How Not to Confuse Christian Evolution with a Naturalistic Worldview

Eternal

The "classic rendering" of an natural worldview can sometimes be described not unlike how Dr. Olson in his article below would like to describe it in his classically arranged set of arguments. These few, shorthand arguments form a thin, summary basis for a much larger, and better versed, set of arguments by many a theologian and philosopher. However, for readers of Relevancy22 (or even the blogsite Biologos), some important/salient points re Christian evolution should very quickly standout:

First, the Christian evolutionist does not, and cannot, entertain a naturalistic worldview. Nor do I think Dr. Olson is saying this of  the Christian evolutionary worldview, though he leaves it unstated. As such, his point is the same one that a Christian evolutionist would make in understanding "life" - and "very creation" itself - as having its beginning point in a Creator God. A God whose is creation's heavenly Author and divine Redeemer within, abroad, and alongside of it. This would be the historically Christian orthodox worldview. But for the naturalist worldview any sense of a God, or divine Creator, will not be part of its philosophical foundations.

Two, a Christian evolutionary worldview must utilize the strictest of scientific methods devoid - as they are - of any "metaphysical" import. This is what makes science "science." One devoid of personal beliefs and ideological conjectures. However, afterwards - at the point of completion and discovery of scientific results - the scientist is then free to personally theorize, or conject, their "worldview" on the matter - be it a naturalistic worldview or that of a Christian one.

Three, a Christian evolutionary worldview must have a teleology or purpose or meaning behind it. Otherwise, by mere definition alone, evolution as a process would be meaningless and devoid of purpose. Curiously, some evolutionary (non-Christian) scientists now think that even within the frameworks of scientific evolution they are beginning to see a teleology within its bones (see here, and here, and here, and the sidebar on "science and teleology" here).

Fourth & Fifth, the idea of evolution as simply being defined as "survival of the fittest" is most fittingly a misnomer preferencing popular folklore over exactness. It belies the strong idea found within evolution of eusociality, or "super-cooperation" (cf, "Eusociality and the Bible," Part 2). What this means is that for the "fit to survive" it will necessitate "cooperation, and even sacrifice, of the fittest for its survival." This important idea would also negate any arguments for altruism except on the grounds of narcissism.

Sixth, unfortunately nihilism seems always to be associated with the idea of evolution... that everything runs "downhill," as it were, towards disunity and destruction. But this would be a misunderstanding of the very idea that evolution upholds... one that would "mutate" towards an ecological efficiency and survival against causation. Thus the reverse is actually more true: "That given the evolutionary construct of the universe, nature will always strive to 'live/survive' in as efficient a manner as possible under any given circumstance of chaos or random disorder."

Moreover, even as "evolution" as a scientific theory was being birthed so too was the philosophical idea of "nihilism" arising from the hotbeds of German Idealism (or Hegelianism). However, an idea like evolution - if it is to survive its detractors and philosophical era - must morph, and progress, in its essence beyond the philosophies of its day. And so, though nihilism is no less true then it is now, nor should it be a sufficient descriptor of evolution as a holistic science even as it was back then.

Seventh, being self-absorbed - or living hedonistically - runs afoul of the principles of eusociality as found within evolution.

Eighth, it has been observed that "humanism is the nihilistic version of evolution" but this is not the Christian idea of evolution, nor even the naturalistic view of evolution. Humanism is simply the preferred idea of some who wish to look at evolution in this shorthanded manner by linking it with nihilism.

For more discussion about "Science and Evolution" please refer to the many sidebar topics under the same title, as well as to the sidebar pertaining especially to "science and religion" which was more recently created to discuss how "religion intersects with science."

The What and Why of Sin

When mentioning nihilism the question of sin arises... just what is it? Why is it? How does it affect the God-ordained process of evolution? Infect it? Disturb it? Or move against God's holy movement of evolutionary creation?

In essence, when creating creation God gave to it chaos and random disorder in His wisdom and mercy. We see this everywhere we look from the macro level (classical physics) to the micro level (quantum physics). From societal relationships with one another to turmoils within ourselves (Romans 5-7). From our relationship with God Himself to even nature itself (ecologically). Everywhere we look there is chaos and disorder. We feel it. We sense it. We move at its behest even as we have learned to live with it. We do not know of a time, a place, nor a relationship, that isn't filled with it until coming to Christ Jesus and finding God's atoning grace through His Son who brings peace to its attenuated disorders in our lives.

However, is this kind of chaotic universe made of God or made of sin? I would submit that it is made of God to His glory and honor and that into its chaos arose sin to conflict its disorders. That death was already present with creation's creation. That we see this in the structure of an atom as a particle moving towards annihilation. But so too was the idea of life present with creation's creation. Because with an atom's annihilation comes rebirth and renewal. That death is the other side of life, even as life is the other side of death. That each requires the other in eternal communion, liveliness, and mutual sustainability.

So then, was this chaotic universe sinful? No. It was what God created. Holy. And that by divine decree by His wont-and-will when there was no sin. And not because of sin. The caveat here is that sin was an unknown thing/principle until the moment of creation's enactment. But when enacted sin too arose. But not at the surprise of an all-knowing Creator. But as a metaphysical reaction to the Creator's imputed liberty that He birthed within the heart of creation. That it was nature's very indeterminacy, even as it was man's very free will, that were the effective causations for sin to arise as a metaphysical principle (and not as an ontologic entity).

From the human perspective, the idea of "choice" is just that... a choice, a decision, a response, as much as is possible within a living entity's effectuating environment, if any such being can have any kind of choice at all against the predilections of his or her's constitution, past background, present circumstances, or future possibilities. And it is here, within this framework, that we may discover a "graduated response" towards either order or disorder (thinking in binary, classical terms). Whether it be divine, human, social, or ecological (or, God-ward, us-ward, other-ward, or creation-ward). Within these relationships rests an infinite number of opportunities to enact goodness and not evil. Love and not hate. Communion and not disunion. Fellowship and not antipathy. In all four areas of creation's sublime relationship to God and itself.

But this thing that we call "sin" would strive against God's "good" creation and be that "force, or principle, or causation, or inaction, or antipathy, or conscious-or-unconscious act, etc," that would remain forever-and-always unsubmitted to God's holy fies and fires. And thus, sin's imprint can be seen or felt in its own disorders, disunions, disturbances, turmoils, restlessness, emptiness, brokenness, etc,... while always resisting a greater sense of peace, satisfaction, restfulness, fulfillment, completeness, or fellowship with God and with itself as a whole.

As such, sin requires God's steady provisioning, nurturing, tending, care, or response of divine redemption to re-enact His aspired fellowship with creation (and creation's fellowship with both itself and its God). It demands an active Creator purposely planning, countering, checkmating, defeating, healing, and redeeming a broken, fallen, unsubmitted creation. That this indeterminate, free willed, creation is a complex set of anticipated junctions or disjunctions that once knew "shalom" (the Jewish concept for "heavenly peace, blessing, and order") at its inception, and at once fell from this divine shalom just as immediately. That is, with liberty came its opposite response of resistence, refusal, bondage, and so on. With union, disunion. With peace, turmoil. With blessing, breakage. With fulfillment, strife.

Why Classic Christianity Must Be Re-Expressed in Postmodern Terms

One of the reasons I write and maintain a reference site such as this is to "uplift" older ideas of Christian orthodoxy to a newer, self-reflective plane of postmodern Christian orthodoxy or, post-evangelical Christian orthodoxy. I am not content to simply quibble over older ideas, or regurgitate them as Christian pander acceptable to most. It is important that today's postmodern Christian understand why the Christian faith must be uplifted unto a higher plane than one of pessimism or popular sentiment. That today's postmodern church must importantly carry forward the exegetical, expository, and philosophical traditions of past Christian orthodoxy in its theological tasks, endeavors, and missional witness.

Fellow Christian brothers like Dr. Olson serve as a helpful springboard in performing this task. His sense of Christian theological history is immense and needs to be profoundly regarded. His, and other well-versed theologian's sentiments, go a long way in helping the church maintain its rightful balance of orthodoxy as versus popular shrift and folklore. So when reading his and other's commentaries and observations it behooves the postmodern Christian to ingest what is being said in order to then uplift those theological thoughts into a postmodern framework of theology that is relevant and renewing of a church wishing to push forward without knowing how, or why, or in what manner, it might accomplish this missional witness.

And thus, to these voices must come other specialist voices that are also biblically grounded. Voices which may also share in the church's experience of redemption while providing updated, relevant, contemporary theologies from a spectrum of ideas that the past historical church could not entertain until this present time in the history of the church. Ideas that will eventually cause Christian orthodoxy to appropriately re-invent itself yet again against a larger stream of witness and discovery, discussion and debate. This is the value of irenic scholarship and a literate church. But it is also a slow, wary process. One requiring a cautious give-and-take between the old and the new. Between tradition and orthodoxy. Between truth and error. And it is into this process that today's postmodern Christian must go with sword and shield, God and Bible, Spirit and Son. Even so may the Lord bless all who would serve and tell of their glorious Creator-Redeemer. Amen.

R. E. Slater

May 27, 2014

related discussions - 

Why a Christian Evolutionist Cannot be a Naturalist
(or, the False Divide between Science and Religion)



Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

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If I Were a Naturalist….

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/05/if-i-were-a-naturalist/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rogereolson_052714UTC010503_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=46016873&spUserID=Nzg4MDU4NjI4MjkS1&spJobID=443510322&spReportId=NDQzNTEwMzIyS0

by Roger Olson

May 24, 2014

Comments

Recently I posted a three part series about the Christian worldview. I asserted that it is a much neglected worldview–both among Christians and non-Christians. I also said that public schools in America tend to secularize students by allowing many other worldviews, quasi-religious as they are, privileged status over against the Christian worldview. I argued that many Christians in the natural sciences live by two worldviews that are incommensurable with each other: the Christian one and a naturalistic one. I did not mention that “methodological naturalism” is, in my opinion, good and necessary in science laboratories. But that is different from believing in naturalism–that nature is all there is.

Something in my musings about all this brought some people here to debate with me. They claim the naturalistic worldview is the only one compatible with modern science, empiricism and reason. And that it has all the resources we humans need including a firm basis for ethics.

I can’t disprove naturalism and won’t even try. What I can do is point out problems in it and explain why I could never be a naturalist in the worldview sense of the word. (“Naturalism” can also, of course, mean study of nature or love of nature.)

The Burden of Discernment

Please forgive me if what I am about to say sounds prideful and self-promoting. I have many weaknesses, but one of my strengths, that can often be a burden, is ability to see the logical outcome of ideas. Sometimes I regard it as a gift; at other times it is almost a curse. Other people seem to be able to accept ideas, messages, proposals as they are without immediately seeing where they will lead if pressed to their logical conclusions. My gift/curse is that I look at an idea, message, proposal and immediately see not only it but its logical outcome–where it will inevitably and inexorably lead if taken to its logical conclusion.

That is, of course, a major reason and explanation for why I so adamantly oppose Calvinism. I know many Calvinists who do not embrace its logical conclusions. One of my seminary professors once said to me “Roger, you shouldn’t press everything to its logical conclusion.” He was a “moderate Calvinist” and could not defeat my logical arguments about where even that would lead if pressed to its logical conclusion. (He believed in “single predestination” and denied “double predestination.”) But he did not think it appropriate to always look to an idea’s logical conclusion as part of evaluating it. I did and I still do.

I don’t find this habit to be optional; for me it is automatic and essential. It just happens. I look at an idea and, without even wanting to, see its logical outcome. And I have great difficulty separating the idea from its logical outcome. (Now, please don’t think I’m claiming some kind of infallibility! I have been wrong about the logical outcome and changed my mind or suspended judgment as a result of dialogue and debate or just further study. I am not claiming to have a super-power! I’m just explaining that logically analyzing ideas is such an ingrained habit that I now find it nearly impossible to suspend.)

I think this explains much of the tension that occurs between defenders of Calvinism and me. I cannot just accept a paradox; I have to try to resolve it. For me a paradox is always a task, not a comfortable resting place. That is not to say I can resolve all paradoxes; it’s only to say I find all paradoxes to be challenges to further inquiry.

The Metaphysics of a Natural Theology

So what does all this have to do with naturalism? First, let me explain clearly what I understand naturalism to be. In this sense, naturalism is a worldview that “sees” reality “as” a closed network of mathematically describable causes and effects such that every entity and event is in principle explainable by the natural sciences. In other words, nature as understood by modern science, is all there is. Not that modern science currently understands all of nature. Only that “reality” does not include anything above or within nature that is not ruled by natural laws that are in principle (not yet in fact) discoverable and exhaustively describable by modern science.

Of course, not everyone who claims to embrace a naturalist worldview agrees with all of that; that is simply how I understand the worldview I call “naturalism.” And I think any deviation from it tends to make the worldview less “naturalistic” and opens the door to something transcendent to nature and even possibly supernatural.

One way of examining a worldview is to imagine oneself as believing it, then imagine oneself being absolutely logical about it, taking the worldview to its logical conclusion, and see where it leads. What ELSE would I have to believe if I adopted naturalism as my worldview?

I am NOT saying: This is what all naturalists believe. I AM saying: This is what I would have to believe if I were a naturalist.

First, I would believe that life is purely accidental and therefore devoid of any transcendent purpose or meaning. It’s only meaning would be what I invested in it; it’s only purpose would be what I purposed.

Second, I would believe that what I believe is determined by natural forces and therefore is not a matter of truth. Ideas would only be chemical interactions in brains and therefore not of any importance except with regard to how they function–to promote my personal happiness or not.

Third, I would believe that survival of the fittest is the most basic law of nature and that helping the weak only serves to corrupt the gene pool. I might have compassion and empathy for those in my tribe, but I would not see any reason to have compassion or empathy on those outside my tribe without any connection to myself.

Fourth, I would believe that my own happiness is the standard of my behavior. I would see no reason for genuine altruism. If I chose to be altruistic it would be because it makes me happy.

Fifth, I would resist moral outrage as a waste of energy. I would embrace anger instead of moral indignation and outrage and realize that when people do things I think are bad it only means I don’t like what they do.

Sixth, I would embrace nihilism as the only logical view of reality consistent with my naturalism.

Seventh, I would try to live “the good life,” whatever I might decide that to be, but I would realize that it doesn’t really matter if I life a totally self-centered life even at others’ expense so long as I am not thereby disadvantaged.

Eighth, I would regard humanism as a form of specieism and completely unwarranted. I would probably live with the illusion that human beings, especially I, are/am higher and better than animals because it would be advantageous.

This is what I would believe if I embraced a naturalistic worldview devoid of anything transcendent. When I meet a naturalist who DOESN’T believe these things I believe he or she is simply being inconsistent.

Thomas Jay Oord - Making Sense of Love & Evil, Chance & Purpose

Making Sense of Love & Evil, Chance & Purpose

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/making_sense_of_love_and_evil_chance_and_purpose/

by Thomas Jay Oord

January 6, 2013

I'm beginning a new book project! Thanks to a generous grant from the randomness and divine providence project, I'm offering a proposal for how we might best believe God acts providentially in our world.

Almost all of us want to make sense out of life. Most of our attempts to make sense of things address immediate questions: Why did she look at me? Why is it so cold? Why can’t my team win a championship? Why do I feel hungry? Why can’t I relax? What’s for dinner? Etc.

Most of us ask the big questions of life too. These questions and their answers make up the heart of the world’s various religions, the impetus for scientific endeavors, and the domain of philosophy. Big questions and our attempts to answer them are a big deal! The disciplines of theology, science, and philosophy explore both the minute particularities and the big picture in their attempts to make sense of reality.

Those of us who believe in God – and I am one – think fully adequate answers to the big questions of life involve God. This does not mean that science, philosophy, the humanities, arts, or other disciplines cannot contribute to our quest to answer well life’s biggest questions. Fully adequate answers involve them too.

The discipline of theology should not play the trump card in attempts to understand reality better. But if God’s presence and influence has the kind of far-reaching effects most believers like me think, theology cannot be set aside in discussions about the meaning of life.

And what an amazing life it seems to be!

Existence as we know it is abounding in information, values, mystery, and more. We experience love, joy, and happiness, along with evil, pain, and sadness. We act purposefully and intentionally to reach our goals, but we encounter randomness, chance, and luck as well. We seem to act freely much of our lives, but circumstances, opportunities, bodies, and environments limit our freedom. At one moment we may be in awe of the goodness and beauty of our lives, while in the next moment we get discouraged by the horror and ugliness we encounter. And most of the time, our lives are made up of the mundane, usual, and routine.

Making sense of life – in light of such wide-ranging diversity – is a daunting task. But it is a task we inevitably take up. In more or less sophisticated ways, we attempt to figure out how things work and what makes sense.  All of us are metaphysicians, in the broad sense.

This book explores the big picture with a special emphasis upon the randomness and evil we encounter in life. This does not mean that purpose, beauty, goodness, and love are ignored. They will not be. But in these pages I offer a theological vision of reality that takes seriously both purposiveness and randomness, both good and evil, both love and sin.

Those who believe in God have for millennia wrestled with what we often call the problem of evil question: "Why doesn’t a good and powerful God prevent genuinely evil events?"

In recent centuries, a different but related question has gained prominence: "How can God act providentially if we live amongst randomness and chance?"

In my book, I will propose a theologically, scientifically, and philosophically informed answer to these questions. In doing so, I face directly the realities of life, in their wide-ranging diversity.

I'm looking forward to this adventure!

N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - The Problem of Evil

By way of a preface, over the past year or two I have been explaining the problem of evil in terms of the problem of freedom. Rather than attempt a dualistic explanation of evil (sic, "God and evil," "Good and evil"), or proposing that it be found in angelic or human revolt (sic, Luther-Satan, Adam-Eve), or as a kind of metaphysical entity that competes with God for ontological presence (sic, goes back to the argument of "dualism") I have sought to define evil in terms of creational freedom.

By way of illustration, Einstein was once asked to define the idea of "absolute zero," or the idea of "cold," and as typical of this brilliant scientist he went immediately to its opposite idea of "heat" and re-defined coldness as the absence of heat. Simple. Direct. Efficient. And I think they same can be done with the idea of evil. To define evil is to re-define it in terms of freedom. As such, evil is the absence of freedom.

Now this can be minced a bit by a'fixing adjectives to the word - adjectives such as "responsible freedom," or "beneficial freedom," or "God-fearing freedom," or "sinless freedom" (whatever that might be!), but basically its the idea of freedom being misused, misapplied, misappropriated. Or, wrongfully utilized, selfishly applied, proudly denied, self-righteously assumed, and so forth. Yet, the basic idea is that freedom breaks fellowship to that of God's will. And whenever that is done we incur various degrees of "sin" or "evil."

The word freedom also implies relationship. When freedom is rightly used, or wrongly abused, it affects our relationship with God and man. Hence, words like covenanted fellowship with our God and Creator, our Redeemer and Lord, should mean things like the responsible usage of human freedom towards God's creation and mankind. It is how man uses this great-and-good privilege that God has given to us which would determine whether or not we have "sinned." To misuse it, deny it, refuse it, is sin. A sin that begins the long and sorrowful tale of evil until it finally defies God's covenantal relationship with His creation and willfully acts against His rule even as it affects all those whom suffer from our "sinful" freedom.

Thus, evil is no more a metaphysical substance than "love" is, or "goodwill, joy, and happiness." Nor is it an ontological entity like some ghost or spirit that exists in the ether around us. No, it is something that is a part of us, part of our ethical and moral makeup, but more than this. It is a part of our relationship with our Creator-Redeemer Himself. A relationship that is fully present with our willful obedience to God's good-and-gracious will - however fierce and retributive it can sometimes be in our lives.

Thus have we tied in the idea of freedom to the other idea of relationship. Each is meaningless without the other, and it is in the grand composition of each that we see the further idea of sin and evil. Each are a misuse of freedom and breaking of relationship, or fellowship, to both God and man. To use freedom aright is to restore (and keep) fellowship. To break fellowship is to break from our responsible usage of freedom towards God and man. As sin can be defined in the idea of freedom, so words like unity, fellowship, goodwill can be defined in terms of how freedom affects the freedoms of others in relationship to ourselves, or to one another. (Do a simple word study on the phrase one another throughout the NT to see the gravity of our freedom towards each other... it is an abundant term we too often read pass and ignore).

But when this "responsible" relationship to the Lord is refused, denied, abandoned, or betrayed (commonly known as "disobedience"), then sin is present. Present in terms of our freedom refusing relational fellowship with our Lord. A divine relationship that is present with us from the time of birth as God our Creator. And a relationship that becomes profoundly united (or completed, or even, re-united) by God's own redemption through His atoning work on the Cross for our re-liberation back into His divine fellowship.

A liberation that cannot be had in any other way than through a God-enacted salvation. A salvation that baptizes us into the Spirit and Presence and Fellowship of God unlike any other activity of God or man. A salvation that restores, bit-by-bit, the deep marring that sin has brought to bear upon our promised freedom in the presence, and life, of the divine. A freedom that is restored to us through Jesus and entered into through the Spirit by faith and obedience.

Thus, to define sin is to define the brokenness of our freedom separating us from our Lord God, who would renew, rebirth, reclaim, revive, restore, a profound new freedom back to His children lost on the eve of creation's birth. A birth that decreed to mankind the great privilege of free/will. And yet, upon its unblemished pronouncement from God's first breath - which breathed life into "an empty and dark" creation - came not only man's greatest privilege, but his worst nightmare. A spiritual divide, gulf, and brokenness of relationship (or fellowship) from His very God. A God-ordained decree that at once gave to man his "rights and liberty" and also the greatest "sin and suffering" that it could imagine within the human breast. It is the cherished word liberty. We call this idea freewill. A human will that bears two halves of the same coin - one side "good" and the other "bad." A heavenly coinage that bears heavily upon its spenders  the royal fiat and diadem of divine love, mercy, goodness, and responsibility.

R.E. Slater

November 25, 2013
 

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The Dark Side of God-Belief: Evil

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/19/the-dark-side-of-god-belief-evil/

by Scot McKnight
November 19, 2013

Any good solution to the big problems of life must deal at some point with “why evil?” If the apostle Paul proposed big solutions to life then he had to deal with evil, so N.T. Wright, in Paul and the Faithfulness of God, sketches the various solutions to the problem of evil and then offers how Paul’s “revised monotheism” (around Jesus, around the Spirit [he spells it "spirit"]) deals with evil.

 

Of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Jewish monotheists, Paul fits with the Jewish monotheists and offers a version of their response to evil, which is sharper than any response one finds among the Stoics of Epicureans.

 

The monotheism of second-temple Jews generated a more sharply etched idea of evil than we see in the surrounding pagan worldviews, including those of ‘monotheists’ such as the Stoics. Once you offer, and celebrate, an account of creational and covenantal monotheism such as we find in Israel’s scriptures, you are going to run into major problems. If there is one God, if he is the creator of a good world and still basically in charge of it, and if he is in covenant with Israel in particular, then neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean solution will do. Nor is serious dualism an option, though there are times when it will look attractive. If the book of Job had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent it (739-740).

 

Now a vitally important set of ideas, so bear with the longer quotation from p. 740:

Ancient Israel did not, however, attempt a ‘solution’ in terms of a coherent analysis of why evil existed within the good creation. Job did not ‘solve’ the problem, but, like some of the Psalms, simply and strikingly reaffirmed the basic monotheistic creed – and complained sharply about the way things were. In the Torah, evil might be traced back to Adam and Eve in the garden, though interestingly there is no sign of this being offered as an ultimate analysis prior to the late first century AD. Or evil might have entered the world through the invasion of strange angelic powers, as in Genesis 6. One might also look back to the arrogance of empire, as in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Or, in relation more specifically to evil within Israel, one could lay the blame on the primal sin of Aaron in making the golden calf (Exodus 32).

These ‘solutions’ were not, of course, mutually exclusive. That was not how ancient Jews read their scriptures. The various accounts of evil functioned, not as scientific ‘explanations’, but as signposts to dark and puzzling realities. Human rebellion, idolatry and arrogance, mingled with shadowy forces from beyond the present world, had infected the world, humans and Israel itself. The narratives drew attention to different apparent elements within the problem, and left it at that. No solution was offered to the question of what modern philosophers have called ‘natural evil’ (earth- quakes, sickness and the like). Prophets might highlight particular events as warning signs from the One God – a line of thought echoed at one point by Paul  – but nobody, not even Job, seems to have asked why such things existed at all within a good creation. The occasional prophetic promise of a transformed creation bore witness to the fact that some at least had an inkling that the trouble ran right through the cosmos itself; but the offer of an eschatological solution was not matched by an analysis of why a problem existed in the first place. 

 But if scripture offered no ‘solution’ in terms of a coherent account of why ‘evil’ existed in the good creation, it offered instead a ‘solution’ in terms of what was to be done – specifically, what was to be done by the creator God. The major proposal was first covenantal and then eschatological: not ‘where did evil come from?’but ‘what will the creator God do about it?’ 

And from p. 742 another important insight: “The fact that one cannot really understand evil is itself an element of creational monotheism, a demonstration that evil is an intruder…”.

Put the argument thus far into logical outline and this (from p. 746) is what you get:

My point thus far can be summarized like this:

1. All views about ‘evil’ are the correlate of a basic, and often theistic, worldview;
2. All worldviews, except those of the most shallow and unreflective optimist, have some idea that something is seriously wrong with the world, and indeed with human beings, often including one’s own self;
3. Monotheists in particular run into a problem which polytheists do not have, and there have been various ways, historically, of addressing that problem;
4. Monotheists of the second-temple Jewish variety, that is, creational and covenantal monotheists, were bound to have a particularly sharp version of the wider monotheistic problem:
   1. (a)  the world is God’s creation, and yet there is evil in it;
   2. (b)  humans are in God’s image, and yet they rebel;
   3. (c)  Israel is called to be God’s covenant people, and yet is troddendown by the nations.
5. This was addressed
   1. (a)  by varied use of the ancient narratives of Genesis and Exodus;
   2. (b)  by cultic monotheism (especially the sacrificial system); and
   3. (c)  by eschatological monotheism (the hope and promise that oneday YHWH would return, would unveil his covenant faithfulness in rescuing his people and renewing all things, and would set up his sovereign rule over the whole world).

Now from p. 747: “My proposal, then, is that Paul’s radical rethinking of creational and covenantal monotheism contained within itself both an intensification of the problem and an equally radical solution.”

In Wright’s resolution of these issues he begins by sketching the widespread Augustinian assumption (plight to solution) and its challenge by Sanders and Barth (solution to plight), while he wants to broaden it all to the problem of evil instead of just the problem of personal sin and salvation (and he repeats the well-worn but important new perspective view that Jews were not seeking heaven-when-we-die solutions). Wright thinks there was a plight problem, that the solution came in Christ, but that the solution redefined the original plight in more expansive terms.

What then was the reimagined plight? How did Paul’s grasp of ‘the solution’ enable him – or, indeed, compel him – to radicalize the original ‘plight’ which we have set out in the previous section? We can sketch this in three quick moves which we will then substantiate exegetically. The cross, the resurrection and the holy spirit together brought the ‘plight’ suddenly and sharply into focus.

1. The most obvious element of Paul’s revised version of the ‘plight’ follows directly from the fact of acrucified Messiah. ‘If “righteousness” comes through the law, then the Messiah died for nothing.’ That is basic to everything else.
2. Not so obvious, but equally important, was the fact of the risen Messiah. Paul’s understanding of the resurrection gave him a much more focused understanding of the creator’s purposes for the whole cosmos – and hence of the problem, the ‘plight’, in which that whole creation had languished.
3. The revelation of the personal presence of Israel’s God in the trans- forming work of the spirit compelled Paul to a recognition of the depth of the human plight. All humans, Jews included, were hard-hearted, in need of renewal in the innermost human depths (750).

Continue to Index -

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



Critique of Aquinas' View of God's Activity in the World

Thomas Oord makes some excellent observations on Dodds' book reviewing God/Creation as Primary/Secondary Cause... basically, the answer isn't found in returning to the classical depictions of God, sin, man, and world, made under Aristotle and Aquinas. But in piecing together Relational-Process Thought with today's quantum/evolutionary sciences that put the word "M-O-R-E" into mechanistic scientism (e.g., God or world or creation as "efficient cause").

And what might that word "more" include? Words like "indeterminacy, free will, open, emergence, synchronicity, sovereignty, postmodern, epistemic humility, partnering, love, faith, weakness, teleology, mystery, renewal, incarnation, etc." Which may not be new concepts but when reconfigured away from classical theism into the lights of postmodern relational and open theism find enlivenment and hopeful approach.

Conceptual ideas that we have painstakingly been crafting within a framework of Emergence Theology and a Postmodern Christian faith these past two years since beginning this blog and become dissatisfied with arguments and theologies on both sides of the aisles. And what are those aisles? That of classic/enlightenment/modernism as conceived by fundamental and evangelical Christianity on the one side. As well as the sometimes irreverent cynicisms and shock theologies of progressive-evangelical / emergent Christianity on the other side (though we have ever leaned to this latter reawakening of the Jesus faith to our global world communities and responsibilities).

R.E. Slater
June 10, 2013

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Unsatisfactory Mystery of Divine Action

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/the_unsatisfactory_mystery_of_classic_theologys_theory_of_divine_action/#.UbTunZ-x4gE.facebook

by Thomas Jay Oord
June 9, 2013

I just finished a wonderfully accessible and clear book on God's activity in the world. It was written from an advocate of Thomas Aquinas's theology, and it addresses recent scientific theory and scholarship. I'll be recommending that serious scholars of science and theology read this book... even though I strongly disagree with its proposals!

I know of no finer, more accurate, or more accessible explanation of a Thomistic view of divine action than Michael Dodds’s recently published book, Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas. This is an immensely important book, and those who care about issues of divine action would do well to read it. But this book only deepened my belief that the Thomistic approach to divine causation is unsatisfactory. We need alternatives.

Causal Categories

Dodds begins by rightly arguing that divine causation – the notion that God acts as a causal force in the world -- is a central concern for our time. Contemporary philosophy of science, however, has reduced the number of causal categories to just one: the category of efficient causes. We think today about causation in terms of the impact of one entity upon another.

Dodds uses Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to argue for additional categories of causation. Early chapters in the book explain accessibly Aristotle’s four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. Aquinas employed these four causes for his own theological work, believing them to give a full account of causality. We should use these four causes, says Dodds, to talk about causation amongst creatures and God’s own causal activity. The major contribution Thomas Aquinas makes to Aristotle’s scheme, however, is to argue that a result or outcome in the world can come through both a primary cause – associated with God – and a secondary cause – associated with creatures.

Because only efficient causality has remained in the contemporary scientific world, says Dodds, “the very success that science enjoyed by omitting causes that could not be measured eventually led to the conviction that such causes should not only be ignored methodologically but denied metaphysically” (50). This denial of additional causes led to philosophical reductionism: the basic parts of the world, which apparently persist via efficient causation, are the most real. Efficient causation consequently led to many scholars framing causality in terms of mechanism. The result of a mechanistic world led to scientism, says Dodds, which is the view that only science can give us truth about the world.

Causality and Recent Science

In recent years, however, change has been taking place in philosophy of science.  The theory of emergence now plays an important explanatory role, for instance. Emergence says that we should think of the natural world as comprised of multiple levels, and new features can arise at one level. These features cannot be explained simply by their parts or by what occurs at less complex levels. In addition, quantum mechanics suggests indeterminacy exists at the least complex levels of existence. This indeterminacy means not only that variance occurs at these levels of existence, but that we cannot be entirely certain about our observations. Dodds notes that evolutionary theory is becoming more influenced by notions of purpose and direction. This development places into question the rigid mechanism assumed by some philosophies of science. Perhaps most important to Dodds’s project is his claim that many now seek causal explanations that go beyond efficient causation. According to Dodds, science itself now cries out for causal explanations beyond efficient causality alone.

The reduction of causality to one category – efficient causation – led to the reduction of our ability to speak about God’s causal activity. Put simply: the scientific worldview seemed to allow no room for God to act. Many engaging science-and-religion scholarship today are searching for a theoretical and empirical space -- “a causal joint” -- at which God may work in the world. Dodd regards this search as the quest for a univocal cause, in which God actions are similar in kind to creaturely actions but do not interfere the laws of nature or creaturely causality.

Many theologians in the modern period, says Dodds, responded to science by accepting the philosophical limitation that causation comes only through efficient causes. Here, process theology and theologies espousing divine self-limitation come under Dodds’s scrutiny. Unfortunately, however, this section is one of the weakest in the book. The author misrepresents what the majority of process theologians have said (and the footnotes reveal a lack of research in this area). Perhaps more unfortunate, Dodds never addresses in this section the crucial question driving much of modern theology: Does or can God completely control others (act as sufficient cause)? This question not only drives quests to solve the problem of evil, it also plays an important role in philosophy of science questions about causal explanations.

A major segment of Unlocking Divine Action addresses new theories of contemporary science and how those engaging in science-and-theology research use these theories to speculate about how God acts in the world.  For instance, Dodds looks at how some scholars speculate that God might input information into the natural world to exert causal influence. He looks at the possibilities open to the science-and-religion scholars by the apparent phenomenon of quantum indeterminacy. Dodds explores the possibility of God’s influencing the emergence of new structures in the natural world. All of the proposals Dodds explores suggest non-interventionist types of divine action: God exerts causal influence without circumventing creaturely influence.

God is Not Like Us (at all!)

Dodds is not convinced, however, by recent science-and-religion proposals on non-interventionist divine action. His primary criticism is that most science-and-religion scholars think God’s activity is of the same general kind as creaturely activity. In other words, these theories presuppose a univocal understanding of divine and creaturely causality. Those who presuppose a theory of causality based on univocity, Dodds contends, inevitably wrestle with the question of God’s interference. “When divine action is conceived univocally with the action of creatures, divine being tends to be viewed univocally as well. A univocal God, however, is quite different than the God of the Christian tradition” (158).

Not only does Dodd think God’s being is altogether different from creaturely being, but by thinking of them as on the same metaphysical kind leads to worrying that God and creatures compete as causes. “When two men carry a table,” Dodds says by way of illustration, “the more weight one lifts, the less there is for the other to lift” (153). But “God is unlike all other things,” he Dodds. “Recognizing this, we should be cautious about trying to say anything about how God acts. God is totally other” (161). For this reason, Dodds says, “the mode or manner of divine activity will ever escape us” (169).

The alternative Dodds presents is a return to the past: the proposals of Thomas Aquinas. According to Aquinas, there are no real relations or mutual dependency between God and creation.  Creatures depend upon God and are related to God. But God has no corresponding relation to creatures, and God is not dependent in any way. With Aquinas, Dodds believes that “God’s action is fundamentally different from that of creatures” (171). “To predicate such a relation of God,” says Dodds, “would be to reduce God to the level of one creature existing beside another” (172). Instead, it is impossible to speak of divine action in any positive way: “our verbal and conceptual abilities should be utterly defeated if we try to speak of God, since God is utterly beyond the being of creatures” (174).

Primary and Secondary Causation

But if it’s impossible for us to speak of God, where does this leave the one who seeks to talk about God’s action in relation to science?

Dodds believes the primary/secondary theory of causation offers the best way to talk about divine action and creaturely causation. According to this view, every instance of creaturely causality necessarily requires God’s influence. But God acts as a primary cause and does not conflict with the secondary causes. After all, argues Dodds, “these causes do not belong to the same order” (191). God’s causality infinitely transcends creaturely causality. And this means that “when a primary and secondary cause act together, the effect belongs entirely to both. The influence of the primary cause does not diminish the action of the secondary cause, but enables it” (192).

It’s important for Dodds, however, to insist that “the use of secondary causes does not bespeak any divine limitation” (192). In fact, “God’s causality does not constitute a miraculous intervention; nor does it negate the real causality of all the natural agents involved in the evolutionary process” (202). Whenever an event occurs in the world, we can say both that God caused it and that creatures caused it.

Dodds admits that this proposal borders on incomprehensibility: “the notion of secondary causation is not an easy one to grasp” (207). But he agrees with Etienne Gilson that “we must hold firmly to two apparently contradictory truths. God does whatever creatures do; and that creatures themselves do whatever they do” (208). This double agency of the primary/secondary theory is a paradox. Both God and creatures can be the causes of what occurs in reality, because as the primary cause, God transcends all categories of creaturely causation.

The Mystery Card

This is where my dissatisfaction for the Dodds/Thomas Aquinas proposal comes out strongly. In essence, Dodds is proposing what Ian Barbour called the “independence” model for thinking about science and theology: science and theology are independent explanations, and the two have no overlapping commonalities. God’s action is independent from creaturely actions, and God’s action is in no way analogous to creaturely action. In fact, we cannot say anything positive about God’s causal activity or God’s being, because God is utterly beyond our language and categories of being.

In the end, then, it’s all about mystery for Dodds. It’s mystery in the unsatisfactory sense of our not even being able to offer any meaningful explanation for God’s causal activity in relation to creaturely causation. The primary/secondary theory of Dodds and Thomas Aquinas strikes me as an elaborate mystery card played to retain a role for both divine and creaturely causation – theology and science – without having to make difficult decisions about ancient questions – e.g., why does a loving and powerful God not prevent evil? – or contemporary scientific issues – e.g., how does God act as an efficient cause?

And as the book winds down, Dodds explores what his primary/secondary theme entails for providence, miracles, and theodicy [(vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil) - dictionary]. He quickly appeals to mystery when confronted with the problem of evil: It is a problem “no theology can answer or ‘solve’” (240). Dodds is not willing to entertain any notion of divine limitations [sic, "process theology"], because he believes such limitations result in even greater theological difficulties. Dodds ultimately offers the unsatisfactory proposal that God allows evil without directly intending it [this is a very unsatisfying proposing and I address this here under several articles in the sidebars "Sin," "Suffering and Evil," and Sovereignty" - res]. He explores prayer and miracles near the end of the book as well, using the primary/secondary scheme [again, I address these here under the concept of "synchronicity" by tying it into our ideas of "Miracle" and the "Holy Spirit". - res]. Important questions about God’s ability to act as a sufficient cause to answer prayer or act miraculously are not addressed to this reviewer’s satisfaction. But this is expected after the previous and longer section on evil and Dodds’s repeated appeals to mystery.

The Causality of Love?

Dodds concludes the book with a short section he titles, “The Causality of Love.” As one who has published a great deal on the metaphysics of love, I was especially keen to see what he would write in this very brief segment. Dodds believes his primary/secondary approach allows us to say God acts lovingly and creatures can partner with God. But after reading earlier in the book that God’s causality and being are altogether different from creaturely causality and being, I wondered how words like “partnership” or “cooperation” or even “participation” make any sense when used in relation to God and creation. And what does “love” even mean when our language about God, according to Dodds, offers nothing positive about God’s being or relations. In short, the appeal to love fell flat.

Despite my strong criticism of Unlocking Divine Action, I think this is an important book. I will be recommending it often. To my mind, it illustrates why many today are seeking ways to talk about divine action other than what we find in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Michael Dodds, and those who think similarly.

Sometimes I need a lucid book - and carefully argued thesis - to see clearly the need for something better. [AMEN and AMEN! - res]

Why I Prefer a Gospel of "Solidarity" over that of "Penal Substitution"

Give Tony Jones his due. If for nothing else he does speak his mind and usually hits the mark right on its head.... He is passionate and passionately speaks his mind.... Today's discussion focuses on the deficiencies of the Christian doctrine of "penal substitution". Not a discussion that we haven't spoken of here before, but because of its continued popularity among evangelical churches needs to be reflected upon from time-to-time.

 

Mine own prejudices against PRIMARILY conceiving the atoning work of Christ around this ancient idea provided to us through the Scriptures (and then turned around by the doctrine of Calvinism) is that it has created an attribute out of God's wrath rather than from God's loving mercy. But this cannot be.... Wrath is simply the result of loving mercy's judgment upon the wickedness sin causes and perpetuates. It is not an attribute of God but an action of God. To judge sin is reflective upon God's character of divine holiness and righteousness. Hence, God is a wrathful God when sin's injustice - and sin's crimes of hate - are repeatedly committed and perpetuated. God judges sin because His judgment derives from His intense love for mankind: as beheld in His love for mercy and forgiveness. A repeated theme found in the messages of the OT prophets and again through Jesus and the messages of the early church in NT.

 

Another problem with PRIMARILY conceiving the atoning work of Christ around the idea of penal substitution is that it creates a Gospel message that is intensely individualistic and not collective (me-and-God as versus us-and-God... my pain as versus our collective pain) which is yet another sociological marker of Western civilization's exhibit of Modernity over the countering, global, posture of Post-Modernal, communal responsibility. We become over-focused upon ourselves -  and not on that of others - and thereby speak of Jesus' atonement in personal terms of ourselves to the exclusion of its communal applicability to all men. But when we see Jesus' atonement in terms of all men, then we are better able to see the harm we have done to one another because of our sin. Surely we are forgiven by God's grace, but just as surely we have committed great wrong and undoing in society which must also be undone by our own hands.

 

Tony Jones goes on to observe, that this idea of Christ's sacrifice makes the Son more attractive to us than it does the Father because of Jesus' willingness to takes His Father's wrath upon Himself in place of our condemnation. The "Bully on the Block" seems to be an unappeased, and very angry, God - not the circumspect God of broken heart as willing Lamb who seeks man's salvation by His own personal sacrifice. Too often we confuse Jesus' lifework-and-divine-being apart from His Father's nature and divine attributes. However, we would do better to understand Jesus and His Father as one - and even more so, to see the Father through Jesus, and not through our ideas of what we think we know of God through Scripture ("Ye have seen the Father through me," says Jesus - John 14.7). Hence, we ultimately know God through Jesus, who perfectly pictures the Creator God through His atoning redemption for man's sin. If we do not understand God than turn to Jesus to understand God better.

 

Lastly, Tony importantly notes that God is too-often seen to be held captive to His own divine laws of righteousness, honor, wrath, and expiation (a legal term for sin's absolvement). And yet, God cannot be held captive to any part of His being - nor can His laws be so understood as to be misapplied about His own being. God judges sin not because of His laws but because of its wickedness. The Law simply points out to us its wrongness. To expect harm and folly, grief and strife, pain and pride and prejudice, if sin is given in to. These God would help lead us away from... and not towards. To use our willful freedom responsibly in loving actions toward one another... and not towards self-seeking greed and evil. Sin, in its ultimate definition, is the unloving use of free will. It is not a metaphysical entity but a description of us doing unloving things. Its the misuse and abuse of the freedom that God has placed within mankind's soul. A freedom which learns to love from the God of love as seen by His life of love on this earth in Jesus.

 

R.E. Slater

June 4, 2013

 

 

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Penal Substitution Dies on the Reservation

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/06/01/penal-substitution-dies-on-the-reservation/

 

by Tony Jones

June 1, 2013

Comments

 

I’ve been to Taizé twice, in France. Occasionally, Taizé goes on the road, as it did last weekend, to South Dakota. More specifically, the gathering was on Red Shirt Table, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, just miles from where I lived the summers of 1994, 95, and 96, in Manderson. I would have loved to participate, being that the gathering was a marriage of two of my favorite places in the world. But, alas, Taizé is not for me. It’s specifically for people under 35 — which I’m not — or faith leaders who were leading groups of people under 35 — which I’m also not.

 

Jason Micheli (subscribe to his blog!), however, is. He led a group of folks from his church in Virginia to SoDak last week, and, at my request, he sent this report:

 

Photo by Sydney Foster

 

Over the Memorial Day Weekend a few of us from my congregation joined between 1,000-1,500 pilgrims from around the world at for the Taize Gathering at Red Shirt on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

 

Taize is an ecumenical monastery in Burgundy, France. Every week the brothers of Taize welcome thousands of pilgrims to participate in the rhythms of their communal life, and once a year some of the more than 100 brothers take their ‘community’ somewhere else in the world for a pilgrimage gathering.

 

This year the brothers were invited by the Lakota nation to welcome pilgrims to Red Shirt.

 

Just as pilgrims do at Taize, we spent our time at Pine Ridge in worship (sung chants, sung prayers and a whole lot of silence) 3 times a day.

 

We shared simple meals of buffalo meat straight off the rez, and we shared our faith stories in small groups.

 

We listened to each other; in fact, listening was the primary reason we’d gathered. We camped in tents in a horse pasture and went, uncomplaining, without running water. For those few days at least, we did our best to approximate the simplicity and joy of what the New Testament refers to as the oikos: the ‘economy’ or household of God.

 

Our ‘sanctuary’ was a hollow carved out by the wind in the middle of the badlands. We sat in the prairie grass under the sun and stars.

 

Sunday night’s worship concluded with Taize’s traditional Prayer around the Cross. The cross is an icon of the Crucified Christ with water rushing out from his pierced side. For the prayer around the cross, the icon is taken out of its stand and laid on top of 4 cinder blocks so that it’s about a foot off of the floor and perpendicular to it. As the gathered sing, one by one, pilgrims approach the cross on their knees. Once they make their way to the cross, they place their forehead on the cross and pray.

 

The Prayer around the Cross is powerful to experience.

 

It’s just as powerful to watch so many approach the cross with devotion and seriousness. But it’s even more powerful to notice the patience and hospitality everyone affords one another during the prayer, for it can take a good long while for that many people to crawl to the cross and then pray on it.

 

Before the Prayer around the Cross on Sunday night, Brother Alois, the prior of Taize, invited us to place our burdens upon the cross, the burdens we suffer both personally and collectively ‘because,’ Brother Alois said in his simple yet incisive way, ‘Christ didn’t just suffer in the past. Christ still suffers today with us, with anyone who suffers in the world.’

 

His words hit me with converting clarity.

 

The prairie wind I felt blow across me could very well have been the Holy Spirit.

 

Because not one of us 1K pilgrims missed the clear, straight, connect-the-dots line he’d just drawn from the Crucified Christ to the all-but-crucified Lakota Indians on whose land we prayed.

 

When Brother Alois mentioned ‘collective suffering’ an accompanying illustration or further explanation wasn’t needed.

 

Sitting all around us were Lakota Christians, young and old, whose families had been herded like cattle onto a patch of land aptly named the badlands. Promise after promise made to them and treaty after treaty made with them had been broken- because why do you need to keep your word to cattle? There on the reservation unemployment is over 80% (just think what the average suburban street would be like with unemployment that high). As a result, alcoholism and hopelessness are nearly as high, and I can’t remember the last time I read a news story or heard a politician mention an Indian issue other than the name of a f&^*%$# football team.

 

We prayed that night just a stone’s throw from Wounded Knee, the site of massacre where a mass grave of over 300 innocents slaughtered by the U.S. Army little more than a hundred years ago. Afterwards the soldiers took gleeful pictures next to heaps of bodies of children and their mothers. Wounded Knee remains a festering wound of memory for the Lakota.

 

When Brother Alois mentioned the cross and collective suffering, we all knew what he meant.

 

And in one sense, nothing he said was revelatory or profound.

 

Yet here’s what hit me about what he said and from where he said it: the ‘traditional’ evangelical understanding of the cross, what theologians call ‘penal substitution,’ not only has nothing to say to people like the Lakota, penal substitution speaks no good news to them because it simultaneously privileges people like me.

 

Penal substitution is an understanding of the atonement ideally suited for oppressors and people who benefit from oppressive systems.

 

On the pop level, penal substitution is the understanding of the cross that says ‘Jesus died for you.’

 

For your sin.

 

Jesus died in your place. Jesus died the death you deserve to die as punishment for your sin.

 

Jesus is your substitute.

 

He suffered (suddenly I realize how the past tense is key) the wrath God bears towards you.

 

On the purely theological level, I’ve always had a problem with penal substitution. Quickly: penal substitution seems to make God’s wrath more determinative an attribute than God’s loving mercy. It easily devolves into a hyper individualistic account of the faith (me and God). God the Father comes out, at best, seeming like a petulant prick who bears little to no resemblance to the Son, and, at worse, the Father seems captive to his own ‘laws’ of righteousness, honor, wrath and expiation.

 

Forgiveness, it’s always seemed to me, shouldn’t be so hard.

 

And shouldn’t require someone to die.

 

I’ve always had my theological gripes with that way of understanding the cross, but when I heard Brother Alois introduce the Prayer around the Cross the this-world, moral deficiencies of penal substitution hit me like a slap across the face.

 

Saying Jesus Christ died for you, for your sin, for your sin to be forgiven is good news to… sinners.

 

But what about the sinned against?

 

What we flipply call ‘Amazing Grace’ is good news for wretches like Isaac Newton. For slave-traders and slave-masters. Thanks to the cross, they’re good to go. Their collective guilt and systemic sin…wiped clean by the blood of the cross.

 

Hell, we might as well continue in those sinful systems because what matters to Christ isn’t our collective guilt but our individual hearts.

 

Yet what about those whom the ‘wretches’ made life an exponentially more wretched experience? What about the millions of others whom those wretches, who’ve been found by this amazing grace, treated like chattel?

 

At the Lord’s Supper we proclaim that Christ came to set the captives free, yet we persist in an understanding of the cross that bears zero continuity with that proclamation.  We spiritualize and interiorize gospel categories like ‘suffering’ and ‘oppression’ and ‘deliverance.’

 

Because it suits us.

 

Because we are ourselves are not oppressed, have no actual desire to be delivered from our ways in the world and suffer only the affliction of the comfortable.

 

Penal substitution, I realized upon hearing Brother Alois’ words, makes the mistake of acting as though Jesus of Nazareth is the only one to ever be strung up on a cross of shame and suffering.

 

Sure, every single, last Lakota gathered with us was, on an individual level, a ‘sinner.’ Just as surely to focus so singularly misses the larger issues, for the Indians praying with us at Red Shirt have been sinned against by us actively for centuries and they are now sinned against by our cynical indifference.

 

To suggest the primary meaning of the cross is that Christ died for their oppressors’ sins is to perpetuate, in a very real way, their suffering.

 

If Jesus wept over Jerusalem, I’ll be damned if he doesn’t weep over a place like Pine Ridge. And if he called the Pharisees ‘white-washed tombs’ for turning a blind eye to Rome’s oppressive systems, I wonder what he might call us?

 

On my knees in the hollow that was our sanctuary and hearing Brother Alois’ words as they struck the ears of Indians along with mine, I realized that Christ doesn’t die for us so much as Christ dies as one of us. With us.

 

In solidarity with those who’ve suffered like him at the hands of empire and indifference.

 

Location, location, location. Real estate can make you hear the gospel with different ears — that’s what I realized at Pine Ridge.

 

The cross, I realized at Pine Ridge, is the opposite of good news unless it is today what it was for the first Christians: a symbol of protest, a demand for and a sign of an alternative to the world’s violence, a declaration that Christ not Caesar is Lord.

 

The primary message of the cross for someone like me, then, isn’t that God’s grace has saved a wretch like me though it can include that message.

 

No, the primary message of the cross is that it’s a summons to suffer, as Christ, for those whom the world makes life wretched.

 

Rather than Jesus being the answer, the solution to our selfishly construed problem, Pine Ridge has left me believing that the Cross is meant to afflict us with the right nightmares.