VOL. 6, NO. 2 SUMMER 1986 A Scholarly Journal for Reflection on Ministry

QUARTERLY REVIEW

Security, International Responsibility, and Reconciliation Tlieodore R. Weber

Theological Education in the Parish /. Andrew Overman

Natural Law, Evolution, and Personhood T. H. Milby

Control: Power or Impotence? Carroll Saussy

Theology of Suffering Ted Dolts

Three Pastoral Perspectives Laurel A. Burton

Hebrew Bible Lections for the Season after Pentecost Wilfred Bailey

Review of Books by Ervirig Goffman Frank E. Wicr

QUARTERLY REVIEW A Scholarly Journal for Reflection on Ministry

A publication of The United Methodist Publishing House Robert K. Feaster, President and Publisher

and the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry F. Thomas Trotter, General Secretary

Editorial Director, Harold Fair Editor, Charles E. Cole

Editorial Board F. Thomas Trotter, Chair Lloyd R. Bailey

Duke Divinity School Wilfred Bailey

Casa View United Methodist Church Dallas, Texas

Fred B. Craddock Candler School of Theology Emory University

Pamela C. Dunlap United Methodist Minister Northern Illinois Conference

Brita Gill-Austern Minister, Northern California Conference, United Church of Christ

Leander Keck Yale Divinity School

Cornish Rogers School of Theology at Claremont

Roy I. Sano Bishop, Denver Area United Methodist Church

John L. Topolewski Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church, Johnson City, New York

William H. Willimon Duke University Chapel

Quarterly Review (ISSN 0270-9287) provides continuing education resources for professional ministers in The United Methodist Church and other churches. A scholarly journal for reflection on ministry, Quarterly Review seeks to encourage discussion and debate on matters critical to the practice of ministry.

Falling within the purview of the journal are articles and reviews on biblical, theological, ethical, and ecclesiastical questions; homiletics, pastoral counseling, church education, sacred music, worship, evangelism, mission, and church management; ecumenical issues; cultural and social issues where their relevance to the practice of ministry can be demonstrated; and the general ministry of Christians, as part of the church's understanding of its nature and mission.

Articles for consideration are welcome from lay and professional ministers, United Methodists, and others, and should be mailed to the Editor, Quarterly Review, Box 871, Nashville, Tennessee 37202. Manuscripts should be in English and typed double-spaced, including notes, and the original and two duplicates should be submitted. No sermons, poems, or devotional material are accepted. Queries are welcome, A style sheet is available on request. Payment is by fee, depending on edited length.

Quarterly Review is published four times a year, in March, June, September, and December, by the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry and The United Methodist Publishing House. Editorial Offices are at 1001 19th Avenue, South, Box 871, Nashville, TN 37202. Circulation and business offices are at 201 Eighth Avenue South, Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202. Second-class postage paid at Nashville, Tennessee. Quarterly Review is available at a basic subscription price of $15 for one year, $26 for two years, and $33 for three years. Subscriptions may be obtained by sending a money order or check to the Business Manager, Quarterly Review, Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202.

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An index is printed in the winter issue of each year (number 5 for 1981 only; number 4 thereafter).

Quarterly Review: A Scholarly Journal for Reflection on Ministry Summer, 1986

Copyright © 1986 by The United Methodist Publishing House and the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry

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VOL. 6, NO. 2 SUMMER 1986

QUARTERLY REVIEW

CONTENTS

Editorial: What Is Scholarly? Charles E. Cole 3

Security, International Responsibility, and Reconciliation Theodore R, Weber 12

The Parish as Context for Theological Education /. Andrew Overman 30

Natural Law, Evolution, and the Question of Personhood T. H. Milby . . . .39

Control: Power or Impotence? Carroll Saussy 48

Six Points in a Theology of Suffering Ted Dotts 59

The Origins of Three Pastoral Perspectives Laurel A. Burton 64

Homiletical Resources: Hebrew Bible Lections for the Season after Pentecost

Wilfred Bailey 75

Book Review: The Prodigious Work of Erving Goffman Frank E. Wier 100

Effective with this issue of Quarterly Review, Harold L. Fair becomes editorial director, succeeding Ronald P. Patterson. Dr. Fair is associate book editor at The United Methodist Publishing House.

EDITORIAL

What Is Scholarly?

On November 14,1985, a thirty-two-year-old American, Gary Taylor, was reading a catalogue of poems in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, As an editor of a new one-volume collection of Shakespeare's works, he was making a last check of manuscript sources purely as a matter of scholarly thorough­ness. Reading down a list of first lines of poems in manuscript form in the library's collection, he came to one attributed to Shakespeare whose first line he did not recognize. As he usually did in such cases, he wrote the information down on a call-up slip and left it at the library desk so that the manuscript could be retrieved and examined the next day.

The next morning he did some chores at the office before going down to pick up the manuscript. When he did ask for it, he found it to be a bound folio of collected poems from several poets, printed in a calligraphic style, and seemingly dated from the 1630s. Taylor homed in on the one poem of interest and ran the tests that he had been trained to do—examining the original penmanship, noting how the poem was printed on the page, deciphering the script. He checked other poems in the collection attributed to poets such as John Donne, Robert Herrick, and Ben Jonson. This last exercise was aimed at testing the editor's accuracy in attributing poems to particular poets. After doing all this Taylor analyzed the internal evidence to see if the wording corresponded to Shakespeare's usual language. Then he shared the results with other Shakespearean scholars at Oxford. A check was made of other libraries throughout the world to see if

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4

the poem could have been attributed to Shakespeare by someone else. This test proved negative and at that point Taylor and others at Oxford announced the discovery: an addition had been made to the Shakespeare poetry collection.

This case study does not end here, of course, because scholars will continue to examine the evidence and argue over it. But it at least displays one characteristic usually associated with scholar­ship: the use of original, often old and unknown, sources. When scholars read a book for the first time, it is common practice for them to flip to the back and check the bibliography first. A scholar familiar with a field of study will be able to tell quickly whether the writer has used the standard authoritative sources or has come up with new ones. A survey that turns up only secondary sources ordinarily results in the judgment that the work also takes its place as a secondary one. The use of original sources is much preferred.

Use of original sources characterizes scholarship, but there are other marks as well. The question of what constitutes scholarship has no clear answer, and one reason is the wide range of what passes for scholarship. Books and journals that carry a complex apparatus—notes, bibliography, credits, etc.—most notoriously communicate scholarly pretensions. Yet a prestigious journal like American Scholar carries no notes at all, and many publications with copious notes could never be mistaken for scholarly ones. An example is a baseball record book. Moreover, even though much scholarship in the humanities often takes the oldest and most unknown sources as the critical criterion, scientific research does just the opposite. The most recent and best-known sources are accorded a higher status. Tone is another gauge. The mere mention of serious scholarship conjures up images of sobriety, and yet some scholarly publications are devoted to humor. Furthermore, some scholars actually tell jokes.

We have an investment in the pursuit of the question of what is scholarly because we aspire to be a scholarly journal. At last year's meeting of the editorial board this question came up for consideration, and although we are still awaiting the verdict of other scholars on the results, I can at least share some of the thoughts that were expressed.

EDITORIAL

Originality seems to be the first quality that comes to mind when the revered name of scholarship is mentioned. One practicing scholar told me of a discussion in his academic department on the matter. He said that one professor argued that only those works that would be read twenty-five years from the date of publication could be adjudged as scholarly. Aside from the fact that this criterion would require colleagues and editors to be prescient (some, sad to say, are seriously lacking in this virtue), it would also mean that very few works would ever be published. Most of us would settle, instead, for scholarship that had a relative degree of originality—that either raised a new question or made a fresh point about the material under consideration. Work that satisfies even this modest requirement seems to be in scarce supply.

The canon of originality has itself led to some familiar excesses. In order to write a doctoral dissertation successfully, candidates are supposed to add to the knowledge in the field under study. This requirement has pushed doctoral students to ever-greater extremes to locate something new about which to write. Thus we find scholars publishing such works as "A Ugaritic Parallel for the Feast for Ba'al in II Kings X: 8-25," and "History, Method, and Theology: A Dialectical Comparison of Wilhelm Dilthey's Critique of Historical Reason and Bernard Lonergan's Meta-Methodology." The result of this kind of specialization has been an occasional increase in actual knowledge coupled with an exponential growth in the number of graduates who are unemployable.

Scholarship consists of more than originality, though, and Dean Leander Keck suggested in the editorial board discussion that another characteristic is that of "disciplined reflection." That is, a scholar not only works within a field with an eye toward detecting the new, or pushing the field forward, but also works in a sustained and methodical way, usually over a fairly long period of time. This kind of scholarly research usually is asked to meet another criterion, that of insight—some previously unthought-of way of viewing the material under consideration. Mere familiarity with material does not make one a scholar—the methodical gathering of information must result in actual knowledge. To say that new knowledge is a requirement for

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scholarship must be baffling to nonscholars who read books by alleged scholars and find them to be bereft of creativity or new insight. Yet the standard of new knowledge must be adhered to, or else the scholarly becomes equated with the merely knowledgeable. Most of us encounter redundant knowledge in those books where the history of a field is reviewed before the writer attempts his or her own contribution. This review often consists of comparison and analysis, and of this we have more than enough, but of synthesis we can hardly get enough. As the late President Lyndon B. Johnson used to say after an aide had read a lengthy memo, "Therefore what?"

Disciplined reflection implies as well adherence to the traditional canons of reason—consistency, logic, accuracy, and coherence, for example. These rules have come under attack in recent decades with the elevation of intuitive processes, but the nature of reasoned discourse itself seems to require them. This is not to say that unreasoned language does not have value. The so-called primal scream, verbal free association, ecstatic outpourings—all these and many other forms of language can and do play a role in basic human communications. But unless they contain a point A that leads to point B, it is extremely hard to comprehend their place in scholarship.

These logical, linear procedures have been criticized because they were the chief ingredients in some of the more spectacular failures of rationality in recent history. How can any of us forget how Robert McNamara and others argued with such seeming plausibility the rationality of moving incrementally into a war in Southeast Asia? Before that our culture had experienced the rationality of Prohibition, and since then we have experienced the rationality of liberals and conservatives in government. All have argued that point A is connected to point B and therefore the course of action being proposed is rational. And all have ignored larger questions in the equation, as if absolute clarity were the only standard for moral action. Besides underscoring the fact that rationality has its vicious side, these rationalistic failures have made us keenly aware that reason comprises much more than the merely rational. As Paul Tillich taught us, rationality can mean mere "technical reason," whereas the more basic notion of reasoning that we inherited from the Greeks and

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EDITORIAL

others was that of grasping and shaping reality. Unless scholars and intellectuals can demonstrate their use of reason in this broader sense, we have a right to be leary of them.

Thus the linear processes must always be connected to some way of asking basic questions about premises and methods, questions that can be characterized as attempts to understand the pre-reflective. These attempts surely belong to the human­istic tradition of reasoning, and they differ markedly from some futile efforts in recent times to "hype" the intuitive at the expense of the reasonable. We have witnessed in our day a number of incredibly boring explorations of left-brain and right-brain differences, mystical religions, psychedelic media, and so on. It is as if all the cultural fads of our time had been packaged in the form of Victorian books. The thoughts of philosophers have become the canned goods of intellectuals, we are told, but the obverse could as well be true: the junk food of popular culture has been freeze-dried for consumption at academic banquets.

These several examples, then, display two distortions of rationality and reason—the assumption that reason means merely technical reason, and the pretentious effort to force intuitive thought into the traditional forms of analysis and rational discourse. In a way both excesses underscore another aspect of the scholarly: the close relation between thinking and writing or speaking. Good thinkers are invariably good writers and speakers. And wherever we find stultifying language, we inevitably find thinking that gives off the stale aroma of a pharaonic tomb. Articulation of ideas is not merely adventitious to those ideas—it is constitutive of them. For those of us in the English-speaking world, being scholarly must then mean using good English. The late E. B. White wrote that good English is characterized by grace, clarity, and force. And although we cannot hold these qualities up as a sort of perfectionist standard in determining what should be published, we can use them as one test of the scholarly. It is always possible, of course, that we are simply too dumb to understand what the speaker or writer is trying to say, but usually these impressions result from technical language and not the sophistication of the ideas themselves. Anyone relying heavily on technical language must have

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essentially conservative purposes in mind, which is to say that a listener or reader can safely assume any ideas cloaked in such language are deservedly obscure. This dictum substantiates our prejudice against bureaucracies, but it applies equally to any intrenched interest, and in one way or another, all of us have such interests.

We have then three marks of the scholarly: a proper use of sources, disciplined reflection (including insight and reason), and articulation. To assert them does not gainsay the fact that much that passes for scholarly fails to impress us as exemplify­ing these virtues. Consider, for example, the infamous dullness of much that purports to be scholarly. We can understand how scholars can argue among themselves about the legitimate ways sources are connected to insight, or whether certain arguments are consistent or not. But what most of us have more difficulty understanding is how anyone who has been exposed to original sources and to the best thinking in any field could possibly be a drone. We become interested in Shakespeare, say, and go to a lecture only to hear a putative scholar repeating the same cliches we have heard over and over. Or we hear about new developments in a field—structuralism in literature, the sociohistorical analysis of the Bible, or semiotics—only to find, on trying to read the books written on those subjects, that they are loaded with jargon and encrusted with neologisms that few persons understand, and seem to bear no mark of freshness or vitality. There is a popular slogan that jeers, " I f you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" We could well ask many supposedly learned persons of our day, "I f you're so smart, how can you be so dull?"

Possibly one reason for the uninteresting way in which many scholars present themselves and their work is group insularity. Like any human subset, scholars seem to prefer to talk to other scholars. This tribalism accounts not only for much of jargon in any given field, but also a tendency toward inertia. Scholars who are trained in particular methods and accustomed to doing research and writing in traditional ways are not likely to take kindly to suggestions that practices should be carried out in other ways. Thomas Kuhn has described how this process has worked in the history of science, where any change in the basic models

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E D I T O R I A L

used to validate "true science" inevitably runs into resistance among scientists. Those of us familiar with religious disciplines can list any number of contemporary debates where this struggle over basic models, or, as Kuhn styles them, paradigms, is being fought. What do we make of the fact, for instance, that church historians have employed the methods of social history very little? Or that the so-called new hermeneutics still must justify itself to those insisting on historical-critical methods? Theology itself seems to have been Balkanized, so that no one challenge exists to previous models, and yet many theologians have been trying valiantly to find ways to think in terms consistent with postmodernism. All of these debates are being carried on heatedly in the professional journals, but few of those outside the academy seem to be involved in the discussion. Scholars are talking with scholars, and the rest of the world seems relegated to the status of the uninformed bystander.

Those of us on the outside, so to speak, often perceive the scholarly world as moribund. Only when some spectacular breakthrough occurs, as in the case of a new poem being added to the Shakespeare canon, can we catch a glimpse of life inside the world of scholarship. Two things need to be said about this perception of static scholarship. The first is that many scholars do indeed suffer from intellectual dementia. A. N. Whitehead has a passage in his chapter, "Requisites for Social Progress," in Science and the Modern World, in which he claims that narrow specialization in professional education does not prepare persons for unexpected situations. "The fixed person for the fixed duties, who in older societies was such a godsend, will in the future be a public danger," he wrote. He was thinking, apparently, of professionals like those in the civil service who must bear heavy social responsibilities. But what are we to say of those worn-out specialists who are supposed to be engendering respect for revered humane traditions in our young and in all of us and who have gone soundly to sleep inside their tenured crypts? Are these not "public dangers" as well?

We have a right to be indignant about dull scholarship when we consider the second reason that the world of the scholarly often seems to be calcified. Given the characteristics of

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scholarship identified here, the scholarly ought to display some inner tension precisely because it attempts to move from the traditional to the new. Knowledge of sources, for example, properly exists in tension with "disciplined reflection," or insight. This tension results from the fact that the more persons of intelligence reflect on the sources in any field, the more likely they are to call into question the conventions and established ways of working in that field. This experience of tension creates the famed skepticism of scholars, and it often underlies the critical methods they employ—critical, meaning making a proper assessment of, and not necessarily a negative assessment. Wherever we find the scholarly at work, we nearly always find heated arguments, however, because some are attempting to stamp out and destroy the ideas that others hold sacred. Rebecca West once wrote, " 'A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life cutting away the dead things that men tell us to revere' " (quoted in the New Yorker, July 30, 1984, p. 86, in a review by V. S. Pritchett). I am not sure West qualifies as a scholar—she seems to be more of a creative artist—but the action she describes does characterize much of scholarly work. And if we are repulsed by blood, we had best stay away from the scholarly. But if our complaint is that the scholarly is boring, then perhaps we need to appreciate the dynamic character of scholarly warfare.

Are we being unrealistic in expecting the scholarly always to be interesting or stimulating? Or does scholarship, like the workaday world, depend on an enormous amount of tedious work that only occasionally ends in new knowledge? Genius as 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration, and that sort of thing? If this slogan holds, then the reason we encounter so many dull books and so many dull lecturers may be that we are being exposed to the process of review without enjoying the result of insight. It is as if we had to hear the gardener explain how the soil was prepared, the insects repelled, the weeds pulled, and so on, before we can enjoy eating the vegetables. Usually, though, those who practice scholarship with agility manage to capture our attention and hold it in unexpected ways. Many of us have such high expectations of scholarship precisely because we have experienced its power through our exposure to authoritative practitioners.

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E D I T O R I A L

"What is scholarly?" may seem a curious question to be asking in the light of contemporary practical concerns, many of which are urgent. As we move into a new age vaguely called postmodernist, the scholarly seems to belong, if not to the dustbin of history, at least in the archives. But wherever the truly scholarly is found, we find creativity, imagination, and hope. We also find ways to cope with larger questions of survival, human community, and the quality of life. We need scholarship for more than utilitarian reasons, and post­modernism seems to ask that we go beyond the merely utilitarian; but postmodernism will make it more and more difficult to eliminate the scholarly, because the world of scholarship has the power to place things in a large perspective, to inhibit the parochial ways of thinking that have done so much damage in the world today. T. S. Eliot told the story of hailing a London taxi and, after being driven a short way, hearing the driver ask, "Ain't you T. S. Eliot?" Replying in the affirmative, Eliot asked the driver how he recognized him. "Oh, I know a lot of famous people by sight," the cabbie said. "Why, just the other day I picked up Lord Russell. And I says to him, 'Lord Russell, what's it all about?' And do you know he couldn't tell me?"

Perhaps it is too much to expect anyone, even a philosopher of the magnitude of Bertrand Russell, to answer such questions. Nevertheless, the taxi drivers of the world do ask these questions, and not only ask them, but in many ways could probably help to answer them. That is, if we seriously consider folk wisdom as a source of knowledge, or the basic perceptions of ordinary people as important in understanding knowl­edge—well, you see what I mean. What is scholarly? The tradition that has given us the term and the reality continues, and all of us have a stake in seeing that it succeeds.

—CHARLES E . COLE

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SECURITY, INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND RECONCILIATION

THEODORE R. WEBER

Even though the Scriptures offer us two conflicting understandings of security, we can provide a theo­logical basis for security as a responsibility of states; but can we also find a political work of recon­ciliation?

Studying the order of some of the words in this title is an exercise similar to that of reading tea leaves or searching for divine guidance in the entrails of chickens, but it is an interesting speculation and possibly even suggestive of the issues we are to consider. Notice that security and reconciliation are separated from each other by international responsibility—a division which may imply differentiation, compartmentalization, and even fundamental incompatibility. Notice also that concern for security is placed first in the order of thought leading to responsibility, whereas the mention of reconciliation comes afterwards. Does that arrangement imply that the relationship between security and state responsibility is natural, necessary, and even primary, but that the relationship to reconciliation is accidental, incidental, and heteronomous? Or does it suggest that a commitment to reconciliation must amplify and in other ways correct a concept of state responsibility that is limited too narrowly to a simplistic understanding of security?

Theodore R. Weber is professor of social ethics at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of several books and articles on foreign policy and issues of war and peace.

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S E C U R I T Y

Reflection on possible meanings of the order of words in the title yields the following preliminary observations: first, if both concern for security and commitment to reconciliation qualify as state responsibilities, they nonetheless are not generically similar. Security, like economic viability, falls generically into the category of national interests. Reconciliation becomes a national interest only in certain instances where reconciling policies and acts serve particular national purposes. These acts and policies may elicit some broader moral approval when they promote the common purposes, and indeed the community, of several nations, but their genesis is in a state's perceptions of the conditions relating it to other states. Considered on its own terms, reconciliation transcends national interests and may even call for their sacrifice. The same vulnerability for which secu­rity is the intended antidote is a condition which is accepted, characteristically, freely and openly for the sake of recon­ciliation.

Second, concern for the temporal security of people, territory, and ruling group belongs—by the authority of common agreement and established usage—to the essence of the state, whereas the mission of reconciliation does not. States exist in a political environment where hostility and threat must be presupposed in principle, even though they vary in form, degree, and constancy, and where no finally authoritative and decisively powerful world government exists to resolve their conflicts and protect them from loss and destruction. What no world government can do, the states must do. Vulnerability of all that is under their jurisdiction justifies their existence as institutions that organize, monopolize, and administer power. Security is not their only business, but it is their first order of business. By contrast, the promotion of international reconcilia­tion is not the reason why states come into existence, and it is not a definitive attribute of statehood. States have the responsibility for promoting peace, but they also may have the obligation to conduct war to protect their vital interests, among which the most vital usually is their security. The theory of the state rests heavily on security, and only very lightly on reconciliation.

Third, if the call for reconciliation suggests a pious, confessional bias, it also implies that the politically orthodox

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concepts of and approaches to security are theoretically and practically inadequate to their own purposes. Dominant images of statehood and security, and the kinds of security policies derived from them, have been overtaken and challenged by events, and especially by technological developments in communications and military means of destruction. Funda­mental retheoretization now is essential, and policies must be reformulated to reflect the revised theoretical understanding. Security cannot and will not be removed as a central concern of the state, but increasingly it must be sought in the strength and durability of relationships rather than in the presumed invulnerability of the fortress or in the ability to "project power" effectively. We may hypothesize, therefore, that the call for commitment to reconciliation is not a proposal that the state be transformed into the church and take the work of reconciliation instead of promotion of security as its foundational responsibil­ity. Rather, it is a proposal to penetrate the thinking that produces policy with the truth that security is contingent upon the development of community among nations, not upon the expansion and technical refinement of arsenals. In the light of that understanding, the "pious, confessional bias" becomes the highest political wisdom.

The intent of this paper is to provide theological perspectives on the topic announced in the title. That proviso requires both a theological analysis of political reality and an indication of the normative direction of political action. So far as the former is concerned, the line of investigation will begin with security and subsequently consider reconciliation. That order is appropriate for several reasons. One is that the inquiry itself was provoked by profound uneasiness over the efficacy and moral justification of current security policies and arrangements. The call for reconciliation is a response to that uneasiness. A second is that theological reflection on politics must engage the reality of politics, and security is the real and principal ground of the existence of states. A third reason is that security is not less theologically significant and susceptible of theological interpre­tation than reconciliation.

So far as the latter, that is, the normative direction of action, is concerned, we must allow the conclusions to follow from the

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S E C U R I T Y

inquiry. We have indicated that security is theologically significant; we may therefore discover that a continuing concern for security is an element in the "normative direction of political action." Also, we approach the task with the conviction that God works in history and nature to make all things new—to bring the entire creation to the fullness of the promised shalom. We shall have to discover the political meaning of that reconciling work in relation to the problem of security in the definition of state responsibilities in interna­tional politics.

T H E O L O G I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S O N S E C U R I T Y

Security theologically understood and security politically understood both are concerned with the vulnerability of human existence. Their provisions for coping with vulnerability are predictably and characteristically different. Security theologi­cally understood is a relationship of dependence on and trust in God which carries hopes for the future but asks and expects nothing other than what God wills to provide. Security politically understood is a symbolic, material, and institutional arrangement for protecting persons, institutions, and property and for making the open and threatening future livable by institutionalizing behavioral expectations. What isithe relation­ship between the two? Specifically, what is the theological perspective on the evaluation of political security?

One can speak of a biblical attitude toward political security because the position is consistent throughout the Bible. It is one of negation and condemnation. The arrangements that human beings make or attempt to make by human means for securing their present and future are both futile and sinful. They are futile because they place trust in what is weak, fragile, and perishable, under the illusion that it is strong, invulnerable, and enduring. They are sinful because implicitly they renounce dependence on God and place confidence in human beings to do what God presumably cannot do. The biblical attitude is stated clearly and characteristically in the following quotation from the Book of Isaiah:

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Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses,

who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong,

but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord! (Isa. 31:1, RSV)

Alliances with major powers (Egypt), possession of advanced military technology (chariots), and the ability to deploy masses of men and cavalry will not give protection against a superior enemy, and their use will invite an even more devastating defeat. More important than such pragmatic calculations, the wrath of Yahweh will bring defeat and destruction on those who rely on ordinary political and military wisdom to give them security or victory, "but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!"

This biblical attitude towards political and military security must not be confused with pacifism. To the contrary, it is a fundamental element of the holy war doctrine of ancient Israel, which carries over in principle even into the New Testament. 1

There will be fighting and the building of fortifications, but only when God gives the command. And when the command is given and the people fight and win, they win only because God fights for them. "The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord" (Prov. 21:31). If God does not fight for the people, no amount of soldiers, horses, and chariots will carry the day. If God does fight, then victory can come with a Gideon's army of three hundred men, blowing trumpets, shouting, and smashing jugs, thereby throwing the thousands of Midianites into such confusion that they hack each other to pieces. The issue is not whether armies and fortifications are good things or bad things, but whether kings and people look to those human means or to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for security.

The basic attitude towards security—that it comes from God alone and not from political and military means—is the same in the New Testament as in the Hebrew Scriptures. However, despite the agreement on that fundamental point there are important differences. One is that the Hebrew Bible expects

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those who trust God for their security to be protected from physical danger, whereas the New Testament does not. The psalmist can speak of the Lord preparing a table for him in the very presence of his enemies, but according to the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, the man of perfect faith, was nailed to a cross and killed by Roman soldiers, and God did not intervene to protect him. Because God did not intervene, even in response to the cry of dereliction from the cross, the implication for the Christian story is either that God was (and is) absent, or that the Resurrection is truth. If God was (and is) absent, the question of security turns back to the consideration of merely human means. If the Resurrection is truth, then whatever true security might mean, it is to be found only on the other side of exposure to suffering and death.

The New Testament calls Christians to accept the risks of vulnerability for the sake of reconciliation with the enemy.

A second difference, which follows in part from the first, is that the New Testament calls Christians to accept the risks of vulnerability for the sake of reconciliation with the enemy. The linkage of faith to physical security thus is broken completely. The linkage to security in relationship with God remains, but as the present assurance of a future blessedness—either in a realm of eternity above history, or in a transformed world at the end of history.

These differences may become significant when we turn to a consideration of reconciliation in relation to international responsibility, but they do not alter the agreement on the fundamental theological perspective on political and military security: Security policies and measures are at best a weak reed, at worst a dangerous and demonic delusion. In either case, they imply a repudiation of genuine faith in the living God.

A second major theological perspective on security is provided by the doctrine that the state is an instrument of God for providing order in a fallen world. According to this view, the

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state is an emergency order of preservation that holds the world together and keeps it from being driven centrifugally into chaos by the forces of sin released by the Fall. It is a security order of protection that maintains domestic peace and repels external foes, and shields the innocent from the predatory actions of the wicked. It is a punitive order that inflicts on evildoers the temporal sanctions of divine wrath. It is an external sacrament (in Calvin's language, not Luther's) that serves the redemptive work of God by providing time and space for the preaching of justification.

Although I have referred to the first theological perspective on security as "the biblical view," the proponents of the second insist that it, too, is biblical. Helmut Thielicke, who has given us probably the most extensive contemporary exposition and application of this doctrinal stance, contends, following Luther, that the state as an order of preservation was established by God in the covenant with Noah. 2 The attitude toward the quest for political and military security is much more affirmative in the second view than in the first. The central theological claim of the second view is that God as sustainer provides temporal security as an integral aspect of the divine work in history. To that end political institutions and magistrates receive divine ordination and serve as instruments and vicars of God. Although some Christian communions that share this theological view of the state exclude true Christians from any and all political participation, others believe that Christians may be called to serve the neighbor in love by administering the institutions that attempt to provide security. The Calvinists prefer (actually it is God's preference!) that only the saints should rule. In the development of doctrine on the question of political and military security, the random interventions of God in response to faith and sin have become institutionalized into a constant mode of divine historical activity that invites human response and participation.

The two positions provide us with a clear choice. In the first case, systematic security policies and their implementation are an offense against God. In the second case, they may be a faithful response to one aspect of the work of God. If the former is theologically necessary, a person who has become a new

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creature in Jesus Christ and lives by the authority of divine revelation can say nothing more about security responsibilities than that nations and their leaders must wait for prophetic divine guidance and not trust their own political wisdom and arsenals. If the latter is theologically necessary, or at least possible, a confessing Christian can proceed to consider and even participate in systematic security planning under the conviction that the effort is a vocational means of sharing in God's work of preservation and protection.

Of course, the first perspective—the one that condemns human efforts to provide for security—is almost certain to be ignored and scorned. Its proponents may be persecuted. Confronted with1 what may be mortal danger to the society, persons responsible for its welfare will be more impressed by the enemy whom they can see than by the God whom they cannot see. If Jeremiah, who advised King Zedekiah to surrender Jerusalem to the Chaldeans, were to make the same prophecy in Jerusalem today, his words would be no more welcome now than they were then—despite the fact that the State of Israel believes itself to be founded on the gift and promise of the very God whose Word established the distinction between true and false security. And what is predictable for Israel in this regard is predictable for almost any state.

But the prospect of being ignored and trampled is no decisive argument against a theologically valid claim. If we speak the truth and are not heard, the burden of blame falls on those who refuse to hear, not on those who bring the witness. In fact, the proper inference from this division may be that those who live by the truth of the coming kingdom ought not attempt to offer guidance to those who rule the kingdoms of this world.

However, there are strong theological arguments against the first view and in favor of the second, in addition to the claim that the state as order of preservation is grounded in the Noachic covenant. One argument is that the first view does not allow the creatures of God to assume the full responsibility for which they have been created. That we have mind, will, memory, foresight, and imagination is the result not of the Fall but of original creation. That we should use these attributes to give some shape and substance to world and time is not in principle a repudiation

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of the divine will but a fulfillment of it. Certainly it is true that we cannot master history and build out into the void a fully secured highway of predictability. But we are bound by the stewardship of human capabilities to use them in the governance of the world that God has put under human dominion. Our faithfulness to God is shown in the way we discern, interpret, and discharge our responsibilities, not in our abandonment of reason, will, and power in the construction, maintenance, and protection of viable societies.

A second argument is related to the first but begins from incarnation rather than creation. The coming of God into the world in human flesh, accepting the full burden and possibility of humanity with its weakness, temptations, hopes, and risks is inconsistent with a view of the divine-human relationship that denies the necessary role of human beings as makers of history and bearers of responsibility. We cannot escape dependence on

W e cannot escape dependence on God for any moment and condition of our existence, but dependence need not mean permanent infancy.

God for any moment and condition of our existence, but dependence need not mean permanent infancy. Without accepting all aspects and implications of the theologies of Friedrich Gogarten and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we nevertheless can agree with them that the incarnate God has given to humankind responsibility for the world in which we live.

For these reasons, something similar to the second perspec­tive rather than the first will provide, at least tentatively, the theological perspective on security as we continue the inquiry into international responsibility. But in making this decision we must acknowledge that important elements of the first perspective are contained in the second: the fact that the only true security is that which one has in relationship with God, that political and military arrangements are fragile and transitory, that all of our efforts to preserve and protect—even when undertaken in cooperation with God—are under the judgment

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of God. Attempts to gain worldly security are too susceptible of illusion, too likely to distort our sense of value, too inclined to involve us in brutal destruction for us to neglect the warnings and limitations and heed only the justifications. Thielicke insists that the emergency order "must not idealize its structure or make of it a law, for this structure is a necessity, not a virtue, and must be so regarded" (p. 132).

S E C U R I T Y A N D T H E P O L I T I C A L W O R K O F R E C O N C I L I A T I O N

If we have found a theological basis for security as a responsibility of states in international politics, can we also find a political work of reconciliation? At first glance, the prospects seem small. The original assertions remain firm: Security and reconciliation are generically different as responsibilities of states. Security belongs to the essence of the state as the principal reason why states come into existence. Reconciliation has no comparable place in the theory or theology of the state. Even theologies of the state like those of Barth and Bonhoeffer, which take a consistently christological stance and explain the meaning of the state with reference to the divine work of redemption, continue to characterize the work of the state basically as that of preservation. 3

Furthermore, many of the conflicts of international politics contain elements of seemingly irreducible opposition. The issues of dispute are themselves irreconcilable, and the conflict over them generates security concerns that widen the gap and increase the hostility between the contending parties. That is manifestly the case in the Arab-Israeli conflicts. Israel is an example of irredenta, of "unredeemed" land—territory held by one state but claimed by one or more others. In most cases of irredenta—Alsace-Lorraine, the Upper Tyrol, the eastern prov­inces of Germany—the disputed territory is only a part of one homeland or the other. In the case of Israel, however, the entire state is irredenta. It could be redeemed for the Palestinian Arabs and other claimants only if the state as a whole were dissolved. Obviously, the Israelis will not accept another final solution (Endl'dsung); therefore, they take the security measures they believe necessary to protect their small state from destruction.

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These security measures in turn tend to provoke more hostility and opposition, especially when they involve the occupation and colonization of additional lands taken from their neighbors.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a case in point. The government of Israel sent its army into Lebanon to eliminate the PLO as a persistent threat to its present security and its future as a state. In the process of doing so, it destroyed what remained of the unity of Lebanon, exacerbated the religiously delineated internal conflicts of that country, and opened the way for Syria to fill the Lebanese power vacuum. Also, it aroused the Shi'ite Moslems who turned out to be even more ferociously anti-Israel than the PLO. And it did not put an end to the PLO. As a result of this "security measure," the elements of opposition are even more irreducible than they were before.

In the larger picture of Arab-Israeli relationships, Arab leaders who are tempted to promote accommodation, if not reconcilia­tion, with the Israelis remember the example of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who took the risks of rapprochement at the cost of alienation from his Arab and Islamic brethren and ultimately at the cost of his own life.

One could construct a catalog of conflicts with apparently irreducible elements: China and Taiwan, China and the Soviet Union, Greece and Turkey, Northern Ireland, NATO and the Soviet Union, the United States and Cuba, black Africa and white-dominated South Africa, North and South Korea, Christian and Moslem Lebanon. The situations have their own identity and particularity, but the common element is that the disputes are real and fundamental, and they evoke means of attack and defense. Negotiated settlements may be possible in some instances, in others not. But even the reasonably satisfactory settlement will incorporate the tension between security and reconciliation.

However, "tension" does not mean complete opposition. Security in many instances is supportive of the work of reconciliation. More importantly for our purposes, reconcilia­tion often is a necessary instrument of efforts to provide and enhance security. We can see aspects of the political work of reconciliation both by looking more deeply into the meaning of "security" as a political concept and by reflecting on the inability

S E C U R I T Y

of contemporary military systems to provide national security commensurate with their firepower.

The seizure in June, 1985, by Lebanese Islamic terrorists of TWA Flight 847 was most immediately and visibly an assault on the persons—passengers and crew—directly involved. At a deeper level, however, it was an assault on the fundamental social order that separates civilization from tribalism and barbarism. Especially in this latter regard, it was a type of dramatic and traumatic action, that reveals dimensions of the phenomenon of political security that normally escape our notice.

For most of the decades of commercial aviation history, security considerations pertained to the airworthiness of the flying machines, the capability, sobriety, and mental health of flight crews and air controllers, and forecasts of the weather. With the onset of "skyjackings," and especially those perpe­trated by politically motivated and sometimes suicidal terrorists, the concept of "airline security" took on quite a different meaning. It came to mean protection against persons who took advantage of the inherent vulnerability of a populated aircraft to advance their own causes, often with no scruples against imposing suffering on and risking or sacrificing the lives of their hostages. In response to that development, airports and airlines hired additional guards, set up checkpoints with monitoring equipment, subjected passengers to body checks, stationed guards on some airplanes, and gave special training to personnel for dealing with skyjacking and terrorist incidents. A few passengers grumbled about inconvenience and delay. Some protested the indignity of searches and what they saw as the violation of individual rights and the perilous expansion of the police power of the state and corporate society. Most, however, accepted the new arrangements as a relatively small price to pay for reducing the new perils of flying on an airplane.

In this context we think of "security" as visible, rationalized force, organized and deployed for the purpose of guarding the social order against those who flout the authority of its norms and rules. This definition is correct but superficial. What the terrorist skyjackings reveal concerning security is that funda­mentally it is a condition provided by common consent to the

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expectations and claims of social order. Security is much more fully present when persons in society accept and respect each other's existence and the regulative institutions of the common life, than when they are armed to the teeth against each other. Prior to the advent of skyjackings there was no significant "security problem" of an interpersonal or political nature. Passengers and crew had unarmed security because, with rare exception, all of them observed the ordinary conventions of social interactions and the specific expectations of in-flight behavior.

Granted, the armed condition properly can be designated a "security arrangement." It is the guardian of vulnerability where violence threatens to become its own law. Theologically, it is the order of preservation, the divine ordinance of God the sustainer. But the resort to armed defense tends to be equated improperly with security as such. The really important change in our consciousness of the problem of security comes when we recognize that real security is the freedom safely to be vulnerable, and that this freedom is a prime ingredient of an integral community.

Real security is the freedom to be vulnerable, and this freedom is a prime ingredient of an integral community.

Once we understand security in the fundamental sense of mutual consent to societal existence, we have the basis for a security politics of reconciliation. Reconciliation, politically understood, is the process of eliciting, coordinating, and strengthening the elements of community in both domestic and international society. The stronger the community and its ethos, customs, and laws, the stronger the invisible and presupposed security to be free to be vulnerable. The greater the invisible security of common will and supportive social fabric, the less need there is for visible, coercive "security forces." Therefore, a politics of reconciliation, which attempts to overcome hostilities, conciliate interests, and generally strengthen the fabric of social relationships, may be much more valuable as a security policy than a politics of competition in armaments.

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To avoid misunderstanding, I must underscore the fact that the two forms of and approaches to security are not, in my view, an either/or choice. The world is not constituted in human material or social organization in such manner that states can surrender their "security forces" or fail to maintain their effectiveness. The world is under the power of sin; its resources will not satisfy inexhaustible appetites or support unlimited population; all forms of social organization discriminate against and oppress someone. There is no way that human society in history as we know it can dispense with the instruments of preservation and live in libertarian anarchy, Marxist classless-ness, or the theocratic harmony of the kingdom of God.

But the other side of the coin is that the society of mutual consent is not an idealistic dream. Societies cannot exist by force alone, and most of the societies of the world are sustained more by consent than by force. The Hobbesian portrayal of natural human relationships as a war of all against all might turn out to be accurate if all of us could be stripped of our socialized personalities and reduced to primal aggressive instincts, but in most social contexts we are not so disposed. We may be latently or overtly hostile toward each other, but most of the time we are able to tolerate each other, and sometimes even to love each other. Trust and love are neither absolutely present nor absolutely absent. To the extent that they exist, they can be nourished and increased. To perform such a work politically is the security politics of reconciliation.4

But let us turn to the explicitly military aspects of security policy and ask whether it is possible to speak meaningfully of a security politics of reconciliation in that connection. It would be unnecessary to attempt to link reconciliation with security where threatened states credibly can plan and successfully can build an effective shield between themselves and the threaten­ing foe. So long as the threatened party could exist in reasonable comfort and safety behind and by reason of its military shield, it would have no real need for reconciliation as an instrument or motive of policy.

If such conditions exist in our time, they exist only for small, weak, nonnuclear states with foes of comparable military capability. For all the other states, and especially for the nuclear

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powers and their allies and dependents, the luxury of security fully guaranteed by military power simply is not to be had. The security of the United States and the Soviet Union against each other's ultimate threats is defined not by the invulnerability of each society against devastating attack, but by the invulnerabil­ity of its "second strike capability," that is, of the residual ability of a state to destroy the society of its attacker after its own weapons systems have suffered extensive damage. That is not the whole of the contemporary meaning of military security, but it is the strategic concept on which other plans and policies rest.

President Reagan's Space Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars" program, is, of course, an attempt to break out of the deterrence pattern and provide technologically based invulnerability. If it were successful, it probably would eliminate the need for security policies of reconciliation, at least on the part of the United States. Indeed, it would reverse the process of community building by eliminating the need for friends and allies—a point to which our European partners are quite sensitive. The massive technological difficulties of this proposal are beyond my capacity to discuss, but even if they were to be solved, the system would not serve its strategic objective of moving from a deterrent to a pure defense posture. Cruise missiles, bombers, and suborbital missiles would not be repelled by the shield, and the society would remain vulnerable also to nuclear devices carried by hand or in land vehicles. If the Soviet Union had its own shield—and President Reagan has offered to help them develop theirs once we have ours—either system presumably could disable the other in a fraction of a second and render the previously protected society completely vulnerable. Given these considerations, the main strategic worth of such a system would be as a backup for a first-strike capability and intention, and not as a shield against a first strike. 5

And so there is no magic of increasingly sophisticated modern technology to liberate us from the terrors of mutual deterrence. It is this fateful, terrible, and unique circumstance that makes reconciliation an essential component of security policy. The states and systems that stand in what at times seems to be mortal opposition must seek each others' cooperation in order to survive. That is the significance, of course, of arms limitation

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SECURITY

and reduction negotiations and other reciprocal efforts, whether bilateral or multilateral, to impose controls on the technology of modern warfare—the demonic creations of the sorcerer's apprentices. It is also the condition of success of the unilateral limited steps toward reversal of the arms race that individual states must take when bilateral and multilateral negotiations fail.

One cannot say with assurance that policies of reconciliation always will serve the cause of security better than military policies. In some instances the reverse almost certainly will be true. What one can say with assurance is that the burden of proof ought always to be on those who give priority to military policies. The principal reason for this order is that military power is rightly the servant of politics and diplomacy, and both politics and diplomacy depend for their legitimacy and ultimately for their success on the presence and growth of relationships of mutual acceptance and agreement. A second-level reason is that a world rich with associations and institutions for resolving conflict is safer than one in which all conflicts are drawn into the power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Contadora Process, for example, is a more effective way of dealing with the problems of security in Central America than is direct or indirect military intervention by the United States. 6 The former creates regional interests in and regional associations and procedures for resolving regional problems—and it keeps the superpowers at a distance. The latter excludes regional initiative as an indepen­dent option and ensures that the Nicaraguan government will seek to increase the stake of the Soviet Union in its own (Sandinista) survival.

STATE RESPONSIBILITIES IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: THEORETICAL RECONSIDERATIONS

Of the two terms that have been pre-eminent in this inquiry, security and reconciliation, the first is usually regarded as peculiarly political and the second, peculiarly religious. Partly to counteract that preconception, and partly to amplify the theoretical understanding of a state's responsibilities in inter­national politics, I have examined the theological perspectives

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on security and the security politics of reconciliation. The question to be raised at this point is whether the results of the investigation suggest any significant changes in the nature and ordering of the state's external responsibilities.

In traditional theological language, is it possible any longer (assuming it ever was) to discern the normative direction of state responsibility solely through the lens of "order of preservation" symbolization? Certainly we cannot suppose that the state as such must or even can give up its vocation of preserving life against chaos and injustice—however ambiguously or abusively particular states may fulfill that vocation. Nor can we suppose that, in an unfinished and disorderly world, states will be able to act as preservers without some reliance on military power. On the other hand, we are led by our investigation to propose certain fundamental revisions in the understanding of what "preservation" entails. As to scope, it is not the particular state alone that is the object of preservation, but also—and at least instrumentally if not primarily—the inclusive order of life and nature in which the state as a set of relationships exists. As to substance, preservation is not impregnable military security nor irresistible military dominance, but relationships of mutuality and cooperation in which the authority of power is grounded increasingly in consent and to an ever-lessening degree in coercion. As to method, it is political and diplomatic before it is military, and as military it is directed and limited by the political concern to enhance the relationships of mutuality and coopera­tion. States must fulfill their task of preservation not primarily through armaments but through their contribution to the creation and nurture of bilateral and multilateral relationships, to the procedures, the institutions, the ethoi of international society that address the security needs of states and peoples in their larger and more realistic dimensions.

What these revisions of "preservation" imply is that the international responsibilities of states must be explored and discharged in terms of reconciliation as well as security. To be sure, the states' understanding of both security and reconcilia­tion is political and prudential, not theological and confessional. That is, they do not understand these responsibilities in the same way as does the community of Christian faith. Conse-

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quently, one cannot assume—and perhaps cannot expect—that political analyses and theological analyses of security and reconciliation will come to the same conclusions. But because the states are dealing with the same human reality under God for which the Christian community prays, and because God is ever present to that human reality in prevenient grace, it may be possible to penetrate the political definitions of responsibility with the awareness that God preserves the world in order to make it whole. Given that the world is so rebellious, so broken, so threatened, yet so valued in the self-giving of God, it is of surpassing importance for the Christian community to pursue that work of penetration.

NOTES

1. L. E. Toombs, "Ideas of War," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G. H. Buttrick (New York: Abingdon, 1963), 4: 796-801; Gerhard von Rad, Der heilige Krieg im alien Israel (Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1951).

2. Theological Ethics, ed. William H. Lazareth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 2:132. 3. I have explored the question of the political work or reconciliation more fully in

"Reconciliation as a Foreign Policy Method," Religion in life 38 (Spring 1969): 40-54. See also "The Christian Community and the Civil Community," in Karl Barth, Community, State and Church: Three Essays (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1960); and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. E. Bethge, trans. Neville H. Smith (London: SCM Pr. , 1955), pp. 332 ff.

4. For an excellent discussion of the possibilities and limits of cooperation in international relations, see "Amity and Enmity Among Nations," in Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays in International Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1962), pp. 25-35.

5. See Robert W. Bowman, "Star Wars—Pie in the Sky," New York Times, 14 December 1983, sec. I, p. 35, col. 2.

6. The "Contadora Group" includes Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, and takes its name from the island off Panama where their foreign ministers convened. They proposed the removal from the region of all forms of foreign military presence and assistance.

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THE PARISH AS CONTEXT FOR THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

J . ANDREW OVERMAN

Ministerial education is limited by the context in which the training is done. By more fully utilizing the parish as a context for academic and practical training, the distance between the academy and the church is narrowed and the effectiveness of ministe­rial training is enhanced.

Most of the Bible was written in and for communities of faith. In the Hebrew Bible those communities were, first, small tribes that carried on and shared the traditions about their God and the dealings of God with them as chosen people. 1 It was in the context of the struggles, doubts, and occasional personal and corporate victories of these small communities that the earliest traditions and beliefs concerning the God of Israel first took shape, were developed and transmitted. Similarly, the theology expressed in the Prophets is, in the main, a response to specific situations or dilemmas within the given communities of which the prophets were part. 2

Where the New Testament is concerned, it is generally held that at least three of the four Gospels were written in and for communities of faith.3 The Apostle Paul, of course, wrote to specific churches. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of the context and setting of Paul's work for the

J. Andrew Overman is a Congregational minister with ten years of community and parish ministerial experience. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in New Testament studies at Boston University.

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T H E O L O G I C A L E D U C A T I O N

understanding of his epistles. 4 Paul's thoughts and letters came off the burning griddle of the parish in the sense that the emotions, questions, struggles, and love typical of the milieu of a church shaped and provoked much of the Pauline corpus. 5

Paul was both a pastor and an apostle, and the various settings and situations of his churches gave him the opportunity both to demonstrate and to develop his particular theological genius.

So, our Bible and in fact our faith took shape in and grew out of a community of faith or church. This may be the case historically, but what relevance or meaning has this for theological education? The import of this observation for theological education is found, in essence, in the value of the context or setting of one's biblical study as hermeneutical and educational tool. In discussing the Apostle Paul and his letters, Leander Keck writes:

The occasional character of Paul's letters calls for a measure of sensitivity on the part of the interpreter. To interpret them calls for more than making their contents intelligible; it includes making Paul's point in a manner that confronts today's readers in a way analogous to what occurred originally. To facilitate this, the interpreter needs to penetrate not only Paul's "answer" but also the "question" until what becomes apparent is the extent to which today's readers share the same problem as the original ones. The greater the similarity, the more directly Paul's response may address also our own. If the interpreter first finds the particularity of the original occasions to be an obstacle to appropriating Paul, it is probably because one expects the letters to articulate timeless truths and principles to be applied, rather than timely words to concrete situations which are prototypes of our own. In other words, in the long run it is precisely the particularity of the occasions that makes Paul's letters perenially significant.6

If the writings of Paul, or any biblical author, were fashioned in the setting of a community or church and sought to address the problems and predicaments characteristic of such a context, how does the student or interpreter of these biblical authors acquire this "measure of sensitivity" that Keck believes is so essential? Keck argues that today's reader must be confronted with Paul's point in a way that is analogous to what occurred

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originally. To a significant extent today's readers or interpreters must share the same problem(s) as the original ones. "The greater the similarity, the more directly Paul's response may address also our own." The setting most analogous, the context where the problems afoot are most similar to the problems shared by the original readers and interpreters of the New Testament, is still the community of faith or church.

This is not to claim that the milieu of the twentieth-century parish is identical to that of the church of the first century. The historical particularities distinctive to the first century cannot be overlooked or dismissed. The life, the situations, and presup­positions of the first and twentieth centuries are not at every point identical. It is ridiculous to assume they are, and if they were, any historical investigation of the New Testament or Christian origins would be irrelevant. However, in the search for a deeper understanding of Paul, or the Gospels of John or Mark, or a number of other writings in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, the greatest similarity in context, setting, and milieu is still with the very setting that gave birth to these traditions and documents, that is, the community of faith.

The point that the contemporary church is the twentieth-century setting most analogous to the writings of the first century is easier to see and accept when the first-century document we have in mind is a Pauline epistle. This is so because the "concrete situations" Keck speaks of are oftentimes more obvious and pronounced in Paul's writings. For example, when Paul begins a passage or section of I Corinthians with "peri de" (now concerning), he is responding to certain questions asked of him regarding specific problem situations present in the Corinthian church, such as the eating of meat sacrificed to idols or the presence of unmarried women, which for the most part are obvious to us, the readers. However, Keek's point holds for any biblical book or portion thereof that arose out of the setting of a particular community of faith. The contemporary church or community of faith is the modern setting that, in Keek's words, "share[s] the same problem as the original ones." Even though these two settings are separated by some nineteen hundred years, they still share common, concrete problems and situations. Issues of unity and authority, of competing beliefs,

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periods of crisis, threat, life, death, uncertainty in matters of life as well as faith, and much more are all the concrete situations or "particular occasions" that the church of the New Testament shares with the contemporary church and with very few, if any, other settings. These first-century occurrences, as Keck says, are truly "prototypes" of the occurrences and occasions perennially a part of the life of a parish or community of faith.

What Keck means here is simply that the interpreter of Paul's letters must be able to sympathize and identify with the same situations and questions that were part of Paul's churches. Failure to have this empathy and understanding leads the student of Paul to err in one of two directions: on the one hand, to take the letters or issues in the letters too lightly, discarding them for being too particular and therefore irrelevant, or, on the other hand, to make too much of the issues, viewing them out of their appropriate contexts and making universal judgments from very concrete and specific instances. It is easy to fall into one of these extreme positions when Paul's epistles are studied without appropriate sensitivity and in a context that fails to do justice to these biblical texts.

If interpreters of the Gospels or Epistles, the Pentateuch or the Prophets lack the measure of sensitivity called for and fail to confront the biblical text in a way analogous to what occurred originally, it may, in large measure, be due to the context and setting in which our biblical and theological studies are done. We will appropriate Paul or Mark or Matthew or Isaiah more fully when we reflect, discuss, and wrestle with these authors and their texts in a setting fraught with situations greatly similar to those original biblical prototypes. Such a setting can only be found in a parish or community of faith, and that is why the Bible continues to speak to the church.

If the good and faithful interpreter is required to possess sensitivity and empathy when determining the social and cultural context of the original setting, 7 as well as the other "classical" and critical tools of translation and interpretation, then the setting and the environment in which this work and this learning is done will make all the difference. The importance of the environment and context in which one's learning and studying are done is readily accepted and implemented in the

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If theology is a discussion about the crises and questions of life and faith, then this discussion would best be pursued in an environment where crises and questions concerning life and faith really occur.

Theology probes and responds to the same questions of life, humanity, and faith that the biblical writers were seeking to address. Once again these questions and dilemmas can only be honestly and pointedly addressed from a theological perspec­tive in a context and setting that shares in a similar or analogous way that particular theological problem. If theology is a discussion about the crises and questions of life and faith, then this discussion would best be pursued in an environment where crises and questions concerning life and faith really occur. If one wishes to explore life and death issues and questions, as theology certainly does, then theology should be done where

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training of other professions and in helping them to master and integrate their new knowledge and skills. 8 Training ministers or theologians should be no different.

What has been said here about the environment of the parish or the community of faith for biblical study and interpretation holds also as a helpful, if not necessary, tool for general theological study and reflection. This is true for two basic reasons. First, theology at its core is biblical and so we are left with the same necessity of a context similar enough to the biblical contexts so that the theological thoughts and writings can be adequately appropriated and understood by the student, theologian, and interpreter. Secondly, theology is usually an attempt to make sense out of the problems and pains and dilemmas of life in the context of faith. Why do people suffer? Why do I suffer? Is there a God? What do I think of Jesus? What do I think of myself and of others? All these questions and more are the stuff out of which theology is made, expressed in the language of the everyday. Yet these are the particular situations, indeed some of these are the very questions Keck has called the interpreter to "penetrate."

T H E O L O G I C A L E D U C A T I O N

life and death are truly taking place. That again, among other limited possibilities, is clearly the local church.

If the parish has played a role in the enterprise of theological education and ministerial training it has, in recent history, been largely in terms of internships and field supervision. 9 However, viewed in this way the parish emerges as an important and vital context for bona fide academic work in the areas of biblical and theological study. The enterprise of biblical and theological training is hindered and, to a certain extent, impoverished because of the context it lacks which the church or community of faith can provide.

We must develop models for theological education that allow for the role of the parish in biblical and theological studies, but the parish must also take greater responsibility and play a larger role in the so-called practical and pastoral fields of ministerial training. There are naturally other dimensions of a student's training that many parishes could easily and effectively provide in coordination with certain seminaries or theological schools. Many such programs have been instituted at some seminaries in cooperation with churches, but the idea is not yet universally accepted. Internships should generally be intensified and lengthened with a stringent and selective process for supervi­sion created by the seminaries in conjunction with denomina­tions and churches. Students should study with certain ministers and priests in a parish while at the same time working in parish ministry. Through the course of these intensified internships students should be exposed to and taken through, step by step, every dimension of the ministry that a particular church has to offer. Weddings, funerals, hospital visiting, counseling, constructing and maintaining programs, as well as dealing with boards and committees, finding out how to handle the pressure of a far too busy schedule and the anger or rejection of a parishioner, and still being a student, reader, and writer would help in truly preparing the seminarian for what lies ahead. To wrestle with theological issues and studies while human need, struggle, and the day-to-day ministry are going on all around not only stimulates questions on the part of the student; it also facilitates the integration of one's own theology with the work of the ministry.

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Seminaries should consider housing some of their depart­ments and faculty in certain select churches. Certainly the practical and pastoral faculties and departments would do well to utilize the setting and life of a parish while engaged in these particular fields of study. Specifically, many parishes could offer courses in human relations and dynamics (something too often overlooked in ministerial training and seminary curriculum), working with small and large groups, homiletics, counseling, working with the sick and dying, and a host of other courses, both academic and practical. Such a list could go on and on. These courses could and perhaps should be taught by the ministers and staff of some particular churches together with theological faculties, utilizing also the tremendous resource of the laity in that particular community or church. It is fair to say that the parish is a resource in the training of the leaders of the church that is far from fully tapped, much to the loss of the seminarians and the churches they eventually serve. Such a list or cataloging of potential courses, which, as we have noted, is far from exhaustive, should not be construed to imply that the role of the parish is that of reducing the theological student to a mere "functionalist," familiar with all the how-to aspects of the ministry. One does need to know how to function as a minister (and the incidence of alcoholism and suicide among ministers reflects that sadly too many do not), but there is far more to learning to minister than knowing how to perform the various tasks.

The minister must still be a theologian, a preacher, teacher, articulator of the vision, and interpreter to a community of faith. How can one, in the words of J. Christiaan Beker, speaking of the Apostle Paul, "translate the Gospel into the contingent particularities of the human situation?" That is the task of the minister as surely as it was the task of the Apostle Paul, Mark, John, or the prophet Jeremiah. In engaging in biblical and theological studies in the context of the parish the students would learn a great deal, not only about the particular field or discipline they are studying, but also how they will translate and appropriate the gospel into their particular setting—a setting, as we have seen, that shares much in common with the settings and contexts of the biblical communities.

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Viewing the parish as an essential component in a student's theological education and ministerial training will foster a closer relationship and perhaps an interdependence between church and seminary. Naturally, both institutions, seminary and church, would grow and benefit from such a relationship. More significantly, however, the men and women seeking to be ministers would benefit tremendously. These future leaders of the church will have been exposed to the setting, demands, and issues surrounding parish ministry in a much more compre­hensive and realistic manner. These students will have seen life and work in the community of faith closeup, knowing full well when they are through the pains and hurts, the challenges and joys typical of the setting of the church. Such instruction and experience will bring students to a fuller awareness of what will be expected of them and what resources they will need in order to work and minister effectively in the setting of the parish.

Also, working and studying in this context will enliven and enrich the biblical and theological study being done presently in a setting so different from that of the community of faith. These students will understand and appropriate their biblical and theological tools and knowledge more deeply and comprehen­sively. Because of the milieu in which they work and have studied, these students will bring sensitivity and resonance to the text being studied and issues being discussed; they will also bring a greater degree of integration and interpretation of biblical and theological questions to their work and congre­gation.

This is not the place to draw out completely a new paradigm for ministerial training that involves both church and seminary. However, it is essential to realize that the church cannot abdicate its responsibility to train and nurture leaders, leaving it solely to theological schools. Neither can seminaries carry on their work without allowing for reaction, involvement, and even, at points, direction from the church. Only when the church and the scholastic communities of seminaries and theological schools join hands and view the task of ministerial training as truly mutual will the leaders of tomorrow's church be better equipped and, in fact, prepared for the myriad tasks and responsibilities that will confront them. If the parish can be viewed as an

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important context and setting for theological education and ministerial training, that relationship of mutuality, laboring together toward the common goal of a more effectively equipped generation of ministers, may be realized.

NOTES

1. For an exhaustive and fascinating discussion of this period of Israel's history, see Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis, 1979).

2. See chapter two of W. Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); and Robert B. Coote, Amos among the Prophets: Composition and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), pp. 24-29.

3. Oscar Cullman, The JoJtannine Circle, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Westmin­ster, 1976), and Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979): two works that discuss John's Gospel from the perspective of a specific community. Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew, and Its Use of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), posits a definite and particular Matthean community, as Howard C. Kee, in The Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark's Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), does for Mark's Gospel. The idea of a "Lukan community" has not received as much attention; however, Robert L. Maddox does discuss Luke's church and audience in his recent book, The Purpose of Luke-Acts (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982), though he does not develop the notion of a Lukan community.

4. See James S. Stewart's Cunningham Lectures, A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St. Paul's Religion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935), and, more recently, J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). Beker speaks of Paul's unique achievement, his "translation of the apocalyptic theme of the Gospel into the contingent particularities of the human situation" (p. ix). See also Beker, part 2, pp. 24, 25, 33.

5. Two good examinations of the internal life (if not strife) of a congregation prompting and shaping Paul's theology and arguments are D. Georgi, Die Gegner des Paulus im 2 KorintherDrief(W. M. A. N. T. 11, Neukirchen: Neukirchen-VIuyn, 1964), and Robert J. Bank, Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

6. Paul and His Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), pp. 16-17. 7. Howard C. Kee expresses succinctly the necessary sensitivity to the wider context

of the original setting in Miracle in the Early Christian World: A Study in Sociohistorical Method (New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr., 1983), p. 3.

8. While many examples exist to illustrate the point, one thinks particularly of the medical profession, where a student is given extensive exposure and experience, learning and practicing the profession in an environment where medicine is actually being practiced, where there are sick people, trauma, death, and healing.

The author notes his indebtedness to the late Dr. William W. Metcalfe of the University of Minnesota, twice president of the American Association of Adult Educators, a committed and insightful scholar and educator, for his illumination not only of this particular point in reference to theological education, but also for his help in clarifying both the shortcomings and the potentials for theological education in America.

9. This, of course, has not always been the case. Throughout the period of the Great Awakening and in eighteenth-century New England the minister was teacher and educator as well as pastor. See Mary L. Gambrell, Ministerial Training in Eighteenth-Century New England (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1937).

38

NATURAL LAW, EVOLUTION, AND THE QUESTION OF PERSONHOOD

T. H. MILBY

Can all fetuses be persons of infinite worth when at the same time it is the divine intent that a far greater number will be conceived than can be expected to survive?

Abortion is one of the most troubling and divisive issues of our time. The United States Supreme Court in its Roe v. Wade decision has established the legal foundation for abortion during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. 1 Public opinion polls indicate that a majority of persons in the United States support this decision while at the same time holding strong reservations about the morality of abortion. 2 The issue of abortion is further complicated i for scientists, especially those who are also committed to the Christian faith. This complica­tion, which has been largely unaddressed, is particularly acute for medical and biological scientists whose attention is directed toward the preservation and protection of human life, especially at early, even prenatal, stages when the question of personhood is compounded by Christian ethics. I refer to what may be described as a conflict between one of the natural laws of biology and the Christian ethic of love for persons.

T. H, Milbyis professor of botany and microbiology at the University of Oklahoma and a member of Saint Stephen's United Methodist Church in Norman, Oklahoma. His current research is devoted to the influence jof climatic conditions on the germination of seeds. In 1983, his article, "The New Biology and the Question of Personhood: Implications for Abortion/' appeared in the American Journal of Law and Medicine.

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It is a principle of biology, specifically reproductive biology, that all successful species possess a reproductive capacity far in excess of what is necessary to replace the existing members within a population. In order for a species to maintain itself it must produce many more offspring than the number of adults that exist in the population at any one time. This excess in the number of offspring allows for the loss of individuals to starvation, predation, and disease, while in the long run perpetuating a population that, though it may fluctuate within limits, remains relatively stable. A larger number of individuals

A larger number of individuals must be produced than the habitat can support in order for the species to survive against natural environmental pressures that tend to reduce its numbers.

must be produced than the habitat can support in order for the species to survive against natural environmental pressures that tend to reduce its numbers. This phenomenon, which may be described as reproductive redundance, applies in a general way to all successful species, whether cockroach or elephant, bacteria or redwood tree.

A second consequence of this redundance is the operation of the processes of adaptation and evolution. Out of this redundance only those individuals best suited to their environ­ment will survive and reproduce. As a consequence of this differential reproduction, populations change, becoming adapted to new environmental conditions, and in the time span of geologic ages new species may be derived.

While this outline in scientific terms is a description of the way reproductive biology functions to accomplish the perpetuation of natural populations and how the redundance of offspring, which is a consequence of that process, contributes to the adaptation and evolution of new species, it may also be said to describe to the person of faith who is not bound by a dogma of biblical literalism the divine process of creation as that process is manifest through the laws of nature. Such a view is expressed by

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Harris F. Rail: "For the scientist they simply express the nature of things as seen in the way they behave. For the religious man they are the thoughts of God. . . . There is a 'reign of law' in nature because God is a God of order. . . . " 3 In this context, natural law may be seen to have both scientific and theological content.

Not only does natural law enjoy divine sanction in both traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant theological thought; the tradition also supports the proposition that natural law applies to both beast and plant and to the life of humankind as well. The operation of natural law, specifically the laws of reproductive biology, performs the creative action of God throughout the living world. For Saint Augustine natural law is seen "as no more than the customary modes of divine action." 4

John Calvin, in Harro M. Hopfl's words, "described 'nature' as the 'ordinary law of God', [and] asserted that 'what is natural cannot be abrogated by either consent or custom' and again that 'the law of nature cannot be abolished by men's vices' ." 5

Although natural law in its classical sense contains elements of moral law, it can be seen in both Calvin and Augustine to include the meaning that is commonly intended by the term today: "the laws of nature discovered empirically by science, as when we refer to the laws of physics and biology," 6 Saint Thomas Aquinas implies the applicability of the principles of nature to humankind in his discussion of natural law: "When speaking of Man's nature we may refer either to that which is proper to him or to that which he has in common with other animals," 7

Applying these assumptions of the tradition regarding natural law, the conclusion may be drawn that reproductive redundance fulfills God's purpose for the perpetuation and modification of the human species in the same way that it serves these purposes with regard to all other kinds of natural populations and species. Herein lies the conflict. On the one hand we accept the fact that it is God's intention, operating through the principle of natural law as manifest in reproductive biology, that a species conceive and produce a far larger number of offspring than can survive to adulthood and reproductive maturity. It is expected that many of those individuals will be

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destroyed at an early age, that many conceptuses will be aborted before the time of birth, and that many more eggs and sperms will be produced than can ever fulfill their reproductive potential. In the case of the human species this is well known to be true. Until only recent times, with the advent and application of modern medicine and measures of public health, the survival of an infant to maturity was more the exception than the rule. And it continues to be a reality of the human reproductive process that at least one-half of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, often at a stage in gestation so early as to escape detection by the pregnant mother. 8 In terms of the operation of natural law this kind of reproductive "wastage" is completely to be expected and is in no way an exception to the operation of natural law as it is manifest through normal human reproductive biology.

The moral dilemma arises, on the other hand, when out of a perspective of concern for individuals an attempt is made to ascribe personhood and legal and political status to prenatal entities. How can we value fetuses and embryos as persons while at the same time acknowledging that large numbers of them are created to serve no other functional purpose within the natural order save, through their collective existence, to provide the diversity out of which the divine creative purpose is fulfilled? Is it possible to reconcile what appears to be a profligacy of offspring, beyond all number of those needed for the species to survive and in numbers that may exceed the carrying capacity of the land, with the notion of individual human worth and value, a notion applied in much of Western Christian thought to the product of every conception from the moment of fertilization of the egg?

How can it be argued, from the perspective of the Christian ethic, that each fetus should be valued as a person when, from the perspective of the divinely sanctioned creative process, many fetuses are redundant and can be expected to perish through normal attrition? Can all fetuses be persons of infinite worth when at the same time it is the divine intent that a far greater number will be conceived than can be expected to survive? Is there an answer that may be given to these questions

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NATURAL LAW

that will preserve human worth and dignity, as those qualities may be applied to the individual prenatally, while at the same time acknowledging the validity and operability of natural law as the divine creative process for humankind? How can we respond to this apparent contradiction? While it may be that no answer that can be offered will be totally satisfactory, some tentative insights into the questions should be considered.

For many of those who confront the issue the answer is simply to deny the applicability of one element or the other of the paradox to the human experience. A common answer disclaims the operation of natural law as an implement of human creation. This stance would accept the laws of reproductive biology as they apply to all nonhuman species, but would disallow their application to the evolution and survival of the human species. Holders of this view claim that humankind is a special case in the created order and believe that although the laws of evolution and adaptation may bear on all other species, they are suspended for humankind. The difficulty of this position lies in the very humaneness out of which its motivation springs. Although those holding this view can no doubt accept without alarm the extravagant production and loss of propaguleg, i.e., sperms and eggs before conception, a similar extravagance in the demise of embryos and fetuses following conception is difficult to reconcile with the notion of a compassionate God, if indeed these postconception propagules are understood to be endowed with the quality of personhood. Can a God of compassion employ a creative process the successful working out of which presumes the inevitable destruction of large numbers of persons preliminary to the production of a fewer number of persons which are better suited to survive?

The antithesis of this view would insist that humankind is in no way different from all other species of organisms and as such is (or should be) subject without qualification to the working of the biological laws of reproduction, evolution, and adaptation. No distinction can or need be made in terms of reproductive biology to accommodate the Christian view that human beings enjoy a special relationship with and a special kind of affection from their creator. How do we allow for the special qualities of personhood, which place worth on the individual, without

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risking the suspension or negation of the divinely sanctioned creative process?

A clue to the direction we may take in our resolution of this dilemma comes from data cited earlier in this discussion with regard to the frequency with which abortion occurs spontan­eously in the human population. If it is true, as those statistics indicate, that at least one-half of all conceptions do spontan­eously abort, many of those so early as to remain undetected by the pregnant mother, it is consistent with evidence that comes from the observation of survivability of organisms in general that those that are in some way naturally defective are removed first from the population. This kind of attrition of weak and defective members from natural populations is an expression of the working out of the law of nature that correlates fitness and survivability. This kind of attrition occurs naturally in the human reproductive process, as a function of the laws of nature by means of which the human race is strengthened and modified, and if our claim is correct—that natural law is the process through which divine creativity is accomplished—then we may also infer that it is consistent with the divine purpose that these spontaneous abortions occur as a way of fulfilling that purpose.

May it not further be reasonably inferred that the proper human response to this phenomenon is one of passivity? It should not be interfered with. This is not to argue that in human experience we should resign ourselves to fate. It is to say that, at the prenatal stage of human life, where the impulse we may have to interfere with the process of human development (out of humane compassion) conflicts with the requirement to allow the working out of natural law (where that law works to accomplish human evolution and the survival of the species), our choice should be in the direction of natural law.

Assuming that a high level of spontaneous abortion occurs as a natural and purposeful phenomenon, our response should be to accept the loss of those fetuses without attempting to interfere.

Furthermore, we should do so, not out of dread that our neglect is a failure to display compassion for persons, but rather a sense of conformity with the divine purpose being worked out

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through the process of natural law. Likewise, it may be assumed that although the fetuses lost during this stage as a result of this process may indeed be alive and possess certain human qualities and attributes, it would be consistent with what we understand of divine compassion that the quality of personhood be bestowed at a stage in human development beyond this point. An analogy out of human experience may be found at a time in history when infant mortality was high. Barbara Tuchman relates that it was the practice in western Europe during the fourteenth century, when most children succumbed to disease before their fifth year, to withhold parental affection and concern from the child until such time as that child had achieved a stage in life when its survival was more nearly assured. 9 In a sense, its identity as a person was conferred only when its full potential as a person was more likely to be realized.

It would be consistent with our understanding of divine compassion that personhood be bestowed on developing embryos at a stage when natural attrition has eliminated defective members of the fetal population.

Similarly, by analogy, it would be consistent with our understanding of divine compassion that the quality of personhood be bestowed on the developing entities at a stage in the creative process when attrition has eliminated redundant and defective members from the fetal population. On the basis of this assumption, personhood would be ascribed to embryos at a stage in development when under normal circumstances their survival outside the womb would ordinarily be assured.

If this latter conclusion can be accepted, then it may be that what appears in the beginning to be a contradiction may be the consequence of a misunderstanding. In actuality, if personhood remains unrealized until postnatal viability has been achieved, then our involvement with prenatal embryos can be undertaken without fear of damage to persons.

What courses of action does this understanding of human evolution, adaptation, and human population allow? One

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course, mentioned earlier, is to accept spontaneous fetal abortion as it occurs naturally with the understanding that it is a normal part of the reproductive process by which human evolution and species survivability are achieved. It would seem, therefore, that although continued basic research into human conception and reproduction should be supported and en­couraged, out of motivation similar to that underlying all basic research, attention should be directed away from efforts specifically concerned with frustrating this natural and sponta­neous attrition of the human fetal population, especially where that attrition involves the loss of defective fetuses. This may be described as a passive course of action.

A more active course of action, of course, would be both to permit and approve induced abortion. This practice of volitional abortion may be seen as a positive manifestation of human social responsibility. If our ingenuity has given us the power to control those postnatal forces that formerly limited the human population and for which the human reproductive potential was designed to compensate, then it is a reflection of the achievement of a further level of social maturity to impose artificial and self-chosen methods to limit human numbers— including abortion—as a substitute for those previously operative, naturally limiting forces.

For us to adopt these two courses of action manifests, in a particularly distinctive way, the unique place of human beings in the hierarchy of being. For us to accept the high level of spontaneous prenatal attrition signals a recognition of our place in the world of creatures to which our biological nature gives witness. For us to practice abortion to limit our numbers, as a deliberately chosen substitute for the natural forces that accomplished that purpose at an earlier stage in human social development, is a genuine sign of our transcendence of the natural order of which we are inextricably a part. It is a course of action befitting a time described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as "a world . . . come of age." 1 0

But what of the abortion debate and of the concern of biological scientists whose research involves experimental use of human fetuses and other human propagules? It is one thing to make intellectual assertions about where theological and

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scientific lines converge and the bearing of that convergence on the question of personhood. It is quite a different matter to find surcease from the ambiguity that is common among us on the question of abortion and the use of human fetuses in research.

While it may be excessive to believe that misgivings grow only out of ignorance and that a proper grasp of our human position within the world of nature is its cure, nevertheless, anxiety is certainly amenable to relief when ignorance is replaced by information and understanding. It is with the purpose of providing that understanding that a discussion of the interrela­tionship between natural law, evolution, and personhood should be undertaken, a discussion that at the same time may move us toward that maturity of which Bonhoeffer speaks.

NOTES

1. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). 2. Victoria A. Sackett, "Between Pro-life and Pro-choice/' Public Opinion 8 (1985);

53-55. 3. The Christian Faith and Way (New York: Publ. for Cooperative Publ. Assn. by

Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1947), p. 27. 4. Rudolph C. Eucken, "Law," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James

Hastings (New York: Scribners, 1951), 7:805-807. 5. The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1982), p. 180. 6. Errol Harris, "Natural Law and Naturalism," International Philosophical Quarterly

23 (1983): 115. 7. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Latin text and English translation; New York:

McGraw-Hill; London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964), 28:85. 8. Reproduction in Mammals, cd. C. R. Austin and R. V. Short (Cambridge: Cambridge

Univ. Pr., 1972), 5:147. 9. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (New York:

Knopf, 1978), pp. 50, 52. 10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard

Bethge; trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 146.

47

CONTROL: POWER OR IMPOTENCE?

CARROLL SAUSSY

When we transcend our need to be in control and attend to the possibilities that God opens to us, then we are truly in control.

How much control over our lives do we need in order to live satisfying and religiously concerned lives? The question is an important one not only for religious and spiritual purposes but also for pragmatic and realistic ends. Pastors and other professionals in religion are continuously confronted by the need for personal control. This need is rooted in the nature of human existence and can be defined as the drive to be in charge of one's life. But it can be distorted and, if not expressed in creative directions, can be destructive. The demonic aspects of the drive for control can be seen in the denial of death and narcissism, both of which characterize professional ministers as much as other professionals. The drive also has organizational pathologies, particularly in congregational and other church political conflicts.

My argument is that the drive for control has both positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect is the desire to participate in life. The negative aspect is the fear of separation and of limits. Both are related to the drive to secure one's connections and significance. This argument leads to the larger conclusion that

Carroll Saussy is associate professor of pastoral care at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. Her research interests include the implications of process thought for counseling, and the theology and psychology of the family.

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C O N T R O L

control has spiritual and theological dimensions. When we transcend our need to be in control and attend to the possibilities that God opens to us, then we are truly in control.

AN ONTOLOGY OF CONTROL

An ontology of control must include an understanding of the very stuff of human existence as well as a description of the fundamental dynamic or motivation to be in control.

The "stuff" of human existence is relational. Process modes of thought, which are relational modes of thought, underscore the fact that we are constituted by our relations. Alfred North Whitehead says that apart from relations there is nothing at all, and that through our relationships we are constantly becoming. We are also constantly entering into the becoming of family and co-workers, friends and acquaintances, and members of our faith communities. (Process thought also provides a way of coping with the need for control and celebrating genuine, limited control on a day-to-day basis, something explored in the discussion of the "pneumiatrics" of control.)

Because we are by nature relational, we are motivated to be connected. "It is not good for man or woman to be alone." From the moment of birth and throughout life we seek others in order to know ourselves and love ourselves and give ourselves and engage in life. Relationship is a way of affirming life.

We seek others for additional reasons as well. Standing on the shoulders of Otto Rank, Ernest Becker held that "the fear of life and the fear of death are the mainsprings of human activity." 1

The search for connection, then, can also be a disguised form of evading life or denying death.

Through lived experience we learn about the human condition. In Becker's language, we discover that we are both animal and symbolic, both trapped in a mortal human body and gifted with a transcending spirit. We discover that indeed our control is severely limited, and that even our seemingly omnipotent parents are not spared these limits: they have no power over death. The awareness of death triggers a fundamental narcis­sism. We are driven to prove that we are objects of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of fundamental significance in the

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universe. We want to count, and not simply to perish. I will win my immortality by becoming the perfect daughter . . . the respected leader . . . the ideal s tudent . . . the trusted friend . . . the life of the party . . . the self-sufficient person. Such projects demand that we control our imperfections or what we allow others to see of our imperfections in order to come closer to actualizing our ideal.

However, this urge toward immortality is inevitably frus­trated by the reality of death. In other words, our control is controlled by the human condition. In order to stay in control, therefore, we devise strategies to keep the thought of limits at bay, unconsciously to convince ourselves that we do not die. Our language is full of such lies: "We will live here forever." "Everything is fine." "I am in perfect health."

Control is both an attempt to deny mortality and the power to participate in life.

Control is both an attempt to deny mortality and the power to participate in life. Strategies, character armor, illusions, lies are necessary if we are to get on with living in the face of dying. They are attempts to control anxiety and fear. We would have a hard time motivating ourselves if we continuously reflected on the transitoriness of life. While we need illusions, then, we should seek vital illusions, those that expand rather than restrict life. For example, take the illusion that we can truly "play it safe"; that if we were careful enough we could live a risk-free life. "Safety first and always" might protect us from considerable risk but would hardly be life-enhancing. Think of all we would deny ourselves if we gave up risks: cars, planes, crowds, even relationships. On the other hand, consider the illusion that "life is an endless adventure." We have more talents to trade with, more knowledge and wisdom to cultivate, more places to go and peoples to discover, more gifts to give and to receive, children and grandchildren to cherish. Yes, but age and energy bring their limitations, motivation wavers, disappointments and loss checker our lives. "Life is an endless adventure" is a lie, but

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because it is a vital lie, it would undoubtedly lead to a more enriched life than "safety first and always." And both are strategies for controlling anxiety about life and death.

In his efforts to shatter illusions of power, Becker underesti­mates the potential for control that we do have as limited human beings. Power, vitality, is ability to engage in life, to relate, to create, to celebrate, and it is also power to deny mortality, perchance even in that engagement, relating, creating and/or celebrating. Becker fails to recognize a drive to live that is not a disguised drive to deny death but a drive to live for the sake of living.

Control, then, is both an attempt to deny mortality and the power to participate in life. In its best sense, control is the ability to transcend immediate wants and say yes to life's challenges.

A PSYCHOLOGY OF CONTROL

How does the need to control show up in life? Born into the human condition, the infant quickly learns that mother and father do not always meet its needs. What does the child do about the unwelcome situation? The child struggles for control. In a very primitive way, the child determines what it needs to do or be in order to win the kinds of responses it seeks. Both consciously and unconsciously, the child becomes a manipula­tor. 2 Manipulation, learned in childhood, is for the sake of controliin a threatening and perhaps rejecting world.

Where does one cross the boundary between an accurate sense of limited control and manipulative control? Healthy control acknowledges the facts of reality. And the prime fact is that our control is limited by the human condition: we die. There are other major aspects of our lives over which we have no control: our parents and the conditions surrounding our birth, our physiological and psychological givens, our heritage, some illnesses, accidents, to name but a few.

The control exercised by the relatively secure person is remarkably different from the control exercised by the person suffering from excessive doubt. The secure, calmly self-assured' person has befriended herself or himself; accepts the givens of her or his life, its strengths and the limits imposed by the life

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cycle; relates honestly and openly to significant others—and does not need to overcontrol self or manipulate others. The person who suffers from excessive self-doubt, feelings of rejection, and therefore fear and anxiety, who feels inferior and insecure (and such feelings can be long-repressed ones), may try to handle the bad situation through overcontrol of self and/or others.

The irony is that the need for control is met when one is not in pursuit of control. Although Linda Tschirhart Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan are writing about self-esteem in women, their comments on control are relevant to all.

If a desperate need to be in control rules somone's life, she is not truly in control; the need controls her. To be genuinely in control means being able to tolerate feelings of fear, uncertainty, inadequacy or self-doubt from time to time without manipulating everyone and everything into our singular view of the world.3

The controlling person has difficulty relating in a noncontrolling way. Some people are unable to nurture without control; some people are unable either to give up or to share control without feeling compromised or threatened.

Let us look at how control shows up in peer relationships, and specifically within committed relationships between adults. Ideally, two persons within a relationship share control in mutual respect. However, control easily becomes the power to control another. One member of the partnership is dominant, the other submissive. One is dependent, the other independent. Or the two live in a power struggle. Once enlightened, we do not want either to control the other or be controlled by the other. Yet we do want to exercise some control over the behavior of others, as well as to feel that others have some control over our own behavior. Without such mutual control and interdepen­dence, we would not feel significant in the lives of others.

THE PNEUMIATRICS OF CONTROL

Pneumiatrics is my term for that branch of theology dealing with the healing of the spirit. Pneumiatrics is to spirituality what psychiatry is to medicine.

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When we transcend our need to be secure, to be in control, and attend to the possibilities God opens to us in any given moment, choosing that possibility which we genuinely believe is most life-enhancing, then we are truly in control. The choosing may be an active assertion; it can also take the form of letting go, recognizing that events or relations or God is choosing me.

To look at the idea of control in terms of our faith life is to run up against one of the deepest mysteries of human life: we are both incredibly empowered people with potential for great generativity; at the same time we are estranged weaklings capable of vast evil.

The most fundamental experience of power or control is the power to affirm oneself, the courage to say yes to one's existence, to exercise what Paul Tillich calls "the courage to be." The will is the vehicle of the power one uses in order to exercise control over one's life. Self-affirmation lies on a continuum between manipulative, aggressive control over self and others, and an inability to assert oneself, to claim one's existence. At one end of the continuum lies a false sense of omnipotence; at the other, a false sense of helplessness. Somewhere near the middle: limited control over one's destiny.

In both active and passive modes, we have the power to respond to possibility, to receive grace, to affirm life, to engage our destiny. Graced human beings, we have considerably more genuine internal control over our everyday lives than we make use of. I am not talking about control over the events that come our way—although we obviously have some control in shaping our external life—but about an inner, spiritual control over how we respond to such events.

Process thought offers a context for understanding the engagement of one's destiny, or the actualization of one's possibilities.4 Ours is a God in whom all possibilities for all time find their being. God creates and holds in harmony all possibilities. Therefore, there is nothing in all of existence or the possibility of existence that is not a part of the nature of God.

The Creator God, the psalmist tells us, has made man and woman just a little less than God, giving human beings dominion over the earth. We are made a little less than God

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because our movement toward fullness of life comes from God and each aim is experienced in God. We are made a little less than God because we share with God the ability to experience novelty, beauty, and satisfaction. All willing, all creating, all loving, all aiming is of the nature of God. Indeed, God is active in an intimate and pervasive way in all of life, cosmic and microcosmic. But God turns over to us, moment by moment, responsibility to actualize ("control" in its best sense) a possibility. Control resides in the act of aiming. Control resides in commitment or noncommitment to the project of God, which is to see actualized the largest possibilities available to everyone existing. Control involves willing a choice in one direction rather than another. Somewhere among the options there is a choice that leads to more life, an option that with all possibilities finds its being in God. To discover the larger choice is to discover something of the heart of God, or what has long been called the "will of God." Rather than seek the will of God from without, we first discover the will of God from within, and then seek confirmation of that lure or conviction within a community of faith. We are more alive, more creative, more responsible when we discover our own godliness. The lure, the desire to give, to live for others, to exchange a destructive or negative way of responding to life for a more caring, creative response is God's willing or aiming within us. The transcending God, known through intimacy, becomes more our God.

Let us suppose that our spouse or friend makes a decision that means that certain financial resources are committed; we would have chosen otherwise. Or our supervisor or the person to whom we are professionally accountable makes a decision that affects our scope of responsibility; we had hoped for a different outcome. In either case, assume we are presented with a fait accompli. For the sake of illustration, consider the decision irreversible. Control has been taken from us. Now I do not want to give the impression that decisions are not best made by both members of a partnership, because I believe that they are. And I do not want to suggest that anger is illegitimate when ground rules have been violated and one member of a partnership has made a decision without adequate conversation regarding the options and consequences of the decision. But after the

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legitimate anger has been expressed and some agreement about future decisions or behaviors has been reached, the aggrieved one has to decide what to do with her or his feelings. One can passively accept the consequences of the other's decision and at the same time control the other through resentment, anger, or passive-aggressive behavior. One can resign oneself angrily or become depressed. One can rage against what has happened. Or one can give up control over the situation, living with, yes, even finding God through the consequences of what has been decided. There are new possibilities within the limits of the new situation.

In other words, when something comes our way unbidden, a frustration or disappointment of major or minor proportion, God is there. If we quiet our rumblings, the internal blasphemies we are hurling at the world, and in prayer seek to know the possibilities open to us, we have the power, the control, to co-create with God a unique response for this new moment. And in that response we are co-creating the other with whom we are dealing. When I let go of whatever issue it is that I am trying to control, something remarkable happens. I feel a physical release and relief in my body; I feel unburdened and renewed. I know freedom because I have at least momentarily broken my excessive need to be in control. An everyday frustration becomes a religious experience. Perhaps because I deliberately evoke my faith in the presence and lure of God, I am also aware that God and I are co-creators of the me who emerges in the experience. That is genuine control, a perishing to the old self and rising to the new, as miraculous as the healing touch of Jesus, and with just as ongoing a challenge as his words, "Go and sin no more."

The difficulty in explaining this process is that I risk giving the impression that resignation to social evil is possibly a religious response. I am not talking about things that can be and ought to be changed, but about power struggles within relationships. I am talking about impotent control.

At any instance in our life, we have, for the asking, the grace of God to be spiritually in control. Of course we do not always use it: we are frail human beings who sin. Trying to live one's belief in an ongoing co-creation of self and other is sometimes far

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more demanding than my self-seeking nature would choose. Many times I crowd out the lure: get busy, charge ahead, stay in control. Yet even in our sinfulness, when we have squandered rich opportunities to reveal the God of the crucified and risen Jesus, the same God, whose hands hold the whole world, waits to see our outstretched arms and fills them anew with fresh, graceful possibilities for the next moments of our precious lives. Following the lure is a theology of the cross, but it is also a theology of resurrection. God continues with us to create man and woman just a little less than God, giving us dominion over all of the earth.

What are the criteria by which we pick out what we dare to call the lure of God? In some cases, the lure may be so evident that we could not fool ourselves into believing that there is more than one religious response to the decision at hand. At other times, the lure may be far more subtle. The key question to be answered as we search for the Spirit of God is whether a decision brings expansion or diminution to self and to anyone else affected by one's decision.

CONCLUSION

Let us return to a variation of the original questions, this time in terms of ministry in its large sense: the ministry of the people of God within the local congregation and in outreach beyond the congregation. The ordained or appointed minister is here understood as a central leader and enabler of the people of God, the church.

How much control over our lives do we need in order to love and to work effectively and joyfully among the people we are called to serve? How does the need for and expression of control affect relationships within our faith community and with God?

The ordained or appointed leader who lives her or his belief that at each moment God lures us toward new possibilities for a more expansive, more generous presence and service within the community is a sacrament of graced control. Such persons recognize both their potential and their limits as co-creators not only of themselves and their congregation, but of the city of God as well. 5 Such persons are as concerned about developing the

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leadership potential of the members of their communities as they are about fulfilling their own needs. In other words, they are generative people who share their power with others through genuine delegation of authority. Rather than allowing jealousy or envy to shape their response to the gifts of others, they clear the way for their sisters and brothers to trade with new talents. They empower rather than cling to power.

When one lives attuned to the lure of God, power struggles that threaten to tear apart the fabric of a community are seen with fresh eyes. Beginning with self, one must assess the nature of the control at the heart of any given struggle. What is at the heart of my conflict and what does it say about my personal needs and fears? Who are the major players in the struggle? Where does the control reside? Are we dealing with a question of domination that grows out of self-doubt, rejection, and fear, or are we dealing with mutual influence among interdependent people? In other words, is the control being exercised impotent or creative control? What would be the most generative, expansive way in which the conflict might be resolved?

One of the major reasons why power struggles, divisions, and scandals become demonic and threaten to or actually tear a congregation apart is that we have not learned to make our behavior conform to our beliefs, much less to the foundation of our faith: God-is-with-us. We have not adequately interwoven our Sunday creed with our weekday activities. We do not really believe that if God is, then God is here and now, intimately involved in every breath we breathe and word we speak. The one sovereign God is in the power struggle that is tearing two factions of a congregation apart. That is, the lure is available to all parties willing to discern God's Spirit. Such discernment requires a generative openness, the willingness to let go, to give up control and be moved forward to a moment new to God and all of us.

Whether individually or collectively, when we believe that God is with us and transcend our need to be in control, attending to the possibilities open to us in any given moment and choosing that possibility that we genuinely believe is most life-enhancing, then we are truly in control. The frustration or

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agony of everyday conflict becomes shot through with the peace of God and we know risen life. Or as my colleague Marjorie Suchocki puts it, "Jesus becomes the firmness in the water, and we, too, can walk." 6

NOTES

1. Sam Keen, "The Heroics of Everyday Life," Psychology Today (April 1974): 74. This is the thesis of Becker's classic book, The Denial of Death (New York: Free, 1973). For a critique of Becker, see Donald Evans, "Ernest Becker's Denial of Life," Religious Education Review 5:1 (January 1979): 25-34. Two other classics: Robert Jay Lifton, The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); and Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny (New York: Norton, 1981).

2. For a detailed study of how this manipulation takes place, see Ernst G. Beier and Evans G. Valens, People-Reading: How We Control Others, How They Control Us (New York: Stein and Day, 1975). Also see Will Schutz, The Interpersonal Underworld (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1966).

3. Linda Tschirhart Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan, Women and Self-Esteem: Understanding and Improving the Way We Thinkand Feel about Ourselves (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984), p. 412.

4. Two useful works include Gordon E. Jackson, Pastoral Care and Process Theology (Washington, D. C : Univ. Pr. of America, 1981), and Evelyn E. Whitehead and James D. Whitehead, Christian Life Patterns: The Psychological Challenges and Religious Invitations of Adult Life (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1982).

5. I use the phrase "city of God" because it connotes a more democratic society than "reign of God" or "kingdom of God." The latter adds sexism to monarchy.

6. Marjorie Suchocki, Cod, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 101.

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SIX POINTS IN A THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING

TED DOTTS

Transcendence, joy, repentance: what place do these have in the experience of suffering?

A theology of suffering. I contemplate the phrase. The indefinite article a connotes something not previously recognized, in contrast to the definite article the, which connotes something familiar. A theology of suffering suggests something about suffering not previously recognized. Something not previously recognized implies a presence, a presence awaiting an uncovering.

Uncovering? Theology means using words to uncover the absolute in the

midst of the relative. 1 A theology means, then, to use words to uncove r some th ing in our c o n n e c t e d and dependen t —relative—existence.

The English word suffering comes from two Latin words—sub and ferre. Sub means "under" and ferre means "to bear." When we suffer, we bear. The word to bear, an Anglo-Saxon word, means to bring forth, to give birth, to render, to lean toward.

But, if the indefinite article a means uncovering something not previously recognized, how could I render anything about suffering not previously recognized? With Jesus, Job, Flannery O'Connor, Kierkegaard, Barth, and Solzhenitsyn at hand, how

Ted Dotts is pastor of Saint John's United Methodist Church in Lubbock, Texas.

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could I render the not previously recognized? 2 Indeed, should I even consider so doing?

My first thoughts about suffering led me away from thinking about suffering toward thinking about producing a unique thesis. This near change of direction uncovers a first point in a theology of suffering—suffering diverts. Even thinking about suffering diverts.

Diverts from what? From the task of staying with the suffering. How sneaky. Suffering keeps our attention diverted. "The better to eat us up," Red Riding Hood's wolf would say.

In Job we see the nature of the diversions accompanying suffering—even thinking about suffering.

Job asked two questions that diverted him. He asked Why? and he asked How? Why did this happen? How am I to live with it? He did not receive an answer to either diversionary question. Instead, he received a new question, a question that set him again at the center of his suffering. He asked Who? Who is with me in this mess? Once he recognized this previously unrecog­nized, but ever-present question, Job sang from the deepest deeps of his awful suffering:

Then Job answered the Lord: "I know that thou canst do all things,

and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 'Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you declare to me.' I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes." (42:1-6)

Job ends with a song. In the midst of suffering, we do not find ourselves singing as we go. Our going makes us dull plodders through the pain-filled time of our suffering. We need more than a beginning and an ending song. Job shows us how to live in the midst of suffering. We live into suffering by asking Who? Who is with me?

THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING

If Job reveals the Who, Jesus lives by, on, with, of the Who. In Jesus we recognize the one who goes before us into suffering. This insight uncovers a second point about suffering, a note we find ourselves eager to deny and to ignore at the first hint of suffering. Suffering means we enter suffering. We do not run away or go around, but we enter. The followers of Jesus follow

In Jesus we recognize the one who goes before us into suffering.

his steps on a path of suffering, the suffering that arises as witnesses pit God against the world, and the suffering that steals upon the just and the unjust alike from the dark mystery of evil.

We ask, "Who so lives in Jesus that he can enter suffering?" Rather than offer us words of explanation, Jesus teaches us to pray. Prayer uncovers the presence of God. Following Jesus, we pray, "Abba" (Mark 14:36, Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). Perhaps a Semite catches the meaning where we moderns miss it. Abba means "father," but it carries the deeply intimate sense of "daddy."

Who goes with us? Abba. Daddy. Parent. Momma. What characterizes a parent? The assurance of a future. Parents work to assure the future of their children. Present suffering does not define nor confine the children of God. God labors to assure a future, a future not limited to the present. Herein appears a third point about suffering: Suffering can only achieve a penultimate status. Suffering cannot contain the ultimate, because the ultimate, God, labors from within to assure a future.

Once we discover that suffering holds at the worst only a penultimate place in existence, we begin to ask where it ends. This raises the fourth point about suffering: Suffering ends in transcendence. Those who suffer transcend suffering: they encounter the Highest in the very midst of their worst.

Flannery O'Connor, the southern writer of novels and short stories, often used the grotesque as a medium to convey her experience, to do her theology. She knew the grotesque through

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6 2

the awful distortions of her disease—seminated lupus erythe­matosus. She suffered—in and out of hospitals, on and off medications, bounced from one side effect to another by the very drugs designed to help her. Worse than her physical condition was the isolation she suffered. Unable to live and to work near New York with other writers, she took refuge on a small Georgia farm. Her mother attended to her dying.

But, O'Connor transcended. She wrote to her friend "A":

I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies, (p. 163, see end note 2)

Suffering bears us to the ultimate. When I linger over O'Connor's words, I feel joy. Point

number five in a theology of suffering: Suffering turns into joy.

What if the true, the strongest, the most refreshing and enduring temporal fulfilments await us at the very point where in our simplicity, which might well be our blindness, we will not seek them, in the repulses, obstructions and disturbances which we meet, in our confrontation with the dark aspect of life . . .? (Karl Barth, p. 383, see end note 2)

"But," some will say, "not everyone feels joy in suffering." True. The gospel of God remains a scandal for those who do

not exercise faith. The message from John's Gospel, "Your sorrow will turn into joy" (16:20), and from James's letter, "Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials" (1:2), will sound like babbling to those who trust that suffering and death win in the end. But to those who risk allowing the challenge and the threat of life—suffering—to own shares in shaping existence, it tells of an on-tiptoe existence, leaning forward to see around the bend.

Of course, the exercise of faith cannot, then, mean support of pet projects or a guarantee of worldly success. Indeed, the exercise of faith, especially where suffering appears, will call out repentance—a revision of life. We suffer and we find ourselves

THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING

face-to-face with an occasion to repent. We may not take it, but we must either take it or reject it.

In 1943, Adolph Hitler's man, Heinrich Himmler, visited the model death camp at Dachau. Himmler's lackey, Major Karl Wolff, reported that Himmler asked to see Jewish prisoners executed. The SS took him to a pit where Jews, prodded by yelling guards, stripped off their clothing, ran along a narrow ditch, stopped, and turned their backs to the SS troops, who shot them in the head. As Himmler watched from close quarters, one of the shots splattered a Jewish head. Some Jewish brain splashed on Himmler's coat and face. Himmler became ill. Wolff wiped Himmler's face and helped him walk away.

The moment of repentance brought into existence by suffering had come, but Himmler turned away. From then on Himmler took in the deaths of Jews by reading columns of statistics.

Point number six in a theology of suffering: Suffering creates a moment for repentance, a moment to revise life.

NOTES

1. Edward Schillebeeckx, God among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York: Crossroad, 1983), p. 157. See also his Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. Hubert Hoskins (New York: Seabury, 1979).

2. Useful works include Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters, ed, Sally Fitzgerald (New York; Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979); Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Gospel of Sufferings, trans. A. S. Aldsworth and W, S. Ferrie (London: J. Clarke, 1955); Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: Clark, 1960-61), 3:4; and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). See also Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr. , The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1981).

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THE ORIGINS OF THREE PASTORAL PERSPECTIVES

LAUREL A. BURTON

Emphasis on rules, on individual choice, or on dialogue: these are three different styles of pastoral care. Family systems theory offers an explanation of the origins of these styles.

People engaged in the work of pastoral care operate with implicit assumptions about theology, psychology, and ethics. The kind of pastoral care provided depends on these assump­tions and reflects a particular perspective. Pastoral perspectives, then, are the lenses through which ministering people view God, themselves, and others.

Pastoral perspectives are influenced by many things, not the least being the simple fact of modernity. Modernity is characterized by our gradual realization that things are not as they once were.

The transition from traditional cultures to cultures that have been greatly relativized has had an impact on pastoral care perspectives. In traditional cultures one simply would not have a "religious preference." One would not have the option to prefer this faith community to that. Rather, one would practice the religion that is passed down, parent to child.

Laurel A. Burton, an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, is head of the pastoral care department of the Boston University Medical Center. He is the editor of the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy and is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled Pastoral Caring.

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Modern societies, however, provide remarkable freedom for choosing how things shall be and how things shall be understood. One choice might be to live somehow set apart from the rest of the culture, maintaining distinct boundaries and monitoring entrances and exits and communication with the outside world, so as to preserve an authoritative tradition. Or, one might choose a different direction and "go with the flow," embracing whatever is current. Anyone making one of these choices cannot fail to recognize that there are others who have not made this choice. Further, it will be recognized that both perspectives share an essential time and space relation­ship, suggesting that each is an alternative approach to a similar end. Pastoral perspectives are, therefore, as pluralistic as the culture.

R U L E S F O R T H E R E L I G I O U S

Within a religious context, the end toward which people strive is transformation or salvation, and the means to that end is often some set of rules or values implemented by the clergy as a pastoral perspective. These rules become extraordinarily im­portant in times of crisis, because they become the maps which are used as guides through the territory of pluralism's conflicting claims.

There are three typologies that may be used to describe the pastoral perspectives from which a religious person may operate. The first of these types asserts the rules. It is an approach that presumes a fixed order that has been determined by a higher power, an order containing certain immutable values to which each person is obliged to adhere. The second type diminishes the rules, presuming that each person is the focus for determining order in her or his own world. On this view values will differ from individual to individual or from situation to situation, and all values will have equal validity. The third type interprets the rules, seeking to bring the reflective elements of reason, tradition, and faith experience to bear on the situation. Dialogue within the community of faith is the setting for this perspective.

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When the pastoral perspective is based on asserting the rules, the shepherding task may sound something like this:

MRS. B: Oh, pastor, sometimes I feel so bad since my husband died, I just wish God would take me, too.

PASTOR: Mrs. B, you shouldn't talk that way. Why, what would God think?

MRS. B: Sometimes I don't even care, pastor. Isn't that terrible? But it's true. Sometimes I just want to die and get it over with.

PASTOR: God's purposes are God's own, Mrs. B. Suffering is all a part of his great plan for your life. You must not ask to die. That is contrary to what God has in mind. When God wants you, God will take you. Right now, you had better ask forgiveness for that attitude. Why don't we pray that God will absolve you of that thought and give you the strength to suffer in silence?

The desire to die, articulated by Mrs. B . , is perceived by the pastor to be contrary to God's rules, and therefore it is a sin that must be forgiven. Mrs. B. has broken the rule, and the pastor's task, from this perspective, is to correct Mrs. B. with appropriate judgment, exhortation, and prayer so that a right relationship with God might be restored. Asserting the rules, then, is the means toward achieving Mrs. B's salvation.

Consider another encounter. In this case, pastor # 2 is calling on a pregnant woman from the parish who is in the hospital having tests. This pastor's perspective is quite different from the first example.

PASTOR: Well Janet, did you find out the test results yet? JANET: ( A S tears come to her eyes) Yes . . , the doctor . . . she

said that . . . t h a t . . . the baby will be . . . retarded. (She cries.)

PASTOR: Oh Janet, I'm so sorry. What are you going to do? JANET: I don't know, I just don't know. Bill and I hadn't wanted

any more children, but when I got pregnant . . . well . . . now this. Is it fair to the other two? Could we keep the baby at home? What about my job? The doctor mentioned having an abortion. What do you think?

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PASTOR: Sounds to me like all you see are the problems of having a retarded child. Maybe an abortion is the answer. But I can't tell you what to do, Janet. It's what you want that is important. That's all that matters.

JANET: Well, I think I want the abortion, but . . . oh, I don't know.

PASTOR: You're hesitating? JANET: Yes. I mean, the baby is alive, it's a real little person

inside me, is it OK to . . . to . . . well, you know. I want to do what's right.

PASTOR: Of course you do, Janet. What is right is what is right for you. No one else can tell you what to do. There are no rules. You must do what is right for you.

Instead of asserting the rules, pastor # 2 diminishes the rules, suggesting that each situation and each person is unique and that decisions should be made according to the beliefs and values of the one taking the action. This is different from situation ethics in that, here, transformation or salvation may be understood as the result of being true to oneself and thereby being true to God.

Let's look at a third conversation. Pastor # 3 is having lunch with the head of the parish council, a person who is also an executive with a local company recently cited by the bishop "as an example of companies guilty of crimes against humanity because of their manufacturing of nuclear weapons."

GEORGE: The bishop is entitled to her opinion, but I have to say I think this is going too far.

PASTOR: YOU sound pretty angry. GEORGE: I guess I do. Our parish study group has raised so

many issues for me, more than I want to face right now. I'm not perfect, pastor, but I'm not immoral either. I'm not out to hurt people! This is a matter of self-defense and freedom. To keep peace we must stay strong, and in the twentieth century that means nuclear weapons.

PASTOR: You may be right, George, but maybe there's a larger issue here. What's the dominant picture of Jesus—for you, I mean?

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GEORGE: Oh, I guess I see Jesus on the cross. Why? PASTOR: When his freedom was threatened, how did he defend

himself? GEORGE: He didn't. But that's different. Jesus knew he was

going to have eternal life. PASTOR: What about you, George? GEORGE: That's not fair, and it isn't that easy. Even if I agreed

with all this, what would I do if I left Associated Industries? I have kids, college ahead. With unemployment like it is, where am I going to find another job as good as this one? And what about all the others in our parish?—more than half the congregation, you'll remember. What happens to the church and all our programs if they all quit?

PASTOR: YOU raise hard questions, George. There do seem to be more human questions than just the obvious ones. I don't know all the answers, but I know we've got to keep on talking together. Let's set up a congregational meeting, and have our Bible study group share its peace-with-justice discussions. Let's try at least to stay a community as we work on this.

GEORGE: You're on. We've got to give it a try.

Neither asserting nor denying the rules, pastor # 3 begins a process of interpretation, acknowledging conflicting claims but lifting up what she perceives to be larger issues of faith as well. This pastor points to Scripture and community dialogue as necessary. It is a reasoned and sensitive response to a difficult situation.

AS THE TWIG IS BENT . . .

Why would three Christian pastors have such different perspectives and provide such contrasting pastoral care? One answer to that question comes from family systems theory, which can describe the type of family in which each pastor was nurtured as a child. Just as there are typologies for pastoral perspectives, there are family types that may give rise to these perspectives.

Pastor # 1 , who asserted the rules, may well come from a traditional family. Traditional families seek constancy. They

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preserve their territory and can be very self-protective. These families understand time as a continuum, running in a steady line from past to future. They ward off experiences that do not serve the goals of preserving the past and planning for the future. Schedules are carefully set and kept, and there is a clear plan or map for future goals. Deviation from the family plan is suppressed and conformity is required. Such families are highly disciplined, controlled, and predictable. Growing up in such a family could well lead a pastor to a ministry where asserting the rules expresses her or his faithful understanding of shepherding.

Pastor # 2 , on the other hand, probably came from a very individualistic family. Variety is the norm in these families, and instead of protecting their territory they easily share it with just about anyone who comes along. Time is discontinuous for individualistic families and is experienced in the present moment, without a great deal of concern for either past or future. "Do your own thing" is the motto of these families, and goals are seldom an issue. There are no set schedules, just as there is no map or plan for family operations (other than, perhaps a plan that things should always "just happen"). Without a plan there is no deviation, and family members are encouraged to do what they want, when they want. Pastor # 2 may well have learned his or her perspective of diminishing the rules in just such a family. (It is also possible that this pastor has embraced an individualistic mode in reaction to a traditional upbringing. Either way, the present behavior is influenced by the earlier experience.)

There is a third possibility. It is the negotiating family. Dialogue and consensus are two of the ways decisions about territory are made in the negotiating family. Both constancy and variety are important in this family type, and so while there may be traditional goals, there will also be the understanding that these goals may change over time. Freedom is important, but license is avoided. There is a range of movement in the negotiating family, and members usually fit comfortably within this range. With an awareness of the past and an evolving future, negotiating families live in the present. Elasticity and flexibility (not relativism) are important, but there is a sense of being rooted. A

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pastor learning about life in the midst of a negotiating family, we might assume, would operate from a perspective that reflected the shared, communitarian values of this type, and we might predict this pastor would offer pastoral care that is neither authoritarian nor anarchist.

A summary of these three types would look like this:

Family Type Pastoral Perspective Action Plan

Traditional Assert Rules Preserve External Power

Individualistic Diminish Rules Exert Personal Power

Negotiating Interpret Rules Share Corporate Power

CHART 1

RECONCILING PERSPECTIVES

We have seen how pastors may acquire their pastoral perspective based on personal experience of the family. When there is crisis or conflict, these perspectives become the way of seeking reconciliation by asserting the rules, diminishing the rules, or interpreting the rules. The work of reconciliation is often understood best in terms of theories of atonement. Atonement is the process whereby the ruptured relationship between God and persons is accomplished via the life and death of Jesus Christ. Usually three theories are identified: the satisfaction theory; the theory of moral influence; and the classical theory. The classical theory, as articulated by such persons as Paul, Luther, and the Greek Fathers, understands the human being to be enslaved by evil and sin, the "objective powers" of the spiritual realm. These powers are defeated through the work of God in Christ, and as a result people are freed and reconciled with God.

A second theory is that of satisfaction. The orthodox position of Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and most of fundamentalism, this understanding sees humans in rebellion against God in such a way as to affront the honor of God, who

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demands some kind of satisfaction. Since no created creature can satisfy God, God must assume human form and become the sacrifice—the only sacrifice that could possibly accomplish its purpose—that makes right the wrong. It is the human acceptance of this understanding that continues the salvific work, and thus the continuing requirement for decision on the part of the believer.

Historically the third theory, that of moral influence, is most often associated with Abelard, though more recently with Bushnell. This view of atonement argues that it is the human misperception of God that separates us from God, and that through the Incarnation God "gets our attention"and convicts us of God's love. Atonement becomes both God's action and humanity's response.

Atonement theory can be related to pastoral perspectives to show the relationship among and between family type, nature of God, nature of persons, and pastoral task. (See chart 2.) Here we can begin to see how a pastor's early developmental experiences in the family contribute significantly to her or his understanding of God, persons, and pastoral care ministry with those persons. For example, pastor # 1 is probably from a traditional family and most likely would subscribe to the satisfaction theory of atonement. God is then understood in terms of the traditional family, with emphasis on discipline, criticism, order, and love. The children of such a critical parent-God are essentially rebellious and must be made to conform to God's rules. The task of the pastor then is to be a kind of prosecuting attorney whose perspective on pastoral care is to assert the rules. "You will obey!"

It would be a neat trick if the classical theory of atonement would fit into our third category, negotiating family/interpreting rules, but it simply does not. Indeed, the corporate dialogical nature of this perspective does not lend itself to any one idea. Rather, this third category or type draws together an integrated theory that includes insights from satisfaction, moral influence, and classical theories.

A pastor whose family style is negotiating would find meaning in the dialectic among the several atonement theories, and would probably experience God in all of God's many forms.

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CATEGORY

A t o n e m e n t

Family type

N a t u r e of G o d

N a t u r e of persons

Pastoral perspect ive

Pastoral task

PASTOR #1

Satisfaction

Tradit ional

Critical/loving parent

Rebellious chi ldren

Asser t rules

Prosecut ing a t torney

PASTOR # 2

Moral influence

Individualistic

Personal / ult imate va lues

Neutral / teachable

Diminish rules

Resource person

PASTOR #3

Integrated

Negot iat ion

Complete ly o ther ye t radically relational; crea tor / redeemer / sustainer

C r e a t e d good , for relationship; free but subject to evil; deve loping to­w a r d generativity

Interpret rules

Procla im word; Offer critique; Serve as f irst-among-equals

Exper ience self-in-relation to G o d a n d others; Obedience / responsibility to and before God; Live in c o m m u n i t y , for others

E x p e c t e d C o n f o r m to the L e a r n / e x p r e s s h u m a n rules o w n values re sponse

C H A R T 2

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Without adopting an egoistic anthropology, such a pastor would still understand people as good and free, yet subject to the power of sin and evil. An evolving eschatology would accompany this. Persons are free to obey God and stand before God as individuals in community. This pastor would interpret the rules within the context of the faith community, offering critique, proclaiming the Word, and providing a first-among-equals kind of leadership.

CONCLUSION

While each of the perspectives has its own value, I believe that the interpretive perspective is to be preferred as a model for pastoral care.

The interpretive perspective, growing as it does from a negotiating family type, takes the idea of rules seriously but understands them as the product of human reflection on religious experience. The sources of religious experience continue to be of primary importance, so the sovereignty of God and the present mediation of Jesus Christ as the Word of God are understood as normative. The validation of religious experience takes place in community, where, indeed, interpretations may vary.

The particular benefit of this pastoral perspective is that it values both the moral-ethical concerns of the rules-asserting perspective (without giving in to the deification of rules) and the spiritual-emotional concerns of the rules-diminishing perspec­tive (without deifying the individual). The result is respect for persons as God's creatures, an understanding that even good people can make bad decisions, a commitment to dialogue in community, and a continuing experience of the sovereignty of God over all creation.

In light of the feminist critique of the church, there is a certain urgency to lift up the possibility of an interpretive, negotiating pastoral perspective. It seems likely that variations of the rules-asserting and the rules-diminishing perspectives, as ways of controlling an environment perceived as hostile and chaotic, will proliferate. It is to be hoped that the interpretive perspective will offer a grace-filled alternative.

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FOR FURTHER READING

Berger, Peter L. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor, 1980.

Everding, H. Edward and Dana W. Wilbanks. Decision Making and the Bible. Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson, 1975.

Kantor, David and William Lehr. Inside the Family. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975.

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HOMILETICAL RESOURCES: HEBREW BIBLE LECTIONS

FOR THE SEASON AFTER PENTECOST

WILFRED BAILEY

Do pastors turn to other pastors for help in weekly sermon preparation or do they look only to the Scriptures, within themselves, and to the recognized professional exegetes? My own experience and observation has convinced me that many pastors welcome help from their colleagues. Obviously Quarterly Review concurs. What follows assumes that most pastors have access to adequate exegetical resources. This article offers some "conversation" about how this lectionary preacher struggles with the preaching task, focusing on four lections from Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Mine is not a how-to approach. It is, rather, my current way of working at lectionary preaching that comes out of the specific pastoral charge which I have served for more than thirty-two years. During the last half of that period I have followed the lectionary quite strictly, studying the readings with the aid of a group of pastors each Monday afternoon. These persons have been important to me as a personal and vocational support group, but our announced task is taken seriously with a covenant that calls for a weekly page or so of duplicated material about the readings, concerning context, word study, or the like.

Wilfred Bailey is pastor of Casa View United Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas, He is the author of Awakened Worship (1972), has served as a naval chaplain, and is a member of the Quarterly Review editorial board. These Four Cozy Walls, a 1960s film about church mission, was filmed at Casa View UMC.

Lections in these homiletical resources follow those provided in Common Lectionary: The Lectionary Proposed by the Consultation on Common Texts (New York: Church Hymnal Corp. , 1983).

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Standard Version Common Bible, copyright © 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U. S. A., and are used by permission.

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We instigated the group out of our admitted need for this discipline as well as for the textual help we could offer each other, drawing on our own areas of interest and our particular resources. Others I know work with similar groups or meet regularly with laypersons from the congregation for a study of the texts.

Did I say "more than thirty-two years" at the same appointment? That is correct. As most pastors know, it would be imprecise and even somewhat misleading to speak of my preaching to "the same congregation" all these years. In a suburban community rather typical of those throughout our nation, many people move away as others move in. Some people change congregations without changing addresses. The degree to which the congregation has been the same is far more an advantage than it is a problem. It took at least ten years for me to begin to realize that the sermon was a corporate effort. This is true not only at the time the sermon is delivered on Sunday morning, but also as it is formed out of the life of the "community called church." Along with my realization, the congregation has also become aware of its own role through the years. More and more I know that I not only preach to the people, but I also preach on their behalf.

The approach I am offering is lacking in strict organization and in clearly defined, progressive steps within each lection. I hope it does not come across as a rationalization to say that this is intentional. My professional pride tempted me to offer some kind of textbook model as being my own method, but I probably could not have pulled that off even if I had yielded to the temptation. I have tried to be as honest as it is possible for me to be with my peers looking over my shoulder, to portray the process and directions that I actually take as well as the ones that I intend to take each week. I have attempted to write the material in that style.

A biblical professor told me recently that during the nine years he attended his neighborhood United Methodist Church he never heard the pastor preach from a Hebrew Bible text. His remark, along with this assignment, has brought me to re-examine the frequency of my own selection of Hebrew Bible texts. Most of us are not necessarily seeking an even division of Sundays between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament or even a numerical balance of one-third Hebrew Bible, one-third Gospel, and one-third Epistle, but a continued presence of Hebrew Bible preaching is imperative.

Sermons bear a variety of witnesses. Not only is the richness of the content in Hebrew Bible texts greatly needed by congregations as well as by their pastors, but the New Testament texts also suffer when the Hebrew Bible is neglected. Furthermore, sermons from these

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Scriptures can make an important witness. It is not enough that we include a Hebrew Bible reading during the liturgy and sing hymns from Hebrew Bible texts. These texts also need to be preached in order to affirm that our identity as Christians is tied to them and to the entire history of Israel out of which they come.

I have attempted to treat these lections from Jeremiah and Ezekiel with respect. That is, to the best of my ability I have avoided Christianizing them. It would be artificial to pretend that I am preaching as one who has never heard of the Christian faith, nor would that be appropriate. We preach as disciples of Jesus Christ, but this does not preclude our honoring the Hebrew Bible's witness in its own integrity. We have good examples of this reverence for the Hebrew Scriptures throughout the New Testament.1

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Within God's sovereignty we can choose life or death.

When I realized that this opening lection was Jeremiah's story of the potter and clay, I was pleased and maybe even a little bit excited. To me this is one of the Bible's blue-ribbon passages and I considered it to be a most welcome gift. My experience quickly reminded me, however, that my favorite texts often give me the most trouble in my efforts to write the sermon and that those texts I dread most are sometimes the ones out of which I seem to do my better work. Maybe it is because I know that the unfamiliar ones will require more work from me and that I cannot rely on familiarity. I also know the difficulty of communicating anything that I have come to take for granted. The positive feelings of preaching from this familiar Jeremiah text far outweighed my internal warnings, however, and I found myself eager to dig in.

"Digging in" means the same for me that it probably means for many other preachers. It is the process of reading the text several times from several translations without overt help from any commentaries. Almost always these first readings will include for me the Revised Standard Version, not because it necessarily offers the best presenta­tion of the text in English, but because of several practical reasons. First, I am most familiar with it. I feel at home with its style. It is also the translation we have chosen to use in the Sunday morning liturgy of this congregation and one that often draws comparison and to which

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reference is made by other translations. Furthermore, the RSV is important for my work because of my use of its concordance, especially the New Testament analytical concordance (1979). Astute readers must have guessed by now that I will not be reading Jeremiah from the Hebrew text.2

After these several readings of the text and after reading the verses, sometimes chapters, that precede and follow the lection, I appeal to the Christian community for direct and overt help. This is in addition to the lifetime of help and support that the "community called church" has given and that has brought me thus far. I am speaking now of my turning to the written work of biblical scholars. Although this early consultation flies in the face of the overwhelming advice I have heard and read throughout my ministry, I do not wait two or three days before consulting those persons who devote their lifetimes to a study of the Scriptures. This step, which so many consider to be a sellout or a stifling of one's own creativity, cannot wait three days. These people have information that I need on Monday, and I am not convinced that ignorance will turn into knowledge if left by itself for three days.

These to whom I turn are not the writers of sermons or "expositors" of the lection. For the most part I have not found much help from commentaries designed for sermon preparation. Those to whom I go are the ones who can tell me more about the context out of which this writing has come. Some of these from our cloud of witnesses wrote centuries ago, while others are still alive and reflect recent scholarship and discoveries.3 Because of my irregular visits with Jeremiah I want to know more about the world in which the people to whom Jeremiah was writing lived. I need to be informed of those points in the text over which scholars have debated.

This is also word-study time. Jeremiah writes that if Israel turns from its evil, then God promises to repent. "Repent"? God repents? That would raise some interest in the congregation. Did Jeremiah quote God correctly? It hardly seems proper to speak of God repenting. I am now adding this to the notes I have been making as I have been reading through this text. Maybe our church will need to rehearse again the common Hebrew Bible understanding of God's call for the people to repent as meaning primarily that they are to turn from their idolatry. We remind ourselves from time to time that the Hebrew Bible usage is in contrast to the modern, secular use of the term to mean primarily a feeling of sorrow and regret. As I inquire of the historical community, however, I find that God's repenting certainly does not mean that God is to turn back from the evil ways God has been following, but rather

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that God will have a "change of heart" or "a change of mind" about plucking the nation up and breaking it down.

The word study that I have described is part of those essentials I need in order to be sure that I am dealing fairly with this passage. It seems unreasonable to make any start on a journey toward a sermon or even extract the primary message of the text until I have as sound an understanding as possible of what the writer is actually saying. Members of the faith community whom I have never met help me with this essential task, such members as Gerhard von Rad, John Bright, and James Hyatt. My question to them is not so much What did Jeremiah mean? but rather, What is Jeremiah really saying in these verses? This is a preliminary question, certainly, and it has no final value in itself. It can even become an idolatrous question for us, reflecting our worship of the past. Nevertheless, it is a vital step. We dare not deceive ourselves by such statements as "It is not important what the writer was saying; what counts is what I hear in this text." Ultimately, of course, the question is, what does God say to me (us) in this text?—but we do not begin there. Much of our bad preaching comes from forcing ourselves on the text and not being willing to make every effort to understand what the writers, in fact, intended to say.

A decision needs to be made about the bounds of the text, and the work done so far can help me make an informed decision. Although I rarely depart from the lectionary on Sunday morning, I have determined that I will follow my own understanding of the integrity of its boundaries and divisions, leaning heavily, of course, on the exegetes I respect. If now and then a distinct segment of material appears within the lection itself, a segment that has its own unity without including all that the lection designates, then I do not view it as a violation of the lectionary if I limit my attention to that one unit.

Likewise, on occasion I become convinced that the lection stops too soon. This is the situation in this work from Jeremiah, I cannot see any reason why verse 12 should not be included and can see possible reason why it should. Nothing I read from the exegetes changes my mind, so I am including it. It might not make any difference that verse 12 is now a part of my scope, but it is too early to make that kind of judgment.

Preparing for my Monday afternoon lectionary sessions with other pastors is useful not only in getting me to take on the exegetical and word-study task, but also in helping me bring it to a close. I struggle at times against the need to read from "one more book" about the text, but finally we all have to make the leap and go with where we are, knowing the risk that is always taken. It is to this point that I ask myself what I find to be the primary thrust of this lection. Until I answer this

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question I have no way of working toward a sermon, not even a broad outline. When I have determined this thrust or message, I feel some confidence that I am on my way, even though it is a feeling that does not always hold up. At this point I am not looking for a sermon title. I want some way to state briefly, possibly in one sentence, what the text is saying.

With the present lection I am thinking of the only sermon I possibly ever heard from this text (but then how many sermons do most pastors ever hear from someone else?). The preacher told us that the word given in this potter and clay story is that in the shaping of humanity God will "keep doing it until God gets it right." That was not something plucked out of the air, but I find this an inadequate, if not an inaccurate, way of summarizing the message.

Repentance is certainly involved here. If Israel does not hear the call to repentance and obey it, its future is at best bleak. I have some notebook items on repentance that I feel good about and this might be the opportunity for putting them into a sermon. But is this the time? Would I be using Jeremiah as an opportunity to preach one of my sermons on the doctrines of the church while not playing fair with what Jeremiah has given us? I had better continue the search, even though I am keeping repentance as a contact point.

It does seem obvious that Jeremiah is convinced of the sovereignty of God. God is the potter and we are the clay and there is no mistake about this. More can and must be said, however. The clay can frustrate the potter's intention. Contemporary philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne and theologians like Schubert Ogden have continued to call our attention to the biblical witness that refutes the claim, often attributed to orthodox theology, that God is unaffected by what we do. Jeremiah is telling the people that they determine what God does with them, while reminding them at the same time that God remains sovereign. The freedom they have is a real, genuine freedom. Human beings can choose the dark side of life in which to live or they can choose the light. Whichever choice, all still belong to God, and the "pot" God is shaping is never really destroyed. What God will do with Israel will be determined by whether or not Israel turns from its evil.

I am now ready to try out the following as setting forth the primary thrust of the text: Within God's sovereignty we can choose life or death. I wish that I felt totally confident that this is a faithful rendering of the text, but I am willing to do what a friend once advised when we were working on the wording of some liturgy. "Let's make our decision," he said, "and then worry about it a lot." To say it another way, I plan to stick with this but I hope to keep the dialogue open.

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With some understanding of what I belive to be happening in this seventh century B. C. E. setting and proclamation, lam now looking at the areas of life about me. If this text is to be alive for me and this congregation, it will happen because it touches concerns and experiences that are already inside of us. It is true of us as individuals and it is true of our institutions. Nothing that comes out of the Bible is to be worshipped and adored for its own sake. When the Word comes to us from the Scriptures, it comes to creatures who already have been claimed and called through the day-by-day world about us. This Jeremiah text will have significance for us to the degree that it brings us into an encounter that makes us aware of our own lives. I am not looking for what I might consider direct parallels between what was happening in Jeremiah's world and events taking place here and now. Rather, I am looking at what this word addressed to Israel has to say to us, in whatever condition we now live.

To what degree does our congregation understand itself to be malleable to God's purpose? What about the United Methodist Church or even all institutional churches? In the working of God's purpose of wholeness, wherein is our obstinacy? It would be more comfortable to consign this text to past history by saying, "See what God did when Israel would not respond? God shaped into being the Christian community." This is a deathly approach, as is any approach that does not allow the word given here to address us as the stubborn resisters to God's shaping.

For example, what vessels did God shape and what vessels are now being shaped by God to relieve the oppression brought on by continued racism, when the church has not been and is not now being malleable because of its apathy, its lack of courage, and its own complicity?

We cannot afford to be general. In both past and present situations and incidents we need to call into question our specific resistance to God's shaping. What was this congregation doing when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus? What is this congregation doing as the influx of Asians continues in our once all-white, Caucasian, suburban areas? Will God cast us aside as an instrument of God's purpose and shape another vessel? (While letting our institution continue to prosper?) Where does this text engage me in my own life, my own resistance?

Other areas that we might explore could include specific directions Americans might follow in repentance of ("turning from") the materialism that is so deeply embedded in our culture. Are we able to think of repentance only in terms of individuals? If our psyches are

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once permanently formed, is repentance just a matter of behavior modification, or is it something deeper or of another dimension?

This is no time to move entirely away from further considerations of the text. This is not possible. My attention, however, is focused primarily on the present time even as it never stops referring to Jeremiah, the potter, and the clay. Now I am on my way. It is a long way between here and a sermon but my mind is in gear, gathering material not only at the structured times at my desk but as I drive to meetings and make hospital visits. Soon, however, I need to begin writing—sooner than most recommend,

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 20:7-13

God's calling claims Jeremiah's total life and will not let him go.

As I was reading this text in several translations, I found myself making notes that would be applicable at several stages of the sermon process, which goes on formally and informally from Monday morning through Sunday noon, I am reminded again that even with all the benefits of whatever systematic sermon process has evolved in me, it is not possible for me to do all my work in sequential, self-contained units. I am also convinced that strict adherence to such a system is not always appropriate, for it is usually in this initial stage of reading that my mind and my eyes do the most productive scouting about. For example, I was still in the initial process of reading texts when I was struck by Jeremiah's complaint that God had "deceived" (RSV) him. I remembered having previously read somewhere that Jeremiah complained that he was "seduced" by God and I began some word-study.

I found the word "duped" used in two translations—the New English Bible and the New American Bible—but I also found "seduced" in John Bright's translation, as well as in the Jerusalem Bible. "Seduced" seems more descriptive and consistent with Jeremiah's complaint. This is one of those occasions, however, when I must once again be sure that I am not choosing a translation on the basis that it will preach better. Which translation is more consistent with the Hebrew? It is another case of a search to know as completely as possible what is actually said, rather than what I want the text to say. Only after I appeal to the exegetes for help can I go back to Jeremiah's accusation that God seduced him, having been satisfied by my favorite scholars that "seduced" is an appropriate translation and probably the most likely.*

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Repeated readings as well as readings in other parts of this book also help me better understand Jeremiah. I go back to the first chapter and listen to his protest upon being called to be a prophet. I find there and elsewhere a revealing and poignant portrayal of this man and of the struggle he continues to have with his calling to prophesy to Israel.

These seven verses in this week's lection form another blue-ribbon passage, but now I want to consider adjustments in the boundaries of this lection. My first evaluation of the scope given here is that the boundaries are too narrow. I have checked to see if the connecting verses, the ones preceding and those following our lection, appear elsewhere at any time in our lectionary. They do not, although such a situation does occur in 1987 in two texts from chapter 31. I feel free, therefore, to consider adding verses 14-18, the remaining verses of this chapter.

My reason for possibly extending this lection is at least twofold. First, along with the third chapter of Job, this additional confession offers some of the most powerful literature in the Bible, and it is this power that can help the congregation hear Jeremiah's voice more clearly in our text. A second and possibly more valid reason is that they seem to offer an understanding of what initially appears to be a sudden switch in Jeremiah's emotions in verse 13. Although the two verses preceding it have already moved into an affirmation of God's presence, Jeremiah is still crying out for vengeance on those who persecute him, Then a dramatic doxology comes in this thirteenth verse:

Sing to the L o r d ; praise the L o r d !

F o r he has del ivered the life of the n e e d y from the h a n d of evi ldoers.

As abruptly as these words appear, the verses that follow present an even more dramatic change:

C u r s e d be the day o n w h i c h I w a s born!

The day w h e n m y m o t h e r bore m e , let it not be blessed!

Exegesis and boundary-setting combine. If I consider this thirteenth verse as having been inserted in the text at the wrong place, or even to be inauthentic, then I would have far less reason to extend the boundaries of our lection to include verses 14-16. Even understanding the verse as a reversal in Jeremiah's mood might not convince me to

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make the inclusion. But I am attracted to the possibility that something more might be found here, and that possibility came to mind because of a member of this congregation.

In my reading I immediately thought of her—a woman who has survived three open-heart operations, but who has been told that the hope of reversing her present downward spiral by more surgery is almost nonexistent. No medication can remove the cause of her suffering and her constant loss of strength. She cries as she experiences her final days and she expresses her anger as I visit her. But in between her displays of anger, sadness, and despair come the "nevertheless" affirmations of faith. She even appears most Sunday mornings with whatever strength she has, and she sings the doxology. She has given me an insight into this text. I will consider the possibility that in between his two confessions Jeremiah injects a liturgical act of praise, or hymn, not reflecting his emotions but rather affirming his faith in the midst of his despair.

In this constant appearance of the members of the congregation in my thoughts as I plan my sermon I am reminded of my dependence on them. I do not say this to be humble or generous. I am describing an essential element. Composer-conductor Benjamin Britten once wrote about the indispensable role and contribution of the "listeners." He maintained that the orchestra's performance and the concert as a whole is shaped by the audience. How much more significant is the role of the congregation in the church's liturgy, including the preaching. References are sometimes made to the power of sermons in shaping people's lives. Seldom, however, do we recognize how greatly the congregation shapes sermons.

In a manner not totally different from my listening to someone from this congregation, I now want to hear if Job can offer me deeper insights into Jeremiah's message. I remember the description a friend once gave of the third chapter of Job, calling it a fugue on this twentieth chapter of Jeremiah. Job has a possibility of offering aid for more than my own understanding of Jeremiah; I also look ahead to the possibility that I might refer to Job during the actual preaching of the sermon, since most lay people I know are more familiar with Job than they are with Jeremiah.

If I include references to Job and his self-cursing I run the risk of distracting the congregation, but such a reference might also offer a clearer insight into Jeremiah and his confession. I have tried to keep in mind a suggestion offered by a colleague who recommended more use of parallel material from other books of the Bible. Sometimes the second source is used because of its contrast and at other times because

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of its similarities. I was reluctant to follow this advice at first, out of a fear that I would violate the integrity of a particular writer or redactor. Most of us know too well the problems. For example, a preacher can take the word "faith" out of the Epistle of James and preach about it from the understanding of Paul as if this were James's meaning. But I once found that I could properly clarify much of what James is writing about faith and works by referring to Paul and his similar concerns related to the ways in which people understand, speak of, and live their faith. Even aside from any future considerations of including Job in the sermon, I need him now to help me with Jeremiah.

If I pursue this possibility I would need to take a new and closer look at the circumstances out of which Job offered his self-curse. I know that even if this becomes an unlikely path, there is no reason to utter a self-curse of my own for having wasted my time in heading off on a tangent. Sometimes these tangents produce results and often they go dry. Some of this work might show up in another sermon further ahead, possibly in a rather unexpected manner. Then again, it might be resigned to that large pile of material that is abandoned each week, never to be used in any recognizable form.

This is one of the toughest disciplines for me—that of remembering each week that the quality of sermons is far less likely to be determined by how much material I assemble than it is by what I am willing to leave out. And despite various efforts to make future use of that which comes to rest on the cutting room floor, I know that much of it is unlikely to be salvaged. This is no tragedy. The congregation will be able to continue its journey in faith without the benefit of all of those wonderful words that I must leave unspoken. How much more important it is to have sermons that set forth a witness as clearly focused and uncluttered as can possibly come from a cluttered mind.

All of this exploring must now move in some more specific directions. What is the context of the preceding and following verses? In chapter 19 Jeremiah prophesies the fall of Jerusalem. Chapter 20 opens with the narrative in which Pashhur the priest hears this prophecy and has Jeremiah beaten, puts him "in the stocks," and releases him the next day. Jeremiah tells Pashhur, "The Lord does not call your name Pashhur, but Terror on every side." But this name for Pashhur becomes a nickname for Jeremiah, and he hears those about him whispering this phrase whenever he passes by. Here is added commentary on Jeremiah's turmoil.

Possibly it is time to fix in my mind a sentence that will set forth the primary thrust of this text. It is with fear and trembling that I take on this task.

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Sufficient reason is here to focus on the statement, "The commitment of Jeremiah is strong enough to endure all pain." This formulation presents the problem, however, of focusing on the prophet's faithfulness rather than on the activity of God and is a danger. All too prevalent is the understanding of the role of Scripture as portraying models of faithfulness and behavior on the part of the prophets and other heroes. This understanding needs to be dealt with, and constant effort must be made to offer the Scriptures as they are offered to us. They bear witness to the mighty works of God through God's imperfect servants. Therefore, I think it better to reverse the subject and predicate and say, "God's calling claims Jeremiah's total life and will not let him go." Now what does it mean for us to acknowledge God's claim on us to prophesy, even when our prophecy is not received as anything other than words of doom and gloom, and even when being a prophet is the last role we would ever have chosen for ourselves?

Certainly one of the first steps in understanding our prophetic call is that of understanding what it means to live in an awareness of God's presence in our lives. Jeremiah's very personal conversations with God and his identification of God with what is happening in his life are likely to come across as rather strange thought and language for most mainline Christians. Few in this age and culture understand complaining about God to be a proper activity for Christians. Complaining to God is one thing but complaining about God is something else. At a social gathering a few years ago I listened to a woman tell me in one conversation that she despised most people, did not trust "the world," was constantly a victim of bad luck, but that she loved God.

Jeremiah presents a different kind of witness from hers. He will not look elsewhere for the source of his problems. He looks to God. It is God who has made his life so miserable by seducing him into this role of being God's voice. It is also God who is stronger than Jeremiah and has therefore prevailed. Because of God he must proclaim a message that the people do not want to hear and one that brings derision. He has become a laughingstock. He is derided not because of bad luck, or because the world is cruel. It is God's doing.

A very important person in my life once told me that each service of worship might do well to allow for two sermons. When the pastor has finished preaching and has sat down, he or she should be able to get back up and preach "the other sermon." My friend's suggestion might be illustrated in this instance by envisioning a "first sermon" which sets forth the real presence of God in this present world as Jeremiah proclaims it. The "second sermon" would correct any distorted

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thinking of what Jeremiah is saying, such distorted and often trivial thinking as "Yes, I agree about the presence of God. I was low on money the other day but found a one-hundred-dollar bill in the supermarket parking lot. I knew immediately that it was a gift from God." Or maybe the distortion would be expressed in a negative understanding, in asking why God caused an airplane to crash and kill hundreds of innocent people, for example.

Since we do not have the luxury (or burden) of preaching a second sermon each Sunday, we are constantly under the demand to inform the congregation of what we are not preaching as well as what our message is. For example, a single opening clause, such as, "I am not advocating a disregard for morals, but . . .," can be lost on the congregation as they follow the sermon that describes our faith as living by God's grace instead of trusting in our own moral achievements. The listeners need more than one "disclaimer." They must be clear in understanding that to live by grace does not mean that one is indifferent to immorality, just as in this week's text we must be clear about the biblical meaning of God's presence.

This most certainly is a text about God's constant presence. God never lets up. But neither will Jeremiah let up. At times he is determined to get out of this prophet business. He will never again mention God's name nor will he speak in God's name. It will not work, however. The burning fire shut up in his bones will not be quenched.

An example of this inner struggle occurred when my rrunistry and the ministry of the Casa View church was set in a new direction in the early 1960s as it "discovered," almost as if for the first time, that the church exists for the sake of the world. One layperson in our congregation led the way. Working from within the membership through reading and study and through contact with guest resource persons, and working in the poor and minority areas of Dallas, through direct involvement this woman was able to bring a consciousness and participation that increased for several years. In private conversations with me, she told of her desire for tranquility. She agonized over why her husband could perform a rather routine day at the office, come home to a satisfying dinner, and then watch television or read for the remaining hours of every evening and on weekends, ignoring the crying world around him. Why, she agonized, could she not do the same? Why was her life always to be one of examination and active response? She would hear this confession of Jeremiah.

Those who excuse themselves from bearing witness to God's claim and promise because they "just don't feel like it" or because they "aren't in the mood" will find a message directed to them in Jeremiah.

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The church that claims a desire to involve itself in more work with those alienated from society but fears that this would destroy its inner peace needs to hear this prophet's lament. The church that does not prophesy is not the church.

Our tradition as the church enables us to be aware of what it means to be the prophetic community called to proclaim a message that our society does not always want to hear. We profess our belief in the communion of saints and surely we are less than the church when we do not "count the votes" of those women and men who have gone before us. Scripture is the only norm for us, but we come to know the Scriptures through those who have brought them to us. Therefore, we listen to the voice of Martin Luther when he says, "Here I stand," and we recognize the suffering of John Wesley as he called to account the ministry of the Anglican church he loved. And much closer to our own day we can read the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., that he wrote as a prisoner in the Birmingham jail to which his prophetic call had brought him.

To end on an apparent light note, we might look toward the entertainers. Although it might seem like a rationalization for spending my time reading the comic pages, I would say that some of the more profound statements in our day have been made by cartoonists who risked their careers in speaking out when at least some of them might have preferred to have kept everyone laughing. "Pogo," a comic strip by the late Walt Kelly, was cancelled by some newspapers and often suspended by others because of Kelly's prophetic stance. Whatever pain and financial loss Kelly suffered did not deter him from his presentation of judgment through his "bad news" characters.

God continues to raise up prophets all around us who desire peace and tranquility, but who persist in proclaiming a word to the people that the people do not want to hear, but a word that is spoken for the salvation of all.

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 28:1-9

Jeremiah's yearning for deliverance is second to his faithfulness to the message he receives from God.

My reading of other translations of this text does not offer much additional information beyond what I find in the RSV, but on reading the material preceding and following it seems especially significant. The reference to God having broken the yoke of the king requires the

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clarification about the yoke's symbolism given in the verses that go before our text (27:2, 8) and some that follow (28:10-14). Also, my repeated readings of the text and its surrounding material made me curious about the seemingly needless references to Jeremiah as "the prophet Jeremiah." As I moved into some word study and conferring with the exegetes, I found the suggestion that "it may be that the writer wished with the utmost emphasis—and irony—to point up the fact that prophet was contradicting prophet, and in the name of Yahweh."3 A brief look at biblical prophecy and Jeremiah's prophetic role is in order.

I am indebted to a seminary professor who once told his class that we would do well to look at prophecy more as "forth-telling" rather than as "fore-telling." Instead of being primarily an exercise in reading a crystal ball, prophecy comes from the person who speaks God's word within a specific context—a certain place at a certain time to a particular community of people.

Not only prophecy, but all lectionary preaching, indeed all biblical preaching, must of necessity be based on thorough investigation of the context in which the lection comes. We need to understand the background of the Hebrews to whom Jeremiah and Hananiah are prophesying. These people know themselves through their history. They are Israel, released from their chains and delivered out of Egypt. They live by God's promise, by the covenant given to Abraham and the covenant that God made with David. They are convinced that God will not allow them to fail. Yet here some of them are, in the captivity of the Babylonians.

We look again at this prophet Jeremiah. He wants to be loved by the people and he wants freedom and peace, but as a faithful prophet of God he cannot proclaim any message other than that one given to him from God. His faithfulness to his callling is put into sharp focus in this week's narrative of his encounter with the false prophet Hananiah. Hananiah is sure to get a good hearing because he is telling the people what they want to hear, Happy days will soon be here again. God has broken the yoke of the king of Babylon and within two years God's house will be restored. Jeremiah is one hundred percent for this kind of prediction, but the truth of the situation will not let him live in this kind of make-believe world.

Jeremiah is offering hope to the people, but it cannot be the kind of immediate good news that Hananiah offers. Jeremiah believes that Israel will continue to exist, that it will always be the people of God. God's deliverance from Babylon was not to come within two years, however. In the meantime, these exiles who had been taken from Jerusalem to captivity in Babylon were to become good Babylonians in

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their exile and serve the king, Nebuchadnezzar. The good news and hope that Jeremiah offers in his prophecy must be seen in long-range terms and in a form different from that experienced by those who had gone before. He defends his prophecy, however, as being consistent with prophets before him, prophets who also had to speak of gloom.

The temptation at this point might be to portray Hananiah as an evil man who tries to deceive the people, courting their favor by saying what the people want to hear. The text does not justify this interpretation. It might make good preaching for me, but it is not what the text tells us. Jeremiah, as we have read, says "Amen" to Hananiah's words. Even beyond that, Jeremiah prays that the prophecy of Hananiah might come true. Hananiah the mean person versus Jeremiah the good hero might be fun, but a preliminary question that each preacher must ask is, what does the writer say? In this instance, a careful reading of the text can prevent a mistaken labeling of Hananiah. But careful reading is not always enough.

Even if we wish it were not so, anyone who struggles with hermeneutics knows the "outside help" we need from the communion of saints. I am impoverished in my preaching to the extent to which I cannot lay hold of the scientific approaches in understanding the Bible. I need to know methods of form criticism and of what has been called "literary" and "textual" criticism. I need to know more about how the Hebrew language is put together and how it expresses itself. I dare not impose my own understanding of poetry on the forms we find in the Scriptures. What are the patterns of thought used here? What is the meaning of biblical myth? What is the role of parable and of allegory? It is simple-minded for anyone to say that he or she simply reads the Bible "as it is." All of the work being done by scholars is precisely toward this point. For us to learn the meaning of scriptural symbols and the like is to move closer to the Bible "as it is."

The exegetical and hermeneutical tasks remain staggering even when we have laid hold of all the tools given to us. We can often become confused attempting to read a contemporary letter written in English from a person with whom we have communicated all our lives. Sometimes serious breaches between family members come from the misunderstanding of such a letter. How infinitely more difficult it is for us to grasp what is actually being said in Scriptures when we consider the difference in language, the radically different worldview, and an unlimited number of other handicaps facing us. This ought not discourage us, however, but should call us to a serious effort at bridging the gap as much as possible in order to hear as clearly as we can what is being said. One rather easy task required of us at this

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moment in order to make sense of the text's reference to a yoke is to read chapter 27.

Even though Jeremiah does not offer the kinds of symbolic acts we will be reading about in Ezekiel, he does employ the method on occasion. In chapter 27, verse 2, he is told by God to "make yourself thongs and yoke-bars, and put them on your neck," This is the yoke of which Hananiah speaks in 28:2. "I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon/' he tells the people. As Jeremiah's putting on of the yoke symbolized God's word to the people to continue their subjection to the king, so Hananiah's breaking of the yoke portrayed the deliverance that God would soon bring. Later in this chapter Jeremiah replaces the broken wooden bars with bars of iron (28:13).

What, then, is the message of this text out of which I will move toward my sermon preparation? I have a terrible feeling that it might be stated most accurately with this sentence: The test of a true prophet of God is whether or not that prophet's word comes to pass. I hope that it is more than my reluctance to try to build a sermon out of that message that tells me to search further. I am going further, anyway, to try something else. How about this? Jeremiah's yearning for deliverance is second to his faithfulness to the message he receives from God. I will go with this statement for now, even though it conflicts somewhat with the guideline I offered in the previous section of making God the subject.

With this particular text I am eager to let my mind pursue a number of directions that relate to this message. I want to be open to historic happenings in the twenty centuries of the church in which this need to hear good news had to be dealt with. I am open to events that were primarily rejections of God's word as well as acts of faithfulness. In addition to the standard look at specific parts of the church, such as United Methodism, churches in Dallas, and our own congregation, I want to include events or happenings in the arts—music, painting, literature, drama, and whatever other direction my mind goes in. What does the message of the text mean in doctor-patient relation­ships, and how is it acted out in parent-child situations? Do we protect our children from the truth? Does it bear on the selection of which movie I will see? How does it relate to reports we get concerning the hungry of the world?

Finding related areas will be less of a task than will be the choice of those most sensitive and crucial parallels in the lives of members of this congregation. They are citizens of a nation that constantly informs its political leaders by its votes that it wants to hear only good news and the promise of a rosy future. Political analysts have been of one mind in pointing to the cost paid by candidates, especially those for national

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office, who tell the citizens of the United States to prepare for some belt-tightening, to look toward future days in which we must reduce our standard of living. Our country wants to hear promises of good news and be told of hope for even finer days ahead. We often accept hollow promises, not always because we truly believe they will come to be, but rather because we want them to come true.

Although I consider this a possible example to include in my sermon, I know too much about the voting record of members of this congregation to believe that very many of them will see themselves as supporters of the false prophets of good news. Most have been involved in the political process in such a way that much of what might be preached at this point would come across as reason for self-congratulation for their faithfulness. Sermons can validly include points toward which people can look in order to determine their own faithfulness and receive encouragement, but we will miss the point of Jeremiah's prophetic voice and the voice of any other Scripture passage if others become the sinners and we become the faithful.

The many dangers that accompany any current political references in my sermon should not cause me to abstain from material that includes this essential part of life, but it does have its own special set of cautions. It would be unfair and false to infer that one candidate or one part of our nation is identical with Hananiah and that another is identical to Jeremiah.

Over a decade ago I found it altogether appropriate for me to participate in various forms of opposition to our involvement in the Vietnam War, even as a reserve U. S. Navy chaplain. But the question as to how I was to approach this issue in sermons was a constant struggle. Condemning war and speaking against the dehumanization of someone for being an Asian or a communist was clearly appropriate. But support or condemnation for certain United States military moves, such as the bombing of Hanoi, was a different matter. The sermon is not the place for me to tell the people what J think. It is, rather, the occasion for me to put before them what I believe to be the Word of God as the church has interpreted it through the Scriptures and passed it along through the centuries.

Determining the difference is never easy for anyone, of course. It is appropriate to be concerned that one is expressing mere opinion, rather than conviction, but this concern can bring a preacher to choose silence when it is actually time for a voice to be heard. The people need to know that the pastor is aware that there is a difference between personal opinions and that which the pastor believes to be the Word given through the witness of the Scriptures in this particular context.

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Adequate opportunities exist elsewhere in the world for the pastor to act out political opinions. Now I want to turn from politics to the church in looking at good/bad news prophecy.

For almost thirty years the congregation at Casa View has heard the call to confession from the Scriptures, like the one found in the opening verses of Isaiah 6. This call to confession follows soon after our hymn of praise through which the congregation gathers to enact the drama of our salvation. If our Sunday morning worship is indeed a drama, even the drama—a rehearsal of the story of God's saving work in our lives—is it not appropriate that we acknowledge the truth about our lives, that we cannot depend on our works but must trust in God's ever-forgiving grace? Throughout United Methodism and elsewhere, however, comes repeated urging to make our worship all joyful, eliminating the "negative." We want Hananiah's good news. But since liturgy is essential in the formation of the church, we do well to look to the biblical witness as the way of informing our worship, and we find there reason to include "bad news," that is, judgment.

There are times when communities and individuals are in need of that prophecy that offers hope and encouragement. It is altogether appropriate and consistent with the prophet's calling to point toward the "good news." The congregation needs to be reminded of God's faithfulness throughout history and God's deliverance of those who went before us. But when this word comes forth as an effort to give false hope, crying peace where there is no peace, it does a disservice and is false prophecy. True hope recognizes the actual state in which life is being lived and the possible suffering and even tragic circumstances that the people face.

A colleague of mine spent a number of years attempting to bring the good news to indigent children in a section of Chicago. He wished to expose these boys and girls to some significant and respected paintings but was hesitant because of their lack of background in the arts. One day he made the plunge, however, and showed them a print of Picasso's Guernica. As the children viewed this portrayal of the tragic suffering of a people, he waited for the giggles and ridicule that did not come. One boy stared at the painful scene for a few minutes and then said, "That's the block where I live." My friend used the boy's identification of his own bleak circumstances as a beginning of a trek toward hope and found this "bad news" painting to be a vehicle in that hopeful direction.

Even if many in a congregation are not familiar with Guernica, it is still possible for some imaginative preachers to help people receive the prophetic word that Picasso presents in this courageous and prophetic work of art.

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In a more familiar area of our culture some might find parallels in the outrage expressed by many when governmental agencies called for warnings on cigarette packages or on certain medications and food. We sometimes resist acceptance of "bad news" even if it is spoken to us in an effort to preserve our lives. And that is what all "bad news" from God is about—the judgment addressed to us that we might turn and live in God's gracious mercy.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 18:1-9, 25-29

God offers each generation and each person a new beginning.

This lection offers an opportunity to preach from the book of that strange and magnificent prophet, Ezekiel. It is true that Ezekiel makes two other appearances in the three-year lectionary cycle—on the Day of Pentecost in 1985, and again in Lent of 1987—but the text in each instance is the same: 37:1-14, For this summer, however, we have two separate texts from Ezekiel and, what is more, they come on consecutive Sundays. A further bonus is that of having these opportunities to preach from Ezekiel immediately following the three lections from Jeremiah. Not only do these two prophets share much in terms of the place, time, and events out of which they prophesied and wrote, but also their similarities and their differences help us better understand each of them. Our dialogue with Jeremiah will provide us with a helpful perspective through which we can look at Ezekiel.

A member of our church illustrated the power of a new perspective through a brilliant breakthrough in understanding her faith. After reading a book for her adult church school class, she called to tell me of this dramatic new awareness in her life. The next Sunday morning, following worship, she said to her friends with excitement, "I think that the preacher has had the same breakthrough as I. Did you notice how different his sermon was?" When she determined that nobody else was aware of anything particularly different, she realized that the newness was coming from the changed and enlarged perspective from which she was now listening, a perspective that had come into focus from her earlier encounter with the theology book.

I am not necessarily expecting an emotional or intellectual breakthrough to occur with a similar amount of intensity to me or to this congregation, but I suspect that I will not be the only person who

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will be hearing the prophecy of Ezekiel from a deeper perspective because of the weeks we have already spent with Jeremiah. I also suspect that this congregation will immediately recognize Ezekiel by name, but few are going to know much about him and his prophecy.

I conducted an unscientific and limited survey to determine how familiar church people are with Ezekiel. In truth, I simply talked with one friend who belongs to a mainline congregation who described herself as having attended worship and church school "regularly" when her children were young and in school but who now attends "somewhat less often." She said that she identified Ezekiel with a song about his having seen a wheel, then added that she was not sure, but "was he the one related to the dry bones?" I found this mildly encouraging, following on her admitted lack of any knowledge about Jeremiah other than that she remembered a song of past years about a bullfrog with that name. I hope that our own congregation is better informed, but I am not counting on it.

Although nothing major happened in my reading the various translations, even slight differences in wording seem to offer some freshness. For example, the New American Bible offers "green" grapes rather than "sour" grapes. Also, the translation by Walther Eichrodt provides sharper emphasis in verse 4 in refuting the proverb of the sour grapes—that the people are suffering because of the sin of a previous generation. Where other translations offer wording similar to the RSV's phrase, "the soul that sins shall die," Walther Eichrodt gives us a more explicit statement: "The person who sins, he alone shall die" (Ezekiel, p. 231). The New American Bible also is more explicit in some ways, such as the translation that a man must not "have relations with a woman in her menstrual period." With the hope that I am not overlooking words that need further study, I now move into further exegesis.

This week's text opens with God's unhappiness with the people for repeating a proverb: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Why should God be so upset because the people of Israel were repeating a proverb? It hardly seems worthy of God's wrath, at least not at first glance. For the person who attempts to look only at the text under consideration for this specific Sunday morning, the answer is not available. I will need to find ways of enabling the congregation to gain some understanding of what is going on in this book of prophecy in order to grasp the context out of which it comes. It will be helpful, of course, if many remember what was happening in our preceding journey with Jeremiah, and not simply because Jeremiah has already presented this proverb (31:29).

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This is not a proverb like unto "A wet bird never flies at night." The people are using this saying about sour grapes as a way of crying out against God for the way in which God is dealing with them. Learning about the context is essential for us to understand that this is a protest that would not have been made by the previous generations of Israel. These people, however, do not have the security and assurance that their ancestors had, an assurance that came with being closely tied together. The emphasis on the community and not on the individual was so strong that they could endure their personal hardships and still trust in the righteousness of God. They did not feel the need or see reason to complain that they were receiving difficulties brought about through the sins of their fathers. They were bound together in community so completely that it seemed reasonable that one would suffer because of the sins of another, whether that "other" was a contemporary or of a previous generation.

But the nation had been and was even now falling apart. Their exile in Babylon underlined the crumbling of Judah. They had troubles unknown to their predecessors. This community did not provide the security known earlier. Now they were beginning to understand themselves more in terms of individuals than ever before, and not only as part of a nation. Their questions about their existence, and primarily their suffering, became more centered in themselves than in Israel. It was here that they began to rebel against God. This rebellion was in no way a denial of God's rule in their lives. God's presence was not being challenged at this point. The complaint was about what God was in fact doing. Why was God punishing them for something that was done by their ancestors? This was no detached, intellectual wondering. They were hurting and they were calling into question the righteousness of God. Again, it was in Jeremiah's time that this direction began.

With some awareness of the risk of focusing on the negative, I want to point to a sermon that I will not be preaching out of this text. It is one that has tempted at least a few of us in the past because of previous questionable exegesis concerning Ezekiel's message throughout this book. The sermon to be avoided is the one that distorts Ezekiel's attention to the individual to the point of giving this prophet credit for discarding an understanding of God's dealing with the nation or religious community, and for proclaiming an understanding that focuses only on the individual.

I know that it is true throughout our nation, but it seems especially true in the Southwest, the area in which this congregation is located, that we are obsessed with championing individualism as being the

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good and the true. We approach with suspicion and nervousness, if not condemnation, any understanding of ourselves as coming before God in terms of community. It seems downright un-American.

It is not only the Hebrew Bible that constantly addresses itself to those who have responded to God's call as a people chosen by God for witness and service. In the New Testament we have difficulty finding any understanding of being a Christian apart from the church. It would make no sense to New Testament writers to speak of "individual" Christians. And it does not make sense to do so today. The way in which our culture worships individualism would not have made sense to Jeremiah or Ezekiel. Their awareness of themselves and others as individuals was in no way an effort to disassociate from the community. Out of their recognition of themselves as a community they were able to come to a new and deeper understanding of themselves as individuals. With clarity about this exegetical error I can move on.

My previous work in historical review with Jeremiah gives me a head start on this lection, but I recognize a strong need to become more familiar with Ezekiel. Like Jeremiah, his father was a priest, but unlike Jeremiah, Ezekiel was also himself a priest, even though he did not exercise priestly duties. His priestly perspective shows through, however. In verse 5 of our lection he begins his enumeration of the marks of righteousness with references to obeying religious practices. This list includes one's refusing to "lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel."

Ezekiel was much more than a priest, of course. He was also a theologian, artistic writer, and historian. Most of all, he was a human being called of God to be a prophet to Israel. His preaching for a turning from sin did not focus on individual acts of immorality as is often done today, but rather was a call for obedience to God. He did

i this preaching as one who warned Israel of its wickedness only that it might repent and live.

This prophet made use of symbols in the manner of Jeremiah and his yokes and in the style of other prophets. Ezekiel, however, outdoes them all as he shaves his beard and head with a sharp sword, weighs the hair, and then divides it into three parts (5:1-2), He burns one part, strikes one part with his sword, and scatters the third part to the wind. Now that is symbolism and that is Ezekiel.

I have always tried to take seriously the advice of a mentor who said that the shape and style of the sermon should come in large part from the approach and style of the writer and the setting of the writing. However, since this text does not include any of these dramatic efforts

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from Ezekiel, I will forego shaving my head and a day's growth of beard as I enter the pulpit. I will even pass up such stage props as a bunch of sour grapes and rely instead on structure and verbal style in an effort to communicate this portion of Ezekiel's witness.

The time comes for that awesome task of determining as precisely as possible what the message or messages from this text might be. I could begin with this attempt: Sin is death and obedience to God is life. Ezekiel certainly does say this repeatedly. But in verse 27 he points to the life-saving act of turning away from wickedness. Could the message be a call to repentance? These approaches are not in violation of the text, but I am choosing another sentence: God offers each generation and each person a new beginning. Ezekiel tells the people that in their hardships they are not, in fact, suffering for the sins of their ancestors. God is dealing with them strictly on the basis of their own faithfulness and faithlessness. He apparently overstates his case, however, as I see his statement elaborated in terms of individualism by other witnesses of our faith history. This is what I have previously referred to as "the other sermon."

At this point, as I move from this primary thrust toward work on the sermon, it seems likely that I might well move around two areas. The first of these might be a look at the various ways in which we do suffer from the sins of our ancestors. The thoughts that immediately pop into my mind are of black children who are being reared in homes that deprive them of adequate health care, an awareness of the arts, and the experience of being part of the mainstream of society. They are often alienated from those in our nation who make the decisions others will live by, and they live in conditions that bring them to a sense of helplessness in terms of education and economic achievement. These are factors that they endure because of the discrimination and mistreatment that has been put on their race by our society. This suffering comes through the "sins of their fathers." These "fathers" are not the blood relatives of their family, but rather an entire society of nonblacks who for their own gain have exploited the black race.

My mind is in gear and I begin to think of the suffering of other children of all colors who will live handicapped lives because we choose to spend money on nuclear armament rather than on prenatal care for indigent mothers. I consider the threat of nuclear destruction of a future generation because of this generation's blindness that comes from its national pride.

My second emphasis might fall on the primary thrust of refuting the sour grapes proverb of our text. We know that Jeremiah is right. In a crucial understanding of ourselves we acknowledge that nothing can

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stand between ourselves and God, including previous generations. Here I might look for literature—plays, novels, biographies—in which others have dealt with our unwillingness to accept our lives in the moment, place, and circumstances in which we find ourselves. Such plays as Eugene O'Neill's The Ice Man Cometh well illustrate the death that a "victim" kind of approach brings. Biographies abound in which people, such as George Washington Carver, witness to their unwillingness to collapse under the terrible weight that they inherit. They celebrate by their lives the fact that God gives a new possibility of full personhood to each human being, even within the difficult circumstances in which that life must be lived.

NOTES

1. In Hebrews 11 the writer recalls stories of faith, beginning with Abel. His examples are so many, including illustrations from the lives of Abraham, Moses, and others, that he finally asks, "And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson. . . ." Paul also points to Abraham as an example of faith (Rom. 4; Gal. 3:6-9), and states in Gal. 4:28, "Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise." The synoptic Gospels contain statements from Jesus, such as, "Have you not read what was said to you by God, T am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?" References to the Exodus are so numerous throughout the New Testament that one might almost say that Exodus typology is what the New Testament is about.

2. Some years after my graduation from seminary I returned to participate in a class taught by New Testament scholar John Knox. Someone asked him, phrasing the question in a way that assumed an affirmative answer, whether he thought it vitally important that the preacher know Greek and Hebrew in order to understand adequately the text. Professor Knox replied that this was highly desirable and that he strongly recommended that all seminary students acquire a working knowledge of these two languages. He said further, however, that those who were already serving full time in the pastorate without such knowledge were not hopelessly handicapped by their ignorance. In fact, he believed that, given the demands of the pastorate, the many other study needs, and the availability of a number of excellent translations and commentaries, to involve oneself at this "late date" in learning Greek and Hebrew would likely be of less importance than the other kinds of Bible study the preacher needs to be doing.

3. The most helpful commentaries I have found are John Bright, Jeremiah, Anchor Bible, vol. 21 (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1965), and James Philip Hyatt and Stanley R. Hopper, "The Book of Jeremiah," in the Interpreter's Bible (New York, Nashville: Abingdon, 1956), 5:777-1142. For Ezekiel I refer most often to Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970). In addition, 1 often look to Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962-65).

4. Bright, p. 132; Hyatt, p. 973. 5. Bright, p. 201.

99

BOOK REVIEW The Prodigious Work of Erving Goffman,

1922-1982

FRANK E. WIER

Back in the late 1960s, three books played a part in my decision to go back to school and learn some sociology—a subject previously neglected in my formal education. One was Robert Nisbet's Emile Durkheim. The second was The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Third was The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman. I was not influenced by the authors' reputations (all of the highest order), because I did not know their reputations. (I had, curiously, been alerted to Durkheim by citations and methodological acknowledgments in From Religion to Philosophy, by F. M. Cornford, the great Cambridge Platonist, who analyzed the Greek terms for pride, fate, and retribution—the hinges of tragedy—in terms of the social organization of the polis.) These three books, entirely different in subject matter, style, and method, and with little overlap in the citations, seemed to me nevertheless to converge powerfully, showing the possibility of sociology as a science—not a mature science, but a real science maturing.

My high school physics teacher, years before—a fine teacher and a wonderful man—had departed from his subject long enough to tell us that he just could not go along with evolution (why are so many engineers and hard-science scientists like that?) and that sociology was not and could never be a "real" science because of the softness of its

Frank E. Wier was for many years an editor with the Methodist Board of Education. He has written and edited many educational resources. He did graduate study in sociology at Vanderbilt University and is now pastor of four small churches in the Sevierville Parish of the United Methodist Church, in east Tennessee. He is the author of The Christian Views Science (1969).

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data. I felt that he was all wet on biology, but for some reason implicitly accepted his dictum on sociology for two decades. It was, I think, a point of view widely held.

Erving Goffman, born in 1922, came along in a period when sociology was diffidently trying to strengthen its claim. At Chicago, where he took his Ph.D., a substantial part of the faculty (not all) was leading the entire profession to new methodological rigor in experimental design, hypothesis testing, and quantitative analysis—in short, "hard" sociology. By the time of his flourishing authorship, this trend was dominant—a tidal wave. Goffman's career has been made, neither in ignorance nor in defiance of this trend, but certainly in swimming against the tide.

But methodological rigor and self-consciousness are by no means foreign to Goffman. No doubt the trend toward sampling, controls, and number-crunching required him to think long about the defense of his method. Much of his presentation of method is at least implicitly in a defensive mode, and increasingly so in the later books.1 At first glance, his first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, must have appeared to many a species of "pop sociology." The pejorative buzzword "anecdotal" comes to mind; from the first he used personally observed anecdotes, and, increasingly, file material, conspicuously including even fiction. In what could hardly be a mere lapse (for a Chicago-trained sociologist), he several times refers to these as "data"—surely knowing the opinion, at the other end of the spectrum, that anecdotes could in no wise be data.

Any impression of Erving Goffman as a "pop" sociologist is, however, far wide of the mark. There is not a hint of calculated appeal, for example, in the book titles; no teasers or grabbers in the words asylums, encounters, or frame analysis. To be sure, he writes well; I hope the day is past when that means to anybody that he could not be writing sociology. I have freshly examined his work with such criteria in mind as: precision of definition; explicitness and consistency of method; quality of literature search and citations; clarity of analysis; architec­tonics of writing; and relation to other sciences and to philosophy. He does not suffer from comparisons with regard to any of these. I find every evidence of ambition, daring, and professional eTan; very little that could be considered hedging, obscuring, or papering over. Goffman is a proud investigator and craftsman. (To me, that's one of the good words.)

Reading Goffman's works in order of publication reveals a very steady development, almost like a single work in progress—no thrashing about, no opportunism. In this singleness there is danger,

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for such a prodigious author, of writing the same book over and over. His stylistic consistency would tempt one to think that he does so, especially in the series Encounters (1961), Behavior in Public Places (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), and Relations in Public (1971). But a close reading shows that the successive problems are carefully and differentially defined; he is approaching, in a very ambitious design, problems defined within several strong traditional perspectives or subdisciplines; problems with application to the same research environment, the behavior of actors in face-to-face encounters. The subtitles, which are not mere adornments, help: Presentation of Self (no subtitle) is identified as a study in interaction and social stratification. Asylums is subtitled Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates and invokes certain problems familiar in structural-functionalism. Encounters, subtitled Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, specifically studies "focussed gatherings" (and the latter term is precisely and fruitfully defined). A number of distinctions as to subject and method are exactly, if somewhat laboriously, made in the preface.

Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings looks at a wide variety of delicts and violations of rules—not (as he says of psychiatry) to discover what is wrong with the rule-breaker, but to discover what the rules are supposed to accomplish. Relations in Public: Micfostudies of the Public Order investigates, from the standpoint of (borrowed) ethological and linguistic models and a concept of the constructed virtual organism (the self), how rules function to produce advantages for all or nearly all social participants—the old "social contract," but free of any assumption that the contract is or needs to be understood by the actor.

Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, makes the greatest ostensible break with the foregoing, as Goffman turns to sociolinguistics and phenomenology for problems to be illuminated, as always, in the observational sphere of the face-to-face. Gender Advertisements (no subtitle) looks and feels different (it is an 8^-by-ll-inch picture book with accompanying text), but it continues the use of frame analysis in the relatively narrow area where advertising practice "hyper-ritualizes" the ritual practices and relationships already embedded in American culture.

Everyone who has his consciousness raised by Goffman's anecdotes wonders, What kind of person is he, and what is his attitude toward manipulation of the knowledge and awareness he possesses? I picked up an anecdote of my own from a Goffman colleague at one of those paper-reading conventions. I think the story is true, but if not,

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Goffman would be the first to say it doesn't have to be true to be instructive.

It seems that Goffman was seated with friends and colleagues in a restaurant during the dinner break of a convention. Someone approached the table, ostensibly to greet one of his companions, who rose and made the obligatory introduction. Whereupon the intruder said, in mock surprise and awe, "Not the Erving Goffman!" I am told that Goffman frosted him so severely that he had to retire elsewhere to thaw out.

Was Goffman sincerely hostile? Let us follow his lead and treat that as an unanswerable question. His behavior was certainly punitive; it is inconceivable that he was in any sense unaware of the message he was sending; and we can be sure that he had a robust conscience about doing whatever was necessary to put the offender in his place. There are also numerous lines in his book that suggest he may have enjoyed his antagonist's discomfort—or, at any rate, the game, of which that discomfort was an inevitable result.

Goffman's response cannot be attributed to a moralistic rejection of the intruder's gameplaying, including his dissimulation. From Goffman's point of view, that would be to object to the very groundstuff of social life. As Goffman peels back (in Frame Analysis) layer after layer of fantasy, wishing, dreaming, rehearsing, recount­ing, and other kinds of re-presentation, he never finds a "genuine" or "sincere" core. But this is not the cynic's view (that people are no damn good); it is the scientist's view (that life is complicated).

I think that Goffman must have felt, in this particular encounter, the contempt that professionals always feel for amateurs who want to challenge them to play. His message translates: If you want to play with me, come ready. Maybe, too, he had the practical sense that the best way to get rid of an intruder is to get rid of him.

If you are reading Goffman for the first time, I would suggest beginning with a thorough reading of Presentation of Self, because it is foundational. I don't mean that the later works don't stand alone—they certainly do—but together these books provide an exceptional documentation of the intellectual development of a scholar and scientist, and it is worth collecting a sense of that as you go. In Presentation, Goffman sets out a theatrical, dramaturgical frame of human interaction that is never absent from the subsequent works.

Next, I would read Frame Analysis with meticulous care, because it is very intricate, and because it exhibits the greatest departure from, and complementarity to, Presentation. If the latter is foundation, the former is culmination: turrets, battlements, parapets, statues, roof, finial,

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flagpole, and flag. Between the two are the stories, each different but taking character from what is below and above. I would then read as much as time and inclination support, somewhat sequentially, between these opening and closing "brackets" (a Goffman term). I would scan Gender Advertisements and decide whether or not to read. Then, finally, Forms of Talk and Interaction Ritual.

Frame Analysis particularly interests me because it partly fills a place implied by my initial sense of the convergence of Durkheimian macrosociology, Goffman's microsociology, and the phenomenology reflected in Berger and Luckmann; and partly because it doesn't and even disconfirms this convergence.

I have never seen it noted anywhere—certainly not as strongly as I would prefer—that linguistics, in a style consistent with de Saussure's principle, 'Tarbitraire du signe," is almost the perfect type of a social science under the definitions implied in Durkheim's Rules of the Sociological Method. Its object is not a natural object (as the arbitrariness of signs assures us); its object therefore is a social fact, which the individual cannot create or destroy; which is before and after the individual, and beyond him spatially, and beyond his ken; but which has no existence apart from individual action, and yet exercises a compulsive power over his action. If one looked long and hard for an example to illustrate Durkheim's definition of social fact, none better could be found than language. So, perhaps, Goffman's micro-sociology, plus linguistics, plus phenomenology equals convergence.

It doesn't work out, however, quite that way. Goffman makes, I think, better use of linguistics than of phenomenology. This is somewhat surprising, since Goffman's citations show an unforced ease and familiarity in using the great names of the discipline. And despite the fact that Frame Analysis approaches the same subdiscipline (phenomenology) through the same door (Schutz) as do Berger and Luckmann, there are only two citations of Social Construction of Reality, both so slighting as to be almost derogatory. I can't account for that. They aren't on the same wave-length, to say the least.

Let's stop a moment to play a little game. Can you parse the following string of symbols, by adding punctuation and capitalization, so that it can be read as an idiomatic and true English sentence?

Is not a sentence is not a sentence is a sentence and is true but is a sentence is a sentence is a sentence but false is true.2

If you take the italicized sentence as what Goffman calls a "strip of activity," then a successful parsing of it is precisely a "frame analysis." Elements of the strip that are otherwise meaningless, chaotic, and

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anomic receive the "accent of reality" by being appropriately framed in brackets, commas, quotes, etc., that define the grammatical status of what is within. But linguistic framing is only a special and narrow case of frame analysis, albeit the case in which the method was generated and from which it was extended.

What Goffman does is to apply this method brilliantly to "strips of activity" that are in no wise limited to words, though they may include words. (The old embarrassment of the social sciences in handling words and other frank artifacts—that these could not be interpreted without resort to excessive assumption of rationality, hence vulnera­bility to the charge of rationalism—is fading.) What the frame expresses, then, is not the grammatical status of the contents, but their otitic status.

Although Frame Analysis is said to be about "the organization of experience," I cannot find experience defined. I don't know whether that is good or bad. There is an implicit definition, and it is very different, I think, from what you will find anywhere outside the phenomenological tradition. In the book, Goffman cites two schemes of experience as primary: the natural, where "full determinism and determinateness prevail," and the social, characterized by "serial management of consequentiality," "continuous corrective control," by a "live agency," usually human (p. 22). Other experience schemes, such as dreams, dramas, rituals, sports, games, fantasies, memories, wishes, attempts, and so on, are real in relation to the primary by way of transformation rules implicit in their frames. Thus Goffman has a formal but not a material principle of ontology. He is in the same boat (the Titanic) that Kant left us all in: (1) there must be a ding an sich, but (2) it must be inaccessible to certification. Thafs a definition, if you will, of phenomenology, a peculiar predicament,

One of the reviewers that Harper's chose to quote in a jacket blurb says that Goffman throws a "brilliant but weird light," If you will immerse yourself briefly in the curious G'ddel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter, which explores self-referential phenomena, transformations, and analogies between Bach's music, Escher's art, and Godel's incompleteness theorem (in brief: a system of axioms cannot contain its own proof—a confirmation of phenome­nology); then in one or two of the some fifty or sixty volumes (I seem to remember) in Martinus Nijhoff's (publisher) series on phenome­nology; then in some of the material from the structuralists in linguistics; then Goffman will seem no less brilliant but a lot less weird. The complexities are there; the question is, are they to be exploited for vertiginous thrills, or for understanding?

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Some of this sorting out has to be done; in particular, preachers and theological teachers ought to "come ready to play" at a truly professional level. Take so simple a "strip" as "The Bible is my authority for believing the Bible is my authority." Lots of people, lay and clergy, passionately assent. Most of us can readily "frame" this strip logically. We need the skill, however, to frame the corresponding strip that becomes experience, where the self is committed. Goffman can help; but he cautions that every insight can be used on both sides and cuts both ways.

Goffman makes brief but telling use of certain insights from animal ethology. (Add another initial "A" to the scholarly bugaboos that Goffman has faced down: Anecdote, Analogy, Anthropomorphiz­ing—very unscientific.) For my part, I find these insights liberating. I once spent an hour or so in deep snow and deep cold watching tigers in a city park. Given the weather, there was no one else around to harrass the animals, and I, by preference, don't, so they were at ease. There were a large male tiger and two females, somewhat smaller. The male broke loose a piece of snow, almost a bushel's equivalent, from the ramp where they had trodden it down. Suddenly he was stalking it, then leaping high, fur on end, as if it were a cobra or something equally dangerous. The females were aroused to curiosity, and approached. Then the male rose on hind legs, paws and claws extended, seemingly ten feet tall, and let out a great intimidating roar at the females. He was the monster we all know and love from the old circus posters. The females retreated. He quietly broke up the snowball and ambled away to lie down. The females, sensing opportunity, quietly returned to look for the toy, now nowhere to be found.

Throughout this episode, the six-hundred-pound tiger seemed to me exactly like a six-ounce kitten, rehearsing the dangers of his world in order to master them, playing at dominance, having fun. It would be a strange kind of scientific rigor that says we have nothing to learn from this about human theatricality.

Goffman, borrowing this frame, explores the behavior of the human being in his umwelt or "surround" of crisis and opportunity. A curiously fecund thing happens; the analogy generates not only inference, but difference; and it emerges clearly that the human is marginally understood as a natural organism in a natural world, but centrally, and increasingly, as a virtual organism in a social world. It is a Meadian social psychology that emerges, in the next-to-last essay of Relations in Public, in the process of achieving a true empirical foundation on the basis of "ethnographic work"—and not to be achieved, says Goffman, by "pencil-and-paper" sociologists asking

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people to choose from a list of traits to describe themselves (p. 342). Of this virtual organism Goffman says, "He has no self that is deeper, although he has some that are as deep" (p. 279).

An illustrious humbug of another generation (who happened to be Methodist) used to write a daily "psychology" column for news­papers. After a few hundred of these, you knew what to expect by way of advice: Husbands should keep romance alive with flowers and compliments; women who want to get married should get jobs as waitresses. One of his favorite themes was how to make a speech: two minutes of flashing erudition (let 'em know how bright you are); fifteen minutes of familiar, easy stuff (let 'em know how bright they are); three minutes of rousements to an emotional payoff. (It works, of course.)

I don't like to see scholarly writers overdo the first part of that, the "dazzle the rubes" part. Alfred North Whitehead does it a lot, I think, and it spoils my appreciation for what is clearly the work of a great mind. Goffman does it a little; more in the later works. Maybe he feels some license, and the temptation is very great. But he gives us a lot of material that lets us know how smart we are. Reading these is great fun. Try to remember that serious sociology is also going on.

NOTES

1. No less than ten books by Erving Goffman are currently in print: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Doubleday Anchor, 1959); Asylums; Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Doubleday Anchor, 1961); Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Bobbs-Merrill, 1961); Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (Free Pr., 1963); Strategic Interaction (Univ. of Penn. Pr., 1970); Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (Harper Torchbooks, 1972); Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1974); Gender Advertisements (Harper Colophon, 1979); Forms of Talk (Univ. of Penn. Pr., 1981); and Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior (Pantheon, 1982).

2. This string is elaborated from a similar one studied in Douglas R. Hofstadter, G'ddel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Vintage, 1979). Solution: " ' "Is not a sentence" is not a sentence' is a sentence, and is true; but' "Is a sentence" is a sentence' is a sentence, but false," is true.

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Coming in QR FALL 1986

Can We Deter Deterrence? Edward LeRoy Long, Jr.

Christian Bookstore: Caveat Emptor Dale Goldsmith

Developing Eucharist Awareness William L. Pugh

Why Christians Should Not Be Allowed to Teach Religion at State Universities

Gary Comstock

Review of the New Harper's Bible Dictionary Paul Minear t

Expository Notes on Selected Lections Joseph D. Stinson

Homiletical Resources: Advent as Apocalypse Beverly Gaventa

I

Quarterly Review is a publication of The United Methodist Publishing House and the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.