Some Black Eschatology

"Black theology does not scorn Christian hope; it affirms it. It believes that, when Christians really believe in the resurrection of Christ and take seriously the promise revealed through him, they cannot be satisfied with the present world as it is. The past reality of the resurrection and the future of God disclosed through it make Christians restless with regard to the imperfections of the present. It is not possible to know what the world can and ought to be and still be content with the excuses for the desolation of human beings. Christians must fight against evil, for not to fight, not to do everything they can for their neighbor's pain, is to deny the resurrection."

-James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 140

On Speech and Silence

"The assigned purpose of our words, in unity with the word of God, is to express the real, as it exists in God; and the assigned purpose of our silence is to signify the limit which is imposed upon our words by the real as it exists in God."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 332.


This short essay by Bonhoeffer on "Telling the Truth" in his Ethics was a very encouraging and insightful read. It is only 9 pages long so I would recommend picking up the book from the library and reading through this short little chapter.

A Quote From Some of My Reading...

"He who has thought most deeply, loves most vigorously."

In other words, the telos of an academic life must be love.

Apologetics as Refutation of Faith

It is completely asinine, in my opinion, for Christians to debate the question of the existence of God. To even begin to engage in such a discourse is to undermine a central assertion of Christian theology. God’s existence is a matter of faith. Faith cannot be proven or even believed but only experienced as an encounter with the immanent Other. So much intellectual time and effort is wasted by certain segments of the Church on the counter productive task of apologetics. Instead of refuting faith through our efforts to transform faith into knowledge, we should instead pour efforts into practices and notions that foster encounter with the just Other in the world.

Back

I am going to try and blog again. All previous attempts have been more or less failures, thus we should all probably expect the same again. Nonetheless, I am going to give it one more shot.

I just finished reading James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power. This text was a seminal work in establishing the academic discourse known as Black Theology. I am currently on a quest to complete an exhaustive reading of the Conian corpus, hopefully completing a large chunk of this project during this spring quarter.

Let me offer a brief reflection in response to this text. The central contention of this book is that Black Power is God’s central message to 20th century America. This contention is unfolded through out the book. The crux of the argument is that Black Power is that movement which is speaking both to and for poor black people. In other words, Black Power is clearly on the side of the oppressed.

An important caveat on Cone’s understanding of blackness will be helpful for those not familiar with Cone. Blackness moves beyond skin pigmentation in Cone’s thought. Blackness functions as a symbol for the oppressed peoples and classes in America. This is intelligible because of the deep history of black suffering and oppression within American history. The Black community has historically been the oppressed and the suffering group, and thus blackness is an appropriate contextualized way of speaking about the American poor and oppressed.

An important aspect of Cone’s central contention, which struck me, was his willingness to identify God, in a very specific way, with a social/political movement such as Black Power. The theological basis for this implication of God in political struggle is rooted in the theological affirmation of the transcendence of God. In the past, I have taken this theological foundation to mean that God stays above the fray of the dominant political discourse, and instead embodies himself within the church community creating an alternative body politic. This becomes problematic because it creates a massive void within a world characterized by deep injustice and slavery. From the perspective of those outside of the Christian community an ominous silence is all that can be heard. And silence is the close friend of injustice. Thus a politic which stands over and against the dominant political discourse must in fact manifest itself within the dominant discourse as a voice of resistance. NO, NO, NO should be constantly heard from an appropriately Christian political stance. These loud and adamant “no’s” can only ever be heard from within the context of the dominant discourse.

Thus, in order for the transcendent God to truly stand over and against the dominant political structures in America, which purvey violence, injustice, and slavery, that God must enter into the depths of the struggle against the dominant political structures, represented in movements such as the Black Power movement. Retreat to the church is not an option. God is in the world and that is precisely the place to which we are called. God is before us in the world, not behind us in the church. Let us press on!

Questions and a Project

Questions regarding the theological task as a whole have been piquing my interest as of recent. I was wrestling with these questions on my drive to Downey from Pasadena this evening. Let me open up the barrage of questions that assaulted my mind. What is the theological task? What form does it take? Is theology art? If this is the case, what is art? Does theology have any room for the transcendent? Is theology concerned with an object or a subject? Is theology science? Is theology history? How does theology interact with other areas of public discourse? What does a public theology look like? There were more, they came like a whirlwind, leaving only mental rubble in their wake. I was left a little bit disturbed after this thought event, yet also a glitter of optimism remained. I am going to attempt to use this blog as an avenue for beginning to sort out my thoughts on theology. I am pretty convinced that I need to begin the process of articulating some of my theological ruminations. I thought seminary would give me a space for this, but looking back on this first quarter alas it did not. Maybe in the future it will, but for now I hope this blog will create a space for me to begin developing my theology.

Here is a thought for the road: Is theology as conceived by most simply exercises in Eurocentric, esoteric, uninteresting, pretentious blather that has nothing to say to the world? Can theologians (or philosophers for that matter) really claim to be the architects of the conceptual worlds?

The Light is On

So, an interesting occurrence has transpired at the Camp/Trainor residence. Our porch light refuses to turn off. Truly an enigma! The light is always on... even when no one is home...