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Michael Claus gave me a gift a few weeks ago of an entry into the half marathon at the San Diego Rock-n-Roll marathon on June 5. The last distance road race that I remember running was while Kathy was pregnant with Carl. That was quite a few years ago, not to mention many pounds. While I ran regularly and got fairly fit during my sabbatical over a year ago, the Spring has not afforded me time for the type of regular training that I would like.

So today I decided to get a long run in -- approaching two hours. Eventually the hills around the house wore me down -- I walked some up the steep hill on Mission Gorge Road, but completed the run once I got to Golfcrest. The run basically exhausted my physical strength for the day.

Which, of course, gave me an excuse to read all day. I finished Stratford Caldecott's book, Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-Enchantment of Education (Brazos, 2009). Caldecott looks to the relationship between mathematics, cosmology, and aesthetics as a basis for the Christian liberal arts. In so doing he seeks to reconnect faith and reason. In light of the stupidity of the past week in the tarot-card announced "judgment day", one understands why it is so important that one not divorce faith from reason.

On the other hand, after that I spend time reading John Milbank's Stanton Lectures given at Cambridge this winter and spring. The lectures are vintage Milbank, but show the continued development of his thought. Yet he too seeks to keep faith and reason together -- but this time for the sake of reason. He is engaging a whole new generation of English and continental philosophers as thought European thought moves into a "post-Derridean" phase. Rather than "Iambic neo-Platonism" as his end, however, Milbank draws upon Nicolas Cusa and regains a Christological center for his thought:

"The culmination of everything is. . . not just in eternity, but also with the Incarnation, when God combines with a human nature to form a uniquely precise finite thing, in which all other finite things also participate. Without this sharing in the life of the incarnation, and its eucharistic perpetuation as the Church, no finite thing would be even relatively stable, because God can only be all in all when he is also, in Christ, that which is 'not God', yet without abolishing the chasm that separates him from his creation." (Lecture 4, pp. 29-30).

At any rate, my legs are still sore and my brain tired. But I'm thankful for the day that I've had.

Posted by johnwright at 8:07 PM

Last night around 11:45 pm I finished grading. It's been a long haul. Grading is interesting; I grade blindly -- I don't know whose paper that I am grading. When all is said and done, I hope that I have been just. Of course I have not been free just to focus on grading. Departmental and other matters occupied much of last week. My summer school classes didn't "take" (not enough students). That means that my summer is "free" to read and write. Today was the first day since I returned from France last year when I didn't have a precise agenda that I had to accomplish.

So I read. I read for my book on the Old Testament, a contract that I've signed for Cascade Press, and which, of course, is overdue. I'm excited to get into it, though; to put together thoughts and readings from over many years.

I'm reading a book by Allan K. Jenkins and Patrick Preston, Biblical Scholarship and the Church: A Sixteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (2007). The book is in a series from Ashgate Press: Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies. I am convinced that the social location of reading the Scriptures, particularly in relationship to the church, is absolutely indispensable to the intelligibility of the authority of Scriptures. To understand why Scripture authority is a "problem to solve" rather than a gift given to us, I think we have to unpack the history of the location of Scriptural reading. Thus I'm returning to the move from pre-Reformation readings in Renaissance humanism to the post-Reformation secularization of biblical studies.

In my PhD candidacy exams and then in the 1990s, I worked with early English biblical translations, particularly in relationship to the reformation and Enlightenment. I wrote and gave (but never published) two papers on William Tyndale. I was interested, therefore, in reading two chapters in the book on Tyndale and Thomas More. The authors stress that both of these "antagonists" were deeply influenced by Erasmus and Renaissance humanism. Ironically, both of the figures were eventually executed for their positions on Scriptures -- a sad commentary on the tragedy that was and is the Reformation. The authors conclude the chapter:

"Where More by virtue of the living relationship he understood to exist between Bible and church erred on the side of according greater authority to the church, Tyndale turned the Bible against the church and was in danger of subordinating the authority of both to that of personal experience of a sort that gave subjective certainty of salvation and of truth" (p. 148).

It seems to me that perhaps here is the beginning of the post-reformation bifurcation in which Protestants and Catholics divide by differentiating each other in an oppositional manner -- rather than looking how to properly order the relationship between Scripture, the church, and the subject, perhaps a problem that arises by the very nature of Renaissance humanism that the authors argue defined themselves against scholasticism, rather than to deepen scholastic use of Scriptures. Such dialectical thinking, reacting rather than thinking, I am more and more convinced, leads to a cheapening of thought, rather than its deepening, and becomes detrimental to the witness of the church.

Posted by johnwright at 8:47 PM

I give two finals today; graduation tomorrow. I have literally hundreds of papers and essays to work through. But yesterday on the Wesleyan Theological Discussion center, several posts turned to Augustine and how theologians in the holiness movement have received him in the last fifty years. I lost all personal discipline and wrote a post that summarized my research from last summer and the bits and pieces that I've done this year on Wesley and the Augustinian tradition. Next Wednesday we'll begin working through the material in a summer school class that I am teaching. So I thought that I would post my post from the discussion board on the blog.

Friends:

After criticizing list-serves as not the proper genre to discuss major, scholarly issues, Mark Mann and this conversation has goaded me out of lurking again to summarize research that I have yet to submit for publication, but which I think is very, very important.

Mike speaks of my "affection" for Augustine. I'm not sure that is the issue as much as my contesting the whole tenor of the Outler-established "normal science" of Wesley studies the past 50 years with its shoddy (forgive me) reading of the history of Christian thought. I think that Sam is correct in one sense (the Lady Hunnington controversy continues), but I think the issues go deeper and have much to do with our own historicity.

First, our categories were and still is overdetermined by a mindless repetition of the de Regnon thesis of the difference between the "east" and the "west" that reaches into Trinitarian thought. This has allowed the us to approach Wesley in terms of "East versus West"/ therapeutic versus judicial" categories to try to place Wesley into an Eastern tradition that Outler really hoped he could establish but has been shown false for at least 20 years now (see Ted Campbell's dissertation), though the categories continue. Even as this has been undercut (see Anne Williams and Lewis Ayres and Michael Barnes), we continue in our own little networks continuing the normal science.

Second, Wesley has been read as a Lockean empiricist or limited to merely a soteriology without any ontological or real theological background so that his soteriology could be translated into the modernist or postmodern categories of choice -- this enabled the whole "relational theological categories" as fundamentally Wesleyan that moved into Methodism and derivatively, into the holiness movement academy. Holiness scholars went to American Methodist theological schools for theological acumen (!!) as we moved into the wider Protestant establishment of the 1960s on -- we (holiness movement churches) face the issues of Methodism with about a 20 -30 year time lag in academic scholarship as the American church follows the Southern Baptist in the same time lag in the pews. During this time was a time time of general and often uninformed criticism of Augustine within the American theological guild, particularly in mainline Protestant seminaries.

It was Mike's translation of Wesley into Process theological categories (with some reservations) in "God of Nature and God of Grace" that brought the Augustinian background of Wesley's thought to me when Wesley in a dinner prayer prayed "so that all we eat be God." Rather than naturalizing the supernatural as mediating theologies do, I thought I heard Augustine's doctrine of "use" and "enjoy" -- supernaturalizing the natural -- at work. When I developed this into a paper for publication, it met split reviews, one wildly positive, one complete rejection; the third final judge rejected it because it was asserted that Augustine was not read by Wesley except in a very limited way (seemingly true) and not present within the 18th century Anglican environment (as seen below, very false). With help from the last summer at Nazarene Theological College in England, I was able to develop and deepen the research. Tom Noble in the Johns Rylands University Library Bulletin had already shown Wesley's relationship soteriologically to Augustine; in the same issue, a scholar named Meahly (?) has shown that Wesley's reading of Locke, though on the surface positive, deeply disagreed with Locke at every point that really mattered. Of course, Steve Long's volume on Wesley as Moral Theologian and now Colon-Emeric's dissertation at Duke (and monograph at Baylor Press) places Wesley within the Augustinian-Thomist tradition (and yes, Augustinian-Thomist is more accurate in reading Thomas rather than "Augustine versus Thomas" as Tillich wanted and we were taught). The American consensus of Wesley of the last 50 years, overdetermined by mainline Protestant considerations, has crumbled. Instead a high church, non-jurist, Wesley with an emphasis on "primitive Christianity" has emerged within the framework of Wesley studies (see the excellent work by Geordan Hammond, to whom I owe very much).

While it is true that Wesley did not read Augustine directly, I think that I can now show how the Augustinian eudaimonism goes throughout his text ("holiness and happiness"). I think that I can draw the genealogy to Wesley from William Law/John Norris (who worked directly with Samuel Wesley and whom Heitzenrater shows in an appendix to his unpublished dissertation that Wesley read at Oxford more than anyone else). In text that we know that Wesley read, Norris quoted and exegeted "St. Austin", particularly the language of use and enjoy from De Doctrina Christiani. But even more importantly, Norris and through him, Wesley also read Malebranche (whom Wesley recommended that children read rather than novels). In Malebranche's Augustinian re-visioning of Descartes (in which one finds "the visible in the invisible") one finds the anthropological dualism (that Mark Mann, Rex Matthewes, and others have found) and the mediation of Augustine to Wesley via Law/Norris/Malebranche. The French catholic background of Wesley explains his non-jurist impulses and the accusations of his being a Jacobite (that persisted into the 1740s, from what I understand, but could be corrected). Even more fun, one can go back from Malebranche to Cardinal Berulle for a non-Calvinist/non-Jensenist Christological Augustinian spirituality that ultimately finds its end in Vatican II. Methodism as the first new religious movement. Wesley represents a non-German, non-Lockean tradition that must return to a modern re-doing of the Augustinian catholic tradition for it to sustain its intelligibility. Calvinism was not the only "Augustinianism" of the 17th and 18th centuries. Even Rob Walls' observations that Wesley quotes from the Johanine corpus corresponds to this Augustininan "illumination" and Augustine's deep immersion in the Johanine text.

Thus my article, which was preliminary and undeveloped and in many ways, naive, deserved criticism. Yet in another sense, the criticism itself needs criticized. The "Outler paradigm" (including the "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" that comes from a misreading of Hooker by mid-Century Episcopalian/Anglicans) does not seem to do justice to the actual historical genealogy in which the Wesley text works. To reject the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, however, and try to translate Wesley into Protestant German Idealist (Kantian and post-Kantian continental modernist and/or post-modernist traditions) or "Empiricist traditions" (large swaths of analytic philosophy and types of "experiential theologies" coming from Wieman and Hartshorne legitimated by Rack's biography of Wesley), fundamentally distorts the Wesleyan tradition from its fundamentally catholic categories. Thus United Methodisms struggle since its 1972 official embracement of "doctrinal pluralism" in its discipline, a Outlerian move that many in the holiness movement would like to emulate based on an Outlerian reading of "A Catholic Spirit" that takes it out of its Law/Norris/Malebranchian framework based on "the perfections of God" and knowing all that is "in God."

I know that this post will not send joy up Tom Oord's spiritual senses -- although I think that there are interesting possibilities and real insights about the Wesley text via Malebranche that can be brought into dialogue with process thought if it will give up its doctrine of God (see Graham Harmon, "Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics"). I know my limitations in mastery of the Wesley text and biography compared to many. Yet I think tha this is a deeply ignored means to understand Wesley for the reasons that Sam, with my additions via Albert Outler, has given.

One thing that I found in England Wesley is read as a cultural figure (he was the most visibly known Englishman upon his death) studied by historians and cultural and social historians, and in the United States, he is read by theologians within religious studies programs. This has led to a strange bifurcation. A prominent British scholar told me that he would never read Wesley for his intellectual thought; obviously I know little about "non-jurists" and hadn't even heard about John Norris, although his works received many, many editions in England. As much as Albert Outler of blessed memory, may he rest in peace, has helped us, I'm afraid that he ultimately led us astray and we were much too eager to follow. As Ted Campbell wrote in his preface, "I feat that my research disappointed him [Outler] in some ways: he had hoped, in particular, that it would confirm his suspicion that Wesley's doctrine of sanctification was in essence that of ancient Eastern Christian asceticism" (p. x).

I'm still very much on the learning path here, and teaching a summer school class on "Wesley and the Augustinian Tradition". I have some of the data at hand, but still have much to gather. I'm not sure what form the work should take, but no longer should in any way Wesley be placed against the Augustinian tradition, but deeply within its multi-faceted embodied arguments across time.

Peace,
John Wright

Posted by johnwright at 7:36 AM

The semester classes have ended. Perhaps it's me, but the work load has made it impossible to get to the blog -- four general education classes plus one upper division class -- an overload to help the department with some last minute changes. I'm in the office now working -- but I'm looking toward to summer and blogging at least three times a week. I've continued reading, although not at the pace I would like, and am looking forward to sharing readings with you.

Of course the pastoral work has not slackened. As a matter of fact, numbers have risen in the last month for our distribution about 10-15% -- either the gas and rental prices, or a sign that governmental budget crunches are dragging down the economy -- or both. Of course the working poor get hurt in basically any economy. Last week, though, was our annual meeting. I thought I'd begin the blog anew with my annual report.

Thank you for your patience with me. I hope that we can build readership back up!

Senior Pastor's Report 2010-2011

Dear Friends and Members:

It is hard to express, or even process, the gift of pastoring the English-Speaking Congregation of the Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City. To stand in the baptismal waters on Easter Sunday alone is an honor hard to express. How does one describe participating in the death and resurrection of Christ through those who have come to seal their repentance and faith in their baptism? When God brings those to you who have walked across Mexico after the Haitian earthquake, when I am given the gift of those born in Congo who have come to faith in Jesus Christ fleeing from the atrocities of civil war, how do you articulate this gift? Then to receive Sarah, Patricia, Josie, Robin, and Joshua in the waters, what words exist to express this honor? It's not about me. At that time I visibly saw the faithful witness of the congregation bear a depth of fruit, the fruit of God's faithfulness to us in Jesus Christ, come fully to bear. Here was true freedom -- from the power of sin and death and Satan, a freedom for the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, a freedom unto eternal life.

Tuesday night I sat down on the stairs of the downtown post office speaking with persons who have become members of the congregation. Our friend Rabbit came by, no longer semi-comatose from the vodka as we had seen him 45 minutes earlier. He quoted Hebrews 13:1-3 with us, maybe a sign that he is an angel, a messenger of God, that God has sent us in his alcoholic body. Before these members, he complimented me in ways that I don't deserve for our meek presence downtown on Tuesday nights. Again I heard in the prematurely aging body of Rabbit, the Holy Spirit speak of the witness of the congregation, to speak of the Spirit's presence in David Crazythuder's cooking and Ryan's and also Ken and Soosan and so many other's presence in our Shelter. This witness reaches in hope and dignity to Rabbit and into the struggles of life of the poor who live on the streets downtown, struggles that literally are our struggles.

Wednesday I went to a luncheon at Point Loma Nazarene University as your Pastor to hear the Director of Missions for the Church of the Nazarene in the Horn of Africa. I was invited because of our multi-congregational witness, to provide a means of introducing Manoa to the witness of the Church of the Nazarene to the north of his homeland. I sat with Manoa and learned more of his life moving between Congo and Burundi. I watched as Brother Armias placed on the screen a list of eight of his friends that who had lost their lives for Christ in the Horn of Africa -- all eight literally beheaded for their faith in Jesus Christ. My mind flashed back to little Joshua's cries in his baptism last week.

Friday night Kathy and I gathered with Cristen Renick and Travis Vaughan for a rehearsal of their wedding to take place today. All of us have participated as the love that God has given them for each other has matured and led them into Christian marriage -- a very different practice from what the world in which we live practices.

Today Kathy and I will stand close to them as God binds their lives as one, and they give themselves to each other, a visible sign of how Christ loves us, the church. In the office of Pastor given to me, I will participate in the support and love and witness of the congregation as it has grown in Cristen and Travis -- and which we watch move away from us to Montana and then to the Dominican Republic as part of our visible witness to Christ that continues to go forth from this place.

This morning (Saturday) I dropped in on our food distribution: more cabbage and oranges, cucumbers, Wheat Thins, and graham crackers. A woman in the alley clapped her hands in joy as I told our friends who so patiently wait in line for these distributions: "Good! There's a lot" she said in her broken English. Igor, who has now turned 80 and worked as a pediatrician in a hospital for disabled children in the Ukraine for 32 years, came and gave me my weekly hug. It's not that I'm special. The hours of work of Al and Johnny and Cam and Mark W. and literally hundreds of others have made the distribution a sign of God's love in Christ through the church.

I benefit, unjustly, from the gift of pastoring, as a token sign of the congregation's witness. How do I say thanks for the congregation giving me such gifts?

But no gift given to me is greater than opening God's Word to you in the Scriptures and invoking the Holy Spirit to come upon us as the bread and the cup become the Body and Blood of Christ in faith so that God might make us the Body of Christ in the world. All we say and do finds our source, our strength, our hope, in what God does for us there in Christ by the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

We are a pilgrim people, caring for a pilgrim way-station, as a vowed community. To be this witness we need each other -- you (plural) as the Body of Christ and individually members of it. Somehow God sustains our witness through various pilgrimages as we respond to the forgiveness offered to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. God calls us continually in repentance and faith to allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify us in the purity of love. Again this year we will say "Good bye" to those who will move on, those who have faithfully served and witnessed. Again we will have to pray and beg for the financial goods to keep us afloat, to care for each other and to give in witness as Christ has given to us. To step back sometimes and look, it seems that the strength of witness is too fragile to sustain -- yet somehow God keeps us going -- what choice to do we have? We learn to pray, invite others in, listen to the Scriptures, and above all, come to the Father through Jesus the Son and let the Holy Spirit sanctify us, that we might be better, more visibly true as witness of God as the church, the Body of Christ in the world.

Thank you for the gift of the office of Senior Pastor that you have given me again this year.

Most Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. John W. Wright

Posted by johnwright at 1:45 PM