The theology of Walter Wink

[struggle4progress]

... I listen intently to the Book. But I do not acquiesce in it. I rail at it. I make accusations. I censor it for endorsing patriarchalism, violence, anti-Judaism, homophobia, and slavery. It rails back at me, accusing me of greed, presumption, narcissism, cowardice, and an addiction to war. We wrestle. We roll on the ground, neither of us capitulating until it wounds my thigh with "new-ancient" words ...

A Personal and Social Transformation through Scripture
By Walter Wink
Auburn Theological Seminary
February 2004
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Wink_Transformation.htm

Here is a long careful article from 1979, well worth reading, but (for a reasonable length post) I simply take a bit near the end:

... The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no biblical sex ethic. Instead it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand-year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible only knows a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, culture, or period.

The very notion of a "sex ethic" reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is "ethical" in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person's life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witness the shift from the ideal of preserving one's virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.

I agree that rules and norms are necessary: that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Such a love ethic is non-exploitive (hence, no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence, no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this is his inspired phrase, "Love God, and do as you please."

Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus' love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn't mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus' love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole ...

Homosexuality and the Bible
by Walter Wink
http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink
http://www.bridges-across.org/ba/wink.htm

... You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer .... and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well ... Christians have, on the whole, simply ignored this teaching. It has seemed impractical, masochistic, suicidal -- an invitation to bullies and spouse-batterers to wipe up the floor with their supine Christian victims ... Either he failed to make himself clear, or we have misunderstood him. There is plenty of cause to believe the latter ... He is rather showing us a way that can be used by individuals or large movements to intervene on behalf of justice for our neighbors -- nonviolently ...

Indebtedness was endemic in first century Palestine. Jesus' parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. Heavy debt was not, however, a natural calamity that had overtaken the incompetent. It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Emperors had taxed the wealthy so stringently to fund their wars that the rich began seeking non-liquid investments to secure their wealth. Land was best, but it was ancestrally owned and passed down over generations, and no peasant would voluntarily relinquish it. Exorbitant interest, however, could be used to drive landowners ever deeper into debt. And debt, coupled with the high taxation required by Herod Antipas to pay Rome tribute, created the economic leverage to pry Galilean peasants loose from their land. By the time of Jesus we see this process already far advanced: large estates owned by absentee landlords, managed by stewards, and
worked by tenant farmers, day laborers, and slaves. It is no accident that the first act of the Jewish revolutionaries in 66 C.E. was to burn the Temple treasury, where the record of debts was kept ...

Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their undergarments as well? This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Imagine the guffaws this saying must have evoked. There stands the creditor, covered with shame, the poor debtor's outer garment in the one hand, his undergarment in the other. The tables have suddenly been turned on the creditor. The debtor had no hope of winning the case; the law was entirely in the creditor's favor. But the poor man has transcended this attempt to humiliate him. He has risen above shame. At the same time he has registered a stunning protest against the system that created his debt. He has said in effect, "You want my robe? Here, take everything! Now you've got all I have except my body. Is that what you'll take next?" ...

Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus' Nonviolent Way
by Walter Wink
http://www.cres.org/star/_wink.htm
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=485
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1216-30.htm

Finally, here is what one blogger describes as "a lovely autobiographical piece from walter wink about negotiating the space between fundamentalism and cynicism when it comes to the bible." At first sight, it seems a strange and self-contradictory piece:

... As a part of my preparation for writing about the Powers, June and I decided to spend a sabbatical semester in Chile in 1982, so that we might experience what it is like to live under a military dictatorship. I became increasingly convinced that nonviolence was the only way to overcome the domination of the Powers without creating new forms of domination. I decided to test this hunch in South Africa, where we spent part of a sabbatical in 1986. On our return I wrote a little book, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1987) which urged the churches of South Africa to become more involved in nonviolent direct action against the apartheid regime. With the financial help of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, our little church in the Berkshires of Massachusetts individually addressed 3,200 copies to the black and white English-speaking clergy of South Africa. Later, the South African Roman Catholic church sent out another 800.

The book infuriated some: how dare a white American male tell those who are already suffering to suffer more, voluntarily and deliberately. Even more anger came from those committed to a violent solution. But the book had its intended effect. Someone from the outside had to say what few inside could say without losing credibility. The book redefined nonviolence (which was heard there, thanks to the white missionaries, as nonresistance and passivity) in an active, militant sense, and did so by appeal to Jesus' own teaching. Within a year the debate had completely reversed itself (my book was only one of the factors) and the head of the South African Council of Churches, Frank Chikane, was calling on the churches to engage in active nonviolence.

In 1988 I was invited to return to South Africa to do workshops on nonviolence. When the government refused to issue a visa, the person who invited me, Rob Robertson, suggested that I try to enter illegally. First Richard Deats and I led a workshop in Lesotho (which I could enter without a visa), where we sang each day as our theme song "Thine is the glory, risen, conquering Son." Then Rob and I headed for the South African border. As we entered the border post, the soldier in charge was whistling-"Thine is the glory"! It was like a biblical story: the eyes of the soldiers were blinded (by an out-of-season torrential rain that darkened the border post), they couldn't see well enough to read, so they asked me to read my passport for them. They never even looked for the visa! Those two weeks were the only other time in my life besides Oregon that I experienced the moment-by- moment guidance of God in such complete abundance. I was never apprehended; I went cheerfully about doing workshops on nonviolence until time to leave, when we "turned me in" and I was expelled from the country ...

... "Objective view" is itself an oxymoron; every view is subjective, from a particular angle of vision. We always encounter the biblical text with interests. We always have a stake in our reading of it ... Thus liberals will tend to construct a liberal Jesus, conservatives a conservative Jesus, pietists a pietistic Jesus, radicals a radical Jesus, and atheists an unattractive Jesus. Scholars who believe Jesus was like a cynic philosopher will tend to reject as non-historical any data that suggests otherwise ...

Write What You See
An Odyssey
Walter Wink
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Wink_bio/wink_bio.html