The separation between church and state: Clarifying a concept

Yesterday, my fb was abuzz with postings and comments on those who support and against the mix between politics and the church. What I find interesting here about this debate is no one seek to clarify the underlying concepts that are driving the debate. Rather it is assumed everyone understood the idea behind the concept of separation between church and states.

The book is so ‘cheem’. What’s it all about actually?

We’re back and here’s more on the recent project we published. Check it out here.

 

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Alwyn:

When I ‘marketed’ it to my church members, I said that the book was especially for Christians who are still somewhat apathetic about the political situation in Malaysia, those who are steadfast against voting (or who haven’t registered themselves), or who have decided to keep an arm’s length from issues like justice, power, oppression, etc.

The Bible and the Ballot hopes to remedy the above mindset by approaching politics from different angles and perspectives, all of which have one objective in mind: To sensitize the reader to the problems Malaysia is experiencing as a nation, the abuses committed by the incumbent government, and issues Christians need to engage with.

Christopher:

Basically, each of us in our own way set out to think about Christian involvement about politics.

Rama:

The Bible and the Ballot is about what it means to engage Malaysian society today, as Christians, in a very politically charged environment. We explain what motivates us. We share our thoughts on current events and we speak about the people who challenge, inspire and guide us.

Joshua:

Hahahaha… Actually, it’s the other way round. A reader told me that The Bible and the Ballot is notcheem enough; in his words, it “lacks depth”!

All the same, I would say that it is not so much that the content is too in-depth, but it is perhaps foreign. What I mean is that the issues discussed in the book are not what the majority Christian community in Malaysia are usually exposed to. Churches in our country do not often teach about these matters. So the book is meant to create awareness that Christian discipleship at certain times in history includes socio-political engagement. And we believe that the present is such a time.

But if you have been following this sort of conversation for a while (like the person who said that the book is not cheem enough) then the book wouldn’t be so foreign.

Sivin:

‘Cheem‘? Really? Then again the authors are writing authentically from their own unique experiences and reflections. Overall, it’s a book about how Christians are critically thinking through their choices in the light of so much that’s been happening in Malaysia. Furthermore, it’s also about how one wrestles with drawing from Biblical wisdom in the midst of challenging circumstances in today’s complicated world.

It’s not a one-size-fit-all book; it’s more like “here’s what some of us have done, and we offer it as one way of living our Christian faith today”, or “this is how we’ve thought through this, and we hope it will encourage you to reflect with a Christian mindset”. Of course, my own hope is that the readers will be encouraged to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God” in both our personal and public lives!

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Philosophy & Theology Soccer combo

I’ve watched this so many times and still enjoy it. Perhaps with greater appreciation now!

Faith and Justice: Conflict or Convergence?

 

Can faith & religion speak truth to power? Is social justice at the heart of authentic faith or is religion an opiate of the masses?

Come and take part in this Inter-faith Dialogue, “Faith and Justice: Conflict or Convergence?”, organised by our dear friends at the Islamic Renaissance Front, Sunday, 25th March, 2pm, at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, KL.

Pls register here: http://irfront.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=503

“What are the Roots of the Distinction between Theology and Philosophy?” by Jean-Luc Marion

 

This is a good lecture interweaving insights from a historic western perspective with systematic reflections later.  While it may be true that the distinction between theology (in particular Christian theology) and philosophy (in particular Greek Philosophy onwards) is problematized, then what does this mean for today? Where is ethics in this discussion and to what extent an introduction of ethics or the empirical  into the discussion disrupts the abstract nature of the dominance of ideas?

Back to Malaysia, in the public university it appears the philosophical discussions would likely be found in the humanities and social sciences, or perhaps it is also present in the form of Islamic philosophy and theology in Islamic institutions. But, this fragmented situation suggests that different ‘knowledge’ production and cultivation sites are separated from each other at least institutionally. For example, the philosophy department in University Sains Malaysia, Penang, the study of Islamic philosophy in International Islamic University, and the social scientific  and humanities work in Monash University. 

Where would ‘theology’ especially Christian theology generated from either the church context, or more precisely the seminary context in the peninsular and Sabah for example enter the conversation?

Interview with Dr. Gayatri Spivak

 

Gayatri Spivak came to Malaysia and left quite an impression to the point of being compared to Oprah Winfrey. The challenge of her contribution will perhaps be less about her erudition and complex multi-syllable sentences, but rather forcing us to pause and reconsider how we have been taught to look at the world, especially starting with the world of our origins.

This conversation between Hamid Dabashi and her around the happenings in Iran models serious thinking that is grounded in particular situations whether it’s India or Iran. My sense is that it seeks to transcend the trap of ‘localizing’ the discourse because we are now even more aware of the interconnectedness our shared global existence. The result besides solidarity with each other is to critically resource one another’s ethical and philosophical engagement with the realities confronting us.

Reading Athanasius’ Christology with Larry Hurtado’s findings

There is a popular rumor about the Church Fathers, such as Athanasius, having imported foreign categories into theology proper. It charges that Christianity’s understanding of Jesus Christ since the fourth century is deeply infiltrated by paganistic Greek philosophy. The famous case is none other than the word homoousios (Greek: ‘of the same substance’), which is seen as a dubious theological imposition on the earliest Christians’ historical experience of God and Jesus, to which has since distorted the (trinitarian) idea of divinity in the consciousness of the Church. To inquire into this matter, we may look back into the uncompromising dispute between Arius and Athanasius.

The Alexandrian presbyter Arius and his followers (Arians) challenged one of the most sacred conviction among the Christians in the fourth century. They proposed that Christ is not God but simply a pristine being created by God. Hence the Son does not exist eternally. The main person who was more than able to engage the Arians was Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria at that time. He insisted that the Son exists eternally along God and shares the same divine nature. Although Athanasius is not the one who introduces the term homoousios to the world, he is the best known defender of it in that century. Hence if homoousios is an invalid theological construct, we would have Athanasius to blame. But we have to ask whether is this the case?

Those of the view that the Bishop is responsible to corrupting Christianity’s theology proper often do not realize what was at stake in the Arian controversy. Alasdair Heron has helpfully elaborated that the main contention in the dispute is due to the different paradigm held by Arius and Athanasius. To quote Heron extensively,

The origins of the Arian conception of God lay in the tradition of philosophical theology which had begun with Xenophanes. This took as axiomatic an absolute distinction between God and the world, which was closely bound up with equally radical disjunctions between the mind and the body, and between the intelligible and the sensible realms. Thus the being of God, while in one sense seen as totally separate from non-divine being, is yet implicitly conceived of as being epistemologically accessible to the mind whose vision is clarified and refined. Through self-knowledge lies the path to knowledge of God, and the being of God may be grasped and spoken in terms drawn from the mind’s self-analysis, and then further qualified to take account of the difference even between the mind and God. [...] Athanasius does not entirely reject this sort of approach: it has a part to play in his theology, as in most Christian theology before and since. What he does insist on, however, is that this avenue to knowledge of God must be controlled by the fact that God himself has made himself known in Christ, and that it is with Christ as God that genuine knowledge of God must begin. Arius on the other hand never reaches the point where he can admit that Christ is God: his thought is wholly shaped by these other influences, and his epistemological starting-point is thus at the opposite pole from Athanasius.
(Alasdair I. C. Heron, ‘Homoousios with the Father,’ in The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A. D. 381, ed. Thomas F. Torrance [UK: Handsel Press, 1981], pp.70-71. H/T: Leow Theng Huat.)

The Arians’ paradigm is traced back to Xenophanes, while Athanasius’ back to “the fact that God himself has made himself known in Christ“. To understand Athanasius’s point further, we may juxtapose it with the historical study done by Larry Hurtado,

To judge by NT writings, Jesus was not reverenced at the expense of God, but instead as the unique agent and expression of God (e.g., as God’s “Image,” “Son”), and in obedience to the one God, who has designated Jesus as the “Kyrios” to whom this robust cultic reverence is to be given.

In the historical context, it is a novel development: professing the “one God” of Israel and yet also including as rightful (even required) recipient of devotion a distinguishable, second figure. The NT evidences, not dreams of some future time when a messianic figure may be reverenced (as, e.g., in the “Similtudes” of 1 Enoch), but instead a real and dramatic re-formulation of regular devotional practice in historically identifiable circles of early Christians. Given the special significance attached to worship practice, the programmatic inclusion of Jesus as co-recipient/recipient of their devotion is remarkable.

Of course, these first Christians insisted that they remained true to the “monotheistic” stance inherited from the ancient Jewish tradition. But, judging by the actual way that they practiced their worship and larger devotional life, theirs was a distinguishable form of “monotheistic” practice involving the programmatic inclusion of Jesus along with God.
(Emphasis added)

With this juxtaposition, we see that the theological term homoousios is not a distortion, but rather the approximated term that is considered to be the most appropriate constructed description of the earliest Christians’ knowledge of God and Jesus.

It seems clear that Athanasius is well aware that homoousios is not a foreign imposition forced into the theology proper of the Church. In contrast to the Arians, who were too ready to perceive God and Jesus through Xenophanes’ philosophy, Athanasius understood well the ‘novelty’ of the earliest Christians’ encounter with God and Jesus. The employment of homoousious is therefore used as a restrictive category that prevents the perception of God from being corrupted by foreign ideology. And precisely because of its preventive function, the category is liberated to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son based on the historical experiences of the earliest believers. To Athanasius, the theological notion that Jesus shares the same divine nature as God is because he is known as such historically.

Can Malaysians Do Political Philosophy?

A friend of mine, Ahmad Fuad, posted an essay in his Facebook entitled “Do Malaysians Need Political Philosophy?” Basically he is arguing for the need for political philosophy in the country. What caught my attention was his observation of how we disavow the need for serious thinking about the nation’s politics. For Malaysians, we are either indifferent to political philosophy by saying (i) it is too abstract or it’s a Western invention that is not applicable to the country; or (ii) we are cynical “hell, politics is about bread and butter issues! We don’t need some airy-fairy theory to tell us what is politics!”

Notes on doing political theology in Malaysia

Modernity, it was once argued, will drive religion out of the public sphere. Modern political discourse focused on the immanent ground of the sovereign will of the people. The discourse on God , on the other hand, was relegated to the private sphere of conscience and faith. To talk about God in the public sphere is presume to be an act of bad faith.

Transcending dualism in public administration

**An edited version of this article was published in the September 2011 issue of the Penang Economic Monthly.

The old Greek philosophy has a famous law, the law of non-contradiction which says, a thing cannot be its opposite in the same time space continuum. In plain English, this  is what we call “Either..or” thinking, or in plainer English, a durian cannot be at the same time a mangosteen.