Philip Clayton's talks about Process Theology

"No one gets to capture the flag around here... "

 - Anon

What can God be doing now?!?

 

Part of developing this blog/journal during the past year has been to revitalize a Christianity that has become boring, static, mundane, inconsequential, and unimportant to our postmodern day lives of the 21st Century. The old orthodoxies with their set definitions of God and faith, church and worship, have basically turned off many "outsiders" to the Christian faith. That same faith seems unremarkable and unrelated to what's happening in the world with its sufferings, injustices, and unfeeling regard for humanity's basic liberties and freedoms. We have inhumanized practically everything that we have touched. Creating a world that is more mechanistic than human; more dead than alive; more concerned with self, than with people beyond ourselves; more concerned with our Western cultures than with the wider pluralisms of the many non-Christian cultures around us. In essence, we have made God out to be all of these things that we basically are ourselves, calling these things "God" when in actuality they resemble our own idols of "God." So that if this is the kind of God the church is offering than no one wants this kind of God. Least of all myself.

Our favorite ideas of God
are changing...

Of course I am being unfair here and dumping all the old cynicisms and cliches that we've heard about the church and Christianity since time immemorial... but there is a large part of this that can be true when the church refuses to loosen up its dogmas and restrictive thinking to simply sit itself down upon past creedal faiths and closed theologies to plaintively cry "the sky is falling" like chicken little. With postmodernism coming-of-age we now have the opportunity to rethink, in radically newer terms, the church's ideas of "God," "faith," and "religion," in very organic ways. Not by simply creating an "edgy" style of worship, or "closer-knit" faith communities, or more "holistic" ministry practices that are street-wise and pedestrian. No, it has to go deeper than this. It has to go all the way down into our very theologies itself. A theology that must be re-created in deeply radical terms that lets go of the past and opens itself up to a whole new array of thinking about God, ourselves, and our world.

Our favorite dogmas are broken...

Consequently, over this past year we have been looking at a branch of theology called "Process Theology" and trying to understand what it is, why it is, and where it would have us go.... And for us older theologs and bible students, we have been trying to discern just what to keep, and what to let go, within this newer branch of ontology, metaphysics and economic order. For myself I have been advocating a halfway house... a place somewhere between Classical Theism and Process Theism that I have been calling Relational Theism (see links immediately below). Not "Relational-Process Theology," but "Relational Theism" that rejects Process' panentheistic (and perhaps too liberal) basis but reaches out to take all the cool relational stuff about God, us, and religion, that is transportable  from process theology; but also from classical theism's very austere, and implacable, ideas about God, His rule, and His conduct towards creation and mankind. So then, a synthesis, if you will, between the two varying positions.

Why? Because I am attracted to a God who is relational. Who is deeply involved in the process of re-creation - even within His own Being that is too often claimed impassive and stoic. Who changes like I do with every passing day, adapting to the world of men and creation, as each changes, and forms, and reforms, and breaks apart, and reforms again. Something which is dynamic, reactive, and intrinsically organic. But is also deeply connected to the past as much as to the future. Which binds all together as one as a living, breathing, process - and not a cold, impersonal, intemperate rule of governance according to a heartless plan or cold ideology.
 

Seeking a Postmodern Re-definition of Classic Theism -

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-and-what-of-process-theology.html

Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/process-theology-terence-fretheim.html

Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/theism-panentheism-open-theism-process.html

Fear of change is in the church...

Of course this leaves open a lot of questions about what kind of omnipotence and foreknowledge God bears (or wields) which is where my old timey Classical Theism kicks in and begins to question my inherited classical tradition - asking questions that requires of it a fuller evaluation of its deficiencies and/or sufficiencies, with a better approbation of where it can, or cannot, lead when asking these more fundamental postmodern questions.  For instance, perhaps it is in God's ethical being that His divine Personage remains immutable and unchanging - for how can pure Love be anything less that itself? And perhaps when we were created in God's image and given free will God necessarily "limited" Himself (a word I no longer like by the way b/c God isn't necessarily "limited" unless only by a relationship's self-limiting boundaries, so let's substitute this idea for the word "relates" Himself) in his predestination / omnipotency through an infinitely evolving relationship that is dynamic, open, and malleable (changing). This then would affect God's foreknowledge for which a newer branch of theology has arisen called Open Theology which might provide some help in light of these newer, postmodern, ideas. Or might not (but I'm hoping it will!). And the list can go on and on... but a list that we must explore should we wish to find reasonable answers... and if not answers, than much better questions.... Which I personally would be quite content with anyway being an old "Lostie" (the popular TV show from a couple of years ago) at heart, whose viewership sought for better questions rather than straight-forward answers to each character's quantum-like time splices of lived lives.

We tell God we can't
and then try to patch things up...

At least that is how I am understanding it at this point.  But to do this we must be better acquainted with Process Theology, and more willing to adapt our old-line orthodoxies, and ingrained church traditionalisms into a more radical rethinking of basic church doctrines and ideas of God. And to not behave like the story of Humpty-Dumpty who fell off the King's wall with all his pet ideologies smashing about to then be repaired by all the king's horses in an impossible task of frivolity and nonsense. No. But to push on in re-imagining a theology that can be beheld in the footlights of post-modernism's constant glare and brighter promises.

And as if on cue, God has provided us with a new form of church movement that we've been studying called post-evangelic or Emergent Christianity, which seems to be the perfect vehicle to do this type of thinking as we look at the many newer conceptualizations and ideologies of the Bible in fundamentally altering ways releasing us from bondage of older church epistemologies into fresher postmodern perspectives of what our faith can be and become. Living, real, affective, dynamic, relational, and meaningful! At least that is my hope and expectation for Emergent Christianity.

We are left either with really good
French Toast...

Not that our faith was less meaningful in eras past, because back then it simply had adapted itself to live-and-breathe within those era's philosophical besetting boundaries and epistemologies. For within those past centuries many eons ago the church's faith was as organic and real then as what we would wish it to be now. But the church's faith of yesteryear is not going to live-and-breathe the same now as it did then in our newer, postmodernistic, and scientific era. Much like Jesus' new wine of the gospel that needed newer wineskins lest it burst, so will the faith of a newly emerging, post-evangelic church require a newer, more postmodern, gospel wineskin - one that might look more like that of a Relational Theology bearing within its bones an Open Theology of the future full of expectations and zeal. But to get there we must first understand its newer cousin, Process Theology, and from there we will be freer to synthesize our older, classical, faith into something more relevant for today. By discovering what works - and what doesn't work - in this newer postmodern wineskin we call Emergent, or post-evangelic, Christianity, while leaving the task of unscrambling broken eggs to our infinitely wise God within a nursery of fomenting ideas brimming with possibilities, hatching uncertainties, incredibilities, impossibilities, hope, and nurture. Now wouldn't that be grand!

R.E. Slater

February 8, 2012
revised October 25, 2013

Or a nursery full of new ideas and growing possibilities!
Stayed tuned....

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



Doug Pagitt Radio | Philip Clayton Pt. 1 of 2

Doug Pagitt Radio | Philip Clayton Pt. 2 of 2

A Rough Outline of 
Doug Pagitt – Philip Clayton's Discussion
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/emergentvillage/2012/01/emergent-village-process-theology-conversation-preview/

January 22, 2012

A Definition of Process Theology (PT)

1.       Alfred North Whiteheadian…  John Cobb...

       Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology

2. Any theology that recognizes that thought about God is always in process

What Does This Mean?

"God's own experience of the world is progressing with us. He is being as affected as we our affected by creation, mankind and each other.

"Interaction with mankind changes God as much as He changes us. Our relationship with one another is like a marriage partnership that is not static but dynamic."

"God is unchangeable in his ethical being but that is a different from his changeable relationship to man."

"God’s eternal nature vs. God’s experiential nature is constantly developing or responding to the world and to every living thing on this planet whether animate or inanimate (including the universe). Therefore we have an evolving God."

• Many professional theologians preach a static God
• Many traditional or creedal believers preach a time-bound bible with static proof texts

Process Theology says that God is One who responds to people in genuine interaction with humanity

PT gets interesting when it meets the emergent church. Why? Emergent Christians are much more willing to update their theology; to radically rethink the church in new terms that break the old restrictive rules about God; to think in postmodern terms of dynamic understanding of ourselves, our cultures and our thought.

PT loosens up orthodoxy

To simply have newer church practices, newer worship, or newer communities is not enough... the church needs a newer theology from the current one that simply stays the same day after day; that doesn't evolve with an evolving creation.

We need radically newer ways of doing church but we need even more radically newer ways of thinking about God

God constantly engages His creation

Traditional churches with traditional theologies are not as attractive anymore; people don’t want the old orthodoxies nor do they want any new orthodoxies that were the same dress but in a different style. People don't want an institutional religion but a completely new style of faith that is liberating.

We have a saying, "No one gets to capture the flag around here…." [(not liberals, not evangelics, not even progressives.)]

Paul, whom I have loved

A Map of the Travels and Voyages of the Apostle Paul

The novel idea in contemporary Christian theology is to bash Paul, or more accurately, bash our own ideas of Paul. But I will admit right upfront that I am a lover of Paul - but so am I of Jesus - and have found great help in the study of Hebrews that reclaims the OT through Jesus and the Gospels. However, since my early days in seminary Paul and Jesus have found a growing gap of misunderstanding between them through no fault of their own - for the onus is on us. We have been the ones that have allowed this gap and distance to grow. And it is also on us to reconcile the theologies, narratives, and ministries of Paul and Jesus back together again. Not seamlessly. But holistically. By recognising all the differences of character and location that comes through the marvelous synergies between meta-narrative and cultural import.

Paul in thought, by Rembrandt

Paul was the Pharisee's Pharisee if you will... the guy that knew Torah better than anyone else. And he's also the guy who was struck down in his great knowledge and zeal for his wayward faith upon the Emmaeus Road. To then spend a lifetime thereafter sorting out the Torah through the words and ideas of Jesus - who was no less a Rabbi except in name only - by Judaism's ruling clerics at war with a growing band of emerging Jewish faithful calling themselves Christ-followers (later to be named Christians). But Jesus had the upper hand didn't he? In that he was actually the God who had spoken Torah to his people Israel... to all the Paul's and would-be followers of OT faithful seeking obedience to God's words of self-proclamation and image-making activities. For over the centuries God's words became more-and-more confused through sin and distractions, judgments and exiles. What started out as a powerful journey of faith by their father Abraham had turned into a miserable mess of disillusionment, fear and confusion. A living faith had become distilled into a faith-killing religion of dogmas and rituals. Grace and Law were unnaturally separated and each had lost their way in the idea of what God and worship should be (properly described as covenantal nomism, sic. EP Sanders et al).

Paul writing, by Rembrandt

Consequently I find this newer focus of NPP (the New Perspective of Paul) refreshing in that it re-rights the distortions that have grown up through the church these past 2000 years. The question is not "Do I follow Jesus or do I follow Paul?" But the real question is, can we, like Paul, learn to re-learn our faith as exampled and taught by Jesus - that it might live and breathe as it should be? Apart from our many disillusionments, fears and confusions that we have placed upon our own selves, in our relationships with others, in our understanding of God and worship, within our faith communities, and the many work-a-day ministries of life, family, work and existence? And like Paul, we'll spend a lifetime trying to figure it out because of the many false distortions of the world that comes to us creating disillusionment, fear and confusion.

But I am a firm believer that our God is a "self-knowing Knower" (to use Barth's description of God) who will make Himself firmly known to us... perhaps not through our heads, or doctrines, or beliefs... but most definitely through our hearts, our faith, and our worship. Though I try my best in this website to lead and shepherd our thoughts and insights about God doctrinally I find our best apprehension seems to come when the Divine meets us in our hearts in worshipful moments of salvation, redemption, renewal, restoration, reclamation, resurrection, recommittal, restitution, reconfiguration, and release. And most usually during our times of deflation, defeat, disappointment, destruction, failure, death, sorrow and woe. Unhappily we will always be in the process of being destroyed in this sinful world. But happily, during this destruction, God is there, and will continually reclaim us as His own children who will never be loosed from His all powerful grip of grace, mercy and hope, in a never-ending process of rebirth.

So then, do not give up on yourself nor on others. It is all of God. And only of God. It is He who is our Faith. The Lover of our Souls. The only real Father that will form and fashion His sons and daughters through this sin-cursed world until we are redeemed fully, freely, completely by His Son Jesus' life, death and resurrection. When together we rise, and together arrive, to a final resting place of newness-of-hope and life eternal. But it begins in this life.... So then, be patient with yourselves. With others. Be steady in your faith and hope. In the devastation of your failures know that God's Spirit rests more powerfully on you than can be thought or believed during those times of abadonment and loss. For you are not abandoned nor lost. God is there especially at those times. And will ever be your inheritance. Your trust. Your Rock and Living Water. The High-Priest of your souls. The Cloud of Fire that abides in the tabernacle of your souls. The Lamb slain for your provisioning. The First Fruits of your Feast. The Slayer of death and sin and devil. God is boundless and is boundlessly-bound to you ever and always. And like Paul, rest ye and be at peace with the Jesus we have come to trust and worship. Who is the self-knowing Knower reclaiming all that you are through Himself.

R.E. Slater

February 7, 2012

God's Everlasting Love (Romans 8.31-39)

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be^[i] against us? ³² gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.^{[j] 35} Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Voyages and Travels of the Apostle Paul

Learning to Love Paul

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/02/02/learning-to-love-paul/

by Scot McKnight

February 2, 2012

J.R. Daniel Kirk‘s new book, Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity (BakerAcademic, 2011) may very well be a touchstone for the next generation of Christians who can’t accept (i) the traditional Paul (on historical grounds) and yet who want to explore what Paul looks like if we begin with a more accurate understanding of Jesus, of Judaism, of the Bible’s Story… and of Paul himself [sic, the (ii) New Perspective of Paul - res].

What role does Paul play in your faith and in your theology? Have you struggled with him?

We begin with this: lots of Christians today are struggling with Paul. (For some that is just incomprehensible, while for many this speaks volumes.) Some are bothered that Paul doesn’t talk kingdom enough; others that Paul doesn’t even talk about Jesus’ teachings; others that Jesus was so activist and justice-oriented and Paul, well, those aren’t his gigs. Some find him “distasteful, offensive, oppressive, exclusive, confusing, arrogant, or just plain wrong” (3). Others wonder why he gets so much attention and why his theology is the lens through which the whole Bible is read [sic, Calvinism as expressed through Reformed Theology. - res]. Others think Paul was not so important until Augustine (c.354-430) and after him not until Luther (c.1483-1546) and Calvin (c.1509-1564). Kirk gives us more: Paul the angry Reformed theologian, the promoter of internalized Christians, the Neoplatonist, the exclusivist, the oppressor, the judge, the chauvinist, and the imposer of order.

Daniel Kirk thinks Paul’s been given a misreading. He thinks we need to get to the narrative shape of Paul’s thinking, to the Story at work in Paul’s letters.

But Daniel also thinks that many (post?) evangelicals no longer operate with the assumptions of the previous generation, including concern with inerrancy as the foundation. “For this generation (in which I include myself), a network of relationships and experiences fills the primary role of confirmation of our beliefs that earlier evangelicals would have located primarily in ‘objective’ truths such as the inerrancy of Scripture or, to take another example, proofs of the resurrection” (7).

Kirks strategy is to show that Jesus and Paul inherited the same story of God at work in Israel, and that Mark’s Story of Jesus and Paul’s Story of Jesus are very similar — that is, Jesus and Paul are at one on the Story. This leads, he argues, to a revolutionary reinterpretation of Paul (for some). That one Story is this:

The God of Israel acted decisively in the person of Jesus to restore God’s rule and reconcile the whole world to himself (9).

That Story is about God (and this God is known through the Story God is in, not through such terms as immutable, etc). This is a Story about Israel as God’s chosen way of blessing the world. No Story in the Bible without Israel. Israel has a future: new king, pour out Spirit, live in Land, free from overlords, the temple.

Big one: The Gospels are Israel’s future. The future tense becomes present tense. This Story comes to its “pointed realization” in the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul’s churches have been “scripted into Israel’s story” so that the whole Gentile theme in Paul is about realizing the promise to Abraham to be a blessing to the nations. They get to be part of Israel’s Story.

The center of this Story, of course, is Jesus. He is the King and brings the kingdom. The Gospels tell the Story of God ruling through Jesus, and the oddity of this Story is that God reigns through Jesus’ death and resurrection. He becomes King, as it were, via those acts. Resurrection is about new creation and about ruling creation.

Mark’s crucified King — first half about king, second half about how he rules as king — and Paul’s christology are very similar: it is about Jesus ruling as the one who was crucified and raised.

The Cost of True Leadership in the Failure of the Jesus' Twelve Disciples

On Jesus’ Choosing Twelve Males, take 1 

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/03/on-jesus-choosing-twelve-males/

by JRD Kirk

February 3, 2012

I know that many of you wake up on Fridays eager for the weekly Karl Barth post. I hate to put you off another day, but today I have something a bit more pressing to take care of.

Yesterday, I posted the first of two responses I wanted to make to John Piper’s description of Christianity as a “masculine” religion. Rachel Held Evans has issued the summons for replies, and I think this is an important moment to inject a more biblically sound reading of gender issues in the church. Thanks, Rachel, for stirring us to positive response.

Today’s issue has to do with the significance of Jesus’ choosing of twelve men to be his disciples. This is one of several issues I take up in Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?.

The story within which this selection of the twelve is embedded leads us to draw a very different point from Piper’s.

Jesus chooses twelve men. These twelve Jesus specially commissions. Jesus came preaching, casting out demons, and healing. The disciples are sent to preach and heal and cast out demons.

Jesus comes proclaiming and inaugurating the reign of God, and these men are sent out to participate in that coming. When Jesus feeds the 5,000, he hands the bread to them. They are the chosen. They are the insiders.

In contrast (let’s stick to Mark’s Gospel here), the women in the story are marginal. There are small handfuls of nameless women. They touch Jesus’ robe, they ask for healing for their daughters, they throw a few coins in a box in the temple, they anoint Jesus’ head with oil.

So while the women are coming in and going out, acting on faith and finding praise for their faith, it’s the boys who are getting it done!

Getting it done, that is, right up until the great, transitional moment in the story.

1. “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ.” Ok, so far so good. Then, Jesus begins to tell them what this title entails: “The Messiah must be rejected, suffer, and die. Then he’ll be raised.”

Peter rebukes Jesus. Jesus rebukes him back: “Get behind me Satan.”

What happens then?

Move on to ch. 9, and the disciples who had been empowered to exorcise are unable to cast out a demon. The disciples who had been given the charge to proclaim cannot overcome the mute-making spirit.

2. Later that same chapter Jesus again predicts his death. The disciples’ reaction? They walk along debating with each other about who is going to be greatest in God’s coming kingdom.

We begin to see what they don’t get about Jesus’ ministry: the cross turns the economy of the world on its head. They have a standard of greatness that entails a certain kind of leadership and power, but Jesus wants to transform their ideas. He wants them to see greatness in the cross and the child.

As if Mark, or Jesus, thought we might miss the point, we get the whole thing a third time.

3. Jesus predicts his death, and this time the subsequent response of the disciples is James’ and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand. Again, Jesus has to combat not merely the request, but the wrongheaded assumption about what greatness in the kingdom of God looks like:

Jesus called them over and said, “ You know that the ones who are considered the rulers by the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around. But that’s not the way it will be with you. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you will be the slave of all, for the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.” (Mark 10:42-44, CEB)

In the story, the disciples do not understand what is entailed in leading the people of God. They think it is about greatness and power rather than service and death.

And so, we have the group represented by Peter. The rock. Is being “the rock” a good thing? In Mark, the rocky soil indicates plants that spring up well, but fall away when danger or persecution arise on account of the word. Mark repeats the language of “falling away” when the disciples scatter, leaving Jesus to die alone.

The Twelve were committed to Jesus, and happy with him–but only as one who came with power. They had no faith in their calling to participate in his way of death. They did not have eyes to see that the ministry of Jesus turned the economy of the world on its head....

Shall we return to the women now?

How are we to assess these women who, in the narrative world, are outsiders, on the margins?

Unlike the disciples who are rebuked for being of little faith, Jesus commends these women as having great faith: “Daughter, go in peace, your faith has made you well.”

Moreover, there is one episode where Jesus ties a human inseparably to the gospel story. It is the episode of the woman who pours out oil over Jesus’ head. This looks to be a royal anointing! But when Jesus defends her he says, “Leave her alone, she has prepared my body beforehand for burial.”

The act of anointing prepares Jesus for burial: Messiahship and death are held together, and here is the only person in the whole story to get it. This is why “wherever the gospel is preached what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

What does it mean to live at the margins, to be unnamed? How does this compare with being the twelve, the dudes, the insiders?

According to the economy of the world, with its measures of greatness, to be the twelve is to be exemplary, in the place to lead, to exclude others from leadership, to stand close to Jesus and guard the gates of who else can draw near.

And to the extent that we look to Jesus’ selection of them, and the apparent marginalization of the women, as paradigmatic for male leadership in the church, we show ourselves to be people whose minds have not yet been transformed by the very story to which we are appealing.

It is only by agreeing with the disciples’ way of assessing the world that we can see their “insider status” as a true insider status, to be replicated by other men in church history.

Jesus offers another way: You guys don’t get it! It’s the rulers of the Gentiles who lord authority over people. It shall not be so among you.

There is another way. It is the way of the cross.

There is another way. It is the way of the “marginalized” in the worlds eyes lying closest to Jesus in faith and understanding.

Are we really supposed to hold up as our model the “Satan” who denied the gospel of the crucified Christ, and claim that Peter is paradigmatic of the place of men as insiders and faithful leaders in the church?

Or should we not seek out the one who did the good deed for Jesus, holding together Messiah and death from her place at the margins? Should we not seek out the one who sought out Jesus merely to touch the fringe of his garment and learn from her what it means to walk in faith?

The irony of appealing to the boys as insiders is that in so doing we show ourselves to be adopting the boys’ understanding of power, privilege, and leadership in the kingdom.

And this view is roundly rebuked by Jesus in words of dissuasion and the work of the cross.

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

Power-Inverting Kingdom, take 2

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/06/power-inverting-kingdom-take-2/

by JRD Kirk

February 6, 2012

On Friday I said a few words about the twelve disciples. How normative is Jesus’ selection of twelve men to be his ministry-extenders while on earth? This is a question that cannot be answered in a way that is abstracted from the narrative. The story of their failure, of their rejection of the gospel of the crucified messiah, undermines the claims to their normativity.

We have to remember that we’re reading stories. In stories, characters develop. Events in the narrative shape them. They respond. We all know that the twelve includes the betrayer Judas, but we also need to look closely at the other eleven and their betrayal of Jesus.

As I mentioned Friday, the turning point in the story is a turning point for the twelve: Yes, Jesus is the Christ (Peter’s confession in ch. 8), but this Christ is a suffering Christ–a claim for which Peter rebukes Jesus in a Satanic denial of the road ahead.

From this point on, the disciples lose their kingdom-extending role. Their failure plays out in several subsequent scenes.

After the second passion prediction, Jesus confronts the disciples about what they were arguing about on the road. They are shamed. They had been arguing about which is greatest.

Jesus inverts their assessment of the world: to be great is to be least and servant of all.

Then, Jesus takes hold of one of the least, the most powerless members of society, and shows the disciples what it means to be agents of the kingdom: “Welcome the child in my name.”

Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with who can minister in Christ’s name, right? I mean, this is just about patting little kids on the head, right?
Well, that’s what John thought: “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.”

Clearly, welcoming kids is one thing, taking up the master’s name and performing unauthorized ministry, ministry not delineated by the Twelve is something else!

Or maybe not.

Jesus said, “Don’t stop him. No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me. Whoever isn’t against us is for us” (Mark 9:39-40, CEB).

So I ask again: does the narrative of Mark uphold the idea that the twelve delineate the parameters for faithful ministry in the church?

And again the unfolding story itself pushes me in a different direction.

To the extent that we use the disciples as paradigmatic figures for excluding people from ministry we are embodying their own failed understanding of ministry in and for and under the Reign of God in Christ.

The gospel of the cross overturns such understandings of insider standing, power, and status. It rebukes our natural tendency to affirm as eligible leaders only those who are like the original insiders.

When we use the Twelve as a weapon for fending off women from church leadership we align ourselves with the misapprehending disciples rather than the gospel proclaiming Christ.

Karl Barth on Knowing God

[A] Humanity Ready for God

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/02/04/humanity-ready-for-god/

by JRD Kirk

February 4, 2012

Karl Barth claims that God is ready to be known by people, and hence actually knowable by people. In §26 of the Church Dogmatics, he approaches this from two different angles.

First, as we discussed previously (here and here), Barth draws us back to revelation, claiming that God is only known as God has revealed himself in and by the word.

In §26.2, Barth takes up the same question from the human side. If God is knowable, there must not only be a God who makes Godself known, but a humanity capable of receiving this knowledge.

Who, then, or perhaps what, is this humanity?

First, Barth returns to the question of natural theology, applying his previous arguments about God as knowable through the natural order to humanity as those who can know as they are by nature.

Well, not exactly as humanity is “by nature.” What humanity is in its “fallen nature” is more to the point. We’ll come back to this in a second. At any rate, humans as we actually are cannot truly know the true God through a natural theology, but only through God’s revelation.

“Anthropology” is not the route to humanity’s ability to know God.

Interestingly, and again, perhaps, surprisingly, Barth is equally insistent that ecclesiology, humanity as addressed by the church, is not the humanity able to receive the revelation of God. Humanity in the church is as liable to deception about its understanding of God as humanity in general. It is as liable to control it for its own purposes, as humanity in general.

Though I don’t recall Barth saying so explicitly, I wonder if this twin denial isn’t a recurrence of Barth’s regular two-sided glance: on the one hand he wants to show how evangelical dogmatics stands over against Christian liberalism; on the other he wants to show how it stands over against Roman Catholicism.

If not anthropology or ecclesiology, then on what basis can we discover humanity’s readiness for God? Unsurprisingly, it comes from Christology.

God is [the] known Knower in the triune, eternal relationship between Father and Son. This Son who has eternally known God, becomes human, thus joining the eternal self-knowing God with human flesh. How can people know God? Because, on the human side as well as the divine, God knows Godself. “On the human side” meaning, in this case, the humanity of the God-man.

I have a couple of questions about Barth’s construction.

First, do his stances against anthropology and ecclesiology as means by which we might see that God is knowable to people underplay the significance of Christ as The Human One and of the church as the Body of Christ? In the salvation story, there is a redefinition of humanity, of “image of God,” of the people of God, of “the church,” that is derivative from Christ himself.

Does Barth take this incorporation into Christ seriously enough in his denial that as humans or as the church we can know God?

Second, and related, does Barth give too much play to sin as a defining element in our human nature? Not that all humans aren’t born in sin and all the rest. But being sinful isn’t at the core of what it means to be human. Yes, it’s the reality that we are born into and from which Christ ushers us into a better future.

But Christ was fully human, and yet without sin. So if it’s sinfulness that keeps us from knowing God, it’s not our humanness that keeps us from God, but instead it’s the lack of true humanness that keeps us from knowing God.

So then, third, why is it that Christ offers a new humanity in which God is knowable? Is it because Christ is God? Or is it because Christ is truly human? Has Barth retreated too quickly to the Trinity rather than taking full stock of the inherent value of humanity as created in God’s image and recreated in the image of God in Christ?

That’s the real fun stuff. On a side note: is there a difference between natural theology and general revelation? The latter phrase keeps the requirement of “revelation” on the table, as Barth says is necessary, but allows for a broader compass of revelation than we find in only scripture, Christ, and preaching.

Academic Jargon

The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say About Human Origins

I Could Have Used This Book Twelve Years Ago: A Review of “The Evolution of Adam” by Peter Enns

http://rachelheldevans.com/evolution-of-adam-peter-enns

by Rachel Held Evans

February 2, 2012

Within the first week of my freshman year of college, my Introduction to World Literature class included a reading of Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian myth about a hero who is described as 1/3 man and 2/3 god.

As we read the text together in class, I couldn't help but notice some striking similarities between this text and the familiar texts of Genesis and Ecclesiastes, but when we got to the part where Gilgamesh speaks with Utnapishtim, a survivor of the Great Flood, I disintegrated into a full-fledged faith crisis. So much of the Gilgamesh flood story sounded just like “my” flood story from Genesis: Both accounts included a boat in which just a few people, along with animals, are saved from a universal flood. In both stories, the boat comes to rest on a mountain and birds are sent out to find land. And both stories end with a sacrifice to a deity. And my literature book dated the writing of Gilgamesh before the [date of] writing of Genesis!

I was at a conservative Christian college, and so my professor insisted that the texts had been misdated and that the story of Gilgamesh represented some sort of distortion of the historical/scientific account of Adam and Eve, Noah, and the flood. But my literary instincts had kicked in and I just wasn’t buying it.

“The similarities between these texts must mean that they are of the same genre and share a similar context,” my English-major mind was screaming. “Why would we regard one as history and the other as story when they use such similar images, styles, symbols, and plotlines? That just doesn’t make sense.”

Twelve years later, Old Testament scholar Peter Enns has confirmed my suspicions, but in a way that has somehow managed to strengthen my faith rather than weaken it, through a fantastic book entitled The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins.

“The early chapters of Genesis are not a literal or scientific description of historical events but a theological statement in an ancient idiom, a statement about Israel’s God and Israel’s place in the world of God’s people,” Enns explains. “The core issue raised by ancient Near Eastern data has helped calibrate the genre of the biblical creation accounts. The failure to appreciate that genre calibration is responsible for much of the tension in the evolution discussion.... To observe the similarities between the creation and flood stories and the literature of the ancient Near East, and to insist that all of those other writings are clearly a-historical while Genesis is somehow presenting history—this is not a strong position of faith, but rather a weak one, where Scripture must conform to one’s expectations.”

Enns goes on to remind readers that “a text’s meaning is rooted in its historical and literary context,” and to argue that the historical and literary context of much of the Old Testament can be found in the questions and concerns of post-exilic Israel.

I first heard Enns present these ideas at a conference hosted by the BioLogos Foundation in 2010, and it was as if a light clicked on in my head. As a lover of literature, it made perfect sense to me that the best way to understand an author’s meaning is to study the time and culture in which the author wrote, to get a sense of the sort of questions people were asking at the time. Taking this approach to the Bible does not weaken it, but rather respects it for what it is, not what we want it to be.

The Evolution of Adam not only answers just about every question I had after Enns’ Biologos lecture, but also includes a lengthy and thoughtful treatment of the apostle Paul’s Adam, again seeking to understand Paul’s intent within his unique context and culture. Enns is quick to note that it is Paul’s view of Adam rather than the Genesis account itself that causes most Christians to wrestle with the implications of evolution, and so it is Paul’s view of Adam that must be investigated.

“Paul’s use of the Adam story,” Enns concludes, “serves a vital theological purpose in explaining to his ancient readers the significance for all humanity of Christ’s death and resurrection. His use of the Adam story, however, cannot and should not be the determining factor in whether biblically faithful Christians can accept evolution as the scientific account of human origins—and the gospel does not hang in the balance.”

This may seem like an impossibly complicated topic to cover in a mere 147 pages, but Enns manages to do so with astounding clarity and insight. He is of the best scholarly writers I’ve ever encountered because he somehow manages to be thorough, personable, and readable all at the same time.

In The Evolution of Adam, you’ll find accessible introductions to everything from source criticism to the New Perspective on Paul, which will make you feel oh-so-caught-up on all the important trends in biblical scholarship. (Try not to show off at parties.)

For me, this book served as both a reality check and an inspiration—a rare combination that you just won’t find in most books that take historical and literary criticism seriously. I wish I could get into all the details of what made this book so helpful, but this would require a series of posts that will have to wait for a later time.

For now, just know that The Evolution of Adam comes with my heartfelt, enthusiastic recommendation. Learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be, means taking its context and history seriously. Enns has managed to do that in a way that both enlightens and encourages.

I’ll conclude with a quote from The Evolution of Adam that ties together perfectly yesterday’s post and today’s:

For many, it is important for the future viability of faith, let alone the evolution-Christianity discussion, that we recognize and embrace the fact that the Bible is a thoroughly enculturated product. But it is not enough to merely say so and press on, with a quaint nod or an embarrassed shuffle of the feet. It is important for future generations of Christians to have a view of the Bible where its rootedness in ancient ways of thinking is embraced as a theological positive, not a problem to be overcome. At present there is a lot of fear about the implications of bringing evolution and Christianity together, and this fear needs to be addressed head-on. Many fear that we are on a slippery slope, to use the hackneyed expression. Perhaps the way forward is not to resist the slide so much as to stop struggling, look around, and realize that we may have been on the wrong hill altogether.

Be sure to check out the Brazos Press Web site this week. You can enter win a giveaway in which the grand prize is a book package that includes:

• The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns
• Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns
• The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith
• Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible by John Polkinghorne
• The Mind and the Machine by Matthew Dickerson

(Five runners up will receive copies of The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns).

If some of these titles sound familiar, it’s because most of them are on my list of books to read and discuss on the blog. So go enter!

What I want to say to my daughter someday...

If I become the father of a daughter someday this is what I want her to know...

http://nearemmaus.com/2012/02/02/if-i-become-the-father-of-a-daughter-someday-this-is-what-i-want-her-to-know/

by Brian LePort

Posted on February 2, 2012

My beautiful, intelligent, strong wife

and I in front of Notre-Dame de Paris.

For many men our earliest interactions with women are from our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, and cousins, along with peers at school. Some of these relationships include being nurtured for a time, but eventually we go through the process of finding our own identity as adolescents. Our mother’s kisses cause us to blush in front of our friends. Other relationships are competitive like sisters and peers at school. Some day we will compete with them for scholarships, jobs, raises, and the like. Even our relationship with our wives can be quite complex. We are nurtured, we nurture, and there is always the day-to-day challenge of learning to live with each other. Some men assert that they are the final authority in the home and that may make things easier on them but it often is not received well by their wives. Others work to share authority and responsibility in the home, seeking to understand our roles in relation to each other, not in relation to the predetermined standards of our society.

When it comes to the role of women in the church of God many men bring the experiences of these relationships to the discussion. I’ve heard men say they can’t imagine a woman as their pastor. Often they think of the woman as being “overbearing” like their mother, “competitive” like their sister, or the uniqueness of their relationship with their wife is projected onto said woman pastor.

I wonder if we men would be better at this discussion if we asked, “What would I want for my daughter in this world?” Sometimes we men do not realize that we are playing games for power with our spouses, yet there is something in us that creates a different posture toward a daughter. I say this as a man without children, but I imagine that if I become the father of a daughter someday this is what I want her to know: you can be anything and do anything a man can do in society.

Now I hear some complimentarians chirping about how women and men are different biologically, emotionally, this and that. I am not denying that we are not the same. I am denying that these characteristics mean a woman can’t be a CEO, or a senator, or the pastor of my local church.

When I realize that I want this for my future daughter it forces me to rethink how I treat my wife who is another man’s daughter. Do I want her to be everything she can be? Yes! My wife is intelligent, she is talented, she is charismatic and personable. I want her to know that her gender doesn’t prohibit her from being fully human. (She knows this already; she is strong!) If I had a sister I’d want her to be everything God has called her to be.

If I have a daughter and she tells me, “Dad, I think I am called to be a pastor,” and someone with their Bible in hand tell her that she cannot follow that calling, let me tell you it will be a bad day for that person. I won’t stand for men using their Bibles to tell a daughter or wife of mine that she can’t be what they can be for the simple reasons that she is a woman. When Scripture was written it was written in a patrilineal society. I won’t allow someone to tell my future children who will be part Latino that their race prevents them from being what they want to be. I wouldn’t allow someone to use Scripture to tell a victim of human trafficking that “you should obey your master like Scripture says.” I know people have their portions of Scripture to quote, but this is where it is essential to stand against misguided biblicism.

If I become the father of a daughter someday I want her to know she is equal to me. She is fully human. She is loved by God. She is called by Christ. She is a vessel of the Holy Spirit. I want to be the type of man that Philip must have been to cultivate not one daughter who was a prophetess, but several!

So dear Christian pastor, scholar, theologian–if a few decades from now I have a daughter who says she is called to the pastorate you can give her your opinion, but tread lightly, she’ll have a father whose been telling her for years to follow God’s calling no matter where it leads.

Continued: Part 1 - Christianity began in a patrilineal society...
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/christianity-began-in-patrilineal.html

Christianity began in a patrilineal society

Christianity began in a patrilineal society

http://nearemmaus.com/2012/02/01/christianity-began-in-a-patrilineal-society/

by Brian LePort
February 2, 2012

The resurrection was witnessed by women first.

Christianity began in a patrilineal society. This influenced the language and concepts that became “biblical”. But does that make Christianity inherently masculine in nature?

I haven’t heard the audio of the recent talk given by John Piper where he claims that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel.” But I have seen quite a few people talking about it. All that I have available to me are these excerpts (from “John Piper: God Gave Christianity a ‘Masculine Feel’”) to which I would like to respond:

“God revealed Himself in the Bible pervasively as king not queen; father not mother.”

Is it a coincidence that the powerful rulers in the ancient Near East has been men? If God is to depict himself as the most powerful ruler it makes sense to communicate this through imagery understood by the audience. That said, Scripture doesn’t avoid depicting God as having motherly qualities, some examples including Genesis 1.27 where the image of God is male and female, God as mother-bear in Hosea 13.8, a woman in labor in Isaiah 42.14, a comforting mother in Isaiah 66.13, and I am sure there are others. In other words, yes, God is depicted as masculine more than feminine, but that he is depicted as feminine at all invalidates Piper’s argument. If God was gendered in any significant way there would be no reason to describe particular traits of God using prototypical feminine characteristics of the audience culture. When God is depicted in male language it is the same idea.

“Second person of the Trinity is revealed as the eternal Son not daughter; the Father and the Son create man and woman in His image and give them the name man, the name of the male.”

Again, fathers were considered the head of homes in the biblical world. It was thought that the man’s seed was what brought forth the “begotting”. Likewise, most Kings and their heirs were male. Piper’s point about Genesis 1.27 makes little sense to me since all that passage is saying is that God created “human” and he created “human” with the genders male and female.

“God appoints all the priests in the Old Testament to be men; the Son of God came into the world to be a man; He chose twelve men to be His apostles; the apostles appointed that the overseers of the Church be men; and when it came to marriage they taught that the husband should be the head.”

God appoints male priest in a patrilineal society. Surprise? Also, it seems that many pagan temples often used women in an overly sexualized way. In other words, it doesn’t mean it is God’s ideal, per se. God had no trouble with female nation leaders like Deborah who was a prophetess (Judges 4.4) and Huldah who according to 2 Kings 22.15-20 speaks with authority on behalf of Israel’s God to Israel’s King! The story is told in 2 Chronicles 34.23-28.

The apostles are a reconstruction of the twelve tribes of Israel. The males chosen are significant because of this reconstruction and likely because of the intimate nature of their time with Jesus. Even then, Jesus has female disciples whom he taught and commission, who were present to receive the Spirit at Pentecost, and who could even be apostles (e.g. Junia in Romans 16.7).

Other offices were available to women as well in the church like Philips prophetess daughters and those women given permitted to use their prophetic gifts in 1 Corinthians 11.

While Piper may ignore the debates over the nature of Paul’s statements regarding male headship (I’m a bit surprised when this is argued so matter-of-factly when the same hermeneutic can be used to justify the master-slave relationship and has been used this way), this doesn’t mean his interpretation (and all of his friends at CBMW) isn’t full of problems both exegetically and hermeneutically.

“Now, from all of that I conclude that God has given Christianity a masculine feel. And being God, a God of love, He has done that for our maximum flourishing both male and female.”

If this is so then there is little we can do. Often I ignore people like Piper, Grudem, and Driscoll. I came into Christianity through Pentecostalism where this is often less of a problem than evangelicalism (though a problem still). As Gordon D. Fee once said in an interview when asked about women as clergy, “It just isn’t an issue for me.” But I know many of my sisters in Christ who feel various calls from the Spirit cannot ignore this type of misguided rhetoric. They must stand for themselves and I stand with them.

I have many close friends who are some form of complimentarian. I disagree with them, but we can be civil (my local church has male elders only). But I disagree when they tell women “You can’t do this because….” Sorry, wrong. If the Spirit which is poured out upon our sons and daughters choses to anoint someone their gender doesn’t stop that. I’ve been in a church where one of the pastors was a woman and I thought she was wonderful in her calling. When she left our church to plant one elsewhere it was sad to see her go. She preached. She prayed. She functioned in the gifts of the Spirit. We lost something when she left.

Christianity is not a man’s religion. It is not a story where men should be in the spotlight while women stand back. While this may have been so in Israel’s past and the church’s, this is not what the prophets foresaw when they said God’s Spirit makes sons and daughters into God’s prophets. At the heart of the Gospel is Paul’s claim that there is neither “male nor female”. While Paul wrestled with the practicality of this, and we have wrestled ever since, it is my starting point, and I hope for people like John Piper it can become their’s as well.

Continued: Part 2 - What I want to say to my daughter someday...
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-i-want-to-say-to-my-daughter.html

Give Me a God Who Raises the Living!

Your God Raises the Dead? Give Me a God Who Raises the Living!

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3522

by Peter Rollins

posted 19/1/12

No matter how great a song is it cannot raise the dead, cure cancer or make your lost lover return. Music does not change the world you live in, reverse time or change history. It does not promise snake oil solutions to life’s woes. But music is anything but impotent; indeed it can be experienced as one of the most potent forces in our universe. For music can assist us in changing the way that we interact with the world we live in.

Great music can help us to affirm life, embrace it, face it and sublimate it. In other words music can help sensitize us to, and celebrate, the life that we participate in.

The poet is one who helps us experience life as inscribed with a rich and sensuous texture. S/he helps us to call forth, confront and confirm our existence. Inviting us to find the courage that might enable us to say “yes” and “Amen” to life in the midst of its complexity and in spite of our anxiety.

In light of this we might begin to understand how a divine miracle is not something that simply raises the dead but one that is able to raise the living to a place where life is not experienced as death. For without the latter the former would appear to be nothing more than the work of an evil demon.

I guess that is why I was never that interested in gods who raise the dead. The real power lies in raising the living: something that is testified to in the act of love.

Love is that which experiences another as worth more than the mundane matter of which they are composed. In love we find a cause for which we would be willing to die, and it is there that we experience life as worthy of living. In love we find a world worth dancing in and celebrating.

The claim that “God is love” testifies to this miracle. It points to the idea that, in the act of love, we encounter a transcendent depth and mystery that sets our world ablaze, a depth and mystery that we cannot grasp, but which renders our world worthy of being grasped. In other words it hints at the idea that the highest good is not some object that we should love, but a reality we participate in through the act of love itself.

Love is then the true miracle; it is in love that the living are raised from death to life. In love we do not run from our world, but learn to embrace it and raise it to the level of the sacred.