Richard Beck - The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity, Parts 1 & 2

The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity, Part 1 of 2

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-purity-culture-of-progressive.html?m=1

by Richard Beck

March 9, 2015

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent.

You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be

the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of

man for it is the image of God. --Thomas Merton

We've all read about the problems related to the purity culture associated with evangelicalism. But recently I've been thinking about the purity culture that is found in liberal, progressive and/or radical Christian circles.

My thoughts here were spurred by the essay written by Aurora Dagny entitled "Everything is Problematic."

As someone who identifies as a progressive Christian I found Aurora's essay to be very thought-provoking. The essay describes Aurora's journey into radical, leftist activism and the reasons she eventually stepped away. If you're a progressive Christian like me I encourage you to read the whole thing.

The one thing I want to draw attention to his how a purity mentality ran through the leftist and radical groups Aurora worked with. Interestingly, this purity mentality was oriented around a set of "sacred beliefs"--an "orthodoxy." This is exactly what you see among evangelical Christians. More, this orthodoxy is used to separate "the good guys" from "the bad guys." Beliefs create warrants for social exclusion, expulsion and scapegoating.

Aurora describing this:

One way to define the difference between a regular belief and a sacred belief is that people who hold sacred beliefs think it is morally wrong for anyone to question those beliefs. If someone does question those beliefs, they’re not just being stupid or even depraved, they’re actively doing violence. They might as well be kicking a puppy. When people hold sacred beliefs, there is no disagreement without animosity. In this mindset, people who disagreed with my views weren’t just wrong, they were awful people. I watched what people said closely, scanning for objectionable content. Any infraction reflected badly on your character, and too many might put you on my blacklist. Calling them ‘sacred beliefs’ is a nice way to put it. What I mean to say is that they are dogmas.

Thinking this way quickly divides the world into an ingroup and an outgroup — believers and heathens, the righteous and the wrong-teous. “I hate being around un-rad people,” a friend once texted me, infuriated with their liberal roommates. Members of the ingroup are held to the same stringent standards. Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. People are reluctant to say that anything is too radical for fear of being been seen as too un-radical. Conversely, showing your devotion to the cause earns you respect. Groupthink becomes the modus operandi. When I was part of groups like this, everyone was on exactly the same page about a suspiciously large range of issues. Internal disagreement was rare. The insular community served as an incubator of extreme, irrational views.

High on their own supply, activists in these organizing circles end up developing a crusader mentality: an extreme self-righteousness based on the conviction that they are doing the secular equivalent of God’s work. It isn’t about ego or elevating oneself. In fact, the activists I knew and I , [myself], tended to denigrate ourselves more than anything. It wasn’t about us, it was about the desperately needed work we were doing, it was about the people we were trying to help. The danger of the crusader mentality is that it turns the world in a battle between good and evil.

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What is fascinating to me is how this is the exact same psychological dynamic at work among conservative, evangelical Christians. It's just the progressive version of it.

And this "will to purity" doesn't just manifest in protecting sacred beliefs, it manifests in behavior as well. Both evangelical and progressive Christians doggedly pursue a vision of moral purity.

For evangelical Christians moral purity will fixate on hedonism (e.g., sex, drug use, etc.).

For progressive Christians moral purity will fixate on complicity in injustice. To be increasingly "pure" in progressive Christian circles is to become less and less complicit in injustice. Thus there is an impulse toward a more and more radical lifestyle where, eventually, you find yourself feeling that "everything is problematic." You can't do anything without contaminating yourself.

To be clear, I'm not judging any of this. I'm simply trying to trace out the contours of the purity culture at work among progressive Christians. Mainly because I think many progressive Christians have become burnt out by this psychology. Progressive Christians have become burnt out by the chronic anger produced by the "good vs. evil" Crusader mentality and burnt out by the chronic exhaustion of living in a world where "everything is problematic."

For most of us, the vision of progressive Christianity--as we took up the banner of social justice--started out so hopeful and joyous.

But for far too many, in the words of Aurora, the purity culture of progressive Christianity caused it all to "metastasize into a nightmare."

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Richard Beck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of several books including Unclean, The Authenticity of Faith, and The Slavery of Death. Richard's published research also covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity to why Christian bookstore art is so bad. Richard also leads a bible study each week for fifty inmates at the maximum security French-Robertson unit. And any given week Richard drives the van, preaches or washes dishes at Freedom Fellowship, a church plant feeding and reaching out to those on the margins. Finally, on his popular blog Experimental Theology Richard will spend enormous amounts of time writing about the theology of Johnny Cash, the demonology of Scooby-Doo or his latest bible class on monsters.

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The Purity Psychology of Progressive Christianity: Scrupulosity, Part 2 of 2

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-purity-psychology-of-progressive.html

by Richard Beck

March 17, 2015

After my posts from last week I continue to have a lot of conversations about how purity psychology affects various impulses within progressive Christianity. My original post is here which has a link at the bottom to some follow-up reflections.

In light of the analyses I shared in those posts, a very interesting connection with Catholic moral theology was pointed out to me yesterday by Leah Libresco who blogs at"Unequally Yoked" for the Patheos Catholic channel.

Specifically, Leah pointed out some similarities between my descriptions of the purity psychology at work among progressive Christians and the Catholic notion of scrupulosity. According to Catholic moral teaching scrupulosity involves persistent worries about being in a state of sin.

These worries can be due to a lot of things, from being extraordinarily conscientious to having a very sensitive or tender conscience to something that is more pathological (like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or Generalized Anxiety Disorder).

Psychologically speaking, I think Leah is right in connecting scrupulosity to intrusive thoughts and even to what the Eastern Orthodox call logismoi, evil, or tempting thoughts. For the Orthodox logismoi are intrusive mental temptations such as lust and greed and pride. In scrupulosity the intrusive thoughts are persistent and nagging worries that we've done something wrong.

In Catholic moral teaching scrupulosity has generally been connected to worries about committing a mortal sin and falling out of a state of grace. Mortal sins are, generally speaking, severe or chronic failures of piety.

But what is interesting for our purposes is how Leah has observed scrupulosity at work in issues related to altruism. That is to say, among compassionate Catholics scrupulosity can manifest in worries about how to do the right or best things for others. Paralleling my analysis, Leah traces this wanting-to-do-good scrupulosity to a purity psychology.

In her post "Purity, Anxiety and Effective Altruism" Leah focuses on the worries many of us feel about making sure the monies we send to charities are being used effectively and with minimal waste. We want our money, most if not all of our money, to get into the hands of those who need it. But when we start evaluating the effectiveness of charities and how best to use our money in alleviating suffering worldwide we can fall down a rabbit-hole. In wanting to do the right thing and the best thing we can encounter, to use Leah's words, "analysis paralysis." Regarding all these worries about trying to do the right thing Leah writes:

...I came up with a speculative hypothesis about what might drive this kind of reaction to Effective Altruism. While people were sharing stories about their friends, some of their anxious behaviors and thoughts sounded akin to Catholic scrupulosity. One of the more exaggerated examples of scrupulosity is a Catholic who gets into the confessional, lists his/her sins, receives absolution, and then immediately gets back into line, worried that she did something wrong in her confession, and should now confess that error.

Both of these obviously bear some resemblance to anxiety/OCD, period, but I was interested in speculating a little about why...Taking a cue from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, Leah traces this altruism-related scrupulosity to purity psychology: "My weak hypothesis is that effective altruism can feel more like a 'purity' decision...". Wanting to optimize our altruism, to make it more effective, can, in Leah's words, "trigger scrupulosity."

What is interesting here is how Leah is connecting scrupulosity less with a fear of doing a bad thing (committing a mortal sin) than with the keen desire to do a good thing, the desire to reduce suffering in the world. And as the scope of this scrupulosity expands from domain to domain, to eventually inhabit every facet of existence, we begin converging upon the "everything is problematic" mindset and a sort of moral paralysis sets in.

Of course, the objections here are now familiar. While scrupulosity is definitely an unpleasant neurotic experience, scrupulosity is still focusing upon the actions of individuals and is still centering feelings, generally the feelings of privileged people.

But the answer here wouldn't be for those privileged people to have less scruples or to check their scruples or de-center their scruples. Without scruples the privileged people wouldn't really care or worry about being privileged. Without scruples you'd never check your privilege.

So the scruples are necessary, vital even. The trick, it seems, is having those scruples--and in spades--but rejecting "the will to purity" that curdles into scrupulosity.

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Richard Beck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of several books including Unclean, The Authenticity of Faith, and The Slavery of Death. Richard's published research also covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity to why Christian bookstore art is so bad. Richard also leads a bible study each week for fifty inmates at the maximum security French-Robertson unit. And any given week Richard drives the van, preaches or washes dishes at Freedom Fellowship, a church plant feeding and reaching out to those on the margins. Finally, on his popular blog Experimental Theology Richard will spend enormous amounts of time writing about the theology of Johnny Cash, the demonology of Scooby-Doo or his latest bible class on monsters.

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 16 - Jared Byas

Jared Byas

“aha” moments (19): Jared Byas

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/03/aha-moments-19-jared-byas/

by Peter Enns

March 16, 2015

Comments

Today’s post is part of our continuing yet intermittent “aha” moment series, this from Jared Byas.

Byas (BA in Philosophy from Liberty University and an MAR from Westminster Theological Seminary) was in pastoral ministry from 2004 until 2011. He then left to teach Philosophy & Ethics at Grand Canyon University and co-launch MyOhai, a collective of creatives and advisers (that he now runs under the name EMDASH) where he advises individuals and organizations on how to communicate better. In 2012 he co-wrote Genesis for Normal People with me and in 2013 he became the founding operations director for Experience Institute, an innovative graduate school alternative based in Chicago.

Byas and his wife Sarah live in suburban Philadelphia and have four children: Augustine (6), Tov (5), Elletheia (3), & Exodus (1).

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Some teenagers dream of being musicians or sports stars. My dream was seminary — and becoming a Christian apologist. So, after receiving a B.A. in philosophy at a self-described conservative Christian university my new wife and I moved states for me to live the dream.

Little did I know the dream would include lying awake for countless nights alternating between intense fear that I might go to hell for changing my views about the Bible and giddy excitement, like I had just opened the Bible again for the first time.

Just like many in this series, my “aha” moments concerning the Bible came from actually studying it in my seminary Bible classes and followed Thomas Kuhn’s description of paradigm shift perfectly: minor shifts that over time forced a new framework for understanding the whole.

But a few of those shifts were more memorable than others.

The first was discovering the work of Walter Brueggemann. His Texts Under Negotiation and Prophetic Imagination reminded me of a quote by the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, “Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget that shit and just play.”

When Brueggemann could quote the latest scholarship and garner the respect of the academy while also penning phrases like,

Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet

to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures

alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one...

(Prophetic Imagination, 40)

it was evident that he was engaged in playful mastery.

His writings asked that I stop trying to make the Bible “relevant” (an important phrase in my tradition), whether it be to culture, contemporary church polity, or theology, and instead immerse myself with such abandon that I became relevant to the text.

He showed me that scholarship coupled with deep imagination is the heart of the theological enterprise; that is, he modeled for me the responsibility of pursuing biblical scholarship beyond my own ideological idols and gave me the permission to do it with imagination and passion.

And he let me know it probably wouldn’t be well received by those in power.

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My second memorable “aha” moment was my interaction with Jon Levenson, professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard. After reading his entire corpus and exchanging emails with him for a graduate seminar on Old Testament Theology I felt like I had gone through rehab and boot camp, all in one semester.

Like Brueggemann, Levenson continued to indulge my fascination with “playful mastery.” But Brueggemann, though he had given me the courage to chart a different course, hadn’t really given me any maps. Through his sharp analyses of biblical conflict, tension, and contradiction, Levenson was my map.

Levenson effortlessly quotes biblical and rabbinic texts to animate the conflict within the traditions behind the Hebrew Bible in Sinai & Zion. He creatively interrogates how Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) may point to a cover-up about child sacrifice in The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son.

And he does it all with an evident passion and respect for the text that avoids both religious eisegesis and dismissive antagonism.

I came to seminary with an protectionist Calvinist orientation, and chose my seminary for that reason. But I came to see that Levenson and Brueggemann took the Bible more seriously than I or my tradition did—or anyone I had read before—and it led them to dangerously refreshing and compelling conclusions.

Their tenacious sincerity about the text wasn’t a means to defending already existing dogmas but a means to understanding, and beyond that, imagination. That was new for me. And I was hooked.

In full disclosure, those months were difficult for me. During this time, I was a teaching pastor and was constantly wrestling with how these “aha” moments would affect my congregation, and, to be honest, my paycheck. They were also hard on my wife, who noticed a change in me. One morning she finally said, “I feel like you’ve lost your convictions about Christianity. What’s going on?”

That stung. I had always prided myself on being a person of conviction. But she was right. And she was also wrong.

I said, “If you mean my convictions about how to read the Bible, then yes. But if you mean my love for the Bible itself, then no. I think I’ve just now found it.” That was enough for her. And thankfully we’ve been on a beautiful journey of faith together ever since.

* * * * * * * * * *

Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Peter Enns

Part 3 - John Byron

Part 4 - Daniel Kirk

Part 5 - Michael Pahl

Part 6 - Charles Halton

Part 7 - Christopher W. Skinner

Part 8 - Christopher M. Hays

Part 9 - Michael L. Ruffin

Part 10 - Athony Le Donne

Part 11 - Chris Tilling

Part 12 - Megan DeFranza

Part 13 - Carlos Bovell

Part 14 - Lindsey Trozzo

Part 15 - Anonymous

part 16 - Jared Byas

Ecology Reforms - Releasing Our Rivers & Depaving Our Cities

Remains of the Glines Canyon Dam on the upper Elwha River. Photo by James Wengler.

Depaving Cities, Undamming Rivers -

Here’s How We’re Undoing the Damage

All around the United States, people are stepping up to help a damaged planet heal.

Diane Brooks posted Mar 16, 2015

Releasing the rivers

The largest dam-removal project in history reached completion last fall, when excavators dredged the final tons of pulverized concrete from the Elwha River channel in Western Washington. Native fish, banished for 100 years from their historic spawning habitat, already were rediscovering the Elwha’s newly accessible upper stretches. Within weeks of the final explosion in August, threatened bull trout and chinook salmon were spotted migrating beyond the rubble.

Two hydroelectric dams once blocked the Elwha; both now are gone.

“It was a thrill,” said Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes. Before the Elwha Dam was built in 1910, the river produced an estimated 400,000 fingerlings per year, a number that dwindled to 3,000 in recent decades. All five native species of Elwha salmon are expected to repopulate the river.

More than 80,000 dams more than six feet high block U.S. waterways, and activists are cheered by the Elwha success story. Two hydroelectric dams once blocked the Elwha; both now are gone. Sediment that was trapped behind them is washing downstream, replenishing habitat. The first 67,000 seedlings (of a planned 350,000) to help restore native vegetation are already planted on the sites of the former dams and reservoirs. A documentary about the project, Return of the River, came out in 2014.

Return of the River

Photo by Shutterstock

Botanical remedies

Headache or back pain? Before you reach for the bottle of aspirin, consider aspirin’s ancient precursor: white willow bark. Or perhaps echinacea to boost the immune system, aloe vera to heal burns, and black cohosh to ease hot flashes.

The trend away from the profit-based pharmaceutical industry toward natural, age-old botanical remedies is beneficial for the environment and wildlife as well as for the humans who take medications. A U.S. Geological Survey study found chemicals from prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications in 80 percent of water samples drawn from streams in 30 states; those waters flow into lakes, rivers, and eventually the oceans.

Alain Touwaide, co-founder of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, says pharmaceutical chemists have inverted humanity’s relationship with medicines. “When a sick person used a plant, this person relied on history, the use of the plant over centuries,” he says. Now a researcher starts with a chemical and then experiments to find its uses. Botanical medicine has “an almost philosophical component,” he says, which helps with healing. Users tap into an interactive “sympathy” between humans and the environment, he says.

Photo by Paul Dunn.

Citizen turtle remedies

When a community of threatened Hawaiian green sea turtles began hauling themselves from the ocean onto the northern beaches of Oahu to bask and sleep in the sunshine, word soon spread through the island’s tourism industry. Families began plopping children on turtles’ backs for photos and poking, prodding, and pushing turtles back into the surf.

Concerned, the national Oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) launched a “Show Turtles Aloha” campaign in 2005. North Shore residents quickly joined in, and in 2007 they created the nonprofit Malama na Honu (Protect the Turtles) to monitor the beach and educate visitors every day of the year. About 60 trained Honu Guardian volunteers take turns patrolling Laniakea Beach, working three-hour daylight shifts. They educate tourists about the ancient species, ask beachgoers to keep a respectful distance, and collect data for NOAA.

Hawaiian green turtles were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 1978. They’ve made a remarkable recovery since then, and their major nesting beach at French Frigate Shoals was added to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in 2006. The number of nesting turtles has grown annually from 67 in the early 1980s to more than 800 today, according to Irene Kelly, NOAA’s regional sea turtle recovery coordinator.

Dennis Mclung stands inside what used to be a swimming pool in his backyard in Mesa, Arizona.
Now it serves as a closed-loop food-producing farm for his family. Photo by Laura Segall.

Swimming Pool Becomes BackYard Farm

It’s a typical Mesa, Arizona, suburban subdivision, except for that corner house with a broccoli patch growing on its low-pitched roof. And those goats, chickens, and ducks roaming the backyard, near the solar panels erected above the entryway to that greenhouse planted in the deep end of an old swimming pool. When Dennis and Danielle McClung bought their ‘60s-era home in 2009, they hatched an eccentric but modest plan to make the best of that decrepit, way-past-its-prime pool. Two days after they moved in, Dennis McClung erected his first in-pool greenhouse, intended to provide food for their young family. He had recently quit his job as a Home Depot department manager; his wife was a nurse. “I convinced my wife of my crazy plan, and she went with it,” he says. “We really wanted to live a more sustainable, self-sufficient life, and we thought this was good idea. And it just kept getting better and better, the more we put into it.”

Today their backyard is a mini-ecosystem—McClung calls it a “closed-loop food-producing urban greenhouse”—and their home is headquarters for the Garden Pool nonprofit organization. Its official aim: sustainable food production, research, and education. At night the chickens roost above the pool’s deep-end rainwater pond so their droppings contribute to an aquaponics habitat for tilapia fish. The McClung’s natural water filtration system uses duckweed and solar energy; their organic greenhouse plants are rooted hydroponically, without soil. Pond snails, which probably hitchhiked in on the duckweed, provide calcium for the egg-laying chickens and help manage a pond-sludge problem.

On a typical day, the system provides the couple and their three children with about half their diet, McClung says. That includes veggies and herbs from the greenhouse; apples, citrus fruit, figs, sugar cane, bananas, and pomegranates picked from a 40-tree grove in their side yard; along with eggs and goat milk.

Photo by Shutterstock / Holly Kuchera.

Making room for carnivores

When gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, we learned valuable lessons about the critical role of large carnivores in balancing an ecosystem. the impact on the landscape was dramatic. Two decades later, stream banks stripped by booming populations of deer and elk are growing new trees and shrubs, and birds and beavers are returning to the feast. even the physical landscape has been altered, as returning vegetation stabilizes banks and prevents erosion.

Now a growing movement of scientists and conservationists is campaigning to go further to ensure the health and survival of large carnivores: defining and protecting ancient migration corridors across the continent. a key component of this campaign is educating affected communities about the importance—and practicality—of coexisting with species that traditionally were feared and killed.

In her new book The Carnivore Way: A Transboundary Conservation Vision, Cristina Eisenberg says coexistence with wild predators isn’t just possible: it’s critical. “Carnivores protect biodiversity, which creates ecosystems more resilient to climate change. The climate change crisis we are facing makes it critical for us to help carnivores thrive wherever we can,” says Eisenberg, lead scientist at Earthwatch Institute.

The Wildlands Network has identified two initial priorities for protection. The Eastern Wildway runs 2,500 miles from Florida’s Everglades through the forests of Alabama and along the Appalachian Mountains to the boreal forests and Maritime Provinces of Canada. The Western Wildway is a 5,000-mile corridor stretching from Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental to Alaska’s Brooks Range, running along the Rocky Mountains.

Photo from Depave.

Asphalt, be gone

Across the nation, activists are organizing work parties to rip up excess pavement in playgrounds, parking lots, and empty lots, replacing it with pervious surfaces such as porous asphalt, block pavers, and greenery of all sorts. The swaths of impervious pavement that characterize our urban and suburban communities, from sprawling shopping malls to ubiquitous cul-de-sac neighborhoods, have vast ecological impacts. Rainwater—which otherwise would soak into the earth and benefit the habitat—is polluted with oil, antifreeze, and pesticides and then diverted into local streams and rivers.

The Portland, Oregon, nonprofit Depave promotes the transformation of over-paved places, such as schools, while engaging and inspiring communities to reconnect urban landscapes to nature. The organization uses community partnerships and volunteer power, and creates educational events, to pursue its goal of nurturing livable cities where people and wildlife can coexist. Since its initial project in 2008, Depave has transformed more than 123,000 square feet of asphalt, diverting about 2.9 million gallons of stormwater from storm drains. Above, the Creston School depaving project last fall.

Photo from Rebuild by Design.

Rebuild smarter

The devastation wrought in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy, including 117 U.S. deaths and an estimated $5 billion in damages to greater New York alone, shocked planners and policymakers into fashioning innovative new tactics to protect communities from future disasters. Rebuild by Design, a unique public-private partnership, is identifying and funding ambitious, creative infrastructure improvements in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A contest initiated by the U.S. government already has allotted $930 million to six winning projects, each crafted with powerful community input.

“Sandy exposed physical and social vulnerabilities of the region. It was not built to withstand the forces of climate change, and now we can rebuild it with better foresight,” said Amy Chester, Rebuild by Design’s managing director.

Major philanthropic partners staffed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development contest, and the project is funded by Congress, along with the Rockefeller Foundation and other private supporters. Design teams worked closely with local residents, businesses, and governments to co-design realistic solutions that carry broad support, Chester said.

In Manhattan, for instance, the community examined how river berms can benefit daily public life. “A wall can be a piece of art; a wall can be a part of a park. A wall should never be something that walls off the communities from the waterfront,” said Chester. One winning proposal: the Big U river fortifications. A 10-mile stretch of Lower Manhattan is to be protected from future storms and rising sea levels with projects including wide, grass-topped berms and rolling hills and bridges, providing new recreational spaces along the Hudson and East rivers.

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Diane Brooks wrote this article for Together, With Earth, the Spring 2014 issue of YES! Magazine. Diane is a journalist and communications consultant. She was a newspaper reporter for many years in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area, and now lives in Everett, Wash. priestdi.com.

Confessions of an Egalitarian Complementarian

Confessions of an Egalitarian Complementarian

Source Link

by Roger Olson

March 4, 2015

Comments

The topic is gender. It’s a minefield. Anyone who dares to step into it must be prepared to be injured. Especially in American academic institutions it’s a minefield. And it is a major point of division among evangelical Christians. I speak from within both contexts.

In academia we are in a time of recovery from rampant patriarchalism and that has led to some over reactions. Two trends are noticeable. First, any acknowledgement of real difference between the sexes—beyond biology and patriarchal oppression—is discouraged. One academic professional society requires facilities where it meets to make all restrooms unisex. Second, insofar as differences between males and females are acknowledged—beyond biology and patriarchal oppression—typically female modes of behavior are to be prioritized. No positive acknowledgment of typically male modes of behavior is permitted. These two trends are in some tension with each other, but both are easily observable in American academia and they filter out into the media, government and business.

Among evangelicals one is pressured to choose between being either “complementarian” or “egalitarian.” There is little room for middle ground or hybrids. Somewhat mimicking secular academic trends, many evangelical egalitarians shy away from any talk of interdependence between the sexes or of differences between them beyond biology and social conditioning. “Masculine” and “feminine” are only social constructions and nothing more. Any mention of innate differences between boys and girls beyond physiology is discouraged. The assumption is that “difference” inevitably leads to hierarchy (read “patriarchy”).

On the other hand, many evangelical complementarians insist that power differentials between males and females are rooted in revelation and the Trinity itself. “Male headship,” it is argued, does not mean male superiority but only divinely ordained male leadership. In reality, however, among evangelical complementarians, male headship always tends to flesh out as male domination and female submission.

I stand (sometimes alone) in a middle space, a liminal space (to use academic jargon), between egalitarianism and complementarianism. It’s often an uncomfortable space to inhabit. What this means is that:

• Among academics I reject the radical minimizing of sex differences. I believe male-female difference is more than biology/physiology and social conditioning. I admit that identifying that difference is never easy, but I believe it is observable in tendencies of behavior well before hormonal influences can account for it. We are one humanity; our humanity is one. But difference does not mean inequality in any other area of human life; we celebrate difference and “otherness” (in academia). We can be and are one humanity in variety. And maleness and femaleness is one of the irreducible manifestation of that variety. It cannot and should not be obliterated by social engineering.

• At the same time I stand together with feminists in opposing oppression based on sex or gender. Females should have every opportunity to fulfill their human giftedness including entrance to every level of leadership in every profession. (On the other hand I think professions commonly considered reserved for females ought to be opened without hindrances to males. If the profession of engineering would be improved by having more women engineers, then the profession of nursing would be improved by having more men nurses.)

• Among evangelicals I stand with the egalitarians in affirming that women called by God to lead should be ordained and recognized as leaders at every level of religious organizations. I stand with egalitarians in affirming that husbands and wives should submit to each other in marriage and that both, together, should lead families. I have been a member of two churches pastored by women (and am now attending a third) and have many women students who will be pastors of churches. I work within a denomination whose executive leader is a woman. My wife is a deacon in our church. My wife and I have for forty plus years made all decisions in our marriage and family together. When we do not agree we do not act in any way that affects both. I do not claim “leadership” and neither does she—except together, as one.

• On the other hand, I agree with complementarians that “manhood” and “womanhood” are rooted in creation and are not reducible to biology/physiology or social construction-conditioning. Although they overlap much (and there’s nothing wrong with that), manhood and womanhood, maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, complement each other. Typically men need other men and they need women; typically women need other women and they need men. “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” is not true. Woman is made for man as man is made for woman. The two need each other and complement each other. We should celebrate the difference and interdependence without creating or supporting hierarchy.

• For example: A church for women only would be a travesty as would a church for men only (both exist). Children are best raised, when possible, by both a male and a female. If either a father or mother is not available the single parent should seek out a person of the other sex to co-parent with them (within appropriate boundaries, of course). Boys need both male and female teachers in schools, as do girls.

We need to overcome our polar oppositions and recognize both man and woman as uniquely gifted by God, equal in every way, interdependent, and yet really different ways of being human.

Confusing the Biblical God of Time with the Greek God of Time: Classic Theism & Divine Timelessness - What It Is and Isn't from a Non-Process Point of View

An Example of Unwarranted Theological Speculation: Divine Timelessness

Source Link

by Roger Olson

[comments by R.E. Slater]

February 19, 2015

Comments

“The God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

And it can have negative consequences for Christian practices such as prayer.

- Roger Olson

In my immediately preceding post [see next article below]  I argued that far too much Christian theology includes unwarranted speculation—especially about God. Under pressure from Greek ontology traditional, “classical theism” has generally agreed that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the Yahweh of the Bible) is somehow (i.e., differently expressed) “outside of time” such that temporal sequence, the passage of past into present into future (or future into present into past) is known to God but not experienced by God.

Put in other words, for this classical theistic view, God’s eternity means (in relation to time) “simultaneity with all times.” In other words, in this view, explained best (most scholars agree) by Boethius, God exists in an “eternal now.” For him, our future has already happened. In other words, this is not just a claim about God’s foreknowledge; it is a claim about God’s being. It is not merely epistemological; it is ontological.

I have taught Christian theology on both the undergraduate and graduate levels for thirty-four years. I can say without hesitation that the vast majority of my students think this is biblical theology and orthodoxy. They think this view of God’s eternity, timelessness, being “outside of time,” is part-and-parcel of Christianity, the Christian faith, even the gospel itself. Try questioning it and you will (I have) experience(d) strenuous push back.

I suspect many people think two things about this traditional view of God’s eternity and time:

1 - First, it is necessary for God’s transcendence; if God is somehow “within time” or if time is “real for God,” then (God forbid!) God must be limited.

2 - Second, it undermines God’s power and sovereignty and makes God unreliable. The future, scary to us, becomes scary to God, too. As one theologian expressed it, denial of the classical view makes God a “pathetic, hand wringing God who has to wait fearfully to see what will happen.”

And yet…

Nowhere does the biblical story of God, the biblical narrative that identifies God for us, and upon which classical Christian theology claims to be based, say or even hint that God is “outside of time” or “timeless” or that all times are “simultaneously before the eyes of God.”

• This view of God’s eternity entered into Christian theology from Greek philosophy which regarded time as imperfection.

• Greek philosophy was notoriously negative with regard to time. Hebrew thought was not; it regarded time and history as the framework for God’s action.

Many Christian theologians, not all liberal, began to see this especially in the nineteenth century and began to deconstruct the Greek influences in Christian theology insofar as they were extra-biblical and tended to de-personalize God.

Among the earliest to begin this deconstruction project were Richard Watson (Methodist), I. A. Dorner (Lutheran-Reformed), and even Karl Barth (Reformed). (Barth’s belief about God’s relation to time was complex and ultimately ambiguous, but there can be no denying that he incorporated time into God even if he called God’s time “divine temporality.”) (Many conservative theologians “blame” liberal Adolph Harnack for this de-Hellenizing project, but he was not alone.)

And yet…

As Christian philosophers Nicholas Wolterstorff and Keith Ward (among others) have strenuously pointed out, a “timeless being” cannot interact with temporal beings. In fact, such a being, freed entirely of the flow of time, cannot “act” in time at all. In fact, he cannot even know that “today is February 18, 2015.” But most importantly, as Christian philosopher Dallas Willard pointed out most emphatically in The Divine Conspiracy, such a God cannot be affected by our prayers.

So how to preserve God’s transcendence together with denial of God’s timeless eternity?

This has been answered many times by many philosophers and theologians. The answer is “creation as kenosis.” This is explained in many books but is especially clear in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis edited by theologian-scientist John Polkinghorne (Eerdmans, 2001). Polkinghorne’s own contribution to the book is best: “Kenotic Creation and Divine Action.” The point is that God’s entry into time with us (T. F. Torrance in Space, Time, and Incarnation) is voluntary.

Why would God do this? Out of love for the sake of having real relationships with temporal creatures made in his own image and likeness. A “timeless” God who is not temporal cannot be affected by anything temporal beings do. The great medieval scholastic theologians knew this and described all God’s relations with temporal creatures as external, not internal. In other words, God remains unchanged, unaltered in every way [sic, divine impassibility]. They drew the natural, reasonable conclusion that an eternal God, one for whom our past, present and future are all “now,” must be immutable and even impassible in the strongest senses possible. He can act but not react. (Whether he can even act within time is strongly questioned by Wolterstorff and Ward and other Christian philosophers.)

God’s transcendence lies in the fact that he remains self-sufficient in his eternal nature and character; time does not erode or add to God’s being. And the voluntarily temporal God remains omnipotent and everlasting. Time does not limit or threaten his being or power.

The conclusion of many modern Christian thinkers (and here I am excluding process theologians such as Nelson Pike whose 1970 book God and Timelessness is a devastating logical critique of the traditional view) is that the classical view of God’s eternity (“outside of time,” “eternal now-ness”) is pure philosophical-theological speculation unrelated to the God of the Bible and alien to any religion that values an interactive God. It tends to make God remote, uninvolved, inaccessible and non-relational (except within himself).

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I often wonder about the possible connection between this classical view of God’s eternity (viz., “outside of time”) and many Christians’ view of prayer. When I ask my students if they have heard the saying that “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me” almost all confess that they heard it in church or home or somewhere among Christians. That prayer changes me is not contested; that prayer can change the mind of God is clearly biblical. To say otherwise is to reduce numerous passages of Scripture to mere imagery, “anthropomorphism,” and guts petitionary prayer [into a nothingness, meaningless, worrisome task]. I suspect that the idea of God as “outside of time,” “eternal now,” “non-temporal,” contributes to and supports that false idea of prayer.

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So why did this traditional view of God’s eternity (“timelessness”) invade Christian theology which claims to be based on the Bible or at least governed by the Bible? I suspect the Greek “logic of perfection” contributed to it—the idea that God is perfect, time is imperfect, therefore God must be timeless.

A more biblical way of looking at the subject would be that God is perfect, love is perfect, love between God and created beings requires freedom-in-and-for relationship, freedom-in-and-for relationship (between God and created beings) requires time, it is more perfect for God to enter into time than to remain outside time.

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At this point in a conversation about this subject many Christians will ask “Why can’t God enter into time and be outside of time also?” But think about that language. How can a non-temporal being “enter into time” while also remaining outside of time? If what has been said is true, then only “part of God” would be in real relationship with free creatures. There would still be “part of God” for whom the future has already happened. If the future has already happened at all, for anyone, even for a “part of God,” then history’s unfolding including our ability to affect God (e.g., with prayer) is a charade. The idea that this problem can be solved by positing that God both enters into time and remains outside of time is simply another way of saying God is timeless. It doesn’t solve anything.

But more importantly, the logic of the Bible, the flow of the biblical narrative, God’s story with us, never says or even hints that God is “outside of time.” It only says that God is everlasting and hints (very strongly) that God is the Lord of time. All that the biblical narrative requires is that God be omnipotent within time and able to guarantee his victory over whatever forces oppose him.

If there is some aspect of God that remains above or outside of time, I do not know how to speak of that, how even to imagine that, how to make that consistent with God within time (and God in real relation with creatures in time). Therefore, I leave that aside, simply lay it down, and ignore it. It doesn’t function in a truly biblical theology except as a metaphysical compliment some people feel compelled to pay to God. But I don’t feel so compelled by the Bible or by reason.

I realize that the temporal view of God goes against the bulk of Christian tradition, but the traditional, classical view is derived from alien [(non-biblical, non-Jewish)] sources. It is a foreign body within biblical theology. “The God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And it can have negative consequences for Christian practices such as prayer.

Theologian Robert Jenson is widely considered one of the most astute contemporary Christian theologians. Many of his books (such as God after God: The God of the Past and the Future as Seen in the Work of Karl Barth [1969] and The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel [1982]) strongly point toward a temporal view of God. Page 4 of The Triune Identity powerfully expresses what I (and other non-process theologians who embrace a temporal view of God) believe:

“God may be God because in him all that will be is already realized,

so that the novelties of the future are only apparent and its threats

therefore not overwhelming. Or God may be God because in him

all that has been is opened to transformation, so that the guilts of

the past and immobilities of the present are rightly to be

 interpreted as opportunities of creation.”

 - Robert Jenson

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Theology and Speculation

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by Roger Olson

February 17, 2015

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The issue here is the legitimacy of speculation in theology. What is speculation? In this context, if not in all contexts, “speculation” is making truth claims without clear warrant—reasonable grounding in relevant data. In theology “relevant data” are revelation/Scripture, tradition, reason (logic) and experience. “Experience” is intersubjective experience, not private experience.

Some years ago I came to the conclusion that much Christian theology, truth claims made by Christian theologians, is speculation—as opposed to clear exegesis of Scripture and tradition using reason and experience as guidance mechanisms and tools of interpretation.

Now I need to give examples. It seems to me that calling the Holy Spirit “the bond of love between Father and Son” in the immanent Trinity (like much talk about the immanent Trinity) is speculation. And yet, probably due to the influence of Augustine (De Trinitate) it has become commonplace in especially Western Christian theology.

Another example is theories of atonement: how exactly Christ’s death on the cross made possible human salvation. All theories of the atonement seem speculative to me.

Of course, my examples reveal that I think much “tradition” is itself speculative compared with Scripture itself. Most Protestants, anyway, claim to believe that Scripture trumps tradition and where tradition departs from Scripture it is to be held more lightly and with less authority.

Over the years I have gotten in the habit of reading every book of theology with a kind of critical principle about speculation: “Is this truth claim made by this theologian actually warranted by revelation/Scripture?”

I would guess that as much as half or more of all that I read in books of theology is speculation.

Now, having said all that, let me also say that speculation is not always bad. The human mind seeks answers and it is naturally for theologians to guess at possible answers when revelation/Scripture is not clear. I don’t blame theologians for attempting to answer the question “Why did Jesus have to die in order for us to be saved?” but I recognize much of most theological answers as speculation.

Some years ago I was at a banquet honoring a world class theologian’s sixtieth birthday. During his talk after the toasts he reminisced about his life and career and specifically referred to a falling out he had with another theologian who was present. He said directly to the other theologian “Let’s all just remember: It’s only guesswork anyway.”

Naturally I was a bit shocked as I had spent much time and effort studying that theologian’s work. And yet I was somewhat relieved at the same time because I had come to suspect that much of his theology was, indeed, “guesswork” or what I am calling here speculation.

Again, to me that does not nullify the value of that theologian’s contributions to theology. I only wish he and others labeled their prescriptive truth claims “speculation” rather than putting them forward as “truth.”

As I said, speculation is not bad or wrong, but it should not carry the weight, authority, that truth grounded directly in revelation/Scripture carries. And yet what often happens is people adopt an entire theological project as truth and are reluctant or unwilling to recognize much of it as speculation when, in fact, that is what it is.

Theologians (and others) should be more open and transparent about this. They should label their truth claims with degrees of speculation—from that which is closer to the data (“justified speculation”) to that which is farther from the data (“guesswork only”). My own reading of Christian theology has led me to believe that most theologians (other than fundamentalists) actually know these differences between truth claims but, for whatever reasons, are reluctant to label them.

What difference does all this make? Well, it should be obvious to people involved in theological work. It is very common for graduate students, for example, to latch on to a theologian and his or her system and treat it as truth itself. Arguments break out and people are demeaned, insulted, marginalized, even excluded because they don’t buy into the “truth system” that, in fact, is half or more speculation.

The twentieth century saw a renaissance of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian theology—from Barth to Boff theologians (almost) all piled on the Trinity bandwagon offering their own contributions. I have read much of that literature and concluded that at least half of what is said about the Trinity in those numerous tomes of modern theology is speculation. Some of it I would consider warranted speculation but much of it is sheer guesswork. Who can really know the inner workings of the Trinity?

Now don’t get me wrong; I love theological speculation. I’m sure I do it! But a greater degree of humility ought to accompany speculation in theology (than is usually the case).

A case in point is the debates about the so-called “decrees of God.” Supralapsarians, infralapsarians, Amyrauldians, Arminians. So much of what went on in Protestant scholasticism was sheer speculation and yet it led to numerous divisions among Christians. Another case is, as already mentioned, theories of the atonement. The Bible overflows with images and metaphors. Attempting to develop a model that explains why Jesus had to die is natural, but elevating one model to dogma or rejecting others as wrong amounts to elevating to speculation to timeless truth.

There are minds attracted to speculation. When a theological question seems important to someone (or a group) and yet revelation/Scripture is not as clear as they wish it were (often the case) they often look around for a “Bible teacher” or theologian who “has the answer” and then latch onto that person as if he or she thought God’s thoughts after him. They then treat that Bible teacher’s or theologian’s “teachings” as God’s truth itself. They do not want to hear “This is my opinion,” or “This is how it seems to me.” So often the favored Bible teacher or theologian treats his or her doctrinal formulations just like the proverbial fundamentalist preacher who pounds the pulpit saying “The Bible saaaayyyys…” when, in fact, the Bible doesn’t say that at all!

These people have trouble distinguishing between revelation/Scripture and a theologian’s speculative answers to their pressing questions. I have seen this happen with students (and theologians) enamored with the theology of Karl Barth; they become upset when anyone questions Barth’s veracity on a subject. “That’s just Barth’s speculation” invites a glare and an argument—as if Barth’s Church Dogmatics were dropped down out of heaven. I have seen the same happen with people devoted to Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology.

In fact, both Barth and Tillich were prone to speculation. I suspect they knew it. But too often they did not couch their truth claims in such a way as to indicate “this is speculation.”

I favor theological works that admit speculation is just that—speculation. Unfortunately, they are too few.