"No Man Can Serve Two Masters": Church and Academy in Tension

So, the Church needs theology.  We're all agreed on that, hopefully.  And as I argued in the last post, that means not merely listening to its own inchoate voice, but seeking to let that voice be clarified by careful interrogation from theology as a discipline.  We'd go to hell in a handbasket pretty quick if we relied on nothing but experts, but we'd also go to hell in a handbasket pretty quick if we tried to get by without experts.  (Needless to say, "experts" here should not be taken to signify "those who have all the answers," but merely "those who have learned (or at any rate begun to learn) how to frame the questions.") 

Having defended the role of theology as a discipline, I will now offer a few thoughts on the deep problems currently afflicting the relationship between this discipline and the Church it is called to serve. 

First, I think that pausing to meditate on this word "discipline" can help us think more clearly about what we're talking about.  Of course, the term carries academic connotations—we speak of an "academic discipline" of sociology, or applied chemistry, or English literature, or whatever.  And so one might think that when I speak of "theology as a discipline" I'm referring to "theology as an academic department," theology as part of the university, perhaps with seminaries thought of as sort of hangers-on that can also basically claim to be part of the academy.  But of course, "discipline," fundamentally, means "training to act in accordance with rules" or "activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training"

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C.S. Lewis, Just War, and the Locus of Authority

In a 1939 letter to the journal Theology, C.S. Lewis raises a very important, and too little discussed, question of just war theory: who is responsible to decide whether a war is just?  Too often, just war debates focus on the six traditional just war criteria, whether they are sufficient, and whether they have been fulfilled in a particular case.  But Lewis objects, "It is plain that equally sincere people can differ to any extent and argue for ever as to whether a proposed war fulfils these conditions or not.  The practical question, therefore, which faces us is one of authority.  Who has the duty of deciding when the conditions are fulfilled and the right of enforcing his decision?"  To this, Lewis offers a very interesting and uncomfortable answer.  To be sure, he grants from the start, no subject must obey a decision that he knows to be wrong and unjust; indeed, he must not obey.  But just how responsible is he to determine whether it is wrong or unjust?  Lewis is inclined to think that the ordinary citizen has, in fact, relatively little responsibility on this front.

He uses the analogy of a hangman.  Assuming that a Christian may legitimately be a hangman, we will of course say that

"he must not hang a man whom he knows to be innocent.  But will anyone interpret this to mean that the hangman has the same duty of investigating the prisoner's guilt which the judge has?  If so, no executive can work and no Christian state is possible; which is absurd.  I conclude that the hangman has done his duty if he has done his share of the general duty, resting upon all citizens alike, to ensure, so far as in him lies, that we have an honest judicial system; if, in spite of this, and unknowingly, he hangs an innocent man, then a sin has been committed, but not by him.

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Some Tasty Morsels of Blogdom

Is it just me, or has the blogosphere churned out some unusually fine fare over the past week or so?  Well, the narrow corner of it I sample certainly has.  Here's some highlights you should check out:

Peter Leithart bucks the Moscow trend by offering a qualified endorsement at First Things of the recent growth of evangelical interest in social justice.  In particular, he turns to the Torah to confirm the importance of this concern, but also to critique facile equations of Christian justice with welfare statism.  If we want to care for the poor the way God wants, we should pay careful attention to the view of property and poverty enshrined in these laws, and the way they worked in practice, rather than simply appealing to vague "Jubilee principles."  Any regular reader of this blog knows that this has been a prominent theme in my own thinking and writing for the past couple years, and that Leithart is my patron saint--so naturally, I was pretty jazzed about this essay.

Stewart Clem at Transpositions offers the finest reflection I have yet encountered on Tree of Life, a film of breathtaking beauty and theological depth which has occupied my thoughts daily since I saw it two weeks ago.  The gist of Clem's reading--the film is not, in fact, about the dichotomy of nature and grace, as it seems to claim; rather, it teaches us that nature is graced, and it is only our fallen distortions of it that make us unable to recognize it.

Davey Henreckson, after a long period of comparative blogging dormancy, has erupted in the last week with a pair of fine posts on Annabel Brett's new book Changing States.  The most recent of these, on the relationship of natural virtue and God's law in early Protestant political theology, is right up my alley, even majoring on that oft-neglected but ever-fascinating Florentine, Peter Martyr Vermigli.

Finally, Jeremy Kidwell, having just migrated to a new blog home, www.domesticatedtheology.com, offers some provocative reflections on Protestantism, vocations, and intentional communities.  This post almost exactly echoed some thoughts that I recently shared with a friend, and that I've been continuing to reflect on; I never discussed them with Jeremy, but we did have a meal together that day...must've been some mental osmosis going on.