Monday, December 06, 2004
(2:15 PM) | Anonymous:
Saint Paul Week: Thoughts on Pauline Christian Community
This post is a response to Stephen Fowl’s "Making Stealing Possible: Criminal Thoughts on Building an Ecclesial Common Life" in Engaging Scripture published by Blackwell. (This post may also betray the fact that I am currently living in Christian community with an Anabaptist fellowship.) Fowl’s project is the right understanding of scripture interpretation to the end of right Christian life and worship. He asserts that this interpretation happens within Christian communities as they practice a certain kind of "word-care": a mutuality of language that builds the kind of community necessary for right scripture interpretation. This word-care is in essence truth telling. Communal life cannot happen where truth is not told.Ironically enough, his experiment passage and the passage with which we are dealing is arguably not Pauline. Nevertheless, it falls in the larger canonical umbrella of belonging in some way to Paul. His assertion is that only the type of community where stealing can happen is one where truth can be told. The text is Ephesians 4.25-5.2. Paul offers his customary paraenetic (instructional) section; this one specifically emphasizes all kinds of ways and modes of communal speech: "speak the truth to our neighbors", "Let no evil talk come out of your mouths", "Put away…slander." In the midst of all this talk about talk Paul slips in a bit about stealing. "Those who steal must stop stealing" (Fowl’s translation). Fowl asks, "Why in the midst of a discussion about ‘word-care’ does Paul raise the issue of stealing?" Why, indeed.
We have to realize the possibility that those stealing were stealing from others in the community. Fowl relies on Milbank’s work in The Word Made Strange to show how this is out of character for the church of Jesus. Stealing happens out of a context of scarcity. Milbank posits, "Generosity or true not stealing acts out of the assumption of plenitude." It is not that scarcity does not exist but this non-stealing rejects the assumption that such a situation is natural. Seeing scarcity as natural leads a view of creation as securing up one’s possessions and goods.
Fowl’s conclusion is that the certain level of Christian community that is needed for truth telling is a level of intensity that provides the possibility of stealing. This idea of community transgresses the dividing line of public/private so prevalent in Christian communities today. Privatization closes off; truth cannot be told when my neighbor is not allowed in my black-box money safe. However, it is just this truth that is necessary for right interpretation of scripture to the end of right Christian living and witness. Fowl concludes,
To the extent that Christian communities (at least in the US) adopt the
public/private distinctions operative in the larger culture, they will find it
difficult and frustrating to cultivate the care for words that is essential for
the debates and discussions which are crucial for interpreting scripture in ways
that foster faithful life and worship (176).
If the church is to bear witness in the current world context it has a few things to get right in its scripture interpretation. Left Behind obviously will not do. But in progressive Christianity things like voting for Kerry (or Nader) and putting commercials on Network TV are viewed as faithful acts (and they may very well be). However, Christian communities must go further. Until Christians begin to get involved in each other’s lives in real ways (real accountability and discipleship; a context where stealing is possible and where the reprimand for stealing is possible) they will not be able to bear witness (martyr) to the world. Without any sense of discipleship and accountability Christianity loses its identity. Christianity’s task is to bear witness to Christ; when this gets lost Christianity is no longer good for anything but to be trampled on the ground by humanity’s sandals (and this is probably what is happening now). Things like the Methodist George W. Bush happen. Excommunication is not a real possibility anymore but the Anabaptist idea of shunning for reconciliation is (see Menno Simons’ Life and Writings). Responsibility can still happen in local communities—it is the only place it can happen in the Christian context. But the people of those local communities must get involved in each others lives in radically communal ways.
It is my opinion that the UCC commercial will probably not be effective in drawing many people to the church. It may need to remain a "prophetic stance." What I also know is that a prophetic stance could be giving whatever money was spent in buying airtime to the poor (coffee growers in Columbia, for instance). Ultimately, I am not concerned with structures as big as The UCC or the Church of the Nazarene. I am concerned with Christians (both conservative and progressive) who think that private discipleship is enough.
As Milbank states above, Christians must not live as if the current situation is normative; it must witness to a new way of being. The (local) church cannot be faithful without a communal economics. Stealing (even from each other) must be possible in church communities. Where stealing can take place, forgiveness and accountability can happen. And where these happen "behold there is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5.17). And as Paul writes, "a new creation is everything!" (Gal 6.15).
