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 God's Mission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God's Mission. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Are We Witnessing the Death of Christianity in America?






"Are we witnessing the death of Christianity in America?" Has it become its own "evil empire?"

My answer to this question would be both "yes" and "no." That the Jedi warriors of its faith must now arise to contend for the faith of Christ first given His church through His disciples and Apostles of the New Testament.

In its dark empire form, the cruciform faith of Jesus followers will not be tolerated. The first kind of faith leads out with self-righteous Christian biblicism while the second kind of faith seeks Jesus-identification through sacrificial servanthood and crucifixion.

From a historic viewpoint, Christianity's dark empire form will win out politically even as it dies to itself spiritually. This has been true throughout the Christian ages of Western civilization even as the people of God refusing the "mark of the beast" may expect push back in various forms of "biblical" denunciations who wish to strive for humanity's solidarity and not its division.

The Jesus way is unity.

The way of sin is disunity and division.

If you chose to misunderstand and misrepresent your neighbour than you have chosen the way of darkness and death.

God's way is one of salvation, restraint, tolerance, uncertainty, and doubt of one's beliefs in life.

To imagine any other future is to legislate individual freedoms and liberties for an imagined freedom under the political banners of fear and protectionism that is bondage and death.


R.E. Slater
December 8, 2015

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To Serve and Not To Enforce

A day or two ago I published an article on The Call of Jesus and the Spirit to the Church to Repent and Reform in which I expanded my thoughts through the Tale of Two Scriptures, the Tale of Two Churches, of Christian Messaging, and a Gospel that is both Old and New. If you have not read this article than I would suggest you do.

Basically it speaks to the NONES and the DONES of the Christian faith and why they have a serious conflict with Christian beliefs and its resultant practices. That orthodoxy without orthopraxy is dead. That faith without works is a lie. That the true church of Jesus Christ not only follows but serves. And radically so.

This has been explained in numerous ways over the years using emerging/emergent Christianity as an example, or by describing a postmodern post-Christian faith as a lead-out for Millennial generations blossoming globally around the world. But in whatever way it has been described it has been highly critical of the conservative American church in its dogmatic doctrines, religious folklores, and un-Jesus-like self-serving practices of  judgment and condemnation to all other beliefs unlike itself.

We are basically witnessing a religious war come to the shores of America
where it once tolerated various expressions of faith but now wishes to
reverse its Constitutional commitments. - r.e. slater, 12.7.15

American Christianity is being split in two. One part of it wishes to follow a hard line conservative view of Christian biblicism (sic, actions based upon a literal reading of the bible including its violence and exclusion from its lands of "God's enemies") while the other side wishes to follow the Jesus-way of the bible freed from the political rancor and rhetoric of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, fear, and protectionism.

Recent examples of these Americanized Christian policies would be the gross discrimination, oppression, and genocide of native American Indian cultures, religious and black slavery (which includes white slavery in early colonial America known as indentured service to pay off debts), and "defensive-industrial" war upon non-Christian religious groups being waged against the Muslim cultures of the Middle East.

The Odd Partnership of Church and State

Another way to view this split in Christianity is its view of "the separation of church and state." The first kind of Christianity wishes to integrate both into a religious church/state in order to enforce its interpretation of the bible (a kind of religious fascism or police state, if you will). The other kind of view is that of our earliest Constitutional forebearers who foresaw the wisdom in keeping each institution of church and state separate-and-apart from one another so as to allow maximal constitutional freedoms to individual rights. Rights that would grant freedom of worship and religious expression of community according to one's prerogatives rather than according to its enforcement by law.

This latter form of religious liberties would also describe Christianity's more progressive face seeking to align itself with early America's Constitutional liberties built upon the "liberal" freedoms of life, liberty, and justice. To deny these liberalities would be to move away from it along a path of exclusionary freedoms, rights, and justice.

Though today's religious/conservative right would disagree with this view, history bears them out as being the least tolerant form of faith, or kind of government (as referent, recall religious European inquisitions of dominant groups presaging their religious views over less powerful religious and secular minorities).

This was why Christian minorities fled overseas from more powerful Catholic or Protestant forms of Continental government. They fled seeking freedom of religion and expression of their non-standardized forms of Christian faith.

Ironically, those "non-standardized expressions" have today become their own standardized mores demanding public allegiance. And thus, we have come full circle from politically oppressed to political oppressor in America.

Biblicism is a False Choice

The bottom line is that today's more popular forms of biblicism have confused a Jesus faith with an admixture of enforced societal outcome. Hence, do you surreptitiously chose "the bible" over "Jesus" or "Jesus' over "the bible"?  A false choice if ever there was one! But for these groups, to chose "the bible" is to remain convinced of the rightness of your Christian views of the bible. But for progressive Christians, to chose "Jesus" is to be less sure of your dogmas but more sure of your commitment to love, serve, and reach out to all people and not to just some people whom you prefer over others. In other words, a liberal Christianity is concerned with the just rule of government and not its unjust rule or application.

Therefore, to be a progressive Christian is to take the best of Christian legacies and to expand them outwardly to include and accept formerly banished people groups such as minorities of color or poverty, women, the gay community, world religions, and disbelievers such as atheists and agnostics. A politically conservative Christian faith pushes back against this enlarging effort by demanding a specific doctrinal viewpoint as a prerequisite to God's love. That is, to be fully loved by God you have to be or do something in order for God's love to come to you. However, a Jesus-based faith will embrace all people without exception in a renewal of solidarity to humanity without losing the center of its faith and author, Jesus. More plainly, God fully loves you know now as you are, without  the need for you to do anything more to receive His love and forgiveness. This kind of a Christian faith is more robust, more confidant in God, and more willing to admit uncertainty or doubt about its dogmas. It leads out with:
  • God's love vs. God's judgment
  • God's presence with us vs. His distance from us
  • God's earthly rule vs. His heavenly rule
  • God's mercy vs. His pitiless indifference
  • God's compassion vs. His holy ire
This does not discount the need for repentance from sin and confession of Jesus as God's way of salvation into fellowship not only with Himself, but with ourselves, and each other, and even this broken planet with live upon. But it also enlarges the idea of God as more bountiful, more good, more present in our lives. Lives which need a Spirit-revolution of breakage and re-make from the sins and oppressions and injustices we have brought upon ourselves and to others around us. Jesus' kingdom then is a kingdom of love, service, peace and understanding.

A Jesus Kingdom of Love, Service, Peace and Understanding

A radical Christianity will move a progressive Christianity even further left
to a completely level field spiritually, epistemologically, existentially, and even
hermeneutically where all religious and societal barriers are physically removed
in the cruciform presence of God's person, will, experience, and mission.
                                                                       - r.e. slater, 12.7.15

Jesus' kingdom is a picture then of a divine kingdom that is trans-national, trans-geographical, trans-cultural. It embraces all people and not some people. It unites all genders, all races, all ethnicities by removing all societal barriers to this encumbrance. It honors the God who made humanity and granted humanity to be in His holy likeness and image. A Triune fellowship (or partnership) wishing to expand its fellowship to all mankind. A mankind mangled by sin, and without empowerment, without the binding engine of Jesus' Cross to make the supreme sacrifice of solidarity between God and man.

Thus my concern, along with many others who are expressing this same concern, that American Christianity must die to itself in order to find God's resurrected power of fellowship with one another. In summary, religious police states are never good for minorities and the politically oppressed. Its expression of power always yields to the more powerful over the rights of the least powerful. Motivators such as fear and protectionism are replete with historical examples. This is not the way of Jesus. It is the way of sinful man, whether he be a Christian man or pagan.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
December 7, 2015

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Jerry Farwell Jr, President of Liberty University | Image screenshot courtesy CNN via YouTube


ARE WE FINALLY WITNESSING THE DEATH OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA?
http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6530/are-we-finally-witnessing-the-death-of-christianity-in-america?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

by Zack Hunt
December 7th, 2015

Several months ago a Pew Research study sparked what almost seem like shouts of glee from those who were eager to declare the impending death of Christianity in America.

According to the report, Millennials are leaving the Church in droves and, the theory went, if the next generation isn’t there to fill the pews, the future of the Church in America is bleak.

Which makes sense.

Not surprisingly, many Church leaders were quick to denounce such ominous conclusions as nothing but Chicken Little nonsense or at worst, they argued, the report more or less revealed an important separating of the wheat (real Christians) from the chaff (nominal Christians).

The future of the Church, we were told, is safe and secure.

To a certain extent I did and still do agree with those who cautioned that the death of the Church is not quite as near as the Pew Study might lead us to believe. Although I think some of the deflection amounted to No True Scotsman arguments, declining numbers don’t necessarily equate to death. Though, they should certainly cause the Church to pause and ask some serious questions about itself and its future.

After the initial shock wore off, I couldn’t help but think back on that debate when I heard about Jerry Falwell Jr.’s words to the students of Liberty University at the close of a recent chapel service. After revealing he was carrying a gun in his back pocket, Falwell declared, “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.”

Falwell then encouraged his students to get their own concealed carry permit (via a free school-sponsored course) so that together they could “teach [those Muslims] a lesson if they ever show up here.”

His words were met with rapturous support by the student body.

As I sat in stunned silence, my inner Star Wars nerd couldn’t help but channel the words of Padmé Amidala:

So this is how Christianity dies…with thunderous applause.

For a while now, declining Church attendance, the rise of the nones, and an increasingly secular society have all seemed like the biggest threats to the future of Christianity in America.

But that is not where the existential danger comes from.

The future of Christianity in this country isn’t threatened by shifting demographics.

The Christian faith in America is on life support because far too many of us have simply stopped living like Jesus.

Christianity is facing an existential crisis in America not because our pews aren’t quite as packed as they used to be, but because — through an embrace of violence, hatred towards Muslims, callous rejection of refugees, demonization of the LGBT community, and a whole host of starkly anti-Christian actions — we’ve allowed the gospel of Jesus to be supplanted with sanctified and extreme right wing politics.

It’s no secret that American Christianity has been hijacked by the political right since at least the days of the Moral Majority. But in recent months and years we’ve witnessed a full-frontal assault on the particular and peculiar values that define the Christian life.

For example,

  • The way of Jesus is a way of peace and a sometimes unfathomable commitment to nonviolence, but American preachers can now carry an instrument of death into a space dedicated to the proclamation of life and be met with boisterous applause.
  • The way of Jesus is one of radical inclusion where new paths are blazed to welcome in those shunned by dogma and religious authority, but the identity of Christianity in America has become all but synonymous with the list of those who aren’t truly welcomed within our doors.

There are manifold explanations for how we got here, but at its root, authentic Christianity is being eradicated in America because the way of Jesus has been replaced by a list of ideas which, once agreed to, apparently "liberate us" from actually living like Jesus.

We say we believe in the Bible and God and that Jesus rose from the dead, but once we claim our certificate of orthodoxy we seem to think we’ve been freed from the obligations of grace, from the cost of discipleship, from the way of Jesus that is defined not simply by the ideas in our head but the actions of our lives.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. — James 2:14-26

The way of Jesus is not simply a sales pitch meant to convince us to agree to a list of doctrines in order to avoid hell.

It’s a call to a particular and peculiar way of life.

We can believe all the “right” things, but orthodoxy does not emancipate us from orthopraxy. Rather, it demands we live out the radical, revolutionary, and world changing faith we’ve embraced.

Sadly, we live in a strange place and time where it seems that publicly assenting to the right dogma is some sort of sanctified Get Out Of Living Like Jesus Card™. This is why Jerry Falwell Jr. can carry a gun into sacred space and call for the death of his enemies even though Jesus unequivocally declared “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

Despite the glaring incongruity, Falwell’s students can applaud and his admirers defend his pseudo-righteous call to “self-defense” because because he’s already confessed his assent to the core list of right ideas. Anything he says or does beyond that is of marginal consequence — even if it directly contracts the life and teaching of Jesus.

This is the sad, cheap state of Christianity in America.

It’s Christianity without discipleship, Christianity without the cross, Christianity without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

It no longer matters if we actually live like Jesus, so long as we agree that Christian dogma is true.

Thankfully, Christianity will almost certainly never completely die off in America (and is no doubt thriving in unexpected and isolated pockets of our country), but Christianity as a particular and peculiar way of life directly reflective of Jesus of Nazareth sure seems to be on life support.

And unless more Christians are willing to speak out and denounce the demonic theology being proclaimed in the name of Jesus, we might as well go ahead and pull the plug.

Because regardless of shifting demographics, without authentic discipleship, the future of Christianity in America looks hopeless.


* * * * * * * * * *


"Weaving Peace," by Michele Miller-Hansen: "Thoughts about nature and humanity and the
delicate balance of our world"
- https://www.artprize.org/michele-millerhan…/2014/weave-peace.


"Authentic Christianity is the loving, peaceful, just, and generous way of life embodied in Jesus.
It is characterized more by self-giving than self-defense, by pre-emptive peacemaking rather 
than pre-emptive violence." - Deborah Arca

An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell Jr.,
Students, and Faculty of Liberty University

December 9, 2015

Dear Mr. Falwell,

In the tradition of your father, you made some reckless and inflammatory statements to your students the other day.

Just as I appreciate it when peace-loving Muslims, Hindus and others repudiate hostile and reckless statements made by prominent members of their religions, I feel impelled by conscience to repudiate your words as not being representative of authentic Christianity as I, and thousands like me, understand it.

For us, authentic Christianity is the loving, peaceful, just and generous way of life embodied in Jesus. It is characterized more by self-giving than self-defense, by pre-emptive peacemaking rather than pre-emptive violence.

Your message faithfully represents a longstanding (and ugly) stream of American culture and politics. This tradition goes back to those who argued against the equal human rights and dignity of the Native Peoples and African-American slaves, often abusing the Bible to justify white supremacy under its various guises.

It was also manifest in the Protestant prejudice against Catholic immigrants, in centuries of morally repugnant anti-Semitism, and in the unethical treatment of the Japanese during World War II. During the McCarthy era, it launched witch hunts using “red” and “Communist” as its epithets.

In this ugly American tradition, your father used antipathy towards gay people to rally his base, and now, you are doing the same with Muslims. You are being deeply faithful to a tradition that is deeply unfaithful to the life and teaching of Jesus… not to mention the broader American ideal that upholds the dignity and equality of all people, whatever their religion.

My friend Shane Claiborne speaks for many of us when he says, “It’s hard to imagine Jesus enrolling for the concealed weapons class at Liberty University. And it is even harder imagining Jesus approving of the words of Mr. Falwell as he openly threatens Muslims.”

I don’t doubt that your conscious intentions were simply to protect your students from a terrorist attack. But it’s the unintended consequences of your words that concern me most. I doubt many, if any, violent Islamist Fundamentalist extremists woke up one day and decided to become hateful, cowardly, immoral murderers. Instead, they were led down that path by degrees, and those who radicalized them convinced them that they were becoming purer, more faithful, and more orthodox believers in the process.

Your reckless words can easily render your students vulnerable to more extremist influences (perhaps including some who are running for president), and the result could be catastrophic. You could spiritually form a generation of people who think of themselves as “Champions for Christ” but who actually become a mirror image of the violent religious warriors you fear and reject, different in degree, perhaps, but not in kind.

According to a Washington Post story, you later said that when you referred to “those Muslims,” you were referring not to Muslims in general but to Islamic terrorists. OK. But I hope you realize that your audience in that convocation applauded, not your intent as later explained, but your actual unqualified words. And you approved of their approval. That is scary. That is ugly. That is wrong.

How would you feel if you saw the president, faculty, and students in a radicalized Muslim university somewhere applauding and laughing about killing Christians and “teaching them a lesson?” Do you see how you are helping your students become the mirror image of such a scene? And do you see, apart from any issue of moral conscience, the way that those reckless words could be used by ISIS and other such groups to stir up their apocalyptic us-versus-them fervor? The Bible we both revere has a lot to say about the danger of unwise words… how much more important in an age of Youtube.

Can you imagine how much more beautiful it would have been if you told the students that you were going to offer free classes in nonviolent conflict transformation — the kind that is taught not far from you at another Christian university that has a very different understanding of Christian character and discipleship?

Perhaps you owe it to your students to invite some Muslims to campus to explain to you, your faculty, and your students the damage done by your words. Maybe it would be a good time to invite some Christians who are risking their lives as peacemakers to come to your campus as well.

I hope your words will inspire millions of us to respond, not with the applause and laughter displayed by your students and faculty, but with unequivocal repudiation — and a commitment to embody a different kind of Christianity than the one you purveyed in your recent comments.

Just as there are many ways to be Muslim, some more and some less peaceful, there are many ways to be Christian. May more of us seek and find those more peaceful ways.

In a positive response to your negative words, I hope that this week, millions of Christians and other Americans will speak in neighborly kindness to their Muslim neighbors (along with their Sikh and Hindu neighbors, who at Oak Creek and elsewhere have suffered so much harm from Islamophobic violence). I hope they will repudiate the flippancy of your comments about taking human life, and instead, I hope they will speak of solidarity, mutual respect, and hospitality across religious lines.

And I pray that someday, students and faculty at Liberty University will look back on your comments, and their applause and laughter, with deep regret and a deep commitment to live more in the way of Jesus.


International Peace Day in NYC | September 21, 2015



Monday, October 12, 2015

Become Kingdom Makers, Not Kingdom Waiters

Last week I attended my school and seminary's "Talking Points" seminar as I do most every year since it began. This year's topic would be on the Kingdom of God, and as I went I knew full well it would play to the conservative evangelic side of the discussion which I grew up in and know very well down to the chapter and verse and eschatological charts used from a multitude of viewpoints: dispensational, Reformed, or even amillennial.

Mostly I attended in hopes of seeing some digression or nod of the head towards some form of a more progressive gospel over the spiritually infused words of heavenly hope accompanied by the lethurgy of social inaction refusing to address the greater needs of society. Why the disinterest in serving the world and only God? Because in the parochial line of thinking (at least within my fellowships) Jesus is coming and that should be enough to content oneself with until some cloudy day when He does actually come in the air to take away His church from this wicked world.

And although there might have been a nod towards a more earthly kingdom the day's opening speaker held to the school's current stricter position of wishing "for another day to fly away unto" and until that day "to rest in the secure knowledge" that a future heaven and earth would be a guarenteed wonderful place to be when this old world goes away by fire and destruction. And though I knew this kind of heavenly-minded sermon was coming my reaction was still one of heart-felt dismay for my old haunts of decades ago.

What I was hoping to hear was a more contemporary tone advocating for a more progressive Christian view of "Kingdom Now" as versus "Kingdom Later" kind of emphasis. But what I got was the sanitized side of a "New Heavens and New Earth" which is the safe, pedantic version of a conservative Bible gained from an evangelic-Calvinistic view of the future filled with hope and deliverance from God's coming judgment upon the world. But the more progressively-minded "Kingdom Now" view is the gutteral, ghandi-type version of God's Kingdom done from the bottom up of theology within an Arminian structure of Christ's gospel (sic, "human freedom" vs. "divine control" debates as errantly perceived of divine sovereignty evangelical Calvinists).

Now I am not discounting the grand and glorious view of my brethren's picture of God's Kingdom to come but for now, in this life, the only view which is deeply pertinent to the us (and consequently the living church of the living God) is the stereo picture of God's Kingdom lived now, here on this earth and in this life. Accompanied by a deeply burdened, if not hotly passionate picture, of God's church hard at work serving humanity based upon Christ's example and gospel love/witness as versus the heart-attitude of waiting for God's wrath and judgment to come to burn the earth to a cinder and all the unfortunate's living upon it.

In essence, the heavenly-minded "Kingdom Later" gospel leads out with preaching salvation to sinners (and basically a conservative party line of politics) with no hope of effect upon its listeners in this day and age. Which is a "Jonah-kind-of-gospel" where God's prophet Jonah grudgingly does God's will with a vigor of bitter resolve and then sits back on an overlooking hill waiting for God's wrath to fall upon his avowed enemies, the people of Nineveh. When this doesn't happen dear ol' Jonah is sorely displeased with God and bitterly asks why the nation's worst enemy (Assyria) isn't readily plunged upon by God in the same vigor that he had preached God's wrathful message? In effect, God says, "Their time has not yet come and My mercy burns with the same vigor for their souls as does your heart for their destruction." In consequence, Jonah, who had suffered great personal indignities at the hand of God Himself, now struggled with God's message of presumptive grace and sat back in a miserably depressed funk amazed by God's reaction of grace and mercy to those who would repent of their cruelty and injustices.

No less is today's hard-bitten church preaching God's word with a vigor of condemnation and then sitting back to await God's great wrath across the lands of sin and ruin. But true to form, in a mystery of atypical convention, what God does is not what the church expects, but what it doesn't want to see. God's love and compassion falls upon the cities of man to redeem the lost, show mercy upon the ruined, and grant deliverance to destitute lives committed to anything but God Himself.

It is the story of God's "Kingdom Now" coming unto this old earth rather than His future promised "Kingdom to Come" later. And it is bourne of a gospel which leads out with actually bringing both societal and personal salvation to the impoverished, the worker state, and to those held in societal chains of bondage. It is a disruptive kind of gospel which provokes imagination, heart, and soul.

As example, the plight of San Francisco was shared in several documentaries through HBO in September of 2015 (see accompanying article below). It showed a community's hardships through the lens of Alexandra Pelosi as it is being repeated again-and-again throughout the major metropolises of this world. And into this urban blight comes a response from the progressive church to a heartfelt and known social need unwanted in the vision of more structured views of the evangelical church believing desolation for desolation's sake is the response God has shown to those peoples who have rejected Him and refuse obedience to His holy name.

But it is a naive, and uninformed view which shows just the opposite through the documentary's piercing lenses. A view requiring action both within the government as well as from its citizenry. And especially from the churches of America declaring for the rights of the damned, the poor, the disenfranchised, the debt-ridden student, and distraught worker excessively burdened with no way out. It is a social occurrence that is all too frequent and must be framed both within our political discourses as well as within our walled-up, hard-hearted churches unwilling to allow a sympathetic tone or generosity to allieviate the ungenerous side of America's capitalism.

Most importantly, it must also be a response of compassion from both the church and society in general fraught within a banking system and corporate structure driven by share value and prowess. It is a "Kingdom Now" effort which makes most of us suburbanites feel uncomfortable having been delievered from this urban menance in our own lives by luck, chance, circumstance, or plain hard work and right decision making. But it must be something which gets us beyond our sense of normalcy, complacency, and hard-heartedness as it now stands within our surburban churces having escaped this great misery of the cities it has left behind.

And, it must proceed apace with a restorative ecology in mind and not simply a heavenly "new ecology" that someday may come (sic, the "new" earth part of "new heavens and new earth). To see an earth in need of reclamation as much as its peoples need to live in lands offering good soil, clean water, and nurturing space. Its not the kind of "Kingdom Later" theology which would spiritualized inactivity and cultural status quo with a do-nothing attitude because "its all going to burn up anyway."

The Jesus we see in the NT is a Jesus who serves and works for humanity as versus one preaching in a Pharisaical temple of God's "bounded' goodness and "controlling" wisdom. But a Savior of man who preaches a gospel declaring His temple as the city streets, the amphitheaters of the rocky hillsides, the seashores, and debauched dinning spaces of Jerusalem. It was to be a gospel formed by words accompanied by action (James 2.14ff), and action accompanied by words. It was a full circle kind of divine service to a humanity forgotten, disregarded, judged, and condemned by the religious regimes of Jerusalem aligned with Rome with a political lust for Rome's power. The bottom line is to be difference makers and not difference breakers in Christ's name.

For myself, yes, there will be a New Heavens and New Earth. Whether fiction or fantasy I don't know, its what's declared in the Bible. But I also know that God's Kingdom must also be now and not simply later within our theologies. To see a Christian Church always at work in this world both by gospel message as well as with rolled up shirt sleeves and dirty hands administring the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ as servants to His holy name and glorious majesty. It is a gospel that works for the rights of others to be freed from the bondage of sin and its earthly hardships borne by the sin of society working against God's will towards obedience, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. A bondage that is unrelenting unless it be broken by burdened souls and communities dedicated to the rights of others through any form of redemption they may bring to help and unshackle the loss and the destitute in the gospel of Christ. A gospel that works instead of waits. Serves instead of condemns. Sacrifices instead of grasp all the more tightly to its own deliverances. It is a gospel of a Kingdom both later and now and evermore. Thus our admonition to be kingdom makers and not a kingdom waiters. Serve. Love. Dedicate heart and soul to a divine humanity lost within this wicked world and found once again. Amen and amen.


R.E. Slater
October 12, 2015
revised October 15, 2015

*For more discussion on the American economy and how the church may change it, go to this link here discussing "The Soul of the Next Economy" by Brian McLaren and company: "The vision of the Soul of the Next Economy dialogues is to help us move from an extractive, exploitative economy to a regenerative economy that prizes the flourishing of people as well as the planet." Cost is $20.



* * * * * * * * *


Courtesy HBO

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
09.28.153:33 PM ET

San Francisco’s Alarming Tech Bro Boom: What Is the Price of Change?

Director Alexandra Pelosi, whose doc San Francisco 2.0 premieres September 28 on HBO, writes about how her city is emblematic of a changing America, and the new segregation.

By now you must have heard the rumblings coming from the West Coast about “the battle for the heart and soul of The City.” Not a week goes by without a headline about the growing pains brought on by the tech Gold Rush in San Francisco. For my ninth HBO documentary, San Francisco 2.0, which premieres Monday, September 28, at 9 p.m. on HBO, I chose to point the camera at my beloved hometown, where the influx of tech money and the sharing economy are disrupting the natural order of things.

Inside San Francisco, it’s impossible to talk about progress without stepping in a messy local streetfight. As the natives try to encourage the techies to see The City as their community, not their playground, a backlash against gentrification has erupted. But the rest of the country can look at the vanishing middle class of San Francisco to see our fate—the new segregation between rich and poor that is emerging in San Francisco 2.0 is the challenge of the new American economic reality.

“I’m worried about a city that is becoming uniformly wealthy and out of reach,” former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains. “San Francisco is London, it is Vancouver, it is Manhattan, it is places that are increasingly desirable to live in, that are becoming gated communities.” Have middle-class Americans lost access to their cities? Who gets to live in The City? Will middle-class people still feel like they belong? Or will our cities be for only those who can buy their way in? This is not simply an economic question, it’s also a spiritual one: What is the price of change? And what will the growing divide between rich and poor do to the fabric of America?

As we struggle to come up with fair answers to these questions, we must embrace the fact that you can’t fight change. You can’t refuel a city by standing still. San Francisco is not a boutique, it’s a center of commerce with the highest median tech wage in the country. No one can deny the benefits the tech boom has brought to San Francisco—all the new money is clearly good for the city’s tax base. “Every mayor in America would die to have these problems,” my uncle, Tommy D’Alesandro, says. He, like his father, served as mayor of Baltimore during much more divided times in American history. We must be grateful to the tech companies for bringing jobs and tax revenues and cleaning up their neighborhoods. New jobs have trickled down.

San Francisco 2.0 by HBO

For each new tech bro hired, there are new job openings for baristas, manicurists and personal trainers. This is the new feudalism of San Francisco 2.0, the landed gentry need more people to service them. So we need more bartenders, and they can't afford to live in the City…but what about the schoolteachers? Or the fireman and police who protect our families? Don’t we need to make room for them?

For some, the only way to hold on to the city with its skyrocketing home sales and rent prices is to join the sharing economy. Renting out their apartment on Airbnb or driving for Uber. But as Reich asks, “What happens to the widening inequality? What happens to job security? Everybody who becomes more of a contingent worker, more of a precarious worker—whether you’re an Uber driver or you are an Airbnb proprietor—your source of income is that less certain. A freelance economy can be a very cruel economy. It can be a form of social Darwinism.” This is the dark side to progress. For capitalism and democracy to actually work, we need new rules to make the playing field fair for everyone.

Courtesy of HBO

At a time when it is in vogue to hate our politicians, we need our elected leaders now more than ever to write the new laws that will guide us into the new frontier. As we try to figure out how to manage all this change, we need to make sure we don’t destroy the character of our communities. As more cities become a Tale of Two Cities, in which the class warfare between the haves and have-nots rages, and income inequality becomes a national epidemic, we need to find solutions that will keep our country together.

We are all looking West for solutions to these epic challenges of how to learn to share, manage change, and evolve as a community. And if any city can solve these problems, I’m hoping that my progressive hometown will lead the way into the new world economy—without leaving its heart and soul behind.



Saturday, January 5, 2013

Being the Face of God, the Presence of God, Who Through Us Binds and Heals

Why, God?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/dowd-why-god.html?_r=0

By MAUREEN DOWD, Op-Ed Columnist, Washinggon
The New York Times
December 25, 2012

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
When my friend Robin was dying, she asked me if I knew a priest she could talk to who would not be, as she put it, “too judgmental.” I knew the perfect man, a friend of our family, a priest conjured up out of an old black-and-white movie, the type who seemed not to exist anymore in a Catholic Church roiled by scandal. Like Father Chuck O’Malley, the New York inner-city priest played by Bing Crosby, Father Kevin O’Neil sings like an angel and plays the piano; he’s handsome, kind and funny. Most important, he has a gift. He can lighten the darkness around the dying and those close to them. When he held my unconscious brother’s hand in the hospital, the doctors were amazed that Michael’s blood pressure would noticeably drop. The only problem was Father Kevin’s reluctance to minister to the dying. It tears at him too much. He did it, though, and he and Robin became quite close. Years later, he still keeps a picture of her in his office. As we’ve seen during this tear-soaked Christmas, death takes no holiday. I asked Father Kevin, who feels the subject so deeply, if he could offer a meditation. This is what he wrote:
 
How does one celebrate Christmas with the fresh memory of 20 children and 7 adults ruthlessly murdered in Newtown; with the searing image from Webster of firemen rushing to save lives ensnared in a burning house by a maniac who wrote that his favorite activity was “killing people”? How can we celebrate the love of a God become flesh when God doesn’t seem to do the loving thing? If we believe, as we do, that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why doesn’t He use this knowledge and power for good in the face of the evils that touch our lives?
 
The killings on the cusp of Christmas in quiet, little East Coast towns stirred a 30-year-old memory from my first months as a priest in parish ministry in Boston. I was awakened during the night and called to Brigham and Women’s Hospital because a girl of 3 had died. The family was from Peru. My Spanish was passable at best. When I arrived, the little girl’s mother was holding her lifeless body and family members encircled her.
 
They looked to me as I entered. Truth be told, it was the last place I wanted to be. To parents who had just lost their child, I didn’t have any words, in English or Spanish, that wouldn’t seem cheap, empty. But I stayed. I prayed. I sat with them until after sunrise, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, to let them know that they were not alone in their suffering and grief. The question in their hearts then, as it is in so many hearts these days, is “Why?”
 
The truest answer is: I don’t know. I have theological training to help me to offer some way to account for the unexplainable. But the questions linger. I remember visiting a dear friend hours before her death and reminding her that death is not the end, that we believe in the Resurrection. I asked her, “Are you there yet?” She replied, “I go back and forth.” There was nothing I wanted more than to bring out a bag of proof and say, “See? You can be absolutely confident now.” But there is no absolute bag of proof. I just stayed with her. A life of faith is often lived “back and forth” by believers and those who minister to them.
 
Implicit here is the question of how we look to God to act and to enter our lives. For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.
 
I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.
 
One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God’s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I was asking “Why?” and I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn’t explain why he died. Even if they could, it wouldn’t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. They held me up to preach at Brian’s funeral. They consoled me as I tried to comfort others. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong.
 
A contemporary theologian has described mercy as “entering into the chaos of another.” Christmas is really a celebration of the mercy of God who entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. I have never found it easy to be with people who suffer, to enter into the chaos of others. Yet, every time I have done so, it has been a gift to me, better than the wrapped and ribboned packages. I am pulled out of myself to be love’s presence to someone else, even as they are love’s presence to me.
 
I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.
 
 
 

Monday, December 31, 2012

Can the 5-Point Calvinist Really Say, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know?"

 

Introduction
  
Commenter BKO to Dr. Roger Olson - "On what Biblical basis can 5-point Calvinists say, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?” And, I mean, on what Biblical basis can they say he loved them enough to die to save them? Anyone who believes in “limited atonement” cannot point to any verse that teaches he died for them in a saving way. Their belief that he did so is merely subjective, rather than being based on objective statements of the Bible. Subjectivism is not a good nail on which to hang one’s faith. (re: Comments Section re Karl Barth)
 
Reply by Dr. Roger Olson - I'll invite Calvinists to answer this. Many of them come here, so hopefully at least one will take the challenge and answer the question.
 
Referral to a Calvinist Post re Sandy Hook Elementary School
 
Reply by Dr. Roger Olson to above Calvinist posting - Nothing new there, just the same old attempt to defend God’s character in light of affirmation of God’s authorship of sin and evil. Does he have the courage of his Calvinist convictions? If he did, he’d go the next logical step and affirm that God, not sinners, is guilty of all the sin and evil in the world.

Editorial Reply by R.E. Slater - What Dr. Roger Olson means is that on the basis of 5-point Calvinism, a Calvinist can only conclude that God is the author of sin and evil. Dr. Olson is not a Calvinist but a respected Arminian theologian who teaches that God is NOT the author of sin and evil. That these are present creational realities fraught within the larger context of creation indeterminacy and human free will. And since this is an editorial reply let me continue to infer in my next several discussions below what this would mean from an Arminian viewpoint placed within a relational context before attending to the first question of God's love....

 

Indeterminacy and Free Will
 
...That sin is the resultant condition of human free will. That it marks humanity as a consequence of our free will. That it is NOT some metaphysical "entity" that wars against God which is turning humanity to sin (though many would erroneously infer this). But an existential reality of the human condition of free will which wars against God.
 
Moreover, neither is "creational indeterminacy" a result of sin. But, like free will, is granted by the creational design of God - just as God designed humanity with free will. As such, God designed both creation and humanity with free will. But the more proper description of this when applied to creation itself is that of "indeterminacy" so as not to attribute our human qualities (or anthropomorphisms) of consciousness. Hence, the cosmos of God is unconscious; and is not some higher (or lower) form of metaphysical being. It is not a living thing. Nor is it a sentient being like a human is.

But creation (or, the "cosmos," or "nature") does have its own agency of creative and destructive power attributed to it because of its design of "indeterminacy" which in this case can mean "randomness." As such, winds may combine to create a tornado or hurricane. Water combined with wind may form to create floods and tsunamis. These are not premeditated acts on the part of creation, but part of its indeterminate design.

Nor are they premeditated acts by the Creator God to wreck willful havoc and ruin on humanity. But instances of a God who has purposed not to interfere with the "liberty" He has granted within creation itself (just as He does by respecting our own free will choices). This is the essence of creational indeterminacy. That it may interact with itself and all of  humanity in both good ways and bad. Giving to us beautiful sunsets to naturally-occurring destruction - some due to our short-sightedness and ignorance, our misapplication or disrespect for the laws of chemistry and physics, biology and agriculture. (As an aside, I've often have wondered why square-framed houses are built in the "tornado-alleys" of the Mid-West. Why not build round, geodesic homes that can throw off high winds? Or homes partially buried into the ground with rounded roofs and/or stabilizing barriers? Our current architectural designs should better plan for natural disasters in high-risk areas both commercially as well as residentially.)

This does not mean that God is not Sovereign. Nor that He may not interact with either His creation or with mankind. Though harm and destruction can, and does, come through nature's indeterminate design; even as wickedness and evil can, and does come, through humanity's sin. Each are instances of a good design by God gone bad with the corrupting consequences that God's design of "free will" brings as a consequence of its own design. Something we indiscriminately call "sin," by which we mean something that has become "harmful" or "destructive" because of our own free will.

So why would God give to nature "indeterminacy," and to us "free will?" Did He not know of these results when He created? Nay, verily, one must assume that God did know them. And in the design also planned for the design's further "redemption" according to His sovereign judgment. That this "redemption" (as we are discovering) would be a long, slow process, allowing for natural process and human history to occur each within-and-around the other. And that ultimately, the "redemptive" solution would require God's own personal involvement into the very system He created (which He also knew). To wit, He has so done, through His incarnate birth and presence in Jesus Christ in restoring and reording both creation and humanity back to its original, uncorrupted design, which we acknowledge as the New Heavens and New Earth of the future.

So that over all these events does God superintend to His desired ends - to that of redemption. It began in Christ as God's Incarnate answer to sin. Who is the unique and complete Word of God, made flesh. Who is the culmination of creation, and the beginning of the Kingdom of God. Who is the culmination - and the manifest perfection - of the Covenant of God with man and nature. Through Jesus is the beginning of man and nature's willful submission to the will of God. Even as it begins the willful re-ordering of a creation's indeterminacy and man's insubordination. Who, in Jesus, God shall restore, renew, revive, reclaim, and rebirth all creation and humanity back to Himself in perfected, relational harmony to Himself. That in Christ, God may be All-in-All. That sin and death may be no more. That peace and harmony reign in restorative relationship each to the other as to God Himself.

Thus, with "free will" has come the additional burden of sin. God knew this, and had planned for this, when granting to nature and humanity its own free will. Even as God will triumph over this predicament by His corresponding "choices" to redeem. Choices made partly out of His creational responsibility as the Creator. And partly out of His divine love as our Redeemer. How? By enacting an exacting plan of comprehensive redemption in such as way as respecting (and keeping) the indeterminacy and free will He first established between Himself with creation and humanity. A condition that will continue even after His work of redemption.

Thus, in all of its sublimity, we may say that God will redeem all of creation. That He will redeem man. That He will not deliver creation from its indeterminacy. Nor will He deliver man from his free will. But that He will redeem the entirety of His creative order from the affectual power of sin in relationship to the indeterminacy and free will He has so granted it. That He will redeem each from the burden of sin.... As respecting the creation, this writer here cannot presume what this may mean. It is assumed that in the New Heavens and New Earth the sun will still rise and set, the rain will still pour, the winds arise. But it is also said in Scripture that the lion will lay down with the lamb, and peace will reign.... And as pertaining to man, his wickedness will be no more. Nor, at the last, will death occur. How death is removed I cannot tell. For in the New Heavens and New Earth the very atomic structure we are made will seemingly still require death (e.g., destruction). As does the light from the stars. And the nutrition we depend upon for food. These are a mystery I cannot comprehend.
 
God's Love. Is It Necessary?

Now, to our original question as to whether a strict 5-point system of Calvinism requires the necessity of God's divine love. Calvinism does pointedly teach that God is responsible for, and directive of all things, both in creation as amongst humanity. That He rules in all things. That He controls all things. And from that basis we may surmise that God is culpable for all things, including sin and evil, for the greater good of His redemptive plan. And furthermore, that it is un-necessary for us to respond to His divine love, if, in the strictest sense, He has predestined, and foreordained, "elect" individuals to Himself. That there would be no necessity for His relational love to bend our willfulness to Himself since He doth command us into His holy presence by fiat and by ordination. Moreover, to other unfortunates He doth not elect and consequentially doth condemn to the eternal flames of hell's fires (known as double predestination, as an ancillary corollary to the positive doctrine of election).

Against this viewpoint Arminianism teaches the freedom that is found in creation and humanity, as we lately have discussed above. That God works alongside His creation presaging it towards His redemptive ends while allowing for sin and harm to occur by free will choice. That He does not control creation, so much as interacts with (or redemptively partners with) creation, while not interfering with its indeterminacy and free will. This would make humanity culpable for its sin and not God. It also would require of God to "win" or "woo" our "hearts, minds, and souls" by every means available to Him, including using His Holy Spirit to illuminate and empower our "hearts, minds, and souls" towards God's divine love (think of the illustrations of dating and marriage, raising kids, leading by consensus than by fiat, benevolent pastoring and shepherding care-take, etc). We are held within God's prevenient grace that would give to us every possible means and opportunities to repent and obey, while at the same time respecting, to the highest degree, our refusal not to. In this way are we "elect" in terms of God's "universal election" to participate in God's redemption. But by our choice even as this choice is reflective of God's faithful perseverance within His creation. Though predestined, we may refuse. Though foreordained in Christ, we may deny His work of atonement to ourselves. God's call to salvation must always respect our free will submission, our active agreement, and acknowledgement, to-and-for His help to redeem. Though we know not how this process works, still may we cry out to God for His help. To which He will. Down to the poorest cry. From the most miserable lips. From the most harden, lost soul. None may be lost or unfound when seeking His divine help for healing and restoration, life and removal from sin's dark imprisonments. That is the Christian hope and the doctrine of redemption.

Against the competing views of Calvinism and Arminianism are the separate differing views of mechanistic determinism, atheism, pan-en-theism, and deism. Both Calvinism and Arminianism have reacted separately to each non-Christian doctrine  separately and together, as well as helping each other to further refine their own biblical views. Accordingly, one either understands the Godhead to be in a master-controller relationship, and forbidding hegemony, with creation and humanity. Or in a free-willed, living partnership. To which the Calvinist would further temper their description og God's character by deferring to His love, mercy, wisdom, and justice. Which is very preachable but not particularly accurate, nor central to the core positions of Calvinism when connected with its concept of austere election and unmerciful pre-ordination (sic, double damnation).

The Armenian will look at the same things and posit a more benevolent form of salvific universalism undetermined except by that of the human heart-and-will gained under the influence of the Holy Spirit through God's prevenient grace. Which is where we get the concept of "Love Wins" throughout the postings of this website. To which the truly 5-point Calvinist can only say "God Rules regardless of His divine attributes." But for the Arminian, God's rule is affective on the basis of His divine love, and not in disregard to His divine love. Love is what makes a man receive the enabling partnership of God into life's turmoils and sins, wickedness and woe. Otherwise, to elect, or predetermine, a living soul to godly partnership is like a father tasking his son with obedience regardless of the father's demeanor - be it fair or foul, evil or loving. There is no necessity for free will. In contrast, Arminianism incorporates the concept of free will with that of God's divine love. For it is the love of God that doeth set in motion all things creative and living. Not by His mere power or divine will alone. But all is made-and-created on the basis of God's loving heartbeat for His creation which gives to all things purpose and meaning. Thus we must preach, as evangelists and His holy labourers, God's love in all things. God's love is what gives meaning to this life of ours and not just man's mere survival.

God's Love Gives to Man Open Futures

In terms of Theism, Arminianism would be more congruent with Relational Theism (and parts of Process Theology) whereas Calvinism would be the by-product of Classical Theism and will touch upon parts of Relational Theism. Ironically, both lean towards Open Theism, which asks just how much can God know in experiential relationship to a free willed creation's unpremeditated future? If He controls all aspects of it (Calvinism) than there can be no such thing as free will. That our future has already been determined. That we simply exist as robots in the mechanism of a larger universe (determinism, atheism). But if God Sovereignly enacts redemption while experientially reacting to creation's randomness - and humanity's choices - than such knowledge is "limited" and thus allowing for open futures, and our creative input and interaction, with the God of the universe.

Popular opinion would posit God and creation as separately enjoined but one (pan-en-theism; not pantheism's view of a unified oneness). Deism would posit God as uncaring and removed from the operational mechanism of creation (determinism). Atheism sees no God at all; while agnosticism simply cannot say. To this Relational Theology would argue against each position while also disallowing Calvinism's more classical position of God as a master-controller who closes our future from choice, interaction, and inventiveness (creativity, or entrepreneurship). Furthermore, Open Theology forces the classical position to expand its premeditative stance to include experientially open futures, while softening God's control of that universe.

Thus, Arminianism would embrace Open Theology more strongly so, while Calvinism less so, if at all. Arminianism would claim the validity of God's relational experience as foundational to the rule of His Sovereignty. While Calvinism views God's Sovereignty in terms of austere power and unwavering control set within a perfected knowledge of a completed future irrespective of (or, in denial to) His relational experience with a indeterminate creation and free willed humanity. Why? Because Arminianism emphasizes God's love over Calvinism's emphasis upon God' power. Divine love would demand the incorporation of relational experience. Power values only knowledge and divine manipulation. Love partners with man in his sin and woe. Power conflicts, and restricts, man in his sin and woe. Love values the power of divine presence and partnership within a life; Power values divine coercion and abject obedience to a life.

As help, think of the movie "Les Miserable" - where Hugh Jackman personifies love, and Russell Crowe personifies merciless power. In the end, love wins out; and, power became meaningless for its lack mercy and resolution to the human condition. So I think it is with the view of God's sovereign love as versus the more inhumane view of God's sovereign power. In the end, Calvinism, for all its benefits doesn't inspire. By way of a metaphor, for an Arminian, it is better to raise a garden of DAISY(ies) than a garden of TULIPs (cf, DAISYs, TULIPs, and Open Theism). Enjoy the metaphor and thank you for considering these very difficult subjects which have split denominations for years. Even as Emergent Theology wishes to heal the split and continue the Gospel of Jesus forward into these latter days of postmodern witness and testimony.

R.E. Slater
January 2, 2012


A Final Reply by BKO - Dr. Olson, let me say, once again, that Calvinists and non-Calvinists need to read your books, “Against Calvinism,” and “Arminian Theology: Myths And Realities.” I have read both of them twice, and continue to recommend them. They can easily be used in theology classes and Bible institutes.



 
 
 
Calvinism and the "God-as-Author"
Analogy


by Roger Olson
December 29, 2012

I recently received this e-mail letter. It’s the best recommendation of Against Calvinism I’ve read yet. I hope you, my faithful readers and blog visitors, will pass this good word around so that more people like this young Christian will read Against Calvinism to counter the arguments of their YYRM friends:
 
“I purchased a copy of Against Calvinism after reading your article from Relevant Magazine’s website a few months back. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your time and effort writing this book. It is very refreshing and encouraging to see someone advocating something other than Calvinism as plausible doctrine. I have often times felt very overwhelmed with other twenty-somethings when theology comes up because I am one of only a select few students I know that do not cling to Calvinism and the TULIP. Being raised in a hybrid of Methodist/Baptist home and growing up in the church, theology has always interested me – even before I truly began following Christ with my entire life at 16, rather than just going to church on Sunday and praying before meals etc. I went to Presbyterian school for thirteen years, so I was introduced to Calvinism at a very young age.
 
My school required theology classes as part of core curriculum study in high school, so I gleaned a lot of information from 9-12th grade. Calvinism was always very unsettling to me. I respected my professors that taught it as God-fearing men who truly served the Lord, but no matter how hard I tried I simply could not accept Calvinism and the implications it makes on God’s nature. I also struggled with how, at least from my reasoning, it shirks man's responsibility for his sinfulness to a certain extent. It was not until I got to college that heard of the “New Calvinist Movement.” I must admit, in my naivety, I never once considered that anyone other than my theology teachers and well versed Presbyterians even accepted Calvinism as a plausible conclusion to be made from scripture. I soon figured out that I was mistaken. I also soon figured out that many of the young Calvinists I have met will bring up theology at every opportunity looking for a good debate.
 
After being cornered in my dorm room first semester of my freshman year by a close friend wanting to discuss “why reformed theology is the only doctrine that is not heresy,” I began to do extensive research on Calvinism and the Reformed movement as a whole. I will not lie, I was very overwhelmed and shocked by some of what I found. What I found even more unsettling was a lack of resources readily available to counter Calvinism. I knew that I did not advocate the doctrine of Calvinism, but that was after a long, hard, digging study accompanied by a lot of coffee and many sleepless nights. I also get upset when I think of the many young members of the Reformed movement who have not extensively researched all the doctrine they embrace as its advocates. It is very upsetting than many Christians of my generation, in an attempt to run from the “spoon-fed doctrine” they embraced as a child have done the exact same thing at 20 years old. They adopt a new doctrine because it’s “cool” and a celebrity pastor advocates it, and then slap the label of “being enlightened to the truth” on it. I have a lot of respect for anyone who has studied or, researched, why they believe what they believe even if it differs from my theological standpoint, but what I can hardly bear is watching my generation flock to “what is cool” in terms of the doctrine they embrace without any real study beyond the bestseller list at Lifeway.
 
I thank you for presenting my generation with a counter to the Calvinist movement. I am very grateful that a theologian of this day decided to flesh out an alternative to Calvinism with a scriptural basis. It is very refreshing to hear the voice of a respected and incredibly well-studied theologian on this topic who holds a belief other than Calvinism. I firmly believe that my Calvinist brothers and sisters are just as passionate for the Lord as I am, but I am also grateful to know I am not alone in my inability to accept all the tenants of Calvinism.
 
Thank you again for your work on Against Calvinism and for your service to our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
 
 
 
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