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 from 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

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Being Human 4


by RJS
posted May 24, 2011

Chapter 2 of Joel B. Green’s book Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible is entitled “What does it mean to be human?” In this chapter he addresses the title question from two directions, scientific and biblical. In the post last Tuesday I considered the scientific evidence for the connection of human life with the rest of animal life including a consideration of the material features that may, or may not, make us distinctly human. In this post I would like to put up for conversation some of the biblical perspective on human uniqueness.

Moving from science to the bible, Dr. Green starts by describing several problems or pitfalls in the consideration of a biblical view of the nature of humanity. He proceeds to consider a few passages of scripture and wraps up with an sketch of what he finds as the biblical basis for human distinctiveness.

The evidence for the nature of humanity found in the bible is implicit not explicit. We are not told “this is the nature of humanity” rather we have texts that assume a view, counter other views though to be errant, or project ideas about the nature of humanity into a discussion of the future new heavens and new earth.

There is a problem of method. There is no simple method, be it appeal to culture, word study, or appeal to the afterlife, which, when applied to the scripture, will permit easy discovery and understanding of the biblical view of the nature of humans.

Most importantly, there is an ever present danger of imposing our current ideas about the human person on the text rather than listening to what the text has to say. This is really the big problem. The approach of substance dualism is something that Dr. Green claims we project into the text rather than extract from the text. Here he looks specifically at the healings by Jesus to provide an example. Physical blemish kept a person from access to God and the community of God’s people. Cleansing a leper restored him to God and to community (Mt 8:1-4). In another example healing is connected with the forgiveness of sin, in fact healing is tantamount to the forgiveness of sin (Mt 9:2-8). Humans are unified wholes.
Here we find no room for segregating the human person into discrete, constitutive “parts,” whether “bodily” or “spiritual” or “communal.” (p. 49)
Is the dualist view of human persons as body and soul something we read from the text or we read into the text?

Humans as individuals vs human in community. The problems that arise from imposing modern assumptions on the text go beyond dualism though. The notion of community and the importance of place in community was more significant in the ancient culture where the bible was shaped and written. We tend to define identity in terms of self-sufficiency, self-determination, self-autonomy, self-legislation, and the individual inner person – taking ideas from Charles Taylor Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. This modern view of human identity is in contrast with the view of human persons implicit in the biblical text.
The point is that constructions of personal identity that pervade the world of the interpreter are easily read back into the texts under scrutiny, and yet, in the case of the human self discerned by Taylor, can stand at odds with biblical anthropology at almost every turn. … These include such emphases as the construction of the self as deeply embedded in social relationships and thus the importance of dependence/interdependence for human identity; a premium on the integrity of the community and thus the contribution of individuals to that integrity; the assumption that a person is one’s behavior – that is, that one’s dispositions are on display in one’s practices; an emphasis on external authority – that is the call to holiness is a call to human vocation drawn from a vision of Yahweh’s “difference”; and the reality of dualism vis-a-vis good/evil, resident in and manifest both outside and inside a person. (p. 50)
So what is found in scripture? Dr. Green looks specifically at Genesis 1-2 and concludes that humans are fundamentally relational – with God, with each other, and with the world. To bear the divine image is to have a distinct role and vocation in creation. The vocation is part of the covenantal relationship with God.
What is this quality that distinguishes humanity? God’s words affirm the creation of the human family in its relation to himself, as his counterpart, so that the nature of humanity derives from the human family’s relatedness to God. The concept of the imago Dei, then, is fundamentally relational, or covenantal, and takes as its ground and focus the graciousness of God’s own covenantal relations with humanity and the rest of creation. The distinguishing mark of human existence when compared with other creatures is thus the whole of human existence (and not some part of the individual). (p. 63)
Turning to the Psalms and then New Testament Dr. Green finds the same theme of covenant, relationship, and vocation in community as the defining nature of the human person. After looking at the terms image and glory, especially in relationship to the place of Christ as the image of God, and a brief comment on the nature of salvation (more of that in a later chapter), he concludes that both science and scripture paint a view of human persons as characterized by embodiedness and relationality. But the bible gives us a more complete view in two ways:
First, In presenting the physical embeddedness of the human family, they [the biblical materials] highlight the vocation of humanity in relation to the created order – not only in relation to other humans, but also in relation to the cosmos. Second, the biblical materials urge the view that a biblical theology of humanity must have as its primary point of beginning and orientation the human in a partnering relationship with God. (p. 71)
The biblical view of human persons, according to Dr. Green, is centered on community and relationship, not on individuals. The question of body, soul, and personal identity from a modern perspective distorts our understanding of scripture, our appreciation for the story of Israel in the Old Testament (including the issues raised in the posts on God Behaving Badly), and our understanding of salvation in the New Testament.

What do you think? Is the nature of humanity in the Bible primarily relational, covenantal, and vocational?

Do we over value the nature of humanity as individual identity?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.


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