Stanley Hauerwas: “You Never Marry the Right Person”

"Stanley the Manley"

I’m not typically one to like much from Relevant magazine, but Tim Keller has a nice article  here about marriage and Christians that includes this infamous – and spot on – paragraph from Stanley Hauerwas.

“Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.”

Reading Barth Backwards, IV/4: The Goal of Baptism

Like the Matthias Gruenewald portrait of John the Baptist of which he was so fond, for Barth the act of water baptism can only point away from itself, towards the twisted body of the Crucified. Like John the Baptist standing and pointing at Jesus in the Isenheim Altarpiece, baptism’s goal rests not in its elemental washing of a person with water, nor in the characteristics or virtues of those participating in it, but rather in its ability to both witness to the reality of Jesus as well as its ability to follow him in his submission to John’s baptism.

“What John and those baptized by him in the Jordan had in view was the future in which John proclaimed to be directly imminent, the coming kingdom, the coming judgment, the coming grace of God in the form of the remission of sins, the ‘mightier’ than John who was coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit. The demanded conversion, and baptism in the Jordan as its concrete form, had reference to this future. There could be no question of any presenting or materializing of this coming One either openly or secretly immanent in, or brought about by, the human action of the Baptist and those baptized by him. What was preached was not the bringing or representing of this coming One, but conversion towards him” (69-70).

In my experience, one pitfall of both paedobaptists as well as those who practice adult baptism is a decoupling of baptism from conversion, albeit in two different ways. For adult baptizing groups, conversion is something which happens in the heart in a moment in time in which one decides to follow after the way of Jesus. To be sure, for many of these folks, their conversion experience already contains what Barth terms the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” so necessary for one to participate in the life of the Kingdom of God. But water baptism, which Barth terms a necessary first step in following Jesus in a life of discipleship, is often seen as a secondary, unnecessary, and relatively unimportant step in one’s life of discipleship. For these folks, baptism can turn into a ritual which only detracts from a heart relationship with God. I have seen both relatively young children (e.g. 6-8 years old) baptized with minimal preparation or faith formation by adult baptisting groups, just as I have had students training for vocational ministry at the Pentecostal college in which I teach who were not baptized because no one had ever told them that baptism was an important step in their discipleship.

For paedobaptists, conversion gets decoupled from baptism in a different direction. Since many people in infant-baptizing communities are themselves baptized as infants, there is no possibility for conscious conversion prior to baptism. In many instances, this infant baptism is undertaken with either a non-existent or very weak confirmation curriculum while the infant baptized are in junior high or high school. At its worst, this sort of confirmation essentially consists of memorization of certain facts or doctrines with little practical connection, and concludes with a “graduation from church”.

Suffice it to say that Barth had neither of these in mind here.

Reading Barth Backwards, IV/4: Jesus’ Baptism as Normative for Christians [Baptism with Water, #6]

In the Christology and Soteriology survey course I teach at a Pentecostal university, I focus in on the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist as being pedagogical, in the sense that these sacraments teach us about what it is to be a follower of Jesus. The lecture I give on baptism is inevitably the most controversial lecture of each term. This surprised me the first time I taught the course this way, but it has held true each time I’ve taught it since as well. Many evangelicals are conditioned to believe that what really matters for salvation is whether one has made a personal decision to be in relationship with Jesus Christ, and received reconciliation with God. Barth is no less concerned that Christians are (in his verbiage) “baptized in the Holy Spirit” through divine bridging of the chasm that exists between God and humanity. And while Barth is careful to not collapse the distinction between baptism with water and what he calls baptism with the Holy Spirit, he also does not fall into the evangelical habit of making baptism something that is mostly ancillary from salvation itself. For Barth, the importance of this baptism lies in the example of Jesus himself, and his submission to John’s baptism at the start of his Messianic ministry.

“The [early Christian] community certainly did not have to enter upon a new Messianic and saving office of its own. But it did have to enter on the way of those who are called to be His witnesses, and who are thus called to fellowship with him (I Cor 1.9). As they entered on this way, the beginning of His way could not be of mere historical interest for them. It necessarily became exemplary, normative and binding in respect of the form of the beginning of their new life. When in faith in Him the beginning of a life of fellowship with Him was at issue, it had to follow His act of obedience, His subjection to God, His solidarity with men, His acceptance of service both of God and of men. It had to submit to this, to integrate itself into it. It had to perform the same act of acknowledgement and commitment as that with which He began His work as Man. It had to do this with reference to Him and to His beginning, yet resolutely for this very reason. Since His concrete act was baptism with water, it had to perform this act in the same concrete form.

Could it be obedient to Him, or follow Him, without perceiving, affirming and accepting in practice the fact that there, in and with His baptism in the Jordan, an order was set up which embraces and applies to all his disciples, to which they must all submit, since there the community was in fact commanded to baptize, and all who seek to attach themselves both to Him and to it are commanded to have themselves baptized? This is a train of thought which is not to be found anywhere in the New Testament, perhaps because its content and conclusion were so self-evident to the New Testament community.” (68)

This also poses important questions to those in communities which baptize infants, particularly in that the rite of confirmation must be made to be as self-evidently Christological to the participant – it must not collapse into the mere affirmation of church membership or, worse yet, the “graduation ceremony” from participation in the life of the Christian community. On a similar note, those denominations which emphasize the covenant made between person and God at baptism must also be careful to continue to emphasize the exemplary character of Jesus’ baptism, and that this is a necessary first step to following the narrow road of salvation, rather than an end in itself which assures one’s own salvation.

Reading Barth Backwards, IV/4: Jesus Confesses His Sins (?!?) [Baptism with Water, #5]

Continuing on from yesterday’s post regarding Jesus submitting himself to John’s baptism in solidarity with the rest of humanity, Barth continues by suggesting, scandalously, that John’s baptism was an opportunity for Jesus to confess his own sins. [But wait, there's more.]

“With them he thus confessed His sins. His sins? If we do not say this, we question and even deny the totality of His self-giving to men, and therewith the totality of His self-giving to God. We say that he had Himself baptized with the rest only improperly, contrary to the meaning of John’s preaching and baptism in a demonstration which had which had neither truth nor necessity for Him. We say at root that this was just a theatrical show. But it was not a theatrical show.” (59)

But Barth is rhetorically leading the reader, not to a heretical negation of the sinlessness of Jesus, but rather to an embrace of the idea that even at the beginning of his messianic vocation, Jesus was taking upon himself the sins of the people of Israel and confessing them  as Mediator before YHWH.

“The seriousness with which others, frightened before God and setting their hope in Him alone, confessed their sins, is infinitely surpassed here by the divine earnestness with which this One, when faced by the sins of all others, their confusions and corruptions, their big and little acts of ungodliness, did not let these sins be theirs, did not regard, bewail or judge them from a distance with tacit or open accusation, did not simply characterize them as sins by His own otherness, but as the Son of His Father, elected and ordained from all eternity to be the Brother of these fatal brethren, caused them to be His own sins, confessed them as such, and therewith confessed that he was baptized in prospect of God’s kingdom, judgment and forgiveness. No one who came to the Jordan was as laden and afflicted as He. No one was as needy. No one was so utterly human, because so wholly fellow-human. No one confessed his sins so sincerely, so truly as his own, without side-glances at others. He stands alone in this, He who was elected and ordained from all eternity to partake of the sin of all in His own person, to bear its shame and curse in the place of all, to be the man responsible for all, and as such, wholly theirs, to live and act and suffer. This is what Jesus began to do when He had Himself baptized by John with all the others” (59).

 

Reading Barth Backwards: IV/4, Baptism with Water, #4

In reading IV/4, particularly as the first thing I’ve read from Barth for some time, I’m struck by how friendly God is toward people, despite the chasm that exists between God and creation. Barth’s reading of Jesus’ baptism by John emphasizes his obedience to God precisely in his being baptized in solidarity with people, particularly the people of Israel.

“When He had Himself baptized with water by John, Jesus confessed both God and men. A better way of putting it is that because He confessed God, the God whose will was soon to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, therefore He confessed men, the men who are in view in this doing of God’s will. Because he is committed unreservedly to subordination to God, therefore He is committed unreservedly to solidarity with men.

He who as God’s Son was very different from all men, being one with the Father who sent Him, and therefore Himself God, negated this difference, this distance, this strangeness between Himself and others, even to the last remnant. He became wholly and utterly one of them, not in an act of secret or even public condescension, like a king for a change donning a beggar’s rags and mingling with the crowd, but by belonging to them in every way, by being no more and no less than one of them, by having no point of reference except to them. He became one of them, not in order to renounce full fellowship with them when the game was over, like the king exchanging again the beggar’s rags for his kingly robes, not in order to leave again the table where he had seated Himself with the publicans and sinners, and to find a better place, but in order to be one of them definitively as well as orignally, unashamed to call them brethren to all eternity because he was their Brother from all eternity, a veritable King in the true form of His, and at His place of honor.” (58-59).

With comments like that, I wonder why it is that liberation theologians and others who emphasize the solidarity of God with people have seemingly relied so little on Barth. No less eminent a liberation theologian than James Cone has cited the irrelevance of Barth for the black situation in urban America in the 60s and 70s as a starting point for his exploration of a black contextual theology. Perhaps it is simply the sheer volume or difficulty of the reading which causes this – but the content seems to speak clearly. But then, that’s my $.02.

 

Reading Barth Backwards: IV/4, Baptism with Water, #3

To this point in my theological life, I have not given much thought to the significance of the baptism of Jesus. To be sure, this is not entirely my own fault. Growing up, the only significance I can recall being attached to this event was that Jesus was baptized to fulfill Old Testament prophesy predicting the coming of the Messiah.

I still think that there is Old Testament prophecy about the person of the Messiah, but I’ve grown more uncertain that it is specifically predictive. I’m more convinced that this sort of prophesy is rather interpreted by the New Testament as to be about Jesus – a move which, as a Christian, I find every reason to support.

But back to the baptism of Jesus: Barth says that the baptism of Jesus is “the prologue which opens and characterizes the whole of Jesus’ history, setting it in motion herefrom both with a definite direction and towards a specific goal. The baptism of Jesus, as His baptism, is in a sense the point of intersection of the divine change and the human decision. In the main character in this event, who here enters upon His way, who, one might almost say, stands here at the beginning of his Christian life, the two aspects, though plainly distinct, are directly one and the same.” (53)

In some other author I might worry about adoptionism a little here -but Barth hardly can be termed that from the rest of his comments even in only IV/1.

So aside from being the formal beginning of Jesus’ vocation, what actually happened in Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan? “The baptism is 1) an act in which Jesus freely, concretely, unequivocally, and unconditionally subjected and delivered Himself to, and placed Himself under the control of, the lordship of God. In the same act 2) He no less freely, concretely and unequivocally set himself in the sequence and fellowship of men who had fallen victim to the judgment of God and were referred only to His free remission of their sins. In this act in its twofold sense 3) He undertook to do in the service of God and men that which as God’s work He alone could do for men. (54)

So in baptism, Jesus submits himself to the Lordship of the father, places himself in the history and in fellowship of humanity, and thus undertook to do God’s work as he alone could do for people.

Reading Barth Backwards: IV/4, Baptism with Water, #2

Further fuel to add to the parallels between Barth’s reading of Jesus’ baptism and N.T. Wright’s argument for Jesus as a new Israel, formed around himself rather than around ethnic identification with the descendants of Abraham:

In one of the famous small-type passages, Barth writes the following regarding the significance of John the Baptist’s “baptism for repentance” as a way to say that Christian baptism must be at least what John’s baptism was.

“It may be added that the relation of John’s baptism to Jewish proselyte baptism was solidly polemical – a strange connection! – inasmuch as those who according to the Gospels were baptized by John in the Jordan were admonished to submit to the judgment which threatened them as the people of Abraham, and to put their hope solely in the forgiveness of sins which is to be expected as grace from the One who comes to Judge and baptizes with the Spirit. The distinction between New Testament baptism and pre-Christian Jewish baptism is thus as indisputable as their interrelation.” (46).

Thinking about Jesus, then, one could say that Jesus submitted to John’s baptism as a way to submit himself to the judgment that Israel herself had earned so as to ultimately vindicate her.

Reading Barth Backwards: IV/4, Baptism with Water

After a section on Baptism with the Holy Spirit – which Barth equates with the divine action that makes possible faithfulness to God, and thus not to be equated with the Pentecostal Baptism with the Holy Spirit, Barth turns to a more lengthy discussion of baptism with water.

“Baptism with the Holy Spirit does not exclude baptism with water. It does not render it superfluous. Indeed, it makes it possible and demands it…

On the one side is the action of God in His address to man, and on the other, made possible and demanded thereby, the action of man in his turning towards God. On the one side is the Word and command of God expressed in His gift, on the other man’s obedience of faith required of him and to be rendered by him as a recipient of the divine gift. Without this unity of the two in their distinction there could be no Christian ethics.” (41)

For Barth, Christian ethics are to be found precisely at the point where the action of God comes together with the response of humanity, and thus it is fitting that Christian ethics should begin with water baptism.

The White Stripes and Liturgical Music?

This morning, I found a setting of the Venite that was authored by Jack N. White. The only thing I could think was: “What if that is THE Jack White?” Bet that setting would spice up the morning prayer service by a factor of 11.

In honor of said Jack White, see the following:

Reading Barth Backwards: IV/4, Baptism with the Holy Spirit, #5

I had an exchange with a fellow seminarian a while back around the nature of humanity. I argued that Jesus Christ is the definition of true humanity and that only from Jesus Christ do we learn what it means to be human. My friend asked me whether then it was possible for people groups before the time of Jesus could have known what it was to be truly human. With apologies to the Greek philosophical tradition, I said no.

“To be a man means to be once in time the addressee and recipient of the pledge and promise which is given one too in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in this sense to be a participant in the history of Jesus Christ which took place once, then and there in time. To be a man is to belong to Jesus Christ as an addressee and recipient of the Word in which Jesus Christ presents Himself and His work to every man. It is to find and have one’s own salvation history in the salvation history accomplished in Him in virtue of the fact that it is also a Word of salvation spoken to man.” (26).