With Ruptured Bodies: A Theology of the Church Divided out a week from today, I thought I’d share with you an Afterword that I considered including in the book, but ultimately decided not to. I think it gives a good window into my agenda and approach, but in the end I decided it was a bit self-indulgent to include in the book itself. Better to let my argument speak for itself. But now I’m writing a SubStack. It’s already established that I’m going to be self-indulgent. So here we go!
Afterword
Where does one begin with an impossible task? This problem has vexed me for half a decade as I’ve considered when and how to begin this particular project. But begin I must, for the matter at hand lies at the root of my particular vocation as a theologian. I find myself in a position reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah: if I cannot (or will not) speak, if I cannot give voice to the cri de cœur that animates my theological project, behold, a fire burns in my heart, in my very bones, and I enact an existential contradiction. And so, unsure of the way forward, I entrust myself and this work to the Holy Spirit, who, it has been promised, will lead us into all truth. That, I suppose, is how one begins.
That paragraph is the first set of words that I wrote for this book. In hindsight, they seem self-important or grandiose. But I include them here, not because I believe I’ve done the impossible, but because they indicate the way I’ve approached this work and, I think, account for the way in which I feel myself to have been profoundly changed in the writing of it.
The summer of 2020 was a turning point and paradigm shift for me (and of course, for many others as well). As the world faced a pandemic that shook many assumed foundations, the United States was shaken by protests that arose in the wake of a fresh spate of Black citizens being murdered by the police and private citizens. I became convinced that my work needed to more explicitly consider such realities, and I set about more fully appropriating anti-racist and intersectional analysis. Around this time, I was finishing my book Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery of the Cross, which left me with the conviction that the mystery of redemption by the incarnate Christ was the sole criterion for Christian theology and that discerning this criterion was the beating heart of the ressourcement project.
That milieu accounts for some of the emphases that emerge in this text, which I began working on in 2021. If Christ and him crucified is the sole criterion, if our theology is enriched by and depends upon discerning him and his mystery throughout the theological tradition, then the range of witnesses to whom we appeal must be expanded, and ought to include especially those whose witness to and experience of the cross has historically been neglected by a “mainstream” discourse held by and among straight white men. Over the course of writing, significant legislative backlash against an ill-defined “Critical Race Theory,” and efforts to eradicate LGBTQ people from American public life emerged, provoking the questions: On which side of this struggle will I be? On which side would Jesus be? Given how many presently enacted divisions in the church revolve around LGBTQ affirmation, I have found myself focused on that question far more directly than I had anticipated.
This is the most personal piece of work I’ve ever produced, an outgrowth of and instrument in my own personal transformation. Some conservative friends and mentors may be troubled or disappointed by the positions I have taken. Contrariwise, queer and affirming friends may find my work here too tentative or halting. But I’ve acted as I found myself compelled based on this sole criterion of Jesus Christ and him crucified, animated by the conviction that only together can we find the way.
I set out to write a definitive word. I’m confident I’ve not done so. If I’d written this book seven years ago [eight years, at this point] when I first conceived it, it would have been rather different. If I’d waited another five years, I’m sure it would have been different still. A book can only ever really be an artifact of its author’s thought as they wrote it. Such is this book. I have done the best I could with the resources I have (professionally, intellectually, emotionally, and relationally) to be true to the animating conviction that Jesus is Lord and that all my life, all my labors, are ultimately for him. Where I have fallen short — and I am sure that I have in many ways — I can only hope that I have failed in the right direction, and that the merciful Lord will use these efforts for the good of his church, that much, much loved people he has gathered to himself, that people whose love is only ever incomplete and halting, but whose ultimate hope is not in its own love, but in his.
Such is my hope. “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).
Photo: Archives New Zealand, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons