5 Things You’re Reading, When You’re Reading The Bible

5 Things You’re Reading, When You’re

Reading The Bible

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by Benjamin L. Corey
March 13, 2017
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I love the Bible.

It’s why I spent eight years of my life in seminary, why I’ve served as a church pastor even when they couldn’t afford to pay me, and is why even now I end up finding Greek flashcards in the most random places in my house.

But my love for the Bible includes honesty.

When we love someone or something, it’s easy to grow to see them the way you want to see them in your mind, often overlooking obvious realities that, if acknowledged, would create more work for the relationship. I did that for many years with the Bible, but now my love for it includes a willingness to embrace it for all it is– and to be honest about that.

In my years of studying, wrestling, and growing to love the Bible deeper and more honestly, I’ve come to embrace and acknowledge that when we read the words on the page, we’re reading a lot more than just those words. So, here’s 5 things we’re reading, when we’re reading the Bible:

5. You’re reading books and letters where the primary/original meaning is what the author intended the original audience to understand.

I remember learning in Sunday School that the Bible was “God’s love letter to us.” It’s a cute idea, but is less than helpful because we’re not the original audience, and that matters.

The reality is that these are sacred books, stories, and letters, where the primary/original meaning is the meaning the original author intended to convey to the original audience– and we’re neither of those parties. It’s almost like trying to understand an inside joke; until you understand the relationship between the sender and receiver of a message, and the context of what’s being discussed, it’s easy to walk away with all sorts of broken understandings of what was really being communicated. This makes things like understanding ancient culture, customs, and general history, a critical aspect of understanding the Bible.

4. You’re reading an unfolding story of people slowly growing in their understanding of God.

For those of us who grow up in conservative traditions, we’re often taught that the nature and character of God is perfectly revealed on every page of Scripture, but that’s not actually true.

The Bible, while a collection of books spanning centuries, is ultimately an unfolding story of people trying to understand what God is like. There are glimpses of God revealed throughout the story, as well as misunderstandings about God, and even blaming horrid actions on God– but the revelation of God is a progressive revelation. The entire narrative builds towards the introduction of a main character– Jesus– who is God made flesh and reveals that the nature and character of God has often been profoundly misunderstood.

The giant twist of the story was the realization that the only way to know what God is like, is to look at what Jesus is like– everything else gets reinterpreted in light of God made flesh.

3. You’re reading the judgment call, and even bias, of a translator.

Translation may involve the same part of your brain as math, but it’s not *exact* like math. The reality is that when translating ancient manuscripts into modern language, there are words and expressions that do not have a 1 for 1 swap. You also find words that could have meant many different things in the original language, and without the ability to ask the original author which meaning they meant or which meaning the original audience most likely would have understood, you’re left with no choice but to make your best guess– and that best guess can radically change the flavor of any given passage.

Other times there is outright bias on the part of the translator to the point where they will deliberately translate something in a way that is more favorable to their opinion or position. Either way, when you read the Bible you’re already reading someone else’s best guess, or someone else’s bias.

2. You’re reading nuance in English that does not exist in Greek.

Translation isn’t just a challenge from Greek or Hebrew into English, but also brings up reverse issues: words in English that carry flavors, associations, and nuance, that would not have existed in the original language. When this happens, we are subtly led to read things into Scripture without even knowing we’re doing it– unconsciously assuming that modern or English nuance actually applies to the text.

A great example of this is the word “hell.” The NT uses three completely different words that we translate into English as hell, even though all three Greek words have different nuance– none of them being the equivalent to what we think about when we see the English word, hell. Our version of the word didn’t exist in the first century, so using the English word “hell” causes us to read a modern understanding into an ancient text, wrongly.

1. You’re reading your own beliefs, assumptions, and generational theology.

Every time you pick up a Bible, you’re reading not just words on a page but are also reading previously held beliefs and assumptions into the text. This is a version of confirmation bias, which essentially is an unwillingness (often subconscious) to have your cherished view be shaken by additional facts or information, and is a *really* hard habit to break.

If your childhood was spent being taught that X was true, when you read the Bible you’ll read it in such a way that assumes X is true. When you encounter a passage that contradicts or challenges X, you’ll naturally look for alternative ways to understand the passage so that it lines up with your unwillingness to consider that X may not be true after all.

Believe violence against enemies is ok? You’ll read that into the Bible. Taught that God is full of wrath, that there’s a great tribulation about to come upon us, and that the end is here? You’ll read that into the Bible, too. That’s because it’s natural to bring our own beliefs and assumptions to the party with us, and to read the Bible in such a way that makes it conform to the view we already hold– we all do it, we just have to learn to be aware that we’re doing it.

…

I grew up in the world where people had bumper stickers that said, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” but it’s really not that simple. The Bible is a complex collection of writings. There are translation issues, narrative issues, nuance of language issues, and the human tendency to make something conform to a previously held belief.

I think we need to be honest about that, and allow that to invite us into a posture of humility when reading the Bible.

I still love the Bible every bit as much as I loved it back then, but I love it with more honesty now– even thought it creates a lot more work for the relationship.

What is the Higgs Boson, and why is it so important?

What is the Higgs Boson, and why is it so important?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/208652-what-is-the-higgs-boson

by Graham Templeton

June 24, 2015

The Higgs boson is, if nothing else, the most expensive particle of all time. It’s a bit of an unfair comparison; discovering the electron, for instance, required little more than a vacuum tube and some genuine genius, while finding the Higgs boson required the creation of experimental energies rarely seen before on planet Earth. The Large Hadron Collider hardly needs any introduction, being one of the most famous and successful scientific experiments of all time, but the identity of its primary target particle is still shrouded in mystery for much of the public. It’s been called the God Particle, but thanks to the efforts of literally thousands of scientists, we no longer have to take its existence on faith.

Why has the Higgs been the subject of so much hype, funding, and (mis)information? For two reasons. One, it was the last hold-out particle remaining hidden during the quest to check the accuracy of the Standard Model of Physics. This meant its discovery would validate more than a generation of scientific publication. Two, the Higgs is the particle which gives other particles their mass, making it both centrally important and seemingly magical. We tend to think of mass as an intrinsic property of all things, yet physicists believe that without the Higgs boson, mass fundamentally doesn’t exist.

The reason comes back to something called the Higgs field. This field was actually theorized before the Higgs boson itself, as physicists calculated that in order for their theories and observations to jive, it was necessary to imagine a new field that existed everywhere in the universe. Shoring up existing theories by inventing new theoretical components to the universe is dangerous, and in the past led physicists to hypothesize a universal aether — but the more math they did, the more they realized that the Higgs field simply had to be real. The only problem? By the very way they’d defined it, the Higgs field would be virtually impossible to observe.

The Higgs field was thought to be responsible for the fact that some particles that should not have mass, do. It is, in a sense, the universal medium which separates massless particles into different masses. This is called symmetry breaking, and it’s often explained by way of analogy with light — all wavelengths of light travel at the same speed in the medium of a vacuum, but in the medium of a prism, each wavelength can be can separated from homogenous white light into bands of different wavelengths. This is of course a flawed analogy, since the wavelengths of light all exist in white light whether or not we’re capable of seeing that fact, but the example shows how the Higgs field is thought to create mass through symmetry-breaking. A prism breaks the velocity-symmetry of different wavelengths of light, thus separating them, and the Higgs field is thought to break the mass-symmetry of some particles which are otherwise symmetrically massless.

The (a) mouth of the Large Hadron Collider.

It was not until later that physicists realized that if the Higgs field does exist, its action would require the existence of a corresponding carrier particle, and the properties of this hypothetical particle were such that we might actually be able to observe it. This particle was believed to be in a class called the bosons; keeping things simple, they called the boson that went with the Higgs field the Higgs boson. It is a so-called “force carrier” for the Higgs field, just as photons are a force carrier for the universe’s electromagnetic field; photons are, in a sense, local excitations of the EM field, and in that same sense the Higgs boson is a local excitation of the Higgs field. Proving the existence of the particle, with the properties physicists expected based on their understanding of the field, was effectively the same as proving the existence of the field directly.

Enter, after many years of planning, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an experiment massive enough to potentially falsify the theory of the Higgs boson. The 17-mile loop of super-powered electromagnets can accelerate charged particles to significant fractions of the speed of light, causing collisions violent enough to break these particles into fundamental constituents, and deform space around the impact point. With a high enough collision energy, it was calculated that scientists could basically super-charge the Higgs boson, pushing it up into an energy state where it would decay in ways that we canobserve. These energies were so great that some even panicked and said the LHC would destroy the world, while others went so far as to describe an observation of the Higgs as a peek into an alternate dimension.

As you can see from this chart of the composition of the universe, understanding
dark matter and dark energy will be fundamental to understanding our universe.

Initial observations seemed to actually falsify predictions, and no sign of the Higgs could be found — leading some researchers who had campaigned for the spending of billions of dollars to go on television and meekly make the true-but-unsatisfying argument that falsifying a scientific theory is just as important as confirming it. With a bit more time, however, the measurements began to add up, and on March 14, 2013 CERN officially announced the confirmation of the Higgs boson. There is even some evidence to suggest the existence of multiple Higgs bosons, but that idea needs significant further study.

So what’s next for the God particle? Well, the LHC just recently reopened with significant upgrades, and has an eye to look into everything from antimatter to dark energy. Dark matter is thought to interact with regular matter solely through the medium of gravity — and by creating mass, the Higgs boson could be crucial to understanding exactly how. The main failing of the Standard Model is that it cannot account for gravity — one that could do so would be called a Grand Unified Theory — and some theorize that the Higgs particle/field could be the bridge physicists so desperately desire.

In any case, the Higgs is really only confirmed to exist; it is not yet remotely understood. Will future experiments confirm super-symmetry, and the idea that the Higgs boson could decay into dark matter itself? Or will they confirm every tiny prediction of the Standard Model about the Higgs boson’s properties and, paradoxically, end that entire field of study once and for all?

The Authentic Rigor of the Bible as a Literary Narrative of the Ages

To read the bible is to read of its composition at the hands of many many authors and editors. As has well been said, the bible is a literary composition not a literal composition when we read its pages. To me, this makes the bible all the more authentic over the contrived "inerrancy" movement which would say otherwise. If this literary authenticity was not found in its pages than the bible would simply pass into the archives of history as another mythical narrative elicited from ancient civilizations long pass.

To that end, the biblical legends that arise from the bible's pages are a common narrative theme bespeaking cultural relevancy rather than historical irrelevancy. When compared to other literary narratives it is a very common argumentation derived from the human breast linking past to present. Even today, in our postmodern cultures, news services and social media, contemporary interpretations of the news continually purports to "interpret" God's hand in human affairs as did the "divines" of yesteryear from the pages of the Old and New Testaments.

No less was this narratival work done by other, more ancient civilizations, bespeaking God's "favor" upon their actions through war canons, documentaries, and cultural legends. Today we do the same. It seems we cannot avoid thinking in nationalistic terms when interpreting our past and present actions. Revisionism lies everywhere to the uncritical, inward-evolving human story of pathos in event. It is how humanity tells its story to itself and other peoples and nations though its story may not be God's story of redemption but a more earthly form of "redemption" a civilization may wish to cling too.

This makes the Bible authentic. It was never written as a creedal tract but as a theological narrative relating the difficulty of faith in the streams of popular beliefs and actions. And in many instances, as a-less-than-godly narrative from the lips of God's people steeped in lore, legend and legacy. For many a faithful one, it required standing up to one's culture to challenge its common misperceptions. And when done, receive for their efforts shunning, excommunication, libel, and perhaps death, when speaking out. Today, popular examples abound in postmodern civilization as both church and government, communities and individuals decide who or what is worthy to be heard. It bespeaks the ancient disease of sin in the hearts of the faithful wishing to be valiant but finding their works but filthy rags needing Jesus' atoning redemption.

As such, this historical-literary feature of the Bible makes it all the more interesting and relevant to today's postmodern cultures grasping how to interpret God's Word in a day-and-age when all claim "knowing God" but really are living far-far-away from His Heart, Word, and Spirit. And no, I am not speaking of the world here, but of the today's fundamental and conservative churches and faith claimants clamoring about to the truth of their messages yet finding their dutiful work, preaching, and outreach nowhere close to God's heart and mission. Thus religion is bourne away from faith to idolatry, away from good intentions to evil, without any questioning of its truer, darker heart held within the human breast casting eyes ever outwards rather than inwards. So the bible tells us let us examine ourselves first, our faith, and our commitments, and learn to be wise when seeking truth and fellowship. Amen and Amen.

R.E. Slater
August 3, 2017

* * * * * * * * * *

A Few Facts Christians Should Know About The Bible’s “Canaanite Genocide”

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by Benjamin L. Corey

July 31, 2017
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In recent years the issue of violence in the Old Testament has become a hot topic of discussion in many Christian circles. While there’s plenty of violence in the Old Testament worthy of wrestling and discussion, one particular event seems to come up a lot: the Canaanite genocide.

There’s fewer stories in the Bible that create the problems the Canaanite genocide creates. How could “God’s nation” completely slaughter an entire people group? How is it loving to one’s neighbor to kill all of them? Why would God make them do such a thing?

All good questions. Atheists have pounced on them for years, while most evangelicals have had to engage in cognitive dissonance as the modern concept of inerrancy has forced them to now find a way to justify an event (that if true) isn’t morally different than the holocaust or other genocidal conquests we’ve seen through history.

This discussion has been re-sparked by recent news that scientists have discovered that the Canaanites were not wiped out. This study reports:

“DNA retrieved from roughly 3,700-year-old skeletons at an excavation site in Lebanon that was formerly a major Canaanite city-state shows that “present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age.”

In light of this study, here’s some important facts that Christians might want to know about the Bible’s Canaanite genocide:

Fact: The Bible itself ultimately makes it clear that the genocide did not happen.

Later in the Bible we find out that there are, gasp, still Canaanites. In fact, Jesus actually heals one of them in the Gospel of Matthew. So this idea there was a genocide where all of the Canaanites were destroyed? We know just from reading the Bible this isn’t true.

Fact: We already knew scientifically that the genocide didn’t happen.

As Dr. James McGrath pointed out today, many of us were surprised that people are acting like this is some sort of new discovery, when it’s not:

“First of all, the Bible is very clear (in places) that the Canaanites were never completely wiped out from Israel. But second and more importantly, historians have always been aware that the Phoenicians were a Canaanite people, and so the discovery that their descendants are to be found in the regions they historically inhabited should not be a surprise either…”

Furthermore, as Peter Enns has pointed out in his own work, we know from archeological evidence that the genocide did not happen– certainly not on the scale the Bible implies.

Fact: False reports of genocide are common in the bronze age.

Should the fact that the Bible implies genocide occurred, but that modern evidence disproves this, be shocking? No, of course not. In fact, this clear exaggeration of events actually makes the Bible more authentic instead of less– and this is because at the time these passages were written, it was actually commonplace to falsely claim one had wiped out all of their enemies. Instead of shocking, it is quite affirming because it is exactly how I would expect a bronze age written war conquest to read. Had Canaanite records survived to present day, I wouldn’t be surprised if they claimed to have wiped out all their enemies, too.

Case in point, here is a short 2 minute video blog I made in Amman, Jordan when I stumbled upon a Moabite artifact that does exactly this– and ironically, falsely claims there was a genocide that destroyed all of ancient Israel:

One of the hot issues in theology today is the issue of violence and genocide in the Old Testament. Did God command genocide? Did the people of God ruthlessly slaughter their enemies? I'm here at a museum in Amman, and have stumbled upon an artifact from a Moabite king that might completely change the way you read some of the claims of the Old Testament, especially claims of genocide:

https://www.facebook.com/benjaminlcorey/videos/1002072116605360/

So, when we as Christians discuss the problematic Old Testament passages claiming genocide, we need to begin from a starting point that recognizes that both the Bible, and multiple angles of science, affirm the reality that there was not an extermination of the Canaanites. Furthermore, we must also recognize that these exaggerations do not call the authenticity of the Bible into question, but instead affirm it is a historical document of a specific time and place, and that it reads exactly the way one would expect it to read– including exaggerations of genocide.

Of course, this brings up other questions, perhaps the most important being: “If the Bible claims that God ordered genocide, does that mean God really did?”

That’s a question for a different day– but the important facts to remember, is that they didn’t do what we often think they did.

And that’s actually good news.

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Relevancy22 - Disclaimer, Purpose, Intention, and Goal

DISCLAIMER:

Relevancy22 is a collection of Contemporary, Postmodern, Critical Theology discussions built as a reference site and not as a personal blog. To make it interesting I try to interact with the material as I have time. Its contents and topics have been constructed to help users think through a vast array of contemporary issues. Using its Indexes on the right hand column will help any explorer begin acquiring the rudimentary knowledge gained from past contemporary and historical discussions required of the Christian faith in this post-truth age of rigorous belief juxtapositioned against known academic truths and post-conservative questions. It is this latter I wish to explore.

Relevancy22 does not purport to be a conservative "safe" site but one asking relevant questions to today's postmodern global cultures especially in light of who God is, what the bible is, and how the church thinks through these issues. The author, me, came to Jesus many, many years ago as a child and grew up in a fundamental church, and later, attended conservative-evangelical churches, all of which I have dearly loved. About a decade ago (2009) the Lord brought all my education, seminary training, and past ministries into re-calibration as I watched the church provide less and less relevant answers to its congregants and society. As such, I respect the past for the beauty it held but must now differ from its conclusions which I've been re-adjusting and updating over the years towards a more contemporary voice. I try to be gracious in my writing or reporting but at times do become passionate about a subject or topic as you will discover.

Relevancy22 was Holy-Spirit-borne for Christians seeking legitimate answers (or helpful directions) to their faith. In a way, I believe Relevancy22 to be recapturing the Orthodox Christian faith from the constructed one being voiced about by today's conservative churches which draw too heavily on their doctrinal commitments and not enough on an open (rather than closed) bible unfettered by traditional teachings. If the articles found within sound different, radical, or not quite conservative, they are. They've been written - or edited from other author's bodies of work - to cause us to think about difficult biblical subjects which have been overly simplified resulting in more fictional narratives of the church's faith than what they really are. In my mind, making the Christian faith "safe" from academic, scientific, and cultural examination is the beginning of all the evils of popular religions refusing to submit to, or enact, God's grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness, into the lives of both the lost and saved. Thus this online dialogue here. We need another gospel which embraces the fullness of God and His salvation through Christ our Savior.

As always, may God's peace and love flood the hearts and minds of readers everywhere.

Your brother in Christ,

R.E. Slater
August 3, 2017

Roger Olson - Is God Infinite or Personal? The Rise of Boston Personalism as Foundation to (but different from) Process Theology and Revival in Open and Relational Theology

Is God Finite?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/07/is-god-finite/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=BRSS&utm_campaign=Evangelical&utm_content=259#

by Roger Olson
July 23, 2017

Most Christians in the middle or to the “right” of the middle of the Christian theological spectrum will automatically recoil at the question “Is God finite?” The knee-jerk reaction even I feel is “No, of course not. What a silly question.” On the other hand, when asked to explain God’s infinity many such Christians (middle to right of the theological spectrum) have some difficulty. “Unlimited?” “Eternal?” “Omnipotent?” All are answers one hears as attempts to pin down what “infinite” means in relation to God.

To the best of my knowledge, however, nobody thinks or can show that the Bible itself actually says God is “infinite.” The word itself simply means “not finite.” But what does “finite” mean?

This became a divisive issue among European Christians especially during the so-called “Atheismusstreit” (atheism controversy) that broke out in German universities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The person who launched it was philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte who argued that God can either be infinite or personal but not both. Fichte’s claim possibly cloaked an atheistic intention; it’s somewhat difficult to tell as atheism was illegal at that time and place.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Fichte was G. W. F. Hegel who, after Fichte, tried to “fix” the problems Fichte and others raised about God and defined God as “Absolute Spirit” and the “wahrhaft Unendliche” (“true infinite”) that includes the finite in itself.

Now jump to the early 20th century. One of the nearly forgotten but very influential Christian philosophers of religion throughout the early and middle 20th century was Edgar Sheffield Brightman (d. 1953) who taught at Methodist-related Boston University. Brightman was very interested in theology and sought to reconstruct the Christian idea of God to make it fit the facts of experience more adequately. He launched a brief movement called “Boston Personalism” that was eventually replaced, for most liberal-leaning Protestants in the U.S., by Process Theology. (Here it might be helpful to note that Brightman was Martin Luther King’s mentor at BU during his doctoral studies there.)

Over the years I have heard of Brightman and Boston Personalism and read some secondary sources (book chapters, journal articles) about him and it. But I never, until recently, actually dipped into a primary source. Because of a recent challenge to do so, by a philosopher of religion influenced by Brightman and Boston Personalism, I bought the “classic” of Boston Personalism at a used bookstore and read it. The book is The Problem of God by Brightman published by Abingdon Press (the Methodist publishing house) in 1930.

Here I do not have space to go into all the “ins” and “outs” of Brightman’s (and Boston Personalism’s) idea of God. I will just mention a few points I found interesting and say that I found them interesting partly because I think they left a lasting impression that is not directly connected with Process Theology. (Most scholars of modern theology seem to think that Brightman laid the foundation for Process Theology’s later rise and replacement of Boston Personalism as the “theology of choice” among liberal-learning Protestants in America.) In other words, I “hear” and read echoes of Brightman’s view of God as “finite” elsewhere—not only among Process theologians and those influenced by A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.

In The Problem of God Brightman argues at some length, but in winsome style (the book is really very easy to read), that throughout the history of thought about God (especially but not only Christian) there has been a back and forth tendency that he calls “expansion” and “contraction.” The expansion tendency has been to think of God as so different from humanity as to make God useless for human religious need. (And Brightman does argue that God is necessary for humanity and includes in the book some strong arguments against atheism in all its forms including secular humanism.) One notable example of that, he argues, is the attribution to God of “infinity” which does lead, as Fichte argued, toward a de-personalizing of God. Pushed to its logical conclusion, “infinity” is incompatible with personality and we need a personal God because our basic religious need is for God to deal with suffering. (I will leave that there and challenge doubters to read the book which is available on line through Amazon and other re-sellers of out-of-print books.)

The contraction tendency has been to think of God as so similar to humanity, so anthropomorphic, as to be also useless religiously. Another human religious need is to have someone to worship and be powerful enough to bring value out of evil.

In true Hegelian style (although Fichte actually said this before Hegel), Brightman’s thinking is about “thesis” and “antithesis” searching for “synthesis.” The “thesis” would be the expansion tendency and the antithesis would be the contraction tendency. So what is the “synthesis?” That God is finite and personal but supreme above all other finite and personal beings.

So, in what sense is God “finite” for Brightman (and his Boston Personalism followers—a few of which are still around)? And why do I care?

Well, first of all—to why I care. I long ago rejected the notion that God is “infinite.” I rejected it when I first heard it articulated which was probably in some seminary class. I immediately thought that the concept itself was beyond comprehension (except perhaps in mathematics) and that attributing it to God led away from thinking of God as personal, present, involved, loving and able to be affected by us. With Brightman (who I only learned about later) I thought of that attribute of God in traditional theology as an inappropriate expansion of the concept of God brought into Christian thought through philosophy, not the Bible.

On the other hand, I have never felt comfortable with saying that God is finite. That “feels” to me like too much of a contraction of God. So I have preferred to think of God as not infinite but also not finite—insofar as the latter implies a God who is limited in knowledge and power. I have long, perhaps always, preferred to think of God as self-limiting in relation to the world he created. I kept looking for some serious discussion of that concept in Brightman’s book but did not find it. That is interesting because, around the time Brightman wrote The Problem of God the great Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong was advocating (or had been advocating) the solution (to the same problems Brightman identifies) as “God’s Self-Limitations.” (I do not know the exact date of that essay; it is included in a volume of Strong’s essays published by Judson Press in 1899.) I can’t believe Brightman knew nothing about Strong’s alternative and I wish he had responded to it. Perhaps he did in another publication.

Anyway, my preferred alternative to the problem Brightman identified in historical Western thinking about God—going back to the Greeks—is God’s self-limitations. That, of course, has become one of the major themes of non-Process Christian theologians such as Emil Brunner and Jürgen Moltmann.

So what did Brightman mean by God’s finitude? A careful reading of The Problem of God reveals that he did not mean that God is pathetic, or “evolving,” or powerless. He did mean, however, that there is inherent in God’s eternal being “the Given” which is a particular nature that governs what God can and cannot do. Clearly Brightman was no nominalist/voluntarist! He was a realist with regard to God. He believed God has a specific nature and it includes certain limitations that are not voluntary on God’s part. Among those limitations are that God cannot know the future insofar as it contains events not yet knowable because they will be determined by free will beings other than God and that God cannot coerce free creatures to do his will. According to Brightman, these denials/affirmations about God are necessary “contractions” apart from which the “expansion” would make God religiously unavailable if not irrelevant.

Well, it should be obvious to all readers who pay any serious attention to conversations about God taking place in even evangelical Christian theology how Brightman’s influence may have “trickled down”—even where his name is not known.

Here are a few things about which I agree with Brightman—after reading The Problem of God:

1. First, he was not afraid to think about God metaphysically.
2. Second, he recognized and articulated one of the main problems in Western theism including much traditional Christian thinking about God—the problem of the continual alternation between expansion and contraction.
3. Third, he affirmed that God’s personhood is primary for religion. An impersonal God is of no religious interest or use.

Here are a few things about which I disagree with Brightman—after reading The Problem of God:

1. First, I would not go so far as to call God “finite.” I think that at least strongly hints at too much contraction in the doctrine of God.
2. Second, I think all the problems he identifies can be solved by replacing “the Given”—as he thinks of it—with God’s loving self-limitation in relation to creation.
3. Third, as a philosopher, not a theologian, Brightman relied too heavily on reason and experience to the neglect of revelation and tradition (the four parts of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral).

In some ways my recent book Essentials of Christian Thought turns out to be an alternative to The Problem of God although not entirely in disagreement with the latter.

I found reading Brightman’s The Problem of God a satisfying exercise even as I found myself disagreeing with many of its point. One quandary left over from reading the book is whether Brightman believed in an eventual triumph of good over evil. I find hints in the book that he did, but I’m not sure how his “finite God” could bring that about.

One thought I had was more of a “wonder,” a question, whether my friend Thomas Jay Oord ever read the book or any of the writings of the Boston Personalists and whether he was influenced by them. I think I see certain real points of congeniality there—especially Oord’s basic idea that God cannot coerce free will beings. Tom does not seem to me to “fit” into the category of Process Theology (even though he studied with Cobb at Claremont). Might his theology “fit” more closely into the category of Boston Personalism?

I know of one other theologian who is working to revive Boston Personalism—Gary Dorrien who teaches theology at Union Theological Seminary. (Which is not to say Dorrien follows Brightman or anyone else slavishly; I have just heard him say publicly that he feels a special affinity for Boston Personalism and wishes to breathe new life into it as a live option for liberal Protestant theology.)

By no means do I intend this question as a criticism of Tom Oord or Gary Dorrien; as a historical theologian who focuses especially on modern theology I’m always curious about connections—especially ones not known or recognized. I believe there can be connections, strings of influence, that are not conscious or even known. This is what I call my “trickle down theory” of historical theology. Thinkers like Brightman can “release,” as it were, ideas into the theological “atmosphere” that later re-appear even where he is not known or his influence recognized.

Can a Fundamentalist Exist in the Trump Era?

You Might Still Be a Fundamentalist Even If…

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/07/might-still-fundamentalist-even/

by Roger Olson
July 18, 2017

In January of this year (2017) I served on a panel at a session of the American Society of Church History’s annual, national meeting. The subject of the discussion was “The Future of Evangelicalism in America” which is also the title of a book edited and written by the panel’s participants. I was the only theologian on the panel as I was also the only theologian who authored a chapter in the book which was published in 2016 by the University of Columbia Press. The other authors and panelists were historians and sociologists of religion. One difference that emerged among us, especially during the Q&A time after the panelists’ presentations, has to do with how best to define “evangelicalism.” I define it as a deep and wide historical-theological tradition within Protestant Christianity and as a distinct spiritual ethos found primarily among Protestant Christians.

Understandably, given the influence of the media and the participation of many voters calling themselves evangelicals during the 2016 American presidential election, many others, especially in the audience, tended to think of “evangelical” as a political identity nearly identical with “Trumpism.”

During the Q&A I was specifically asked by a member of the scholarly audience, composed mostly of church historians, how it is possible that certain notable evangelical thinkers and leaders have spoken out publicly against Trump. The person named names and they were all people I would identify as inhabiting the “far right” of the evangelical spectrum. (I will refrain from naming names here, but many readers will know who they are.)

Reading the faces and body language of the audience I felt that this question was of special interest. During the presidential campaign and in the period between the election and the inauguration several “evangelical notables”—all of whom I would call fundamentalists—broke from their own ranks, their own cohort, their own tribe to denounce Trump as unfit to be president of the United States. The question aimed at me was how to explain these men’s seemingly odd, unfitting, peculiar political posture when nearly all of their own friends and colleagues loudly supported Trump.

My off-the-cuff response to the question was that I considered the persons named primarily motivated by theology and as intelligent, thoughtful men. Obviously my understood intention was to distinguish them from the majority of their own “pack” or “tribe” many of whose influential self-appointed spokesmen, mostly pastors of fundamentalist churches, supported Trump.

However, and this is my point here, the mere fact of not supporting Trump and of expressing dissenting opinions about Americanism mixed with Christianity does not make one any less “fundamentalist” theologically, spiritually or dispositionally.

Fundamentalism is a particular theological and spiritual posture within evangelical Christianity. Some people will insist on a clear line of distinction, even difference, between “fundamentalism” and “evangelicalism.” There is some support for that clear differentiation historically and theologically. However, in the wider view fundamentalism has always been evangelical Christianity’s “far right wing”—theologically.

However, neither evangelicalism nor fundamentalism are political identities; this confusion is the creation of certain sociologists of religion and the media.

There is and has been since at least 1942 a line, however blurred it may be, between moderate-to-centrist evangelicalism and fundamentalism. This is especially the case in Great Britain and America. I won’t attempt to speak for the situation in other countries. Fundamentalists are evangelicals who display the following characteristics:

1. belief that “biblical inerrancy” is a “super badge” (Carl Henry’s own term) of evangelical identity, 
2. belief that true evangelical Christians will always interpret the Bible as literally as possible,
3. belief that true evangelical Christians will never have Christian fellowship with non-evangelicals (“biblical separationism”), and,
4. a habit of searching for, “finding,” and exposing heresies especially among evangelicals.

To make my point here as clear as possible without naming any names…. Imagine influential American fundamentalist evangelical theologian “John Doe.” Dr. Doe is well-known for bearing all the characteristics of fundamentalism I mentioned above. However, like many American fundamentalists, he wants to be considered a mainstream evangelical leader and spokesman. In the past, anyway, he has been aggressive toward those among American evangelicals he considers heretics, “sheep in wolves’ clothing,” people he considers not authentically evangelical, and has worked to undermine their acceptance and influence among evangelicals.

Then, surprisingly to many people who think of both “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” as political identities, Dr. Doe breaks ranks with his fundamentalist evangelical cohort and denounces their favorite politician as unfit to be president of the United States. Then he goes even further and denounces the prominence of “Americanism” mixed together with Christianity—something his own cohort is especially known for.

I understand the confusion Dr. Doe creates among those ignorant about evangelical and fundamentalist history and theology—especially those who have wrongly come to identify these categories as political identities. What I don’t understand is the tendency on the part of some moderate-to-centrist evangelicals to think that, only for this reason, Dr. Doe must no longer be “one of those fundamentalists.” He might have broken ranks with some outspoken fundamentalists—about these matters—but this alone does not make him now no less a fundamentalist or now a moderate-to-centrist evangelical (non-fundamentalist evangelical).

My plea here is for everyone to take a deep breath and remember that neither“evangelical” nor “fundamentalist” is really, historically-theologically speaking, a political identity. A person can be a true blue fundamentalist and nevertheless be opposed to both “Trumpism” and “American exceptionalism” cloaked with the cross and the Bible.

Roger Olson - A New Christian Dogmatics from Eerdmans

A New Christian Dogmatics from Eerdmans
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/07/new-christian-dogmatics-eerdmans/

by Roger Olson
July 16, 2017

I recently received from publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans a complimentary copy of Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction by two Dutch theologians Cornelis van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink (2012/2017). It’s a beautifully hard cover volume encompassing 806 pages (including indexes). On the back cover and inside are glowing endorsements by Richard J. Mouw, Michael S. Horton, Charles Van Engen, and John Bolt—all well-known Reformed theologians with evangelical credentials. I have not read the whole volume yet, but have glanced through it and read portions. It is very contemporary, moderate, irenic, broadly Reformed in posture and orientation, and accessible in language. The authors quote a broad range of theologians and philosophers but the influences of certain 20th century Dutch Reformed theologians such as G. C. Berkouwer and Hendrikus Berkhof are notable.

One of the first things I noticed as I scanned the table of contents is that the doctrine of Scripture appears as Chapter 13—on the heels of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Chapter 12). That is not to say, of course, that the Bible is not mentioned or used as an authority for theology before that; it is only to note that a complete account of a doctrine of Scripture follows that of the Holy Spirit—which is ironic (at least to me).

Years ago my good, late friend Stanley J. Grenz published his similar one volume “dogmatics” entitled Theology for the Community of God (also published by Eerdmans) and included the full discussion of a doctrine of Scripture after the doctrine of the Holy Spirit—late in the order of chapters. For that he was pummeled and vilified by certain conservative evangelical theologians. I am waiting to hear from them now about van der Kooi and van den Brink who do the same.

Of course, as an evangelical Arminian, I am especially interested in these Dutch Reformed theologians’ treatment of the doctrines of God’s sovereignty—especially providence and election/predestination. I found them to be very moderate—following closely Berkouwer and Berkhof (Hendrikus, not Louis!). There is no hint here of the aggressive “five point Calvinism” of many American Calvinists.

In sum, if someone asked me to recommend to him or her a moderately evangelical, one volume systematic theology from a broadly Reformed perspective I would recommend this one while cautioning that I have not yet read every page. What I have read pleases me even though, naturally, as an Arminian, I would have trouble using it as my own textbook in a course in systematic theology.

We evangelical Arminians need a good, broadly evangelical (not only Wesleyan), contemporary, one volume systematic theology from an Arminian perspective. I have heard rumors of such—that it is “in the works”—from a British Nazarene theologian, but he has cautioned me not to expect it anytime soon. I hope that it may yet appear in publication during my lifetime. I will not write one; I’m not a systematician but a historical theologian. I will leave it to others to risk systematizing revelation and Christian belief; I’m not at all convinced it can be successfully done. I agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson who famously wrote:

“Our little 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.”

Ghost Sightings of the Third Kind - Are They Real Or Unreal?

Even though its fun to write and talk about the paranormal (which I occasionally have done) there are many reasons why its a created fabrication dependent upon our physical surroundings. In Gettysburg last year as evening stole into the depths of the once torn Civil War town and outlying battlegrounds run red in sadness and despair, I witnessed long lines forming by the hundreds as tourists gathered together to go on ghostly walking tours. Yes it can be fun, and spooky, and eerie, and even educational, to consider the realm of the dead. But caution is always advised.

Now lest Christians think they are immune because of the residency of the Holy GHOST (Spirit) in their lives let us also consider that to the standard, run-of-the-mill, ghostly sightings should be included any "angel or demon sightings," conversations with "dead saints," the devil, or even "sightings" of God Himself beyond the spiritual sense of conviction, worship, praise or thanksgiving.

The ancient cultures of the bible believed no less in the supernatural than our contemporary cultures do today. This phenomena can also be found in literature both old and new lending itself to the idea that our physical being is remarkably created in such a way as to be sympathetic to, or to sense in a "sixth sense" sort of way, our surroundings - both in what we see and what we don't see but feel or sense.

The reality is, though the human body is like a cosmic tuning fork sensing the unseen, it is well to remember that we are also susceptible to manipulation by our physical surroundings through invisible chemicals in the air, ultrasonic sound waves, "waking states" of sleep, and powers of suggestion by ourselves or others. What we think is there is really not - however strong its urge. And despite similar encounters by other people experiencing similar "unrealities" they too are more probably influenced by the invisible affects of our surroundings without realizing it.

To be fair, I believe God understands how finely-balanced our bodies, minds, and spirits have become over the many years of its long evolutionary development. We see God work time-and-again with all sorts of afflicted people through their stories in the bible. Even with the saints throughout the history of the church (the biblical prophets come to mind). It doesn't mean that our "ghostly sense perceptions" are any more real by default - it simply means we have an amazing constitution that differs little with our more recent historical/biological past and that our Creator God is intimately acquainted with us.

As the Psalmist would say,

"He hears the cries of the afflicted and grants heaven's peace; He attends to those broken in soul comforting their hurts and drying their tears; to the weak, the destitute, the overwhelmed He comes by night to minister to the broken heart; God is the Great Healer of mind, body, soul, and spirit."

Of course science fictions movies have taken this idea of the supernatural sense within our beings to a whole new level of perception when portraying storylines that allow us to "transcend" our earthly bodies into the heavenlies (consider movies like Phenomena, Transcendent with Johnny Depp, or Morgan Freeman's series Down the Rabbit Hole). These are pseudo-fictional movies and documentaries expressing the possibility of greater "there-ness" found in our human makeup. Its fun to imagine, and possibly even true (everything and everyone is connected in some sense), but it can also function as an escape-mechanism by transferring all our hurts and needs into an imaginary realm where we might find a kind of "spiritual" healing rather than to deal with the realities of our suffering in a real world which has so deeply harmed our souls.

And though its fun to imagine and believe (I certainly like to think about these possibilities myself), for some, its an invitation to explore what usually amounts to a fearful state of black darkness descending into the realm of the imagined "spiritual" or "ghostly/demonic/angelic encounters". Like the "demonics" of the bible, these sad souls were physiologically under the influence of suggestion, disease, or abuse. But when encountered by our gracious Lord and Redeemer their souls were miraculously healed of the causes of their affliction, grief, or madness.

In short, this is my armchair discussion of some of the many physical factors which can influence the human psyche to believe something that really isn't there, never was there, and yet seems to be real and present. I apologize ahead of time for my skepticism of the supernatural. Even though I sometimes write about it in my stories and poems it is but an attempt to communicate to those caught up in this "other worldliness" thoughts and convictions that might heal deeply held wounds. As such, I would use this kind of literary medium for that intended purpose while exploring my own consciousness of the "other worldly."

Certainly my Pentecostal friends would think me a poorer sort of Christian than if I were to join their circles preaching dreams, interpretations of dreams, sightings of the supernatural, and so forth. And without discounting their experiences I do question many of them and would urge greater caution to be careful to what you listen too. Not all of it is of God but illusions brought on by our exhausted spirits worn by life, tragedy, sorrow, and hardship. And so, in another "sense", our great God comes to us knowing all our constitutional frailties. He comes to minister as we are, where we are, and even how we are. Thank you Jesus for your grace and mercy.

R.E. Slater

July 21, 2017

* * * * * * * * *

The Science of Ghosts: What's Really Happening When Your Brain Detects a Ghoul?
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/theres-no-such-thing-as-ghosts-instead-one-of-these-phenomena-is-at-play

by Philip Perry
July 18, 2017

Once, in middle school, a gang of boys and I were lured to a spot behind the Dunkin' Donuts in our town. We went after dark, to a place where a kid from school witnessed a paranormal experience. Once there, we saw nothing. We chided our classmate until suddenly, a column of white light appeared out of nowhere. We scattered.

It sustained itself for a few minutes. Then suddenly, it cut off. A few moments later, just as mysteriously, it went on again. We stayed there quietly studying it, scared out of our minds. Until someone in our group finally pointed out a streetlight overhead. The bulb was getting old. That was the last time I believed in ghosts.

Do you? If so, you’re in good company. 45% of Americans do. In one poll, 28% of them admitted they’d had contact with one, personally. Senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Joe Nickell is the world’s sole, full-time, scientific paranormal investigator. After five decades of research, he hasn’t turned up a shred of evidence that points to the existence of ghosts. Magicians Harry Houdini and James Randi arrived at a similar place.

It’s not for lack of trying. In a video for Vox, Nickell says he’s employed blood pattern analysis, linguistic analysis, aspects of psychology, and more. It isn’t just him. Not one haunting or ghost sighting has ever rendered any evidence.

One of the problems is, it’s hard to grab raw data. All we usually have is a personal account. And these vary widely. One person will interact with an actual human figure, while another will observe mere objects flying across the room. There are a few grainy, blurs in some photos. But it’s hard to extrapolate from that.

Photographic evidence such as this isn’t enough to go on. Getty Images.

Though electromagnetic field (EMF) meters have been made popular by movies like Ghostbusters and TV shows such as Paranormal Lockdown and Ghost Hunters, there’s no scientific proof of any link between supernatural phenomenon and the magnetic field. Despite a general lack of evidence, such experiences feel poignant and real.

In a recent TED talk, Carrie Poppy explains her brush with the paranormal, how it made her feel, and later on, what she came to realize about it. She’s the co-host of the popular podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie, which explores and demystifies spiritual, religious, and paranormal topics, among others, through a scientific lens.

At the time her ghost sighting occurred, she was alone in her house. Suddenly, she felt a presence. Poppy felt like she was being watched. The feeling grew and grew and as it did, a pressure began to build inside her chest. The feeling increased slowly over the course of a week and rose to a fever pitch. She started to hear whispering sounds and became convinced that her house was haunted. Poppy tried to do a cleansing by burning a sage stick and other things. But no matter what she tried, the pressure on her chest got worse. It was also growing painful.

Finally, she took to the internet and arrived on a ghost forum for skeptics. She told them what she was experiencing and one of them said she had the symptoms for carbon monoxide poisoning. These include pressure on the chest and auditory hallucinations. The utility worker who rectified the problem, told her that if she hadn’t of gotten it fixed when she did, she wouldn’t have been alive the next morning.

There are many scientific explanations for ghost sightings. Ghost. By: Jordi Carrasco. Flickr.

The process by which one experiences something that isn’t there is called misperceived self-representation. So what else might induce this, besides carbon monoxide poisoning, brain damage, or an episode related to mental illness? Well, several things actually. There is a condition called sleep paralysis for one, also known as waking dreams.

This affects around 8% of the population. It usually occurs in the twilight hours of the morning, when one is between a waking and dreaming state. You can’t move your body and sometimes experience visual hallucinations. Grief also tends to increase the chances of a ghostly encounter. Psychologists say it might be a way for the mind to process and deal with loss. Usually, the person they see is a comforting figure who appears serene.

Another ghost-inducing phenomenon is called infrasound. This is a vibration that occurs below our normal range of hearing. That’s below 20 hertz (Hz). Certain machinery (like engines), whales, and extreme weather can all cause infrasound.

Some studies suggest that it can result in symptoms including feelings of depression, the chills, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is watching you. According to Hayden Planetarium director and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, infrasound at 18 Hz vibrates at such a rate that the eye can pick it up, which might cause visual hallucinations.

So if you or someone you know claims to have seen a ghost, believe them. But also, look for what evidence or phenomenon might be behind the sighting. You could end up finding a faulty lightbulb was the culprit all along.

Commentary - Jean Vanier's World of Love and Kindness

Jean Vanier

Jean Vanier’s world of love and kindness

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/jean-vaniers-world-of-love-and-kindness/

"How a visit to an ‘idiot’ asylum inspired the founder of L’Arche"

by Mary Wakefield

July 1, 2017

Some of the time, most of the time, it’s tricky to believe in God. There’s just too much that’s sad — and behind it all, the ceaseless chomping of predators. Then sometimes the mist lifts and just for a moment you can see why the saints insist that everything’s OK. There’s a documentary out now, Summer in the Forest, that for a while cleared the mist for me and made sense of faith.

It tells the stories of a group of men and women with learning disabilities who live alongside volunteers without disabilities in Trosly-Breuil, a small French village north of Paris. The community is called L’Arche — The Ark — and it was founded 53 years ago by a French-Canadian former naval officer, Jean Vanier. In his mid-thirties, Vanier visited an institution for ‘idiots’ and was struck by the great loneliness there. Where most of us would scuttle away guiltily, Jean Vanier made a decision in the autumn of 1964 that sent his life’s trajectory off at an odd angle.

He invited two men, Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, to leave the asylum where they’d spent their adult lives, and come to live with him in his cottage in Trosly-Breuil. He thought it would be fun, he says. He thought they could go for drives.

In the film, a now elderly Philippe Seux explains what Vanier’s decision meant to him: ‘In the psychiatric hospital, there was nothing to do — just sit on your arse all day doing sod all. When some lads misbehaved, they were given injections to calm down. It was quite a relief to be out of there, I can tell you.’

The cottage became L’Arche, which in turn became an international movement over the years, and there are now hundreds of L’Arche communities worldwide, where men and women who would otherwise live locked up can live as family. The strange and lovely thing is that if Summer in the Forest is to be believed, it’s a family filled with unusual joy.

Jean Vanier is now 88 and, if you ask around in Catholic circles, it’s whispered he’s a saint. He still lives in Trosly-Breuil, but in his spare time he’s a sort of secret superhero for peace — flying around the world to broker between powerful players. Justin Welby called on him this year to mediate between cross bishops, and it’s said he made them all wash each other’s feet. Though Vanier’s life has been punctuated with great accomplishments and prestigious awards, it’s that first invitation to Raphael and Philippe that seems most impressive. You can change the direction of your life — you can change other people’s lives! Deep in my everyday rut, I forget.

When I spoke to Jean Vanier, England was simmering in the aftermath of the election and the Grenfell Tower fire. Summer in this city — all the railing against the rich — seemed a far cry from Summer in the Forest. Vanier lives with and champions the very poorest people. I asked him: All this rage against the rich, can good come of it? Will it be productive? He replied: ‘I mean, it’s not only unproductive but it kills oneself. If you hate people, then you begin to hate yourself. You destroy yourself and no more peace! You are just continually in anger.’

So what are we to do? (When you’ve got a candidate for sainthood on the line, you cut to the chase.) ‘When there is a lot of poverty it should be a call for a lot of people to rise up to share tenderness,’ he said. ‘It’s what the Samaritan did when he bent down and started looking after this Jewish guy somewhere between Jericho and Jerusalem. Something suddenly rose up in him that he could communicate life, and he did it to this guy who was a sort of enemy in religion. We all have that — that’s the beauty, we all have that potential. If we can cool the anger down.’

One way of cooling the anger — better than another smug-fest pop concert — might be a giant screening of Summer in the Forest in Trafalgar Square. This, I think, is actually a genuinely good idea. The residents of L’Arche, unlike most Corbynistas, are some of the least fortunate people on the planet. But they have a laugh. The documentary shows the canteen at breakfast. One young man, David Surmaire, says: ‘I’m a strong man, me. People who treat me as if I’m small — they have to stop it.’ Then he drops to all fours, and barks like a dog while his girlfriend miaows. They’re having a blast. Jean Vanier eats all his meals in the canteen. He sits to one side and gently teases his friends.

Michel Petit, the real star of Summer in the Forest, is a barrel-bellied 75-year-old with the gait and purposefulness of a toddler. In his pre-L’Arche life he spent angry decades in a home. He says, simply and seriously to camera: ‘Jean Vanier is a man who loves us very much. He loves me very much. He taught me about calm.’

To me, Jean said: ‘I’ve been with these people now for 30 years, they are super people. Because they are people of fun, they love to celebrate. Every meal can become a celebration. That doesn’t mean to say that now and again people won’t prod their next-door neighbour with a fork — this is life. But the fundamental movement from many people with disabilities, they have been so pushed down, they don’t know they’re lovable, and then the day that they discover that they are lovable and they can trust themselves, then it becomes whoopee!’

The L’Arche communities are peaceful places, but they’re a puzzle for the West. We all talk great game on equality but the truth is most of us think: ‘I’d rather be dead than very disabled.’ Witness the hundreds of poor babies with Down’s syndrome aborted each year. So how can these men and women at L’Arche be living better lives than our own?

Vanier explained: ‘Look, there are two realities, two cultures. There is a culture of power and there is a culture of relationships. The men and women I live with see that it is good to be together and we don’t have to solve all the problems of the world when we are together. They teach me to lighten up. But then now and again,’ he said, ‘you get people from The Spectator who ring you up and you have to start being serious…’

I looked down at my great list of serious questions, and ploughed on. Here in the UK, the dominant philosophy in the social services is one of ‘care in the community’. The idea is that people with learning difficulties should live not in homes, but in their own flats, independently. Communities like L’Arche are closing down. Isn’t that lunacy?

‘We did that for a while right in the early days,’ said Vanier. ‘We found jobs for people and got them into apartments and everything, but then they found that television and beer go really well together and then we had to work with the AA! The point is not just to have independence, it’s to have friends. People belong together in a shared life.’

‘If I could change the law,’ he said, ‘I would organise it so that industries can be welcoming people with disabilities, meaning they don’t have to pay such high prices, they have much greater flexibility in wages and time and so and so, that could be adapted to people with disabilities.’

Oh what a hot potato this is in England! Rosa Monckton argued the same case in this magazine a few months ago. She suggested that people with learning disabilities who long to work, should not have to be paid the minimum wage. The reaction was apoplectic, I told Jean. ‘What a shame!’ he said. ‘The Down’s people would bring in laughter to the businesses! It would benefit everyone. But anyway…’ Anyway. It’s life, and we’re all in it together.

According to the philosophy of L’Arche, men and women with learning disabilities — loving and guileless — teach us how to live. But, says Vanier, they have another lesson for us too — they also teach us the mystery of living with loss. This I find unnerving. What is the mystery of loss?

‘We all live with loss,’ said Vanier. ‘It’s inevitable. We begin, most of us, by being loved totally when we’re born — then we enter into a world of loss, a mystery of loss. Every time you lose a job, or something precious, or there’s death, there’s loss. We cannot live without this movement of loss and gain. But some people are so frightened of loss, they are just scared stiff of loss.’

He laughed. I didn’t. I thought of a life spent acquiring and keeping safe: a husband, the baby, a house, the great stream of packages from Amazon. The possibilities for loss give me vertigo.

‘You can’t escape it,’ said Jean Vanier, gently. ‘In the end, you even lose what you feel is yourself. We all do. There’s a beauty in that. There’s a beauty even in something like Alzheimer’s, because it is a cry. It’s not a disaster, it’s a cry for a one-to-one.’

But how can that be beautiful? Isn’t it just catastrophically sad?

‘We have to learn to cry,’ said Jean Vanier, ‘because we’ve created an identity of power and not an identity of relationships, and that’s what the whole film is about — an identity of relationships.’

It’s true that Summer in the Forest turns the world upside down. If these men and women, who have so little of what the world admires, can be so happy, then we must be going about things a little wrong. The mystery of loss remains a mystery to me — but I’m left with the image of Sebastian, a member of L’Arche in Trosly-Breuil, whose life is spent lying scribbled up on a sort of motorised bed: limbs useless, head twisted sideways. In the film he’s shown having his heart checked by a doctor. When the doc is done, Jean, standing beside him, leans his head down next to Sebastian’s. ‘You are so beautiful, Sebastian,’ he says. Sebastian, who should by all rights be furious with life, accepts Jean’s love.