Soren Kierkegaard's Postmodernistic Relevance for Today

Happy (Belated) Birthday Kierkegaard

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/05/13/happy-birthday-kierkegaard/

 

by Scot McKnight

May 13, 2013

From Julian Baggini, on Kierkegaard’s 200th birthday (May 5) and his continuing appeal:

Discovering that your childhood idols are now virtually ancient is usually a disturbing reminder of your own mortality. But for me, realising that 5th May 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of Søren Kierkegaard’s birth was more of a reminder of his immortality. It’s a strange word to use for a thinker who lived with a presentiment of his own death and didn’t reach his 43rd birthday. Kierkegaard was the master of irony and paradox before both became debased by careless overuse. He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none…. 

If Kierkegaard is your benchmark, then you judge any philosophy not just on the basis of how cogent its arguments are, but on whether it speaks to the fundamental needs of human beings trying to make sense of the world. Philosophy prides itself on challenging all assumptions but, oddly enough, in the 20th century it forgot to question why it asked the questions it did. Problems were simply inherited from previous generations and treated as puzzles to be solved. Kierkegaard is inoculation against such empty scholasticism. As he put it in his journal in 1835: 

What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through all the systems of philosophy and of being able, if required, to review them all and show up the inconsistencies within each system … what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognised her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? 

When, for example, I became fascinated by the philosophical problem of personal identity, I also became dismayed by the unwillingness or inability of many writers on the subject to address the question of just why the problem should concern us at all. Rather than being an existential problem, it often became simply a logical or metaphysical one, a technical exercise in specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying one person as the same object at two different points in time. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 

 

Illustration by Stephen Collins

 

I still love Kierkegaard

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/julian-baggini-i-love-kierkegaard/

 

by Julian Baggini

May 6, 2013

 

"He is the dramatic thunderstorm at the heart of philosophy

 and his provocation is more valuable than ever."

I fell for Søren Kierkegaard as a teenager, and he has accompanied me on my intellectual travels ever since, not so much side by side as always a few steps ahead or lurking out of sight just behind me. Perhaps that’s because he does not mix well with the other companions I’ve kept. I studied in the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy, where the literary flourishes and wilful paradoxes of continental existentialists are viewed with anything from suspicion to outright disdain. In Paris, Roland Barthes might have proclaimed the death of the author, but in London the philosopher had been lifeless for years, as anonymous as possible so that the arguments could speak for themselves.

 

Discovering that your childhood idols are now virtually ancient is usually a disturbing reminder of your own mortality. But for me, realising that 5th May 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of Søren Kierkegaard's birth was more of a reminder of his immortality. It's a strange word to use for a thinker who lived with a presentiment of his own death and didn't reach his 43rd birthday. Kierkegaard was the master of irony and paradox before both became debased by careless overuse. He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none.

 

It’s easy enough to see why I fell in love with Kierkegaard. Before years of academic training does its work of desiccation, young men and women are drawn to philosophy and the humanities by the excitement of ideas and new horizons of understanding. This youthful zeal, however, is often slapped down by mature sobriety. I remember dipping into the tiny philosophy section of my school library, for example, and finding Stephan Körner’s 1955 Pelican introduction to Kant. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Strangely, this did not put me off philosophy, the idea of which remained more alluring than the little bit of reality I had encountered.

 

Kierkegaard was not so much an oasis in this desert as a dramatic, torrential thunderstorm at the heart of it. Discovering him as a 17-year-old suddenly made philosophy and religion human and exciting, not arid and abstract. In part that’s because he was a complex personality with a tumultuous biography. Even his name emanates romantic darkness. ‘Søren’ is the Danish version of the Latin severus, meaning ‘severe’, ‘serious’ or ‘strict’, while ‘Kierkegaard’ means churchyard, with its traditional associations of the graveyard.

 

He knew intense love, and was engaged to Regine Olsen, whom he describes in his journals as ‘sovereign queen of my heart’. Yet in 1841, after four years of courtship, he called the engagement off, apparently because he did not believe he could give the marriage the commitment it deserved. He took love, God and philosophy so seriously that he did not see how he could allow himself all three.

 

He was a romantic iconoclast, who lived fast and died young, but on a rollercoaster of words and ideas rather than sex and booze. During the 1840s, books poured from his pen. In 1843 alone, he published three masterpieces, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition.

Kierkegaard achieved the necessary condition of any great romantic intellectual figure, which is rejection by his own time and society

All of this, however, was under the shadow of a deep melancholy. Five of his seven siblings died, three in the space of the same two years that claimed his mother. These tragedies fuelled the bleak religiosity of his father, who believed he had been punished for cursing God on a Jutland heath for His apparent indifference to the hard, wretched life of the young sheep farmer. When his father told Søren about this, it seems that the son adopted the curse, along with his father’s youthful sins.

 

Yet alongside this melancholy was a mischievous, satirical wit. Kierkegaard was a scathing critic of the Denmark of his time, and he paid the price when in 1846 The Corsair, a satirical paper, launched a series of character attacks on him, ridiculing his gait (he had a badly curved spine) and his rasping voice. Kierkegaard achieved the necessary condition of any great romantic intellectual figure, which is rejection by his own time and society. His biographer, Walter Lowrie, goes so far as to suggest that he was single-handedly responsible for the decline of Søren as a popular first name. Such was the ridicule cast upon him that Danish parents would tell their children ‘don’t be a Søren’. Today, Sorensen — son of Søren — is still the eighth most common surname in Denmark, while as a first name Søren itself doesn’t even make the top 50. It is as though Britain were full of Johnsons but no Johns.

 

All this was more than enough to draw my open but largely empty 17-year-old mind to him. In the battle for intellectual affections, how could the likes of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic (1936) or Willard Van Orman Quine’s Word and Object (1960) compete with Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death (1849) or Stages on Life’s Way (1845)? What is more interesting, however, is why the intellectual affair lasted even as I became a (hopefully) less impressionable, older atheist.

 

If Kierkegaard is your benchmark, then you judge any philosophy not just on the basis of how cogent its arguments are, but on whether it speaks to the fundamental needs of human beings trying to make sense of the world. Philosophy prides itself on challenging all assumptions but, oddly enough, in the 20th century it forgot to question why it asked the questions it did. Problems were simply inherited from previous generations and treated as puzzles to be solved. Kierkegaard is inoculation against such empty scholasticism. As he put it in his journal in 1835:

 

"What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through

all the systems of philosophy and of being able, if required, to review them all and show

up the inconsistencies within each system ... what good would it do me if truth stood

before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognised her or not, and producing

in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion?" - SK

 

When, for example, I became fascinated by the philosophical problem of personal identity, I also became dismayed by the unwillingness or inability of many writers on the subject to address the question of just why the problem should concern us at all. Rather than being an existential problem, it often became simply a logical or metaphysical one, a technical exercise in specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying one person as the same object at two different points in time.

 

So even as I worked on a PhD on the subject, located within the Anglo-American analytic tradition, I sneaked Kierkegaard in through the back door. For me, Kierkegaard defined the problem more clearly than anyone else. Human beings are caught, he said, between two modes or ‘spheres’ of existence. The ‘aesthetic’ is the world of immediacy, of here and now. The ‘ethical’ is the transcendent, eternal world. We can’t live in both, but neither fulfils all our needs since ‘the self is composed of infinitude and finitude’, perhaps a hyperbolic way of saying that we exist across time, in the past and future, but we are also inescapably trapped in the present moment.

 

The limitations of the ‘ethical’ are perhaps most obvious to the modern mind. The life of eternity is just an illusion, for we are all-too mortal, flesh-and-blood creatures. To believe we belong there is to live in denial of our animality. So the world has increasingly embraced the ‘aesthetic’. But this fails to satisfy us, too. If the moment is all we have, then all we can do is pursue pleasurable moments, ones that dissolve as swiftly as they appear, leaving us always running on empty, grasping at fleeting experiences that pass. The materialistic world offers innumerable opportunities for instant gratification without enduring satisfaction and so life becomes a series of diversions. No wonder there is still so much vague spiritual yearning in the West: people long for the ethical [(spiritual or eternal) - res] but cannot see beyond the aesthetic.

 

In evocative aphorisms, Kierkegaard captured this sense of being lost, whichever world we choose: ‘Infinitude’s despair is to lack finitude, finitude’s despair is to lack infinitude.’ Kierkegaard thus defined what I take to be the central puzzle of human existence: how to live in such a way that does justice both to our aesthetic and our ethical natures.

Kierkegaard showed that taking religion seriously is compatible with being against religion in almost all its actual forms.

His solution to this paradox was to embrace it — too eagerly in my view. He thought that the figure of Christ — a man-made God [per the Kierkegaard's sentiments, not mine own; though, in its earthly version of religion would in some sense be true, but not in its divine version of spirituality emanating from the personage or being of God - res], wholly finite and wholly infinite at the same time — was the only way to make sense of the human condition, not because it explains away life’s central paradox but because it embodies it. To become a Christian requires a ‘leap of faith’ without the safety net of reason or evidence.

 

Kierkegaard’s greatest illustration of this is his retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling (1843). Abraham is often held up as a paradigm of faith because he trusted God so much he was prepared to sacrifice his only son on his command. Kierkegaard makes us realise that Abraham acted on faith not because he obeyed a difficult order but because lifting the knife over his son defied all morality and reason. No reasonable man would have done what Abraham did. If this was a test, then surely the way to pass was to show God that you would not commit murder on command, even if that risked inviting divine wrath. If you heard God’s voice commanding you to kill, surely it would be more rational to conclude you were insane or tricked by demons than it would to follow the order. So when Abraham took his leap of faith, he took leave of reason and morality.

*Under the section of "Violence in the OT" such biblical passages are being examined with a pre-conclusion that the standard enlightenment/modernized interpretations such as these above are inexact and bereft of their Ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) settings unreflected by our philosophies and theologies of today. Hence, the interpretation as given above is rejected and its conclusions must be based on something more solid than a common literal understanding ripped out-of-context to its ancient past. - res

 

How insipid the modern version of faith appears in comparison. Religious apologists today might mumble about the power of faith and the limits of reason, yet they are the first to protest when it is suggested that faith and reason might be in tension. Far from seeing religious faith as a special, bold kind of trust, religious apologists are now more likely to see atheism as requiring as much faith as religion. Kierkegaard saw clearly that that faith is not a kind of epistemic Polyfilla that closes the small cracks left by reason, but a mad leap across a chasm devoid of all reason.

*This is a common understanding that has been explored ad naseum within religion and philosophy. For the man or woman of faith, the life of faith is both reasonable and unreasonable, and the spiritual life of faith is one of spiritual connectivity to all things human, mundane, eternal, and divine. As a tissue is connective to a larger membrane of tissues so is the life of faith connective to all things God in the lifeblood of sight and sound. - res

 

That is not because Kierkegaard was guilty of an anarchic irrationalism or relativistic subjectivism. It is only because he was so rigorous with his application of reason that he was able to push it to its limits. He went beyond reason only when reason could go no further, leaving logic behind only when logic refused to go on.

In a pluralist world, there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different values if we only judge them from the outside.

*As has been observed within Relevancy22 countless times, our explorations of faith - and especially of one's theology of God behind the life of faith - has shown that our ideas of the bible, biblical teachings, and even of God Himself is oft times  bound by our finite assumptions and mislead beliefs about each. That our beliefs are so bounded by our religion, our religious views, or our limiting personal philosophies, that we misapprehend the truer pictures of theology when borne aright by less limiting theological persuasions as we have pursued here since inception. However, this is to deconstruct one's self and religion, which can be threatening if not altogether leading to a personal bankruptcy of belief. And yet, if led of the Spirit of God, can be holistically reconstructive in the life of the believer willing to cast off his/her's personal past to a larger, more expansive view of God, the bible, and the life of Spirit-filled faith. - res

This was powerful stuff for a teenager such as me who was losing his religious belief [(cf. sidebars re Peter Rollins, Deconstruction as additional explorations in this regard - res)]. What Kierkegaard showed was that the only serious alternative to atheism or agnosticism was not what generally passes for religion but a much deeper commitment that left ordinary standards of proof and evidence completely behind. Perhaps that’s why so many of Kierkegaard’s present-day admirers are atheists. He was a Christian who nonetheless despised ‘Christendom’. To be a Christian was to stake one’s life on the absurdity of the risen Christ, to commit to an ethical standard no human can reach. [(*as expressed in pre-postmodernistic terms - res)]. This is a constant and in some ways hopeless effort at perpetually becoming what you can never fully be. Nothing could be more different from the conventional view of what being a Christian means: being born and baptised into a religion, dutifully going to Church and partaking in the sacraments. Institutionalised Christianity is an oxymoron, given that the Jesus of the Gospels spent so much time criticising the clerics of his day and never established any alternative structures [(for myself, the reason was simple, Jesus left the interpretation of faith's life within a community open for plurality's sake. - res)]. Kierkegaard showed that taking religion seriously is compatible with being against religion in almost all its actual forms, something that present-day atheists and believers should note [AMEN! - res].

Kierkegaard would undoubtedly have been both amused and appalled at what passes for debate about religion today. He would see how both sides move in herds, adhering to a collectively formed opinion, unwilling to depart from the local consensus. Too many Christians defend what happens to pass for Christianity in the culture at the time, when they should be far more sceptical that their churches really represent the teachings of their founder [Jesus]. Too many atheists are just as guilty of rallying around totems such as Charles Darwin and the scientific method, as though these were the pillars of the secular outlook rather than merely the current foci of its attention.

 

Kierkegaard’s views on religion are not the only way in which his critique of ‘the present age’ is strangely timely for us, and likely to be the same for future readers. ‘Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm,’ he wrote in 1846, ‘and shrewdly lapsing into repose.’ Passion in this sense is about bringing one’s whole self to what one does, including reasoning. What is much more common today is either a sentimental subjectivity, in which everything becomes about your own feelings or personal story; or a detached objectivity in which the motivations and interests of the researchers are deemed irrelevant. Kierkegaard insisted on going beyond this objective/subjective choice, recognising that honest intellectual work requires a sincere attempt to see things as they are and an authentic recognition of how one’s own nature, beliefs and biases inevitably shape one’s perceptions.

 

This central insight is nowhere more developed than in his pseudonymous works. Many of Kierkegaard’s most important books do not bear his name. On the Concept of Irony (1841) is written by Johannes Climacus; Fear and Trembling (1843) by Johannes de Silentio; Repetition (1843) by Constantin Constantius; while Either/Or (1843) is edited by Victor Eremita. This is not just some ludic, post-modern jape. What Kierkegaard understood clearly was that there is no neutral ‘objective’ point of view from which alternative ways of living and understanding the world can be judged. Rather, you need to get inside a philosophy to really see its attractions and limitations. So, for example, to see why the everyday ‘aesthetic’ life is not enough to satisfy us, you need to see how unsatisfying it is for those who live it. That’s why Kierkegaard writes from the point of view of people who live for the moment to show how empty that leaves them. Likewise, if you want to understand the impossibility of living on the eternal plane in finite human life, see the world from the point of view of someone trying to live the ethical life.

 

This approach makes many of Kierkegaard’s books genuine pleasures to read, as literary as they are philosophical. More importantly, the pseudonymous method enables Kierkegaard to achieve a remarkable synthesis of objectivity and subjectivity. We see how things are from a subjective point of view, and because they really are that way, a form of objectivity is achieved. This is a lesson that our present age needs to learn again. The most complete, objective point of view is not one that is abstracted from the subjective: it is one that incorporates as many subjective points of view as are relevant and needed.

*The reason this method works today is that postmodernism requires story telling from a subjective, personal narrative. As an era, postmodernism has reject the abstract, cold, detached systematic statements of theology or other disciplines. To be meaningful, and to be meaningfully expressed, today's writer/thinker/speaker must express their thoughts in narrative form. - res

 

This also provides the link between imagination and rationality. A detached reason that cannot enter into the viewpoints of others cannot be fully objective because it cannot access whole areas of the real world of human experience. Kierkegaard taught me the importance of attending to the internal logic of positions, not just how they stand up to outside scrutiny.

 

This is arguably even more vital today than it was in Kierkegaard’s time. In a pluralist world, there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different values if we only judge them from the outside, from what we imagine to be an objective point of view [(that is, our own view - res)] but is really one infused with our own subjectivity. Atheists need to know what it really means to be religious, not simply to run through arguments against the existence of God that are not the bedrock of belief anyway. No one can hope to understand emerging nations such as China, India or Brazil unless they try to see how the world looks from inside those countries.

 

But perhaps Kierkegaard’s most provocative message is that both work on the self and on understanding the world requires your whole being and cannot be just a compartmentalised, academic pursuit. His life and work both have a deep ethical seriousness, as well as plenty of playful, ironic elements. This has been lost today, where it seems we are afraid of taking ourselves too seriously. For Kierkegaard, irony was the means by which we could engage in serious self-examination without hubris or arrogance: ‘what doubt is to science, irony is to personal life’. Today, irony is a way of avoiding serious self-examination by believing one is above such things, a form of superiority masquerading as modesty. It might be spotty, angst-filled adolescents who are most attracted to the young Kierkegaard, but it’s us, the supposed adults, who need the 200-year-old version more than ever.

Julian Baggini is a writer and founding editor of The Philosopher’s Magazine. His latest book is The Shrink and the Sage, co-authored with Antonia Macaro.

Supplemental-

 

Was Kierkegaard an evangelical? Parts 1-3

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2013/05/was-kierkegaard-evangelical-parts-1-3.html

 

 

 

Blog Update: How to Proceed vs. Present Commitments

The last several weeks I've had to become involved in the life-and-death issues of my father related to his health and life-continuance as it begins to turn towards a steady decline. This medical condition will not immediately pass and will require several weeks or months of my attention over which time I am unsure how involved I can presently be in theological research and writing on contemporary issues.

 

Additionally, I have also been giving some thought and prayer to finishing my incomplete masses of poems and poetic stories which I had left off from a couple of years ago when beginning this blog site.

Another task I have also been considering is the re-writing of the many articles I have published here at Relevancy22 in order to place these in some kind of an online book format that readers may print off through Amazon at their discretion.

Lastly, I would like to have readers take over this site in the sense of disseminating its ideas and prose. The content herein should no longer be mine but belong to those who feel blessed and helped by its articles and messages. And based upon that information I could then re-package those articles by stepping-them-back into a timeless format that might supersede the events and issues of our day.

 

Hence, there is a lot to think and pray about. Which does not mean that this site, or my poetry site will be discontinued, only that I cannot give to them the attention that I have these past four years. Your help and consideration as always have been appreciated.

 

May the Lord continue to bless and direct you in the ways that are pleasing to Him.

 

To God be the glory,

 

R.E. Slater

May 19, 2013

 

 

 

 

The God of Miracles: Stepping Out On Faith: A Minnesota Missionary's Disappearance in Mali, West Africa

 

FIND JERRY: Minnesota pilot missing

off West Africa coast

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast

 

Updated: Apr 17, 2013 12:48 PM EDT

 

facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

By MICHELLE FAUL

Associated Press

 

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - A small plane carrying only its American pilot disappeared 10 days ago just miles from a refueling stop at a West African island in the middle of a tropical storm of thunder and lightning.

 

Since then, searches with a plane and boats have found no trace of the pilot, 54-year-old missionary Jerry Krause, or the twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C that he was flying from South Africa to Mali.

 

Krause's family in Mali, where he has lived for 16 years, and in Waseca, Minnesota, believes he is alive and could have landed in hostile territory.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed," says a message posted Wednesday to their website www.findjerry.com

 

"That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerrilla members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios."

 

Family members reached by email would not elaborate on any possible evidence, and the suggestion could not be immediately backed.

 

The posting said that a missing person's report has been filed in the United States so that the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board can start an investigation into Krause's disappearance.

 

The Krauses have launched a multifaceted campaign to "find Jerry." Family members are lobbying officials, posting messages on social media and using the Internet to encourage a relay of prayers for his safe return.

 

Krause's last contact was apparently with the control tower at Sao Tome island, a couple of kilometers north of the equator and 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gabon.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

He said Krause called in to say he was 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the island when lightning struck the tower and knocked out the power. That was just before 4 p.m. local time (1600 GMT), still in daylight, on Sunday, April 7. When generators kicked in, soon afterward, Krause could no longer be reached, Barreto said.

 

He said air traffic controllers immediately contacted the nearest control towers on the African mainland at Libreville, Gabon and Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to see whether they had heard from Krause. They had not.

 

Navy and Coast Guard vessels are still looking for any trace of Krause's plane, Barreto said.

 

The family's website said they have sent a Portuguese-speaking envoy to Sao Tome, at the family's expense, to "get the official documentation as to what actually took place there from Jerry radioing in to land to their responses and follow-up.

 

"Their stories haven't been confirmed and haven't been consistent," the message complained.

 

Krause's employer, Eric van der Gragt, said the control tower did not inform others that there was a missing pilot and plane until almost 24 hours after the disappearance.

 

"The tower just didn't inform people that he had disappeared," van der Gragt, owner of Bamako, Mali-based Sahel Aviation Service, said in a telephone interview.

 

He said he sent a plane to search for Krause for two days that week, after the Sao Tome Coast Guard had found nothing on the Monday and Tuesday following his disappearance. The Sahel plane searched around the twin-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, he said.

 

Van der Gragt said the turboprop Beechcraft that Krause was flying did not belong to his company but, he believed, to a company based in Senegal.

 

Krause's family is heartened that searchers have found nothing in the Gulf of Guinea, saying that an absence of wreckage or emergency locator transmitter signals are hopeful signs.

 

The oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, where Krause disappeared, has been increasingly targeted by armed pirates who hijack ships' cargoes, including a British ship in February.

 

At their Web site and on Facebook, the Krause family details how they lobbied officials of the French cellular service Orange, to which the pilot was subscribed, in an effort to get them to try to track his iPhone and discover his last position. At first the company resisted, then said it was unable to help because his subscription was based in Mali, according to the Web site. Orange was able to turn off the iPhone from afar, to conserve its battery.

 

Krause's family last heard from him when he called his wife Gina from South Africa to let her know he was on his way home to Bamako. The two have lived as missionaries in Africa for 25 years, the last 16 of them in Mali, a mainly Muslim country. Krause had served as a missionary pilot for the Nampa, Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship until 2009 when the air service pulled out of Mali.

Jerry and Gina Krause stayed on. Many foreign companies and charities have left Mali since jihadist fighters swarmed over the north last year. France and several African nations sent troops this year when the Islamic fighters, allied with al-Qaeda, started to advance on Bamako, the capital.

 

"God knows where Jerry is," Gina Krause says, expressing certainty and her faith in a posting at the findjerry Web site. "I know I serve a God who can do the IMPOSSIBLE."

 

AP writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report.

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

Read more: FIND JERRY KRAUSE: Pilot missing off West Africa coast - KMSP-TV http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast#ixzz2TAxm6uRC

 

 

 

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

 

YouTube.com Link -

 

Interview with Wife and Family

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5OknZSZiTNY

 

 

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

 

 

Missionary Pilot Goes Missing En Route to Mali; May Have Been Captured

http://www.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/

 

(Photo: Facebook/Find Jerry)

 

The Krause family is raising awareness for Jerry Krause, a 54-year-old missionary pilot who went missing on April 7 when his plane hit a tropical storm while en route from South Africa to Mali.

 

 

By Katherine Weber , Christian Post Reporter

April 18, 2013|6:32 pm

 

A family is searching for answers after a pilot, who has served as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, went missing 10 days ago when his plane was hit by a tropical storm on his way to Mali.

 

The family worries that the pilot may have been captured by guerilla forces or drug lords.

 

Jerry Krause, 54, went missing on April 7 while flying a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C near the island of São Tomé, where he was due for a refill of fuel, en route to Mali from South Africa.

 

About nine miles away from the island, an intense tropical storm reportedly hit and the missionary pilot lost contact with the local control tower at São Tomé; he has not been heard from since.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

Barreto claims that the tropical storm caused lightning to hit the São Tomé control tower, causing it to temporarily lose power shortly after it had its last verbal communication with Krause.

 

When the generator at the control tower restored power, Jerry could not be contacted.

 

Jerry's family, which includes his wife, Gina, his brother, Jeremy, and three children, Alyssa, Nathan, and Jessica, has set up a website, www.findjerry.com, to provide updates about their search for their loved one, implore government officials to help with the search, and encourage followers to pray for Jerry's safe return.

 

The family has also set up a social media campaign, starting the Twitter trend "FindJerry" and setting up a Facebook page to spread awareness about their missing loved one.

 

The Krause family wrote on the FindJerry.com webpage that they believe the São Tomé control tower did not follow protocol when Jerry's plane went missing, and could possibly now be trying to cover their tracks to avoid reprimand.

 

"Sao Tome air traffic control DID NOT contact mainland airports to check on Jerry's status as they should have," the family says on the website.

 

Additionally, the family refuted the claims of the control tower that lightning from the tropical storm knocked out the power of the control tower for a temporary time when Jerry went missing.

 

"[The control tower officials] are either stating this now to cover their tracks since they didn't follow protocol when a plane went missing or they are involved somehow with the disappearance," the family argued.

 

"It would have made sense had they come out and said that from the beginning, but such thing was said last week about electricity going out," the family noted.

 

The family also believes that because no plane wreckage has been found, it's possible that Jerry is alive and surviving.

 

Unfortunately, there is a 50 percent chance Jerry could have landed his plane in enemy territory and could now possibly be used as a pilot for drug traffickers against his will.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed. That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerillas members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios," the family stated.

 

In an earlier blog post, the family wrote that Jerry's plane would have crashed into "a million pieces," which surely would have been washed ashore by the changing tide or scooped up by fishing nets, and therefore, because no plane fragments have been found, "there is more potential that he was potentially ambushed or kidnapped."

 

"Again, there is no proof of kidnapping, but it's becoming more of a reality. Please pray for the US Embassy officials to get answers and for other countries to cooperate as we continue to search," the family wrote.

 

The family has also been making progress in spreading awareness of Jerry's absence to the authorities in both the U.S. and South Africa, successfully filing a missing person's report in the U.S. to enable the National Transportation Safety Board and the South African Civil Aviation Authority to begin their investigation into the pilot's whereabouts.

 

Additionally, the Krause family offered a $5,000 reward for information on Jerry's whereabouts, including providing fragments of his plane, but no one has come forward with any evidence.

 

The family continues to remain hopeful and faithful during this time of uncertainty, writing on their Find Jerry website that they are grateful for the prayers given to their family and to Jerry.

 

"We serve a God who can move mountains and whose mighty hand is over this entire situation," the Krause family wrote.

 

Jerry Krause has worked as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, spending the past 16 years in Mali with his wife, Gina. He most recently worked for the Sahel Aviation Service, a commercial company which provides air transportation in the areas around Mali.

 

Prior to that, Jerry also worked as a pilot for the Mission Aviation Fellowship for 22 years, which works to help over 1,000 Christian and humanitarian organizations with air transportation and delivery.

 

Jerry worked for the MAF until 2009, when the air service ended its work in Mali.

 

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/#xzU8j2BwErEDAUR0.99

 

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

 

Update: May 30, 2013

From Huntington, IN

 

Follow on Facebook 

 

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

To those who we will be forever grateful to...

 

Just so you can plan ahead in great anticipation for the next update :), I plan on updating once a week, updating on Monday or Tuesday (even though today is Wed) unless something urgent comes up.

 

My intention for this update is to explain why we believe my dad to still be alive. We are almost at two months since he disappeared. And looking at the evidence, as I've mentioned previously, the most logical perspective would determine my dad to be dead. As time progresses, the easiest solution would be to count my dad dead. That final verdict would end the waiting, the effort of searching, and the perseverance of continuing to pray. I would be relieved to have the test God placed in the lives of my family to have ended many weeks ago, to be in a place where we could just move on. But, God's timing is beyond my understanding and the test has not ended.

 

As I've thought through the reasons as to why we believe my dad is still alive, I've reread report after report of the investigations done searching for my dad in order to come up with the most logical reasons. But even after making a list of those reasons, I don't think they are the main reasons we still believe my dad is alive. Briefly, the logical reasons to believe my dad to still be alive include (in no specific order): 1. Not finding any piece of the plane, 2. The lack of effort on searching for a crashed plane by Sao Tome, 3. The negligence of the refuelers in Sao Tome in providing documentation of planes refueled on April 7th and 8th, 4. The discrepancy of the facts regarding the last conversation my dad had with the tower, 5. The corruption in the area and the benefit of having my dad (pilot, mechanic, and free plane).

 

And the list could go on. If you want more specific logical reasons, feel free to email me (Jessica)...

 

But, the real reason we believe my dad to be alive:

 

Because God is not allowing us to believe anything else. When we reach a point of starting to believe my dad to be dead, God keeps placing people in our lives and providing us with Scripture that does not give evidence to him being dead (including around 15 dreams). God keeps telling us: Pray, Persevere, and Trust Me. And so we have to keep doing that.

 

Please continue to partake in this journey through prayer. I know that is an area that God is testing me. And at the end of this, I don't want to be someone who stopped having faith or someone who believed in the logical and not the miraculous. This situation is one where God wants and is going to get all of the glory. And I have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking till God says I can stop.

 

May God be glorified in me and in you. May we each be able to stand before God and have Him say, well done my good and faithful servant, no matter what situation we each face. For God is good. His Love endures. And He will be victorious.

 

 

Continue to follow on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

 

 

Peter Rollins, "The Idolatry of God"

We have followed Peter since his introduction at Mars Hill Church many years ago. I have found in him the seeds of a restorative faith through honest recognition of our failings, hurts and harms. He approaches Scripture from primarily a philosophical perspective in order to integrate redemptive theology towards healing and wholeness in Jesus. As such, it is meant as relevant philosophical theology for the postmodern 21st century as versus other restorative disciplines such as psychology, social theory, or normative church instruction.

I have used Peter to help determine what is meant by the idea of "deconstructing the Christian life" primarily through his observations as to how Christian symbols and imposed church structure are used in our worship of God and faith. Knowing Peter to have a heart centered on Jesus-and-His-resurrection, I can also say that Pete is fundamentally orientated towards spiritual "reconstruction" within the Christian life albeit through "torching" those ideas about God that pre-postmodernistic religion has imposed upon the human spirit. He calls this "pyrotheology," a subset of which is his idea of "idolizing" God in our own image rather than in God's own  divine image that he finds to be, in a deeply religious sense, mystical and mysterious, moving and paradoxical.

Generally, I find Pete's ideas helpful, if not sometimes outlandish or weird. But within that weirdness there are always glimmers for me into my life with Christ and the heart of faith we are called to commit and be founded upon. As I am not a philosopher but primarily a theologian, I find it helpful to listen to those whom God has led before me into areas that may be fruitful for discussion and discernment - even as He has with past Christian philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard of the 19th century. There is always room in the family of God for differing perspectives. Peter Rollins is one such voice to whom we might listen.

R.E. Slater
May 10, 2013

Idolatry of God Trailer

Biography

Peter Rollins is a widely sought after writer, lecturer, storyteller, and public speaker. He is the founder of Ikon, a Belfast, Northern Ireland, faith group that has gained an international reputation for blending live music, visual imagery, soundscapes, theater, ritual, and reflection to create what they call 'transformance art'. He currently resides in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Peter gained his higher education from Queens University, Belfast and has earned degrees (with distinction) in Scholastic Philosophy (BA Hons), Political Theory (MA) and Post-Structural thought (PhD). He is currently a research associate with the Irish School of Ecumenics in Trinity College, Dublin and is the author of the much talked about How (Not) to Speak of God. His most recent work is entitled The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. He was born in Belfast but currently resides in Greenwich, CT.

Commentary by Peter - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Commentary%20-%20Peter%20Rollins

Peter's website - http://peterrollins.net/

Peter's blog - http://peterrollins.net/?cat=276

Peter's youtube channel site - http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOrthodoxHeretic?feature=guide

The Idolatry of God

You can’t be satisfied. Life is difficult. You don’t know the secret.

Whether readers are devout believers or distant seekers, The Idolatry of God shows that we must lay down our certainties and honestly admit our doubts to identify with Jesus. Rollins purposely upsets fundamentalist certainty in order to open readers up to a more loving, active manifestation of Christ’s love.

In contrast to the usual understanding of the “Good News” as a message offering satisfaction and certainty, Rollins argues for a radical and shattering alternative. He explores how the Good News actually involves embracing the idea that we can’t be whole, that life is difficult, and that we are in the dark. Showing how God has traditionally been approached as a product that will render us complete, remove our suffering, and reveal the answers, he introduces an incendiary approach to faith that invites us to joyfully embrace our brokenness, resolutely face our unknowing, and courageously accept the difficulties of existence. Only then, he argues, can we truly rob death of its sting and enter into the fullness of life.

Book Review

Challenges one of the greatest idols in the church today

By Greg Tenni
February 11, 2013

 In this book, Pete continues his program of incendiary theology - burning all the things that get in the way of having a bare bones, gut-level relationship with God. He talks about our quest for answers and victory over our circumstances as being idolatrous, as being the real object of our worship rather than God Himself.

He is not writing anything new, because people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Soren Kierkegaard have written in a similar vein many years before , but Pete brings his unique version of this message in a different style, using more contemporary images and stories.

As an example, have a look at this passage from Bonhoeffer (Ethics):

"Only by God's executing judgment upon Himself can there be peace between Him and the world and between man and man. But the secret of this judgment, of this passion and death, is the love of God for the world and for man.

What befell Christ befalls every man in Him. It is only as one who is sentenced by God that man can live before God. Only the crucified man is at peace with God. It is in the figure of the Crucified that man recognizes and discovers himself. To be taken up by God, to be executed on the cross and reconciled, that is the reality of manhood." [in chapter titled Ecco Homo - The Successful Man]

Peter Rollins puts it like this:

"This means that the crucifixion bears witness to a form of life that is free from our obsessive drive for the idol, a form of life in which our zombie nature is cured. For to lose the idol means to lose that drive which prevents us from fully embracing our life and taking pleasure in it. It means giving up our desire for ultimate satisfaction and then, in that act, discovering a deeper, more beautiful satisfaction, one that is not constantly deferred but that can be grasped here and now. Not one that promises to make us whole and remove our suffering, but one that promises joy in the midst of our brokenness and depth in the very embrace of our pain." [End of Chapter 4]

Obviously they are writing in very different styles and using very different perspectives, but essentially they are bringing the same message.

This is one of those books that should be read slowly, and every image savoured. Like Bonhoeffer's Ethics and his Christology, it should be re-read every year because new meaning and application can be found again and again.

Anyone looking for answers or new methods of creating "meaningful worship experiences" will be disappointed by this book. It doesn't give answers, but raises questions that we need to explore in our own lives and communities. And ultimately it's questions that keep us close to God, whilst answers drive us away from Him.

What Could Be More Biblical, More Redeeming, than the Non-Stop, Screwed-Up World of Glee?!

 

The Senseless, Beautiful, Topsy-Turvy World of Glee

 

Glee has hit the world running exposing all the best and worst of the human spirit. It focuses on the disabilities and insecurities of our impersonal societies and heartless spirits. From its nastiness to its beauty – from humanity's warts, pimples, byoptic near-sightedness, weirdness, and ugliness, to its wonder, amazement, incredibility, incredulity, and soaring hopes and dreams. Glee is the Disney version of the Bible’s exposure of our hearts, minds, souls and spirits. It shows to mankind the worst and the best within us. From our disabilities and disbelief, to our insecurities and inner turmoils. From our gross frailties and failures, to our impossibly unchained ambitions and soulful concessions.

 

God’s Word exposes us. And so did Glee as we sat glued to the TV waiting breathlessly for the next big blowup, the next devastating heart break, the next miraculous human touch that would make sense of the senseless world thriving around us. It’s topical pop music lifts our spirits giving hope, healing, and a steely-eyed reality of strength to the deep complexity and oft-times senseless destruction that overwhelms us. A destruction that never quite ends in our teen years but seems to hang-on through our later mature years of denial. Our bigotry. Our unresolved hurts and harm. Our need for compassion, mercy, understanding. For real friendships that stay with us through all that we are and hope to be.

 

 

 

Postmodernity and Glee

 

At Glee’s essence is the struggle of the human spirit to know and express love beyond its bounded freedoms and chained disappointments. To find a group of friends - and especially that one close soulmate - who sees and accepts us at our most unvarnished exposure. Who brings out the best in us when we fail to be at our best. Who might endure our meltdowns and unkindness to help us become less toxic to those family and friends around us bewildered by our too-hasty actions, misspoken words, and intolerable cruelty. To reach a place that we might see sin’s ugliness in our lives and accept God’s world of love, hope, healing in bonds of unbroken fellowship. To find-and-recreate communities of redemption, hope, mercy and forgiveness. Here is the teenage world of postmodernity at its deconstructive best and reconstructive heights binding human souls into depths of fidelity unthought and undreamed.

 

To modernity’s excesses and brutalities, its impersonal arguments for-or-against God-and-country, comes postmodernity’s reach of the human touch admitting froth and failure, helplessness and lost, disappointments and reality. The youth-of-today give to the-world-of-tomorrow a pageantry of hope wrapped within the tenuous tissues of God’s redeeming love that would rescue the worst of us from the ugliness waiting within the cesspool of our loneliness. Tissues that tear too easily and yet cling tenaciously until our human souls might find the exit doors to its dilemmas and confusions, anger and hate, denials and destructions. God’s love is that fibrous tissue – so seemingly frail and yet spidery strong. It is everywhere around us to the one brave enough refusing to give-up or give-in.  His Spirit mighty enough to grant a strength we fail to have against such impossible odds of self and world. His Cross wide enough to take a world of suffering and give to it a resurrected hope little understood until personally found, claimed, and received. This is the world of Glee. The world of the Bible. Our world of God’s love and reach and depth. Cling to it and “Don’t Stop Believing” in the renewing worlds of tomorrow.

 

R.E. Slater

May 10, 2013

 

 

Glee - Don't Stop Believing

 

 

 

 

Short clip

Glee 3D Movie - Don't Stop Believing Performance

 

http://www.foxtv.de/serien/glee/start.html





Addendum

Below is a video produced by resident philosopher/theology Peter Rollins of Belfast, Ireland. His observations fall in-line with the biblical idea of redemptive introspection that was written of above. And is a consistent message of God's directive love and care through our own moments of implosion and failure, griefs and torments, where the bond of forgiveness and understanding through Jesus can bring restoration and healing by the hands and hearts of those God brings into our circumcised lives. - R.E.Slater

 

 

 

For Further Reference - Peter Rollins, "The Idolatry of God"

 

 

 

 

Here's One Denomination Willing to Adapt Their Theology Against Past Church Ideology

 

 

My friend Tom Oord has been a great-and-good influence in demonstrating to those within his denominational reach of how to adapt one's theology to the present understanding of scientific knowledge. Consequently, he and other theologians within (and outside) of his denomination (sic, Biologos for one) have been willing to accept the fact that their theology is out-of-step with today's academia and are showing their flexibility in remitting incorrect church doctrines in the face of fact-and-not-fancy.

 

That Evolutionary Creationism is beginning to become a broad-based understanding to the early creation stories of the Bible has been reflected herein within the journals of Relevancy22 as evidence to this movement's intent. That this is beginning to become a legitimately accepted viewpoint within today's postmodern church has also been demonstrated in the writings of those willing to speak out against the more popular rhetoric of refuting Christian colleges, churches, mainstream publications, and media outlets.

 

Little-by-little the evolutionary doctrine of creation is becoming understood as the only valid scientific process by which our Creator God has chosen to create His creation against the centuries-old proclaimed teachings of the non-postmodernday church (sic., in pre-postmodernistic language these movements go under the several names of Young Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, or Intelligent Design). Because this theological view confronts those countering church dogmas on so many doctrinal planes it has behooved theists both left-and-right of the issue to reflect on the many differing doctrinal subjects which have been abrogated and must be updated.

 

To those far-sighted theologians willing to brave the task at hand, and accepting the challenge that scientific discovery has brought to the church's understanding of the Bible, we are discovering a far deeper (and far richer!) grasp of our Creator-Redeemer God than initially comprehended (or originally feared lost) through such study. Hence, the Bible itself - along with its many integrating doctrines - are being challenged as to their truer course of revelation to which the church had formerly understood (and applied) those doctrines (and dogmas) under previous administrations and enlightenment eras.

 

Slowly, newer, more hermeneutically palatable explanations and study of the Scriptures are arising to replace poorly understood - and misapplied fears - to the truths of "scriptural evolution" as they affect our understanding of God, His Being, His elected processes of creation, His considerable judgments and wisdom, His oft-times incomprehensible revelation and communication to man, His reach, intent, majesty, and glory. Nay, into the very spirit of redemption itself as God renews, reclaims, recreates, revives, creation towards His sovereign goals and plans.

 

Consequently, the church has everything to gain and nothing to lose as has been demonstrated within the articles contained here in Relevancy22 in its many arguments for Evolutionary Creationism, and its varied exploration into the depths of the divine mind and will. As such, to the inquiring heart-and-mind willing to suspend past ideological arguments for a deeper, richer, insight into God Himself, there will be paradoxically discovered profound satisfaction that will include an expansive array of the world's resources and native storybook everywhere written about us into the cosmologic and biotic landscapes surrounding our hearts and minds, souls and spirits. "Hail," brave adventurer, "to the beauties of our Creator God, His wondrous world, and ancient mysteries of the divine!"

 

R.E. Slater

May 10, 2013

 

 

 

 

Nazarenes Exploring Evolution

http://exploringevolution.com/project.html

 

The Project

 

Recent polling shows that the majority of scientists believe in evolution. More than 9 of 10 professional scientists believe the evidence for evolution is compelling.¹ While the theory of evolution comes in a variety of forms, virtually all forms say that gradual changes occurred to produce new species over long periods of time.

 

Not only do the majority of scientists affirm evolution, the general features of evolutionary theory – including an old earth and natural selection – are widely accepted in culture today. Most public television and scientifically-oriented programs simply assume the general truth of evolutionary theory.

 

Recent polling also shows, however, that more than half of American Evangelicals believe humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.² Those who hold this view typically believe the world is relatively young. And they interpret Genesis (and other books of the Bible) in a particular way to support their young earth view.

 

This difference between 1) the majority of Evangelicals and 2) the majority of scientists seems true of the Church of the Nazarene. Many denominational scholars in various disciplines – scientific, biblical, and theological – believe the general theory of evolution is compatible with Wesleyan-holiness theology. Yet, many non-specialists in the Church of the Nazarene reject evolution. In fact, a 2007 Pew poll said only 21% of Nazarenes mostly agree or completely agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life on earth.³ Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, sums it up: "the bulk of our Christian scholars/scientists are in a camp different from the bulk of our laity [on issues of evolution]."⁴

 

The Nazarenes Exploring Evolution project works to foster greater understanding among members of the Church of the Nazarene about the potential fruitful relation between Wesleyan-holiness theology and evolution. It does so by exploring scripture, science, theology, and other realms of knowledge. It seeks not to ridicule those who hold non-evolutionary views of creation, such as Young Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, or Intelligent Design. Instead, it offers Theistic Evolution (or similar views) to members of the denomination as a viable alternative among accounts of how God creates the universe.

 

Nazarene Scientists on God Creating through Evolution

 

In a 2009 Pew research study, 97% of scientists said humans and other living things have evolved over time by natural processes, guided by God, or evolved in some other way.⁵ To date, no one has taken a poll of scientists in Church of the Nazarene colleges and universities to determine how they think about evolution. But some scientists in the denomination have published their views on the subject.

 

Fred Cawthorne, of Trevecca Nazarene University, says that "evolution by no means contradicts the fact that God is the Maker of heaven and earth and that he has been actively guiding and sustaining the universe for all time. If we say God cannot create through a gradual, progressive process such as evolution, then we limit God's transcendence and immanence."⁶

 

Karl Giberson, long-time professor at Eastern Nazarene College, affirms evolution: "I think evolution is true. The process, as I reflect on it, is an expression of God's creativity, although in a way that is not captured by the scientific view of the world... God's creative activity must not be confined to a six-day period - 'in the beginning' - or the occasional intervention along the evolutionary path. God's role in creation must be more universal – so universal it cannot be circumscribed by the contours of individual phenomena or events."⁷

 

Darrel Falk, of Point Loma Nazarene University, says that "for the past century and a half, thousands of scientists from disciplines as diverse as physics, geology, astronomy, and biology have amassed a tremendous mass of data, and the answer is absolutely clear and equally certain. The earth is not young, and the life forms did not appear in six twenty-four-hour days. God created gradually."⁸

 

Rick Colling, a long time scientist at Olivet Nazarene University, says that "some people, on religious grounds, choose to aggressively ignore or deny many scientific concepts and principles, especially in the domain of evolution... The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to squeeze God into small rigid boxes... Unfortunately, this approach to religious faith is fraught with liability because it prevents God from truly being God – a creator capable of using any means He chooses for His creation."⁹

 

Without polling, it is difficult to know if these views represent the majority of Nazarene scientists. But it is true that the voices quoted above are not alone among Nazarene scientists who believe the evidence for evolution is strong and evolution does not necessarily conflict with the belief God is Creator.

 

Nazarene Biblical and Theological Scholars on God Creating through Evolution

 

There is little doubt some people reject evolution based on their interpretation of the Bible. The Bible says little to nothing about evolution. And the first chapters of Genesis, when read literally, do not easily fit the theory of evolution.

 

Many biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers in the Church of the Nazarene, however, believe the Bible should not be interpreted as a straightforward science or history book. For instance, many believe Genesis 1 reads like a hymn of praise. Others believe it draws from Jewish Temple literature, which is religious and not scientific. Most Nazarene Bible, theology, and philosophy scholars believe the main point of Genesis and other creation texts is theological: God is Creator. Genesis and other books of the Bible need not mention the specific ways God creates for this main point to be true.

 

Robert Branson, a long-time professor at Olivet Nazarene University, says that "it is one thing to say we believe that God is the Creator. It is quite another to say that in Scripture God described with scientific accuracy "when" and "how" he created."¹⁰

 

Dennis Bratcher, a long time Bible scholar in the Church of the Nazarene, says that "sometimes it is hard for us to realize that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is an Oriental book... The thought world of Oriental culture is radically different from the thought world of Western culture, particularly when we recall that there is a period of three thousand years between us and that culture... That's why they are not writing about evolution in Genesis 1; that's 3,000 years in their future."¹¹

 

Alex Varughese, of Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and his Nazarene co-writers of Discovering the Bible say that a "careful reading of Genesis 1:1-2:4a shows that the focus of the text is on the Creator and what He made. Our usual questions of why, how, and when are not answered in this account."¹²

 

Michael Lodahl, of Point Loma Nazarene University, says that "a Wesleyan reading of Genesis – and of the world – need not and should not shy away from the dominant ideas of the contemporary natural sciences. It is obvious that if the evolutionary story of the universe (including our own planet and all of its living inhabitants) is generally accurate, then the opening chapters of Genesis cannot be assumed to be giving a straightforwardly literal account of the creation of the world."¹³

 

Thomas Jay Oord, of Northwest Nazarene University, sums it up: "The Bible tells us how to live abundant life. It does not tell us scientific details about how life became abundant. The Bible also tells us how to go to heaven. It does not provide the science to tell us how the heavens go."¹⁴

 

Without polling biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers in the denomination, it is difficult to know if the quotations above represent the majority. But the available literature suggests that these views do represent most scholars in these disciplines. Most scholars in Bible, theology, and philosophy seem at least open to the possibility that Wesleyan-holiness theology is compatible with evolution. And many are convinced the two are compatible.

 

Does It Matter?

 

Even those mildly interested in questions of theology and evolution know the science-and-religion discussion has a history of conflict. Any progress toward insight or reconciliation comes slowly, if at all. Veterans of the discussion are prone to weariness, and denominational leaders might wonder if the "fight" is worth the trouble. Does addressing the issues of evolution really matter?

 

Christians have long believed that truth matters. Although Christians may not ever know all truth because we "see through a dark glass" (1 Cor. 13), we are called to search for truth in our attempts to love God with our minds. Because the natural and social sciences are primary avenues for discovering truth about existence, these sciences can play a central role in helping Christians discern how to love God and others as oneself.

 

Al Truesdale, long-time professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, summarizes the importance of seeking truth in the Church of the Nazarene: "Denominations that stand in the Wesleyan tradition [such as the Church of the Nazarene] are at their best when they advocate a vital faith that seeks understanding through a bold examination of the results of all human exploration, whether in technology, in the sciences, or through historical research."¹⁵

 

One reason this discussion matters, therefore, is that the search for more adequate understandings of God and the world God creates relies upon a variety of sources, not the least of which are the sciences. If evolution is widely accepted among those who have studied the natural world most intently – scientists – it matters how Christians engage the science of evolution in light of Christian Faith.

 

This brings us to a second reason why the discussion of evolution and theology matters. It matters because many (but not all) scientists in the Church of the Nazarene affirm the general theory of evolution. These scientists often feel ostracized, get labeled as ungodly, are marginalized, or considered deceived.

 

The testimony of Nazarene biologist, Darrel Falk, is similar to the testimonies of many Nazarene scientists: "One of the biggest deterrents (to entering a Nazarene community) was my impression that I could never become part of an evangelical fellowship because of my belief in gradual creation.... Unless the church begins to downplay the significance of believing in some variety of sudden creation, there will continue to be thousands of individuals ... who will be denied true fellowship in God's kingdom."¹⁶

 

Christian Witness Today

 

A third important reason why the evolution and Christian theology discussion matters is the nature of Christian witness. And the Christian witness pertaining to evolution is especially true for how young people think of God and Christian faith.

 

In a recent Pew study, more 18- to 29-year olds reported having a positive view of science than those in any other age category. More specifically, sixty-one percent of young people believe life evolved over time due to either natural process or divine guidance. Seventy percent of all college graduates – no matter their age – affirm some form of evolution. In sum, young people and those with degrees in higher education are more likely to trust scientists who argue for the validity of evolution.

 

Statistics also show, unfortunately, that young people leave the church and/or become atheists because they perceive the church to be opposed to science in general and evolution in specific. In his book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith, David Kinnaman uses the data from Barna Group research to show why 18- to 29-year olds are leaving the Church. Nearly 3 in 10 say the church is out of step with science, and one quarter say Christianity is anti-science. About one quarter of young people are turned off by the creation vs. evolution debate, and about one-fifth say Christianity is anti-intellectual.¹⁷

 

Kinnaman quotes one young person and why he left faith over the church's failure to accept science: "To be honest, I think that learning about science was the straw that broke the camel's back," says the young person. "I knew from church that I couldn't believe in both science and God, so that was it. I didn't believe in God anymore."¹⁸

 

Stories from Nazarene parents, youth pastors, and university professors indicate that some young people are leaving the Church of the Nazarene for the reasons Kinnaman reports. These young people think they cannot affirm the idea that God creates through evolution and still feel welcome in the denomination.

 

Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, asks an important question of himself that also applies to the Church of the Nazarene, "Will I engage a young generation in an open-minded biblical conversation that welcomes scientific discovery, reasoned philosophy, and careful logic? Or will I ignore all of these in favor of an interpretation of creation that is barely one hundred years old and rooted in the fear of science?"¹⁹

 

In a loving, constructive, and humble endeavor, the Nazarenes Exploring Evolution project seeks to help the Church of the Nazarene consider how evolution can complement rather than contradict Wesleyan-holiness theology.

 

 

¹ Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx Accessed 1/18/13. See also, http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/ Accessed 1/22/13

 

² Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx. Website accessed 1/18/13

³ Association of Religion Data Archives. http://thearda.com/Denoms/families/profilecompare.asp?d=1001&d=601&d. Accessed 1/23/13. Rich Housel, who alerted me to this website, notes that the sample of Nazarenes polled was very low: 103.

 

⁴ Dan Boone, A Charitable Discourse: Talking about the Things that Divide Us (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2010), 106.

 

⁵ Research Center for the People & the Press. http://www.pewforum.org/science-and-bioethics/public-opinion-on-religion-and-science-in-the-united-states.aspx Accessed 1/18/13. See also, http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/ Accessed 1/22/13

 

⁶ Fred Cawthorne, "The Harmony of Science and the Christian Faith," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 105.

 

⁷ Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 216.

 

⁸ Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2004), 214.

 

⁹ Richard G. Colling, Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator (Bourbonnais, Ill.: Browning, 2004), 107.

 

¹⁰ Robert Branson, "The Bible, Creation, and Science," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 105.

 

¹¹ Dennis Bratcher, http://www.crivoice.org/biblestudy/bbgen1.html Accessed 1/18/13

 

¹² Alex Varughese, ed. Discovering the Bible: Story and Faith of the Biblical Communities (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 2006), 65.

 

¹³ Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2003), 63.

 

¹⁴ Thomas Jay Oord and Robert Luhn, The Best News You Will Ever Hear (Boise, Id.: Russell Media, 2011), 25. See also Oord, Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2009) and Oord, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010), ch. 4.

 

¹⁵ Al Truesdale, "Introduction," in Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale, ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 10.

 

¹⁶ Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 230. For similar testimonies, see Richard G. Colling, Random Designer, and Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin.

 

¹⁷ David Kinnaman, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2011), 136.

 

¹⁸ Ibid., 131.

 

¹⁹ Dan Boone, A Charitable Discourse, 102.