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

Friday, January 11, 2013

How a Lutheran Pastor Envisions Emergent Christianity


A New Reformation? Emerging Theology is shaking Christianity, says Pastor Paul Nuechterlein of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Portage
http://www.mlive.com/living/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/03/a_new_reformation_emerging_the.html

Published: Saturday, March 27, 2010, 7:00 PM Updated: Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 4:29 PM


Rev. Paul Nuechterlein
Studying the gospel: The Rev. Paul Nuechterlein, senior pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Portage, conducts a Bible study on the Gospel of John at his church on a recent Sunday morning.
 
 

RELATED CONTENT
READING LIST
On ‘emerging’ theology
  • “John for Everyone,” Parts 1 and 2, by N.T. Wright (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002)
  • “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,” by N.T. Wright (Harper One, 2008)
  • “Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross,” by S. Mark Heim (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006)
  • “The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul,” by Douglas A. Campbell (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009)
  • “A Generous Orthodoxy,” by Brian McLaren (Emergent/YS/Zondervan, 2004)
  • “A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Christian Faith,” by Brian D. McLaren (Harper One, Feb. 1, 2010)

CONNECT

In response
“Goodbye Emergent: Why I’m Taking The Theology of the Emerging Church to Task,” Grand Rapids pastor and author Jerry Bouma’s response to “emergent” theology: tinyurl.com/jerrybouma
KALAMAZOO — Nearly 500 years ago Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg, Germany — a move that set off a shakeup in the Christian Church that became known as the Protestant Reformation.

Now there’s another movement brewing that could change Christianity just as dramatically, says a local pastor whose denomination takes its name from Luther.

“It’s 8.8 on the Richter scale,” says Pastor Paul Nuechterlein, of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Portage. “If the last huge change in Christianity was at the time of the Reformation, it looks like we’re going through that kind of change again.”

If you’re a biblical scholar, this change probably isn’t news to you — “I think it’s been under way for 50 to 100 years,” says Nuechterlein — but if you’re a Christian sitting in a pew of your local church, it might be.

The change Nuechterlein is talking about is a change in how some Christians view the meaning of an event at the heart of Christianity — Jesus’ crucifixion.

While Christian theology is, of course, a complex subject that takes way more than a newspaper article to address, here’s an attempt to summarize traditional thinking on the crucifixion: Jesus died on the cross to save human beings from their sins. God is a just God who would have had to punish us for our sins unless he sent Jesus. But God is also a gracious God, and Jesus stepped in and took the punishment for us, sacrificing himself and thereby atoning for our sins. If we believe in Jesus, we’ll be spared eternal damnation and go to heaven when we die to be with him.

Nuechterlein (pronounced NECK-ter-line) has a shorthand phrase for this interpretation — he calls it the “turn or burn” message. And he says it can be traced historically to the atonement theology of Saint Anselm, who lived in the 11th and early 12th centuries.

Nuechterlein and others in the world of emerging or emergent theology hold a different view that “flips atonement upside down,” Nuechterlein says.

“Christ came to end that sacrificial logic (that God required a sacrifice for our sins),” Nuechterlein says. “It’s not God but we who are wrathful and punishing. God offers a lamb so we might see (our) sin and accept God’s alternative, which is goodness and grace and mercy.”

Jesus, as the lamb of God, intentionally walks into “what are essentially our engines of punishment” and shows us that “God is love, that God is not about violence at all,” Nuechterlein says.

“When John says God is love, he doesn’t say, ‘And sometimes wrath and anger.’ Love — that’s the power that sustains the universe.”

Nuechterlein’s view is echoed in a piece by Abbot Andrew Marr in this year’s Easter newsletter of St. Gregory’s Abbey, a Benedictine near Three Rivers affiliated with the Episcopal Church. “The Gospel record and the apostolic preaching in Acts suggest that Jesus’ death says a lot more about human beings than it does about God,” writes Marr. “ ... Jesus did not come to die; he came to give life and to give it abundantly.”

A merciful God

So what does Nuechterlein make of those Old Testament stories that refer to an angry God?
 
Essentially, those stories reflect a limited understanding of God and project human flaws onto God, he believes.

The Exodus story, for example, has God slaughtering the firstborn children in Egypt through a plague, he says. “You could compare that to Pat Robertson saying the earthquake in Haiti is punishment from God for the Haitian people selling their soul to the devil centuries ago,” Nuechterlein says. “Most people say, ‘That god is not my God.’ That interpretation in Exodus is a Pat Robertson sort of interpretation. ... Jesus is trying to help us unlearn that.”

In others cases, people misinterpret or miss the point of an Old Testament story, Nuechterlein says, as with the account of Abraham going up a mountain to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. “In Hebrew, the god who asks Abraham to do that is Elohim, and that’s the garden variety word for god,” Nuechterlein says. “The one who stops him is the angel of Yahweh. The true God is stopping us from following the old god who demands sacrifice.

“That is not what the true God is about. All of the prophets say God doesn’t want this. God wants justice and mercy.”

Valuing the Bible

Nuechterlein, who turned 54 earlier this month, grew up with “the standard kind of atonement theology,” he says. But “the best of Lutheran theology is uneasy with that,” he adds.

Nuechterlein credits, among others, French biblical scholar Rene Girard and British bishop and theologian N.T. Wright with helping him develop his newer way of thinking. He also noted that author and pastor Brian McLaren is bringing “emerging” thinking to a wide audience.

“He is helping us to understand that this is a big time of change,” Nuechterlein says.

Nuechterlein’s perspective — like that of other “emergent” thinkers — entails a view of the Bible that some would say is more sophisticated than seeing it as inerrant in every word. Others, though, would say he doesn’t take the Bible seriously enough, and Nuechterlein knows that. But he begs to differ.

“A different sort of faith would say I don’t value the Bible, but I value it very much. It’s the key and center to my faith,” says Nuechterlein, who has spent 25 years in the ministry.

“Here’s how I look at the Bible,” he says. “... If there is a true God, how would that true God ever get through to us? I think the Bible gives us the picture. God chooses Abraham and Sarah (and their descendants). He has a covenant relationship with that people over centuries. It will take centuries for the true God to get through to us so we will get it. ... Christians have just as famously missed the point [of God's revelation] as so many stories in the Old Testament did.
“The point of scripture is to take this journey where God helps us learn who God truly is.”

Judgment and hell

As opposed to traditional views of salvation and judgment, Nuechterlein has “more of a sense of universal salvation — that God came to save the whole creation.” But he acknowledges that “a lot of this is a mystery. We just don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”

Nuechterlein says he has a problem with the Reformation concept of justification by faith — the idea that one gains salvation and eternal life by believing in Jesus rather than by doing good works. For Nuechterlein, it’s neither belief nor good works that bring salvation.

“One thing that happens with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith is that believing becomes its own works righteousness,” Nuechterlein says. “(The apostle) Paul’s message is unconditional grace. It’s not about my belief, but about Jesus’ faithfulness. God in Jesus Christ has a rescue mission. God sends Jesus to unconditionally save us from the powers of sin and death. ...

“We’re already rescued, and it’s an unconditional rescue mission. Some of us would probably not want to be saved from the powers of sin and death, but God did it anyway.”

Biblical language about judgment and hell, in Nuechterlein’s view, is about the consequences of our sin. “When Jesus says, ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword,’ he’s saying that violence and accusation and punishment bring their own kind of judgment,” Nuechterlein says.

“Someday violence will just kind of sink down into its own hellhole,” he adds. And “if I continue to live my life according to violence, I miss out on what life is all about.”
A gospel class

Nuechterlein is currently teaching a class at his church that incorporates some of these ideas about salvation and judgment. He says his ideas are received “fairly well” by his congregation.

“I’m not aware of any movement to oust me yet,” he jokes. Getting more serious, though, he adds, “When someone does have a negative reaction, that provides an opportunity to talk and learn together.”

For his class, which is focused on the Gospel of John, he’s using a book by Wright, “John for Everyone.”

While Wright’s views have influenced Nuechterlein’s thinking, the two differ on some matters. Unlike Nuechterlein, Wright presents a view of Jesus as God’s agent of final judgment and rejects the idea of universal salvation.

“Judgment is necessary — unless we were to conclude, absurdly, that nothing much is wrong or, blasphemously, that God doesn’t mind very much,” Wright says in his book “Surprised by Hope.”

But Wright talks of the final judgment as a time to be longed for and celebrated, a time when “the creator God will set the world right once and for all,” bringing it back to a state of justice and truth through Jesus.

Wright is reluctant to consider whether some people won’t be part of God’s transformed creation. But he suggests that maybe those who persistently refuse God’s love and rescue will one day, after death, end up no longer bearing the divine image at all and will exist in “an ex-human state.” But he says he doesn’t want anyone to suppose he knows much about this subject or enjoys speculating about it.

In Wright’s view, as in Nuechterlein’s, God’s purposes are bigger than the issues Christians often focus on.

In thinking about God’s purposes, says Wright, our challenge is “to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all.”

For Nuechterlein, one of the implications of believing in a redeeming, nonviolent God is this: “It helps me orient my life around life, not violence and death. That I can live in that spirit today makes a huge difference in my life.”
 
 
 

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