SOFLES — LIMITLESS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv-Do30-P8A
Published on Nov 22, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
What We Believe about "Last Things"
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| White Poppy |
I might refer the reader to Bruce Epperly's earlier articles (here and here) on "Kingdom Now Christianity" as the process-based version of seeing this holy life given to us by our gracious God as the one life that counts for the time that we now have. It is a vision of a life that becomes transformed by the grace of God through His atoning work on the cross of Christ Jesus our Lord. And in the transformation of the world in which we inhabit through the resurrection power of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is also the vision of an evangelic theology in its classical expression (as succinctly expressed by Michael Bird) but severely limited by a Christianity that would too easily condemn this world and give up on it - to await its death and destruction by God's future judgment (hence, Bird's emphasis on hell and Sheol). Which is in no sense the proper reading of the Apostle Paul as NT Wright has demonstrated time-and-again. What Paul argues for, and has ably demonstrated in Jesus' life, was the necessity of the believer to live transformed lives by the power and grace of our Redeemer/Creator God. To understand that in order for the Kingdom of God to come, it must come through our lips, hands, feet, minds, and hearts. To not abandon all so easily to hell but to uplift all to God's redeeming love and grace.
The essence of the Kingdom of God is that it is here, now. A Kingdom that lives in tension with this sinful world in which we live; but a good world when reconciled to its God, and committed to spiritual transformation in the grace and fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. A Kingdom that changes and grows as we change and grow as individuals and as a society. Which magisterial power is made all the more visible through our own transformed lives seeking benevolence and goodwill with all men everywhere, and with God's good earth that we live upon. Thus it can be said that the Kingdom of God is present now, and will grow fully to fruition based upon our commitment to live it, envision it, seek it, and share it.
And lastly, as a relational theologian - part process, part evangelic (and mostly post-evangelic) - I see God's heavenly Kingdom in both its tenses, both here - now, and here - later, to come. But don't let the word "heavenly" Kingdom mislead you... it is heavenly in that it is the epitome of what God wants, obedience to His will. But it is now become an "earthly Kingdom" inaugurated by the Incarnation, death, and resurrection, of Jesus Christ; who has established a New Covenant with God, and with mankind/creation, by His own transforming atonement. Hence, this Kingdom doth now lie in tension between the "here, and not yet. Between "what is, and could be. What is, and what will be." Sanctified, yea, covenanted, by God's great goodness and love in Christ Jesus, His Son. Who is God of very God. King of Kings. And Lord of Lords.
Thus, it is my expectation to see Jesus live-and-rule within the diadems of earth's history - not only as my Incarnate/crucified Lord, but as my risen King seated upon the earthly thrones over all mankind. And with this vision I likewise realize the deep solemnity portrayed in the acts-and-speech of God's holy bride, His church - its egresses and failures, as well as its heights and vision - when beheld fully within our Lord's grace works. Which fails in hope and will, pretending all is lost, upon a world commended by its Creator Redeemer to salvation. Renewal. Rebirth. Reclamation. Revival. Content to live upon the tatters of God's holy being, clothed in the rags of its own torn communities, rather than living powerfully transformed, repentant lives, redeeming the time still at hand. Whose charter of Kingdom fellowship must become more than it now displays to this world, should we permit the Holy Spirit of God to weave around us the holy threads of God's majestic love, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, hope, goodwill, and peace. "Even so dear Lord, Come. Let Thy Holy Will be done. On this earth, as it is in Heaven."
R.E. Slater
November 27, 2013
What We Believe about “Last Things”
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What We Believe about “Last Things”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/27/what-we-believe-about-last-things/
by Scot McKnight
by Scot McKnight
Nov 27, 2013
Comments
Christians have distinct views of the “last things” — in fact, their view of the “last” things (or eschatology) is that the last things have already begun. This is called “inaugurated” eschatology. But there are bundle of topics in what Christians believe about eschatology and evangelicals have (they really do) even more to believe (than many Christians). Here are the topics, all discussed briefly by Michael Bird in his Evangelical Theology:
1. Gospel and kingdom: here he affirms George Ladd’s definition of kingdom. Though Bird will finesse church and kingdom when he gets to church, I think kingdom is the place to raise that discussion because it forces ecclesiology in its proper place. And because he ties the two together, and does not separate them as many do in the Reformed and Lutheran and dispensational frameworks, this is the place to raise it first. This one deserves more than I can put here but Israel and kingdom and church come into play, too. The big picture is that he sees kingdom as the overlap of the ages …
… even more, for him kingdom is mostly reduced to the dynamic of the redemptive rule of God in this world, and he sees breaking-in moments of the kingdom if redemptive actions. This leads toward a more Kuyperian (not so Richard Niebuhrian) theory for the relationship of church and state. It also leads him to believe he has a gospelized perception of kingdom and eschatology.
2. The return of Christ and the rapture, and here Bird’s view is “historic premillennialism” (vs. dispensationalism), so once again he is with Ladd. Here Bird has a slight preterist view in what Jesus was talking — 70AD stuff in Mark 13. I’d like to see him address 1 Thess 4–5 more on this topic. He’s post-trib and not pre-trib.
3. Final judgment: he affirms NT Wright’s view of heaven as new heavens and new earth, a more or less city with Eden-like features (the end is the beginning, the beginning is the end), but he also affirms a traditional view of hell.
4. The intermediate state: he’s got a chart that maps it all out (323). Prior to Christ’s ascension, all who died entered the realm of the dead (sheol) that had two parts: one for wicked, one for righteous. At the ascension, Christ took with him the righteous of Sheol while the wicked remained; at death believers go to be with Jesus in heaven ahead of the resurrection. Sheol will be emptied into hell.
5. The Final state: Here, the old heavens and earth pass away, and the new heaven and earth begins under the reign of the resurrected Jesus as Lord and King.
Christians have distinct views of the “last things” — in fact, their view of the “last” things (or eschatology) is that the last things have already begun. This is called “inaugurated” eschatology. But there are bundle of topics in what Christians believe about eschatology and evangelicals have (they really do) even more to believe (than many Christians). Here are the topics, all discussed briefly by Michael Bird in his Evangelical Theology:1. Gospel and kingdom: here he affirms George Ladd’s definition of kingdom. Though Bird will finesse church and kingdom when he gets to church, I think kingdom is the place to raise that discussion because it forces ecclesiology in its proper place. And because he ties the two together, and does not separate them as many do in the Reformed and Lutheran and dispensational frameworks, this is the place to raise it first. This one deserves more than I can put here but Israel and kingdom and church come into play, too. The big picture is that he sees kingdom as the overlap of the ages …
… even more, for him kingdom is mostly reduced to the dynamic of the redemptive rule of God in this world, and he sees breaking-in moments of the kingdom if redemptive actions. This leads toward a more Kuyperian (not so Richard Niebuhrian) theory for the relationship of church and state. It also leads him to believe he has a gospelized perception of kingdom and eschatology.
2. The return of Christ and the rapture, and here Bird’s view is “historic premillennialism” (vs. dispensationalism), so once again he is with Ladd. Here Bird has a slight preterist view in what Jesus was talking — 70AD stuff in Mark 13. I’d like to see him address 1 Thess 4–5 more on this topic. He’s post-trib and not pre-trib.
3. Final judgment: he affirms NT Wright’s view of heaven as new heavens and new earth, a more or less city with Eden-like features (the end is the beginning, the beginning is the end), but he also affirms a traditional view of hell.
4. The intermediate state: he’s got a chart that maps it all out (323). Prior to Christ’s ascension, all who died entered the realm of the dead (sheol) that had two parts: one for wicked, one for righteous. At the ascension, Christ took with him the righteous of Sheol while the wicked remained; at death believers go to be with Jesus in heaven ahead of the resurrection. Sheol will be emptied into hell.
5. The Final state: Here, the old heavens and earth pass away, and the new heaven and earth begins under the reign of the resurrected Jesus as Lord and King.
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| Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Ontonagon, Michigan |
Bruce Epperly, Process Theology & N.T. Wright's "Faithful God of Paul"
Signs of the New Creation: Responding to N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/11/signs-of-the-new-creation-responding-to-n-t-wrights-paul-and-the-faithfulness-of-god/
by Bruce Epperly
November 1, 2013
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| New Testament Scholar, N.T. Wright |
N. T. Wright’s magisterial text Paul and the Faithfulness of God is destined to become a classic in Pauline theological studies. As a pastor and theologian, like Wright, I join the study and the pulpit and the library and hospital room. My preaching and pastoral care are grounded in theological reflection and my theology finds its inspiration in pastoral care, spiritual direction, and the weekly responsibilities of preaching God’s good news and leading a congregation on Cape Cod. I have always appreciated Paul’s approach to ministry – he proclaimed the universally applicable wisdom of God embodied in Jesus Christ with full awareness of the intimate needs of the communities with which he corresponded. The universal truths of faith become transformational only when they connect with the real challenges of congregations, communities, and persons.
Paul is a working pastor-theologian, and I can identify with that joyful-challenging vocation. His theology is holistic, practical, and connected with what’s going on in the faith of emerging Christian communities. He doesn’t speak to Christians in general; he speaks to the faithful church in Philippi, the ethnically troubled churches in Galatia, and the divided congregation in Corinth. Still, precisely because his theology is embodied and emerges from the concrete world of budgets and communication gaffes, it echoes through the ages, bringing challenge and good news to twenty-first century believers and seekers.
N. T. Wright sees the heart of Paul’s theology as involving his experience and expression of God’s new creation, brought about by God’s action in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Although Christ as Messiah is profoundly Jewish – you cannot find any foundation for anti-Judaism in the authentic Pauline literature – he sees Jesus Christ as embodying and inviting us to live in God’s new age of Shalom. Accordingly, Pauline theology is profoundly concrete. He is a preacher-theologian: his thinking is ultimately practical. Paul believes that the theological is transformational. The message of the Gospel and God’s new creation, the heart of Paul’s message, is transformational and invites us to become transformed persons, living in transformed communities, and working toward a transformed world order. Many scholars of John’s Gospel note a similar holistic approach to John’s theology: John’s proclamation of eternal life is not just some future hope, the “pie in the sky when we die,” but a present experience that emerges the moment we enter into relationship with Jesus Christ, the word and wisdom of God.
Theology is homiletical and can be healing, for Paul. The theologian-preacher does not abandon history, but imagines, as Wright asserts, a better history and then works to bring it forth. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings about new creation in the here-and-now, and the spirit of Jewish monotheism, this new creation is cosmological, ethical, and soteriological – we are new people, experiencing a transformed universe, touched by the healing Christ, and living by the values of God’s realm “on earth as it is in heaven.” Our vision of God’s faithfulness throughout history and in all creation nurtures the confidence that transforms behavior and beliefs.
As the body of Christ, the church is always more than we can imagine. Paul’s letters to emerging congregations are invitations to live in God’s realm of Shalom right now. As a holistic theologian, Paul sees the body, mind, spirit relationship as both a metaphor and a reality for community life. Disease among the members – like cells run amuck – can destroy the community, and render it insentient to God’s vision. Every part matters, every member is inspired (in-breathed) and touched by the mind-spirit of Christ, which is not some supernatural add-on, but the animating and guiding principle of part and whole. Dynamic in nature, the lively, inspired body of Christ can become God’s embodied vision of Shalom – of new creation – in this very moment of time. Accordingly, when Paul encounters the tragic brokenness of Christ’s body, he experiences what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as the “divine pathos,” the intimate joy and suffering God experiences in relationship to our world. What happens in Corinth, including the details of agape meals and worship services, matters to God because God is in the details: God is touched by church divisions, arguments among members, economic disparity, and ethnic prejudice.
God is truly in Christ reconciling the world, and we are intended to be companions in God’s ministry of reconciliation. We are intended to be a microcosm, a foretaste, of the world to come, participating in God’s new creation and becoming God’s temple making sacred the world. As pastor-theologians, Paul and I share the hope for new creation in the congregations we serve; we also experience the dissonance between our concrete embodiment of God’s new creation and God’s vision of what we as pastors and our congregations can be in God’s ever-present, ever-future new creation. We expect far too little from God, and far too little from ourselves. We are the body of Christ and individually reflections of divine wisdom, yet we settle for so much less – petty prejudices, alienation over budget items, neglect of vulnerable members, and conforming to a social order that is ruled by consumerism, narcissism, and polarization. We are too often, Paul says in Romans, conformed to this world, when God calls us to transformation – first, of ourselves, but also of transformed communities without which personal transformation is almost impossible.
Still in our imperfection and waywardness, we can experience God’s transformation. We feel, as Paul did, “wretched” and pray that something will deliver us from the conflicts and weakness that beset us. We can’t do it on our own. Faithful communities, inspired and animated by a faithful God, are essential. But, more than that, it involves trusting a faithful God of new creation, whose love still encompasses Judaism, but now extends in space and time reconciling all history, and making this moment a holy moment. Only the faithful God can give us the energy of transformation that enables us to make a commitment to reconciling people, living God’s new creation. The new creation is here – or nowhere – transforming the past and luring us to live in God’s future now!
Theology is pastoral, homiletical, spiritual, and theological. God is found in worship, but also in potluck suppers, daily decision-making, and brick and mortar. It is all the prayer of God’s spirit groaning in creation and in us in “sighs too deep for words.
It is only right that the final page of Wright’s grand opus affirms, “Prayer and theology met in his personal history, as in the once-for-all history of the crucified and risen Messiah. Paul’s ‘aims’, his apostolic vocation, modeled the faithfulness of God. Concentrated and gathered. Prayer became theology, theology prayer. Something understood.”
Continue to Index -
Bruce Epperly - The Process Theologian's "Bonhoeffer"
Bonhoeffer’s Vision and Process Theology
A Response to The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/11/bonhoeffers-vision-and-process-theology/
by Bruce Epperly
November 18, 2013
A Response to The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge
Few theologians have responded as creatively and forthrightly to the postmodern challenge as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer recognized the pluralistic, multi-centered, experience-oriented world of our current religious landscape. He imagined an emerging Christianity, no longer at the center of culture, but at the margins, and making these same margins the ground of a frontier faith. Postmodernism presented a threat to the old-time religion and Christian supremacy, but it also presented an opportunity to a fluid, agile, and worldly faith.
In the midst of the maelstrom of war, Bonhoeffer saw the eclipse of Christendom and imagined a dynamic, counter-cultural Christian faith of the future. The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge not only captures the breadth and evolution of Bonhoeffer’s theology, but gives special care to his final expansive visions of a Christianity big enough to embrace a radically-changing world. From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer saw more than most free-ranging people. He saw, in the words of Bishop John Shelby Spong, that Christianity must change or die. He did not see the future of Jesus’ mission in megachurches, dreams of Christian dominion, or Christian supremacy, but in living out the mission of the suffering servant Jesus of Nazareth and the God who celebrates and suffers with us.
Bonhoeffer never had the opportunity to fully articulate his vision of God, but his emerging vision touches the edges of process theology. His vision of God shapes the contours of an interactive, relational, and affirmative Christianity, comfortable with diversity and open to the insights of secularity. According to Bonhoeffer, God “needs” us to achieve the best in our ambiguous world. God is not a “timeless fate” but “waits for and responds to prayer and sincere actions” (769-770). This vision touches process theology’s insight that God evolves with the world: neither God nor the world are complete, but are open-ended. In the spirit of Jewish mysticism, God needs us to be God’s companions in tikkun ‘olam, “mending the world.” The healing of the world requires our participation; there is no preordained end of history, or end-time goal, or apocalypse, but rather an ongoing process which requires our positive action for God’s vision to be embodied.
God’s vision for us is not timeless but God acts in real time and not in “advance” (769), similar to process thought’s image of God’s vision of possibilities appropriate to each moment. We are given strength, insight, and the resources to achieve God’s aim that all things work out for good. This happens right where we are with all its limitations and opportunities.
The parent of process theology, Alfred North Whitehead describes God as “the fellow sufferer who understands.” Echoing this, Bonhoeffer asserts that humans are called to share in God’s sufferings” (804). Note well, “God’s sufferings.” Only a suffering God can save, a God with skin, who shares our condition and seeks to bring beauty from ugliness and justice from injustice. Jewish spiritual teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of the “divine pathos” as being the heart of prophetic religion: God experiences the details of our lives and is truly hurt by injustice; God suffers in the anguish of the vulnerable and dispossessed. God is not apathetic but passionate in God’s care for creation: God is not an Aristotelian “unmoved mover,” but as process philosopher Charles Hartshore claims, the “most moved mover.”
Process theologian, Bernard Loomer described two kinds of power – unilateral and relational. (1) Unilateral power, characteristic of the Christendom that had died in the modern world, described God as determining and knowing everything in advance: the all-powerful God established the powers of the universe, and determined success and failure and life and death. Images of God’s omnipotence inspired and undergirded the unilateral and often oppressive actions of religious institutions and nation states. After all, if we are the chosen servants of an all-determining God, we alone are equipped to shape history, especially as it relates to government, church, and non-Christians and foreigners.
In contrast, (2) a relational God works with the world, creating along with the evolving history of humanity and the non-human world, being subject to our actions as well as shaping our actions. When Bonhoeffer invokes the “powerlessness” of God, he is also speaking of God with us, not as omnipotent, but as the One who suffers with us, who experiences our pain, but also invites us to invest ourselves in the worldliness of a secular world.
Writing in the shadow of the culture Christianity of World War II Germany, Bonhoeffer asserts that you will not find God’s vision in those who identify God and country, and advocate national supremacy. Nor, according to Bonhoeffer’s theological vision, will we find God’s vision in the machinations of congressional leaders who demean the poor and underinsured by shutting down government. Who traumatize the children of undocumented immigrants by advocating the deportation of their parents. Or, who see Christ as dominating the political sphere, guiding them to shut down government or default on loans to avoid expanding health care to the vulnerable. While such persons may call themselves Christians, they will truly experience God’s costly grace only when they let go of the power to exclude and welcome the power to embrace the least, the last, and the lost.
Liberals also may live by what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace, especially as they privilege the middle class and forget the traumas of the dispossessed in order to seek a better day for all. The vulnerable are never expendable, even for a good political cause or for a greater good. God feels the pain caused by conservatives for whom the greatest good is lower taxes, smaller government, and the right to bear arms; and liberals whose liberalism obscures the needs of the least of these to obscure political goals. The truly great society must include everyone and start with the least of these, whose faces reveal the suffering face of Christ.
Much more could be said and of course Green and DeJonge’s Bonhoeffer Reader gives a complete picture of Bonhoeffer’s evolving theology. Nevertheless, the insights of the later Bonhoeffer parallel those of process theology in their respective affirmations of:
1) a God who evolves along with the world,
2) a God whose power is limited by the world,
3) a God who is touched by our pain,
4) a God who needs our best efforts to secure God’s vision on earth, and
5) a humanity whose vocation is to become God’s companions in transforming the world so that God’s vision on earth as well as heaven be realized.
N.T. Wright, "The Big Picture" (select videos)
What is the Gospel? NT Wright
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICHovRHJAYY
N.T. Wright, The Big Picture
112013 - NT Wright from Matthew Hickman on Vimeo.
On Nov 20, 2013, NT Wright, the author of numerous books, including Surprised by Hope, Simply
Christian, and How God Became King, spoke at Mars Hill on the Big Story of the Bible. Missed his
lecture? Watch it online now.
NT Wright on Paul, Hell, Satan, Creation, Adam, Eve & more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueegnOTz7qY
NT Wright and Larry Crabb Conversation - Christianity and Culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TETGLqxdtJY
Continue to Index -
Index - Christian Poetry
Index to Christian Poetry
Poems by R.E. Slater
OneRepublic - Come Home (prodigal son)
Kindred Fellowships
Rebirth (poem)
The Glory of the Lord (psalm)
Abiding Presence (poem)
Star Light, Star Bright (poem)
Expressing Love (poem)
A Prayer (poem)
The Power of Our Words (poem)
Jars of Clay (poem)
Poetry Website Link
The Poetry of R.E. Slater
Advent Poems
24 Advent Poems for Christmas
R.E. Slater - Butterfly Wings of Promise
Easter Poems
R.E. Slater - Butterfly Wings of Promise
Geroge Herbert, "Easter Wings" (poem)
Easter Poems
R.E. Slater - Butterfly Wings of Promise
Geroge Herbert, "Easter Wings" (poem)
R.E. Slater - Ruptured Soils
Inspirational Poems
R.E. Slater - Best Coin Ever Spent...
The Wonders of God's Creation - Kuroshio Sea and Poem
Verses on Humanity and Goodwill, Compassion and Forgiveness
Select Poems and Poetry
Of Dads and Daughters, of Parenting and Love: "Wakefulness in a Night of Fireworks"
Love Poems by Shannon Eason
An Evening Prayer, by Sir Thomas Browne
Poetry Magazine's Editor Christian Wiman Discusses Faith
The Calf Path, by Sam Walter Foss (poem)
Padraig O Tuama - "Go in Pieces" (poem)
Of Calvin, Barth and Poetry
Poems of Awakening
I Dreamed a Great Revival Came
Langston Hughes - I Dream a World
What If... ?
Maya Angelou. Poet, Activist, Storyteller
Essays and Articles on Creativity
The Messy Minds (Personalities) of Creative People
Poetry Essays & Historical Poems
G&N - Poetry for Scientists?
The Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and the Struggle for Human Rights
(re: Archibald MacLeish)
Poetry to Nature, Ecology, Environment
Notes to Water Based Green Infrastructure: Sustainability and Practices
(Wendell Berry)
Inspirational Poems
R.E. Slater - Best Coin Ever Spent...
The Wonders of God's Creation - Kuroshio Sea and Poem
Verses on Humanity and Goodwill, Compassion and Forgiveness
Select Poems and Poetry
Of Dads and Daughters, of Parenting and Love: "Wakefulness in a Night of Fireworks"
Love Poems by Shannon Eason
An Evening Prayer, by Sir Thomas Browne
Poetry Magazine's Editor Christian Wiman Discusses Faith
The Calf Path, by Sam Walter Foss (poem)
Padraig O Tuama - "Go in Pieces" (poem)
Of Calvin, Barth and Poetry
Poems of Awakening
I Dreamed a Great Revival Came
Langston Hughes - I Dream a World
What If... ?
Maya Angelou. Poet, Activist, Storyteller
Essays and Articles on Creativity
The Messy Minds (Personalities) of Creative People
Poetry Essays & Historical Poems
G&N - Poetry for Scientists?
The Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and the Struggle for Human Rights
(re: Archibald MacLeish)
Poetry to Nature, Ecology, Environment
Notes to Water Based Green Infrastructure: Sustainability and Practices
(Wendell Berry)
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
You Might be a Radical Theologian If...
Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism (Radical Theologies)
November 19, 2013
Comments
Many of you asked for it – now you get it! We are excited to announce the release of the paperback edition of The New Materialism.
Cornel West, author of Race Matters, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary, had this to say about the book:
Many of you asked for it – now you get it! We are excited to announce the release of the paperback edition of The New Materialism.
Cornel West, author of Race Matters, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary, had this to say about the book:
‘I love the sense of urgency from Crockett and Robbins. By invoking the earth as subject, they have named our emergency situation today. This book is a true manifesto. It is comprehensive and encyclopedic. And as a renewal of radical theology as an insurrectionary political theology, it just might be a new species of liberation theology. Don’t miss this book!’
In celebration of this release, we wanted to have some fun. So here is what the co-authors, Clayton Crockett and Jeffery Robbins came up with.
You Might be a Radical Theologian If
- The idea of the death of God fills you with excitement rather than dismay.
- You are suspicious of priestly authority - whether in its ecclesiastical or academic forms.
- In college your favorite philosopher was Nietzsche, and your favorite aphorism was: ‘be careful when you stare into the abyss, because the abyss is also staring back at you.’
- You disagree with traditional theology’s obsession over individual salvation — and more pointedly, with the theological rendering of death as the prerequisite for life.
- You cried when Thomas J. J. Altizer died. Wait! – he’s not dead? How is that possible that God is dead and Altizer is still alive!?
- You conceive of theology as a creative endeavor - that is, not as a reduplication of an already given, inherited, or predetermined faith, but for its possibility of generating new concepts and different formulations of extremity.
- You have ever tried to deconstruct a sermon by _______ (insert popular evangelical preacher here).
- You have a tattoo of the cover art of Erring - Robert Morris’s labyrinth - somewhere on your body.
- It actually makes sense to think of theology as a ‘discourse formation.’
- You refuse the category of the sacred, or at the very least take more delight in locating the sacred within the profane rather than distinguishing the former from the latter. It is in this sense that radical theology is a secular theology by grounding the sacred/profane distinction in the shared saeculum.
- The first person who comes to mind when you see the initials ‘JC’ is John Caputo, as opposed to - well, you know.
- You also acknowledge radical theology’s own limitations and blindspots - most specifically, radical theology has heretofore remained almost exclusively an academic theology lacking in both a politics and an ecclesiology, its voice of protest has all too often not risen beyond that of white, male frustration, and instead of seeking out common cause with the poor and the oppressed it has all too often remained aloof and self-obsessed.
Please feel free to add your own in the comment section below.
You can also go back the original blog tour and get up to speed while your paperback ships.
Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism (Radical Theologies)
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Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism (Radical Theologies)
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1137374217/?tag=homebrechrist-20+politics+and+the+earth
by Clayton Crockett (Author) and Jeffrey W. Robbins (Author)
This book takes its leave with the realization that Western-driven culture is quickly reaching the limits of global capitalism, and that this reality manifests itself not only economically and politically, but that it is at once a cultural, aesthetic, political, religious, ecological, and philosophical problem. While Western capitalism is based upon the assumption of indefinite growth, we have run up against real, physical constraints to growth, and humanity must face the real, physical ramifications of the short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive choices made on behalf of the capitalist machine. While there is widespread angst and numerous scenarios of apocalyptic crisis and collapse, there is little or no comprehension of the problem and a coherent picture of reality is left wanting. Drawing primarily from the discourses of contemporary continental philosophy, cultural theory, and radical theology, the new materialism is being offered up as a redress to this problem by its effort to make sense of the world as an integrated whole.
The book emphasizes three aspects of the current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often viewed primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of the ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the de-leveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is inter-related, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing.
Rather than despair or the cynicism that passes for realpolitik, the authors will suggest that this crisis provides an opening for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth. This opening is an opening onto a new materialism that is neither a crude consumerist materialism nor a reductive atomic materialism, but a materialism that takes seriously the material and physical world in which we live. This materialism counters idealism in its practical and philosophical forms, which constructs an ideal world that we wish to inhabit and then mistakes that world for the real one. Furthermore, in contrast to classical materialism which rejects religion as a form of false consciousness, this new materialism recognizes religion as an effective means of political mobilization and as a genuine source of piety, and thus does not oppose religion per se; instead, it opposes fanaticism and fundamentalism, including the fairy-tale expectations that a God (or gods) will rescue us from our predicament and punish the evil-doers while rewarding the righteous.
by Clayton Crockett (Author) and Jeffrey W. Robbins (Author)
This book takes its leave with the realization that Western-driven culture is quickly reaching the limits of global capitalism, and that this reality manifests itself not only economically and politically, but that it is at once a cultural, aesthetic, political, religious, ecological, and philosophical problem. While Western capitalism is based upon the assumption of indefinite growth, we have run up against real, physical constraints to growth, and humanity must face the real, physical ramifications of the short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive choices made on behalf of the capitalist machine. While there is widespread angst and numerous scenarios of apocalyptic crisis and collapse, there is little or no comprehension of the problem and a coherent picture of reality is left wanting. Drawing primarily from the discourses of contemporary continental philosophy, cultural theory, and radical theology, the new materialism is being offered up as a redress to this problem by its effort to make sense of the world as an integrated whole.
The book emphasizes three aspects of the current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often viewed primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of the ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the de-leveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is inter-related, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing.
Rather than despair or the cynicism that passes for realpolitik, the authors will suggest that this crisis provides an opening for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth. This opening is an opening onto a new materialism that is neither a crude consumerist materialism nor a reductive atomic materialism, but a materialism that takes seriously the material and physical world in which we live. This materialism counters idealism in its practical and philosophical forms, which constructs an ideal world that we wish to inhabit and then mistakes that world for the real one. Furthermore, in contrast to classical materialism which rejects religion as a form of false consciousness, this new materialism recognizes religion as an effective means of political mobilization and as a genuine source of piety, and thus does not oppose religion per se; instead, it opposes fanaticism and fundamentalism, including the fairy-tale expectations that a God (or gods) will rescue us from our predicament and punish the evil-doers while rewarding the righteous.
Index - Readings in N.T. Wright
N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Re-Envisaging Israel's Election in Jesus
Not “Christ” but “Messiah”: NT Wright on Translating Christos
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/26/not-christ-but-messiah-nt-wright-on-translating-christos/
by Scot McKnight
November 26, 2013
Comments
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/26/not-christ-but-messiah-nt-wright-on-translating-christos/
by Scot McKnight
November 26, 2013
Comments
“The purpose for which the covenant God had called Israel had been accomplished, Paul believed, through Jesus. The entire ‘theology of election’ we have examined in the preceding pages is not set aside. It is brought into fresh focus, rethought, reimagined and reworked around Jesus himself, and particularly around his death, resurrection and enthronement. Christology, in the several senses that word must bear, is the first major lens through which Paul envisages the ancient doctrine of Israel’s election” (815-816).
One of the more interesting features of NT scholarship is a widespread (radical) minimization of “Christ” meaning “Messiah.” Instead of a direct royal perception, this term is understood by many scholars to mean a second/last/family name, that is Jesus Christ is little more than Jesus’ name. NT Wright’s work won’t get off the ground until this is critiqued.
I want to [also] add that this interpretive approach owes some (not all) of its origin in (i) the de-Judaization of Christianity and to the idea (ii) that making Jesus a Jewish Messiah makes Jesus less universally relevant. (The same happened to the word “kingdom” in NT and theological scholarship.)
NT Wright’s response:
1. Paul’s use of royal passages from the Psalms and Isaiah — and here he points to Romans 1:3-4, where there are clear and loud echoes to 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2. Inheritance theme in Romans, then Romans 15:1-13 and 1 Cor 15:20-28 (Psalm 110 and 8:6)… Ephesians 1:20-23.
2. Wisdom theme, a royal house theme (David and Solomon).
3. Narrative role in Pauline letters, like Galatians, where Jesus’ narrative role is that of Israel’s Messiah: e.g., “seed.” Romans 9:6–10:13.
Then there’s another element, often overlooked, now brought out by Novenson: “For a start, there is the linguistic evidence, set out recently by Matthew Novenson, that Christos is in fact neither a proper name (with denotation but no necessary connotation) nor a ‘title’ as such (with connotation but flexible denotation, as when ‘the King of Spain’ goes on meaning the same thing when one king dies and another succeeds him). It is, rather, an honorific, which shares some features of a ‘title’ but works differently” (824).
Thus: “The Messiah", then, " 'ho Christos," is for Paul not simply an individual, Jesus of Nazareth, who happens to have acquired a second proper name through the flattening out of the royal title that other early Christians were eager still to affirm. The royal meaning of Christos does not disappear in Paul’s writings. It is present, central and foundational. Though sometimes the word seems to function more or less as a proper name (any word, repeated often enough, can appear to have its surface indentations worn smooth), its connotations are never far beneath the surface and often show clearly through” (824).
Wright’s big point, of course, is that in Jesus we find an “incorporative Messiah,” that is, in Jesus we find someone in whom the identity and vocation of all Israel has been assumed. When one looks at Jesus one sees all Israel, the whole of Israel’s Story, and the plan of God incarnated in one person. Here is how Wright puts it:
Paul, I propose, exploited the notion of ‘Messiahship’ in such a way as to say two things in particular.
First, the vocation and destiny of ancient Israel, the people of Abraham, had been brought to its fulfilment in the Messiah, particularly in his death and resurrection.
Second, those who believed the gospel, whether Jew or Greek, were likewise to be seen as incorporated into him and thus defined by him, specifically again by his death and resurrection.
The full range of Paul’s ‘incorporative’ language can be thoroughly and satisfactorily explained on this hypothesis: that he regarded the people of God and the Messiah of God as so bound up together that what was true of the one was true of the other. And this becomes in turn the vital key to understanding the close and intimate link between ‘incorporation’ and ‘justification’, between ‘participatory’ and ‘forensic’ accounts of Paul’s soteriology – not to mention the themes of salvation history, ‘apocalyptic’ and transformation (826).
This incorporative language, Wright is arguing, is not typical Judaism but more of a revising by Paul’s own belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Thus, “Israel” would be raised up in the general resurrection; it happened though only to Jesus (Tom skips Matt 27 but it might have helped a tad); therefore the general resurrection did happen but our resurrection is “in” Jesus. This is the kind of thinking that went on in Paul’s head. Israel’s king was representative and incorporative. He has backed off seeing some of this, as he once did, in other OT and Jewish texts, but he maintains it is taught by Paul — in Romans 3:1-26; Galatians 2:15-4:11; Phlippians 3:2-11.
Also the “in” and “with” Christ passages abound, and they are incorporative.
Continue to Index -
Monday, November 25, 2013
The Glories of God's Creation...
An Itch to Scratch the Earth
Philosopher, Alan Watts, states that we come out of this world, like a flower budding from a tree. Upon sprouting, the desire to examine our surroundings and stake claim of our experiences grow. Shot on a Bolex 16mm film camera and a Go Pro, we attempt to see our surroundings with a different perspective.
This visual voyage takes you on a journey from Michigan to Colorado to California, utilizing the lens as means to touch, see and be apart of the world.
Filmed//Edited by Mac Jermstad
Stills by Zach Snellenberger
Opening Graphic by Logan Sabo
Words by William Hedgepeth
Sound Bite: Alan Watts
Stills by Zach Snellenberger
Opening Graphic by Logan Sabo
Words by William Hedgepeth
Sound Bite: Alan Watts
Written permission by Tessa Murray of Still Corners for permission to use "The Trip" in the video
Please support Still Corners by buying their music.
Please support Still Corners by buying their music.
Special Thanks: Imperial Motion
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