The Cost of True Leadership in the Failure of the Jesus' Twelve Disciples

On Jesus’ Choosing Twelve Males, take 1 

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/03/on-jesus-choosing-twelve-males/

by JRD Kirk

February 3, 2012

I know that many of you wake up on Fridays eager for the weekly Karl Barth post. I hate to put you off another day, but today I have something a bit more pressing to take care of.

Yesterday, I posted the first of two responses I wanted to make to John Piper’s description of Christianity as a “masculine” religion. Rachel Held Evans has issued the summons for replies, and I think this is an important moment to inject a more biblically sound reading of gender issues in the church. Thanks, Rachel, for stirring us to positive response.

Today’s issue has to do with the significance of Jesus’ choosing of twelve men to be his disciples. This is one of several issues I take up in Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?.

The story within which this selection of the twelve is embedded leads us to draw a very different point from Piper’s.

Jesus chooses twelve men. These twelve Jesus specially commissions. Jesus came preaching, casting out demons, and healing. The disciples are sent to preach and heal and cast out demons.

Jesus comes proclaiming and inaugurating the reign of God, and these men are sent out to participate in that coming. When Jesus feeds the 5,000, he hands the bread to them. They are the chosen. They are the insiders.

In contrast (let’s stick to Mark’s Gospel here), the women in the story are marginal. There are small handfuls of nameless women. They touch Jesus’ robe, they ask for healing for their daughters, they throw a few coins in a box in the temple, they anoint Jesus’ head with oil.

So while the women are coming in and going out, acting on faith and finding praise for their faith, it’s the boys who are getting it done!

Getting it done, that is, right up until the great, transitional moment in the story.

1. “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ.” Ok, so far so good. Then, Jesus begins to tell them what this title entails: “The Messiah must be rejected, suffer, and die. Then he’ll be raised.”

Peter rebukes Jesus. Jesus rebukes him back: “Get behind me Satan.”

What happens then?

Move on to ch. 9, and the disciples who had been empowered to exorcise are unable to cast out a demon. The disciples who had been given the charge to proclaim cannot overcome the mute-making spirit.

2. Later that same chapter Jesus again predicts his death. The disciples’ reaction? They walk along debating with each other about who is going to be greatest in God’s coming kingdom.

We begin to see what they don’t get about Jesus’ ministry: the cross turns the economy of the world on its head. They have a standard of greatness that entails a certain kind of leadership and power, but Jesus wants to transform their ideas. He wants them to see greatness in the cross and the child.

As if Mark, or Jesus, thought we might miss the point, we get the whole thing a third time.

3. Jesus predicts his death, and this time the subsequent response of the disciples is James’ and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand. Again, Jesus has to combat not merely the request, but the wrongheaded assumption about what greatness in the kingdom of God looks like:

Jesus called them over and said, “ You know that the ones who are considered the rulers by the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around. But that’s not the way it will be with you. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you will be the slave of all, for the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.” (Mark 10:42-44, CEB)

In the story, the disciples do not understand what is entailed in leading the people of God. They think it is about greatness and power rather than service and death.

And so, we have the group represented by Peter. The rock. Is being “the rock” a good thing? In Mark, the rocky soil indicates plants that spring up well, but fall away when danger or persecution arise on account of the word. Mark repeats the language of “falling away” when the disciples scatter, leaving Jesus to die alone.

The Twelve were committed to Jesus, and happy with him–but only as one who came with power. They had no faith in their calling to participate in his way of death. They did not have eyes to see that the ministry of Jesus turned the economy of the world on its head....

Shall we return to the women now?

How are we to assess these women who, in the narrative world, are outsiders, on the margins?

Unlike the disciples who are rebuked for being of little faith, Jesus commends these women as having great faith: “Daughter, go in peace, your faith has made you well.”

Moreover, there is one episode where Jesus ties a human inseparably to the gospel story. It is the episode of the woman who pours out oil over Jesus’ head. This looks to be a royal anointing! But when Jesus defends her he says, “Leave her alone, she has prepared my body beforehand for burial.”

The act of anointing prepares Jesus for burial: Messiahship and death are held together, and here is the only person in the whole story to get it. This is why “wherever the gospel is preached what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

What does it mean to live at the margins, to be unnamed? How does this compare with being the twelve, the dudes, the insiders?

According to the economy of the world, with its measures of greatness, to be the twelve is to be exemplary, in the place to lead, to exclude others from leadership, to stand close to Jesus and guard the gates of who else can draw near.

And to the extent that we look to Jesus’ selection of them, and the apparent marginalization of the women, as paradigmatic for male leadership in the church, we show ourselves to be people whose minds have not yet been transformed by the very story to which we are appealing.

It is only by agreeing with the disciples’ way of assessing the world that we can see their “insider status” as a true insider status, to be replicated by other men in church history.

Jesus offers another way: You guys don’t get it! It’s the rulers of the Gentiles who lord authority over people. It shall not be so among you.

There is another way. It is the way of the cross.

There is another way. It is the way of the “marginalized” in the worlds eyes lying closest to Jesus in faith and understanding.

Are we really supposed to hold up as our model the “Satan” who denied the gospel of the crucified Christ, and claim that Peter is paradigmatic of the place of men as insiders and faithful leaders in the church?

Or should we not seek out the one who did the good deed for Jesus, holding together Messiah and death from her place at the margins? Should we not seek out the one who sought out Jesus merely to touch the fringe of his garment and learn from her what it means to walk in faith?

The irony of appealing to the boys as insiders is that in so doing we show ourselves to be adopting the boys’ understanding of power, privilege, and leadership in the kingdom.

And this view is roundly rebuked by Jesus in words of dissuasion and the work of the cross.

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

Power-Inverting Kingdom, take 2

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/06/power-inverting-kingdom-take-2/

by JRD Kirk

February 6, 2012

On Friday I said a few words about the twelve disciples. How normative is Jesus’ selection of twelve men to be his ministry-extenders while on earth? This is a question that cannot be answered in a way that is abstracted from the narrative. The story of their failure, of their rejection of the gospel of the crucified messiah, undermines the claims to their normativity.

We have to remember that we’re reading stories. In stories, characters develop. Events in the narrative shape them. They respond. We all know that the twelve includes the betrayer Judas, but we also need to look closely at the other eleven and their betrayal of Jesus.

As I mentioned Friday, the turning point in the story is a turning point for the twelve: Yes, Jesus is the Christ (Peter’s confession in ch. 8), but this Christ is a suffering Christ–a claim for which Peter rebukes Jesus in a Satanic denial of the road ahead.

From this point on, the disciples lose their kingdom-extending role. Their failure plays out in several subsequent scenes.

After the second passion prediction, Jesus confronts the disciples about what they were arguing about on the road. They are shamed. They had been arguing about which is greatest.

Jesus inverts their assessment of the world: to be great is to be least and servant of all.

Then, Jesus takes hold of one of the least, the most powerless members of society, and shows the disciples what it means to be agents of the kingdom: “Welcome the child in my name.”

Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with who can minister in Christ’s name, right? I mean, this is just about patting little kids on the head, right?
Well, that’s what John thought: “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.”

Clearly, welcoming kids is one thing, taking up the master’s name and performing unauthorized ministry, ministry not delineated by the Twelve is something else!

Or maybe not.

Jesus said, “Don’t stop him. No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me. Whoever isn’t against us is for us” (Mark 9:39-40, CEB).

So I ask again: does the narrative of Mark uphold the idea that the twelve delineate the parameters for faithful ministry in the church?

And again the unfolding story itself pushes me in a different direction.

To the extent that we use the disciples as paradigmatic figures for excluding people from ministry we are embodying their own failed understanding of ministry in and for and under the Reign of God in Christ.

The gospel of the cross overturns such understandings of insider standing, power, and status. It rebukes our natural tendency to affirm as eligible leaders only those who are like the original insiders.

When we use the Twelve as a weapon for fending off women from church leadership we align ourselves with the misapprehending disciples rather than the gospel proclaiming Christ.

Karl Barth on Knowing God

[A] Humanity Ready for God

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/04/humanity-ready-for-god/

by JRD Kirk

February 4, 2012

Karl Barth claims that God is ready to be known by people, and hence actually knowable by people. In §26 of the Church Dogmatics, he approaches this from two different angles.

First, as we discussed previously (here and here), Barth draws us back to revelation, claiming that God is only known as God has revealed himself in and by the word.

In §26.2, Barth takes up the same question from the human side. If God is knowable, there must not only be a God who makes Godself known, but a humanity capable of receiving this knowledge.

Who, then, or perhaps what, is this humanity?

First, Barth returns to the question of natural theology, applying his previous arguments about God as knowable through the natural order to humanity as those who can know as they are by nature.

Well, not exactly as humanity is “by nature.” What humanity is in its “fallen nature” is more to the point. We’ll come back to this in a second. At any rate, humans as we actually are cannot truly know the true God through a natural theology, but only through God’s revelation.

“Anthropology” is not the route to humanity’s ability to know God.

Interestingly, and again, perhaps, surprisingly, Barth is equally insistent that ecclesiology, humanity as addressed by the church, is not the humanity able to receive the revelation of God. Humanity in the church is as liable to deception about its understanding of God as humanity in general. It is as liable to control it for its own purposes, as humanity in general.

Though I don’t recall Barth saying so explicitly, I wonder if this twin denial isn’t a recurrence of Barth’s regular two-sided glance: on the one hand he wants to show how evangelical dogmatics stands over against Christian liberalism; on the other he wants to show how it stands over against Roman Catholicism.

If not anthropology or ecclesiology, then on what basis can we discover humanity’s readiness for God? Unsurprisingly, it comes from Christology.

God is [the] known Knower in the triune, eternal relationship between Father and Son. This Son who has eternally known God, becomes human, thus joining the eternal self-knowing God with human flesh. How can people know God? Because, on the human side as well as the divine, God knows Godself. “On the human side” meaning, in this case, the humanity of the God-man.

I have a couple of questions about Barth’s construction.

First, do his stances against anthropology and ecclesiology as means by which we might see that God is knowable to people underplay the significance of Christ as The Human One and of the church as the Body of Christ? In the salvation story, there is a redefinition of humanity, of “image of God,” of the people of God, of “the church,” that is derivative from Christ himself.

Does Barth take this incorporation into Christ seriously enough in his denial that as humans or as the church we can know God?

Second, and related, does Barth give too much play to sin as a defining element in our human nature? Not that all humans aren’t born in sin and all the rest. But being sinful isn’t at the core of what it means to be human. Yes, it’s the reality that we are born into and from which Christ ushers us into a better future.

But Christ was fully human, and yet without sin. So if it’s sinfulness that keeps us from knowing God, it’s not our humanness that keeps us from God, but instead it’s the lack of true humanness that keeps us from knowing God.

So then, third, why is it that Christ offers a new humanity in which God is knowable? Is it because Christ is God? Or is it because Christ is truly human? Has Barth retreated too quickly to the Trinity rather than taking full stock of the inherent value of humanity as created in God’s image and recreated in the image of God in Christ?

That’s the real fun stuff. On a side note: is there a difference between natural theology and general revelation? The latter phrase keeps the requirement of “revelation” on the table, as Barth says is necessary, but allows for a broader compass of revelation than we find in only scripture, Christ, and preaching.

Academic Jargon

The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say About Human Origins

I Could Have Used This Book Twelve Years Ago: A Review of “The Evolution of Adam” by Peter Enns

http://rachelheldevans.com/evolution-of-adam-peter-enns

by Rachel Held Evans

February 2, 2012

Within the first week of my freshman year of college, my Introduction to World Literature class included a reading of Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian myth about a hero who is described as 1/3 man and 2/3 god.

As we read the text together in class, I couldn't help but notice some striking similarities between this text and the familiar texts of Genesis and Ecclesiastes, but when we got to the part where Gilgamesh speaks with Utnapishtim, a survivor of the Great Flood, I disintegrated into a full-fledged faith crisis. So much of the Gilgamesh flood story sounded just like “my” flood story from Genesis: Both accounts included a boat in which just a few people, along with animals, are saved from a universal flood. In both stories, the boat comes to rest on a mountain and birds are sent out to find land. And both stories end with a sacrifice to a deity. And my literature book dated the writing of Gilgamesh before the [date of] writing of Genesis!

I was at a conservative Christian college, and so my professor insisted that the texts had been misdated and that the story of Gilgamesh represented some sort of distortion of the historical/scientific account of Adam and Eve, Noah, and the flood. But my literary instincts had kicked in and I just wasn’t buying it.

“The similarities between these texts must mean that they are of the same genre and share a similar context,” my English-major mind was screaming. “Why would we regard one as history and the other as story when they use such similar images, styles, symbols, and plotlines? That just doesn’t make sense.”

Twelve years later, Old Testament scholar Peter Enns has confirmed my suspicions, but in a way that has somehow managed to strengthen my faith rather than weaken it, through a fantastic book entitled The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins.

“The early chapters of Genesis are not a literal or scientific description of historical events but a theological statement in an ancient idiom, a statement about Israel’s God and Israel’s place in the world of God’s people,” Enns explains. “The core issue raised by ancient Near Eastern data has helped calibrate the genre of the biblical creation accounts. The failure to appreciate that genre calibration is responsible for much of the tension in the evolution discussion.... To observe the similarities between the creation and flood stories and the literature of the ancient Near East, and to insist that all of those other writings are clearly a-historical while Genesis is somehow presenting history—this is not a strong position of faith, but rather a weak one, where Scripture must conform to one’s expectations.”

Enns goes on to remind readers that “a text’s meaning is rooted in its historical and literary context,” and to argue that the historical and literary context of much of the Old Testament can be found in the questions and concerns of post-exilic Israel.

I first heard Enns present these ideas at a conference hosted by the BioLogos Foundation in 2010, and it was as if a light clicked on in my head. As a lover of literature, it made perfect sense to me that the best way to understand an author’s meaning is to study the time and culture in which the author wrote, to get a sense of the sort of questions people were asking at the time. Taking this approach to the Bible does not weaken it, but rather respects it for what it is, not what we want it to be.

The Evolution of Adam not only answers just about every question I had after Enns’ Biologos lecture, but also includes a lengthy and thoughtful treatment of the apostle Paul’s Adam, again seeking to understand Paul’s intent within his unique context and culture. Enns is quick to note that it is Paul’s view of Adam rather than the Genesis account itself that causes most Christians to wrestle with the implications of evolution, and so it is Paul’s view of Adam that must be investigated.

“Paul’s use of the Adam story,” Enns concludes, “serves a vital theological purpose in explaining to his ancient readers the significance for all humanity of Christ’s death and resurrection. His use of the Adam story, however, cannot and should not be the determining factor in whether biblically faithful Christians can accept evolution as the scientific account of human origins—and the gospel does not hang in the balance.”

This may seem like an impossibly complicated topic to cover in a mere 147 pages, but Enns manages to do so with astounding clarity and insight. He is of the best scholarly writers I’ve ever encountered because he somehow manages to be thorough, personable, and readable all at the same time.

In The Evolution of Adam, you’ll find accessible introductions to everything from source criticism to the New Perspective on Paul, which will make you feel oh-so-caught-up on all the important trends in biblical scholarship. (Try not to show off at parties.)

For me, this book served as both a reality check and an inspiration—a rare combination that you just won’t find in most books that take historical and literary criticism seriously. I wish I could get into all the details of what made this book so helpful, but this would require a series of posts that will have to wait for a later time.

For now, just know that The Evolution of Adam comes with my heartfelt, enthusiastic recommendation. Learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be, means taking its context and history seriously. Enns has managed to do that in a way that both enlightens and encourages.

I’ll conclude with a quote from The Evolution of Adam that ties together perfectly yesterday’s post and today’s:

For many, it is important for the future viability of faith, let alone the evolution-Christianity discussion, that we recognize and embrace the fact that the Bible is a thoroughly enculturated product. But it is not enough to merely say so and press on, with a quaint nod or an embarrassed shuffle of the feet. It is important for future generations of Christians to have a view of the Bible where its rootedness in ancient ways of thinking is embraced as a theological positive, not a problem to be overcome. At present there is a lot of fear about the implications of bringing evolution and Christianity together, and this fear needs to be addressed head-on. Many fear that we are on a slippery slope, to use the hackneyed expression. Perhaps the way forward is not to resist the slide so much as to stop struggling, look around, and realize that we may have been on the wrong hill altogether.

Be sure to check out the Brazos Press Web site this week. You can enter win a giveaway in which the grand prize is a book package that includes:

• The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns
• Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns
• The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith
• Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible by John Polkinghorne
• The Mind and the Machine by Matthew Dickerson

(Five runners up will receive copies of The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns).

If some of these titles sound familiar, it’s because most of them are on my list of books to read and discuss on the blog. So go enter!

What I want to say to my daughter someday...

If I become the father of a daughter someday this is what I want her to know...

http://nearemmaus.com/2012/02/02/if-i-become-the-father-of-a-daughter-someday-this-is-what-i-want-her-to-know/

by Brian LePort

Posted on February 2, 2012

My beautiful, intelligent, strong wife

and I in front of Notre-Dame de Paris.

For many men our earliest interactions with women are from our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, and cousins, along with peers at school. Some of these relationships include being nurtured for a time, but eventually we go through the process of finding our own identity as adolescents. Our mother’s kisses cause us to blush in front of our friends. Other relationships are competitive like sisters and peers at school. Some day we will compete with them for scholarships, jobs, raises, and the like. Even our relationship with our wives can be quite complex. We are nurtured, we nurture, and there is always the day-to-day challenge of learning to live with each other. Some men assert that they are the final authority in the home and that may make things easier on them but it often is not received well by their wives. Others work to share authority and responsibility in the home, seeking to understand our roles in relation to each other, not in relation to the predetermined standards of our society.

When it comes to the role of women in the church of God many men bring the experiences of these relationships to the discussion. I’ve heard men say they can’t imagine a woman as their pastor. Often they think of the woman as being “overbearing” like their mother, “competitive” like their sister, or the uniqueness of their relationship with their wife is projected onto said woman pastor.

I wonder if we men would be better at this discussion if we asked, “What would I want for my daughter in this world?” Sometimes we men do not realize that we are playing games for power with our spouses, yet there is something in us that creates a different posture toward a daughter. I say this as a man without children, but I imagine that if I become the father of a daughter someday this is what I want her to know: you can be anything and do anything a man can do in society.

Now I hear some complimentarians chirping about how women and men are different biologically, emotionally, this and that. I am not denying that we are not the same. I am denying that these characteristics mean a woman can’t be a CEO, or a senator, or the pastor of my local church.

When I realize that I want this for my future daughter it forces me to rethink how I treat my wife who is another man’s daughter. Do I want her to be everything she can be? Yes! My wife is intelligent, she is talented, she is charismatic and personable. I want her to know that her gender doesn’t prohibit her from being fully human. (She knows this already; she is strong!) If I had a sister I’d want her to be everything God has called her to be.

If I have a daughter and she tells me, “Dad, I think I am called to be a pastor,” and someone with their Bible in hand tell her that she cannot follow that calling, let me tell you it will be a bad day for that person. I won’t stand for men using their Bibles to tell a daughter or wife of mine that she can’t be what they can be for the simple reasons that she is a woman. When Scripture was written it was written in a patrilineal society. I won’t allow someone to tell my future children who will be part Latino that their race prevents them from being what they want to be. I wouldn’t allow someone to use Scripture to tell a victim of human trafficking that “you should obey your master like Scripture says.” I know people have their portions of Scripture to quote, but this is where it is essential to stand against misguided biblicism.

If I become the father of a daughter someday I want her to know she is equal to me. She is fully human. She is loved by God. She is called by Christ. She is a vessel of the Holy Spirit. I want to be the type of man that Philip must have been to cultivate not one daughter who was a prophetess, but several!

So dear Christian pastor, scholar, theologian–if a few decades from now I have a daughter who says she is called to the pastorate you can give her your opinion, but tread lightly, she’ll have a father whose been telling her for years to follow God’s calling no matter where it leads.

Continued: Part 1 - Christianity began in a patrilineal society...
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/christianity-began-in-patrilineal.html

Christianity began in a patrilineal society

Christianity began in a patrilineal society

http://nearemmaus.com/2012/02/01/christianity-began-in-a-patrilineal-society/

by Brian LePort
February 2, 2012

The resurrection was witnessed by women first.

Christianity began in a patrilineal society. This influenced the language and concepts that became “biblical”. But does that make Christianity inherently masculine in nature?

I haven’t heard the audio of the recent talk given by John Piper where he claims that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel.” But I have seen quite a few people talking about it. All that I have available to me are these excerpts (from “John Piper: God Gave Christianity a ‘Masculine Feel’”) to which I would like to respond:

“God revealed Himself in the Bible pervasively as king not queen; father not mother.”

Is it a coincidence that the powerful rulers in the ancient Near East has been men? If God is to depict himself as the most powerful ruler it makes sense to communicate this through imagery understood by the audience. That said, Scripture doesn’t avoid depicting God as having motherly qualities, some examples including Genesis 1.27 where the image of God is male and female, God as mother-bear in Hosea 13.8, a woman in labor in Isaiah 42.14, a comforting mother in Isaiah 66.13, and I am sure there are others. In other words, yes, God is depicted as masculine more than feminine, but that he is depicted as feminine at all invalidates Piper’s argument. If God was gendered in any significant way there would be no reason to describe particular traits of God using prototypical feminine characteristics of the audience culture. When God is depicted in male language it is the same idea.

“Second person of the Trinity is revealed as the eternal Son not daughter; the Father and the Son create man and woman in His image and give them the name man, the name of the male.”

Again, fathers were considered the head of homes in the biblical world. It was thought that the man’s seed was what brought forth the “begotting”. Likewise, most Kings and their heirs were male. Piper’s point about Genesis 1.27 makes little sense to me since all that passage is saying is that God created “human” and he created “human” with the genders male and female.

“God appoints all the priests in the Old Testament to be men; the Son of God came into the world to be a man; He chose twelve men to be His apostles; the apostles appointed that the overseers of the Church be men; and when it came to marriage they taught that the husband should be the head.”

God appoints male priest in a patrilineal society. Surprise? Also, it seems that many pagan temples often used women in an overly sexualized way. In other words, it doesn’t mean it is God’s ideal, per se. God had no trouble with female nation leaders like Deborah who was a prophetess (Judges 4.4) and Huldah who according to 2 Kings 22.15-20 speaks with authority on behalf of Israel’s God to Israel’s King! The story is told in 2 Chronicles 34.23-28.

The apostles are a reconstruction of the twelve tribes of Israel. The males chosen are significant because of this reconstruction and likely because of the intimate nature of their time with Jesus. Even then, Jesus has female disciples whom he taught and commission, who were present to receive the Spirit at Pentecost, and who could even be apostles (e.g. Junia in Romans 16.7).

Other offices were available to women as well in the church like Philips prophetess daughters and those women given permitted to use their prophetic gifts in 1 Corinthians 11.

While Piper may ignore the debates over the nature of Paul’s statements regarding male headship (I’m a bit surprised when this is argued so matter-of-factly when the same hermeneutic can be used to justify the master-slave relationship and has been used this way), this doesn’t mean his interpretation (and all of his friends at CBMW) isn’t full of problems both exegetically and hermeneutically.

“Now, from all of that I conclude that God has given Christianity a masculine feel. And being God, a God of love, He has done that for our maximum flourishing both male and female.”

If this is so then there is little we can do. Often I ignore people like Piper, Grudem, and Driscoll. I came into Christianity through Pentecostalism where this is often less of a problem than evangelicalism (though a problem still). As Gordon D. Fee once said in an interview when asked about women as clergy, “It just isn’t an issue for me.” But I know many of my sisters in Christ who feel various calls from the Spirit cannot ignore this type of misguided rhetoric. They must stand for themselves and I stand with them.

I have many close friends who are some form of complimentarian. I disagree with them, but we can be civil (my local church has male elders only). But I disagree when they tell women “You can’t do this because….” Sorry, wrong. If the Spirit which is poured out upon our sons and daughters choses to anoint someone their gender doesn’t stop that. I’ve been in a church where one of the pastors was a woman and I thought she was wonderful in her calling. When she left our church to plant one elsewhere it was sad to see her go. She preached. She prayed. She functioned in the gifts of the Spirit. We lost something when she left.

Christianity is not a man’s religion. It is not a story where men should be in the spotlight while women stand back. While this may have been so in Israel’s past and the church’s, this is not what the prophets foresaw when they said God’s Spirit makes sons and daughters into God’s prophets. At the heart of the Gospel is Paul’s claim that there is neither “male nor female”. While Paul wrestled with the practicality of this, and we have wrestled ever since, it is my starting point, and I hope for people like John Piper it can become their’s as well.

Continued: Part 2 - What I want to say to my daughter someday...
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-i-want-to-say-to-my-daughter.html

Give Me a God Who Raises the Living!

Your God Raises the Dead? Give Me a God Who Raises the Living!

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3522

by Peter Rollins

posted 19/1/12

No matter how great a song is it cannot raise the dead, cure cancer or make your lost lover return. Music does not change the world you live in, reverse time or change history. It does not promise snake oil solutions to life’s woes. But music is anything but impotent; indeed it can be experienced as one of the most potent forces in our universe. For music can assist us in changing the way that we interact with the world we live in.

Great music can help us to affirm life, embrace it, face it and sublimate it. In other words music can help sensitize us to, and celebrate, the life that we participate in.

The poet is one who helps us experience life as inscribed with a rich and sensuous texture. S/he helps us to call forth, confront and confirm our existence. Inviting us to find the courage that might enable us to say “yes” and “Amen” to life in the midst of its complexity and in spite of our anxiety.

In light of this we might begin to understand how a divine miracle is not something that simply raises the dead but one that is able to raise the living to a place where life is not experienced as death. For without the latter the former would appear to be nothing more than the work of an evil demon.

I guess that is why I was never that interested in gods who raise the dead. The real power lies in raising the living: something that is testified to in the act of love.

Love is that which experiences another as worth more than the mundane matter of which they are composed. In love we find a cause for which we would be willing to die, and it is there that we experience life as worthy of living. In love we find a world worth dancing in and celebrating.

The claim that “God is love” testifies to this miracle. It points to the idea that, in the act of love, we encounter a transcendent depth and mystery that sets our world ablaze, a depth and mystery that we cannot grasp, but which renders our world worthy of being grasped. In other words it hints at the idea that the highest good is not some object that we should love, but a reality we participate in through the act of love itself.

Love is then the true miracle; it is in love that the living are raised from death to life. In love we do not run from our world, but learn to embrace it and raise it to the level of the sacred.

"Nothing New Under the Sun:" 19th Century Theology v. Today's Late 20th Century Contemporary Theology

Finding roots and gems in old theologies
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/02/finding-roots-and-gems-in-old-theologies/

by Dr. Roger Olson
February 2, 2012

For the past month I’ve been immersed in nineteenth century theology: Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Ritschl, Hodge, Catholic Modernism (Blondel, Loisy, Tyrrell), Troeltsch, Dorner, Bushnell. It isn’t the first time, but this time I’m reading more primary texts and writing about these almost forgotten theologians.

One thing I’m finding confirmed is my long-standing opinion that there’s really nothing new in “contemporary theology.” That’s one reason I chose historical theology as my primary field of research and teaching. Every time I hear that there’s a “new thing” afoot in theology or church life or among Christians I easily find how it’s not really new at all!

For example, “relational theology” is all the rage now in certain theological circles. It’s a catch-all phrase for viewing God as affected by what happens in the world. It’s a reaction against strict classical theism that says God is simple substance, pure actuality with no potentiality, absolutely immutable, etc. Process theology is one form of it, but there are more “conservative” forms as well. (Open theism is a form of relationship theology.) I wish they would read Isaak August Dorner! In his three essays on divine immutability he completely overturned classical theism without denying God’s essential sameness through time. He made a strong distinction between God’s “ethical immutability” and God’s changing experience in relation to the world (which he regarded as an expression of his ethical character as love). Dorner clearly also influenced Barth’s doctrine of God as “He who loves in freedom.”

Dorner’s “progressive incarnation” idea struck me immediately as similar to, if not identical with, Norman Pittenger’s neo-Antiochian Christology in The Word Incarnate.

Bushnell’s idea of all language, and especially God-talk, as symbolic and metaphorical anticipates many postmodern ideas about language and theology. (Fortunately he did not take it to the extent that, say, Sallie McFague takes it.)

Troeltsch’s historicism foreshadows “religious pluralism” (e.g., John Hick). He even talked about an “Absolute” that transcends history and religious diversity that is very much like Hick’s “The Real.”

Catholic Modernism paved the way for the “Nouvelle Theologie” that created Vatican 2 and found expression in de Lebac, Rahner and von Balthasar. But even much of the Modernists thought was influenced by Newman, a previous Catholic thinker.

Kierkegaard, of course, sounds like all kinds of dialectical Christian thinkers from Barth to Peter Rollins!

When I was reading Hodge, of course, I almost thought I was reading Grudem or David Wells!

So to what conclusion does all this lead me? There are new ways of expressing old ideas, but most “new ideas” are, at core, recycled old ideas–repackaged, updated, sometimes reconstructed. But it’s very difficult to find anything truly new.

Did the nineteenth century see anything truly new come about in Christian theology?

Well, the whole idea of a “secret rapture” among fundamentalists is totally new in about the 1830s. It first appeared in circles associated with Edward Irving, the pre-Pentecostal Presbyterian preacher in Great Britain. (That was meant somewhat tongue-in-cheek as most believers in the “secret rapture” think true believers have always believed it!)

Sure, there were some new developments in theology in the nineteenth century, most of them not particularly helpful (because they were somehow related to modernity–as accommodation to, or over reaction against, it). Schleiermacher’s idea of religion as “the feeling of utter dependence” was relatively new, although it stood on the shoulders of Pietism and Romanticism. Dorner’s idea of progressive incarnation seems new even if it parallels Nestorianism.

But what’ s really new in twentieth century or twenty-first century theology? The God-is-dead movement (that is still alive with certain radical postmodern theologians)? Perhaps. But, of course, that was heavily dependent on Nietzsche, Hegel, Feuerbach and Blake!

Show me something claimed to be “new” in twentieth or twenty-first century theology and I’ll show you its roots in nineteenth century (or earlier) theology. Now, maybe that’s a good thing. I’m sure many would say it is. I’m not making a value judgment here. I’m just being descriptive. My point is that perhaps we need to go back and rediscover nineteenth century theology; at the very least it will help us understand and put contemporary theology in perspective.

31 Responses to Finding roots and gems in old theologies

*as always, comments, highlighting, etc, are mine own observations! - res

1. Joe Canner says:

   February 2, 2012 at 4:52 pm

   How would you characterize recent efforts (Peter Enns, for example) to re-evaluate in a more reasonable way the historical and archaeological findings that led to radical criticism and attempts to eviscerate the Scriptures? For me, it has been a very refreshing development (even if not entire novel) that we can look at the implications of these findings carefully without having to to throw out Scripture, and without having to reject the evidence out of hand because of an a priori commitment to strict inerrancy.
   • rogereolson says:

     February 3, 2012 at 2:48 pm

     Horace Bushnell, allegedly the “father of American liberal theology,” was opposed to “radical biblical criticism” even though he didn’t believe in inerrancy. There were voices raised against radical biblical criticism (e.g., Baur and Strauss) when it first raised its head and ever since. I doubt anything new is being said now, although perhaps some new archeological discoveries are relevant to the contemporary discussion that weren’t available a century ago or more. The problem with radical biblical criticism (e.g., Bultmann’s) is its presuppositions. Bushnell pointed that our over a century ago. He was a supernaturalist and accused the radical critics of operating out of an anti-supernatural world view.
     • Robert says:

       February 3, 2012 at 6:10 pm

       I’ve started to read Sparks’s “God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Biblical Criticism.” One of the arguments he makes is that, although there are indeed certain aspects of “liberal” biblical criticism that are driven or constrained by naturalistic assumptions, this is not always the case and is too often used as a convenient ad hominem argument to dismiss biblical criticism.

       
       
     • Basically, if you take a broad brush and say that the conclusions of biblical criticism are all (mostly, etc.) simply artifacts of naturalistic assumptions, then you can dismiss such criticism out of hand as being nothing more than materialistic naturalistic bias. That’s the same basic argument against evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory [sic, Darwinism/Scientific Naturalism - res] is nothing but an artifact and outgrowth of (atheistic, materialistic, naturalistic) assumptions, and that if you set aside those assumptions, then evolutionary theory (biblical criticism) is nothing but a shaky house of cards.

       
       
     • I’m not going to re-produce Sparks’s arguments. But his basic thesis is that this often is simply not true and not intellectually honest. Many biblical critical conclusions are based on the same basic methodology that shapes other historiographical work and which has been used to, e.g., successfully decipher various “dead” languages. And if you take the time to work through those arguments to their conclusions, it requires considerable interpretive heroics (special pleading) to explain them away.

       
       
     • Again, I’ll leave it for Sparks to advance those arguments in detail, b/c I’ve not mastered them myself. But I found him pretty credible and compelling, at least as far as I’ve gotten.
       • rogereolson says:

         February 4, 2012 at 2:38 pm

         I think there are two types of higher criticism of the Bible–those based on naturalistic assumptions (e.g., Bultmann and Perrin) and those not based on naturalistic assumptions. The problem is, it’s harder to come up with names of those practitioners of higher criticism (form, redaction, etc.) who explicitly hold a supernatural worldview.
2. ME says:

   February 2, 2012 at 5:45 pm

   I’ve read a lot of Kierkegaard, and love it. Besides Barth, what 20th or 21st century theologians have been strongly influenced by the great Dane?
   • rogereolson says:
     February 3, 2012 at 2:54 pm
     Many! Brunner, of course. Reinhold Niebuhr, Rudolf Bultmann, every existentialist theologian is at least indirectly influenced by K. About a year ago I was reading a lot of John Caputo and recognizing the influence of K. all over the place in his writing even though Derrida is his muse. I’d say Peter Rollins is influenced by K. I’d say K. is one of two or three most influential Christian thinkers of the modern world.
     
     
     • ME says:

       February 4, 2012 at 5:17 am

       Thanks! I don’t think I’ve read any of those you mentioned, but, from the very little I do know I have a negative opinion of Niebuhr (strongly negative!) and Derrida. K wrote with “two hands” so to say. I love most the things he wrote from the ideally Christian point of view and suspect Niebuhr and Derrida were more influenced by what K wrote with his “other” hand. Just an uninformed guess, though.
3. Robert says:

   February 2, 2012 at 11:39 pm

   I think it’s a good thing If you think about, e.g., salvation, you have inclusivism, restrictivism, universalism. I mean, as an example, what else is left that isn’t in some respect derivative?
4. Brian says:

   February 3, 2012 at 12:02 am

   Hello, it’s interesting to see how the hottest “new” trends in theology aren’t so new. Now my question deviates a little from your article, but I am pretty sure that all “new” forms of heresies (with a capital “H”) have their roots set in early heresies. Now, my question is, is it possible for new heresies (with a capital “H) to just pop up? If this isn’t the case, is heresy (with a capital “H”) defined only by the early church’s creeds? (For example, the Nicene Creed) Or is it actually possible for new heresies (ones that the early church may not have addressed) to pop up onto the theological scene?
   • rogereolson says:

     February 3, 2012 at 3:06 pm

     I guess I’d have to hear an example to decide. But I can’t think of any new ones; they all seem to be new versions of old ones. Now, if we step outside of Christianity, of course there are lot of invented religions–religions simply invented by entrepreneurs. In virtually ever case, they are just new, eclectic expressions of old traditions such as gnosticism. Don’t ask me to name any; some of them have batteries of lawyers that sue people who mention them in a negative way. But they’re pretty easy to spot.
5. Sean says:

   February 3, 2012 at 2:19 am

   Funny–I’m presently reading Schleiermacher (TCF) for the first and last time in my life. While there is an occasional gem (or at least shiny stone) amidst the mounds of problems and the work explains a lot of what happens later–my goodness, is his prose ever impenetrable! (And I say that as someone who enjoys reading Barth’s CD as a morning devotional!) It makes me wonder how much his recognition as brilliant is actually deserved or if people concluded that simply because he’s so difficult.
   • rogereolson says:

     February 3, 2012 at 3:11 pm

     Yes, he’s difficult to read. No doubt about it. But he’s worth wrestling with just because of his influence on later theology.
6. Holdon says:

   February 3, 2012 at 4:13 am

   “Well, the whole idea of a “secret rapture” among fundamentalists is totally new in about the 1830s. It first appeared in circles associated with Edward Irving, the pre-Pentecostal Presbyterian preacher in Great Britain.” That it first appeared in Irving circles is a myth, not historical. And that it was totally new has been debated as well. But “new” has various meanings, so you could be right. It was never really a secret since Paul wrote: “I don’t want you to be ignorant brethren….” .
   • rogereolson says:

     February 3, 2012 at 3:13 pm

     I stopped believing in the “secret rapture” when I studied Paul’s eschatology closely for myself. There’s not even a hint of it there. As for how and when belief in it arose, read The Incredible Cover-Up by Dave MacPherson.
     • Holdon says:

       February 3, 2012 at 6:35 pm

       “As for how and when belief in it arose, read The Incredible Cover-Up by Dave MacPherson.” I suspected as much, that you would rely on that source. But it isn’t a good source. Nor was his’ a “new” discovery. Something similar was uttered a long time ago and refuted then as well. See: http://stempublishing.com/authors/kelly/7subjcts/rapture.html. Paul never said that the rapture would be “secret”. He plainly told the Thessalonians that he didn’t want them to be ignorant and then explained the rapture. I don’t know who came up with calling it a “secret” rapture. I suspect it came rather from the opponents as the proponents allude to them calling it such in the 19th century.
     • • rogereolson says:

         February 4, 2012 at 2:43 pm

         I didn’t say MacPherson’s discovery was “new,” did I? But I am convinced by it. As a historical theologian, I cannot find any reference to a pre-tribulation rapture, secret or not, before the originating events MacPherson talks about. Can you? Name a Christian biblical scholar or theologian before the 1830s who believed in such. I do not know of any. The issue isn’t “secret” or not; the issue is “pre-trib” or not. However, all the people I know who write about a pre-tribulation rapture describe it in ways that could rightly be called “secret” meaning Jesus does not appear to everyone in that event.
7. Jeremy Patterson says:

   February 3, 2012 at 2:00 pm

   What are the historical roots of liberation theology?
   • rogereolson says:

     February 3, 2012 at 3:15 pm

     I find “the preferential option for the poor” for in Rauschenbusch’s writings. And the there were the Zealots and the Fraticelli and Thomas Muntzer and many groups throughout Jewish and Christian history that advocated and practiced revolution against injustice and oppression.

1. Bev Mitchell says:

   February 3, 2012 at 3:53 pm

   What is really new in the last 100 years is our understanding of the nature of the biological and physical world, along with phenomenal advances in our understanding of the facts of history and archaeology. All these new discoveries have their various interpretors, of course, but the mountain of new facts is enormous – major truths have come to light and they are very different from what was known in the past. Many of these new truths have yet to find there way into general evangelical thought and theology/interpretation of Scripture. If we hold to the idea that theology is faith seeking understanding, which I take it means starting with a solid faith and then considering all truth as from God, and considering it seriously, there is much work to be done.

   Fortunately, many are hard at work on this front. Unfortunately, many evangelical leaders, inside and outside the academy, prefer to spend their time ignoring or severly criticizing this work – or re-dissecting/defending age- old positions with little reference to modern advances. As you say, there is little new when one considers the scope of theological positions taken through the centuries.
2. What is very new is the good fruit yielded by recent secular studies that can be used to support/elaborate various of those positions that were once more speculative. Even in working together, generally creed-afirming Christians reveal a reluctance to be as cohesive as they should be. Consider the following, four multi-authored books. While the scope is very broad, they are all very Christian works and strongly related at various levels. Yet, there is practically no overlap among the 67 authors.

   The Work of Love: Creation as KenosisJohn Polkinghorne ed. 2001
   11 authors
   The Bible Tells Me SoRichard P. Thompson and Thomas Jay Oord eds. 2011
   32 authors
   The Art of Reading ScriptureEllen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays eds. 2003
   13 authors
   Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s BibleMarcus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Torrance eds. 2008
   11 authors
   • rogereolson says:

     February 4, 2012 at 2:22 pm

     The sheer amount of theology being written and published these days is staggering. Who can keep up? Yet, as I approach books like these I’m prone to think I won’t find anything all that new in them (except new packaging and new evidence). The basic theological views and arguments seem to be recycled.
3. Rob says:

   February 3, 2012 at 4:06 pm

   Question. At what point would you say that theologians in the U.S. and Britain stopped reading the contemporary philosophy of their own language? 19th century? 20th century? Seems as though many of the ones you mention were well-read in the 19th century German philosophy and that their theology is unintelligible apart from it.
   • rogereolson says:

     February 4, 2012 at 2:32 pm

     To be sure, Germany became the “Mecca” for theologians from all over the world, probably beginning in the early 19th century [sic, thus the need to be able to read German b/c of all the literature being produced at that time! Theology for today requires one to be able to read English to keep up with current trends. - res]. All American and British theologians who could traveled to Germany (and later Switzerland) to hear Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Tholuck, then Barth, et al. I’m not sure that Hodge was all that influenced by German theology; he traveled in Germany and met leading German theologians and heard them lecture, but he was more influenced by Reid than by them. Bushnell was mainly influenced by Coleridge. Without doubt, however, German language philosophy and theology has led the way in modern theology (for better worse).
4. DRT says:

   February 3, 2012 at 5:16 pm

   Buddy Jesus is new
   • rogereolson says:

     February 4, 2012 at 2:34 pm

     I’m not sure about that. The language may be new, but think about Zinzendorf’s talk about Jesus as “our little lambkin” (and friend).
5. Bev Mitchell says:

   February 3, 2012 at 6:01 pm

   I need to become a better proof reader – “find their way” not “find there way” – sigh!
6. Fred Smith says:

   February 3, 2012 at 7:32 pm

   Your reading of the 19th Century is a bit “one-sided”–diverse as these theologians were they were very much in the “classical liberal” wing of 19th Century theology. Important work was done by such men as John L. Dagg, Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, Charles G. Finney, A. A. Hodge and Augustus H. Strong, to name a few. Many of these were Calvinists, but not all (but then, Calvinism was a leading intellectual movement in the 19th century). Every one of them had an influence on the life of the churches, often across denominational lines, at least as much so as the classical liberal theologians on your reading list.
   • rogereolson says:

     February 4, 2012 at 2:50 pm

     Especially the conservatives you mention would deny introducing any new ideas. In fact, at the celebration of Hodge’s 50th anniversary of teaching at Princeton he famously declared that during that time no new ideas had been taught at Princeton. Finney? Even his “New Measures” were anticipated by Whitefield and Wesley and certainly by the revivalists of the Cane Ridge Revival. But my main point was that contemporary (late 20th century/early 21st century) theology doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer. My point was that today’s “trends” in theology seem to bed recycled from the 19th century. Also, I included some non-liberals in my list of 19th century theologians. Dorner was not a liberal.
7. Matt W says:

   February 4, 2012 at 2:14 pm

   Donald Bloesch had an intersting idea in his volume on the Church in his Christian Foundations series. He wrote that the emergence of sects and cults, and the emphasis of second order truths to first order status, is a result of the Church not fully living up to her high calling in a holistic sense. In other words, where there is a deficiency in the life and thought of the Church, the tendency is to overcompensate with some ‘new’ movement or ‘new’ school of theological thought.
   • rogereolson says:
     February 4, 2012 at 3:04 pm
     Bloesch was a good Pietist (in the best sense of the word). He tought that spiritual vitality was first and doctrine second (without in any way making doctrine unimportant). His early books on evangelicalism modeled for me what it means to be “generously orthodox.”