“third language that avoids the particularities of the faith”
quote from intro to A Better Hope, p.11
is this so neccessarily a bad thing?…..as long as the “first language” is not that of the state, and also devised to point to the second, that of the faith and the church, it is an instrument of dialogue and invitation, not compromise.
if the culture is of different minds as to the relative weighting of liberty and equality, thenany proposal as to how they ought to be weighted will perforce go beyond what can be extracted from that culture itself.
quote from Nicholas Wolterstorff Gifford lectures 1994-95 in
A Better Hope pp. 26-27
INtriguing :
according to Woleterstorffour best strategy is to move from one set o deliberations to another, employing whatever set of considerations we think may be persuasive for the persons with whom we are in conversation.
A Better Hope p.27
Hauerwas concludes:
I believe one of the great advanyages of Wolterstorff’s way of understanding our situation is it does not ask Christians to learn some third language in order to participate socially and politically in America. If this is a “pluralist” society, a description I find far too complimentary, then I see no reason that Chrisitians (any more than Jews or secularists) should be asked to put their convictions in some allegedly neutral language in order to talk with one another.
Here’s one of those places here I can question (perhaps wrongly, or perhaps I don’t understand Hauerwas here) whether or not Hauerwas does not allow for the actual implementation what he applauds in Wolterstorff’s analysis by his protest over what he calls “third language”. I would ask whether or not the Apostle Paul did not employ categories of Greco_Roman culture in his theological arguments in which he directs the final telos to the cross. Is this not a “third language”, and does not Paul take hold of certain concepts and point to their “higher fulfillment” in the Christian story?
On this subject, see my post of 08-03 on “Realizing Ideological Assumptions”
Oops, Jamie Smith’s quoted portion was supposed to continue after the “[…]”. My own stuff doesn’t come in till “So, more specifically…”
All I’m getting at here is that I don’t think we as Christians should be concerning ourselves with making the liberal nation state “better.” Trying to “witness” to the state itself seems more and more a waste of time, especially after nobody seemed to be listening to all of our outrage last summer. It simply didn’t matter. People wanted the violent, war-like nation and they wanted to be lied to by George Bush because of so many reasons that you and I used to more vigorously explore on our blogs.
It goes back to that very first question Jamie Smith answered where he took apart the assumptions behind the question that thinks that the state could be “witnessed” to:
So, more specifically, what I was getting at was recalling this plus emphasizing that we should be modeling the Kingdom for people within these structures, but not to the structures themselves, and especially not for the sake of the structure of the modern liberal nation state.
One easy example is that yesterday when I was on the Sojo website, they were trying to get people to “save social security.” Another case of me being saddened by a misplace of one’s hopes. I get all the rhetoric coming from the left (I read Paul Krugman still twice a week in the NY Times), but I think we need to be distinctly Christian in where we place our hopes. Yes, there are homeless in my own church who receive some social security money, but… well, they’re still homeless. SS doesn’t cure their other problems, and they still obviously don’t have enough money. And on the other side of the spectrum (which is where the leftist vision wants to go, and this is quite obvious) is the Marxist state where everything is provided in the end, again, for our “freedom.” It would still be a case where the nation state mishapes our desires for its own end.
You lost me. I guess you need to elaborate on thgat one. This seems to moving in a direction that I’ve sensed concerning Radical Orthodoxy, but wasn’t sure how to articulate. It has to do with recognizing things which I truly believe are instructive and important, but to the people not “schooled” inthe theology of RO, it catches them off guard. I am convinced that this is where Jim Wallis would find himself, if he was aware of the JKA Smith critiques. The whole issue of the “language of the state” is a new way of being confronted. Most people (including myself, until this RO discussion started, before which and I was aghast at how Smith could in any way construe Wallis as “Constantinian”– now that I know WHY….I am still not convinced that Wallis is an “aapropriate” target “appropriate” meaning one must ask if Wallis is “walking a fine line” (which I believe he is) or if he is one of tyhose who is in ignorant bliss of a total capitulation to, and “in bed with” the state. The latter are those to which the “deeply confrontive” rhetoric is more deservedly applied; those who are “snapping their heels” at the every whim of nationalism in the guise of religiosity and Christianity.)but, back to what I started to say before I broke into that parenthetical–Most people are totally unaware of this sociological distinction being drawn here*. I see Wallis as working to the same ends as Smith, and thus his tone seems to be that of “talking to the world” when he engages in such accusatory rhetoric.
I think it perfectly fine and appropriate to lovingly and instructingly express “concerns” and also be careful to affirm the obvious goal of working to produce works of mercy (which Sojo and Wallis have always stressed)….but Smith does not give any indication that he is even close to doing so. As I said last night, I have concerns about the language Wallis has fallen into during this God’s Politics thing. I think he is responding to the overwhelmingly postively reception his words have had….and to me, this has been a good thing, despite the vast imperfections of language and the fine distinctions of language that cvan oh so inconspicuously lure us into aiding and abetting the state. But I consider Sojourners and Wallis to have been one of the most influential pieces of my own journey to a place where I can level as many questions about the natonalistic assuptions I once held. I don’t think I would even be able to see the church as church and the world as world to the extent that I do without the witness Sojourners has provided.
Dale
* this was added to this comment a day later —and elaborated in the comment about to be posted 08-03 at 8am CST
Does the church need to witness to the state, or merely the people within it, though?
the latter, of course, and this is precisely my point about language, and more specifically, the “third language”. I would add that it doesn’t “avoid” the particulalrities of the faith (as Hauerwas put it) as much as it seeks to illuminate the particularities of the faith in a way that can lead the one at home in the language of state to a place where they can “recognize” the church for how it is the true fulfillment.
Was Paul using Greco/Roman cultural language to make Greco/Roman culture “better,” or so that they would know better what he was talking about?