Celebrating John Cobb's Global Spirit

John B. Cobb, Theologian, Academic, Pragmatist

John Cobb's Global Spirit

https://processandfaith.org/john-cobbs-global-spirit/

by Bruce Epperly

September 23, 2015

"As a Christian theologian, Cobb asks “Can Christ be good news?” and then

proceeds to share the good news of a faith that is inclusive, healing, hospitable,

and growing; a faith that embraces the marginalized, placing them at the center

of the theological adventure." - Bruce Epperly

In my last contribution, I reflected on Bernard Loomer’s vision of “size” or “stature” as the ability to embrace as much of reality as possible, including contrasting positions, without losing your spiritual center. Perhaps no theologian in recent times has been as inclusive as John Cobb. John has been my teacher and mentor for over forty years and is one of models upon which I have based my own teaching, ministry, writing, and administration. I have been inspired by Cobb’s vision of Christ as the embodiment and lure of God’s aim at creative transformation. In a polarizing age, I have taken to heart Cobb’s affirmation that Christ is the Way that excludes no way. Christ is the inspiration for the quest for truth and enables us to embrace wisdom and healing wherever it is found.

Cobb’s global spirit is embodied in the breadth of his theological and ethical commitments. Many theologians and scholars choose to focus on the micro, staying with the same subject matter their whole careers. In contrast, Cobb has always been on the move, and inspires his students to be ecumenical and dynamic in spirit as well. Cobb has been a leader not only in process theology but also in reflections on ecology and global climate change, economics, interfaith dialogue, pluralism, feminism, the intersection of theology and prayer, to name a few of the areas in which he has illumined laypersons, academics, and pastors. Cobb’s theology is both academic and practical. His work reminds scholars that one of our vocations is to be agents of creative transformation, bringing healing and justice to the world. As a Christian theologian, Cobb asks “Can Christ be good news?” and then proceeds to share the good news of a faith that is inclusive, healing, hospitable, and growing; a faith that embraces the marginalized, placing them at the center of the theological adventure.

If theology and philosophy are to tell big stories, intended to transform and heal the world,

then nothing is too small or too large for a theologian’s interest. - Bruce Epperly

As students at Claremont, many of us thought that between the creativity of John Cobb and David Griffin, there would little room for innovation on our part. Over the course of our careers, we discovered that Cobb and Griffin opened the door for our own creative thinking. Just think of the creativity of some of my classmates – Jay McDaniel, Catherine Keller, David Lull, Rita Nakashima Brock, and Rebecca Parker! Nothing is off limits or out of bounds for a process theologian. If theology and philosophy are to tell big stories, intended to transform and heal the world, then nothing is too small or too large for a theologian’s interest. In my own journey, I find myself dialoging with Cobb as I embark on my own adventures as a process theologian whose work has embraced healing and wholeness, spiritual formation, ministerial well-being, biblical studies, complementary medicine, and emerging Christianity. There is always more to explore if we are faithful to the God of process. There are more pathways to healing than we can imagine if we affirm that the aim of the universe – God’s vision – is toward the production of beauty.

I am grateful for the wisdom of John Cobb and his willingness to support his students with affirmations and inspirations. His way invites us to see holiness in every pathway of truth and work toward healing of this good earth and its peoples.

* * * * * * * * * *

Wikipedia - John Cobb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Cobb

Below is a selection of content from Wikipedia's fuller discussion:

John B. Cobb, Jr. (born February 9, 1925) is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Gary Dorrien has described Cobb as one of the two most important North American theologians of the twentieth century (the other being Rosemary Radford Ruether).[1] Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy andprocess theology—the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.[2] Cobb is the author of more than fifty books.[3] In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4]

A unifying theme of Cobb's work is his emphasis on ecological interdependence—the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. Cobb has argued that humanity's most urgent task is to preserve the world on which it lives and depends,[5] an idea which his primary influence—philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead—describes as "world-loyalty."[6]

Cobb is well known for his transdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from many different areas of study and bringing different specialized disciplines into fruitful communication. Because of his broad-minded interest and approach, Cobb has been influential in a wide range of disciplines, including theology, ecology, economics, biology and social ethics.

In 1971, he wrote the first single-author book in environmental ethics—Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology—which argued for the relevance of religious thought in approaching theecological crisis.[7] In 1989, he co-authored the book For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, Environment, and a Sustainable Future, which critiqued current global economic practice and advocated for a sustainable, ecology-based economics. He has written extensively on religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue, particularly between Buddhism and Christianity, as well as the need to reconcile religion and science.

Cobb is the co-founder and current co-director of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California.[8] The Center for Process Studies remains the leading Whitehead-related institute, and has witnessed the launch of more than thirty related centers at academic institutions throughout the world, including twenty-three centers in China.[9][10] Cobb is also founder and president of the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, which uses Whiteheadian ideas in order to move toward a sustainable economy and address practical problems associated with social change and globalization.[11]

Recently, Cobb co-founded the organization Pando Populus. Pando Populus aims to create an "ecological civilization," and is co-organizing a major conference on "Seizing An Alternative" with the Center for Process Studies in June 2015.

Transdisciplinary work

Although Cobb is most often described as a theologian, the overarching tendency of his thought has been toward the integration of many different areas of knowledge, employing Alfred North Whitehead's transdisciplinary philosophical framework as his guiding insight.[1] As a result, Cobb has done work in a broad range of fields.

Philosophy of education

Cobb has consistently opposed the splitting of education and knowledge into discrete and insulated disciplines and departments.[24] He believes that the current university model encourages excessive abstraction because each specialized area of study defines its own frame of reference and then tends to ignore the others, discouraging interdisciplinary dialogue and inhibiting a broad understanding of the world.[24]

To combat these problems, Cobb argues that discrete “disciplines” in general—and theology in particular—need to re-emerge from their mutual academic isolation.[25] Theology should once again be tied to ethical questions and practical, everyday concerns, as well as a theoretical understanding of the world. In service to this vision, Cobb has consistently sought to integrate knowledge from biology, physics, economics, and other disciplines into his theological and philosophical work.[26]

Constructive postmodern philosophy

Alfred North Whitehead, Cobb's

primary intellectual influence.

Cobb was convinced that Alfred North Whitehead was right in viewing both nature and human beings as more than just purposeless machines.[27] Rather than seeing nature as purely mechanical and human consciousness as a strange exception which must be explained away, Whiteheadian naturalism went in the opposite direction by arguing that subjective experience of the world should inform a view of the rest of nature as more than just mechanical. In short, nature should be seen as having a subjective and purposive aspect that deserves attention.[27]

Speaking to this need of moving beyond classically "modern" ideas, in the 1960s Cobb was the first to label Whiteheadian thought as “postmodern.”[28] Later, when deconstructionists began to describe their thought as “postmodern,” Whiteheadians changed their own label to “constructive postmodernism.”[29]

Like its deconstructionist counterpart, constructive postmodernism arose partly in response to dissatisfaction with Cartesian mind-matter dualism, which viewed matter as an inert machine and the human mind as wholly different in nature.[29][30] While modern science has uncovered voluminous evidence against this idea, Cobb argues that dualistic assumptions continue to persist:

"On the whole, dualism was accepted by the general culture. To this day it shapes the structure of the university, with its division between the sciences and the humanities. Most people, whether they articulate it or not, view the world given to them in sight and touch as material, while they consider themselves to transcend that purely material status."[29]

While deconstructionists have concluded that we must abandon any further attempts to create a comprehensive vision of the world, Cobb and other constructive postmodernists believe that metaphysics and comprehensive world-models are possible and still needed.[29][31] In particular, they have argued for a new Whiteheadian metaphysics based on events rather than substances.[29][32] In this formulation, it is incorrect to say that a person or thing ("substance") has a fundamental identity that remains constant, and that any changes to the person or thing are secondary to what it is.[33] Instead, each moment in a person's life ("event") is seen as a new actuality, thus asserting that continual change and transformation are fundamental, while static identities are far less important.[34] This view more easily reconciles itself with certain findings of modern science, such as evolution and wave-particle duality.[35]

Environmental ethics

Ecological themes have been pervasive in Cobb's work since 1969, when he turned his attention to the ecological crisis.[5] He became convinced that environmental issues constituted humanity's most pressing problem. Cobb writes:

"During the seventies my sense of the theological vocation changed. I did not lose interest in developing the Christian tradition so as to render it intelligible, convincing, and illuminating in a changing context. But I did reject the compartmentalization of my discipline of 'constructive theology,' especially in its separation from ethics, and more generally in its isolation from other academic disciplines... I was persuaded that no problem could be more critical than that of a decent survival of a humanity that threatened to destroy itself by exhausting and polluting its natural context."[5]

Cobb went on to write the first single-author book in environmental ethics, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, in 1971.[36] In the book, he argued for an ecological worldview that acknowledges the continuity between human beings and other living things, as well as their mutual dependence. He also proposed that Christianity specifically needed to appropriate knowledge from the biological sciences in order to undercut its anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) and devaluation of the non-human world.[37]

City Hall in Claremont, California. Cobb has
lived and worked in Claremont since 1958.

Critique of growth-oriented economics

Cobb's economic critiques arose as a natural extension of his interest in ecological issues. He recognized that he could not write about an ecological, sustainable, and just society without including discussion of economics.[38]

As part of his investigation into why economic policies so frequently worsened the ecological situation, in the 1980s Cobb decided to re-evaluate Gross National Product (GNP) andGross Domestic Product (GDP) as measures of economic progress.[39] Together with his son, Clifford Cobb, he developed an alternative model, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW),[39] which sought to "consolidate economic, environmental, and social elements into a common framework to show net progress."[40] The name of the metric would later change to Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).[41] A recent (2013) article has shown that global GPI per capita peaked in 1978, meaning that the social and environmental costs ofeconomic growth have outweighed the benefits since that time.[42]

Cobb also co-authored a book with Herman Daly in 1989 entitled For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, Environment, and a Sustainable Future, which outlined policy changes intended to create a society based on community and ecological balance. In 1992, For the Common Good earned Cobb and Daly the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.[43]

In recent years, Cobb has described current growth-oriented economic systems as the "prime example of corruption" in American culture and religion:

"Since the rise of modern economics, Christians have been forced to give up their criticism of greed, because the economists said "greed is good, and if you really want to help people, be as greedy as possible."”[44]

Cobb sees such values as being in direct opposition with the message of Jesus, which in many places explicitly criticizes the accumulation of wealth. Because of Christianity's widespread acceptance of such economic values, Cobb sees Christians as far less confident in proclaiming the values of Jesus.[44]

Biology and religion

Along with Whitehead, Cobb has sought to reconcile science and religion in places where they appear to conflict, as well as to encourage religion to make use of scientific insights and vice versa.[45]

In the area of religion and biology, he co-wrote The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community with Australian geneticist Charles Birch in 1981. The book critiqued the dominant biological model of mechanism, arguing that it leads to the study of organisms in abstraction from their environments.[46] Cobb and Birch argue instead for an "ecological model" which draws no sharp lines between the living and non-living, or between an organism and its environment.[47] The book also argues for an idea of evolution in which adaptive behavior can lead to genetic changes.[48] Cobb and Birch stress that a species "co-evolves with its environment," and that in this way intelligent purpose plays a role in evolution:

"Evolution is not a process of ruthless competition directed to some goal of ever-increasing power or complexity. Such an attitude, by failing to be adaptive, is, in fact, not conducive to evolutionary success. A species co-evolves with its environment. Equally, there is no stable, harmonious nature to whose wisdom humanity should simply submit. Intelligent purpose plays a role in adaptive behaviour, and as environments change its role is increased."[49]

The Liberation of Life stresses that all life (not just human life) is purposeful and that it aims for the realization of richer experience.[50] Cobb and Birch develop the idea of "trusting life" as a religious impulse, rather than attempting to achieve a settled, perfected social structure that does not allow for change and evolution.[51]

Religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue

Cobb has participated in extensive interreligious and interfaith dialogue, most notably with Masao Abe, a Japanese Buddhist of the Kyoto School of philosophy.[52] Cobb's explicit aim was to gain ideas and insights from otherreligions with an eye toward augmenting and "universalizing" Christianity.[53] Cobb writes:

"...it is the mission of Christianity to become a universal faith in the sense of taking into itself the alien truths that others have realized. This is no mere matter of addition. It is instead a matter of creative transformation. An untransformed Christianity, that is, a Christianity limited to its own parochial traditions, cannot fulfill its mission of realizing the universal meaning of Jesus Christ."[54]

In short, Cobb does not conceive of dialogue as useful primarily to convert or be converted, but rather as useful in order to transform both parties mutually, allowing for a broadening of ideas and a reimagining of each faith in order that they might better face the challenges of the modern world.[55][56]

Cobb has also been active in formulating his own theories of religious pluralism, partly in response to another Claremont Graduate University professor, John Hick.[57] Cobb's pluralism has sometimes been identified as a kind of "deep" pluralism or, alternately, as a "complementary" pluralism.[58] He believes that there are actually three distinct religious ultimates: 1) God, 2) Creativity/Emptiness/Nothingness/Being-itself, and 3) the cosmos/universe.[59] Cobb believes that all of these elements are necessary and present in some form in every religion but that different faiths tend to stress one ultimate over the others.[60] Viewed in this way, different religions may be seen to complement each other by providing insight into different religious ultimates.[61] Cobb's pluralism thus avoids the criticism of conflating religions that are actually very different (for instance, Buddhism and Christianity) while still affirming the possible truths of both.[61]

Revitalizing Christianity in a pluralistic world

David Ray Griffin. Cobb co-founded the
Center for Process Studies with Griffin in 1973.

Cobb believed that through at least the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, American Protestant theology had been largely derivative from European (specificallyGerman) theology.[62] In the late 1950s, Cobb and Claremont professor James Robinson decided that the time had come to end this one-sidedness and move to authentic dialogue between American and European theologians.[63] To establish real mutuality, they organized a series of conferences of leading theologians in Germany and the United States and published a series of volumes called "New Frontiers in Theology."[64]

After writing several books surveying contemporary forms of Christian Protestantism, Cobb turned in the mid-1960s to more original work which sought to bring Alfred North Whitehead'sideas into the contemporary American Protestant scene.[65] Cobb aimed to reconstruct a Christian vision that was more compatible with modern knowledge and more ready to engage with today’s pluralistic world.[58] He did this in a number of ways.

For one, Cobb has stressed the problems inherent in what he calls the “substantialist” worldview—ultimately derived from Classical Greek philosophy—that still dominates Christian theology, as well as most of western thought.[66] This "substantialist" way of thinking necessitates a mind-matter dualism, in which matter and mind are two fundamentally different kinds of entities. It also encourages seeing relations between entities as being unimportant to what the entity is "in itself."[67] In contrast to this view, Cobb follows Whitehead in attributing primacy to events and processes rather than substances.[66] In this Whiteheadian view, nothing is contained within its own sharp boundaries. In fact, the way in which a thing relates to other things is what makes it "what it is." Cobb writes:

“If the substantialist view is abandoned, a quite different picture emerges. Each occasion of human experience is constituted not only by its incorporation of the cellular occasions of its body but also by its incorporation of aspects of other people. That is, people internally relate to one another. Hence, the character of one's being, moment by moment, is affected by the health and happiness of one's neighbors.”[66]

For Cobb, this metaphysics of process is better-aligned with the Bible, which stresses history, community, and the importance of one’s neighbors.[66]

Claremont School of Theology, 2013

Also, instead of turning further inward to preserve a cohesive Christian community, Cobb turned outward in order to discover truths that Christianity may not yet possess.[53]This is in direct opposition to those who feel that Christianity as a religious system is absolutely final, complete, and free of error. Cobb has not only turned to other religions (most notably Buddhism) in order to supplement Christian ideas and systems,[68] but also to other disciplines, including biology, physics, and economics.

In fact, Cobb has not shied away even from re-imaging what is now regarded as the “traditional” Christian notion of God. He does not believe that God is omnipotent in the sense of having unilateral control over all events, since Cobb sees reconciling total coercive power with love and goodness to be an impossible task.[66] Instead, all creatures are viewed as having some degree of freedom that God cannot override.[69] Cobb solves the problem of evil by denying God’s omnipotence, stressing instead that God’s power is persuasive rather than coercive, that God can influence creatures but not determine what they become or do.[70] For Cobb, God’s role is to liberate and empower.[71]

Against traditional theism, Cobb has also denied the idea that God is immutable (unchanging) and impassible (unfeeling).[72] Instead, he stresses that God is affected and changed by the actions of creatures, both human and otherwise.[66] For Cobb, the idea that God experiences and changes does not mean that God is imperfect—quite the contrary. Instead, God is seen as experiencing with all beings, and hence understanding and empathizing with all beings, becoming "the fellow sufferer who understands."[73]Cobb argues that this idea of God is more compatible with the Bible, in which Jesus suffers and dies.

Additionally, Cobb's theology has argued against the idea of salvation as a singular, binary event in which one is either saved or not saved for all time. Rather than seeing one's time in the world as a test of one's morality in order to enter a heavenly realm, Cobb sees salvation as the continual striving to transform and perfect our experience in this world.[66] Cobb's idea of salvation focuses less on moral categories and more on aesthetic categories—such as a preference for intense experience over dull experience, or beauty rather than ugliness. Cobb writes:

"If morality is bound up with contributing to others, the crucial question is: What is to be contributed? One contribution might be making them more moral, and that is fine. But finally, true morality cannot aim simply at the spread of morality. It must aim at the wellbeing of those it tries to help in some broader sense. For process thought that must be the perfection of their experience inclusively."[66]

Cobb admits that the idea of morality being subservient to aesthetics is "shocking to many Christians,"[66] yet he argues that there must be more to life than simply being morally good or morally bad and that aesthetic categories fulfill this function specifically because they are defined as goods in themselves.

Within the last twenty years, Cobb has become increasingly distressed by the popular identification of Christianity with the religious right and the weak response of mainstream Protestants. To encourage a stronger response, he organized Progressive Christians Uniting with the noted Episcopal priest George Regas in 1996,[74] chaired its reflection committee, and edited a number of its books. As the perceived gap between the policies of the American government and Christian teaching grew wider, these books moved beyond simply reformist proposals. The last of these was entitled Resistance: The New Role of Progressive Christians.

Cobb's most recent book is entitled Spiritual Bankruptcy: A Prophetic Call to Action. It argues against both religiousness and secularism, claiming that what is needed is the secularization of the wisdom traditions.[75]

The influence of Cobb's thought in China

Process philosophy in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead is often considered a primarily American philosophical movement, but it has spread globally and has been of particular interest to Chinese thinkers. As one of process philosophy's leading figures, Cobb has taken a leadership role in bringing process thought to the East, most specifically to help China develop a more ecological civilization—a goal which the current Chinese government has written into its constitution.[76][10]

With Zhihe Wang, Cobb founded the Institute for Postmodern Development of China (IPDC) in 2005, and he is currently the president of its board of directors.[11] Through the IPDC, Cobb helps to coordinate the work of twenty-three collaborative centers in China, as well as to organize annual conferences on ecological civilization.[9][10]

Book Review - Finding God in Suffering, by Bruce Epperly

Book Description

Death. Illness. Divorce. Unexpected. Undeserved. In this world there is going to be suffering and pain. As a person of faith, we are not exempt from that undeniable fact. What do we do? Where is God when the pain is unbearable and the night so long? How do we reach out to others with something more than platitudes? It has been said that theology begins in the experience of suffering. At the very least, debilitating suffering challenges our images of success and security, and invites us on a quest for something solid and dependable when the foundations of our lives are shaking. The book of Job emerges from one person's unexpected encounter with suffering. Job seeks God's presence, and to find a God he can trust again, he must jettison his previous images of God. - Bruce Epperly

Product Details

Paperback: 110 pages

Publisher: Energion Publications (December 10, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1631991078
ISBN-13: 978-1631991073

Book Review

By Dubious Disciple on January 5, 2015

Format: Paperback

I have a love/hate relationship with Job. If I’m reading an insightful exposition, one which highlights the deep, poetic messages of the book, I love Job. If I’m reading a dry commentary drawing traditional conclusions, I want to chuck Job in the round file.

Today I love Job again.

Epperly doesn’t pull punches, yet his writing is tender and honest. As he explains, reading Job is not for the faint-hearted. It is a theology which emerges from the vantage point of excruciating and undeserved pain. It is written in the place where the rubber meets the road. And it is the experience of every man and woman on earth.

The question of why remains unanswered. Are we really supposed to believe that Job’s intense pain is the result of God and Satan sharing a friendly wager? Is God really that amoral, acting no differently than the arbitrary behavior of the surrounding nations’ deities?

God’s ways are beyond our comprehension. Job’s spiritual growth requires stepping out of his comfortable paradigm where the universe is intricately structured, where goodness is always rewarded and evil is always punished, so that he can embrace the unknown and unsolvable … while retaining an intimacy with God even in times of pain. In this chaos, Job finally finds peace.

Here’s an interesting observation by Epperly: “I have found that many people are more reticent to question God’s omnipotence, his unrestricted ability to achieve his will, than God’s love. They can live with God causing cancer or a devastating earthquake, but worry that a loving God might not be powerful enough to insure that God’s will be done…”

Read this one; it’s a journey you don’t want to miss. You may find yourself losing faith in the God you thought you knew, only to find the living God. Comfort hides in deep waters.

Bruce Epperly, Process Theology & N.T. Wright's "Faithful God of Paul"

Signs of the New Creation: Responding to N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/11/signs-of-the-new-creation-responding-to-n-t-wrights-paul-and-the-faithfulness-of-god/

by Bruce Epperly

November 1, 2013

Comments

New Testament Scholar,
N.T. Wright

N. T. Wright’s magisterial text Paul and the Faithfulness of God is destined to become a classic in Pauline theological studies. As a pastor and theologian, like Wright, I join the study and the pulpit and the library and hospital room.  My preaching and pastoral care are grounded in theological reflection and my theology finds its inspiration in pastoral care, spiritual direction, and the weekly responsibilities of preaching God’s good news and leading a congregation on Cape Cod. I have always appreciated Paul’s approach to ministry – he proclaimed the universally applicable wisdom of God embodied in Jesus Christ with full awareness of the intimate needs of the communities with which he corresponded. The universal truths of faith become transformational only when they connect with the real challenges of congregations, communities, and persons.

Paul is a working pastor-theologian, and I can identify with that joyful-challenging vocation. His theology is holistic, practical, and connected with what’s going on in the faith of emerging Christian communities. He doesn’t speak to Christians in general; he speaks to the faithful church in Philippi, the ethnically troubled churches in Galatia, and the divided congregation in Corinth. Still, precisely because his theology is embodied and emerges from the concrete world of budgets and communication gaffes, it echoes through the ages, bringing challenge and good news to twenty-first century believers and seekers.

N. T. Wright sees the heart of Paul’s theology as involving his experience and expression of God’s new creation, brought about by God’s action in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Although Christ as Messiah is profoundly Jewish – you cannot find any foundation for anti-Judaism in the authentic Pauline literature – he sees Jesus Christ as embodying and inviting us to live in God’s new age of Shalom. Accordingly, Pauline theology is profoundly concrete. He is a preacher-theologian: his thinking is ultimately practical. Paul believes that the theological is transformational. The message of the Gospel and God’s new creation, the heart of Paul’s message, is transformational and invites us to become transformed persons, living in transformed communities, and working toward a transformed world order. Many scholars of John’s Gospel note a similar holistic approach to John’s theology: John’s proclamation of eternal life is not just some future hope, the “pie in the sky when we die,” but a present experience that emerges the moment we enter into relationship with Jesus Christ, the word and wisdom of God.

Theology is homiletical and can be healing, for Paul. The theologian-preacher does not abandon history, but imagines, as Wright asserts, a better history and then works to bring it forth. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings about new creation in the here-and-now, and the spirit of Jewish monotheism, this new creation is cosmological, ethical, and soteriological – we are new people, experiencing a transformed universe, touched by the healing Christ, and living by the values of God’s realm “on earth as it is in heaven.” Our vision of God’s faithfulness throughout history and in all creation nurtures the confidence that transforms behavior and beliefs.

As the body of Christ, the church is always more than we can imagine. Paul’s letters to emerging congregations are invitations to live in God’s realm of Shalom right now. As a holistic theologian, Paul sees the body, mind, spirit relationship as both a metaphor and a reality for community life. Disease among the members – like cells run amuck – can destroy the community, and render it insentient to God’s vision. Every part matters, every member is inspired (in-breathed) and touched by the mind-spirit of Christ, which is not some supernatural add-on, but the animating and guiding principle of part and whole. Dynamic in nature, the lively, inspired body of Christ can become God’s embodied vision of Shalom – of new creation – in this very moment of time. Accordingly, when Paul encounters the tragic brokenness of Christ’s body, he experiences what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as the “divine pathos,” the intimate joy and suffering God experiences in relationship to our world. What happens in Corinth, including the details of agape meals and worship services, matters to God because God is in the details: God is touched by church divisions, arguments among members, economic disparity, and ethnic prejudice.

God is truly in Christ reconciling the world, and we are intended to be companions in God’s ministry of reconciliation. We are intended to be a microcosm, a foretaste, of the world to come, participating in God’s new creation and becoming God’s temple making sacred the world. As  pastor-theologians, Paul and I share the hope for new creation in the congregations we serve; we also experience the dissonance between our concrete embodiment of God’s new creation and God’s vision of what we as pastors and our congregations can be in God’s ever-present, ever-future new creation. We expect far too little from God, and far too little from ourselves. We are the body of Christ and individually reflections of divine wisdom, yet we settle for so much less – petty prejudices, alienation over budget items, neglect of vulnerable members, and conforming to a social order that is ruled by consumerism, narcissism, and polarization. We are too often, Paul says in Romans, conformed to this world, when God calls us to transformation – first, of ourselves, but also of transformed communities without which personal transformation is almost impossible.

Still in our imperfection and waywardness, we can experience God’s transformation. We feel, as Paul did, “wretched” and pray that something will deliver us from the conflicts and weakness that beset us. We can’t do it on our own. Faithful communities, inspired and animated by a faithful God, are essential. But, more than that, it involves trusting a faithful God of new creation, whose love still encompasses Judaism, but now extends in space and time reconciling all history, and making this moment a holy moment. Only the faithful God can give us the energy of transformation that enables us to make a commitment to reconciling people, living God’s new creation. The new creation is here – or nowhere – transforming the past and luring us to live in God’s future now!

Theology is pastoral, homiletical, spiritual, and theological. God is found in worship, but also in potluck suppers, daily decision-making, and brick and mortar. It is all the prayer of God’s spirit groaning in creation and in us in “sighs too deep for words.

It is only right that the final page of Wright’s grand opus affirms, “Prayer and theology met in his personal history, as in the once-for-all history of the crucified and risen Messiah. Paul’s ‘aims’, his apostolic vocation, modeled the faithfulness of God. Concentrated and gathered. Prayer became theology, theology prayer. Something understood.”

Continue to Index -

 

Index to the "New(er) Perspective(s) of Paul"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce Epperly - The Process Theologian's "Bonhoeffer"

Bonhoeffer’s Vision and Process Theology

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/11/bonhoeffers-vision-and-process-theology/

by Bruce Epperly

November 18, 2013

Comments

A Response to The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by  Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge

Few theologians have responded as creatively and forthrightly to the postmodern challenge as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer recognized the pluralistic, multi-centered, experience-oriented world of our current religious landscape. He imagined an emerging Christianity, no longer at the center of culture, but at the margins, and making these same margins the ground of a frontier faith. Postmodernism presented a threat to the old-time religion and Christian supremacy, but it also presented an opportunity to a fluid, agile, and worldly faith.

In the midst of the maelstrom of war, Bonhoeffer saw the eclipse of Christendom and imagined a dynamic, counter-cultural Christian faith of the future. The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge not only captures the breadth and evolution of Bonhoeffer’s theology, but gives special care to his final expansive visions of a Christianity big enough to embrace a radically-changing world.  From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer saw more than most free-ranging people. He saw, in the words of Bishop John Shelby Spong, that Christianity must change or die. He did not see the future of Jesus’ mission in megachurches, dreams of Christian dominion, or Christian supremacy, but in living out the mission of the suffering servant Jesus of Nazareth and the God who celebrates and suffers with us.

Bonhoeffer never had the opportunity to fully articulate his vision of God, but his emerging vision touches the edges of process theology. His vision of God shapes the contours of an interactive, relational, and affirmative Christianity, comfortable with diversity and open to the insights of secularity. According to Bonhoeffer, God “needs” us to achieve the best in our ambiguous world. God is not a “timeless fate” but “waits for and responds to prayer and sincere actions” (769-770). This vision touches process theology’s insight that God evolves with the world: neither God nor the world are complete, but are open-ended. In the spirit of Jewish mysticism, God needs us to be God’s companions in tikkun ‘olam, “mending the world.” The healing of the world requires our participation; there is no preordained end of history, or end-time goal, or apocalypse, but rather an ongoing process which requires our positive action for God’s vision to be embodied.

God’s vision for us is not timeless but God acts in real time and not in “advance” (769), similar to process thought’s image of God’s vision of possibilities appropriate to each moment. We are given strength, insight, and the resources to achieve God’s aim that all things work out for good. This happens right where we are with all its limitations and opportunities.

The parent of process theology, Alfred North Whitehead describes God as “the fellow sufferer who understands.” Echoing this, Bonhoeffer asserts that humans are called to share in God’s sufferings” (804). Note well, “God’s sufferings.” Only a suffering God can save, a God with skin, who shares our condition and seeks to bring beauty from ugliness and justice from injustice. Jewish spiritual teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of the “divine pathos” as being the heart of prophetic religion: God experiences the details of our lives and is truly hurt by injustice; God suffers in the anguish of the vulnerable and dispossessed. God is not apathetic but passionate in God’s care for creation: God is not an Aristotelian “unmoved mover,” but as process philosopher Charles Hartshore claims, the “most moved mover.”

Process theologian, Bernard Loomer described two kinds of power – unilateral and relational. (1) Unilateral power, characteristic of the Christendom that had died in the modern world, described God as determining and knowing everything in advance: the all-powerful God established the powers of the universe, and determined success and failure and life and death. Images of God’s omnipotence inspired and undergirded the unilateral and often oppressive actions of religious institutions and nation states. After all, if we are the chosen servants of an all-determining God, we alone are equipped to shape history, especially as it relates to government, church, and non-Christians and foreigners.

In contrast, (2) a relational God works with the world, creating along with the evolving history of humanity and the non-human world, being subject to our actions as well as shaping our actions. When Bonhoeffer invokes the “powerlessness” of God, he is also speaking of God with us, not as omnipotent, but as the One who suffers with us, who experiences our pain, but also invites us to invest ourselves in the worldliness of a secular world.

Writing in the shadow of the culture Christianity of World War II Germany, Bonhoeffer asserts that you will not find God’s vision in those who identify God and country, and advocate national supremacy. Nor, according to Bonhoeffer’s theological vision, will we find God’s vision in the machinations of congressional leaders who demean the poor and underinsured by shutting down government. Who traumatize the children of undocumented immigrants by advocating the deportation of their parents. Or, who see Christ as dominating the political sphere, guiding them to shut down government or default on loans to avoid expanding health care to the vulnerable. While such persons may call themselves Christians, they will truly experience God’s costly grace only when they let go of the power to exclude and welcome the power to embrace the least, the last, and the lost.

Liberals also may live by what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace, especially as they privilege the middle class and forget the traumas of the dispossessed in order to seek a better day for all. The vulnerable are never expendable, even for a good political cause or for a greater good. God feels the pain caused by conservatives for whom the greatest good is lower taxes, smaller government, and the right to bear arms; and liberals whose liberalism obscures the needs of the least of these to obscure political goals. The truly great society must include everyone and start with the least of these, whose faces reveal the suffering face of Christ.

Much more could be said and of course Green and DeJonge’s Bonhoeffer Reader gives a complete picture of Bonhoeffer’s evolving theology. Nevertheless, the insights of the later Bonhoeffer parallel those of process theology in their respective affirmations of: 

1) a God who evolves along with the world,

2) a God whose power is limited by the world,

3) a God who is touched by our pain,

4) a God who needs our best efforts to secure God’s vision on earth, and

5) a humanity whose vocation is to become God’s companions in transforming the world so that God’s vision on earth as well as heaven be realized.