A theology of self-service checkouts

Karl Barth said that 'in its basic form, humanity is fellow-humanity' (CD III/2, 285).  This claim is not difficult to defend from Scripture.  The creation narratives point out that it is not good for the man to be alone; human being, it seems, requires other human being in order to make it whole.  This is a point which goes well beyond the context of marriage, although that is a particular example of 'fellow-humanity'.  For Barth, of course, the primary evidence that humanity simply is fellow-humanity is derived from the Lord Jesus.  Christ came to be with us.  If real humanity is seen in Jesus, and only in Jesus, then what we see is humanity as being-with, humanity as fellow-humanity.

We see more than that.  If true humanity is seen in Jesus, then true humanity is being-with-in-service.  Christ's service of his people, his sacrificial love for them, was not something extra added to his humanity; it was a display of true humanity as that true humanity can only fully exist when energised by the presence of God.  Real humanity is not whole and entire to itself, but is oriented in service towards others.

Note that this is, for Barth, the 'basic form' of humanity.  We tend to think of the individual first, defining him or her within his or her own limits.  Only then do we look outward.  Being-with becomes something the human, complete in himself, does (or does not do); it is extrinsic.  This is doubly the case when it comes to being-with-in-service.  But this is not a true representation of humanity as we are taught to think of it in Jesus.  In actual fact, the self-complete human of our imagining is barely human at all; I said that we think of him or her within his or her own limits; but in fact in a crucial way this imaginary human - the human we like to think of ourselves as being - is free of limits.  He is whole and entire in himself.  He is a sphere which may come into contact with other spheres.  Whereas the true human is limited, and thus defined; he has shaped edges, and those shapes are contoured to the shapes of others.  Being-with is not a thing he chooses (or declines to choose); it is who and what he is.

Which brings me to self-service checkouts.  Self-service checkouts, and other self-service machines, are everywhere now.  It is very difficult to see a human being in my bank - the robot will deal with you.  Our local Sainsbury's has just taken out half it's old (manned) checkouts to replace them with more self-service machines.  Part of the motivation for the current rail strikes in the UK is apparently the threat that ticket office staff will be replaced with machine.

I confess, I make use of self-service checkouts.  They are quick and convenient (except when they aren't, because they go wrong, or the person in front of you in the queue doesn't understand the system).  But to a theological view of humanity, the self-service checkout is at the least an unfortunate development.  Anything that removes an element of being-with from our everyday tasks, usually in the name of efficiency, helps to conceal from me a central truth about myself: that I need other people, not merely to help me achieve my goals, but to be human.  The same sort of thing could be said about other trends in working life at the moment - the increase in remote working, for example.  Something important about being human, that sense of being-with-in-service is diminished.

Two arguments are usually advanced in favour of self-service checkouts.  The first is efficiency.  The business is viewed here as if it were a machine.  Why not cut out some unnecessary cogs?  Why not make the whole thing flow a bit faster?  But this assumes that the goal of human life is to get things done, and that anything that makes getting things done easier and quicker is therefore a good thing.  I can easily think just the same: anything that speeds up my weekly shop must be good.  But what if the snippet of conversation with a cashier is actually one of the most valuable things that can happen in the shop - more valuable than the goal-oriented act of shopping, because oriented towards another human being, a little slice of being-with that goes to the heart of our mutual humanity as created in the image of God?

The second argument is that this sort of automation removes low quality jobs, freeing people to do better things.  The idea is that we get rid of drudgery.  But I wonder whether this has a lot to do with our faulty perspective on service.  Sure, if we treat the shop like a big machine, and the people like parts of the machine, this might make sense.  But if they are actual human beings, whose basic existence is being-with-in-service, whose deepest reality is shaped by Jesus Christ as the one true Human, isn't there a huge dignity in serving in this way?  And doesn't the encounter at the checkout offer a brief opportunity for mutual service as you recognise one another's humanity?  I hope that if you're a Christian you always make some effort to chat with the cashier!

So anyway, I'm not proposing that we all be Luddites and resist every technological innovation in the sphere of work.  I'm just suggesting that we try to think Christianly about what these innovations do to us, in terms of our view of humanity.  Maybe sometimes that will mean resisting societal and technological change, but I suspect more often it will mean resisting the cramping effect on our own hearts and minds which these changes bring along, so that whatever is going on out there, I can still be an exhibit of real humanity, pointing to Christ the great Servant of his people.

Authenticity

The equation spontaneity=authenticity goes mostly unquestioned in our culture.  When the politician switches off the teleprompter and speaks to us 'from the heart', we feel like we've seen them as they really are.  It's the same in church.  We have a sense that prepared words, or actual written liturgy, easily imply hypocrisy, or at least are not the best way of expressing authenticity.

The gospel ought to raise at least a question mark here.  If the real me is not the person I experience myself to be day by day, but the person I am in Christ, then what is most true about me is not what springs spontaneously from my own heart but what is said about me in the gospel.  I do not know myself, not even from my own lived experience of myself, unless I know myself by faith.

One implication for the gathered worship of the church is that it should be a time when, through liturgical structure and content, I am able to authentically express myself - which is to say, I should be able to say and sing, in the company of the community, words which could never spring from my own heart, but which express who I really am.

Might the way of authenticity involve turning off my own inner chatter and owning the voice I am given in Christ instead?

The only finished human

I don't know if this is a cross-cultural constant - my hunch would be probably not - but here in the West it seems to be universally assumed that life takes the form of a story of some kind.  I think it's almost impossible for us to avoid narrative as a way of understanding the (often apparently random) events which fill the span our existence.  We tell the story of our lives to ourselves and to others because that is how we integrate our experiences and experience our selves in the world.

That latter would imply that our tendency toward life-narrative is deeply connected to issues of identity.  This surely is the case.  In telling our life story, we also present ourselves.  The story of the things that have happened to me, and how I have reacted to things or brought things about - that is at one level surely about synthesising myself as a character in a story.  One interesting thing about that is the interplay of given and created in my self-understanding.  To a certain extent I can tell the story my way, and thus create my own character; but at some level there are events and reactions over which I have no apparent control, and my character is given to me.  (And of course this is not just retrospective: I can make decisions which affect the future course of the story, and in that way I have input into who I will be; and yet, not all my decisions will work out as planned, and to a certain extent I will always find myself in a future story not of my making).  I am both who I make myself, and a constant surprise to myself.  I make myself and discover myself.

The thing is, the story is not yet finished.  It's not even as if we've written the first part in stone, and we're writing on into the future.  As anyone who has tried to write a story (or even read one) knows, sometimes things happen in the later narrative which require the complete re-evaluation of earlier events.  We might need to re-write the early story in light of what is coming.  And that means that we can only have a provisional knowledge of who we are: we can only say that this is who I seem to be to me at the moment.  (And I'm not even touching here on the fact that other people looking in might tell our stories, and portray our characters, very differently - and is it really all that clear that we should privilege our own narrative voice, even if practically it is inevitable that we will do so?)

So here's a thought: Jesus Christ is the only finished human.  The story of his life is complete, from birth to death.  That could be said of countless people, of course.  But the difference is that in raising Jesus - from the dead, and then up to his own right hand - God has pronounced the authoritative verdict on Jesus' life.  God has endorsed a particular telling of Jesus' story - and God's endorsement implies truth.  Jesus now lives forever as the person he was.  His complete story means a complete character: we know who he is.  He will always be that person.

This has two implications for the way I think about my personal future.  At the one level, I can say: I don't know who I will be for eternity, because in the here and now my story and character are not fixed.  One day, I will know who I am, but not yet.  But at another level, if I am thinking in faith - which is just to say, if I am not ignoring Jesus Christ - I know that the me I will discover in that eternal future will be the me eternally determined already by him.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

On being real

A couple of days ago, I argued that one thing we can take away from the doctrine of the Trinity is its concern for the God who is.  That is to say, the doctrine treats God as having real existence, and therefore particular existence - he is in this way, and to fail to acknowledge that is simply not to know him.  This is a property of real things: they occupy space, physically or conceptually, and we bump up against them, literally or metaphorically.  Whilst they can be (must be) interpreted - which is to say, there must be some interaction between my understanding and the real existing thing - they cannot be simply reimagined without denying their reality.

I'm not sure I could trace this historically, but I'm confident that logically the lack of belief in a real existing God leads to a loss of belief in real existing humanity.  Real existing humanity - both in the general sense and in the more acute sense in which I am myself an instance thereof - has a genuine shape, occupies genuine space.  It cannot be reimagined without denying its reality.  But we must reimagine humanity; we must claim for ourselves total sovereignty over our own humanity.  Do we notice than in claiming this sovereignty at this level we destroy (in so far as it lies with us) the very thing we want to rule over?  We become kings and queens of dreams, and more often than not of nightmares.

Of course we see this is in the arena of sexuality and gender, but the most extraordinary and terrible example I can think of relates to abortion.  Behold the power of imagination!  The joyfully expectant mother carries a baby; the unfortunate woman with an unwanted pregnancy has nothing but a collection of cells.  The longed for baby is not a foetus but a person, already loved; the undesired ball of matter is nothing but an excrescence, to be removed.  We have become sovereign over our own reality, and can decide what should live and what should die.

A big caveat: I have to put this starkly and horrifically, because that is the shape of the reality.  But I know that this is not how it feels for people going through this sort of thing.  I suspect that the decision to abort more often than not feels like helplessness and not sovereignty.  I know that it is pain and anguish and not at all the simple choice painted here.  I know that.  But if we step back: what allowed these choices to become choices at all, however anguished?

But the bitter truth is that human beings are real.  We are real.  I am real.  I cannot reimagine myself without denying myself.  In reality, I cannot be absolutely sovereign over myself or anyone or anything else.  I, and all other real things, are to some extent given; I am not a dream or a nightmare, but a created person.  At some point, we will bump up against the reality of humanity - our own and that of others.  And at some point, even if it is not until the Judgement, we will bump up against the reality of the God who is there and who gave us all of our reality.  Then what will we say?

Being really awful

One of the things that I find most important about Christianity is that it allows me to admit that I am a really poor excuse for a human being.  Before you leap to my defence (which was your instinct, right?) I should say that you, too, are an awful, awful person.  I'm not exaggerating.  I'm sure that you, like me, have regularly had that experience of knowing exactly the morally right thing to do, and yet doing something else altogether - sometimes without even really knowing why.  Most of the time we brush that off - just a one off, a thing that happened.  But it happens quite often, doesn't it?  And what sort of a person are you - what sort of a person am I - if I deliberately avoid the good?  Those choices don't speak well of our inner being.

It's not just ethics either.  Like me, you have all sorts of opportunities to do good, exciting, fun, significant things with your life.  Like me, I bet you don't do most of them.  Maybe out of laziness, maybe out of fear, maybe just distracted by all the nonsense with which we've filled our lives.  We've got life - actual, real life - and what's more, uniquely, we know we've got it.  What sort of people are we to waste that?

And then there's just that nagging feeling that everything isn't right between you and the universe.  I'm slightly on a limb here, because we don't talk about this stuff as much, but I'm betting that you, like me, know what it means to feel not-at-home even when you are home.  I'm guessing you know what it means to have that discomfort verging on anxiety for no apparent reason.  It's like we don't really know how to be ourselves, when it comes down to it.

We're just really awful human beings.

Now, I think I know how the secular non-Christian ought to answer this.  He or she ought to point out that we are, after all, just very advanced animals, with only a lot of luck and a little bit of achievement separating us from the rest of the beasts.  Nothing means anything, we don't mean anything.  We are, at the end of the day, only pretending to be people anyway.  The only flaw we have - if we have one - is that we perversely hold ourselves to standards of ethical behaviour and existential peace which we don't extend to badgers and wolves.

Most people don't go down this logical but chilling route.  Most people instead choose to stand their ground and assert that in actual fact they are quite good (and if they're feeling generous, they might throw in that hey, you're not so bad either, and don't be so hard on yourself...)

This is frankly ludicrous.

What a relief to admit what would surely be patently obvious to any unbiased witness, if we could only find such a one: that we are utterly bankrupt, failures in almost every respect, turning even our triumphs into burdens we cannot bear.  We are real people gone really wrong, out of step with ourselves and with all of reality.  We are colossally guilty, guilty of the greatest crimes, all of us together and without exception.

What a relief to get it out in the open.

And then -

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Anyone want to throw me out an amen?

Christianity is a Humanism

When Christ ascended into heaven, taking his seat at the right hand of the Father on high, he put into effect the eternal decree of God.  Jesus Christ was always the person by whom and for whom all things existed.  Now that is revealed in his exaltation.

Seeing Christ on his throne, every philosophical and programmatic humanism appears as nothing more than a lame parody.  Every attempt to make humanity the measure of all things, to begin with human experience, to place humanity at the centre of the epistemic or ontological universe looks foolish.  In truth, humanism as conceived by humanity is doomed to failure, because there is no vacancy for humanity to fill.  The centre and pinnacle of the universe is already occupied - by humanity!  Not humanity in the abstract, to be sure, but this particular human being, Jesus of Nazareth.  Nevertheless, humanity.

The implications are far-reaching and profound.  One that I would stress, because it seems to me it is often missed, is that humanity matters, and all things truly human matter.  A question which I have is this: in the midst of a culture given over to materialism and scientism, might it not be the task of Christians to pick up the genuine concerns of humanism?  In the light of the exaltation of humanity in Christ, can we ever take humanity too seriously?

Being myself (3)

My 'self' - my identity - is above (hidden with Christ) and ahead (waiting to be revealed at his coming).  Let's be clear: this is my real self, my real identity now, based on what Christ achieved then.  But it is still concealed, even from me, and pursued by faith in expectation that it will one day be given to me.

Whilst all of this might seem to open up an intolerable gulf between my experience of myself and my true self (although is it worse than the non-Christian's awareness of the gulf between who they are and who they want to be?), it also lays to rest any notion that overcoming this gulf might be my work.  It is not.  My true self is not something to be achieved, but something to be received.  Moreover, identity is not threatened by any of the things that might seem to stand against it - my own under-achievement, other people's scorn, or even death itself.  No, death is the gateway to resurrection, and therefore to my true self.  The only thing that can really threaten my identity is unbelief, since faith is the (subjective) link between me and my identity in Christ (as the Holy Spirit is the objective link).

So, there is a certain relaxation here.  But we need to be careful: it's not the relaxation of saying 'God loves me just the way I am'; it's the relaxation of saying 'God loves me in Christ and will bring me together as one person united in him'.

Being myself (2)

If it is true that for those who do not know Christ self-identity is essentially a compromise between 'who I find myself to be' and 'who I consider myself to be (or want myself to be)', the gospel of Christ admits of no compromise.  It says, with the force of God's command, 'you must be yourself' - even as it says with the force of God's liberating good news 'you may be yourself'.  But command and permission are predicated on and derived from the simple factual statement: 'Jesus died and rose for you'.

Sometimes the NT describes a Christian as one whose self has been crucified with Christ, or as one who has died and been buried with him.  On the other hand, sometimes it presents an imperative - put to death your old self, kill your sinful deeds.  How can the indicative be true, and yet the imperative have force?  If my 'self' is dead, how can I kill it?  Conversely, if I must kill it, how can it be true that it is dead?

We need to remember that the death of the old self is accomplished in Christ - and we know this because of his death and resurrection.  But we do not see it.  It is a Christological reality, which means it is really true, as true as the victory of Jesus over death is true.  But it is not yet seen.  The Christian's life is hidden with Christ, to be revealed only when he is revealed.  It is not revealed even in part in this life, but is perceived only by faith - faith which is itself awaiting the fulfilment of the promise that what it believes will one day be seen and experienced.  That is why the apostle can write that he no longer lives, since Christ lives in him - but on the other hand, that the life he continues to live in the flesh (that is, with his old earthly self still there) is lived by faith in the Son of God.  Christologically speaking, something fundamental has happened; he had died.  But that is received at this point only by faith.

Nevertheless, faith that is really faith finds an answer in action.  It is an answer, not a new and independent action, but an answer nevertheless.  That answer is to bear witness to the reality as it is in Christ by putting to death the old self in the here and now.  We do not set out to crucify the self so that the old self might die; that would be a new action.  Rather, as an answer to what Christ has done, we set out to crucify the self because it is already crucified in him.  Our action is not the thing; it is the witness to the thing, the faint echo which nevertheless shows that the original Word has been spoken and heard.

Rather than a life of compromise, that sets up a life of conflict.  We look for a new self, perfected in Christ, currently hidden, coming with him.  It will be a resurrection identity; in continuity with this self we know, but transfigured.  To get to resurrection, you have to go through death.  The Christian life is death, putting to death.  That is why we are fools to live this way if Christ is not raised. If Christ is not raised, we should find a happy compromise between the person we are and the person we want to be, and learn to happy with ourselves.  But Christ is raised from the dead, and therefore we fight and die.  It is worth it.  80 years of constant tearful struggling for righteousness is worth it if just over the horizon there lies my resurrection, and that glorious moment when I see him as he is, and myself as I truly am....  It is worth it.

Anyone who says 'this is just the way I am' has left the way of Christ.

This is hard, so hard.  A narrow gate and a hard way.  But he is with us, and even on this hard way there are still waters and green pastures.  And he will give us rest.

Being myself

The only problem is, which 'self' should I be?

At the most basic level, all of us come up against the phenomenological self.  That is to say, the person we experience as ourselves.  The bundle of experiences, characteristics, and attributes - physical, mental, and spiritual - which are 'me'.  This is not the same as the person other people encounter; by (provisional, and in need of later tweaking) definition, a 'self' can only be self-experienced.  It is who I am to myself.

But then, I am also aware of another self, the sort of self I want to be, the aspirational self.  Sometimes I am just aware that the self I experience does not match up with well the person I like to think I am.  Sometimes, more painfully, somebody else describes me, and I realise that I am indeed 'like that', even though I feel that is 'not really me' - I am forced to own their description, even as I really want to disown it.  So a gap opens up between 'who I am' and 'who I want to be' - except more often than not, I do not see it that way.  Rather, I see 'who I am' and 'who I really am'.  Perhaps this is a delusion, but it is an important one; I harbour the thought that 'I' am really other than - better than - the self I experience.

The gospel of the world is that I can be, and should be, my aspirational self.  'Sanctification' is about being more myself, more the person I like to think of myself as being.  And when I hit a roadbump - when there is something in my phenomenological self which I don't seem to be able to adjust - I should adjust my aspirational self instead.  The goal is to bring the two together, one way or another.

But then there is what I will call the Christological self.  In Christ, my identity is not about my self-identity.  My true self has already been identified in him.  I don't see it now, because it is hidden.  But that doesn't mean it isn't real.  My self is determined, not by me, but by Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection.  Because here is someone - the only person - who really and truly knows me better than I know myself.  As my creator, he knows the self I was made to be; as my redeemer, he knows the self I have been eternally determined to be.

So the true gospel says: be yourself.  But not the self that is determined by the mere phenomena of your existence, or even by your dreams and aspirations, but by who Jesus has determined you to be.  And these are not the same.  Just because I see something in me doesn't mean it belongs to my truest self.  Just because I dream something doesn't mean it is who I really am.  I am who I am in him, and to be a disciple is to look to him and to walk like him.  And so to be myself.

Marriage, etc.

Those who move in Christian circles can hardly fail to have become aware of the Coalition for Marriage, a pressure group seeking to prevent the government from giving legal sanction to homosexual marriages.  I imagine even if you don't move in such circles, you will have heard rumblings in the media.  I have to say, I find the Coalition off-putting.  It is partly the slightly shrill tone with which they pronounce their warnings, and partly it is the sorts of arguments they use - the argument from tradition, the slippery slope argument (and I quote: "If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?"), and the 'rest of us' argument ("Same sex couples may choose to have a civil partnership but no-one has the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us").  These are not good arguments.  But the whole thing has got me thinking more about what I think.

Firstly, I don't think government or anyone else can define or re-define marriage.  Human sexuality is not something which is given to us to define.  It takes its definition from creation, and ultimately from the gospel.  I do not uphold 'traditional' sexuality or morality, or 'traditional' definitions of marriage, but I will hold to gospel definitions.  The Biblical witness makes it plain that marriage derives its existence and its meaning from the union of Christ with his Church; moreover, it is clear to me, on the basis of this witness that only lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage devoted to Christ's service or celibacy devoted to Christ's service adequately point to this spiritual union of Christ and Church - the former as a picture of what the union is like, the latter as a symbol of the over-riding importance of the union.  That is where my definition of marriage comes from.

Secondly, because this definition is rooted in the gospel, I do not and cannot expect people who do not believe the gospel to accept it.  I don't think it is wise for Christians to fall back on arguments from sociology or tradition in order to support their view of marriage, which if it is of value at all is derived not from tradition or sociology but from Christ.  That will make it harder for us to make the public case, but then I wonder whether that is my job as a disciple.  Is there any way to make the case for marriage other than preaching the gospel of Christ?

Thirdly, I find myself looking to draw a line between issues where I can believe a thing to be wrong, but not want to legislate, and issues where I think we must campaign for legislation.  For example, I think it is desperately wrong, hugely damaging, and ultimately leading to hellfire to blaspheme.  I do not think, however, that anyone should legislate against blasphemy (and such antiquated laws as remain should be repealed).  On the other hand, abortion - I think we should do everything possible to make this illegal in almost all situations.  The difference is that if I campaign for legislation against blasphemy, I am really only campaigning for my right to live in unoffended, unchallenged comfort; whereas if I campaign against abortion, I am campaigning for the right of another human being to live.  Where does the marriage campaign fall?  Do I think the government's plan are ill-advised, ungodly, and ultimately a reflection of sin rampant in our society? Sure I do.  But is it the sort of thing that we ought to be campaigning against, or the sort of thing that should prompt us to preach Christ and his grace, and to pray much more?  I think I incline toward the latter, although the issue is certainly complex.

Fourthly, I think we Christians need to be ready to suffer on this front, and we need to be ready to do it well.  The race analogy keeps cropping up - saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry is like saying that black people shouldn't be allowed to ride in the front of the bus.  As a Christian, I can't accept the analogy; Biblical anthropology stands against it.  But I can understand where it comes from, and it has a certain rational (and a great emotional) force.  We will be hated for what we say, or at least what we say will be hated.  How we react will matter.  Here is a question: what rights of gay people and couples could we stick up for?  How could we try to bless people whose lifestyles and choices we reject?

Fifthly, we are equipped with three ultimate weapons which will make a difference in this situation, and they are all prayers: agnus dei, kyrie eleison, and maranatha!

Gender and stereotypes

There was a story on the news this morning - I haven't been able to find an online version, although I haven't looked very hard - about a couple who decided not to let anyone beyond close family know the gender of their child until he was five years old.  Their stated aim was to avoid the stereotyping which they feel often goes on.  They didn't want their son forced to conform to the societal norms for little boys; they therefore elected to keep his gender under wraps until such time as his true character had begun to develop, independent of expectations related to gender.  There have been more extreme stories than this floating around - I saw one recently about a couple who told nobody the gender of their child, and deliberately dressed him/her (I can't remember which) in clothes which would normally be associated with different genders on different days.

I think this is pretty seriously wrong, but also a little bit right.

It is wrong because gender is a given, in at least two senses.  Firstly, gender is biologically given.  We are gendered creatures, and it is not given to us to decide to which gender we ought to belong.  It is true that there are people who do not seem to be clearly gendered physically, but I would suggest that this class forms the limit of human experience - to be taken seriously, to be treated with respect, but not to be used as a source of norms.  The attempt to escape from all forms of 'given-ness' is a part of our society's carrying on of the Enlightenment quest for autonomy.  (Another way this shows itself is the desire to be disembodied, something which we see in the preference for digital media over face to face interaction.  I heard someone on the BBC a little while ago say that she thought that our vestigial attachment to being in the same physical place as someone would soon wither and die.  I doubt it).  For the Christian, of course, these 'givens' - embodiment, gender - are given by God, and therefore to be taken doubly seriously.  If I am male, I am called by God to be male, and to seek to do otherwise is disobedience.

Secondly, gender is socially given.  It is a false model of human existence to assume that I can construct my own identity apart from the norms and expectations of society.  I am born as part of a family, in a specific geographical, temporal, and cultural context.  Many of the most important things about me are decided by these 'givens'.  To try to escape them altogether is to try to be less than fully human.  Again, this is all about the quest for autonomy, and it relates to the first point.  The societal norms surrounding gender are about the regulation and expression of the biological differences.  To deny society a voice altogether is to deny the basic biological difference, and in the Christian framework to deny the Creator.

But these people are also a little bit right.  Unlike the God-given biological differences, the societal norms surrounding these differences are open to critique.  The expression of masculinity and femininity is not the same everywhere and at all times, nor need it be.  Moreover, there are certainly aspects of these norms which inculcate wrong (sinful) attitudes and aspirations.  Whilst we cannot completely discard society's norms, neither ought we to accept them uncritically.  There is a real masculinity and femininity which can only be disregarded by disobeying God; the ways in which these are expressed in a particular culture will vary, and indeed there will and must be variation between individuals within a given culture.

It is this point which I think is often overlooked by evangelical Christians when they talk about gender.  Particularly amongst our North American complementarian brethren, there is a tendency to assume that when God calls men to be men he calls them to be rugged, individualist, North American men.  Well, perhaps he does, in that culture, but perhaps not.  Taking social norms and enshrining them as the only way to express God-given differences seems pretty risky to me.  Perhaps we need to be a bit more open; to accept that masculinity and femininity are there, to be embraced and enjoyed, as part of our God-given identity - but then to think carefully about the way in which we are accustomed to express those identities, and to engage critically with our culture.

Who are you?

If you start your investigation of human nature with Jesus - if Christology is at the centre of your anthropology - the possibility is raised that you do not know yourself.  You may have to be told who you are.  It may be that none of us knows inherently, or is able to deduce from our own behaviour or that of others, what it means to be human.  That raises all kinds of issues.

One issue that has been floating around recently, mainly because of the case of Mr and Mrs Johns, is the attitude of Christians to homosexuality.  Now, up front, I want to acknowledge that this is a hugely complex and, for many, painful issue.  I also want to acknowledge that Christians don't all agree on this topic.  But I have to say that as I read Scripture, and as I try to think theologically about what the gospel implies for humanity, I arrive at the conclusion that an active homosexual lifestyle is not compatible with the Christian message.  I don't want to overplay that, and I also don't want to make out that this is a big part of my belief - it is not.  (In fact, although from the news you would get the impression that evangelical Christians basically talk about this all the time, and also that they are raging homophobes, my experience has been that the topic comes up rarely, and when it does is tackled with pastoral sensitivity.  I know that hasn't been everyone's experience.)  Still, however peripheral this belief is - however much I may consider it to be basically an implication of an implication of the gospel, something which stands at considerable remove from the heart of the faith - nevertheless I am obliged to hold it.

And here's the point.  This position comes in for criticism so often in the news, and raises such outrage amongst our contemporaries, because it challenges our notion of what it means to be human.  Christians are saying something which is, despite all my disclaimers above, huge in what it means for human nature.  Everybody knows that Christians want to tell people how humanity ought to be - it is part of the Christian message to say that we are not what we should be, and that we must be changed.  This is, naturally, offensive to people.  But I think we are actually saying something more offensive than that - we are saying that you are not who you think you are.  Imagine if a Christian said this: 'if this lifestyle is incompatible with the gospel, it is not human'.  Offensive!  But that is implicitly what we are saying.

Of course, we are saying it to everyone, not just those who practice a certain lifestyle, and not just those outside the church.  Still, sexuality is a point at which it is particularly painful, because it is so close to the heart of an individual's identity.  The Christian message threatens to take their identity away, by telling them they are not really who they think they are at all.  What insecurity this threatens!  And what offence!

The flip-side is that if the gospel is true, then I am told who I really am, and can relax.  I have no need to forge my own identity, assert my own individuality, or even wrestle with my own inner contradictions to quite the same extent.  Who I am is decided elsewhere, and I am in a sense graciously given to myself to enjoy.

Being Human (3)

One of the key points about Barth's Christological anthropology, as I understand it, is that the Christ who stands at the centre of it is the real Jesus of Nazareth, as witnessed in the Scriptures.  Anthropology is not shaped around a centre defined by a logical or aesthetically appealing idea, whether that of the ideal human or that of incarnation.  It is based around a person, and when we say a person we mean an event - a history, a happening. General anthropology is the periphery to which the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ form the centre.

One of the huge implications of this is that it is impossible that human beings should fail to be human.

Everything we know about the world and the people who inhabit it militates against this conclusion.  In fact, we have already seen that the phenomena of human life exhibited all around us speak just as strongly of inhumanity as humanity.  If we constructed our anthropology on the basis of experience, we would probably say that people could choose: they could affirm or deny their own humanity.  In one sense we would be right. We can affirm or deny our humanity.  I can choose to live as someone who stands before God and my fellow man, or I can try not to.  I can seek to escape God, either by atheism or religion, and my fellow man, either by solitude or shallow relationships.  It is the great tragedy of sin, from the human point of view, that it tends towards the dehumanising of human beings.  It attempts to mask what and who we are.

But the event of Jesus Christ is and means 'God with us'.  And it means 'he will save his people from their sins'.  The presence of Jesus Christ - and especially the resurrection - means that humanity is not abandoned, just as Jesus is not abandoned to corruption.  God affirms his creation, and upholds it against its own wilful fall and senseless drive to be nothing.

There is no single human being who can erase what Jesus Christ has done.  There is therefore no single human being who can be really without God, or really without the fellow man, because Jesus Christ is both.  All my attempted inhumanity cannot unmake me.  The mask of evil which I choose to wear - and in so far as it lies with me, I will this mask to be my reality - is in fact not chosen for me, because Jesus Christ is with me as a human being and as my God, and I am upheld.

But how much worse this makes it!  Every sin is against my own humanity, against the grace of God, against Jesus Christ.  And every sin is an impossible attempt to be nothing when God has made me something.  My sin may take me to the fire of hell, but it will not make me less than a person who stands before and with God and my fellow man.  And that is a terrifying thought.

Being Human (2)

So, what does Christocentric anthropology look like?

First of all, it begins with Jesus, and asks the question: what does it mean to be Jesus?  Because if Jesus is 'the Man', the only real human being, humanity cannot be discovered apart from him.  Of course, there are many ways we could look at Jesus, and many perspectives from which we could view him.  When it comes to anthropology, we must consider Jesus the Man (albeit the Man who is God).  There are two essential things to consider about this Man - two relationships.  On the vertical axis, Jesus is man for God.  This captures a number of different things.  Jesus, considered as a human being, is God's creature; his human nature has no existence except that which is granted to it in the incarnation through its union with the Logos.  The sense in which Jesus is man for God goes beyond this, however, to embrace his responsibility.  Everything that is not God exists for God in some way, but Jesus exists for God as an active, responsible being.  He exists to willingly fulfil the will of God.  Meanwhile, on the horizontal axis, Jesus is man for man.  At the surface level, this expresses the fact that Jesus comes to do humanity good.  At a deeper level, the man Jesus would not exist except as he comes to do man good.  Being 'for man' is not something that is incidental to Jesus; it defines his being as the incarnate Son of God.  And then again, Jesus is 'for man' because in his life, death, and resurrection he takes the place and takes up the cause of the human race and each member of it.

To be Jesus is to be man for God, and man for man.

But secondly Christocentric anthropology recognises that Christology and anthropology are different things.  We cannot read a general doctrine of humanity from the being of Jesus.  He is the God-man, unique and above us in every way.  Barth doesn't put it like this, but I suppose you could say we should not be Christomonist when thinking about humanity, but genuinely Christocentric.  Jesus is the centre point of humanity, and general humanity stands around him; Christology is the centre and anthropology is the periphery.  Nevertheless, we can move from the centre to the periphery.  Humanity cannot be Jesus, but it must correspond to Jesus.

Jesus is man for God - uniquely so, through the incarnation.  But corresponding to this is the determination of man generally as one who belongs to God and responds to God.  This vertical relationship exists, whether the individual human being acknowledges it or seeks to efface it.  The relationship holds because, in the faith of human unfaithfulness, and indeed the impossible yet frequently made decision for inhumanity on the part of individual human beings, God is faithful.  Human beings cannot unmake themselves, or make themselves something other than what they are.

Jesus is man for man - uniquely so, through his representative and substitutionary role.  But corresponding to this is the determination of man generally as one who stands with other men.  No definition of humanity which makes the individual prior can possibly be correct.  To be man, says Barth, is to be fellow-man, to stand in an I-Thou relationship with other human beings.  Again, this must be so.  We do stand in relationship to others, whether we like it or not.  We cannot, and should not, stand in their place as Jesus does, but we should stand alongside.  We exist to help one another.  This being as fellow-man is shown most clearly in the existence of humanity as male and female, man and woman.  "It is not good for the man to be alone".

These conclusions - that man is for God, and with other men - could be reached in other ways.  But only from Jesus can they be shown to be certain and absolutely determinative for human existence.

Being Human (1)

Shiny Ginger Thinking has been interrupted recently by the arrival of a brand new ginger boy into our family, which is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, but does cut into my computer time.  Still, some background low-level thoughts have been bubbling up to the surface, and this is one of them.

Since I picked up my cheap-as-quite-expensive-chips reprint of the Church Dogmatics just before Christmas, I've been ploughing through some of what has, for me, been life changing and brain stretching theology.  Volume IV.2 has changed the way I think about Barth, as he unfolds what might be called the more subjective side of salvation, something he is often accused of neglecting.  Volume III.2, which I am now half way through, has been challenging my view of what it means to be human, and how we ought to talk about humanity.  Let me share a few, possibly disjointed, reflections.

Barth begins his anthropology, as he begins pretty much everything, with Jesus Christ.  He argues that we ought not to put together our definition of what a human being is on the basis of what we see in human beings around us.  Partly, this is because we see as much inhumanity as humanity in human beings in the world.  More profoundly, Jesus Christ is "man for man" - the human being, the one who lives out our created and predestined life of obedience for us.  If we want to understand humanity, we should look first at Jesus.  This does not mean that non-theological anthropology can't teach us anything about human beings; it simply means that anthropology that does not start with Christ cannot penetrate to the essence of what a human is.  Barth's presentation recalls Kant at this stage, with his doctrine of the transcendental subject - for Kant, we cannot talk about what a human being really is in essence, because this is unknowable to us; we can only discuss what we see, the phenomena of humanity.  Barth says, in effect, that this is true, in so far as we attempt to proceed without revelation, and seek our knowledge of humanity "in other ways than by the confrontation of man with the man Jesus Christ" (p. 198).  All the phenomena of human existence - the things that can be studied by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and others - may well be symptoms of real humanity, but that cannot be known unless we have already been shown and told what real humanity is.  Otherwise, they are like accidents without a substance (Barth uses the analogy of the mass!) - floating adjectives attached to no known subject.

By chance, I was flicking through Henry Bettenson's selections of extracts from the early church fathers (good toilet reading), and came across this from Athanasius:  "[God] did not merely create man in the same way as he created all the irrational creatures on earth; he made man 'after his own image', giving them a share in the power of his own Word, so that they might have as it were shadows of the Word..." (De Incarnatione, 3).  And also this:  "We are called the image and glory of God not on our own account; it is on account of the image and true glory of God that dwells in us, namely his Word who later became flesh for us, that we have the grace of this designation" (Contra Arianos, iii. 10).

See what he's saying there?  Humanity is found in Christ, the image of God.  So anthropology starts with him. And this is not some abstract logos asarkos, but the real man Jesus Christ.

More to come, as and when I find the mental energy!