 Jn. 2:20), the means by which her sacraments are effective (1 Cor. 12:13), but he is also the one who empowers, who gives grace to, and who instructs the Church in both its institutional forms and in the personal piety of its members.450

If the Holy Spirit did not exist, we believers would not be able to pray to God. … when you call on the Father, you should remember that the Spirit must have touched your soul so that you would be judged worthy to call God by that name. If the Holy Spirit did not exist, the discourses about wisdom and knowledge would not be in the Church. … If the Holy Spirit did not exist, there would not be or teachers in the Church. … If the Spirit were not present [when you come to worship], the Church would not form a consistent whole. The consistency of the Church manifests the presence of the Spirit.451

The Spirit is the θεόπνευστος, theópneustos – the living breath and certain truth – of the

Church’s Scripture (2 Tm. 3:16), but he is also the one who carried the prophets along (2

Pt. 1:21), who spoke through the apostles and guided the apostles into all truth (Mt 10:20;

449 , On the Holy Spirit, 2.5.32-33 NPNF 1/10: 118-119. Commenting on the concept of the Spirit as both beauty/love and the one who makes beauty, Hart describes the Spirit as “the one in whom the love which God is” most clearly reveals God as “sheer delight, generosity, and desire for the other,” , The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 175. Italics mine. Bulgakov says of him, All the forms of being, the meanings that clothe the latter, are – as creations in beauty – the artistry of the Holy Spirit … The Beauty of the world is an effect of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Beauty; and Beauty is Joy, the joy of being. … “The soul of the Divine creation/Is nourished by eternal joy.” Bulgakov, The Comforter, 201; the internal quotation is from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” as translated by Tyutchev into Russian. For more on Bulgakov’s view of beauty and the Holy Spirit see also 200-218, esp. 203-204. 450 Following the ’s language of “One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,” Congar argues that the Spirit makes the Church (Vol 2, 5-15), makes the Church’s members holy (Vol 2, 67-144), gives the Church its unity (Vol 2, 15-23), and keeps the Church apostolic (Vol 2, 39-67). 451 John Chrystostom, De Sancta. Pentecoste Homily. 1, 4: in Patrilogia Graeca vol. 50, 458-459. Quoted in Congar, Vol 2, 3.

223 Jn. 16:13). He is the one by whose help the Church reads and interprets the Bible today, and he does so as a person, not merely a power.452 As Jenson says, “until we have identified the particular of the Spirit we cannot fully understand the church’s tradition, nor therefore Scriptural or creedal or liturgical or ministerial authority.”453

IV.B. We can see that the Spirit is a person because the Spirit has a story.

From these activities of the Spirit, the patristic writers argued for the personhood of the Spirit and presented their doctrine of the third person of the Trinity in Greek philosophical terms of essence, substance, and hypostasis. If asked to answer our riddle,

“How can the presence and power of God be a person?” they would readily respond, “By the Holy Spirit.” Their insights were inspiring and brilliant, and they limned out much of the orthodox pneumatology that would shape the Church’s life and practice for centuries.

However, their doctrines were so closely tied to the Platonic categories of their day that it can be hard to fit into contemporary ethical models like the one we are proposing. We need not abandon the Patristic insights, but we must extend them if we are to truly see how the Holy Spirit is a person and how such an idea can shape our understanding of virtue ethics.454

452 As Congar says, “The only really adequate way of reading and interpreting the Scripture is to do so subject to the movement of the Spirit.” Vol. 2, 27. 453 Jenson, The Triune God, 26. Like Hauerwas, Jenson argues that theology must begin with God and then move on to God’s relationship to creation rather than versa for just this reason. 454 Though contemporary theology frequently treats the descriptor Neo-Platonic as a pejorative and seeks to undermine any Greek influence on the Christian faith, such is not my goal at all. On the contrary, I find the Platonic categories of the patristic writers immensely helpful even if they do not tell the whole story. Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite and Bulgakov’s The Comforter both contain excellent metaphysical extensions of the ’ pneumatology. Their work is different from the extension I will propose but it is not in conflict with it.

224 It is one thing to confess the metaphysical claim that the Spirit is a person, the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity and to base such a claim on particular functions and activities. It is another to see that the Spirit is a person, a character in God’s story and someone that can be known and listened to, loved and turned to for aid. Though their prayers and sermons frequently perform the latter, the emphasis in the patristics (and in much of Christian pneumatological teaching generally) has been on the former.

Contemporary writers like Jenson and Rogers help us attend to the narrative of the Spirit in Scripture in order to see that, like Christ, he is both the author of and a character within the story of the world. They do so primarily by drawing our attention back to Scripture and to overlooked voices in the history of the Church.

IV.B.1. We see that the Spirit is a person not because he functions like a person in the abstract but because his functions are interactions with other persons within a shared story.

Rogers points out that traditional discussions of the Spirit’s personhood have centered around function and activities, “They ask for something distinctive for the Spirit to do.”455 But this raises problems with notions of God’s unity – Opera trinitatis ad extra

455 Rogers, After the Spirit, 45.

225 indivisa sunt.456 And here the twin doctrines of the Spirit’s divinity and personhood come into conflict. If God’s actions to the world are indivisible, we cannot posit distinctive functions to the Spirit without divorcing him from the divine nature which places him within the Trinity. Traditionally the strategy by which such an impasse is avoided is the notion of appropriations. Christians are to confess that all of God’s external actions are one but also acknowledge that some actions are more fittingly associated with this or that person with the trinity, e.g. creation to the Father, redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Spirit. “The doctrine of the appropriations sits with the doctrine of

God’s unity in a dialectical way: Here’s how you say it, and here’s how you take it back.”457

456 Though often misattributed to Augustine, the formula owes its precise wording to the scholastics. It is true however that the concept is first explored in detail by Augustine in a sermon on the Trinity “You have the persons quite distinct, and their working inseparable. So let us never say that the Father worked anything without the Son, the Son anything without the Father. … ‘The Father abiding in me does his works (Jn. 14:10).” Augustine, “Sermon 52: The Trinity,” 14, in Sermons Vol. III (51-94) on the New Testament, Works of Saint Augustine Series, trans, Edmund Hill, (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1990), quotation 14:56: 50-65. Though Augustine focuses on the Father and the Son since the question to which he is responding was, “Does the Father do anything that the Son doesn’t do, or the Son anything that the Father doesn’t do?”, he does include the Spirit in his principle of unified operation saying, “For the time being let us talk about the Father and the Son; when he to whom we say, ‘Be my helper, do not forsake me’ (Ps 27:9), has brought our efforts to a successful conclusion, we will have to understand that the Holy Spirit too is in no way excluded from the activity of the Father and the Son.” Augustine, “Sermon 52,” 4:52. The maxim also has supporters in the Greek tradition. explores the principle, but again not the phrase, in “Not Three Gods,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 3.5 second series, ed. Henry Wace (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 331-336. John of Damascus says, “The abiding and resting of the Persons in one another is not in such a manner that they coalesce or become confused but, rather, so that they adhere to one another, for they without interval between them and inseparable and their mutual indwelling is without confusions. …And there is one surge and one movement of the three Persons. It is impossible for this to be found in any created nature. There is the fact that the divine irradiation and operation is one, simple, and undivided; and that , while it is apparently diversely manifested in divisible things … it remains simple.” John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 14:202, emphasis mine. 457 Rogers, After the Spirit, 45.

226 Rogers offers an alternative way of naming the Spirit’s personhood, one rooted in narrative rather than function or office. He notes that exercising a particular human office does not add to nor take away from the personhood of a human beings, and therefore we ought not imagine that it does so for the Godhead either. Recognizing the complexity of the people we know and work with, we would resist basing their status as persons on their role as say police officers or movie directors. How much less should we do so with God!458 Rather, Rogers suggests, we know people as persons by narrative, and we should seek to recognize the persons of the Trinity in the same way.

Is it to be expected that we would get to know the Spirit in any other way than by her interactions with other persons? And if the Spirit has identifiable actions over against other persons only within the trinitarian life – since toward human persons God acts as One – then how else could Christian believers expect to detect the Spirit’s personhood but in her interactions with the Father and the Son? And where else could Christians expect to detect those interactions, except where they get glimpses into the trinitarian life, when Jesus, as narratively portrayed, makes them known, by himself praying to the Father, or receiving the Spirit, teaching the disciples or expecting his resurrection? Either that, or Christians must themselves enter into the trinitarian life where those interactions take place, something which they sometimes claim on the basis precisely of the Spirit’s work.459

If this is the case, then the Spirit would not be the “hidden person” of the Trinity but one whom we first encounter via his interactions with the man Jesus Christ as presented in the

Gospel narratives and who later makes himself known precisely by incorporating human persons into the life of God.460 Occasionally the Spirit is even pictured in more personal

458 To be fair, the Patristic argument is not that the Spirit is a person because he does x, y, and z but that we can see that he is a person because he performs those actions. Hauerwas makes a similar point about the problematic nature of divorcing personhood from narrative roles in his essay, “Must a Patient Be a Person to Be a Patient? Or, My Uncle Charlie Is Not Much of a Person, But He’s Still My Uncle Charlie” in The Hauerwas Reader, 596-602. 459 Rogers, After the Spirit, 46. 460 Here we see a foreshadowing of our second riddle about the mystery of theosis.

227 and visible ways than the Son, as in Congar’s statement, “Jesus is the way and the Spirit is the guide who enables man to go forward on that way.”461

Jenson teaches us to understand God narratively—God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead having earlier rescued Israel from Egypt—and Rogers encourages us to do this for the person of the Holy Spirit. Both do so, not merely under the influence of late modernity and its emphasis on story, but also by following patristic authors like Gregory of Nyssa.

Christ is born; the Spirit is His forerunner. He is baptized; the Spirit bears witness. He is tempted; the Spirit leads Him up. He works miracles; the Spirit accompanies them. He ascends; the Spirit takes His place.462

The Spirit is whoever overshadowed Mary’s womb, whoever descended in the form of a dove and remained on Christ in the Jordan, whoever drove Jesus into the wilderness, whoever waited to be sent until the time was right, whoever acted as God’s agent in raising Jesus from the dead, whoever fell like fire on the apostles at Pentecost, and he is whoever makes Christ present in the sacraments today, whoever seals our salvation, whoever speaks to us through the Scripture and the church, whoever allows

Christians to partake in the divine nature. That this person, the Spirit, tends to be self- effacing or modest463, to point to Christ rather than to himself, to work inwardly and intimately (entering Mary’s womb, inhabiting Jesus’s breath, dwelling within the deepest

461 Congar, 1:57. 462 Gregory of Nyssa, Fifth Theological Oration, NPNF 2/7:327. 463 Dale Bruner speaks of the Spirit as “the shy member of the Trinity.” Rogers Frederick but points out that by “shyness” he does not mean timidity or fear and cites 2 Tim. 1:7 as a direct repudiation of any such notion. Instead, he thinks we should speak of the Holy Spirit’s shyness as, “the shyness of deference, the shyness of a concentrated centering of attention on another; it is not the shyness (such as we often experience) of self-centeredness, but the shyness of an other- centeredness. . . It is, in a word, the shyness of tact.” Frederick Dale Bruner and Willaim Hordern, The Holy Spirit – Shy Member of the Trinity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 14– 15.

228 reaches of Augustine’s inmost self “interior intimo meo”) is evidence of his character, not his lack thereof.

It is in a deepening of thought about the portrayal of character, not in flight from it, that the anonymity of the Spirit is best understood: as the complex, storied, audacious reticence of someone who desires and gives herself to be known only and precisely in the community where she is at home (oikei) – the better to entice others in. It is an intimate place, the haram of the Spirit, the place in which she hovers over the waters of Mary’s womb, and thereby over the waters also of the whole world, the intimate and embracing place into which “the Spirit and the Bride say ‘Come!’” . . . The Spirit is inaccessible not because she lacks the qualities of a person; the Spirit is inaccessible because she has the qualities of a person. She is not inaccessible because impersonal, but as personal.464

It is appropriate to connect the Spirit with concepts like life, but such a connection does not distinguish him from the Father and the Son who also are identified with life (Ps.

42:8; 54:4; Jn. 14:6). Life is a quality shared among all three persons of the Trinity.

Rogers worries that even if it is biblical to call the Spirit life, doing so, or only doing so, ought to be impossible for people baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

“The Spirit is not the life but a life, or, better, a Person of the Living One, who gives life to human beings in storied and historical interactions.”465

How then are we to determine what is specific or characteristic of the Spirit?

How can his character be inseparable from but not reducible to the more generic term

‘God’? Rogers’s answer is to look at him not in relation to the world but to the Father and the Son. If the external operations of the Trinity are one, their internal operations may show distinctions. Much of Christian pneumatology, especially in the West, has done this by reflecting on the Trinity’s internal relations hinted at by words like

“begetting” and “being begotten,” “Proceeding” and “Sending/Giving.” Rogers calls us

464 Rogers, After the Spirit, 47, 53-54. 465 Rogers, After the Spirit, 54.

229 to focus instead on intertrinitarian scenes from the Gospels in which we see Jesus interact directly with the Spirit (and the Father) in order to see the internal life of God played out in the created world.

IV.B.2. The Spirit anoints and abides upon the body of Christ; this is true whether we mean the flesh of the Nazarene or the bodies of those who make up the Church.

Rooting pneumatology in the Spirit’s relationship with the man Jesus Christ immediately raises the question of the Spirit’s relationship with matter. The incarnation and the material character of Jesus Christ is often contrasted with the ethereal and super- material character of the Holy Spirit. That the Spirit works upon the heart, convicting, calling, and sanctifying from the inside out, does not mean that the Spirit is somehow uninterested in or divorced from material creation, including the material creation of the human body. While the Son takes on material existence and comes to us as God incarnate, the Spirit anoints and abides upon matter as God’s presence of blessing and/or judgment. As Rogers says,

[The Spirit] is said to come upon a human being: but this is expressed externally with the oil of anointing, the water of baptism, the fire of Pentecost, so that she is thought to rest upon or embrace the physical body; she is said to indwell or inhabit a human being but this is portrayed as physically as the seed in the womb, the priest in the temple, or the householder in her home. You do not need a theory of promotion to see that even as late as Thomas Aquinas (who learned it from Aristotle) to “inhabit” is to habituate, to dwell dispositionally or by training in limbs and muscles physically readied, for love’s sake, to act. To inhabit is to habituate, to render love bodily.466

In the narratives of Jesus and the Spirit examined below we find at least two characteristic activities of the person called the Holy Spirit. He descends (anoints) and rests (abides) on matter, specifically on the body of Christ. In the text, the Spirit does not

466 Rogers, After the Spirit, 54.

230 primarily interact with Jesus intellectually or psychologically. He descends upon, drives, and is breathed out by the body of Jesus. As Basil says, “The Lord was anointed with the

Holy Spirit who would henceforth be united with his very flesh.”467

The characteristic activity of the Spirit is to anoint and abide upon matter. As

Ephrem says of the holy oil of anointing, the Spirit “befriends” matter, blessing it and teaching us truths about his eternal person through the types of matter he rests upon and the manner in which he does so.468 The Spirit presents himself as wind, living water, fire, and oil because those material items present something that is true about his person to human beings. More provocatively, we might say that wind, water, fire, and oil are the kinds of materials they are specifically because the Spirit has befriended them, knowing from all eternity that they would be the fitting signs by which he could communicate his character to humanity. If we are to think well about the Spirit, we must think materially, not only because of the limitations of our earthly minds which cannot approach the spiritual apart from material mediation, but because the Spirit has chosen to befriend matter for the sake of Jesus Christ who took on matter. We must neither identify the

Spirit as matter and become idolaters nor identify him by simple contrast with matter and become Gnostics.469 God is neither confined to the world nor to some spiritual realm

467 St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 15.36: 59-60. 468 Ephrem the Syrian, “Hymn on Virginity, 7” in Rogers, The Holy Spirit, 110. 469 Kathryn Tanner’s discussion of divine agency and transcendence mirrors the point Rogers is making about the Spirit and matter and reminds us that what we are saying about the Spirit is also true of God in his fullness. Neither the person of the Trinity, nor the divine nature they share, nor the unity called God may be utterly confused nor utterly separated from the creation he has made. “A God who genuinely transcends the world must not be characterized, therefore, by direct contrast with it. A contrastive definition will show it failure to follow through consistently on divine transcendence by inevitably bringing God down to the level of the non- divine to which it is opposed.” Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988), 46-48, quotation from 46.

231 outside of it, so Christ can have a body, and the Spirit can anoint and abide upon bodies.470

The Spirit is a Person with an affinity for material things. The Spirit characteristically befriends the body. Those things are true of the Son as well: the Son shows an affinity for material things in the incarnation, and befriends the body from conception to resurrection, ascension and the final judgment. And they are even true of the Father, if to the Father we appropriate the creation of the material world, and its return to him in the Kingdom. That the Spirit shows an affinity for material things, and befriends the body, does not itself distinguish the Spirit from the Father and the Son; rather it shows again that the Trinity’s activity in the world is of a piece.”471

The Spirit’s anointing and abiding is no more abstract than the Son’s incarnation, and both have the same end – to unite the material world which the Father loves to the life they share with the him. The Son takes on flesh and is baptized, fully immersing himself in humanity via the waters of Mary’s womb and the waters of the Jordan; the Spirit overshadows Mary’s womb and anoints the body of Christ in the Jordan. Our bodies are immersed in the baptismal water; the Spirit stirs the waters making Christ present to us and uniting us to him. Jesus, heals the sick; the Spirit is the means by which he does so.

Our bodies become ill; James advises us, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the Lord will raise him up” (James 5:14). Jesus executes judgement upon the temple by overturning tables, fashioning a whip, and driving out animals; the

Spirit who prophesied (Ps. 69:9) prompts the zeal which fills his soul and strengthens his

470 “For the sake of the world, the Spirit figures her hovering on the waters of the womb backward to the waters of creation and forward to the waters of the [baptismal] font.” Rogers, After the Spirit, 58-59. 471 Rogers, 60. Fretheim echoes this point in regards to the presentation of God in the Old Testament (whom he generally associates with the Father). Israel’s God loves matter, is connected to matter, and is so involved in matter that, “For Israel, there is no such thing as an unincarnate God.” Fretheim, Suffering of God, 106. See also his God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005).

232 hands. Elymus opposes the gospel’s proclamation and seeks to “make crooked the straight paths of the Lord;” Paul, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” fixes his eyes upon him, pronounces judgement, and blinds him as an act of Divine judgment (Acts 13:8–11).

Jesus’s body dies and is laid in a tomb; The Spirit hovers over his body in repose and raises it to life in resurrection. Our bodies are constantly being given over to death (2

Cor. 4:11); the Spirit rests upon us as the guarantee and first fruits of our resurrection (1

Cor. 15:20).

What Christ does in the body, he does by the Spirit. Likewise, what the Church does in the body, we do by the Spirit. This should come as no surprise for those who acknowledge themselves to be “the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1

Cor. 12:27). The Son’s affinity for matter as expressed in the incarnation is not something to be contrasted with the Spirit. It is something which points us toward the common love that all persons of the Trinity have for matter. In his interactions with the matter of Jesus’s flesh, we see the Spirit’s story manifested, and by attending to these interactions we begin to get a feel for the Spirit’s habits, his character, his story.

IV.C. We see the Spirit as a character with a story by attending to Trinitarian scenes in the Gospels in which we see the Spirit’s characteristic activity of anointing and abiding on Jesus, expressing and accomplishing the union of love between the Son and the Father.

It is tempting to imagine that a pneumatology useful for ethics is one in which the

Spirit “has more to do,” but Rogers reminds us that such thinking leads to a non- trinitarian view of God. If the external acts of the trinity are one, then seeking out unique activities for the Spirit is both futile and heretical. What we really are after is a more robust way of speaking about the Spirit and those characteristics which identify him as a

233 person rather than a reified power or presence alone.472 For this, we turn to those unique scenes in which the Spirit’s interaction with the world and its creatures are not merely ad extra because the creature with whom he interacts is God himself, the person of the eternal Word who became the man Jesus Christ. As Christian artists and iconographers have long recognized, these scenes are windows into the life of God and thus worthy of our special attention. In attending to them, we find that the Spirit is a character and that his characteristic activity is to join together in love, or, as John of Damascus puts it, “to proceed from the Father to anoint and abide upon the Son.”473 It is because this is the

Spirit’s characteristic activity in the Trinity that it is manifested as his characteristic activity in creation as well.

To say that the Spirit anoints the Son is to say that he is sent, proceeds, is given by, and is poured out. Hilary of Portiers was the first to note that the Spirit is properly named the Gift of God.474 Augustine would follow Hilary and extend his insight to say that the Spirit was properly named Gift because his characteristic activity was to be given. The Father gives the Spirit to the Son. The Son gives the Spirit to the Church.

The Spirit gives gifts to the Church, but “The Gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing but the

Holy Spirit.”475 In the life of Jesus we see the Spirit given by the Father to his Son and given by the Son to those whom he would unite to himself and through him to his Father.

Just as it is the character of water to flow, of wind to blow, and of fire to spread, it is the character of the Spirit to descend, anoint, and blow upon Christ and the world claimed by

472 Rogers, After the Spirit, 61. 473 John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 1.3:183. 474 “The Holy Spirit has a Name of His own … He is the Gift to us.” Hilary of Portiers, On the Trinity, 2.31, NPNF 2/9: 60. 475 Augustine, De Trinitate, Works of Saint Augustine Series, trans. Edmund Hill, (New York: New City Press, 1991), 15.19.36: 428.

234 Christ. But the Spirit does not merely descend for a moment. He anoints in order to abide, to rest upon the Son.

This “abiding” (μένειν, ménein) is an active rather than passive state of being.

“When the Spirit rests, she is as static as water, as contained as oil, and as passive as fire.

The Spirit rests like the wind.”476 The Spirit rests upon the Son in the same way that he

[the Spirit] brooded over the waters of creation or continually rushed upon David. Just as

God’s rest on the seventh day is the active rest of a king seated on his throne, not out conquering, but also not lounging in relaxation, the Spirit’s rest is a stable exercise of influence and power.477 “Abiding” is just one way that this active rest is described.

Rogers lists nine other Greek expressions from Scripture used to describe what the Spirit

476 Rogers, After the Spirit, 71. 477 “God’s resting in Genesis 1 does not specifically describe his disengagement of the controls [of creation], but it describes the opportunity to do so. He can disengage from the set-up tasks and begin regular operations. It would be similar to getting a new computer and spending focused time setting it up (placing the equipment, connecting the wires, installing the software). After all of those tasks were done, you would disengage from that process, mostly so you could now engage in the new tasks of actually using the computer. That is what it had been set up for.” John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 76. Elsewhere Walton describes divine rest as “freedom to rule” and connects it with his cosmological temple reading of Genesis 1:1-2:3: “Divine rest is not primarily an act of disengagement but an act of engagement. No other divine rest occurs in the Hebrew bible than the rest that is associated with God’s presence in his temple.” Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 180. “The [seventh day/Sabbath] discloses something about the God of Israel. The creator does not spend his six days of work in coercion but in faithful invitation. God does not spend the seventh day in exhaustion but in serenity and peace. In contrast to the gods of Babylon, this God is not anxious about his creation but is at ease with the well-being of his rule.” Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 35. The original Sabbath is a picture of divine because this type of abiding and exercising control without coercion is the sort of relationship the persons of the Trinity have with one another. See John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 1.14: 202. For a fuller account of rest in the Hebrew Bible see Walton, Cosmology, 178-184; N.E. Andreasen, The Old Testament Sabbath: A Tradition-Historical Investigation, Society of Biblical Interpretation Dissertation Series 7; (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1972); J. Laansma, I Will Give You Rest (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 17-76.

235 does “upon” a person, place, or object, all of which connote activity rather than passivity or stillness.478

Though the Spirit rests upon creatures, his hypostatic character, who he is as a person, is seen in his resting on the Son, for this is his habitual action. As John the

Baptist said, Christ is the one on whom the Spirit descends and remains (Jn. 1:32).

Certainly, the Spirit’s abiding upon Jesus stands in contrast to the Spirit’s occasional rushing upon Samson and Saul, but John intends to convey something more than just the duration of Christ’s “prophetic .”479 The Spirit’s abiding on Jesus is evidence not of a new connection between the Father and the Son but of a prior relationship which the Spirit reveals.480

“If the Spirit is a person, we must turn to narrative to identify her. And yet the

Spirit is such, that the narratives of the Spirit are narratives about Jesus.”481 Rogers argues that what exactly it looks like for the Spirit to anoint and abide can be seen by

478 Rogers’s list comes from both the Old and New Testaments: 1) to make to rest upon (Num. 11:26; 2 Kings 2:15 [IV Kings in LXX]); 2) to come upon (2 Chr. 15:1, 20:14; Lk. 1:35; Acts 1:8; 19:16); 3) be upon (Num. 24:2; Judg. 11:29; 1 Sam. 19:20, 23; Lk. 2:25) 4); 4) be in (Gen. 41:38; 5) find (2 Kings 2:16); 5) hover (Gen. 1:2); 6) descends (Mt. 3:16; Mk. 1:10; Lk. 3:22; Jn. 1:32); 7) falls upon (Acts 10;44; 11:15); 8) Overshadows (Lk. 1:35; Mt. 17:5 and parallels; 9) dwells in (Rom. 8:9; 2 Tim. 1:14). Rogers notes that verbs relating to resting, alighting, and abiding also show up in early epiclesis from the Greek, Syriac, and Armenian churches. Rogers, After the Spirit, 62-63. 479 Thompson, God of the Gospel of John, 163. 480 Thompson, God of the Gospel of John, 164. “The significance of John’s seeing the Spirit “remaining on” Jesus lies not in what the Spirit does to Jesus but rather in what the Spirit does for the Baptist. With respect to Jesus, the result of the Spirit’s ‘descending’ ought not to be classified under the rubric of inward illumination, filling, endowment, equipping, or any of a number of other terms redolent of Pauline or Synoptic descriptions of the Spirit’s work. Rather, the descent of the Spirit leads the Baptist to recognize Jesus as the one who would baptize with the Spirit, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the Son of God.” 481 Rogers, After the Spirit, 71.

236 attending to trinitarian scenes in the story of Christ.482 The first such scene is his baptism in the Jordan River. The second is his nativity. The last is his death and resurrection.483

In each of these scenes we find the Spirit acting as a character in the story, a character whose habitual action is the anointing and abiding upon the body of Christ.

IV.C.1. The Spirit is a character who anoints and abides upon Jesus in the story of his baptism.

“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove” (Lk 3:21–22a).

482 In this section I follow Rogers methodologically in attending to Trinitarian scenes in the Gospels and Acts in order to discern the character of the Spirit, and I arrive at the same conclusion as he – that the Spirit’s characteristic way of relating to Christ and therefore to the world is best seen in his anointing and abiding. However, we differ significantly in the middle in our treatment of the various texts. See Rogers, After the Spirit, 75-207 for his account of the following scenes. 483 Rogers also treats the Transfiguration and (briefly) the Ascension/Pentecost. See After the Spirit, 172-208. One additional scene which Rogers does not address, likely because it is has not captured the Church’s historic attention and does not often appear in Christian iconography, art, or liturgy is Luke 10:21-22. “In that same hour [Jesus] rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes Father for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The scene mirrors the baptism in that rather than the Father identifying Jesus as his Son by anointing him with the Spirit and proclaiming his love, the Son, being filled with the joy of the Spirit, proclaims the identity of the Father. The Father is whoever knows the Son and whomever the Son reveals to those he [the son] chooses. In this scene we see the Son “full of the Spirit” and “rejoicing.” Christ is full of the Spirit not because of an onrush of power such as Samson experienced but because “all things have been handed over to [him] by [his] Father.” The Spirit is the gift received from his birth and his baptism who abides upon him always. He “rejoices” because the Spirit is the blessed presence of God, the one whose fruit (Gal 5:22) and name (Jn. 15:11; 16:24) is Joy. The prophetic prompting of the Spirit bears witness to the love and union between the Father and the Son and the promise of sharing in that union for those to whom the Son reveals the Father. That revelation of the Father by the Son is accomplished by the Son’s sending of the Spirit who will fill the Church, causing it to rejoice as Christ rejoiced, to know and worship the Father as Christ knows and worshipped him, and be united to God in glory and honor as Christ was and is and will be. The Spirit behaves in this scene according to the same habits we will see exhibited in the baptism, nativity, and death & resurrection scenes examined below. He anoints and abides upon the body of Christ, bearing witness to and accomplishing the love between the Father and the Son and in doing so extends the promise of that love and union to human beings who are found in Christ.

237 “…and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17).

“He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’” (Jn. 1:33).

“You yourselves know what John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:37–38).

The , more explicitly than any other event in the Gospels, pictures the three persons of the Trinity interacting with one another in ways that display their inter-trinitarian characteristics. It is the lens through which we will read the trinitarian aspects of the stories of Christ’s birth and death and is, therefore, treated first.

There are discrepancies in the various accounts, and John does not include the actual baptismal scene or the Father’s declaration from heaven, but the story of the Spirit’s anointing of Christ in the Jordan is the first event that appears all four Gospels.484 What is consistent in all the accounts is the characteristic activity of each person of the

Trinity.485 In them, we see the Father’s election, love, and glorification of the Son. We see the Son’s kenotic self-abasement in his obedience to the Father and his solidarity with sinful humanity. And we see the Spirit’s anointing and abiding on the body of the Son as a gift of and witness to the Father’s love.

As is typical of such scenes, the characteristics of the Persons in this inter- trinitarian encounter radiate out into creation. What happens in eternity is mirrored in

484 It also appears in the preaching of Peter in Acts 10. 485 The discrepancies in the accounts include the following. Matthew has the Father’s proclamation addressed to the Baptist (and possibly to the crowd of Jews on the banks of the Jordan), “This is my beloved Son…” while Mark and Luke record it as addressed to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son.” The Fourth Gospel places the confession of Sonship in the mouth of the prophet, John the Baptist, “I have seen and bear witness that this is the Son of God” (Jn. 1:34). The Spirit descends as a dove in each account with Luke emphasizing the bodily form of the dove and John emphasizing that it “descended and remained” (Jn. 1:32).

238 what happens in the Jordan. The Spirit bears witness to the love between the Father and the Son and invites others to see and join in the life of God’s love. The Father’s declaration of Jesus’s identity – the Son of God who is loved by God – is first of all directed to Jesus, but by the Spirit’s anointing and abiding, it also reveals the identity of

Jesus to those present, specifically to John. Luke’s use of the adjective “bodily”

(σωματικῷ, somatiko) indicates others present could see the Spirit even if the Father’s declaration of sonship is addressed to Christ. John’s Gospel is more explicit. The Baptist says that it is the Spirit’s anointing and abiding which revealed Jesus’s identity as the Son of God (Jn. 1:33). Moreover, he sees that the Spirit’s anointing and abiding on the Son has implications for those who are not begotten by God but who will nevertheless be invited into his family. John was called by the Spirit to baptize with water so that Jesus might be revealed and baptize others with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit anoints Christ to bear witness to the Father’s love for him, but he abides upon Christ so that the Father’s love can be given to others by Christ.

What the Spirit does for the body of Christ, he also does the other human bodies.

The character he shows in taking the form of a dove and anointing Christ at baptism and in abiding with him after baptism shines through in the way that he interacts with other human beings who through baptism have “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27) and “been buried with Christ” (Rm 6:4).486

In the baptismal interaction, the Father expresses his love; the Spirit hovers over the waters of the Jordan as she hovered over the waters of creation and the waters of the womb; and Jesus receives the love and witness in a way that other human beings can participate in – he comes to the Jordan “to perfect baptism,” i.e., to accomplish its potential for initiating human beings into the triune life. The

486 A similar parallel can be drawn between what the Spirit does to the body of Christ at the transfiguration and what the Spirit does to the Christian in 2 Cor. 3, “transforming us from one degree of glory to another.”

239 baptism of Jesus does not make sense without the presence of the Spirit. For what the Spirit adds to the expression and reception of love is this: that she witnesses it in such a way that she can also celebrate it, by electing further witnesses to the love between the Father and the Son among the disciples and among other human beings. At the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit, with her presence, indicates, marks, points out – bears witness to – the love between the Father and the Son in such a way (tropos hyparxeos) that it can be shared.487

At the baptism of Jesus, we see the Spirit’s invitation to humanity to join the love between the Father and the Son.

The Spirit’s role in Jesus’s baptism was unique in that Christ received the anointing and abiding which was already his from birth and from before birth. Christ received as a human what he possessed as God. He did not grasp at divinity as Eve did, but receives it as a gift in humility.488 The Spirit does not sanctify, deify, or adopt the

Son. The Son is, in himself, already holy, divine, and begotten. But in celebration of the

Son’s sanctity, deity, and filiality, the Spirit grants these qualities to him anew in his humanity. “The Spirit takes something that Christ does not need and presents it to him as gift.”489 Moreover, he gives these gifts to Christ through the mediation of sinful humans and the material of a fallen world. Jesus receives the Spirit because he was baptized by

John and baptized in the Jordan. In his baptism, we see the foundation for the Church composed of and mediated through sinful humans and the material of a fallen world that nevertheless will be elected by God, united with Christ, and anointed by the Spirit.

Because the Son condescends to receive holiness, divinity, and sonship as gifts of the

Spirit to humanity, he opens the way for those gifts to be shared with other human beings.

In descending on Christ in the waters of the Jordan, the Spirit reveals to humanity that

487 Rogers, After the Spirit, 137, italics original. 488 Rogers, After the Spirit, 135. 489 Rogers, After the Spirit, 144.

240 God’s life of eternal love is available for those who would, by baptism, be united to

Christ in his obedient Sonship, anointed with the abiding Spirit, and adopted as Sons by the Father who loves them. As a prayer in the Syriac tradition describes it, Christ who had no need to be baptized left the robe of divinity in the waters of the Jordan for those who were naked to come there and be clothed in it490

It is characteristic of the Spirit to take up and render holy concrete, physical, sociological structures – like the bathing practiced in Judaism and by John. It is so that she renders the life of the Trinity in matter, in history, in community, in all their human contingency.491

The Spirit is the one who changes a bath to a baptism, the baptized to a Son of God, and the baptizer to the body of Christ. He sanctifies the water, the one who comes to the water, and the one who waits in the water as a representative of the Church.

In the story of Jesus’s baptism, the Spirit’s character is presented to us. He appears not only as a power and a presence, but as a person; not as an ethereal presence divorced from the world, but as one who delights to be in and on bodily forms. He is the one who anoints and abides upon the body of Christ, the expression of and the one who bears witness to the love between the Father and the Son. But if this is the character of the Spirit, then we should expect to find him behaving in this way not only at the baptism, but throughout the entire story of Jesus. We will therefore look at two other iconic trinitarian scenes, those which open and close the gospel.

IV.C.2. The Spirit is a character who anoints and abides upon the body of Christ in the story of his nativity.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Lk 1:35).

490 Francis Acharya, ed., Prayer with the Harp of the Spirit: The Prayer of the Asian Churches (Vagamon, India: Kurisumala Ashram, 1982-1986), 3:496. 491 Rogers, After the Spirit, 137.

241

“And behold, the star they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was” (Mt. 2:9)

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Lk 2:14).

At the annunciation, the Spirit “comes upon” (ἐπέρχομαι, hepérchomai) Mary, enfolding her beneath the shadow of his wings. He broods above the waters of her womb, abiding there and giving life to the body of Christ within them. Though the focus is on Mary and on the Christ Child she bears, the Spirit is nevertheless a character in the story. Whatever one is to think about the nature of Jesus’s DNA or the physiological manner in which the miracle of the virgin birth was accomplished, one thing must be noted. The Spirit came upon Mary, and she conceived Jesus. As he inspired the prophets in the past, placing the word within them, so he more perfectly inspires Mary filling her mouth with the words of prophesy and filling her belly with the Word made flesh. Mary is no mere surrogate carrying an alien baby within her womb. The Spirit anoints Mary’s body in order for her to conceive and rests upon the child within her. She contributes to the physical makeup of the man who was God. When the Spirit anoints Mary, he anoints her body, that is, her womb, in order to bring this about. This bodily connection is strong enough that when the Spirit moves the prophet Elizabeth to speak and the prophet in her belly to leap, he does in response to both the unborn Christ and to the woman who carries him. “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Lk 1:42).

Because of the Spirit’s overshadowing, the child conceived is not merely Mary’s son, but neither is he ever referred to as the Son of the Spirit. No, the Spirit’s anointing and abiding is the reason that he is called the Father’s Son. The Spirit unites the body of

242 Jesus to the Father even as he unites that body to Mary. Perhaps the matter is better expressed in the sideways speech of a riddling haiku:

I often wonder, Did he have Mary’s eyes, or Were they his Father’s?

However one answers the haiku’s question, the Gospel narrative is clear – the body of the unborn Christ upon whom the Spirit rests is intimately connected to Mary’s body and intimately connected to the Father such that the man Jesus is truly called the son of Mary and the Son of God. In his “coming upon” and “overshadowing” of Mary, the Spirit anoints and abides upon the body of Christ and unites him to the Father.

As we step back from the inter-triune picture of the Spirit and the newly incarnate

Christ, we see him acting upon the creation, both human and non-human, in ways that bear, what Wittgenstein would call, a family resemblance to how he interacts with Christ.

Those who know the Spirit as the one who anoints and rests upon the body of Christ and those who have seen him pictured in Revelation as stars and spirits are able to discern his presence in the star and in the glory of the Lord surrounding the chorus of angels who proclaimed the birth of the King of the Jews. The star, as it appears in Matthew, is the star of the anointed one. Its light came upon the wise men, and, as it were, “it moved where it willed.” Where it willed to move was upon the place where Christ was. There it

“came to rest” (Mt 2:9). The result of which was that Christ was revealed to the nations, prompting them to join the Spirit in honoring Christ and giving worship to God.492 It is no accident the star’s appearing yields joy, one of the fruits of the Spirit. (Mt 2:10). Nor

492 The Spirit’s work in Acts of anointing the Gentiles and uniting them to the body of Christ is prefigured here.

243 is it surprising to see that when the Spirit brings them to the Messiah of Israel, these kings mirror the Spirit by giving gifts and abiding in God’s presence (Mt 2:11).

The shepherds who saw the barrier between heaven and earth torn open likewise joined the Spirit in his work of coming to Christ, honoring him, and proclaiming him to the world. The Glory of the Lord, the Shekinah cloud that anointed and abode within the tabernacle and the temple, is sent to the shepherds of Israel. The angelic spirits proclaim good news which inspires both joy and peace, fruits (and names)493 of the Spirit, in those who receive the message. The shepherds to whom the Glory was sent are, predictably, drawn to Christ just as the wise men were. Like Mary and Elizabeth, like Simeon and

Anna, the Spirit gives these rustic herdsmen words which bear witness to Christ and proclaim good news to the world (Lk 2:17–18).

In the first appearance of Jesus Christ, we see the Spirit anointing his tiny body within Mary’s womb and uniting that body to the Father. Because of the Spirit’s abiding, the flesh of Mary’s womb was united to the Father such that her son was His Son. We hear the Father proclaim his love and connection with Jesus via the angel’s words, “He will be called the Son of God.” We also see the Spirit coming upon the bodies – both human and non-human of the world around Christ, moving them toward Christ and uniting them with him in shared worship of the Father. In short, when we look at the

Spirit’s interaction with the Son in the nativity, we see the inter-trinitarian character of the Spirit as one who is given as an anointing and as one who abides, and we see these same characteristic behaviors also appear in the Spirit’s relationship to the rest of the creaturely world, both human (the shepherds, wise men, and the prophetic characters of

493 A strong argument can be made that Peace is used as a name for the Spirit in Jn. 14:27 and Joy in 15:11 and 16:24.

244 Mary, Elizabeth, John, Simeon, and Anna) and non-human (the star) in an analogous manner.

IV.C.3. The Spirit is a character who anoints and abides upon Christ in the story of his death and resurrection.

“Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani!” (Mk 15:34).

“Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit”(Lk 23:46).

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in your mortal bodies, You too shall be raised from the dead” (Rm 8:11).494

In his incarnation, the Son faces a separation from the Father in that he will take on flesh. But every stage of his journey in the flesh is also accompanied by a return to the father. This movement from distinction to union carried out by the Spirit pictures on earth what the life of God looks like in eternity. In his conception, the Son leaves Father and descend to earth, but the heavens open to pour out God’s proclamation of love. He takes on a body and is Mary’s son, but he is called Holy, the Son of God. This separation and return is accomplished by the Spirit’s overshadowing of the body of Mary. At his baptism, the Son faces a separation from and return to the Father: separation as he stands in solidarity with sinful humanity and submits to a baptism of repentance from sins utterly alien to the Father and return as he rises up from the water and is greeted by the

Spirit-Dove and the proclamation of the Father’s love. This separation and return is accomplished by the Spirit who inspired John’s preaching, who directed Jesus to the

494 The arrangement of this verse is taken from Rogers, After the Spirit, 75. Though he is not intending to be poetic, Rogers’s presentation of the clauses of Romans 8:11 fortuitously presents this key passage in the style of sideways speech, accomplishing a sort of gestalt switch in which we see the straightforward logic of Paul’s condition and claim presented instead as a poetic meditation on the Persons of the Trinity, their identity in relation to one another and their invitation to us to join their life together.

245 Jordan, who descended and remained to bear witness to the Son’s identity and the

Father’s profession of love. Both of these scenes are proleptic images of the climax of the gospel story. In his death and resurrection, Jesus faces a separation from and return to the Father. At the cross, Jesus faces the abandonment of the Father, a new and hitherto unknown estrangement from the one who with whom he shares an eternal and divine life as he descends into death. Thus, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Mk. 15:34). But this separation is not so much of the Father “turning his face away” as the popular hymn would have it.495 Rather, it is accomplished by the

Son sending the Spirit to the Father’s waiting hands.

The Gospel writers all use pneumatological language to describe the death of

Christ, and that language becomes more explicit over time. Mark, the earliest Gospel, describes the death of Jesus with the word ἐξέπνευσεν, exépneusen “breathed his last” which the King James translation captures in the memorable phrase “gave up the Ghost”

(Mk 15:37). Though Matthew is remarkably close to Mark in his description of the crucifixion, he nevertheless strengthens the pneumatological language of Christ’s death by substituting ἀφῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα, hapheken tó pneuma, (yielded up his spirit) for

ἐξέπνευσεν, exépneusen (Mt 27:50). Luke follows Mark’s use of ἐξέπνευσεν,

495 Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” track 9 on Say the Word, Thank You Music, 1995. “How deep the Father’s love for us, How vast beyond all measure, That He should give His only Son To make a wretch His treasure. How great the pain of searing loss – The Father turns His face away, As wounds which mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory.”

246 exépneusen but records Jesus’s prayer, “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit”496 as a way to clarify that what Jesus does is more than simply a cessation of physical respiration (Lk 23:46). Raymond Brown comments,

Spirit is not simply a partial component of the human being (as in “soul” and body); it is the living self of life power that goes beyond death. In Jesus’ case, however, “spirit” goes beyond the usual anthropological definitions, for he was conceived by the Spirit that came upon Mary (Luke 1:35), and at his baptism the Holy Spirit descended upon him in a bodily form (3:22), so that he was full of the Holy Spirit (4:1) and moved about Palestine in the power of the Spirit (4:14). When Jesus “places over” his spirit to the Father, he is bringing round to its place of origin his life and mission.497

John’s account is perhaps the strongest. Seeing that all his work was completed, Jesus adopted the posture of prayer, bowing his head and “παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα, parédóken tó pneuma” handed over his Spirit (Jn. 19:30).498 Such a passage demands to be read in connection with Jesus’s declaration in John 10:18 that “No one takes [my life] from me.”

The Spirit who anoints and abides upon Christ, the source of his life and direction is his

Spirit as well as the Father’s Spirit. He is the Son precisely because this life in the Spirit and the authority to lay it down, give it to others, entrust it to the Father, and take it back up has been given to him.

Jesus’s death is the mirror image – the same but flipped – of his birth and baptism, an utterly trinitarian event. In the incarnation, the Son departs from the Father’s

496 The prayer is adapted slightly from Psalm 31 LXX Ps 30, with minimal changes the most significant of which is the addition of the word “Father” as the designation for God. Significantly, Jesus calls God “Father” less frequently in Luke than in other Gospels, and so its inclusion here is relevant enough to demand a trinitarian reading of the passage. 497 Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, From Gethsemane to the Grave vol. 2 of A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1068. 498 Παρέδωκεν, parédóken here carries the sense of “conveying something in which one has a strong personal interest/ entrusting” as in Mt 25:20 where the master “delivers” over his wealth to his servants. “παρέδωκεν,” BDAG, 3rd edition, 761.

247 right hand to be identified with humanity. The Father sends the Spirit to the Son to give him life and to declare their unity in the midst of their separation. In the baptism, as the

Son stands in the place of sinful humanity, the Father sends the Spirit to express his identification with and confidence in the Son. He cries out from heaven that this is his

Son with whom he is well pleased. The Son receives the Spirit to fulfill all the all righteousness, acting in faithfulness to the Father’s desire for him and submitting to be governed by the Spirit. But at Golgotha, the Son delivers over the Spirit to the Father, letting go of his life in the flesh. With his final words he cries out to heaven that this is his Father to whom his Spirit can be entrusted.

The separation of Father and Son on the cross is accomplished by the Son’s sending of the Spirit from his own body, not in hopelessness because the Father has abandoned him, and not under duress because an external force (whether human or divine) has compelled him to do so, but as an expression of kenotic love.499 In the death of Jesus, the Spirit behaves in his characteristic fashion. By being given, he makes possible a distinction, an opening or interval between the Father and Son. In dying, Jesus sends to the Father the Spirit whom the Father sent to him at his baptism. The Spirit, as is his habit, is given, sent, and breathed out. He who is the Spirit of Jesus is given to the

Father just as He who is also the Spirit of the Father was given to Jesus. But the Spirit’s work is never simply going forth, or separating the Father to the Son. He always also enacts a characteristic reunion of love.

499 Commenting on Luke 23:46, Green says, “It is important to remember that, in the midst of darkness (vv 44-45a), God is still present. Jesus’s death does not contradict but actually helps to fulfill the divine purpose. This is signified by the tearing of the temple curtain in v 45b, and is evidence in Jesus’ final words from the cross. If God’s presence is not in doubt, neither is Jesus’ relationship to him.” Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 826.

248 In keeping with his abiding character, the Spirit broods upon the body of Christ on Holy Saturday. The Son’s descent into the formlessness and void of death does not occur apart from the overshadowing wings of the Spirit – “You will not let your holy one see corruption” (Ps. 16:10).500 He descends to the dead and makes proclamation to the by the same Spirit who had energized and given authority to his preaching on Earth. On the Sabbath, he participated in the rest of the Spirit waiting in silence while the Ruach Elohim incubated over his grave waiting in active repose for the

Father to speak the Word in the right time.

Early on Easter morning, the Father performs his characteristic action and sends the Spirit to anoint the body of Jesus, declaring again in power, “You are my beloved

Son” (Rm 1:4) and raising him from the dead by the same quickening Spirit. By the

Spirit that abides upon him, the body of Christ ascended to the heavens, overcoming the separation enacted by his kenotic journey into human form and death and takes his seat at the right hand of the Father. From thence, the Father and the Son together send the Spirit to anoint the nascent body of Christ gathered in the upper room on Pentecost (Acts

2:33). The Church, being the body of Christ by the Spirit, sends the Spirit who abides in it into the world through the word of their preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, and she (the Church) does this at the prompting of the Spirit who delights in being given to the material world he has befriended and who longs to rest upon all flesh in order to unite all things to the Father and the Son whose Spirit he is.

IV.D. The Spirit is a character who speaks.

500 The Psalm is quoted in regards to Christ’s death and resurrection in both Acts 2:27, 31 and 13:35.

249 One final point must be made about the character of the Spirit and the story of the world, and for it we go not to a trinitarian scene narrated in the gospels, but in the book of

Revelation. Chapter 14 opens with Jesus, the Lamb, surrounded by the full measure of the people of God.501 Three angels warn of coming destruction for those who oppose

God and the Lamb, and then, in the climactic scene, the Father declares, “Write this:

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord [Jesus] from now on.” The Spirit gives the amen and extends the heavenly proclamation, “‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’” (Rev. 14:13). The scene is reminiscent of the baptism of Christ. The Son appears amidst the people of God. The

Father makes a declaration of love and blessing, and the Spirit appears to extend that declaration of blessedness by his resting presence. The difference in this scene is that the blessing is not directed to Jesus but to those who are in Jesus, that is, to his body, the church. The Spirit’s promise of rest is likewise directed to those who die in the Lord.

Moreover, the Spirit acts not in the bodily form of a dove, but in another of his characteristic . He speaks.

Throughout our description of the Spirit as a character, we have seen that the

Spirit is a character who speaks. The Spirit is both the power of inspiration by whom the prophets spoke, but he is also, the New Testament affirms, the one who does the speaking. Jesus promised the apostles that when they were called to testify on his behalf they could do so without fear because, “it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Mk.

13:11). When that day came and wind of the Spirit blew through Jerusalem and the fire

501 12 is the standard number for the people of God: twelve tribes, twelve apostles, etc. 144,000 is 12x12x12 and the triple exponent is meant to convey fullness. For more on the 144,000 see Ian Paul, Revelation, TNTC (Downers Grove, IL: Ian Paul, 2018), 158.

250 of the Spirit anointed the apostles, he was proved right. It was no mere group of

Galileans who amazed the crowd with their foreign tongues and mighty message. It was the Spirit who delivered the first gospel sermon through the mouth of the apostles. When

Peter quotes Psalms, he does not say, “David spoke by the Spirit” but “The Holy Spirit spoke…by the mouth of David” (Acts 1:16). The same pattern is applied to Isaiah’s prophesy in Acts 28:25 when Paul says, “The Holy Spirit was right in saying…” before quoting the prophet. When the Spirit fell on the Gentiles in Cornelius’s house, the evidence of his presence and power was not in fire or wind, but in words of praise for

God (Acts 10:44–46). When the Gentile mission was ready to begin in earnest, it was the

Spirit who said “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). The prophet, Agabus, announced to Paul that his warnings of persecution to come were not his own words but the Spirit’s. His language is especially noteworthy. “Thus says the Holy Spirit” (Acts 21:11). The phrase is normally, “Thus says the LORD,” but Agabus knows that “The lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17, 18).

Throughout the book of Acts the Spirit speaks through the Church, through dreams, through inspired apostles, and through the providential ordering of events.502

502 None of this should be taken as a flat sort of dictation theory in which the human person is annihilated by the Spirit who speaks in and with and through him. Nor do I propose some synthesized account of dual agency between the human and the divine speaker which accounts for the vital role that each person plays in speaking the words of the Lord. Rather, I am simply recommending the biblical language which dialectically says both “Peter lifted up his voice” (Acts 2:14) and “It is not you who speak but the Holy Spirit” (Mk. 13:11). This same pattern of naming both the human and the divine author of Scripture but failing to be careful or consistent as to whose voice is emphasized or the manner in which the two relate is also common among the patristic writers. Hippolytus’s treatment of inspiration is typical, “They were first endowed with wisdom by the Word and then again were correctly instructed about the future through the visions they had. And when they were fully convinced, then they spoke those things that were revealed by God to them alone and concealed from everyone else.” Hippolytus, 270.

251 The bear witness to the Spirit’s speech as well. The Spirit famously intercedes for the saints “with groans too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). Paul declares that the proclamation “Jesus is Lord” comes only from the lips of those who are in the

Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). 1 Tim. 4:1 describes the warning of Christians departing from the faith and devoting themselves to demons as a word, “the Spirit expressly (ῥητῶς, rhetos) says.” Hebrews mirrors the apostolic pattern from Acts of referring to Old Testament quotations as the speech of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 3:7; 10:15). In all of these passages we see that the Spirit is both the God-breathedness which enlivens and empowers the words of the prophets and apostles and also the one who speaks those words. This is true for the words of prophesy and also for the words of Jesus.

We return now to Revelation to see other scenes in which the Spirit speaks. The opening of the book contains seven letters addressed to Asian churches which are dictated by the Lord Jesus to the book’s author. Throughout these mini-epistles, the Lord says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 2:7, 11,

17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). The Word who was with God and was God speaks the words the

Spirit has to say. Additionally, it is not the Father or the Son who offers the book’s last words, but the Spirit and the church. The apocalypse, as we noted earlier, culminates with the Spirit and the Bride speaking together, saying, “Come,” and inviting thirsty humanity to drink of the water of life (Rev. 22:17).

Throughout the Scripture, we see that the Spirit is not merely a person with a story; he is a person with a story and with something to say within that story. These passages complicate the picture of the “shy member of the trinity” who always only points to the Son. The Spirit is also the character in the story who speaks through the Son

252 and uses him as his instrument. He anoints and abides upon the body of Christ in the

Church, and he gives to that church speech and songs, praise and promise, conviction and calling.

IV.E. Conclusion: The Spirit is a character who unites in love.

What can we learn to see from attending to these iconic trinitarian passages in the

Gospels? We can see that the Spirit is like the Son in that he is sent/given by the Father to the world. While the Son empties himself and becomes flesh, the Spirit’s kenotic act is to anoint and abide upon flesh – to befriend matter. We can see that these acts of anointing and abiding bear witness to the love between the Father and the Son. We can see that the Spirit, like the Father and the Son, speaks both to the other persons of the

Trinity and to those whom he calls to join the trinitarian life they offer. We can go further and see that, in these scenes, the Spirit is the means by which the Father and the

Son are distinguished, separated, and presented to each other as an other. In Rogers’s evocative phrasing, the Spirit “dilates,” opening an interval, the space necessary for the

Father and the Son to see each other as an object of Love. And the Spirit also embraces, unites, and harmonizes the Father and the Son such that their I-Thou relationship is one of kenotic and triumphant love rather than competition.503 But more than this, we can see that the Spirit is both the bond of love between the Father and the Son extended to creation and also the one who binds the Father and the Son in love. He is the one who befriends and invites creation into that bond because he is possessed of a certain character, one that is his from eternity in relation to the Father and the Son and one that,

503 Rogers, After the Spirit, 11. Jenson’s treatment of the Barthian “I-Thou trinitarianism” lies behind much of Rogers’s thesis. See his The Triune God, 155-156.

253 therefore, expresses itself consistently in word and deed in his interactions with the world. How can the power of God be a person? By the Holy Spirit!

V. Seeing the Spirit as a Power and a Person Changes the Way Christians Speak.

Those who see the answer to this riddle speak differently about the Spirit from those who do not, and that difference is important for constructing a truly Christian ethic.

Importantly, there is a difference between those who truly see the answer and those who merely know that it is the correct one. It is entirely possible to confess the doctrine of the

Trinity and believe that the Holy Spirit is a person yet not to see him as such. This, unfortunately, has been the case for many members in Churches of Christ. The “word- only” school discussed in chapter two is only the most obvious form that this deficiency has taken in our movement. The tendency among Churches of Christ simply not to speak about the Spirit is commonplace, as is the tendency among those who do speak about the

Spirit to limit the conversation to that which the Spirit does not do. All too often, those who break from this tradition do so by embracing that which it has opposed – the theology of some charismatic branches of Evangelicalism in which individualism replaces the Church and personal religious experience replaces the sacraments.

Hauerwas, who in most ways is an immensely helpful resource for our proposed new ethic for Churches of Christ, falls prey to the same tendencies. In his own telling of the story of his life, we see the tendencies to minimize the Spirit discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Hauerwas only mentions the Holy Spirit three times in his autobiography, and in each case, the Spirit is mentioned only in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity.504 That is, the Spirit is a piece of an idea within Hauerwas’s story

504 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 87, 236, 283.

254 of himself rather than a character whose activity shapes the story the way that say, the church or friends, do. “God,” Hauerwas says, “is identified by a story that takes time, often a lifetime, to learn.”505 There is something admirably humble in the fact that the

Holy Spirit (or even God) is less of a character in Hauerwas’s story of himself than the church or his friends are. This absence is evidence of Hauerwas’s hesitancy to attribute to God things for which he himself is responsible. It reflects his desire to be on God’s side without imagining that God is on his side. Given the plethora of examples of

Christians claiming God’s inspiration, approval, and help in all manner of horrific sins, such humility has much to commend it. Nevertheless, it will not do. If the Spirit is both the power of God and a person who desires to be known, loved, and relied upon for aid, then telling one’s story in a way that denies him that role is problematic to say the least.

One need not abandon humility, a high regard for the church and its authority, an appreciation of human and personal frailty, or an emphasis on the sacraments in order to make room for robust personal language for God’s power and presence in one’s life.506 I offer three examples to illustrate this point, one from Scripture, one from a source

Hauerwas regularly cites approvingly, and one from Churches of Christ.

505 Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, 236. 506 It may be unfair to isolate Hannah’s Child from the rest of Hauerwas’s writings as I have done here. If one were to sprinkle his published prayers, sermons, and speeches along with testimonies and stories about him from his friends over the pages of his autobiography, the result might be something much closer to the examples I give below of Christian writers who treat the Spirit as both an active power in their lives and as a person with whom they have an intimate relationship. To his credit, despite the strong tendency to make academic theology and ethics conform to models fundamentally at odds with Christian faith and practice (not the least of which is to make it uninteresting!) Hauerwas increasingly includes these more personal and devotional pieces in his work with the result that the longer one reads him, the more he fills the lacunas in his earlier work.

255 No one could accuse the Apostle Paul of having too low a view of the church and the sacraments, but consider the way that he speaks about the Spirit in his own life as well as in the lives of the disciples to whom he writes. One might be tempted to say that, as an apostle, Paul had a unique access to the Spirit, one that required less careful discernment than needed by normal Christians today, but his letters and the descriptions of his life in Acts do not permit such an objection. At the Jerusalem Council, of whom

Paul was an active participant, the church wrote, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28). Throughout his journeys in Acts, Luke (and Paul through Luke) attributes to the Spirit specifically or God generically a guiding and accompanying activity that is intensely personal even if it is mediated through natural and human agents

(e.g. dreams, prophets, shipwrecks, arrests, etc.). Paul’s ministry is guided by the Spirit, but that guidance must still be discerned. The Spirit speaks, but his voice must still be interpreted. Paul responded to these perils of misinterpretation in the same manner that he responded to all other perils he faced, with undaunted courage and unwavering reliance on the divine help offered by the divine helper, the Spirit of the Son of God.

Likewise, no one could accuse Augustine of using personal and direct speech about the Spirit as a means for undermining the authority of the church or the power of the sacraments, nor of appealing to the Spirit as an excuse to live according to his own desires rather than those revealed through Scripture and the church. If anyone had cause to be cautious about his own sinfulness distorting his vision of God and therefore failing to name the Spirit as a character in his own life story, it was Augustine. Yet his

Confessions is rife with such appeals. Indeed, the primary character in his

“autobiography” is not himself, but God. The Spirit is not a replacement for the church

256 or for Scripture in Confessions. Instead, “God’s grace … remains immanent in the Holy

Spirit in the Church.”507 Friendship plays a vital role in Augustine’s understanding of how he became who he was, but he is careful to say that such friends were agents through which God’s Spirit was at work in him.508 Like Paul, Augustine sees and speaks about

God and the Spirit as characters in the story of his life; indeed, he seems incapable of seeing his life as anything other than a thin slice of the story of the Spirit.

Even among Restorationists we can find examples of those who narrated their own lives in a way that recognized the Spirit as both a power and a person. His student and admirer, R.C. Bell, described James Harding’s “soul-kindling faith in God as a personal Friend” and his “contagious enthusiasm for God as a Father who personally identifies himself with each of His own, and for the Holy Spirit as a

Comforter who personally resides in and empowers every Christian.”509 For Harding, the

Christian life was “a divine-human encounter, in which immediate spiritual communion between God and man is established and perpetually maintained, gradually.”510 We might compare the relationship as Harding understood it to the way that a man is made a husband immediately upon his wedding but truly learns what such a role entails only

507 Albert Outler, Introduction to Confessions and Enchiridion, trans. Albert Outler (Louisville: Westminster, 1955), iii. A digital scan of this text is available online, and the quotation is found on unnumbered page 3. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/ augustinconf.pdf. 508 Augustine, Confessions, vol. 1 of Works of Saint Augustine, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, 2nd ed. (New York: New City Press, 2012), IV.4. Subsequent references to the Confessions are taken from this edition unless otherwise noted. 509 R.C. Bell, “A Lifetime Spent in Christian Education,” Originally published in Things that Endure: Third Annual Lectureship, Lubbock Christian College (Jackson, TN: Nichols Brothers, 1960) but accessed online in: John Mark Hicks, “R. C. Bell: A Lament Over A Theological Shift Among Churches of Christ,” Wineskins (March 7, 2011) http://johnmarkhicks.com/2011/03/07/r-c-bell-a-lament-over-a-theological-shift-among-churches- of-christ/ 510 Bell, “A Lifetime Spent in Christian Education.”

257 through prolonged faithful interactions with his wife. Bell went on to describe Harding’s emphasis on

such vital matters as Christians being crucified to the world and the world’s being crucified to Christians (Gal. 6:14), and as Christians really believing with all their hearts that the Holy Spirit was working personally in them to help their infirmity, to pray unutterable prayers for them, and to make all things work together for their good (Rom. 8:26–28) so that they, ever mindful of the Lord’s presence, might be anxious about nothing, praying in everything, thankful in anything, and possess “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:5–7).511

In Paul, in Augustine, and in Harding, we find three Christians who not only knew the answer to our riddle, but could see the answer, saints who testified that the good life was only possible by God’s power and by friendship with the Person who was and is that power, those who knew that we must ask God to help us to be good.

VI. Conclusion: Seeing the Spirit as Both a Personal Power and a Powerful Person is Vital to Befriending the Spirit who Befriends us.

One of the central claims in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one which

Hauerwas emphasizes throughout his work (especially in Hannah’s Child) is that human flourishing demands friendship. Christian ethics takes this seriously and extends the point to say that while friendship with other people is a good and a powerful avenue through which God can and does work for our sanctification, friendship with God is even more important. Jesus says to the disciples, “I call you friends.” Restorationists sing,

“I’ll be a friend to Jesus.” But Jesus intends to introduce us to another friend, a comforter, a counselor, a helper, one who longs to anoint and abide upon us just as he did

(and does) upon Christ. The Spirit befriends us holistically, blessing our bodies and our souls, shaping our character and our habits. We need the power of the Spirit to make us

511 Bell, “A Lifetime Spent in Christian Education.”

258 good, but we also need to befriend the person of the Spirit in order to reach our telos and participate in the life of God.

“How can the power of God be a Person?” By the Holy Spirit! This section has attempted to help the reader see how the riddle and its answer are true, and has done so, at least in part, using straightforward argumentation and drawing from traditional sources in pneumatology. But I have also relied a great deal on hymns, patristic aphorisms, biographical narratives, and other sideways forms of speech when possible. Such techniques are not meant to explain the answer to the riddle so much as to help readers think in riddling ways in hopes that they will come to see how the answer is true. To that end, we close our discussion of the first riddle with a poem.

No piece of has more potently and poignantly depicted the

Spirit as both the power/presence of God and also as a person who is God than Gerard

Manley Hopkins’s poem, “God’s Grandeur.” In fourteen nearly perfect lines Hopkins performs the dance which Scripture slowly treads from Genesis 1 to John 14 – the slow manifestation of the Spirit as an impersonal force present throughout creation who is finally revealed to be a distinct person who exists above and apart from creation and is nevertheless a character with a story within it.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went

259 Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.512

Hopkins’s “grandeur” follows the biblical patterns we have explored above. God’s influence, majesty, glory, and power fill the world like electricity fills a wire – invisibly but undeniably, restlessly waiting for a moment to flash forth. It is an endless vivacity, the “dearest freshness” which brings forth the sunrise and pierces through the stench and smear of creation’s brokenness. Yet, this grandeur, this rod of providential authority which men refuse to recognize, this radiant beauty which runs through every atom of creation is the result and indeed the manifestation of a distinctly personal character who broods over it intimately and gloriously “with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”513

512 Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” in Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Major Works, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 128. 513 Hopkins use of the maternal avian imagery for the Spirit here may be helpfully compared to his fierce falcon he associates with Christ in “The Windhover” The Major Works, 132. The opening lines are worth including here: I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy!

260 CHAPTER VII

RIDDLE TWO – WHERE THE SPIRIT IS GOING: HOW CAN CREATURES

BECOME WHAT THE CREATOR IS?

His divine power has given us all things related to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and virtue, by which he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises that through them you all may become partakers of the divine nature … For this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness (2 Pt. 1:3–5).

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Rom. 8:11).

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14–19).

Our first riddle asked a question about God. Our second asks a question about humanity. Congar pushes his readers to see the strong connection between pneumatology and anthropology. As Elizabeth Groppe notes,

The theology of the Holy Spirit, Congar emphasizes, is not simply an account of the third person of the Trinity but concerns the mystery of God’s transformation of human life—the mystery of our deification in Christ and our communion with God and one another.514

514 Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, ’s Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85.

261 The telos of humanity and the telos of God are intermingled because God has given us his

Spirit and united us to himself through Christ. Ethics, therefore, is and must always be pneumatological and pneumatology is and always must be ethical.

The fundamental question which all ethical thinking seeks to answer (or at least ought to) is “How can a person or a community be good?” But Christian ethics complicates the question because it confesses, “None is good but God” (Mk 10:18) and

“None are righteous, no not one” (Rm 3:10). Goodness, Aquinas teaches us, is not a character trait of God, but a name for him.515 The infinite divide between creature and creator is an integral piece of Christian thinking. How then can creatures be or become that which God is, namely, Good? Our answer, of course, is By the Holy Spirit.

Two characteristics of riddling discussed in chapter 5 will be particularly evident in this section. First, riddling demands a familiarity with specific narratives, narratives which the riddles explain and which are also necessary to explore the riddles. And second, riddling is iterative and grows through self-reinforcing insights as opposed to linear thinking. Our primary focus is on the question, “How can we be good if Good is a name for God?” but in order to answer it we will first look at the inverse riddle, “How can the Creator become that which the creature is?” and then its parallel, “How can the creature become what the creator is?” What we see in these two questions will then force us to explore the ethical concept of “goodness” theologically and ask, “What is it that

515 Aquinas, ST, I-II. 94.2. See also I.13. While Aquinas offers the definitive treatment of the topic, the patristics also held that transcendentals such as goodness were the essence of God rather than merely attributes possessed by him. Basil makes the point in regards to goodness in The Holy Spirit, 19.48: 75. See also the treatment of bliss, desire, and moral goodness in David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (New Haven: Yale, 2013), 251-292.

262 God is?” But because our framework is narrative rather than metaphysical, we find that this question is better framed as “Where is God’s story heading?” Therefore, this section will examine our second riddle by attending first to kenosis and the story of the Son, then to theosis and the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and finally to and the character of the Triune God. The answer to both our primary riddles and to the two sub- riddles through which we will explore it is the same. How did the creator become what the creature is? By the Holy Spirit. How can the creature become what the creator is?

Through the Holy Spirit. Where is God heading? To the Spirit. Each mystery unfolds like a fugue in which the Holy Spirit is the theme uniting , soteriology, and theology.

I. How Did God Become a Human? By the Spirit.

Just as we sought to define the concept of person narratively rather than metaphysically, so we understand what it is to be a human not merely in terms of nature or essence but through the narratively-shaped existence that humans characteristically enact. What is it to be a human? It is to have a bodily beginning brought about by forces outside of oneself, a life characterized by self-direction on the one hand and dependence upon and subjection to forces outside of oneself on the other, and an end in death of that body. Thus, when God became a man, he submitted himself to all that it is to be human and fully partook not only of our flesh, but of our story. This he did, at every stage, by the Holy Spirit.

The Son became flesh, and, as Basil says, “The Spirit was made an unction and was inseparably untied to the flesh of the Lord…After this, every operation [of the Son]

263 was accomplished with the co-operation of the Spirit.”516 In his advent, the Spirit comes before Christ in prophesy through Zachariah, Elizabeth, and John and in overshadowing power upon Mary. In his life and ministry, the Spirit was a continual presence and anointing. In his death the Spirit is returned by him to his Father. In his resurrection the

Spirit is given by the Father to him anew. In his ascension, the Spirit is sent in his place and as his continuing presence in the Church.517 That God became man by the Spirit is consistently taught in the New Testament and among the patristic authors.518

I.A. Christ’s story cannot be recounted faithfully without explicit reference to the Spirit.

Because he is fully human, Christ has a beginning in the body, a life characterized by both self-determination and dependence on others, and a death in the body. The Spirit is a key character in each of these stages in his story. As we have already explored in

Riddle one, the Spirit is involved in the birth of Jesus. Our point here in revisiting this scene is to note the ways in which, in the person of Jesus, the divine and eternal Son of

God has an origin in time. “In the beginning was the Word,” John tells us (Jn. 1:1).

Jesus himself testified, “Before Abraham was, I am (ἐγώ εἰμι, ego eimi)” (Jn. 8:58). Paul says of him, “He was before all things and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17).

516 Basil, The Holy Spirit, 16.39: 62. 517 This description of the life of Christ and the Spirit follows the pattern present in the Cappadocian Fathers, e.g. Basil, The Holy Spirit, 19.49:76. “Do we speak of Christ’s advent? The Spirit is forerunner. Or of his incarnate presence? The Spirit is inseparable. The working of miracles and the gifts of healing are through the Holy Spirit. Demons were exorcised by the Spirit of God. The devil was deprived of his power by the presence of the Spirit. Remission of sins is accomplished by the grace of the Spirit...” See also Gregory of Nyssa, Fifth Theological Oration, NPNF 2/7:327 quoted above in I.C.2.b. 518 Bobrinskoy compellingly argues that, “For the Cappadocians, “‘Christ’ is a supremely trinitarian and ‘pnematophoric’ name.” Boris Bobrinskoy, “The Indwelling of the Spirit in Christ: ‘Pneumatic Christology’ in the Cappadocian Fathers,” St. Vladamir’s Theological Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1984): 49-65; James D.G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), esp. ch. 2: 53-67

264 Before the conception of Jesus, the Son of God was immaterial and eternal, but in taking on human nature, he took on both a body and a beginning in time. If, like Mary, we ask,

“How can this be?” we receive the same answer that she did. The impossible is made possible because the Father sends the Spirit upon the temporal, material body of a particular young woman in Galilee. The conception of Christ is accomplished, as the

Apostles’ Creed says, “by the Holy Spirit,” so his human story begins because the Spirit crosses the infinite gap between heaven and earth, between eternity and time. The Spirit makes space between the Father and the Son and ensures that this space is overcome by his unifying action. Christ who was conceived in the flesh is nevertheless called the Son of God. Christ’s divinity is his own (though always his own in communion with the

Father and the Spirit), but the gospel story makes it clear that he kenotically receives his humanity from the Father by means of the Spirit. Because he has his beginning by the

Spirit, he is filled with the Spirit before his anointing, before his miracles, before his resurrection. As Chrysostom says, “Christ is spiritual because the Spirit himself has fashioned him in the flesh. Thus, the Word of God and the whole energy of the Spirit dwell within him.”519 The humanity of the divine Son of God begins with his bodily conception, and this conception was not accomplished without the Holy Spirit.

Though we are undeniably individual persons, to be a human is to be, in the language of Alasdair MacIntyre, “dependent rational animals.” Our beginning as humans is not our own, and our lives are characterized by the same sort of dependence. The story of humanity is one of finding oneself affected by forces external to oneself. To sustain our life, we must be nourished by food from the world around us. We receive our

519 “Homily XV.2” in Homilies on Hebrews, quoted in Bobrinskoy 61.

265 identity, our language, our perspective on the world by cooperating with others who assign to us names, social roles, and parameters within which our freedom to act is limited. Ours is a world of inescapable powers and principalities, social structures, and laws of nature which we must navigate. Since this is the human story, Christ deigned to make it his story as well.

The Son of God became not simply a human in the abstract, nor many humans at once.520 He became a particular human, with a particular identity, who spoke a particular language, and operated within particular social and political spheres. He was a man, a

Jew, a subject of the Herodian governors in Palestine and the at large.

But the Gospels make it clear that Christ’s entirely human dependency is first and foremost seen in his dependence on the Spirit.

Christ is the one upon whom the Spirit descends and remains, not only to bless and empower but also to guide and direct. The Holy Spirit guides and governs Christ’s life and ministry from its beginning to its end. When Christ who is himself “the Wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24) teaches, he does so not as an isolated individual but as one inspired by the Spirit. The Spirit informs, empowers, and makes effective Christ’s preaching (Mt.

10:16f; 12:18–28; 26:41f). When Christ who is “the power of God” (1 Cor 1:24) performs mighty works, signs, and miracles, he does so by the power of the Spirit. Christ who possesses “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18) is nevertheless “driven by the Spirit” (Mk 1:12). The Greek verb here is ἐκβάλλει, the same word used for what

Christ does to the demons causing the crowds to ask in amazement what sort of authority he has (Mk 1:27). The Spirit does to Christ was Christ does to the demons. Like the

520 The latter was the suggestion of Celsus and was criticized by Origen in Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953).

266 witnesses of Jesus’s exorcisms, readers of the Gospels should marvel at the Spirit’s authority and at the humility of the one who allows himself to submit to and rely upon it.

When Christ prays to the Father, he does so in the Spirit (Lk 10:21) and asks for the Spirit (Lk 11:13). Even a cursory reading of the Gospels demonstrates that the Spirit gives direction to Christ’s life from the manger to the cross.521 In becoming like his brothers and sisters, Jesus experienced a life of dependence. Like us all, he was born by a power distinct from himself, and his life was governed by forces other than his own will.

But, rather than the various idols, powers, and principalities which humanity has so regularly embraced, the power upon which Jesus relied consistently was the Holy Spirit.

As a child, Jesus was subject to his parents, but in faithful obedience to the Spirit, he had to be in his Father’s house. As a Palestinian man living in the first century, Jesus submissively rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, but because he was led by the Spirit, he rendered unto God the things that were God’s. As a Jew he consented to the authority of the Jewish leaders and conformed to the norms of synagogue society, but because “the Spirit of the Lord was upon [him]” he taught as one with authority. Jesus experienced the human reality of dependence because he was dependent upon the Holy

Spirit.

Finally, the Spirit strengthened Christ in preparation for his death, and his death was accomplished, as we noted above, by his sending/committing/handing over of the

Spirit to the Father. In the uttermost weakness of his flesh, we see the strength of his

Spirit’s will carrying him inexorably toward the cross. Jesus prayed in the Spirit when he

521 In all of this it is important to remember that the Father is not absent from the dynamic between the Son and the Spirit. Everything that the Spirit does to, in, and with Christ he does according to, in keeping with, and as an expression of the Father’s will.

267 was filled with sorrow as his closest friends slept in the garden (Lk. 22:39–46), and on account of that prayer, an angel was sent to strengthen him. On the cross, he continued to be submissive to the Spirit’s leading. John presents what might seem the most entirely human word from the cross, “I thirst,” not only as an expression of the physiological reality of a man about to die, but also as an act of obedience to the Spirit of prophesy who moved within Christ and who had moved within the Psalmist before him. Jesus was undoubtedly thirsty, but as one who knew the Spirit’s words from Psalm 69:21, he asked for a drink knowing that water would not be on offer. John is clear that he asked for a drink in order to fulfill that which the Spirit had foretold (Jn. 19:28).

We find the Spirit in the passion narratives most explicitly in the prophetic words of Jesus. In his time of agony and weakness, he draws upon the in-spirited words of the prophets and adds to them even as he fulfills them. The Psalms are the Spirit’s announcement of the gospel of the Son’s death and resurrection, and Jesus recognized this in them (Lk.24:44f). The Psalms which Jesus quotes from the cross are, for him, not the primarily the words of David but of the Holy Spirit who is his Spirit.522 His cry of abandonment “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” takes its shape from the

522 As noted above in I.C.d., this is also how they would be seen by his disciples (Acts 1:16).

268 Spirit’s words in the Psalms (22:1) as does his prayer of confidence in God’s faithfulness

“Into your hands I commit my Spirit” (31:5).523

Finally, as we saw above in our first riddle, Christ joins humanity in its uttermost weakness, the humiliation of death, by giving up, sending, and handing over his Spirit to the Father. The full humanity of Jesus is seen nowhere more clearly than at Golgotha. It is no surprise that the earliest heresy the church faced was , for the death of

Christ is simply too human an experience for anyone we worship as God to endure.524

But to deny that Jesus was human, fully human, like us in every way except sin, subject like us to the humiliation of death, even death on a cross, is the position of the antichrist

(1 Jn. 4:3). And, as we have seen, Christ accomplishes this most poignantly human experience by ex-spiration – sending forth the Spirit to the waiting hands of the Father whom he loves.

I.B. As a human, Christ not only participates in the story of humanity as we know it; he transforms that story’s ending, and he does so by the Spirit.

Christians confess two things at once when we confess that in Christ God became a man. The first is that God in Christ submits to make his story a human story, to be made like us every way, to fully embrace all that it means to be human in an infinite act

523 Bonhoeffer notes that the in praying the Psalms, the words which by the Spirit are truly the Word’s, we are joined to Christ. “How is it possible that a human being and Jesus Christ pray the Psalter simultaneously? It is the incarnate Son of God, who has borne all human weakness in his own flesh, who here pours out the heart of all humanity before God, and who stands in our place and prays for us. He has known torment and pain, guilt and death more deeply than we have. Therefore it is the prayer of the human nature assumed by Christ that comes before God here. … Who prays the Psalter? David prays. Christ prays. We pray.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Prayerbook of the Bible: An Introduction to the Psalms, trans. James H. Burtness, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 159-160. 524 For a treatment of Docetism see James L. Papandrea, The Earliest : Five Images of Christ in the Postapostolic Age (Downers Grove: IVP, 2016), 45-66.

269 of self-outpouring. The second is that in Christ’s incarnation we not only see humanity as it has been; we see humanity as it should and will be. Christ not only participates in the story of humanity as it has been told since the days of Adam. He transforms the story’s ending and thereby redeems it. Christ not only dies as a human. He is also raised as a human. He is not only the Son of God as the Second Person of the Trinity. He is the

Son of God as a human. And, therefore, what it means to be human is no longer defined by those who share only in Adam’s story. True humanity is defined by Christ and therefore defined as union with the Father through the Spirit. To be truly human, as

Christ is truly human, is to be born of the Spirit (Jn. 3), to live by the Spirit (Gal 5:25), to die in the Spirit (Acts 7:55f), and to be raised through the Spirit (Rm 8:11). Because of

Christ, to be truly human is to be adopted by the Father through the Spirit and carry

Christ’s name and title, “Son of God” (Rom 8:14; 9:26).

I.C. Conclusion: How did God become human? By the Spirit.

How can God be a human? How can the eternal fount of all being have a beginning? How can the Almighty, omnipotent lord of all that is be governed and directed by a force other than himself? How can the one who has life in himself, whom it is impossible for death to hold, who truly says, “I am the life” have an end in death? By attending to the relevant background narratives, namely, the story of Jesus, we find the answer at every stage is, By the Holy Spirit. In seeing the answer to this riddle, and in seeing how the story of humanity is changed by the resurrection of Christ, we are now prepared to see the answer to its inverse – How can a human become what God is? By the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the means by which the Son crosses the infinite gap

270 between creation and creator, and he is, therefore, also the means by which those who are in the Son may cross the gap and be unified with God.

II. How Can a Person Become That Which God Is? By the Spirit: Theosis and the Telos of Humanity.

The movement of separation and union, departure and return, humility and glorification is characteristic of the dynamic life of God.525 This dynamism results in an overflowing, an outpouring of God’s life. It is this outpouring which is manifested in his acts of creation, incarnation, and eschatological uniting of his creatures to himself. What

God is in eternity is implied in creation, expressed fully in the life of Christ, and because of Christ, extended to humanity through the Spirit. Because Christ has united himself to humanity in his kenosis through the Spirit, humanity is invited to be resurrected, glorified, and united to God in his glorification through the Spirit. Just as Christ was raised, glorified, and united to the Father by the Spirit, so, too, are his brothers and sisters. The story of Christ with its kenosis and glorification is a window into the eternal life of God. When we see God’s nature and character in the story of Christ, we also see the shape of our salvation.

Though God saves us from wrath and frees us from the grave, salvation is more than avoiding punishment or escaping death. Though he rewards the faithful and promises us joy inexpressible in eternity, God’s gift is more than pleasure and glory in heavenly mansions. Justification is a means to the end of sanctification, and both find their fulfillment in union with God. Theosis is the word that we use to name this process of salvation for and by union with God, and it, therefore, names the telos of humanity.

525 This claim is unpacked more fully below in section II.C.

271 II.A. The story of Jesus’s kenosis and glorification narrates the character of God and, therefore, it also shows the shape of our salvation.

Two theological maxims govern our reading of the story of Christ and its relationship to who and what God is. The first we have already discussed in connection with our first riddle: Opera trinitatis ad extra indivisus sunt. No act of Jesus in the world is divorced from the Father or the Spirit. The incarnation and all that goes with it is a trinitarian act, not only an act of the Son. Likewise, any activity we appropriate to the

Spirit, either in the biblical narrative or in the ongoing life of the Church is inseparable from the Father and the Son whom the Spirit reveals and toward whom he draws the church.

The second maxim is Rahner’s, “The ‘economic’ trinity is the immanent trinity, and the ‘immanent’ trinity is the ‘economic’ trinity.”526 What we see God doing in the world reveals to us who God is in himself. As Hart puts it,

Trinitarian thought uninformed by the gospel narrative results, inevitably, in an impoverishment of both that thought and that narrative; hence the importance of the affirmation that the Trinity as economic or as immanent is the one God as he truly is, whose every action is proper to and expressive of his divinity.527

The Son’s act of sacrificial obedience to the Father is only one aspect of the kenotic character of the incarnation. The Father’s gracious submission to give his Son to the world is also characterized by an attitude of self-outpouring. The Spirit, whose inner- triune character is that of loving unification, joins in the kenotic action of God by opening up an interval between the Father and the Son when he clothes Christ in human nature.

The Spirit not only unites, exalts, and anoints with power and glory, he also separates, opens space, and creates distance for God’s kenotic love to be expressed. The external

526 , The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (London: Burns and Oates, 1970), 22. 527 Hart, Beauty of the Infinite, 156.

272 act of kenotic incarnation accomplished by all three persons reveals to us that kenosis is at the heart of who God is in himself.

Before Rahner had ever expressed these principles in doctrinal propositions, Paul described them narratively in Philippians 2:6–11. The ESV is typical of English translations:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:5b–11).528

In this key biblical text, Paul demonstrates that the kenotic character of Christ was present both before and after the incarnation. Being in the very nature of God, he did not grasp at equality with God but emptied himself; being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to death. The habit of self-emptying is not something

Christ acquired only after his birth in Bethlehem. It was in his character from all eternity, and a recognition of this helps shed light on the opening words of the passage. As

Gorman has persuasively argued, the New Testament presents both kenosis (self-

528 As is widely noted, this passage likely represents not a piece of Pauline theology as much as the core content of the gospel which Paul received and which shaped and governed his entire theology. Gorman describes it as “Paul’s master story” and argues that it is not merely the centerpiece of Philippians but of Paul’s corpus as a whole. Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 12-13. Gorman lists four reasons to call Phil 2:6-11 Paul’s master story: “1) its comprehensive scope in relation to the story of Israel, from protology to eschatology; 2) its simultaneously creedal and counter-imperial character, rooted in the confession that ‘Jesus [ – not Caesar – ] is Lord’; 3) its inclusion of a wide range of significant Christological narratives or patterns; and 4) its generative power for Pauline theology and its ubiquity in the Pauline corpus.”

273 outpouring) and theosis (union and fellowship of nature) are eternally present in God.

This is why our salvation takes the shape of co-crucifixion with Christ, co-resurrection with Christ, and co-glorification with Christ. Gorman roots his claims primarily in the writings of Paul, though it is also present in other New Testament writers, most notably

John.529

According to Gorman, the pattern, “although [x] not [y] but [z]” appears throughout Paul’s epistles in Christological, apostolic autobiographical, and ethical contexts. Take for example, 1 Thess. 2:7 – Although we could have been demanding as apostles, we did not seek honor, but were gentle; and 1 Cor 9:12–23 – Although I [Paul] am free, I did not take advantage of my rights, but enslaved myself to others.530 Paul believes that there is an inherent, pre-existing authority in apostleship, but he also believes that true apostleship is characterized by renouncing that authority and power and becoming a servant. Thus, when an apostle or a church follows through with the narrative pattern expressed in these passages, the initial “although” carries with it also the sense of “because.” Paul did not only exercise his apostolic authority among the

Thessalonians nor apostolic freedom among the Corinthians although he was an apostle who had the right to, but also precisely because he was an apostle and such renunciation is true to the character of what it is to be apostolic.

For Paul, the possession of a right to act in a certain way has an inherent, built-in mandate to exercise truly the status that provides the right by sometimes refraining from the exercise of that right out of love for others. This is not to deny one’s apostolic or general Christian identity (and associated rights), or to void it,

529 See Michael J. Gorman, Abide and Go: Missional Theology in the Gospel of John (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018). 530 See also 1 Cor. 9:12-23 and 2 Cor 8:9. For more on this pattern in Paul, see Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 88-91, 164-175; 181-199, 209-212, 230-261.

274 or to put it aside, or to empty oneself of it, but to exercise it as an act of Christlike love.531

In Phil 2 we see the pattern expressed in reference to Jesus: Although he was in the form of God [x], he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped [y], but emptied himself [z]. Understanding how Paul uses this pattern elsewhere makes clear that Paul means to say not only “Although he was in the form of God …” but also

“Because he was in the form of God, he did not grasp at equality with God but emptied himself.” Christ’s divinity is precisely the reason that he is kenotic in his character. His self-renunciation is not contrary to his divinity; it is the embodiment of his divinity.

Thus, Gorman’s elaborated translation of Phil. 2 is,

Although Messiah Jesus was in the form of God, a status people assume means the exercise of power, he acted in character – in a shockingly ungodlike manner according to normal but misguided human perceptions of divinity, contrary to what we would expect, but, in fact, in accord with true divinity – when he emptied and humbled himself.532

What is true about Christ is true vis a vis of his apostles and his disciples. “It is not just although Christ, Paul, and all believers possess a certain identity ([x]) that their story has a certain shape (not [y] but [z]); it is also because they possess that identity.”533

The gospel as described by Paul is that both Jews and Gentiles can be incorporated into the “master narrative” of Christ’s kenosis and glory such that Christ’s story becomes our story. Salvation, for Paul, is always nothing less than who has perfect union with the Father. Though Gormans’s emphasis is on Christ and Christology, as we shall see in the following section, this union is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, and the

Spirit is implicated in his point about Christ’s kenosis.

531 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 24. 532 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 27. 533 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 25.

275 II.B. The Spirit Incorporates Our Lives into God’s Story of Kenosis/Glorification by Forming in Us the Virtue of Self-Outpouring Love and by Uniting Us to the Glory of Christ’s Resurrection.

By joining Christ in kenotic cruciform self-renunciation, which is to say, dependence on the Spirit and obedience to the Father, Christians are united to him in glory as well. We renounce ourselves but receive our true identity, a name above every name. We join him in death but are raised with him in resurrection. We humbly depend upon the Spirit but are filled with boldness and power. We submit to the Father as obedient slaves but find freedom and sonship in his house. By the Spirit, the story of

Christ becomes our story. The Spirit that enabled both Christ’s self-emptying kenosis and his resurrection/glorification is given to us that we might be united to Christ and therefore “partakers of the divine nature” characterized by kenosis and glory (2 Pt. 1:3–

11).

Partaking of the divine nature is never merely a matter of increasing in knowledge, glory, power, wisdom, or joy. It is always also partaking of the divine character as expressed in the eternal story of the Trinity – a story of self-outpouring and being filled up, of moving towards distinction without sacrificing unity, a story of one becoming two as the Father begets the Son, and two becoming one as the Father and Son are united in love, by means of a third, the Spirit, who is properly the Spirit of both the

Father and the Son. Nature and narrative are one in God, and they will be one for those who are joined to him.

Though the New Testament is replete with passages on this theme, none is more powerful nor more explicitly pneumatological than Romans 8. Verse 11 makes it clear

276 that our union with Christ in resurrection is accomplished by the same Spirit by whom the Father raised Christ from the dead.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom. 8:11)534

Rogers notes that the first clause of Paul’s complex sentence names the persons of the

Trinity and the second identifies the manner in which human beings participate in the trinitarian life, namely, resurrection. The persons of the trinity each act in such a way as to assimilate human beings into the life shared by the Father and Son through the

Spirit.535 The relation of the protasis and apodosis in the passage marks not merely a result of some external activity of God, but, as Rogers says,

a result characteristic of the Trinity and of the Spirit’s role within it, because the Spirit assimilates other human beings to Christ, stamps or seals Christ’s character upon them; and a result strictly superfluous to the Trinity, because the Spirit includes them within the trinitarian life without need and at some risk and therefore by grace.536

In verses 13–17 Paul makes the connection between ethics and kenosis/theosis more explicit. In it we see that co-crucifixion with Christ is not merely a matter of faith or sacramental participation. It is also an ethical practice.

If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body [kenosis/character formation], you will live [theosis].

For all who are led by the Spirit of God [kenosis/character formation] are Sons of God [theosis]. . .

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of God…co-heirs with Christ [theosis]

534 It is worth noting that Rom. 8:5-7 uses various forms of φρονοῦσιν, phronousin four times. The connection between “setting one’s mind” and the practical wisdom of virtue ethics ought not be overlooked. 535 Rogers, After the Spirit, 76. 536 Rogers, After the Spirit, 76, italics original.

277 provided we suffer with him [kenosis/character formation] (Rom. 8:13–17).537

Putting to death the deeds of the body, being led by the Spirit, and suffering with Christ are the kenotic categories of character formation, while life, being called Sons of God, and sharing in Christ’s inheritance are the theotic categories which result from that character formation. The text attributes both the kenotic character transformation and the deifying glory which results from it to the Spirit.

Paul shows us that the unity of Christ’s kenotic incarnation and theotic exultation is mirrored in the Spirit’s work of sanctifying our lives ethically and deifying our nature eschatologically. The patristic writers followed Paul in connecting the dual concepts of sanctification of our character and glorification of our nature to each other and to the work of the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus writes,

He [Christ] has poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and human beings, imparting indeed God to human beings by means of

537 See also Col. 2:6–15, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord [theosis], so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving [kenosis/ character formation]. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority [theosis]. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, [kenosis] in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead [theosis]. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him [kenosis/character formation]. Hillary of Portiers commenting on this passage notes, “…our human nature abides forever in him, the weakness of our infirmity is united with his strength, and the spiritual powers of iniquity and wickedness are subdued in the triumph of our flesh, since God died through the flesh. … After the announcement that in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, the mystery of our assumption follows immediately in the words, ‘In him you are made full.’ As the fullness of the Godhead is in him, so we are made full in him. The apostle says not merely ‘you are made full,’ but, ‘in him you are made full.’ All who are or shall be regenerated through the hope of faith to life eternal abide even now in the body of Christ.” On the Trinity, 9.7-8.

278 the Sprit, and attaching human beings to God by his own incarnation and bestowing on us at his coming immortality durably and truly through communion with God.538

Likewise Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on John’s Gospel, says,

For Christ is in us through the Spirit, converting that which has a natural tendency to corruption [he means both physical and moral decay] into incorruption and transferring it from the condition of dying to that which is otherwise … But when God sent forth his Spirit and made us partakers of his own nature, and through him renewed the face of the earth, we were transfigured to “newness of life,” casting off the corruption that comes with sin and once more grasping eternal life through the grace and love towards the human race that our Lord Jesus Christ has.539

Cyril credits the Spirit both with aiding us in “casting off the corruption that comes with sin” (i.e. ethical character transformation) and a change in eschatological nature

“grasping eternal life through grace and love.” Both of these activities of the Spirit he connects with us in Christ and Christ in us.

Pseudo-Macarius describes Christ as a master painter who paints his own image, that of the heavenly man, onto the collective face of the church – those who fix their gaze upon him and remain steadfast in that posture. “Out of his Spirit, out of the substance of the light itself, ineffable light, he paints a heavenly image and presents to it its noble and good Spouse.”540 Christ, the painter, applies the Spirit, the paint, to us and thereby conforms us to himself in our appearance (ethical transformation) so that he may unite us to himself eschatologically as his bride (participation in his nature).

Pseudo-Macarius’s image is evocative of 2 Cor. 3:18–19, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image

538 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.1.1: 539 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, vol. 2 of Ancient Christian Texts, trans. David R. Maxwell, ed. Joel Elowsky (Downers Grove: IVP, 2015), 9.1: 280. 540 Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. George H. Maloney (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992), 30.4: 191.

279 from one degree of glory to another.” Notice also that Paul uses the plural “we all” to describe the collection of saints but the singular “face” to describe that which we become.

Neither our ethical transformation nor our conformity to the divine nature is aimed at us solely as individuals. We are transformed and glorified with Christ and with Christ’s church, individual members of the one collective body (I Cor. 12). The 144,000 diverse saints from every tribe and nation and language are also the one Bride of Christ.

There are a variety of images and metaphors by which the patristic writers, sought to picture this process of theosis, but perhaps most famous is that of iron being penetrated by fire and taking on its properties of heat and light. Iron is like fire when it is in a fire and when the fire is in it. The Son is like the Father because, by the Spirit, he is in the

Father, and the Father is in him. The church becomes like Christ because, by the Spirit, she is in Christ, and Christ is in her.

The history of this image serendipitously reinforces our point that human salvation mirrors the relationship of the Son and the Father. The metaphor was first employed to depict the relationship of the man Jesus to God and later became a way of describing the relationship of Christians filled with the Spirit to the Father and the Son. It originates in Christology and then is extended into soteriology.

Origen first employed the image of iron participating in the nature of fire to describe the divinity of Christ. The soul of Christ is the iron which abides in and with the fiery deity of the Logos and therefore glows and radiates heat just as fire does.541 The

Cappadocians rejected Origen’s Christological image because it ran counter to

541 Origen, On First Principles, II, 6, 6, (ANF: 181-195).

280 , but the metaphor was too potent to lay down.542 Instead they applied it to the nature of angelic principalities and powers and their participation in the holiness of

God. Basil associates the fire in the image with the Holy Spirit that penetrates and thereby sanctifies natures that are other than divine, specifically, angelic ones.543 The

Cappadocians were careful to note that Christ participated in the deity from his nature and not via grace. Angels and humans, on the other hand, received from God a new nature by participation. What they failed to note as strongly was the way in which Christ, in his humanity, also submitted to be anointed, filled, guided, etc. by the Spirit who was his by nature in his divinity.544 Cyril and Pseudo-Macarius made the move from talking about fire and iron within the heavenly realm and applied it to the process of theosis which Christ had made possible for humanity.

Like the body of Christ, being mingled with the deity, is God; like iron cast into fire is a fire, and nobody can touch or approach to it without fearing to be eliminated or extinguished (only fire with fire and heated coal with heated coal may remain unhurt), – the same way any soul purified by the fire of the Spirit and having become itself fire and spirit, can be together with the pure body of Christ.545

542 Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, vol. 148 of Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language, trans. Miguel Brugarolas (Boston: Brill, 2018), 1.1.284. 543 Dmitry Biriukov, “Penetration of Fire Into Iron: The Sense and the Usage Mode of This Metaphor for Description of Theosis in the Byzantine Theological Literature” Scrinium 15, no.1 (16 July, 2019), https://brill.com/view/journals/scri/15/1/article- p143_10.xml?language=en#FN000008. Biriukov acknowledges that the authenticity of Basil’s authorship of this homily is disputed. 544 Bobrinskoy works to point out the ways in which this trend was sometimes countered by patristic authors, especially the Cappadocians. 545 Macarius, Macarii Anecdota Seven Unpublished Homilies of Macarius, ed. G. Marriott (London: Cambridge University Press, 1918), 27. Quoted in Biriukov, “Penetration of Fire.”

281 The metaphor finds some of its most powerful expressions in the writings of , and he sets it alongside the images of a clear reflection in a mirror and of air or space that is fully suffused with light.

If an intellective being is moved intellectively; that is, in a manner appropriate to itself, then it will necessarily become a knowing intellect. But if it knows, it surely loves that which it knows; and if it loves, it certainly suffers an ecstasy toward it as an object of love. If it suffers this ecstasy; it obviously urges itself onward, and if it urges itself onward, it surely intensifies and greatly accelerates its motion. And if its motion is intensified in this way; it will not cease until it is wholly present in the whole beloved, and wholly encompassed by it, willingly receiving the whole saving circumscription by its own choice, so that it might be wholly qualified by the whole circumscriber, and, being wholly circumscribed, will no longer be able to wish to be known from its own qualities, but rather from those of the circumscriber, in the same way that air is thoroughly permeated by light, or iron in a forge is completely penetrated by the fire, or anything else of this sort.546

Predictably, it appears in the hymns of St. Symeon as well.

The Master casts fire into these souls As though upon a lamp full of oil and hemp, thus is that fire which the world does not and cannot see. … Just as a lamp catches fire… when it touches the fire, so also … the divine fire touches and ignites souls. … Again I saw Him within my house and within my earthen jar

546 Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, vol. 1 of The Ambigua, ed. and trans. N. Constas, (Cambridge: London, 2014), 87-88. Maximus later writes, “Having been wholly united with the whole [Word], within the limits of what their own inherent natural potency allows, as much as may be, they were imbued with His own qualities, so that, like the clearest of mirrors, they [the saints] are now known only as reflections of the undiminished form of God the Word, who gazes out from within them, for they possess the fullness of His divine characteristics, yet none of the original attributes that naturally define human beings have been lost, for all things have simply yielded to what is better, like air – which in itself is not luminous – completely mixed with light. Maximus, Ambigua, 213. The translation presented here is taken from Biriukov and has been slightly altered by him.

282 where suddenly He became whole, ineffably united to me, unspeakably joined, and mixed in me without mixing, like the fire in the iron itself, and the light in the glass, and He made me like a fire, and made me like light, and I became that which I had seen before and had contemplated from afar.547

In the image of fire penetrating iron and thereby making the iron glow and burn, we see that the Spirit is the power by which moral transformation occurs and that such transformation alters not only our behavior but our whole identity.548

Both the New Testament and the Church Fathers testify to the importance of theosis for an understanding of the Spirit and the Spirit for an understanding of theosis.

Their doctrinal declarations, their hymns and poems, and the metaphors employed in their epistles and sermons all point to the same basic insight: the Spirit conforms us to Jesus

Christ and thereby conforms us to God such that we partake in both the divine nature and in the ethical character by which that nature expresses itself. Jenson affirms this classical

Christian doctrine, but he goes further. He argues that the Spirit is not only the persona and power by which moral formation and transformed nature is accomplished. He is also the telos at which such a change is aimed.

II.C. What Is It That God Is: Where is the story of God Headed? Toward the Spirit.

547 Symeon, “Hymn 30” in Divine Eros, 231, 242-243. 548 Congar offers one more metaphor to make the same point. As cold water pouring from above into a warm pool both cools and raises the pool to its same level, so the Spirit poured out without measure by Christ conforms the Christian’s character to that of the Lord and lifts the Christian up to his level, “a current or stream going from God the source to God the ocean without shores or banks.” Congar, I.50.

283 The riddle we are exploring asks how it is that creatures can become that which the creator is, and answers By the Spirit. We have focused thus far on the first clause,

“How can creatures become…” and found our answer in that the Christological story of kenosis and theosis, a movement from self-emptying to glorious fullness accomplished in

Christ and in the believer by the Spirit. But we now turn to the second clause in our riddle: “How can creatures become that which God is?” What is it that God is? Or, stated narratively, what is the story of God and where is that story headed? Once again, we find that the Spirit is the key to understanding this riddling phrase. We have seen how the Spirit is the power of God, the presence of God, and a triune person who is God. We turn now to Jenson’s provocative claim that the Spirit is also the telos of God, and, therefore, the telos of all things.

II.C.1. Christ is the telos of humanity, but the Spirit is the telos of Christ and of the Father.

In an important sense, the telos of the Christian is Christ. He is that at which we aim, our goal and standard of excellence, and all that we say in this section about the

Spirit cannot contradict or minimize the emphasis on Christ as the telos of humanity.

Nevertheless, the goal of the incarnation and the work of Christ was the giving of the

Spirit who would bring us into with God by conforming our character and our story to the character and the story of Christ. This raises a question. If our telos is union with Christ, does that name our ultimate end, or do we find that Christ (and therefore those who are in Christ) has a telos of his own? Surely, the Son aims at the

Father, but not in such a way as to displace him as (Nietzsche and his heirs might suppose) nor to be absorbed into him (as eastern might have it), but to be united to him in love. The Father, likewise is aimed at the Son and in a like manner. What then

284 is it towards which both the Father and the Son are directed? A mutual union of love.

This love is not, and indeed cannot be, other than God himself. Thus, we arrive at

Augustine’s classic doctrine that the Spirit is the vinculum caritatis which binds and unites the Father and the Son to each other.549 Though he is intensely critical of

Augustine on many points, Jenson is in full sympathy with him on this claim. This union of love which is the Spirit, Jenson argues, is the telos of both the Father and the Son, and therefore those who have been deified with Christ and made co-heirs with him are beckoned forward into the divine futurity of the Spirit.

Classically, the normal mode for distinguishing the persons of the trinity in the immanent Trinity has been to focus on relationships of origination.550 The Father is the eternal ἀρχή, arche and source of the Son by begetting and of the Spirit by procession.

But Jenson proposes another way of distinguishing the persons.

Naming the father as the mono-arche of the Trinity is a non-negotiable for him, but to name the source is not a sufficient means for understanding the whole.551 A river is defined by both its source and the mouth towards which it flows. A narrative is shaped not only by its beginning but also by the ending which gives order and meaning to all the events within it.

The order of a good story is an ordering by the outcome of the narrated events; its animating spirit—precisely the word here is unavoidable—is the power of a self- determinate future to liberate each specious present from mere predictabilities, from being the mere consequence of what has gone before, and open it to itself, to itself as what that present is precisely not yet. The great metaphysical question on the border between the gospel and our culture’s antecedent theology is whether

549 A fuller treatment of the vinculum caritatis is given in section III.C.1. below. 550 Aquinas presents the classic treatment in ST, 1.27-28; 36.2-4. Bulgakov offers a thorough and persuasive critique of relying on relations of origin as the means for differentiating between persons of the Trinity in The Comforter, 75-151, esp. 127-129. 551 Jenson, The Triune God, 156-159.

285 this ordering may be regarded as its own kind of causality: Can stories as stories be true of reality other than that posited in the storytelling itself?552

The Father stands as the source of deity in both the Son and the Spirit, and thus is positioned over against each of them and therefore a distinct person. The Son, because of his begottenness and his incarnation, is not only true God (Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν Theos alethinón) but also from true God (ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, ek Theos alethinón) and thus is distinct from both the Father and the Spirit. But what of the Spirit? Much of Christian theology has simply affirmed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father (and the Son) without giving much in the way of meaningful language as to what that mysterious proceeding means. Aquinas speaks for the Tradition when he says,

While there are two processions in God, one of these, the procession of love, has no proper name of its own, as stated above (1.27.4.3). Hence, the relations also which follow from this procession are without a name: for which reason the Person proceeding in that manner has not a proper name.553

If we do not have proper language to identify the Spirit in relation to the Father by a relation of origin distinct from that of the Son, and if we claim that trinitarian persons are known only by their relations of origin, we cannot call upon the Holy Spirit by that name

552 Jenson, The Triune God, 159. 553 Aquinas, ST, 1.36.1, emphasis mine.

286 except in an accommodative sense.554 But calling on the Spirit as a person is precisely what the Church does and intends to do. Where, Jenson asks, does the Spirit stand over against the Son and the Father? In focusing on narrative rather than metaphysics and on culmination rather than origination, Jenson is able to answer his own question.

The Spirit stands at the End of all God’s ways because he is the End of all God’s ways. The Spirit is the Liveliness of the divine life because he is the Power of the divine future. He is the one who, when he in time gives a “down payment” on the Kingdom, gives precisely himself. He is the Love into which all things will at the last be brought, who is thus the fulfillment not only of created life but of the divine life. One observation alone would be sufficient: in Jesus’s proclamation the power of the Spirit and the pressing immanence of the Kingdom are the same thing. “Where the Spirit works…he makes history enter the last time…” …

554 Jenson, The Triune God, 148. Bulgakov agrees with Jenson on this critique of Western trinitarianism. He argues that Aquinas’s (and Augustine’s) slavish emphasis on oppositional relations of origin results in depersonalized hypostases, undermines the tri-une nature of the Trinity, and treats the hypostases as “substantial accidents” of the one (impersonal) divine nature which possesses an ontological priority over them. i.e. The impersonal divine nature precedes and produces the divine persons. He argues that the filioque (which he believes deforms trinitarian relations) is a logical consequence of the doctrine that divine persons are distinguished solely by relations of origin but adds, “The source of this doctrine [the filioque] is not revelation but scholastic theology with its erroneous conclusions, so that one wishes to say to it: hands off!” Bulgakov, 128. Like Jenson, Bulgakov does affirm a qualified role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit and is critical of the Orthodox tendency to follow Photius in emphasizing ek monu (from [the Father] alone) to such an extent that the Trinity is deformed into two dyads of Father-Son and Father Spirit. He proposes that the Church should follow the Fathers in embracing a practical rather than a dogmatic filioque best expressed in the phrase dia tou Huiou [through the Son] rather than filioque. “The understanding of the Holy Trinity as a system of originations or productions results in its sundering into dyadic interrelations and the abolition of the fundamental principle of trinitarity: the hypostasis of the Father is defined only in relations to the generation of the Son, and vice versa; the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit is defined only in relation to the Father from Whom It proceeds (and by the Catholics, in relation to the Son as well). But the Father is the Father not only as the Engenderer of the Son but also as the Spirator of the Spirit (“who proceedeth from the Father,” as the Niceaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed says); and the Son is the Son not only as the Engendered One, but also as the recipient of the reposing of the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit not only proceeding from the Father, but also as reposing upon the Son. Each hypostasis establishes for itself not only a double relation to each of the other hypostases but also a trinitarian one; and these relations are in no wise relations according to “origination” or opposition. The principle of production or origination must, in general, be eliminated from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.” Bulgakov, 128-129. One could argue that Aquinas’s practical conclusion in 1.36.1 is more closely aligned with Jenson and Bulgakov than his strict argument since, like them, he believes that the name “Holy Spirit” is appropriate, though only accommodatively so, because the Spirit proceeds “by way of the love whereby God is loved.”

287 The divine beginning at which the relations of origin focus is acknowledged as the Father’s Archimedean standpoint. Equally, the divine goal at which relations of fulfillment focus should be acknowledged as the Spirit’s Archimedean standpoint.555

As Paul repeatedly teaches, the Spirit puts us in Christ and puts Christ in us, but these phrases describe a life, not a static state of being. The life of Christ as we have seen is defined by its V-shaped character:

This shape was the focus of point II.B. in our discussion about how God became man, but the dynamism and movement implicit in this V-shaped story is just as important if we are to understand Christ and through Christ both God and humanity. In Christ we see that which God is, and what we see is movement. The Son is headed somewhere, and that somewhere is into the life and glory and freedom of the Father. But the Father also has a directedness of motion – towards the Son. It can seem that the Spirit is here either depersonalized as their love or left out altogether. Again, Jenson offers an alternative perspective.

How can the Spirit be the love between the Father and the Son and still be a personal identity along with the Father and the Son? There is a problem only so long as we must put the question in that order. Let us instead look at the matter the other way around and say: the Spirit is himself one who intends love, who thus liberates and glorifies those on whom he “rests”; and therefore the immediate

555 Jenson, The Triune God, 157. The internal quotation is taken from the ecumenical statement, “Reflexions de théologiens orthodoxes et catholiques sur les ministéres,” Chambesy, 1977, Episkepsis 183 (1978), 7. The full statement is available online in English translation at http://www.prounione.it/dia/oc-o/Dia-OC-O-03-Ecclesiology.pdf.

288 objects of his intention, the Father and the Son, love each other, with a love that is identical with the Spirit’s gift of himself to each of them.

Only if we are restricted to thinking in terms of relations of origin is it problematic to see the Spirit as a personal third in relation to the Father and the Son. Looking backwards from the eschatological future, Jenson argues that the Spirit frees God the Father to be

Father to the Son and Arche of the Spirit. “The Spirit so proceeds from the Father as himself to be the possibility of such processions, his own and the Son’s.”556 Thus Jenson arrives at a qualified approval of the filioque which avoids the pitfalls that have so long stymied any progress in that debate.

Only the Father is the source of the Spirit’s being, of his sheer givenness as an other than the Father or the Son, but the Spirit’s energies, his participation and agency in the triune life, come to him from the Father through the Son or, it can even be said, from the Father and the Son. For the whole divine life begins with the Father and is actual through the Son and is perfected in the Holy Spirit. … The life of the Spirit enables as the divine life has its plot from the Son’s relations to the Father and to the Spirit; it is Christ who gives the Spirit to Israel and the church, that very Spirit who does not derive his being otherwise than from the Father and who is in himself the perfection, the liveliness, of the divine life.557

In Christ we see the living God and the God of the living, and this liveliness into which God and those who are in God are drawn is none other than the Spirit. Christ has a telos – to share in the life and glory and freedom of the Father. This is what the Spirit does in and for the Son. Likewise, the Father has a telos, to send, bless, and exalt the

Son. This is what the Spirit does for the Father. Their joyful movement into an eternally deepening relationship of love is the content of the divine life and is the characteristic activity of the Spirit who is that Love. Thus, the Spirit is the telos of God, and we partake of that telos because we are in Christ and Christ is in us. The Spirit makes

556 Jenson, The Triune God, 158. 557 Jenson, The Triune God, 158-159.

289 possible not only the Father’s and the Son’s freedom for each other but also their freedom for all creation too, and it is into this freedom, this life, this future that the story of the

Father and the Son, and therefore the story of humanity, is headed.

Our goal in this section is less ambitious than Jenson’s. We do not here propose to follow him in articulating a systematic theology in which clear answers are given on the question of divine or definitive doctrines related to the relationship between God and time are offered.558 Rather, we seek to learn his language and in it to find valuable tools for the ongoing task of pondering the riddle which is the sanctifying work of the Spirit. His pneumatological system is useful as a commentary on, but not a replacement for, biblical aphorisms such as:

God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and goodness, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Pt. 1:3–4).

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).

Nor does it replace the prophetic images set forth in the book of Revelation which offer some of Scripture’s most potent presentations of humanity’s telos. It is to those images that we now turn our attention.

II.D. The Riddling Images from Revelation Depict the Pattern of Spirit-Led Kenosis-Theosis by Which the Creature Becomes That Which God Is.

558 If one can call Jenson’s tersely phrased system clear!

290 If the Spirit is indeed the “whither of the triune life” as Jenson would have it, it is appropriate that we conclude our discussion of this second riddle by looking at the book of Revelation.559 The lively picture of our eternal life as a movement of kenosis and theosis is shown in riddling images throughout the Apocalypse of John. Three in particular stand out: the enthronement scene in chapter 3, the crown casting scene in chapter 4, and the marriage of the Lamb in chapter 19.

We see the saints exalted to the highest place with Christ in 3:21. “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” The promise of Christ is that those who have been refined, cleansed, and enlightened (3:18) will have invitation, fellowship, and glorification with Christ (3:20–21). The final image of 3:21 is strikingly theotic. “The one who conquers, I will grant him sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Rev. 3:15–22 can be presented following the pattern we applied to Pauline texts above:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” [Judgement on moral failings and lack of kenotic character].

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. [moral exhortation and kenotic transformation]

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. [theosis]

559 Jenson, The Triune God, 338-339.

291

John’s repeated description of the Father in Revelation is “the One who sits on the throne,” and so to see Christ exalted here, not merely to be at the right hand of the Father but to be on the throne with him is particularly striking. The promise is that those whose story conforms to Christ’s story (conquest through suffering) will share in his glory and be invited to sit upon the one throne which is the Father’s, but which is also Christ’s. In this scene, the saints are pictured not as servants in heaven, but as participants in the eternal reign and recipients of the glory and blessings of the very throne of God. Christ is the one who dictates this message of union with himself and therefore union with the

Father. He invites the saints to share in the unimaginable and infinite glory and power of

God, but, in his characteristic fashion, he does not claim it as his own. The letter to the

Church ends with Christ’s telling to the Churches to hear what the Spirit says. The promise of union is, he testifies, a promise from the Spirit by whom and in whom that promise is fulfilled.

Rev. 4:6–11 describes an antiphonal scene of worship around the throne of God in which kenosis is explicitly depicted and theosis implied. Four living creatures, the cherubim from Ezekiel 1, are depicted flying around the throne, and twenty-four elders representing the fullness of God’s people – Israel and New Israel – sit on thrones wearing white robes and golden crowns.560 As the scene unfolds, the four living creatures cry out,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” and the twenty-four elders fall to the ground, cast their crowns before the throne, and cry,

“Worthy are you, oh Lord, to receive honor and glory and power…” The kenotic theme is

560 The images of thrones, white robes, and refined gold all point back to the promise made to victorious saints of 3:18-21.

292 obvious here. Though they sit enthroned in heaven, the people of God do not count their glory as something to be grasped, but cast aside their status as kings in order to give glory to God. The theotic imagery is not absent though.

The text says that whenever the living creatures issue their cry, the twenty-four elders respond by casting their crowns. But the living creatures are said to be continually crying out, “day and night, they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy…” This means the elders are continually casting their crowns before the throne. But once removed and thrown down, how are there crowns to be cast again when the call of the living creatures comes? Surely, we are not to imagine the elders crawling forward, picking up their crowns and repositioning them on their own heads like so many Napoleons before Pope

Pius VII. No, it is the Lord who crowns them with refined gold, who vests them with white robes and who seats them on thrones. The saints are glorified and sit down on the throne of God with/as Christ. (Rev. 3:21), and their eternal story is that of kenosis

(casting their crowns before the throne) and glory (being crowned ever-anew that they might have crowns to cast). In Rev. 4:9–11, the throne of God is not characterized by static adoration but by an eternal dance of giving and receiving, an everlasting movement of outpoured glory returned to its source in love and honor.

The climax of the Apocalypse depicts the character transformation of the Church and her union with Christ in the famous image of the bride of Christ.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

293 and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:6–8).

The Church, having been cleansed and purified the gift of the Spirit, is the one Bride of

Christ, and the telos of the Bride is to become one with her husband. The clothing of righteousness she wears is her own. She has clothed herself in fine linen – the deeds of righteousness of the saints. The righteous deeds are really hers. This is not a picture of . Christ does not look upon a woman clothed in filthy rags and pretend that she wears finery. The deeds are hers, for they flow out of her character.

Nevertheless, there is no pride or self-aggrandizement for it has been granted to her to clothe herself thus. By the Spirit given to her, she has become one who can truly do righteous deeds, who can truly be bright and pure in herself. The purification of the

Bride (character transformation) is an act of preparation for union with Christ (theosis).

She is not destined for a broom closet but the throne room, and Christ will have nothing less than absolute glory for his bride.

In these images we see both the individual and the corporate nature of those united to God. There are twenty-four individual elders each of whom casts his private crown before the throne. Individual saints like Antipas (Rev. 2:13) and the martyrs who call out for justice (Rev. 6:9–10) are given the marks of deification (white robes). But they are also joined together into the singular image of the Bride. The voice that announces the coming nuptial union of the Bride and the Lamb is the voice of a great multitude, but the Bride herself is one. The call to kenotic character transformation and the promise of theosis is issued to every Christian individually but never in isolation from

294 the call and promise to the Church as a community. Each member is sanctified and glorified only as a part of the body as a whole.

Moreover, this call to kenosis and this promise of glory is not simply reserved for some ideal individual members of some ideal church in some distant future.561 The book is addressed to the church of the first century, to seven concrete churches in Asia whom

Christ calls to pour themselves out in kenotic love. The Spirit who sanctifies the Church begins his work now even if that work is not completed until we attain the resurrection.

With Paul the Church confesses:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him … that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his , becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained (Phil. 38–16).

The Spirit’s sanctification of the church begins now, and the church is neither surprised nor discouraged if the first-fruits we receive are indicative of, but not the fullness of, the harvest to come.

III. Conclusion: How can we become that which God is? By the Spirit.

How can we be good when good is a name for God? How can the creature become what God is? By the Spirit. We have explored this riddle by looking at Paul’s

561 As is common in Churches of Christ, I take the preterist approach to Revelation and see the preponderance of its images and import as directly applicable to its original recipients. For a treatment of Revelation typical of Restorationist scholars see Christopher A. Davis, Revelation, College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press, 2000).

295 master narrative – the Spirit-enabled kenosis of the incarnation and crucifixion and the spirit-accomplished glory of the resurrection and ascension, and at the way the Spirit incorporates us into that narrative by conforming our character and life to Christ’s kenosis and conforming our nature and destiny to Christ’s divinity. We have also looked at it by attending to scenes from Revelation’s depiction of the goodness of the saints.

How can we be good? Only in Christ, only with the Church, only by the Spirit. The theme throughout our exploration of this riddle has been union – Christ’s union with humanity in kenosis and with the Father in glory, our union with the man Jesus in his suffering and with the exalted Christ in our deification, the trinitarian union of the Father and the Son in the Spirit. This union is characterized not by one party being absorbed and lost in another, but by self-renunciation met with honor and exaltation, not by individuals resting in perfect isolated bliss, but in a community of persons united into one glorified body which is presented to Christ as his bride by the Spirit. Christ becomes one flesh with the Church because he is the head of the Body and because he is the husband of the Bride, in both cases, a union of love which makes sinful humanity into that union of Love which God is by the power of the Spirit.

As is the case in each of our riddles, we do not find some new doctrine or original idea at the heart of this puzzle. We instead simply come to see a fundamental aspect of the Christian story more clearly. In these first two riddles we see corrections to the distorted anthropology implied in the received ethic of Churches of Christ. The “too high” error that supposes that we have within ourselves the means necessary to be good is challenged by the existence of a divine person whose name is “Helper.” If the power of holiness is a person, then our ethical lives must inevitably be characterized by

296 dependence and friendship rather than by self-reliance and autonomy. The “too low” error that supposes that our eternal destiny is merely to be obedient servants in heaven is challenged by Spirit’s work of deification. Certainly, we will never cease to be obedient servants, but that will always only be half of our story. Our destiny in the Spirit is to be like Christ, eternally embracing the kenotic role of the submissive son who does what he sees his father doing but also is eternally glorified in a union of love with the Father upon whose throne the Son is seated. By attending to these two riddles, we have also begun to see why love is at the heart of all Christian ethics. Our final riddle explores the concept of love and seeks to articulate an aphorism to replace “Try hard to do what the Bible says” with an expression that emphasizes virtue and the Spirit in our pursuit of moral excellence.

297 CHAPTER VIII

RIDDLE THREE – LOVE AND DESIRE: HOW CAN SINFUL PEOPLE WHOSE

LOVES ARE DISORDERED LOVE GOD AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER?

… though every inclination of man’s heart is evil from childhood (Gen 8:21, NIV).

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt. 22:35–40).

The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom. 5:5).

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 Jn. 4:7–8).

In acknowledging that the anthropology received by Churches of Christ in our ethic is too high, I am saying that humans cannot be good without help. Churches of

Christ need not embrace the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity or particular concepts of to confess the uncontroversial truth that being good is harder than being evil. On this question, Scripture’s witness is uniform as is any honest account of our own lives. No one needs to teach children to lie or hit or be stingy with toys. They figure that out all on their own. But the inculcation of virtue in them is long and arduous work which frequently does not bear the fruit for which we hope. When Paul says “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), he is not speaking merely of making one mistake. He is joining with the witness of the Old Testament562 and of Jesus563 in

562 Ps. 5:9; 10:7; 14:1-3; Eccl. 7:20, etc. 563 Mk. 10:18.

298 confessing that humans are prone to sinfulness and that more than simple instruction is needed to develop virtue. Our second riddle helped us see the connection between goodness and love, and therefore pushes us to see that our inability to be good on our own is related to our inability to love properly. Our loves are disordered, misdirected, or weak. This insight points us toward a conversation partner who has been largely rejected or ignored by Restorationists but whose insights are of immense benefit to us in formulating a healthier approach to ethics – .

To the extent that they know Augustine at all, Restorationists know him primarily as their opponent in debates with Calvinists and Catholics. On questions of original sin, free-will, predestination, and various other doctrinal matters, his views are in strong contrast with core commitments of the movement. But his thoughts on the ordo amoris

(order of loves) and the Holy Spirit can stand somewhat independently of those controversial theological convictions, and Churches of Christ would do well to attend to his ethical teaching.

Augustine was as aware of his own sinfulness as perhaps anyone who has ever lived. He tells the story of his life as a series of confessions to God, and he invites his readers to join him in contemplating the manifold wickedness of his sinfulness. “All the worse for me! By stages I was led deeper into , laboring and chafing under the scarcity of truth.”564 Even after his conversion and years of service as a bishop and theologian, when his last illness came, Augustine chose to meet death alone, lying in bed

564 Augustine, Confessions, 3.6.11: 83.

299 and reading the penitential Psalms while weeping over his sins.565 The practice of penitence, the narration of his life as a series of confessions, and the Church community in which he lived gave Augustine eyes to see things about human sinfulness that

Restorationists have missed. Restorationists are likely to disagree with many aspects of

Augustine’s hamartiology and anthropology, but we should nevertheless learn from him a new way of seeing how love and the ethical life are tied together.

The riddle that this section poses lies at the heart of Augustinian ethics where his insistence on the sinfulness of humanity resulting from our disordered loves meets his emphasis on love as the sole principle for ethical living. How can sinful people whose loves are disordered love God and love one another without merely reinforcing their own sinfulness? Augustine’s answer should not surprise us: By the Holy Spirit!

I. Augustine Rightly Teaches Us That Love Is the Fullness of Christian Ethics.

If the early church fathers had been asked for a Scriptural summary of Christian ethics, they would almost certainly have pointed to the Sermon on the Mount. This was the most-quoted and most referenced passage of Scripture in the writings of the early church, and the patristic commentary tended to emphasize themes like obedience, visible action, and radical counter-cultural witness.566 With Augustine, the emphasis shifts from

Matthew 5–7 to Matthew 22, from the Sermon on the Mount to the Greatest

565 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 432. For more on the significance of weeping in Augustine’s theology see: William Werpehowski, “Weeping at the Death of Dido: Sorrow, Virtue, and Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 19. No. 1 (Spring, 1991): 175-191; and Paul J. Griffiths, “Tears and Weeping: An Augustinian View,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 28 no. 1 (Jan. 2011): 19-28. 566 Jeffrey P. Greenman, ed. The Sermon on the Mount Through the Centuries (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007).

300 Commands.567 Though there are common dangers and ubiquitous examples of abuses related to prioritizing love in Christian ethics, Augustine’s move is fundamentally correct. Love is the primary virtue of the Christian faith, the heart of what it is to be and do good, the bond of fellowship that unites the individuals within the Church to each other and to God.

What exactly Augustine means by love is not always clear, but some generalizations can still be made.568 First, Love always involves the will. Second, there is a divinely intended hierarchy of value among things that are to be loved, an “ordo amorum” with God at the top, other human beings in the middle and non-human things at the bottom. Third, love can be misdirected or disordered, and this distortion results in sin. Finally, love, in the true sense of the word, is always a gift of grace from God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

567 “It is surprising how little attention is paid to the ‘summary of the law,’ the ‘two commands,’ of love-of-God and love-of-neighbor, in either the Western or the Eastern Fathers [before Augustine].” Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in St. Augustine (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 4. Some have argued that Augustine’s influence has led to an overemphasis on love as it relates to Christian ethics. Hays points out that the word love does not appear at all in Acts and only rarely in books like Hebrews and Revelation. See Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, and New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 200-204. As we shall see, such critiques will not hold up provided one has a fulsome pneumatological view of what love is in the Augustinian sense. 568 Though the word most frequently translated as love in English versions of Augustine’s work is charitate (sometimes caritatis), he also uses dilectione, amore, and other words synonymously. Generally speaking, amor is the standard classical word for love, which covers the full range of love and affection, but frequently has erotic overtones. Dilectio is a late Latin word, representing love and affection without the erotic aspect; it is used much more frequently in the than is amor. Caritas (or sometimes charitatas) in classical usage primarily refers to costliness, with the secondary meaning of affection or love (which becomes the predominant meaning in Christian Latin). The spelling charitate suggests the Greek χάρις, grace or , as well. Augustine does not distinguish between the various terms and uses them interchangeably in both his early and late works e.g. “If a man has love or (for they are but two words for one thing)…” De Trinitate, 15.32.

301 I.A. Augustine’s Moral Theology is an Ad Hoc Ethica Caritatis That Does Not Fit Neatly into Either Virtue Ethics in the Thomistic Tradition or Protestant Versions of Divine Command Theory.

For Augustine, love is both the foundation of all ethical thought and also its apex.

His is an ethica caritatis and does not fit easily into any standard systems of ethics. His moral teaching collapses all the virtues into the notion of love. However, he does not turn this fundamental insight into an ethical system the way that many of his later interpreters would. At times he appears to be a virtue theorist (like Aquinas) or a divine command theorist (like and Calvin), but his ethical works are always ad hoc and function independent of any formal ethical theory. Despite this lack of systemization, his central emphasis on love is always present (even if only implicitly) and always informs his understanding of both holy obedience and of the virtues.569

[Augustine’s legacy] combines an acute moral sense, certainty of an objective moral order, a sober assessment of the limits of human virtue, a complex but

569 Chappell acknowledges that Augustine fits into “all of [our modern ethical systems] and into none of them.” And guesses that Augustine would “be astonished that anyone should try to do ethics without all of the notions [virtue, principles, duties, consequences, etc.].” Nevertheless, he identifies Augustine primarily as a divine command thinker and bases this claim largely on the uncompromising stance he takes in De Mendacio. Paul Griffiths takes a similar position in his Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004). This seems too hasty a qualification. Augustine demonstrates a great deal of flexibility on other ethical questions where clear biblical commands are given – on war, for example, and his emphasis on obedience to God is always an expression of his deeper commitment to an ethic rooted in love and human nature. Augustine’s treatment of the ethics of war is ad hoc and unsystematic, and it is more complex in its approach than the treatment of lying found in De Mendacio. Augustine’s departure from the more straightforward emphasis on turning the other cheek and into the complexities of justifiable violence gave birth to the that has dominated western thoughts on the ethics of war for centuries. For more on his doctrine of justified violence and its relation to his ethical thinking in general see: John S.L. Langan, “The Elements of St. Augustine’s Just War Theory,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 12 no 1 (Spring 1984), 19-24; Marcus Bull, “Origins” in The Oxford History of the , ed. Johnathan Riley-Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 18; Stanley Hauerwas, “Call for the Abolition of War,” Duke Divinity School, Our Daily Bread Lectures, May 2007, www.itunes.com (downloaded February 19, 2009); Fidéle Ingiyimbere, “St. Augustine and the Foundation of Just War Theory,” Journal of Catholic Social Thought, 11 no. 1 (Winter 2014): 179-202.

302 supple doctrine of Christian love, and a refusal either to relinquish hope in moral transformation or portray it as a simple matter of willful resolve.570

While he joins the classical tradition in identifying happiness (eudaimonia) as that for which we aim and suggests that virtue or excellence is the means by which one may achieve this blessedness, Augustine reimagines all the classical virtues and even the concept of happiness itself as love for God.

Following after God is the desire of happiness; to reach God is happiness itself. We follow after God by loving Him; we reach Him…by nearness to him, and in wonderful and immaterial contact with Him, and in being inwardly illuminated and occupied by His truth and holiness. He is the light itself…The greatest command therefore, which leads to happy life…is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind.” For to those who love the Lord all things issue in good.571

Though Augustine is neither the first nor the last Christian theologian to reimagine the classical virtues, they emerge from his “baptism” in forms that are difficult to recognize.

Unlike Thomas Aquinas who goes to great lengths to harmonize Aristotle’s Nicomachean

Ethics with Christian teaching in ways that maintain the key insights of the classical tradition, Augustine’s emphasis is on the difference the Christian story makes to our understanding of virtue.

I hold virtue to be nothing else than perfect love of God. For the fourfold division of virtue I regard as taken from four forms of love. For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: That temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it. The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God;

570 Gerald W. Schlabach and Nello Cipriani, “Ethics” in Augustine Through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 320. 571 Augustine, On Lying, trans. H. Browne and A.M. Overett (Savage, MN: Lighthouse Publishing, 2017), 11.

303 justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it.572

Just as he redefines the virtues as expressions of or characteristic ways of loving

God, Augustine provides an understanding of holy obedience as nothing other than love.

He understands it to be an act of love which flows from our nature as imago dei— image—bearers of the God who loves—rather than as an external command placed upon us from a foreign authority. Augustine has no more interest in denying the importance of obedience than he has in rejecting the virtues, but he nevertheless claims that obedience is only right insofar as it is an act of love.

Obedience to [God’s] will is the criterion of right for all His creatures. But Augustine does not stop here as so many theologians do. He adds, “It is our duty to do the will of God because His will is our deepest will too.” No moral law forced on us entirely from without and foreign to our nature could be morally binding on us. “Departure from God would be no vice unless in a nature whose property it was to abide in God.”573

Because divine commands are always given in accordance with our nature, and it is our nature to love God, the ‘greatest commands’ inevitably encompass and guide the interpretation of holy obedience. James Pratt provides an apt summary:

I see no way of reconciling the autonomy of the will with the universality of any ethical law except the way that Augustine took; namely, to postulate that, while the basis of right for each man is his own nature, the natures of all men are fundamentally the same; that while we differ in innumerable particulars, the deepest will in us all is identical. Thus, the applicability of ethical laws is made universal. But something more than this is needed to give morality the authority which it should have, and this Augustine gives by saying that we are

572 Augustine, The Catholic Way of Life and the Manichean Way of Life (De Moribus ecclesiae Catholicae et De Moribus Manichaeorum), in The Manichean Debate vol. 19 of The Works of St. Augustine, trans. Roland Teske ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1990), 1.15: 43 573 James Bissett Pratt, “The Ethics of St. Augustine,” International Journal of Ethics, 13 no. 2 (Jan. 1903), 222. Internal quotes City of God 11.17.

304 fundamentally alike because we are all made in the image of our Creator; that the deepest will in us is also the will of God.574

The “deepest will” of which Pratt speaks might also be rendered as “our first love” since

Augustine teaches that the work of the will is to love. Thus, we could paraphrase

Augustine and say that, because we are made in the image of our Creator, our first love is also the love of God both in the sense of our love towards God and also in the sense of the inner-triune life of God which is characterized by love.

However, though we are in God’s image, we find that all too often our first love is not the love of God, but the love of something pulled from its proper place in creation and elevated to the status of an idol. Love is the heart of Christian ethics, but our loves must be properly ordered if they are to be worthy of the name love. Augustine’s doctrine of the ordo amoris offers nuance and clarity to his general emphasis on love and is an essential aspect of his ethica caritatis.

II. Augustine’s Doctrine of the Ordo Amoris Describes the Ways in Which Humans Are Sinful as Well as What Righteousness Looks Like.

Augustine came to Scripture’s greatest commands and constructed his doctrine of the ordo amoris by drawing on his Neo-Platonic tendency to unify concepts and the stoic distinction between use and enjoyment.575 Human sinfulness, Augustine believed, is an expression of misdirected or disordered love. While it was appropriate, he argued, to love all things as a means to loving God, he knew the human tendency to become distracted by the things of the world and fail to see the God who made them and revealed himself through them. Though God made the world as a window through which people might see him, humanity tends to look at the window instead of through it. Augustine

574 Pratt, “Ethics of Augustine,” 233. 575 Nello Cipriani, “The Order of Love” in Augustine Through the Ages, 323.

305 made a sharp distinction between the world which we ought to use (uti) and God which we ought to enjoy (frui).576 Sin comes from enjoying that which ought to be used and thereby becoming entangled in disordered loves.

II.A. Human Beings Are Sinful Insofar as Their Loves Are Disordered or Too Weak.

The doctrine of the ordo amoris teaches that things are to be loved according to their proper ordering. One key text Augustine uses to make his argument is Matthew 22 with its discussion of the greatest commands. This passage provided Augustine with a matrix for understanding all of ethics as properly ordering love of God, neighbor, and self. Augustine comments,

Now, since God, our teacher, teaches two chief precepts, love of God and love of neighbor, in which man finds three things to love – God, himself, and his neighbor, and since one who loves God does not go wrong in loving himself, it follows that he also wants his neighbor to love God, since he is commanded to love his neighbor as himself.577

He points out that the greatest commands teach us that there exists a hierarchy of loves and that having that hierarchy firmly in place is essential for any proper ethical act.

Character transformation is accomplished by aligning one’s dispositions with the ordo amoris.578 If we love God properly, we will also love our neighbor and ourselves properly. If we love our neighbor or ourselves properly, we will do so only because we

576 Augustine, De Doctrina, 1.20. For examples of how this “use” vs. “enjoy” polarity plays out in applied cases of Augustinian ethics see Andrew McGowan, “To Use and to Enjoy: Augustine and Ecology,” St. Mark’s Review, 212 (May 2010): 89-99; Anthony Dupont, “To Use or enjoy Humans?: Uti and Frui in Augustine,” , Leuven: Peeters (2006): 89-93; Robert Dodaro, “Augustine on enjoying One’s Neighbor: Uti-Frui Once Again,” Lateranum, 80 no.3 (2015): 511-526. 577 Augustine, City of God (De Civitate Dei) part 2 Books 11-22, vol. 7 of Works of St. Augustine, trans. William Babcock (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2013), 19.14. 578 Timothy Chappell, “Augustine’s Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine 2nd Ed. David Vincent Meconi S.J. & Eleonore Stump eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 195.

306 rightly love God. The existence of this hierarchy is key to Augustine’s doctrine of sin and to his closely related love-ethic.

The misalignment of loves is at the heart of Augustine’s notion of evil and of his hamartological teaching as a whole. All ethics reduces to this one question for

Augustine: How are one’s loves ordered? The answer which he gives about himself and about all humanity (excepting Christ) is, “They are ordered wrongly.” All sin is fundamentally a matter of misdirected or inordinate love, and love is desire acted upon by the will. Augustine’s doctrine of the will emerges from his exploration of the origin and nature of evil.579 Since evil for Augustine is not a thing with substance but rather a privation or perversion of goodness – a turning from the real and the good – it can only come about by the use of some power or cause which allows that turning to take place.

When the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil – not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore, it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing.580

This ability to turn, to act upon or move toward desire is the essence of love and therefore the essence of ethics for Augustine. “It is the will, therefore, and the will alone, that is

579 Phillip Cary argues that Augustine invents the concept of the will and bequeaths it to all of later Western philosophy Phillip Cary, “Evil, Free Will, Original Sin, and Predestination” in Augustine, Philosopher and Saint (Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2013), lecture 8. 580 City of God, 12.6. This is a theme explored in a variety of Augustine’s works but is most clearly and concisely presented in his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love 3.9-11 and 4.12-15. See also Confessions 7.7; 16.22; City of God, 11.9; etc. For a robust discussion of the Augustinian view of evil and the will see J. Patout Burns, “Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 16 no. 1 (Spring, 1988): 9-28; Gillian R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and especially, Adam M. Willows, “Augustine, the Origin of Evil and the Mystery of Free Will,” Religious Studies, 50 no. 2 (June, 2014): 255-269.

307 essentially evil. The thing toward which the evil will turns is neither evil nor good.

Nothing is evil but the evil will.”581

When people love created things as if they were eternal things, when they direct their will inappropriately toward creatures instead of toward God, when they allow themselves to be captivated by the things of the world rather than letting their restless hearts find rest in God who is their true end, the result is sin, evil, judgment, and death.

II.B. When Their Loves are Properly Ordered, Human Beings Love Both the World and God But Do So in Such a Way That Their Love for the World is Always Instrumentally Directed Toward Their Love for God.

The general principle that humans ought to love the world in order to love God lies behind the technical uti/frui distinction Augustine makes in De Doctrina. There he writes that God alone is to be enjoyed (frui), and all else is to be used (uti).

Among all the things there are, therefore, those alone are to be enjoyed which we have noted as being eternal and unchanging, while the rest are to be used, in order that we may come at last to the enjoyment of the former sort.582

It is important to note that Augustine does not use “enjoy” (frui) as a synonym for “love”

(delectionis) in this passage. The question is not, “Ought we to love other people or love ourselves?” Scripture provides him with an obvious answer in the affirmative. The

581 Pratt, 224. Here Augustine offers the inverse of Kant’s claim, “It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will.” Immanuel Kant, A Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Revised 2nd Edition, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, eds. and trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 9. Augustine roots evil in the will rather than good since it was by the will that humanity first sinned and rebelled against the good, namely, God. The Augustinian notion of the will is distinct from Kant and the decisionist ethics which flow out of him in important ways. Augustine’s concept of will changed over the course of his life, but it has room within it for habitual actions in ways that are of obvious import for virtue ethics. See especially his, On Free Choice and the Will, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993), 1.12-2.46. 582 Augustine, Teaching Christianity/De Doctrina Christiana, trans. Edmund Hill O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996), 1.20/22.

308 question, for Augustine, is, “Why ought we to love ourselves and others?” or “We ought to love ourselves and others to what end?” His is a teleological question, and the answer he gives is that we ought to love others as a means to enjoying, resting, and finding our ultimate end in God.583

The metaphysical hierarchy represented in Augustine’s uti/frui distinction therefore runs parallel to, but is not the same as the ordo amorum. Yet both doctrines manifest the underlying idea that sin is rooted in the misdirected will of the individual who is led astray by her desire for that which is not or does not lead to God. In this,

Augustine is thoroughly Johannine.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 Jn. 2:15–17).

In a homily on this passage delivered around twenty years after his composition of De

Doctrina, Augustine writes,

Why, then, wouldn’t I love what God made? May the Spirit of God be in you, so that you may see that all these things are good, but woe to you who love created things and abandon the creator. They are beautiful as far as you are concerned, but how much more beautiful is he who formed them? Let your Charity be attentive, for you can be taught by metaphors. Don’t let Satan creep up on you, saying what he customarily says: “Enjoy yourself in God’s creation. Why did he make those things if not for you to enjoy them?” And they get drunk, and they ruin themselves, and they forget their creator. As long as they use created things not temperately but inordinately, the creator is disdained. Of such persons the Apostle says, “They adored and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever (Rom. 1:25). God doesn’t forbid you to love those things, but you

583 Thus, the uti/frui distinction is primarily about the transcendent nature of God and not about any comprehensive ethical system. When Augustine says that people are to be “used”, he means by this something radically different than what Kant has in mind in his categorical imperative prohibiting treating people as means rather than ends. For a fuller treatment of this difference and of the uti/frui distinction in general see Mario Naldini and Edmund Hill O.P., “Structure and Pastoral Theology of Teaching Christianity,” Introduction to De Doctrina, 17-19.

309 mustn’t love them in the expectation of blessedness. Rather, you must favor and praise them in such a way that you love the creator.584

Augustine goes on to address the issue metaphorically with a parable in which a bride loves the wedding ring given to her by her bridegroom more than she loves the man himself. Clearly, he says, such a woman possesses an adulterous heart insofar as she loves the gift more than she loves the one who made and gave the gift to her. He emphasizes that the world and the things in it are to be loved. They must simply be loved in appropriate ways; that is, they are not to be loved instead of or above God but loved as means to the end of loving God.585 Even things about which Augustine is generally critical (e.g. food, wine, and sex) are appropriately loved if they are loved for God’s sake.

Not surely, that there is no allowed measure in [food, drink, and sex], or that when it is said, “Love not these things,” it means that you are not to eat, or not to drink, or not to beget children? This is not the thing said. Only, let there be measure, because of the Creator, that these things may not bind you by your loving of them: lest you love that for enjoyment which you ought to have for use. But you are not put to the proof except when two things are propounded to you, this or that?586

584 Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Works of St. Augustine vol. III/14, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Edmund Hill (New York, New City Press, 2008), 2.11: 47. Note Augustine’s emphasis on the virtue of temperance rather than on mere obedience in this passage. 585 In both De Doctrina and Homilies on First John, Augustine identifies temporality as the key failing of the world. God is to be enjoyed because he is the eternal one. In Homilies, Augustine connects this point to the Incarnation: “Will you love the things of time, and pass away with time; or not love the world, and live to eternity with God? The river of temporal things hurries one along; but like a tree sprung up beside the river is our Lord Jesus Christ. He assumed flesh, died, rose again, ascended into heaven. It was his will to plant himself, in a manner, beside the river of the things of time. Are you rushing down the stream to the headlong deep? Hold fast the tree. Is love of the world whirling you on? Hold fast Christ. For you he became temporal, that you might become eternal.” Homilies on First John 2.10. We might suggest, with Jenson, that a better metaphor would be to say that Christ is a new stream which joins the river of time and takes it in a new direction, one that flows forever instead of pouring into the dead sea and becoming stagnant. See also Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 63,” in Exposition of the Psalms PNF 1.8: 259; in which he says, “…in this world we ought not to love fulness. Here we must thirst, in another place we shall be filled. But now in order that we may not faint in this desert, He sprinkleth upon us the dew of His word, and leaveth us not utterly to dry up, so that there should not be in our case any seeking of us again, but that we may so thirst as that we may drink.” 586 Augustine, Homilies 2.12.

310 Here in the homilies Augustine’s uti/frui distinction achieves its practical form – when faced with the choice, will you choose the things of the world over God? Will you direct your towards them instead of towards God? Will you love God or something else? Sinfulness is loving something else more than or instead of God. Goodness is loving God and loving other things as a way of loving God.

We find the principle expressed narratively in book four of the Confessions.

Augustine describes the death of his friend and ruminates on the role that love plays in friendship. “Blessed is he who loves you [O God], and loves his friend in you and his enemy for your sake.”587 The ordo amoris dictates that the Christian ought to love his friend but not in order to gratify his own pleasures in the friendship. To do so would put the love of self ahead of love of neighbor. But he also must not love his friend ultimately. He must not enjoy his friend, for death can end a friendship, and temporal things must not be loved ultimately since doing so places them above God. Thus

Augustine writes, “He alone loses no one dear to him, to whom all are dear in the One who is never lost. And who is this but our God.”588 As Cipriani says, “The real and lasting value of friendship is found when it is placed in service to God who can secure it and bless his children through it.”589

When their loves are properly ordered, humans love both the world and God, but they do so in such a way that their love for the world is always instrumentally directed toward God whom they love as an end. Of course, their loves are rarely, if ever, so ordered. Given the ease with which humanity falls into the trap of loving the wrong thing

587 Augustine, Confessions, 4.9.14: 101. 588 Augustine, Confessions, 4.9.14: 101. 589 Cipriani, 323.

311 or loving in the wrong way, one might expect Augustinian ethics to take the form of a theory in which right is named and judged by static external rules grounded in eternity rather than arising from individual or social norms—some sort of legalism perhaps. So it is almost shocking to find the same man who teaches us that sinfulness results from our misdirected loves summing up his entire ethical thought in these five short words: dilige, et quod vis fac, “Love, and do what you will.”590

III. We Whose Loves Are Disordered Can Only Love Rightly Insofar as the Holy Spirit Pours the Love Which is Himself into Our Hearts.

The key to unraveling this mystery lies not in Augustine’s anthropology, but in his pneumatology, for the good is not a merely a principle for Augustine; it is the living person of the Holy Spirit. The text to which Augustine most commonly appeals to when articulating this doctrine is Romans 5:5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”591

In his Propositions on Romans, Augustine writes,

… are done out of love, and love is present in us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle himself says: “Charity has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom. 5:5) No one should, therefore, boast of the works as if they were his: they are the fruit of a gift from God, since it is love that operates in him good works. What, then, was what God chose? If it is he who gives the Holy Spirit to whom he wills, thanks to which love works good in him, on what basis does God choose to whom to give it? Because in the absence of all merit, there is no choice: we are all equal before deserving, and we cannot talk about choice when things are exactly the same. But since the Holy Spirit is given only to those who believe, it means that God chose not works, but faith: works are a gift of God, the fruit of charity that works in us good, which it comes with the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is clear: if one does not believe in God, nor keep oneself in the will to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, he does not receive it.592

590 Augustine, Homilies on First John, 7.8: 110. 591 E.g. Augustine, De Trinitate, 7.5; 8.10, 14; 15.31; City of God, 17.20. 592 Augustine, Expressions in Romans in Patristic Bible Commentary, https://sites.google.com/site/ aquinasstudybible/home/romans/augustine-of-hippo-propositions- on-romans.

312

Love, for Augustine, is the grace given to us through the Holy Spirit by which we are able to grow in virtue, to obey God’s commandments, and ultimately to be united to the

God who is love. His vision of the ordo amoris holds forth the promise of humanity participating in the trinitarian life which is the mutual love of God and also names the real and lasting temptations that make such a promise difficult for us to attain. In our confession of and forgiveness for sins, we see the dance of kenosis/theosis performed yet again.

Whether we call it circumincession, perichoresis, or interpenetration, we have seen in our second riddle that the life of God is characterized by a mutual kenosis, a deferring to and exalting of the other. This eternal trinitarian dance of self-giving, delight in the other, and union is the reality to which Christians ought to point when they use the word love. Love, Augustine teaches us, is the name of the Trinity as a whole and of the

Holy Spirit as a person within the Trinity. The Spirit is the Love given by the Father and the Son to each other and to the world, and to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with

Love, that is, to be deified.

III.A. The Spirit is the Love of God.

In De Trinitate, Augustine proposes a number of metaphors for the triune nature of God, but few are as consequential for his theology and ethics as this one, “You see a trinity if you see love.”593 Indeed, while he says early on that love is a trinity, by the end of the work he has come to conclude that love is the Trinity and that all true loving (and if it is not true, he writes, it is not worthy of the name Love) is a participation in the triune

593 Augustine, De Trinitate 8.12.

313 life of God made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit.594 Thus, in the climax of his treatise on the Trinity, he writes:

So God is charity. But the question is whether it is the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit or the triad, because this triad is not three Gods but one God. … I do not know why Father, Son, and Holy Spirit should not all be called charity and all together be one charity…In the same way the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, and they are all together one God. And yet it is not without point that in this triad only the Son is called the Word of God, and only the Holy Spirit is called the gift of God…If therefore any of these three can be distinctly named charity, which could it more suitably be than the Holy Spirit.595

In his metaphor from book 8, the Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved, and the Spirit is the love which binds them together. We see here, even in the very nature of God, an ordo amorum at work, a pattern of loves rather than a degree of intensity.596 The Father is the originating principle and the son the begotten one, but the Spirit proceeds from/through and is directed towards both such that not only is the Son bound to Father, but the Father is also bound to the Son. So real equality and mutuality exists within the trinity without the loss of a discernable order of loves – “a truly self-giving reciprocal communion, not a hierarchy of powers.”597

This reciprocity – what Ratzinger calls the communio between the Father and the

Son – is the Holy Spirit. 598 The Spirit’s particular distinction is that he is that which the

Father and the Son have in common, and this is evident even in the generic name “Holy

594 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.4. The comment about “true love” comes in the opening lines of book 8. 595 De Trinitate, 15.28, 31. 596 This does not imply that there are differing degrees of love in the trinity, merely that there is an appropriate ordering of them. 597 Lewis Ayres, “Augustine on God as Love and Love as God,” Pro Ecclesia, 5 no. 4 (Fall 1996), 484. 598 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Holy Spirit as Communio: Concerning the Relationship of Pneumatology and Spirituality in Augustine,” trans. Peter Casarella, Communio 25 no. 2 (Summer, 1998): 326. Augustine treats the matter in De Trinitate, 5.12. “…the Holy Spirit is a kind of inexpressible communion or fellowship of Father and Son.”

314 Spirit” which he bears. The words “holy” and “spirit” are both applied to God generically and to the Father and the Son individually. These descriptors, “holy” and

“spirit” are “the essential descriptions of God.”599 Thus, the Spirit for Augustine is the paradoxical mutuality of the Godhead.600 It is this insight, along with the identification of the Spirit with the divine gift, which led Augustine to identify the Spirit as the love which unites the Father and the Son, the gift which each of them gives to the other and the gift which together they give to the world.601

III.A.1. The Spirit’s nature as love is tied to his nature as gift.

Hilary of Portiers was the first to identify the Spirit as the Donum Dei, but

Augustine expanded and improved upon Hilary’s teaching.602 As is typical for most of

Augustine’s thinking about the Spirit, the Apostle John provided him with the key texts from Scripture. In this case, the story of the woman at the well in John 4 served as the primary reference for Augustine’s pneumatology. There Jesus tells the woman that his

599 Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.12. 600 Ratzinger, 326. Such a view of the Spirit is tied up in the most controversial aspect of Augustinian trinitarian theology – the dual procession of the Spirit. While the Bishop of Hippo acknowledges that the Spirit precedes “principally” from the Father, it is vital to his doctrine of God that the Son also has “life in himself” (Jn.. 5:26) from before all worlds and that this life which he receives from the Father by his eternal begetting is the Spirit which also proceeds from the Son back to the Father. De Trinitate, 15.47-48. As noted above, Jenson and Bulgakov both are critical of the filioque, yet both strongly affirm Augustine’s doctrine of the Spirit as the inter- trinitarian love. Indeed, the systematic theology of each collapses without it. 601 We must be careful at this point not to forget the insights gained from our first riddle. To say that the Spirit is the love of God and the gift of God must not lead us to thinking of him as impersonal any more than saying that the Son is the word of God or wisdom of God should lead us to think of him as an abstract entity rather than one with a concrete story in the history of God and the world. As we saw in our second riddle, Jenson’s treatment of the Spirit as the divine futurity within the trinity helpfully maintains Augustine’s teaching on the vinculum caritatis without depersonalizing the Spirit. 602 See Hilary’s De Trinitate 2.1 and 2.3. For an extended treatment of this important element of Augustinian Pneumatology, see J. Warren Smith, “The Trinity in the Fourth-Century Fathers” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, Gilles Meery, O.P. & Matthew Levering eds. (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 121.

315 gift is greater than what he asked her to give, for the water he gives is living water, an expression that the Evangelist later explicitly identifies with the Spirit (Jn. 7:37).603 This identification of the Spirit with the gift of God allows Augustine to distinguish the Spirit from the Son while maintaining that both are “of God.”604 He makes the distinction most clearly in the following passage:

He [The Spirit] comes forth, you see, not as being born but as being given, and so he is not called Son because he was not born like the only begotten Son, nor made and born adoptively by grace like us. What was born of the Father is referred to the Father alone when he is called, and therefore he is the Father’s Son and not ours too. But what has been given is referred both to him who gave and to those it was given to; and so the Holy Spirit is not only called the Spirit of the Father and the Son who gave him, but also our Spirit who received him.605

Just as the Son was begotten of the Father before his entry into human history via the virgin’s womb, so also is the Spirit the Gift of God even before he brooded over the

603 Ratzinger, 330. Ratzinger points out that these passages join Augustine’s Christology with his pneumatology; Christ is the well or spring and the Spirit is the water. “The well of the Spirit is the crucified Christ. From him each Christian becomes a well of the Spirit.” For an excellent exegetical treatment of the passages in question and their attendant pneumatology, see Dale C. Allison, “The Living Water: John 4:10-14, 6:35c, and 7:37-39,” St. Vladamir’s Theological Quarterly 30 no.2 (1986), 143-157. 604 This distinction is vital for Augustinians like Ratzinger who wish to rebut accusations that Augustine’s trinitarian doctrine smacks of modalism. For an example of one such critique see John Myendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, (NewYork: Fordham University Press, 1979), 186-187. 605 Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.14.

316 waters or moved the prophets to speak.606 For the Spirit is the Gift of the Father and the

Son not only to creation, but also to each other.

Staniloae takes the insight even deeper noting,

Because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and comes to rest in the Son, and therefore is not begotten like the Son, endless multiplication of the divinity is avoided, and a certain internal unity is achieved, for not only is the unity between Son and Spirit made manifest in this way, but that between the Father and the Son is also strengthened. The Spirit proceeding from the Father comes to rest in the Son who is begotten of the Father, and, like an arch, unites Father and Son in one embrace. Thus, a unity among the Persons is manifested which is distinct from their unity of essence. If there exists nothing between the two to unite them, the number two represents separation. The duality which appears at the begetting of the Son by the Father is reduced to a unity by the procession of the Spirit. … The third in the Trinity . . . represents the perfection of the unity of the many. The Father causes the Spirit to proceed in order to unite himself with the Son.607

Rogers notes that this embrace is not merely a metaphysical principle of unity accomplished by the Spirit’s nature, but also an aspect of the Spirit’s role in the story of

God. What the Augustine thinks of as a metaphysical principle, Rogers reminds us is a gift of unity which the Spirit gives to the Father and the Son within their shared story and by which he crowns, celebrates, and perfects their unity.

What is crucial here is that the Father and the Son have not only a unity of their own that belongs to their essence, but that they also have a unity to receive as the gift of the Spirit. It is this received unity, the koinonia or communion of the Holy

606 For Augustine, the eternal begetting and eternal gifting of the Spirit is utterly independent from the incarnation and the sending of the Spirit in creation, but Jenson helpfully ties the two events together noting that the eternal Son is always connected to Jesus Christ. For Jenson, to talk of eternal begetting is to say that “Christ precedes himself” but it is not to say that the Eternal Word/Son ever has an existence separated from the man Jesus of Nazareth. Jenson offers three ways that Christ precedes himself. 1) Christ precedes himself in the infinity of the life of God by being the object of divine election. 2) Christ precedes himself by “being going to be born” i.e. promised or moving toward incarnation from all eternity. 3) Christ’s post-existence i.e. his eschatological future, defines him from the end and not just from the beginning. Jenson, The Triune God, 139-144. All of this applies, mutatis mutandis to the Spirit as well. His character as gift goes before and comes after but is never separated from his being given by the Father through the Son to creation. 607 Staniloae, “Holy Spirit and the Sobornicity of the Church,” 23.

317 Spirit, that renders the life of the Trinity dynamic and allows for the inclusion of others within that life without distortion – deified persons.608

This mutual giving is foundational for Augustine’s argument that the Spirit is the love of

God and for the implications that this love has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit

(Rom. 5:5).

III.B. The Spirit Who is God’s Gift of Love Binds the Christian to God in Love, Instructs Christians on How to Live as Love, and Transforms Christians Such that their Nature is Love.

What then does the Love of God poured out into our hearts do? Three answers are particularly important for understanding our riddle of how sinners whose loves are disordered can love rightly. First, the Spirit unites Christians to God. Aquinas said,

“Charity signifies not only the love of God, but also a certain friendship with Him.”609 If

God is love, then we can be sure that he desires fellowship, friendship, and communion for their own sakes and that he implants that desire within his creatures. The Spirit unites both divine and human persons rendering the Christian one with God and with God’s people.610 Like Rogers, Ratzinger names this characteristically pneumatological work of forming deep communal bonds as “abiding.”611 The Spirit abides with us and forms a stable relationship, one that mirrors the Spirit’s presence in the life of Christ. Ratzinger notes that this “abiding” is the basic criterion of love. “Love proves itself in constancy.

[It] abides, overcomes vacillation, and bears eternity within itself.”612 And because love is characterized by abiding, it cannot take place anywhere except where there is eternity,

608 Rogers, After the Spirit, 67. 609 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2A.65.5 610 David Vincent Menconi, “Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 222. 611 Ratzinger, 328-329. 612 Ratzinger, 328-329.

318 that is, in God. Here we see the ultimate grounding for the ordo amorum. While contemporary notions of both love and the Spirit emphasize unpredictability and the tendency to break out of rules and institutions, Ratzinger points to constancy, loyalty, even the as the fundamental characteristics of love. The same Spirit who offers growth gives rootedness. The one who brings about change guarantees continuity.

The one who brings about individual charisms binds those gifts to the Church. The freedom of the Spirit is not therefore to be cut off but to be bound to. “Freedom is finding a home.”613 Ratzinger follows Augustine in talking about the nature, fundamental characteristics, and definition of love, and I am in full sympathy with the conclusions to which they come. However, the true meaning of those definitions is found only by looking at the story of God’s love played out in creation. Ultimately, we know that

God’s love poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit abides with us not because abiding is the Spirit’s nature, but because the gospel tells us that the Spirit remained on

Jesus.

Second, as Jesus promised in John 14:26, the Spirit acts as teacher and guide for the Christian.614 Drawing on the Confessions, Harvey points to the importance of moral vision for Augustinian ethics and connects the development of this skill with the work of the Spirit. Conversion, itself a work of the Spirit and deeply associated with teaching, is typically the result of the gradual process of gaining self-knowledge under the light of grace. And this is true for moral vision as well.

St. Augustine’s concept of conscience is not purely philosophic but theocentric and dynamic. For him the judgments of conscience are not isolated phenomena,

613 Ratzinger, 334–336. 614 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things…”

319 but complicated operations of the whole person in the varying situations of life— operations done under the influence of Divine Grace.615

This “theocentric dynamism” is the mark of the Spirit’s activity. As we saw in riddles one and two above, the knowledge of God and self does not come from a “dead letter” carved in stone for all ages, but from a living and intimately present tutor who instructs and corrects over time. Thus, Augustine writes, “That which I know of myself, I know by thy light shining upon me.”616 Notice the present tense of the verb. The Spirit’s illumination is not something that happened once and has now been comprehended, internalized, and ended, but a continual shining forth of instruction, encouragement, and help. Here we see clearly the tension with the Restorationist idea of the Spirit as one who authored Scripture and then fell silent having said all that was necessary to those competent to hear, understand, and obey. Augustine’s view aligns more closely with the

Biblical witness that “The word of God is living and active…” Spiritual growth, including moral growth, is directly tied to knowledge that comes from divine illumination, an ongoing work explicitly associated with the Spirit’s teaching role. We can expect the Spirit to teach, convict, and guide the church today because that is what we have seen him do in the story of the church in Acts.

Finally, the work of the Spirit is tied to Christian eschatology and the perfecting of God’s people. Deification and its attendant themes of individual moral progress, the formation of a redeemed community, and the efficacy of the sacraments play a major role in Augustine’s thought though it is one that has often been overlooked or denied

615 John F. Harvey, Moral Theology of the Confessions of Saint Augustine (Washington: CUA Press, 1951), 19-22. The divine grace in question can be identified as the gift of the Holy Spirit. 616 Augustine, Confessions, 10.5.7.

320 outright.617 The work of theosis begins in the present by the indwelling of the Spirit. But

Ratzinger notes that, given that this is the work of the Spirit, we ought not to think of our participation in the divine nature or the increasing degrees of glory given to us in terms of power and authority but in terms of love and fellowship with God and his people.

Becoming a Christian means becoming communion and thereby entering into the mode of being of the Holy Spirit. But it can also only happen through the Holy Spirit, who is the power of communication and is himself a Person.”618

III.C. God is Love; Therefore, to Love is to Become One With God, and to Become One With God is to Love.

In his commentary on First John 4:8, “God is love (ὁ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν, ho theós estin)” Augustine makes the unusual move of flipping John’s formulation “God is love” to its inverse “Love is God,” a step too far for most commentators and theologians.

But this move is a necessary one given Augustine’s trinitarian doctrine and his pneumatology. He offers three arguments in defense of the unusual formulation “Love is

God”:

1) Verse 7 says that we are “of God” because of the love within us.

2) We know that to act contrary to love is to disobey God.

3) If those who love are indwelt by the Spirit, then love must necessarily be the presence of God.619

617 Menconi, “Deification,” 222-225. 618 Ratzinger, 327. Italics mine. 619 The passage here summarized in its entirety is, “We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love (quia Deus dilectio est). In this the love of God was manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” Augustine, Homilies on First John, 7.4. Ayres provides a helpful treatment of the passage in, “God as Love and Love as God,” 482-483.

321 He strengthens this last claim by an appeal to Romans 5:5, “Hope does not fail because

God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” The love of God which is the Spirit is poured into our hearts by God who is the Spirit – the gift of God who is

God himself. Again, Augustine’s argument is strong, but it remains inferior to the narrative presentation which John gives in his epistle. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” For John, the story of Christ and the life of the church are the proof that

God’s love is among us, that God is among us, and that our love for one another cannot be other than God’s love.

If love is both the starting point and the end goal of all moral theology, and if

Love is a name for what God does as a Trinity and who God is as the Holy Spirit, then all ethics is love, and Love is the Holy Spirit. Ethics is the name we give to the process of theosis (or the lack thereof) happening in our lives at present.

It is in this context that Augustine offers his famous maxim, “Love and do what you like.”

Once for all, then, a brief precept is given to you: Love and do what you want. If you are silent, be silent with love; if you cry out, cry out with love; if you chastise, chastise with love; if you spare, spare with love. The root of love must be within; nothing but good can come forth from this root.620

Given his connection between the Spirit and love, we can begin to see how love which is so easily disordered and which Augustine believes is trapped within a wretched, fallen body given to all kinds of lusts, can nevertheless function as the summation of all moral theology. The love which Augustine has in mind is not misdirected or fleshly human

620 Augustine, Homilies on First John, 7.8: 110.

322 affections which so often go under the name of love. It the eternal love of God, the source and principle of the ordo amoris, the Gift of God which is God himself, who has been poured into the Christian’s heart and who wars against the flesh and its desires. We might paraphrase Augustine to say, “Be filled with the Spirit and do what you will.” Or, in the riddling words of Paul, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–

13).

Ayres notes that in understanding what it means for Augustine to call God love and to call love God, we see the larger picture of how his theology of the Trinity, the incarnation, the church, and the sacraments are all interrelated.621 But we should add that

Augustine’s ethics are also deeply imbedded in this interrelationship, and understanding what it means for Augustine to call God love, and to call Love God carries with it a distinctive approach to ethics both in theory and in practice.622

Once we understand that love for Augustine is both the name and the fruit of the

Spirit who indwells the Christian, our third riddle is suddenly much easier to understand.

Yes, our loves are disordered, but God’s love is not, and this love is poured into our hearts by the one who is God’s Love, by the Holy Spirit. If we follow the one with whom we are filled, then “Love and do what you want” becomes an inestimable ethical maxim. Indeed, Augustine goes further. For the one who loves (that is, the one who has

621 Ayres “Love” 487. 622 “Distinguishing ethics from theology or theology from biblical exegesis risks anachronism. No treatise in Augustine focuses on ethics in particular. Even De Moribus is a response to Manichean arguments against the ethics of the church and a critique of Manichean ethics.” Schlabach and Cipriani, 320.

323 the Spirit and is led by him), evil character becomes impossible. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn. 1:5).

When the Apostle says, “The charity of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5), we should understand that in love there is the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is he whom the wicked cannot receive. He is that font of which scripture says, “Let the font of your water be your own, and let no stranger have a part in you (Prov. 5:16–17). A wicked person can receive baptism. A wicked person can also have . … A wicked person can also receive the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord … A wicked person can have Christ’s name—that is, a wicked person can also be called a Christian. … A wicked person, therefore, can have all these sacraments, but a person cannot be wicked and also have [love]. This, then, is the particular gift; it is the unique font. The Spirit of God exhorts you to drink from it; the Spirit of God exhorts you to drink from himself.623

IV. Conclusion: A Deeper Understanding and Appreciation for the Holy Spirit Allows the Aristotelian Notion of Character to be Transformed into the Christian Doctrine of Theosis, and Theosis is Nothing Other Than Love.

Our three riddles have brought us to a place at which we can see how the

Aristotelian concept of character emerges from the waters of Christian theology under the name of theosis, and theosis, far from being an abstract piece of dogmatic theology is the personal, concrete act of God in our lives which we call love. God’s power and presence are not merely impersonal forces suffused throughout the world, but are a living character who has a role to play within the story of creation, and this character is a person we know whose name is The Holy Spirit. He is the presence and power of the Father and the Son dwelling within us and filling all things around us, and he is also a friend and helper who walks alongside us in and with and through Jesus Christ. His work in our story and our lives is the same as his work in the story and the life of God. Just as he was the means by which God became what human beings are in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, so he is the

623 Augustine, Homilies on First John, 7.6.

324 means by which human beings can become what God is in the salvation accomplished by

Jesus Christ. The normal Christian name for this work of crossing the infinite distance between distinct people without obliterating their distinctiveness, of binding them together without the loss of freedom for either party, of creating within them a delight and glory in being given to and for the other is love. Therefore, the character of the

Christian, the habitual second nature which defines her life, shapes her choices, and directs her desires is not merely human love which is so prone to corruption and disorder but divine Love which is the proper name of God, the Holy Spirit.

325 CONCLUSION

HELP US TO BE GOOD: CHANGING THE ETHICAL MAXIM IN CHURCHES OF

CHRIST

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained (Phil. 3:12–16). . What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower And what if When you awoke You had that flower in your hand Ah, what then?624

624 This poetical fragment is a traditional paraphrase of lines written in a journal by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The original form of the poem runs: “If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke — Ay! and what then?” and can be found in Anima Poetae: From the Unpublished Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895), 238-239. Various paraphrases of the poem have been passed on frequently under Coleridge’s name e.g., “Untitled” in English Quotations: A Collection of the More Memorable Passages and Poems of English Literature, ed. Robinson Smith (London: Routledge, 1907), 204. The version presented here seems to have its origins in Lawrence LeShan, The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 14. I first encountered the poem in an excellent Christmas sermon on the Holy Spirit delivered by Matthew Love on December 23, 2018 at the Beebe Church of Christ. Available online at http://www.beebechurch.net/sermons/december-23- 2018. Love says that the flower from heaven is love and follows Augustine in saying that love is the Holy Spirit. In many ways, Love’s sermon performs in thirty minutes what this dissertation has attempted to do in in three hundred pages.

326 The great riddles are iterative. Even when they are answered, they continue to invite the wise on their spiraling journey deeper into the mysteries they name. The riddles I have spent the last three chapters pondering are all answered with By the Holy

Spirit. If Churches of Christ can see how this answer is the correct one, we will have arrived somewhere. We will have, as it were, plucked a strange and beautiful flower from heaven and found that we are now holding it in our hand. But Coleridge’s question beckons us onward, “Ah, what then?” We spiral back to ethics and are better prepared to think about and to live lives of excellence. Though we have not yet attained to the fullness of understanding or of excellence to which we are called, we press on, always seeking to move “further up and further in” as we explore the mystery that is God’s goodness in our lives.625

My goal from the beginning of this dissertation has been to help Churches of

Christ learn a new way of approaching ethics and to do so by means of the humble, open, attentive, iterative, and biblical method of riddling. I have attempted, when possible, to perform what I am prescribing. It is not an accident that my argument (if it can be called an argument) culminates with Augustine’s riddling aphorism, “Love and do what you want,” nor that I have, even in the most straightforwardly argumentative sections of this project, deployed poetry, narratives, humor, and other forms of sideways speech to make my points. Though my methodological section comes, somewhat unusually, in the middle of the argument, it reaches back into the early chapters and draws them into the explicit riddling of the later ones.

625 The quoted phrase is the title of chapter 15 in C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Harper Collins, 2002).

327 In the opening chapter, I attempted to diagnose the problems in the received ethic within Churches of Christ and to prescribe an effective treatment for those problems. I identified two ailments: 1) the problems of legalistic deontology which focused exclusively on wooden readings of biblical commands and 2) the problem of rationalistic self-reliance which severely limited the role of the Holy Spirit in the pursuit of the good.

The first four chapters of the work focused on the diagnosis and the prescription for the first of these two problems.

Chapter Two presented my diagnosis at length, examining the historical and philosophical origins of the two problems. I summarized the two problems in the moral maxim, “Try hard to do what the Bible says.” The ethic contained in this maxim, I argued, yielded an anthropology that was at once too high and too low. It overestimated our ability to do and be good without divine intervention, and it underestimated our destiny by supposing that the ultimate goal for humanity was mere obedience.

Furthermore, it produced a skewed view of what the Bible is and how we ought to approach it.

The next two chapters focused on addressing the problems inherent in “Do what the Bible says” by critiquing decisionism, individualism, and biblicism and proposing instead the Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas.

In Chapter Three I proposed that MacIntyre’s project was relevant to Churches of Christ since we share so many characteristics with the modernist approach to ethics which

MacIntyre critiques. Like the culture from which we were born, our movement’s debates have often been unsettleable, rooted as they are in an Enlightenment-inspired approach to

Scripture and an exalted view of unaided human reason. MacIntyre’s recovery of

328 Aristotle extends and improves the best elements of our moral thinking and helps us avoid some of our most egregious errors. From him, Churches of Christ can learn to free ethics from the realm of abstract moral crises calling for a decision and move instead into the wider world of the narratively shaped lives of moral actors thereby aiding us in the recovery of tradition so vital to a movement that has largely seen itself as ahistorical. He helpfully encourages us to deal with ethical crises before they arise by attending to practices that develop the virtues needed to discern and pursue the good. He calls us to reimagine moral excellence as fundamentally a transformative journey as opposed to an atomized series of legally correct decisions. However, MacIntyre does all of this (with some relevant exceptions) without appeal to God, Scripture, or Christian theology.

Hauerwas, as we saw in Chapter Four, does not have the same problem. His

Christian appropriation of MacIntyre’s project allowed us to make four important moves in regards to key concepts within Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. The first was the move from teleology to eschatology. Without sacrificing the concept of the end or goal as an essential element of ethical thinking, Hauerwas reminded us that, for the Christian, there is a sense in which the end has already come and we are living in a new time.

The second shift was from narrative to the gospel. The specifically Christian story as described by Hauerwas emphasizes bounded time, a contingent creation, God’s election of and work through Israel, the incarnation of Christ, the defeat of evil by

Christ’s death, the sovereign reign of God displayed in the resurrection of Jesus, and the empowering of the church. This story gives the concrete description of the narrative within which Christians operate and out of which their understanding of the virtues emerges.

329 The third move was from tradition to the church. Like Churches of Christ,

Hauerwas has a high view of the church and an emphasis on the local congregation. His ecclesiology reminds us that the Church is both the grand vision of Christianity historically extended from Pentecost to the present and also the socially embodied reality of local congregations. This emphasis on the church helpfully corrects the Restorationist tendency to undervalue the community and the presence of God in the world in order to emphasize the individual and the Bible. Moreover, by the performance of ecclesiology in his own life, Hauerwas shows us that, like all MacIntyrean traditions, the church is an argument about the good. This provides balance to the seemingly idealistic and inconsistent manner in which he sometimes speaks about the church in his writing. The tension between his ecclesial prescription and his ecclesial performance is a manifestation of the tensions present within the church, tensions which are appropriate for a tradition.

The final move was from practices to sacraments. By looking at prayer, worship, baptism, and eucharist, we saw that these Christian practices both do and do not meet

MacIntyre’s definition of practices. Without abandoning MacIntyre’s notion of practices,

Hauerwas helps us see that if the good is mediated to us through practices it is because they are carriers of a divine grace which transcends and suffuses these special human activities. Thus, we find that not only are the church’s sacraments more than practices, but also that given the way that God works through them, worldly practices like bricklaying are not so worldly after all.

The virtue ethic which emerges from Hauerwas’s Christianizing of MacIntyre’s project is a powerful corrective to “Do what the Bible says,” not because it rejects the

330 Bible as an authority or obedience as a virtue but because it places that authority and that virtue within a larger context. It reminds us that Scripture is a certain kind of authority, one which emerges from and operates within a living community called the church and that obedience is a virtue because the habit of submission helps us move toward transformation in Christ and union with God. But there is one final move that Hauerwas alone cannot make for us. The MacIntyrean notion of character must become the

Christian doctrine of theosis. This move demands a more fulsome pneumatology than

Hauerwas can offer, a pneumatology that can address the “just try harder heresy” implicit in the received ethic of Churches of Christ. And so, in the next four chapters I sought to extend Hauerwas’s teaching on the Spirit in ways that were in keeping with his project and would be accessible to Restorationists.

The second stage of my prescription aimed to cure the disease of self-reliance lurking within the phrase “Try hard” in our moral maxim. In the remaining chapters, I proposed an approach to pneumatology derived from riddles rather than straightforward arguments. I explored the ways in which three riddles in particular could help Churches of Christ see that the Holy Spirit plays a vital role, indeed, the vital role in Christian ethics.

Chapter Five argued that this riddling approach has the advantages of being both biblical (an essential element for Restorationists) and well-suited to the topic of pneumatology. In contrast to Bacon’s image of science wringing the truth from facts via torture, I described riddles as demanding humility and openness to receive insight as a gift. I noted how riddling is neither inductive nor deductive but shares characteristics of both. Like induction, riddling draws on a wide array of knowledge and rewards

331 attentiveness to the world at large, but unlike induction, it terminates at answers which

“click” and yields the characteristic “ah ha!” rather than a probabilistic statement. In this, it is closer to the closed nature of deduction. Finally, I argued that riddling is iterative and grows through self-reinforcing insights as opposed to linear thinking which terminates with the apprehension of a static truth. With this methodology in place, I turned to pneumatology directly.

Chapter Six presented the first riddle, “How can the presence and power of God be a person?” Drawing on a wide range of biblical passages, patristic images, hymns, prayers, and theology, I sought to show how the answer to the riddle is by the Holy Spirit.

In my discussion of this riddle, I made the important claim that the Spirit has a story which is narrated in Scripture, a fact that Hauerwas noted was both new and revolutionary to him. By attending to the work of Eugene Rogers, I noted that in trinitarian scenes within the gospel narrative, we can see the Spirit as a person and see what the character of this person is like. In seeing that the Spirit is not only a power, a presence, and a grace but also the one who has and exercises power, the one who is present (and who makes the Father and the Son present), and the one who gives the gift of grace which is himself, we see that the Spirit is someone with whom we can talk, by whom we can be guided, upon whom we can rely, and from whom we can receive help.

In the second riddle, I explored what it is the Spirit helps us to do and to become by asking, “How can creatures become what the creator is?” Again, we arrived at the answer by attending to a wide range of biblical passages, especially Paul’s epistles and the book of Revelation. I also drew on the patristic image of iron heated in fire and on

Robert Jenson’s lively image of the trinity in which the Spirit is the telos toward which

332 the Father and the Son move and in which they are united. In this chapter the twin doctrines of kenosis and theosis took center stage. I looked first at the inverse of this second riddle and asked, “How did the creator become a creature?” The answer was that when Christ emptied himself and crossed the infinite distance between God and humanity in his incarnation, he did so by the Spirit. It ought not surprise us then that when we creatures are untied to Christ by joining him in self-outpouring kenosis and glorified with him in theosis, both movements are accomplished by the Spirit.

If our first riddle showed that the Spirit is both our help and our helper, and the second riddle showed that what the Spirit helps us to become is good, the final riddle helped us see that both the one who helps us and the good which he helps us to become is nothing other than love. With Augustine as our guide, it became clear that love is not defined by our disordered desires but by God’s Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). Love is God, and God is Love. The characteristic activities of the

Spirit – anointing and abiding, opening up a space for kenotic separation and closing that space in theotic glorification – are the actions of love. Beyond Agustine’s metaphysical account of why we should think of the Spirit as the vinculum caritatis of the Father and the Son, it is the story of the Spirit which lets us see that Love is his proper name. If we follow Augustine in seeing that Love is the name of the Spirit, then we can also follow him in confessing that the whole of ethics may be summed up in the riddling maxim,

“Love and do what you want.”

Augustine’s maxim need not stand alone as “a hegemonic hedgehog.” Rather, it finds its meaning in community with “a multitude of cunning little foxes” such as, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the deeds of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). “If by the Spirit

333 you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). “Since we live by the

Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8). To these, I would offer one more.626

Neil Postman has said that “to people like ourselves, any reliance on proverbs and sayings is reserved largely for resolving disputes among or with children.”627 He goes on to acknowledge that such was the method employed by Jesus but nevertheless finds it unsuitable for modern Americans. If he is correct, then let those of us in Churches of

Christ set aside the modernistic American pretentions which have been so much a part of our heritage and instead come to our discussion of ethics like little children, “for the

Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Mt. 19:14). I began this work with a prayer written for my children, and I return again to that prayer as I close. Instead of self- reliant individuals, armed only with our reason and the Bible, who preach, “Try hard to do what the Bible says,” I propose that we become a community of children who in and

626 Though I am calling for Churches of Christ to change their ethical maxim, I am under no illusion that a mere grammatical shift will bring about the change we need in our ethical thinking. On the contrary, as a community we must embrace both language and lifestyle changes in keeping with this new maxim. Otherwise, we will be like the child who is told the answer to the riddle but fails to understand it because he has not had the relevant life experience to see how it is an answer. It remains for scholars of , preachers, and pastors to explore more fully exactly what that language and those practices are. In our efforts toward this practical work, Hauerwas is once again a helpful friend to Churches of Christ, especially when one brings to his work the pneumatological insights gained from our three riddles. See especially his Prayers Plainly Spoken (Downers Grove: IVP, 1999); Unleashing Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993); Disrupting Time: Sermons, Prayers and Sundries (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2004); A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009); Working with Words; Without Apology: Sermons for Christ’s Church (New York: Seabury, 2013); The Truth About God; Lord Teach Us to Pray; The Character of Virtue; and Cross-Shattered Christ. 627 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of (New York: Penguin, 1985), 19.

334 by and with and through the Holy Spirit, humbly pour ourselves out in the theotic prayer,

“Help us to be good.”

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