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

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

The Parable of the Prodigal Sons

Commentaries by Pete Enns & R.E. Slater

A Parable of the $20 Bill

Sermon by James Grier

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

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/but-while-he-was-still-far-off-or-what-if-god-actually-loves-us/

by Pete Enns

January 6, 2013

Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, he sucks it up and heads back home.

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

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

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

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

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

But while he was still far off…

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

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

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

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

You get the feeling the father was pretty excited.

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

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

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

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

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

What if God is glad to see us?

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

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

- Pete Enns

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

How Does One become "Family"?

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To whom does this apply? To Israel alone?

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

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

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

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

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

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2012

The Parable of the $20 Bill

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

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

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

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

AUDIO FILE

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

The Father of Two Lost Sons – Luke 15

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

Popular False Claims About Biblical Scholarship & Historical Criticism

3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/3-things-i-would-like-to-see-evangelical-leaders-stop-saying-about-biblical-scholarship/

 

by Pete Enns

January 10, 2013

Comments

 

On occasion I come across some sweeping public claims made by Evangelical leaders about the state of biblical scholarship. These claims may be genuinely felt, but they are still false, though they persist in the Evangelical subculture.

 

 

1. Historical Criticism is either dying or at least losing momentum in academia.

 

Rather than assuming that the Bible is revelatory (revealed by God, inspired) and therefore historically accurate, historical criticism seeks outside verification through various means of historical and textual analysis. Historical Criticism has its roots in Europe and has governed the academic study of the Bible for about 300 years.

 

I’m not saying anyone has to like it or agree with it. I’m only saying historical criticism isn’t dead or dying. Ask anyone who has taken Bible classes or earned a degree in Bible from a university.

 

True, many universities also engage in postmodern approaches that are critical of historical criticism (e.g., Feminist studies), but you’d still be hard pressed to find academic programs in Bible that don’t take as their axiomatic starting point a historical critical approach to the Bible. Look at course descriptions on the internet of departments of Religion, Judaism, Near Eastern Studies, Christian Origins, Hebrew Bible, etc. “The Historical-Critical Method” is what defines these programs.

 

Claiming that historical criticism is passé may suggest to some that conservative biblical scholarship has won the “battle” against historical criticism and is now finally vindicated. This may sound appealing in popular circles, but it is not true in academia.

 

 

2. Source Criticism of the Pentateuch is in a state of chaos.

 

Rather than accepting the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) in the middle of the second millennium BC [(~1400 BC) - res], source criticism claims that scribes living after the Babylonian exile (after 539 BC) created the Pentateuch out of various pre-existent “sources.”

 

Source criticism has been a major thorn in the side of conservative Christians since the 19th century. But again, like it or hate it, source criticism is not dead. What is dead is how the earliest source critics theorized about these sources, most notably Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th century. His theories have been criticized from almost the beginning, but a you’d have a hard time finding a research institution where the basic outlines of source criticism that Wellhausen popularized aren’t a given.

 

In my experience, the motivation behind this claim is apologetic. Casting doubt on the reigning theory of the Pentateuch supposedly elevates by default the traditional view. But this does not address the serious problems with the traditional view that gave rise to alternate explanations in the first place.

 

 

3. Biblical archaeology basically supports the historical veracity of the Bible.

 

Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites.

 

The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.

 

That doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to be done and people don’t need to keep an open mind. Who knows what the future will bring? But, my only point is this: at present to say that archaeology is a friend to the historical accuracy of the Bible may be true for some things, but not for the foundational story of Israel’s origins - slavery, exodus, and conquest. This has been and continues to be a big problem, and claiming otherwise just makes the matter worse.

 

Anyway, I know that across the Evangelical spectrum–especially with Evangelical biblical scholars–you will find various nuances and differences of opinion on these three issues, especially off the record. I’m only talking here about uninformed public claims made by Evangelical leaders. They may be rhetorically effective, but they are false and only lead to more cognitive dissonance.

 

 

 

Index- Calvinism v. Arminianism

Index to Calvinism v. Arminianism

Newest Conversations

Chatbot and I Discuss Whether a Christian "Can Lose Their Salvation?"

Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

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

Arminianism Doctrine

Discussion on Calvinism & Arminianism by Dr. Roger Olson

Does God Change?

Arminianism re God's Providence, Free Will, Sin, and Evil

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

Why High Calvinism is Impossible: The Importance of Language



Calvinism and Relational/Open Theology

Thomas Jay Oord - Pathways to Open and Relational Theologies

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



Calvinism v. Arminianism

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

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

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

The Insistence of God in Times of Change (or, 

The Emergence of Puritanism into Neo-Calvinism)

My Journey Out of Inerrancy to a Broader Hermeneutic

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

A You A Divergent?

Parody: Hitler Finds Out Arminian Theology is True

The Broader History of Evangelicalism and Christian Orthodoxy

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

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

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

The FACTS of Arminian Theology: The Biblical Doctrines of Grace

Is there a middle ground between Calvinism and Arminianism?

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

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

Pushing up DAISY: Arminianism in Brief

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

An Arminian Ordo Salutis (Order of Salvation)

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

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

Another Calvinist Misrepresentation of Arminianism

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

Prevenient Grace and Why It Matters to Arminians and Calvinist Alike

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

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

Blinded to the Real Issues


John Calvin and Jacob Arminius

What is Faith? Holding an Arminianism that is Not Wesleyan

Testimonial: "I Used to be a Calvinist"

Roger Olson: Arminianism as a God Centered Theology

IS Arminianism the Root of Christian Liberalism?

What does the Christian term Atonement Mean?

Of Calvin, Barth and Poetry

Evaluating "God Wins" by Mark Galli

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

Reforming the Reformed

God's Self-Limitations (Torrnace, Pinnock)

Arminianism is NOT Semi-Pelagianism

Calvinism and TULIP

DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism

Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 1

Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 2

Is Emergent Another Name for Evangelical?

12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again

Calvinism and Legalism

Voices of Dissent - Unfolding God's Love Within the Heart and Conscience of Humanity

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

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

Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”

of Horace Bushnell, Part 2/3

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/remembering-the-progressive-orthodoxy-of-horace-bushnell-part-two/

by Roger Olson

August 13, 2012

Comments

 

Bushnell was self-consciously a mediating theologian. He stood against the stream of New England Unitarianism and the accommodating liberalism while at the same time resisting the rigid orthodoxy and incipient fundamentalism of neo-Puritanism and the [arising] Princeton Theology (Alexander and Hodge). He strongly defended belief in the supernatural, including Jesus’ miracles (although he felt no need to defend every biblical miracle story), while at the same time defending the need to adjust Christian doctrines to the changing cultural context. He infuriated both liberals and conservatives. The latter attempted to expel him from the local Congregational association, but his church withdrew to protect him. The former heaped scorn and ridicule on him for being out of touch with modern thought.

 

Like Barth and Niebuhr in the next century, Bushnell never earned a doctoral degree; he was a seminary graduate and pastor. His only academic teaching involved tutoring Yale students. Yet he wrote many books of theology that sold well and were widely read, reviewed, discussed and sometimes condemned (especially by his opponents to the right such as Hodge and to the left). His main philosophical-theological influence was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the enigmatic English romanticist poet and essayist whose book Aids to Reflection greatly inspired Bushnell. Like Kierkegaard, but without any obvious influence by him, Bushnell believed spiritual truth usually comes clothed in paradox; and, that many of theology’s pathologies arise from attempting to make everything rationally satisfying.

 

Among Bushnell’s most influential books (besides Christian Nurture) were God in Christ (1849), Nature and the Supernatural (1858), Christ and His Salvation (1864) and The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866). The latter book created the most controversy as there he tried to work out an objective doctrine of the atonement that would avoid the penal substitution theory which he thought portrayed God as cold and vindictive. He became dissatisfied with what he had written about the atonement there, so he revised his doctrine of the atonement in his last book Forgiveness and Law (1874). Essentially, he held that Jesus’ death was the cost of forgiveness by God. I won’t get into Bushnell’s mature theory of the atonement here as the details of his doctrinal proposals are not my focus in this post.

 

One cannot understand anything about Bushnell’s approach to theology and doctrinal reconstruction without realizing that he considered all language, not only theological language, metaphorical. All nouns outside of mathematics, he argued, are “faded metaphors”—images. Words about things never match them perfectly. And that is especially true in spiritual matters where we are talking about things unseen. Therefore, according to Bushnell, all God talk ought to admit that none of its words perfectly match the Reality they seek to express. This is more than merely affirmation of analogy; it seems to me that Bushnell’s theory of religious language takes a position somewhere between equivocal and analogical. The upshot was that for him, all creeds and doctrines must be held somewhat lightly because none of them correspond exactly to the spiritual realities they attempt to describe. Some words about God and salvation (etc.) are better than others, but all are like arrows shot toward a target too distant to hit. Some go right toward it but fall short; others go way off in a wrong direction entirely.

 

Also, one cannot understand anything about Bushnell’s theology without realizing that he considered religion, including Christianity, primarily about experiencing God. For him, the essence of Christianity is spiritual communion with God through Christ. “A few dull propositions” can never do justice to that life even if they are necessary. For him, there is a qualitative difference between that communion with God and doctrines that inevitably flow from it. Doctrines are secondary; personal communion with God is primary. Critics charge Bushnell with repeating Schleiermacher’s subjectivism, but that’s not correct. Bushnell did not believe in a universal “God consciousness” that serves as the criterion of all religious belief, including Christian belief ....

 

[(coincidentally, Process Theology sounds these same themes in attempting to reconcile all the world's religions with one another, which is yet another reason that I do, and do not, like Process Theology, preferring rather that all the world's religions, including Christianity, comes to Jesus, and not to some nameless, eternal "Source of All Reality" - res)].

 

... In other words, he did not acknowledge any “religious a priori” to become a Procrustean bed (look it up) for Christian doctrine. Nor did he think doctrines are subjective expressions of individual or corporate experiences; he held the Bible to be the source and norm for doctrine. However, he thought the Bible communicates spiritual truth through poetry and parable and even its didactic writings (e.g., Paul’s letters) are metaphorical such that they must be interpreted anew in each generation ....

 

[(... a postmodernist will recognize the fluidity of language respective to the interpretive eras and social cultures of its residence. - res)].

 

... For example, the New Testament uses the metaphor “ransom” for what Christ accomplished on the cross. That spoke meaningfully to people in the ancient world filled with slavery; it speaks less meaningfully to us in the modern world. The theologian’s task is to develop new accounts of the atonement that are nevertheless faithful to the original images.

 

Bushnell was appalled at the vicious theological debates tearing churches apart in New England ...

 

[(not unlike today's inflammatory rhetorics being heard. Part of my pulling away from Evangelicalism was in my disappointment with Evangelical response to Emergent Christianity - res)].

 

... Much of what he was about was trying to provide ways of thinking about doctrines that make such heated debates unnecessary. To that end he developed (or at least began developing) what he called “Christian comprehensiveness.” Contrary to what his critics charged, he did not advocate throwing out all creeds and confessions of faith. However, he said of them “the more, the better.” All express something of the truth; none express truth perfectly. “Christian comprehensiveness” was Bushnell’s ecumenical endeavor; he thought a major task of theology is to draw out the truth in all the major, historical forms of Christianity and hold its various expressions in tension with each other.  Unlike liberals, he was not interested in finding the “kernel within the husks” (essence of Christianity separated from all its historical forms) and discarding the husks. For him, there is no culturally neutral, transcendent propositional truth to which we have access. All expressions of Christian belief are culturally shaped. And all are metaphorical.

 

All this is vague without an example. Much of the heat of New England Protestant controversy in Bushnell’s time centered around Calvinism versus Arminianism. Bushnell argued that there is truth in both and neither is true alone. They need each other. His approach to this and other controversies among equally God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians was “both-and” rather than “either-or.” He rejected both Calvinism and Arminianism insofar as they were represented by their adherents as closed systems; he accepted both insofar as they are viewed as human attempts to express equally important truths of revelation. Both agree that God is sovereign; both agree that humans are responsible for sin and evil. The problem that gives rise to the controversy tearing churches apart, he argued, is that defenders of both go too far in speculation and deny the truth in the other's soteriology. He knew that inquiring minds will inevitably seek to explain mysteries, but he believed these explanations ought to be held lightly and not as fortresses to be built up and defended and used as bases for forays against the “enemies.” He wasn’t in favor of Methodists giving up Arminianism or Presbyterians giving up Calvinism; he was in favor of Christian comprehensiveness in which both and all sides can come together, admit that their systems of belief are human attempts to understand something about God that humans cannot fully comprehend and unify around the truths about which they agree—that God is sovereign and humans alone are responsible for sin and evil. By “unify” he meant at least stop fighting each other and have fellowship and cooperation.

 

I think if Bushnell were alive today he would find himself most at home in a postliberal, narrative type of theology. Many things he wrote about doctrine anticipated that. I’m not saying he would agree with any specific theory of doctrine such as Lindbeck’s, but I think he would agree heartily with Hans Frei’s approach to the Bible and doctrine. The Bible, he would say (I think) is not a not-yet-systematized-systematic theology. All systems of theology are human attempts in a certain time and place to bring the truths of the biblical narrative to expression. More important than that, however, (and I’m not sure Frei would agree) is spiritual communion with God through Jesus Christ. It is that that the Bible is meant to create and promote and govern by its stories, parables, poetry, images and, yes, propositions. I think Bushnell would agree with Moravian leader Zinzendorf who, about a hundred years earlier, said that "Whoever attempts to put Christianity into a system kills it." He would certainly agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson who said, 

 

“Our little systems have their day;

they have their day and cease to be.

They are but broken lights of Thee,

and Thou, O God, art more than they.”

 

Of course, predictably, both liberals and conservatives of his day accused Bushnell of relativism. (It might be difficult to conceive that liberals would accuse him of that, but it’s important to know that the liberals of his day were, like the conservatives, under the influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism. Both liberals and conservatives then believed that propositions can correspond to reality (they just disagreed about what propositions correspond to reality.) I consider him to have been a precursor of critical realism in theology. He certainly was not a relativist even though he admitted and argued for the relativity of all human propositions—especially about God and spiritual realities. He believed in absolute truth; he denied human absolute knowledge of it.

 

An excellent example of Bushnell’s approach to theology is the atonement. He believed that Scripture does not communicate a “theory” of the atonement; it expresses what Christ accomplished on the cross with metaphors: sacrifice, conquest, ransom, cancelling a debt, etc. In his time and place, liberals and conservatives had staked out theories of the atonement and opposed each others’. Liberals by-and-large promoted a subjective view of the atonement called the moral example or moral influence theory. Conservatives virtually all promoted some version of the satisfaction or penal substitution theory. (Many Arminians and Wesleyans promoted the so-called governmental theory, but to Bushnell that would be just a modification of the penal substitution theory.) According to Bushnell, both (all) theories express some aspect of the truth of the atonement. Their faults lie in their claims to be comprehensive and exact as if they could look right into the mind of God and know what was going on between Father and Son before, during and after the death of Christ on the cross.

 

Bushnell believed a new theory of the atonement needed to be constructed—one that would take up the truth in both subjective and objective theories and avoid their problems. But his own constructed doctrine of the atonement, expressed differently in two books (mentioned above), was not to be final, closed or total. It was to be a new arrow, so to speak, aimed in the direction of the truth from a particular social, cultural context and frame of mind. In developing it he used a lot of the budding science of psychology as well as recent theories of justice. Basically, in a nutshell, his theory was that forgiveness is always costly and the death of Christ was God’s experience of the cost of forgiving. He thought that all Christians could rally around that even as they might hold onto their own theories as other arrows aimed at the truth. None hits the target’s bullseye. But Bushnell thought his own came closer to that for his own time and place.

 

In Part 3, the final installment of this series, I want to suggest ways in which Bushnell might be a model for contemporary theology.

 

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”

of Horace Bushnell, Part 3/3

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/needed-a-new-progressive-orthodoxy-for-the-21st-century-part-three-final-of-series-about-horace-bushnell/

by Roger Olson

August 15, 2012

Comments

 

 

Needed: A New “Progressive Orthodoxy” for the 21^st Century: Part Three (Final) of Series about Horace Bushnell.

 

In the first two installments of this three part series (cf., A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1 ) I talked about what Gary Dorrien calls Bushnell’s “liberal-leaning experiment in progressive orthodoxy” with special focus on the 19^th century theologian’s theological method. Here I want to suggest some ways in which Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy can be helpful today.

 

As in Bushnell’s time and place (New England in mid-19^th century), Protestant Christianity in America today is deeply divided between conservatives of various kinds and liberals of various kinds. And, among evangelicals, a gulf is widening between those I call postconservatives (including progressives and moderates) and neo-fundamentalists (conservative evangelicals). Notably missing is viable, attractive, influential middle ground.

 

In my estimation, what American theology needs is what Bushnell (and a few others) provided in mid-19^th century New England: an attractive mediating theology that takes orthodoxy seriously but is willing to explore new horizons and frontiers in doctrinal reconstruction. Theologies of retrieval abound and are attracting many conservative-minded young people. These are either paleo-orthodox (retrieving and renewing ancient Christian teaching) or neo-fundamentalist (retrieving and usually entrenching the “received evangelical tradition”). Needed is a vision of orthodoxy in which it is living. Jaroslav Pelikan quipped that “Tradition is the living faith of the dead while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Too often, I fear, orthodoxy today is the dead faith of the dead. Progressive orthodoxy is the attempt to breathe new life into it and make it relevant (without relativism) to contemporary people.

 

Theologies of revision also abound. Among so-called “mainstream” Protestants there is new interest in process theology and various left-leaning political theologies of inclusion and social transformation. Among evangelicals, many younger people are attracted to revisionist theologies as espoused by some of the more progressive emerging church gurus. These often seem to repeat the liberal Protestant experiments of the later 19^th century and early 20^th century.

 

In the midst of the theological convulsions shaking New England Protestantism in the mid-19^th century Bushnell attempted to provide a middle way, a via media, that took seriously the new knowledge of the sciences and new paths of philosophy while at the same time holding on to crucial doctrines of orthodoxy such as the Trinity. (Bushnell was a strong defender of the Trinity against the growing Unitarianism of his time and place.)

 

When people hear the phrase “progressive orthodoxy” there are usually two reactions. Conservatives hear only the “progressive” part and are deaf to the “orthodoxy” part. They react to it as if it were nothing but a new form of the old liberalism. Bushnell was no liberal. He believed in and defended the supernatural, the deity of Christ, the atoning death of Christ as more than a moral example. He was not a reductionist nor was he anxious to rush into accommodation to “modern thought.” Although he did believe it important to moralize dogma, he was not interested in reducing Christianity to ethics (which was the trend among the true liberals of his day).

 

The second reaction is from liberals who only hear the “orthodoxy” part and are deaf to the “progressive” part. They react to it as if it were nothing but a new form of fundamentalism. But Bushnell was no fundamentalist. He did not believe in biblical inerrancy (a concept he thought was foreign to the nature of Scripture as narrative and imagery), every biblical miracle (although he believed some biblical miracles are necessary such as Jesus’ resurrection), or that correct doctrine is the essence of authentic Christianity.

 

Like Bushnell, a new progressive orthodoxy would be a conscious via media between neo-fundamentalism that elevates correct doctrine to the sine qua non of authentic Christianity and neo-liberalism that reduces doctrine to unimportance. This new progressive orthodoxy would acknowledge that certain beliefs are necessary to holistic, mature Christianity in every place and time, namely the deity and humanity of Christ, the supernatural (that God sometimes acts in ways that transcend the laws of nature), the grace of God in salvation, and the Trinity (to name the most important ones). However, progressive orthodoxy would be open to reconsideration and revision of the ways in which doctrines have traditionally been formulated and expressed.

 

The new progressive orthodoxy would, like Bushnell’s, regard communion with God as the essence of authentic Christianity, and emphasize spirituality as equally important, if not more important, than correct belief. It would recognize the distance between all human doctrinal formulations and the reality they aim to express. It would encourage Christian engagement with culture (science and philosophy especially) without capitulation to secularism or consumerism or “New Thought.” It would encourage the ongoing process of devout and faithful theological research that critiques and reconstructs traditional doctrinal formulations while at the same time holding firmly to the basics of the faith “once for all delivered.”

 

Bushnell’s lifelong work on the atonement is the best example of his own progressive orthodoxy at work. He refused to reduce the cross to a moral example and influence; he knew the biblical imagery of Christ’s sacrifice required an objective achievement that affected God as well as sinners. But he was dissatisfied with the traditional Puritan doctrine of penal substitution because it went beyond Scripture and portrayed God as a cruel judge who demands blood before he will be loving and forgive—also an unscriptural view of God and the atonement.

 

Bushnell’s proposal may not have been correct, but it was a valiant attempt to push on the frontiers of doctrinal achievement and break through impasses to something new and faithful and satisfying to both traditional theology and modern sentiments. (It’s important to remember that up until Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo ,the majority of medieval church leaders and theologians thought of the atonement in terms of a ransom paid by God to the devil. Anselm’s “satisfaction theory” was initially greeted with horror because it was new and culturally sensitive. During his own lifetime, however, Anselm’s theory caught on because it did take into account biblical images of the atonement not accounted for by the traditional ransom theory and it made sense in feudal society better than the ransom theory.)

 

Another example of Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy is his open belief in the suffering of God. He was one of the first Christian theologians to affirm that God himself, not just the incarnate Son of God, suffers. It was Bushnell who first said (so far as I have been able to determine) that "before there was a cross on the hill of Calvary there was a cross in the heart of God". (This is an image that has been much repeated in 20^th century theology and attributed to many different poets and theologians; it belongs originally, so far as I can discover, to Bushnell.) There’s no evidence that in this he was at all influenced by Hegel who talked about a “speculative Good Friday” in God; and Bushnell certainly did not mean anything like what Hegel meant by God’s “suffering.”

 

Bushnell was not afraid to break out of the confines of classical Christian theism when Scripture, spiritual experience and reason called for that. He was accused by critics of “patripassionism,” of course, but he steadfastly held on to his idea that God can and does suffer the sufferings of the world, and especially of his Son on the cross, against the overwhelming weight of traditional ideas of God’s immutability and impassibility.

 

Like Bushnell’s progressive orthodoxy, a contemporary one would seek to be reasonable while respecting and preserving mystery. It would attempt to take into account many different perspectives on Christian truth (“Christian comprehensiveness”) and unite them as much as possible. It would value imagination and creativity in theology without falling into relativism. It would keep an ear to the ground of culture and adjust doctrines to culture without reckless accommodation or capitulation. It would regard theology as a series of research projects rooted in tradition and community.

 

Who are some theologians working today along the lines of progressive orthodoxy? I’m not comparing them with Bushnell in terms of specific doctrinal formulations; I’m only comparing them with him in terms of approach and ethos.

 

One obvious example is N. T. Wright, although he is primarily a New Testament scholar. However, his work on justification is a good example of progressive orthodoxy. Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg are other examples. The late Stan Grenz was one, in my opinion. But the field of candidates is not cluttered. We are living in a time when only extremes get attention. Look at the ubiquitous use of the word “extreme” in entertainment. Radical proposals get more attention in politics and cuture generally (than moderate proposals). If a political candidate is perceived as moderate he or she had better do something quickly to appeal to the extremists in his or her political camp.

 

While I most certainly do not agree with every position Bushnell took, I think his example of moderate progressivism or, progressive moderation in theology, is a model for contemporary theology today. May his tiny tribe increase.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

Please Refer to the postscript following Part 1

pertaining to Emergent Theology & Emerging Christianity -

 

A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1

 

 

A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1

Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”

of Horace Bushnell, Part 1/3

 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/remembering-the-progressive-orthodoxy-of-horace-bushnell-part-one/

 

by Roger Olson

August 11, 2012

 

 

One thing I like to do here is point readers back to neglected theologians. As a historical theologian I find many “new” proposals in theology are not that new. Often they echo theological ideas of the past even as their promoters advance them as new. There’s some truth to the old sayings that there’s nothing new under the sun and that history repeats itself. In fact, sometimes it becomes downright wearisome to hear or read about an allegedly new idea or movement in theology that isn’t really new at all.

 

One theologian of America’s history many of whose ideas reappear in new forms (and perhaps they were not new with him, either) is Horace Bushnell (1802-1876). He was an original thinker that found ways to express older ideas that seemed to many to transcend the divides in American Protestantism.

Unfortunately, in spite of his tremendous influence on American Protestant theology, Bushnell has been largely forgotten as his books have gone out of print. (I believe only one of his books is still in print: Christian Nurture. Others may be printed by publishers who print runs for specific needs such as a class in a university or seminary.) I would say that America has only produced a few world class theologians who stood out as especially influential as somewhat original thinkers: Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Howard Yoder. (I don’t include Paul Tillich because Germany really “produced” him even though he wrote his Systematic Theology in America.)

 

Of course, each one of them stood on the shoulders of previous giants; none introduced totally new theological ideas. Each, however, produced theological proposals that seemed original and innovative enough to draw attention and gained broad followings because they seemed to solve some pressing problems, at least for a time.

 

Earlier here I questioned Edwards’ greatness. What I really meant to question was the unbelievable renaissance of Edwards as demonstrated in the new studies of his theology being published every year and in his popularity through his popularizers such as John Piper. I’m not at all sure Edwards deserves the attention he’s getting right now [(sic, cf. A Christian Humanist Manifesto, Parts 1-3, by Roger Olson, November 14,15,16)].

 

Just as great, in my estimation, and just as neglected as Edwards is remembered (both responses undeserved, in my opinion), is Bushnell. Relatively conservative, broadly evangelical Protestant Christians, theologians, pastors and students, could learn much and be enriched by rediscovering the New England theologian. I have begun that process, I hope, by including a chapter on him in my forthcoming book on modern theology.

 

I consider Bushnell to have been a “mediating theologian.” I think it’s unfortunate that he is usually categorized as liberal by both conservatives and liberals in theology. In my opinion, the best description of his theology, overall, is “progressive orthodoxy.” It’s a label attached to his theology by scholars of American Christianity and theology. I’m not sure who first labeled it so. I disagree with Gary Dorrien, renowned scholar of American liberal theology, who rightly calls Bushnell “America’s greatest nineteenth-century theologian” but wrongly (in my estimation) describes him as “the theological father of mainstream liberal Protestantism.” (The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion 1805-1900, p. 111.)

 

Now, if all Dorrien meant was that Bushnell was misunderstood by some of his followers (e.g., Theodore Munger) such that mainstream liberal Protestantism afterwards came to consider him their theological father, fine, I can agree with that. However, Dorrien treats Bushnell as a true liberal, even if somewhat inconsistent, and with that I disagree. He certainly displayed liberalizing tendencies, especially compared with the Old School Princeton theologians (e.g., Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge), but his main target for correction was Unitarianism which was growing by leaps and bounds in New England (Bushnell’s territory) and the “Victorian liberalism” that was accommodating to it in order to counter movements of thousands of Congregationalists away from traditional churches to it.

 

Dorrien defines the essence of “liberal theology” as “the idea that Christian theology can be genuinely Christian without being based upon external authority.” (Ibid., p. xiii) Later, he describes the “liberal Victorian gospel” as “The good news of…the triumph of spirit over nature as mediated by the example and teaching of Jesus. Under the influence of Jesus, the perfectly God-conscious redeemer, human beings are liberated from the selfish impulses of their animal nature and transformed into persons in right relation with God. To be saved is to experience the fulfillment of one’s moral and spiritual personality through the triumph of the indwelling spirit of Christ over nature.” (p. 402)

 

I prefer historical theologian Claude Welch’s definition of liberal theology as “maximal accommodation to modernity.” However, I don’t think Bushnell himself, as opposed to some of his followers, fit any of those definitions. In fact, after reading Dorrien’s own discussion of Bushnell (almost 70 pages!), I don’t see how he can categorize Bushnell himself (as opposed to his followers who misinterpreted him) could treat Bushnell as truly liberal. Almost all scholars of Bushnell I consulted for writing my chapter on him agreed that his followers created the impression of him as liberal. Bushnell himself was far from liberal when stood alongside later liberal Protestants such as Harry Emerson Fosdick.

 

By no means do I agree with everything Bushnell advocated. For example, I disagree with his idea of “Christian nurture”—something he is usually remembered for, especially by those in the field of Christian education. Bushnell argued in his book by that title that normally children raised in Christian homes and churches simply grow up Christian, if they are spiritually formed correctly; they have no need of a dramatic conversion experience or radical decision of faith. He was opposed to viewing children of Christians in the church already as a mission field. I disagree with him about that, but that’s not directly relevant to my argument here—that Bushnell was no liberal theologian in either Dorrien’s or Welch’s sense of the word.

 

Now, I’m going to stop here for now and post a follow up message soon about Bushnell’s theology. What I want to warn about now and here, however, is that I will not post comments arguing that Bushnell was “liberal” JUST BECAUSE he didn’t believe in the penal substitution theory of the atonement ...

[(at last count Relevancy22 has reported on 6 viable theories of atonement, each as biblical as the other: cf. the postscript, "Kurt Vonnegut and the Sacred Solidarity of God with Humanity," - res, 1.8.2013)] -

... or JUST BECAUSE he didn’t take Genesis 1-11 literally, or JUST BECAUSE he didn’t believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, etc., etc. I’m well aware that some of my valued readers are very conservative theologically and will inevitably consider Bushnell liberal just for those reasons (as they will consider anyone liberal just for those reasons).

 

When I deny that Bushnell was truly liberal I mean in the classical sense as defined by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, the two leading 19^th century liberal Protestant theologians, and especially as defined by Gary Dorrien and Welch above. Without any doubt Bushnell, like almost everyone in his time, was accommodating, rightly or wrongly, to some aspects of modernity. I argue in my forthcoming book that even Hodge was doing that.

But the question is whether Bushnell truly deserves his reputation as the “father” of American mainstream liberal theology. Can a straight line be drawn, for example, from him to Fosdick? I say no. And he does not belong in the same category as the real liberals of his time such as William Ellery Channing and Henry Ward Beecher and later real liberals such as Washington Gladden and Harry Emerson Fosdick.

 

My argument will be that Bushnell was a mediating theologian—attempting creatively but faithfully (to the gospel) to bridge the divide between orthodoxy and progressivism in American religion.

And I will argue that what we need today is a new Bushnell, a new mediator between true liberal theology (e.g., process theology) and neo-fundamentalism (e.g., conservative evangelical theology that requires belief in inerrancy, penal substitution, etc.).*
 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 

 

POSTSCRIPT

 by R.E. Slater
January 8, 2013

 

 

Horace Bushnell was a 19th century evangelical theologian who strayed between the lines of conservative evangelicalism and the neo-orthodoxy of 20th century yet to come. As such, some would claim Bushnell's theology as too "liberal," which I think confuses his legacy with what it really was... a precursor to early neo-orthodoxy.

In many ways Bushnell was a good illustration of a theologian who was burden for his generation's biblical literacy and worked faithfully at pushing the contemporary boundaries of biblical thought from both sides of the floor - attempting as he might to "fill the gap" between evangelical Protestantism and Liberal Theology. For his effort he was loved by the Congregational churches of his day and defamed by others both right and left of his contemporary positions.

Here at Relevancy22 we too are attempting to speak to the contemporary issues of the 21st century created by the gaps between present day conservative evangelicalism and neo-liberal theology pulling at each end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. With the advent of Karl Barth and other neo-orthodox theologians during the middle of the 20th century the bar has been set, and reset, multiple times in a continuing balancing act to speak to the Scriptures faithfully pertaining to the issues confronting the church of the modernistic era (an era birthed in the Enlightenment some 200 years ago). Some tell of themselves as progressive evangelics; others as progressive (as vs. mainstream) denominationalists, some as neo-Anabaptists, neo-Lutherans, neo-Catholics, and so forth.

Thus, to avoid confusion (and perhaps create a little bit more!), we have adopted the term of Emerging Christians who presently are undertaking directional discourse and studies for determining what an Emergent, Postmodern Theology can mean to Christianity today. Which is not unlike the similar undertaking once found in Bushnell's early efforts of speaking a more progressive, perhaps even a neo-orthodox, message of Christ as the church's theology waggled between the conservative and liberal issues and doctrines of its day.

Hence, this blogsite here is an instance of the dozens of names and organizations - both old and new - each attempting to bridge the moderating gap between divisive modernistic forces. Between forces fighting to remain staid and irrelevant, wishing for the grand old days of 19th Century Enlightenment, against other Christian voices and groups equally desiring to push beyond today's old timey pulpiteering rhetoric to the undiscovered lands of postmodernistic opportunities and renewing Christian witness. And sometimes too far, beyond biblical reach and the orthodox understanding of theology.

And while this author here of Relevancy22 has shown time-and-again how Emergent Theology itself can stand within this middling ground of mediation, some would say that it is not so, accusing Emergent Theology as too liberal. As unbiblical. As dishonoring to Christ and His Word. While proponents to the left would go too far, speaking in the more liberal tones of Continental Philosophy and Theology, of revisionist church history, of describing the person and work of Jesus in humanistic overtones. Blithely preaching redressed Christian heresies obdurately unaware of their theological divide with past Christian orthodoxy. An orthodoxy that needs renewing. That needs a Postmodern resurrection out of its overlong modernistic grave. Into this scenario has come an Emergent, Postmodern Theology to temper the fires both right and left of the Gospel of Christ (an impossible task that seems doubtful at best to accomplish!). A theology attempting to bring solidarity to the church of God fractured in its divisional exuberances and heighten revisioning for the world as it struggles to determine what this Age of Postmodernism means to its doctrinces, dogmas, practices and ministries.

At Relevancy22 we have attempted to take the middling road between what is truly biblical without becoming obtusely mired in Evangelicalism's ideological dogmas - nor uncritical of Emergent Christianity's fanning flames for Jesus fraught with their own passions and historical revisionisms. It is true, that Emergent Theology does think-and-feel differently from that of its conservative Evangelical, and Progressive Denominational, neighbours, through no fault of its own. Nor should Emergent Christianity and its developing theology be jettisoned because of past popular Evangelical mis-statements, nor because of the exuberances of its over-zealous proponents seeking to defend their beliefs. And yet ultimately, Emergent Christianity wishes to speak to the loss masses of humanity that is unhindered by Evangelical stereotypes and its modernistic excesses (sic, its business culture for one, and consumerist mindset, as another) using Emergent-speak to construct a vision of God's love and reach. A vision that may be non-threatening when spoken from its American, Westernized cultures, and pacific and sympathetic towards Third World countries and cultures.

Hence, Postmodernism has rightfully claimed its illuminating affects upon any Christian thinker wishing to depart modernistic, secular, theologies for a redefined version of a postmodernistic, postsecular Christianity. And in the process uncover infrastructural linkages to their ecclesiological past requiring patient deconstruction (as well as insightful reconstruction) in the name of Jesus. I believe this movement to be led by the divine guidance of God in the renewing effort of Spirit-burdened prayer. Under a fruitful biblical scholarship committed to Scriptural observance while investigating and integrating accumulating, accretive, academic disciplines to the Christian faith. And amassing under the mesmerizing energy of affiliating Emergent believers desperate to share God's redeeming mercy and forgiveness, love and healing, in purity of heart and social common cause. A message that surely must be resurrected and preached by words of action and hearts true.

Consequently, Emergent Theology will be different from Evangelical or, conservative Protestant, Theology. But rightfully so, given its differing era with its differing, viable, postmodern social needs, language, thought-forms, and comportments. While at the same time maintaining an ever faithful allegiance to the Word of God, and to Jesus as Lord and Savior, pitting it against any liberal theologies wishing to apply to it. And from this fiery furnace we will find a God who is redeeming a remnant for His name, purified for His use, and charged with the task of sharing the gospel of Jesus into the many lost worlds of humanity. Grown closer by communication and technology, industry and transportation, expanding trade and finance, growing infrastructures and corresponding energy vacuums. With equally growing ecological realizations to preserve rapidly diminishing resources that are irreplaceable, that require better governance relative to the burgeoning needs both humanitarian and educational, and a vision filled with the rapidly expanding global communities and civilizations of this world in mind.

As such, Relevancy22 is an attempt to lift up the Emergent discussion and theological trajectory in ways that remain true to biblical orthodoxy, while uncoupling itself from past (perhaps, self-sustaining) Evangelical dogmas, folklores, and ideologies. While in its reinvigorated explorations of theological research and application, uncover orthodox theological linkages to the past that can themselves be uplifted into today's postmodern discussions of the Christian Gospel's message and mission. Yes, Emergent Theology will be radical, but it should not be considered as a departure from old-line Christian orthodoxy. But one that is simply a resurrected orthodoxy that is under development and being respoken in postmodern terms.

Lastly, into the contemporary Emergent folds has come its corresponding Evangelical counterpart known as Radical Orthodoxy. Both are postmodern in perspective, and so will be similar in this regard, but with Radical Orthodoxy's introduction seemingly comes the heavy philosophical structure of neo-platonism coupled with the biblical structure of neo-Calvinistic Reformed Theology. Which at this junction limits hermeneutical boundaries to the claims of biblical literalness; prefers the Calvinistic doctrines of God's power (TULIP) over His love (the Arminian DAISY); propounds Evangelic dogmas and practices wishing to hold on to limiting versions about God, humanity, sin, hell, and judgment, gender inequalities, and bigotries; and any number of other contemporary discussions that we have been holding here at Relevancy22 since its inception. As such, we must also research Radical Orthodoxy to its claims and birthrights, directions and purposes.

However, it is the current estimation here that to recover orthodox Christianity does not necessarily mean that we recover evangelical Christianity. As such, we're more in favor of starting anew under a new banner and industry, known as Emergent Christianity, much as a son or daughter begins anew from their family, thanking their parents for their help (or non-help) and pushing on to make their own distinctions and narrative. Such is how we feel here at Relevancy22.

If Evangelicalism wishes at all to be helpful, than let it contribute to their son-and-daughter's spiritual future and not to their spiritual demise. Each may learn of the other as each has much to give. Let us then learn to speak in softer tones of love and grace when books like "Love Wins" would draw out the rancorous religiosity of our spirits and not the humility found in Christ....

And with that let's proceed to Dr. Olson's review of Horace Bushnell, 19th century reformer and theologian, Parts 2+3.

R.E. Slater

January 11, 2013

 

ps... By way of a personal note, I would like to tell of my family's own linkage to the Beechers of Boston, include Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame. As social activists they crusaded against bigotry; human trafficing and slavery; organized for women's suffrage rights; temperance; Darwinian evolution; Chinese immigration into the United States; and, for a number of other urban causes pitting the Gospel's influence over the rights and perogatives of contemporary Christian soothsayers.

 

And it was because of their Congregationalist's beliefs that their heart and timely Bostonian message to the populace of America was one of social reform and the rightful recovery of human dignity. In the Slater tree of ancestry we are glad to part of this continuing effort of the gospel of Christ for the Kingdom of God's resurrection and recovery for human rights and reform, social justice and human dignity.

 

 

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

 

continued -

 

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

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-case-for-progressive-orthodoxy-horace_8.html