Between Radical & Confessional Theologies: Whitehead’s God

A God of Love is A God Who is

Transcendently Near

The Process Doctrine of Divine Immanence

by R.E. Slater

April 1, 2023

Divine Immanence = Spirit Presence

Bo Sanders was a contemporary with Tripp Fuller at the outset of Homebrewed Christianity. Both Bo and Tripp were just coming into their own as student theologians focusing on their respective ideas of Whitehead and Christianity. Here, Bo utilizes Austin Roberts thoughts on the distinctiveness of Whiteheadian Philosophic Theology as a radically helpful approach to re-orienting the doctrines of God back to people and the church back to loving ministries.

It is important to remind ourselves of Process Theology's early struggles with the classical theologies of the 19th and 20th century (modern) church which institute had uplifted it's teachings of the transcendence of the Divine to the indelicate and immediate loss of God's crucial immanence necessary to the church and humanity.

At which point process theologians in the 1950s began to reverse this script of God  by the church by placing the Divine as importantly, necessarily, and centrally, immanent in relational ontological communication of the Divine with creation and humanity as a subset of creation.

In Christian terms we would say that the Spirit of God was set free to do the Work of God savifically, redemptively, and at all times, lovingly. At this same moment revived denominational groups such as Pentacostalism, Charismatics, Catholics, and a few other protestant movements began re-centering their beliefs around the Spirit of God. Which is a curious coincidence but wholly indicative of the Spirit of God's moving across the many heart's of believers noticing the church's paucity on the teaching of God's immanence in the lives of it's people everywhere. 

Now neither the transcendent nor the immanent doctrinal groups would necessarily deny the other's position even today's evangelical preaching separates God from man frequently and often when preaching sin and judgement, holiness and the sacred divine. This would be an example of God's transcendence from humanity.

Whereas the doctrinal immanency group will preach the imperative of God's nearness and presence at all times in humanity's lives regardless of sin and evil. That is, the divine is incapable of living his creation to which God has bound himself by love. Love never leaves but stays - as it can - in humanity's lives seeking reclamation and fellowship.

However, it is "relevant" to notice how one group places God further away from humanity when emphasizing holiness, sin and evil, while the other group says "Not so!" That the Divine is first and foremost loving before all other attributes of the Godhead - which consequently and necessarily places God intrinsically into the panrelational and participatory conversation with creation and mankind.

What does Divine Immanency Mean?

It is in this direction which I have strongly leaned over these past many years teaching how the love of God brings the Divine lovingly near, if not importantly making divine salvation central to creation in all ways imagined... here are a few:

• That God is neither justice nor holy if God is not first loving.

• That a transcendent God is no good to his creation if he leaves it. In fact, it will fall apart completely and wholly without God's presence momentarily infilling creation's length and breadth and entirety.

• That a God who abandons his creation is an unloving God; betraying his promises to always abide; and to be centrally located within his creation.

• That on the basis of God's intrinsic immanence can salvation and redemption ever occur. A transcendent God cannot save, heal, bind up, or participate with his creation when leaving it to itself. It is a bald denial of why "by Love's desire" (and not by "Divine fiat") God created creation at all.

• And finally, that because of God's Love we are to love and minister to one another; neither oppressing, harming, or shackling God's creation, nor ourselves; nor our bodily and spiritual needs; nor the church and its congregations; nor civil society; by oppressive rites and rituals of religiosity substituting idolatrous self-righteous legalisms for the clear and extended Love of God.

What Does God's Presence Mean?

And although I have spoken these statements with many more declarations - and far more elegantly in the past than I do here - when speaking to the processual immanence of God; when placing Love over sacredness, holiness, and justice; I do wish to remember again the necessity to write, teach, and preach of the Love of God over the more current church views of judgment and wrath based upon it's transcendent (and not immanent) views of God.

Theologies which withhold God's love from us and creation replacing godly immanence with transcendent religious forms requiring church-sanctioned penance and conversion. Human deeds which I label as unnecessary and ungodly teachings of the church misspeaking it's ideas of what God's love means to us a living, serving, hurting, parishioners to the living Spirit of Christ.

Furthermore, a loving God does not command religious actions as substitute to his loving care and indwelling. That all such actions to require worthiness of his love are vain, self-serving acts of self-righteousness and prideful heart.

That the only reciprocation to God's love is to love ourselves and one another. Not by dwelling in guilt nor self-beatings. Nor harming others in congregational displays of unholy rites and memed profferings of scape-goating (I think of the historical acts of church cruelty and oppression to the public as well as to its congregants).

What God's love means to us is that all our works - whether religious or not - are unwanted, unhelpful, self-deceiving, and but raggish substitutes for receiving God's love wholly and completely.

Outcomes of Preaching a Lovingly Present God

The most religious thing a penitent might do is:

• To give God's love away kindly, tenderly, helpfully, and with large amounts of humility, forgiveness, grace and mercy.

• For many process theologians this means progressive activism embracing humanitarian outreach to the unwanted, despised, ill-regarded, hated, and such like.

• For other process practitioners it may also mean rebuilding fully democratized ecological societies which value people and faiths of all kinds cooperatively, equally, fairly, and in ecological reconstruction of a polluted and failing planet.

• This then is what it means to teach a theology of love based upon a God who is immanently near and unwilling to leave us. 

One Last Word on Divine Immancence

Certainly God is "Other" than creation and ourselves but God's "Otherness" consequently demands God's Immanence based upon God's deep loving desire to be a Father-Creator. Process Immanence then speaks to a Loving God in process with his creation.

"Love is what makes the world go 'round. What makes life purposefully meaningful. And is the Soul-energy of the very Divine." Love - not holiness, not justice, not acts of religious self-righteousness - is the definitive story of the God who is "Otherly Near" - Abidingly Near - Sacrificially Near - and Presently Near - at all times, hard or sad or cruel or full of pain and suffering.

God's Love is promised to creation at all times throughout its stories of survival in unloving, creaturely worlds having abandoned loving caretake of one another for other unloving energies set as idolatrous images to the One Who Loves.

Peace and Love,

R.E. Slater

April 1, 2023

* * * * * * *

Between Radical & Confessional Theologies:

Whitehead’s God

article link

by Bo Sanders

March 14, 2014

[all bracketed comments are mine - re slater]

*side note: "Radical Theology" as written here is not strictly secular radical theology but a theology which differs from the classic church teachings on a

theological doctrine. In this case transcendence v immanence. - re slater

Guest-post by Austin Roberts:

He is a PhD student at Drew University, studying with the incomparable Catherine Keller. [listen to her podcast here]

You should 100% follow his blog and you might want to read his book on eco-theology Process pairing Jürgen Moltmann and John Cobb.

I.

As a process theologian, I often find myself in the position of needing to explain or even defend the God that Whitehead affirms. I have these conversations with fellow academics and intellectual types who just can’t see how some of us can still call ourselves theists after the ‘death of God,’ as well as fellow Christians who struggle to see how one could reconcile process panentheism with the God of the Bible.

While the former group tends to be extremely critical of any hint of transcendence (whether in reference to God or otherwise), the latter group gets uneasy with the process theologian’s special emphasis on God’s immanence.

• For the former, transcendence is more-or-less relativized – if not entirely eliminated – by immanence.

• For the latter, it is usually the other way around: God is infinitely transcendent and created everything out of nothing.

For those who care to go into this kind of discussion, the core theological question up for debate is this: how immanent and/or transcendent is Whitehead’s God?

II.

I’m certainly not going to try to answer this with any sense of finality. What I primarily want to do here is to point out the difficulty of this issue when we have, broadly speaking, two types of theologians reading Whitehead in different ways today:

• those who resonate with Radical Theology
• those who are committed to Confessional Theology.

This is exciting to me, even as it brings new challenges to process theology. I’m not claiming that there is a full-blown contradiction between these two approaches, and perhaps there’s a way to bring these two approaches closer together. Even so, they are starting out with different assumptions and concerns that certainly shape their contrasting readings of Whitehead’s theism.

At the risk of oversimplifiction, there’s a sense in which Radicals tend to read Whitehead primarily through a poststructuralist lens (Derrida, Deleuze, Butler) while Confessionals read him primarily through the lens of tradition and scripture.

This makes for a rather striking difference between the two.

• One could always follow the “Whitehead without God” approach (Bob Mesle, Donald Sherburne). [sic, Whitehead was a Victorian Christian who was developing processual theology at the same time as the newer quantum cosmologies were being birthed scientifically. Thus, one reads Whitehead as a process philosopher rather than as a process theologian. This latter task was later taken up by Dr. John Cobb, Jr. - re slater]

• One can also see Whitehead’s God as nothing more than a cosmic function – and therefore wholly “secularized” – that is necessary for a coherent process worldview but totally uninspiring for spirituality or religion (Steven Shaviro’s reading in his “Without Criteria”). [here, the process philosophy of Whitehead is utilized to develop a wholly secular line of processual thinking ala metaphysical cosmologies, ontologies, and rightfully ethically, as an overall teleology of process thought. The word secular then is applied correctly but in Whitehead does not necessarily deny an underlying processual theology. In Whitehead, process is a correctly observed to be a philosophic theology as opposed to Christian theologies built upon an eclectic panacea of  Platonic-Hellenistic-Aristotelian-Enlightenment philosophic foundations as the church has done these past 2000 years. - re slater]

Personally, I think there are serious problems with these interpretations (that’s for another post) and they remain minority reports within the process community.

IIIA.

Let’s consider two streams of process theology, what I’m calling the Radical and Confessional paths.

On the one side are those who read Whitehead’s God in ways that strongly emphasize immanence – a kind of Radical theology, perhaps, usually with the help of Deleuze’s poststructuralist philosophy of immanence. Few process thinkers go so far as to deny God’s transcendence entirely (although see Kristien Justaert’s process pantheism in “Theology after Deleuze”), but the concept as more commonly understood is very much relativized by a more immanent God. This is rapidly becoming an influential way of reading Whitehead (I can confirm this based on my experiences at both Drew (sic, Catherine Keller) and Claremont  (sic, John Cobb) [Universities] where most students of Whitehead tend to lean this way).

My former professor Roland Faber, signaling a stronger shift towards immanence with his Deleuzean reading of Whitehead, argues for “trans-pantheism” as opposed to the more standard reading of Whitehead’s panentheism. He digs deep into the Cusan paradox of God as “Not-Other” and places a stronger theological emphasis on Whitehead’s immanent creativity. He interprets the later Whitehead as seeming inclined “to replace any remaining connotations of God’s transcendence with a totally immanent divine creativity” (Process & Difference, 216). As with John Caputo’s radical theology, Faber will also say that God does not exist but insists as the interrupting event of the new.

For Faber’s radical process theology, God is always “In/difference”: the insistence on difference and relationality of all differences. For the Radical approach, questions of Christian doctrine (Christology, Trinity, Revelation) tend to be secondary (at best) to the political and ethical implications of theology. The thinking here is that an immanent theology is better equipped for this-worldly activism based on democratic practices, over against difference-denying oppressive forms of hierarchy that are rooted in transcendence.

IIIB.

On the other side are those who read Whitehead’s God in ways that try to maintain more traditional theological intuitions of transcendence. I see this as a kind of Confessional trajectory for Whiteheadians that has been much more common for Christian process theology over the last fifty years. Confessional process theologians are not necessarily Orthodox in their beliefs, but they tend to have a stronger concern than the Radical process theologians to maintain ties to the Christian tradition and to more thoroughly align their theology to the Bible.

John Cobb is an obvious example here, especially evident in his rather high Christology in which he intentionally remains close to the creedal confession that Jesus was “fully God and fully man.” By reading Whitehead’s God as a balance of immanence with transcendence, he can affirm that:

• God is the most powerful reality in existence;
• That our existence is radically contingent upon God as our Creator; and;
• That we depend upon God’s grace.

Attempting to do justice to key themes of the Bible and Christian piety, Cobb will claim that:

• Because God is always working for the good in the world and truly loves her creation;
• God can genuinely reveal him/herself in particular ways;
• Our prayers can be answered, people might even sometimes be healed through God’s action in the world, and that death ultimately does not have the last word.

Unlike Radical process theology, Confessional process theologians unequivocally affirm God’s existence as a real being (e.g., David Ray Griffin’s cumulative argument in his Re-enchantment Without Supernaturalism).

A neo-Whiteheadian approach, as in Joseph Bracken’s theology, pushes even closer to traditional commitments and asserts a stronger (“asymmetrical”) sense of transcendence than even Cobb.

Like Thomas Aquinas did with Aristotle, and Augustine did with neo-Platonism, Bracken will use Whitehead as a general philosophical framework for special revelation in scripture and tradition, allowing the latter more authoritative sources to revise the former when necessary. The doctrinal results for him are an orthodox view of the Trinity, creatio ex nihilo, and bodily resurrection.

IV.

Some of us might cringe at the Radical approach, others at a Confessional approach.

• To Confessionals, the Radical approach might sound even more esoteric and complicated than Whitehead himself and irrelevant for practical or spiritual life outside of the academy.

• To Radicals, the Confessional approach might sound outdated and naïve at best, or imperialistic and oppressive at worst.

• Or some of us might instead be able to see the two as constrasting rather than contradicting and perhaps look for a way to learn from both, even if we share the more basic assumptions of one or the other.

Conclusion

If the Radical approach is helping to keep Whitehead relevant to postmodern intellectuals, religious skeptics, and academics – perhaps even effecting a “Whiteheadian revolution” or a “return to Whitehead” in contemporary philosophy and science

– the Confessional approach tends to have much more traction for pastors and laypersons.

This distinction seems to me to exemplify the challenge of identifying the task of theology today:

• Is it important to do theology primarily for the sake of the life of the confessing church, or

• Can we (should we?) move on and do theology primarily because of its continuing politically subversive and ethical power for society?

This is not a question just for those of us in the process community, but rather for any theologian who finds herself in this predicament, between the Radical and the Confessional.

Here's One Denomination Willing to Adapt Their Theology Against Past Church Ideology

 

 

My friend Tom Oord has been a great-and-good influence in demonstrating to those within his denominational reach of how to adapt one's theology to the present understanding of scientific knowledge. Consequently, he and other theologians within (and outside) of his denomination (sic, Biologos for one) have been willing to accept the fact that their theology is out-of-step with today's academia and are showing their flexibility in remitting incorrect church doctrines in the face of fact-and-not-fancy.

 

That Evolutionary Creationism is beginning to become a broad-based understanding to the early creation stories of the Bible has been reflected herein within the journals of Relevancy22 as evidence to this movement's intent. That this is beginning to become a legitimately accepted viewpoint within today's postmodern church has also been demonstrated in the writings of those willing to speak out against the more popular rhetoric of refuting Christian colleges, churches, mainstream publications, and media outlets.

 

Little-by-little the evolutionary doctrine of creation is becoming understood as the only valid scientific process by which our Creator God has chosen to create His creation against the centuries-old proclaimed teachings of the non-postmodernday church (sic., in pre-postmodernistic language these movements go under the several names of Young Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, or Intelligent Design). Because this theological view confronts those countering church dogmas on so many doctrinal planes it has behooved theists both left-and-right of the issue to reflect on the many differing doctrinal subjects which have been abrogated and must be updated.

 

To those far-sighted theologians willing to brave the task at hand, and accepting the challenge that scientific discovery has brought to the church's understanding of the Bible, we are discovering a far deeper (and far richer!) grasp of our Creator-Redeemer God than initially comprehended (or originally feared lost) through such study. Hence, the Bible itself - along with its many integrating doctrines - are being challenged as to their truer course of revelation to which the church had formerly understood (and applied) those doctrines (and dogmas) under previous administrations and enlightenment eras.

 

Slowly, newer, more hermeneutically palatable explanations and study of the Scriptures are arising to replace poorly understood - and misapplied fears - to the truths of "scriptural evolution" as they affect our understanding of God, His Being, His elected processes of creation, His considerable judgments and wisdom, His oft-times incomprehensible revelation and communication to man, His reach, intent, majesty, and glory. Nay, into the very spirit of redemption itself as God renews, reclaims, recreates, revives, creation towards His sovereign goals and plans.

 

Consequently, the church has everything to gain and nothing to lose as has been demonstrated within the articles contained here in Relevancy22 in its many arguments for Evolutionary Creationism, and its varied exploration into the depths of the divine mind and will. As such, to the inquiring heart-and-mind willing to suspend past ideological arguments for a deeper, richer, insight into God Himself, there will be paradoxically discovered profound satisfaction that will include an expansive array of the world's resources and native storybook everywhere written about us into the cosmologic and biotic landscapes surrounding our hearts and minds, souls and spirits. "Hail," brave adventurer, "to the beauties of our Creator God, His wondrous world, and ancient mysteries of the divine!"

 

R.E. Slater

May 10, 2013

 

 

 

 

Nazarenes Exploring Evolution

http://exploringevolution.com/project.html

 

The Project

 

Recent polling shows that the majority of scientists believe in evolution. More than 9 of 10 professional scientists believe the evidence for evolution is compelling.¹ While the theory of evolution comes in a variety of forms, virtually all forms say that gradual changes occurred to produce new species over long periods of time.

 

Not only do the majority of scientists affirm evolution, the general features of evolutionary theory – including an old earth and natural selection – are widely accepted in culture today. Most public television and scientifically-oriented programs simply assume the general truth of evolutionary theory.

 

Recent polling also shows, however, that more than half of American Evangelicals believe humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.² Those who hold this view typically believe the world is relatively young. And they interpret Genesis (and other books of the Bible) in a particular way to support their young earth view.

 

This difference between 1) the majority of Evangelicals and 2) the majority of scientists seems true of the Church of the Nazarene. Many denominational scholars in various disciplines – scientific, biblical, and theological – believe the general theory of evolution is compatible with Wesleyan-holiness theology. Yet, many non-specialists in the Church of the Nazarene reject evolution. In fact, a 2007 Pew poll said only 21% of Nazarenes mostly agree or completely agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life on earth.³ Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, sums it up: "the bulk of our Christian scholars/scientists are in a camp different from the bulk of our laity [on issues of evolution]."⁴

 

The Nazarenes Exploring Evolution project works to foster greater understanding among members of the Church of the Nazarene about the potential fruitful relation between Wesleyan-holiness theology and evolution. It does so by exploring scripture, science, theology, and other realms of knowledge. It seeks not to ridicule those who hold non-evolutionary views of creation, such as Young Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, or Intelligent Design. Instead, it offers Theistic Evolution (or similar views) to members of the denomination as a viable alternative among accounts of how God creates the universe.

 

Nazarene Scientists on God Creating through Evolution

 

In a 2009 Pew research study, 97% of scientists said humans and other living things have evolved over time by natural processes, guided by God, or evolved in some other way.⁵ To date, no one has taken a poll of scientists in Church of the Nazarene colleges and universities to determine how they think about evolution. But some scientists in the denomination have published their views on the subject.

 

Fred Cawthorne, of Trevecca Nazarene University, says that "evolution by no means contradicts the fact that God is the Maker of heaven and earth and that he has been actively guiding and sustaining the universe for all time. If we say God cannot create through a gradual, progressive process such as evolution, then we limit God's transcendence and immanence."⁶

 

Karl Giberson, long-time professor at Eastern Nazarene College, affirms evolution: "I think evolution is true. The process, as I reflect on it, is an expression of God's creativity, although in a way that is not captured by the scientific view of the world... God's creative activity must not be confined to a six-day period - 'in the beginning' - or the occasional intervention along the evolutionary path. God's role in creation must be more universal – so universal it cannot be circumscribed by the contours of individual phenomena or events."⁷

 

Darrel Falk, of Point Loma Nazarene University, says that "for the past century and a half, thousands of scientists from disciplines as diverse as physics, geology, astronomy, and biology have amassed a tremendous mass of data, and the answer is absolutely clear and equally certain. The earth is not young, and the life forms did not appear in six twenty-four-hour days. God created gradually."⁸

 

Rick Colling, a long time scientist at Olivet Nazarene University, says that "some people, on religious grounds, choose to aggressively ignore or deny many scientific concepts and principles, especially in the domain of evolution... The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to squeeze God into small rigid boxes... Unfortunately, this approach to religious faith is fraught with liability because it prevents God from truly being God – a creator capable of using any means He chooses for His creation."⁹

 

Without polling, it is difficult to know if these views represent the majority of Nazarene scientists. But it is true that the voices quoted above are not alone among Nazarene scientists who believe the evidence for evolution is strong and evolution does not necessarily conflict with the belief God is Creator.

 

Nazarene Biblical and Theological Scholars on God Creating through Evolution

 

There is little doubt some people reject evolution based on their interpretation of the Bible. The Bible says little to nothing about evolution. And the first chapters of Genesis, when read literally, do not easily fit the theory of evolution.

 

Many biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers in the Church of the Nazarene, however, believe the Bible should not be interpreted as a straightforward science or history book. For instance, many believe Genesis 1 reads like a hymn of praise. Others believe it draws from Jewish Temple literature, which is religious and not scientific. Most Nazarene Bible, theology, and philosophy scholars believe the main point of Genesis and other creation texts is theological: God is Creator. Genesis and other books of the Bible need not mention the specific ways God creates for this main point to be true.

 

Robert Branson, a long-time professor at Olivet Nazarene University, says that "it is one thing to say we believe that God is the Creator. It is quite another to say that in Scripture God described with scientific accuracy "when" and "how" he created."¹⁰

 

Dennis Bratcher, a long time Bible scholar in the Church of the Nazarene, says that "sometimes it is hard for us to realize that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is an Oriental book... The thought world of Oriental culture is radically different from the thought world of Western culture, particularly when we recall that there is a period of three thousand years between us and that culture... That's why they are not writing about evolution in Genesis 1; that's 3,000 years in their future."¹¹

 

Alex Varughese, of Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and his Nazarene co-writers of Discovering the Bible say that a "careful reading of Genesis 1:1-2:4a shows that the focus of the text is on the Creator and what He made. Our usual questions of why, how, and when are not answered in this account."¹²

 

Michael Lodahl, of Point Loma Nazarene University, says that "a Wesleyan reading of Genesis – and of the world – need not and should not shy away from the dominant ideas of the contemporary natural sciences. It is obvious that if the evolutionary story of the universe (including our own planet and all of its living inhabitants) is generally accurate, then the opening chapters of Genesis cannot be assumed to be giving a straightforwardly literal account of the creation of the world."¹³

 

Thomas Jay Oord, of Northwest Nazarene University, sums it up: "The Bible tells us how to live abundant life. It does not tell us scientific details about how life became abundant. The Bible also tells us how to go to heaven. It does not provide the science to tell us how the heavens go."¹⁴

 

Without polling biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers in the denomination, it is difficult to know if the quotations above represent the majority. But the available literature suggests that these views do represent most scholars in these disciplines. Most scholars in Bible, theology, and philosophy seem at least open to the possibility that Wesleyan-holiness theology is compatible with evolution. And many are convinced the two are compatible.

 

Does It Matter?

 

Even those mildly interested in questions of theology and evolution know the science-and-religion discussion has a history of conflict. Any progress toward insight or reconciliation comes slowly, if at all. Veterans of the discussion are prone to weariness, and denominational leaders might wonder if the "fight" is worth the trouble. Does addressing the issues of evolution really matter?

 

Christians have long believed that truth matters. Although Christians may not ever know all truth because we "see through a dark glass" (1 Cor. 13), we are called to search for truth in our attempts to love God with our minds. Because the natural and social sciences are primary avenues for discovering truth about existence, these sciences can play a central role in helping Christians discern how to love God and others as oneself.

 

Al Truesdale, long-time professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, summarizes the importance of seeking truth in the Church of the Nazarene: "Denominations that stand in the Wesleyan tradition [such as the Church of the Nazarene] are at their best when they advocate a vital faith that seeks understanding through a bold examination of the results of all human exploration, whether in technology, in the sciences, or through historical research."¹⁵

 

One reason this discussion matters, therefore, is that the search for more adequate understandings of God and the world God creates relies upon a variety of sources, not the least of which are the sciences. If evolution is widely accepted among those who have studied the natural world most intently – scientists – it matters how Christians engage the science of evolution in light of Christian Faith.

 

This brings us to a second reason why the discussion of evolution and theology matters. It matters because many (but not all) scientists in the Church of the Nazarene affirm the general theory of evolution. These scientists often feel ostracized, get labeled as ungodly, are marginalized, or considered deceived.

 

The testimony of Nazarene biologist, Darrel Falk, is similar to the testimonies of many Nazarene scientists: "One of the biggest deterrents (to entering a Nazarene community) was my impression that I could never become part of an evangelical fellowship because of my belief in gradual creation.... Unless the church begins to downplay the significance of believing in some variety of sudden creation, there will continue to be thousands of individuals ... who will be denied true fellowship in God's kingdom."¹⁶

 

Christian Witness Today

 

A third important reason why the evolution and Christian theology discussion matters is the nature of Christian witness. And the Christian witness pertaining to evolution is especially true for how young people think of God and Christian faith.

 

In a recent Pew study, more 18- to 29-year olds reported having a positive view of science than those in any other age category. More specifically, sixty-one percent of young people believe life evolved over time due to either natural process or divine guidance. Seventy percent of all college graduates – no matter their age – affirm some form of evolution. In sum, young people and those with degrees in higher education are more likely to trust scientists who argue for the validity of evolution.

 

Statistics also show, unfortunately, that young people leave the church and/or become atheists because they perceive the church to be opposed to science in general and evolution in specific. In his book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith, David Kinnaman uses the data from Barna Group research to show why 18- to 29-year olds are leaving the Church. Nearly 3 in 10 say the church is out of step with science, and one quarter say Christianity is anti-science. About one quarter of young people are turned off by the creation vs. evolution debate, and about one-fifth say Christianity is anti-intellectual.¹⁷

 

Kinnaman quotes one young person and why he left faith over the church's failure to accept science: "To be honest, I think that learning about science was the straw that broke the camel's back," says the young person. "I knew from church that I couldn't believe in both science and God, so that was it. I didn't believe in God anymore."¹⁸

 

Stories from Nazarene parents, youth pastors, and university professors indicate that some young people are leaving the Church of the Nazarene for the reasons Kinnaman reports. These young people think they cannot affirm the idea that God creates through evolution and still feel welcome in the denomination.

 

Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, asks an important question of himself that also applies to the Church of the Nazarene, "Will I engage a young generation in an open-minded biblical conversation that welcomes scientific discovery, reasoned philosophy, and careful logic? Or will I ignore all of these in favor of an interpretation of creation that is barely one hundred years old and rooted in the fear of science?"¹⁹

 

In a loving, constructive, and humble endeavor, the Nazarenes Exploring Evolution project seeks to help the Church of the Nazarene consider how evolution can complement rather than contradict Wesleyan-holiness theology.

 

 

¹ Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx Accessed 1/18/13. See also, http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/ Accessed 1/22/13

 

² Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx. Website accessed 1/18/13

³ Association of Religion Data Archives. http://thearda.com/Denoms/families/profilecompare.asp?d=1001&d=601&d. Accessed 1/23/13. Rich Housel, who alerted me to this website, notes that the sample of Nazarenes polled was very low: 103.

 

⁴ Dan Boone, A Charitable Discourse: Talking about the Things that Divide Us (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2010), 106.

 

⁵ Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx Accessed 1/18/13. See also, http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/ Accessed 1/22/13

 

⁶ Fred Cawthorne, "The Harmony of Science and the Christian Faith," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 105.

 

⁷ Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 216.

 

⁸ Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2004), 214.

 

⁹ Richard G. Colling, Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator (Bourbonnais, Ill.: Browning, 2004), 107.

 

¹⁰ Robert Branson, "The Bible, Creation, and Science," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 105.

 

¹¹ Dennis Bratcher, http://www.crivoice.org/biblestudy/bbgen1.html Accessed 1/18/13

 

¹² Alex Varughese, ed. Discovering the Bible: Story and Faith of the Biblical Communities (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 2006), 65.

 

¹³ Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2003), 63.

 

¹⁴ Thomas Jay Oord and Robert Luhn, The Best News You Will Ever Hear (Boise, Id.: Russell Media, 2011), 25. See also Oord, Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2009) and Oord, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010), ch. 4.

 

¹⁵ Al Truesdale, "Introduction," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 10.

 

¹⁶ Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 230. For similar testimonies, see Richard G. Colling, Random Designer, and Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin.

 

¹⁷ David Kinnaman, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2011), 136.

 

¹⁸ Ibid., 131.

 

¹⁹ Dan Boone, A Charitable Discourse, 102.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Review of the Historic v. Canonical v. Creedal Jesus of the Church

McKnight has listed 5 criteria as necessary guidance on the historical vs. canonical vs. creedal Jesus debates.This is especially relevant to the Church's hermeneutical emphasis upon Jesus in today's current revelatory studies.

 

Basically, what is meant by the phrase, "the Historical Jesus of the Gospels," is that historians are attempting to discover the real Jesus behind the Gospels. That He has been technically lost "historically" and must be found apart from the early first century Church's description of Him. To which redactory endeavor I submit can, and cannot, be done having already become seamlessly integrated with the Gospels of the Bible by the Church through its canonization of the Gospels of Jesus. Meaning that, what we see in the Gospels is mostly the canonical Jesus of the Church. To find the historical Jesus is largely an endeavor in futility. It's like trying to write a history of ourselves apart from the legacy of ourselves developed around us. We see this in the many biographies of Winston Churchill or Theodore Roosevelt as biographers attempt to encapsulate "the man behind the myth." Each biographer's viewpoint is an interpretive viewpoint of the person they have met or studied - in this case Churchill or Roosevelt. Likewise we find this same "dilemma" in the many interpretive viewpoints of Jesus contained in the Gospels by (1) the Gospel writers themselves (Matthew, Mark/Peter, Luke/Paul, John). As well as (2) the many vignettes of Jesus given to those writers from their interpreted "sources" of eyewitness within the many Gospel stories collected and compiled by each author for their Gospel recount.

 

Right from the start we understand the difficulty of trying to unveil and discover "the man behind the myth," or, in this case, the historical Jesus of the Gospels. Now nearly everyone of us will have an interpretive view of our friends just as everyone who came into contact with Jesus will have thoughts of the same. To attempt to reduce who a person is from a collection of sources might describe a generalized account of that person (to some degree true, and to another degree untrue, based upon authorial repute or eyewitness veracity) but mostly this attempt becomes lost in the annuals of time as the decades and centuries roll by. What we are left with is the canonized story of Jesus found in the Gospels as upheld by the Church's historic councils directed to the purpose of preserving biographically true stories of Jesus (mostly found in the Gospels of the New Testament; as well as in the other books of the NT in another sense) as versus less biographically true stories of Jesus (known as the Gnostic Gospels of the NT). This then is what is meant by the canonical Jesus of the authorised NT (as authorised by the early church in the century or two afterwards), or the canonical Jesus of the Gospels, as versus the historical Jesus of the Bible. It's nearly an impossible task to find the historical Jesus, so that what can be said of Jesus can only be sanguine, mostly generalized statements, about Jesus. Things like, "Jesus was a good child," or "Jesus knew labor as a carpenter," or "Jesus grew up in a family," and was "an (biologically) adopted child in a sense" because of his unique birth to Mary, or "Jesus knew hunger and pain because of His humanity." However, it was Jesus as the incarnate Person of the Trinity, as God come to live and minister amongst men, as the Spirit-filled man, as the perfect revelation of God in both Godhead and humanity, that we glean from the biblical accounts, memoirs, and essays of the New Testament. This is the theology of Jesus from which we get from the canonized NT books of the Bible, and especially from the Gospels themselves. And this then is what we mean by the canonized Jesus. It doesn't mean that Jesus is any less historical, just that His personage bore an interpretive meaning behind (and within) it that superseded mere commentary on His lifestyle.

 

So what do we mean by the creedal Jesus then? Simply this... as the Church grasped Jesus' mission and gospel it developed an ensuing theology of Jesus (mostly redemptive in orientation). As example, for some bodies of believers they didn't understand Jesus' intermix of divinity and humanity - a common problem going back to the misunderstanding of one's theology about sin and materiality (is sin corporeal, is it spiritual, is it some combination of both, and if so, to what extent?). Which then required studies in harmatology (sin), theology proper (God), anthropology (man), pneumatology (the Holy Spirit), and so forth. Each area impacting the other area (much as I am attempting here in this blog by interweaving various doctrinal positions into a holistic version of Emergent Christianity). As a result various doctrinal ideas were propagated by the church - some believed Jesus less than divine. Others that Jesus was fully divine. Some that Jesus was sinless while others thought Jesus bore sin either spiritually or because of His corporeal body.

 

Consequently, how a church fellowship understood other parts of theology, philosophy, biblical doctrine and human endeavor was how they understood the Jesus they read about in the Bible. This is known as a believer's "frame of reference." In today's terms this means that we can be products of our environment formed by experiences in our church, by our religious background, even from our geographical era and family values, creating a very personalized frame of reference. A frame of reference that makes us, us - but a frame that is not easily circumvented beyond our own opinions upon subjects. As an example, generally, for older adults growing up in the mid- to late- 1900s they will have a modern, and not a postmodern, mindset. But within those large philosophical sets are additional "-isms" and "-ologies" that have influenced one's dispositional make-up as can be seen below by this societal map:

 

 (click on map to enlarge)

 

"The Century is Over" - Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture with its attractor basins,

by Charles Jencks, Architectural Review, July 2000, p. 77 - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/10/charles-jencks-look-at-modernism.html



Hence, one may have a Catholic orientation, a Baptist, agnostic or atheistic orientation, so that what a person's frame of reference is will be that person's depiction of Jesus to him or her. This is the same with a local or regional fellowship of believers. Their environment of societal variables determines what Jesus may have meant to them (as witnessed to by Rob Bell's Love Wins book - it was reviled by some parts of the country, and hailed in other parts of the country). So that today, many American denominations will behold Jesus differently from one another, having come from differing philosophical backgrounds. While in another sense many denominations and churches may be described as a common "societal class of congregants" bearing similar values, belief structures, and dogmas with one another as evidenced by whether one is a Protestant, a Catholic, Roman Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, liberal, progressive, moderate, evangelical, or even emergent Christian. Which is then reflective of that church's doctrinal positions of the Bible, theology and even of Jesus Himself. This then is what is meant by the creedal Jesus (as opposed to the historic Jesus and canonical Jesus).

 

So that, to a further extent, various branches of the Church went beyond basic interpretations of Jesus (for example, Jesus' redemptive ministry of salvation) to submit additional doctrinal interpretations about Jesus. For example, the controversies over the "hypostatic union of Christ" laid out a dozen or so positions about a fellowship's view of Jesus' humanity and/or divinity, about sin and materiality, about God, and so forth (see the historical charts at the end of this discussion). Many of these positions either didn't say enough about Jesus, or said too little. As a result, the Church accumulated continuing confessions about Jesus by adapting its reading of the New Testament to the times-and-circumstances of its societies, such that as regarding Christ's divine/human nature we see the Church's doctrine developing and maturing relative to this theology. A theology being played out in the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian, and Athanasian Creeds. Developing over time and place in response to its various (and vigorous) debates about Jesus' meaning for the Church's theological positions of the Bible.

 

Which is why a good biblical theology should also pay attention to (i) the historical creedal and confessional revisions of the church, as well as (ii) to study the historical eras the church worked and lived within - if not the very history of the church itself. It all adds up to a more complete study, and understanding, of the Scriptures, and specifically, of one's view of Jesus. Not that the past necessarily drives current discussions of theology, but seeks to inform theological discussion as it is pertinent or relevant to ideas and directions being discussed. As example, the postmodern direction of the early 21st Century is driving a resultant discussion of all things God, and the Bible, and is known under many names because of the many drivers contributing to the evolving discussion of Jesus. Myself, I prefer the edginess (and sometimes the impertinence) of Emergent Theology which seeks to maintain an orthodox relationship to the past while also pushing the envelopes of the theological future within a postmodern, post-Christendom setting.

 

Let me take a short commercial break here for several paragraphs ...

 

As such, Emergent Theology is still emerging (pun intended). And should not be defined by any one Emergent speaker or figurehead. Thus, I find hope in contributing to its evolving presence taking the best of my evangelical orthodox past and interrelating it to the best theological observations being made today. Which is why several new sidebar sections have opened up within Relevancy22 (sic, "An Open Faith and Open Theology," and "An Emerging Theology") as I take these past many months of emergent exploration and begin to interweave them towards larger conclusions.

 

Competing with Emergent theology is a neo-Reformed, neo-Calvinistic theology bearing the (safe) name Radical Orthodoxy. Each are dealing with postmodernism, but each are coming at it from differing directions and target audiences. Emergent Theology seems to be more free of church dogma and thus quicker to respond more relevantly towards a post-Christendom witness and mission. Its target audiences seem to be from all ranks of the church, plus the non-churched and unchurched masses of society who may have been abandoned, or set aside, by the church for one reason or another. As example, how many times do we read of Christian evolutionary professors removed from their posts by a Christian college? Do you ever wonder where these professors go? I would imagine they find work in another city and worship in another church. But these types of people are the would-be inhabitants filling the ranks-and-files of Emergent Christianity. Whether they use the name emergent or not. Because Emergent Christianity is a movement, not an organization. An attitude, not a doctrine.

 

Whereas Radical Orthodoxy is attempting to bring the fracturing churches of the evangelical movement along with itself while discovering similar ideological barriers to cross. Though past councils and creeds are helpful, the issues of postmodern society have changed requiring the postmodern church to respond with a theology that is relevant, contemporary, and meaningful. As such, to each-and-every theology that preaches Jesus we wish God's greatest blessings and Spirit-based inspiration regardless of name or structure. In the end, the bible must be made meaningful to today's generations. Not changed. Meaningful. And changed within our religious preferences and dogmas to become meaningful. Which is what Relevancy22 is attempting to do along with many other visionary prophets, preachers, theologians, writers, poets, organizations, and Christian media outlets.

 

Now back to our discussion...

 

This then is what is meant by the creedal Jesus of the Church to which the historical-Jesus redactors have attempted to strip away so that we may see (the enigma) of their own "real Jesus." Even as historical church theologians have attempted to strip away the canonical Jesus for their own church denomination's position on creedal propositions and statements.... Its hard not to think of these various redactory efforts not unlike Ezekial's "wheels within wheels within wheels," where one area leads to another area, leads to another area, which makes having a well-versed teacher, professor, set of books, or reference tools, important to one's discovery of the Christian faith. According to 1 John 1 we all have are own self-inflicted delusions to which we must attend. And pray to the Spirit of God that those delusions not harm redemption's resurrection of Jesus held within us.

 

Thus, I find I must reiterate McKnight's synthesized positions about the historic vs. canonized vs. creedal Jesus. Each point is found to be important. And each point is helpful to the task at hand. By way of summary he says that:

 

(1) historical Jesus studies are possible but the better effort is to be given to the canonical / creedal positional development of Jesus;

 

(2) each of the four Gospel stories of Jesus are four authorial viewpoints of the one historical personage of Jesus;

 

(3) historical revisionism of Jesus is of no use to the Church because it already has a canonical view of Jesus that supercedes all non-canonical (historic) views of Jesus;

 

(4) Jewish studies of Jesus will lead to important revisions of the Church's canonical and creedal views of Jesus.

 

This last sentiment is known as the "New Perspective of Paul" reinvigorating present Pauline studies using first-century Jewish theology while paying attention to the ancient Hebraic customs of the time. The idea is to recover the Church's doctrines backwards towards a more Jewish/OT flair and appreciation for its earlier Jewish times and settings. This does not mean that we are to become Jewish Christians and re-proselytize the Church. But that we are Messianic Christians who should try to better understand the deep Jewish culture of the New Testament through a re-orientation of our westernized theology backwards towards with an emphasis upon Jesus (aka Sanders, Dunn, Wright). But not towards any specific Jewish observance of calendar dates, dress, religious institutions, and the like, as evidenced by the well-meaning, and sincere, observations of Olive Tree Christians and the variant proselytized Gentile forms within Jewish Christianity.... This latter is yet another example of interpretive creedal difference just as we have discussed above between churches, denominations, and faith fellowships. Where Jesus is lifted up we are all one ecumenical body of Christ.

 

However, this latter effort also is a response to the Protestant Reformation itself, to its Westernized and Easternized elements of Christianity, and to Catholicism itself, resulting from each's interpretive imprint upon the early church's canonical and creedal views of Jesus that have become distinctly less appreciative of the Gospel's Near-Eastern, Semitic/Jewish cultural roots. If one is to properly read the Gospels and the New Testament, then one must pay attention not only to the Aramaic/Hebrew language but to its surrounding Hebrew culture latent in the Gospel and New Testament settings. If not, then we do an injustice upon the biblical texts by forcing our own Western, Eastern, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Evangelic doctrinal interpretations upon the text while missing the prevalent teachings of the NT writers about Jesus. Giving to us an unbalanced Gentile view of Scripture as versus a more-informed Jewish understanding of Scripture.

 

(5) And lastly, the Gospels are already interpretations of Jesus, who was thus canonized by the Gospel writer's simple act of reporting their observations of Jesus, and of the meaning of His ministry and resurrection for us. Thus giving rise to a variety of creedal versions about Jesus which have arisen through the Church's continual reassessment of the Jesus of Scripture, and of Scripture itself. In historic response, there then arose from the Church various acclaimed "creeds and confessions" for the guidance of fellowship and community life. (A small list of these can be found here on this blog under the section "Notable Creeds and Confessions of the Church. Whereas the charts below are just one instance of a creedal history pertaining to one theological development within the church. Hence, there are many more denominational/orthodox distinctives should one begin to consult the general historical development of the Church since its first century origins out of Jerusalem and Judea.)

 

At the last, the canonical Jesus and the creedal Jesus is the Church's Jesus. The historical Jesus endeavor is not realistic for if it could be done it would simply discover the Jesus we know from the Bible. No more and no less. Thus, this historic redactory effort is not theologically informative. For its intent is to strip away Jesus' divine personage thinking to find simply a fleshly man dressed in religious garments bearing a passionate, universal message. To find Jesus no longer God Incarnate. Nor as man's Redeemer-Savior. But become like a Buddha, a Mohammad, or even a Joseph Smith, the Mormon, each of whom were significant figures to their religions. But of no importance to the revelatory salvation of God incarnated in Christ Jesus as portrayed to us by the first century Church's canonized record laid out in the New Testament. I think they got it right. And I trust we will too. I hope this helps.

 

R.E. Slater

October 15, 2012

rev. January 25, 2013

 

 

A simplified chart of historical developments of major groups within Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity#Creeds

Church Councils and Doctrinal Divisions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_theology#Hypostatic_union

 

 

A Christological Flowchart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_theology#Hypostatic_union

 

 

Historical Jesus Contrarian

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/10/10/historical-jesus-contrarian/

 

by Scot McKnight

October 10, 2012

Comments

 

Well, I didn’t get to attend the Historical Jesus conference last weekend led by Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne, but I’ve seen a couple reports taking me to task for my view, which was part of the book published, though I’m not sure the posts are taking my definitions seriously enough, so let me clarify. I do realize my view of historical Jesus studies is contrarian, but it’s hardly new. It’s a bit like Martin Kähler and a bit like Jimmy Dunn, but not identical to either.

 

What I say emerges from my own work in historical Jesus studies, and you can read my own approach to historiography in Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theories, published by Baylor University Press. It also emerges from more than five years of working in the Historical Jesus Seminar of the SBL at the Annual Meetings.

 

Point 1: My contention is that historical Jesus studies are all about reconstructing what Jesus was really like. They are the attempt to get behind the Gospels (and the Creed) to the real Jesus, the one who walked and taught and ministered in the Galilee and Judea.

 

Point 2: My contention is further that this reconstruction occurs over against the church’s Jesus, which is found in the Gospels (four presentations, not four “gospels” — not four “Jesuses” either, but four gospels presenting the Story of the one Jesus in four ways) and then developed even more in the Creed. The point of departure for historical Jesus studies is that the church either got Jesus wrong or said too much. The historical Jesus will be the real Jesus over against the church’s more theologized Jesus.

 

If you don’t accept these two premises, we have no discussion. If you do, we’ve got one. Again: it’s about reconstruction over against what the church thinks. Historical Jesus studies are decidedly contrarian to orthodoxy and the church and even the Gospels, if I may say so, and that is why they subject the church’s Jesus to criticism.

 

Point 3: And my contention is that historical Jesus studies, because it is all about reconstructing Jesus over against what the church has always believed, are of no use to the church. Why? Because the church knows what it believes about Jesus: The Gospels are the first source and then the Creed will be the second source for what the Church believes. [I want to avoid the Creed vs. Canon debate for this post because I'm intent on explaining what it means to do "historical Jesus studies."]

 

My contention is not that it is impossible to do historical Jesus studies — in other words, I do think historical methods, when folks stick to the methods, can discover what the method permits for discovery. (That’s the historical Jesus as reconstructed on the basis of methods, and my Jesus and His Death is that kind of historical Jesus book.) Some have said it is impossible to do historical Jesus studies because we don’t have any brute facts to interpret in another way. I disagree; I do think the methods are useful for historical purposes.

 

Point 4: My contention, further, is that “examining the Jesus of the Gospels [canonical Jesus] in his Jewish context” is not the same as “historical Jesus studies.” Canonical Jesus study sets an interpreted Jesus [canonical Jesus] in his Jewish context while historical Jesus study gets behind the canonical Jesus to the (less interpreted) real Jesus and sets that reconstructed figure in his historical context. I’m all for historical study of the canonical Jesus.

 

Point 5: And my contention is that the Gospels are already interpretations of Jesus, that is, the Gospel writers were “historians” in some sense and strung together facts about Jesus into a narrative that was designed to “gospel” Jesus to its readers. That is the church’s Jesus, the canonical Jesus, and that is the Jesus the church believes in. The creedal Jesus develops the canonical Jesus, and even if many think the creedal Jesus said too much, that does not change that the creedal Jesus is also the church’s Jesus.

 

If the church opts for the historical Jesus, it must choose to disregard the canonical Jesus for a reconstruction of Jesus on the basis of historical methods.