Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, January 9, 2012

J.I. Packer - An Evangelic Argument for Classic Theism

And now…kudos to J. I. Packer for this brilliant article

by Dr. Roger Olson
posted November 7, 2011

Lest anyone think I hate Packer or disdain everything he’s written, I want to applaud him for one of the best basic theology articles I have ever read. It’s so good I copied it and have kept it in my files for years (since 1986!). The article is “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?” (Remember article titles are assigned by editors and not by authors; that may not have been Packer’s preferred title.) It was published in Christianity Today in (I think) September, 1986. (My copy does not have the exact publication date on it; I can see only the year–1986.)

This is a magnificent article decrying what Packer calls “mystification” of the doctrine of God. He calls for a cautious “retooling” of traditional Christian theism insofar as traditional theism (Augustine, Aquinas, et al.) has tended to downplay the personal aspects of God’s being. But he warns that any such retooling must purge “elements of mystification” from the doctrine of God. “By ‘mystification’ I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.”

In that section of the article headed “Exit mystification” Packer more than hints that God really does change his mind and that traditional theology has been wrong to say otherwise. Here is what he wrote: “To be specific, sometimes [in Scripture] God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a ‘victim’ of his creation. … But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the question: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actually misrepresent and so conceal God?”

There Packer sounds like an open theist! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was an open theist in 1986, only that this particular point about God changing his mind and the ways in which traditional theology have “mystified” those passages foreshadows an argument used by open theists.

Packer goes on in that section to call for biblical exegetes and theologians to take biblical allusions to God’s personal characteristics and interactions with creatures more seriously and not to dismiss them as mere figures of speech right out of hand. He also calls for theologians to discard traditional notions of God’s immutability and impassibility. Here is what he wrote about God’s impassibility: “Let us be clear: A totally impassive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong in Islam; he has no place in Christianity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosen-ness of God’s grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.”

Was Packer suggesting that a certain notion of God common among Christian theologians is an idol? Was he suggesting that he would not worship such a god (viz., one that cannot suffer)? Perhaps not, but it does sound that way. His language against divine impassibility (as traditionally understood in classical Christian theism) is very strong. What would Packer have said to this question asked of him right after he wrote that article: “Dear Professor Packer, if it were somehow revealed to you that God IS actually incapable of suffering, would you still worship him?” I suggest his answer is revealed in that statement that such a god might belong in Islam but has no place in Christianity.

Packer goes on to call for the purging of elements of rationalism in Christian theism. Most significantly, he says “theological triumphalism” is to be avoided because, although Scripture is authoritative, we cannot claim to have a complete grasp of God or ever think we have “enlisted him on our side.” He is clearly there talking about theologians who think they know too much about God beyond what is revealed.

I couldn’t agree more with Packer’s closing statement that reveals why he wrote this article. Talking about an expected coming syncretism of Christianity with other religions (something he was against) Packer concludes that “If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism–whether or not we are going to think about God the Christian way, or some other way–will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare ourselves along the lines suggested–just in case.”

I found this article extremely helpful in 1986 and I still find it helpful. I agree with almost everything in it. But if you remove the name “J. I. Packer” from it, someone might think it was written by a postconservative evangelical! In fact, I believe IF that article were to be published today WITHOUT the author’s identity attached, many conservative evangelicals would assume it was written by an open theist or a “leftwing evangelical” and attack it as dangerous.

Personally, I do not see how the article’s central thrust can be reconciled with classical Calvinism.Classical Calvinism is closely tied to classical theism. It certainly does not believe that God can change his mind or “make new decisions as he reacts to human doings.”

This is why I DO NOT SAY that Calvinists and I worship different Gods. Typical of most Calvinists I know, Packer was (at least in 1986) inconsistent. R. C. Sproul lets Arminians be Christians (just barely) due to a “felicitous inconsistency.” So I can say that my fellow evangelicals who happen to be Calvinists are Christians (not just barely!) and worship the same God I do due to a many felicitous inconsistencies. What I mean is that IF I BELIEVED WHAT THEY DO I would have to be more consistent and believe God is a monster and not worship him–something fortunately they do not believe so they can worship him. But the only reason they do not believe it is because they, like Packer, are inconsistent.

I hope this clears things up with regard to what I mean when I say the God of classical Calvinism is a monster IF Calvinism is pressed to its logical conclusion following out and embracing its good and necessary consequences, something almost no Calvinist does. I mean the same thing THEY MEAN about me and fellow Arminians when they say our theology, if pressed to its good and necessary consequences (which most of them acknowledge we don’t do), would amount to a man-centered false gospel of self-salvation.

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


What Do You Mean
When You Say
God?
by J.I. Packard
September 19, 1986
Christianity Today, pp 27-30

What does it mean to say "God"? Many today would have to answer this question as Augustine did when asked for a definition of time: "When I am not asked I know very well, but when I am asked I do not know at all!”

The doctrine of God is a confused area in Western theology. Each of its three departments - the divine at­tributes, the Trinity, and God's relation to the world­ - is disputed territory. This is basically because agreement is lacking as to how the doc­trine should be constructed and defended. Different in­tellectual methods for doing this naturally produce dif­ferent theological results.

Hybrids often prove unsta­ble, and the Western heri­tage of theism is a hybrid. It grew out of the apologetic theology of the early centu­ries in which much was made of the thought that Greco-Roman philosophy was a providential preparation for the gospel.

This theism, which found its fullest statement when Thomas Aquinas formulated it in Aristotelian terms was a blend of reasoning from philosophy and the Bible, the former appearing to pro­vide the frame into which the latter has to fit. But that changed with the Kuyperian, Barthian, and neo-Lutheran movements of this [20th] century. Each of these, in its own way, drew on Luther's and Calvin's criticisms of natural theology. But they pushed Luther's and Calvin's arguments to the point where it seemed that any appeal to reason to support or confirm scriptural rev­elation would be out of place. As a result, some as­pects of theism in its tradi­tional form have become widely suspect among main­stream theologians.

This means that when fac­ing challenges to theism, Protestant theologians have not always known what to say. They have sometimes been tempted to take up pan­icky and defeatist slogans like that fathered by the late John Robinson: "Our image of God must go." But that is not the way of wisdom. Certainly some rethinking is called for, but it is minor modification, not abandon­ment of traditional theism, that we need.

The anatomy of theism

It will help us to review the ingredients that make up his­toric Christian theism. Here is a check list of the usual items, expressed in as simple a way as the thoughts allow.

1.      God is personal and tri­une. God is as truly three personal centers in a rela­tionship of mutual love as he is a single personal deity. God is always Three-In-One and One-in-Three, and in all divine acts all three persons are involved. "He," when used of God, means "they" - the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2.      God is self-existent -and self-suffi­cient. God does not have it in him, ei­ther in purpose or in power, to stop existing. He exists necessarily. The an­swer to the child's question "Who made God?" is that God did not need to be made since he was always there. He depends on nothing outside himself, but is at every point self-sustaining.

3.      God is simple, perfect, and immutable. This means he is wholly and totally involved in everything that he is, and does, and his nature, goals, plans, and ways of acting do not change, either for the better (for, being perfect, he cannot become better than he is) or, for the worse.

4.      God is infinite, without body, all-­present, all-knowing, and eternal. God is not bound by any of the limitations of space or time that apply to us, his crea­tures, in our present body-anchored ex­istence. Instead, he is always present everywhere, though invisibly and imperceptibly. He is at every moment cog­nizant of everything that ever was, or ­now is, or shall be.

5.      God is purposeful and all-powerful. He has a plan for the history of the universe, and in executing it he governs and controls all created realities, with­out violating the nature of things. And ­without at any stage infringing upon ­the human free will, God acts in, with, and through, his creatures to do every­thing that he wishes to do exactly as he wishes to do it. By this sovereign, over­ruling action he achieves his goals.

6.      God is both transcendent over, and immanent in, his world. On the one hand he is distinct from the world, does not need it, and exceeds the grasp of any created intelligence that is found in it. Yet on the other hand he permeates the world in sustaining and creative power, shaping and steering it in a way that keeps it on its-planned course.

7.      God is impassible. This means that-no one can inflict suffering, pain, or any sort of distress on him. Insofar as God enters into an experience of suffering, it is by empathy for his creatures and according to his own deliberate decision. He is never his creature’s vic­tim. This impassibility has not been taken by the Christian mainstream to mean that God is a stranger to joy and delight. Rather, it has been construed as an assertion of the permanence of God's joy, which no pain clouds.

8.      God is love. Giving out of good will, for the recipient's benefit, is the abiding quality both of ongoing rela­tionships within the Trinity and of God's relationship with his creatures. This love is qualified by holiness (puri­ty), a further facet of God's character that finds expression in his abhorrence and rejection of moral evil.

9.       God's ways with mankind, as set forth in Scripture, show him to be awesome and adorable by reason of his truthfulness, faithfulness, grace, mercy, patience, constancy, wisdom, justice, , goodness, and generosity. For these glorious qualities God is eternally worthy of our praise, loyalty, and love. The ultimate purpose of human life is to render to him worship and service, in which both he, and we, will find joy. This is what we were made for, and are saved for. This is what it means to know God, and to be known by him, and to glorify him.

10.  God uses his gift of language, giv­en to mankind, to tell us things directly in-and-through the words of his spokes­men – [the] prophets, apostles, the incarnate Son, the writers of Holy Scripture, and those who preach the Bible. God's mes­sages all come to us as good news of grace. They may contain particular commands, even threats or warnings, but the fact that God addresses us at all is an expression of his good will and an invitation to fellowship. And the cen­tral message of Scripture, the hub of the wheel whose spokes are the various truths about God that the Bible teaches, is, and always will, be God's unmerited gift of salvation, freely offered to us in and by Jesus Christ.

Traditional theism under fire

Now, what are the present-day prob­lems with this venerable understand­ing of God? They come down to its sources and method. The positions them­selves, as stated above, are plainly bib­lical. But the Platonist-Augustinian-­Thomist tradition of philosophical theism has persistently held that knowl­edge of God's reality and of several of the above facts about him can, and should be, gleaned by rational analysis apart from the Bible's witness. This is where the uncertainty centers.

Karl Barth in the powerful Bible-­based reassertions of trinitarian theism of his Church Dogmatics, spurned the help of this kind of rational theology. (It has traditionally been called natural theology.)

This did more than any other twenti­eth-century contribution to produce a pendulum swing against attempts to wed theology to philosophy. To be con­cerned lest philosophy becomes the dominant partner in this marriage is right and proper. Barth, however, want­ed to go further, and divorce them - a different agenda altogether.

Barth himself would use philosophi­cal concepts as tools to help investigate biblical teaching. But he would not let these concepts become grids limiting in advance what God is free to say to us through Scripture.

Barth's protest, though justified with­in limits, threw the doctrine of God into great confusion. It opened the door to a selective reading of the Bible, free of coherent rational control; and operating without regard for any of the tradi­tional fixed points. That is what we face today in many quarters. The pendulum still swings between Thomist and Barth­ian extremes, and shows no sign of com­ing to rest.

Minor modification of traditional theism, rather than

abandonment, is what the present-day situation demands.


Karl Barth's theism

Barth's contribution, though disrup­tive in the way just described, paves the way for some clarifications of the doc­trine of God that we badly need.

Granted, his attack on the basis of natural theology - that is, the recogni­tion that our existence and God's have something in common - was certainly overdone. Granted, too, Barth's denial of general revelation through the creat­ed order was a mistake. (His refusal to recognize general revelation, apart from the gospel, in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:9-16, seems little short of perverse.)

Nevertheless, his polemic against the claim of natural theology, to establish for us foundation truths about God as a kind of runway for revelation, now ap­pears as a largely justified attack on nineteenth-century attempts to domes­ticate God. (Barth's break with liberal theology began around 1915, when prominent German theologians blithe­ly spoke of "using" the Christian faith “for purposes of conducting” World War 1.) And Barth's insistence that all our doctrine of God must come from the Bible was healthy and right.

So it will not be enough to dismiss Barth as eccentric and then slump back into traditional postures and parrot­ings. If Barth, with his type of biblicism, did not do well enough, we must try with ours to do better. To that end I now venture some comments on the doctrine of God as today's evangelicals have received it.

There are three important respects in which the traditional doctrine needs purging. It needs to be purged of ele­ments of natural theology, elements of mystification, and elements of rational­ism. Let me explain.

First, elements of natural theology need to be purged. Against Barth, I affirm that general revelation is a fact, and its impact will again and again produce thoughts about God that, so far as they go, are right. (Like those of Epimenides and Aratus that Paul cites in Acts 17:28.) Many are confident that rational apolo­getics (a form of natural theology) can, under God, trigger and crystallize such thoughts and insights. Unlike Barth, I see no reason to doubt their confidence.

Yet I contend that natural theology needs to be eliminated from our at­tempts at theological construction. There are five reasons.

First, we do not need natural theol­ogy for information. Everything that natural theology, operating upon gen­eral revelation, can discern about the Creator and his ways is republished for us in those very Scriptures that refer to the general revelation of these things (see Ps. 19; Acts 14:17, 17:28; Rom 1: 18-32,2:9-16). And Scripture, which we rightly receive on the grounds that it is God's own word of testimony and law, is a better source of knowledge about God than natural theology can ever be.

Second, we do not strengthen our position by invoking natural theology. On the contrary, claiming that biblical truths rest on philosophical founda­tions can only give the impression that the biblical message about God's re­demption is no more certain than is the prior philosophical assertion of God's reality. And God's reality on this sce­nario must be established by reason­ unaided by revelation. Thus revelation becomes distinctly dependent on philosophy.

Third, all expositions of the analogy of being, and all attempts to show the naturalness of theism - all "proofs" for God's existence and goodness, in other words - are logically loose. They state no more than possibilities (for probabil­ities are only one kind of possibilities) and can all be argued against indefi­nitely. This will damage the credit of any theology that appears to be build­ing and relying on these arguments.

Fourth, the speculative method for building up a theology is inappropriate. As Louis Berkhof has observed, such a method takes man as its starting point and works from what it finds in man to what is found in God. "And in so far as it' does this," Berkhof writes, "it makes man the measure of God." That, of course, does not "fit in a theology of revelation."

Fifth, there is always a risk the foun­dations that natural theology lays will prove too narrow to build all the em­phases of Scripture upon. Thus, for in­stance, in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica,  natural theology purports to establish that there is one God, who is the first cause of everything. But nothing is said about the personal as­pects of God's being. This personal dimension is central to the biblical revelation of God, setting it in stark contrast with (for instance) the divine principle in Hindu thought.

Thomas's approach, however, en­courages the theologian, to downplay the biblical stress on it, to treat God as an impersonal object rather than a per­sonal subject, and to see himself as standing over God to study him, rather than under God, to obey him.

It seems right to limit our use of natural theology to the realm of sup­portive apologetics (showing biblical faith to be reasonable), and not to give it any place in our attempts to state what the biblical faith actually is.

Exit mystification

In 'retooling traditional theism for to­day, we need, secondly; to purge elements of mystifications. By “mystifica­tion” I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand, and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring' tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate and necessary distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.

To be specific, sometimes God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a "victim" of his creation. As writes Louis Berkhof, representative of this view, "the change is not in God, but in man, and man's relations to God."

But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the ques­tion: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actu­ally misrepresent and so conceal God? In other words, how may we explain these statements about God's grief and re­pentance without seeming to explain them away?

Surely we must accept Barth's insis­tence that at every point in his self ­disclosure God reveals what he essen­tially is, with no gestures that mystify. And surely we must reject as intoler­able any suggestion that God in reality is different at any point from what Scripture makes him appear to be. Scripture was not written to mystify, and therefore we, need to ask how we can dispel the contrary impression that the time-honored, orthodox line of ex­planation leaves.

Three things seem to be called for as means to this end.

First, we need exegetical restraint in handling Scripture's, anthropomor­phisms (phrases using human figures to describe God). Anthropomorphism is characteristic of the entire biblical pre­sentation of God. This is so not because God bears man's image, but because man bears God's, and hence is capable of understanding God's testimony to the reasons for his actions. The anthropomorphisms are there to show us why God acted as he did in the biblical story" and how therefore he might act towards us in our own personal stories. But nothing that is said about God's negative or positive reactions to his creatures is meant to put us in a posi­tion where we can tell what it feels like to be God. Our interpretation of the Bible must recognize this.

Second, we need to guard against misunderstanding of God's changeless­ness. True to Scripture, this must not be understood as a beautiful pose, eternal­ly frozen, but as the Creator's moral constancy, his unwavering faithfulness and dependability. God's changeless­ness is not a matter of intrinsic immobil­ity, but of moral consistency. God is always in action. He enters into the lives of his creatures. There is change around him and change in the relations of men to him. But, to use the words of Louis Berkhof, "there is no change in his being, his attributes, his purpose, his motives of action, or his promises." When one conceives of God's immuta­bility in this biblical way, as a moral quality that is expressed whenever God changes his way of dealing with people for moral reasons, the biblical refer­ence to such change will cease to" mystify.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that

we have enlisted God on our side, and now have him in our pockets.

Third, we also need, to rethink God's impassibility. This conception of God represents no single biblical term, but was introduced into Christian theology in the second century. What was it supposed to mean? The historical answer is: Not impassivity, unconcern, and im­personal detachment in face of the cre­ation. Not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief, either. It means simply that God's expe­riences do not come upon him as ours come upon us. His are foreknown, willed, and chosen by himself; and are not in­voluntary surprises forced on him from outside; apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.

This understanding was hinted at earlier, but it is spelled out here be­cause-it is so important, and so often missed. Let us be clear: A totally impas­sive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong [in some other religion, but] he has no place in Christian­ity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosenness of God's grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.

Problems of rationalism

The final step needed to spruce up tra­ditional theism is to purge it of elements of rationalism. Just as the two-year-old son of a man with a brain like Einstein's could not understand all that was going on in his father's mind if his father told him, so it would be beyond us to under­stand all that goes on in the all-wise, and not in any way time-bound mind of God.

But, just as the genius who loves his boy will take care to speak to him at his own level, even though that means re­ducing everything to baby talk, so God does when he opens his mind and heart to us in the Scriptures. The child, though aware that his father knows far more than he is currently saying, may yet learn from him all that he needs to know for a full and happy relationship with Dad. Similarly, Scripture, [when] viewed as torah (God's fatherly law), tells us all that we need to know for faith and godliness.

But we must never-forget that we are in the little boy's position. At no point dare we imagine that the thoughts about God that Scripture teaches us take the full measure of his reality. The fact that God condescends and accommodates himself to us in his revelation certainly makes possible clarify and sureness of understanding. Equally certain, how­ever, it involves limitation in the reve­lation itself.

But we forget this, or so it seems; and. then appears the rationalism of which I am speaking. It is more, I think, a tem­per than a tenet, but it produces a style of speech that in effect denies that there is anything about God we do not know. By thus failing to acknowledge his in­comprehensibility beyond the limits of what he has revealed, we shrink him in thought down to our size. The process is sometimes described as putting God in a box.

It is certainly proper to stress, as against the sleep of reason in the world and the zaniness of subjectivism in the church, that scriptural revelation is ra­tional. But the most thorough-going Bible believers are sometimes required, like Job, to go on adoring God when we do not specifically understand what he is doing and why he is doing it.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that we have enlisted him on our side, and now have him in our pockets. Confidence in the teaching of God's written Word is to be main­tained all the time. But this stance of theological triumphalism is some­thing quite different, and is to be avoided.

God the image maker

This review of traditional theism, and suggestions for its possible refinement, has been heavy sledding. How can it all be pulled together? Can we focus our theism in a phrase? I welcome the sug­gestion that we should speak of God as the image maker.

This phrase binds together the main theistic thrusts that our secular world needs to face. Say "God," and you point to the infinite, eternal, self-existent, self-revealing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Say "Maker," and you point to the fundamental relationship between God and us. He is the Creator, we are his creatures.

Say "Image Maker," and you point to the basis and presupposition of our knowledge of God-namely, the fact that he made us like himself. Included in that image are rationality, relation­ality, and the capacity for-that right­eousness that consists of receiving and responding to God's revelation. We are able to-know God because we are think­ing, feeling, relating, loving beings, just as he is himself.

I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but it seems fairly clear to me that pressure on conservative theology is still building up from exponents of re­ligious relativism and pluralism. This is so both within the church (where some think that the more theologies there are, the healthier and merrier we shall be) and outside it.

*I expect over the next few decades to see the quest for a synthesis of world religions gain impetus, with constant attempts to assimilate Christianity into other faiths. We may expect a genera­tion of debate-on the program of mov­ing through and beyond syncretism to a nobler religion than any that has yet been seen. That notion, which has emerged more than once in liberal cir­cles, looks like an idea whose time, hu­manly speaking, has come; and coun­tering it, I predict, will be the next round in the church's unending task of defending and propagating the gospel. If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism-whether or not we are going to think about God the Chris­tian way, or some other way will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare our­selves along the lines suggested-just in case.


Reformational Theology vs. Emergent Theology


"Classic Reformational Theism vs. Emergent Christian Post-Theism"

When comparing Emergent Christianity to classic Reformational Christianity commonly practice within the halls of Evangelicalism one can see the direct influence of the one to the other, and within that correspondence understand the necessity for Emergent Christianity to continue moving away from Evangelical Christianity in a way that is deeply "reformational" as found within the Reformation's originating charters 500 years ago. In the sense that Emergents are revisiting every area of Reformed theology - much like Luther and Calvin had done with the Catholic Church's practices and dogmas - and updating it first in practice (orthopraxy), and secondly, in theological observations (orthodoxy), by de-emphasizing a soteriology of justification by faith and re-emphasizing a Christology of Jesus-first and the Kingdom ethics of benevolence and love.

One of the main disturbances to Evangelicalism is the Emergent doctrine of God's love and grace that somehow became lost in the Evangelic rhetoric of man's sinfulness and certain judgment of death-and-hell. As the latter ideas were lifted up God became more and more distant to the plight of human existence until man was fully regarded as damned and condemned, unworthy of salvation, and dismally lost. And though true, and without dispute, the Emergent Gospel re-emphasizes the first purposes of a God who creates and superintends in love and devotion to mankind; who seeks to impart grace and mercy to mankind's existence; who intends to invade heaven into man's hellish experience of sin and evil. Distancing Himself only from a church not preaching Jesus' Gospel of love and grace.

Moreover, as Emergent Christianity continues to evolve there is a renewed effort to revisit and critique every Reformational doctrine towards a Jesus-of-the-Gospel's rightness and orientation that when followed and practiced can only become deeply disturbing. Upsetting many of the church's current practices and teachings like Jesus did of old when questioning the religious establishment of His day as the Pharisees and Scribes shined-and-polished pet doctrines-and-beliefs. Consequently, Emergents have been questioning not only Luther and Calvin, but the Reformed Father's Grand Progenitor centered in Augustine hoary observation many centuries earlier. Questioning all of Reformed Theology's fundamental doctrines and teachings of Scripture that has created an Evangelic culture of a bible-within-a-bible (e.g., known as Biblicism); a religious subculture within what was intended to be a pervasive, globally-necessitated Apostolic Christian faith; and unnecessary dogmas filled with restrictions, harshness, callousness, set within a minutia of religious Reformed laws.

Partly, this effort is due to postmodernism's critical analysis of secular modernism begun during the World Wars, and again with Vietnam's institutional insurrections. And partly, to Evangelicalism's waywardness from New Testament Kingdom teaching of love-in-action to those in need, impoverished, and unempowered by society. Who are held in the affliction of misery, disease, desperateness, race, gender and lifestyle prejudices. But under a fresh re-reading of the Gospels in light of all these developments, then the Jesus discovered within them (especially as related to His Kingdom teachings) would de-emphasis a Reformed Pauline doctrine that has become too Calvinised by the church. Which then creates the consequential reaction to re-right the Reformed churches' Pauline understanding of the Gospel through the Christ event once again however paradoxical this may seem (for more on this area, please refer to the article Paul, whom I love, and other articles found within this website's sidebar entitled Pauline Theology).

It is submitted then that the only thing holding Evangelicalism together is not Reformational Theology but Emergent Theology's broader scope of God's love expressed through Jesus Christ that builds upon Reformational Theology's first principles of faith (vs. today's emphasis on justice 500 years later). Without Emergent Christianity's important new insights and emphasis for Jesus-first Christological practices, and a radically new re-interpretation of the Bible perceived through the Gospels themselves, Evangelicalism would continue to centralize itself within its own Reformational theologies blinded by their need of a Jesus revolution. Creating then a Calvinism of dogmatizing rhetorics and strict sectarian practices that are excluding the larger part of mankind from any form of acceptance and sympathetic outreach by God's overwhelming love. That would rather wish to see God's justice displayed in judgment-and-wrath upon a wicked world than to stand-in-the-breeches with a lost mankind beseeching Jesus' followers to preach-and-practice a God of loving justice who, when coming, will first sweep out His own house, to their own harm and destruction. Thus, is it more "just" to proclaimed-and-enacted God's love or to preach an unloving rhetoric of God's justice filled with hypocritical legalisms and self-righteous duties? Didn't Jesus say this same thing to the Pharisees of His day? Whose priests and scribes had tipped the theological cart towards an ungracious Judahizing of the Law than to a just-and-loving Gospel of God's benevolence to a lost mankind? Today's Calvinism stands in this same vein unless it re-discovers Jesus' faith declarations to go back to its first tenets and throw out all of its resultant rhetorical baggage built up over the past 500 years in the name of Reformational theology {see NT Wright, Simply Jesus  (October 2011) and How God Became King (March 2012)}.

Consequently, it is important to remember what Reformational theology has brought to modern day Christianity by reciting an older interview of Dr. J.I. Packer to a Baptist journal many years ago.... In an article from the Spring of 1994, Packer speaks to Reformational theology's God-centeredness, particularly as it relates to the themes of God's sovereignty (classic theism); the deep set nature of sin and man's complete inability to save himself, even down to the lowest levels of revelatory illumination (depravity and election); and the radical and transforming power of Jesus Christ to redeem sinners by his saving grace (redemption). To this Emergent Christianity is updating classic theism through it's own inquiries into open theology (also named open theism) and process theology and hopefully towards an admixture of both that this blog here is calling relational theism (see sidebars again).

Packer goes on further to recount his fear of (1) a modern-day humanism filling the evangelical church; (2) of arighting any Christian doctrines oriented towards a me-first, man-centric interpretation of subordination; (3) that God serves man's glory of religious entitlement and indifference to the plight of a lost mankind rather than man serving God's glory through practices of love and justice to the same; (4) of a God who exists for man, and not man for God, despite Reformational rhetoric that would protest otherwise while dunning its ears to the injustices filling the world around itself; and, (5) that God simply exists to serve at man's beck-and-call when in need of help and desperation. In response, Emergent Christianity is rewriting these  same observations from a relational understanding through all its liturgies, practices and doctrines using deconstructive / reconstructive terminologies and postmodernistic framing.

Packer then notes how modern Evangelicalism has splintered into various organizations emphasizing specialized goals beyond that of declaring the gospel of Christ and curiously declares that "the only thing that can unite evangelicalism is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider, and more-generally-agreed-upon theology that he only finds in Reformational Theology." In response, we see today an effort to re-declare these same doctrines through neo-evangelic and neo-reformed movements counter to the broader movement of Emergent Christianity seeking to go beyond the Reformation back to the days of the early Church's proclamations of Jesus teachings and Kingdom ethics. Hence, Calvinists and Emergents are at loggerheads with one another when we should be joined together in purpose and proclamation - one vying for traditional protestant legacies while the other is vying for early 1st Century church practices yet unformed, apostolic, refreshingly new, and built upon Jesus. One which emphasizes the singular doctrines of salvation (justification by faith), law (with an emphasis on rituals and dogmas), and political kingdom (enforced nationalism) while the other seeks an early Christology the affects the whole of soteriology, eschatology, anthropology, and wishing to bind these seamlessly together. Consequently, when these same doctrines are built upon Jesus they have a completely different flavor founded, and seasoned, by God's love in matters of faith, trust, devotion, worship, and affecting popularly preferred religious doctrines by turning them upside-down and inside-out.

Lastly, Packard rightly notes the need for Christians to better learn of their Christianity. To not only read their Bibles but to study and know its theological truths. Truths that relate to everyday wisdoms, personal behaviors, insights, philosophies; that practically give to us godly direction and thinking. Which is the very reason and purpose for this blog journal. To recite Emergent doctrinal differences from the recent past and declare the Christian faith in fresh, new ways that unwraps past denominational creeds and legacies in postmodern truths of enlightenment and understanding. Striped from religious folklores, dogmas and offences to the more liberating ideas of God's love and grace that were somehow misplaced over the past 500 years of post-Reformational doctrine and enlightenment.

Curiously, Emergent Christians would practice this kind of faith first-and-foremost apart from the dominant Evangelical / Reformed churches more popular dogmas of restrictive grace - which doctrine of faith was ironically the very foundation stone upon which the Reformation began! But to these same Emergent Christians, as to our Reformed brethren all-too-well-steeped in systematic doctrinal distinctions, it is as necessary to discern the faith that we practice as it is to know it. This is all the difference between studying a static biblical theology and discerning it into its various fashions of contemporary biblical theology. Consequently,  Orthopaxy and Orthodoxy must stand together as Siamese twins, and not as opposing opposites. Each one sharpening the other just as the conjoining Christian groups of Emergent Christian can do with our "entwined" Evangelical / Reformational brethren - and similarly, they to us. Not in a spirit of dissolution and synthesis, but in the spirit of true transformational - even radical! - change that could revolutionize our current contemporary theologies in a renewed Reformational movement of grace, truth and justice that may last for another 500 years! Let this be our prayer for unity and discernment.

R.E. Slater
January 9, 2011
Revised: September 24, 2013
 

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Founders Ministries

AN INTERVIEW WITH
Dr. J. I. Packer
Spring 1994

Question: Dr. Packer, you have done a great deal of writing and speaking on the subject of the need for a new reformation, a new awareness of the sovereignty and grace of God in our day. How do you assess the condition of the state of evangelicalism as it presently exists, and what do you think we can do about that condition?

Augustine (4th-5th Centuries)
Packer: I see evangelical strength needing desperately to be undergirded by Reformation convictions. If you do not see deep into the problem, you do not see deep into the solution. My fear is that a lot of evangelicals today are just not seeing deep enough in both the problem and the need. But Reformation theology takes you down to the very depth of the human problem. And actually, the Reformation itself was a recovery of the tremendous contribution that the great St. Augustine made back at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries. He was the man who, more than anyone else in Christendom, saw to the heart of the real problem. He saw how much damage sin had done, how completely we were oriented away from God by nature. He is the one who left us that phrase 'original sin' which he got from the text of Psalm 51:5:

'Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.'

He also saw in response to our sinful condition, how great a work of transformation was needed by the grace of God in human lives. The sixteenth-century Reformers stood on Augustine's shoulders at this point. Of course, they clarified the great truth that justification by faith is the way in which the grace of God reaches us. We need, even today, a Christianity that is as deep and strong as that. And this, it seems to me, is where modern evangelicalism is lacking.

Question: Would you say that there is a connection or a similarity between the man-centered theology of evangelicalism and the general humanistic spirit?

John Calvin, 16th Century
Packer: Yes, although I think that it is an indirect connection. Secular humanism, you see, is very man-centered. It encourages every individual to regard his or her own personal happiness as the supreme value. And the kind of evangelical religion which does not challenge this self-centered, self-absorbed standpoint, but, rather, reinforces it by making one's religious experience the most important thing in the world, or God's gift of personal contentment, happiness, joy, good feelings, or that kind of thing, is simply echoing the tenets of this type of modern humanism. A Reformational emphasis, however, challenges this by asserting that God is the centre, not man. We must recognize that he is at the heart of things and that we exist for his glory, that is to say, we exist for him, not he for us. And it is only as we set ourselves to glorify him as the one who supremely matters that we are going to enter into the joy and fulfillment which being a Christian brings. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it so well: 'What is the chief end of men?' answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The enjoyment comes as we set ourselves to glorify God. But if our concern is with the enjoyment, then we won't be glorifying God.

Question: Dr. Packer, you mentioned just a moment ago, in referring to the proliferation and growth of evangelicalism, the lack of any real significant power of the cross and the gospel. Do you believe that modern evangelicals have lost their grip on the biblical gospel?

Packer: Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind's redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God's work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.

Question: Given the current trends of the evangelical movement, what do you see for the future?

Packer: I think that there is a big risk of fragmentation. Modern evangelicalism is simply too worldly, and the influence of the world is usually always a fragmenting influence. I think perhaps that evangelicalism has not yet learned the way of unity on anything except the outward trappings of united evangelistic efforts. And that in itself is only a shallow uniting factor because the gospel as understood by some doesn't correspond to the gospel as understood by others. And when it comes to all goals and objectives beyond evangelism, then I think that evangelicals are very seriously divided. There are some tightly connected with right wing politics, yet their are others, because of their emphasis on end times speculations, who really do not think that involvement in society is important at all. There are some who are only interested in the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit, such as faith healing or speaking in tongues, while others seem only interested in the implementations of psychology or self-help type programmes. So I see grave risks of fragmentation down the road. The only thing that can unite us is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider and more generally agreed upon theology. And I find that theology only in the Reformation heritage.

Question:If the theology is the only thing that will unite us, do you really think unity is at all achievable? Because from our perspective, the average evangelical, indeed the average Christian, it seems, is intimidated by theology.

Martin Luther, 16th Century
Packer First of all, theology simply means the study of God. This is something that every Christian needs to realize. I think the way that the word has been used in the past has frightened many Christians away from it, even though they never stopped to consider what the word actually meant. People got the idea somewhere that theology is the business of the seminary professors and the clergy, but has very little to do with the day to day living of the Christian life. It's something people seem to think you can get along without, provided that you read your Bible daily and think one or two guiding thoughts from your passage to keep you on the rails. I do not believe it is at all like that. But theology means the study of God, and if we are to love God, as we are commanded, with all our 'minds' them we need to be in the business of theology. So when I speak of theology, I am referring to the truth that God has given us all in Scripture which we all need to learn and digest. It is truth for life! Now, I am a professor of theology, but I must tell you that in all of my teaching and writing, I am trying to show that theology is supremely practical. If this could be seen, then I think people's fear of theology could melt away and they would appreciate, and benefit from, serious theological instruction. Again, if you will allow me to beat the drum once more, this is a Reformational emphasis. If you actually get around to reading the Reformers, such as Luther or Calvin, you will find that they did all their work from a pastoral standpoint, and at every point they are applying truth to the lives of people. What they were trying to do throughout their earthly lives was to build the people up in God's truth so their lives might bring glory to their Creator and Redeemer. It's as practical and down to earth, and as pastoral as that. That's what we need to get back to first, I think.


Hallmarks of a Jesus Movement




by Dr. Paul Pierson
Fuller School of World Mission
June 8, 2005

The list of factors observed in revival and renewal movements throughout history is flexible and some of these can be combined. Here is a list I've observed:

* They always begin on the periphery of the institutional church

* They are motivated by a transforming experience (grace) of God by an individual or group

The result is the desire for a more authentic Christian life that often leads to concern for the church and world

Face to face groups for prayer, Bible study, mutual encouragement are important

New methods of selecting and training leaders become important. These are less institutional, more grass roots and lay oriented

There are theological breakthroughs, that is, rediscovery of aspects of the Biblical message that have been forgotten or overlooked by the Church, usually they involve a focus on the gifts of every believer

There is a leveling effect, distance decreases between clergy and laity, social classes, races, men and women, and denominations

* The movement is countercultural in some ways, often because it reaches out to those who have not been valued by their society

Consequently there will be opposition by many in the dominant culture and church

* There will often be manifestations of spiritual warfare. Such movements sense the reality of evil and the need to recognize the vistory of Christ in the cross and resurrection

* At times there will be unusual manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit; healings, visions, glossalalia, miracles. etc

* More flexible structures of church and mission will be needed and often emerge, different from traditional structures

* The movement will be led to significant recontextualization of the Christian message, which will be communicated more widely by lay persons to those outside the church

* New music is often a characteristic

* Biblical concepts ignored by the traditional church but relevant to the hearers are often discovered

* There will be a growing concern for the marginalized, often expressed in ministries of compassion

* At a later stage this often leads to concern for broader social transformation

* As the movement matures there will be concern for the renewal of the broader church

* As the movement continues to mature many will see themselves not only as part of the particular movement but as citizens of the Kingdom of God, transcending their own movement

* Finally, every movement is less than perfect and often messy at the edges and sometimes, at the center. This is inevitable as long as sinful humans are involved