Luke 7: A Gospel of Reversals - "Who Are the Invited? And Who Are the Sinners?"

 

Photographed by Peter Ruprecht

Three words come to mind when giving a meal or a dinner to invited guests: "Honor. Hospitality. Hosting." And so we see these three very important words re-enacted by Simon Levi, a tax collector who invites his friends to meet Jesus who had called him into discipleship. Earlier, Jesus had healed a leper and a paralytic. Now we find Jesus calling a despised tax collector by the name of Simon Levi. And behind each passage of Luke's accounts we find the ever-present religious Pharisees lurking around the edges questioning Jesus' every move and motive.

As the saying goes, "If Jesus were running for public office He might've been more careful about the company He was keeping." But Jesus has a higher mission than one of popularity:

 

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

 

- Luke 4.18-19 (as quoted from the prophet Isaiah)

 

In first century Jewish culture the needy weren't always clean or respectable. Especially the hated tax collectors of Rome who requisitioned impossible duties upon the burden of the public in order to meet Rome's ever increasing demands for empire and their own ever-expanding appetites for material wealth and political power.

 

Into this environment Jesus calls Simon Levi to leave his employer and to become His own disciple in a ministry of collecting and disbursing the Kingdom of Heaven's funds from Jesus' wealth and store.

 

Within Luke's account (written on behalf of the Apostle Peter) we find seven meals where Jesus was present: twice with Simon Levi, at the feeding of the 5000, a meal with the Pharisees (where we find Jesus immediately breaking protocol in heated debate), a wedding banquet with its corollary Kingdom call, at a last Passover Meal with His disciples, and a final evening meal with Cleopas and his wife Mary after their long walk along the dusty road of Emmaus:

Luke 5.27-32 - Jesus calls Simon Levi then invites his friends to a meal with Jesus:

²⁷ After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” ²⁸ And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

²⁹ And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. ³⁰ And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” ³¹ And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Luke 7.36-52 - A Pharisee questions Jesus at Simon's meal about an uninvited woman who bathes his feet with her tears:

³⁸ and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

Luke 9.10 - 17 - Jesus feed the 5000

 

Luke 11.37-52 - Jesus attends a meal with the Pharisees:

 

³⁷ While Jesus^[e] was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. ³⁸ The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. ³⁹ And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰ You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹ But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

⁴² “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. ⁴³ Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. ⁴⁴ Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”

⁴⁵ One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” ⁴⁶ And he said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. ⁴⁷ Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. ⁴⁸ So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹ Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ ⁵⁰ so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, ⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. ⁵² Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

⁵³ As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, ⁵⁴ lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.

Luke 14.1-24 - "A Sabbath Healing" and "Inviting the Uninvited"

 

Luke 22.14-38 - Jesus' last Passover Meal with His disciples on the eve of His trial and crucifixion.

 

Luke 24.28-32 - Jesus has an evening meal with two of his disciples, Cleopas and his wife Mary (one of the women who had visited Jesus' tomb earlier that Resurrection morning), after their travels to their village of Emmaus:

 

²⁸ So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He [Jesus] acted as if he were going farther, ²⁹ but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. ³¹ And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” ³³ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, ³⁴ saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
 

 

My interest today is in the Luke 7 account where Simon Levi's Pharisee friends are appalled by the presence of an uninvited, unclean woman who repeatedly weeps upon Jesus' feet while washing and perfuming His feet with her hair. As the story unfolds we find a crowd that has gathered to a meal; a host we now know by the name of Simon Levi; a honored guest, Jesus, who has been invited by Levi to attend as the designee of distinction; an uninvited woman who enters off the unwashed streets (otherwise known as a woman of prostitution servicing the men of the area); and an ensuing disruption of the first order that immediately splits the gathered guests in two - between those who believe Jesus to be Israel's prophet sent by God to release their shackles from under the bondage of the Roman empire, and those still in doubt.

 

From the outset we find Simon Levi, ever the political aspirant, socially arranging to have his well-connected associates meet Jesus so that he might introduce this self-proclaimed prophet of Israel to them and begin bringing about the support money and the political connections that Jesus would need.... Or so he thought. But the one who was also calling himself Israel's Messiah (Savior) had a far more sublime message than the one Levi had contemplated. Believing only that Jesus had called himself into service (e.g. "discipleship") so that through his connections he might be able to help Jesus create the political momentum required for Israel's insurrection from Rome. But it was to an insurrection that he had not surmised... one that would have surprising consequences for both himself and his guests as he would soon find out.

Into the midst of this auspicious gathering a social disruption soon occurs where no one can withhold from heated comment. A disruption that causes the invited guests to vent their considerable feelings upon a social faux-pas that wasn't acceptable. And quickly taking the lead were the "honored ones" within the ranks of Levi's guests - those that spoke for the Jewish community - who should naturally speak out their alarm to Levi their host. So that at once the Pharisees present at the dinner party turn to Levi demanding that he remove a woman of ill-repute who had come into their midst unwelcomed and socially stained. Into which fray Jesus has been benignly thrown into as this same woman falls upon His feet and begins to weep and anoint his feet over and over, again and again. A woman who understands Jesus' truer identity and more radical insurrection to be directed at the very foundations of Jewish society itself. And ultimately to every man and woman's faith and heart.

Meanwhile, in gapped silence everyone awaits Jesus' auspicious response. But His response is totally unlike their pronounced expectations. Instead, Jesus continues to allow the unwanted woman her remarkable prostrations to the horror of both the crowd and their societal representatives, as they each begin doubting Jesus' prophetic ambitions He had earlier announced in Luke 4, and demonstrated by the healing of the sick at the onset of Luke 5. Jesus does exactly the opposite of what they were expecting.

Growing bolder, and more dogmatically angry, the Pharisees none-too-politely ask Levi the question everyone is by now asking, "That if Jesus is a prophet He would've known whom this woman is!" they demanded and hissed as-in-one-breath. And by one fell utterance from the councils of high Jewish society both the woman and Jesus are rejected along with all pretentious claims made by Levi, their dinner host, to the same. Jesus' mission comes into immediate and deep ruin, and with it, any pretensions to what the guests had earlier thought about Jesus' claim of Davidic kingship and rule by power and might.

Most poignantly we, the readers and hearers of Luke's story, now understand that the argument was not so simply about compassion or love, mercy or forgiveness. But about who was really in, and who was really out, according to the covenantal dictates of the invited teachers, rabbis, and priests at the dinner table. In one collective voice Jesus was out. Why? Because He failed to recognize the harlot in their midst as they had: "How could Jesus be Israel's prophet, much less their Messiah King!" And the differences become even more startling when realizing that even as Simon had not washed, nor kissed, nor anointed Jesus' feet, even so had this woman done so with her hair (yet another symbol of heavy shame in the perspective of Jewish culture as related to her sexual trade). And to stretch the dishonor out completely, Jesus is now dishonored along with the woman, even as Simon Levi's quickly diminishing hopes plunged to the ground before his honored guests.

But in a role of reversals we quickly see Jesus lifting up this woman of ill-repute and claiming before one-and-all that she is the truer host and honored guest at the dinner party by virtue of her actions and function. And with one sling of accusation directed towards His newest recruit, Simon, but directed towards all found in attendance, Jesus asks who really were the blind among them? Who really was the spiritually sick and leper of society? Who really was the one that has truly honored Him? Who really was the sinner in their midst? Who really were the symbols of shame in this story? And just as quickly Jesus forgives the woman's sin and tells her to go in peace. That she is welcomed and honored before the presence of God for her repentance and faith. And by these pronouncements Jesus deftly demonstrates both His prophetic status sent against the wickedness of Israel, His Messiahship as one come to forgive sins, and the quality of His wisdom as Israel's newly resurrected Davidic King.

At which point the story is left unfinished. We don't know if a riot immediately ensued; if Levi collapsed into his seat in dispirited conviction; if those remaining began to understand how horribly wrong they had gotten everything; if the Pharisees found themselves divided in their opinion over Jesus; or, even if the police were called to throw Jesus out of the city. But within the story itself we find it ended so that we - the readers and listeners - become those who are gathered around the banquet table asking the same questions and thinking the same thoughts as those present in the story. A story which calls us to ask who I really am? What might I have done in this same situation? How blinded might I have been if present at this dinner in my opinions about Jesus, myself, or to others considered disrespectable? And whether I would've responded even as the woman of the story did in repentance and faith - rather than as the guests did in anger and disruption, hatred and despise?

If whether we might allow our Father God to take the things that shame us and to turn them around for His own glory and our own shalom. For without a doubt we are the invited ones to God's table who asks us to fully participate in His sacrificial love.... Even as we are to embrace all whom we might consider "unclean" and "unwashed" that comes to this same insurrection table laden with redemption and hope. And at the last, we are the ones who are to enjoy God's banquet meal of love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, especially with all those around us who have also come to the Passover table of peace and rest, fellowship and refuge. To be wary of following Jesus for any other motives than His call to insurrection to this wicked world of ours. To reclaim it for God by giving up everything we have - even as Simon Levi had belatedly discovered when God stripped him of any last lingering vestiges of worldly hopes and dreams before his peers and honorees. And there discovering that he had it all most horribly wrong. That it wasn't he that could help Jesus, but Jesus who had come to help him, and to deliver him into a more worthy service than his present masters of mammon that he served.

Levi's call was a costly call. And so we will find even in our own lives. That God's Spirit will not rest until all has been undone in our wicked lives of wail and woe until we have come to the end of ourselves and understand it to be chattel worthy only of fire and ash. That in calling us to Himself God is redeeming our souls in every way that a man or woman may be saved. From ourselves and from our crooked worldly aspirations to a life of insurrection meant to restore God's lost Kingdom into this broken world of ours. Who will use all our talents and abilities to wreck this world system we live in if only by heaven's diamond-hardened tools of love and forgiveness. Out of which God Himself will bring about the salvation of all as only He can. Even so Lord Jesus quickly come... coming through us as your human instruments of truth and justice, beauty and judgment, hope and dreams, to be used as swords and battlements to your all-glorious name. Even so, now come. Amen.

R.E. Slater

July 29, 2013

sic, The Cost of Discipleship in Luke - Mars Hill

 

 

 

 

 

What Millennials Want in Church

Why millennials are leaving the church
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/27/why-millennials-are-leaving-the-church/?hpt=hp_c3

 

By Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN

July 27, 2013

 

(CNN) – At 32, I barely qualify as a millennial.

 

I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb.

 

I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my contacts first.

 

I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity.

 

Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.

 

Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

 

I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.

 

I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.

 

Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”

 

And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.

 

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

 

But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS-meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.

 

In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.

 

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

 

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

 

We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.

 

We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.

 

We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.

 

We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.

 

We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

 

You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.

 

Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.

 

Now these trends are obviously true not only for millennials but also for many folks from other generations. Whenever I write about this topic, I hear from forty-somethings and grandmothers, Generation Xers and retirees, who send me messages in all caps that read “ME TOO!” So I don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it is.

 

But I would encourage church leaders eager to win millennials back to sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a faith community.

 

Their answers might surprise you.

 

----

 

Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.
 

The Editors - CNN Belief Blog     For futher discussion:   More on millennials and the future of Christianity...(a list of resources & conversations)

Phase III - Building a Postmodern Theology that is both Weak and Apocalyptic

Initially entitled:

Comparisons between Postmodern Christianity, Radical and Liberal Theology

 

by R.E. Slater

July 26, 2013

 

As Americans, we have read our view-of-the-world from an American perspective within the pages of Scripture. A perspective that is robust, militant, and rigorously individualistic. So when reading the Bible, or thinking of the God of Scriptures, we tend to believe God as robust (He can do anything as a controlling force in the universe and in our lives); that God is militant (God's truth-and-righteousness will win out as we, His divine minions, bow to His almighty will and rage economic, political, and ideological warfare upon the world-at-large); and God is rigorously individualistic (God will do what God will do, ultimately encapsulated in our conscripted reading of the Hebraic idiom "I AM whom I AM").

Our American churches have likewise acquired this selective method of reading God's Word within its congregations gained from the perspective of all our past wars and industrial feats of technical prowess. Beginning with the American Revolution and proceeding forwards through the 20th century's major world wars, America has shown a commitment to a number of regional warfares waged upon cultures vastly different from our own. Each war demanding newer technologies, more efficient distribution and logistical solutions, and a populace at one with itself in the face of its perceived enemy. In effect, America has been fighting for the human rights, liberties and equality, of not only itself, but for other societies as well, through its democratized republic full of purpose-and-will. Similarly, we have read these primal American idealisms backwards into Israel's Old Testament struggles with her surrounding heathen neighbors as they fought-and-warred with one another over the many, many, long centuries.

Certainly, we do not wish to discount the American ideal of Life, Liberty, and Equality. And indeed, from the reports we've read, many who live beyond America's borders would wish those majestic qualities upon themselves benighted within oppressive countries of totalitarianism, hopeless states of unending abject poverty, and the cruel forms of slavery everywhere abounding. Moreover, we are not so naïve as to disbelieve that these forms of oppression, poverty, and slavery do not also exist within America's borders itself, even though we still tend towards the idealisms of Americanism as expressed by our national motto of Life, Liberty, and Equality for All. And because of its importance to us, these idealisms have also influenced our reading of the Bible, our understanding of God, and how we might conduct ourselves in this world as we  have perceived and constructed it.

Hence, our more popular theologies found within American churches tend towards a high view of Calvinism that emphasizes God's strength, power, and will; an absolutist call of Christ to enforce our perspective of God and Scriptures upon all nations, religions, and faiths unlike ourselves; and a strict humanism that is both secular and individualistic as a means to encompass our views and objectives. Which brings us to the idea of postmodernism. An idea that rejects modernity in its egresses; that disdains the secularity our American churches have embraced; that wishes to temper our view of an all-controlling God in the face of natural disasters which have left us horrified by the suffering left in their wake; that cannot comport with man's wickedness and evil when small children are shot and killed; or, when sex slavery is dismayingly discovered running rampant throughout our American cities; and questions whether we Americans are truly the Masters-of-our-Fate in the strident courses of our business ethics when money and politics are involved.

Postmodernity looks at modernity's shortcomings and says that maybe there is another way. We see that in our kids who have endured two recent Global Recessions (2001-2004 and 2008-2010); lived in a constant state of terrorism and terroristic acts (both within our American homeland and abroad); grew up with the knowledge that American is at war with somebody over something at all times; have seen the failures of their homes broken beneath the weight of workaholic mom-and-dads, domestic abuse and anger, and the shallowness of material wealth; and the results of addictions within a society placing a heavy emphasis on hedonistic behavior. These kids then do something amazing. Something which is totally unexpected by us, their parents, teachers, coaches, civil magistrates, and youth workers. They become unlike us. They center on the truer values of ethics again. They reach out in compassionate projects of service to those in need. They see the circus of career, job and dollar, and ask if whether life might offer more than these things. They show to us a color-blindness towards race, gender equality, and same-sex marriage. And they become intensely interested in the ecological health of this world that is burgeoning with over-population and the scarcity of resources, time, and production.

Yes, postmodernism is here (and more likely merged into a form of post-postmodernism by now). And yes, with its coming some important questions have arisen as to whether our Americanized view of God and the Scriptures might be a little askew of where they should be for the church today. Thus my interest in producing Relevancy22 beginning in the late spring of 2011. Phase I found my first six months questioning my Evangelic roots as I witnessed well-meaning Christians venting Calvinistic and Reformed views upon Rob Bell's book, Love Wins. It was not pretty and gave me time to reflect and react upon the state of Evangelicalism itself rather than on Rob's book in particular. At which time I chose to balance the subject off by speaking to the themes of God's love (relational theism), arminianism (which emphasizes prevenient grace and human free contra Calvinism), a non-coercive divine sovereignty (as opposed to meticulous sovereignty), missional pluralism (reaching beyond our enculturated gospel) and many other classic doctrines gone askew in the hands of an over zealous Evangelicalism within whose womb I had grown up. It gave me a chance to percolate and become up-to-date with Christianity's more popular forms of expression.

After the first six months I slipped into what I would call Phase II and began writing about a more expansive expression of Christianity that was less sure about things, more in doubt of itself, and more willing to explore supposedly "non-classical" doctrine as it was deemed by those who were clearly laying claim to a very narrow selection of preferred dogmas.... Even though they were just as clearly wrong though I knew it not at the time I began. This was my deconstructive phase where I more-or-less moved towards a form of Emergent, Postmodernism in a re-interpretive (or reconstructive) understanding of God and Scriptures. And which, in many ways, I am still even now pursuing. However, in my continued interest in enlarging my personal and interpretive hermeneutic of Scriptures, I have come to what I might call Phase III of this re-interpretive project to re-write a more current postmodern understanding of God and the Scriptures (that is, a Postmodern Theology if you well).

Hitherto I have written only a few articles about God's weakness (known as "weak theology") and our correspondent responsibilities as followers of Jesus in light of God's preference that His Church now act in His place as His divine substitute, answer, and source of repentance, reclamation, rebirth, renewal, and resurrection . Nor have I written enough (if anything) about eschatology - especially from an apocalyptic angle that is radical and revolutionary (if not even anarchistic to our global societies' posthuman secularisms). Moreover, I wish to continue to explore a kind of anthropologic hermeneutic that synchronizes God's Love and Divine Sovereignty with Jesus' radical presence, death, and ministry through the Holy Spirit. For this I will need to look into Radical Theology as expressed most recently through the past 150 years of German Idealism before mashing it into an Emergent, Postmodern framework of discussion. (By definition, a radical theology is any faith teaching that clashes with the standard faith teaching of the time.... You see this with the prophets in the OT, with Jesus in the NT (John the Baptist, the Apostles, and early Church), and with any believer wishing to speak to the egresses of the believing community. Radical Theology is not new - but in its contemporary forms is always new - as it recalls one-and-all back to God's heart of purpose and living.)

 

Thus, as I have time to research and write, I wish to explore the ideas of Hegel, Ricouer, Heidegger, Tillich, Derrida, Zizek, and Caputo. Now don't be alarmed because even Karl Barth needed to interact with the Continental Philosophers of his day in order to produce his guiding theologies that God had laid upon his hear for the church-of-tomorrow. And having done that, had produced innumerable theologians who have spawned countless workers for the harvest of the gospel. But if we do not think through these issues, than Christianity will become irrelevant to the countless masses of men and women seeking a better spoken biblical theology than the one we are presently seeing in print and in media (mostly what I see disturbs me - thus my passionate articles and blog).

Hence, we have laid before us a worthy task if done right. And if not undertaken, than I'm afraid that we will see some lesser mutations of God's Word become popularized to the harm of Christian orthodoxy's sustainable presence. And yes, it is true, that we will be moving from Christian orthodoxy's Medieval classical expressions of itself (founded upon Greek thought at the time) even as we also move away from its Reformational and Evangelical expressions of itself (founded upon the Enlightenment and later-arising Modernity), to a Postmodern expression for the 21st Century. Thus we will be no less guiltless of interacting with our present world than past godly men and women who had wished to do the same however the spirit we might ascertain. And though creedalism and confessional theology is a bad word among postmodernists, I also realize that we are symbolic creatures that will need help in remembering who God is, and what He intends. Thus, as a historic Christian I do not wish to forgot those past statements of classically-inspired orthodoxy and creedal-sacramental confessionalism, but to build on top of them towards a newer, more contemporary expression for today.

But it will also require a more expansive hermeneutic than the one we presently are witnessing under Evangelicalism's more popularly acclaimed literalistic (if not dogmatic) reading of God's Word that is restricting today's church to time-bound, modernal interpretations of Scripture.... Interpretations that I've reacted to over these past two years to little avail.... But if done right, might allow us to see God better, along with better envisioning God's will for His Church today in this life of ours. While perhaps avoiding the many nuanced expressions of a segmented Christianity fractured by too many conflicted dogmas and stylisms; interpretive preferences and bigoted statements; and generally refusing to embrace the radical reversalisms found in Jesus' teachings and ministries. At least this is my hope as I explore Weak Theology and Apocalypticism for the postmodern orthodox church of the 21st Century.

By God's grace I have awaken from my dogmatic slumber and would wish the same for God's church today as it arises to the conflicts lying within herself and this world's conflicted needs. And by God's grace I wish to begin by re-introducing postmodernism's relationship with radical theology in comparison with liberal theology from a more positivistic plane of biblical discussion than from the more cursed anathemas that the church has heaped upon either. At the last, I am learning not to be afraid of words as I once was taught. For I am finding words to be quite helpful when re-contextualized outside of the phrases of religious men and institutions. Words that can help provide the freedom of expression I could not find earlier until creating mine own. And especially when formed around the person of Jesus and His Word rather than around the extra-biblical dogmas and folklored, Christianized religion I grew up within. It has not been for naught these past two years of writing that I have written about my faith in a more expansive form than formerly presented in mine own life of study, worship, and observation. And if you have not yet had a chance to catch up then mark this date because Phase III has begun as we build towards a postmodern theology that is both weak and apocalyptic and unafraid to rethink what a biblical Christianity might really mean shed of its pretentious statements and debilitating words. Thank you for your consideration.

 

R.E. Slater
July 26, 2013

 

 

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Postmodern Christianity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity

 

from Wikipedia

 

Postmodern Christianity is any form of Christianity which has been influenced by postmodern philosophy. Although it is a relatively recent development within Christianity, some Christian postmodernists assert that their style of thought has an affinity with foundational Christian thinkers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, and famed Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius.

 

In addition to Christian theology, postmodern Christianity has its roots in post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, developed ca. 1960s to present.

 

Some people who eschew the label "postmodern Christianity" because the meaning of the term "postmodern" is frequently debated, even between those who use the label. Therefore some say [who?] it has almost no determinate meaning and, in the United States, serves largely to symbolize an emotionally charged battle of ideologies. Moreover, such alleged postmodern heavyweights as Jacques Derrida and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe have refused to operate under a so-called postmodern rubric, preferring instead to specifically embrace a single project stemming from the European Enlightenment and its precursors. Nevertheless, postmodern Christianity and its constituent schools of thought continue to be relevant.

 

 

Liberal Christianity

Main article: Liberal Christianity

 

Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, has an affinity with certain current forms of postmodern Christianity, although postmodern thought was originally a reaction against mainstream Protestant liberalism. Liberal Christianity is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically informed movements and moods within 19th and 20th century Christianity.

 

Despite its name, liberal Christianity has always been thoroughly protean. The word "liberal" in liberal Christianity does not necessarily refer to a leftist political agenda but rather to insights developed during the Enlightenment. Generally speaking, Enlightenment-era liberalism held that humans are political creatures and that liberty of thought and expression should be among the highest human values. The development of liberal Christianity owes much to the works of philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Overall, liberal Christianity is a product of a continuing philosophical dialogue.

 

In the 19th century, self-identified liberal Christians sought to elevate Jesus' humane teachings as a standard for a world civilization freed from cultic traditions and traces of "pagan" belief in the supernatural.[1] As a result, liberal Christians placed less emphasis on miraculous events associated with the life of Jesus than on his teachings. The effort to remove "superstitious" elements from Christian faith dates to intellectual reformist Christians such as Erasmus and the Deists in the 15th–17th centuries.[2] The debate over whether a belief in miracles was mere superstition or essential to accepting the divinity of Christ constituted a crisis within the 19th-century church, for which theological compromises were sought.[3]

 

[As an extreme example],the Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was Thomas Jefferson's effort to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.

 

Many 20th century liberal Christians have been influenced by philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Examples of important liberal Christian thinkers are Rudolf Bultmann and John A.T. Robinson.

 

 

Christian existentialism

Main article: Christian existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard

Christian existentialism is a form of Christianity that draws extensively from the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard initiated the school of thought when he reacted against Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's claims of universal knowledge and what he deemed to be the empty formalities of the 19th century church. Christian existentialism places an emphasis on the undecidability of faith, individual passion, and the subjectivity of knowledge.

 

Although Kierkegaard's writings weren't initially embraced, they became widely known at the beginning of the 20th century. Later Christian existentialists synthesized Kierkegaardian themes with the works of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Buber.

 

Paul Tillich, Lincoln Swain, Gabriel Marcel, and John Macquarrie are examples of leading Christian existentialist writers, building upon a legacy of neo-orthodox thinkers like Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, who similarly disdained the propositionalism of traditionalist Protestantism.

 

 

Continental philosophical theology

 

Continental philosophical theology is the most recent form of postmodern Christianity. The movement was fueled heavily by the slew of notable post-Heideggerian philosophers that appeared on the continent in the 1970s and 1980s. Groundbreaking works such as Jean-Luc Marion's God Without Being and John D. Caputo's The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida ushered in the era of continental philosophical theology.

 

Radical orthodoxy

Main article: Radical orthodoxy

 

Radical orthodoxy is a form of continental philosophical theology that has been influenced by the phenomenological writings of French Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion.

 

Radical orthodoxy is a style of theology that seeks to examine [and maintain] classic Christian writings and related Neoplatonic texts from a contemporary, philosophically continental perspective. The movement finds in writers such as Augustine of Hippo and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite valuable sources of insight and meaning relevant to modern society and Christianity at large.

 

John Milbank and James K.A. Smith are leading proponents of radical orthodoxy.

[Radical orthodoxy is substantially different from Radical Theology. The former wishes to resurrect classical Christian doctrine in postmodern dress, while the latter wishes to push on beyond classical Christian expression using postmodern thinking and hermeneutics. - res]
 

 

Hermeneutics of religion

See also: Biblical hermeneutics

 

The hermeneutics of religion is another form of continental philosophical theology. The system of hermeneutic interpretation developed by Paul Ricœur has heavily influenced the school of thought. A central theme in the hermeneutics of religion is that God exists outside the confines of the human imagination. Richard Kearney is a prominent advocate of the movement.

 

Non-dogmatic theology (weak theology)
Main article: Weak theology

 

Weak theology is a manner of thinking about theology from a deconstructive point of view. The style of thought owes a debt to Jacques Derrida, especially in light of his idea of a "weak force." Weak theology is weak because it takes a non-dogmatic, perspectival approach to theology. Proponents of weak theology believe that dominant contemporary explications of theology are inherently ideological, totalizing, and militant. In response, weak theology expresses itself through acts of interpretation.

 

According to Caputo, the distinctive reinterpretive act of weak theology has resulted in the notion of the weakness of God. In the body of thought, the paradigm of God as an overwhelming physical or metaphysical force is regarded as mistaken. The old God-of-power is displaced with the idea of God as an unconditional claim without force. As a claim without force, the God of weak theology does not physically or metaphysically intervene in nature. Weak theology emphasizes the responsibility of humans to act in this world here and now. Because God is thought of as weak and as a call, weak theology places an emphasis on the "weak" human virtues of forgiveness, hospitality, openness, and receptivity. In each of these virtues, a metaphoric "power of powerlessness" is at work.

 

John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo have recently completed works that further develop the idea of a weak theology. Earlier, liberation theologians such as Jurgen Moltmann also dealt with concepts such as the kenotic, or self-emptying nature of God in Christ.


 

How Might We Interpret the OT for Today?

 

 

Suffice it to say that today's article would be a great beginning point in the postmodern Christian's understanding of how the OT might relate to the NT. However, at first blush it would seemed that there may be a few more things going on here than we might currently admit. Mostly, we must think about why certain societal rules or cultural norms appeal to us. A postmodernist will question everything, and one of the things s/he must question is ourselves, then our social group, our church fellowship, and lastly our society.

 

But rather than saying everything is relativistic we should be asking how the Bible might help illuminate us as we find ourselves in our time-and-place when re-enacting God's great love that He has shown to us through His Son Jesus. Not judgmental love even though proper love will judge both its challenger as well as its motivation to meet that challenge. But to love in the sense of bringing peace and justice, reconciliation and purpose, back into a person, a situation, or a society. Even so, it must all begin with Jesus even as He questioned everything, teaching an ethic that stood everyone on their head, and spun them around in their thinking, from what they thought He might say to what He was actually saying TO THEM.

 

Further, a good historian of the Bible knows that ancient biblical culture - both in the OT as well as in the NT - are mostly lost to us in the sense of knowing how people thought and behaved back then. Oh yes, we can make our conjectures based upon our comparative readings of ancient histories, but most of these histories were written much later after-the-event-had-occurred! Even in the Bible's recorded histories by the biblical writers themselves as they too wrote from their cultural-and-historical perspectives (sic, via an  enculturated boundedness, personal biases and judgments). In its present form the Jewish OT was written in the Second Temple era from records as much as a thousand years earlier, many of which had been lost to time and inattention. Truly, we mostly are at a lost as to what people were thinking back 2000 years ago (the NT period), let alone 4000 years ago (the Torah period).

 

Which also gets us to the idea of remembering that language by its nature is both fluid and ambiguous. Even today, amongst our literate societies news-events are continually questioned as to their correctness of interpretation! Whether they are punning towards a particular view, outcome, or bias - or whether, it is in sincere search of the truth - our words carry multiple meanings to multiple hearers and societies. How much more than has the church done the same with its own ancient records and traditions as demonstrated by the vernacular speeches and commentaries held forth by today's current crops of Christian writers, pulpiteers, and media outlets? Words carry meaning. But they also carry ambiguity. Words are not mathematical symbols with strict mathematical properties. The best words of poets know this. And those kinds of lucid poets will write in a way that will carry an idea as expressed in a poem on many levels of meaning to many kinds of ears and eyes. Even in the church's traditional creeds we find our postmodern thinking wanting more (or less) when reading those grand confessions of faith. Especially when couched in the newer terms of process theism, relational thought, open theology, and the emergent strains of radical theology in its pithy cores and poignant questions to Christianity's truer meanings.

 

For all these many reasons, and many more, today's articles by Christianity Today and Scot McKnight make for a great beginning point of conversation. But not an ending point. Why? Because CT's expression is couched in the church's traditions and classical creedal expressions. Whereas McKnight's is showing a more nuanced reading of those traditions and expressions which may help guide the street-level Christian in his/her's reading of the OT. But still, we may push forward by asking even more questions. Questions of our preferred hermeneutical interpretation of the Bible: whether it pushes us far enough from our comfort zone, or if whether it keeps us too smugly wrapped up in our biases and bigotries towards those whom we should share God's love with. Whom we should advocate and mediate justice for. Whom we should forgive and reach out to. If whether we might lay down our religions clubs and shields long enough to work together in irenic debate and peaceful argumentation.

 

At the last, it is a beginning point. And hopefully, as we have discussed here at Relevancy22 in previous articles about the Bible and biblical interpretations, we might have been asking the hard questions of how we might discover Paul's readings aright in light of his Jewish orientation and not his Calvinistic or Reformed interpretation that we have covered him in. Or his Americanized, Western dress that we see Paul in. But not only must we learn to rethink the OT, so even must we learn to rethink the NT. When making our brazen speeches that "Paul said this or that" we may only be marking ourselves by our own (biblical) shortsightedness to what Paul may or may not actually be saying (or not saying!). Issues of gender equality, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, political rightness, poverty, victimization, and injustice continue to challenge us by God's Word. Let's just say that it would be a fearful thing should Jesus return today within our lives and churches. Just how many of our judgments and biblical assurances might you think remain?

 

In Paul's day, even this great Rabbi of the Jewish faith (I'm speaking of the Apostle Paul) found his faith impoverished, his ideas conflicted, his ministries oppressive, his love hardened before he met the Resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road. An experience that burned up the chattel of his life and reapportioned his livelihood to the re-righting of his earthly calling to public ministry. A ministry of love-and-reconciliation rather than of one of oppression-and-judgment. So too must we each must be confronted by our own Damascus Road experience beginning with how we might skew (or unskew) our interpretations of the OT text and NT principles we think we understand today in the postmodern sense. No, we do not speak of a relativism, but of a loving God's guidance of His church to err on the side of love, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. To do all in the name of Jesus as we are able or gifted by our separate callings. No more, and no less. And to abandon our guilt, and the oppression of our conscience, by taking all to the Lord as He gives us insight into our lives, our calling, our purpose here in this life when confronted by the crucified Christ.

 

At the last, how did Jesus answer his accusers? To Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul. And to Love your neighbor as yourself. Even so may this be prayer and admonition be in our lives this day, as difficult as it is. As challenging as it can be. To do good to everyman... and even more, to love in the power of the Holy Spirit by God's grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness. May this be so for you as God gives you strength and confession, repentance and trust. Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

July 25, 2013

 

 

 

 

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Chris Wright on Old Testament Law and Today

by Scot McKnight

Jul 25, 2013

Comments

 

Introductory comments from an article in Christianity Today:

But just as well, we should never say, “Oh, we don’t bother with those things because they are just Old Testament rules.” There are principled reasons why Christians not only need but also should not observe certain Old Testament laws simply as written. And regarding two kinds of law, the New Testament itself provides those reasons. 

The sacrificial laws: The New Testament makes it clear that the religious system of temple, altar, animal sacrifices, priesthood, and the Day of Atonement has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ through the Cross and Resurrection. He has accomplished once and for all what that great system pointed toward. The Book of Hebrews stresses that, whether we are Jewish or Gentile believers, we must not go back to that system, because we already have all that it represented through Christ’s sacrificial death and ascended life in the presence of the Father. 

The food laws: The distinction between clean and unclean animals and foods was symbolic of the distinction between Israel as God’s holy people and the Gentile nations (Lev 20:25–26). In the New Testament, that separation is abolished in Christ, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. Through the Cross, God has made the two cultures one new humanity. And as Peter discovered through his vision in Acts 10; before going to the home of the Gentile Cornelius, what God has called clean should no longer be called unclean. Today some Messianic Jewish believers choose freely to observe the kashrutregulations as a mark of their Jewish community and cultural identity. But in their unity, believers are free from food laws. 

But just because we no longer keep these laws literally does not mean they can’t teach us anything. We are called to present our bodies as a living sacrifice in the service of God. We are called to offer the sacrifice of praise. We are called to cleanness of life in a corrupt world. In fact, if we are tempted to mock Jewish fastidiousness over kosher food in the kitchen, we might ask if we have any sustained commitment to the moral and spiritual distinctiveness that the New Testament upholds. 

We can find principles even in Israel’s civil laws to apply today. The urban Christians in Corinth did not see oxen grinding corn in their city houses. But when Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he took an Old Testament law about allowing working oxen to be fed from the product of their labors (Deut 25:4) and applied it to Christian workers in Corinth. He sees a principle in the case law—originally meant for the benefit of animals—and applies it to working humans. The principle: Work deserves reward. Later he applies another commandment about how manna was to be collected (totally irrelevant to Corinth, you might think), and applies it to the principle of equality between Christians (1 Cor 9:8–10; 2 Cor 8:13–15). These are biblical examples of creative application of biblical laws in nonliteral, but very appropriate, ways.

 

 

Additional Comments from Scott McKnight:

 

In Blue Parakeet, I advocated that we learn to read Moses’ laws as God’s ways in Moses’ days, and it seems Chris Wright gets close to this view by advocating a hermeneutic of questions that then get re-asked in our day:

The best way to derive principles from the Old Testament law is to ask questions. All laws in all human societies are made for a purpose. Laws happen because people want to change society, to achieve some social goal, to foster certain interests, or to prevent some social evil. So when we look at any particular law or group of biblical laws, we can ask, “What could be the purpose behind this law?” To be more specific: 

● What kind of situation was this law intended to promote or to prevent? 

● What change in society would this law achieve if it were followed? 

● What kind of situation made this law necessary or desirable? 

● What kind of person would benefit from this law, by assistance or protection? 

● What kind of person would be restrained or restricted by this law, and why? 

● What values are given priority in this law? Whose needs or rights are upheld? 

● In what way does this law reflect what we know from elsewhere in the Bible about the character of God and his plans for human life? 

● What principle or principles does this law embody or instantiate?

Now we won’t always be able to answer these questions with much detail or insight. Some laws are just plain puzzling. But asking questions like these leads us to a much broader and deeper grasp of what Old Testament laws were all about: forming the kind of society God wanted to create. 

Then, having done that homework as best we can, we step out of the Old Testament world and back into our own. Ask the same kind of questions about the society we live in and the kind of people we need to be, and the kind of personal and societal objectives we need to aim for in order to be in any sense “biblical.” 

In this way, biblical law can function sharply as a paradigm or model for our personal and social ethics in all kinds of areas: economic, familial, political, judicial, sexual, and so on. We are not “keeping it” in a literalist way like a list of rules. But more important, we are not ignoring it in defiance of what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16–17. We are studying and using it as guidance, light for the path, in the joyful way of Psalms 1, 19 and 119.