Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Commentary - Mason Slater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Mason Slater. Show all posts

Friday, September 7, 2012

The Legacy of the Christian Blogosphere

a deeper story
 
Chick-Fil-A, Love Wins, the maelstrom over a particular post about 50 Shades of Gray – sometimes I find myself worrying that this will be the legacy of the Christian blogosphere, that these controversies (and hundreds like them) will be all that people remember in twenty or fifty years.

Sure, we wring our hands at the unpleasantness of it all, but that’s usually while we are busy rolling out the outrage machine and the language of persecuted minority or righteous-defender-of-all-that-is-good-and-true.

We say we wish it wasn’t like that, that we don’t want to be this way, that they started it.

But, sometimes, I really don’t think that’s the case.

I think much of the blogosphere can’t do without it. We have become the outrage-industrial complex, building a digital empire by speaking in the vitriolic language of us vs. them.

I think that if there wasn’t a conflict we would have to start one.

I worry that if people twenty years from now remember the Christian blogosphere as driven by controversy, outrage, and infighting, tragically they might be more right than wrong.

How many blogs would soon fall silent if there wasn’t an “enemy” to oppose? We get a high off it, but like any junkie we are quite talented at denying we have a problem, no matter how much damage we are doing, no matter how out of control it has become.

And it’s a shame, because so many of you have beautiful stories to tell, and incredibly brilliant ideas to share. So many bloggers are writing and doing things that are redemptive, imaginative, an outworking of the Gospel story.

But those bloggers, the sort who don’t want to play the game, they often tend to drop out over time, exhausted and disheartened by it all. Or, these wise and quiet voices get passed over in our mad dash from one controversy to the next. And so, one way or another, we never hear them.

I suppose that is part of what I appreciate about this community. True, it is not afraid to address difficult or controversial issues – but it finds its identity not in outrage but in grace, love, and the little bits of life that we share through our stories.

I think if all the controversies went away, by some miracle of God’s mysterious grace, the people here would have just as much to say. These writers would not fall silent.

Because it isn’t simply writing about a controversy that’s the issue, it’s when we start to confuse these controversies with the Gospel, and confuse our stance on them with our identity as children of God. These controversies are not our story, or at least, they shouldn’t be, because our real stories are far better.

And it’s those stories, those stories about love and grace and resurrection, that I hope people remember long after the controversies have been forgotten.


About Mason: Mason is a husband to Melinda, seminary student, blogger, and freelance writer in Grand Rapids, MI. He is passionate about theology, community and justice. What little time is left amidst his busy schedule is devoted to reading, coffee snobbery and a new adventure in home brewing.

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Thursday, June 7, 2012

Peter Rollins - The Idolatry of God + Insurrection





"This book will offer a systematic frame within which to understand my project to date. The release date is 1st January. Sign up to my mailing list (on the right on my website) in order to get some advance excerpts. More information to follow."

Peter Rollins
May 5, 2012
Publication Date: Jan 2013
http://peterrollins.net/?p=3656


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Peter Rollins – a Narrative of Idolatry
http://masonslater.com/2012/02/21/peter-rollins-a-narrative-of-idolatry/

by Mason Slater
February 21, 2012

Peter Rollins was recently interviewed by Whitworth University about some of the themes in Insurrection.

I find myself especially interested in his push back on the idolatry inherent in the way we use God-talk as a talisman in our quest for a narrative that tells us why we are right/ good and they are wrong/ evil.

Not because right and wrong, or good and evil, don’t exist. But because we all too easily assume that we are “on God’s side,” that we are playing the role of the good and the right in the story being told. And we then craft a narrative about faith, or love, or politics that uses God-talk to reinforce that assumption without ever really allowing the living God to challenge our actions and our beliefs.





My Take on Peter Rollins

by R.E. Slater
June 8, 2012

I give the two following commentaries below as an example of the give-and-take debate between two friends involved with the formative [philosophical] topics of Insurrection. Having met Rollins personally, and following him here on this blog site, I continue to find his ideas and thoughts helpful in marking the distinction between Christianity as a religion and Christianity as a faith. I may get lost in his Christianized philosophical ideas, and I may wish he would use more familiar theological terms for me... terms that aren't stripped of their great theological wealth of meaning and expression for my faith... but when expressed in a philosophical vernacular seem to escape my appreciation for their criticism by one who is a philosopher first, and a theologian second. But even so, I must listen and glean by what he thinks important to state openly about the 20th Century Church.

Hence, when listening to Peter I try to glean what I can from his passion and then re-express it into the more familiar categories of biblical terminology. Which is what I think Jacob Clark tries to express of his frustration to us in his commentary below. Though I think I am more willing to give to Peter the benefit of the doubt and not hold him as critically to the theological "gun" of critique as some are currently doing. More rather, I try to (critically) import Peter's insights and concerns into my faith even while I try to appreciate his philosophically oblique/dense (that is, to me!) referential symbolisms and cultural imports on the Church's philosophically religious state and behavior. I do not, however, find myself, nor my faith, unhelpfully criticized when reduced to these philosophical introspections. On the contrary, I in fact welcome them as from a friend whom I trust and through whose eyes may see something I do not. But this does not mean that I avoid the hard work of interpretation from what I glean. All the more, I must listen and interpret where-and-when I can by Peter's insights as I extrapolate them into religious terms and Christianized categories, since that is more my background and experience.

Thus, for myself, Peter has provided important insights into my faith as well as the experience of my faith as a religion. And I find his criticisms relevant and valid for usefulness in constructing an Emergent Christianity that can both deconstruct itself while at the same time reconstruct itself into a more relevant postmodernistic expression for the witness of Christ to 21st Century postmodern cultures and religions of our day. As I take it, Peter is simply giving us more legs (or pillars) on which to stand up the Gospel of Christ to compete more effectively against the humanistic philosophies of our times. For this help I am thankful. But it is left to the Church to figure out how to effectively translate these insights from Peter Rollins, and other similar soothsayers like Peter Rollins, into the necessary relational experiences and expositional categories for people to hear, digest and respond to in their everyday confession, repentance and living faith.

R.E. Slater
June 8, 2012


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by on Monday, October 31, 2011 · Comments


This week bring us a new review of Peter Rollins’s Insurrection. Jason Clark offers an extended and thoughtful interaction with Pete’s work characterized by a pastoral heart. You can read about Pete and his work at his website. Clark is one of our contributors here at churchandpomo, and you can read his bio here.

Review of Peter Rollins’ Insurrection

Having contributed to a book with Pete Rollins,[1] collaborating in person on that work, and having worshipped with Pete, I find myself for the purposes of this review, in somewhat of a quandary. Within that relationship, and knowing that Pete is reading and due to respond to my review, there is the temptation to simply offer praise due to a collegiate friendship, or to provide a critique as an alternative. Instead I wish to provide an extended review, that seeks to understand Pete, his current work, and larger writing corpus. This review has given me the opportunity to grapple with and seek to understand Pete’s work. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on how Pete’s work impacts upon my own Christian faith, as most others reading it make their own personal assessments.

Pete’s latest book Insurrection invites us to understand and explore his work as one of ‘pyro-theology.[2] For Pete ‘pyro-theology’ is to ask a question that ‘ruptures’ and ‘re-configures Christianity’[3] that also ‘overturns the Church as it presently stands’ in all its current forms.[4] The hoped for outcome of this proposed theological method is a Church that is utterly different and yet is true to its previous incarnations.[5]

By way of method, Pete suggests that it is in a question from Bonhoeffer that we find not only an example of this ‘pyro-theological’ method, but the question we need to ask today. This question is one where we ask whether religion is necessary to participate in the Christian life. It is this question we must respond to, if we are to be true to Christianity, and engage in these reconfigurations and over-turnings.[6] Pete wants to get us to Bonhoeffer’s ‘religionless Christianity’. Pete would have us understand that the question by the early Church of whether Gentile Christians should be circumcised was an antecedent of his ‘pyro-theology’ theological method.[7]

And it is here that Pete’s theological method seems most immediately problematic. For we might ask if the question of whether Christianity needs completely overhauling, and the Church replacing is valid for establishing his method. Pete does not seem to give direct warrant to that claim, other than to make statements in his work couched in generalizations. For example he talks of how ‘Church leaders believe on behalf of the community’ in the contemporary Church, thus denying all Christians the ability to experience the cross.

Many of us involved in Church life might take issue not just with such a premise and generalist claim, but the setting up of his work as an antidote to the whole and contemporary Church, in all its forms. I am sure in his planned response to me on this blog, Pete will be able to affirm that not all Church leaders are oriented and established around a disposition to keep people from the cross, and the struggles of faith and belief.

And then for a work that aspires to be a theological method, it is rather more one of philosophical theology, and I suspect better read as such. For Pete’s real focus strikes me as a philosophical reading of the nature of God, and the experience of faith within that. Whilst Pete signposts his work with theological words, such as God, Cross, Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, it is not the historic, confessional and traditional theological content of those terms that are his methodological horizon. And it is not that Pete even wants to contest such horizons. Rather it is that his philosophical method means that belief in those things seems irrelevant to his task. I was left wondering if for Pete those terms have their ‘true’ meaning solely as descriptions of the existential ‘events’ of Christian experience?

It is here that I think Pete leads us into an understanding of God, and an apprehension of Christian faith that Bonhoeffer would not have recognized, as ‘religionless Christianity’. For whilst Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa may have navigated a ‘dark night of soul’, they did so with confessional faith, one with a deeply theological content, and their hope in a real historical resurrection. The issue of circumcision was not simply the removal of an external religious practice that stopped people from embracing the cross, and the loss of God for their religious experience. It was to a deeply somatic response, that relocated the nature of the experience of salvation into an even more intense and embodied experience; one where the heart that was now to be circumcised in regard to its desires and orientation. That internal circumcision was to now bring our lives, in all their aspects, into an experience of the cross. It was to bring the life we live in our bodies, into a very real experience of the God who was and is there in the cross, and into His body.

Here I suspect Pete and I argue for the same thing, but from different understandings of the cross. And like Pete I would agree that it is better to experience the cross, rather than have some religious belief in it—something that actually stops us from encountering it. But I do think that Bonhoeffer’s apprehension of the cross within ‘religionless Christianity’ was something very different to Pete’s proposals.

For one cannot read Bonhoeffer’s confessional theology without reading that the experience of the cross was more than a psychological dynamic, and one that changes all that we are, even our bodies themselves. In terms of how we apprehend the experience of the cross that Pete offers us, I am left wondering how ‘cerebral’ that psychological apprehension is, and how it requires a metaphysical locus that Bonhoeffer would have rejected. For Bonhoeffer asserts that God is simultaneously (a la Barth) ‘wholly other’ whilst shockingly immanent and intimate. For Bonhoeffer writes:
God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science, has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion. For the sake of intellectual honesty, that working hypothesis should be dropped, or as far as possible eliminated. A scientist or physician who sets out to edify is a hybrid. Anxious souls will ask what room there is left for God now; and as they know no answer to the question, they condemn the whole development that has brought them to such straits. I wrote to you before about the various emergency exits that have been contrived; and we ought to add to them the death-leap back into the Middle Ages. But this principle of the Middle Ages is heteronomy in the form of clericalism; a return to that can be a counsel of despair, but it would be at the cost of intellectual honesty[8]. …But all the time God still reigns in heaven… he remains the Lord of Earth, he preserves his church, constantly renewing our faith and not laying on us more than we can bear, gladdening us with his nearness and help, hearing our prayers[9].
Pete not only empties theological terms, those used by Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, the wider Church and ourselves of their content, he also presents them as universal processes and experiences. And they are also deployed rather confusingly by him, at least in my reading. For example, the resurrection appears to be subsumed into the crucifixion by Pete, as something that is merely an experience of the cross, or a means to experience the cross.[10] So again I wonder if anyone reading Pete’s work for a theological method might, like me, be frustrated at his lack of attention to Christian theology, and wonder at his appropriation of Bonhoeffer.

As a further example, Pete spends some time reflecting on the Kenosis and Christology within Philippians 2, of the emptying of God himself.[11] If I have understood Pete’s method, there is no God out ‘there’ in the first place, outside of our experience, to be emptied into the reality of and particularity of human experience; be that an experience that is somatic, psychological, emotional, spiritual, etc. Pete voids and evacuates the theological term Kenosis of any theological content and meaning. On reading Insurrection I was left with the anxiety that God is dead, there is no cross, just the idea of the cross, and that there is no place for God to be involved in my life at all.

Pete explicitly wants to remove the notion from us that loving Christ directly is possible. Rather, God is to be indirectly loved, as we participate in love generally.[12] In the whole of Pete’s work I then found this sentence the most startling, ‘in the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, we discover that God is not something we encounter directly and thus is not something that we experience’.[13] Not only does that leave me with no possibility of an experience of God as object and me as his subject, a sense of ‘otherness’, that I am his, and he is mine, but it also seems to elevate the love of love itself, as the telos to any ordering in our relationship with God. For Pete it is not enough to realize that we have desired the wrong objects in life, it is that we need to desire desire itself, as God is not an appropriate or possible object for our love. I doubt how many humans can live in this mode of love, let alone whether it is even Christian. And I do not make that statement lightly or casually. If God is not the object of my love, and me his, then what is the purpose in Christianity at all?

Or at least such an apprehension is the best I can hope for as an experience of God. And perhaps that is the intention of the book in any event.

The Jesus of Christianity as a real transcendent person, who becomes finite to us so that we might adventivally experience him, now seems lost to us as other theological terms are similarly emptied by Pete. The theology of the cross that the Church holds historically, presently and which it confessionally experiences in much of its worship, is shorn of all biblical narratives and paradosis, with crucifixion reduced to psychological process. I felt left with a Jesus who was only an exemplar of self-awareness of an existential experience. If this is the case, then perhaps Pete’s work might be less about a ‘religionless Christianity’, and more about Christianity without an historical, immanent, and risen Jesus.

Not that this is all a bad thing, as long as we understand that this is what Pete presents us with. And within that realization I find the most compelling element of Pete’s work, that there is a God-forsakenness intrinsic to the Christian faith, replete with doubt, mystery and question that is too often replaced with certainty to cover our fears. And I agree with Pete that Bonhoeffer does call us to refuse to let our Christian religious constructions stop us from an experience of the cross. Such experience is intrinsic to Christianity. For Bonhoeffer ‘religionless Christianity’ was about the loss of all that keeps us from the cross. Just as God despised the false religion that kept us from him, he seeks to bring us out from all religious life, even that set up within much that masquerades as Christianity, which is in fact something that keeps us from the cross.

I have already strayed too far into philosophical critique, which is not my natural domain, and with which I have no fluency or proficiency. But I have stepped into that domain, in order to attempt to interact with Pete’s work on his terms, and by that I have no doubt done him a great disservice.

But I have also approached his text on my own terms, and however non-philosophical my bent, I am left wondering how a real theology, a theology of the cross attends more fully and more immediately, and would be apprehended more readily by others. For the Church as it exists already carries within large segments of itself an understanding of the theologia crucis. Luther clearly observed and questioned how Christians would rather go to Easter Sunday for an experience of the theologia gloriae, bypassing the need to experience the cross, and participate in its God-forsakenness. Such theologies of the cross are readily available to us, are already part of much of contemporary church life, and are more akin to that which Bonhoeffer was building upon. Pete’s work would have been more compelling for me, if it at least gave greater nod to the Church’s theologies of the cross, especially those that attend to Bonhoeffer’s work, having invoked Bonhoeffer. Or at least the philosophy within those theologies. For there is a confessional Christian faith in which incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and parousia, are able to attend to the false comforts of religion, whilst allowing us the comfort of a real person to know and experience in Jesus.

If the idea of embracing doubt, mystery, and question are new to the faith of any of Pete’s readers, then his work may re-assure them (no pun intended) that such experience is deeply Christian. But I am suggesting that they then turn to the larger Church, and explore how that experience has been readily available and reflected upon for our apprehension. Such apprehension might be more easily retrieved from that location, than a complete overturning of the Church. And by that I am not saying that much that passes as the Church and Christian doesn’t need overturning!

As I conclude, I find that Pete’s work has forced me to (i) explore the philosophical dimension of some my own theologies, to be (ii) reminded (again) of the need to consider Bonhoeffer in my own ecclesial re-formulations, and (iii) the place of the cross at the centre of my Christian experience. Thank you.

As I finished reading Insurrection, I wondered if Pete’s latest work reveals most of all, the nature of his work as his own autobiography; as do most authors in their writing—as I know I do. Insurrection is perhaps best read as Pete’s escape from his own churched cages of Christian certitude and the theologia gloriae that bypassed the cross. It might become yours too as you read it.

And it is there that I find myself, despite deeply different theological convictions to Pete, with much in common. My own story of finding an experience of the cross, with my own apprehension of doubt, mystery, and question as central to my Christian life has taken and continues to take place. I have had and continue to have my own ‘dark night of the soul’.

Pete writes, ‘in crucifixion we are brought to a place in which we see the full weight of anxiety bearing down upon us without anything that would shield us’.[14] I am wiling or at least wanting to reject all the ‘religion’ that would shield me from the experience of the cross of Christ. Yet Pete’s writing left me with a feeling that he has replaced one theologia gloriae with another; of human reason and existential experience that takes the place of experiencing the Cross.

I wonder that when Pete and I talk about the cross (which we have in the real time and space of a worship service), that whilst I thought I was talking about Jesus, Pete thought I was only talking about myself.


[1] Church in the Present Tense, McKnight, Rollins, Corcoran, Clark, Baker Academic, 2011.
[2]Insurrection, xiii.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., xiv.
[5] ibid.
[6] Ibid., xv.
[7] Ibid., xii.
[8] Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 187.
[9] Ibid., p. 205.
[10] Insurrection, p 123.
[11] Ibid., p168.
[12] Ibid., p123.
[13] Ibid/, p123.
[14] Ibid., p112.

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“Insurrection” Book Symposium – Rollins’s Response to Clark

by on Monday, November 7, 2011 · 72 Comments



The symposium on Peter Rollin’s Insurrection has been a really great exchange so far. Katharine Moody engaged with Pete’s work helpfully on the level of philosophy, bringing Pete’s work further into conversation with one of his main influences, Slavoj Zizek. Jason Clark’s review approached Pete’s work from a pastoral perspective, offering some challenging reflections on Pete’s work with respect to situating Pete in relation to historical and confessional theology. Pete’s response to Clark is below. You can read more about Pete and his work at his website. Thanks for all the interaction in the comments. With this post, the Symposium concludes, but can the conversation can continue with your comments.

Ten Thousand Angels Are Not Enough: Reflections on Jason Clark’s Review

I appreciate the concerns that Jason raises in his reflection on Insurrection and will try to address what I take to be his main criticism. Before doing so however I just want to push back on one minor point. Jason seems frustrated that I make certain generalisations. But I am not so sure that this is, in and of itself, a problem. When one wishes to make observations concerning some underlying structural reality manifested in the historically concrete, one explicitly does this. We do not carry around maps the size of the territory we are seeking to explore. They are scaled down and, as such, miss the vast majority of minor, insignificant details. The purpose of the map is to accurately portray the information needed to get to where you want to go.

The issue then is not that I make generalisations (even multi-volume texts on specific parts of church history do that), but whether the generalisations are accurate descriptions of underlying structural tendencies.

So what are my generalisations? In brief the primary one is that there are two broad tendencies in the church today - either we find communities that explicitly treat God as a garniture of meaning (our faith gives us a way of understanding the world and our place within it, God acts as a being who offers happiness, satisfaction and bliss, i.e., is treated like a product etc.) - or we are free to question the idea of God as garniture of meaning while the liturgical structure we participate in continues to treat God in this way (thus acting as a type of security blanket). The map I draw won’t, of course, be a 1:1 of the territory it describes. The question rather is whether it puts its finger on a virtually ubiquitous underlying reality (and here, unlike elsewhere, I think I stand very close to the late Bonhoeffer). I then go on to try and show why this notion of God is problematic and how we might create collectives where the liturgical structure draws us into an encounter with our own brokenness.

Let us now consider what seems to be Jason’s main concern. He makes the case that I do not pay enough heed to the confessional theological tradition, that I am not interested in the historical context of the theological terms I employ and that I reduce central Christological claims to mere existential events. If we were to go head to head on these issues I would like to tease the claims out a little more and push back a bit. However, to a greater or lesser degree, I can agree with his assessment. My interest in this book (though not my sole theological interest) is to explore the existential import of Christianity (the subjective in Kierkegaard’s sense – meaning the way that its transforms our subjectivity).

An analogy might help to elucidate what I mean. If I am an analyst and someone comes to me to talk about their memories, dreams and fantasies I do not ask myself whether or not they are historically accurate descriptions of empirically observable situations. Rather I delve into the meaning they have for the individual. Together we explore their subjective significance. This does not mean that I judge them to be false in some objective way. Rather the question of historicity is bracketed out so that we can concentrate on the meaning and power of what is being discussed. I would, if I had space, argue that this type of approach to the faith is an eminently theological project and that if one wants to talk about the historical claims of Christianity a better person to dialogue with would be a well-trained archaeologist or historian.

To make his point Jason quotes me saying that God is not someone we directly encounter and thus not one we directly experience. His point, if I understand correctly, is that I am not interested in the objective reality of God, even rejecting the idea completely. As an aside the statement that he quotes can actually be seen as a rather orthodox one (there are many places throughout the Bible that speak of humans not being able to directly encounter God, let alone the ideas of God as found in the midst of service to the other). But the point that I am making (which he does not refer to) is not primarily related to this. Rather I am presenting the idea that the notion of “rebirth” does not, properly understood, actually describe an experience but rather the transformation of how we experience everything (just as one does not experience birth, for birth is what opens one up to experience).

This takes me to the heart of why I am interested in bracketing out the debates that saturate the popular arena of religious debate. To understand this let me take the example of the rabbi of Gur that I employ in The Fidelity of Betrayal. The story goes that during the Second World War he escaped from Germany and met with Winston Churchill to talk about the Nazi war machine. The story goes that this rabbi said, “there are two ways in which the Nazis could be stopped: the natural and the supernatural. The natural solution would involve 10,000 angels with flaming swords descending upon Germany. The supernatural would involve 10,000 Englishmen parachuting down from the sky.”

The point is that is if 10,000 angels with flaming swords descended upon Germany this would be a natural event. In other words these angels would act like other objects in the world; they would be seen, heard, and experienced. These angels would exist within space and time like every other object.

In contrast, the rabbi speaks of a supernatural response, namely 10,000 British soldiers descending in parachutes. Here the rabbi is hinting at a deep change in the hearts of the British that would precipitate such a drastic response. This change, for the rabbi, would be deeply supernatural because the change itself would not be something that could be captured in a laboratory or measured by reference to some purely utilitarian calculation. Unlike the descent of warrior angels, this change would not lend itself to be approached as a natural object to be reflected upon; it would not be made manifest to the senses but indirectly testified to in certain actions.

This no more excludes the possibility of phenomenon being influenced by something outside a closed system of cause and effect than it affirms them. Rather the point is that physical changes are natural insomuch as they take place in the natural realm. In contrast conversation on a miracle worthy of the name does not register it as an object that can be recorded and beamed around the world but rather refers to an event so radical that while nothing need change in the physical world nothing remains the same for the one who undergoes it.




Thursday, May 31, 2012

Walter Brueggemann – of Prophets and Poets


I've often wondered why the term poet has become so popular amongst bloggers and preachers this past year, especially since poetry seems so overlooked and little appreciated by Western civilization's need for making everything practical and utilitarian. You see this in the art expressed and in the music we listen to. It comes out in what we have time for and what we spend our time at (mostly shopping, I think). Everything must make money; must make us look or feel beautiful or energized; get us to a place of personal impowerment or importance; and generally, serve the purpose of a consumerist culture valuing things and money over people and life's deeper hiddenness.

Curiously, the term prophet has also been linked with the term poet which seems unusual, and again, I stop and ask "why." Was there something about a prophet that made him/her a great poet? Were they lyricists at heart or simply reactionaries who hated what they saw around them (or hated what they saw people were turning into because they were turning towards ideas and values less than godly? Less than what they thought humanity should be about?). Were they yesterday's vociferous voices startling society with words and perceptions largely unwanted and biting with acute observations? Or simply unpleasant types that didn't know how to be around with people and craving personal attention by saying and doing startling things?

Most poets I've read (because I can't say that I really know any poets personally, rare as they seem to be in today's society) appear to be placid types. Romantic, or cynical, but really not driven by a need for singular attention and fame. And the few angry poets I've read (whom always seem to be really good writers but not too healthy to constantly be reading... at least for me) strike me as writing for cathartic effect. That is, it is a way to find a kind of personal balance, health and growth, from the things that have angered them caused by earlier tragedies and severe losses and injustices done to them in this life. But I really don't think of a poet as a prophet, nor of a prophet as a poet, until you start linking the insight behind the poet's eyes and souls with the same insight that drives the prophet... each are passionate though one writes and the other proclaims. They are neither introverts or extroverts but both and none and all. So it kind of makes sense to place the categories together if only to tell society to listen again to the poets and prophets around us whom we ignore, whom we isolate with our biting sarcasm, or overlook because we don't really wish to hear what they have to say to us. To our lives. To our activities and enjoyments. To the way we think. And what we wish to believe or ignore. We prefer to shut them out, close the book, click to the next scintillating Internet page (or Facebook tidbit), and think about less upsetting things (or more amusing amusements).

And so, belatedly, I have stumbled upon the origin of the interrelation of the terms poet and prophet's revival through Walter Brueggemann's* book titles and discussions of the same from many years ago. It seems that he is the instigator for so much of this talk and discussion. We have him therefore to blame.... And being a writer of poetry myself (however humble my efforts and unappreciated its literary nature) I find my interest doubly peaked when hearing a theologian of Brueggemann's statue speaking of prophetic vision and poetry in the same vein. Or, of mixing the categories so that I begin to think of poetic prophets and prophetic poets (which isn't necessarily true of most poets I suppose with the kinds of contemporary poetry I've read; but then again, perhaps it is and my definitions should stretch a bit more to allow it, or my perceptions must re-attune themselves to see it). But I especially like a poet who gets to the discovery of life's divinity and holiness and begins to interweave its majesty - or hellish delves - into the fabric of our societal clothing and begins to rearrange the hems and styles so that it wears upon our fancy a bit longer. Perhaps pushes a button here, stitches a flash of colouring there, surprises with a rise, or a drop, of material, to help us see again what we have missed in the meaningless busyness of our days and nights, our mornings and evenings, breakfasts and dinner times. Pointing out in subtle ways - or loudly! - what we have missed, that might make us better men and women, fathers and mothers, administrators and helpers, servers and leaders. More loving, more kind, more tolerant. Less judgemental, less condemnatory, less harsh towards those different from ourselves. More at peace and less at war and strife with each other and our own pettiness and faults. More helpful and caring, compassionate and insightful. Poetry can do that... and so can a good prophet when we give them a chance.

And so, lest we miss God's blessings and contritions of heart to the unexamined word and life of obedience to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ I wish to again present W. Brueggemann's vision for the church and the life of its contrition to its Christian followers for our examination, edification, exhortation, and example. There never seems to have been a time in humanity when God has expelled His poets and prophets from service, and so we should not think that that godly task of the Holy Spirit is less in vogue today. I would rather argue that it is more needed now than ever before. And to those poets and/or prophets who are in our midst around us, do not give up. Speak out as only God has gifted you in the service of His word and by the power of His Spirit-filled ministry.

R.E. Slater
May 31, 2012

My thanks to Mason Slater (yes, he is my cousin's oldest son) for his insight and appreciation for Brueggemann's words and vision for the Church in the related article below. I am comforted to see the younger generation take up the task of dispensing God's word to their day and generation. May the Holy Spirit continue to gift you and give you voice.

*Walter Brueggemann is the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. A past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, he is one of today's preeminent interpreters of Scripture.


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Walter Brueggemann – of Prophets and Poets
http://masonslater.com/2012/05/25/walter-brueggemann-of-prophets-and-poets/

Mason Slater
May 25, 2012

Earlier this week fellow blogger Carson T. Clark posted a link to an NPR Interview with Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann.

In it he speaks on the role of the Biblical prophets.
The people we later recognize as prophets, says Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, are also poets. They reframe what is at stake in chaotic times.
It’s an excellent interview and an accessable introduction to the work of a brilliant scholar.

Brueggemann’s writing (along with scholars like Goldingay and Walton) has served to breath new life into my own reading of the Old Testament, much as N.T. Wright and others have re-shaped my reading of the New Testament.

If you are interesed in engaging with his work on the prophets and the theology of the Old Testament, I would recommend beging with the classic The Prophetic Imagination and then taking time to wrestle with the more contemporarily focused Out of Babylon.

Grace and peace.



THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION

In this challenging and enlightening treatment, Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Here he traces the broad sweep from Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus. He highlights that the prophetic vision and not only embraces the pain of the people but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing. In this new edition, Brueggemann has completely revised the text, updated the notes, and added a new preface.

Publ. June 2001



OUT OF BABYLON

Explores the Old Testament's prophetic cry against materialism, consumerism, violence, and oppression.

Publ. Oct 2010









The people we later recognize as prophets, says Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, are also poets. They reframe what is at stake in chaotic times. Hear a very special voice in conversation to address our changing lives and the deepest meaning of hope this Christmas season. (12.22.11)



Listen to NPR's Interview





Saturday, February 18, 2012

Humanity Is Not Defined By "Militarism" and "Consummerism"


Amazon Link

A classic text in biblical theology--still relevant for today and tomorrow.

In this 40th anniversary edition of the classic text from one of the most influential biblical scholars of our time, Walter Brueggemann, offers a theological and ethical reading of the Hebrew Bible. He finds there a vision for the community of God whose words and practices of lament, protest and complaint give rise to an alternative social order that opposes the "totalism" of the day.

Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Linking Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus, he argues that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people, but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing.

This edition builds off the revised and updated 2001 edition and includes a new afterword by Brueggemann and a new foreword by Davis Hankins.

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On “the War” and “the Economy”

by Mason Slater
February 16, 2012


Sometimes I think that American politics is simply a mechanism for finding one hundred different ways to promise the same thing.

Yes, there are differences between the various candidates for president, and the two main parties, but lately it has seemed to me that those differences are greatly exaggerated.

Points of dissimilarity, such as their stance on defining marriage or who gets which tax cuts, are pushed to the front to obscure the fact that they are all just offering us variations on the same narrative.

Almost every candidate, and the party platforms of both Republicans and Democrats, promise us year after year that they will grow the economy and secure America’s “special place in the world,” which is of course a not-so-subtle reference to our continued military superiority.

And this sounds right to us because we have convinced ourselves that our narrative, nationally and personally, is defined by consumption and war – what Walter Brueggemann calls “therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism” in The Practice of Prophetic Imagination.

Consumerism and militarism have come to play such an essential and interconnected role in the American story that Wendell Berry can justifiably refer to them in terms of impersonal forces, The War and The Economy, in his novel Jayber Crow.
The War and The Economy were seeming more and more to be independent operations. The War, I thought, was just the single Hell that is always astir in the world…And the nations were always preparing funds of weapons and machines and people to be used up whenever The War did break out in full force, which meant that sooner or later it would … Also, it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related…The War was good for the Economy.”
We’ve decided that economic advancement at any and all costs, and America’s military superiority over any and all rivals, are worthwhile goals that somehow increase our peace, strengthen our communities, and advance the common good.

But instead we have unending wars and a whole “security” industry in our airports and public spaces, disintegrating communities from urban centers to the rural farmlands, and the shrinking of the “greater good” to nothing more than our collective ability to consume more year after year.

People are made for more than this, war and consumption may be parts of the human experience but they are not the most important parts. Such a view reduces our humanity, ignoring our souls, our loves, our neighborhoods, our environment, our art, our virtues and vices, our story.

As Gospel people shouldn’t we be offering a political vision of what it means that Jesus-is-Lord that is more than just a baptism of Right or Left wing promises of economic growth and national security?



Wednesday, February 15, 2012

What do we mean by the word Literal?


by Mason Slater
February 15, 2012

Suggesting that “I just read the Bible literally” is often used as a trump card in debates, especially over issues like differing interpretations of the Genesis narratives or apocalyptic literature like Revelation. The assumption being made is that one person is taking the text seriously – literally – while the other is twisting it to fit their theological agenda.

I’ve seen this play out in pop-theology quite often, and even promoted as the only faithful hermeneutic for approaching the Scriptures by some theologians. But even though it has a certain surface level appeal, I’ve come to believe this is an inherently problematic way to frame the issue. For one thing, it often takes for granted that a “literal” reading that is obvious to us in the 21st century would be anything like how the original readers would have understood the text; for another it begs the question what do we mean by “literal” in the first place?

In this clip from BioLogos N.T. Wright and Peter Enns discuss the term literal, and how interpreting the Biblical text might not be quite that simple.






Monday, January 23, 2012

Homosexuality: Paul and the Narrative of God's Love


I would refer the reader to this blog journal's sidebar Gay Rights and Marriage for additional discussions on homosexuality. I especially found helpful Justin Lee's interview on "A Gay Christian Responds to Christ and Culture."  Meanwhile, I hope to shortly begin following the Jesus/Paul blog tour by Daniel Kirk but am submitting here Mason Slater's review of one of Kirk's chapter's that continually needs highlighting as we go forward with the Gospel of Christ into all the world.

R.E. Slater
January 21, 2012

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Paul, Homosexuality, and a Narrative of Love
http://masonslater.com/2012/01/19/paul-homosexuality-and-a-narrative-of-love/

by Mason Slater
January 19, 2012


“A Christian culture dominated by believing the right things about Jesus too often forgets that believing in Christ and walking in love are inseparable. In this case, followers of Jesus have too often forgotten that articulating a position on homosexuality does not in itself answer the questions: What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor as myself? What does it look like for me to do unto my homosexual neighbor as I would have done to myself?”
For quite a while now Daniel Kirk’s Storied Theology has been one of my favorite blogs [really, you should be bookmarking it now, I’ll wait], so I was excited to learn he was going to share some of his work in narrative theology and Pauline studies in the book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? and agreed straight away when I was asked to participate in this blog tour.

The chapter I’m reflecting on is “Homosexuality Under the Reign of Christ” No easy task, as this is proving to be one of the most difficult issues facing the church today.

Daniel starts by laying out what the biblical text says about homosexuality, and honestly it’s not that much – far less than one would assume when you consider how much evangelicals in particular have tended to obsess over the issue.

Granted, what is said is uniformly negative, but even that is less straightforward than it might first appear. The infamous “abomination” line in Leviticus for example is hardly usable in current debates, as it comes in the midst of a whole list of other national laws that we no longer consider relevant, including another “abomination,” eating unclean foods (so next time you see someone eating a cheeseburger, haul out the protest signs).

The New Testament statements, almost exclusively from Paul, come in the midst of vice lists that lay out a classically Jewish diatribe against practices that are seen as the symptoms of paganism and idolatry. They do indeed portray homosexual acts in a negative light, a fact which Daniel insists we refuse to brush aside, but there is more going on linguistically and hermeneutically than we often want to admit.

So we are left with a picture of the Biblical testimony that is far more nuanced, and gives no justification for singling out homosexuality as somehow different or worse than any other sexual sin, but is still essentially negative.

Where do we go from there?

In the aside “Arguing for Homosexual Practice,” which is directed at those who affirm homosexuality either for textual reasons or because they believe the Spirit is doing something new in our day, Kirk suggests that if you take this path it must go hand in hand with the Biblical narrative of fidelity and lifelong commitment. So that GLBT affirming churches should at the same time fight against the cultural trends towards easy divorce and casual hookups.

But the real thesis of the chapter, the theme that (rightly I think) trumps everything else, is love.

Central to our calling as Christians is love of others, and it is here that much of the church has failed spectacularly in its approach towards the GLBT community.

Jesus sums up the entire law with “Love the Lord your God with all your … and, love your neighbor as yourself” and then when asked who this neighbor might be, Jesus tells a parable which turns all the audience’s expectations upside-down and shows a hated outsider as more faithfully following the way of Jesus than the religious insiders.
“No clearer story could be told to show us that our predilection for keeping our love restricted to ourselves runs counter to the way of Jesus. When we restrict our love to those who roughly fall within the boundaries of those who are living lives pleasing to God, or when we use biblical regulations as reasons for excluding ourselves from the duty of providing for a person in need, we violate the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.”
Daniel continues by bringing this story to bear on the discussion of homosexuality,
“the homosexual is the Christian’s neighbor, and Christian’s duty is to love homosexuals as ourselves. If the result of our biblical convictions is that we stand on the streets with “God Hates Fags” signs, we are not holding a Christian position but are using a Christian idea to prop up our rebellion against the life that Jesus calls us to.”
So what does it look like to love our homosexual neighbor as ourselves? The last few pages of the chapter wrestle with that admittedly complex question. I won’t delve into specifics at the moment, but the general thrust is this – is it loving the GLBT community as we would want to be loved if we deny them rights that we would never want others to deny to us?

We’ve failed miserably in our treatment this group of people, but the Christian narrative of love and self sacrifice might just point a way forward.

Daniel begins this chapter with a quote from Love, Love, Love






*Baker sent me a free copy of this book as a participant in the blog tour – no stipulations were made on the content of my review, but if you think I can be bought off with free books then this information might be relevant to you. And with that I think I’ve fulfilled my FTC obligations.*



Friday, January 13, 2012

Blinded to the Real Issues

Theological Comfort Foods

by Mason Slater
January 12, 2012

Over the holidays I read through For Calvinism and Against Calvinismby Michael Horton and Roger Olson respectively. Both authors were thoughtful, persuasively argued for their given position, and showed a rare level of graciousness towards their theological opponents. You could hardly ask for better guides if you are set on wrestling with the theology of Calvinism.

I couldn’t help but think, however, that the entire Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate increasingly seems like a sort of theological comfort food.

 
It’s a foray into a classic argument with well worn arguments, nostalgic turns of phrase, famous theologians, and most importantly everyone is playing by more-or-less the same rules. We know this argument, and although it may seem intractable, that is almost a part of the charm now as the two Titans battle it out endlessly in college dorms, classrooms, pulpits, and pews.

That predictability, that comfort in the familiar, draws us in and reminds us of simpler days. Because, no matter how heated it gets, the history of the Calvinist and Arminian debate usually plays out by a well defined set of rules and keeps us far from the troubling questions raised in contemporary debates over evolution, sexuality, the New Perspective (or post-New Perspective), postmodernism, and gender roles: questions like “What sort of book is the Bible actually?” or “How do we go about reading the text after assuming for so long our lens is objective when it has now proved to be anything but?” or even “What does it mean to take the Bible seriously in its historical context and narrative instead of seeing it as a repository of timeless doctrines?”

Those questions of contextualization and hermeneutics, raised by everyone from N.T. Wright to Christian Smith, play out in every area of theology and are some of the most pressing discussions facing the church today.

One glance down that path and it is easy to see the potential for it to lead towards a significant rethinking of many areas of theology, and so, wary of even beginning, we revert to the comfort of bashing the heartless Calvinists or theologically inept Arminians – because they’re not really the enemy, just the opposing team in a game we’d really prefer to keep playing.

In other words, it is theological comfort food.



continue to -
 
 
 




 

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Testimonial: "I Used to be a Calvinist"


by David Nilsen
November 18, 2011

Today’s guest post is by my friend David Nilsen. His blog, The Screaming Kettle, is consistently excellent, and I’ve found in his writing a story that is very much like my own.

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I used to be a Calvinist. Now I’m not. If you know anything about theology, you know I just told one of the world’s shortest complete stories.

I am a rational thinker. I love math and science and lists and organized categories. So it’s obvious looking back that at the point at which I encountered Calvinism as an adult, the key fit the lock. I had begun meeting weekly with the new worship pastor at our church, and one week we got into the classic argument about sovereignty and free will. We raised our voices. I told him it wasn’t fair. He told me it didn’t matter. I hardly slept for weeks.

I would lay in bed staring at the ceiling trying desperately to make the lines connect in such a way that God would still be just for doing this. I wrestled with the ideas in my head trying to make the lines connect. I crunched the numbers and erased them when they didn’t add up until suddenly, late one night, they did. I can’t remember what the epiphany was, but I had gotten the math to work, and God was still good. I was suddenly a Calvinist, and I saw the world with new eyes. In the words of one young Calvinist I know, I had experienced “second salvation”.

If you’ve ever radically changed your theology as an adult, you know the heady rush that comes with that new perspective. The weeks and months that follow are like putting your mouth to an open fire hydrant – there is so much to take in and you want it all. Calvinism was beautiful to me. It provided a perfect system of answers that left no room for ambiguity. Every doctrine had a place in the house Paul built. You could almost run your hands along them like the clean boards of a new shelf.

I made a good Calvinist, and for the eighteen months it stuck. I’m not afraid of confrontation and I grasp systems easily, so as soon as I was convinced I began convincing others. I was leading the young adults ministry at our church at that point, and I taught Habakkuk, Ruth and all six Post-Exile books from a Calvinist perspective, which is not easy, let me tell you.

We attended New Attitude in early 2007, the twentysomethings conference put on by Sovereign Grace Ministries. Speakers included Mark Dever, Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney and John Piper. Three thousand young people, each as restless and reformed as the next, packed into the convention center in Louisville, Kentucky for four days of worship, sermons, prayer and discussion. My wife and I went by ourselves but were quickly taken in by an amazing group of people from a church in another state.

They invited us to their hotel for meals, welcomed us into their group for prayer and fellowship, and in every way showed the love of Jesus to us. Even now, after abandoning not only Calvinism but Biblical inerrancy, creationism, complimentarianism and all the other trappings of reformed evangelicalism, that weekend still stands out to me as one of the truest experiences of Christian community I have ever known. Their hearts were full of love and thirsty for beauty; that they’ve maintained both in the face of Calvinism is a mystery to me, but I am grateful for them.

Calvinism was amazing right until it wasn’t. It was about a year before every last spark of joy evaporated from my spiritual life, and it happened rapidly. At the time I thought it was just a dry spell, but it wouldn’t go away. God seemed absent not only from my time in prayer but from the pages of Scripture. I couldn’t figure it out. I hadn’t fallen into sin, I was being faithful in my reading and prayer, I was holding to truth. I was crossing every T, dotting every i. I couldn’t figure it out.

Looking back I earnestly believe it was the mercy of God. I had grabbed hold of what I perceived as Truth so tightly it had died and turned to dust in my hands, and the way I looked at God and his work in the world was mathematical and cold. I hadn’t done it on purpose, but I had turned God into a logical computer and the Bible into a code book. Calvinism provided all the answers, which had always seemed like the point of faith. I hadn’t yet realized that life was found in the questions. And [...] the questions didn’t come.

After six months of the total absence of joy and passion in my spiritual life, I had the space to begin asking hard questions. The gears and pulleys of my theology had been greased early on with the enthusiasm of new discovery, but that grease had worn away, the machine had seized, and I could finally get in and look at how it worked. I hated what I found. If what I had believed was true, God was not good. It felt like I was seeing the man behind the curtain [sic, The Wizard of Oz], and he was a very bad wizard. I was stuck for a time in the terrifying place of still thinking Calvinism was true, but believing God was a monster if it was.

It’s an awful thing to have to question the goodness of God. In fact, in the couple years that followed the collapse of my faith system, the only thing I felt I could hold onto was that God was good. I refused to let that go even when everything seemed to indicate the opposite. I couldn’t get my mind around how God could be acquitted of great guilt if He really worked the way the Calvinists said, but I refused to accept that He was less than Love. My daily prayer was God, I believe you are good, but I can’t see how. Help me see how. And slowly, painfully, he freed my heart from the weight of the doctrines I had chained to it, and chained to him.

The last several years have been a time of rediscovering joy and freedom. I no longer believe God works in the cold manner I had assigned to him. And I no longer believe he requires me to solve for x in some doctrinal equation in order to know him. I have a head full of questions now, but my heart is far more at peace than when I thought I had all the answers.

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David Nilsen is a writer from Greenville, Ohio. He loves good coffee and beer, deep talks that keep him up too late, books and snobby films. He’s been married to Lyndie for ten years this January, and has a four year old daughter who is already asking questions about God he doesn’t know how to answer. He blogs at http://homekettle.wordpress.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @DNilsenKettle.