Evolving as a Postmodern Christian - Asking Questions of Evolution and Theology

 

"Looking beyond our own beliefs"

 

 

Last November I asked the question whether the Bible needed an historical Adam (Why Do We Need a Historical Adam? The Bible Doesn't). I then asked whether the Gospel of Jesus needed the same. At which point I also left a half dozen articles that I had previously worked up for interested readers to follow within that same article. Later, this past April, I then made the observation that Evolutionary Creationism would require rethinking our major Christian doctrines (How Evolutionary Creationism Will Require Rethinking Scriptural Doctrine) to which I have spent the past two years doing just that as I investigated our historic Christian faith and updated it into a postmodern, Emergent Christian frame of reference without losing sight of our historic, orthodox creeds as long as they could be biblically substantiated. It has been a large task (as you can tell from the many articles and topics along the right-hand sidebars), but a fruitful one. It required a change of boundary markers and a change of viewpoint from which I had familiarly grown up with, and become comfortable, within. A journey that has been spiritually satisfying as my faith matured, while allowing me to become reacquainted with the majesty and glory of the Lord God Almighty. At the center of all my searches as been Jesus, His glory, His love, and His atoning sacrifice - without which this effort would all have been meaningless.

 

Since the questions I have asked, and the explorations I have made, appear to make radical departures from most of today's more popularly-rooted evangelical beliefs, I did not think that these topics would make for popular reading material. However, as an evolving, emerging Christian, I did believe that there would be others like myself who would be interested in these same discoveries, and so, have pointedly laid out my observations and arguments as patiently, and insightfully, as I could. Meanwhile, I have been careful to give heed to past non-scientific, pre-postmodern orthodox doctrine and dogmas, while at the same time have actively sought to uplift this same Christian faith into a postmodern, emergent context - one that would be more flexible and more relevant with our current understanding, education, scientific knowledge, and cultural/social movements. It has been a large endeavor, but one that I have thankfully explored with the help of other Christian minds and souls whom I have liberally quoted, and have provided references to their likeminded observations, as they have lent additional insight to mine own.

 

Hence, I would encourage further examination of the articles here on this web journal. The questions I have been asking - and am still asking- are questions I believe every Christian should be asking, and should remain necessarily relevant for generations to come. Namely, how does one break out of one's own background and be able to see beyond the borders of one's own discontinuities, intolerances, and short-sightedness? That in itself is an impossible task but if undertaken by the power of the Holy Spirit is made significantly satisfying when finally discovering the distant shores of other lost worlds, tribes, and people thought long dead (metaphorically speaking). For in the end, the Gospel of Jesus is one of following and obeying His call to lose one's faith in order to find one's faith. I think prime examples of these kinds of believers are the biblical heroes we know by the names of Abraham, Moses, the prophets, Jesus, His disciples, and the apostle Paul. Each one had to doubt what they knew of God in order to be able to hear God's call in their lives again. Without that doubt, that lose of faith, they would never have been able to follow after God's call to move beyond the boundary markers of their lives framed in yesterday's religions and inflexible beliefs.

 

The Christian faith, at the last, is a faith that demands we submit and obey to God's revelation in our lives, against our own wills of disbelief and incredulity. To me, this is the clarion call of God's Spirit to our own... one that listens and obeys like the little shepherd boy David watching over his father's sheep far from the fields of battle. A lad of tremendous faith who packs 5 rocks into his slingshot bag and marches off to confront Goliath and his four brothers. Who refuses the heavy, protective armor of King Saul to stand in defiance to the armies of the Philistine arraigned in hatred to God's covenanted people of Israel. Who, at the last, by his actions and faith, removed the obstacle to Israel's own lack of faith through his courage and trust in God. And patiently endured the many hardships to come in order to be able to lead God's people by his own faith struggles and disbeliefs, into a deeper covenant commitment despite surrounded by a wilderness of doubt and dismay.

The Christian faith should never be static. Never dull and out-of-step with society. We need to hear God's clarion call of belief and follow hard after His leading without fear of never finding Him again. Creation attests to the Lord Almighty. It is everywhere about us. We simply need to hear and obey. And to hear we must leave behind those giants of illusion, fear, and mis-statement. We must trust and believe. Even within our own disciplines that would persuade us otherwise causing us to stand on the sidelines of battle and tremble. For many Christians we spend too much time "defending our faith" when we should be spending more of our time "embracing our faith." The issue is not in defending our view of religion but in discovering the God of faith Himself. Paul had to let go of his sentiments about Jesus in order to see the Savior of his faith. His religion stood in the way of his sight while his heart knew all along that he must bow before his Creator-Redeemer.... Now what say you?

 

R.E. Slater

May 6, 2013

 

 

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Does Paul’s Theology Require a Historical Adam? Thoughts from J. R. Daniel Kirk

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/05/does-pauls-theology-require-a-historical-adam-thoughts-from-j-r-daniel-kirk/

 

by Peter Enns

May 6, 2013

Comments

 

Recently, Daniel Kirk posted his thoughts on the historical Adam question in Fuller Theological Seminary’s Spring 2013 issue of “Theology, News, and Notes.” He followed up with a post on his own blog. Many know Kirk from his books Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?: A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity and Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God. Kirk is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller.

 

I saw this article several months ago in an earlier version, and, amid all the controversy and misinformation generated by others, I was excited to see Kirk weighing on this this issue. I hope the article gets the attention it deserves.

 

Kirk summarizes his entire article well at the end of his introduction:

 

I want to open up the conversation to the possibility that the gospel does not, in fact, depend on a historical Adam or historical Fall in large part because what Paul says about Adam stems from his prior conviction about the saving work of Christ. The theological points Paul wishes to make concern the saving work of the resurrected Christ and the means by which he makes them is the shared cultural and religious framework of his first-century Jewish context.

 

Note the two key issues Kirk mentions here:

 

1. What Paul says about Adam is set up by his prior conviction that in Christ the “new creation” has broken in to present time. Paul draws Adam into a conversation begun by the resurrection of Christ, not vice-versa, and in doing so recasts Adam’s significance beyond that which he has in Genesis.

 

2. To the extent that Paul sees Adam as the first man, Paul is not making a binding scientific or historical  declaration but reflecting his view on such things as a first-century Jew.

 

In my opinion, both of these observations are absolutely key in coming to a biblically literate and historically knowledgable understanding of the role Adam plays in Paul’s theology.

 

Later Kirk makes the following observation concering Adam’s function in Paul’s argument in Romans:

 

What difference might it make to our discussions about a historical Adam that Paul was claiming, “Christ, is (un)like Adam, therefore God’s people are not demarcated by Torah”? This latter statement is, in fact, the point of Paul’s argument in Romans 5 (cf. 5:12–14, 20–21). Paul’s Adam theology is an avenue toward affirming that God has one worldwide people; therefore, the specially blessed people are not defined by the story of circumcision. 

 

What if Paul’s Adam is not a lesson for us about where people came from, but part of Paul’s rhetoric to establish the oneness of God’s people–Jew and Gentile together–that so dominates his letter to the Romans?

 

Here is one more quote that captures Kirk’s point:

 

[W]hat is a “given” for Paul is the saving event of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other things he says, especially about sin, the Law, and eschatology, are reinterpretations that grow from the fundamental reality of the Christ event. Recognizing this relieves the pressure that sometimes builds up around a historical Adam….Adam is not the foundation on which the system of Christian faith and life is built, such that removing him means that the whole edifice comes crashing down. Instead, the Adam of the past is one spire in a large edifice whose foundation is Christ. The gospel need not be compromised if we find ourselves having to part ways with Paul’s assumption that there is a historical Adam, because we share Paul’s fundamental conviction that the crucified Messiah is the resurrected Lord over all.

 

I hope you have a chance to wonder over to Fuller’s website and read the article for yourselves. At the very least, counterarguments would need to provide a more compelling account of Paul’s overall theology in Romans rather than simply lifting verses out of that carefully crafted work and using them for reasons Paul never intended–and never would have understood.

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Q&A: Our New BioLogos Book

http://biologos.org/news/apr-2013/new-book-qa
 

How does my walk with God relate to modern scientific discoveries? Can I maintain biblical Christian faith even if I change my mind on an issue like evolution? Many Evangelicals today are pondering these questions. Finding the answers will involve more than a mere synthesis of scientific facts. We need to hear stories from others who have wrestled with evolution and Christian faith. That’s the basis for Evolving: Evangelicals Reflect on Evolution, a collection of essays from Evangelicals sharing their personal journeys of science and faith being produced by BioLogos. Some essays will appear on the BioLogos blog in coming weeks and months, with the full collection published in a book by Russell Media by the end of 2013.
We sat down with BioLogos Program Director Kathryn Applegate and Tom Oord, two editors of the essay collection, to learn more.

1. Where did the idea for the book come from?

Kathryn: We were all talking about how much we personally have been impacted by stories, and how coming to our present-day understanding of origins is not simply a matter of learning new facts.  We thought it would be interesting to compile stories from people in many different disciplines to see what factors were most important for them as they wrestled with evolution and their faith.

Tom: A growing number of Christians -- including Evangelicals -- are rethinking their opposition to evolution. The idea for this book basically comes from trying to witness to this significant growth. We wanted Christians to speak about how they are working through the myriad of issues pertaining to evolution and faith.

2. Were most people eager to share their stories of wrestling with science and faith?

T: We were encouraged by the number of people willing to share. For some, this meant risking criticism. Forces are at play that discourage such honesty and openness to science. But Evangelicals know the testimonies of the saints are among the most powerful evidence to God's working in the world and in the midst of complex questions.

K: Almost all the scientists we asked were eager to write, and so were many scholars from the humanities.  The most hesitant group, perhaps not surprisingly, were the "professional Christians"--prolific Christian authors and parachurch leaders.  In some cases they were simply too busy, but in others they were concerned about damaging relationships with their constituencies.  Talking about evolution in the church is still a risky business!

3. What were some of the common themes you found throughout the testimonies?

K: Many of the contributors were raised in the church and took on young-earth creationist beliefs at an early age, but somewhere along the line began to discover that a) it wasn't the only position faithful Christians can hold, and b) it didn't make sense in light of what they were learning about science, history, and the Bible.  Many wrote about role models--parents, teachers, or pastors--who had an influence on their thinking.  Some mentioned a conviction that accepting evolution brought a sense of peace, even as legitimate questions remained.  They sensed that they were pursuing truth about God's creation, not taking the path of least resistance.

T: Christians care about the Bible. It has been and continues to be a well-spring of wisdom. So many essayists rightfully explore the scriptures as a guide for their coming to terms with the mounting evidence for evolution. The results affirm the central role of Scripture for finding truth, but it also reveals that Christians care about the truth of God found in creation.

4. Why do you think a book like this is important for the Church?

T: This book is important for many reasons, but let me just highlight two: (1) Sometimes putting in words what we are thinking can help us hone our own intuitions and partially-formulated thoughts on a subject. This book is helpful both to those who wrote the essays and should be so for those who read them. (2) For some time, a significant number of Evangelicals have accepted evolution as compatible with Christian faith. But many were unaware that others thought similarly. This book helps those who may think they are all alone see many others exist in their tribe who also believe evolution can be compatible with robust Christian faith.

K: Many people still believe that evolution is a creation story for atheists, when in fact there are many, many believers who are striving to follow Jesus even as they accept that God created through an evolutionary process.  When we hear someone's story and sense the Holy Spirit's working in their life, it becomes harder to dismiss them as not a "real" Christian.  Without needing an advanced degree in genetics or evolutionary biology, church leaders can learn ways to more effectively minister to those who are struggling over origins--and avoid creating stumbling blocks for seekers of God.

5. What has been the most rewarding part of working on this project?

K: It has been a real privilege to work with the authors on their essays.  They're a highly intelligent, faithful bunch—all leaders in their own fields.  And they still express an intellectual humility and a desire to keep learning and growing.

T: I especially enjoy hearing time and time again that a prominent leader wants to participate in this project because he or she has wanted to write on his or her affirmation of evolution. This provides further evidence for the growing sense that momentum is building on this crucial set of issues!

Continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "An Emerging Theology"

 

 

Love, Hell, and Trampolines: In Conversation with Rob Bell

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/07/05/love-hell-and-trampolines-in-conversation-with-rob-bell/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

July 5, 2012

Comments

A couple weeks ago, I was alerted to the fact that the Rob Bell Reader for Kindle was selling for just the right price on Amazon. Which is to say, of course, that it was free (as it still is today, as it is also at Barnes and Ignoble for Nook and in the iTunes store for whatever people read on when they buy at the iTunes store).

Having never read anything Bell has written prior to this, I figured this was as good an excuse as any to see what he’s up to. The book is forthrightly offered as a teaser for the books Bell has published with HarperOne and Zondervan (both part of the same parent company). Each of the five chapters is a selection from one of Bell’s earlier books: Love Wins, Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and Drops Like Stars.

Here’s my bottom line: Bell offers a compelling overarching theological vision, peppered with various detailed exegetical and/or theological claims that make me wince.

The book’s selection from Love Wins is Bell’s exposition of the Prodigal Son parable. It contains some vivid, beautiful insights about our lives as they stand in relation to God:

Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story. We all have our version of events. Who we are, who we aren’t what we’ve done, what that means for our future. Our worth, value, significance. The things we believe about ourselves that we cling to despite the pain and agony they’re causing us.

This description of the brothers, each needing the father to retell their stories as stories of beloved sons, each refusing in their own way to believe it at different points in the story, is packed with insight. The brothers both have skewed visions. And the father offers them each a new story of acceptance and love.

But one wonders whether this metaphorical description of “hell” is really to the point when reading an author who is claiming to make a point about “hell” as a potential destiny for human beings who reject the work of God on their behalf.

We believe all sorts of things about ourselves. What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with God’s version of our story.

Yes. That.

Toward the end, Bell comes around to a stronger argument about Hell. If this God we serve is the one who is constantly rewriting our stories of guilt and shame with his story of peace and grace and forgiveness and love, then how can this same God turn on a dime and cast into Hell those who refuse?

What sort of grace and forgiveness and love are those?

What kind of God is that?

This is an important question for us to wrestle with.

How one understands the gospel they claim, and the God who offers it, will inevitably impact how a person lives. Bell joins the ranks of those who call us away from a gospel that’s too small: a focus on “getting in” that does not entail a whole new life, is a truncated gospel at best.

We’re invited to trust the retelling now, so that we’re already taking part in the kind of love that can overtake the whole world.

Bell presents a captivating vision, and it is not without its challenge to us to examine our shortcomings. This is not just about “inclusion,” but calling us to repentance as well. He writes these challenging words:

The second truth, one that is much more subtle and much more toxic as well, is that the older brother is separated from his father as well, even though he’s stayed home. His problem is his “goodness.”

His rule-keeping and law-abiding confidence in his own works has actually served to distance him from his father.

The parable is, in fact, told in Luke 15 to a bunch of older brother types who are grumpy about the folks Jesus is celebrating. Bell does a great job of bringing this back around to us, the presumed insiders, to challenge how we posture ourselves toward the rest. Ok, so that was just one chapter of the reader.

But perhaps its illustrative: Bell has a penetrating theological vision that is worth learning from, even when we find ourselves disagreeing along the way.

Emerging Conversations with Searching Christians

Emerging Conversations
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/05/31/emerging-conversations/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk
May 31, 2012
Comments

This is how I assess interviews (whether they’re for a job or for some media outlet or for a book proposal or, well, basically anything): if in the course of the interview I find myself talking passionately about the things I care most about, it was a good interview.

And, if this happens, it’s usually because the person or people I’m speaking with are a natural “fit” with my work.

Though it wasn’t an interview, my conversation with the Charlotte Emerging Church Discussion Group was one of those moments. We had great conversation because there was a common well of experience. And this is what I’ve found, often, when I’ve been in emerging church conversations:

Often, the thing that holds us together is that we have all experienced that traditional church, traditional structure, traditional authority, do not work. We have all experienced that these traditions are upheld by traditional ways of handling the Bible and of handling people. And most of us are somewhere on the spectrum of putting things back together.

That spectrum is quite broad: from “I guess I still want to believe in some sort of God” to “I’m at a different kind of church now, and following Jesus, but at every step of the way trying to figure out how to put the pieces back in place.”

For those folks, the claim I’ve been developing over the past couple years resonated deeply:

As a people whose story is largely understood by reading a Book, how we read that book, how we understand our identity, and how we believe we are supposed to act are inseparable.

In other words, identity, hermeneutics, and ethics will be mutually reinforcing.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation that I continue to mull:

Embracing the Bible as narrative makes the Bible a much less controllable entity. People tell, read, and embrace stories differently from one another. And, the stories we have in the Bible are not all told the same way. Matthew had something to say, and he changed [the book of] Mark to make his point.

I’m not a fan of hierarchy, but I do believe that leadership is important. Something I’ve mulled quite a bit is what the impact of the biblical call to cruciformity means for church leadership. I don’t think that you can institutionalize cruciformity. But anyone in a position of leadership should see such self-giving service as their primary vocation.

I don’t have a great answer to the question of sexuality in the Kingdom of God. Steve Knight probed this question a bit in our conversation. The easy answer is that Jesus indicates in Mark 12 that in the coming Kingdom humans will be asexual (neither marrying nor given in marriage).

But what would it mean to claim this while we also say, “The Kingdom has come near?” What would it mean to make such a confession when we are, generally speaking, called to take hold of our eschatological future and bring it to bear on the present?

Great questions.

Finally, I was reminded how much of my theologizing happens from the luxurious place of privilege. It’s a luxury to talk about “surprise” in the Bible–a luxury that the African American church doesn’t have, because life may hold a grim “surprise” any time you walk out the door. The church has become a counter-cultural place by becoming a place of certainty. Upsetting that applecart has significant consequences that it might not have in a white church.

Even the issues we care about highlight our privilege. Why does the Twitter feed and Facebook timeline overflow with cries about the injustice and/or necessity of forbidding same-sex marriage, while it is entirely silent about the African American high school graduation rate that sits below 50%?

It’s a perpetual challenge for even the postmodern church to embrace multiple perspectives that transcend our own ethnic, racial, and class distinctions.

Finally, it was pointed out that normal church people are not only capable of having robust theological conversations, but that the church’s attempt to “protect” people from difficult questions has, itself, led to theological anemia and dying congregations.

That’s, perhaps, the shared perspective that lay behind everything and enabled the fruitful dialogue:

Implicit in the critiques of where many had come from was simply this: stop trying to handle your congregations with kid gloves; stop trying to hide difficult issues; you are killing us with your “kindness.”

About J. R. Daniel Kirk: Professor at Fuller Seminary, resident of San Francisco, consumer of dark chocolate, brewer of dark beer, reader of Flannery O'Connor, watcher of the Coen Brothers, listener of The Mountain Goats.

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Nameless Women of the Bible

Life-Giving Widow
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/05/11/life-giving-widow/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk
May 11, 2012
Comments

The Freely-Given Life.

On several occasions I’ve reflected on the nameless woman who anoints Jesus in Mark 14. She is unique in that Jesus promises that her deed of burial-preparation / anointing will be told everywhere the gospel is proclaimed.

Why remember her?

It seems that she alone, of all the characters in the story, has held together “anointed one” with “the one who must die.”

Another word of approbation is given to a woman a couple chapters before. She, too, is nameless.

It is the widow who gives her own 2 cents.

Her presence here is double-edged, without a doubt.

The scribes have just been accused of devouring widows houses. Enter the widow. Behold how she has put in her whole livelihood.

Check that.

She has put in her whole life (ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς).

Why would Jesus draw attention to this one person, of all the people in the gospel, and point to her as an example of discipleship? Why is she the great positive example who puts to shame all the others who are giving to God’s work?

Perhaps because in giving her life she has executed faithfully the sacrifice that Jesus lauds in ch. 8:

After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. (Mark 8:34-36, CEB)

She has given her life. She has not clung to it.

Unlike the rich man who cannot part with his wares, and unlike these rich who give from the overflow, she has given all.

Yes, she is consumed by the scribes who devour widows’ houses. But then again, such forces lay behind Jesus’ own cross as well.

The Value of Asking Difficult Questions & Disturbing the Comfortable to Wrestle Afresh

Questions and Answers
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/05/12/questions-and-answers/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk
May 12, 2012
Comments

AI love writing about theological things for folks who aren’t academic professionals. One of the great benefits of being a New Testament professor is that there are thousands upon thousands of pastors and lay people who are interested in the ideas and capable of having insightful conversations about them.

But I discovered something.

I really only like writing about theological things for normal people when I get to set the rules. When I have to adapt to someone else’s idea of what it means to talk to normal people, I’m not so happy about it.

I should have clued into this a long time ago.

Once I was interviewing for a position at a church. They asked me what sort of curriculum I’d use for Sunday School. My answer was basically: I’ve got a seminary degree and a Ph.D.–I’ll use the Bible and other books people have written and make my own. They weren’t so happy with that.

But to the point for today.

When you are preaching and/or teaching and/or leading folks in your faith community, to what extent do you see your task as providing direction through difficult issues? And to what extent do you see your task as raising questions for them to wrestle with?

This week I was revising something I had put together for a “popular” audience. I was revising it under the direction of the editors / readers whose first comment was this:

Author: Please rewrite the introduction. Think of writing it for Sunday school classes – not to raise questions but to provide orientation.

My first (and enduring) response to this in my heart was: “Please tell me what church you go to, because I do not want to attend such a Sunday school!”

But there’s a both/and here. I know it. In fact, I see one of my most important roles as a professor and writer as one of providing direction for asking the right, difficult questions.

It’s more important for me to raise the issues surrounding who might or might not have written a book of the Bible, and allow you to be disturbed, comforted, or otherwise engaged with the issues as you read.

It’s more important for me to highlight the difficulties entailed in signing off on household codes than to provide an explanation for why a NT writer might have made them all better by introducing Jesus into them.

The direction I can give, the value I can bring to the process, is often to disturb the comfortable and cause us to wrestle afresh with the text. I’m less concerned that people will be troubled by issues and more concerned that they will fail to be troubled by important difficulties that have the power to transform our understanding of what the Bible is and how we faithfully live out the narrative contained there.

Just as I was grumping about having to turn my vintage Kirk piece into tame “Sunday School” material, I saw a friends link to this:

It’s a promo video for a new Sunday-School-like material.

At one point, a person in the video says, “I think Animate will spark conversations for adults because we’re not spoon-feeding them the answers.”

Bingo. Christian education for adults.

Ok, so it’s not one or the other. (Either questions or answers.) But still…

Having laid out my own proclivities (and, knowing that I’m more of a provocateur than answer-giver!), I truly would like to hear from you:

• When you preach or teach or lead, how do you think through how much direction to give and how much you raise salient, even difficult or impossible questions?
• When you’re in a group such as a Bible study or Sunday School class, to what extent to you hope the person will be giving direction, and to what extent provoking difficult questions?
• To what extent do you imagine that it’s the leader’s job to direct you–into difficult / impossible questions?!

I’d love to have good conversation about this.

(And, that Animate series looks great–though don’t ask me what “electric, carbonated space,” is!)

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For More on the Animate Series - 

Introducing Animate's "Faith Formation Series"

for Adults, Teens, and Kids by Sparkhouse

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing-animates-faith-formation.html

The Mutable Immutable God of Creation

The God who Moves and Responds and Acts 

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/05/04/the-god-who-moves-and-responds-and-acts/

by J.R.D. Kirk

May 4, 2012

One of the most significant ramifications of working out one’s theology from the starting point of Jesus Christ is that the actual involvement of God in the world curtails pious-sounding abstractions that, if true, would make God so distant and other as to be of no earthly good.

Because, let’s face it friends, on the day that we learn of the death of the great MCA of the Beastie Boys, we need to know that our God is not a pious abstraction, but a God who can and will and does act. (Can I get an amen?)

Barth's God Immutably Loves Mozart

God’s constancy is not a constancy of one who is unmoved or unmoving. God’s life is “difference, movement, will, decision, action, degeneration, and rejuvenation” (Barth, Church Dogmatics §31.2).

With this litany of divine attributes, signaling what, exactly, God’s constancy looks like, Barth launches into one of the best discussions of divine identity and attributes I’ve ever read.

In the [popular/modernistic] world of theological abstraction, God’s “immutability” becomes “immobility.” But in the [biblical] theology developed from the self-revelation of God in Christ, “immutability” becomes, instead, God’s constancy of action, as God chooses to act, in accordance with God’s desire to be in relationship with the world God created.

God is life.

"We have also to understand it as a proof and a manifestation of God’s constant vitality that God has a real history in and with the world created by Him. This is the history of the reconciliation and revelation accomplished by Him, by which He leads the world to a future redemption."

God has tied himself to a history, bound himself to a story.

We know all this because as Christians we don’t start with abstractions about the identity of God and attempt to figure out how such abstractions make sense within our story. We begin with God’s actual revelation in Jesus and Christ and learn from there who this God is who is at work.

Two highlights from later in the chapter include small print sections on prayer and on the Philippians Christ-hymn.

An immutable God might lead one to believe that prayer can have no effect on the divine. “It’s all about changing us, not getting God to act.”

Wrong.

…the prayers of those who can and will believe are heard; …God is and wills to be known as the One who will and does listen to the prayers of faith… So real is the communication that where it occurs God positively wills that man should call upon Him in this way, in order that He may be his God and Helper.

The living and genuinely immutable God is not an irresistible fate/force before which man can only keep silence, passively awaiting and accepting the benefits or blows which it ordains. There is no such thing as a Christian resignation in which we either have to submit to a fate of this kind or to come to terms with it.

God acts. God acts in love. This is what we learn of the immutability of God as God is revealed in Jesus Christ. The God of love acts on behalf of God’s people. More specifically:

It is because God was in this way one with the creature in Jesus Christ, that there was and is fellowship between God and the creature.

No, the God of all did not need to bind Himself to humanity. But he did. In God’s freedom, God has bound himself to all humanity in Jesus Christ.

So when God is immutable and constant, that changelessness will be for us as our salvation, for the maintenance of the relationship God has created anew. [And when God is mutable and changeable it is for us the result of our relationship with a living God in relation with us. - res]

The surprise in this is that it is in self-giving, self-humbling love that “Christ is Christ and God is God.”

The upshot for us, of course, is that only in such self-giving, self-humbling love and “In it alone can Christians be Christians” (p. 518).

The Wounding of the Body of Christ

Jesus Beyond Jesus

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/05/05/jesus-beyond-jesus/

by J.R.D. Kird

May 5, 2012

One thing evangelicals do well is our incessant hammering on the need for each of us to continually respond in faith to the God who is reaching out to us in Christ. We insist on personal accountability before God.

But if the down side to this has been that we’re slow to realize the fully communal implications of our faith.

As I’ve said before, I used to shrug off the old hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Because, NEWS FLASH!, I wasn’t! I was a couple thousand years too late for that one.

But then I started to realize that the body of Christ is all around me every time I gather with God’s people. And I began to realize that these were people I had wounded, people whom I had judged and rejected and injured. I had become an instrument in the wounding of the body of Christ.

So yes, I was there. And I am there. I participate in the crucifixion when I judge and reject and injure those who are, themselves, members of Christ’s body.

When Jesus places His name on someone in baptism, he takes this identification with them with utmost seriousness. It’s not just that the person is bound to the story of Christ (something else we need to learn more deeply than we have) but that Christ is bound to the person of this story.

And so Jesus tells his disciples:

Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me. (Mark 9:37, CEB)

The disciples weren’t too sure about this whole, “name of Jesus” thing. So they pressed back a bit:

We saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us. (Mark 9:38, CEB)

Wrong answer.

Everyone who’s not against us is for us. In fact,

I assure you that whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will certainly be rewarded. (Mark 9:41, CEB).

We too often fall into the trap of thinking that our relationship with God is one thing, and our relationship with people is something else. Sometimes we’ll acknowledge the connection by saying something like, “When my relationship with God is askew, it messes with my relationships with people, too.”

There’s truth in that.

But there’s a more profound truth that such statements skirt; namely, our relationship with other people in the body is, itself, our relationship with the Christ whose name is upon them.

Before us is Jesus beyond Jesus.

God has determined to renew each of us after the image of the firstborn Son.

And so, what we do to them, those who bear the son’s image, is done to the son whose image they bear. When we engage the one who is Christ’s, for blessing or for curse, we bless or curse the Christ to whom they belong.

What Is Narrative Theology? It is the "Grander Story of God and Creation"

The Grander Story of God and Creation

In today's contemporary theology a new term has arisen called "Narrative Theology" that is sidling alongside the older term of "Biblical Theology" to give it a fuller expression to our dynamic understanding between God and man that we've been calling Relational Theism in an everyday expression of interaction, community, and relationship between the Godhead and Creation. Whereas the older idea of revelatory communication showed us what God was doing in specific covenantal areas of the Old and New Testaments, narrative theology takes this idea and couples it with another older German theological idea of heilsgeschichte (salvation history; a term used by Oscar Cullman to describe an interpretation of history emphasizing God's saving acts and viewing Jesus Christ as the central theme of redemption). That is, as God reveals Himself to mankind He is also remaking the idea of Himself to mankind into a truer, fuller, expression of Himself as He teaches us of Himself through salvific events of covenant, sin, redemption, etc. Which events continue to evolve our relationship to Himself and to Creation. It is God's narrative of himself, his divine story to us. As much as it is our own narrative. Our story of us, back to God. It is then, the story of God and us. God and me. God and Creation, as we commune each with the other, era after era, age after age, through His image relationally, in love, in truth, in passion, in anger, in all that makes us "us". It is our t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r story of the divine/human cooperative amidst the larger story of Creation.

God and Creation
envisaged

To this concept I might further add the important idea of eschatological escalation, which gives meaning to the idea that within each era's narrative story between God and man is the further idea that this narrative story continues to expand, to eschalate, upwards into a fuller story of redemption and salvation. That is, there is a future hope, or promise, within Christianity that has a time element to it that works itself progressively forward within time-and-space (e.g. within the history of mankind) which lends itself to the fuller expression of the idea of a future Kingdom of God. A Kingdom that encapsulates all of Creation's past into all of its future. That, as much as Israel moved forward in its storied history towards its ultimate expression in Jesus, their Messiah, which then gave birth to the Church. So too is the Church moving forwards towards that time when Jesus is manifested again in some future time period we call God's Kingdom. But as a returning King and not as a crucified Saviour. One who comes to Rule what He has Redeemed.

Interlocking Shalom
through Redemption

Hence, God's story of Himself is also the story of man whom God incorporates into His story - not simply by telling us of Himself - of who He is - but of telling us of who we are, and how we fit importantly into His plans in a glorious era to come that we call the New Heavens and New Earth. That we have hope and that our hope is not hopeless when we see so much death and destruction, injustice and impoverishment around us. That He is redeeming all of mankind and not only some of mankind. That He is configuring us to be a significant part of this story of redemption, of redeeming mankind. That while He tarries we are to work towards the coming Kingdom Rule of Jesus through love and good works (we call this concept the Ethics of the Kingdom of God). And that we have as much a future in eternity's history NOW, as we will LATER, as God Himself does who indwells all of eternity's history of past, present and future. That both the Creator and the Created are bound together as One in a steady evolution of recapture, re-incorporation, re-assimilation, re-adoption, reconciliation, and redemption (the adjectives to describe this are endless!).

Further, the Christian story is not one merely of redemptive revelation (biblical covenants), historical progress (heilsgeschichte or salvation history), and forward movement unto a completed Hope (we call this Christianity's teleology, it's eschatological hope). But that all of these movements show a helical structure to themselves that seem oddly familiar to us - though dissimilar as well - in that we seem to be repeating God's redemptive purposes again, and again, and again, in a circular paradigm of historical import. Only that this paradigm is stretched out in an upward fashion teleologically so that we have a helical structure of history progressing forwards, or eschalating upwards, into the fuller story of God Himself. We are thus being inextricably drawn forwards - and upwards at the same time - into repetitive, circular expressions of God's story of our redemption from sin; of stories of healing and health; and unto culminating, continuing, stories of eternal completeness. This then is the Christian story. It's narrative. It is one of culminating, eternal, completeness.

Picture a 2d helix set along the lines of time and motion (= event). The

Christian story is one of Salvific escalation showing an historical repetition

 and forward movement in time sequences that are similar but dissimilar

as God recreates the cosmos through redemption's cycle of renewal.

In terms of biblical events God's movement through time
and history would show a progression from one covenantal
era to another as creation becomes aligned with its Creator
in redemptive renewal. This also means that God will do
newer redemptive things in successively evolving eras. In
a sense God is changing in relation to His own creation.

 

From this idea of storied theology come the new idea of Narrative Theology long lost over the past 500 years of Reformational teachings emphasizing systematic doctrine in place of the biblical practice of storied narrative that once incorporated doctrinal ideas into the biblical story being told amongst ancient peoples. Thus today's contemporary theologies are adjusting from past Reformational practices of scientific statement about God which gave impetus to dearly held Christian heritages, dogmas, liturgies, and practices, and allowing the larger narrative of God to arise over popularly held biblical ideas and expressions. Curiously, today's postmodernistic cultures have rapidly accepted this style of teaching making it a very popular form of talking about God and God's revelation to man.

But not to the exclusion of systematic study and biblical apologetic discussion of the Scriptures. But in the sense of "uplifting" those ideas and doctrines into the newer areas of storied theology which in its own way is recreating God's story to us from the ancient settings of past biblical events into relevant ideas available for public reception, discussion, and incorporation. This is an important development and one that needs to be used deftly, honestly, and graciously without reducing biblical teaching to the pandering philosophies of humanism's overly therapeutic cultures and narcissistic preoccupation with one's own experience. That said, Narrative Theology is a powerful tool in re-imagining God's Word to both Christian and non-Christian audiences alike thought lost so long ago to the Bedouin experiences of very ancient cultures and ideologies.

Consequently - (and I'm speaking to my past evangelical heritage now) - one such adjustment that must be made is the evangelic belief that "systematic theology" (or, reductionistic biblical re-statement) is the fuller expression of God.... But in actuality has done just the opposite by reducing God into our own privately held ideas of Himself and His Story through our own logical, analytical expressions of formulaic theological creeds, church covenants, and dogmas. By saying that (i) God is thus-and thus, and consequently (ii) we are thus-and-thus, then (iii) we must do such-and-such. These reductionisms, though at times helpful to our feeble intelligences, do greater harm to the larger story of God and Creation. A story that is larger than our own interpretation of it....

Hence, we must always give precedence to biblical/narrative theology over that of any systematizing theology, dogmatic expressions, creedal confessions and ecclesiastical statements. Not only do we look to the text of Scripture for this help through a hermeneutic of biblical/narrative theology, but we look first and foremost to the God of Scripture Himself (relational theism) to drive our expectations, our theologies, our ethics, in the story of us as seen through God's completing glories.

Our stories must then be God's stories of ourselves. And our stories must also be of God's own story of His divine majesty. It is not only a story of the Triunity of the Godhead but of the completing unity of Creation to this Godhead that gives all majesty. However you wish to word it, God created Creation to be part of Himself, and He in it, in a process of completing harmony, resolution, and order. This then is the real biblical narrative of redemption and salvation.

R.E. Slater

February 24, 2012

The Evolving Narrative of God's Redemption

Addendum

The following articles by JR Daniel Kirk will address the change in relationship between three theological disciplines: biblical, systematic and narrative theology. In the older idea good biblical theology led to good systematic/analytic statements about God, us and the world. In the newer idea, systematic theology is abandoned (in a sense) and is replaced with a narrative theology that enhances biblical theology.

If systematic statements are now made of God they must be couched within the greater stories (and mysteries or enigmas!) of biblical/narrative theology. Hence, we may say that "God is good," but must realize that this statement will have multiple meanings depending upon its listeners social, cultural, and temporal milieus (that is, it is dependent upon the cultural era, type of society, and generational characteristics prevalent within that historical era).

Consequently, systematic theology has become un-systematized due to narrative (and postmodern) influences necessitating theologians to talk of God within a given socio-cultural context that would allow for cultural elasticity and flow. As well as for the broad human dynamics of linguistic communication that can be both plain and ambiguous to the same listeners on the same subject. God created man in His image. That image is infinitely complex and eternal. We are God's image bearers and should expect nothing less than to be amazed at the capacities God has given to us in bearing His image.

Thus, God cannot be systematised. And should not be. He is a living Being as we are living beings. Nor should the Bible be systematised. It is God's living Word which thus makes the Bible an open document without a culminating interpretation so that it can dynamically speak to every age, era, culture, and community of humanity. It opens God up to us without providing systematised, formulaic, expressions of definitive statement about God and ourselves. It can do this because we are open beings who live in open socio-cultural contexts and use an open language that is symbolic and can be as ambiguous as it is plain. All of which then allows for fluidity (that is, elasticity and flow) within our communication with God and with each other.

Humanity changes with time and circumstance. This is what is meant when Classic Theism meets Process Theology - one is old timey, the other postmodern. Somewhere in between is its synthetic alternative I prefer to call Relational Theism. An alternative that I think better retains the past to the relationship of the future (e.g., postmodernism) without throwing out God's steady redemptive narrative that has been evolving since He spoke the worlds into being. And will not stop evolving until all worlds have come under submission to His will and Word.

A submission that will allow for the greatest amount of freedom without the terror of sin, death and destruction behind it all because of Jesus' work of redemption. Because all things have come under God's redemption - and will come under God's redemption - both now and forevermore. God's Word is as living and true now as it was a hundred years ago, a millenia ago, or even eons ago. And it is spoken from the very God who "Is" (Yhwh = I Am), and is evolving with us, even as we are evolving with Him, in an open theology of time and import.

R.E. Slater

April 16, 2012 

Part 1

Narrative Theology and Biblical Theology

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/24/what-is-narrative-theology-pt-1-narrative-theology-and-biblical-theology/

by JRD Kirk

February 24, 2012

Having just read Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?, a reader emailed to ask what, exactly, this narrative theology is that I’m on about in the book. Is there a go-to definition or description? The book embodies it, but what is this “it” we are beholding?

In short, narrative or storied theology is a way to talk about God and proceeds on the premise that the Story is the thing.

Learning the story of God as a story, articulating the various aspects as parts of a dynamic movement that not only passes through time but genuinely develops and changes as it does so, narrative theology never seeks to leave the story behind to get on to the real business of theology or ethics. The church’s theology is the narrative, and its ethics is the telling of that story in the words and deeds of Christian communities.

"Narrative theology recognizes changes in people’s expectations

and even in the nature of the fulfillment of God’s promises."

Narrative Theology is (un)Like Biblical Theology that Preceded It.

Like the biblical theology movement that finds description in the likes of Geerhardus Vos and Reformed theology more generally, it strives to do justice to the interconnections between what we are told about God, God’s promises, and God’s people in the OT, and what we are told about them in the New.

However, unlike the work of some of the older Reformed Biblical theologians, narrative theology reads the story as a history of God’s action, not merely a history of revelation. In the latter, as it is defined within this world, there is a truth about God that is progressively revealed through time–much as though it existed in a heavenly cache, only to be distributed a bit at a time over the course of history.

Narrative theology, instead, recognizes changes in the people’s expectations and even in the nature of the fulfillment of God’s promises. We cannot read the Bible from Genesis through Malachi and be prepared for the surprises of Matthew through Revelation.

Narrative theology is more dynamic, allowing room for dead-ends to certain OT roads, and a radical revision of our understanding of God and salvation in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus–even within the same story that is the story of Israel.

Such a move toward seeing surprise is not absent in the Reformed Tradition, and is captured quite well at several moments in Herman Ridderbos’ Paul. But in general, I see it as a movement beyond Vos, and ultimately untenable metaphors such as the idea that the story develops “from acorn to oak tree.”

Going back further, Narrative Theology also stands over against the notion of biblical theology enshrined in Gabler‘s famous “On the Correct Distinction Between Dogmatic and Biblical Theology and the Right Definition of Their Goals.”

Gabler suggested that the job of biblical studies was to distill the truths from the Bible, to be handed over to the systematicians for proper and logical ordering. Such a vision holds onto what Narrative Theology will always deem a mistake: thinking that “systematic theology” is the real thing, whereas biblical theology is a road on the way to theology’s completion.

Narrative theology grows from the soil prepared by biblical theology, or perhaps it is a branch off the same tree, but it embodies a commitment to the narrative that older concerns with the enduring primacy of systematic (or, if you prefer, analytic) theology in the life of the church did not allow.

In future posts I’ll talk about narrative theology in relationship to systematic theology and to ethics.

Part 2

Narrative Theology and Biblical Theology

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/24/what-is-narrative-theology-pt-1-narrative-theology-and-biblical-theology/

by JRD Kirk

February 25, 2012

In practicing a narrative theology, the overarching conviction is that the revelation of God is a story: the story of the creator God, at work in Israel, to redeem and reconcile the world through the story of Jesus.

Part of what this means for me is the possibility of transformation, reconfiguration, and even leaving behind of earlier moments in the story as later scenes show us the way forward and, ultimately, the climactic saving sequence.

This is one point at which I differ from N. T. Wright.

Regularly in Wright’s writing we will find statements such as, “This is what God was up to all along.” I don’t disagree here. But what often goes unspoken, and where I think we need to be more clear, is that one only knows “this is what God was up to all along” once one is already convinced that “this new thing is actually what God is up to.”

The work of Jesus is not merely a saving act. For a people who are convinced that the saving work of Jesus is what was “pre-promised in the scriptures” (Rom 1), the Christ event becomes a hermeneutic. It becomes a lens by which we re-read the Old Testament and discover what can only be seen by the eyes of faith.

In light of the climax of the story, we re-read the earlier moments and discover things that would not have been visible to the original audience. We boldly read those as indications of God’s work in Christ, nonetheless, because we believe that the same God is at work in the same story to bring it to its culmination in him. 

 Image courtesy of The Open Fiction Project tofp.org

This brings me to a point at which my version of narrative theology differs from the work of some practitioners of what is sometimes called “theological interpretation of scripture.” Here the specific example who comes to mind is Kevin Vanhoozer.

Confronted with the incongruity between “behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son” as it is used in Isaiah and in Matthew, Vanhoozer appeals to authorial intention to say that the Matthew meaning was, in a sense, the meaning intended for Isaiah as well. Of course, by “authorial intention,” Vanhoozer means God as author.

Matthew's meaning = Isaiah's meaning

(using authorial intent where God is the Author)

This, it seems to me, is cheating.

Instead, I propose a multiple-reading strategy: Allow the text to mean what it meant in its first context, as much as we can determine this. Do the historical critical work that sheds light on why, for example, an eighth century BC audience would formulate matters just so–and then recognize the freedom of later readers to re-read those texts differently in light of later events.

Reading Vahoozer or Dan Treier, I sometimes fear that theological readings become a way to circumvent critical issues. But even if the demands of the church push us toward a final, post-critical reading, where we reincorporate the difficult message of an earlier day into the story of the church by a dramatic rereading of the text, I want to contend that we must still be first critical in order to be post-critical.

To my mind, narrative theology allows for such transformations. We are part of a story. Later moments take up, fulfill, recapitulate, and transform earlier. We can say both, “Isaiah 7 has nothing to do with a person born hundreds of years later to someone who has not had sex,” and, “the virgin birth of Jesus fulfills Isaiah 7.”

Reading a book on theological interpretation by a scholar across the pond, I was struck by a claim that we are to read the Bible as a book addressed to us–that the ideal audience are those who proclaim and profess to follow Jesus Christ as Lord.

This, it seemed, to me, was half right.

Yes, we are like the first and ideal audience: those expected to respond in faithful following of Jesus.

But we are also not like them: we are not first-century Romans; we are not first-century Jews; we are not fifth century Jews in Babylon. There is a specificity to the particular audience that sets us apart from them. To the writer, there would have been a hope that first-century Galatians would respond by “kicking out the slave woman and her son,” even as Abraham did. That word is not directly addressed to us in the same way.

What I propose for reading the Bible itself also pertains to reading it for our communities. We are part of a long story. This means that the retellings will involve some measure of transformation. And this is, itself, faithful and living renarration of the story of God.