Homebrew Updates: Emergents, Liberals, Progressives & Mainline Churches

Goosing Emergents into the Mainline

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2011/08/14/goosing-emergents-into-the-mainline/

August 14, 2011 by Deacon Bo 16 Comments

Back Ground : Brandon Morgan attended the Wild Goose Festival and came away with some concerns/critiques that were posted at Roger Olson’s website and responded to by Tony Jones with some great new suggestions .

Tripp and I had some fun recording a Theology Nerd Throw-down (TNT) last week where we discussed Tony’s suggestions for replacing Emergent-Liberal-Progressive as unhelpful and antiquated terms that are unclear and carry too much baggage.

But none of that responded to Brandon’s actual concerns and questions. I appreciate and respect Brandon’s position and involvement – SO since we are on the same team – I wanted to honor his questions with an honest attempt to dialogue about it.


Question 1: Why haven’t Emergent folks joined the mainline denominations?

Response: The simple answer is – because they are doing two different things. People emerge out of something-somewhere. Those backgrounds are varied and diverse, but primarily they emerge into a more open, less institutional, more casual, less hierarchical expression. It doesn’t have to be a full fledged movement (sorry Dr. Olson) for there to be both an appeal and an organizational framework. It is providing a communal and spiritual environment that nurtures and facilitates a less defined- more adaptable entity (expression) in the post-colonial, post-christendom ecosystem.

To me, the better question is “Why WOULD emergent folks join mainline denominations?” They are going two different directions. I mean, except for some behaviors and convictions (ordaining women, justice work, etc.) the mainline is a historical-institutional behemoth that one would only want to take on if there was a significant impetuous. Otherwise the decentralized- organic-contextual capacity of emergence spirituality and practice are much more attractive than the albs & stoles, acolytes and adjudicatories, the liturgy and lectionary of the Mainline.

Why would an emergent type volunteer to take on all of that plus the Bishoprics and Books of common practice?

I want to ask you: what are you picturing when you say something like this? [it is an honest question since I do not know you and do not know what you are picturing when you say 'mainline' and what exactly it is that you think would appeal to an emergent type?]

I think the reason that your post has gotten the response that it has and your questions have not been answered is that you must be picturing something when you ask the question that seem outlandish to those of us who are not in your head. Have you had a different experience of the mainline that we have? What aspect of mainline did you think WOULD appeal to emergent types?


Question 2: Why have the negatives of evangelicalism been so easy to describe and virulently rebuked, while the negatives of the mainline denominations have barely shown up in Emergent concerns?

Response: I think this comes down to two quick thoughts:

1. most emergents have either emerged from an evangelical background or against an evangelical background. It is the reality of our era. TV preachers, mega churches, Christian bookstore chains and the Religious Right have made it so.
2. The mainline has it’s endowed seminaries and publishing houses to document it’s slow decline. It is neither the primary drive nor the main attraction for most theologically charged conversations.

Question 3: Another way to ask this question would be: Why hasn’t the Emergent critique of evangelicalism’s involvement with the American nation-state and it’s tendency toward creating theologically exclusive boundaries not found root in a critique of mainline denominations, whose political interests also conflate the church with nation-state interests?

Response: I hate to oversimplify it, but it seems really clear. If mainliners are theologically over-aware (maybe even hyper-aware in some cases) then their involvement in the political system may tend toward liberation, justice, and equality. Whereas those movements who are newly energized toward “Theo” heavy themes may tend toward conserving romantic ideals of past formulations without consideration (or awareness) or their capacity and tendency toward institutional hegemony.

So those are my genuine, non-cheeky, responses to your honest questions. I would love to hear your and other people’s thoughts in order to dialogue about this.

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Update: Categories Clarification

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2011/08/11/update-categories-clarification/

August 11, 2011 by Deacon Bo Leave a Comment

Last week I posted that Progressive is not Liberal and also on the term Evangelical. Both got good response. It was part of a bigger conversation that his happening at several nodes around the interwebs. Here is a rundown of some of them.

Carol Howard Merritt from Tribal Church.org did a good job clarifying her position here. She says:

I agree that progressive and liberal are theological terms as well as sociological ones.

I like “progressive” as a theological term, because the most vital aspect of my faith is a liberating one. As someone who moved from evangelicalism, a key to my spiritual evolution has been understanding the freedom of God and God’s continual liberating process. As we move from abolitionism, to the child-labor movement, to anti-poverty, to civil rights, to gender equality, to creation care, to affirming LGBTs, this has been an incredible, liberating time in our American theology. It’s exciting how our theology has often been at the forefront of making these changes. “Progressive” recognizes and celebrates God’s expanding freedom.

That said, I think that Tony’s right in wanting a new term. “Progressive” did seem to move directly from the political sphere to the theological one, so I’m a bit uncomfortable with that. Also, I believe in the *ideal* of progression and expanding freedom, but I’m afraid that the ideal does not always match with reality. For instance, our business practices no longer allow for child labor in the US, but we thoughtlessly employ children overseas. Is that true progress? When we use the term “progressive” are we feeding a modernist mindset and deluding ourselves into thinking that everything is getting better? Those are my concerns…

Daniel Kirk continues to be a blog worth reading and he has had a lot to contribute lately.

Greg Horton had a characteristically intelligent and … Horton-esqe take. Deep stuff at the Parish.

Austin Roberts, my close friend, focused on the Evangelical aspect , wanting to tighten it up a little bit. We disagree about that. But the conversation is vibrant.

Brian McLaren made some predictions and pointed people to both Tony Jones’ and Roger Olson’s contributions.

Speaking of Roger Olson, he was a guest on Doug Pagitt’s radio show in hour 2 this week and took it up a WHOLE other notch. (it’s also available on I-tunes)

This has given me a lot to think about and I continue to flesh out the frameworks and philosophical underpinnings that drive this conversation. Please feel free to point me to any resources or locations that may be appropriate.

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Progressive is not Liberal

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2011/08/04/progressive-is-not-liberal/

August 4, 2011 by Deacon Bo 16 Comments

This has been an exciting couple of weeks for evangelicals. Well, at least the term evangelical. Kurt Willems started it all with a post about being an evangelical “reject” and a guest posted about C.S. Lewis being one.

I responded by putting forward a progressive re-interpretation of the classical definition with my Nine Nations formulation.

Then, this week Roger Olson (from Podcast episode 96) had a guest post-er Brandon who was a little confused about his experience at the Wild Goose Festival. He asked some questions about the Emerging Church that Tony Jones responded to … which led to Dr. Jones (Podcast episode 105 ) to suggest that we abandon the term ‘evangelical’ to the conservatives and go a different direction.

The hitch seems to be that both Brandon and Tony (as well as Roger) have real concern / apprehension about the distinction between Liberal and Progressive.

The problem seems to come when people fail to make a distinction between Progressive and Liberal – even equating them.

Dr. Jones says :

The problem with both “liberal” and “progressive” is that they are not inherently theological categories. They are sociological and political. “Evangelical,” on the other hand, is inherently theological.

As odd as this seems – I actually disagree with Jones on all three points. Liberal and Progressive are both thoroughly theological terms and everyone from Carol Howard-Merritt to Austin Roberts has been trying to tell me that Evangelical is a sociological distinction and not inherently theological. ( I still hold out hope)

In Podcast episode 101 John Cobb makes an important distinction by explaining it this way:

• Liberal simply means that one recognizes human experience as valid location for the theological process. 

• Progressive means that one takes seriously the critique provided by feminist, liberation, and post-colonial criticisms.

I know that when many people think of Liberals they think of a caricature of Marcus Borg and have him saying something about the laws of nature and how no one can walk on water or be conceived in a Virgin so we know those are literary devices that need not be defended literally. It is someone stuck in the Enlightenment who puts more faith in physics than in the Bible.

Similarly, I often hear a flippant dismissal by those who don’t get the Progressive concern so resort to the cliche that “progressive is just a word non-conservative evangelicals who don’t like the word ‘liberal’ hide behind as camouflage.”

Both are woefully cartoonish.

Tony Jones, on the other hand is addressing a real concern. So if he wants to say “Those of us who are not conservative need a new label.” That is fine and I would probably even join team TJ – whatever it says on our uniform.

Just don’t say that Liberal and Progressive are not theological. They are inherently so and the distinction between the two is worth the effort. They, along with the term ‘Evangelical”, come with a historical framework, a theological tradition and a social application. They are not interchangeable nor are they disposable. They come from some where and the represent a group of some ones.

I think that they are worth clarifying, understanding, and maybe even fighting for – and over. They matter.

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what went wrong with the Mainline?

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/?s=what+went+wrong+with+the+Mainline%3F

May 10, 2011 by Deacon Bo 2 Comments

I was editing the 101st episode of Homebrewed Christianity, a conversation primarily between Paul Capetz and John Cobb. It was a fantastic theological dialogue … and then then subject turned toward practical matters.

What happened to the Mainline church? Why is it in such decline?

It turns out the answer, according to Cobb, is both complex and not completely absent of theology.

He details three major shifts that spelled out a recipe for disaster:

The first shift was an acculturation. In post World War 2 America, there was a boom in church attendance as it played a vital role both socially and in the family. In a twist of fate, the Mainline churches (and social gospel) were successful – maybe too successful. The church got comfortable. The church liked its forms – especially liturgy. The church was satisfied with the direction and changes of society. Cobb doesn’t use the word complacency but self-satisfaction about success can become paralyzing in future discussions.

The second shift was a diminishing of the importance of theology. It was the ecumenical mentality and apathetic attitude toward theological difference that somehow resulted in a mentality that it doesn’t really matter so much what you believe about this specific or that. At some point one has to think that this casualness about theology is not simply laziness but an abdication of core responsibilities.

The third shift came in the 70’s when the Liberation Theologies showed up and “they knew exactly what they believed and were not afraid to say so.” The Mainline was impotent and irrelevant by comparison. (my words, not Cobb’s)

When you put these three together, you see a perfect storm: loss of intensity due to acculturation, loss of identity due to theological abandonment, and loss of relevance (potency) due to shifting contexts.

The first shift gets a lot of attention. Philip Clayton has talked about the ‘collapse narrative’. Dianna Butler Bass has done great work on both dying forms of liturgy and efforts of revitalization. Brian McLaren had some powerful and innovative thoughts on the subject [toward the bottom of the link].

The overwhelming consensus seems to be that purely theological explanations are too simplistic and miss the overarching interrelatedness to the shift in the surrounding culture. I have always been told that it is because they “sold out” to the culture and “compromised the gospel”. I never bought that – there was too much good coming out of churches like that and I had met too many people sincerely committed to Christ’s work.

It is the second shift that really piques my interest. Cobb doesn’t specifically talk about hermeneutics, but I have been bewildered at, what seems to me, a willingness of Liberal thought to saw at the Biblical limbs on the tree side of the limb that they stand on. This is self-sabotage! You can not undercut the very thing that your existence stands on without weakening your ability to stand at all.

The third shift is potentially the one with the greatest consequences… and the most potential for turn around. It is the church’s willingness to engage its surrounding culture and embrace the task of forging an authentic expression of the gospel in our local context that gives us relevance. This can be done with a progressive reading of the Bible and a Liberal, generous stance – no matter what our weekend gatherings look like.

The old wooden beams in the sanctuary may not make it through this shift. But I have great confidence that both the work of the church and the people of Christ’s spirit will endure in multiple streams. A progressive reading and expression of the gospel is a message of great hope to many in our emerging, decentralized, inter-connected culture and world. The forms and structures may need to change, but the historic impulse can be cultivated and harnessed.

Cobb and Capetz have me thinking about this stuff from a new angle.

Profile Story: Bosnian Native Reconstructs His World

Profile: Bosnia native, Grand Rapids go-to guy Haris Alibasic

http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/08/profile_bosnia_native_grand_ra.html

Published: Sunday, August 21, 2011, 6:01 AM

By Terri Finch Hamilton | The Grand Rapids PressThe Grand Rapids Pres
 E-mail Terri Hamilton: thamilton@grpress.com

Haris Alibasic with uncle Dzelal in 1977

Haris Alibasic, impeccably dressed in a suit, holds his 9-month-old daughter, Lamija, on his lap as she howls.

He jiggles her. Coos at her. Gives her dry cereal to munch and water to sip.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaa!” Lamija shrieks.

Alibasic, who has seemingly at least nine different jobs with the City of Grand Rapids, is good at fixing things, from neighbor disputes to City Hall windows that leak energy to tricky legislative affairs.

“Yaaaaaaaaaa!” Lamija shrieks again.

But dad knows when he’s beat, and hands his yowling baby off to his wife.

“She’s a fighter,” he says proudly of his daughter.

You’ll see where she gets that.

Alibasic, 39, has an office on the sixth floor of Grand Rapids City Hall, right next to the mayor’s.

He’s Mayor George Heartwell’s go-to guy on all sorts of stuff — some things you may not even realize anybody’s doing.

His main job is as director of energy and sustainability for the city, which means he has his hands in everything from the use of solar panels in city buildings to planning installation of charging stations around town for electric cars to a proposal to use wind turbines to create energy at the city’s water filtration plant.

But, as City Manager Greg Sundstrom says, “Few of us here have the luxury of doing one thing,” so Alibasic also solves the stickiest neighborhood problems nobody else could fix. He also was in charge of the city’s 2010 census count. He was instrumental in getting the Kroc Center off the ground, after controversy erupted when Garfield Park neighbors didn’t want it built there, as originally planned.

He wrote the rules that allow city business owners, such as all of those Uptown restaurant and shop owners, to join together and use property taxes the city collects from them to pay for neighborhood improvements, such as turning an old vacant lot into paved parking for customers.

What can’t Alibasic do?

“Haris has an enormous capacity for work,” Heartwell says. “He’s a bit of a magnet for projects and initiatives that I dream up or the city manager dreams up. We’ll say, ‘Who’s there to do the work?’

Haris. He can always take on one more job.”

If it’s volatile, give it to Haris.

“He’s calm and patient,” Heartwell says.

That’s in large part because Alibasic has endured a lot worse than the most ornery city resident can dish up.

Haris Alibasic in 1982 standing outside with his family.

A war torn homeland

He grew up in Bosnia and survived the three-year war there in the 1990s, watching his home and village burn to the ground, tanks rumble through every night, neighbors shot dead by Serbian soldiers in huge swaths of ethnic cleansing.

“When you think about his background, coming from a war-torn nation and the stresses and pressures he’s had,” Heartwell says, “solving some of the city’s most intractable neighborhood problems is a walk in the park.”

When 200 angry Grand Haven residents gathered at a public hearing, riled up about Grand Rapids’ plan to install two wind turbines in Grand Haven Township to power its lakeshore water filtration plant, Heartwell sent Alibasic.

You can tell he feels sort of bad about it.

“The people were angry; they were very disrespectful,” Heartwell says. “Haris said afterward, ‘There was never a time I thought I wouldn’t get out of Bosnia alive. But I thought I’d never get out of Grand Haven Township alive.’”

People call Haris quiet and serious, but he can be pretty funny.

They didn’t get the permits needed for the wind turbines.

“But Haris was able to handle it all,” Heartwell says, “with his usual calm demeanor.

“The courage and endurance one develops coming out of a war setting is useful in peace time,” Heartwell says.

“Haris is unflappable,” Heartwell says. “There’s a quiet demeanor about him that I suspect comes out of his experience.”

Many here have just a fuzzy understanding of the war. Alibasic can explain it — then share poems he wrote during the worst of it, turning horror into a kind of sad beauty.

Before the war, there were six republics in former Yugoslavia. Four republics decided to separate from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s in an attempt to break away from the oppressive Serbian nationalists led by Slobodan Milosevic, he explains.

Slovenia was the first, then Croatia, then Bosnia and, finally, Macedonia. After the referendum on independence passed, the four republics became independent and were internationally recognized. But Milosevic had a plan for a “Greater Serbia,” Alibasic explains, and Serbian nationalists attacked Slovenia, then Croatia, then they turned the entire war effort to Bosnia.

The Serbian army killed more than 100,000 Bosnian civilians, Alibasic says, systematically ridding much of Bosnia and Croatia of all non-Serbs. The war ended in late 1995 with the signing of a peace agreement.

Those are the bare facts, Alibasic says.


Five things to know about Haris Alibasic

• He watches “Bob the Builder” and “Dora the Explorer” cartoons in Bosnian with his son, Jakub, on YouTube.

• He’s president of the Congress of North American Bosnians, representing at least 350,000 Americans and Canadians of Bosnian descent.

• When he eats chicken, he has to follow it with chocolate. Ask for an explanation and he shrugs. “Something about the taste together,” he says.

• He was on a nationally televised quiz show at age 17 in Bosnia.

• “He made recordings for nobody,” his wife, Katie, says. He was the king of mash-ups, experimenting with meshing two different recordings into one new one. He’d mix spiritual and electronic. He fused the “Lord of the Rings” soundtrack with music by the ethereal, neoclassical Australian world music duo Dead Can Dance. He sold his recording equipment when they had their first child, Jakub. “We needed the bedroom for the baby,” he says.


A poet

Now, he shares a poem he wrote in 1994 about the fires of war that claimed his home in June 1992, when he was 20.

Flame
Tongues overpower the sky
Touching the horizon high
I hardly breathe
Face into two pieces
Falls apart
First part salvation seeks
The second part
Stands still
Watching around
Looking outside and inside
Flames getting higher
Insane flaming beasts
Abandoned horses
Rearing up
I stand, no armor
Engulfed by the flame
That burned the house down
Burned the past
Memories erased

“I witnessed my home burning,” he says, sitting at the dining room table in his home on the city’s Northeast Side. “My whole village was burned. Five hundred homes, all burning at once.

“The infrastructure in Bosnia was completely obliterated,” he says. “Everything was destroyed. Roads. Schools. Everything.

“Every night, the tanks could shoot right at you,” he says. “I witnessed people shot by mortars. I saw dead bodies covered up.

“They would just shoot you ... 100,000 civilians were killed. Our home and village were burned for no other reason than the fact that we were not Serbs.”

He slides a photo across the table of 50 simple wood coffins lined up at a funeral for 50 civilians killed in his village.

“They just burned them alive,” he says. “I can’t even tell you about the horrors.”

His dad spent 18 months in a concentration camp, where he was threatened and beaten.

“We didn’t know if he was alive for six months,” he says.

“One day, you can have your home, your life. Then ...”

His voice trails off.

After the horror, Alibasic knew without a doubt what truth would guide him.

“What really matters is not your house or your car,” he says quietly. “It’s the people. Your family, your closest friends. I was blessed my immediate family wasn’t killed or captured.

“It’s a great testament to human survival,” he says. “There was a great sense of unity. We used car batteries to run the radio. You learn to live with less. As long as there was flour and oil and salt to make bread ...”


Learning to survive

There was no normalcy, but he did the best he could.

He hosted a radio show three times a week. He took college classes. He passed time translating Pink Floyd songs into Bosnian. (A music lover, he now loves the Vertigo Music store downtown and collects vinyl records.)

“It was a challenge that tested human spirit,” he says of the war. “People learn how to survive. It made me stronger.”

After the war, Alibasic got a government job as a business specialist. He worked as a translator for the United Nations for a while. He worked for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other international organizations as a business and economic development specialist.

He came to Grand Rapids in 2000 with his family — mom Emira, dad Dzevad, brothers Venso, 38, and Emir, 29 — after his dad was granted immigration status through refugee resettlement.

Haris Alibasic meets with the president of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Zeljko Komsic, last month.

But he didn’t leave Bosnia behind. Alibasic is president of the Congress of North American Bosnians, representing at least 350,000 Americans and Canadians of Bosnian descent.

He meets with the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zeljko Komsic. He writes for Bosnian magazines and newspapers, tracks legislative issues and works to strengthen the relationship between Bosnia and the United States.

He’s been elected to the position three years in a row. Everybody likes Alibasic.

His friend and colleague William Crawley at Grand Valley State University, where Alibasic teaches, has seen his intense commitment in action.

The two traveled with a local group to Turkey last month, an interfaith trip sponsored by the Niagara Foundation, a Chicago-based organization that promotes peace and understanding.

“People in Turkey asked me about the Grand Rapids lip dub,” Alibasic says with a grin. “They said that was so cool.”

There’s a significant population of Bosnians in Turkey, Crawley says, and Alibasic connected with them wherever they went, asking about their lives, getting political updates.

When Crawley boarded his plane for home, Alibasic got on a different plane to Sarajevo, to meet with the Bosnian president.


‘Both worlds’

Back home at GVSU, where Alibasic teaches graduate-level classes in city politics and policy, Crawley says Alibasic is great at taking the textbook theory his students study and relating it to the real world of government, where he works every day.

“He has a foot in both worlds,” Crawley says. “He shares the realities that aren’t always captured in their textbooks. It makes for a really strong voice in the classroom.”

Plus, his students can sometimes read about his City Hall exploits in the newspaper, Crawley says, which they think is pretty cool.

Alibasic’s experiences in war-torn Bosnia bring another layer of depth to his teaching, Crawley says.

“He teaches citizenship as a serious obligation,” Crawley says. “And beyond local or state government. He talks to his students as global citizens.”

Haris Alibasic, left, with his family: his wife, Katie;
2-year-old son, Jakub, named after Alibasic's grandfather;
and 9-month-old daughter, Lamija.

A sentimental husband

Alibasic’s wife, Katie, says living through war has made her husband careful and sentimental.

“He’s very cautious about security,” she says. “He’s always checking all the doors and windows.

“He wants to save everything,” Katie says. “Pictures are so important to him.”

“There are hardly any pictures from my childhood,” he points out. “They burned in the fire.”

As baby Lamija — her name means “brilliant” in Bosnian — naps and 2-year-old Jakub — named for Haris’ grandfather — happily munches cinnamon coffee cake between his parents, Katie looks tenderly at her husband.

“I think you’re indestructible,” she says. “Nobody can put you down.”



Haris Alibasic of the Office of Energy and Sustainability
addresses the concerns about the Wind Turbines project
as the audience at Grand Haven Township Hall listens.
(T.J. Hamilton | The Grand Rapids Press)

He smiles.

“My wife says I’m a survivor,” he says.

The two met at GVSU, both studying public administration. Katie, who grew up all over the world as an Army kid, learned to speak Bosnian from Alibasic and from children’s books. They speak to their kids in English and Bosnian so they’ll grow up knowing both.

She learned how to cook Bosnian food, such as burek, a meat or cheese pie made with flaky phyllo dough.

“You roll it up like a snake,” she explains, “coil it up in a round pan and bake it.”

Alibasic smiles at her.

“I have the best wife in the world,” he says. “She puts up with me staying up until 1 a.m.”

He stays busy

Among all of his other activities, he’s working on his doctorate in public policy.

His work, he says, “is never done. I have my iPhone on all the time.”

Heartwell calls him “my personal Bloomberg News,” always forwarding articles about the latest in sustainability issues. He has all kinds of followers on Twitter, and he has no idea who most of them are.

“I’m never bored,” Alibasic says. “Really. Never bored. I’m always meeting new people, implementing new ideas.”

And Lamija eventually will wake up from her nap.

What does the Christian term Atonement Mean?

This article addresses what Christ's atonement is, but not its extent (whether unlimited or limited). That idea has been dealt with in other areas of this blog. Please refer to articles on Calvinism and Arminianism to understand discussions related to the "extent of Christ's atonement" upon humanity.

- skinhead

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Did I kill Jesus? Part three of a series on atonement

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/08/did-i-kill-jesus-part-three-of-a-series-on-atonement/

by Roger Olson

on August 21, 2011

Returning to my discussion of good books about atonement.

Now I turn to what I consider one of the best recent books on atonement: Scot McKnight’s, A Community Called Atonement.

I suggest to anyone reading this book that they turn first to Chapter Eighteen: Atonement as Missional Praxis: Living the Story of the Word. It might have been good for Scot to put some of this chapter’s material first because it lays his cards on the table with regard to theological methodology and especially the role of the Bible in Christian theory and practice. I could not agree with Scot more about the TENDENCY of many conservative Christians to put the Bible first–even before God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit–in their hierarchy of loyalties. Scot labels many conservative Christians (I think he is talking mainly to and about evangelicals) “Cognitive Behaviorists” who think that knowing more about the Bible automatically makes them better Christians.

Scot views the Bible as the communication of an overarching narrative about God. (I would add with Hans Frei that the Bible’s main purpose is to identify God for us–meaning God’s character.) “Scripture is more than information revealed for our knowledge so that, in knowing more, we will be more.” (145) In brief, Scot’s point is that our loyalty as Christians is to God as revealed in Jesus and to the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and in the church and the Bible is the God-ordained and inspired instrument of strengthening that loyalty and our praxis growing out of it.

Let me add something here that I think is consistent with what Scot says and MAY make his point even clearer. (I don’t know that Scot would agree, but I think he probably would.) Too many conservative evangelicals view the Bible as a NOT-YET-SYSTEMATIZED SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY such that once the correct doctrinal system is drawn out of it and correctly organized and expressed (e.g., in a massive one volume systematic theology seen on the shelves of every Christian bookstore in America!) the Bible is dispensable.

Scot’s point (I think) is that God’s self-revelation (including Scripture) is for the purpose of relationship-community. This happens through the medium of story: “Jesus’ story is to become our story as we identify with him and we are incorporated into him.” (147) The purpose of Scripture, then is “identity-shaping” (146) more than information-giving.

So what about atonement? A major point of the book is expressed on page 147: “Central to my understanding of atonement is the notion of identification for incorporation.” Throughout the book the overarching theme is that “atonement” is not just about what Christ accomplished on the cross but about the entire process of restoring to wholeness we “cracked Eikons” of God through being incorporated into God’s community. Scot rightly points out that the English word “atonement” literally means “at-one-ment”–reconcilation or restored relationship.

(He doesn’t mention this, but my study of the word leads me to believe it was invented by Tyndale for his English translation of the Bible. (Side bar: I remember years ago reading The Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin. There Martin took Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science to task for defining “atonement” as “at-one-ment” as if that was her invention and heretical interpretation of the word. While I agreed with Martin that the CS interpretation, being monistic, is heretical, I now chuckle when I think about how wrong Martin was about the origins and meaning of the term!)

So, for Scot, “atonement” is an umbrella term for salvation (although he never says it quite that way) and his view of salvation is holistic. It includes not just forensic justification or personal conversion. For him salvation, atonement, is incorporation into Christ so that our brokenness is healed and we are restored to what we are meant to be–whole persons in community with God and others through Jesus Christ. Thus, Jesus’ atoning work includes incarnation, temptation and victory over it (Scot loves Irenaeus as do I), death, resurrection, outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church at Pentecost and the Spirit’s inclusion of us into the church, the continuation of God’s people.

One of my favorite quotes from this book is on page 132: “A thoroughly biblical understanding of atonement, then, is earthy: It is about restored relations with God and with self, but also with others and with the world–in the here and now.” Consistent with that, Scot ends his book with a call for Christians to do justice in the world as part of their participation in the mission of God. I can’t resist offering here another great quote from the book: “God’s redemptive intent is to restore and rehabilitate humans in their relationship with God, self, others, and the world, and when that happens justice is present and established. The followers of Jesus both proclaim and embody atoning justice by fighting injustice and establishing just that kind of justice. Their forward guard is surrounded with the banner of grace and forgiveness.” (133)

But what about the classical atonement theories? Which one does Scot finally embrace? He embraces them all: Christus victor, recapitulation, moral influence, satisfaction/penal substitution, etc. All of these, he argues, are metaphors for something ultimately mysterious–God’s work through Jesus Christ on our behalf for restoring relationship.

In order to understand Scot’s meaning here, and its significance for his account of Christ’s atonement, you have to pay close attention to Chapter Five: Atonement as Metaphor: Metaphor and Mechanics.” On pages 38-39 Scot lays out a view of theology consistent with (if not influenced by) 19th century American theologian Horace Bushnell. Bushnell famously argued, much to the chagrin of his critics mired in Protestant scholasticism (Turretin and all that) that all theological language is metaphorical. But he also argued that ALL HUMAN LANGUAGE is metaphorical. Many conservative evangelicals will balk at Scot’s agreement with Bushnell (whether Scot meant to agree with Bushnell or not, I don’t know): “…we are bound to our metaphors. This is where a moderate postmodern theology or a robust critical realist theology will simply fall down and admit that, to one degree or another, theology is metaphorical. We cannot unpack the metaphors to find the core, reified truth in a proposition that can be stated for all time in a particular formula. We have the metaphors and they will lead us there, but they are what we have. Yes, what we have is metaphors, but the Christian claim is that metaphors do work: they get us there.” [sic, all human interaction (including language, conscience, mental thoughts and visualizations, sociological/psysiological/psychological relationships, etc) is symbolic - and therefore metaphorical - because human beings are primarily and essentially visual beings. - skinhead]

(Again, let me say in a sidebar that these programmatic moves by Scot make him one of my postconservative evangelicals whether he likes that label or not. I won’t apply the label to him if he doesn’t want it, but I will say his overall approach to theology, the Bible, doctrine, theological language, cautious openness to revision, etc., is typical of what I mean by “postconservative evangelicalism.”)

Back to Scot’s reflections on the theories of the atonement. They are all metaphorical; none matches exactly what God has done for us in Jesus and continues to do for us and in us through the Holy Spirit. They all find roots and justification in Scripture and tradition. Each has its place and value.

Scot uses his own metaphor of a bag of golf clubs to make his point. A good golfer uses all the clubs in his bag and not just one. Similarly, the church needs all the biblical metaphors and historical theories of the atonement and not just one. BUT, all the metaphors and theories come UNDER the umbrella of the wider, more holistic metaphor of reconciliation and restoration of cracked Eikons (us).

So let’s get right to it: what about penal substitution? That seems to be the ONLY atonement theory that is controversial right now. Fortunately, Scot does not simply discard it as some tend to do. But his critique is that TOO MANY of its advocates have treated it mechanically rather than relationally. He rightly says “This theory of penal substitution has come in for hard times in current theological discussion, much of the hard times being gross caricature and political posturing.” (40) Let’s stop there and dwell on that for a moment. (Another sidebar coming….)

I’ve already commented in this series of posts about the gross caricatures of the penal substitution theory–depicted as “divine child abuse” and so forth. But what does Scot mean by “political posturing?” He doesn’t explain and the context isn’t very helpful. The only ideology he mentions is radical feminism and he decries SOME feminists’ caricaturing of penal substitution as divine child abuse that justifies abuse of children and women. But he also mentions some very conservative evangelical theologians who treat penal substitution as if it were THE ONE AND ONLY legitimate theory (and not really a theory at all!) of atonement. I THINK Scot means that SOME people on both ends of the spectrum of critics are using their rhetoric against or for penal substitution to score points with their constituents and do harm to others within their theological contexts.

(For example (I’m departing somewhat from Scot here, but I think he might agree) SOME conservative evangelical critics of Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (by Mark Baker and Joel Green) have simply flown off the handle with their criticisms and have depicted the book as cavalierly tossing aside penal substitution in favor of, say, Abelard’s moral example or moral influence theory. (Read: Baker and Green are liberals!) SOME of the accusations aimed at the book and its authors sound more like diatribes meant to marginalize the authors (and positive reviewers) within the evangelical movement than like careful, scholarly examinations of the books argument.)

Back to Scot and his book. Let me quote Scot about critics of penal substitution here. “…it is irresponsible for critics to depict penal substitution as ‘divine child abuse’ because all it takes is love-of-neighbor readings of major theologians–and I will mention here Leon Morris, John Stott, and J. I. Packer–and one will readily discover that for each of them penal substitution is contextualized into a Trinitarian context wherein it is not the Father being ‘ticked off’ at humans and venting his rage on the Son. Instead, atonement for penal substitutionists is prompted by the loving grace of the Father.” (41) And, I would add, ” of the Son.”

Lest anyone get defensive, Scot adds “But advocates of penal substitution should listen to their critics.” (41) “…I am persuaded,” he says, “that penal substitution theorists could help us all out if they would baptize their theory into the larger redemptive grace of God more adequately.” (43) So how does Scot himself do this?

Scot’s actual treatment of the theory comes on page 113 of the book–wrapped into a larger and more holistic treatment of atonement metaphors. And he attempts to shift the focus from the “mechanics” of substitutionary atonement to Christ’s mysterious identification with us in his death that plays ONE ROLE (not every role) in reconciliation and restored community. Here is how Scot expresses it: “He [Jesus] identifies with us, all the way down into death (so, Phil. 2:5-11), so that we can be incorporated into him and find life–both here and now and then and there.” (113)

Scot argues that the Bible “often” teaches that Jesus suffered death “on our part.” (113) And he means, instead of us. That is, “Jesus identified with us so far ‘all the way down’ that he died our death, so that we, being incorporated into him, might partake in his glorious, life-giving resurrection to new life. He died instead of us (substitution); he died a death that was the consequence of sin (penal).” (113) But completely missing from Scot’s account of penal substitution is any thought of God the Father having to have his pound of flesh and taking out his vengeful wrath on Jesus instead of on us.

Here is how I interpret Scot’s “take” on penal substitution. In order express it I have to talk briefly about another theory of atonement–the “ransom theory” that was so popular among fourth century Christians including the Cappadocian fathers. It as, in fact, the reigning theory up until Anselm. The ransom theory picked up on the biblical metaphor of ransom–that Christ was the ransom paid by God to free us from sin, death and the devil. But some early church fathers and most people throughout the middle ages INTERPRETED this to mean that God the Father gave his Son Jesus over to Satan as a ransom in a transaction that included Satan handing over humanity to the Father. Of course, nowhere does the Bible say that! And it makes God crafty and deceptive (because he knew the devil did not know that he could not keep the Son of God). It portrays the atonement as a transaction between God and Satan and depicts them as almost on the same level–as if God has to enter into a bargaining agreement with Satan.

I THINK what Scot is suggesting is that too many explanations of the penal substitution theory of the atonement pick up on substitutionary imagery and metaphor in the Bible and run with it too far–implying (if not saying) that Christ’s death was a kind of mechanical transaction between God and humanity (with Christ representing humanity) involving strict, juridical justice and a kind of impersonal law that even God has to obey. Scot apparently wants to keep the biblical metaphor of substitutionary death without all the baggage the whole penal substitution theory has accumulated throughout the years especially among Reformed fundamentalists. I applaud the effort and largely agree with him about this. Penal substitution is a biblical image I cannot escape. The correlation between Isaiah 53 and numerous New Testament passages that seem to echo this, applying it to Jesus and his death, convince me that, biblically, we cannot escape penal substitution as one metaphor for what Jesus’ death was.

A Community Called Atonement is much more than what I have described here. Overall, the book is a ringing call for Christians to BE THE CHURCH that God intended his people to be–a reconciling, restoring, healing, justice-establishing community that extends Christ’s holistic saving work into the world.

1 One mild criticism I have of the book is that it stretches the word “atonement” almost to the breaking point. Scot uses it for everything God does and we enter into with him that works to restore the damaged goods (cracked Eikons) that we humans are. Most people understand “atonement” much more narrowly–as having to do with Christ’s death and its salvific effects. I’m always a little leery of stretching terms to mean too much.

2 Another mild criticism I have is that nowhere does Scot (like Boersma) deal with the crucial issue of the extent of the atonement. Is Christ’s atoning work FOR ALL or only for the elect. In this day and age when so many voices are being raised on behalf of limited atonement I hope ANY book on the subject will deal with that horrendous, nearly heretical idea that one cannot find even in Calvin himself! Theodore Beza invented it out of whole cloth because it was logically necessary for the Calvinist system. I agree it is necessary for the Calvinist system, but take it away and the system falls. Beza saw that which is why he added it in. (Please don’t remind me that an obscure monk named Gottschalk was held in prison most of his adult life for teaching limited atonement; I know that. But he had no influence in terms of injecting that idea into the stream of theology. Beza is its source if we are talking about a continuity of doctrine beginning today and stemming backwards in time.)

continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "Calvinism v. Arminianism"

 

 




 

A Note from Karl Barth on Collecting Books

Collecting books? A note from Karl Barth

http://www.faith-theology.com/2007/09/collecting-books-note-from-karl-barth.html

by Ben Myers

September 15, 2007

Kurt Johanson kindly sent me a copy of his delightful new volume, The Word in This World: Two Sermons by Karl Barth. And he included a facsimile of an inscription which Barth wrote in Klaus Bockmuehl’s copy of Against the Stream, back in 1954.

It’s such a nice inscription that I thought I’d reproduce it here – a timely reminder to all of us who like collecting books!

Meaning of life?
Collecting books? No, read them!
Reading them? No, think about!
Thinking about? No, do something for God and for your neighbour!

- Karl Barth, Basle, 2.11.195

The Best and Worst Books Ever Written About Karl Barth

http://www.faith-theology.com/2005/07/best-books-ever-written-on-karl-barth.html

by Ben Myers

posted on July 20, 2005

The books about Karl Barth could fill an entire library. And on the whole the quality of all this scholarship is extraordinary. Many of the twentieth century’s leading theologians started out by writing brilliant books or dissertations on Barth’s theology. So it’s particularly difficult to choose the very best books. Still, here is my own list (in chronological order) of the Top Eight—if I had to save just eight from my library, these would be the ones:

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992 [1951])

G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Paternoster, 1956 [1954])

Hans Küng, Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection (London: Burns & Oates, 1964 [1957])

Robert W. Jenson, Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1963)

Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth: A Paraphrase (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001 [1965])

Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (London: SCM Press, 1976 [1975])

George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)

Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909-1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

**********

The worst book ever written on Karl Barth

http://www.faith-theology.com/2005/07/worst-book-ever-written-on-karl-barth.html

While it’s hard to choose the best books ever written on Karl Barth, fortunately it’s very easy to name the worst book ever written on Barth. It is—of course—

Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (London: James Clarke, 1946)

This book presents a comically grotesque misreading of Barth—it would be hard to imagine a more drastic and more wilful misunderstanding of Barth’s theology. Unfortunately, this same book influenced the popular American writer Francis A. Schaeffer, and through Schaeffer it influenced a whole generation of evangelical students and ministers in the United States. And so even today you will occasionally meet someone who, without ever having laid so much as a finger on one of Barth’s books, is nonetheless bitterly and adamantly hostile to Barth’s theology.

**********

 Collecting books? A note from Karl Barth

http://www.faith-theology.com/2007/09/collecting-books-note-from-karl-barth.html

by Ben Myer

September 15, 2007

Kurt Johanson kindly sent me a copy of his delightful new volume, The Word in This World: Two Sermons by Karl Barth. And he included a facsimile of an inscription which Barth wrote in Klaus Bockmuehl’s copy of Against the Stream, back in 1954.

It’s such a nice inscription that I thought I’d reproduce it here – a timely reminder to all of us who like collecting books!

Meaning of life?
Collecting books? No, read them!
Reading them? No, think about!
Thinking about? No, do something for God and for your neighbour!
- Karl Barth, Basle, 2.11.1954

Review Bruce McCormack - Studies on Karl Barth's Theology

Bruce McCormack: Barth in response to Open Theism

 http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2008/07/bruce-mccormack-barth-in-response-to.html

by David W. Congdon

on July 3, 2008

Bruce McCormack recently edited a volume of essays by Protestant theologians on the doctrine of God, entitled, Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives. The volume is well worth reading, in part because of the range of perspectives represented in its pages—including everyone from D. A. Carson to John Webster. But the book is worth the price just for McCormack’s essay. His article, “The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism,” is a 57-page exploration of the claims made by open theism over against classical theism as well as the alternative which Barth provides to both of those metaphysical positions. As a way to whet your appetite for more, here is the opening of McCormack’s essay:

For nearly two decades now, the evangelical churches in America have been the scene of a polarizing debate between defenders of classical theism and the proponents of what is typically referred to as “open theism.” After reading through the growing literature generated by both sides, my own conclusion is that each has something important to say; each has “theological values” which would need to be preserved in any truly adequate doctrine of God. The trouble is that both sides are actually occupying a shared ground on which no resolution of the debate is thinkable. It is clearly time for some fresh thinking.

As the subtitle of this essay makes clear, the goal here is to bring Karl Barth into conversation with the open theists. The decision to treat Barth in relation to open theism rather than classical theism is not based upon a belief that he stood closer to the former than the latter. Far from it. As I have already suggested, both sides to the current debate stand finally upon the same ground—a ground which would have to be abandoned if the values now contained in each model were to be brought into a single, unified conception. Barth occupies a very different ground, and as we shall see, it is because he does so that he is able to take up and preserve the values set forth in each of the other two models.

In any event, Barth does not stand closer to the open theists than he does to the classical theists. The decision to bring Barth into conversation with open theism is based simply upon the perception that open theism is attracting a great deal of attention—to the point of disturbing the peace of the churches—and the belief that it is not dealt with adequately where it is met by power plays (e.g., attempts to exclude its proponents from membership in the Evangelical Theological Society). The only adequate response is to provide an alternative which is demonstrably superior to it—something today’s defenders of classical theism have consistently failed to do.

- Bruce L. McCormack, “The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism,” Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2008), 185-86.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bruce McCormack:

Orthodox and modern: studies in the theology of Karl Barth

http://www.faith-theology.com/2008/09/bruce-mccormack-orthodox-and-modern.html

Posted by Ben Myers

September 19, 2008

Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Baker Academic, 2008), 317 pp. (review copy courtesy of Baker)

Bruce McCormack’s 1995 work on Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology is one of the towering monuments of Barth studies. It casts its shadow over all subsequent interpretation of Barth, just as it has corrected or relativised much earlier work in the field.

Since 1995, McCormack has produced a steady stream of essays on Barth’s theology (a full list here) – essays which have continued to expand the horizons of Barth-interpretation in many directions. Broadly speaking, McCormack’s full corpus of essays can be divided into three categories:

1. historical studies, focusing especially on Barth’s relation to the 19th century; 
2. studies of Barth’s relation to contemporary theology (especially to contemporary evangelicalism – although unfortunately none of the essays on evangelicalism appear in this collection); and finally, 
3. constructive essays on the contemporary significance of Barth’s theological ontology.

To begin, let us review then each of the points above.

1 The essays selected for this volume (all of them previously published, but some appearing now in English for the first time) are organised under these three categories. In the first section, McCormack explores Barth’s relation to the 19th century, particularly the traditions of Schleiermacherian theology and Kantian philosophy. Against the common tendency to find in Barth a complete break with Schleiermacher and with Kantian foundationalism, McCormack situates Barth within the broad Schleiermacherian tradition of “mediating theologies.” He argues that Barth’s thought remains wedded to neo-Kantian categories (even if, admittedly, “Kant is no longer Kant by the time Barth is finished with him”), and he shows the extent to which Barth remained “a 19th-century theologian” who was deeply preoccupied with the questions and problems of the Schleiermacherian tradition.

If Barth’s project was born of an effort to overcome theological historicism and psychologism, this was in fact a struggle not against Schleiermacher but against Troeltsch – although Barth himself persistently confused Schleiermacher with Troeltsch, or at least imagined that a root-and-branch repudiation of the latter had to entail a rejection of the former. Throughout Barth’s career, however, he shared the fundamental concerns of Schleiermacher, and he agreed with Schleiermacher that post-Kantian dogmatics had to be shaped by the epistemological “turn to the subject” and by the problem of the limits of human knowing.

2 In this set of historical interventions, McCormack’s antipathy to “postmodern” readings of Barth is never far from the surface. For McCormack, postmodern and non-foundationalist appropriations of Barth’s thought are based on flawed understandings of Barth’s own questions and contexts – and also on a failure to grasp the real priorities for contemporary constructive theology. The essays in the book’s second section bring this critique explicitly to the foreground.

McCormack analyses and critiques the “postliberal Barth” of Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, together with the “postmodern Barth” of Walter Lowe and Graham Ward. He finds more promise in the work of John Webster – although he observes that, at times, “Webster’s Barth can come across as a bit too ‘premodern’,” too closely wedded to the assumptions of classical metaphysics (p. 164). In any case, McCormack’s main point is that English-language research tends “to move much too quickly to ‘use’ of Barth’s theology before having acquired a proper understanding” (p. 165), so that Barth’s theology too easily becomes a mirror of our own contemporary assumptions and commitments. In short: “The followers of Frei and Torrance must look elsewhere for resources for their various projects” (p. 294).

3 While McCormack’s historical work on Barth is peerless for its depth, range and sophistication, his own recent constructive engagement with Barth’s thought represents a major event within contemporary theology. The essays collected in the third section of the book provide a sample of this recent theological engagement with Barth – beginning with the widely discussed Cambridge Companion essay on “Grace and Being,” where McCormack offers a critical correction of Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity. The argument here is that Barth ought to have reversed his ordering of Trinity and election: properly understood, Barth’s own doctrine of election entails that God’s decision to be God-for-us is the ground of God’s triunity. Simply put: according to its own internal principles, Barth’s dogmatics ought to begin with the doctrine of election, not with the doctrine of the Trinity.

In chapter 8, a magisterial essay on “Karl Barth’s Historicized Christology” (previously published in German), McCormack continues to pursue this revisionist reading of Barth, by exploring Barth’s own revision of Chalcedonian christology. Before developing his doctrine of election, Barth’s thought contained significant traces of “the abstract metaphysical ontology which underwrote the Christology of the Chalcedonian Council” (p. 207). It was only with the development of his doctrine of election that he was able to excise this metaphysics from his thought; the turning-point here was his insight that Jesus Christ is the subject of election, so that election is “a free act in which God assigned to himself the being God would have for all eternity” (p. 216). God’s decision to be God-for-us is an event in which God differentiates himself into the three modes of being – Father, Son and Spirit. The gap between Jesus Christ and the eternal Son is thus eliminated.

The second mode of being in God simply is Jesus Christ. Indeed, this insight can lead McCormack to support Bertold Klappert’s challenging remark that “Barth does not think incarnationally.” For Barth, there is no absolute metaphysical subject which unites itself to a human “nature.” Rather, there is a divine decision in which humanity is taken up into the event of God’s own being, so that “the human history of Jesus Christ is constitutive of the being and existence of [the second Person of the Trinity]” (p. 223).

In these highly creative readings (and constructive revisions) of Barth, McCormack is pressing towards the articulation of a striking new theological ontology. I once remarked that, where theological ontology is concerned, John Milbank’s project is the only game in town – and it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that McCormack’s work represents the only thoroughgoing counter-proposal to Milbank’s ontological vision which is available in contemporary theology.

• While Milbank’s ontology is structured by hierarchical and participatory categories, McCormack articulates an ontology structured by actualistic categories and by a radically historicised doctrine of God.
 
• While Milbank’s thought presupposes an ontological state of primal harmony, peace and fecundity, McCormack issues a direct challenge to “the Trinity of peace and perfection” (p. 276), and he envisions instead a Trinity of act and decision, centered on the insight that “the death of Jesus Christ in God-abandonment … [is] an event in God’s own life” (p. 189).

Although McCormack has never directly engaged Milbank’s work, his essay on “Participation in God” (chapter 9) shows how much is at stake in the question of creaturely deification, and in the ontological categories through which “participation in God” is understood.

In all this, McCormack’s writing is shaped by Karl Barth and by the distinctive problems of modern German theology; but his proposals have a much wider theological significance, and they deserve close attention and deep reflection. Within the narrower field of Barth studies, of course, McCormack’s work is not only a towering presence – it is also highly contentious and divisive. As McCormack himself observes, his recent work on ontological actualism “has incited a controversy that threatens to divide Barth scholars in the English-speaking world into two rival camps” (p. 295).

I can only speak for myself here, but I think this division is a productive and important one – and I hope it is sharpened all the more by the appearance of this book. As I suggested in an earlier post (against Paul Molnar), I believe the future of theology lies not in any incarnational realism, nor in the recovery of a metaphysical Chalcedonian objectivism, but rather in a far-reaching appropriation of Barth’s christological actualism. And for this task, there is no better guide than the work of Bruce McCormack.

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

Karl Barth: Of

Calvinism and Armeninianism

I had a conversation with Dr. Roger Olson about Karl Barth on another matter

but in that conversation we talked about Barth's position on Calvinism and

Armenianism. He was the jist of that discussion....

- skinhead

Russ says:

August 22, 2011 at 1:05 pm

If you have not done so already I would be interested in what Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Dietrick Boenhoffer taught as vs. evangelical and emergent Christian thot today. For me Barth is complex and simplifying him may not be possible. Still Barth seems to offer some 3rd-way alternatives to the discussions of Calvinism v. Arminianism, as well as to Open Theism (or so I’ve read). Thank you. (Roger's reply did not include references to Open Theism)

rogereolson says:

August 23, 2011 at 11:57 am

• Great question. My study has led me to believe the following about these theologians and the whole Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate. Barth was basically a monergistic universalist (salvation without the interaction of the human will). Someday I’m going to defend that thesis here. I have friends who know Barth just as well as I do who disagree, but my study of Barth’s doctrine of election has led me to that conclusion. Of course, that would put him at odds with Arminianism as well as with traditional Calvinists. Barth called his own view “purified supralapsarianism (a double predestination position that God consigns the non-elect to hell with foreknowledge).” That alone should prove my thesis–especially in light of his adamant insistence that Jesus Christ was the only reprobate man. 
• Brunner reveled in paradox, but I see his soteriology as very close to Arminianism. Some of my students over the years have written papers on Brunner and Arminianism and I’m convinced their conclusions are right. They all concluded that there is real affinity between them. Brunner despised double predestination while affirming single predestination but without the monergistic, individualistic flavor one finds in much traditional Calvinism. He affirmed divine self-limitation throughout his Dogmatics. 
• Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran. That should settle it. Lutherans generally reject both Calvinism and Arminianism as too rationalistic and simply embrace paradox (if not contradiction). But I’m not aware of whether he ever addressed the Luther versus Melanchthon issue over monergism versus synergism.