You Lost Me

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/09/21/you-lost-me/#more-20517

reviewed by Scot McKnight

September 21, 2011

David Kinnaman has written what I suspect will be a much-discussed, perhaps much-debated, book about why it is that young adults are walking out the doors of the church. His book is called You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith. David’s previous book, called unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters, focused on outsiders. This one focuses on insiders — those reared in the church. It offers description of various types of young adults who are walking away from the church.

David discusses three kinds of “dropouts”:

Nomads: those who walk away but still consider themselves Christians.

Prodigals: those who no longer consider themselves Christians.

Exiles: those who are still invested in the Christian faith “but feel stuck (or lost) between culture and the church” (25).

One of his findings is that more are struggling with their experience of the church than their Christian faith. But about 40% of 20somethings are deeply concerned about friends who are abandoning the church.

Kinnaman finds three characteristics of this generation as it dwells in a new technological, social and spiritual reality and these are to be seen as pervasive realities and general realities:

What do you think of his three categories?

Do they describe “types” in your experience or church?

Access: facts and knowledge are a click away; authority gets diminished.

Alienation: family’s are less integrated; adulthood is postponed; they are skeptical of institutions.

Authority: there is a profound skepticism of authority. Christianity is not a default setting. The Scripture’s authority is not a default setting. Christianity’s influence on culture has diminished. Awareness of Christian influencers has diminished while other cultural icons has risen.

With this general picture, here are the characteristics of Nomads:

1. They describe themselves as Christians.
2. Involvement in a Christian community is optional.
3. Importance of faith has faded.
4. Most are angry or hostile toward Christianity.
5. Many are spiritual experimentalists.

Prodigals:

1. They feel varying levels of resentment toward Christians and Christianity.
2. They have disavowed returning to the church.
3. They have moved on from Christianity.
4. Their regrets, if they have them, usually center on their parents.
5. They feel as if they have broken out of constraints.

Exiles:

1. Exiles are not inclined toward being separate from “the world.”
2. Skeptical of institutions but are not wholly disengaged from them.
3. Sense God moving “outside the walls of the church.”
4. Not disillusioned with tradition; frustrated with slick or shallow expressions of religion.
5. A mix of concern and optimism for their peers.
6. They have not found faith to be instructive to their calling or gifts.
7. Struggle when Christians question their motives.

 

The Search for the Historical Adam 9

The Search for the Historical Adam 9

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/the-search-for-the-historical-adam-9/#more-869

by rjs5

posted September 13, 2011

I have been posting over the last several weeks on the recent book by C. John Collins entitled Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care. Dr. Collins’s book looks at the question of Adam and Eve from a relatively conservative perspective but with some good nuance and analysis. The questions he poses and the answers he gives provide a good touchstone for interacting with the key issues.

Chapter 5 of Dr. Collins’s book asks the question Can science help us pinpoint “Adam and Eve”? He answers the question in the positive – but in a limited sense. In his view we must take into account science, with what he considers appropriate skepticism of scientific claims, as well as the biblical narrative and Christian world view. Section 5.a deals with the topic of scientific concordism, section 5.b discusses the need to read the bible well, sections 5.c and 5.d consider the criteria for acceptable scenarios involving Adam and Eve and then critiques a few of the scenarios that have been proposed, considering both strengths and weaknesses.

I dealt with Dr. Collins’s discussion of acceptable scenarios last November in a post How Much History in Gen 1-3? focusing on his article “Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters” in the theme issue of the ASA Journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (v. 62 no. 3 2010) – this book is an expansion of the material in that article. The post generated much discussion – 102 comments. Another post on this topic will not add anything new to the discussion.

In reading this chapter, however, I was struck by another point Dr. Collins makes in his section on reading the bible well. Today I want to pose some questions based on this section of Dr. Collins book, and then wrap of the discussion of the book with a few summary statements – both Dr. Collins’s summation and my response.

Reading the bible well requires having respect for the authority of scripture which reflects the authority of God, and having respect for the form and genre of scripture. This means that we need to pay attention to the text on many levels and read it intelligently. Scot’s post yesterday Seven Days That Divide the World 2 raised the issue of concordism. For many the truthfulness and authority of scripture rests on its accuracy in detail, and this includes scientific concordance. Dr. Lennox expects to find scientific concordance in the text of Genesis. Neither John Walton nor C. John Collins think that we should expect to find scientific concordance in the biblical description of origins. Our reading of Genesis should take into account the viewpoint of the original audience, their picture of the world. They were not asking scientific questions, and we should not expect to find scientific answers in the text.

There is another aspect of the text of Genesis 1-11, one we have not discussed before, that should also help to shape the way we read and understand Genesis. This is anachronism. An anachronism is present when a writer (or artist) describes or portrays an earlier time using forms and images familiar to his or her contemporary audience. These elements, of necessity, introduce an inaccuracy into the telling of the story.

Is anachronism consistent with inspiration? Is it consistent with inerrancy?

How should we view passages of scripture with apparent anachronisms?

One clear illustration of anachronism in the text of Genesis 1-11 is seen in the story of Noah in Genesis 6-8. In Genesis 6:19-20 (NIV) we read:

You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

In Genesis 7:2-3 we read:

Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

The distinction between Genesis 6 and 7 provides evidence for the idea that the text of Genesis is an edited work incorporating information from a number of sources. Like the creation narratives in Genesis 1-5 we can discern the editor/author’s use of material from different sources. More than this though, the reference to clean and unclean animals in Genesis 7 is anachronistic. The text describes events, perhaps events with an element of history, perhaps cultural myths, in terms familiar to an audience from a later time and context. Dr. Collins comments on this passage:

In Genesis 1-11, we have Noah taking aboard the ark extra specimens of the “clean animals,” presumably because these were fit for sacrifice (Gen. 7:2, 8; 8:20). Now there is no hint in the creation account that the clean-unclean distinction is inherent in the nature of the animals, and in the Bible this distinction served to set Israel apart from the Gentiles (see Lev. 20:24-26); this is why the early Christians did away with these laws (see Acts 10:9-29; Mark 7:19). The very first mention of a “clean” animal occurs right here; we do not even know what they are unless we turn to Leviticus 11. Perhaps we are to think that Noah had some idea of what kinds of animals are right for sacrifice, but we need not suppose that it was identical to the system found in the books of Moses. How could it be when Noah was not an Israelite? Perhaps the specific “burnt offering” is also anachronistic – that is, Noah made a sacrifice, but the term “burnt offering” had a very precise term in Israel that may go beyond what Noah thought. Genesis interprets Noah’s behavior in line with Israelite practice. Nothing makes this literary practice unhistorical since we are recognizing a literary device. (p. 114)

The elements of anachronism and literary form extend beyond the story of Noah. They are present in the setting of Cain and Abel as farmer and keeper of sheep, the fear that Cain has for blood revenge, the records of the various crafts in Gen 4:20-22, although not as easy to pinpoint and illustrate in these examples as in the story of Noah.

Do you think that anachronisms, like the reference to clean and unclean animals in Genesis 7, cause a problem for the reliability of scripture? Why or why not?

How do you deal with this in your view of scripture as the Word of God?

And this is a wrap – the last post on Dr. Collins’s book. Dr. Collins sums up his book with an intriguing mix of ideas. He has very good discussions of aspects of scripture and the nuance and importance of literary form in our understanding of scripture. He takes a conservative view of the authorship and date of Genesis (substantially from Moses with small tweaks and updates p. 170), but this still leaves Genesis 1-11 in the genre of primeval history pulling together the story of Israel from the mists of antiquity. An appreciation of this should impact the way we read the text – including the anachronism mentioned above.

He doesn’t think that animal death is part of the death described in Genesis 2-3 or in Romans.

To answer that question, we first recognize that, whatever the verse talks about, it is referring to humans. Therefore Genesis is not at all suggesting that no other animals had ever died before this point: the teeth and claws of a lion are not a decoration, nor have they been perverted from their “pre-fall” use. (p. 116)

Dr. Collins does believe that Genesis 1-4 contains a description – with many literary elements – of a historical fall. We need not look to Genesis 1-4 as a historical account of the fall, but he has tried to show that there must be a historical element to the story of Adam and Eve. In summary he gives four reasons for this conclusion.

(1) The conventional telling of the story as creation, fall, redemption, restoration is the Christian story, this is what makes sense of the world.

(2) Sin is an alien invader that affects all people. Our story and world view must account for this invasion.

(3) The Christian view of humanity must include a common origin for all mankind. Paul uses Genesis to demonstrate this – and this element of historicity is not incidental to the message, it is essential.

(4) Jesus appears to have affirmed an element of historicity, and Moses, Paul, John, and other people entrusted as God’s messengers writing what we know know as the bible, have viewed and used Genesis with a historical understanding. To eliminate this will undermine our view of biblical authority. It is not incidental. “But it seems to me that Adam and Eve at the headwaters of the human family, and their fall, are not only what Jesus believed but also an irremovable part of the story.” (p. 135)

My take. I’ve enjoyed reading Dr. Collins’s book – it has provided a good interaction, and a nice forum for wrestling with some of these ideas. I agree with many of his points, but not all, and perhaps not with some of the points he considers particularly important.

(1) I don’t think we should cast the Christian story as creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Rather I think the story is cast as creation, fall, redemption, and consummation and this is the way we should read scripture and approach the Christian life. We are not returning to an original condition but moving on to the final state God always intended.

(2) Sin is rebellion from God – but I am not comfortable with some of the ways the view of sin as “alien invader” play out. This needs a good deal more thought and conversation.

(3) I am in total agreement with Dr. Collins on the importance of the unity of all mankind.

(4) I don’t think that scripture as the authoritative word of God requires the kind of acceptance of the view of Paul or the other writers of scripture that Dr. Collins maintains. I think there may be an element of historicity to the fall, but I also think that there are ways to read scripture without this element of historicity and without undermining the authority of scripture. Dr. Collins’s emphasis on the belief and understanding of Paul regarding Adam as an important data point in determining the historicity of Adam has been my primary objection to his argument.

What do you think?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If you have comments please visit The Search for the Historical Adam 9 at Jesus Creed.

Charity: Operation Smile

Changing faces with a smile - Operation Smile

http://www.operationsmile.org.br/novo/

An amazing little girl who had her cleft lip surgery.People ask me why I volunteer overseas so much.... It takes my eyes off me and allows me to remember what life is all about. When we use what we have been given (whatever that might be) to make a positive change for our world, that's when life make sense.... In a time when the world seems to be imploding with greed, there are certain things that will always remain invaluable... like the smile on this girls face when she realises her life will be changed forever. Her lip is still swollen and painful as she is only 24 hours post surgery but the joy in her eyes is unmistakable and makes my heart laugh without measure. I hope it brings the same to you. - plasticd1

About Us

OperationSmile.com

We mobilize a world of generous hearts to heal children's smiles and transform
lives across the globe. We're Operation Smile, and we hope you'll join us.

Who We Are

Compassionate people dedicated to healing cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.

Read More >

How Your Support Helps

Every gift can help change a life.

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Leadership

Forging a new frontier of safe and effective surgical care.

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Financials

We demonstrate exceptional stewardship while transforming lives.

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Our work comes from the heart. And we are honored to make a difference.

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We’re proud of the company we keep.

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Our donors, volunteers and partners make it happen.

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The Tallest Man on Earth - "Like the Wheel"

Like the Wheel by the Tallest Man on Earth

(Live on KEXP)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW9wULjz0Ng&feature=player_embedded#!

Like The Wheel

by The Tallest Man On Earth


Oh I wish I was the sparrow in your kid's eye

Like a fly above is summer all day long

On an island in the heart he has to carry

Past the many you have let into your song

And I said oh my lord why am I not strong

Like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on

Like the wheel that will take you home

And in the forest someone is whispering to a tree now

This is all I am so please don't follow me

And it's your brother in the shaft that I'm swinging

Please let the kindness of forgetting set me free

And he said oh my lord why am I not strong

Like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on

Like the wheel that will take you home

And on this Sunday someone's sititng down to wonder

Where the hell among these mountains will I be?

There's a cloud behind the cloud to which I'm yelling

I could hear you sneak around so easily

And I said oh my lord why am I not strong

Like the branch that keeps hangman hanging on

Like the branch that will take me home



Send "Like The Wheel" ringtone to your cell

Wiki Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tallest_Man_On_Earth

Official Website with more Songs - http://www.myspace.com/thetallestmanonearth

Review - http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/the-tallest-man-on-earth-concert/20030843-3738157.html

The Tallest Man On Earth, Kristian Matsson, gets lost in the stupor, in the pre-dawn and in the watery ramble of all that isn't muscle memory. He gets distracted by the darkness, intoxicated by it, and by the drizzle that he enjoys the company of from time to time. He leaves himself plenty of moments every day to just sink into this textured hammock of leathery toughness - where the street address is something along the lines of "a rock and a hard place," where he's able to sort through a lot of the details that typically make you sleepy or reserved and depressed that there haven't been many improvements to write home about.

The diminutive Matsson never finds himself making cranky songs about his woes and all the negligence that the world and its creatures sometimes show - twisting nipples, playing dumb and offering blank stares or gawks. He professes his love for the downtrodden examples of a man in the clutches of a struggle to make matters sweeter, for making food more succulent, for making the air soak into his lungs with more purity, and for the eyes to get better adjusted to the blackness if none of the above can be had with any sort of simplicity.

He professes his love, period, for all of these struggles as the steel a man, while stealing some of his sanity, even if it's not really being used all that much. He sings with a high bit of squeak in his voice, as if his throat is curled a bit at the end, puckering itself and just giving it all it's got to crow up to a young and vibrant swath of sunlight in the morning hours or to croon at a chalky moon that allows him to bask in a tolerable coldness.

The title track on Matsson's latest album, Shallow Grave, has him identifying the contrasts that exist with his surroundings and their inhabitants - the little birds, the sneaking people who live next door, the moles sleeping below the ground - as he sings about chilly waters and more:

 

Come see the ripples on the water

As I throw pebbles in the pond 

To let the sky go past the surface

Empty my pockets filled with stones

Come see the sadness of the sailor

As I will scratch his deep blue floor

Already in my years of bad luck

I broke his mirror long before…

I found the darkness in my neighbors

And I found the fire in the frost

And I found a season once claimed healthy.

The season once claimed healthy could be any of the four as Matsson seems to get into all of their extremities - the brittle colds, the oppressive heats, the rapid changes and the rainy weeks that seep through house foundations and flood the fish blind. He sings later in the session that "that old dark was mine," and it feels like a funeral, as if something was lost because somewhere along the line, the dark becomes scary.

The old dark, before you learn of so many bad things and bad people, isn't anything to be afraid of. It may actually be loving and comforting. But it always becomes something else, something to avoid, something that gets redefined and kind of ugly. There's a lingering desire in Tallest Man On Earth songs to overcome, to get to a slumber that's therapeutic, that he'll wake up from completely refreshed. He's just gotta keep closing his eyes and getting that first step out of the way.



 

West Michigan Remembers 9/11

On the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 a West Michigan display was set up by a local non-profit group in honor of all those who had died in the World Trade Tower tragedy including all airline victims. From children as young as 3, to a retired infantry man of 67 who was the last American soldier to have left Vietnam, each life story was told. Some had come to meetings, others to meet loved ones, still others died from falling debris raining out of the bursting skies. Each life story was found written as a short biography onto a plastic card attached to the mid-section of every flag pole. During the five day event countless thousands visited, even as many as 35,000 on one hot day, in a steady stream of patriots seeking to mark the 2011 anniversary in some small way in personal tribute to the survivors and their families.

~ By clicking on the picture the field of vision may be enlarged and zoomed in upon ~

A mosaic greets each visitor coming to honor
the dead telling the story of American patriotism.

Each flag represents one person who had died in the
9/11 Towers Tragedy. A short biography of that person
can be found on a plastic card attached to the flag.

60,000 visitors came over the weekend
to honor the dead and had discovered
one of the dead was their own.

A forest of national colours bend their
banners on a morning's warm breezes.

Presented by the Healing Field of West Michigan
as a 2011 memorial on the 10th year of 9/11.

Viewed from below can be found stake after stake
telling the life stories of young and old.

A troop of children walk through the forest of
flags on the last morning of display.

What Real Patriotism Must Be

But this is not the end of the story. For by wrapping our pains, our sorrows, our agonies in a nation's patriotism will do little to assuage what must be preceded by forgiveness and mercy. This is a God thing. A Holy Spirit thing. A Jesus thing. For it is in Jesus that a nation may find the will to forgive and be merciful to their enemies. To act justly and not in anger and wrath. At all times must a nation seek wisdom and mercy in the dispensation of justice upon those who would hate and do wrong to the innocents of this world. It is in Jesus that this spiritual conviction may be found through the ministrations of love and compassion first and foremost above all else.

So that by allowing the pain of forgiveness to settle in and to become part of our broken spirit we may find the spiritual grace of God to show lovingkindness to those who would be our enemies. To find a spiritual will to live peaceably with all men without neglecting to pursue justice upon those who refuse to be peaceable, who prefer to act unjustly through war and terrorism, who violate the human rights and inalienable liberties of men, women and children everywhere. Then shall hell be reigned down upon their heads who would continue to do such grievous sins.

However, blind patriotism but blurs these lines preferring anger and indignation over wisdom's exercise of love and justice. True patriots seek God first, his will upon this earth first, above all other wills, even their own. This is what defines a country's greatness - by a patriotism both humble and strong, willing to act in truth and justice, that shows grace, mercy, lovingkindness and wisdom. It honors God by honoring the dead and the living, and removes the anger that is felt when savagely harmed, murdered , invaded, transgressed. This is a true patriotism, one that all men of all nations may agree upon, who would submit first to God, who would humble their hearts before his will, before marching to war, to division, to pagan destruction. Then, and only then, may patriots act - and it may be in ways unthought - in ministrations of nation-building, communication, national understanding, and charitable works of helps.

So then, be at peace with the One who is Peace. Be healed by the One who is our Healer. Be Loved by the One who is Love. Let not your hearts be troubled for it is God who will judge both the quick and the dead. It is in his hands that we must place our trust, our souls, our yearning for justice. Remember the dead by remembering your God in true memorial.

- skinhead

The Search for the Historical Adam 8

The Search for the Historical Adam 8

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/the-search-for-the-historical-adam-8/

by rjs5

posted September 8, 2011

We have been working through the recent book by C. John Collins entitled Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care. This book looks at the question of Adam and Eve from a relatively conservative perspective but with some good nuance and analysis. The questions he poses and the answers he gives provide a good touchstone for interacting with the key issues. Later this fall we will look at the question of Adam from an equally faithful, but less conservative, perspective in the context of a new book coming out by Peter Enns entitled The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins.

Chapter 4 of Dr. Collins’s book deals with human uniqueness and dignity. These ideas are discussed in the context of the biblical concept of the image of God and in the context of universal human experience.

The image of God is a concept that arises from the text describing the creation of mankind in Genesis 1.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Gen 1:26-27, NIV

Dr. Collins discusses three approaches to the image and likeness of God while noting that there is no unanimity among biblical scholars on the significance of the term.

Resemblance view: Humans are like God in some respects. The intellectual, moral and aesthetic experiences of human beings are cited as examples of this resemblance. I would also suggest that creative abstract thought and the ability to realize this creativity are aspects of resemblance.

Representative view: Humans are God’s representatives on earth and are commissioned to rule in God’s place. Humans have a job to do.

Relational view: Humans are fulfilled in community – both as male and female and in a broader sense of community. Humans in community function as the image of God.

Dr. Collins incorporates all three of these in his view of the meaning of the expression “image and likeness.”

My view is that the linguistic and exegetical details favor the idea that “in our image, after our likeness” implies that humans were made with some kind of resemblance to God, which was to enable them to represent God as benevolent rulers, and to find their fulfillment in relationships with each other and with God. (p. 94)

I have also heard NT Wright comment on the image of God as a reflection of the glory and presence of God in the world, humans are “angled mirrors.” Some will also comment on the image and likeness of God as temple language. God’s creation is his temple and humans are the image of God placed in the temple – the way an idol would be placed in the temple – a representation of God.

In what ways are humans created in the image and likeness of God?

Which views would you emphasize or combine?

Continuing on with the idea of image and likeness of God, Dr. Collins reflects on the idea of the human soul – maintaining a form of body-soul dualism, but a deeply connected and intertwined form of dualism. The image of God is a property of the whole person – body-soul, not a property of the soul.

The Biblical version of body-soul dualism stresses much more the intertwining of these two elements than it does their separability. … Recognizing this body-soul unity as the focus in Genesis will help us avoid a mistake that has a long history in Christian theology, of seeing the image of God as a property of the soul only: rather, it is the human being as a body-soul tangle that expresses God’s image. (p. 95)

According to Dr. Collins, the image and likeness of God is unique to humans, universal among humans, and transmitted through procreation. He reflects on human moral instincts and the human ability for language and grammar as reflective of the image of God. There is no effective model for the evolution of language capability and perhaps this is indicative of a special act of God. The ability to retain a cultural life in the worst of circumstances is another feature of humans demonstrating that we are more than mere animals.

Universal Human Experiences: Dr. Collins ends this chapter with a discussion of universal human experiences. Humans have a yearning for justice, a need for God, and a feeling of brokenness. Something just isn’t right. We need redemption for broken relationships. A major effect of the corruption of human nature is social – in the breech of social relationships with God and with others.

Dr. Collins suggests that part of the evidence for Genesis 1-4 as historical is found in the general human sense of being lost. There is a nostalgia for a better past that is part of universal human experience. We know that something is wrong, and that once upon a time all was whole. Here he quotes Blaise Pascal ( I include only the beginning of the quote):

Man’s greatness is so obvious it can even be deduced from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals we call wretchedness in man, thus recognizing that, if his nature today is like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own. (p. 102)

Dr. Collins next considers the commentary of Leon Kass on Genesis. Kass insists on a purely symbolic reading of Gen 2-4 but discusses a nostalgia for our mythical past. Or at least “something that feels, in fact, like nostalgia.” This deep sense of nostalgia tells us to read Genesis as containing a degree of literal history.

With all due respect to Kass, if we fail to read the Genesis story as some kind of history, we fail to persuade the perceptive reader, because we fail to do justice to this nostalgia. (p. 103)

After quoting GK Chesterton (As I Was Saying p. 160) on the significance of the Fall as a view of life, where happiness is not only a hope, but also a memory, Dr. Collins concludes his chapter:

If we say, as I think we should, that there is a level of figurative and symbolic description in Genesis 1-4, we must still allow that the story we find there provides the best explanation for our lives now, and for our hunger for things to be better. (p. 104)

The Historical Adam and Eve. Dr. Collins argues that we must search for the historical Adam because we know that, in some sense, the story is true. We are fallen, we do not and cannot live up to our ideal, an ideal we know as “memory” not just in theory. We long for something better and are in need of redemption, reconciliation, rescue to reach that something better.

I see more of the figurative, symbolic, and even mythical in Genesis 1-4 than Dr. Collins would allow. However, in this argument I think he is on his strongest ground. There is a way in which the fall is at the very root of the Christian story. And Christ was, from before the beginning of time, the way to make this right.

What do you think – is the fall the best explanation for our lives now and for our hunger for things to be better?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If you have comments please visit The Search for the Historical Adam 8 at Jesus Creed.

Gerhard Richter - September 9/11

September

A Gerhard Richter print from 2009., Courtesy of
Gerhard Richter and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris

Disappearing Before Our Eyes

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/04/gerhard-richter-s-september-painting-evokes-9-11-memories.html

by Blake Gopnik

Sep 5, 2011 1:00 AM EDT

German painter Gerhard Richter tackles

the hardest subject: that which no longer exists.

Making art about 9/11 is the ultimate challenge for any artist. How do you take such an utterly iconic image and push it beyond cliché? How do you say anything at all about the attack without veering into either bellowing banality or genteel understatement? In his painting titled simply September, Gerhard Richter, possibly the last of the great painters, may have found answers.

Robert Storr, author of a new book on this one artwork from the Museum of Modern Art, points out that Richter resisted enlarging his canvas to the scope of the event—the clichéd move in grand history paintings—but instead found more meaning in a domestic, even democratic size. September is close to the size and shape of a flat-screen TV, “matching the proportions of the vessel through which we learned the terrible news,” says Storr.

But Richter, now 79, has said that even with the scale right, when he originally tried to paint the burning towers, in 2005, he couldn’t stomach the results. Working in his classic photo-realist style, he found that the towers’ glowing flames registered as garish and attractive: “That couldn’t work,” he said. But rather than give up, Richter took his failed painting, scraped off most of its surface detail, and smeared an abstract veil of gray on top of what was left. “He applied the techniques of unpainting to his subject, but since the subject is the erasure of a building, it’s the perfect metaphor,” Storr says.

Richter gives us a way to view the carnage: the image is so imprinted on our psyches that we recognize it even, or especially, in a painting that is close to obliterated. But he also uses paint to push back against our urge to gawk, against the pornography of violence and catastrophe.

No bit of canvas could ever contain the scale and scope and meaning of the moment. When the world’s greatest living painter can’t do justice to his theme, can only render it as blurred and almost unseeable, you get a sense of its enormity. The impossibility of condensing such a subject into art, or into any final summation, is the true, great subject of September.

Addendum

 When I first saw this painting it took my breath away in its sweeping panorama of destruction evaporating away into nothingness. There were just no words to describe the horror, the waste, the agony. And in many ways this painting can be a metaphor for our lives when we find them blown up by sickness, death, injury, trauma, personal events, and the like. It's as if a life has ceased to exist once having stood tall to everything and everyone around it. And though this blog is dedicated to helping Christians find a bedrock to their faith during this time of religious uncertainty, it is also dedicated to helping those individuals seeking answers to faith's questions.

For without questions we cannot discover God's purpose for ourselves, our reality, our meaning when all around us seems terrifying and desperate. Rather than becoming unpainted in our lives with all the colours washed out from the canvas of our minutes and hours and days and years of our lives, we may begin to reclaim those years of faithless-living back through Jesus and his Spirit. For now is the time for Jesus to become the master painter of our lives in our re-awakened discoveries of what true life can become as he re-applies his paints and colours to a once unimagined life lived without purpose, love and meaning.

Eternity begins now through God's love and redemption, and the lostness and emptiness once so much a part of our being can be scraped away with faith's assurance hitherto unknown in the depths of our spiritual being. No more will sin's hatreds, discontents, emptiness, and brokenness drive one's days and nights; rather, through spiritual re-birth into the life of Jesus as our Savior-Redeemer can love, purpose, meaning be re-discovered in a lost and empty world fled its Creator-God. Be at peace then ye who seek God. For God seeks you and invites you to enter into his life, his destiny, his purpose for you.

Come, says the Spirit, come to the table of plenty set in the valley of the shadow of death. For life begins now. Faith begins now. Come ye, and enter in.

- skinhead

Are Christians Called to be Conservatives or Radicals?

Looking To The Past: The Backward Movement of Radicals and Conservatives

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3068

by Peter Rollins

posted September 8, 2011

A few days ago Kester Brewin posted an insightful post called ‘The year of opposition’ (can’t link to it as I am writing this on some ipad software). In this post there was brief reference to the words ‘Radical’ and ‘Conservative’ which sparked off some debate. He then followed this up with some provisional reflections on what these words might mean.

Because of the confusion around these terms I thought I would reflect briefly on what I see as the difference. As I do this I wish to make an initial observation. When one is within a field of debate one's definition of sides will reflect the stand one has taken. So while I will attempt to offer as precise a definition of Radical and Conservative as I can in a small post, I am making a case for one over the other.

I would suggest that both the words ‘Radical’ and ‘Conservative’ as used in theology refer to a relationship with the past. In this sense they both move forward by looking back. What is at stake in their difference is the way that they relate to this past. This relation to the past is hinted at in the very etymologically of the words, as ‘Radical’ means to return to the roots and ‘Conservative’ refers to a form of conservation of what has been inherited.

In order to understand the different ways they relate to the past we need to introduce a classical philosophical distinction between potentiality and actuality, a distinction first introduced by Aristotle. Basically potentiality refers to the range of possibilities that something has (e.g. it is possible, though highly unlikely, that I could become a dancer) while actuality refers to the realising of possibility (e.g. if I were to become a dancer). One of the first things we can say in light of this distinction is that all actuality (things that have actually happened) were once potentialities. If they were not then they could never have happened. Traditionally then it has been thought that actuality is the realisation (and thus the end of) potentiality.

In light of this we could say that theological conservatives seek to protect, promote and re-articulate an actuality that they see as true, good and beautiful in the Christian tradition. In short they seek to conserve something that has actually taken place.

The opposite position to this one could be described as a kind of theological new wave that seeks to leave behind what has gone before and chart an utterly new course. Turning from what is actual and striving to build a new frame.

In contrast to both of these I would argue that the theological Radical neither affirms what is actual in the concretely existing church, nor turns away from it. Instead they embody a totally different relation to the Potentiality/Actuality relationship.

Instead of seeing actuality as the end of potentiality, the theological radical (echoing Kierkegaard and others) sees a potentiality bubbling up within the actuality of the historical church. The theological radical is one who believes that there is an explosive potentiality buried within this history that ought to be realised.

Instead of turning from concretely existing Christianity, or defending it with apologetics, they are committed to delving into the actuality in order to find some, as yet unrealised, possibility. Something that Kierkegaard called repetition.

Thus both the radical and the conservative are interested in the past, but in different ways. One thinks that the past must continue to be brought into the present while the other thinks the past is a womb from which an utterly new event can arise (which was one of the founding claims made by Radical Theology as a movement).

This enables us to claim that the Conservative seeks to return to the early church while the radical seeks to return to the event that gave birth to the early church.

The Pauline Form of Universalism

The Trash of the World: Paul and Universalism

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3063

by Peter Rollins

posted September 6, 2011

I would like to reflect briefly on the interesting and complex area of universalism in Christianity. Something I shall be exploring more in some upcoming books. Broadly speaking we might say that there are two dominant types of universalism being advocated in the church today. The first might be called (for want of a better word) Conservative Universalism. This type of universalism draws upon the idea that the Christian message is for all (rather than some particular group). Thus the Christian message must be preached to all, who must then make a decision in light of it. This understanding of universalism employs the various scriptural references that concern the move from a gospel dedicated to the Jewish people to a gospel that reaches out to the Gentiles, as well as those missional sections of the text that speak of preaching to the ends of the earth.

The other type of universalism that we witness in the contemporary church can be loosely described as Liberal Universalism. Here there is a belief that the power of the Christian message touches and transforms all, meaning that ultimately all will be unified with God through Christ.

There is however a different way of approaching universalism, a way that is opened up via a reading of Paul. A third reading neither confirms nor negates the above readings. Rather it causes us to rethink what it might be that the Church should be inviting people into.

In order to approach this let us recall Paul’s claim that Christians are the refuse (garbage) of the world. In other words, they were once a part of the world but now have been cast out into the rubbish heap. In this way Christians are the de-worlded, they are the part of no part, the community of outsiders, the excremental remainder that has been wiped from the surface of the world (the literal translation refers to a scraping off).

The question then is what this might mean and why it should be described as universalism? To answer the first part of that question we must recall how the Cross represented a divine curse. It is the symbol (or was in Paul’s day) of being thrown outside of the political, religious and cultural orders. The one being crucified was naked and abandoned. They experienced their existence as broken, suffering, without meaning and hurtling toward death. In this way the one being crucified was made to experience nihilism in the most visceral, material and horrific way. Those who were crucified were utterly de-worlded, placed outside the walls (quite literally as well as symbolically) and left to experience their last hours in an ocean of unrelenting suffering.

So then, when Paul preaches ‘Christ Crucified’ and speaks of the body of believers as the ‘refuse of the world’ he is saying that the body of believers are the ones who participate in this experience in some deeply existential way (and often in a deeply material way too).

This view can be described as a new form of universalism for at least two reasons. Firstly, every universalism provides a mode of thought that renders previously solid distinctions into thin air. They encompass a previous binary that was, up until that time, taken as absolute.

Here Paul writes of a community that transcends the seemingly natural and absolute division of his day that existed between Jew and Gentile. In this new category of the Pauline outsider whether you were a Jew or Gentile became unimportant. What was important was the experience of the Cross, i.e. the experience of existing outside the tribal communities you were a part of.

Secondly it is a form of universalism in the way that it relates to a human reality that is open to all. To understand this let us recall Sartre’s famous reflection on a Parisian waiter. He once saw a waiter who was so absorbed in his role as a waiter that he seemed to define himself in terms of that job. Sartre wrote of how this young man was acting in a mode of inauthenticity because he was not embracing the reality that he cannot be contained by the roles he plays in life.

In the same way the various identities that we adopt are useful, but we miss something vital about our humanity if we act as if we are fully defined by them. The problem is that we do not want to embrace this insight because it is terrifying to do so. It is terrifying because the various beliefs and roles we adopt help us to feel like masters of our own universe, they protect us from the experience of chaos and give us a type of compass that can direct our activity.

Yet Paul calls us to fully face up to and enter into the truth that we are all naked, broken and hurtling toward death. He is calling us to identify with Christ on the Cross and thus embrace a profound experience of nihilism. But the trick is that in facing up to and embracing ourselves as outsiders in this way we actually find a form of liberation and freedom Paul knew as Resurrection life.

If we were to attempt to reflect Paul’s insight (that we are the trash of the world, the excremental remainder that has no place) in a church environment what might that look like? Perhaps it would involve rituals, music and preaching that caused us to question what we take for granted. Perhaps it would mean learning from, leaning toward and reaching out to the people who live day to day as the trash of the world. Just perhaps it would involve an hour in our week where we lay down the various political, religious and cultural narratives that protect us from looking at our own brokenness and allow it to be brought to light. Not so that it will have power over us, but so that its power over us will be broken. For when we suppress our darkness it always comes out in other ways.

For example, if a church leader wants to have an affair yet prohibits himself from doing so the prohibition might work in stopping the primary act, but it will not overcome the desire. Rather the prohibition will simply reallocate the desire (e.g. in hatred of his partner, drinking, self-loathing etc.). It is only when one is in a community where the desires can be acknowledged that they begin to lose their power.

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Addendum

In essence, our brokenness is universal, as is our healing through the Cross of Christ. Both sin and redemption bear universal trademarks knowing no distinction amongst men.

- skinhead

Preview: John Walton's, "The Lost World of Genesis"

In order to properly evaluate the Genesis 1-2/3 Creation record, Scot McKnight offers John Walton's academic text as a reference point and immediately sets out that Genesis 1 is not about the creation of a material cosmology from nothing (void), but of the ordering of materials into functions (known as a functional ontology). This is not to say that God did not create the "void" of Genesis conceptually as Creator-God from which creation sprang (in support of Theism), but it is to say with affirmation that God re-ordered the chaos of creation to his designs to function according to his will. Further, that God is now managing and re-creating that creative-void so that all things will be brought into submission to his will, and into a final stage of completion when sin and death have been removed. (For further discussions re ex-nihlo creation see Theistic vs. Process Theology - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/process-theology-terence-fretheim.html ).

And secondly, that the cosmology is ordered or designed in such a way as to become God's temple from which he may dwell with his eikons (man, as God's image bearers). And that by the end of the seventh day God had completed all the tasks of ordering the cosmology, declaring it as good, and marking it as his final Creative Day of Inauguration wherein He may dwell amongst his creation once marked by a void and disorderliness.

I am recording this article to keep in mind these significant themes of the Genesis account that have been reviewed in earlier articles, and will certainly appear in future abstracts to come, when discussing the relevancy of Israel's creation story in terms of their national heritage as a people of God, chosen by God, to bear God's image to a sinful world. And by escatological extension, the church, as an expanded people of God who bear God's image to a sinful world, in revelatory fullness of the Christ-event both as apocalyptic hope and as man's completing the Inauguration of the God-event.

- skinhead

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Seven Days that Divide the World 2

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/09/12/seven-days-that-divide-the-world-2/#more-20220

by Scot McKnight
September 12, 2011

One of the most interesting books I read in the last few years is Wheaton professor John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Reduced to two points, Walton argues that (1) Genesis 1 is not about the origins of materials (like creating light out of nothing) but ordering of materials into functions so they fit into God’s ordered system for the cosmos; that’s the first point of his book. (2) the second makes clear what this “order” is all about: the cosmos is designed by God to be God’s cosmic temple. So, the book argues Genesis 1 is about a “functional ontology” and the created order is designed to put everything in its proper place of God’s cosmic temple. It’s an impressive, wide-ranging, and suggestive study. John Walton’s got a big academic book, which was behind this more popular version, coming out very soon from Eisenbrauns so many of the concerns or questions will be answered when we can all read the fuller explanations of each point.

Until then though some will be offering criticisms, including John Lennox, professor in Mathematics at Oxford, in Lennox’s new book, Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science. I began a series on Lennox’s book a bit ago and want to jump to an appendix in the book because it takes on Walton and, since I just taught Walton’s book, I wanted to see what Lennox had to say.

In essence, he doesn’t agree with Walton. I’m not persuaded his first major criticism, dealing with Walton’s points about function, are as clear as he could have been but I will do my best to present Lennox’s study as clearly as possible.

What do you think of Lennox’s criticisms of Walton? And, what do you think of Walton’s two big points above?

Lennox thinks Genesis 1 is better explained as the creation of materials and not just the “creation” or establishment of functions of previously existing matter. Then he discusses several items — “heaven and earth” and “great sea creatures” and “human beings” — and says these are matters. But I’m not sure Lennox sees what I see in Walton when it comes to the meaning of function. Walton sees a tapestry in which each item must be understood in terms of the whole, while Lennox wants to separate the items and see each in its own verse. A big distinction for Walton is “functions” in Days 1-3 and “functionaries” in Days 4-6, so that to say “human beings” are material misses the point that they are the culmination of the functions as those who are the functionaries, esp for what is created on Day 3. By atomizing the elements it appears to me Lennox misses the tapestry into which the items fit. The big picture is cosmic temple; the items are designed within that system; humans too.

It is true that Walton’s book does not establish or develop in detail what bara / ”create” meant when he says it concerns not so much materials but functions, and I saw that when I read this book — but at that time I knew John had a bigger book in the works (and it was the basis for this one) and I said, “I can wait to see if he can prove that.”

Then Lennox pushes Hebrews 1’s and John 1’s creation expressions into Walton’s thesis, and concludes that Walton’s thesis for Genesis 1 doesn’t fit the overall creation theology of the Bible. Well, I’d say — even as a NT scholar — I’d want to be careful about pushing either John 1 or Hebrews 1 onto the page of Genesis 1 because there’s no reason the authors all need to be talking about the same thing. So, for me, those two texts don’t count. What does count, is what Genesis 1 means in the ancient near east. Lennox offers nothing by way of rebuttal from that world.

Nor is Lennox convinced of the cosmic temple hypothesis: he doesn’t think Walton establishes his case for Genesis 1 being the creation of the cosmos as a cosmic temple. Folks connect Genesis 1-2/3 to Exodus 39. He pushes Walton for not citing sufficient evidence, and again — yes — but Walton’s got the big academic approach coming out. Oddly, Lennox doesn’t like that Walton uses Isa 66:1-2 since it comes from a later date, which didn’t stop Lennox from using Hebrews 1 and John 1 against Walton in the previous point. It’s methodological and it’s historical. 1 Kings 8:27 is mentioned too, and Lennox is unpersuaded.

Lennox then says these texts press materiality, but again — if one says the cosmos is a temple — we are not talking materiality so much as functionality since it functions as a grand metaphorical perception of the cosmos itself. Lennox flat-out surprised me when he said God doesn’t actually take up residence in the temple at the end of Genesis 1, but instead it is humans. Isn’t the whole point that humans are “images” and at least in part God’s representatives, and then isn’t the point that God dwells among us by setting up humans as his presence?

Lennox’s next point is about the significance of the seventh day and here is where I struggled most with what Lennox was on about. Walton emphasizes the focal point of God dwelling among us (through the image-bearers, what I call eikons) on the seventh day, and Walton sees Days 1-7 as the inauguration of God’s dwelling among us. Lennox scatters questions that don’t matter to what Walton is saying here. He wonders which days and which weeks and what inauguration means … connects this to Sabbath and says that it was materiality. Well, what I see in Walton is a week that comes to completion in the 7th day, and it is the “first” week of all — the primal week — and that’s what inauguration means.

Lennox's next concern has to do mostly with whether or not God revealed to [the] Israelites cosmological details that were unknowable at the time. I agree with Walton in the main; it gets me nervous to see some people read the Bible suggesting that God revealed things to ancient Israelite about cosmology that no one understood then — and sometimes haven’t understood until our time. But Walton says that nothing updated their scientific understanding, and this perhaps overdoes it … and it might just be easier to say “What is in the Bible is in accordance with contemporary perceptions of the cosmos.” He seems to set Lennox off to prove that at least somethings transcended ancient perceptions, which really in the end doesn’t change whether or not Genesis 1 is ancient cosmology. Lennox explores the conclusion of Edwyn Bevan and Andrew Parker, who concluded divine inspiration of Scripture through study of history and science and an uncanny accuracy in the Bible.
 

Another Link to Walton:

 

Ancient Cosmologies and the Creation Story of Genesis