Beauty is a form of Hope

"When we make beauty, it is a form of hope." Anne Hathaway.

Human beings are priests; our value is worship

LLMs are causing all sorts of angst and discussion these days, most noteably in the recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas which I have yet to read. There is a duality of doom on one side and evangelical fervor on the other. For now, these thoughts from from author L. M. Sacasas in his Substack "The Convivial Society" point me forward in a laudable way:

We’ve made machines that can fly faster and farther than the swallow-tailed kite, but in no way does it follow that the kite should cease from its flight or that it is somehow diminished because of the advent of flying machines. That there is something else in the world that flies tells us nothing about whether the kite ought to fly.

It seems to me that we would be better off if we were less preoccupied with the question of human uniqueness, if we took for granted that we are creatures of certain sort making their way in the world with a distinct set of capabilities and potentialities and that we ought to exercise these capabilities and develop these potentialities not because they make us special but because they make us happy.

I will set aside for a moment the question of whether machines, LLMs specifically, can think or reason or use language in a manner that corresponds to the human use of language, etc. But let us grant for arguments sake that they can. They can certainly generated passable simulations of such things. But why should this mean that I ought not to think for myself and with others? Why should I cease from inhabiting the playground of language because a machine can pretend to play in it as well? Why should I abandon the exercise of judgment or the pursuit of knowledge? We must pursue these things not because the dignity of our humanity is on the line, but because our joy is.

This is a good turn, but it is not turn enough. Human beings were not made for what we do. Certainly what we do is marvelous. But we were made to be priests. Priests receive their value from the calling they receive from their god and from the personal and corporate worship they do and produce for their god. This river of value flows from the Source of value and go back again to that Source.

So let's get our anthropology set and calm down about these new tools we've invented. The ability of the greatest LLM or robot may meet or surpass that of human beings, but we do not receive value from those abilities. The joy of the Lord is our strength. I rejoiced when I heard them say, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'

__________

[1] An adjacent though unrelated idea. "AI is not a unitary actor." wrote Joanna Bryson. "It is not unitary, and it does not act. . . It is a set of software engineering techniques and digital services. Thus it is meaningless to discuss what AI will do, or to look for singular solutions about how to govern it."

[2] Microsoft's post "Towards Humanist Superintelligence" written in November 2025 should not be forgotten. "Technology’s purpose is to help advance human civilization. It should help everyone live happier, healthier lives. It should help us invent a future where humanity and our environment truly prosper. . . . Any technology that doesn’t achieve this is a failure. And we should reject it."

Graeme Goldsworthy asks how we can know what is true

What follows is a summary of Graeme L. Goldsworthy's essay "'Thus Sayeth the Lord': The Dogmatic Basis of Biblical Theology" printed in the festchrift God Who is Rich in Mercy (Lancer, 1986). I hope to add my own comments after.

Reworking Goldsworthy's Essay

How can human beings know what is really true? False presuppositions produce false results. So any philosophy constructed of human reason, such as the Thomism of Roman Catholicism, cannot help but err. "Thomism along with liberalism and Arminianism establishes human knowledge, reason and logic" as the means by which human beings can know what is real. As Aquinas, following Aristotle, taught, "By what is evident to the senses, man is capable of developing a philosophical framework within which revelation is defined and understood." But natural methods can never describe true reality because the human beings that use them are blind. Human beings not only deny but actively suppress the truth. Therefore, "common humanity and human interests in themselves provide no real common ground for understanding truth."

Certainly believers and unbelievers can and do "work side by side in the sciences, humanities, arts, and politics. But they can never agree on the ultimate meaning" of it all. For most, the measure of truth is the autonomous self. But for a believer--one who has been healed of his or her blindness--there is access to truth; the cornerstone of reality is made available. Yes, for those who can see, truth's measure is Jesus, the God-man, announced by the father and attested by witnesses inspired by the Spirit.

John Calvin, the last of the first wave of Protestant reformers, taught with his fellows that it was the Easter light of the Holy Spirit that opens the eyes of human beings to see the truth embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. And this is no mystic truth, but a historical one. The historical sweep of the Bible and all of history with it makes up the witness by which human beings understand the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of the man Jesus. The historical arc of Jesus' incarnation fits historiography into its proper frame. It is a jigsaw set right within the redemptive arc of time that begins in creation and goes on into the everlastingness of the age to come.

Not wishing this to take all day, I asked Gemini to create a summary of the essay. I'm going to paste it below and pick up my commentary after.

LLM Summary: The Core Thesis

Goldsworthy argues that biblical theology is not a neutral or purely descriptive discipline[cite: 124, 130]. Instead, it must be rooted in a Reformed dogmatic framework that recognizes the self-authenticating authority of Jesus Christ and Scripture[cite: 98, 134, 135]. He rejects the notion of "common ground" between believers and unbelievers based on autonomous human reason[cite: 73, 90].

Main Ideas

• Epistemological Reformation: Goldsworthy contrasts the "nature-grace synthesis" of Thomism with the Calvinist view that sin has corrupted human cognition[cite: 33, 44, 71]. He argues for noetic regeneration, where the Holy Spirit enables the believer to accept Scripture as God’s self-authenticating word[cite: 49, 144, 146].
• Rejection of "Common Ground": While believers and unbelievers share the same universe, they interpret reality through fundamentally different presuppositions: the sovereignty of God versus the autonomy of man[cite: 79, 118].
• Christ as the Hermeneutical Center: The Old Testament cannot be fully understood on its own terms or through purely historical evidence[cite: 209, 210]. Only after accepting Christ as Lord can the OT promises be correctly interpreted as speaking of Him[cite: 215, 224].
• The Role of Biblical Theology: Goldsworthy defines biblical theology as being concerned primarily with the dynamics and progression of revelation across redemptive history[cite: 229, 230].

Supporting Ideas

• Scriptural Conflict of Epistemologies: The author uses Jesus' dialogues in the Gospel of John and Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians to show that belief and unbelief are radical opposites with no rational middle ground[cite: 153, 164, 168].
• Critique of Evangelical Empiricism: Goldsworthy challenges theologians like Clark Pinnock, arguing that historical "evidences" do not validate God’s word; rather, God’s word provides the necessary interpretation for historical events[cite: 242, 273].
• Faith vs. Evidence in the OT: He cites the lives of Abraham, Noah, and Moses to demonstrate that their faith often operated against historical evidence, sustained solely by the authority of God's word[cite: 254, 259, 261].

---

Argument Outline

I. The Presuppositional Roots

• Historical Context: Biblical theology often emerges as a revolt against excessive dogmatism or extreme liberalism[cite: 26, 27].
• The Reformers' Contribution: True biblical theology finds its impetus in the Reformation's attack on the presuppositions of medieval scholastic theology[cite: 29, 30].
• Calvin’s Epistemology: Knowledge of God is innate (sensus deitatis) but suppressed by sin[cite: 44, 75]. Therefore, a "true Christian epistemology" requires the witness of the Holy Spirit to the Word[cite: 34, 47].

II. The Conflict of Two Worldviews

• Sovereignty vs. Autonomy: Every thought assumes either the sovereignty of God or the autonomy of man[cite: 118].
• The Dogmatic Framework: Goldsworthy outlines a five-point summary of the Reformed method, starting with the idea that every datum in the universe is theistic and ending with the need for the Holy Spirit to bring the rebellious reason to faith[cite: 80, 81, 85].
• Noetic Sanctification: The believer must strive for "intellectual and epistemological sanctification," bringing every thought into submission to Christ[cite: 113, 114].

III. Christological Foundation of Biblical Theology

• Failure of Neutrality: Biblical theology can never be "merely descriptive" because the theologian's a prioris always govern the results[cite: 125, 128].
• The Word-Event Relationship: God speaks through a "sinless, saving word" (Christ), who is the perfect divine-human relationship[cite: 220].
• New Testament Priority: The NT establishes the dogmatic basis (Jesus is Lord) through which the OT is interpreted[cite: 216, 331].
• The Final Norm: Christ is the "Alpha point" and "Omega point" of all theological endeavor[cite: 142, 333].

---

Comparison of Epistemologies

Feature	Thomism / Empiricism	Reformed Presuppositionalism
Common Ground	Human reason and logic [cite: 72]	None (except the suppressed sensus deitatis) [cite: 90, 92]
Role of Evidence	Historically validates the Bible's truth claims [cite: 242, 245]	Interpreted and given meaning by the Word [cite: 109, 273]
Starting Point	Sensory data and philosophical frameworks [cite: 38, 42]	The self-authenticating Christ [cite: 67, 98]
Effect of Sin	Weakened the "likeness of God" but left the image unscathed [cite: 71]	Radical dislocation of the relationship between God and His image [cite: 70]

Of the late Greek theologian Chrysostomos Stamoulis

Orthodox theologian, university professor, and musician Chrysostomos Stamoulis passed into the Lord's keeping in mid-August 2025. I'd not heard of him until I read a tribute by the World Council of Churches, which led to further research. I really like Dr. Stamoulis's ideas. So, here's a place to put what I know about him and his work.

“The aesthetic theology of Professor Chrysostomos Stamoulis is a holistic one. For him, the distinction between the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane, is false. Music, poetry, theatre, film, the novel, philosophy, and science are not ‘secular’ endeavors, but attempts to give significance to the world and especially to its most critical questions about love, life, and death. The rejection of the distinction between holy and unholy applies equally to the distinction between the familiar and the strange. The stranger should be a part of my own life. He invites me to dialogue, he challenges me and he is the chance for an authentic self-knowledge. Christ is the supreme criterion for judging the ecclesiastical life. The members of the Church, in order to be authentic, must follow Christ’s paradigm. They must be open to the unfamiliar, to the wholly different one. But He is also the assumption of concrete man and reality. As a consequence, the Christian must embrace real life, as it is, without nostalgic flight towards an idealized historical past. Professing a living theology, Stamoulis urges us not to lose the beauty of the present by overloading it with the chimerical beauties of the past, or indeed of the future. His thinking is, in its way, a theological version of Carpe diem.”

Bibliography

• Texts on the diologue of Orthodoxy with the city, politics and culture publishes by Armos, Athens 2016.
• Love and sexuality. Interdisciplinary narrative, from antiquity to the present day, from microorganisms to humans (ed.), Armos Publishing House, Athens 2014.
• Test for a culture of incarnation published by Akritas, Athens 2009.
• Lot's wife and modern theology published by Indictos, Athens 2008 and Armos 2014.
• The saint is beautiful. Probers in the hospitable aesthetics of Orthodoxy. Akristas, Athens 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010.
• About light. Personal or physical energies? Contributions to the modern problematic Holy Trinity in the Orthodox space, published by "To Palimpsiston", Thessaloniki 1999, 2007.
• Theotokos and orthodox dogma. Study in the teaching of Saint Cyril of Alexandris, published by "To Palimpsiston", Thessaloniki 1999, 2003.
• Holy Beauty: Prolegomena to an Orthodox Philocalic Aesthetics (Kallos to hagion). James Clarke. London, 2022.
• Broken Bridges: An Introduction to Orthodox Fundamentalism. trans. Constantine Lerounis. Sebastian Press. Alhambra, California. 2021.
• We got run over: Essays on Orthodoxy's self-entrapment. Athens 2021.
• What the Fox seeking in the Fair? Essays on the Dilogues of Orthodoxy with Politics, Culture, and the City Athens 2016.
• As if I were a Stranger and a Wanderer, or Incarnation: the Migration of Love. Athens 2011.
• Love and Death: An Essay on the Incarnation. Athens 2009.
• Lot's Wife and 20th Century Theology. Athens 2008.
• Sacred Beauty: An Introduction to the Philocalic Aesthetics of Orthodoxy. Athens 2004, 2005, 2008.

Links

In memory of Chrysostos Stamoulis
World Council of Churches
Author bio from James Clarke
Why theology needs the arts
Stamoulis on COVID-19
The Theater of a Dialogue in Three Acts
Holy Beauty: book review

The Genre of the Lord's Prayer

Let me add this to my notes around the Lord's Prayer: The genre of the prayer is lament. Here's how you get there. (1) By the time the disciples ask Jesus to "teach them to pray", they have hundreds of years of world-literature-level devotional tradition and practice behind and around them, which they've imbibed from infancy. (2) So, "teach us to pray" is more like asking a martial arts master to "sum up the essence of your take on the tradition." (3) The context of the Prayer is absolutely that devotional tradition--and chiefly the psalms. (4) Therefore, to understand the prayer, one must look to the psalms. (5) Psalms come in several genres. (6) The Prayer is without doubt functioning in the genre of lament. (7) The genre's of the psalms, from royal victory to the deepest despair, fall along the spokes of a cycle, where each genre is aware of the others. So, (8) lament psalms are on-the-way to psalms of absolute praise, even as absolute praise is aware that human life is going to include despair eventually as well. But the whole of the five books of psalms does, nevertheless, slowly lift as a whole into priestly adoration of Yahweh. (9) Back to #2, the Prayer defines the Messianic call in the context of the psalmic devotional tradition. (Anyone who wants to know more about this praise -> lament and repeat cycle should consult the work of OT scholar W. Bruggemann.)

The Meetup of Divine Intent

Driving in to work this morning, I was listening to a lecture on St. Bonaventure. I have always been fascinated by the mystics of Christian history, and I have read many of their works and summaries of their lives. The problem for me, though, is the explicit Neoplatonism that informs their ideas. The mystic way is not something I would have learned from the lips of the apostles. Its descent into the soul to find God is not the kind of spiritual advice that I read Jesus encouraging his followers to practice. So, as much as I admire these devout men and women of the church, I respectfully believe them misguided with respect to their Biblical theology. And that is no hidden scar.

But this morning I realized that I have come to find myself at the door of a better mystic way. This way is not a ladder of divine ascent. It does not struggle inward to God. Instead, it journeys outward--soul and body together--into the lives of one's neighbors and the needs of our communities. Instead of the cloud of unknowing, the self disappears into the river of God's selfless, overflowing love. One is carried in the eucharistic direction, to be broken and distributed for others. Perhaps there is still the threefold pattern of purgation, illumination, and union. Purgation of the self. Illumination about the people and communities in which one lives. And union with the Spirit as it pours itself kenotically into the world setting apart the name of God, living out the kingdom rule of God, and seeking to do the will of God.

Plastic People

In 2012 science writer Annie Murphy Paul published a summary of then-recent research into brain science and language called "This is Your Brain on Fiction." In it, she wrote, “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Writer Mike Sowden referred to Paul’s article in his Nov 26, 2025, Substack Entry “Nothing Lies Like Your Own Memory.” Given research that calls into question the mind’s ability to unchangeably hold any memory and to resist bias and illusion, Sowden ultimately wonders what we even anchor ourselves in? “Without the sturdy edifice of our personal history to place ourselves in, how [can] we ever know who we are and where we belong? . . And if even our most fundamental memories [cannot] be trusted, where [does] that leave us?” Sowden goes on to talk about the vivid power of false memories, and how those who object most to the plasticity of memory are those most subject to it. He closes thus:

To avoid your personality flying to pieces, how about leaning into the findings of Annie Murphy Paul, and start regarding yourself not just as an amalgam and summation of your memories of everyone you’ve been and everything you’ve done (both of which may not be far less accessible to you than you think) - but as an ongoing story of your own continuous re-imagining. . . Identity is stories all the way down, and instead of feeling hemmed in and victimized by yours, how about acting like the author you actually seem to unconsciously be at the neuron-by-neuron level, with all of your self-rewritten components in the form of memories. How similar to who you’ve ended up are you to the person you want to be? What would that person be doing and how would they be acting? How about trying to add a few of those things until your fickle memory does its work and you completely forget you haven’t been like that until now?

__________

Mimesis: a short definition
Hermeneutics is love's desire to know

A short introduction to liberation theology

Robert McAfee Brown. Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993. 143 pp.

***

What is liberation theology? It is a modern style of theology, an apocalyptic style, that begins with people and, specifically with the poor. It asks questions about now, and applies the gospel concretely to real situations and toward real goals. It says the world, because of the kingship of Christ, should not be the way it is.

Brown identifies four recurring themes in liberation theology.

Compromiso. This word is not a Spanish form of the English word compromise. Quite the opposite. It means commitment of the whole person. And a good test of such commitment, says Brown, is one’s degree of concern for children. Y los unicos privilegiados seran los ninos, “and the only privileged ones will be children.”

Hope. This is the existential dimension that Juergen Moltmann discusses in his Theologie der Hoffnung. This is the attitude resulting from living in the Easter light. This is the possibility that change in every way is not only possible but promised.

God’s Presence. The poor can hope because God is with them and sees them, for he himself did not come as a rich man but as a poor one. And, Jesus spoke of bringing good news to the poor. Jesus tabernacled among us; he labored and lived among us.

Preferential Option for the Poor. Certainly, the gospel is for all people. But the Bible begins with the poor, with widow and orphans. The preferential option points to the kind of change necessary to bring about the justice the lordship of Jesus requires. The question put to any reform must be, “Will this or will it not improve the situation of the poor?” And if so, all of society will benefit.

Someone who wishes to practice liberation theology should do their research. They must open their eyes–-especially if they are privileged. "Criticial thinking without hope is cynicism," said the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova, "but hope without critical thinking is naivety." Seeing requires struggle. The insights of social analysis, economists, and the sciences help. But one cannot stand apart and seek to understanding. In order to open one’s eyes (called conscientization), one must personally cross the gap.

“The commitment being described is not a form of intellectualizing so much as one of experiencing and ‘encountering.’ It is not enough to read books about poverty; commitment means encountering poor people. It is not enough to learn about ‘the root causes of poverty,’ . . . it is a matter of learning about and entering into and making common cause with persons who are being destroyed by these root causes, and seeking for legislative–or more drastic–ways to dispose of the causes. And it is the almost universal witness of those who do so, that in encountering the poor they are somehow encountering God, learning that whoever else God is, God is ‘the God of the poor,’ the one who takes their part, who works with and form them.” (56)

Brown lists three emphases of liberation theology clustered around its call for liberation. All three hang together. This is important: one cannot be over emphasized or considered apart from the rest. (1) Liberation from unjust social structures or “structural evil.” (2) Liberation from the power of fate. Nothing is “the way it is.” Things needn’t remain as they are. (3) Liberation from personal sin and guilt. These all hang together because Jesus, among other things, is the liberator and the gospel is an announcement of the personal and political liberation consequent of his reign. A Christian cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and not include its second half. There is no theology without ethics; no resurrection without hope.

Brown concludes by calling his reader to some next steps. First, we must consciously form communities of Christians committed to Bible reading and contemporary action. Second comes a commitment to the truth, to speaking the truth. We must be truthful with ourselves, with others, and we must speak the truth to the dominant community. And finally, we must take risks.

“I believe there is an eleventh commandment for Christians: Thou shalt not decide that someone else should become a martyr. . . . Christians must seek to discern the kind of witness that is demanded of them, and then go with it.” (119)

Every Christian must do a hermeneutic of their situation and decide what martyrdom—meaning witness–demands of them. And every church, too, has to do the same. The forces and temptations that buffet the individual will be different than those that afflict a church. “Either we believe in a God of life, or we serve the idols of death.” (Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero)

“A sacrifice from ill-gotten gains is tainted
and the gifts of the wicked win no approval.
The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the godless,
nor do countless sacrifices win his forgiveness.
To offer a sacrifice from the possessions of the poor
is like killing a son before his father’s eyes.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and to deprive them of it is murder.
To rob your neighbor of his livlihood is to kill him,
and he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood.”

~ Ecclesiasticus 34.18-22, the passage that “converted” Bartolome de las Casas

Dorothy Soelle on the existential origin of feminist theology

"Feminist theology arises, as does every liberation theology, from the experience of being wounded. It grows from the destruction inflicted on the lives of women, whether conceived in economic, political, social, intellectual, or psychic terms. It makes mutilations visible. It arises among women who perceive their situation and take common steps to change it, breaking out of the conventions and forms of the dominant theology and its pact with power. The pact which is made there tenders a cultural task for the church which contradicts its mission and its tradition: the church is supposed to make the victims of our situation invisible; and if this isn't possible, at least the causes of the misery should remain fatefully uncertain. Preachers may tell of Mary and Joseph but should not know the particular homeless in our own cities. They expound on the story of the paralytic and his friends, but whether those suffering from AIDS have friends, they don't know. They mention the 'hungry,' but the feminization of poverty remains outside of their horizon.

"In view of the real suffering of women, the theology and devotional practices of churches show up as strangely blind and ignorant. Among feminist women who have begun to reflect from the perspective of their wounds, there has spread astonishment concerning the dispassionate abstractness of masculine theology, boredom with biblical exegesis removed from experience and praxis, and revulsion against spiritless masculine administration within the institution. 'Therefore I ask God,' writes Meister Eckhart, 'to rid me of God.' There is no heresy but rather the petition for liberation from the prison of a language which is too small for God. Therefore I ask God my Mother--so I understand Eckhart today--to rid me of the God of men." (Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God, Augsburg-Fortress, 1995), 39-40.

Esau McCaulley says his church, the black church in America, has something to say

Yesterday, I finished Esau McCaulley's book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. IVP Academic. 2020. McCaulley's bona fides are beyond question. He has a PhD from St. Andrews. His Doktorvater is N. T. Wright. He teaches New Testament at Wheaton College. He is a priest in the ACNA. He is a black man and a Christian. This is a book McCaulley was born to write. And it is a book with a message: the South got somethin' to say.

These notes are not a book review. Rather, they are a short treatment of some of his ideas. Nevertheless, if you have never read his book, I do recommend it. The faculty and staff of my alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, read it together. That encouraged me to pick it up; it took five years to find a cheap copy bc I'm a cheapie. Plus, I am very interested in looking at the faith through the eyes of non-white people.

Chapter One: The South got Somethin' to Say

As he grew up, McCaulley found himself caught between two communities in the Black church. One of these was evangelical scholasticism and the academy. The other, social justice and the pulpits. He appreciated the serious scholarship of the former, but its papers and commentarites "displayed little concern for how biblical texts speak to the experiences of Black believers" (12). He also thought they read for a white audience, if they even made it out of the first century. "To me, it was a sign of privilege to imprison Paul and Jesus in the first century (13). But what about the social justice side? Here, scholarship was viewed with suspicion. Getting the exegesis right and whiteness have often gone hand in hegemonic hand. Wasn't exegesis the tool of white churches seeking to baptize slavery in the first place? McCaulley cedes the point but disagrees. Looking at the earliest strate of Black ecclesial leadership, he finds plenty of exegesis--and a thoroughgoing message of liberation and freedom.

As McCaulley argues, God is a liberator. Liberation erupts from God's very character, from out of and to his ontological sabbath shalom.[1] God desires freedom for his people. And his expectation is that his freed people will live lives of holiness, living out their liberation before the world. They participate in God's continual and peaceful call. Any reading of the Bible that says otherwise is in error. Scholarship and justice pick up the liberating cross together in whatever historical situation it is found and partner with one another to discern the mind of Christ for this day.

Handpicking other points of interest

McCaulley goes in for re-examing texts used historically to subdue and subjugate Black Christians. Eschatology is on his mind, the kind of eschatology that bubbles up into every living moment. Eschatology stimulates the church to act for justice and for liberation against the horizon ofeventual and certain shalom. But eschatology is also "not yet." And, in the intervening time, there is mourning.

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, McCaulley writes, "To mourn involves being saddened by the state of the world. To mourn is to care. It is an act of rebellion against one's own sins and the sins of the world. . . A theology of mourning never allows us the privilege of apathy. . . Mourning is intuition that things are not right--that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is. Our politicians run on our desires by convincing us that utopia is possible here and they alone can provide it." (65) I do also like his emphasis that this mourning leads to a hope to see elements of the Kingdom of God come to be, its liberation unto justice. And that this involves telling truth. As Luther said, A theologian calls a thing what it is. "Peacemaking is a sign of God's inbreaking kingdom. . . . Through our efforts to bring peace, we show the world the kind of king and kingdom we represent. . . . Therefore the work of justice, when understood as direct testimony to God's kingdom, is evangelistic from start to finish." (Ibid.)

I am caught by this: "For Zecharaiah and Elizabeth, the miracle child is John. For the African American Christian, the miracle is the Black Church born of truly miraculous circumstances and whose witness to Jesus has served as something of a forerunner preparing America to accept a truer and fuller gospel" (84). This fuller gospel is one that, while grounded in respectful and canonically comprehensive exegesis, includes the necessary hermeneutic to place those exegetic results in dialogue with today. Preaching is a public gift of the Black Church.

McCaulley reads with the end in mind. His work is eschatological. He understands the Christian vision of the future--the liberated, risen church--as one that embraces difference: difference of skin, of language, of culture. "These distinct people, cultures, and languages are eschatological everlasting. At the end, we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God's glory. . . . Our distinctive cultures represent the means by which we give honor to God. He is honoered through the diversity of tongues singing the same song." (118) Liberation does not lead to the removal of color, thinking of people who claim to not see color. That approach to difference is well-meant, perhaps, but incorrect. "The gospel does not cancel ethnic identities.(113)"

So when McCaully approaches scripture, he considers it in its historical-grammatical context and he considers it eschatologically.[2] In the Easter light, as von Balthasar said. So, he weds the careful tools of the evangelicals with the social energy of the progressives.

Laws of restraint suggest an eschatological purpose

McCaully discusses a way of reading Biblical ethics that I found very helpful. Referencing Jesus's teaching on divorce, McCaully observes that Jesus brings ethics back to creational intent. Let's call this the creational ethic. But, Jesus acknowledges that the law does exist to restrain error. Paul does the same when he says the law is the paidagogos. The law makes pastoral sense of difficult situations. Let's call this pastoral consideration.

Applying this to the slavery question in America. The Bible's teaching around slavery is pastoral consideration. Its teachings limit the worst aspects of slavery. And, as they do their work, they erase the foundation that supports the sinful institution itself. They do this because the creational intent--the deeper ethic--is liberation-unto-freedom. God made all human beings to be his imago in the world. So the limiting effort of the law serves a temporary purpose guided by the deeper and eventually overcoming liberation of eschatological reality, in this case, a free people worshiping God's messiah together.

Scars suffered in the present do not prevent eschatological participation

Finally, there is McCaulley's discussion of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Christ is our reconciler, our liberator to shalom in the Kingdom of God. One would not have thought a eunuch could ever be liberated. Weren't his public wounds permanent? He was not only a a Gentile, but he was permanently impure by the nature of his injury. As McCulley reminds his reader: eunuch's were despised. The man suffered the injustice of castration from the community at large, and "in a culture with strictly defined gender roles, he would be seen as aberrant" (110). But the eunuch is in fact liberated. He "found hope in the shamed Messiah whose resurrection lifts those with imposed indignities to places of honor." And "The eunuch [was always] an image bearer [of God]. Christ showed the eunuch who he truly was." McCaully's point is that blackness, like castration, does not prevent Jesus's liberating act from fully delivering black men and women to wholeness, dignity, and value in the Kingdom of God, to "God's eschatological vision for the reconciliation of all things in his Son." Christ's redemption is a liberating act for all people who for whatever reason suffer indignity and shame. Christ has made a place for them all in the kingdom.

__________

[1] I hope one sees the divine mission underneath this mention of liberation.
[2] cf Theology Along Three Axes