Can There Be a Christian Culture?--Part 5

So was Berlin right to charge Christian hope for the end of history with closet determinism? Are the theist claims of an all-provident God, a known future, and human freedom finally in the last analysis compatible?

For some Christian thinkers the key was to focus on the very question of final things. After all, what might a Christian eschatology have to offer? The biblical pattern of a good creation, a human fall into rebellion and subsequent decay, a redemptive history of covenants with Israel, culminating in the atoning work of Christ and Church, and leading up to a final consummation suggests a directional pattern and outcome to human history. Josef Pieper, while sharing the view that Christians cannot know the future, insisted nonetheless that human beings have a quality of "being-directed-toward-the-End," in which the chaotic events of history become understandable. Not every theologian or philosopher of history agreed.

For Karl Löwith, the promised future is a radical inbreaking into history and at the same time, a future hope not yet seen. The violence and contingency of history has no real discernable direction precisely because the future cannot be inferred from the past; it is a divine, mysterious promise not a human, rational pattern . Eric C. Rust and Carl Michalson concurred. For Rust, outside God's revelation in Christ, "history is generally a realm of meaningless chaos and frustration," while for Michalson, there can be no significant history since Jesus: "Christ is not the eschatological event because he will enter history at some moment of time but because when he appears in history, history comes to an end in its old form and the last, the eschatological age begins."

A divine destiny, some insisted, did not translate into a discernable pattern for human history in general. Jean Daniélou, however, would have us synthesize this eschatological double story. While there can be no progress beyond Christ who is "the culminating and final innovation" of history, yet to separate out secular and sacred history is to declare Christ as less than Lord of history. The Christian mission, he insisted, is not simply "to teach the word to individuals of all countries; it is to evangelize the civilizations . . . so that Christianity may find its appropriate and authentic expression in the idiom of every racial community."

The promised apocalypse, for Pieper, is both the end of history and the promise of a new eternal state which strictly speaking lies beyond time. Only in a willing commitment to martyrdom can the Christian truly understand the legitimacy of human action in history, not as a gnostic who denies the value of creation, but as one who "contains both affirmation of creation and readiness for blood-testimony; only the man who combines in himself this affirmation and this readiness will retain the possibility of historical activity." Martyrdom denies the cultural relativism of historicism. It is a commitment to the future. Eschatology, he felt, does not remove the call to human freedom and to responsible action.

To summarize, the debate about history, in trying to address questions of civilization and Christian culture, had to consider

1. how much one could say about the inner workings of history, as well as the moral nature of its events;
   
2. needed to answer the claims of the historicist persuasion on a number of levels;
3. had to consider questions of freedom and determinism and of idealism and materialism, especially the question whether some aspect of historical normativity still allowed for human free choice;
4. had to explore what a spiritual realm might say to human freedom;
   
5. had to ask what biblical eschatology had to say to the shape of history.
   

In particular, they needed to consider whether the eschatological promise of the gospel had anything to say to the national and cultural concerns of the average historian. For all its pledges of Christian faith, this was not a conversation with an easy consensus, nor I suspect should it have been, for they were seeking to hold together a number of tensions, as well as answer destructive claims from a number of directions. In my next post I will consider what this debate, then, has to teach us, as well as explore briefly how it relates to Christian personalism.

Paul Tournier & the Meaning of Persons

The psychologist Paul Tournier was another important contributor to Christian Personalism. Especially important to his work as a therapist and a medical doctor was the stress on treating patients as persons with full dignity and not as simple cases to be solved. His thinking was clearly influenced by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber who distinguished between I-Thou relationships and I-It relationships.

Tournier defined persons as those characterized by both a separation from others and a connection to others: "the double movement" of "a separation followed by a relation. By the secret the person is formed, and then by communication of the secret is affirmed." In other words, we each have things that are ours particularly yet they are also communicated in acts of trust to others. In doing so, we open ourselves as more than atoms in relations of defense and negotiation. We risk our inner beings with others.

This leads to another aspect of personhood, that of commitment and responsibility. "The personage," according to Tournier is "an external appearance which touches the personage of others from outside," while "the person communicates inwardly with the second person, the 'thou'." In Tournier's thinking, this inward offering is essential to our growth and development as moral and aesthetic beings. He sees this as important in marriage and in healthcare:

"The true dialogue [in marriage] is not the first easy communion, wonderful though it be--the impression one has of sharing the same feelings, saying the same things and thinking the same thoughts. The true dialogue is inevitably the confrontation of two personalities, differing in their past, their upbringing, their view of life, their prejudices, their idiosyncrasies and failings--and in any case with two distinct psychologies, a man's and a woman's. . . . Marriage thus becomes a great school of the person, through the level of personal commitment it entails and the exacting quality of the dialogue that demands it."

"For me as a doctor to become a person, to attain completeness as a human being, the road is the same as for my patients, and I must commit myself to it before I can hope to lead them along it. It is the road of personal dialogue with God and with my fellows. There is a decisive turning I must take, that leads me into the word of persons . . .It is this aptitude for personal contact, which is created and nourished by being sincerely sought after, which is the proper medicine of the person. . . . There comes into being a 'reciprocity of consciousness,' to use M. Nedoncelle's admirable expression. I allow my person to be discovered and known, and at the same time discover and know the person of my patient. It is in this that the medicine of the person demands a personal commitment which is not called for by technical medicine."

Spousal Love and the Nuptial Body

Last year, I had the privilege of performing the wedding of two DBU students that I had taught in several of my classes. I found myself moved with deep gratitude for playing a part in their lives, as well as remembering again the deep commitment of my own marriage. The opportunity also gave me a chance to reflect more on the nature of marriage, and I believe there are connections to be drawn between this aspect of sacramental life and education.

This is what Jesus said of marriage: "[F]rom the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."(Mark 10:6-9). Jesus taught that marriage forms something new. Two people from different families become one flesh, and what God has brought into existence, no human court of justice has the right to unravel. When Jesus reminded his culture of this truth, he had in mind the model of Genesis. If humanity is the crown of creation, marriage is the jewel on that crown.

"Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone," Adam tells Eve. The nuptial meaning of the body is part of ourselves; we image God together male and female and are always the image of God in communion by helping one another, through mutual support and mutual definition. Our bodies literally point to the mutual dependence and community we were created for. Our contingent being is good; we have a sense of our finite dependency before the fall of humanity. "Ens et bonum convertuntur (being and the good are convertible)" as John Paul II observes (29).

These are important truths to remember in college-level education. The sexuality of ourselves and our students is part and parcel of who we are. Here, I am not necessarily trying to engage certain norms or stereotypes of gendered behavior, though I think there is some truth to these matters. Instead, I am trying to reflect on how we cannot treat intellectual and ethical formation in isolation from the nuptial aspects of ourselves.

In Genesis, humans are separated out from other animals; we may be bodies among other bodies, but we are far more. We are given our bodies to till and subdue creation, to be stewards of a world, wards of the king chosen to care for his prized estates. Our bodies are ethical, sacramental, aesthetic, social, and erotic. They present ourselves to the world and the world to us. Our bodies were created to aid in the fullness of shalom and the complete multi-faceted communication of being to being, but that bodily gift has been marred in our fallenness. We were created to express love, and our freedom was given to make true love of God and God's creatures possible. To be a body is to be a living soul, not a slave of our physical desires. We were, thus, originally free from the constraint of overpowering instinct.

That this is now too often the reverse is something we must keep in mind in the educational process, though it is hardly something we must address openly in most courses. Tom Wolfe's recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is only one sobering account of the culture of pornocracy on many campuses. Charlotte’s journey into an academic and residential culture of relativism and fornication should give us all pause, whether we teach in a state or private institution.

God promises us cleansing, for we are each Christ's bride (Eph 5:26-27). We are called to learn to lay aside shame and return to the right gift of our bodies in marriage. We are also called to relearn that our nuptial meaning is a pledge of respecting the bodies of others. This the meaning of pledging wedding vows before witnesses. In mutuality we learn "the reciprocity of the donation" (JP II). The gifts of ourselves, our gendered, nuptial bodies, are tied to a new purifying of our motives and in marriage a new vulnerability in our lovemaking.

The culture of "hooking up," of nearly anonymous sex leads to a loss of ourselves; we lose part of who we actually are. Lust desacralizes the body's sacramental sign. It also reduces the meaning of our erotic actions to a far less complex communication. Being human, it can still be quite complex, but once something less than reductive enters, it begins to be something else, with all the human brokenness our culture tries to hide from itself. We need to struggle with this dimension to education, even if it makes us quite uncomfortable. As professors, we need not be surprised when this part of existence enters our students' academic struggles.

Sex is not to be separated from love, family, and our responsibility to our community. Strong marriages and strong families make strong neighborhoods and town. Marriage is one of life's original blessings--prosperity, comfort, joy, long life, In the scriptures, marriage is a picture of giving and gratitude and mutual dependence, for "a marriage with conditions is no true marriage" (John Colwell). In this sense, the marriages of faculty, staff, and administration--not to mention those of students--ought to be signs of the true uses of our humanity. Christian marriage is a work of restoration, and this makes it profoundly counter-cultural. We are meant to model for all people what Christ intends for his Church as his Bride. This means we must learn to fully and truly accept each other, receiving each other for who we are in our brokenness and in our health. We were created for the experience of giving and receiving in the blessedness of trust and wholeness. When we truly live for the other person we help them along the way to a full possession of who they were meant to be.

'til Divorce Do We Part?

Historian of law and religion John Witte, Jr. describes four models of marriage in the Western Christian tradition that have had an important impact on early marriage, divorce, and family law in the United States.

1) Within Roman Catholic tradition, marriage has been understood as a sacrament that, while a natural and contractual association of a man and a woman for the purposes of propagation, childrearing, and companionship, is primarily a spiritual union that brings grace to the couple and to those touched by their marriage. Such marriages might be annulled, but they can not be dissolved by divorce.

The three major streams of magisterial Protestantism each in turn rejected Catholic sacramentalism, but often borrowed many particulars from Catholic canon law.

2) Lutheranism stressed that the Christian life shares in two kingdoms, an earthly, political one and a spiritual, heavenly one. Marriage is a natural and civil institution, and thus both marriage and divorce are earthly, public acts that involve the judge, the magistrate, and the priest. In turn,

3) Calvinism stressed marriage as a covenant that involves the whole community--parents, witnesses, the minister, and the magistrate. As an act that shares in the creation, marriage has in mind the spiritual and moral well-being of the couple and of their children. God is a part of every covenant. Even though divorce might become necessary in cases in which the covenant has been broken, it is a serious undertaking, and it must encounter a large number of barriers to prevent easy suits.

4) Anglicanism pictured marriage as a little commonwealth in which the serious covenant with one's spouse serves not only to teach the couple the moral and spiritual virtues, but also to act as a "seedbed and seminary" for the local church, polity, and community in these virtues. Divorce was almost entirely prohibited in this tradition.

Arising in the 18th century, the Enlightenment view of marriage was often to void the sacramental and covenantal assumptions about marriage for purely contractual ones representing a voluntary bargain between two persons with agreed-upon terms and time limits. This view argued for the removal of conditions of parental consent, community witness, or ecclesiastical blessing. While these notions only marginally made their presence known in the U.S. during the 19th century, by the mid-20th century they became more and more predominant with divorce becoming easier and easier to obtain, especially after the rise of no-fault divorce and more fluid definitions of marriage and consensual relationships.

What does this brief history have to teach us about the nature of marriage, divorce, and family law? Any thoughts?