Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, January 11, 2013

James Grier Website, Audio Sermons & Lectures (updated)




TEACHINGS ON ETHICS AND
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

by Dr. James Grier



Personal Reflections on
Conservative Evangelicalism

by R.E. Slater


The audiocasts here provided are testament to my past education in the Regular Baptist denomination first marked by it's dispensational fundamentalism, and later, by a conservative evangelicalism refined in the fires of Covenantal Reformed teachings rejecting the Baptist plank of Arminianism and replacing it with Calvinism as its pejorative systematic. Dr. Grier was an excellent speaker and capable communicator who reaffirmed this common approach by many my Christian tribe. To know where Christianity stood in the 1970s and 1990s is to listen again to its many reflections on God, Scripture, and Christ's Atonement.

However, I created Relevancy22 as further personal testament to Spirit-led divine inspiration  I received years ago urging me to expand my inherited discipleship in the Westernized Christian faith both i) progressively and, ii) as a way to find a biblical hermeneutic which might allow me to do this. After many years I have found that I cannot find a biblical interpretation any better than the "Love of God" as the central theme of Scriptures as shown to us in Jesus, as both divine Son of God and Lord of Lords Immanuel who has come to bring salvation to all.

I have sadly noticed over many years of observation that where the re-engaged biblical center of God's love runs astray is in those sincere or zealous Christians who follow God and translate His divine loving acts for divine wrath, judgment and hell if rejected - such as John Calvin had done in his Dogmatics (c.1536 - 1559). Similarly, when reading the biblical Gospels, Jesus spoke specifically to the religious Jewish leaders of his day as to their human perversion and idolatry of God which they were reinforcing through accumulated ungodly religious laws and sacraments over the centuries.

Hence, if I err as a follower of Jesus, it will be in speaking to God's love through-and-through-and-through all previously held Christian beliefs, dogmas, doctrines, creeds and confessions; and across as wide a range as I can ecologically, civilly, economically, politically, and socially. Like the many Venerable Bedes of our past common centuries who spoke to the Spirit-command of mercy, grace, forgiveness and Christian Humanism; or today, to that same subject of Christian Humanitarianism and Social Justice; so I urge all Jesus followers to speak God's love into all areas of life regardless of the abuses taught by the church into these same areas demanding grace.

And yes, James Grier does reiterate these same centuries-old pervasive church doctrines of sin and judgment as common to the fundamental and evangelic forms of Christianity I was raised in. He will argue these persuasively, regularly, and with vigor. All to which I will disavow, and in the same spirit of alacrity, speak persuasively, with vigor, and in regularity, as testament to God's enriching, infilling, healing love. Thus and thus, Relevancy22's shouts to a new message of God's love and against the sin that overcomes us in our self-righteous and sanctimonious Christian spirits.

An "Eco, Civil, and Socio, Christ-filled Humanitarianism" is far better for the world than any Christian ideologies urging:

i) civilly-exclusionary-dominionism; or,

ii) religiously-reinforcing-kingdom-reconstruction dogmas; or,

iii) any forms of Christian-White-Supremacist-fascist crusades held against civil democracies wishing to expand the legal rights of their polyplural, multiracial, and multicultural communities.

Better, to replace these zealous, agitating, unloving, church beliefs with a Christ-filled, God-filled love, centered in people of all kinds, than to exclude, berate, chastise, and belittle those who live differently to the unChristian ideals none of us can live up to... nor should we. I know of no better Gospel (Good News) of God than love, welcome, embrace, and resistance to both human and religious evil. God is a God of love, not a God of evil.

R.E. Slater


* * * * * * *


INTRODUCTION TO DR. GRIER
Dr. James Murray Grier (1932-2013) joined the staff of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary in 1982, having earned degrees from Baptist Bible College and Seminary, Grace Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary.
Dr, Grier served as Executive Vice President and Academic Dean for 16 years. In addition, he also held the position of Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Theology until 2012.
As we recall his contributions and consider his legacy, we invite you to engage selected resources from his work and ministry.


CONFERENCE SESSIONS

Creation (MARBC 2009) 
Death, Dying & Euthanasia (Critical Session) 
Genetic & Stem Cell Research (Critical Session)
Reproductive Technologies (Critical Session) 


TEACHING SERIES 















ADDITIONAL SERMONS 


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PLEASE NOTE:
The site and links below may no longer be operative but are kept as an indication of some of the additional sermons and lectures Dr. James Grier had developed over a lifetime of speaking and engagement in evangelical thought.

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SERMONS BY DR. JAMES GRIER


~ the links below may no longer be operative ~


Reproductive Freedom Contrasted with a Biblical Theology of Family
The Dawn of the Age of the Spirit – Morning Service, West Cannon Baptist
Church: God’s Temple/Presence- Evening Service, West Cannon Baptist
A Legacy of Grace (at Grace Community Church 75th Anniversary)
The Triumph of the Servant – Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (at Metropolitan Tabernacle)
The Local Church as a Body of Believers in Christ – 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 (at Ridley Hall Evangelical Church)
The Gospel: A Funeral Homily for Dan Cummings
God’s Glory and Presence – Installation Service
The Corruption of Man - Genesis 3
Corruption of Society – Genesis 4
Triumph of Grace – Isaiah 6
Behold My Servant! – Isaiah 42:1-9
The Servant Triumphant – Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Jesus and the Spirit: Baptism & Temptation - Matthew 3 & 4
The Baptism of the Son of God – Matthew 3
The Testing of the Son of God – Matthew 4
Theology of Prayer: Part 1 – Matthew 6
Theology of Prayer: Part 2 – Matthew 6
Jesus’ Sermon on Missions – Matthew 10
Come Unto Me – Matthew 11
Mine Eyes Have Seen – Luke 2, Christmas Sermon
The Unspeakable Gift – Luke 2, Christmas Sermon
The Advent – Luke 2
Your Heavenly Father Will Give… – Luke 11:1-13
Gathering Riches for God – Luke 12:13-21
The Great Banquet – Luke 14
The Father of Two Lost Sons – Luke 15
Lost and Found – Luke 15
The Return of the Glory/Presence – Acts 2
The Impossible Possibility – Acts 2
From Glory to Glory – 2 Corinthians 3:18
I Timothy 4:6-16 – Ordination Sermon
The Word Above All Words – Hebrews 1:1-4
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ - Hebrews 2:1-18
What Have We Come To? Hebrews 12
The Church: God’s Temple/Presence pt. 1 – I Peter 2:4-10
The Church: God’s Temple/Presence pt. 2
The Investiture of the Lamb: Revelation 5
Hallelujah to the Triumphant Christ: Revelation 19
I Make All Things New – Rev. 21
We Shall See His Face – Revelation 22



LECTURES BY DR. JAMES GRIER

~ the links below may no longer be operative ~


The Trinity – Part 2: London Reformed Baptist Theological Seminary
The Trinity – Part 3: London Reformed Baptist Theological Seminary
Islam’s Global Challenge to the Gospel
Myths & Misconceptions Concerning Homosexual Behavior & Genetics
The Biblical Basis for Heterosexual Behavior: An Evaluation of Homosexuality
Growing Old in God - Biblical and Ethical Considerations
Growing Old in God – Practical and Personal Reflections
Spiritual Responses to Dementia
Ministry in a Postmodern Context: Our Times and Culture
Ministry in Postmodern Context: Alternative Responses
The Ground of Certainty: Part 1
The Ground of Certainty: Part 2
Bio-Ethics: Do the Ends Justify the Genes
Bio-Ethics: Reproductive Technologies
Bio-Ethics: Death, Dying & Euthanasia
Missional Ministry in a Postmodern Context
What Do You Know for Sure?
The God Who Is



THURSDAY EVENING BIBLE CLASS

Delivered at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary 
by James M. Grier



~ the links below may no longer be operative ~


Jonah Retold:
Adventures in Cross-cultural Listening


10 Words 


Biblical Theology of Prayer


The Reformation Cry 


Ancient Light for Modern Times 


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Of Sons and Daughters Lost to the Fathers and Mothers of this World


Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662–1669 | Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Parable of the Prodigal Sons

Commentaries by Pete Enns & R.E. Slater
A Parable of the $20 Bill
Sermon by James Grier

“But While He was Still Far Off” (or, what if God actually loves us?)

by Pete Enns
January 6, 2013

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion (Luke 15:20).

A lot of people have heard of “the parable of the prodigal (i.e., wasteful) son.” Some translations call it “the parable of the lost son,” which is better but not quite there. I prefer “the parable of the jerk loser son.”

Long story short (you can read the full version anytime you want to), the younger of two sons demands that his father give him his inheritance right now. This move is majorly disrespectful, for a inheritance is given only when the father dies and also the older son is supposed to get his first. The younger son isn’t being a little forward. He’s leaping over his older brother and in effect saying to his father, “you are dead to me.”

So, he left to live the life that mimicked Animal House and - spoiler alert - "ran out of money!" Of course, what should happen next but a famine and so he roamed the streets hungry and alone. He finally decided he actually has to get a job, and so wound up taking care of pigs–which, if you recall your Judaism, is about as bad an animal as you can come in contact with. He’s so hungry, he even started daydreaming about eating pig food.

He figured he needed to do something about his predicament before he starved, so his sense of self-preservation kicked in. (If you haven’t caught on, this guy is pretty focused on himself, even here.) ”I know, I’ll go back home and grovel a bit. ‘Oh father, I am not worthy to be your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.’ That should work.”

"The Parable of the Lost Son" by Christopher W. French.
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight."

So, he sucks it up and heads back home.

I’m talking now to you parents out there, especially with high school and college age offspring. If you’ve ever been in the place where you son or daughter has left the straight and narrow, slammed the door in your face (actually or metaphorically), and began making some life choices that keep you up nights worrying yourself sick if they are OK, what they’re doing, are they alive, are they ever coming home–if you’ve ever been there, you know what’s going on here.

Or maybe things have not been all that dramatic for you. You child disrespects you and storms out the door to go who knows where and do who knows what with who knows whom. You’re worried and mad. The next day, the car pulls in the drive way and s/he clearly has that look of remorse.

If you’re a like most parents I’ve met (including me), you’re relieved but you also want to make a point. So you play it cool, stand at the door, and give you son or daughter that “I told you so, c’mon, admit it, admit it, you were wrong and I was right” look.

And this is where the parable hits me between the eyes.

When the son was still a far way off, rather than going back into his tent to play it cool (“Oh…You’re back. I hadn’t noticed. How have you been?”), rather than doing what normal fathers do, he was filled with compassion and ran out to meet him.

But while he was still far off…

He couldn’t wait. Even though the son had done his best to bring shame and hurt to his family and his faith …

... his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

The son delivered his limp, rehearsed, apology, hoping at least to get a bite to eat. Instead the father ignored the speech and ordered that his son be fully restored: a clean robe, a ring (representing family membership), and sandals where he had been barefoot.

As for a bite to eat? Forget it. How about a feast? And why not, as the father says, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.”

You get the feeling the father was pretty excited.

Frans Francken (II) - The Parable of the Prodigal Son

The father, obviously, represents God in this parable, but this isn’t a “get saved and go to heaven after you die” story. The son is, well, a son–already part of the family.

In Jesus’ day, he was addressing his stubborn fellow Jewish countrymen, reminding them about the love of God and that it’s never too late to come home. When this and other stories were adapted for the Christian faith, that same point remained but with a broader [non-Jewish] audience.

The story isn’t about conversion to Christianity. It’s about God being on the look out for those in the family who have wandered off, and God simply can’t wait to welcome them home.

I read stories like this and I wonder, What if this is actually true? What if there is a God who is really like this? What if God can’t wait to have us around–even with the garbage we keep carrying around and our half hearted “I’m sorries?”

What if God is glad to see us?

And the much more threatening question, What difference would really believing all that make in how I look at, well, pretty much everything?

And, what would it look like if I loved the way God loved?

- Pete Enns


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


How Does One become "Family"?

R.E. Slater
January 11, 2012

I'd like to make one small addition and add the following observation....

The traditional church view here is that "the family" refers to believers of God who follow after Jesus. To a Spirit-baptized, confessing believer, who has left God and now wishes to come back, to whom God says to His child, "Eh, verily, even now, do I love thee! Thou art my child and ever will I love thee." Of course this doesn't answer the question of "faith and works" (James, Peter, etc) so much as state a profundity of church dogma which we must save for another day's examination.

But this isn't what Jesus was saying....

Certainly Jesus had this in mind when speaking to the Pharisees about belonging to God through the covenants made in Abraham, Moses and David. As Jews under covenant (esp. the unconditional covenant of Abraham) they were part of God's people. Even if, after having broken covenant with God (sic, the Mosaic Law, and Suzerainty-Lordship of God in the Abrahamic Covenant) they were welcomed back. It's what God does as One who Loves and Redeems.

But how can one come back when covenant has been broken?

In the OT sense of "remnant (theology)" those Jews who broke covenant were no longer part of God's blessings and fidelity. They stood in jeopardy of judgment and would be treated as a non-covenanted people God knew not. This is the sense you get when reading the prophets of the OT as they preached against the sins of the people of Israel who hardened their hearts against God and persisted in refusing to repent to the prophets message that they had broken covenant with God. That they were faithless, refusing His will and word in their lives. So too had the younger son in the parable acted by rejecting his father, collecting his inheritance, and leaving the community of his birthright.

Under the Abrahamic Covenant there was a way back to God. But how?

In essence, God Himself would become the sacrifice for His people's sin, as the Lamb of God, pictured in Jesus (who was very God himself!). Hence, when God had Abraham bring a sacrifice for his, and his family's (and his future descendant's) ratification of the covenant (... a ratification that in essence was an atoning covenant for sin, a family covenant for membership, and a submittal covenant for duration of treaty, among other things... ). When this sacrifice was brought it was God Himself who cleaved the oxen in two, who functioned as both the priest and the mediating sacrifice, before Himself and Abraham (Abraham here is pictured as yet another typological figure like that of Adam for mankind).

Thus was God both the Suzerainty who treated with Abraham, and the undergirding foundation for the covenant itself, when it surely would be broken by Abraham in his doubts and faithless acts soon to come.

Even so did Jesus remind the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day of their faithlessness to God. Of their need to repent (sic, as such, Jesus was acting as God's prophet to His people Israel... ). Of their rightness of restoration based upon God's faithfulness and love as their Suzerainty who had become their surety as sacrifice upon creation of their treaty with YHWH. Which Jesus Himself would someday soon perform in His own body and spirit as Exemplar Magnifique, by way of re-establishing Israel's broken covenant with God through Himself, as God's perfect, and acceptable sacrifice.


To whom does this apply? To Israel alone?

Hence, under Paul and NT theology, God's covenant has been expanded to all men - both Jews and Gentiles alike - in and through Jesus. Jesus is mankind's surety of covenant in/under/before/beside/by God. Through Jesus is our sin removed. Through Jesus may we become adopted into God's covenant as His people. And through Jesus has Israel's covenant with God has become enlarged to all men everywhere. And if - and when - broken, as it surely will be, it will ever remain in force because it is based upon the eternal God Himself, and through His Son, and not upon our own selves. So that even in our sin, we are God's "family". By right of creation (Genesis). By right of concession (Abraham). By right of redemption (Jesus).  By right of sustenance (the Holy Spirit). We are God's lost and straying remnant. We are God's faithless people to whom He seeks day and night.

And it is to this idea that God says to us today - to those standing outside His covenant, as well as to those standing inside His covenant - that all may come. And when we fail that He will be our surety. Our sacrifice. Our Oxen and Lamb. Our High Priest and Mediator. Our Savior and Redeemer. That His covenantal love restores, as well as makes, covenant with us. That He understands our brokenness and fallibility. Our sins, selfishness, pride, ego, faults, and small-mindedness. Our hesitancies, doubts, misgivings, hurts, shames, and failures. And yet, reaches out to all who wish to enter in to His grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness, healing and strength.

Then what is our answer this day? Shall we continue to despise the Father or return home?

Regardless if you have left "the covenanted family" or not. Regardless if you were not part of that family (like Abram first was before God had ever established covenant with him). It is to you that God has made covenant. A covenant that will stand the test of time through God Himself and through His work on Calvary's cross for all Jews and non-Jews alike. He is our Redeemer. Our surety. Our Promise-Keeper. Our faithful Lord and Sovereign who seeks all who are lost, and weary, and filled with the pain of this world.

Where money and riches and fast friends never brought satisfaction. Where the pigstys and self-imposed poverties of this world would grind upon our souls in our lostness and inability to find safe haven and rest. Yet God is there. He waits for you to leave yourself behind and to come to Him. Willingly. In hope and desire. Bearing ruin and destruction in your bones through the mangle of sin in our lives. Even as He searches for you. And is pained by your absence. And when seeing you come, will run to you. Embrace you. Hold you. And never let you go. Inviting all who will come to a feast held in your honor, reveling with God's broken heart of joy that yet another sinner has come home from the pigstys of the human heart and lost dens of this world. Wherever they be. For all are sought, and longed for by God, our Creator-Redeemer, with a broken and heavy heart, until "found" on the road leading back to "home". Come. And wait no longer.

R.E. Slater
January 11, 2012
The Parable of the $20 Bill


A well-known speaker started off his seminar holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this."

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants it...?" Still the hands were up in the air. "Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.

"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We may feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.

Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE. For you are priceless in the eyes of God who loves you.



AUDIO FILE

James Grier: Sermon on the Parable of the Two Lost Sons

The Father of Two Lost Sons – Luke 15

Additional Sermons on Luke: http://jamesmgrier.org/sermons/




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Popular False Claims About Biblical Scholarship & Historical Criticism

3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/3-things-i-would-like-to-see-evangelical-leaders-stop-saying-about-biblical-scholarship/
 
by Pete Enns
January 10, 2013
Comments
 
On occasion I come across some sweeping public claims made by Evangelical leaders about the state of biblical scholarship. These claims may be genuinely felt, but they are still false, though they persist in the Evangelical subculture.
 
 
1. Historical Criticism is either dying or at least losing momentum in academia.
 
Rather than assuming that the Bible is revelatory (revealed by God, inspired) and therefore historically accurate, historical criticism seeks outside verification through various means of historical and textual analysis. Historical Criticism has its roots in Europe and has governed the academic study of the Bible for about 300 years.
 
I’m not saying anyone has to like it or agree with it. I’m only saying historical criticism isn’t dead or dying. Ask anyone who has taken Bible classes or earned a degree in Bible from a university.
 
True, many universities also engage in postmodern approaches that are critical of historical criticism (e.g., Feminist studies), but you’d still be hard pressed to find academic programs in Bible that don’t take as their axiomatic starting point a historical critical approach to the Bible. Look at course descriptions on the internet of departments of Religion, Judaism, Near Eastern Studies, Christian Origins, Hebrew Bible, etc. “The Historical-Critical Method” is what defines these programs.
 
Claiming that historical criticism is passé may suggest to some that conservative biblical scholarship has won the “battle” against historical criticism and is now finally vindicated. This may sound appealing in popular circles, but it is not true in academia.
 
 
2. Source Criticism of the Pentateuch is in a state of chaos.
 
Rather than accepting the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) in the middle of the second millennium BC [(~1400 BC) - res], source criticism claims that scribes living after the Babylonian exile (after 539 BC) created the Pentateuch out of various pre-existent “sources.”
 
Source criticism has been a major thorn in the side of conservative Christians since the 19th century. But again, like it or hate it, source criticism is not dead. What is dead is how the earliest source critics theorized about these sources, most notably Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th century. His theories have been criticized from almost the beginning, but a you’d have a hard time finding a research institution where the basic outlines of source criticism that Wellhausen popularized aren’t a given.
 
In my experience, the motivation behind this claim is apologetic. Casting doubt on the reigning theory of the Pentateuch supposedly elevates by default the traditional view. But this does not address the serious problems with the traditional view that gave rise to alternate explanations in the first place.
 
 
3. Biblical archaeology basically supports the historical veracity of the Bible.
 
Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites.
 
The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.
 
That doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to be done and people don’t need to keep an open mind. Who knows what the future will bring? But, my only point is this: at present to say that archaeology is a friend to the historical accuracy of the Bible may be true for some things, but not for the foundational story of Israel’s origins - slavery, exodus, and conquest. This has been and continues to be a big problem, and claiming otherwise just makes the matter worse.
 
Anyway, I know that across the Evangelical spectrum–especially with Evangelical biblical scholars–you will find various nuances and differences of opinion on these three issues, especially off the record. I’m only talking here about uninformed public claims made by Evangelical leaders. They may be rhetorically effective, but they are false and only lead to more cognitive dissonance.
 
 
 
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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Index- Calvinism v. Arminianism






Index to Calvinism v. Arminianism


Newest Conversations




Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

Index to past articles on Calvinism v. Wesleyanism (Don Thorsen et al)



Arminianism Doctrine



God's Glory is God's Love and Nothing Less

 Why High Calvinism is Impossible: The Importance of Language



Calvinism and Relational/Open Theology

Thomas Jay Oord - Pathways to Open and Relational Theologies

 What We Mean and Don't Mean When We Talk About God's Sovereignty



Calvinism v. Arminianism

Calvinism (Still) Isn't Beautiful. It Sings for Divine Power not for Divine Weakness, Suffering, and Sacrifice

 American Theologian Charles Hodge: How Arminianism and Calvinism Play Out in Conservative Chrisitanity

 How is the God of 5-Point Calvinism Not Worthy of Worship?

 The Insistence of God in Times of Change (or, 

 The Emergence of Puritanism into Neo-Calvinism)

 My Journey Out of Inerrancy to a Broader Hermeneutic

RNS - The Troubling Trends in America's 'Calvinist Revival'

A You A Divergent?

Parody: Hitler Finds Out Arminian Theology is True


Excerpt from Austin Fischer’s Book, "Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed"

John Fyre's Review of "The Young, Restless, and No Longer Reformed," Parts 1-2

 Why Calvinism's "Divine Determinism" Doesn't Satisfy an Arminian Theologian

 The FACTS of Arminian Theology: The Biblical Doctrines of Grace

Is there a middle ground between Calvinism and Arminianism?

Three Aspects of Arminianian Hope: "A Godly Kingdom That Is Becoming"

How Does God Move and Act in the Universe? - "Eight Positions of Divine Sovereignty"

Pushing up DAISY: Arminianism in Brief

Discussion in Arminianism's Grundmotif: God's Goodness and Man's Free Will vs. God's Sovereignty and Middle Knowledge

An Arminian Ordo Salutis (Order of Salvation)

Election is For Everyone - Discussion of Election, Free Will, Predestination, & God's Sovereignty

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

Another Calvinist Misrepresentation of Arminianism

Can the 5-Point Calvinist Really Say, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know?"

 Prevenient Grace and Why It Matters to Arminians and Calvinist Alike

Brian Abasciano’s response to a review of his book on Romans 9-11

 Two Responses to the Book, "Against Calvinism" by Dr. Roger Olson

Blinded to the Real Issues

John Calvin and Jacob Arminius

What is Faith? Holding an Arminianism that is Not Wesleyan

Testimonial: "I Used to be a Calvinist"

 Roger Olson: Arminianism as a God Centered Theology

 IS Arminianism the Root of Christian Liberalism?

 What does the Christian term Atonement Mean?

 Of Calvin, Barth and Poetry

 Evaluating "God Wins" by Mark Galli

 Discussions on "Heresy, Universalism, Hell and Free Will"

 Reforming the Reformed

 God's Self-Limitations (Torrnace, Pinnock)

 Arminianism is NOT Semi-Pelagianism

 Calvinism and TULIP

 DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism

 Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 1

 Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 2

 Is Emergent Another Name for Evangelical?

 12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again




 Frank Schaeffer (son of Francis) Speaks to the Destructiveness of Religious Legalism




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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

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

Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”
of Horace Bushnell, Part 2/3
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/remembering-the-progressive-orthodoxy-of-horace-bushnell-part-two/

by Roger Olson
August 13, 2012
Comments
 
Bushnell was self-consciously a mediating theologian. He stood against the stream of New England Unitarianism and the accommodating liberalism while at the same time resisting the rigid orthodoxy and incipient fundamentalism of neo-Puritanism and the [arising] Princeton Theology (Alexander and Hodge). He strongly defended belief in the supernatural, including Jesus’ miracles (although he felt no need to defend every biblical miracle story), while at the same time defending the need to adjust Christian doctrines to the changing cultural context. He infuriated both liberals and conservatives. The latter attempted to expel him from the local Congregational association, but his church withdrew to protect him. The former heaped scorn and ridicule on him for being out of touch with modern thought.
 
Like Barth and Niebuhr in the next century, Bushnell never earned a doctoral degree; he was a seminary graduate and pastor. His only academic teaching involved tutoring Yale students. Yet he wrote many books of theology that sold well and were widely read, reviewed, discussed and sometimes condemned (especially by his opponents to the right such as Hodge and to the left). His main philosophical-theological influence was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the enigmatic English romanticist poet and essayist whose book Aids to Reflection greatly inspired Bushnell. Like Kierkegaard, but without any obvious influence by him, Bushnell believed spiritual truth usually comes clothed in paradox; and, that many of theology’s pathologies arise from attempting to make everything rationally satisfying.
 
Among Bushnell’s most influential books (besides Christian Nurture) were God in Christ (1849), Nature and the Supernatural (1858), Christ and His Salvation (1864) and The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866). The latter book created the most controversy as there he tried to work out an objective doctrine of the atonement that would avoid the penal substitution theory which he thought portrayed God as cold and vindictive. He became dissatisfied with what he had written about the atonement there, so he revised his doctrine of the atonement in his last book Forgiveness and Law (1874). Essentially, he held that Jesus’ death was the cost of forgiveness by God. I won’t get into Bushnell’s mature theory of the atonement here as the details of his doctrinal proposals are not my focus in this post.
 
One cannot understand anything about Bushnell’s approach to theology and doctrinal reconstruction without realizing that he considered all language, not only theological language, metaphorical. All nouns outside of mathematics, he argued, are “faded metaphors”—images. Words about things never match them perfectly. And that is especially true in spiritual matters where we are talking about things unseen. Therefore, according to Bushnell, all God talk ought to admit that none of its words perfectly match the Reality they seek to express. This is more than merely affirmation of analogy; it seems to me that Bushnell’s theory of religious language takes a position somewhere between equivocal and analogical. The upshot was that for him, all creeds and doctrines must be held somewhat lightly because none of them correspond exactly to the spiritual realities they attempt to describe. Some words about God and salvation (etc.) are better than others, but all are like arrows shot toward a target too distant to hit. Some go right toward it but fall short; others go way off in a wrong direction entirely.
 
Also, one cannot understand anything about Bushnell’s theology without realizing that he considered religion, including Christianity, primarily about experiencing God. For him, the essence of Christianity is spiritual communion with God through Christ. “A few dull propositions” can never do justice to that life even if they are necessary. For him, there is a qualitative difference between that communion with God and doctrines that inevitably flow from it. Doctrines are secondary; personal communion with God is primary. Critics charge Bushnell with repeating Schleiermacher’s subjectivism, but that’s not correct. Bushnell did not believe in a universal “God consciousness” that serves as the criterion of all religious belief, including Christian belief ....
 
[(coincidentally, Process Theology sounds these same themes in attempting to reconcile all the world's religions with one another, which is yet another reason that I do, and do not, like Process Theology, preferring rather that all the world's religions, including Christianity, comes to Jesus, and not to some nameless, eternal "Source of All Reality" - res)].
 
... In other words, he did not acknowledge any “religious a priori” to become a Procrustean bed (look it up) for Christian doctrine. Nor did he think doctrines are subjective expressions of individual or corporate experiences; he held the Bible to be the source and norm for doctrine. However, he thought the Bible communicates spiritual truth through poetry and parable and even its didactic writings (e.g., Paul’s letters) are metaphorical such that they must be interpreted anew in each generation ....
 
[(... a postmodernist will recognize the fluidity of language respective to the interpretive eras and social cultures of its residence. - res)].
 
... For example, the New Testament uses the metaphor “ransom” for what Christ accomplished on the cross. That spoke meaningfully to people in the ancient world filled with slavery; it speaks less meaningfully to us in the modern world. The theologian’s task is to develop new accounts of the atonement that are nevertheless faithful to the original images.
 
Bushnell was appalled at the vicious theological debates tearing churches apart in New England ...
 
[(not unlike today's inflammatory rhetorics being heard. Part of my pulling away from Evangelicalism was in my disappointment with Evangelical response to Emergent Christianity - res)].
 
... Much of what he was about was trying to provide ways of thinking about doctrines that make such heated debates unnecessary. To that end he developed (or at least began developing) what he called “Christian comprehensiveness.” Contrary to what his critics charged, he did not advocate throwing out all creeds and confessions of faith. However, he said of them “the more, the better.” All express something of the truth; none express truth perfectly. “Christian comprehensiveness” was Bushnell’s ecumenical endeavor; he thought a major task of theology is to draw out the truth in all the major, historical forms of Christianity and hold its various expressions in tension with each other.  Unlike liberals, he was not interested in finding the “kernel within the husks” (essence of Christianity separated from all its historical forms) and discarding the husks. For him, there is no culturally neutral, transcendent propositional truth to which we have access. All expressions of Christian belief are culturally shaped. And all are metaphorical.
 
All this is vague without an example. Much of the heat of New England Protestant controversy in Bushnell’s time centered around Calvinism versus Arminianism. Bushnell argued that there is truth in both and neither is true alone. They need each other. His approach to this and other controversies among equally God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians was “both-and” rather than “either-or.” He rejected both Calvinism and Arminianism insofar as they were represented by their adherents as closed systems; he accepted both insofar as they are viewed as human attempts to express equally important truths of revelation. Both agree that God is sovereign; both agree that humans are responsible for sin and evil. The problem that gives rise to the controversy tearing churches apart, he argued, is that defenders of both go too far in speculation and deny the truth in the other's soteriology. He knew that inquiring minds will inevitably seek to explain mysteries, but he believed these explanations ought to be held lightly and not as fortresses to be built up and defended and used as bases for forays against the “enemies.” He wasn’t in favor of Methodists giving up Arminianism or Presbyterians giving up Calvinism; he was in favor of Christian comprehensiveness in which both and all sides can come together, admit that their systems of belief are human attempts to understand something about God that humans cannot fully comprehend and unify around the truths about which they agree—that God is sovereign and humans alone are responsible for sin and evil. By “unify” he meant at least stop fighting each other and have fellowship and cooperation.
 
I think if Bushnell were alive today he would find himself most at home in a postliberal, narrative type of theology. Many things he wrote about doctrine anticipated that. I’m not saying he would agree with any specific theory of doctrine such as Lindbeck’s, but I think he would agree heartily with Hans Frei’s approach to the Bible and doctrine. The Bible, he would say (I think) is not a not-yet-systematized-systematic theology. All systems of theology are human attempts in a certain time and place to bring the truths of the biblical narrative to expression. More important than that, however, (and I’m not sure Frei would agree) is spiritual communion with God through Jesus Christ. It is that that the Bible is meant to create and promote and govern by its stories, parables, poetry, images and, yes, propositions. I think Bushnell would agree with Moravian leader Zinzendorf who, about a hundred years earlier, said that "Whoever attempts to put Christianity into a system kills it." He would certainly agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson who said, 
 
“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.”
 
Of course, predictably, both liberals and conservatives of his day accused Bushnell of relativism. (It might be difficult to conceive that liberals would accuse him of that, but it’s important to know that the liberals of his day were, like the conservatives, under the influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism. Both liberals and conservatives then believed that propositions can correspond to reality (they just disagreed about what propositions correspond to reality.) I consider him to have been a precursor of critical realism in theology. He certainly was not a relativist even though he admitted and argued for the relativity of all human propositions—especially about God and spiritual realities. He believed in absolute truth; he denied human absolute knowledge of it.
 
An excellent example of Bushnell’s approach to theology is the atonement. He believed that Scripture does not communicate a “theory” of the atonement; it expresses what Christ accomplished on the cross with metaphors: sacrifice, conquest, ransom, cancelling a debt, etc. In his time and place, liberals and conservatives had staked out theories of the atonement and opposed each others’. Liberals by-and-large promoted a subjective view of the atonement called the moral example or moral influence theory. Conservatives virtually all promoted some version of the satisfaction or penal substitution theory. (Many Arminians and Wesleyans promoted the so-called governmental theory, but to Bushnell that would be just a modification of the penal substitution theory.) According to Bushnell, both (all) theories express some aspect of the truth of the atonement. Their faults lie in their claims to be comprehensive and exact as if they could look right into the mind of God and know what was going on between Father and Son before, during and after the death of Christ on the cross.
 
Bushnell believed a new theory of the atonement needed to be constructed—one that would take up the truth in both subjective and objective theories and avoid their problems. But his own constructed doctrine of the atonement, expressed differently in two books (mentioned above), was not to be final, closed or total. It was to be a new arrow, so to speak, aimed in the direction of the truth from a particular social, cultural context and frame of mind. In developing it he used a lot of the budding science of psychology as well as recent theories of justice. Basically, in a nutshell, his theory was that forgiveness is always costly and the death of Christ was God’s experience of the cost of forgiving. He thought that all Christians could rally around that even as they might hold onto their own theories as other arrows aimed at the truth. None hits the target’s bullseye. But Bushnell thought his own came closer to that for his own time and place.
 
In Part 3, the final installment of this series, I want to suggest ways in which Bushnell might be a model for contemporary theology.
 
 
* * * * * * * *
 
 
Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”
of Horace Bushnell, Part 3/3
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/needed-a-new-progressive-orthodoxy-for-the-21st-century-part-three-final-of-series-about-horace-bushnell/

by Roger Olson
August 15, 2012
Comments
 
 
Needed: A New “Progressive Orthodoxy” for the 21st Century: Part Three (Final) of Series about Horace Bushnell.
 
In the first two installments of this three part series (cf., A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1 ) I talked about what Gary Dorrien calls Bushnell’s “liberal-leaning experiment in progressive orthodoxy” with special focus on the 19th century theologian’s theological method. Here I want to suggest some ways in which Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy can be helpful today.
 
As in Bushnell’s time and place (New England in mid-19th century), Protestant Christianity in America today is deeply divided between conservatives of various kinds and liberals of various kinds. And, among evangelicals, a gulf is widening between those I call postconservatives (including progressives and moderates) and neo-fundamentalists (conservative evangelicals). Notably missing is viable, attractive, influential middle ground.
 
In my estimation, what American theology needs is what Bushnell (and a few others) provided in mid-19th century New England: an attractive mediating theology that takes orthodoxy seriously but is willing to explore new horizons and frontiers in doctrinal reconstruction. Theologies of retrieval abound and are attracting many conservative-minded young people. These are either paleo-orthodox (retrieving and renewing ancient Christian teaching) or neo-fundamentalist (retrieving and usually entrenching the “received evangelical tradition”). Needed is a vision of orthodoxy in which it is living. Jaroslav Pelikan quipped that “Tradition is the living faith of the dead while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Too often, I fear, orthodoxy today is the dead faith of the dead. Progressive orthodoxy is the attempt to breathe new life into it and make it relevant (without relativism) to contemporary people.
 
Theologies of revision also abound. Among so-called “mainstream” Protestants there is new interest in process theology and various left-leaning political theologies of inclusion and social transformation. Among evangelicals, many younger people are attracted to revisionist theologies as espoused by some of the more progressive emerging church gurus. These often seem to repeat the liberal Protestant experiments of the later 19th century and early 20th century.
 
In the midst of the theological convulsions shaking New England Protestantism in the mid-19th century Bushnell attempted to provide a middle way, a via media, that took seriously the new knowledge of the sciences and new paths of philosophy while at the same time holding on to crucial doctrines of orthodoxy such as the Trinity. (Bushnell was a strong defender of the Trinity against the growing Unitarianism of his time and place.)
 
When people hear the phrase “progressive orthodoxy” there are usually two reactions. Conservatives hear only the “progressive” part and are deaf to the “orthodoxy” part. They react to it as if it were nothing but a new form of the old liberalism. Bushnell was no liberal. He believed in and defended the supernatural, the deity of Christ, the atoning death of Christ as more than a moral example. He was not a reductionist nor was he anxious to rush into accommodation to “modern thought.” Although he did believe it important to moralize dogma, he was not interested in reducing Christianity to ethics (which was the trend among the true liberals of his day).
 
The second reaction is from liberals who only hear the “orthodoxy” part and are deaf to the “progressive” part. They react to it as if it were nothing but a new form of fundamentalism. But Bushnell was no fundamentalist. He did not believe in biblical inerrancy (a concept he thought was foreign to the nature of Scripture as narrative and imagery), every biblical miracle (although he believed some biblical miracles are necessary such as Jesus’ resurrection), or that correct doctrine is the essence of authentic Christianity.
 
Like Bushnell, a new progressive orthodoxy would be a conscious via media between neo-fundamentalism that elevates correct doctrine to the sine qua non of authentic Christianity and neo-liberalism that reduces doctrine to unimportance. This new progressive orthodoxy would acknowledge that certain beliefs are necessary to holistic, mature Christianity in every place and time, namely the deity and humanity of Christ, the supernatural (that God sometimes acts in ways that transcend the laws of nature), the grace of God in salvation, and the Trinity (to name the most important ones). However, progressive orthodoxy would be open to reconsideration and revision of the ways in which doctrines have traditionally been formulated and expressed.
 
The new progressive orthodoxy would, like Bushnell’s, regard communion with God as the essence of authentic Christianity, and emphasize spirituality as equally important, if not more important, than correct belief. It would recognize the distance between all human doctrinal formulations and the reality they aim to express. It would encourage Christian engagement with culture (science and philosophy especially) without capitulation to secularism or consumerism or “New Thought.” It would encourage the ongoing process of devout and faithful theological research that critiques and reconstructs traditional doctrinal formulations while at the same time holding firmly to the basics of the faith “once for all delivered.”
 
Bushnell’s lifelong work on the atonement is the best example of his own progressive orthodoxy at work. He refused to reduce the cross to a moral example and influence; he knew the biblical imagery of Christ’s sacrifice required an objective achievement that affected God as well as sinners. But he was dissatisfied with the traditional Puritan doctrine of penal substitution because it went beyond Scripture and portrayed God as a cruel judge who demands blood before he will be loving and forgive—also an unscriptural view of God and the atonement.
 
Bushnell’s proposal may not have been correct, but it was a valiant attempt to push on the frontiers of doctrinal achievement and break through impasses to something new and faithful and satisfying to both traditional theology and modern sentiments. (It’s important to remember that up until Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo ,the majority of medieval church leaders and theologians thought of the atonement in terms of a ransom paid by God to the devil. Anselm’s “satisfaction theory” was initially greeted with horror because it was new and culturally sensitive. During his own lifetime, however, Anselm’s theory caught on because it did take into account biblical images of the atonement not accounted for by the traditional ransom theory and it made sense in feudal society better than the ransom theory.)
 
Another example of Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy is his open belief in the suffering of God. He was one of the first Christian theologians to affirm that God himself, not just the incarnate Son of God, suffers. It was Bushnell who first said (so far as I have been able to determine) that "before there was a cross on the hill of Calvary there was a cross in the heart of God". (This is an image that has been much repeated in 20th century theology and attributed to many different poets and theologians; it belongs originally, so far as I can discover, to Bushnell.) There’s no evidence that in this he was at all influenced by Hegel who talked about a “speculative Good Friday” in God; and Bushnell certainly did not mean anything like what Hegel meant by God’s “suffering.”
 
Bushnell was not afraid to break out of the confines of classical Christian theism when Scripture, spiritual experience and reason called for that. He was accused by critics of “patripassionism,” of course, but he steadfastly held on to his idea that God can and does suffer the sufferings of the world, and especially of his Son on the cross, against the overwhelming weight of traditional ideas of God’s immutability and impassibility.
 
Like Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy, a contemporary one would seek to be reasonable while respecting and preserving mystery. It would attempt to take into account many different perspectives on Christian truth (“Christian comprehensiveness”) and unite them as much as possible. It would value imagination and creativity in theology without falling into relativism. It would keep an ear to the ground of culture and adjust doctrines to culture without reckless accommodation or capitulation. It would regard theology as a series of research projects rooted in tradition and community.
 
Who are some theologians working today along the lines of progressive orthodoxy? I’m not comparing them with Bushnell in terms of specific doctrinal formulations; I’m only comparing them with him in terms of approach and ethos.
 
One obvious example is N. T. Wright, although he is primarily a New Testament scholar. However, his work on justification is a good example of progressive orthodoxy. Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg are other examples. The late Stan Grenz was one, in my opinion. But the field of candidates is not cluttered. We are living in a time when only extremes get attention. Look at the ubiquitous use of the word “extreme” in entertainment. Radical proposals get more attention in politics and cuture generally (than moderate proposals). If a political candidate is perceived as moderate he or she had better do something quickly to appeal to the extremists in his or her political camp.
 
While I most certainly do not agree with every position Bushnell took, I think his example of moderate progressivism or, progressive moderation in theology, is a model for contemporary theology today. May his tiny tribe increase.
 


* * * * * * * *
 
 
Please Refer to the postscript following Part 1
pertaining to Emergent Theology & Emerging Christianity -
 



 
 
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