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

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off 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

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Two Responses to the Book, "Against Calvinism" by Dr. Roger Olson


Recent responses to Against Calvinism
May 1, 2012
Comments

Here I post two e-mails that typify responses I’ve received from individuals about Against Calvinism. I’m not going to comment on them, just reproduced them here. I’ll let you, my faithful readers, decide what you think and comment on them. I’ve removed anything that would identify their authors.

The First Example:

“I recently read your book, Against Calvinism. I first became aware of your work when I heard the debate you participated in with Dr. Horton on the White Horse Inn podcast. I have leaned towards the Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty and will for the past few years and was eager to read your response to the parts of the TULIP that are particularly difficult for my finite mind to fully understand, being distorted by my sinful nature. To make it more interesting, my friend and I actually purchased both your book and Dr. Horton’s book to have a well-rounded presentation from both sides of the argument. My sincere hope is to be challenged in my understanding of this topic because I affirm what was said in your debate, that this is not a small theological matter but one of great importance, influencing everything from how we evangelize to how we view the Church.

I don’t want to waste any of your time because I know that you are a busy man, so I will cut straight to the point. I am very concerned with the way in which you approached your stance against Calvinism in your book. While I understand that you may disagree with the TULIP and many of the “young, restless, and Reformed” crowd, I do not believe that you made any compelling case for a non-Calvinist view. What I was most disappointed in with this work was the lack of Scriptural support for your views. I am certainly open to the plausible arguments that challenge my understanding of theology (because I stand firmly convinced that God uses the Body to sharpen itself) but these views MUST be based from Scripture. My concern is that the same “Reformed” pastors that you make sure to rebuke, all boldly offer Scriptural support for their statements, even if you do feel that it is being used out of context. Instead of rebuking them with Scripture that you believe says something on the contrary, it felt as if you went for an almost secular, agnostic approach to point out what you believe to be cracks in their philosophical foundations.

Secondly, while trying to point out what you feel is erroneous or even heretical within the TULIP, it often felt much more like you were putting God, the Omnipotent, on trial. I feel like I must warn you of the dangerous ground you inhabit by suggesting that if God is indeed the God of Calvinism, that you would not only cease to worship Him, but would refuse Him entirely. You and I are fallen creatures with distorted perceptions of truth, goodness, love, etc. For us, having been given revelation by God and redeemed by the blood of Christ, to suggest that if our theology is challenged on this subject that we would walk away from this God, who has no need to prove Himself to us, is utterly foolish. This kind of spiritual immaturity painfully parallels that in Romans 9.

Dr. Olson, I believe that you are fellow brother in Christ but I pray diligently that you would reconsider your argument as well as your words. Such talk seems much more suited for causing division and stumbling than for building up the Bride of Christ. While I will remain open to reproof concerning this argument, because I believe that we are biblically called to do so, I hope that are reminded that we have finite minds and must take great caution while pointing our finger at the Infinite God. Thank you for your time.”


The Second Example:

“It is hard for me to express my thankfulness for your work in putting Arminianism back on the intellectual table as well as broad Evangelicalism. I am completing a book I will shop around. My wife says the title is too bland. It ought to be “Confessions of an Evangelical.” A little voyeurism could help sales!!!! Anyway, I finally switched categories and self-identified as an Arminian. While reading your blog, a most excellent contribution, and your books, I found a way to move beyond the fatal determinism of High Calvinism. It has been a bondage of sorts to me over the last 30 years since my Westminster days. I could never look a man in the eye and say “you might have been chosen for eternal damnation for God’s own pleasure.” I mumbled something or other. But I never had my heart in it. Yet I could find no credible way out. You shined the flashlight on the path I could take. I took that path and feel a freedom theologically I have not had before. The path was there all along, but I couldn’t find a fellowship of careful thinkers who could partner with me. At Westminster the real opposite of the reformed christian was not the lost man but the Arminian man, as the Roman Catholic. This always amused me when I was there. It was like the phenomenon of Roman Catholics thinking their opposite was a Baptist rather than a non-Christian.

I think there are many Christians who are Calvinists because they want to have a high view of God’s glory. They love him with all their heart and want a theology that lifts him up as worthy and full of honor. Deep down they have questions about the deterministic soteriology. It does not ring true to them. But what to do? How can God be God without a Calvinistic ordo salutis? Street version Arminianism, which is mostly semi-Pelagianism, as you so often remind us, has so tarnished Arminianism in many minds, that it is not an option for thinking Christians.

You are also arguing for an inclusive Evangelicalism. High Calvinists are very suspicious of it. For them, it’s watered down Christianity. By my measure I would like to see you confront this at levels that are as sustained as your defense of Arminianism. This is an area where the Calvinists do significant damage. It’s not their beliefs that are so much at issue here but their sheer inability to welcome into fellowship sincere Christ-believers and Christ-followers from other traditions. This is fundamentalism of the Bob Jones kind and its inbreeding creates all manner of strange life forms.

Evangelicalism, for me, is a kind of preservative that keeps the laity from giving any one church the prerogative to claim all that is Christian as their own. With regard to this, I am not a severe critic of denominationalism. The development of denominations of many kinds not only keeps Christians from killing one another but it also leads to an awareness that there is a core that all Christians share. If there was only one denomination, everything that one denomination believes would be all that Christianity is. On the face of it, that could not be true, not in this world. The existence of many denominations forces the laity to an awareness that there is a center. And that center is Evangelicalism.”

  
End.



Books by Dr. Roger Olson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=roger+olson



continue to -
 
 
 




 

The Shalom of God, Restorer and Healer of All Things


God on a Mission—Freedom and Love

by Thomas Jay Oord
May 1, 2012

In this, the final installment of my missional theology series, I look to the liberation and love a missional God provides.

Free, Free, Set Them Free

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” said Jesus. Standing in his hometown temple, he continues reading a passage from Isaiah: “he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19).

Among the many ways biblical authors talk about God seeking and saving, the themes of healing and freedom from oppression appear often. Healing and deliverance are part of the well-being/abundant life/favor the Lord generously offers. And we desperately need the well-being – shalom – of God’s salvation.

In a world of brokenness, wholeness breaks in. This wholeness is evident in the local church I attend, in which a robust Celebrate Recovery ministry has emerged. Those in this group believe God empowers them to overcome hurts, habits, and hang-ups. God is their deliverer. Through this and other avenues in the church, many find God’s healing and deliverance.

The Apostle Paul says liberation comes from the Spirit and becomes effective through Jesus. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death,” he says (Rm. 8:2). In this liberation, we see God again empowering us in ways that provide salvation from destruction.

A look at the overall scope of Scripture leads one to believe humans are the focus of God’s seeking and saving. But the Bible also says God cares about nonhumans. [1] In fact, Scripture says God intends to redeem all things. “The whole creation” hopes to be “set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rm. 8:21-22).

We play a vital role in this mission. We can be co-laborers with God’s work for the redemption of all things. God acts first to call, empower, and guide us in love – prevenient grace. But God seeks our cooperation. This becomes clear in the Revised Standard Version’s translation of Romans 8:28: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him” (emphases added).

We can work for good with God. The healing and deliverance God has in mind involves our participation.

Love is On the Move

A God on a mission is a God on the move. And love is the primary and persistent intent of our God-on-the-move. A robust missional theology is a theology of love.

To love is to act intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.[2] God’s initial and empowering action makes response possible. We live in community with others to whom we also respond. We are not isolated individuals, and God desires the common good.

God’s love establishes God’s kingdom – or what I call God’s loving leadership. Here again, it is through Jesus we believe such things. Jesus preached God’s loving leadership as both possible and actual here in this life. And he proclaimed its fulfillment in the life to come.

As a young child, I learned a chorus I now sing to my kids. It derives from 1 John 4:7-8:Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. The one that doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.” John says our best clue about what love entails is this: God sent Jesus.

The God who seeks and saves is revealed best in Jesus Christ. This God of love desires that all creation live shalom. God works powerfully through love to fulfill this desire, and we are invited to join in this love project. The result is the healing, restoration, and liberation of all held captive to sin and death. This holy God revealed best in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is on a mission of love.

John takes these truths about God, love, and Jesus a bit further and concludes with this logic: “Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (4:11). Thankfully God makes love possible, says John: “We love, because he first loved us” (4:19). The empowering God enables us to love.

A missional theology supporting the endeavor to seek and save the lost is not based primarily on an evangelistic canvassing strategy. Nor is it based primarily upon duty and obedience to God. It’s not even based primarily upon worship. Strategies, obedience, and worship are all important. But missional theology is based primarily on love.

We ought to be “imitators of God, as dearly love children, and life a life of love, just as Christ loved us...” (Eph. 5:1, 2a). This missional ethic emphasizes generosity, listening and speaking, both influencing and being influenced by, enabling, mutuality, and community. It’s a strategy that cares for the least of these and all creation.

Conclusion

In short: God loves us, and we ought to love one another and love God. We ought to imitate God’s full-orbed love – agape, eros, and philia as we cooperate with God’s mission to seek and save the lost.

The God on a mission invites us on an adventure of love.



[1] For an exploration of a Wesleyan doctrine of creation, see Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2003).

[2] I explain the details of this definition from philosophical, scientific, and theological perspectives in my book, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010).




Evolutionary Creation: "Where to go next..."



c o n t i n u e d     f r o m  -

Thinking About Evolutionary Creation
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/biologos-thinking-aloud-together-parts.html

by Scot McKnight & Biologos




Where to go next...
R.E. Slater
May 1, 2012



Below are listed articles from Relevancy22's sidebar: "Science & Faith: Human Origins." As can be seen, there are other sidebars in the science/faith section each designed to - (i) help us ask better questions, (ii) think larger thoughts about Christianity and evolution, (iii) enable the Christian view to better sync up with 21st Century science, and lastly, iv) help us meld/integrate each position with the other. Please use them. I think the reader may find many questions answered if not in one article than in another when this is done.

Furthermore, I offer the "Proposed Theory" & "Eusociality" articles below as guides to this conversation but caution the uninitiated Christian non-evolutionist that these articles will be top-heavy with an evolutionary discussion of theology-in-process. Please note that they are written as gracious articles to help think through evolution from a Christian-Science perspective on how evolutionary creation can accord with the Genesis story of origins. And more importantly - of God's narrative to us of Himself.

However, before undertaking those reads one might first read the Nat Geo (National Geographic) articles also listed below (re: Neanderthal Man; Genome Studies) along with Dennis Venema's Biologos post and other similar articles on origin while asking how the traditional Christian understanding of Genesis relates to these academic findings from a theological perspective? When I did I found myself writing "How God Created by Evolution" and contributing to the "Eusociality" articles in the context of how it affected my traditional understanding of God, Adam and Eve, original sin, death, and Jesus as the second Adam, to the facts of evolution from a theological standpoint.

Importantly, I wanted to base these discussions of evolution from the viewpoint of an authentic-authoritative bible (sic, see the sidebar sections under Bible, and Hermeneutics, in this web blog) while avoiding any nuanced discussions about inerrancy.... That is to say, my concern lies with historical context versus an evolving sociological context that gradually removes itself from the historicity of the ancient Near Eastern texts. Asking questions like "What did the narratives first mean when they were written?" And "What have they come to mean now, rightly or wrongly, removed from those ancient cultural settings?" What will be discovered is that with the correctly applied hermeneutic the bible remains authentic and authoritative for the Christian faith, witness, worship, teaching, and ministry, without having to do any special kinds of scriptural gymnastics with the biblical texts when asking these questions. What also will be discovered is that our own theologies, pet dogmas, personal ideologies, convictions, and beliefs must first change to accomplish this understanding.... And I will warn you right now that this can be hard to do. Creating fear, threatening personal dogmas, dissettling our world-and-life view, and challenging our protective experiences. However, there's many articles on this web blog that can help the seeking postmodern Christian to usefully accomplish this task and discover that, in the process, it was well worth the time, effort, and anxiety.

So forgive my shorthand and scribbled thoughts here in this post. They were written based upon collecting the many hundreds of other previous articles I've reviewed through this past year's long-and-tedious labors in an attempt to formally update my own 20th Century modernistic faith into a 21st Century postmodernistic faith. In the process I found release from a dated evangelicalism into a more progressive form of evangelicalism that is better known as emergent Christianity. One which seems to comport well with the Christian faith I held, but which must, from time-to-time, "emerge" from its former self (or dogmatic cocoons) into a more "relevant" faith that is necessary for its progression, adaptation and survival (to put it into evolutionary terms!). We call this a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Every believer goes through this when coming to Jesus as Lord and Savior. So each believer must continue to go through this process in all aspects of his/her life. Even academically.

Thus, when I first began this spiritual journey I thought it would only require a 500 year leap from the Renaissance Age until now when in fact it required a 2000 year leap from the New Testament era of the early Church until now. That was quite a leap and has left my head spinning. Overall, my spiritual journey began in 1999 and seems to have finally culminated this past year of 2011 making it a 12 year pilgrimage of seeking God's story and putting it aright with what I've been observing for so many past decades. It's a trek I'm glad to have made and think now that it can be useful to others coming from similar backgrounds to mine own. Hopefully this will be so.

Consequently, one of those fundamental changes will be in moving from a Young Earth creationism to an Evolutionary creationism requiring God's mediation of evolutionary process. It is not necessary to do this. But it will be one of those processes that must eventually be faced by a Christian when considering the discoveries of science and reading the Genesis Story of Creation within scientific context. During this time of investigation I always had told myself that God is big enough to create the earth and its humanity by either theory - with, or without - using the process of evolution. But the natural evidence suggests that God has chosen to create through the process of evolution (despite the Darwinian atheist/agnostic who claims that God was never - or maybe never! - (with)in this process!). It seems like heresy to speak of an evolutionary creation from the text of Genesis when literally read from the viewpoint of a subjective dogmitism. But in time this line of evolutionary reasoning will prove to be tremendously enriching to the Christian faith as I've attempted to provide through the "Science and Faith" sidebars of Relevancy22.

It uplifts the Bible back to its place of authority and authenticity when read in this fashion rather than when read by the unbelieving evolutionary public of a Bible containing storybook ideas couched in mythological imagery and limited by an ancient cosmogeny mindset that speaks more like a fairytale at best. And useless for today's more nuanced, scientifically-minded public. It is the argument here that both the Christian believer and the non-Christian believer each have mis-representational (if not fanciful) beliefs about the true Genesis story. And that organizations like Biologos are doing a greater justice in helping Christianity, and the reading public at large, the greater service in declaring both for science and the proper reading of Scripture as we have discussed here again and again and again.

Thus, I'm fine with those who wish to say "But God has created creation immediately and without process." That is a personal choice and one that must be allowed. But if we are to go by the cosmic, geologic, and biologic fossil records as true and not deceptive, then creational origins will require a "mediated process" such as we have now constructed by the evolutionary sciences of physics and astronomy, geology and environmental sciences, human anatomy and the biological-psychological-sociological human sciences. These latter speak with one voice - and that voice is saying that science is observing a mediated process of creation known as evolution. To which the Christian evolutionist will say required the ever present hand of God through a time period of birth and evolution - even until now as God's Kingdom continues to break into the kingdoms of man!

Lastly, throughout my personal journey I've sought to re-discover basic epistemic/theological truths of God (cf. sidebar: Theism), questions of life and death, and our place in the universe. Thus, I've created this blog as a way to further help other believers exploring similar biblical themes of contemporary interest. I trust it may be of help to you as a fellow explorer with me of the theological themes of the universe. My confidence comes from the power of the Holy Spirit who will lend His holy light of illumination and inspiration within our critical exploratory searches and examinations of God's Word and revelation through nature. Thank you for your consideration.

R.E. Slater
May 1, 2012

 
 
Biologos Video Series - From the Dust
4/18/12

Eusociality and the Bible, Part 2 of 2

4/18/12

Eusociality and the Bible, Part 1 of 2
4/17/12


Critique of Tim Keller's "Creation, Evolution, and...
4/11/12


How God Created by Evolution: A Proposed Theory of...
1/6/12


Dennis Venema + Biologos - Genomic Observations on Adam and Eve
11/8/11


Pete Enns - The Evolution of Adam, Parts 1, 2, 3
11/8/11

Human Migration Maps

10/21/11

 NatGeo - 2008 Human Genome Study
8/9/11


 The Neanderthals
7/4/11


Christianity Today - The Search For the Historical...
6/3/11


NatGeo - The Human Genome Project after 10 Years
6/3/11






Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Thinking About Evolutionary Creation

 
Thinking Aloud Together, Part 1

by Scot McKnight
April 24, 2012
 
"The BioLogos Forum" is pleased to feature essays from various guest voices in the science-and-religion dialogue. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.

Today's entry was written by Scot McKnight. Scot McKnight, a New Testament scholar who has written widely on the historical Jesus, Christian spirituality, and the emerging church, has been the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University in Chicago, Ill., since 1994. Before joining NPU, McKnight held a position as professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Grand Rapids Baptist College, a master’s degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a doctorate from the University of Nottingham. He has written several books, including the popular The Jesus Creed, which won an award from Christianity Today in 2004, and his latest book The King Jesus Gospel. You can read more from McKnight at his blog Jesus Creed.

Thinking Aloud Together, Part 1
At the Biologos Theology of Celebration workshop in New York City
in March, Scot McKnight was one of the featured speakers. His lecture
is  published here as a three-part series.

With a Tear in His Eye

At the end of a class on Genesis 1—2, having finished a freshly-brushed-up lecture I give at least once a school year, a student whose name I had just learned approached me with the kind of seriousness in his eyes a professor recognizes. He looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you. This lecture saved my faith.” He hadn’t said a word in class, and he hadn’t given off the signals one sometimes sees in student behavior that indicate mountains are moving in his head. I simply looked at him with the invitation to go on. So he did. “My pastor told me that I couldn’t be a Christian if I didn’t believe in six-day creationism. He told me if God didn’t create some 10,000 years ago, then the whole Bible fell apart.” He paused then said this, “I love science and I want to be a biologist, and the earth is more than 10,000 years old. So I was wondering if I could believe in the Bible and the Christian faith any longer.” The element that gave this young biologist the courage to continue was no less than eighteen points from John Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One. I’m not sure that the cosmic temple theory got him excited as much as a credible, historical Ancient Near Eastern reading of Genesis 1—2 (we’re waiting for Genesis 3, John) that meant it wasn’t talking about a creation ex nihilo some 6-10,000 years ago. In public schools this student had been taught that science tells us the universe is 13.7 billion years old and the earth is about 4.5 billion years and quantum physics is giving that period of time life and choice it never knew before (or that we never knew before).

Those of us who are on the side of the angels, and by that I mean John Polkinghorne, Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, Darrel Falk, Alister McGrath, Dennis Venema, Edward Larson, Simon Conway Morris, Owen Gingerich, and Alvin Plantinga, may have a gnawing habit of wanting to push against America’s Christian conservatives. (I could use stronger terms for Karl, but he’d perhaps say the same of me.) Indeed, we may find ourselves constantly wanting the young, restless and conservative crowd to think again about historical contexts and about the history of interpretation. But there is another side and that is that the young restless and conservative crowd believes the Bible and has radars a-throbbing for those they think are giving an inch, because they are convinced giving an inch leads to Darwin and Hitchens and bald naturalism and immorality and, well, hell. So the angels have a responsibility to mediate, I’m unconvinced we do this well, but I’m also convinced we can do better.

There are, of course, some precedents—some of them bad ones. Like the famous polemical interchange between the brilliant young orthodox rabbi recently immigrated from Eastern Europe, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the even more brilliant Albert Einstein.1 It occurred right here in Manhattan. Einstein famously argued for a spiritual motive at work in scientific endeavor, but he found the belief in a personal God to be a relic from a stage of human development out of which moderns ought to have grown. Instead of wanting such a God, Einstein argued for the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Heschel’s primal certainty was a personal God, so he satirized Einstein as a “missionary for a forgotten confession” and then proceeded to [falsely] connect Einstein to Nazi racial theories. Heschel argued the foundation for true knowledge was the Hebrew Bible and that nature without faith and morals and the Bible will lead to immoralities of all sorts. (By the way, Walter Isaacson’s Einstein fails to mention this well-publicized episode in Einstein’s life.2)

This stuff matters

Some of you may know I have done research on conversion in general, and also have applied those results to specific kinds of conversion. For instance, I have explored why it is that Jews become Messianic, and why evangelicals become Catholic, and (with Hauna Ondrey) why Catholics become evangelical.3 (That book is called Finding Faith, Losing Faith.) One of the general conclusions is that all conversions are also apostasies, so I had the idea that if all conversions are apostasies then all apostasies are also conversions. So I studied why people walk from the faith, which means I spent some dreary, depressing days reading one accusation after another against Christianity as I plumbed for a pattern. The essence of apostasy is that such persons “discover a profound, deep-seated and existentially unnerving intellectual incoherence to the Christian faith.” But more important for our topic tonight is why they leave the faith.

Some leave because of Christians, or bad experiences with Christians – parents, pastors, churches and friends. Some find the traditional view of hell—or eternal conscious torment—morally unbearable, and come to the conclusion that if that is true then that God is also insufferable. For others it is more-or-less historical study – learning, for example, that Genesis 1—11 has parallels in the Ancient Near East, learning that the Bible’s textual history is out of sync with the magical Bible they learned in their tradition.

But I want to focus briefly on the two most important features of the crisis, and I will tie them together. It works like this: [First,] many Christians grow up with a view of Scripture that it is inerrant, and that means for them – and I speak here of the populist impressionthat it is not only true but that is more or less magically true – true beyond its time, true when everything else says something else. [Secondly,] Connected to this view of inerrancy is a view of Bible reading that takes a sound Christian idea called the perspicuity of Scripture, that the Bible’s message is clear to any able-minded Bible reader, and ratchets it up one notch so that the Bible reader thinks whatever I see in the Bible is what the Bible is saying. This is my way of saying that one’s interpretations of Scripture become as infallible as the Bible itself, and since everything interlocks, giving in one inch is the first step in apostasy. One of which views is that the Bible teaches science in Genesis 1—2. When the evangelical student marches off to Harvard or to schools of lesser repute, takes a Biology class from an able-minded, rhetorically-skilled and atheistic/agnostic professor who makes it more than clear that the earth is not 6-10,000 years old but is in fact closer to 3.5 billion years old, and then tosses in some Gilgamesh Epic or some Atra Hasis, and then loads into that the thoroughly vain notion that intelligent people don’t believe such things any longer, a student’s faith can be more than shaken. Many walk away or, more significant today, embrace an ironic faith.

My studies of stories showed me that the most common crisis that precipitates apostasy from the Christian faith is this nexus of Scripture and Science. Since truth is tied to one’s infallible interpretation of Genesis 1—3 and that it interlocks with everything else in the Bible, even the gospel itself, and since that view is fundamentally denied by Science, the student is forced to choose: Do I believe the Bible against all Science, or does Science disprove the Bible – the whole thing – wrong? The numbers who opt for the second choice are staggering, and for this reason alone we need more and more pastors who can think with young intellectually-gifted evangelical students who are clamoring for someone to mentor them through the thicket. We need more and more scientists who can write for the intelligent student in such a way that does not minimize the problem or promise simple resolutions, but who can point ways forward into the thicket with someone to guide them. Conversion studies reveal to me that we are dealing with a deep, existential issue that won’t go away and simplistic answers won’t satisfy.

Need I remind this audience that American students are being taught something that borders on naturalism (or at best deism in public education)? To be sure, there seem to be Christian public school teachers who suggest other answers than “evolution = atheism,” but the days are already here when they can get in trouble for such ideas. But even if by-and-large our students are taught evolution plain and simple, that means the clash with Genesis 1—3 is inevitable. Because all of America’s students are being taught evolution in public schools, pastors and churches must master evolutionary theory and learn to pastor and teach and educate and theologize in that context instead of one that avoids that context.

The future of the church will be related to how well the church measures its message in the context of scientific research and its major conclusions. I am not urging us to step back to the days of Washington and Jefferson and become deists. What I am arguing is that we need pastors and churches to begin to think theologically in conversation with evolutionary theory. By this I mean very simply pastors thinking aloud with scientists in the room and scientists thinking aloud with pastors in the room, even though I suspect there will at times be some silence.

Tomorrow the series continues by encouraging patient, constructive conversations about science and theology within our churches.
 
NOTES
1. E. K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 15-18.
 
2. W. Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
 
3. S. McKnight, Turning to Jesus: The Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels (Louisville, Ky: Westminister John Knox Press, 2002); S. McKnight and H. Ondrey, Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2008), 7-61.
 
 
 
Thinking Aloud Together, Part 2
 
by Scot McKnight
April 25, 2012
 
Theologians thinking with scientists
 
Let me give two examples of topics that are probably safer places to begin that practice of pastors and scientists thinking aloud together. My father was an English public school teacher; my church was fundamentalist; I was armed against science on all fronts; so I went into the humanities and put off my Biology and Chemistry classes until the last semester of college, and I should add that my college had a policy – so grades could be calculated – that a graduating senior in good standing had his or her grade determined at the midterm grade, which meant that I really only had to take one half of a semester of science, which gave me more time to read theology and Bible. I learned to think theologically. Then along came one “RJS” who wrote up a post on my blog one day about death entering the world long before Genesis 3, which jolted me not because of evolutionary theory but because I wanted to think about death theologically in that context. My life has not permitted me to chase that one very deep into the tohu va-bohu [(the phrase in Gen 1.2 is  usually translated "waste and void," "formless and empty")] but I do wonder if the ongoing cycle of life and death over millions of years, red in tooth and claw, is not a sacrament of resurrection and of God as giver and restorer of life – in an ongoing sacramental cycle. Our bright young science students would like to be at the table for this one, and I suspect pastors could say mostly anything they want on this topic and not get in trouble.

Death is one such topic pastors need to think through with scientists, and so also is original sin. I am a fan of the writing of Alan Jacobs, professor at Wheaton, and his book called Original Sin is a goldmine of judicious and timely quotations across the span of history, but I wondered as I read that book what would happen to this book if pastors and churches began to think through DNA, human nature, the development of the brain and the frontal lobe, and original sin with a group of scientists who also care about original sin? Jacobs gives us one chapter, a short one, but we need three or four, or a few books, on this topic. Timely quotes from brilliant writers who evoke a history of the sophisticates makes for a wondrous romp, but the science student will ask how this stuff really does happen. Pastors and churches can play a role, if they are willing to think together in a safe environment with constructive aims in view. Very few churches can do this; about the same want to do this. It matters and the church will be left behind by many today if they don’t come to the table, or bar, or café.

The mode of conversation matters

One of my friends, a pastor who says he’s from California but is really from Rockford, Illinois, and played for a team called the E-Rabs (he’s named John Ortberg), will ask this question so I might as well begin to answer it. What can we do at the local church level? I begin with this: if we want to influence a generation with an intellectual embrace of orthodox Christian faith and responsible science, we have to avoid satire, insults, and ridicule. You may well hear the common insult that you can believe chimps are your ancestors but Christians don’t, and it isn’t often of much use to reply, or retaliate, that theistic evolution believes in common ancestry but that we are not descendants of chimps. When that claim is made no response works.

Chimps lead the young, restless and conservative to Adam, and I’d like to dwell on Adam a bit tonight as a topic some pastors and scientists need to discuss together. Some of you may know that I have a blog, and some of you may mistakenly think I write about science and faith issues every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I don’t, but that same “RJS” does. I have told her a dozen times I am amazed at how often the discussion turns to Adam. I want to make a stronger claim: all science-faith discussions eventually lead to Adam (and his often unmentioned wife).

Here’s the common theology: God made Adam and Eve directly, out of the dust. That primal couple sinned, and death entered into the world through their sin. Adam is almost entirely absent from the Old Testament and so the next really important text (for our purposes) is either Romans 5:12-21 or 1 Corinthians 15:21-22. Nuances aside Paul contends that as sin and death entered into the world through one man, Adam, so righteousness and life enter back into the world through one man, Christ. We can ramp this up one notch: Luke has a genealogy that runs from Jesus all the back to Adam. Sometimes it works out as back-logic: if Christ is real, then Adam is real. If Adam isn’t real, then neither is Christ. Or, if Adam isn’t real, then the whole thing falls apart.

It would be easy at this stage to take the way of Heschel and Einstein and start shooting the arrows of insult at one another. It may bring the momentary joy of the artful put-down or it may bring (and this is the leader’s temptation) the congratulations of our political allies in the theological world. We need to stop flogging the genuine question, the genuine quester and the genuine quest.

I suggest that instead of trading insults, we develop the virtue of tranquil, intellectual patience, and that the church be a place this can begin. Our goal, and here I can remind us of the many comments of Polkinghorne about the quest for truth and “well-motived beliefs,”1 is to land as firmly as possible on the kind of truth that permits intellectual integrity from both a theological/biblical perspective and a scientific perspective. Intellectual tranquility and patience love questions and frown upon dogmatic claims.

Two facts now: The first one is theological: by all accounts, the Bible looks to me like it tells a Story in which God made a singular couple, Adam and Eve, that they were real people, that they sinned, and that they somehow passed on both death and sinfulness to everyone. One could, I suppose, point to particular examples of sinners to prove this, some pointing to Neandertals and Denisovans while others might point to Green Bay Packer or New York Yankee fans, which for me is the same crowd. [But] I digress....

Speaking of Neandertals, I want to point to the second fact: biologists and evolutionists know that death didn’t first enter the world through humans, and they know the DNA make-up of humans today originated not in two people but in perhaps thousands, and they are inclined to think the Adam and Eve story of Genesis 1—3, and beyond, needs to be looked at through the lens of myth or ancient cosmology. For them, Genesis 1—2 is not straight science. The pastor and scientist now have to look one another in the eye with some trust to get along.

I’m an amateur, perhaps worse, when it comes to science. I read RJS’s posts, and I read books like Edward Larson’s wonderful parade through the history of the idea of evolution, and so some things take me by surprise when others have known such things for decades. Take, for instance, Dennis Vennema’s article that argued that our DNA pool came from perhaps thousands. Well, I thought to myself as I was reading his details and microscopic focus on evidence and scientific letters, this sure does the number on Adam and Eve. I read Karl Giberson’s and Francis Collins’s The Language of Science and Faith, and it was the story of creation and evolution in the last chapter that got me going. It’s all about quarks and leptons and about “beneficial mutations” or what Simon Conway Morris calls “favored pathways” or what Polkinghorne calls “inbuilt natural potentiality.” This too does the number on Adam and Eve. And if these scientific theories are right we need to think about Adam and Eve and creation in more expansive pathways. And I want to suggest churches are a good place for this discussion. Scientists need to talk about this with pastors, and pastors need to talk with scientists.

Dr. McKnight has laid out some all-important projects... If you are a seminary professor, a college/university professor or a church/para-church leader, please note that BioLogos is soliciting grant proposals to explore the very issues described above. Go to EvolutionChristianFaith.org for details. Tomorrow the series concludes with Part 3.
 
NOTES
1. J. Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011)
 
 
 
Thinking Aloud Together, Part 3
 
by Scot McKnight
April 26, 2012
 
Where do we go from here?

As a professor I teach my students at least two things about method: face the facts and do not fear the facts. I believe this means we have to face both what the New Testament teaches and what science teaches. So we are right back with our two facts: science’s view that human DNA goes back to more than two people and the Bible’s view that sin goes back to Adam (and Eve).

So we face the facts. The Bible really does make it look like Adam and Eve are humans from whom we descend, and sin and death entailed. But scientists are going to tell us straightaway that Adam and Eve themselves had ancestors, one of whose millions-of-years'-old-grave I walked into just outside Johannesburg South Africa in what is called “The Cradle of Humankind.” Here I encountered hominid fossils dated at 2-4 million years. (Well, not the fossils themselves but the places they found them and the pictures.) Others are going to tell us that the DNA make-up of humans today goes back to thousands and on and on… so we come to this point and it is for me the most significant pastoral question pastors need to ask in tandem with scientists is this one: What if we are wrong in our interpretations of the Bible?

In other words, if the common hypothesis that our DNA owes to more than two people, the original couple, Adam and Eve, then maybe we have been reading “Adam” wrong for a long, long time. In other words, what if Adam and Eve are understood more in archetypal terms, as we find in the work of John Walton, or in the way the writer of Hebrews reads Melchizedek? Or, what if Jonah’s whale is a parable for the captivity of Israel (or Judah) and that when Jesus uses the analogy of Jonah he implies “Jonah as we know the story of Jonah”? Surely the “Enoch” of Jude 14-16 begins with the biblical text – seventh from Adam – and then incorporates the developed narrative history in the pseudepigraphical Enoch. To whom did “Enoch” refer when Jude used that name? Now to Adam: what if when the New Testament speaks of Adam it is simply referring to “Israel’s story about Adam” as representative of humanity who does/did what we all do – sin and die? What if, a la Hans Frei, Paul and Luke mean the “narratival Adam” who happens to have been an “archetypal” Adam? Is this interpretation viable? I’d like to suggest it is at least viable. Is it what Jews in the 1st Century thought? Maybe not. They thought their Story was the Story because that is what they were taught and how they thought.

We are pondering our mode of conversation [e.g., the study of linguistics and that of narration - res]. The one thing we theologians need to be wary of and that we need avoid with all our might is to say “If you don’t believe this the whole gospel comes crumbling down.” Really? The gospel comes crumbling down if we don’t believe in the so-called “historical Adam (and Eve)”? Really? Resurrection? Yes. Atoning death? Yes. Historical Adam? Slippery slope arguments don’t work for me. We might need to think about this again and maybe we theologians need to embrace our theological beliefs with what Polkinghorne called the “boldness of provisional commitment.”1 We need to have the courage to face the facts - and not fear the facts - and be able to ask ourselves What if our interpretation is wrong? because our framework has such a bold, provisional commitment.

Who will do this if it isn’t done in cooperative contexts of churches and scientists? Until heavy weight pastors, like Tim Keller and the good (former) Bishop N.T. "Tom" Wright and John Ortberg announce they are at the table, this discussion cannot gain credibility. When they do, the conversation might work.

In my own lifetime I have found science to be something that on more than one occasion has taught me to rethink a reading the Bible. A naïve reading of Genesis to Chronicles might lead to Ussher’s dating, but no one really believes that any longer. A naïve reading of pillars holding up the earth might lead to ancient cosmology but no one believes that any longer. And the reason we don’t believe such things is not because of careful consideration of ANE [ancient Near Eastern] evidence but because science told us to look again. But hear this: if pastors join this conversation, we’ve got a chance to influence a young generation of scientists, too.

So what becomes of Adam if science tells us to look again? That is, what becomes of Adam if our DNA pool, the genetic material, could not have come from just two individuals but needed to be from thousands? Is it possible for us to reconsider what Paul meant in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 and at least wonder if we have a theology constructed on a [mistaken impression]? Is it possible for us to see Adam and Eve as King and Queen of a herd of homo sapiens? Or, is it possible for us to see “Adam” as the one who represents us all, sin and death and all, and still be faithful to the Bible, to Paul? The one thing we don’t want to do is lock ourselves down to some reading that science not only denies, but that science may well blow apart. That is, when the student suddenly encounters some unassailable scientific fact, the logical webs we spin as we construct our theological interpretations suddenly falls into pieces. If we are not wise we will have more than tears in the eyes of our students. 

If you are a seminary professor, a college/university professor or a church/para-church leader, please note that BioLogos is soliciting grant proposals to explore how best to address and relieve the tension that exists between evolution and Christian faith. Go to EvolutionChristianFaith.org for details.

NOTES
1. J. Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth, 9.
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Where to go next...
 
by R.E. Slater
May 1, 2012
 
Below are listed articles from Relevancy22's sidebar: "Science & Faith: Human Origins." As can be seen, there are other sidebars in the science/faith section each designed to - (i) help us ask better questions, (ii) think larger thoughts about Christianity and evolution, (iii) enable the Christian view to better sync up with 21st Century science, and lastly, iv) help us meld/integrate each position with the other. Please use them. I think the reader may find many questions answered if not in one article than in another when this is done.

Furthermore, I offer the "Proposed Theory" & "Eusociality" articles below as guides to this conversation but caution the uninitiated Christian non-evolutionist that these articles will be top-heavy with an evolutionary discussion of theology-in-process. Please note that they are written as gracious articles to help think through evolution from a Christian-Science perspective on how evolutionary creation might accord with the Genesis story of origins. And more importantly - of God's narrative to us of Himself.

However, before undertaking those reads one might first read the Nat Geo (National Geographic) articles also listed below (re: Neanderthal Man; Genome Studies) along with Dennis Venema's Biologos post and other similar articles on origin while asking how the traditional Christian understanding of Genesis relates to these academic findings from a theological perspective? When I did I found myself writing "How God Created by Evolution" and contributing to the "Eusociality" articles in the context of how it affected my traditional understanding of God, Adam and Eve, original sin, death, and Jesus as the second Adam, to the facts of evolution from a theological standpoint.

Importantly, I wished to base these discussions of evolution from the viewpoint of an authentic-authoritative Bible (sic, see the sidebar sections under Bible, and Hermeneutics, in this web blog) while avoiding any nuanced discussions about inerrancy.... That is to say, my concern lies with historical context versus an evolving sociological context that gradually removes itself from the historicity of the ancient Near Eastern texts. Asking questions like "What did the narratives first mean when they were written?" And "What have they come to mean now, rightly or wrongly, removed from those ancient cultural settings?"

What will be discovered is that with a correctly applied hermeneutic, the bible remains authentic and authoritative for the Christian faith, witness, worship, teaching, and ministry, without having to do any special kinds of scriptural gymnastics with the biblical texts when asking these quixotic questions. What also will be discovered is that our own theologies, pet dogmas, personal ideologies, convictions, and beliefs must first change to accomplish this understanding.... But, I will warn you right now, that this very thing can be very hard to do. Creating fear, threatening personal dogmas, dissettling our world-and-life view, and challenging our protective experiences. However, there's many articles on this web blog that can help the seeking postmodern Christian to usefully accomplish this task and discover that, in the process, it was well worth the time, effort, and anxiety.

So forgive my shorthand and scribbled thoughts here in this post. They were written based upon collecting the many hundreds of other previous articles I've reviewed through this past year's long-and-tedious labors in an attempt to formally update my own 20th Century modernistic faith into a 21st Century postmodernistic faith. In the process I found release from a dated evangelicalism into a more progressive form of evangelicalism that is better known as emergent Christianity. One which seems to comport well with the Christian faith I held, but which must, from time-to-time, "emerge" from its former self (or dogmatic cocoons) into a more "relevant" faith that is necessary for its progression, adaptation and survival (to put it into evolutionary terms!). We call this a process (or cycle) of deconstruction and reconstruction. Every believer goes through this when coming to Jesus as Lord and Savior. So each believer must continue to go through this process or cycle in all aspects of his/her life. Even academically. Even theologically.

Thus, when I first began this spiritual journey I thought it would only require a 500 year leap from the Renaissance Age until now when in fact it required a 2000 year leap from the New Testament era of the early Church until now. That was quite a leap and has left my head spinning. Overall, my spiritual journey began in 1999 and seems to have finally culminated this past year of 2011 making it a 12 year pilgrimage of seeking God's story and putting it aright with what I've been observing for so many past decades. It's a trek I'm glad to have made and think now that it can be useful to others coming from similar backgrounds to mine own. Hopefully this will be so.

Consequently, one of those fundamental changes will be in moving from an immediate 7-day creationism to an evolutionary creationism. It is not necessary to do this. But it will be one of those processes that must eventually be faced. During my time of investigation I always had told myself that God is big enough to do it either way. And He is. But natural evidence suggests that God has chosen to create by the process of evolution (despite the Darwinian atheist/agnostic who claims that God was never - or maybe never - in the process!). It seems like heresy to speak of this now but in time it'll prove to be tremendously enriching to our Christian faith.

Thus, I'm fine with those who wish to say "But God has created creation immediately and without process." That is a personal choice and one that must be allowed. But if we are to go by the cosmic, geologic, and biologic fossil records as true and not deceptive, then creational origins will require a "mediated process" such as we have now constructed by the evolutionary sciences of physics and astronomy, geology and environmental sciences, human anatomy and the biological-psychological-sociological human sciences. These latter speak with one voice - and that voice is saying that science is observing a mediated process of creation known as evolution. To which the Christian evolutionist will say required the ever present hand of God through a time period of birth and evolution - even until now as God's Kingdom continues to break into the kingdoms of man!

Lastly, throughout my personal journey I've sought to re-discover basic epistemic/theological truths of God (cf. sidebar: Theism), questions of life and death, and our place in the universe. Thus, I've created this blog as a way to further help other believers explore similar biblical themes of interest. I trust it may be of help to you as a fellow explorer with me of the theologic themes of the universe. My confidence comes from the power of the Holy Spirit who will lend His holy light of illumination and inspiration within our critical exploratory searches and examinations of God's Word and revelation through nature. Thank you for your consideration.

R.E. Slater
May 1, 2012


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