Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Bible and Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible and Religion. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Teaching Resources: James McGrath, "The A to Z of the New Testament"




Today's post relates to a very recent discussion I had with a well-churched Christian friend after receiving too many insulting jibe's directed at me. They were not meant to be funny but to be taken personally. At which point, a fun evening became a full-on private discussion between myself and my accuser.

The matter at hand - that of process theology using the newest and latest philosophic and redactive tools at hand - had been brewing for years requiring some form of frank, but well-meaning, discussion.

Unfortunately our venue that night very quickly became the time and place for me to share my personal journey. A journey I had kept private knowing full well the kind of response I would receive.

It began when asking my friend about his trip to an international pro-life religious-political conference which we talked about without getting too deep. But then the remarks started coming when I mentioned a few appointments I had taken this past month.

As I briefly mentioned these my friend began to goad the discussion onwards with accusations towards my community so that it became readily apparently he was unwilling to engage in any meaningful or positive way but fully readily to enact accusatory judgments.

If only his commentary was directed towards myself I would have laughed it off and moved on as I had done over the years but when accusations started landing upon fellow assemblies and friends then it had gone too far.

And so, there we were as I tried to share where I was personally as he pretended to listen while innocently blinking his eyes indicating he had stopped listening and was, instead, looking to argue and accuse in defense of his brand of Christianity.

I found it all particularly sad and a bit frustrating if I am to be honest. And the outcome a complete bust. Nothing was gained. And I became road-kill once again.

It also reinforced the thought I had asked myself on too many occasions that if anyone wished to find Christian enlightenment they should not come to the area I live in.

Once known as the New Jerusalem, my hometown refuses to update its old theologies; rather, it obsequiously monitors all new ideas by it's self-appointed Scribes and Pharisees as overseers of all church polities and policies. Not Jesus. Not love. And certainly not enlightenment.

The apologetic walls here are on high alert and at all times. People come here to leave. Not stay. Any new seed dies on it's hard grounds. And any new wine is expected to be poured into old wine sacks which predictably will burst and be lost. We are expected to stay to the old ways and imagine the rugged past as better than any promised future.

Which is also why I have felt Spirit-driven over the years to write out my personal journey so that readers may benefit by my examination of traditional church beliefs and teachings and how they may be more appropriately applied for today's present times.

Which is also why I am posting Tripp and James' discussion today finding similar souls on similar journeys as my own. That our testimony may aide fellow travellers and local church assemblies exploring the meaning of their Christian faith against all which would make it hollow and empty.

To find a Jesus-gospel which reclaims and redeems; renews and repents; heals and will not harm; as versus another kind of gospel meant to prevent doubt or inquiry; any meaningful self-examination; or force all who come to Jesus to assimilate under a specific brand of socio-political doctrinnaire.

Tripp, by background, comes from a North Carolina Baptist setting in his youth - while James, at present, teaches at Butler University in Indiana. I respect them both. Each have their strengths in Christian witness and testimony. Whether James is a process theologian I do not know. However, he's hanging around the right people who are even as I am trying to find similar fellowship in my area if it is possible.

Moreover, Tripp, like myself, are "all-in on Process-everything" and have been actively fleshing it out since becoming acquainted with Whitehead's organic cosmo-philosophy and metaphysics.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater
December 14, 2023




Source and Redaction Criticism

There are a lot of critical tools we use when studying the Bible. These ways of thinking about the text help us understand where it came from and how it has been used by the authors. The passage we looked at on Sunday leads into a really neat example of both source and redaction criticism.

Source criticism tries to uncover the original source of a story or document and looks to understand what that original source was trying to say. Redaction criticism sees the author of the text as it comes to us as the primary source and tries to understand what the author was trying to say as they edited (or redacted) that original source.

Well, in Matthew 25:14–30 (the parable of the talents) and in Luke 19:11-27 (the parable of the minas) these two authors tell a very similar story with almost diametrically opposed meanings. and this brings up some really interesting questions.

From a source-critical perspective, we can ask where this parable originated. One of the most common assumptions in the study of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) is what is known as the two source hypothesis. Mark is assumed to be the oldest of the Gospels and Matthew and Luke appear to take much of their material from this pre-existing text. However, as in the case of the talents/minas parable, Matthew and Luke share some stories that Mark does not. From this, we surmise that there may have existed another older Gospel containing stories of Jesus that Mathew and Luke also borrowed from. We call this hypothetical document Q from the German for source. (I know now very creative.)

Perhaps even more intriguing though, is the fact that Matthew and Luke seem to think this parable means something very different from each other. In Matthew’s version the servant who brings back the most to his master is the hero of the story, while in Luke’s version it’s the servant who is willing to bring back the least that is the example we should follow. If the source is indeed Q, then this means the two Gospel writers/redactors have interpreted the parable in two different ways based not their understanding of Jesus. And in the end, this is a pretty fascinating window into how each of us encounters Jesus through the text of the Gospels.

Jesus, Zacchaeus, and Source Criticism


* * * * * * *

James McGrath: The A to Z of the New Testament
Streamed live on Dec 1, 2023  |  1:04:05

One of the ongoing tensions for Biblical scholars is the gap between the shared knowledge within the academy and the need for more awareness among the larger public. Most ministers are aware of the tension this creates in the congregation, but the public square is no better. A friend and New Testament scholar, Dr. James McGrath, is back on the podcast to discuss his new book to tackle this problem. Here's the book: https://amzn.to/46Wjqv6


The A to Z of the New Testament:
Things Experts Know That Everyone Else Should Too
by James F. McGrath (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
So you think you know the New Testament?  Did you know that Jesus made puns? Did you know that Paul never calls himself or the churches he writes to “Christian”? Did you know that we don’t know who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, or if it’s even really a letter? 
James F. McGrath sheds light on these and many other surprising facts in The A to Z of the New Testament. Cutting through common myths and misunderstandings of problematic Bible passages, McGrath opens up expert knowledge to laypeople in his friendly introduction to New Testament studies. Each chapter in this fresh, accessible volume begins with a provocative anecdote or fact and then pulls back the curtain to inform curious readers about how scholars approach the issue. Along the way, McGrath explains unfamiliar terminology and methodology to non-specialists with humor and clarity.  

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Why Process Theology is Universal for All Secular and Religious Worldviews




Why Process Theology is Universal
for All Secular and Religious Worldviews

by R.E. Slater
December 19, 2021
Updated December 9, 2022


The winter morning is still black outside and I've got my son's family here for the week of Christmas so today's post will not be especially long but hopefully profound.

I woke up thinking about a statement I read on one of my Facebook groups known as Process Philosophy for Everyone (I also belong to several Open theology groups). This was written by someone hoping that Process Christianity (aka Process Theology) might become it's own Christian denomination. And though I sometimes wish this might be true I also realize the error of thinking in the statement: "I believe Process should have its own denomination."

Now let's think about it... Why should this not be something any Process Christian would want? Why?

One reply I read simply stated the obvious:

I think process having its own denomination would be a horrible idea because it would deprive all the other communions of the process influence. - CT

So here's my several thoughts of the subject... which I think is a very good question to ask:

1 - Process Theology is a base theology for all Christian groups - whether process based or not. However, Process Theology is not intended for just one sect or denomination. It is at its best in influence when adapted and adopted (correctly, one hopes) into all systems of denominational or sectarian Christian theology and thinking and not simply found in one movement, denomination, church or fellowship. It would be like hiding one's gospel light under a bushel basket unused, unthought about, and hidden from its many applications and influences which it can have....

Process theology works best when embraced by all kinds of Christian faiths... including all non-Christian religions. You see, process theology is but a reflection of the larger metaphysic of process philosophy. A philosophy by its nature reflects how a cultural era thinks about itself and others. Process is how the world works. Similar to past philosophies like Platonic thought, Process Philosophy is an integral theory of all previous philosophies, sciences, disciplines, outlooks, perspectives, and cultural world views. You can find it in ancient cultures and in the bible. The trick is to look for it to find it. Though not expressed as exactly then as now still, you will the nature of the cosmos as one which works in relational processualism to itself as a living, organic organism.

2 - Process Theology, like it's sister idea, Process Christianity, is greater than any one Christian movement... even it's own, should there ever come to be one. That is to say, if one looks backwards into time you will always find a processual idea within a cultural religion. Why? Because life, like nature around us, moves processually. But again, unless you look for it you will not find it. It took an English philosopher, AN Whitehead, to complete the earlier German philosopher Hegel's idea of process. Where it stopped Whitehead moved it forward as a contemporary of - and fellow British Academy member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences - of Einstein's and other scholars.

As example of processual cause-and-effect consider the Emergent Church of the 1990s -2010s, It was a movement spawned from within conservative (non-progressive) Evangelicalism (1950s forward)... even as Evangelicalism itself was an outgrowth from within an earlier 1900s cultural era known as Fundamentalism which was composed of Billy-Sunday-like Fundamentalist congregations. Eventually the Emergent Christian movement (Dallas Willard, Brian McLaren, etc) was absorbed into Evangelicalism's Progressive Christian movement (1960s and forward) which has been so strongly reactionary to the Trumpian dystopia of the errant Conservative Evangelical church of the 2000s.

That said, if Process Christianity is ever bottled up into a movement or a denomination it'll eventually play out against itself - or worse - become removed from itself altogether by some deviant social-religious force or imagination. This result would be unwanted and harmful to the very nature of process theology as a metaphysic of fact rather than a metaphysical philosophy of the moment. Further, true to its nature, as we as humans come to understand the quantum sciences and how our eco-cosmology works, process philosophy itself will grown processually in its nuances and perspectives. Why? Because this is how the world works. It doesn't stand still. Nor do we. Our grasp of its operative organic elements will always move forward in our responses to our understanding. The nature of a process universe moves with itself according to its nature. It's processual essence won't change but its processual outcomings will.

3 - I think of Process Theology as I would a basic truth of the Jesus Gospel but more so... it's a way of seeing the world through the lens of a processual God's love and beauty. It brings out the processual reality of God and God's creation in a greater sense then I could find through the Westernized Christian doctrinal statements, creeds or dogmas of God. Process Christianity is, in itself, a way of reading the bible without becoming its own hermeneutical interpretation to the bible. Essentially, a good philosophy permeates everything around it and can be identified in ways which leave it essential and open ended. 

As example, a Westernized reading of the bible portrays God and the bible's message through neo-Platonic Hellenization of human and spiritual categories. If reginned to reflect a process view instead of all eclectic philosophized Western views over the past two millenia the essentials of the today's evangelical dogmas will change dramatically. For myself, I am simply taking my evangelical reformed understanding of God and the bible and applying a process viewpoint over it. When doing so some theology must be removed; some adapted; and some wholly rewritten. More than likely, my view might be that of a process-based progressive post-evangelicalism. But their are other Christian Process theologians who come from Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, or post-Christian experiences who will write of God in a different sense than I do. Through all of these perspectives a consensus of opinion will develop as to what the core of a Process Christianity might look like and become. Hence, when taking up a process-view of supernatural (God) and natural theology (the sciences) there will be a variety of opinion hopefully expanding upwards and centered in God's Love, Unity, Beauty, and Transformative Healing. This is what I would expect from a positive influence of process theology upon the Christian faith.

4 - Though biblical interpretations have been helpful to the Christian church - that is, "ways of reading the bible to help sort out its teachings" - they can also become both problemmatic and unhelpfully polarized and systematized. Process Theology should never be thought of as any one interpretation of the bible, nor even as a re-systematization of the bible hermeneutically. Rather, process theology, like process philosophy itself, is an underlying feeling within creation and how it responds to its Creator and the world at large. Remember, the world at large is a processual relational organism. Not a thing but more like a dynamic "Being" in its entirety. We are not addressing an idea so much as attempting to understand who we are in our individual and corporate structure to one another.

If anything, we should develop a processual hermeneutic admitting to this fact when reading the bible, but then process will infill-words with expansive meaning. Thus, divine inspiration is not a one-and-done experience by some people in the bible of the best but an ever-expanding and deepening reality of how God continually communicates his love and loving presence to us. If there can be any hermeneutical reading of the bible it should be through the lens of love and how the ancients, as we do today in the church, fail to love and look to solutions of harming legalism, violence, and war. The bible simply shows to us how we and the Israelites back then failed to love. And more saddeningly... how we, as divine emissaries then wrote and worshipped a God of our own sinful making... of a God of wrath and judgement and doom. God is not this. God was never this. God is a God of Love. But our message of God, beginning in the bible, showed how quickly we like our rules and rites and do's and don'ts. My friends, God is love and though process theology might be used to state otherwise, the direction in which I find the most hope and redemptive healing in preaching and writing of a God of Love, Hope, Beauty, and positive transformative Redemption. So then, we today, pick up where the people of the bible left off. The Spirit of God places words and actions into our hearts and it is from these words and actions which we must respond.

4a. Past interpretations - or, hermeneutics - of the bible might include a Dispensational reading of the bible through Reformed Christian traditions. Or, its polar opposite (and my own personal preference) of a Covenantal reading of the bible through the same Reformed Christian traditions. Process theology is not this. It is not a "systematic interpretation of Scripture" but the underlying flow of life much like a philosophical reading of how humanity and creation are drawn into and out of the particulars of the bible within their cultural eras.

4b. Current interpretations of the bible which aren't so much a hermeneutic to themselves but act more like Jungian Archetypes or better, biblical themes of Scripture, may help enlighten what a hermeneutic like Dispensational or Covenant Theology are attempting to portray in their Scriptural metanarratives. In my capstone senior thesis at a fundamental evangelical seminary for my M.Div. degree I wrote of eleven meta-themes in the bible. Here are a few: Christ as the Mid-Point of Salvific History (aka Oscar Cullman); the Discontinuity and Continuity of community practices and beliefs within the bible (aka John Feinberg); the Remnant of God in Community Transition through the four major Promise Covenants of the bible: Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New (aka, God's Design by Martens); and so on. Looking back, each of these themes could be re-cast through process theological senses... which means, anything Christian written in the past could also be recast in Process terminology. 
Thus, Process theology should never be systematized but is more like a thought, a smell or aroma, a taste (salt, sugar), a background sound (birdsong, praise hymns in our heads), or as a kind of sensory feeling or emotion. A Process Christian reading of Christianity is more like a feeling or impression as much as it is statements into, on top of, or overlays to, past creedal statements of God, Christ, the Church, Sin, Love, etc.

5 - Process theology, broadly, is not simply for the Christian faith. It is for all global faiths. All global religions. It is that big. And can at once be that nebulous... as it should be. Any theology of God, of mundane living, or philosophical sense of life, can be recast is process terms of theology and philosophy. Buddhism rejected Hinduism for its lack of cosmic connectedness and yet both reveal a process way of thinking in the Chinese and Indian cultures to a greater, or respectively lesser, extent. Process Christianity is simply another way of identifying with other world religions a language of commonality with one another. As Christianity and Islam have many good comparisons with each other as monotheistic (sic, non-polytheistic) faiths, so too does Christianity share foundational commonalities with other non-Christian religions via Process Theology and Philosophy. Process thought, if true, should be seen everywhere and not just in Westernized Christian thinking.

6 - Lastly, Process Christianity is more of a broad identifier - or a broader outlay - of the Christian God and Christian Creeds. As Progressive Christianity is a kind of social justice and environmental movement within the Christian church, so Process Theology might further enlighten and provide a depth of Christian foundation for this Progessive Christian movement within Evangelical Christianity (which necessarily includes Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox faiths and flavors of the Christian Church). Especially as Progressive Christians separate themselves from their alt-religious right elements of Americanized soft fascism working against an expanding democracy attempting to bring social justice to all members of one's nationalism. That is, all minority groups are to be lifted up onto a level CIVIL playing field and no longer kept within the confines of white Christian supremacy.

This we see in America's present internal divisions as the Jesus-following Christian church determines to no longer incorporate white Christian nationalism within its coffers. Hence, Process Theology will give Progressive Christians a better, more democratic (and theologic) basis to their movement, than can past inhumanitarian doctrines of the Christian church such as Franklin Graham's Christian Dominionism or the Charismatic idea of Kingdom Law over Grace taught by Kingdom ReConstructionists. Both theo-political groups wish to integrate Church with State so that America's constitutional laws reflect religious ideas about which groups are loved by God and which are not acceptable to God. Conversely, Process Theology argues for the basic freedoms of all people, not just some. How we understand God in God's love will always inform a Christian gospel of Christ's love over Westernized Christianity's presumption of God's wrath and hate.

At this point I must discontinue, with apologies. My three year old grandson has just arrived to play the piano and then I believe we have a date to punch balloons into the air and catch them on our noses. Perhaps a few here might offer additional criteria on Process Theology's need to stay helpfully philosophical without becoming unnecessarily weighted down by localization. As example, Ecological civilizations come to mind. They must be underlaid by process thinking but left to adopt forms of beneficial capitalism or socialism re community distillation and self-interest. Similary with process theology in its many forms and conventional humanitarian outcomes.

Merry Christmas to All,

R.E. Slater
December 19, 2021
Updated December 9, 2022







Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Theologian Douglas John Hall - "What Christianity is Not"; and, "A Theology of the Cross"



Theologian Douglas John Hall
"What Christianity is Not"; and, "A Theology of the Cross"

January 16, 2020 

Douglas John Hall is Canada’s greatest living theologian & emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He is a theologian of the cross, a contextual theologian, and a wonderfully articulate one as well. In this conversation we discuss his latest two books What Christianity is Not & Waiting for the Gospel, his love of music, personal interactions with Moltmann, Billy Graham, Tillich & company, and a number of intense theological topics. It was a complete joy to chat with him. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did… and of course share the brew!


Titles By Douglas John Hall - go to link here



What Christianity Is Not:
An Exercise in “Negative” Theology

by Douglas John Hall
Feb 12, 2013

What really is Christianity? If all the religious packaging in which it is wrapped were removed, what would remain? These were Bonhoeffer’s questions, and they must be ours today—even more urgently! For in many quarters Christianity is being so narrowly identified with some of its parts, cultural associations, and past ambitions that like all militant religion, it represents a threat to the planetary future.

We may no longer speak clearly of the essence of Christianity, as von Harnack and other nineteenth-century thinkers did; but perhaps we may still have a sufficiently shared sense of the kerygmatic core of this faith to be able, in the face of these misrepresentations of it, to say what Christianity is not.

“Those who know the work of Hall will know what to expect in this book: wisdom that comes from long years of faithful discernment, pathos about foolish fickleness in the name of the gospel, and buoyancy because he trusts the God of the gospel. Readers who do not know his work may take this book as an access point. In his critique of idolatrous misconstruals of the faith, Hall is himself a forceful antidote to the dysfunction of our society and to the dismay of the church.”
—Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary
“As one of this generation’s most profound theological thinkers, Douglas John Hall reveals his magisterial grasp of the depth and complexity of the Christian tradition. His elegance [is] matched only by profound understanding of human longing in his presentation of the God of steadfast and loving kindness. He is a master craftsman whose building blocks are the broad themes of systematic theology, which he brings together with his legendary stylish and grace-filled writing.”
—Patricia G. Kirkpatrick, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, McGill University
Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in McGill University, Montreal. He is the author of twenty-five volumes, including two recent offerings from Cascade Books.
—The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One’s Way (2011); and Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment” (2012).


Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the
Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment”

by Douglas John Hall
April 16, 2012

Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ, as it came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life that they had either lost or never entertained. That message the first Christian evangelists (and Jesus himself, according to the record) called euangelliongood news,  or gospel. For its first two or three hundred years, Christianity was largely dependent for its existence upon the new zest for life that was awakened in persons who heard and were, as they felt, transformed, by that gospel; and at various and sundry points in subsequent history the Christian movement has found itself revitalized by the spirit of that same ‘good news’ in ways that spoke to the specifics of their times and places.

“The lesson of history is clear: the challenge to all serious Christians and Christian bodies today is not whether we can devise yet more novel and promotionally impressive means for the transmission of ‘the Christian religion’ (let alone this or that denomination); it is whether we are able to hear and to proclaim . . . gospel! We do not need statisticians and sociologists to inform us that religion—and specifically our religion, as the dominant expression of the spiritual impulse of homo sapiens in our geographic context—is in decline. We do not need the sages of the new atheism to announce in learned tomes (and on buses!) that ‘God does not exist.’ The ‘sea of faith’ has been ebbing for a very long time.”
from the Introduction
“Douglas John Hall is a treasure, a man I have known whose intellectual depth is matched only by his spirit of kindness. . . . So too is Waiting for Gospel. As people continue to discuss the place of the church in North America leaning on sociology and cultural studies, Doug Hall reminds us that in the end it will be only theology, a lived theology of existential depth, that will help. All the contemporary talk of church in North America has so often failed to provide truly unique and insightful thoughts . . . how God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is encountering people in [their] context, [in their] time. Waiting for Gospel propels us in that direction and therefore shines brightly, giving the reader value upon value.”
—Andrew Root, Olson Baalson Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota; Author of The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church (2010)
Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Lighten Our Darkness (1976, 2001); Why Christian? (1998); God and Human Suffering (1986); The Steward (1990; Wipf & Stock, 2004); and The Messenger (Cascade Books, 2011).

He has lectured widely in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan, and is the recipient of many honors, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Union Theological Seminary, the Joseph Sittler Award for Leadership in Theology, and the Order of Canada. 

 

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Notes by R.E. Slater
July 7, 2021

Today marks yet another sad remembrance

Today marks the sad anniversary of my brother's death who died alone after a terrible losing fight with what many call bipolarism, but technically was a "border-line personality disorder." I remember the calls which came that morning after his death - both incoming and outgoing calls. These prevented anytime for sorrow for most of the week. The conditions of harm my brother had left were too many to recount and the grief that should've been there turned to anger for what he had left, and later relief that this page of family history had finally, horribly ended. 

My lasting impression will be, as it was then, that when he finally took his spiritual life seriously and attempted to repair the disrepair he found himself in it appeared insurmountable. This observation came from his last girlfriend who noted a tone of change three months earlier and who called nearly everyday after his death with some insight or another as she attempted to make sense of the events swarming around her.

Myself, I heard my brother's change of heart when his girlfriend said he was singing in the church pews as if the hymns held more meaning for him than they once did. But the remorse he was dealing would required acts of courage to admit the harm he had done to so many and for so long. The requisite repair to his soul (and to those harmed) which lay ahead prevented any further progress though perhaps some kind could have been made. The truth of it was his actions could not be so easily forgiven. They were too deep to be meaningless.

And so, I imagine it was all too much for his shattered soul for which many had tried to reach out and help in the past but failed... as they all did. In the end he finally let go of his life, leaving without resolution for wife, family, son or daughter, parents, and friends. When he was at his best he was a very good man. But at his worse he was all dark and emotionally charged. The remaining years left to him could never eclipse his malady though he tried through feeble attempts with care givers and support groups. These were long years with many disruptions and set backs. At the last, when he passed, I, like my father, were again left holding the phone to our ears hearing sobbing, anger, harming willful acts, criminal wrongs, and thoroughly unable to heal the unhealable from the mess he left everywhere he went.

The Church is dying in its own beliefs

In many ways Christianity feels like it too is in its own death stages of faith and belief. Once a vibrant, soul-transforming experience, lately its become harming to others; politicized out of proportion to its missionary call to love all and bring into fellowship a circle of healing; and deluded to its inner a circle beliefs, teachings, rantings, pulpiteering, and hunger for bare-knuckled secular power. Its dogmas preach wrath, judgment upon everyone it denounced, and charged insults and vectums upon fantasized enemies. It felt like a very old friend to my former experiences not only with family but with the fellowsips circles I was participating in. Eventually I would step away and seek refuge elsewhere wherever it might be found.

Many of us have been down these roads before listening to family members telling us what they hate about people while blaming everyone for everything they fear or rage against rather than circumspectly looking inwards to see the great anger in their heart refusing to allow any goodness or light in. As if those simple balms would at once be so feared in breaking apart the poisons held for too long inside their heart as to cause personal stress at  the necessary reconstitution, patching, and removing of personal toxins held within, coupled with a humble spirit donned with ears and tongues of contrition, listening and healing.

What is the Gospel? What is the Gospel's
Meaning, Message, Mystery?

So too today's church is in deep trouble. It is not repenting for its apostasy nor is it willing to listen to a society attempting to befriend it and trying to speak reason to its outrageous beliefs and demands. The church is no longer a safe have for fellowship and love, but self-isolating islands of fierce congregants thrashing out at the world at its post-Christian and posts religious communities embracing all cultures, races, religions, and genders. To these communities the conservative church rages against them calling down hell and abomination upon all... not unlike what some of us have suffered at the hands of our so-called superiors, societal members, unkind neighbors, hard-hearted friends, and so forth.

Yes, today's church has changed and become as secular as the society it designs to preach against. But to those of us who see beauty everywhere and in everything; who have hope as we slough through pits of vipers and muds of deep soulful suffering; we work to resist and effectively speak the gospel of Christ to those minds and hearts which can truly hear. Who are willing to hear regardless of church affiliation or not. To this we call down the power of the Spirit to help us engage a wicked world - whether church, evil, or death-eaters blinded and blinding to all about them.

Speaking Christianity is hard

The object of Christianity’s search is not an object but a living subject. How can we speak of knowing God when we cannot even describe the people we think we know best? There must be a kind of modesty in Christianity when we speak of God. This is so with any discipline, be that of a philosopher, scientist or theologian. Each can only speak modestly of the subjects they study because such subjects are so vast, so infinitealtogether, so mysterious.

The thinking Christian is connected with the deep traditions of the church. Christians are the inheritors of a long, long tradition spanning many cultures and eras. Our conversation has been going on for 2000 years (Jesus), nay, 4000 years (Israel re Yahweh). This vast tradition is full of contradictions; its dialectic is wonderfully oblique; its many religious beliefs confounding, confusing, and deeply entangled. We must become students not only of the Scriptures, but of the church's traditions, its philosophers behind the tradition's theological beliefs, and society in general at every level, in every era, in close contextuality with itself.

Moreover, we must ask the questions which are underneath the questions we are not asking. To neglect the philosophical foundations residing underneath the many theological structures of the church is to miss the meaning of God and Gospel altogether. 

Suffering is a major theme of the Church and its beliefs

One key theme of the church is suffering. Theological study must necessarily involve itself with humanity's suffering if a Christian faith is to understand anything about God at all.

Suffering is a mark of a holy cause when approaching the why's and wherefore's of God's abidance with humanity. The education of theology must then walk with the world, acknowledge and experience its suffering, and see with God's eyes the deep needs so many bear and endure.

A theology of the Cross ties Jesus to humanity in its most basic elements. Through humanity's suffering. For Moltmann, his theology of hope came out of his theology of suffering. For him, contextuality is the most profound key to understanding the Christian hope amid its deepest sufferings.

Jurgen Moltmann's titles on hopeclick this link here

Also for Moltmann, his theology of the church had to come to terms with the great amount of suffering his church had caused the world during its Nazification era that had spanned decades. To do this his second series of books addressed the Crucified God.

Jurgen Moltmann's titles on the Crucified God - click this link here

The church generally prefers its gospel to be hopeful and loving rather than seeing itself as the cause of suffering and harm…. But in the great historical movements of the church it has ended up too often on the side of inhumanity, pillage and rape, blaming, scapegoating, harming, and killing, all in the name of Christ...

To hear more... listen to the podcast provided by
Tripp Fuller in his interview with Douglas John Hall.

R.E. Slater
July 7, 2021



Bound and Free: A Theologian's Journey
by Douglas John Hall
Written by North America's premier theologian, this book takes the measure of contemporary theology and urges theological renewal for our more secularized and pluralistic age.


Amazon Link


The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One's Way
This is a book about the importance of mentors in the lives of the young. But rather than developing the theme of mentoring theoretically, Douglas John Hall demonstrates its significance quite personally, autobiographically. In his twentieth year and hoping to study music professionally, Hall met a young minister whose "different" Christianity both surprised and intrigued him. In the end, this friendship altered the course of his life.

The book traces the story of this friendship of more than half a century, and the impact of the times upon the lives of its two principal figures.





Douglas John Hall

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Douglas John Hall

Born1928 (age 92–93)
IngersollOntario, Canada
Spouse(s)
Rhoda Catherine Palfrey
(m. 1960)
Ecclesiastical career
ReligionChristianity
ChurchUnited Church of Canada
Academic background
Alma mater
Influences
Academic work
DisciplineTheology
Sub-disciplineConstructive theology
Institutions

Douglas John Hall CM (born 1928) is an emeritus professor[1] of theology at McGill University in MontrealQuebec, and a minister of the United Church of Canada. Prior to joining the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies in 1975[2] he was MacDougald Professor of Systematic Theology at St Andrew's College in the University of Saskatchewan (1965–1975), Principal of St Paul's College in the University of Waterloo (1962–1965), and minister of St Andrew's Church in Blind River, Ontario (1960–1962).

Early life and education

Hall was born on March 23, 1928, in IngersollOntario. He attended high school and business college in Woodstock, Ontario, and worked for four years in that city's daily newspaper. In 1948–1949 he studied composition and piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He was graduated (Bachelor of Arts) from the University of Western Ontario (London) in 1953. His graduate degrees are all from Union Theological Seminary in New York CityMaster of Divinity (1956), Master of Sacred Theology (1957), Doctor of Theology (1963).

Professional life

The author of 25 published works, including a three-volume systematic theology, and numerous articles, Hall lectured widely in the United States and Canada during the period 1974–2010. He was Gastprofessor at the University of Siegen, Germany, in 1980; Visiting Scholar at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, in 1989; Professor of Theology at the Melanchthon Institute of Houston, Texas, in 1999; member of the Campbell Seminar on the Future of the Church at Columbia Seminary of Decatur, Georgia, in 2000; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Trinity Lutheran SeminaryColumbusOhio, in 2001; Theologian-in-Residence, Church of the Crossroads in HonoluluHawaii (2003 f.); and Theologian-in-Residence, International Protestant Church in Vienna (2003).

Hall was an active participant in many international consultations including the World Convocation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in SeoulSouth Korea, 1990, and the UN AIDS theological symposium in Namibia (2003). He served on theological committees of the WCC and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the United Church of Canada, the National Council of Churches USAet al.

Thought

Influenced by his teachers Reinhold NiebuhrPaul Tillich, John Coleman Bennett, and others, as well as fellow-Canadians including George Grant and Emil Fackenheim, Hall desired to understand and further the biblical and mainstream Reformation Protestant traditions of critical and constructive theology. He argues that over the past two centuries the Christian religion has been experiencing a momentous and (for most) disconcerting transition ("metamorphosis"): after fifteen centuries of legal and cultural "Establishment" in the West, Christianity is being challenged by the evolution of planetary history to assume a more modest, dialogical and humanly responsible position in the new global society.

Accordingly, he believes, the church must abandon the theological triumphalism that has typified its long fraternization with empire, and search its biblical and doctrinal traditions for ways of engaging, rather than seeking to monopolize the spiritual and intellectual life of humankind:

In his books and lectures Hall argues that the stance (modus vivendi) appropriate to Christianity in the post-Christendom context is best illuminated by the ("never much loved" [Moltmann]) theological tradition that Martin Luther named theologia crucis (‘theology of the cross’). That tradition, which Luther distinguished from the dominant religious and ecclesiastical conventions of Christendom (all variations of the theologia gloriae ,‘theology of glory’), accentuates God's compassionate solidarity with the world; thus it opens the Christian movement to both secular and other faith-communities that seek planetary "peace, justice and the integrity of creation" [the theme of the World Council of Churches, Vancouver 1983-1990].

Hall affirms that theology, in contrast to both "doctrine" and piety ("spirituality"), involves both historical knowledge and conscious, informed immersion in one's cultural context [contextuality]. Authentic theology only occurs where the claims of faith meet and wrestle with the great (characteristically repressed) questions and instabilities of the Zeitgeist [spirit of the times]. "Establishment" Christianity was content to transmit dogma and morality from place to place, generation to generation; post-Christendom theology entails original and diligent thinking [Denkarbeit!] including the entertainment of doubt and disbelief, on the part of the disciple-community. Today faith in all its forms and expressions is called to rescue human thinking as such from its captivation by "technical reason" (Tillich) or rechnendes Denken (Heidegger), as it manifests itself today (e.g.) in the West's educational emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often to the virtual exclusion of the arts and humanities (Sciences humaines et sociales).

Personal life

Hall married the late Rhoda Catherine Palfrey, a fellow Canadian and graduate student at Columbia University, in 1960 at Riverside Church, New York City. They have four adult children (Kate, Christopher, Sara and Lucy), three of whom are professional musicians, and eight grandchildren.

Selected publications

  • Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross (1976)
  • Has the Church a Future? (1980)
  • The Steward: A Biblical Symbol Come of Age (1982)
  • Christian Mission: The Stewardship of Life in the Kingdom of Death (1985)
  • God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (1986)
  • A Trilogy: Christian Theology in a North American Context
    • Thinking the Faith (1991)
    • Professing the Faith (1993)
    • Confessing the Faith (1996)
  • "Why Christian?" - For those on the Edge of Faith (1998)
  • Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the legacy of 'Neo-Orthodoxy' (1998)
  • The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity (2002)
  • When You Pray: Thinking Your Way into God’s World (2003)
  • Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (2004)
  • The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One’s Way (2011)
  • Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant "Establishment" (2012)
  • What Christianity Is Not: An Exercise in "Negative" Theology (2013)

Honours

  • Member of the Order of Canada (C.M.) - 2003
  • Distinguished Alumnus of Union Theological Seminary – 1995
  • The Joseph Sittler Medal for Leadership in Theology, Trinity Seminary (Columbus) – 2002
  • Three Book of the Year awards, Academy of Parish Clergy -1994, 1997, 2004
  • Ten Honorary Doctorates:
    • Queen's University, Kingston – D.D. 1988
    • The University of Waterloo – LL.D. 1992
    • The Presbyterian Theological College of Montreal – D.D. 1995
    • Victoria University in the University of Toronto – D.D. 2003
    • Montreal Diocesan College – S.T.D. 2007
    • United Theological College, Montreal – D.D. 2007
    • Huron University College, University of Western Ontario – D.D. 2009
    • St Andrew's Theological College, University of Saskatchewan – D.D. 2011
    • Wartburg Theological College, Dubuque, Iowa – D.D. 2013
    • Vancouver School of Theology -D.D. 2013

Notes

  1. ^ "Douglas John Hall | School of Religious Studies - McGill University"www.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 2017-11-19.
  2. ^ Lott 2013, p. 1. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFLott2013 (help)

References

  • Lott, David B. (2013). "Introduction" (PDF). In Lott, David B. (ed.). Douglas John Hall: Collected Readings. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-9986-4. Retrieved 14 June 2017.

Further reading

External links