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

Thursday, July 25, 2013

How Might We Interpret the OT for Today?

 
 


Suffice it to say that today's article would be a great beginning point in the postmodern Christian's understanding of how the OT might relate to the NT. However, at first blush it would seemed that there may be a few more things going on here than we might currently admit. Mostly, we must think about why certain societal rules or cultural norms appeal to us. A postmodernist will question everything, and one of the things s/he must question is ourselves, then our social group, our church fellowship, and lastly our society.
 
But rather than saying everything is relativistic we should be asking how the Bible might help illuminate us as we find ourselves in our time-and-place when re-enacting God's great love that He has shown to us through His Son Jesus. Not judgmental love even though proper love will judge both its challenger as well as its motivation to meet that challenge. But to love in the sense of bringing peace and justice, reconciliation and purpose, back into a person, a situation, or a society. Even so, it must all begin with Jesus even as He questioned everything, teaching an ethic that stood everyone on their head, and spun them around in their thinking, from what they thought He might say to what He was actually saying TO THEM.
 
Further, a good historian of the Bible knows that ancient biblical culture - both in the OT as well as in the NT - are mostly lost to us in the sense of knowing how people thought and behaved back then. Oh yes, we can make our conjectures based upon our comparative readings of ancient histories, but most of these histories were written much later after-the-event-had-occurred! Even in the Bible's recorded histories by the biblical writers themselves as they too wrote from their cultural-and-historical perspectives (sic, via an  enculturated boundedness, personal biases and judgments). In its present form the Jewish OT was written in the Second Temple era from records as much as a thousand years earlier, many of which had been lost to time and inattention. Truly, we mostly are at a lost as to what people were thinking back 2000 years ago (the NT period), let alone 4000 years ago (the Torah period).
 
Which also gets us to the idea of remembering that language by its nature is both fluid and ambiguous. Even today, amongst our literate societies news-events are continually questioned as to their correctness of interpretation! Whether they are punning towards a particular view, outcome, or bias - or whether, it is in sincere search of the truth - our words carry multiple meanings to multiple hearers and societies. How much more than has the church done the same with its own ancient records and traditions as demonstrated by the vernacular speeches and commentaries held forth by today's current crops of Christian writers, pulpiteers, and media outlets? Words carry meaning. But they also carry ambiguity. Words are not mathematical symbols with strict mathematical properties. The best words of poets know this. And those kinds of lucid poets will write in a way that will carry an idea as expressed in a poem on many levels of meaning to many kinds of ears and eyes. Even in the church's traditional creeds we find our postmodern thinking wanting more (or less) when reading those grand confessions of faith. Especially when couched in the newer terms of process theism, relational thoughtopen theology, and the emergent strains of radical theology in its pithy cores and poignant questions to Christianity's truer meanings.
 
For all these many reasons, and many more, today's articles by Christianity Today and Scot McKnight make for a great beginning point of conversation. But not an ending point. Why? Because CT's expression is couched in the church's traditions and classical creedal expressions. Whereas McKnight's is showing a more nuanced reading of those traditions and expressions which may help guide the street-level Christian in his/her's reading of the OT. But still, we may push forward by asking even more questions. Questions of our preferred hermeneutical interpretation of the Bible: whether it pushes us far enough from our comfort zone, or if whether it keeps us too smugly wrapped up in our biases and bigotries towards those whom we should share God's love with. Whom we should advocate and mediate justice for. Whom we should forgive and reach out to. If whether we might lay down our religions clubs and shields long enough to work together in irenic debate and peaceful argumentation.
 
At the last, it is a beginning point. And hopefully, as we have discussed here at Relevancy22 in previous articles about the Bible and biblical interpretations, we might have been asking the hard questions of how we might discover Paul's readings aright in light of his Jewish orientation and not his Calvinistic or Reformed interpretation that we have covered him in. Or his Americanized, Western dress that we see Paul in. But not only must we learn to rethink the OT, so even must we learn to rethink the NT. When making our brazen speeches that "Paul said this or that" we may only be marking ourselves by our own (biblical) shortsightedness to what Paul may or may not actually be saying (or not saying!). Issues of gender equality, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, political rightness, poverty, victimization, and injustice continue to challenge us by God's Word. Let's just say that it would be a fearful thing should Jesus return today within our lives and churches. Just how many of our judgments and biblical assurances might you think remain?
 
In Paul's day, even this great Rabbi of the Jewish faith (I'm speaking of the Apostle Paul) found his faith impoverished, his ideas conflicted, his ministries oppressive, his love hardened before he met the Resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road. An experience that burned up the chattel of his life and reapportioned his livelihood to the re-righting of his earthly calling to public ministry. A ministry of love-and-reconciliation rather than of one of oppression-and-judgment. So too must we each must be confronted by our own Damascus Road experience beginning with how we might skew (or unskew) our interpretations of the OT text and NT principles we think we understand today in the postmodern sense. No, we do not speak of a relativism, but of a loving God's guidance of His church to err on the side of love, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. To do all in the name of Jesus as we are able or gifted by our separate callings. No more, and no less. And to abandon our guilt, and the oppression of our conscience, by taking all to the Lord as He gives us insight into our lives, our calling, our purpose here in this life when confronted by the crucified Christ.
 
At the last, how did Jesus answer his accusers? To Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul. And to Love your neighbor as yourself. Even so may this be prayer and admonition be in our lives this day, as difficult as it is. As challenging as it can be. To do good to everyman... and even more, to love in the power of the Holy Spirit by God's grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness. May this be so for you as God gives you strength and confession, repentance and trust. Amen.
 
R.E. Slater
July 25, 2013
 
 
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
Chris Wright on Old Testament Law and Today
But just as well, we should never say, “Oh, we don’t bother with those things because they are just Old Testament rules.” There are principled reasons why Christians not only need but also should not observe certain Old Testament laws simply as written. And regarding two kinds of law, the New Testament itself provides those reasons. 
The sacrificial laws: The New Testament makes it clear that the religious system of temple, altar, animal sacrifices, priesthood, and the Day of Atonement has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ through the Cross and Resurrection. He has accomplished once and for all what that great system pointed toward. The Book of Hebrews stresses that, whether we are Jewish or Gentile believers, we must not go back to that system, because we already have all that it represented through Christ’s sacrificial death and ascended life in the presence of the Father. 
The food laws: The distinction between clean and unclean animals and foods was symbolic of the distinction between Israel as God’s holy people and the Gentile nations (Lev 20:25–26). In the New Testament, that separation is abolished in Christ, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. Through the Cross, God has made the two cultures one new humanity. And as Peter discovered through his vision in Acts 10; before going to the home of the Gentile Cornelius, what God has called clean should no longer be called unclean. Today some Messianic Jewish believers choose freely to observe the kashrutregulations as a mark of their Jewish community and cultural identity. But in their unity, believers are free from food laws. 
But just because we no longer keep these laws literally does not mean they can’t teach us anything. We are called to present our bodies as a living sacrifice in the service of God. We are called to offer the sacrifice of praise. We are called to cleanness of life in a corrupt world. In fact, if we are tempted to mock Jewish fastidiousness over kosher food in the kitchen, we might ask if we have any sustained commitment to the moral and spiritual distinctiveness that the New Testament upholds. 
We can find principles even in Israel’s civil laws to apply today. The urban Christians in Corinth did not see oxen grinding corn in their city houses. But when Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he took an Old Testament law about allowing working oxen to be fed from the product of their labors (Deut 25:4) and applied it to Christian workers in Corinth. He sees a principle in the case law—originally meant for the benefit of animals—and applies it to working humans. The principle: Work deserves reward. Later he applies another commandment about how manna was to be collected (totally irrelevant to Corinth, you might think), and applies it to the principle of equality between Christians (1 Cor 9:8–10; 2 Cor 8:13–15). These are biblical examples of creative application of biblical laws in nonliteral, but very appropriate, ways.
 
 
Additional Comments from Scott McKnight:
 
In Blue Parakeet, I advocated that we learn to read Moses’ laws as God’s ways in Moses’ days, and it seems Chris Wright gets close to this view by advocating a hermeneutic of questions that then get re-asked in our day:
The best way to derive principles from the Old Testament law is to ask questions. All laws in all human societies are made for a purpose. Laws happen because people want to change society, to achieve some social goal, to foster certain interests, or to prevent some social evil. So when we look at any particular law or group of biblical laws, we can ask, “What could be the purpose behind this law?” To be more specific: 
● What kind of situation was this law intended to promote or to prevent? 
● What change in society would this law achieve if it were followed? 
● What kind of situation made this law necessary or desirable? 
● What kind of person would benefit from this law, by assistance or protection? 
● What kind of person would be restrained or restricted by this law, and why? 
● What values are given priority in this law? Whose needs or rights are upheld? 
● In what way does this law reflect what we know from elsewhere in the Bible about the character of God and his plans for human life? 
● What principle or principles does this law embody or instantiate?
Now we won’t always be able to answer these questions with much detail or insight. Some laws are just plain puzzling. But asking questions like these leads us to a much broader and deeper grasp of what Old Testament laws were all about: forming the kind of society God wanted to create. 
Then, having done that homework as best we can, we step out of the Old Testament world and back into our own. Ask the same kind of questions about the society we live in and the kind of people we need to be, and the kind of personal and societal objectives we need to aim for in order to be in any sense “biblical.” 
In this way, biblical law can function sharply as a paradigm or model for our personal and social ethics in all kinds of areas: economic, familial, political, judicial, sexual, and so on. We are not “keeping it” in a literalist way like a list of rules. But more important, we are not ignoring it in defiance of what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16–17. We are studying and using it as guidance, light for the path, in the joyful way of Psalms 1, 19 and 119.