We are living," writes J. Bottum, "at a time near the end of the world," in what is often referred to as a postmodern age. He insists, however, that this postmodern eschaton, unlike the demise of previous civilizations and cultures, is neither apocalyptic nor eschatological in character. The idea of an apocalypse entails an uncovering, an unveiling, and revelation is precisely what this ending does not have. "Eschatology" likewise suggests the notion of a discourse, that is, a logos, ratio or science about last things, and again that is what we lack. This eschaton has slipped its leash, and humankind is left standing, emptyhanded and dumbfounded. No one is to blame, no explanations are convincing, no knowledge compels our assent, no telos beckons us. We are blinded by darkness, deafened by silence. All that is left are "ironic juxtapositions: looters with cellular telephones, Van Gogh paintings in insurance company boardrooms, crucifixes in vials of urine." 1 While Bottum presents a rather bleak (though, most would admit, in many ways quite accurate) sketch of our "postmodern" society, his vignette poses an even more unsettling dilemma for the Christian community, which over the last two or so centuries has increasingly relied on the coherence and intelligibility of the modern world to flesh out its life and witness. Protestants in particular were convinced that this was a culture embodying social processes that were conducive to the expression of religious convictions as they had come to define them. They saw, in effect, the promise and possibility of a new and more perfect Christendom, as exemplified in the title of a book by the American theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Modern Theology
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The practices, habits and convictions that once allowed the inhabitants of Christendom to determine what they could reasonably do and say together to foster a just and equitable common life have slowly been displaced over the past few centuries by new configurations which have sought to maintain an inherited faith in an underlying purpose to human life while disassociating themselves from the God who had been the beginning and end of that faith. In the end, however, these new configurations are incapable of sustained deliberations about the basic conditions of our humanity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology provides important clues into what it takes to make and keep human life human in such a world. The first part of this essay examines Bonhoeffer's conception of the last things, the things before the last, and what binds them together. He argues that the things before the last do not possess a separate, autonomous existence, and that the positing of such a breach has had disastrous effects on human beings and the world they inhabit. The second part looks at Bonhoeffer's account of the divine mandates as the conceptual basis for coping with a world that has taken leave of God. Though this account of the mandates has much to commend it, it is hindered by problematic habits of interpretation that leave it vacillating between incommensurable positions. Bonhoeffer's incomplete insights are thus subsumed within Augustine's understanding of the two orders of human society set forth in City of God.
It takes unmitigated gall to say, “Thus says the Lord,” and yet for two thousand years Christians have been doing just that. The church’s concern with language is not a merely human thing, for disciples are those who, in the power of the Spirit, have been caught up in God’s self-communication to the world in Christ. In our communion with one another as members of Christ’s earthly-historical body, we have been entrusted with the ministry of the very utterance of God made flesh, through which all things were made. In honor of Stanley Hauerwas, this article explores the theme of the church as a community of word-care in terms of what could be called Hauerwasian logic. After reviewing some basic philosophical theology and examining some relevant biblical passages, it investigates the historical nature of the relationship between the church and the form of the society in which we currently live. In the process it takes a brief excursion through Roger Williams and Thomas Jefferson’s use of the metaphor of the wall of separation, and concludes an example of a woman who could speak in the name of the Lord with authority.
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