Silas House’s “Eli the Good”

A few weeks ago Silas House was in the area reading excerpts from his new book Eli the Good.  Unfortunately my schedule did not allow me to attend but some friends of my went and brought back a good report of the evening along with the book – signed.  I’m rather fond of House’s books, having read Clay’s Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves.  I like the way House tells stories – the words he uses and how he uses them.  That his stories are about persons and places in rural Kentucky helps me identify with his characters and, a real sense, the author himself.

Eli the Good is a book unlike any of the others I’ve read by House.  He is more generous with his words, offering descriptions about descriptions.  His language is poetic and reflective.  Trees have heart beats and remember, the earth moves and breathes and ‘places’ tell stories.  Some readers would say House is plain wordy in this book, but I sensed him intent on doing more than just telling the story of a young boy who struggled with his parents and hence himself.  He seemed to be engaging in a public discourse on the moral nature of war and freedom and their affect on persons/families (saying something about our times).

Eli’s father, Stanton, fought in Vietnam and, years later after his return, he continued to struggle to understand the strangeness of his war-torn life.  Nightmares plagued him, to the point that he screamed and even attacked his sleeping wife.  The memories of his experiences all but consumed him, and he opened himself only to his wife, Loretta.  This is clear from the loving, even playful relationship they shared.

Josie is Eli’s sister.  She learns that Stanton is not her father; he adopted her after Loretta and he married.  It is of little consequence to Josie at this point in her life that her ’step’ father has loved and cared for her as if she was his own.  She is hurt that her parents have kept this secret from her until her adolescent years.  She wears her rebellion and hurt in the flag decorated pants that she wears, which her mother despises because, in Loretta’s mind (and perhaps Josie’s), they bring insult to Stanton’s war efforts in Vietnam.

Nell is another character who figures into Eli’s story.  Nell is Stanton’s sister who, while Stanton was away fighting the war, she was home protesting it.  She comes to Eli’s home sick with cancer, but however much Stanton disapproves of Nell’s life of protest, he opens his home and care to her.

Nell gives Eli the name: Eli the Good.  This is interesting given that Eli spends the book reading and reflecting on the letters his father wrote to Loretta from Vietnam, which he takes in secret and even deception.  He comes to know his father by intruding into the life his father finds to painful to reveal, yet too real to forget.  Eli learns how to talk to his father and how to keep his distance.  He comes to know his mother as more than a lifelong partner in marriage; she is in fact Stanton’s ‘Sabrina’.  He realizes that Nell is not an adversary but Stanton’s lost voice, one he no longer has any claim to.

There are more things to say about the book that maybe I will say later or at least to myself.  House’s writing in this book reminded of Wendell Berry’s.  I recommend it.

For the View

A New Chapter

In two weeks, I will begin working on Ph. D. in history at University of Kentucky.  Since I hardly post on this site with any regularity now, I cannot imagine I will do any more once school starts.  Though, from time to time, I will run across something worth sharing and will post away.  The subject matter, no doubt, will move in the direction of the history of early Christianity and Byzantium.  This morning, working on Latin, I translated a passage worth sharing.  Enjoy.

Martial 10.47 :
Haec sunt, amice iucundissime, quae vitam faciunt beatiorem: res non facta labore sed a patre relicta, ager felix, parvum fori et satis otii, mens aequa, vires et corpus sanum, sapientia, amici veri, sine arte mensa, nox non ebria sed soluta curis, non tristis torus et tamen pudicus, somnus facilis. Desidera tantum quod habes, cupe nihil; noli timere ultimum diem aut sperare.

A Unique Portrayal of the Body

I would like to think the role I play in the church – Christ’s body – is different than the one being talked about here.

A New Look for Abraham

For the longest time, the hair on my head has been surrendering to the passing years. Or to say it differently, I’m going bald! Since I have always kept my hair short (practically shaved), I’m not too upset. Today, while looking at my mug in the mirror, I noticed I have one lone hair that has fallen away from the group. In the front, where my hairline used to be some years ago, one hair remains. He grows and bends forward, never looking back at the family of hairs he leaves behind. He is my Abraham (cf. Genesis 12).

A Community Called Atonement

Yesterday I finished Scot McNight’s A Community Called Atonement. He offers a good, holistic treatment of the subject. Unlike most writers, he does not approach it with the traditional theories of atonement (i.e., satisfaction, penal/substitution, Christus Victor, recapitulation, etc.). He says that these theories are helpful in identifying particular theological aspects of the atonement but are ill equipped to speak to the subject in a comprehensive way. One thing these theories do is to establish a very narrow precedent for viewing the subject of atonement and ultimately God. So, for instance, if you come to the subject of atonement with a satisfaction view, your conception of God will be different if you view atonement, say, in terms of a penal/substitution view.

McKnight treats atonement from the perspective of the kingdom or community God creates through the atoning work of Christ. Using his golf bag analogy, he talks about Christ’s atonement using the language and ideas from the traditional theories saying each theory is like a golf club that is needed to play the entire hole. These different clubs help describe and help us understand the overarching principle at work in God’s atoning work in the world and in our lives, that is, through the creation of a new kingdom – the kingdom in the Gospel of Luke (to site one example), that Mary sings about, Zachariah emphasizes in his Benedictus, and Jesus’ preaches about in his Sermon on the Mount.

God’s atonement community offers to cracked Eikons (or a “Fallen” people) redemption, restoration and a context for growth and maturity. Humanity, in the state of being cracked Eikons, cannot (and do not) bear God’s image in the way God intended. For this reason, not only do humans suffer the personal pitfalls of sin but they do so because they are unable to share relationality with the world, which, as God’s Eikons, humans were created to do. Through God’s atonement, Eikons are restored to relationship with God, self, others and the world.

He shows how any treatment of atonement necessarily will deal with not only the Incarnation and the death and resurrection of Christ but also Pentecost, the event where the community formed by Christ in empowered by the Holy Spirit. This aspect of atonement is often ignored or relegated to another discussion. On Pentecost, the vision of God realized in Christ becomes available to God’s present kingdom/community through the Holy Spirit. In this way, the community can experience atonement and become co-participants (even co-creators) with God in seeing God’s kingdom come about in the world.

There is more to say about the book but because I do not have it before me, I will conclude by talking about the story he tells at the beginning of the book. He talks about a nurse who says she sees Jesus while working a busy shift in the ER at a hospital in the Chicagoland area. A man with rotting feet was brought in by the paramedics about the same time she came on shift. The doctors quickly assessed him and order a shower and betadine scrub for his feet. The task falls to this nurse. At first, she is disgusted by the thought of what she must do, that is, scrub mold encrusted, puss oozing feet. The thought of caring for this man is almost unbearable. When she looks at the broken man before her, she sees Jesus and is overcome with a desire to treat the man like a king. After briefly describing what she does, she quotes Matthew 24:31-46:

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

Sunday…Sunday

Why didn’t The Mamas and the Papas write a song called “Sunday…Sunday?” Today is Sunday. Rain is falling and gray clouds cover the sky. I might be tempted to be depressed if I were not a Christian. I have no depression only celebration.

Book of the Month

I received a good book in the mail from the book fairy. Thanks! Everybody get a copy of the book and read along with us. I’m sure it will generate some good discussion.

Orthodoxy

This morning I sit back in my chair and look up at the shelves that tower around me. All of my books look back at me. New Testament theologies arrogantly sigh, Old Testament studies look straight and rigid, the philosophy books won’t even look my way, and the gang of books in the New Testament studies section wink and blow kisses at me.

I have too many books I know. But I do not have, what I call, junk books or fillers, that is, books to make my book choir look bigger. No sir! If a book cannot sing a part in the voice of my choir it cannot make it. I discriminate in this way.

One book that stands out this morning is T. Oden’s Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity. I admit I have not read this book in whole; I have only read certain sections, skimming between chapters. I bought the book because of the title and because I know a little bit about Oden’s Paleo-Orthodoxy movement (see also Ancient & Postmodern Christianity by Tanner and Hall).

No doubt, the title suggests something negative about the state of Orthodoxy (i.e., “right glory”). I cannot help but think of Orthodoxy, in this way, as if she were a he, a Nicodemus to be more precise, coming to Jesus in the nighttime. Like Nicodemus, just curious enough to be dangerously disrespectful or arrogantly obstinate, she comes bearing not just questions but even answers. She has been around for a long while and, like Nicodemus, she has tassels of her own. Some time passes in the course of the conversation until Jesus in a matter of fact way says, “You need rebirth.” The suggestion drips with the stench of imperative.

Oden, I think, wants to talk about how Modernization holds no jackpot future for the church. He writes, “Modernization since the Enlightenment has had an insatiable fascination with change and has been bored by stability” (14). Another writer talks about how the Modern mother wants to make us all bastards, even if it means committing the sins of fratricide. What we sometimes call and practice as orthodoxy drips with the stench of secularism and its smell just keeps changing. These modern orthodoxies (i.e., Darwinianism, Marxism, Freudism, Deconstructionism, so on and so forth) are in trouble – vulnerable to demoralization, collapse, and the same kind of slow death with which they inflicted on their predecessors.

The answer? The basics – the faith not seen for generations. I like to hear from my brother Iggybyz names like Augustine and the Cappodocians. To the chagrin of the modern chauvinists, these men and this time have more to say than we can possibly hear and take in. We need to attend to not only their method for doing theology (i.e. hermeneutics, interpretation, etc.) but even more open our eyes to the way they practiced faith. I cannot help but think Basil of Caesarea would probably want me to explain to him how doing what I am doing at this instance furthers the work of the church and allows me to live out salvation within it. Yes, like all those books, he and the rest of the gang from centuries past do live in our present (as Iggybyz suggests below). The question is whether or not we will openly engage them in a healthy way so that our present might give off a pleasing odor of what is tested, tried and true.

Who knows, one of those days I might finish this book and when I do I might have something else to say about the matter. Until then, the title of the book says enough.

The Problem with Wesleyan Theology

People say, “If Jesus were here today…” This is not a valid statement because He would not be here today. His coming was definitive in the history of salvation. A valid question is, “What if John Wesley were alive today?” This is valid because the task of theology is an ongoing process within the history of salvation. I wonder if Wesley would be a part of the emergent church movement? Where would John Calvin or Martin Luther be if they were living in our time, conditioned by our culture? The problem with Wesleyan theology is that we are too concerned with being “Wesleyan” and not “Calvinist.” Even Wesley himself was too preoccupied with not being “Romish.” We need to ask the question, “What does it mean to be Christian?”

We also must understand that this is a historically conditioned question. All the revivalistic movements within the church were successful because they identified with the time in which they developed. Maybe better, the people among whom they developed identified themselves within the movement.

All the greatest theologians, whom I identify as those who effected the church by effecting people with the message of the gospel, were not concerned with conforming to an established system, but how to mediate the gospel to others through their own lives. This is at the heart of ecclesiology.

We need Wesley to live today. We need Luther and Calvin. We need the Cappadocian Fathers. We need Augustine. We do not need the inanimate models which we canonize. We need living, breathing pastoral theologians to live the gospel by wrestling with it and showing their best holds to others.

I really love the X games. Those guys (and girls) invent moves and pass them around. They are constantly seeing how much more air, how many more rotations, and how many more positions they can get before they hit the ground.

That is what exegesis should be. That is what theology should be. Learning from and growing with each other. We need to know what the past theologians said, but we do not need to categorize ourselves by them. Who is Peter? Who is Paul? Were we baptized into Wesley or Calvin or the Pope? Can we forge into Today while it is still Today?