Part Two

Here is the next presentation of the "retreat" that Sean Michael Winters is conducting around H. Richard Niebuhr's book, Christ And Culture.  

This passage from Winters is so spot on with the Scirpture passages I'm dealing with in the Brueggemann Lenten passages, some of which are rather jarring to my sensibilities that I wanted to point it out.

There is, I suppose, a tendency in all of us to cherry pick from Scripture and tradition to bolster our positions, just as there is a temptation to elide or omit entirely those parts of the New Testament witness which might cause embarrassment in sophisticated company. That such tendencies and temptations are what lead us astray is so obvious that it barely warrants a mention, and so, unmentioned, it becomes easier to forget. And off the path we go.


And there is one of the large block quotes from H. R. Niebuhr's book that is worthy of deep consideration.

Thomas Jefferson is one of the group. "I am a Christian," he declared, "in the only sense in which he [Jesus Christ] wished any one to be," but he made that declaration after he had carefully excerpted from the New Testament the sayings of Jesus which commended themselves to him. … The philosophers, statesmen, reformers, poets, and novelists who acclaim Christ with Jefferson all repeat the same theme: Jesus Christ is the great enlightener, the great teacher, the one who directs all men in culture to the attainment of wisdom, moral perfection, and peace. Sometimes he is hailed as the great utilitarian, sometimes as the great idealist, sometimes as the man of reason, sometimes as the man of sentiment. But whatever the categories are by means of which he is understood, the things for which he stands are fundamentally the same — a powerful, co-operative society achieved by moral training. … Many of the leading theologians of the church in the nineteenth century joined the movement. … Christ is in this presentation less the Jesus Christ of the New Testament than the principle of mediation between finite and infinite. Christ belongs in culture, because culture itself, without "sense and taste for the infinite," without a "holy music" accompanying all its work, becomes sterile and corrupt. This Christ of religion does not call upon men to leave homes and kindred for his sake; he enters into their homes and all their associations as the gracious presence which adds an aura of infinite meaning to all temporal tasks. 

For a lot of us there is the constant temptation to domesticate Jesus to transform him into a servant house-god or a good fairy, the kind of thing that is taken up so opportunistically by the enemies of religion and Christianity, insisting that's what everyone believes in.  Which is a bit like accusing the naive, simple beliefs and holdings of faith which the online sci-rangers cherish as the sum total of their scientific knowledge of being the same thing as science.  

If I'm out for a few days, as seems possible, I'll try to post a link so you can follow the "retreat" which apparently Sean Michael Winters has extended because he know seems to intend to go for five days.  Something to look forward to.