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 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

Friday, December 7, 2012

Reviewing Thomas Oord's "Revisionary Postmodernism and the Christian Faith"


The endless Nautilus of Postmodernism


After reading Thomas Jay Oord's piece on revisionary postmodernism (written 2 years ago in March 2010) I thought to myself how amazingly helpful those insights would've been to my personal journey over the past 12 years if I had had some kind of knowledge and understanding back then of the different kinds of postmodernism being banter about and promoted. However, it wasn't postmodernism that was at issue, but the knuckleheads I was paying attention to and trying to discern by their insights and decisions they were making while demanding highhandedly the immediate relinquish of all previous doctrinal commitments without communal assent and accord as allowed within the normal forums of discussion and debate.

Quizzically, those armchair philosophers had it both right and wrong. Right, in that postmodernism is a real event beginning back during the dissettling days of the Vietnam War (cf. The Day America Died & the Birth of Postmodernism) when so many teenagers and young twenty-somethings were dying by the hundreds every day for years and years. One of these kids could've been myself except that by the time I was draftable the war was in its finally year. And for the fact that my draft number just managed to be a hair's breath out-of-reach of the cutoff point (not that I didn't seriously consider accepting the Air Force Academy's offer to be trained and to fly for them a year earlier).

Wrong, in that those same quasi-philosopher's never came forward to tell us exactly what flavor, or kind, of postmodernism they were espousing (largely because I suspect they didn't know themselves - though should have. Or in the least had been more humble about their ignorance as our specially annointed enlightened ones). And as they spouted-and-touted this-way-and-that about doctrinal issues it would've been a help to people such as myself if they had just told us what they were trying to do and accomplish instead of demanding all to follow without rhyme-or-reason. But, on the other hand, there was a very good chance that the problem lay with my boneheadedness and stubborn need for a fuller explanation than the short, cryptic ones I was receiving in public. I had grown comfortable in my Christian faith and had lost sight of the fact that every now-and-again it demands new ways and means that should not be confused with heresy. For surely wasn't I ever taught in the watchwords of reproof and rebuff? In either case, an impasse had been reached, and mostly it was mine when I look back upon those very quixotic days in perplexion and alarm, assurance and wisdom.

So I had the double (or even triple) task of trying to (i) discern how church doctrine would change one theme at a time (and I could see right away that it was going to be total and comprehensive - as you've come to discover through the reading of this blog these past 18 months). While at the same time trying to (ii) retain faithfulness to Scripture and not to a movement of some kind (whatever its name or label). What I didn't realize was that there was a third task hidden amongst the rest requiring even further distillment per (iii) the kind or type of postmodernism that was being espoused (for in reality there was more than one kind, though I knew it not, thinking postmodernism was all "one-and-the-same").

And so yes, it was all very confusing and oftentimes created strong emotional, or visceral, reactions within me.... Positively, I knew they were on to something. But negatively, it was a mish-mash of eclectic posturing and positioning. And it was being preached in a high-handed, in-your-face, suck-it-up, take-it-or-hit-the-road-Jack, smug-and-inflammatory attitude. Which I suspect was occurring because of the fierce public backlash being experienced. And after a while you just get numb to criticism and simply push on as best you can. If it required austerity, then fine. If emotional withdrawal, ok, so be it. But, by one-way-or-another, the Gospel of Jesus needed to be preached. Even though this was not something you would expect to find from the pastoral, shepherding staff and supporting boards of your newly elected church when all first seemed roses and daisies.

Of course, part of the dilemma was the fact that they were all so young. And so terrifically idealistic and prideful over the "secret" truths that they themselves knew that no one else could know unless allowed into the inner sanctums of their cliche'd societies. Added to this dilemma was the fact that age and generational discrimination was rampant so that the older men and women of the church were not allowed in unless they first signed off on the teachings of the church as the church was then envisioning them (they seemed to change by the year). Added to this was the feeling that many of us "older" Christians were suspect of being unable to adapt and change, preferring the older kinds of ingrained traditions that we grew up... consequently, a younger variety of naivete reigned. Finally, added to all of this was the combative invitation that welcomed all to the show - but sadly, not to any discussion, dissent, or veto of it. To do so was to be labelled an outcast within the fellowship with little hope of input except to invite estrangement due to our previously inculcated Evangelical short-sightedness (for such I was, and glad for the title at the time). Paradoxically, this also exactly described the church's inner-circle as well... they were shortsighted and naive themselves. Though they had parts of postmodernism and Emergent Christianity right, it was still all one big giant puzzle requiring years of study and theological posturing until the miscreant pieces could fall into place - both up and down. On paper it looked good. But in public it was being received badly. And in dissemination it was a battle.

Which is what I've been attempting to correct in Relevancy22 as I sift through the maze-like portions of this blog working out what had become of my past 35 years of church history and its more recent postmodern regeneration of itself to the ill-knowledge and tardy recognition of its faithful flocks and congregants. Nor was this task made any easier when turning to my more conservative brethren who had no clues as to what was going on... nor did they wish to. It was all too easy to leave behind while casting stones backwards in our direction and making very loud, vociferous, statements of self-righteous denial and condemning anathemas.

And so, there I was. Caught in between. Standing in the middle unable to turn right-or-left, and finding no knowledgeable help at hand to guide me. First, I didn't know the questions I needed to ask. Second, I didn't know who to listen too (apparently neither! LOL). And thirdly, it was all so new that what appeared to be cultic in fact turned into a rebirth of the Gospel quite unlike what was found during the past 2000 years of the church. And because no one could find "any instance of postmodernism previously occurring in church history" (pun intended) than it was assumed that this new Emergent movement had to be cultic - or at the least an aberrant sect of some doubtful kind. But never to vie in form and operation as a progenitor of mainline Christian orthodoxy! "Oh! How wrong I was!" What it was lacking was absorption into the public purview. A process that would require exactly the kinds of feelings and emotions I was going through over so many long years from dissent to amazement. My awakening and final sealing only awaited its much maligned reception upon the publication of an obscure book entitled Love Wins, by Rob Bell, which immediately relived my own previous spiritual journey publically. From that point forward I began to make my choices and thus, began writing of mine own evolving journey (for isn't an emergent faith exactly that? Intensely personal with intensely personal responses and repercussions?).

What few Emergent Christian books I could find at the time were not particularly enlightening - at least at first. Nor was the Internet in 1999-2006 at the stage of information delivery that it has now become (which is now my primary medium for help and content). On the plus side, the Emergents that I knew were all saying the right things but it just wasn't sitting right to its newest inductees (fellow knuckleheads like myself. LOL) unused to criticizing their beloved church through the positive language of faith renewal held under the guise of criticizing one's roots of Evangelicalism or Denominationalism. Though truly, I little realized how much the Evangelical church (and progressive denominational churches) had changed over its past 35 years. Espousing not the Gospel of Jesus, but some form of its own subcultural values and dogmas ("conservatism" or "progressive liberalism") though couched within that same Gospel of Jesus. And on the minus side, all non-Emergents had come to find themselves judging Christianity's newest fellowship with a severely critical eye which resulted in saying all kinds of things that were not true and unkind about the body of Christ. The rhetoric on both sides was both deafening and defeating. Peace was not in the air amongst God's children. And it hurt to watch it being played out publically.

Postmodernism has many varieties

But this newest segment of Christianity (described as Emergent Christianity) had staying power - evidencing the mighty work and protection of the Holy Spirit who somehow kept it moving forward - incredible as it seemed. If ever a peaceful sit-in, or demonstrable protest by good deeds, ever led so willfully and successfully, so it was with Emergence Christianity. Leading by prayer, grace, mercy and forgiveness to the forgotten, the neglected, the abandoned, found along the highways and byways of life's 2-laned, dirt roads. Jesus fellowships began to minister their way into their own rebirthed version of themselves. Showing little regard to the rigid observance of Evangelic or Denominational decorum as they marched forth on servant's knees to the unwashed masses of humanity. The spirit and temperament was awesome to behold.

And it is only now, years later (as this blog can testify to), that in hindsight the issues confronting the postmodern day church have become better understood and received. That a calm is beginning to settle into it through a latent repentant recognition of the larger-than-life issues that were being missed when squabbling about for our subcultural religious planks and platforms. Whether churches are Emergent or not, those churches and fellowship groups that are listening and praying are following in like suit of humility and obedience - even some of our Evangelic brethren, in one aspect or another, that were so loud at first in their protestations. Perhaps not to the degree one would wish. Nor at the quickening pace desired. But I suspect that in time (or by the roll calls of death and societal irrelevance) the fellowship of God's body will repent one-community-at-a-time until the Spirit of God has leavened the people of God with the gospel of Jesus just as yeast leavens itself throughout a loaf of bread. Or as a mustard seed grows to great height and breadth, starting out tiny at first and becoming a place where the many varieties of the birds of the air may settle into its branches. Or as a mountain of trouble may be removed by the apportionment of a loving and gracious faith. God will not be defeated. This is the mystery and the majesty of His glorious Name.

And so, when reading through Oord's March 2010 article (below) I quickly realized that nearly every one of the themes of revisionary postmodernism had in some way been heavy on my heart and soul. So much so that as bread requires kneading and pounding to form and rise, so too did I feel the same confluences under the Holy Spirit (at least I'm pretty sure I felt the "pounding" part!). Since the inception of this blog, I have unwittingly worked through as many of these themes as possible not realizing that what I was doing was fleshing out the much larger framework of "Revisionary Postmodernism" (well, admittedly I kinda did as we've explored postmodernism more than once here within this blog's postings. Just not revisionary postmodernism... until now). While at the same time we've investigated (amongst others) the juxtapositioned extremes of deconstructivist, liberal, or relativistic postmodernism. (It should also be mentioned that David Ray Griffin had coined the earlier term "Reconstructive Postmodernism." Which theme Thomas Jay Oord takes up in his "Revisionary Postmodernism" explorations).

For apparently, most of my real-life, experiential postmodernism seems to have  come under the requisite deconstructivist  kind (though never the relevatistic kind). One that I admitted but never liked. And largely chaffed under it. Not that I don't believe that every new system must have a deconstructive element within it to identify the why's and wherefore's of its separation from its previous contemporaries. Deconstruction is necessary for any ideology to grow and expand just as it is necessary in the believer's life when first becoming a Christian and examining our lives and finding ourselves wanting in the flesh and devoid of God's Spirit... separated as we were, from the will, and fellowship, of the living God. Whose redemption draws nigh to us through Jesus His Son, the very Incarnate Personage of the Triune Trinity. Savior. Redeemer. Immanuel. And King of Kings both now and forevermore.

That said, by nature I'm a reconstructivist that is willing to deconstruct where necessary, but not so as to linger overlong in abject unknowing, or in  over harsh criticism of God's faithful remnant and spell bound brotherhood. Likewise, I have always considered the apophatic tag forced on Emergent Christianity as unfair. Under revisionary postmodernism I find that I can be gladly rid of that label while keeping my Emergent Christianity healthily intact. And since philosophy isn't my bag, I've been very glad for the level-headedness shown by our perceptive process theologians who have done a yeoman's job standing in the vanguard for us. True, I may not exactly be a devotee of theirs, but they have convinced me enough to move towards a kind of benevolent process thought and away from the guarded stoicism found in classical theism. Towards something of a middling ground (or synthetic position) we've been describing as relational theism (but not of the panentheistic kind, though I more-or-less understand the usage of that appendage both rightly and wrongly as we've examined the quantum physics claims of creational inception).

So, please enjoy this article on postmodernism's features and warrants. Because I have found it to be a very enlightening declaration of just what kind of postmodernist we might strive towards that seems to fit - at least for myself - a good many of the theological platforms that we have been declaring here at Relevancy22. For me, postmodernism was never the issue. However, its type and portrayal was. Along with all the rhetoric that therein occurred. My journey has ended - I am glad to say. And a new one now begins. One that requires telling of my evolving (or emerging) journey hopefully to the benefit of many others as similarly confused as I was once myself.

And with that, I believe we'll be able to use these thoughts for some directional guidance and Christian level-headedness. Please enjoy. And please receive my sincere apologies for this overlong introduction. But when confronted by deeply significant, and foundational pieces of thought, I many times find it helpful to provide a little personality into the academic words less we miss their deep, foundational importance. Humbling as they are. Thank you again for following along. And to all those fellow knuckleheads out there be thankful for our God's all gracious, and loving patience, towards us. And for delivering us from our religious pride and zeal. A sad reality that continues even unto this day as it did in Jesus' day of ministry and reform. We are all in this together. And must never loose sight of the value of community couched within individual well being and sustenance. May God's peace and mercy be upon all His children and upon humanity in general this day. Amen.

R.E. Slater
December 7, 2012




Reclaiming the Past. Imagining a Future:
Revisionary Postmodernism

by Thomas Jay Oord
March 15, 2012
The final postmodern tradition of the four I identify as most prominent may prove
most helpful for Christians in our emerging world. It revisions reality by drawing
from a wide spectrum of resources.

The final postmodern tradition of the four I identify as most prominent may prove most helpful for Christians in our emerging world. It revisions reality by drawing from a wide spectrum of resources.
 
Growing a beautiful garden is an art. Exceptional gardeners draw from a wealth of wisdom to nurture their plants to survive and thrive. Some elements of garden growing are nonnegotiable: seeds, water, nutrients, sunlight. Other elements arise from tried and true methods that, while not necessary, have been proven time and again to produce beautiful gardens. And the best gardeners seek novel gardening insights and resources that enhance their horticultural husbandry. After all, even the art of gardening changes.

Similar to good gardeners, revisionary postmodernists identify the nonnegotiables of life, draw from past wisdom, and incorporate novel ideas as they propose a credible postmodern worldview.

Like other postmodern traditions, revisionary postmodernism overcomes or transcends features of modernism.

But revisionary postmodernism also criticizes other postmodern traditions.

The remainder of this essay sketches out some features of revisionary postmodernism.


Constructing a New Worldview -

Revisionary postmodernists accept the project of constructing a worldview adequate for our time. In this, they distinguish themselves from deconstructionists. Espousing some worldview or another is inescapable. Instead of fooling ourselves, say revisionists, we should propose a worldview that seems best to account for life in all its dimensions.

Revisionary postmodernists reject, however, the idea that we have a certain center or sure foundation upon which to build. Our worldviews will always be "on the way," partial, and in need of further revision. We must always be prepared to recast, generalize, and adapt a postmodern worldview to new experiences and information. Revisionary postmodernist seek to do so with humility. Know-it-alls need not apply.


Embracing those at the Margins -

Modernity failed to consider the experiences of those at the margins (e.g., women, ethnic minorities). It failed to account for animal experience. And it failed to consider the essential role of divine action or providence. These and other modern failures resulted in the loss of a holistic perspective on realit

The worldview revisionary postmodernists offer is intended to account for the voices of those at the margins and the mainstream. Revisionists seek to account for a variety of sensibilities, including religious, scientific, ecological, liberationist, economic, and aesthetic.

They seek a story big enough and adequate enough to include everyone. This story appreciates and promotes diversity and difference.

The “other” is not reduced to the self. Discerning tolerance is a moral imperative, and wisdom with regard to difference is crucial.


The Limits of Language -

Revisionary postmodernists share to a large degree the deconstructionist’s suspicion of language. Language is slippery, even if often helpful and necessary.

Revisionary postmodernists argue, however, that language is not the only or even the most important lens on reality. Rather, experience is prior to and more basic than language. In fact, most experience is nonlinguistic.


Experiential Nonnegotiables -

When constructing a worldview, we should privilege those beliefs that we inevitably presuppose in our experience. These beliefs are the bottom layer of experience we all share. These beliefs include the idea that some things are better than others, the notion that we are free to some degree, the notion that an external world exists beyond us, the idea that some events are caused by others, etc. We inevitably presuppose various beliefs in our day-to-day living. I call these beliefs “experiential nonnegotiables.”

Revisionary postmodernist, David Ray Griffin, calls these inevitable beliefs, “hard-core commonsense notions.” We cannot help presupposing these notions in the way we live our lives, he says. We are guilty of self-contradiction if we adopt a theory or worldview that denies them. Any scientific, philosophical, or theological theory is irrational to the extent that it contradicts whatever notions we inevitably presuppose in practice.[1] Common sense counts.


Overcoming Relativism -

I noted in earlier blog posts that some postmodern traditions result in radical relativism – either individual or communal. Deconstructive postmodernism is most prone to extreme relativism. Some postmodern traditions reject any basis for believing that one worldview corresponds to all of reality better than others do.

The experiential nonnegotiables of revisionary postmodernism, however, allow one to overcome radical relativism. These notions are features of existence we all share. In affirming this, revisionary postmodernism continues the premodern and modern conviction that at least some universal standards exist.


Ways of Knowing -

Revisionary postmodernists join feminists in arguing that knowledge is not confined to logic or facts obtained through our five senses. It affirms the view of Michael Polanyi that personal knowledge must play a role in our attempts to make sense of the world.

Knowledge in revisionary postmodernism typically resides between certainty about absolutes and the disarray of relativism. Catherine Keller suggests that the middle ground between absolute and relative is the postmodern virtue of being resolute.


Ecology and Purpose -

Revisionary postmodernists agree with ecological postmodernists that living things are more than mindless machines. Creaturely freedom, purpose, and intentionality are real. All creatures possess intrinsic value.

Many revisionary postmodernists also adopt the theory of theistic evolution, because it affirms a necessary place both God and evolution in an adequate explanation of creation. One can affirm both the main contours of contemporary science and the belief that God originally and continually creates.


Centrality of Community –

Revisionary postmodernists agree with narrative postmodernists that creatures are not isolated individuals. Community is essential. An adequate postmodern worldview speculates that all creatures -- both human and nonhuman -- are interrelated. We live in a relational world, and who we are is largely determined by our relations with others. With the Apostle Paul, revisionists argue that we are members of one body.

We must affirm a necessary role both for the individual and community, argue revisionists. Humans might best be called “community-created-individuals” or “individuals-in-community.” Bono of U2 says it well: “We’re one, but we’re not the same.”

Revisionary postmodernists agree with the conclusion Bono draws from this insight: “We’ve got to carry each other.” We are designed for community, and our individual well-being is caught up in - and largely dependent upon - the well-being of the whole.


Progress is Possible but not Inevitable -

Modernists celebrated what they thought would be the triumphant march of science to make the world a better place. They often equated advances in technology with overall progress in making the world better. Full-speed-ahead is always right, say modernists.

Modern “progress” has caused so much unnecessary destruction, however. E. E. Cummings called progress a “comfortable disease.” It’s a disease wreaking havoc on humans, nonhumans, and all of planet earth.

Like other postmodern traditions, revisionary postmodernism denies that progress is inevitable or that technology always results in good.

Revisionists believe that genuine progress is possible, however. We are not doomed to the same old self-destructive rut. Transformation can occur.

Revisionary postmodernists join narrative postmodernists by looking to ancient resources for wisdom about how best to proceed into the future.

But they are also open to emergent insights that might help facilitate the experience of abundant life. John Wesley’s optimism of grace fits the revisionary mindset: “the best is yet to be.”

Progress toward a better world is possible by divine grace and proper creaturely responses.


God –

An important plank in revisionary postmodernism is its doctrine of God. Revisionary postmodernists reject the modern tendency to think God could be completely comprehended. We see through a glass darkly.

But it also rejects absolute negative theology and the utter silence of apophatic theology. We know in part.

Revisionists are in many ways pre-modern in their beliefs, because they affirm that God is actual, active, and interacting in the world. God really lives and truly loves.

Revisionary postmodernists often call God “relational” to account for the give-and-receive relationships God enjoys with others. The invisible Spirit works in all creation, and we have direct access to this Spirit. Our non-sensory interaction with God and sensory inferences from nature provide awareness of right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly. For in God we live and move and have our being.

Many revisionary postmodernists look to doctrines of the Trinity to ground their emphasis upon divine relatedness.

Others focus upon the relational God who by nature relates with all creation. God is not unmoved.

Revisionary postmodernists argue that beliefs about God should not be relegated to their own domain while beliefs about the world function without reference to God. We cannot neatly separate the secular and the sacred. A revisionary postmodern worldview reserves an essential place for both creatures and the Creator.

The interaction of God and creation is central to understanding reality. Some call this view “panentheism.” Others call it “participation” or “cooperation.” I like the word “theocosmocentrism.”


Conclusion

We live in a new world. Postmodernism reminds us of that. Revisionary postmodernism promotes the task of constructing a new worldview to account for truths in the widest range of experience. It places God and creation front and center.

The philosopher-poet-environmentalist, Wendell Berry, warns that in this new world...

we have reached a point at which we must either consciously desire and choose and determine the future of the earth or submit to such an involvement in our destructiveness that the earth, and ourselves with it, must certainly be destroyed.”[2]

Berry’s prophetic words beckon us to reckon with our past, our present, and our possible future.

Many revisionary postmodernists agree with Berry. Some dare to hope that a better way of thinking and acting is now possible. But this better way must involve being, acting, and thinking differently.



[1] David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001).

[2] Wendell Berry, “The Loss of the Future,” in The Long-Legged House (New York: Harcourt, 1969), 46.


Wisdom, Choices and Temptations

 
 
 
Here is Wisdom...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Ecology and Doctrine - How One May Affect the Other



The Persistency of Good Doctrine That Is Relevant

Over the past 18 months I have attempted to offer some discussion to the topic of God's Sovereignty as versus the all-too-popular view that God is always in control of everything - from the good to the bad. Or, as a variant to that claim, that God is just responsible for the good stuff and that the bad stuff goes either to our credit, the devil, or "sin" in general. Relational Theism makes the discerning observation that not all things are of God. Nor is God always in control. But rather He may seem to be both Strong or Weak (oft-times at the same time) without either view affecting His Sovereign Rule that allows for creational indeterminacy and sentient free will. As such, this kind of theological view will definitely affect our view of God, ourselves, sin and creation, to mention a few.

What Hess brings out here in his Catholic article on ecology below are the well-thought-out consequences of carrying older theologies written for very different times and cultures than our own postmodern climates and cultures. Which is yet one more reason that a blog essay like Relevancy22 is necessary to the public purview when considering the many fundamental (and I think, radical) changes occurring within the body of the church and its ministries today.

The Bible is meant to be relevant - not dated. And so is the church which we are to assist by becoming relevant ourselves as Jesus followers by bringing debate and reform to its very door steps so that the church does not rest upon its earlier-conceived missions, even from a generation ago. Older views may be the cherished, classic traditions of the church, but they aren't necessarily the most warranted unless they can be stretched a bit, or even shelved completely, dependent upon the events and eras each society is experiencing. The trick is to step back from ourselves and learn to proclaim a Bible and a God that can endure the yesterday's and tomorrows of Jesus' Gospel. What once was believed (or worked) may not be the best way to express the love of God and His current handiwork of regeneration, reform, renewal, redemption and resurrection. For so He ever does.



Thus, what I have attempted here at Relevancy22 is to reletivise static church dogma in a way that could be more pertinent as living doctrine for tomorrow's generation(s) while at the same time speaking extemporaneously to our contemporary environment based upon a biblically-rooted theology that is flexible and generous. Hess' article is a good example of how we should be broader-minded and more adept at thinking through the impact of our static definitions, dogmas, and church statements that may not necessarily be as relevant for us today as they once were generations earlier (and this goes for our narrow-minded press and media pundits as well!)

Recalling older theologians and commentaries is all wonderful and good, but we do our ministries and friends a great disservice when we allow the past to determine our future responses without adding a degree or two of prayerful discernment and theologic forward-mindedness. Newer doctrine does not necessarily mean newer heresies. That is the watchword of the slothful theologian unwilling to become versified in his generation's ways and means, toils and turmoils. It also is the watchword of the overly skeptical pulpit and well-meaning congregants who are unperceptive to the political, economic and social changes occurring around them as regarding the intent and meaning of a good, robust, Spirit-filled, theology.

Nor are our resident theologians and academicians without their flaws given the nature and force of resistant change found within the bastions of our timeless church institutions and traditions. For how many times have we read of a professor or pastor losing their job because they were willing to think outside of the box and address a specific need of society or ministry? If the discipline of science has taught us anything, it has shown us the regularly recurring necessity to abandon non-scientific views and ideologies for more expressive, adaptable, and truer thoughts in any given area. And so must we, pertaining to our ideas of a static theology, an irrelevant God, and an unmeaningful Bible. For so we get when we close God's Word and refuse an open theology rich and beautiful to the needs of our world, and ourselves, today.

Faith is not certainty. It is the courage to live with uncertainty.”
- Rabbi Johnathan Sacks, The Great Partnership (p.97)

We should not be stingy when regarding the hand of God and His heart. Our reluctance to change is most often our greatest sin. Nor should we be misers of the Gospel of Jesus which will have its own iconoclastic* affects both now and in eternity lest we better behave our temperaments, arguments and ecclesiastical statements of "Fire, Fire!" When, in effect, it is the very hand and will of God Himself that we are refusing to allow or assist. Epistemic humility goes a long way towards the grasping the benevolence of God and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Haughty, prideful spirits produce only darkness and gracelessness.

Be willing to change. Be willing to doubt yourself. Be willing to re-consider what you were once taught and how that might be better upgraded (or updated) to today's future generations. If not, God will find better spokesmen and women for His Son's Gospel of grace and mercy, wisdom and truth. But once you do, you'll be glad that you did. And so well your friends, congregants, and pupils.

R.E. Slater
December 6, 2012

*Please refer to the sidebar An Open Faith for additional articles of an open theology, an open Bible, and an open faith.

*Related doctrinal thoughts herein may be discovered in the sidebars labelled under "Sovereignty, God, Evolution, Sin, Man, and Relational, Theism," for starters. A word or phrase look-up may also be undertaken within the body of this blog's opening sidebars near the top right hand side alongside the box "search".

*i·con·o·clas·tic [adjective]
1. attacking or ignoring cherished beliefs and long-held traditions, etc., as being based on error, superstition, or lack of creativity: an iconoclastic architect whose buildings are like monumental sculptures.
2. breaking or destroying images, especially those set up for religious veneration.


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





Peter M.J. Hess, Ph.D.

Director of Outreach to Religious Communities, National Center for Science Education

December 5, 2012

Matthias Claudius penned some memorable lines in German two centuries ago that became in translation England's most popular harvest festival hymn:
We plough the fields, and scatter
the good seed on the land,
but it is fed and watered
by God's almighty hand;
he sends the snow in winter,
the warmth to swell the grain,
the breezes and the sunshine
and soft refreshing rain.

In the holiday season, many of us reflect on what it is for which we are thankful. Naturally, we give thanks when things are going well, and even in a disaster we might be grateful that the catastrophe was not worse or that people stepped forward to render assistance. Claudius's poem presupposes a general climatic stability that for several centuries has been conducive to thankful worship.

But how does this optimistic hymn play in the era of radical climate change? How will it sound in the future, when each decade may bring yet more frequent and extreme climate events? What is the providential reading of "God's almighty hand" in a prolonged and life-threatening drought, or in the agrarian disaster of a dust bowl? When we are battered by a Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, how do we understand the majestic line about God in the Navy hymn, "Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep"?

Indeed, what role do religion and theology play in the accelerating conversation about climate change? This has been a banner year for extreme weather events -- from severe drought in the American Midwest to the wildfire siege in Colorado to the "Frankenstorm" of Hurricane Sandy fueled by a warming Atlantic Ocean -- which have helped the reality of climate change to register on the consciousness of most people.

But global climate change is more far-reaching in its effects than a season of storms. Climate change threatens to put billions of people at risk of devastation wrought by a climate changing too rapidly for coherent and effective response. In numerous religious traditions and the denominations under their umbrellas, people have come to understand the scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change may do irreparable harm to the biosphere upon which our modern civilization depends.

An example of involvement driven by religious conviction is Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. YECA spokesperson Ben Lowe says that:
In seeking to live as Christ's disciples, we have come to see the climate crisis not only as a pressing challenge to justice and freedom, but also as a profound threat to "the least of these" whom Jesus identifies with himself in Matthew 25. The early effects of climate change are already impacting many of our neighbors, both in the U.S. and around the world, and our time to act is running short.

YECA strongly believes that God is calling people of the millennial generation not to sit back passively, but to take action toward overcoming the climate crisis. "For us, this means living as good stewards of God's creation, advocating on behalf of the poor and marginalized, supporting our faith leaders when they stand up for climate action, holding our political leaders accountable for responsible climate policies, and mobilizing our generation and the larger church community to join in."

There are parallel currents within the Roman Catholic Church, which has a long-standing involvement with environmental matters. In 2006, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Religious Partnership for the Environment jointly launched the Catholic Climate Covenant. This is championed by the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change, part of the USCCB's Environmental Justice Program. The coalition has developed the five-element St. Francis pledge, named for the medieval saint famous for his work with the poor and his kindness to animals. Those taking the pledge undertake to:

  • PRAY and reflect on the duty to care for God's Creation and protect the poor and vulnerable.
  • LEARN about and educate others on the causes and moral dimensions of climate change.
  • ASSESS how we -- as individuals and in our families, parishes and other affiliations -- contribute to climate change by our own energy use, consumption, waste, etc.
  • ACT to change our choices and behaviors to reduce the ways we contribute to climate change.
  • ADVOCATE for Catholic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially as they impact those who are poor and vulnerable.

Since its debut on Earth Day 2009, thousands of individuals and organizations have taken the pledge. The website of the Franciscan Action Network offers suggestions and resources for incorporating climate change awareness into church worship by way of prayers, homiletical themes and liturgical music.

Another exciting project is the Jewish Climate Initiative. Like many social action projects in Judaism, it was established for tikkun olam ("repairing the world"), which is especially appropriate for a group working on climate change issues. The rationale for JCI is deeply rooted in texts from the Torah and midrash (the body of rabbinic commentary and interpretation):
We are God's caretakers for the earth. Our job is to cultivate the natural world and enhance its capacity to support life. God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden "to work it and conserve it." (Genesis 2:15.) A famous midrash says: When God created Adam, God led him around all of the trees in the Garden of Eden. God told him, 'See how beautiful and praiseworthy are all of my works. Everything I have created has been created for your sake. Think of this and do not corrupt the world; for if you corrupt it, there will be no one to set it right after you.' (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13.) Destroying the conditions for much life on earth violates this duty of stewardship.

Not all religious groups are as active in promoting understanding of and action in response to climate change; indeed, some are actively denying climate change and resisting efforts to cope with it. But organizations such as YECA, the Catholic Climate Covenant and JCI have realized that religious groups have both an opportunity and an obligation to reinvigorate our society's conversation about climate change and hold policymakers' feet to the fire.



Continue to -







Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Engaging the World - What Is Your Discipleship Model?

A New Kind of Discipleship
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/12/05/a-new-kind-of-discipleship/
 
Scot McKnight
December 5, 2012
Comments
 
A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age In his new book, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age, Fuller seminary’s Christian ethicist, Glen Stassen, proposes a new kind of discipleship — a discipleship fit for a secular age and for a public faith. He calls this model “incarnational discipleship.” Framing an ethic, or discipleship, for the public sector will lead me to questions about the church as our politic, but we need to hear Glen out.
 
What model do you use when you think of how the Christian engages the State? In other words, what is your politic?
 
  • The Constantinian takeover?
  •  
  • Luther’s two-realms?
  •  
  • The Reformed theory of influence through spheres of sovereignty?
  • The Anabaptist ecclesial politic?
  •  
  • Where does Stassen fit?
 
Stassen wants a “thicker” Jesus — not just a vague ideal or a principle, nor an ideal so high no one could achieve it, nor one restricted to “internal church relations” [OK, Glen, now we've made Jesus a public square Jesus] … the thicker Jesus is one that gives concrete and specific guidance and one that rejects a two-realms dualism and one that summons us from the ideologies of our day....
 
 
[A recent example of intergrating faith with society may be reviewed in my most recent
article here - Kurt Vonnegut and the Sacred Solidarity of God with Humanity. - R.E. Slater]
 
 
...So [Stassen] proposes [the idea of an] “incarnational discipleship,” and there are three dimensions defining it:
 
1. A holistic sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ through all of life.
 
2. A thicker Jesus who is God incarnate, historically embodied, and realistic.
 
3. A Holy Spirit who is independent from all powers and authorities, calling us to repent from ideological entanglements.
 
Stassen finds embodiments of this thicker Jesus incarnational discipleship in what can only be called the progressive Christian approach to the relationship of Christ and culture (or world). His major models are The Barmen Declaration, Bonhoeffer’s early resistance during his writing of the Sermon on the Mount, André Trocmé, the righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Martin Luther King Jr and Clarence Jordan, the Revolution of the Candles, and Dorothy Day and Muriel Lester.
 
He stews this new kind of discipleship in the work of Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, and applies this thicker Jesus/incarnational discipleship model to issues like democracy, science, individualism, sin, the cross, love and war.
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
AMAZON REVIEW
 
 
Book Description
October 25, 2012
 
Why have some Christians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr., been able to speak truth to power at great personal cost, while others readily capitulate to injustice? In this magnum opus, Christian ethicist Glen Stassen argues that such robust Christianity stems from believing in a "thicker" Jesus, who is Lord over the whole of life and not just one compartment of it. Belief in this thicker Jesus results in "incarnational discipleship" and can help Christians deal with the challenges of what Charles Taylor has identified as a secular age. Stassen elegantly weaves the characteristics of incarnational discipleship as correctives to secularism.
 
About the Author
 
Glen H. Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. His book Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, with David Gushee, received Christianity Today's Award for Best Book of 2004 in Theology or Ethics. He is also the author of Living the Sermon on the Mount, Just Peacemaking, and other books.
 
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 stars
An outstanding and innovative exposition of the ethics of Jesus
November 22, 2012
By John Mustol
 
Today American evangelical churches are in serious moral difficulty. We are in dire need of spiritual and ethical repentance and renewal. In this book, Dr. Glen Stassen, the Louis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, calls Christians to this needed repentance and renewal through his ethics of incarnational discipleship within the context of our modern secular age.
 
A "thick Jesus" means that Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior was a historically situated, flesh-and-blood person who walked the dusty roads of Palestine. A Jew thoroughly immersed in the Hebraic tradition, especially that of the prophet Isaiah. He lived, taught, and worked within the historical, physical, social, spiritual, and political, realities of his time and place. In this [way] Jesus revealed God's character and provided norms for guiding our lives today. Like Jesus, our ethics must be historical, social, spiritual, and political. They must be embedded in the "thick" realities, struggles, and particularities of earthly life, not in the "thin" conceptualities of platonic idealism or sectarian perfectionism. Stassen wants followers of Jesus to "enter into" the world and be deeply (thickly) engaged in all its flawed messiness in this "age of interaction."
 
Toward this end, Stassen offers his Trinitarian paradigm of incarnational discipleship:
 
(1) the holistic sovereignty of God and Lordship of Christ,
 
(2) God revealed thickly in [the] historical [personage of] Jesus Christ, and
 
(3) the Holy Spirit, independent of all powers and authorities, reminding us of Jesus and calling us to repentance from ideological entanglements (p. 17).
 
Grasping the narrative character of human cognition, Stassen emphasizes "historical drama" in Jesus and in our living out of the Christian life. He believes that the true test for the validity of an ethic is its historical fruit... how it performs in the "crucible" of history. In this regard, the great German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer plays a prominent role. Stassen is a leading Bonhoeffer scholar.
 
Seeking an integrative and holistic approach to ethics and life, Stassen draws on diverse sources: Nancey Murphy's conception of scientific research programs (based on the philosophy of Imre Lakatos), Charles Taylor's analysis of modern individualism and secularism, his own background in scientific procedures and methods, the existentialist novels of Albert Camus, as well as careful analysis of biblical texts. Drawing on Bonhoeffer, Stassen offers an intriguing "incarnational" theory of the cross (atonement).
 
Finally, Stassen reiterates his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, giving it a central place in his ethics. For him, the Sermon is not idealistic perfectionism but concrete realism. He presents his "fourteen triads" for interpreting the Sermon and summarizes his ten "transforming initiatives" for just peacemaking, which is one of Stassen's central concerns as a Christian living in today's conflicted world. Stassen is on a mission to see Christians live out their faith in a morally credible way in the real world. He wants to see Christian churches pass the moral test of history. His passion for this is evident in the book.
 
Stassen is a man of remarkable character and vision, extremely knowledgeable, widely read, a brilliant and accomplished scholar and thinker. Yet he remains a profoundly personable and humble man. And he puts feet on his faith. He is not content to stay in his office writing books or hobnobbing with his fellow professors. At age 76, he is an activist involved in the rough and tumble problems of the world such as peacemaking in the Middle East. In the book he tells of his extensive work in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
 
The book is dense in places, and Stassen's sense of urgency sometimes leads him to try to put too much meaning into too few words. Also, if you are not familiar with some concepts, such as Nancey Murphy's theory of scientific validation, you may find parts of the book a little hard to understand. It also would have been nice if Stassen had placed Jesus and ourselves more realistically in the ecological contexts in which all earthly life is located. But, overall it is an excellent and easy read. Stassen's message comes through loud and clear.
 
All Christians (and a lot of non-Christians) ought to read this book. And it is, or ought to be, required reading for all students and scholars in Christian ethics. When all is said and done, Stassen wants only one thing - that all of us who name Jesus as Lord follow him realistically, incarnationally and in so doing bring glory to God. As his final sentence asks: "Will you join me in the apostolic witness to a thicker Jesus-in the tradition of incarnational discipleship?" (p. 221).
 
 
 

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Monday, December 3, 2012

Kurt Vonnegut and the Sacred Solidarity of God with Humanity

 
 
 
As I hurriedly raced through Slate's article on Kurt Vonnegut telling of his assignment on how to critique fiction I suddenly found myself thinking about timequakes, fourth dimensional space, intersteller transport, issues of fate and free will, and whether life is most enjoyed because of its unknowingness, as I meandered from one Vonnegut epiphany to another. However, the topic at hand was one of listening and crafting appropriate responses to drafted public statements much as I have attempted to do these past 18 months here at Relevancy22 within the temperamental area of Christian theology.
 
I suppose the similarities to writing and reading good theology has a similar appeal to that of writing or reading a good novel or good fiction, because it causes me to think about things I'm not normally noticing if I were not to undertake this task. In essence, it lifts me beyond my frame of reference and causes me to apprehend life from another's viewpoint rather than from my own self-limiting definition that I would too comfortably prefer to wear like the old collection of clothes hanging in my closet.
 
Good theology could be thought of as rooted within the womb of biblical study which can - and will - produce many of the poetic forms and elements of life born from the birthing canal of insight and revelation to become great works of literature, art, human endeavor, forms of inspirational music, wonder, beauty and essence. Opposite to this undertaking can be the many misleading forms of religious fiction that we develop about ourselves, about God, and His plans and purposes, too frequently based upon our rather poor reading and misunderstanding of the Bible itself. Or of that of the Christian faith at large as espoused by self-elected figureheads of the church to all things mainstream, etiquette, and decorum. And not simply those figureheads within the church, but those self-imposed elected masses of academicians, scholars, and fools in general that time-and-again show their thorough ill-knowledge of biblically-rooted theology.

For it is here that Kurt Vonnegut may help us. When reading theology (a task which I suppose many of us don't especially like to do, though we seem to have opinions upon everything it touches). Or, let's say, when reading of anything smacking of religious statements, or pertaining to the broader charters of living human manifestos such as are contained in the civil laws, decrees, and judgments of our courts and bodies politic. Or even the common variety of ideological propaganda found as it were within the public newspaper, the bully pulpit, sports and media-based soap boxes, grandstands, magazines and news stands. That is, if one would wish to be a bit of a contemporary critic to the public parodies being played out on the stage of life. Not a cynical critic. But a constructivist critic formed in the daily habit of consistent, evaluated appeal (or non-appeal) to the adjudicated endeavors being proffered in the mainstreams of human consciousness purporting fey insight to the timeless questions and agonizing dilemmas of the human condition.

Too often we read, we listen, we hum tunes, without actually paying attention to the endless drone of humanity's limiting visions and works. Part of the appeal of postmodernism is that we task ourselves, our families, companies, churches and communities with the goals of a larger human vision affective for all the masses of mankind to participate within. Not just ourselves or our immediate localities. But to involve the many streams of humanity which is altogether different from ourselves by habit, training, background, belief, custom or tradition. And when we do, to begin breaking the ruthless molds that this world's very commercial, very pragmatic, beliefs, practices, and incessant me-mindedness, borne along like so much flotsam and jetsam upon the seas of myopic public opinion and self-interest. To learn to form strongly interactive communities based upon the inherent strengths of the group at large rather than select individuals and majority opinions.
 
Jesus was about looking at things from beyond the norm. Through glass prism's if you will bourne along by the many spectrum hue of diversity within the integrated light of profound revelation and dissettling public opinion. And if not, than through the eyeballs and mindsets of fellow human beings neglected, abused and forgotten by the religious and civil systems of their day. Nor was Jesus content to simply talk about changing the world. No, He went out and did that very thing without hesitation (but I trust with plenty of wisdom!). And so, we are today tasked by God to think through what it means to love one another. To live lives full of grace and truth. To willingly bear burdens and behold fuller visions of a better tomorrow (spiritually) than we have today. To do all things human in uncommonly human ways of doing things.

Accordingly, I might suggest the majestic themes of love, joy, and peace as our Christian banner for all things doctrinal or dogmatic. Or perhaps, seek to disciple future citizenry towards wisely bearing the laudable epithets of good humor and good will amid the sacred sacraments of conscientious solidarity, just governance, and equality of being, for all men everywhere present. Beginning with those downtrodden and neglected masses requiring assistance of education, transportation, food, shelter. Who bear the all-too-frail cloth of humanity upon their weary shoulders. For certainly we must begin today wherever life may find us. And for that fact, wherever God may find us in the spirit and advocated passion of His Son Jesus who came to redeem humanity from the oppression and cruelty of our sin and selfishness, our fears and timidity, to the tasks at hand.

Where Jesus wept so do we. We He has trod so must we. Where He beheld the glory of God then let us fall upon our knees and plead His God-filled vision. Let us weep no longer but pick up the Spirit's tools of patience, kindness, longsuffering, grace and peace. And learn to serve as our Savior did binding both the spiritual and physical wounds of our foes and enemies. Our neighbors and brothers. The Gospel of Jesus is a harsh burden to bear but when bourne along in tandem yoke with our Savior and Lord is made light to the tasks at hand. Go then and make disciples into all the world.

R.E. Slater
December 3, 2012
 
 
Postscript -
 
*I chose "God's Solidarity with Humanity" as an example of Jurgen's Moltmann's Atonement Theory, which is one of six popular views of atonement theology. As such, I attempted to write with this redemptive theme in mind. Other popular atonement theories would be the penal subtitutionary atonement view, union with God, ransom captive, moral exemplar, and Christus Victor atonement theologies. Tellingly, the latter is the more widely acclaimed orthodox view because of its vision of the Kingdom of God to come.

And if left to chose between either of the six atonement theologies I would not. For I do not find it necessary to chose one theology over the other as each brings something necessary to the burgeoning table of Christian theology. As such, it behooves us to live in tension with each aspiring claimant while keeping our hearts and minds open to the larger mosaic of God's fermenting redemption as it expands to fill all the world with His promise of renewal and reclamation.



 
 
 
Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Reading Fiction
 
A term paper assignment from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five.
 
Posted Friday, Nov. 30, 2012, at 11:21 PM ET

Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.
 
This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.
 
Kurt Vonnegut. FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
November 30, 1965
 
Beloved:
 
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
 
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”
 
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”
 
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
 
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
 
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
 
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
 
poloniøus
 
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield. Delacorte Press.
 
 
 
 
 
A Little About Slaughterhouse Five
from Wikipedia
 
The Story
 
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim. Ranked the 18th greatest English language novel of the 20th century by Modern Library, it is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work.
 
Plot summary
 
Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is a disoriented, fatalistic, and ill-trained American soldier. He does not like wars and is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse (although there are animal carcasses hanging in the underground shelter) in Dresden. Their building is known as "Slaughterhouse number 5." During the bombing, the POWs and German guards alike hide in a deep cellar. Because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm.
 
Billy has become "unstuck in time" and experiences past and future events out of sequence and repetitively, following a nonlinear narrative. He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the veracity of their theories.
 
As Billy travels, or believes he travels, forward and backward in time, he relives occasions of his life, both real and fantasy. He spends time on Tralfamadore, in Dresden during the war, walking in deep snow before his German capture, in his mundane post-war married life in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s, and in the moment of his murder by a petty thief named Paul Lazzaro.
 
Billy's death is the consequence of a string of events. Before the Germans capture Billy, he meets Roland Weary, a jingoist character and bully, just out of childhood like Billy, who constantly chastises him for his lack of enthusiasm for war. When captured, the Germans confiscate everything Weary has, including his boots, giving him hinged, wooden clogs to wear; Weary eventually dies of gangrene caused by the clogs. While dying in a railcar full of POWs, Weary manages to convince another soldier, Paul Lazzaro, that Billy is to blame. Lazzaro vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is "the sweetest thing in life." Lazzaro later shoots and kills Billy with a laser gun after his speech on flying saucers and the true nature of time before a large audience in Chicago, in a balkanized United States on February 13, 1976 (the future at the time of the book's writing).

 
 
Major themes
 
Slaughterhouse-Five explores fate, free will, and the illogical nature of human beings. Protagonist Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, randomly experiencing the events of his life, with no idea of what part he will next visit.
 
Billy Pilgrim says there is no free will, an assertion confirmed by a Tralfamadorian, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." The story's central concept is that most of humanity is insignificant—they do what they do, because they must.
 
To the Tralfamadorians, everything simultaneously exists, therefore, everyone is always alive. They, too, have wars and suffer tragedies (they destroy the universe whilst testing spaceship fuels), but, when Billy asks what they do about wars, they reply that they simply ignore them. The Tralfamadorians counter Vonnegut's true theme: life, as a human being, is only enjoyable with unknowns. Tralfamadorians do not make choices about what they do, but have power only over what they think (the subject of Timequake). Vonnegut expounds his position in chapter one, "that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book," both being futile endeavours, since both phenomena are unstoppable.
 
Like much of Vonnegut's other works (e.g., The Sirens of Titan), Slaughterhouse-Five explores the concept of fatalism. The Tralfamadorians represent the belief in war as inevitable. In their hapless destruction of the universe, Vonnegut's characters do not sympathize with their philosophy. To human beings, Vonnegut says, ignoring a war is unacceptable when we have free will; however, he does not explicitly state that we actually have free will, leaving open the possibility that he is satirizing the concept of free will as a product of human irrationality.
 
This human senselessness appears in the climax that occurs, not with the Dresden fire bombing, but with the summary execution of a man who committed a petty theft. Amid all that horror, death, and destruction, time is taken to punish one man. Yet, the time is taken, and Vonnegut takes the outside opinion of the bird asking, "Poo-tee-weet?" The same birdsong ends the novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
 
Slaughterhouse-Five is framed with chapters in the author's voice, about his experience of war, indicating the novel is intimately connected with his life and convictions. That established, Vonnegut withdraws from the unfolding of Billy Pilgrim's story, despite continual appearances as a minor character: in the POW camp latrine, exiting the train at Dresden, the corpse mines of Dresden, when he mistakenly dials Billy’s telephone number. These authorial appearances anchor Billy Pilgrim’s life to reality, highlighting his existential struggle to fit in the human world.

Literary significance and reception

The reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five have been largely positive since the 31 March 1969 review in The New York Times newspaper that glowingly concedes: "you'll either love it, or push it back in the science-fiction corner."[3] In its publication year, Slaughterhouse-Five was nominated for a best-novel Nebula Award and for a best-novel Hugo Award, 1970. It lost both to The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Slaughterhouse-Five eighteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It also appeared in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.[4]

Literary techniques

The story continually employs the refrain "So it goes." when death, dying, and mortality occur, as a narrative transition to another subject, as a memento mori, as comic relief, and to explain the unexplained. It appears 106 times.
 
As a postmodern, metafictional novel, the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five is an author's preface about how he came to write Slaughterhouse-Five, apologizing, because the novel is "so short and jumbled and jangled," because "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." As in Mother Night, but more extensively, Vonnegut manipulates fiction and reality. The first sentence says: "All this happened, more or less." (In 2010, that sentence was ranked No. 38 on the American Book Review's list of "100 Best First Lines from Novels.") The author later appears in Billy Pilgrim's World War II as another sick prisoner, which the narrator notes by saying: That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.
 
The story repeatedly refers to real and fictional novels and fiction; Billy reads The Valley of the Dolls (1966), and skims a Tralfamadorian novel, and participates in a radio talk show, part of a literary-expert panel discussing "The Death of the Novel."
 
Form
 
The Narrator introduces Slaughterhouse-Five with the novel's genesis and ends discussing the beginning and the end of the Novel. The story itself begins in chapter two, although there is no reason to presume that the first chapter is not fictional. This is a technique common to postmodern meta-fiction.[5] The story purports to be a disjointed, discontinuous narrative, from Billy Pilgrim's point of view, of being unstuck in time. Vonnegut's writing usually contains such disorder.
 
The Narrator reports that Billy Pilgrim experiences his life discontinuously, wherein he randomly experiences (re-lives) his birth, youth, old age, and death, not in (normal) linear order. There are two narrative threads: Billy's experience of War (itself interrupted with experiences from elsewhere in his life), which is mostly linear; and his discontinuous pre-war and post-war lives. Billy's existential perspective was compromised in witnessing Dresden's destruction, although he had come unstuck in time before arriving to Dresden.[6] Slaughterhouse-Five is told in short, declarative sentences that impress the sense of reading a report of facts.[7]
 
 
Point of view and setting
 
The narrator begins the novel telling of his connection to the Dresden bombing, why he is recording it, a self-description (of self and book), and of the fact that he believes it is a desperate attempt at scholarly work. He then segues to the story of Billy Pilgrim: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time", thus, the transition from the writer's perspective to that of the third-person, omniscient Narrator.
 
Kilgore Trout, whom Billy Pilgrim meets operating a newspaper delivery business, can be seen as Vonnegut's alter ego, though the two differ in some respects. For example, Trout's career as a science-fiction novelist is checkered with thieving publishers, and the fictional author is unaware of his readership.
 
Censorship controversy
 
Slaughterhouse-Five has been the subject of many attempts at censorship, due to its irreverent tone and purportedly obscene content. In the novel, American soldiers use profanity; his language is irreverent; and the book depicts sex. It was one of the first literary acknowledgments that homosexual men, referred to in the novel as "fairies," were among the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
 
In the USA it has at times been banned from literature classes, removed from school libraries, and struck from literary curricula;[8] however, it is still taught in some schools. The U.S. Supreme Court considered the First Amendment implications of the removal of the book, among others, from public school libraries in the case of Island Trees School District v. Pico, [457 U.S. 853 (1982)], and concluded that "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'" Slaughterhouse-Five is the sixty-seventh entry to the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999.
 
Slaughterhouse-Five continues to be controversial. In August 2011, the novel was banned at the Republic High School in Missouri. The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library countered by offering 150 free copies of the novel to Republic High School students on a first come, first served basis.[9]
 
Criticism
 
The bombing of Dresden in World War II is the central event mentally affecting Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist. Within, Vonnegut says the firebombing killed 135,000 German civilians; he cites The Destruction of Dresden, by David Irving. However, recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000 and question Irving's research.[10]
 
Critics have accused Slaughterhouse-Five of being a quietist work, because Billy Pilgrim believes that the notion of free will is a quaint Earthling illusion.[11] The problem, according to Robert Merrill and Peter A. Scholl, is that:
Vonnegut's critics seem to think that he is saying the same thing [as the Tralfamadorians]. For Anthony Burgess, “Slaughterhouse is a kind of evasion — in a sense, like J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan — in which we’re being told to carry the horror of the Dresden bombing, and everything it implies, up to a level of fantasy... ” For Charles Harris, “The main idea emerging from Slaughterhouse-Five seems to be that the proper response to life is one of resigned acceptance." For Alfred Kazin, “Vonnegut deprecates any attempt to see tragedy, that day, in Dresden... He likes to say, with arch fatalism, citing one horror after another, ‘So it goes’." For Tanner, “Vonnegut has... total sympathy with such quietistic impulses." And the same notion is found throughout The Vonnegut Statement, a book of original essays written and collected by Vonnegut’s most loyal academic “fans."[11]
 

Allusions and references

Allusions to other works

As in other novels, certain characters cross over from other stories, making cameo appearances, connecting the discrete novels as a greater opus. Science fiction novelist Kilgore Trout, often an important character in other novels, in Slaughterhouse-Five is a social commentator and a friend to Billy Pilgrim. In one case, he is the only non-optometrist at a party, therefore, he is the odd-man-out. He ridicules everything the Ideal American Family holds true, such as Heaven, Hell, and Sin. In Trout's opinion, people do not know if the things they do turn out to be good or bad, and if they turn out to be bad, they go to Hell, where "the burning never stops hurting".
 
Other crossover characters are Eliot Rosewater, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Howard W. Campbell, Jr., from Mother Night; and Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, relative of Winston Niles Rumfoord, from The Sirens of Titan. Mr Rosewater says that Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov, contains "everything there was to know about life". Vonnegut references The Marriage of Heaven and Hell at one point when talking about William Blake, Billy's hospital mate's favourite poet.
 
It should be noted that while Vonnegut re-uses characters, the characters are frequently rebooted and do not necessarily maintain the same biographical details from appearance to appearance. Kilgore Trout in particular is palpably a different person (although with distinct, consistent character traits) in each of his appearances in Vonnegut's work.
 
In the Twayne's United States Authors series volume on Kurt Vonnegut, about the protagonist's name, Stanley Schatt says:
By naming the unheroic hero Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut contrasts John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" with Billy's story. As Wilfrid Sheed has pointed out, Billy's solution to the problems of the modern world is to "invent a heaven, out of 20th century materials, where Good Technology triumphs over Bad Technology. His scripture is Science Fiction, Man's last, good fantasy".[12]
 
 
 
Allusions — historic, geographic, scientific

Slaughterhouse-Five speaks of the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, and refers to the Battle of the Bulge, the Vietnam War, and the Black anti-poverty racial riots in American cities during the 1960s. Billy's wife, Valencia, wears a Reagan for President! bumper sticker on her car, referring to Reagan's failed 1968 Republican presidential nomination campaign. The bumper sticker was edited out of a broadcast version of the film which aired on at least one cable channel during or after the Reagan administration. Another bumper sticker is mentioned that says "Impeach Earl Warren."[13]
 
The slaughterhouse in which Billy Pilgrim and the other POWs are kept is also a real building in Dresden. Vonnegut was beaten and imprisoned in this building during World War II, and it is because of the meat locker in the building's basement that he—and Billy—survived the fire-bombing. Today, the site is largely intact and protected. One can visit it and take a two-hour guided tour.
 
Adaptations
 
A film adaptation of the book, also called Slaughterhouse-Five, was made in 1972. Although critically praised, the film was a box office flop. It won the Prix du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, as well as a Hugo Award, and Saturn Award. Vonnegut commended the film greatly. Guillermo del Toro has confirmed his intention to remake the 1972 film, originally hoping to release it in early 2011;[14] but due to his previous involvement with The Hobbit, the date of release for a film adaptation was pushed back. Although Guillermo del Toro has since dropped out of involvement with The Hobbit, the possibility of a new Slaughterhouse-Five adaptation remains in question since Del Toro is currently in pre-production on Pacific Rim.[15]
 
In 1989, a theatrical adaption premiered at The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, in the UK. This was the first time the novel had been presented onstage. It was adapted by Vince Foxall, and directed by Paddy Cunneen. In 1996, a theatrical adaptation of the novel was premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, IL. The adaptation was written and directed by Eric Simonson and included actors Rick Snyder, Robert Breuler, and Deanna Dunagan.[16] The play has been performed in several other theaters including a January 2008 New York premiere production at the Godlight Theatre Company. The operatic adaptation by Hans-Jürgen von Bose,[17] premiered in July 1996 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Billy Pilgrim II was sung by Uwe Schonbeck.[18]
 
In September 2009 BBC Radio 3 broadcast a feature length radio drama based on the book which was dramatised by Dave Sheasby and which starred Andrew Scott as Billy Pilgrim and was scored by the group 65daysofstatic.[19]

Appearances in popular culture

American psychedelic stoner rock band Nebula makes numerous references to Slaughterhouse-Five in their song "So It Goes", on the 2003 album Atomic Ritual.

British singer-songwriter Nick Lowe loosely references Vonnegut's repeated transition "So It Goes" in his 1976 single of the same name.