Analysis of Skye Jethani’s Categorization in WITH: A MacIntyrean Proposal

WITH, in case that is too obscure. MacIntyre wrote After Virtue.

Jethani's Stances:

Jethani has five different stances we might take up toward God, which I briefly characterize here, with notes following them.

OVER:

An attitude of control—If I…then God will…(positive: If I get it right, then God will reward me).

The goods are external to God.

UNDER:

An attitude of hopeless striving—The inverse of the above: If I…then God will…(negative: If I don’t get it right, then God will punish me).

Here, the bads are external to God, and the goods are not considered worth it, or are ignored.

FOR:

An attitude of activity, doing, production.

One is producing goods, again, external to God.

FROM:

An attitude of easy reception from God.

Again: reception of goods external to God.

WITH:

An attitude of being with God, whatever that means.

Here, the good is considered to be God, i.e., the good which one is after is one internal to one’s relationship with God, not one which one’s relationship is a means to.

 

The Difference:

the stances Jethani is urging us to avoid are all stances which take one’s relation to God as a means to an end, or otherwise separable from the goods one is after. WITH, the stance Jethani wants us to take up towards God, is different in that it takes the goods of life to be ones which are internal to being with God, and not available apart from being with God. The other stances are taken as contingent: they are means to a good. This stance is bound up with the good—it is essential to the good that it be obtained in this way, and can only be obtained as a part of taking this stance.

 

Implications:

This suggests that being with God is a kind of practice, a way of life. The question, then, is what kind of life it is. How does one be with God? What is a life with God? We might use alternate phrasings to try to shed some light on it. It is being in the presence of God (Brother Lawrence). It is standing before him as beloved. This is all very well, but none of these quite yet show what kind of life it is. They all seem to be static, they do not seem to have the dynamic quality of life. God is with you—live like it. But how is this developed? Is it a life fearing what God will do, or trying to please God? No: those make God the source of goods and bads. God is with you, and is staying with you whatever you do—live like it. He can stay and punish, he can stay and bless. The difficulty is in showing what makes God himself the good. What is so great about God?

I am suggesting taking a MacIntyrean approach to Christianity as a practice, where the practice is “being with God”, or "being a Christian" and the good internal to the practice is God. MacIntyre suggests that a living practice is one where there is argument about what the goods internal to the practice are. Thus, on MacIntyre’s account, what makes for a living Church is argument about what makes God so great, and, I suspect as a part of that, who/what God is.

 

Beyond the Stances

The other stances may, then, be enveloped, to some extent, in the final stance. The stances must change, of course, in that the sought good must no longer be external to God.

OVER*:

This becomes appealing to God for God, in some way or another. It may take the form of lament, of “where are you, God?” Or of other kinds of intercession. The difference between OVER* and OVER is that in OVER* the good being sought from God is God, whereas in OVER it is something external to God. Further, God must be presumed good, So any time we seek things by God we must presume that he has the best in mind, and trust him to be good. A “your will be done” caveat is thus added.

UNDER*:

This becomes seeking to do right by God. It is the desire to remain near to God. It loses its often legalistic character because of the trust that God is a loving God. The legalism is further hindered by the recognition that God is a living God who seeks us, and will not leave us on our own. The greatest we can fear from God is still less than is outweighed by God’s abiding with us. We are not afraid that God will leave us, since he has promised not to, and he is good.

FOR*:

This changes from doing good works for God to doing good works of God. The good works are a participation in God’s life, a representation of the life of Christ. The good of the good works, then, is the good we ourselves seek in being with God.

FROM*:

The change in this one is most obvious: what we want from God is God, and anything else we receive from him is good only because it is from him and is a reminder, or symbol, to us of him.

Missionaries aren't Special

I noticed a distinction made between a "sending church" and a "sent church" (which are to be one).

I am puzzled by the distinction.

What makes someone "sent"? If they moved away from where they lived before? It doesn't help to add to this "with the intent of furthering God's kingdom," we are all supposed to have that intent in whatever we do. What is the difference between a Christian migrant and a Christian sent to be a missionary in other parts of the world? Is it that not all Christian migrants work for Christian organizations? Is it that we fund missionaries?

I am not against missions agencies. I am against a certain kind of valorization of missionaries. There are missionaries I am comfortable valorizing in a certain way. Not because they are missionaries, but, rather, because of their attitude towards God which is lived out in particularly visible ways. In the way that all Christian missionaries are special, so are all Christians.

The important thing about missionaries is that a greater portion of them, more frequently, have to do what we are all supposed to be willing to do: sacrifice everything for the sake of knowing God. Missionaries happen to be the source for most of our stories about people doing things we cannot imagine them doing if it was not because God was worth everything to them. That, I am comfortable valorizing in a certain way.

But this is along with the martyrs and for the same reason.

And the "sending church" might have its own kinds of martyrs. People who give up everything because God is more important to them than anything else. People who would love to travel the world, or just want to go be a missionary, but give that up because God's kingdom here is more important to them than doing what they want, hope, they would get to do for God. Reluctant missionaries are still missionaries (Jonah). So, too, reluctant martyrs are still martyrs. Neither of these groups are actually martyrs (or, I have not explicitly mentioned any--some in each category are), but they are somewhere on a spectrum which has martyr at the extreme end. They are those who live lives according to the belief that God is more important than anything else--lives filled with a passion for God. And it is good to recognize those who have lived lives which show what the Christian life should look like (that is the point of recognizing Saints in the Roman Catholic Church, I take it).

Religious Belief

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/04/03/what-is-a-religious-belief/

In the above piece, Joe Carter, working off of Roy Clouser, offers analysis of what a religious belief is, according to which "A belief is a religious belief provided that it is (1) a belief in something as divine or (2) a belief about how to stand in proper relation to the divine, where (3) something is believed to be divine provided it is held to be unconditionally nondependent."

He goes on to argue that by this definition materialism is a religious belief, and that, in fact, we all have religious beliefs. Carter thinks this definition is neither too broad nor too narrow. I will begin by arguing against these two claims.

Is my belief in the principle of non-contradiction a religious belief? I do not think it is dependent on anything else, nor do I see how it could be, so, by the above definition, it is a religious belief. There is a problem here: we do not use the word "religious" or "divine" to refer to logic most of the time. Further, the definition above, as shown by this example, makes "religious belief" equivalent to "belief about what is necessarily non-dependent" i.e., "belief about what is necessarily a brute fact if it is a fact at all." Or, "belief about where reasoning must, necessarily, come to an end." (or a belief about how to stand in proper relation to such things). I therefore think that the definition is too broad.

Is my belief that Jesus was the Christ who died for my sins a religious belief? Is it not a religious belief if I hold that God could have done things otherwise, perhaps by keeping the Fall from happening, or simply because I think it was dependent on the Fall's happening that Christ would die for our sins? Is my belief that he was born of the virgin Mary not a religious belief because I think he could have been born of someone else? It would seem strange to think that these are not religious beliefs. It may be that Carter would group these as having to do with how to stand in proper relation to the divine, but, then, what are the bounds of that category? If they are supposed to be beliefs about things like "what I must do to be saved," then, depending on one's beliefs about how much is required, "born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate" seem not to be religious beliefs. Nor would beliefs about whether miracles happen be religious beliefs in themselves, what would be religious beliefs instead would be beliefs about how to stand in relation to the fact that miracles do or don't happen, under the presupposition that miracles are done by the divine (or that their happening is unconditionally nondependent).

Finally, it may be that materialism is not a religious belief, even given the above definition, if it is held that matter is all that exists but that its existence is dependent, or could be dependent, on something else. A materialist might hold that matter could have been created by God if God existed, that God would have been unconditionally nondependent had he existed, but that God does not exist. Dependency is not the same as contingency, and a thing can be both contingent and nondependent.

Thus far the negative part of this post. On to the positive (which is always harder). I do not pretend to be able to offer necessary and sufficient conditions for a belief's being religious. Rather, I offer a few circumstances where we seem to call beliefs religious relatively unproblematically.

1. We call some beliefs religious because they affect how we live in significant ways which are dependent on the person's holding the belief in that way. We may well want to say that a belief can only be called "religious" as a kind of generalization: most people who hold this belief hold it as a religious belief.

2. We call some beliefs religious because they are held in the context of a religion. I take a religion to be something like a practice or tradition whose reason for being is based in beliefs of the first sort.

These two may not exhaust all the kinds of things a religious belief might be, but I cannot think of any others at the moment.

We might, then, still call materialism a religious belief. By this we would mean, I think, that it has certain effects on life beyond what one might expect given simply its propositional content and degree certainty.

Self Love, God Love

Loving oneself, accepting oneself, for who oneself is has become popular. Probably since before I was born.

I suspect (hope) that I am utterly confused by what people mean by "am" when they talk about "loving myself for who I am."

I am a sinner. Nothing to love there. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves the unlovable. Jesus makes the unlovable lovable. Jesus gives me his righteousness. I don't love who I am. I love Christ. I love who I am in Christ. I love who Christ is turning me into. I am justified, and in that sense, sure, I love myself for who I am. It's just that my love for myself--in the ways in which it is justified--has nothing to do with what I have done. Jesus doesn't love me because of what I have done. He loves me, yes. He even loves me particularly as who I am. But not for what I have done. I have never done anything so that anyone should love me, except what I have done by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only what Christ has done through me is any good.

I do not hate myself, though. I am justified by Christ. I have the power of the Holy Spirit within me to change me from who I once was, the man who only ever sinned, to who I shall be shown to be when I stand before the Judge, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and therefore holy and blameless. I love being used, ever so rarely, by God to the glory of God. That is what I live for--or aspire to live for. I only have reason to love myself insofar as I am in Christ and I love Christ. That is also the only way I have reason to love others: their lives are being directed--whether directly or, like pharaoh's, indirectly--to show the glory of God. The glory of God appeared and died for us, and this served to evidence, more than any other event in history, the glory of God. Loving the unlovable glorifies God. The hope which I have as a Christian, that no one is beyond God's help, that anyone might come to be found in Christ like I am, gives reason to love everyone with the love of God.

Thus: love God. Because of God's glory and his love toward you: love others. Love your neighbor as Christ loves yourself. As you do it to the least of these, you do it to him.

Of course, you can't do anything good apart from Christ in you. You are crap, and he has offered to glorify himself in your life. Some vessels are for honorable use, and, Christian, God calls you, the messed up mug, a vessel for honorable use, which he can use to display his Son to the world and so glorify himself. We have this treasure in jars of clay.

Scripture and Sanctification

Words are important. Words communicate. Communication is a matter of one person communicating to a person about something. It is not always another person, however: sometimes it is me communicating something to myself. We do talk to ourselves. Sometimes it is not clear who is communicating. Words say something about how the world is.

Habits are also important. Habits provide a structure to lives. On this structure, other things can hang. Without a structure, lives seem to float. Whether they are routines for getting up or going to bed, patterns of thought or speech, or ways of carrying oneself, habits form the basic framework of life.

Habits of thought provide the framework for thinking. Thought often occurs in words. Thus, effecting patterns of speech ends up effecting patterns of thought.

Consider how you think about things. Often, we have a background collection of stories which provide an idea of how things go in the world. You might also have phrases which come to mind when you consider what to do. I have heard people, in Bible studies and sermons, say, "what is the therefore there for?" Questions like that--words--provide a reminder of what to think about. So do the key parts of the stories we carry around with us. Another source for patterns of thought, which is harder for me to show, is music. I doubt I need to show that music is an excellent memory aid, but notice, too, that music provides some guidance as to how to feel. There is happy music and sad music. This happiness and sadness is linked with any words. The words then stick in the memory along with the way that the music is teaching you to feel about them. As in the previous two cases, the words are then available to structure thought.

Now, the point: Reading, praying, and singing Scripture imbeds it into our hearts so that we think in Scripture--so that we might have, more and more, the mind of Christ. This is part of why I want preaching to be a matter of pointing to Scripture. This is also why I care about what gets sung--despite having no real musical ability of my own. This is why we are to take ever thought captive, and to meditate on what is good: because that will change how we think and feel, and, thus, how we act.


Scripture is where God is present. If you love him: go, spend time with him! If you don't love him yet: go, meet him, he is awesome! (I preach to myself here)

But we are also dependent on the Spirit to give us the mind of Christ so that we may understand Scripture. Apart from God we won't so much as seek God. Go, read Scripture, for it is God who works in you, to teach you by the Spirit, to raise you up into Christ's likeness. So long as we depend on human understanding, Scripture will probably look absurd, unless God gives us grace (and we will continue to depend on our own understanding apart from his grace), and we will not understand, let alone begin to think as Christ does.

The Inconceivable Stable

As we read the History of Israel we come to Christ and find the absurdities:
The glorious one who came to lead Abraham to a new home, who came to Moses in a burning bush, and to all of Israel in a column of smoke and fire, now comes to Mary and Joseph in the form of a helpless babe, born in a manger. He who fed Israel with manna is now fed at his mother's breast. He who is the shepherd of Israel is now visited by sheep, by shepherds, and he leads them nowhere (but look: they were led to him). Wise men came from afar, to visit the king in a manger, the wisest of all, but who does not yet speak--yet this is the one who spoke the world into existence! The incarnation is quite obviously strange when we look at how it began.
It doesn't stop being strange, though...
The glorious God of the universe made himself one of us, wretched small beings who are as nothing in comparison to the universe--let alone God--in order to save us from our sins.

How great the price he payed for us!

How much in need of saving we must have been! How wretched we humans are!

Christ Jesus died--the great I AM died--to save us from our sins.

An offense to the proud. Surely it didn't require that much? Yes, it did. You really are that lost without him.
Unbelievable to the despairing. Surely we are not worth that much? Yes, you are. We are the keystone of creation.

Our God is awesome. Our God is incredible.
When we look around and go "I sure hope God knows what he's doing..." Well, he has done something far stranger in the incarnation.

God is God and There is No Other

I have a god. It might be God, it might not be. If my god is not one who deserves to be my god, then that is idolatry. To be my god is to be that which is my highest end. If something is my god, that means that I desire the good of that thing ahead of the good of any other thing. To have a god is to have one desire according to which all others are ordered.

We all have various desires, aims, goals. These come into conflict with one another. My god is that according to which I decide which desire ranks ahead of which in such a conflict. It is that according to which I can tell whether my desires are good or evil.

I tend to consider myself my god. I order my desires according to how much they serve to please me, how much they make things good for me. To have myself as my god means that I consider how my desires will effect my well-being as the deciding factor in how I order my desires. If I make myself my god, then I will desire what makes life pleasant for me. If I am my god, then I do everything for my own pleasure.

Recognizing that this pleasure need not be merely the pleasures of animals, but might also be those which are unique to humans. Recognize, too, that this manner of life is the one we often suppose others have. If you want to convince someone that something would be good for them to do, you usually try to point out how it will advantage them in some way. The problem comes when you notice that having oneself as one's god backfires: there are great pleasures which cannot be attained if they are done for the pleasure. The attitude of "how can I get the most pleasure out of this social interaction" removes the available pleasure from it. To live with oneself as one's god leaves one unable to do what one considers that one should do.

It is also common to try to make all of humanity one's god. It sounds nice. It is the god of the utilitarian: the ideal of the greatest good for the greatest number. If I have humanity as my god, then my aim is to produce as much pleasure as possible. That would be my aim in life. If humanity were my god, though, it would be bad to mourn if I could help it--unless I thought it would produce more pleasure overall.

It is hard to maximize pleasure in this way. It is also impersonal. I do not matter if my god is humanity in general. If my god is humanity in general, it does not matter what will bring me or those close to me pleasure. If my god is humanity, then it is not any particular humans. Much can be justified by finite and ignorant humans if humanity is their god. Indeed, much looks like something which should be done, if one's god is humanity, which may well turn out poorly.

If God is God, then what I must do is desire his pleasure above all else. My life must become oriented around him. My desires must be evaluated against the standard of whether they are for him or against him. Good desires are those which are for him. It is good to do that which will show one's dependency on him. It is good to act out of one's dependency on him. This is not to desire to fail, but to desire that one's successes would be of God, and one's failures would be such as would allow one to exhibit one's safety in God. One is, then, safe to be weak because it offers a glimpse of the God who is one's strength. It is good to be pained by the evil of the world because in doing so I argue that it is not an evil to be lived with, but to be revolted against. If God is God, then it becomes possible to do what seems foolish because he is the one who brings success.

Would you be free to act without fear of failure? Would you be free to obey in your weakness? Would you be one of those who does what is good? Would you know what is good? Then let all your desires, let all that you do--even what you do against God--be for God. Act for God. When you act against him, let your reaction to that be to let it be made for him. Let your rebellion become his conquest over your sin--as it was on the cross.

Emmanuel: God with us. So that we can act in the knowledge that whatever we do, he is drawing us to himself. He has come as good news--there is no other way to reach the greatest pleasure, whether for ourselves or for any others, apart from seeking him as God.