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So you want to know what we're really thinking?

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
― Karl Barth

From the Minion

“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” Karl Barth’s statement in the Barmen Declaration is followed immediately with the explanation for why it must, again and again, be said: there is “false doctrine,” and there are forces and powers that seek for the Church to admit of another “source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God…as God’s revelation.” — The Minion, from his first seminary paper 

It’s Irresponsible for Protestants to Remain Silent on Abortion— Fleming Rutledge

I have been ruminating about abortion for many decades, but I have seldom written about it. Since the election of Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and, now the nomination of Judge Barrett, however, the atmosphere has begun to change dramatically in a way I had not foreseen. The debate about the issues surrounding Roe vs. Wade has suddenly made repeal seem possible, and it seems increasingly irresponsible for Protestant Christians to remain silent. 

I am therefore going to try to organize the way I have been trying to think about this problem and explain why I have not come to any clear conclusion. I’d like to think that this will be dialectical. I don’t mean this as a “middle road” (the much-touted Episcopal via media has always seemed like wimping out to me). I mean living in the painful tension between conflicting views. John Keats coined the phrase “negative capability,” which, in my view, is necessary for Christian ethical reflection.

The Roman Catholic Church is profoundly wounded, these days, but they do have teaching—the magisterium—and there is something to be said about that. Living in dialectical tension means showing respect for that, however hypocritical it may seem. I have been influenced, over the years, by the thinking of the Roman Catholic Church on sexual and reproductive matters. This teaching is widely derided by the culture, but I have always been impressed with the way that their best thinkers have worked out comprehensive ethical positions at length. I still remember years ago reading a Catholic defense of the “rhythm method” of birth control that impressed me, even though I never tried to live by it. Ruminating about this sort of double-mindedness has not led me to any fixed position. By writing this down, however, I hope I might make a contribution toward a more forthright way of being Christian in the midst of the impending conflict.

Here are some of the factors as I see them:

1)      Speaking first for myself, I believe abortion in all cases (even the morning-after pill) is a form of violating and killing human life and is therefore deeply disordered and an offense to the Creator.

2)      We are presently seeing a change in the political landscape which appears to be encouraging many in public life, perhaps especially men, to move to the right on the issue of abortion.

3)      This seems to be particularly true in the matter of exceptions. When male politicians in danger of losing their seats take an extreme position against exceptions in the case of rape, incest, human trafficking (the life of the mother usually, but not always, escapes from this list), it invites deep skepticism about their motives.

4)      One must wonder why it is that so many (not all, but it seems a majority) people who are vehemently opposed to abortion are so indifferent to loss of life by guns, loss of life on the southern border, loss of life because of poor medical care, loss of life at the hands of the police. It is not necessary to be soft on crime in order to be concerned about abortions.

5)      With regard to the timing of abortions, most people probably feel more uneasy about an abortion the longer the pregnancy proceeds. I personally would have great difficulty continuing to support abortion after the first trimester, but who would be the judge of the exceptional circumstances in the second trimester? I think I would virtually always oppose third-trimester abortions except in the life-of-the-mother case—but the matter of what happens to those babies is of paramount importance and should always be part of the discussion.

6)      I have always been struck by the vacuity of proposals to care for mothers who are forced to carry babies to term against their will. This is often the case with men, I’ve noticed. Lip service is given (“we must be sensitive to these women’s needs,” “we must offer support to these women,” “we must have programs to carry them through and beyond delivery,” “we must provide for these babies”) but they seem to me to be empty rhetoric. We know now what happened to many unwanted children whose lot was to be housed in cheerless orphanages where they often became part of the nameless and dishonored dead. I have not seen any truly impressive proposals, let alone actual programs, for effectively addressing the problem of caring for reluctant mothers and unwanted babies.

7)      Abortion has become so widespread that there are very few American-born babies for childless parents to adopt.

8)      Women have always found ways to have abortions. We know this. This will always be the case, human nature being what it is.

9)      Because there will always be abortions, it will always be the poor, underprivileged women who will suffer. This has often been a decisive factor in the thinking of those who are against abortion but reluctant to make it illegal.

10)  Abortions undergone because of inconvenience are particularly hard to defend ethically.

11)  The role of men who have fathered children who will be aborted is deeply problematic. Suppose a man fathers a child and pressures, or forces, the woman into having an abortion (a frequent scenario). Suppose a man who fathers a child is deeply distressed that the child is to be aborted and seeks to prevent it (less frequent, in my experience, but significant nevertheless). Suppose a man offers to adopt such a child and is refused by the woman who goes ahead with the abortion (also infrequent but significant).

12)  For these and other reasons, it is wrong and deeply unChristian to speak simply of “a woman’s right to choose.” There are two other human beings in this equation, the father and the unborn (not to mention God). Situations in life differ drastically; ethical decisions should not be made with reference to the woman alone.

13)  The rhetoric of the “pro-choice” movement, including the ubiquitous “woman’s right to choose,” is notably silent about the fact that a nascent human being is involved in these disputes. One looks in vain for any concern about the fetus having the right to choose not to be born.

14)  No one knows when life begins. I’m not sure that science will ever yield a certain answer. Certainly, the timing of viability is now earlier than was previously thought, given the advances in medical neonatal care. Personally, I have a hard time thinking of the embryo as a mere “blob of tissue.” There is no agreement about this, but it is hard not to suspect that “pro-choice” advocates of bending the data, such as it is, to their cause. Various signs of unmistakable human life have been identified as the indisputable moment, including of course the much-mentioned fetal heartbeat, but I am not convinced that this point can ever be satisfactorily made since it is so closely linked to the abortion issue. Addendum: I’ve been paying attention to some answers I’ve received pointing out that the embryo has biological life from inception. That, surely, is true. But (to give an example) we just had an exterminator come and destroy an ant’s nest under our house. That was a lot of biological life. Was that sinful (a serious question)? I don’t think the category of biological life is enough to give us much guidance about the timing of the development of a human being.     

15)  The mainline churches, I believe, have been seriously delinquent in teaching about what is involved—theologically and ethically—with regard to abortion. In contrast to Catholic ethicists with their long, carefully reasoned discussions about the foundation of the Roman church’s implacable position against abortion, liberal Protestants have just gone along with secular categories and conclusions. No genuinely theological treatment of the matter has emerged on the “pro-choice” side, to my knowledge, to equal the Roman Catholic position papers.

16)  Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York, delivered a famous speech at the University of Notre Dame in 1984 in which he declared “The Catholic Church is my spiritual home. My heart is there, and my hope.” He meant it, and he lived it. But in that speech, courageously delivered in the heart of American Catholic academia, he also declared that as politician he would not support making abortion illegal. As a resident of New York State since 1969, I admired Cuomo père for his powerful intellect, his searching mind, and his demonstrable conscientiousness. (I wish I could say the same for his son Andrew.) I remember being deeply impressed by that speech at the time. In some ways, Mario Cuomo did a far better job of arguing for legal abortion without relinquishing personal and religious opposition to it in practice than the Protestant churches have done since that time 35 years ago. His position is still fiercely debated today; the speech and the controversy can easily be perused online.

17)  Mario Cuomo also stood firmly and theologically against the death penalty. In my opinion, formed over decades, Christian faith requires opposition to the death penalty (contra John Calvin). I hold to a form of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin’s idea of the “seamless garment” (evoking the robe of Jesus). Here’s a quotation from Bernadin’s 1984 lecture, “A Consistent Ethic of Life: Continuing the Dialogue,” in which he attempts to respond to his critics: “Nuclear war threatens life on a previously unimaginable scale; abortion takes life daily on a horrendous scale; public executions are fast becoming weekly events in the most advanced technological society in history; and euthanasia is now openly discussed and even advocated. Each of these assaults on life has its own meaning and morality; they cannot be collapsed into one problem, but they must be confronted as pieces of a larger pattern.”

My experience (extensive, but admittedly not exhaustive) of the mainline Protestant churches is that abortion is simply not discussed except privately in the pastor’s study or the small support group. Therefore the mantra of “a woman’s right to choose” is not challenged. We are looking at the possibility of the most serious conflict on this issue that we have ever seen in this country. We are already a grievously divided nation, and the thought that the Protestant churches will stand by silently, or continue to take a pro-abortion position with insufficient reflection, is morally compromising in an extreme degree. It would be better, it seems to me, to follow thinkers like Mario Cuomo into the depths of the difficulty and continue to live in the tension than to say nothing and take no position.

For myself, in this as in other ethical and moral dilemmas, I pray for clarity of vision but also for God’s forgiveness in the mess we human beings can always be depended upon to make of our lives and the lives of others. Lord, have mercy upon us.

Beware of Seeking the Good By Way of Evil— David Bentley Hart

Putting mockery side, some things to keep in mind when it comes to President Trump, the Supreme Court, and abortion. First of all, it appears the Supreme Court after the age of Trump will have more justices on it disposed to overturn Roe vs. Wade. A lot of people, even here at Notre Dame where, in general, both conservatives and liberals were against Trump, there was a small contingent arguing what in Catholic doctrine or Catholic moral philosophy is the doctrine of Double Effect, basically that though he himself is not a good man, that you're obliged to vote for him because the result of his presidency might be a Supreme Court that would uphold certain aspects of Catholic teaching. Although, I'd point out, obviously the rest of the Trump agenda jars pretty violently against Catholic social teaching on any number of issues. For instance, the Catholic Church is pretty clear on the duty of government, of all governments, to provide adequate, not only rights, but nourishment, healthcare. And we'll see what happens with the revision of healthcare if it comes from Trump’s court. When you have libertarians talking about health care savings accounts, well that's fine for people who have money to put in savings accounts, for instance, but it's not a substitute for the sort of protection that the destitute need against catastrophic health problems.

The Catholic Church also is quite clear on hospitality to refugees, and under refugees they would just include people seeking economic asylum from horrendous conditions at home, not just put political refugees. And so on and so forth. And in general, the sheer tenor of the Trump administration, the nativism and racism would have once been thought shocking. When you're giving a platform to white supremacists, that's a brush with which you tar yourself pretty indelibly, I would say.

Dying of thirst in the desert, out of Christian duty, I suppose I would have to give Donald Trump a cup of water. 

And try not to kick him while I did so.

That said, back to the abortion issue though, two things have to be kept in mind. One is, no matter what happens on the Supreme Court, if people are imagining that there's going to be some reduction in legal abortions as the result of anything that happens on the Supreme Court in the next several years, they're not following the story very closely. Even if Roe vs. Wade were simply overturned, we know the issue would revert to the states, wouldn't it? And most states in the union, even the states we think of as red states, when it comes to this you'll find that the majority will of the citizens is going to prevail and that's now everywhere, for some kind of legal access to elective abortion.

But, obviously Republicans are hoping something more drastic will happen. Like some sort of case will reach the Supreme Court in which the very question of what constitutes human life will be adjudicated. At which point, presumably, you could think of abortion being made illegal. Now, I don't believe that will ever happen, I believe no such case would ever make it through the courts to the Supreme Court, I don't think the Supreme Court would take such a case, and I don't think if it were adjudicated, even the rock-ribbed Gorsuch and others would vote the way people expect.

What the pro-life people had better keep in mind then, the second thing, is if there's a kind of diabolical strategy to history, it's associating a good cause with an evil faction or force. 

Henceforth, the pro-life movement is going to be, in many people's minds, associated with the Trump regime. With Trump, much of the pro-life movement’s credibility has already been lost by association. So if that's what people are concerned about, they better understand that they're hitching their cart to a horse that's basically covered with mange and only knows how to go up towards cliffs.

Again, I think that the truth is neither of the parties represents a truly Christian, or even very humane vision, of things. And these prudential decisions, like, "I'm going to vote for an evil man in the hope that in some remote future there will be a result which may conduce to a good end, amidst all the other evils brought about by this bad orange man, and the rather brutal and stupid people surrounding him," is not a good strategy. 

My plea to Christians, then, would be to think about what it means to seek the good by way of evil. 

(Excerpted from an Episode #101 of Crackers and Grape Juice)

Q&A with JAM: Is Belief in Universalism Damnable?

Hello Rev. Micheli,

My name is Matthew _______, I’m an enormous fan of your work. I was reading Rob Bell the other day and was a bit disturbed by this line: “It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief (in hell as eternal, conscious torment) is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus.”Would you say it is a common view among evangelicals that the *belief itself* in universalism warrants Hell? That even if the person believes Jesus saves, the additional belief of universalism amounts to rejecting him? (This could just be Bell’s hyperbole regarding the word “essentially”.) Can one be a Christian and believe that all will be saved? Seeing as how it’s almost All Saints Day, I’ve been thinking of this question. 

Sincerest,

Matt

Hi Matt,

Quite obviously you’ve read a sufficient amount of my writing to guess that flattery was a good gamble to get a response from me. I thank you all the same, and I’m being truthful when I say that I’m humbled not only by your kind words but more so by your trust in me with such a significant question.

I think a word like “trust” is absolutely the right word to use in this matter for the stakes explicit in a doctrine like the— supposed— doctrine of eternal conscious torment are too high for the sort of callous, unthinking certitude with which many Christians comment on it. On the one hand, I know far too many liberals who attempt to posit universal salvation by resorting to sloppy analogies about spokes on a wheel. “Different religions are just different paths to the same destination,” is a mantra many are conditioned by the culture to repeat. Seldom do such people realize the presumption behind what they surely take to be a humble position; after all, just as only God can reveal God, only God can know which paths might produce the destination that is God. Likewise are those who want to iron over differences between the faiths of Abraham by dismissing them altogether with “We all worship the same God, right?” We may indeed all worship the same God, but such a dismissal ignores that the central tension in scripture is not over having or not having a generalized belief in God but in whether or not God’s People worship God rightly.

Any account of universal salvation, therefore, must arise not from the secular impulse to undo what God does at Babel and eliminate difference, for the difference God does at Babel is the way in which God blesses the world.

The elimination of difference, Babel teaches us, comes from our sinful inclination to be gods in God’s stead. Often I think Christians of a certain vintage insist upon the notion of eternal hell because those Christians advocating for universal salvation do so in a way that seems insufficiently Christian; that is, Christianity seems incidental to the sentiments that prompt their universalism.

Incidentally, I believe this is also why so many liberal Christians are unpersuasive to other Christians on LGBTQ issues. “Love and welcome for all,” for example, is a principle with which I concur, but it is a principle.

Principles, in principle, do not require a crucified Jew for you to discover them.

Any argument for universal salvation then must be one that emerges from the particular revelation given to us by God in Jesus Christ, and, frankly, the argument from those scriptures is much easier to execute than many brimstone-loving evangelicals seem to realize. Certainly, there’s sufficient scriptural witness to disqualify any characterization of eternal conscious torment as an essential Christian belief. As Jesus tells Nicodemus, his coming comes from God’s love for the entire cosmos and what God desires is that all the world will be saved— the word there is healed— through him (Question: Does God get what God wants in the End? If not, wouldn’t what frustrates God’s eternal aim, by definition, be god?) In that Gospel, John makes explicit in his prologue and in his Easter account that the incarnation is God’s way of constituting a new creation not evacuating a faithful few from the old creation. The cosmic all-ness of Christ’s saving work is the thrust of Paul’s argument in Romans where even the unbelief of the Jews Paul attributes to God’s own doing: “God has consigned some to unbelief so that God may be merciful to all.” He puts it even plainer in Timothy: “Our savior God . . . intends that all human beings shall be saved and come to a full knowledge of the truth.”

Where hell is mentioned in the creeds, which, remember are the only means by which Christians evaluate who is and is not a legitimate believer, hell is mentioned because Christ harrowed it, rescuing the dead from former times from Sheol.

Even in Christ’s own parables—

Hell is never a realm that lies outside the realm of grace.

Whenever we separate the person and work of Christ, which an accommodated Church in Christendom is always tempted to do, we abstract discipleship (a life patterned after the person of Jesus) from faith (confession in the work of Christ), leaving “belief” to play an outsized role in how we conceive of what it means to be a Christian. Faith then becomes a work we do— when we don’t want to do the things that Jesus did— a work by which we merit salvation rather than a gift from God to sinners. Understand— this insistence on eternal conscious torment is ungracious all the way down. We’re the agents of it all. It turns Christianity into a religion of Law instead of Grace.

To answer your question, though, I’m not sure that I can answer your question. I don’t know how many evangelicals believe that belief in universalism itself warrants eternal conscious torment. If they do believe that believing all shall be saved is a surefire way not to be saved, I’m not sure what Bible they’re reading. Karl Barth, for instance, who was an evangelical, wrote that while the Bible does not permit us to conclude without qualification that all shall be saved, the Bible does exhort us to pray that all will be saved— because the salvation of all is God’s revealed will. Just as I’m not sure what Bible such evangelicals could be reading, I’m also unclear about what God they could worship.

Such dogmatic insistence behind belief in eternal conscious torment and the alleged justice that requires such a doctrine grates against the justice God reveals to us in the crucifixion of God’s own self for the ungodly.

When it comes to questions of eternal punishment, we mustn’t let the world’s sin obscure the fact that Jesus, crucified for the ungodly, is the form God’s justice takes in the sinful world.

While I’m not sure how many evangelicals believe believing in universal salvation yields damnation, I do believe many evangelicals lack a helpful awareness that belief in universal salvation is more than a meager minority voice in the history of the Christian Church. There have been universalists as long as there have been Christians. In the first half of the Church’s history, they were so numerous that Augustine had a sarcastic epithet for them (“the merciful-hearted”). The Church Father Gregory of Nyssa, whom Rob Bell basically ripped off, was one. He argued that since Adam and Eve were types who represented the entire human community whatever salvation meant it meant the redemption of all of humanity. You need not agree with Gregory but to suggest Gregory is not a Christian seems to indicate the plot has gotten lost.

As David Bentley Hart notes in his book:

“[universalists] cherished the same scriptures as other Christians, worshipped in the same basilicas, lived the same sacramental lives. They even believed in hell, though not in its eternity; to them, hell was the fire of purification described by the Apostle Paul in the third chap- ter of 1 Corinthians, the healing assault of unyielding divine love upon obdurate souls, one that will save even those who in this life prove unworthy of heaven by burning away every last vestige of their wicked deeds.”

Back to your question— Would you say it is a common view among evangelicals… that even if the person believes Jesus saves, the additional belief of universalism amounts to rejecting him?

Again, I’m not sure what evangelicals believe about the dangers of believing in universalism, but if any do, then we should pray for them. How sad to think that it’s possible for Christians in America to have turned the wine of the Gospel into water.

A Gospel where, in the End, sinners get what they deserve— that’s water, not wine.

It’s religion; it’s not the justification of the ungodly.

A Gospel where those who err by believing too much in the triumphant mercy of God will be banished to eternal outer darkness— that’s worse than the plain old water of religion. What’s more, it puts the right-believers outside the party standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the older brother pissed off at the prodigality of the Father’s grace. Recall Good Friday, it was such begrudgers who pushed God out of the world on a cross.

Solo Gratia,

JAM

Hardy’s Lifehack - Improving the Life You Didn’t Know Needed Improving

When I was growing up my maternal grandfather was the person I would call when something needed to be fixed. Regardless of what it was - water pump, radiator on my 1994 Dodge Spirit Limited, an appliance, or a kitchen cabinet - my grandfather could walk me through the repair from his worn-out recliner in Williamsburg, West Virginia.

My grandfather grew up in rural West Virginia living in the aftermath of the Great Depression. He and his family save everything.

Old nails from a board - those go in a coffee can.

Worn rope - throw that in the back of the Chevy pickup truck in case you needed to tie down a tarp.

The stuff we consider garbage today, they kept. Now, some of it probably was (is) garbage and should’ve been discarded but there was always a “what if” sitting in the back of his mind. Lovingly, my grandfather passed this gift on to me.

I abhor the over-saving of “stuff.” Junk lying around the house or in the garage spins me into a level of pissed off like few things can. And yet, I find myself saving screws and nails in mason jars, because, well, one day I am going to need that damn screw and I’ll be glad I saved one.

This lifehack is not about hoarding or saving screws and nails because one day you’ll need those items. This lifehack is an invitation to listen and learn from those who know better than we do. The reason my grandfather could fix anything was because when something was broken he asked questions to people who knew more than he did. He looked around him for a solution before turning to the pages of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue.

As a preacher and pastor, I do this weekly when preparing sermons. I look to those around me who have more experience (and, if they’re a male, less hair on their heads). We do it in lots of areas of our lives but when it comes to learning or fixing the default is to replace rather than repair, restore, or repurpose.

While my grandfather now resides in the great cloud of witnesses, one of the saints who has gone before me, he’d be first to tell you that he was no saint. He was a flawed man (like his grandson is today). When someone is not a saint in this life it is easy to dismiss them. If a person is more complex than we’d like them to be we often cast them aside, not unlike junk.

But the complexities we carry with us are what make us, well, us, which is to say when they make us human. Our human condition is complex, to say the least, and yet we all carry this condition around with us like old screws in a mason jar from the time air first enters our lungs until the last breath is gone.

More often than not the solution we need is around us. Maybe not in the form of clutter in the garage, rather in someone who has repaired the stripped out screw when others said it could not be done or walked a nervous 16-year-old through a radiator replacement over the phone.

Dr. Hartelius pointed out to me that cherishing memories like this has multiple pay-offs. In listening to people who know their shit, and not just talk a big talk, will allow you to learn. And in remembering our families and traditions, in all their complexity, will teach us to tolerate and even value complexity.

And that is where we find the grace of God in Christ. Dr. Hartelius always has a way of bringing me back to the Gospel. Despite our complexities, flaws, or personality Christ bids us welcome. We are welcome at his table and in his kingdom regardless of how many jars of old screws we have lying around.

Taylor’s Tunes

“Never be ashamed of your music” - Dr. J. Hartelius

The music of Khruangbin is what happens when you no longer know how to classify a band’s genre. With influences from all over the world including soul, dub, and psychedelia, the trio band creates these remarkable soundscapes that beckon you in, and never really let go. Their most recent album was recorded by the trio in separate locations and the individual tracks were later mastered together. In a time of pandemic collaboration, their music is a testament to the beauty that recent technology has wrought upon the world.

Andrew Bird’s recent single Andalucia contains all his signature sounds from violin plucking to overdubbed harmonies to haunting whistles. It is his imaginative cover of the Welsh musician John Cale’s song of the same name. To me, it sounds like what winter sounds like it dreams. 

Guess Again is the first single from Jeff Tweedy’s new album to be released on October 23rd. The music of Wilco (Tweedy’s band) and his own solo songs have always felt like that warm sweater you can’t wait to pull out as soon as the weather starts to cool down in fall and his latest is no different.

Madison Cunningham’s voice is delightfully haunting and I can’t help but imagine that the first part of her song “Something To Believe In” are God’s words to us, and the conclusion is our response. Also - It is a song meant to be heard with headphones.

Finally, Bill Callahan’s “Pigeons” has, by my estimation, one of the funniest opening lines I’ve ever heard in a song: “Well, the pigeons ate the wedding rice and exploded somewhere over San Antonio.” But the real gem is his reflection toward the end of the song about the incomprehensible totality of marriage.

The Way Tommie Sees It