The Russian philosopher and exile Nikolai Berdyaev in his 1944 Slavery and Freedom set forth his mature position on the human person, the political state, and freedom. He contrasted the triumphant existential subjectivity of God and of the human with the enslaving objectification brought by nature, by the collective, and by false views of religion. One caveat: Berdyaev especially prized the subjective and contingent nature of philosophy, so trying to describe his position is a bit like trying to track a moving target. He defended his pursuit of truth as necessarily contradictory in places because that is how humans think.
He did set out in Slavery and Freedom, however, his chief categories of thought: "the primacy of freedom over existence, of spirit over nature, subject over object, personality over the universal, creativeness over evolution, dualism over monism, love over law. The acknowledgement of supremacy of personality involves metaphysical inequality, distinction, dissent from fusion, the affirmation of quality against the power of quantity" (10). But these can perhaps be best summed up as the "principle of personality and freedom and the principle of compassion, sympathy, and justice" (11). Any system that seeks to crush human creativity does so because it denies the infinite creativity of each person. At the same time, without some measure of compassion and sympathy persons can turn inward and wither up, losing their freedom yet again.
Berdyaev, a former Marxist, was suspicious of the language of the common good, the collective, or even at times that of society or community. He feared any system that claimed to absorb the individual person into a collective whole, and thus, he also rejected any claims that the person's good came from society or that of the community as a unity. He also rejected any sense of social hierarchy except that of the natural hierarchy that arose from differences in talents and abilities, and even this he warned against encoding into a social or political hierarchy. Nonetheless, Berdyaev was an advocate of personalism, holding that personality could enslave itself in egoism and that individualism was not true personality unless it discovers itself in turning outward towards others.
For the Russian philosopher, each personality is truly unique, "unrepeatable," one of a kind, yet each personality must grow into itself, becoming a Gestalt of its parts. Like Martin Buber and the German phenomenologists, Berdyaev feared the self, the Thou, being enslaved by any force that objectified it. He saw this potential in the natural world and in human egoism, but he especially warned of it in political forces that sought to conform each person to a utopian vision. He did understand and value the language of communion, the turn outward 0f persons in relationships of compassion and love. Freedom is found in being subject to the truth, he insisted, but that truth is to discovered for each person. Obedience to the truth does not call for obedience to the claims of tyrants, and truth is not given but found.
Bedyaev has been charged with testing the boundaries of orthodox Christianity, and I think rightly so up to a point, for he held the nature of Christ as divine-human to be emblematic of all persons. We all have "theandric existence" he insisted (45). At its best, this approach does recognize that the image of God in all persons includes a spiritual element of supreme worth. At its worst, though, this approach can exalt too quickly the human person while excluding the communal nature of our personhoods. Berdyaev was quick to isolate anything like truth from its community of origins:
"To freedom belongs supremacy over tradition, but the possibility of free living lies in the fact that there has been truth in the tradition. . . . Not for a moment does personality become a part of any organism whatever or of any hierarchical whole. . . . The source of human freedom cannot be in society; the source of human freedom is in the spirit. Everything which proceeds from society is enslaving; everything which issues from the spirit is liberating" (106).
There are immense problems with this, not the least of which is a lack of any real rationale for the social form of communion other than separate persons reaching outward in their isolation. Much of this begins with his over dependence upon a Kantian view of the universe as broken into a subjective moral law within and an objective deterministic world of nature without. Berdyaev doesn't consider a truly Trinitarian interpersonal world where individuals are made up in part by each other and, therefore, are truly dependent upon each other, not in an oppressive uniform anthill, but in a pattern of relations that only draws out the vocation of each more fully and yes, unrepeatably.
His position lead him also to treat the authority of God as limited to a kind of existential offer of relationship while distrusting the Creator's role as King and Lord. He held that God was not the provident master of the natural, physical world, but only ruled in the realm of spirit. Of course, this then, creates a dilemma as to why Christ needed to come to earth at all. The world, for Berdyaev is finally not the home of persons but a place of temporary suffering that offers some measure of personal growth. He comes close to being a Christian Gnostic, his persons trapped in and warring against an oppressive physical world of ilusion. Thus, his position shows us a danger of personalism without any metaphysical sense of community's value as more than just a meeting place of sovereign selves.
Showing posts with label communion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communion. Show all posts
Monday, August 3, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Eucharistic Discernment
"The Eucharist is a celebration of plenitude; it is a recognition of God's provision. It is a challenge to all politics of scarcity. Here at this table, the truth about God's world is told: there is enough. We need not hoard out of fear that there will be too little. We need not fight to get what others have. There is enough. God will provide. God will redeem."--Scott Bader-Saye
When we ask in the Lord's Prayer for "our daily bread," we are asking for more than physical sustenance, for our subsistence is found in a constant renewal of revelation. This revelation is found in both word and table. The Table of the Lord, the Lord's Supper, should be far more central to Protestant Free Church worship than it most often is. God freely offers to reveal himself, and the heart of this revelation is in the Word of God, who is Christ, offered in preaching (as well as all aspects of scripture) and in the Lord's Supper. The Supper is one place that Christians can learn greater discernment of the presence of Christ in his people, and this extends out by implication to the project of a Christian college.
P. T. Forsyth has quipped, "Memorials are meant for heroes who have perished," but this is a bit mean perhaps. A memorial is also a biblical remembrance. The Greek word for remembrance, anamnesis, can be translated "recall by making present." To "remember something" in this way is not to treat it as something that no longer has any relevance to our lives. When the Jews remember the Passover; when Christians remember the Lord's Supper, we are not saying, "Oh well, that was then; this is now." No, when we recall the deeds of God, we are making them present. Or better said, the Spirit is making them present in our discernment. The act of remembrance is a prayer of sorts that God might re-member us. We are no longer spectators outside of a performance. We are worshippers; we are participants in some sense in the drama of God's salvation.
The great Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel said, "In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself from Egypt. [. . .] And you shall tell your son on that day saying, "It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth from Egypt." As Scripture exhorts us, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes." Christ's sacrifice upon the cross, "once for all time" as the Book of Hebrews tells us, is ever present in us his people. This participation mediates to us profound truths, especially the spiritual unity of Christ in his people, and this is deeply important to Christian pedagogy. As a professor, for example, I must learn to discern the Lord's presence in other Christians in the classroom, as well as in any truth or truth-telling that takes place.
The Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon reminds us, as well: real presence means spiritual nourishment, the experience of being filled. I would contend that regular partaking of communion prepares us all for academic and intellectual nourishment--present in the gathered community of Christian learning, as well as in the content of that learning. Am I saying that the regular taking of communion will prepare the student for intellectual discernment? Yes, if rightly received and discerned: "Man is what he eats" (Alexsander Schmemann).
Now, of course, we can and often do resist this. I am not professing a kind of pedagogical or ethical ex opere operato. It is important to remember that grace is everywhere but that it is not available under all conditions, and the nourishment of Christ's presence in the Eucharist opens us up to the gifts of discernment that we need in order to recognize the voice of God in other aspects of our daily living. Eucharist means "thanksgiving," and we need to recall that learning should be possessed by gratitude. Teaching and presence go together, as the gifts and creatures of Supper and Water remind us:
The Eucharist is the site at which the community of the baptized and the work of the Holy Spirit are joined to effect the transformation of persons into an image of the divine fellowship of the Triune God. The Eucharist produces a people who live out of the giftedness of their creatureliness, who make actual the love and generosity, fellowship and freedom that characterize the life of God (1 Corinthians 11). Baptism initiates us into and the Eucharist sustains us in the life we were created for; participation in the ceaseless flow of caritas between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This passage by Debra Dean Murphy teaches that the Eucharist is at the heart of the Trinity's engraced world--the words of institution call us to remember that all matter is finally God-dependent. Just as there should be an open table in learning, so should the partaking be open. This, then, is at the heart of interpersonal and interrelational learning. As the Lord's Supper offers a different polis from our world's, so should the politics of the Christian classroom be a different politics. Communion is a sign of community. The love affair of the Trinity imparts to us the grace we need to love each other in the academic life.
When we ask in the Lord's Prayer for "our daily bread," we are asking for more than physical sustenance, for our subsistence is found in a constant renewal of revelation. This revelation is found in both word and table. The Table of the Lord, the Lord's Supper, should be far more central to Protestant Free Church worship than it most often is. God freely offers to reveal himself, and the heart of this revelation is in the Word of God, who is Christ, offered in preaching (as well as all aspects of scripture) and in the Lord's Supper. The Supper is one place that Christians can learn greater discernment of the presence of Christ in his people, and this extends out by implication to the project of a Christian college.
P. T. Forsyth has quipped, "Memorials are meant for heroes who have perished," but this is a bit mean perhaps. A memorial is also a biblical remembrance. The Greek word for remembrance, anamnesis, can be translated "recall by making present." To "remember something" in this way is not to treat it as something that no longer has any relevance to our lives. When the Jews remember the Passover; when Christians remember the Lord's Supper, we are not saying, "Oh well, that was then; this is now." No, when we recall the deeds of God, we are making them present. Or better said, the Spirit is making them present in our discernment. The act of remembrance is a prayer of sorts that God might re-member us. We are no longer spectators outside of a performance. We are worshippers; we are participants in some sense in the drama of God's salvation.
The great Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel said, "In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself from Egypt. [. . .] And you shall tell your son on that day saying, "It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth from Egypt." As Scripture exhorts us, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes." Christ's sacrifice upon the cross, "once for all time" as the Book of Hebrews tells us, is ever present in us his people. This participation mediates to us profound truths, especially the spiritual unity of Christ in his people, and this is deeply important to Christian pedagogy. As a professor, for example, I must learn to discern the Lord's presence in other Christians in the classroom, as well as in any truth or truth-telling that takes place.
The Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon reminds us, as well: real presence means spiritual nourishment, the experience of being filled. I would contend that regular partaking of communion prepares us all for academic and intellectual nourishment--present in the gathered community of Christian learning, as well as in the content of that learning. Am I saying that the regular taking of communion will prepare the student for intellectual discernment? Yes, if rightly received and discerned: "Man is what he eats" (Alexsander Schmemann).
Now, of course, we can and often do resist this. I am not professing a kind of pedagogical or ethical ex opere operato. It is important to remember that grace is everywhere but that it is not available under all conditions, and the nourishment of Christ's presence in the Eucharist opens us up to the gifts of discernment that we need in order to recognize the voice of God in other aspects of our daily living. Eucharist means "thanksgiving," and we need to recall that learning should be possessed by gratitude. Teaching and presence go together, as the gifts and creatures of Supper and Water remind us:
The Eucharist is the site at which the community of the baptized and the work of the Holy Spirit are joined to effect the transformation of persons into an image of the divine fellowship of the Triune God. The Eucharist produces a people who live out of the giftedness of their creatureliness, who make actual the love and generosity, fellowship and freedom that characterize the life of God (1 Corinthians 11). Baptism initiates us into and the Eucharist sustains us in the life we were created for; participation in the ceaseless flow of caritas between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This passage by Debra Dean Murphy teaches that the Eucharist is at the heart of the Trinity's engraced world--the words of institution call us to remember that all matter is finally God-dependent. Just as there should be an open table in learning, so should the partaking be open. This, then, is at the heart of interpersonal and interrelational learning. As the Lord's Supper offers a different polis from our world's, so should the politics of the Christian classroom be a different politics. Communion is a sign of community. The love affair of the Trinity imparts to us the grace we need to love each other in the academic life.
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