R.E. Slater - Radical Reflections on God, Faith, and the Bible

I hear too many Christians say that God's Spirit has left this world. I hear too many Christians looking forward to Jesus's coming in militaristic power and authoritarian judgment. But the doctrine of insistence says God has never left this world. That His Spirit has doubled-down in His death on the Cross. That His resurrection was not so simply b-a-c-k to heaven but into the very sub-structures of this world and into humanity's desperate plights. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit in this world is now more evident than ever despite what we preferred to see of its evils and atrocities. There is a global resistance to evil even as evil continues it's strife against mankind. The doctrine of insistence says God's Spirit and presence will persist against evil and that He will be all that He is becoming. Even so Lord, become all that you must be in our midst.

R.E. Slater

July 17, 2016

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The emerging God is the evolving God. God's manifestations unfold in human

understanding through time, marking territory along the way. This is highly

noticeable in the biblical text, which can be referred to as an evolving story,

where the Creator speaks, the Crucified and Risen One takes center stage, and

then the Spirit signs us towards a destiny with God, which will someday be

fully realized.

- Reflections for the Week of July 18 by Living Spirituality

I can fully agree with the above reflection in the process sense and in the evolving (non-inerrant) bible sense.

Both God Himself, along with our understanding of God, is evolving through time and history - as would be natural as societies develop and God's experience evolves in relation to mankind's societal evolution.

As examples, when reading Israel's tribal laws from Leviticus or the Deuteronmic legal code it feels like we're reading Sharia (Islamic) law more concerned with cultural/community purity than love or compassion. But when Jesus comes along many, many generations later to reinterpret these sections the religious crowd doesn't like it. Nor did Paul who persecuted Christians for years before coming to the Jesus view of scriptures.

What this means is that we are allowed as we grow older to change our minds and attitudes from those early Sunday school days of youth and instruction as we gain maturity and wisdom. That it's not enough to "know" the Bible from a religious sense but to understand it from a contemporary  (Jesus) perspective. That our understanding of the bible changes with societies and their evolvement with one another.

As another contemporary example, to accept evolution should be more helpful than it present is to Christians too easily upset in their faith and traditions when considering this science (sic, cf. Christian anti-science proponents such as Ken Hamm et al).

Or, to understand that biblical passages do fall in the literary genre of narrative story telling should be a helpful observation rather than the need to legalistically codify biblical passages into strict doctrines of belief (the genre of biblical myths and legends versus literalistic interpretation).

By these examples we can see that a faith maturity requires energy and work and sometimes, if not many times, failure, doubt, uncertainty, disappointment, suffering, and intense struggle. Without these blessings-in-disguise God and His Word will never make sense to us. Nor can we evolve and mature in our religious thinking as contemporary witnesses to God's majesty and glory. Rather, we miss God completely within our traditions requiring a Jesus-figure to come along and point out to us that "there is another way of hearing and understanding God."

R.E. Slater

July 18, 2016

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“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way

through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that

democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

- Issac Asimov

I've said before and will say again, "Ignorance, though blissful, is always illusionary." 

Especially in a Christian culture more willing to believe what it believes than to critically examine those beliefs perpetuating ignorance and myth.

Harsh? Yes.

True? Yes as well.

And don't suppose apology is the answer to critical thinking. It isn't. It is a defensive response to rebutting proper criticism in order to comfort the supporters wishing to continue in errant beliefs. 

Thus the dissonance of the world with the church and the church's banal belief it is always being persecuted for its beliefs.

Or for falsely believing God's Spirit is abandoning the world as He prepares it for judgment when in fact He is abandoning the church for its harshness and uncompassionate religious zeal.

So to listen to church folk trying to reinforce their religious beliefs is quite problematic in a scientific era which rightly questions staid church doctrine.

The truth is you won't lose your God or your faith by critiquing either.

In fact, quite the contrary.

Both God and faith will be enriched and expanded in the discovery of conflict and abandonment of unbiblical church doctrine more commonly described as folk religion or religious dogma than it is good doctrine.

R.E. Slater

July 19, 2016

Emergent, Postmodern Theology's Resurrection of Christian Orthodoxy

Horace Bushnell was a 19th century evangelical theologian who strayed between the lines of conservative evangelicalism and the neo-orthodoxy of 20th century yet to come. As such, some would claim Bushnell's theology as too "liberal," which I think confuses his legacy with what it really was... a precursor to early neo-orthodoxy.

In many ways Bushnell was a good illustration of a theologian who was burden for his generation's biblical literacy and worked faithfully at pushing the contemporary boundaries of biblical thought from both sides of the floor - attempting as he might to "fill the gap" between evangelical Protestantism and Liberal Theology. For his effort he was loved by the Congregational churches of his day and defamed by others both right and left of his contemporary positions.

Here at Relevancy22 we too are attempting to speak to the contemporary issues of the 21st century created by the gaps between present day conservative evangelicalism and neo-liberal theology pulling at each end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. With the advent of Karl Barth and other neo-orthodox theologians during the middle of the 20th century the bar has been set, and reset, multiple times in a continuing balancing act to speak to the Scriptures faithfully pertaining to the issues confronting the church of the modernistic era (an era birthed in the Enlightenment some 200 years ago). Some tell of themselves as progressive evangelics; others as progressive (as vs. mainstream) denominationalists, some as neo-Anabaptists, neo-Lutherans, neo-Catholics, and so forth.

Thus, to avoid confusion (and perhaps create a little bit more!), we have adopted the term of Emerging Christians who presently are undertaking directional  discourse and studies for determining what an Emergent, Postmodern Theology can mean to Christianity today. Which is not unlike the similar undertaking once found in Bushnell's early efforts of speaking a more progressive, perhaps even a neo-orthodox, message of Christ as the church's theology waggled between the conservative and liberal issues and doctrines of its day.

Hence, this blogsite here is an instance of the dozens of names and organizations - both old and new - each attempting to bridge the moderating gap between divisive modernistic forces. Between forces fighting to remain staid and irrelevant, wishing for the grand old days of 19th Century Enlightenment, against other Christian voices and groups equally desiring to push beyond today's old timey pulpiteering rhetoric to the undiscovered lands of postmodernistic opportunities and renewing Christian witness. And sometimes too far, beyond biblical reach and the orthodox understanding of theology.

And while this author here of Relevancy22 has shown time-and-again how Emergent Theology itself can stand within this middling ground of mediation, some would say that it is not so, accusing Emergent Theology as too liberal. As unbiblical. As dishonoring to Christ and His Word. While proponents to the left would go too far, speaking in the more liberal tones of Continental Philosophy and Theology, of revisionist church history, of describing the person and work of Jesus in humanistic overtones. Blithely preaching redressed Christian heresies obdurately unaware of their theological divide with past Christian orthodoxy. An orthodoxy that needs renewing. That needs a Postmodern resurrection out of its overlong modernistic grave. Into this scenario has come an Emergent, Postmodern Theology to temper the fires both right and left of the Gospel of Christ (an impossible task that seems doubtful at best to accomplish!). A theology attempting to bring solidarity to the church of God fractured in its divisional exuberances and heighten revisioning for the world as it struggles to determine what this Age of Postmodernism means to its doctrinces, dogmas, practices and ministries.

At Relevancy22 we have attempted to take the middling road between what is truly biblical without becoming obtusely mired in Evangelicalism's ideological dogmas - nor uncritical of Emergent Christianity's fanning flames for Jesus fraught with their own passions and historical revisionisms. It is true, that Emergent Theology does think-and-feel differently from that of its conservative Evangelical, and Progressive Denominational, neighbours, through no fault of its own. Nor should Emergent Christianity and its developing theology be jettisoned because of past popular Evangelical mis-statements, nor because of the exuberances of its over-zealous proponents seeking to defend their beliefs. And yet ultimately, Emergent Christianity wishes to speak to the loss masses of humanity that is unhindered by Evangelical stereotypes and its modernistic excesses (sic, its business culture for one, and consumerist mindset, as another) using Emergent-speak to construct a vision of God's love and reach. A vision that may be non-threatening when spoken from its American, Westernized cultures, and pacific and sympathetic towards Third World countries and cultures.

Hence, Postmodernism has rightfully claimed its illuminating affects upon any Christian thinker wishing to depart modernistic, secular, theologies for a redefined version of a postmodernistic, postsecular Christianity. And in the process uncover infrastructural linkages to their ecclesiological past requiring patient deconstruction (as well as insightful reconstruction) in the name of Jesus. I believe this movement to be led by the divine guidance of God in the renewing effort of Spirit-burdened prayer. Under a fruitful biblical scholarship committed to Scriptural observance while investigating and integrating accumulating, accretive, academic disciplines to the Christian faith. And amassing under the mesmerizing energy of affiliating Emergent believers desperate to share God's redeeming mercy and forgiveness, love and healing, in purity of heart and social common cause. A message that surely must be resurrected and preached by words of action and hearts true.

Consequently, Emergent Theology will be different from Evangelical or, conservative Protestant, Theology. But rightfully so, given its differing era with its differing, viable, postmodern social needs, language, thought-forms, and comportments. While at the same time maintaining an ever faithful allegiance to the Word of God, and to Jesus as Lord and Savior, pitting it against any liberal theologies wishing to apply to it. And from this fiery furnace we will find a God who is redeeming a remnant for His name, purified for His use, and charged with the task of sharing the gospel of Jesus into the many lost worlds of humanity. Grown closer by communication and technology, industry and transportation, expanding trade and finance, growing infrastructures and corresponding energy vacuums. With equally growing ecological realizations to preserve rapidly diminishing resources that are irreplaceable, that require better governance relative to the burgeoning needs both humanitarian and educational, and a vision filled with the rapidly expanding global communities and civilizations of this world in mind.

As such, Relevancy22 is an attempt to lift up the Emergent discussion and theological trajectory in ways that remain true to biblical orthodoxy, while uncoupling itself from past (perhaps, self-sustaining) Evangelical dogmas, folklores, and ideologies. While in its reinvigorated explorations of theological research and application, uncover orthodox theological linkages to the past that can themselves be uplifted into today's postmodern discussions of the Christian Gospel's message and mission. Yes, Emergent Theology will be radical, but it should not be considered as a departure from old-line Christian orthodoxy. But one that is simply a resurrected orthodoxy that is under development and being respoken in postmodern terms.

Lastly, into the contemporary Emergent folds has come its corresponding Evangelical counterpart known as Radical Orthodoxy. Both are postmodern in perspective, and so will be similar in this regard, but with Radical Orthodoxy's introduction seemingly comes the heavy philosophical structure of neo-platonism coupled with the biblical structure of neo-Calvinistic Reformed Theology. Which at this junction limits hermeneutical boundaries to the claims of biblical literalness; prefers the Calvinistic doctrines of God's power (TULIP) over His love (the Arminian DAISY); propounds Evangelic dogmas and practices wishing to hold on to limiting versions about God, humanity, sin, hell, and judgment, gender inequalities, and bigotries; and any number of other contemporary discussions that we have been holding here at Relevancy22 since its inception. As such, we must also research Radical Orthodoxy to its claims and birthrights, directions and purposes.

However, it is the current estimation here that to recover orthodox Christianity does not necessarily mean that we recover evangelical Christianity. As such, we're more in favor of starting anew under a new banner and industry, known as Emergent Christianity, much as a son or daughter begins anew from their family, thanking their parents for their help (or non-help) and pushing on to make their own distinctions and narrative. Such is how we feel here at Relevancy22.

If Evangelicalism wishes at all to be helpful, than let it contribute to their son-and-daughter's spiritual future and not to their spiritual demise. Each may learn of the other as each has much to give. Let us then learn to speak in softer tones of love and grace when books like "Love Wins" would draw out the rancorous religiosity of our spirits and not the humility found in Christ....

And with that let's proceed to Dr. Olson's review of Horace Bushnell, 19th century reformer and theologian, Parts 1, 2+3.

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2013

 

ps... By way of a personal note, I would like to tell of my family's own linkage to the Beechers of Boston, include Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame. As social activists they crusaded against bigotry; human trafficing and slavery; organized for women's suffrage rights; temperance; Darwinian evolution; Chinese immigration into the United States; and, for a number of other urban causes pitting the Gospel's influence over the rights and perogatives of contemporary Christian soothsayers.

 

And it was because of their Congregationalist's beliefs that their heart and timely Bostonian message to the populace of America was one of social reform and the rightful recovery of human dignity. In the Slater tree of ancestry we are glad to part of this continuing effort of the gospel of Christ for the Kingdom of God's resurrection and recovery for human rights and reform, social justice and human dignity.

 

 

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to continue -

 

A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1

(will include this commentary here as an adjoining piece)
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-case-for-progressive-orthodoxy-horace.html


A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Parts 2-3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-case-for-progressive-orthodoxy-horace_8.html

Continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "An Emerging Theology"