Introduction to the World of TheoPoetics

Amazon link

Theopoetics is the theory and practice of making God known,

particularly through language.

- Keefe-Perry

I  believe that how we express our experiences of the Divine

may change our experiences of the Divine.

- Keefe-Perry

Book Description

Way to Water has two primary intentions:

(i) to trace the development of the nascent field of theological inquiry known as theopoetics and,

(ii) to make an argument that theopoetics provides both theological and practical resources for contemporary people of faith who seek to maintain a confessional Christian life that is also intellectually critical.

Beginning with the work of Stanley Hopper in the late 1960s, and addressing the early scholarship of key theopoetics authors like Rubem Alves and Amos Wilder, this text explores how theopoetics was originally developed as a response to the American death-of-God movement, and has since grown into a method for engaging in theological thought in a way that more fully honors embodiment and aesthetic dimensions of human experience. Most of the extant literature in the field is addressed to allow for a cumulative and comprehensive articulation of the nature and function of theopoetics. 

The text includes an exploration of how theopoetic insights might aid in the development of tangible church practices, and concludes with a series of theopoetic reflections.

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

Wikipedia - Theopoetics

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

Theopoetics suggests that instead of trying to develop a “scientific” theory of God, as Systematic Theology attempts, theologians should instead try to find God through poetic articulations of their lived (“embodied”) experiences.

It asks theologians to accept reality as a legitimate source of divine revelation and suggests that both the divine and the real are mysterious — that is, irreducible to literalist dogmas or scientific proofs.

Theopoetics makes significant use of “radical” and “ontological” metaphor to create a more fluid and less stringent referent for the Divine. One of the functions of theopoetics is to recalibrate theological perspectives, suggesting that theology can be more akin to poetry than physics.

It belies the logical assertion of the Principle of Bivalence and stands in contrast to some rigid Biblical hermeneutics that suggest that each passage of scripture has only one, usually teleological, interpretation.

Whereas those who utilize a strict, historical-grammatical approach believe scripture and theology possess inerrant factual meaning and pay attention to historicity, a theopoetic approach takes an allegorical position on faith statements that can be continuously reinterpreted.

Theopoetics suggest that just as a poem can take on new meaning depending on the context in which the reader interprets it, texts and experiences of the Divine can and should take on new meaning depending on the changing situation of the individual.

* * * * * * * * * * * * 

What is Theopoetics? the answer in book form

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2014/10/11/what-is-theopoetics-the-answer-in-book-form/

by Tripp Fuller

October 11, 2014

For years (many more than you might think) this “thing” called theopoetics has been happening, occuring, bubbling-up, in various places, writings, and presentations. Those who have called their work by the title of theopoetics come from diverse backgrounds including Biblical criticism, death of God theology, postmodern thought, and process theology. Such a wealth of fields and interests encourages broad interest but at the the same time can result in students, practicioners, laypeople, and theopoets themselves lacking a connection to the wider body. Callid Keefe-Perry’s book, Way to Water, remedies this by mapping a path through the sundry strands of theopoetics past and present, all the while working to demonstrate just what theopoetics is or aims to be.

Callid skillfully summarizes the positions of early theopoetic thinkers Stanley Hopper, Amos Wilder, and Rubem Alves before moving in subsequent chapters to more contemporary versions of theopoetic thought. He works his way through the contributions of Melanie Duguid-May and Scott Holland, process theologians Roland Faber and Catherine Keller, radical theologians Peter Rollins and John Caputo, and the work of Richard Kearney and Karmen MacKendrick.

As the title suggests, Callid provides a path on the journey toward theopoetics (or a theopoetic) by gathering together some theopoetic events, examining their moments of resonance and pointing out their places of dissonance. He is careful not to coorindate theopoetic “schools” into fixed positions in relation to each other, which would be antithetical to the theopoetic project in general, but rather he treats the various thinkers/writers as bodies that might collid, slip over each other, or dance together, in the on-going effort to name and describe that which we call God.

Additionally, and importantly, the last two chapters of Way to Water indicate practical applications of theopoetics for churches and pastors. I would expect nothing less from a practical theologian, and again Callid proves wonderfully adept at parsing out how an embodied theopoetics might (and does) take shape through preaching, pastoral care, and liturgy.

Since Callid is well aware that there can be no conclusion to the infinite movement of divine rhythms, for me the end of the book unfolded into new beginnings in two significant ways:

First, Callid suggests three definitions for the term theopoetics, each textured by what Callid has gleaned from the theologians he addresses in the book. These definitions struck me as deeply personal and intimately situated in various ways, which I believe only further demonstrates an important point Callid makes in the book: the symbolic, prerational, and sensuous modes of theological discourse are not to be ignored.

Second, and very much related to the definitions he offers, Callid’s epilogue consists of a series of aphorisms intended not just to describe theopoetic work, but to actually be theopoetic writing. Here he shows us through stories and poems that, while not entirely elusive, the divine is not within our grasp, cannot be pinned down. Rather the aphorisms open the reader to the continual progression, the unfolding process of naming God, of articulating our relationship to the divine.

Way to Water provides a helpful text for those teaching or studying theopoetics for the first time, and it is accessible to non-academic readers as well. I highly recommend this book to all my pastor-type friends, as I know it will spark conversation among you and in your churches. I also recommend it my friends who might consider teaching a course on theopoetics and taking up the task of training the next generation of theopoetic thinkers.

My buddy Jeremy wrote this review and I shared it because I love Jeremy and Callid.

* * * * * * * * * * * * 

What is Theopoetics?

http://theopoetics.net/

How are we to be intelligent, thinking creatures on the one hand, and faithful, trusting people on the other? One answer to this dilemma is theopoetics. Theopoetic arguments suggest that we are best served when we make room in our worldview for the beauty and mystery of life as an integral part of faith: our intelligent, rational minds certainly have a place in faithful living, but they are not sufficient in of themselves.

Asking powerful, critical questions can help in challenging ill-gotten authority, and yet to ever sink into any sense of deep joy there must be an acceptance of things we cannot understand. As we are reminded in Hebrews, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And so, we encounter a seeming impasse… from which theopoetics may provide another path.

Theopoetics isn’t just about verse. When a text is acting theopoetically, it functions in opposing directions, simultaneously pulling the reader further into the world of the text and pushing the reader into a reconsideration of, and reconnection to, life in the world beyond it.

Greek Derivation of the word "theo-poetic"

• [Greek] noun poema - "a created thing"
• the verb poiein - “to make”
• Theo is Greek for "God"

The English author Samuel Johnson wrote, “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.”

Percy Shelley added, “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.”

I work with the word theopoetics from the intersection of these ideas: theopoetics is the theory and practice of making God known, particularly through language. I believe that how we express our experiences of the Divine may change our experiences of the Divine.

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

Theopoems

Amos Niven Wilder - A Hard Death

Theopoetic

by Amos Niven Wilder

Many today have difficulty in relating to religious language. This can happen when we reduce religious meaning to a specific kind of spiritual experience or give undue importance to one aspect of human life. The reduction of life to human will or intellect is often accompanied by the turn to mystical practices and cults. Amos Wilder calls for a renewal of our deep religious imagination as we reflect on biblical faith and on the basic needs and longings of contemporary persons. This requires a new appreciation for mystery and for deep-speaking-to-deep.

Wilder assumes that the depths of biblical truth have scarcely begun to be plumbed and have untapped power to renew life even in our technological Western societies. This requires that we go beyond the objective, surface meaning to the deeper orientation: Before the message, the vision; before the sermon, the hymn; before the prose, the poem. --Amos Wilder

Chapter titles

1.Theology and Theopoetic

2.The Recovery of the Sacred

3.Contemporary Mythologies and Theological Renewal

4.Traditional Pieties and the Religious Imagination

5.Ecstasy, Imagination, and Insight

6.Theopoetic and Mythopoetic

Sparks of wit and insight make Theopoetic a notable monument to the ongoing vitality of Wilder's lifelong determination to remain faithful both to the biblical witness and the imperatives of the imagination. - Journal of the American Academy of Religion

This is a wise and unpretentious book... it offers no fancy programs or catchy formulas. Its prescription for our spiritual illness, far from being some esoteric pilgrimage, is the long and unspectacular remedy of developing spiritual health. - The Christian Century

For most of his career, Amos Niven Wilder taught at Harvard Divinity School. A former president of the Society of Biblical Literature, his books remain influential in bringing together the disciplines of biblical studies, theology, literature, and mythical imagination. - Anon

---

Theopoetic Folds. Philosophizing Multifariousness

Edited by Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal

A Fordham University Press Publication

Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (FUP)

This volume pursues Whitehead's notion of a "theopoetics," or, a divine becoming and multiplicity held between the conversations of continental philosophy and process theology.

Major contributors: Laurel Schneider, John Caputo, Catherine Keller, Roland Faber, John Thatamanil.

Skid Robot - Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

L.A. Graffiti Artist Humanizes Homeless People By Painting Their Dreams

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/16/graffiti-artist-homeless-dreams-skid-robot-photos_n_5991808.html

The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grenoble

Those who say graffiti doesn't accomplish much haven't seen the work of Skid Robot, an anonymous street artist in Los Angeles who uses his medium to draw attention to the homeless -- a population he laments is so often overlooked.

Skid Robot humanizes the homeless by incorporating them into his art, creating scenes in which the subjects aren't just a faceless person, down on their luck. Instead, he highlights their struggle by juxtaposing them with spray painted versions of their needs, wants and dreams.

One man, recently released from the hospital and in a wheelchair, is depicted sitting in a throne atop a castle wall -- not shoeless and in a wheelchair.

 

In a caption accompanying the photo, Skid Robot explains the man's backstory, painting a portrait of a man named "Ben."

"Ben was released from the hospital with no shoes," writes Robot. "He was unable to walk as a result of being shot in the back and eventually the hospital booted him on the street like so many others."

"I offered him a meal but he declined, instead he asked for paper, pencils [and] pens so that he can write and draw. He said he really liked the art and [used] to draw himself ..."

Robot adds he gave Ben a sketchbook, a few pens and money for a meal.

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Another man, identified as "Tony," rests on the sidewalk, his unrolled sleeping pad transformed -- via Skid Robot's paint -- into a regal bed, complete with a headboard and matching side tables. "They desperately needed water more than anything," Robot writes, "so we delivered 10 gallons."

In an email to The Huffington Post, Skid Robot was adamant he's not trying to make light of his subject's situation or use them as a prop, even though his work may be seen as humorous at times.

"I'm drawing attention to a human being who more often than not is looked at as nonexistent," he said of his jarring art. "I hardly think that is using them to my benefit."

"I offer whatever help that I can, I try to get to know some of these people and give them an open ear and heart," he continued. "My message is one of compassion, to look out for those who are less fortunate and to do for others."

Skid Robot has set up a GoFundMe account for a "National Art Campaign of Compassion," which he hopes will "inspire a revolution of compassion for your fellow human being."

H/T Vice

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

Humanizing the Homeless through Graffiti, by Skid Robot

National Art Campaign of Compassion

go Fund me

A national guerilla art campain to create a dialogue for a solution to extreme poverty.

Using the power of art and film, we will tell the stories of the desperate dreamers

across the U.S. who are experiencing homelessness.

The aim of the film is to inspire a revolution of compassion for your fellow human being.

We can no longer neglect the global humanitarian crisis of homelessness and must bring

the dialouge to the forefront of public discussion and find a solution to this crisis.

We would like to travel the United States giving to those in need documenting the

entire mission.

Funds raised will be used to purchase goods for those in need and the cost of travel.

We will be constantly updating this page so please check back frequently and stay tuned!
go Fund me

The Right to Die - Not A Black and White Issue

Wikipedia - The Right to Die

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

The right to die is an ethical or institutional entitlement of any individual to commit suicide or to undergo voluntary euthanasia. Possession of this right is often understood to mean that a person with a terminal illness should be allowed to commit suicide or assisted suicide or to decline life-prolonging treatment, where a disease would otherwise prolong their suffering to an identical result. The question of who, if anyone, should be empowered to make these decisions is often central to debate.

Proponents typically associate the right to die with the idea that one's body and one's life are one's own, to dispose of as one sees fit. However, a legitimate state interest in preventing irrational suicides is sometimes argued. Pilpel and Amsel write, "Contemporary proponents of ‘rational suicide’ or the ‘right to die’ usually demand by ‘rationality’ that the decision to kill oneself be both the autonomous choice of the agent (i.e., not due to the physician or the family pressuring them to ‘do the right thing’ and commit suicide) and a ‘best option under the circumstances’ choice desired by the stoics or utilitarians, as well as other natural conditions such as the choice being stable, not an impulsive decision, not due to mental illness, achieved after due deliberation, etc."

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

Wikipedia - Assisted Suicide

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

Assisted suicide is suicide committed with the aid of another person, sometimes a physician.[1] The term is often used interchangeably with physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which involves a doctor "knowingly and intentionally providing a person with the knowledge or means or both required to commit suicide, including counselling about lethal doses of drugs, prescribing such lethal doses or supplying the drugs.”[2] Assisted suicide and euthanasia are sometimes combined under the umbrella term "assisted dying", an example of a trend by advocates to replace the word "suicide" with "death" or ideally, "dying". Other euphemisms in common use are "physician-assisted dying", "physician-assisted death", "aid in dying", "death with dignity", "dying with dignity", "right to die" "compassionate death", "compassionate dying", "end-of-life choice", and "medical assistance at the end of life".

Physician-assisted suicide is often confused with euthanasia (sometimes called "mercy killing"). In cases of euthanasia the physician administers the means of death, usually a lethal drug. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is always at the request and with the consent of the patient, since he or she self-administers the means of death.

Physician-assisted suicide is different from euthanasia. With physician-assisted suicide, the patient receives the medication and takes it on their own. With euthanasia, the doctor administers the lethal medication to the patient. According to several studies, more than half of the doctors polled have received requests from a patient wanting to end their life. The physicians are only allowed to prescribe the lethal medications in the states where it is legal, regardless of what the patient wants or the prognosis for their disease.

Discussion of assisted suicide centers on legal, social, ethical, moral and religious issues related to suicide and murder.

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

Can A Christian Support “Physician-Assisted Suicide?”

Source Link

by Roger Olson

October 18, 2014

Comments

Introduction

If you expect me to take a definite stand for or against Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) you will be disappointed. This blog is a place where I often reflect about difficult and controversial issues; I don’t always take a stand about them. One of my goals as a Christian theologian and educators is to help people think through doctrinal and ethical issues critically and reflectively but not always to a definite conclusion. I have been doing this within myself about the issue of PAS for years. And, as I age and face the possibilities inherent in that process, I increasingly wonder if this issue (PAS) is as black-and-white as many people, especially Christians, have thought.

What exactly is meant by PAS? Here I can only state what I mean by it. The concept has many variations. What I mean by PAS, and therefore what I am musing about, is this: A person in great suffering for which there is no available relief asks a medical professional to help him or her die in the quickest and most painless way possible. Usually in PAS the suffering person himself or herself performs the final act that immediately results in death. The physician only provides the means. However, in some cases, the physician must go further and actually use the means on the suffering person. This kind of PAS is legal in some countries and a few states—with many qualifications and safeguards against abuse.

Is Suicide a Sin?

Of course, a background theological issue, especially for Christians, is whether suicide is a sin. Most enlightened Christians, and others, will say it is at best tragic but only sin when done for purely selfish reasons and where there are other possible remedies for the emotional or physical trauma and turmoil not tried. Few enlightened Christians believe or argue that everyone who commits suicide is automatically thereby condemned to hell. That was a common medieval belief still held by only a few. The question this raises, however, is whether PAC, assuming it is a last resort, is a selfish act. One would have to ask the suffering person’s loved ones. In the kinds of cases I’m thinking about, all empathetic and reasonable loved ones would give their own right arms to see the person’s suffering cease.

So, in order to shed light on this difficult subject, it is helpful to state more specifically and clearly what kinds of cases I’m thinking of as possibly justifying PAS. Some years ago I read about an elderly mother of two adult sons who were both suffering a debilitating disease that rendered them completely paralyzed. (I remember the name of the disease; I’m just not mentioning it here to avoid a flurry of comments about it.) It was a genetic disease that often leads the person to a near vegetative state of tremendous pain and paralysis. There is no treatment for that pain and paralysis in the late stages of the disease. Her sons were confined to beds in a nursing home where she visited them daily. She watched them slowly suffering in great agony while unable to communicate let alone take care of their own automatic bodily functions. Finally one day she brought a pistol to the nursing home and shot both of them. The jury gave her ten years’ probation. I sympathized with that jury and with the mother even as I felt tremendously conflicted about her act of euthanasia.

As I have aged and I have had more contact with elderly people whose quality of life is extremely poor—down to nothing. Some people, for reasons of disease or age, come to the point where they have no quality of life. Medical provision has often kept them alive years beyond their ability to live a life of dignity and even relative physical comfort. I know elderly people who live with severe pain all the time and who cannot feed themselves or take care of their own bodies and who express the wish to die daily.

Self-Afflicted Death

Some years ago, of course, Dr. Kevorkian brought this issue to public attention in the U.S. by stepping across professional and legal boundaries to aid suffering people to commit suicide. I watched one television news “magazine” segment that focused on one of his cases. The patient was suffering the last stages (but with perhaps months to go before natural death) of ALS (“Lou Gehrig’s Disease”). The man had reached a stage where he could no longer move any part of his body except his eyelids and a finger and indicated that he was in tremendous pain that pain medicines alone could not alleviate. He requested Dr. Kevorkian’s assistance in ending his misery and Dr. Kevorkian complied by setting up a contraption the patient could use to push down a plunger to release a stream of poison into his bloodstream through an IV to which he was already connected. He died painlessly and quickly.

Some patients simply choose to forego all treatments for their terminal disease and die naturally. Usually this also involves gradually starving to death or dying by dehydration. It can take weeks. Few people blame them or even call it “suicide.” And yet, in a way, it is suicide.

Benevolent Common Practice

Some years ago I had the privilege of teaching nurses in several cohorts in a “degree completion” program. My course, which they were required to take as part of their studies, was called “Developing a Christian Worldview” and included a unit on Christian ethics. We talked about the ethical issues surrounding death including suicide. One thing that struck me was that almost all the nurses who worked in hospitals agreed that PAS is quite common. They said that in many terminal cases a doctor will order pain medicine in gradually increasing doses that eventually suppress breathing. And that so long as the doses are necessary to alleviate pain, even if they result in death, most district attorneys will not prosecute the doctors or nurses involved. They said it is one of the best kept secrets in the medical profession—given how common it is.

And yet we criminalize the same practice if it is done earlier than that and outside the context of a hospital [or home-based hospice care]. What sense does that make? Okay, well, the legal argument is that injecting someone with a dose of pain medicine strong enough to suppress breathing is not PAS so long as the intention of the act is only to relieve pain. But how different is that from other PAS the intention of which is only to relieve otherwise unrelievable pain? "Greyness" surrounds the issue at such a point.

Conclusion

I do not have all the answers to this, but I believe it is worthy of renewed discussion both among ethicists and lawmakers:

(1) First, can PAS ever be ethically justified? Let’s not begin with the worst case scenarios in which it might be abused to kill people without their consent. That’s not even in consideration here. Let’s start with the worst case scenarios of people in tremendous suffering that cannot be relieved any other way than PAS.

(2) Second, can laws be crafted that absolutely de-criminalize PAS that also guard against abuses?

click to enlarge

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

Amazon link. May 2012

Publication Date: May 2012

Death is inevitable. But bad deaths those accompanied by unnecessarily prolonged pain and suffering, often aggravated by immensely costly and frequently futile medical treatments, can be avoided. This book explores the pioneering, highly pragmatic and practical work carried out by the international death-with-dignity movement over the last forty years to eliminate the last bad death. It offers clear and valuable examples of how, through frank communication with caregivers and loved ones and the use of Advance Medical Directives such as living wills, those who are facing the possibility of death in the foreseeable future, and those who help them cope, can greatly minimize or eliminate end-of-life turmoil, family dissention, and pain. It also proposes a comprehensive rethinking of end-of-life-care assumptions and a realignment of strategies to create a caring continuum to meet the rapidly expanding demands for death with dignity in the coming years.

Richard Cote' based this unique book on five years of intensive primary source research and more than one hundred in-depth interviews with death-with-dignity pioneers, activists, physicians, nurses, hospice workers, and their patients on four continents. It is written in narrative style for a general audience and intensely documented for the scholar. It illuminates the subject using 92 images and twelve hyperlinks to exclusive YouTube video interviews with death-with-dignity leaders worldwide. It explores the modern history of the death-with-dignity movement through the lives of its founders, leaders, and activists. Using personal case histories from around the world, it also portrays the often heart-breaking conflict between the final wishes of those who are living or dying in pain and the religious, medical, and laws which force them to spend their last days, months, or even years in avoidable pain and suffering against their clearly-stated will.

Drawing on the most recent scientific and medical information, it also describes the rapid evolution of legal, dignified, readily available, painless methods which the tortured and the dying can use to hasten their own death without assistance, in the company, if they choose, of their friends and loved ones.

PLEASE NOTE: this 379-page book replaces and updates Cote s 42-page 2008 technical booklet (now obsolete and out of print) titled In Search of Gentle Death: A Brief History of the NuTech Groupan end-of-life technology development organization. All of NuTech s work is now described fully in Chapter 6 of this new 2012 book.

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

 

Amazon link. April 2000

Publication Date: April 2000

The strength of the right-to-die movement was underscored as early as 1991, when Derek Humphry published Final Exit, the movement's call to arms that inspired literally hundreds of thousands of Americans who wished to understand the concepts of assisted suicide and the right to die with dignity. Now Humphry has joined forces with attorney Mary Clement to write Freedom to Die, which places this civil rights story within the framework of American social history.

More than a chronology of the movement, this book explores the inner motivations of an entire society. Reaching back to the years just after World War II, Freedom to Die explores the roots of the movement and answers the question: Why now, at the end of the twentieth century, has the right-to-die movement become part of the mainstream debate? In a reasoned voice, which stands out dramatically amid the vituperative clamoring of the religious right, the authors examine the potential dangers of assisted suicide - suggesting ways to avert the negative consequences of legalization - even as they argue why it should be legalized.

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

Amazon link. Fiction. April 2012

Publication Date. April 2012

Category: A Novel

While guarding an activist from an assassin, Cuddy makes himself the target

To impress his girlfriend and remind himself of his long-neglected athleticism, John Francis Cuddy is training to run the Boston marathon. But the private detective’s fitness regimen goes on the back burner when an old friend approaches him with a dangerous assignment. Euthanasia advocate Maisy Andrus has been receiving death threats, and the police are helpless to protect her. As he tries to keep the crusading lawyer alive, Cuddy realizes that the question isn’t who wants Andrus dead, but who doesn’t.

Protecting the right-to-die advocate dredges up painful memories of Cuddy’s wife, who died a slow death from brain cancer. The closer he gets to unmasking the would-be assassin, the more his old wounds open. When the killer starts taking potshots at him, as well as his client, Cuddy’s marathon training will come in handy.

What Is Radical Theology?

WHAT IS RADICAL THEOLOGY?

R.E. Slater

Radical Theology at its most radical extreme would promote the death of God in all things, instances, and being within society and without. That theology in its most radical form is a theology that is an anti-theology. In essence, not simply saying "there is no God" but that "the God who exists has left us with only the residual effects of His image and being still lingering in its latency."

Meaning, that as the Creator-Redeemer, when God died on the cross of Calvary He purposely, and affectively (not effectively), left mankind to its memory, and lingering effects, of Himself. A memory now clothed upon by creation itself and by humanity itself. In this way, all traces of God still linger in God's creation without the actually presence of God Himself within that creation. In effect, God has been reborn into His creation as part of His creation in a more intricate way than before His death.

So that in God's absence rest His divine DNA - or imprint - upon a world that struggles to reconcile itself with the fact that it alone now stands in the place of God as remnants - or testimonies - to once was before God's transformance as Spirit to Incarnated Spirit.

In another sense, the eternal God not only "left" Himself as He once was before He died, but was substantively transformed by His "divine death" to be "resurrected" from His divine "otherness" into a divine "oneness" with a creation which was once excluded from His holiness and divinity. Meaning that the God who might have been separate from His creation in some sense by His very nature is now more a part of that creation by resurrection and transformance than ever before.

In essence, Christianity awaits a future resurrection in Christ that has already occurred within Christ Himself personally. Ontologically. Metaphysically. Within very God Himself. That God's own death eventuated into His immediate transformance by resurrection within, and into, the very world He created and was separate from. Thus, the Redeemer is transformed by His own death and resurrection which same event now resurrects and transforms this very world we live upon. Even ourselves.

And so then, the disturbance we feel within our spirits is to the "void of God's absence" to His other presented-ness is now a fuller, truer disturbance to our very selves and this very world. That God has died but has also been transformed, or raised, within the very creation He to and for - to effectively create both a void and to fill it in the same instance with Himself.

Thus, leaving creation and mankind with the awesome, and very disturbing, task to "fill that void" by acting as God in the place of God who fills us with His absence, and resurrected presence, into a world once separate from God.

Not that we - or creation - have become God ourselves. But that in the vastness and the diversity of the world as we know it, God's image PERSISTS in some sense of an INSURRECTED form. A form that would resist sin while aslo transforming creation as a holy residence for God's holy spirit that pervades itself very nature with the God that was and is and is now becoming. Not simply become... but becoming. With us. And with this world.

Thus, filling the Christian image of "renewal by rebirth" or "salvation by being born again" with a more profound meaning than when we first thought. That God has birthed Himself within His created world. Making sin and death even more pregnant with meaning because of His very presence that sin and death would struggle against to refuse its fundamental transformance of the constitution of our intent and promise as transformed creations of God.

So who do we pray to if God is dead? A mystery that is marked as a paradox  wrapped up in an enigma to the Christian man or woman seeking a God no longer "out there" but "within here"?

Are we praying to ourselves? To a created world/creation as an incorporate entity of divinity? To a collaboration of the past, present, and future "NOW" of  synthetic and pervasive redeemed event?

Or, better yet, "Where is God?" If He is no longer here with us as an anthropomorphosized "personable" God of spirit? Or no longer here with us as a Greek/Hellenized subject of deified heavenly Being? As finite beings we find God's "otherness" to our "humanness" unnerving and  much misunderstood.

Or, asked yet another way, "Was this God of Christianity that we worshipped ever as separate and other from us as we once had thought?" Which gets to the ideas of panentheism v. pantheism. The former attests to God's separateness from creation but joined-ness to creation by presence and image (basic Christianity). The other attests to God's unreality and that creation was ever its own creation and divinity (basic Hinduism).

Purposely, Radical Theology addresses these questions by questioning our very epistemologies and theologies we have grown up with. It is an anti-theology to our Christian traditions and classic doctrinal statements. But at its heart is the very Christian doctrine of redemption and resurrection that says "If ever God was once separate from His creation He can be no longer (or is no longer)." That by His salvific death through Jesus God has been transformed within His very being to become us even as He Himself as died to Himself. This is radical theology's radical message.

So, who do we pray to? We pray to God who has become part of us, and with us, and in us, and of us ourselves.

Is humanity divine? In a sense, yes. We are filled not only by God's image, and by His presence, but by His very Self both in Spirit, in purpose, and in redemption.

Was God ever separate from His creation? Perhaps yes and no. Yes, as its creator. And no, because creation was ever an instance of God become "unspirit" to a created world given volition by His decree. And separated from its Creator by this very divine fiat that gave to it its volition. A volition that chooses both life and death. Good and sin. Holiness and evil.

And lastly, for an atheist to claim "There is no God" is the very same reason an atheist will doubt just as the Christian will doubt. Each feels God's absence "in their bones" but each come to differing testimonies and conclusions.

Perhaps the point of agreement between both is God's absence and what this now means. For the atheist it means God is here amongst us in our midst in a radically transformed way that we don't even realize.

For the believer that God is also here amongst us in our midst in a radically transformed way that we don't realize by our classical statements, doctrines, and theologies.

For a radical theologian to say God is dead is not the complete statement of radical theology's belief. It must also say that God is here amongst us in our midst in a radically transformed way that we don't even realize. An event that has historically occurred with fundamental future consequences like yeast is to bread, fire to our spirits, and blood and water to our rebirthing in God.

R. E. Slater

October 19, 2014

* * * * * * * * * *

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby1

Introduction by Peter Rollins

The People are Naked… Don’t tell the Emperor!

http://peterrollins.net/2014/09/the-people-are-naked-dont-tell-the-emperor/

by Peter Rollins

September 9, 2014

One of the popular trends within the church today involves affirming that doubts are a part of faith alongside the claim that God is faithful to us throughout these doubts. The most recent example of this comes from the Archbishop of Canterbury who said that he sometimes questions whether there is a God. In the same interview he goes on to claim that his faith is not however about feelings, “it is about the fact that God is faithful,” indeed he goes on to claim, “the extraordinary thing about being a Christian is that God is faithful when we are not.”

What we see here initially strikes us as incoherent, for the Archbishop effectively questions whether God exists, while at the same time believing in the “fact” that God does exist. As such, this could be laughed off as the dying attempts of a religious individual to maintain their beliefs (or their job).

However the approach taken by the Archbishop might actually expose a much more ubiquitous structure, one that operates widely within both theist and atheist camps: a structure that the practice of Radical Theology seeks to free us from.

To begin with, let us call the God that the Archbishop continues to affirm (following Lacan) “the Big Other.”

The Big Other is a slippery phrase, one that is initially hard to get one's head around. So let us create a scenario that might make this term a little easier to understand. Imagine being in a teeming nightclub at three in the morning. Looking around the room it appears that everyone is having a great time. There is energetic music, dancing, drinking, flirting and animated conversation everywhere.

Yet, as you look more closely, you begin to suspect that some, many, or even all, of the people in the room are actually concealing a lack of enjoyment. Indeed it feels like there is a veil of fun covering the room that is obscuring another dimension, a veil that seems to be getting thinner and thinner as the night wears on. As you stand in the middle of the room you can’t help feeling that everyone in the club has agreed to keep up a façade. In fact, as you stand there, deep in thought, a series of people become agitated and say things like, “cheer up,” “smile,” or “have another drink.” It is as if you are breaking some kind of taboo by looking pensive.

This fictional scenario is obviously very possible; indeed it might even be very common. While thinking about it, two questions immediately arise,

Who is everyone trying to fool?

What is the point of the pretense?

It is possible that people are trying to convince their colleagues that they are having a good time. But most of us are dimly aware that everyone else in the room is as insecure and awkward as we are. So it starts to seem like we are all actually trying to fool someone else who isn’t in the room.

Those in the nightclub can be said to be engaged in a structural deception of the type found in church. When people sing contemporary worship songs that proclaim “all they want is Jesus,” they are obviously not claiming what is being sung (after all they want lots of other things). Instead they seem to want to convince the God they are singing to that they are the type of person who only wants Jesus (affirming what is called their “Ideal-ego”). In the nightclub the same logic is at work in that some outside god is being treated as a figure that we must attempt to fool by our actions. Of course no one in the nightclub actually believes in such a figure. Yet the belief functions in a material way regardless. There is a subject who must remain fooled by our actions, a subject whose ignorance causes us to avoid a confrontation with our own struggles.

This is a version of the Emperors new clothes, except that we, the people, are naked. Maintaining the illusion only as long as the Emperor [within us] is fooled.

This, in a nutshell, is an example of the Big Other. It is that non-existent entity that we submit to in order to avoid a confrontation with our own internal crisis.

What we witness clearly in the interview with the Archbishop is a doubt over the God proclaimed in the actual existing church, which is cloaked in a belief in a Big Other. For simplicity's sake we can say that there are broadly three possible positions he could take about the God proclaimed overtly in church,

I believe

I doubt

I don’t believe

But none of these need touch his more fundamental commitment to the Big Other.

In the same way, someone could affirm one of these three positions while rejecting the Big Other. Indeed I would say that this is the project of Radical Theology.

The point of all this is to say that an atheist could very well claim “I don’t believe in God,” while still making the move of the Archbishop: unconsciously affirming a Big Other who is able to protect them from accepting the consequences of their position. Just as we witness in the nightclub example, such a belief in the Big Other always betrays itself in some way (such as prayer, listening to religious music, supporting ones parents beliefs etc.).

This is why Radical Theology makes the claim that popular atheism is not atheistic enough. For it only attacks the easy target that is the anthropomorphic God of contemporary Christianity. It has nothing to say about the Big Other. Radical Theology, on the other hand, seeks to expose how the Big Other – that protects us from confronting our own personal, religious and political crisis – is a fiction. Indeed Radical Theology is a project that claims this assault on the Big Other is the core message of Christianity.

What would have been more scandalous and insightful than this interview with the Archbishop would be to hear a high profile church leader saying, “I happen to believe in God much of the time, but I know that, in those moments, the God who would protect me from myself does not exist.”

Carl Lentz - "This is What Church Should Look Like. It's Jesus First, Last, and Always."

Hillsong Church Pastors Won't Speak Out On Gays Because Jesus Didn't Either

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/hillsong-church-gays_n_6002762.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051

The Huffington Post | By Antonia Blumberg

Posted: 10/17/2014 2:48 pm EDT Updated: 10/17/2014 2:59 pm EDT

Hillsong Church's New York location reportedly draws "a lot of gay men and women" among the thousands who flock there every weekend, according to head pastor Carl Lentz.

"Jesus was in the thick of an era where homosexuality, just like it is today, was widely prevalent," Lentz told CNN in a June interview (above). "And I'm still waiting for someone to show me the quote where Jesus addressed it on the record in front of people. You won't find it because he never did."

Lentz's wife, Laura, added: "It's not our place to tell anyone how they should live. That's their journey."

Lentz's sentiments appear to be indicative of an overarching stance on gay issues set forth by Hillsong head pastor Brian Houston. At a press conference for the Hillsong Conference held in New York City Thursday, New York Times' Michael Paulson asked Houston directly about his stance on same-sex marriage. In an unofficial transcriptprovided by Jonathan Merritt, Houston responded:

It can be challenging for churches to stay relevant. Because many mainstream churches upheld what they would believe is the long established view of what the Bible says about homosexuality. But the world has changed around and about them. On the subject, I always feel like there’s three things. There’s the world we live in, there’s the weight we live with, and there’s the word we live by. The world, the weight, and the word.

Blogger Ben Gresham, who identifies as a "25-year-old gay Christian" from Sidney, Australia, grew up attending Hillsong Church and often uses his website to write about the church's stance on gay issues. In an August 2013 post Gresham wrote about a message Houston recorded at Hillsong London and broadcast to all the church campuses entitled "Scandal of Grace," which touched on the topic and echoed the pastor's comments on Thursday. The blogger transcribed a portion of the message, in which Houston said:

The one elephant in the room for churches around the world at the moment is the gay situation. What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do?

There's lots of hatred out there but in the middle of it all you know there are three things: the world of the times we live in; the weight we live with; and the word we live by.

Houston added that "the world has changed quickly" and said "the weight we live with" includes "the weight when a young person growing up in a church feels like they are confused in their sexuality." This disconnect, the pastor said, can lead to hate, rejection and, in worst cases, suicide.

There's the world we live in. There's the weight we live with, and there's the word we live by. And they don't all necessary align. With the word we live by, many people have various convictions. In the middle of it all know that Jesus when it comes to people would let nothing stop Him from breaking through a divide to help hurting, broken, everyday normal people like you and I.

In March 2014 Pastor Danny Cortez of New Heart Community Church, a small Southern Baptist congregation in Southern California, delivered a sermon explaining that he no longer believed homosexuality to be a sin. His church struggled with the decision of whether to dismiss him and ultimately decided not to but instead become a "Third Way church" -- based on Vineyard Church pastor Ken Wilson’s book, “A Letter to my Congregation” which puts forth the notion that churches could agree to disagree on the subject and refrain from judgement.

But as the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting approached in June, Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, published an article denouncing the "third way":

There is no third way. A church will either believe and teach that same-sex behaviors and relationships are sinful, or it will affirm them. Eventually, every congregation in America will make a public declaration of its position on this issue. It is just a matter of time (and for most churches, not much time) before every congregation in the nation faces this test.

When faced with "this test," though, Religion News Service blogger Jonathan Merritt says that Hillsong's Lentz and Houston appear to adopt a similar "third way" by keeping definitive opinions to themselves and instead noting the complexity of the issue and the need for compassion. In the press conference Thursday, Houston said:

The real issues in people’s lives are too important for us to just reduce it down to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer in a media outlet."

h/t Jonathan Merrit