Poetry Magazine's Editor Christian Wiman Discusses Faith

Exclusive: Christian Wiman Discusses Faith

as He Leaves World's Top Poetry Magazine 

 

Wiman's Baptist faith lay dormant until love and cancer unearthed it.

 

Interview by Josh Jeter

posted December 7, 2012

 

 

Image: Photo by Jim Newberry | Christian Wiman Discusses Faith as He Leaves World's Top Poetry Magazine

 

In the afternoon of his 39th birthday, less than a year after his wedding day, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable cancer of the blood. Wiman, who announced Wednesday that he will step down in June as editor of Poetry magazine, the oldest and most esteemed poetry monthly in the world, had long ago drifted away from the Southern Baptist beliefs of his upbringing. But the shock of staring death in the face gradually revived a faith that had gone dormant (a story he first told publicly in a 2007 article for The American Scholar).

 

Wiman's new book of essays, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), took shape in the wake of his diagnosis, when he believed death could be fast approaching. These writings come from someone who is less a cautious theologian than a pilgrim crying out from the depths. They divulge the God-ward hopes (and doubts) of an artist still piecing together a spiritual puzzle. San Francisco-based lawyer and author Josh Jeter corresponded with Wiman about his new book, his precarious health, and the ongoing challenge of belief in God.

 

How did you arrive at your Christian faith?

 

I was raised in West Texas as a Southern Baptist, in a culture and family so saturated with religion that it never occurred to me there was any alternative until I left. Then it all just evaporated in the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college. Or, it didn't evaporate, exactly, because I never would have called myself an atheist. But religious feeling went underground in me for a couple of decades, to be released occasionally in ways I never really understood or completely credited—in poems, mostly.

 

'There's no question that illness has brought a great urgency to my work:

One speaks differently when standing on a cliff.'

- Christian Wiman

 

Then about 10 years ago I fell into despair. There is no other way to say it, really, nor do those words do anything but hint at the abyss. Whether it was cause or effect, I went through a writing drought unlike anything I had ever known—three years of it. In the midst of this—miraculously, it now seems to me—I fell suddenly and utterly in love with the woman who is now my wife. I still couldn't write, but the despair was blasted like a husk away from my spirit.

 

We found ourselves saying little prayers together before dinner. They were almost jokes at first, and then, increasingly, not. We'd been married about eight months when I got a surprise diagnosis of an incurable cancer, and the encroaching darkness demanded that the light I felt burning in me acquire a more definite and durable form. One Sunday morning we wandered into a church. A couple of days later I started to write. I don't think it's quite accurate to say that I had a conversion or even a "return" to Christianity. I was just finally able to assent to the faith that had long been latent within me.

 

You have three vocations: poet, editor of Poetry magazine, and, most recently, spiritual essayist. How did you decide to begin writing spiritual essays?

 

I've always written prose, and I can now see how God's absence—or, more accurately, my refusal to admit his presence—underlies all of my earlier work (poems as well).

 

But you're certainly right to point out a change. My work—prose and poetry—is still full of anguish and even unbelief, but I hope it's also much more open to simple joy. The theologian Jürgen Moltmann once wrote that all theology, especially a theology of hope, had to be conducted "in earshot of the dying Christ." Abundance and destitution are both aspects of God—or, more accurately, aspects of our experience of God.

 

Soon you will release a set of essays. How has your turn to faith shaped or influenced these essays?

 

After my diagnosis, I wrote a short piece trying to make sense of all that had happened to me. It was published in a relatively small magazine, The American Scholar, but the response to it was pretty overwhelming. I began to realize there was an enormous contingent of people out there who were starved for new ways of feeling and articulating their experiences of God. I wanted to have a conversation with these people.

 

I also wanted to figure out my own mind. I knew that I believed, but I was not at all clear on what I believed. So I set out to answer that question, though I have come to realize that the real question is how, not what. How do you answer that burn of being that drives you both deeper into, and utterly out of, yourself? What might it mean for your life—and for your death—to acknowledge the insistent, persistent call of God?

 

You have had some very difficult health issues the past few years, and according to one essay, have recently been "close to death." How is your health now? And what have your health struggles meant for your work?

 

I've been through a multitude of treatments, culminating in a bone-marrow transplant last fall. There's no question that illness has brought a great urgency to my work: One speaks differently when standing on a cliff. Then again, I have always had little patience for art that is not elemental, art that doesn't take on the major questions of our existence. Perhaps my own inclinations have simply been intensified by my illness.

 

As for that illness, it's gone. For now. I haven't felt this healthy in eight years. I hope I am now faced with the difficult task of learning to live without my familiar miseries. "Our torments also may, in length of time, Become our elements," says John Milton. "[T]hese piercing fires [a]s soft as now severe." There is always some devil in us—that's a demon speaking the lines above—who makes us think we love or need our pain.

 

Sometimes your essays feel like you are arguing with yourself. Do you write them for yourself or others?

 

I've never thought of my essays like this, but I see immediately that you're right. W. B. Yeats defined rhetoric as the quarrel we have with others. Poetry, he said, comes out of the quarrel we have with ourselves. Prose isn't poetry, obviously, but I've always felt the two arts to be raveled up with one another for me.

 

I read a lot of theology, even though I am almost always frustrated by it. Thomas Merton once said that trying "to solve the problem of God" is like trying to see your own eyes. No doubt that's part of it. There is something absurd about formulating faith, systematizing God. I am usually more moved—and more moved toward God—by what one might call accidental theology, the best of which is often art, sometimes even determinedly secular art.

 

I am moved by works of art that don't so much strive to make meaning as allow meaning to stream through them: Bach, certain poems by T. S. Eliot, the novelist Marilynne Robinson, the late work of the American sculptor Lee Bontecou, even less conventional religious writers like Simone Weil or Sara Grant. People can occasionally embody and enact this kind of meaning as well—we are, after all, works of the very greatest Creator's hands.

 

How much is spiritual experience—prayer, solitude, and the like—a part of your artistic process?

 

I think poetry is how religious feeling survived in me during all those years of unbelief, and it remains the most intense experience I have of another order of being entering my own. But poems are not contemplative or peaceful times for me; they're chaotic and can wreck my life for a while. They're also few and far between, and you can't (or I can't) build a spiritual life on that kind of intermittent intensity.

 

So I try to pray every day, usually in a little chapel near where I work, sometimes in a cathedral because I like the huge estrangement of it, the volatile silence. I feel no connection between prayer and poetry, except for the poems that I have written as prayers. Poetry is a much more powerful experience for me than prayer, but I feel this to be a weakness in me. I'm still just learning how to pray.

 

In your essays, you often appeal to the work of Christian mystics (like Meister Eckhart, Thomas Traherne, George Herbert, Marguerite Porete, Weil). What draws you to the mystics?

 

Partly I feel envy. I want to be taken over by God. I want to have the kind of disciplined inwardness that allows the ego to be annihilated. I want the kind of revelation that precedes all doctrine and dogma, is the reason for all doctrine and dogma. Christ's life is one long revelation; everything after that merely grows up from it.

 

But then, too, all of these writers have an artistic consciousness. I understand the language they speak, though I don't quite speak it myself, or maybe speak a different dialect. The energy of art may be prior to religion, but religion, paradoxically, is a way of sustaining and surviving the psychic storm of that original energy (just as ritual and doctrine are ways of stabilizing and preserving the awful power of mystical revelation). Art for its own sake, art that has no answering "other," will eventually eat you alive.

 

You have written that one measure of a genuine spiritual experience is the extent to which it "demands uncomfortable change." What kinds of "uncomfortable changes" have you experienced in your life?

 

That's what my wife always asks me!

 

I would like to think of this new book as a viable answer to your question, but solitary writing is quite natural to me, and we should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations.

 

More relevant, maybe, are the many speaking engagements, including sermons, I have taken on at religious schools and organizations in the past few years. This is new to me and, while very gratifying, has at times been quite discomfiting. I have also become deliberate about being open and honest about my thoughts of God. Maybe not so honest in secular settings. That, too, has provoked some useful but uncomfortable exchanges.

 

Still, the question is a thorn in my brain. I feel that I spend too much time agonizing over what faith might mean, rather than simply acting in accordance with my instincts. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that only the person who obeys believes. It is a hard road, but the right one. I will probably end up as a preacher after all.

 

Your faith does not come across as breezy in your essays, which you occasionally grace with levity. For example: "If I ever sound like a preacher in these passages, it's only because I have a hornet's nest of voluble and conflicting parishioners inside of me." Does your faith ever express itself as peace?

 

Rarely, which I see as a weakness. I do feel that some people may be called to unbelief—or what looks like unbelief—in order that faith may take new forms. Emily Dickinson is a good example of this, or Albert Camus. But I also believe that God requires every last cell of yourself to bow down.

 

Or perhaps that verb, requires, is wrong, or that it's God doing the requiring: It's more like your nature requires, in order to be your nature, that every last cell of yourself bow down. There is still some satanic pride in me, for which I pay a high price.

 

And yet, I have certainly experienced peace in poems that in their sheer givenness seemed to reveal something of God to me. I have written poems that begin in great anguish and explode into joy. As psychically difficult as the poems may have been to write, certainly I have felt peace and presence in their wake.

 

There are other moments, too, which are simply moments of life. Simply! I think of the poet Paul Eluard: "There is another world, but it is in this one." I have 3-year-old twin daughters. It would be disingenuous in the extreme for me to pretend that they don't at times drive all thought of God out of my head and make me want to write a series of sonnets in praise of celibacy, but it would be equally insane for me not to acknowledge that they are the source of my greatest happiness. Father Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov, defines hell as "the inability to love." I have known that hell, and I should probably spend my remaining days thanking God that I am free of it.

 

- CT

 

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Amazon Listings

 

Christian Wiman's books and editorial contributions -

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=christian+wiman

 

 

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January 2013

Google Listings

 

The American Scholar: Mortify Our Wolves - Christian Wiman

Tere comes a moan to the cancer clinic. There comes a sound so low and unvarying it seems hardly human, more a note the wind might strike off jags of rock ...

 

The American Scholar: Gazing into the Abyss - Christian Wiman

Though I was raised in a very religious household, until about a year ago I hadn't been to church in any serious way in more than 20 years. It would be ...

 

The American Scholar: My Bright Abyss - Christian Wiman
And there the poem ends. Or fails, rather, for in the three years since I first wrote that stanza I have been trying to feel my way—to will my way—into its ending.

 

The American Scholar: Hive of Nerves - Christian Wiman
It is time that the stone grew accustomed to blooming, That unrest formed a heart. —Paul Celan. During a dinner with friends the talk turns, as it often does these ...

 

Christian Wiman's Remarkable Essay in The American Scholar ...
Oct 31, 2012 – Back in April, we blogged about Christian Wiman, a member of the Washington and Lee Class of 1988, for two pieces of news. He had just won ...

 

Evil Is What Humans Do: An Interview with Christian Wiman: The ...
Mar 12, 2012 – Christian Wiman is one of America's most important poets. ... year reading your essay “Gazing into the Abyss” from the American Scholar and it ...

 

 

 

 

Reconstructing An Emergent Theology that is Postmodern, Postsecular, and Orthodox

 

....this will be an evolving post through this week and will not be finalized until this statement herein has been removed... - RES, 1/6/2013

 

 

After 20 months of writing on Emerging Christianity it has become obvious that there are many directions we may attend to - from the expression of pure ideas to that of pure practice, from a variety of forms pertaining to church and worship, to social activism and community engagements, and all parts in-between and beyond. Consequently, I wish to begin revisiting previous observations made on this blogsite in a determinative, directional fashion based upon what has been learned and where we might go from this point forward. I'll begin by forming a list of topics that may be prayed through and investigated. That show Scriptural support using the latest methods of interpretation. And by attempting to express Emerging Theology within a Postmodern (and Postsecular) context that may lead to some form of metaphysical-existential authenticism and socio-cultural participation.

 

It has been said that an emerging/emergent Christian may fall into one of three groups. Whether this is a true statement I do not know but will use it initially to set pace to this discussion. Thus, an emergent may be one who is either:

 

1 - Relevant, that is, who wishes to update postmodern culture around all things Jesus;

 

2 - Reconstructivist, meaning one who wishes to update Christian Evangelicalism into a postmodernistic orientation;

 

3 - Revisionist, suggesting one who wishes to reorient Christian orthodoxy towards postmodernism, while also taking all that is orthodox from within Evangelicalism and pushing it forward, leaving Evangelicalism's modernistic/secular elements behind.

 

From this list I would place myself in movements 1 and 3, but not in 2 having no interest to reform Evangelicalism except to move it back towards its orthodox center, and away from its ideological dogmas, platforms, and statements. Having been birthed in the Modernist stream of secular culture, Evangelicalism has heroically fought for the Christian faith while at the same time become absorbed within its very streams of secularism.

Hence, as good postmodernists, we wish to remove ourselves from all things modernistic and secular. Which means reclaiming Christian orthodoxy and pushing it forward into a postmodern, postsecular Christian expression. Perhaps in this way we might lend help to those involved in the second movement charitably as our brothers and sisters in Christ, and not as opponents. For true Christianity seeks unity and grace, forged by alliance based upon Christ, true biblical scholarship, and not ideological whim or whimsy (which we all seem to fall prey from one time or another).

Thus, we will need to define some terms. Specifically, what does it mean to be postmodern and postsecular? And what might it mean to be an Emerging, if not Emergent, Christian (in my mind these are similar terms, and do not bear separate meanings - one as ideology and the other as a church movement). From this basis we might produce an evolving list of philosophical and theological inquiry, church observance and practice, asking how Emergent Theology may assist in expanding Christian witness and mission. And, I suspect, it will be a broad list, encompassing many ideas and practices, if it is to serve a more pluralistic, global audience uncoupled from regional outlooks and parochial mindsets.

As such, I wish to request helpful replies from our readers that is informed, emergent in perspective, short, to the point, easy to be understood by the reading public, and Christ-oriented in scope and theology. If you wish to participate in this project please provide your email address with a sample paragraph or two of your intended focus of discussion through the comments section. I would like to publish these with editorial largess with your help and contribution. I intend to be selective, prefering demeanor and tone, as much as content.

Otherwise, I fear what little good Emergent Theology may provide may be lost upon the rocky shorelines of progressive ideology (and not orthodoxy) on the one side, and neo-liberalism on the other. As Emergent Christians we look to foundations and cornerstones, not pillars and columns, nor facades and decorations. Once the foundation is set aright all other superstructural elements will fall into place. A foundation that is progressive, and biblical, and that may expand our previous discussions held here in Relevancy22 since inception.

Thank you for your help and contribution.

 

R.E. Slater

January 6, 2013

 

 

A List of Evolving Emerging Theological Topics

 

What Does it mean to be Secular? To be Postsecular? Where is Kant in all of this?

 

What Is Radical Orthodoxy other than what one suspects to be an eclectic version of Emergent Theology aimed at reforming Evangelical ideology, dogmas, and practices? How is Radical Orthodoxy, and Emergent Theology unified in the study of postmodernism. And how are they distinguished from one other?

 

What is Contintental Philosophy? What is Continental Theology? Can either of these be helpful to a postmodern Christian? Or do they more substantially correlate to a postmodern form of Liberal Theology?

How can Emergent Theology utilize Radical (Continental) Theology. How should it not? (Statedly, Radical Theology is not to be confused with the Evangelical form of postmodern Radical (Reformed) Orthodoxy).

 

What is Neo-orthodoxy and in what forms does it survive in today's Christian culture? How does Karl Barth contribute to its survival other than in its historical forms of distinguishing Christian Orthodoxy from Liberal doctrine?

How is Modernistic Dualism rejected in Postmodernism? How is it kept in the Enactment of Creational Free Will?

 

How has Dualism contributed to the ideas of good v. evil, right v. wrong, both helpfully and unhelpfully? How would Monism help to see human beings as essential parts of God's creation, rather than in contextual terms of wickedness and condemnation?

How does Monism, Unitarianism, etc, contribute to the idea of all things being created from the one God Himself? That apart from God can nothing exist? How have these movements departed from Christian orthodoxy?

How does Pantheism, Panentheism, Deism contribute, or not contribute, to an Orthodox Christian understanding? How does Theism, Trinitarianism, Relational Theism contribute to the same?

How is "Ex Nihilo" creationism both helpful and unhelpful both to the scientific/theological understanding of God and creation; as well as to the various branches of Christianity that has since evolved?

 

Where does the Anthropic Principle in all its forms (strong v. weak v. eclectic) contribute to the discussions of evolution, creation, science and the bible?

Should God be viewed as Power or as Love? Is divine power coercive? Is divine love uncoercive (sic, Jurgan Moltmann)? Where does divine intervention, or redemptive sovereignty, enter in to God's attributes?

 

What is Platonism (One Source)? NeoPlatonism (demiurge)? Augustinianism? Thomaism? How does it related to today's modern vs. postmodern discussions? How is Radical Orthodoxy like or unlike this?

How is Determinism related to any of the above? As versus Open Theology's Open Future of Relational involvement with the Divine?

 

...Left Open for further addition, and erudition! :) ...

 

 

Continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "An Emerging Theology"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being the Face of God, the Presence of God, Who Through Us Binds and Heals

Why, God?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/dowd-why-god.html?_r=0

By MAUREEN DOWD, Op-Ed Columnist, Washinggon
The New York Times
December 25, 2012

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

When my friend Robin was dying, she asked me if I knew a priest she could talk to who would not be, as she put it, “too judgmental.” I knew the perfect man, a friend of our family, a priest conjured up out of an old black-and-white movie, the type who seemed not to exist anymore in a Catholic Church roiled by scandal. Like Father Chuck O’Malley, the New York inner-city priest played by Bing Crosby, Father Kevin O’Neil sings like an angel and plays the piano; he’s handsome, kind and funny. Most important, he has a gift. He can lighten the darkness around the dying and those close to them. When he held my unconscious brother’s hand in the hospital, the doctors were amazed that Michael’s blood pressure would noticeably drop. The only problem was Father Kevin’s reluctance to minister to the dying. It tears at him too much. He did it, though, and he and Robin became quite close. Years later, he still keeps a picture of her in his office. As we’ve seen during this tear-soaked Christmas, death takes no holiday. I asked Father Kevin, who feels the subject so deeply, if he could offer a meditation. This is what he wrote:

 

How does one celebrate Christmas with the fresh memory of 20 children and 7 adults ruthlessly murdered in Newtown; with the searing image from Webster of firemen rushing to save lives ensnared in a burning house by a maniac who wrote that his favorite activity was “killing people”? How can we celebrate the love of a God become flesh when God doesn’t seem to do the loving thing? If we believe, as we do, that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why doesn’t He use this knowledge and power for good in the face of the evils that touch our lives?

 

The killings on the cusp of Christmas in quiet, little East Coast towns stirred a 30-year-old memory from my first months as a priest in parish ministry in Boston. I was awakened during the night and called to Brigham and Women’s Hospital because a girl of 3 had died. The family was from Peru. My Spanish was passable at best. When I arrived, the little girl’s mother was holding her lifeless body and family members encircled her.

 

They looked to me as I entered. Truth be told, it was the last place I wanted to be. To parents who had just lost their child, I didn’t have any words, in English or Spanish, that wouldn’t seem cheap, empty. But I stayed. I prayed. I sat with them until after sunrise, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, to let them know that they were not alone in their suffering and grief. The question in their hearts then, as it is in so many hearts these days, is “Why?”

 

The truest answer is: I don’t know. I have theological training to help me to offer some way to account for the unexplainable. But the questions linger. I remember visiting a dear friend hours before her death and reminding her that death is not the end, that we believe in the Resurrection. I asked her, “Are you there yet?” She replied, “I go back and forth.” There was nothing I wanted more than to bring out a bag of proof and say, “See? You can be absolutely confident now.” But there is no absolute bag of proof. I just stayed with her. A life of faith is often lived “back and forth” by believers and those who minister to them.

 

Implicit here is the question of how we look to God to act and to enter our lives. For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.

 

I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.

 

One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God’s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I was asking “Why?” and I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn’t explain why he died. Even if they could, it wouldn’t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. They held me up to preach at Brian’s funeral. They consoled me as I tried to comfort others. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong.

 

A contemporary theologian has described mercy as “entering into the chaos of another.” Christmas is really a celebration of the mercy of God who entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. I have never found it easy to be with people who suffer, to enter into the chaos of others. Yet, every time I have done so, it has been a gift to me, better than the wrapped and ribboned packages. I am pulled out of myself to be love’s presence to someone else, even as they are love’s presence to me.

 

I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.

 

 

 

Can Evangelical Colleges and Seminaries Be Truly Academic Institutions?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/can-evangelical-colleges-and-seminaries-be-truly-academic-institutions/

 

by Pete Enns

January 3, 2013

Comments

 

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to pick a fight or be controversial here. It’s an honest question.

 

I’ve been thinking about this for several years, and what has brought it back to mind is the recent spate of professors “resigning” (wink, wink) from their positions (see earlier posts here, here, and here).

 

Here is the problem in a nutshell. Many evangelical colleges and seminaries in America were founded in no small part as centers for defending and propagating earlier traditional positions against forces that coalesced in the 19th century: European higher criticism, biblical archaeology, and Darwin (evolution). The questions that get at the heart of evangelical concerns are: when the Bible was written, by whom, and is it historically accurate?

 

That defensive posture is quite evident in evangelical intuitions today (though not all, of course, and at times modified), but this raises a question for me: Can an institution claim to be fundamentally academic while at the same time centered on defending certain positions that are largely, if not wholly, out of sync with generations of academic discourse outside of evangelical boundaries?

 

It is common for evangelical institutions to have as part of their statements of faith clear articulations about biblical inerrancy and how that dogmatic starting point (either implicitly or implicitly) dictates interpretive conclusions. The question, simply put, is whether such a posture can be called “academic” by generally agreed upon standards–which are standards that evangelicals would quickly agree to in areas that do not touch evangelical dogma.

 

Another way of putting it is whether evangelical institutions can maintain a credible academic reputation when they officially promulgate positions that are only held within those institutions of similar ideology and not the academic discipline of biblical scholarship in general.

 

Adam as the first man; the essential historical reliability (rather than mythic content) of the creation stories, the Patriarchs, the exodus, and conquest; the fundamentally early authorship of the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and Daniel. These are well-known issues that evangelicalism has defended along traditional lines. By contrast, these issues are either largely settled along very different lines in academic contexts outside of conservative Christian circles, or are at least seen as obvious matters of ongoing dialogue.

 

I am not suggesting everyone outside of the evangelical world has the same answer to all of these issues. But the diversity of views in academia as a whole does not include the apologetically driven answers we tend to see in evangelicalism.

 

Here, it is often claimed that the “guild” of biblical scholarship is too blinded by its own presuppositions to handle the word of God well, or there is some conspiracy afoot, or the better scholars reside in the evangelical camp. These are not hypothetical responses. I have heard them for many years - and still do - and they are not hard to see through.

 

At what point does the reasoned exposition of an evangelical theological tradition cross over to an unreasonable–unacademic–rejection of positions that are essentially non-controversial outside of those boundaries? An analogy with mainstream science and creationism is apropos. At what point are creationists just plain as day not “doing science” and making things up to defend views that are by every other measure implausible if not impossible?

 

Let me put the question differently: At what point, if ever, would it show more integrity for a school to say the following: “Our center of gravity is not academic integrity or engagement but the defense of our theology by either mining the academic discourse of biblical scholarship where useful or condemning it where harmful. We do not see ourselves as primarily an academic body but an ecclesial one.” Should such institutions publicly acknowledge that they are centers of theological apologetics and therefore not places of academic training?

 

I really meant what I said earlier about not wanting to pick a fight, but I think the questions I raise here are legitimate, they’ve been nagging me for quite some time, and I am hardly alone.

 

I have a feeling some of you (I can feel the heat and see the smoke rising from a distance) will be quick to say that people like me have just bowed the knee to the pagan altar of “academic integrity” and the supposed “assured results of academia.” But that criticism only holds if you can truly show others that the academic discipline of biblical studies is fundamentally misguided and that an evangelical model of some sort explains the data better.

 

Ironically, that case would need to be made in a recognizably academic manner to have any persuasive force.

 

 

 

Where Does Jesus Fit in with Other Religions?

 

Is Christianity the One True Religion?

http://theupsidedownworld.com/2013/01/03/is-christianity-the-one-true-religion/

 

by Rebecca Trotter

January 3, 2013

Comments

 

Arg – I was going to try to shape this all into a nice, creative post, but I’m busy, y’all. Olivia gave herself her 3 year old hair cut today and I haven’t even gotten the lovely curls up off the bedroom floor yet. You should all send money and buy my books so I can hire a baby sitter.

 

Anyhow, after my last post on witnessing, Dan Rial of This is My Story sent me an email wondering about my ideas regarding the particularity of Jesus. You know – the claim by Jesus that “I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the father but by me.” In many Christian circles this is used as a proof text to show that all other religions are false (and probably demonic) and that only Jesus believing Christian folks can get to heaven.

 

I asked him if it would be OK if I shared my response with the rest of y’all and he said yes and I said that I’d tell you all to go check out his blog. He’s a very good writer and I really enjoy his perspective, so you really should too. After you read this, of course!

- Rebecca

 

 

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"[Hi Dan.] About your concern re the particularity of Jesus, I’m glad you brought it up. As is usual for me (and I swear I don’t do this on purpose!), I affirm the orthodox position while also understanding it a bit differently than is common. And you may not agree with my understanding – which is fine. I don’t believe theology ought to be something which divides and angers us unless our theology defames God or causes actual direct harm to people. So, please be assured that disagreements and challenges don’t upset me in the least.

 

"So what I believe is that Jesus is THE way, THE truth and THE life and that no one comes to the father but by him. However, most Christians basically change that text to read that “no one comes to the father but by believing in” Christ. Now, I do believe that there are benefits and rewards for those who affirm Christ knowingly and by name. Scriptures promise us that. I also believe that it is desirous that every man would know and serve Jesus in that way. However, it is also true that God, like the land owner in the parable of the talents “reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter seed.” Anyone who seeks after and submits themselves to love is seeking after and submitting to God. God is love. There is no expression or experience of love apart from God whether he is known or named or not.

 

"I see other religions very much along the lines of what Paul told the Athenians when he said that the unknown God they worshiped was God himself and then quoted pagan poetry in order to illustrate the fact that although they did not know this God by name, tradition or doctrine, they had still attained some measure of understanding about him.

 

"It is my understanding that any time someone is are able to find some measure of love and truth, this is due to the work of Jesus – both his salvic work and his creative work – “through him all things were made”. But this reality is not dependent on human knowledge, understanding or even acceptance of Jesus. I think of it as being a lot like oxygen. Oxygen existed and was sustaining our very lives for a long time before anyone knew it was there or what it did or even that they depended on it for life. The life sustaining work of oxygen doesn’t depend on human knowledge, acknowledgment or understanding. I think that the truth that no man can come to the father – or can even know love – outside of Jesus is much the same. It is a truth which exists all on its own regardless of whether we know or accept it as true.

 

"I do believe that the day will come when it is revealed to all mankind that every good thing in their life – all the love, the joy, the beauty, etc – exists because of Jesus and no other teacher or prophet can lay claim to those things. And I believe that will be the day when every knee bows to Jesus. Those of us who know Jesus personally don’t have to wait for that day and I believe that is a great blessing on our lives and for our standing in the Kingdom. Other prophets and teachers may have been able to testify to whatever truth they knew, but Jesus is the truth through which every good thing comes into existence.

 

"All of my life I have been close friends with people who are Muslim, Buddhist or even atheist. In fact some of the smartest, best, most honest people I have known have been atheists. They have all known that I think they ought to be Christians. But they also know that if they aren’t going to be Christians, my hope for them is that they would be the most devout, loving Muslim, Buddhist or whatever that they can be. God and Jesus will take and receive the credit in due time. (FWIW, I’m also fully aware that my non-Christian friends believe that time will prove that I am wrong. Which is fine. We can disagree and leave it at that. Time will tell that I’m right. ;P )

 

"It’s not that I hold to the idea that there are many paths up the mountain. Rather, I believe that there is only one path up the mountain and you can call it different things and you can bring different baggage with you as you climb it, but the reality is that there is no other way up the mountain except for the way that Jesus offers – love, sacrifice, humility, patience, peace, forgiveness, endurance, etc. God’s truth is written into reality and we all carry his image within us. Anytime someone looks for divine love, they will find whatever measure of that love and truth which they are able to hold. So there are many faith traditions which hold some measure of truth – nothing which you can’t also find in Christianity as well, to be sure. But I think this we do see so many commonalities between religions despite wildly different ideas about the reality of life and our spiritual existence.

 

'Ultimately, I believe that the Christian faith is the truest, clearest, least encumbered revelation man has for how to walk that path, know it and understand it. It is without any doubt in my mind, the surest way to make the climb to God, to our salvation and to the redeemed world we’ve all been seeking.

"And for those of you wondering, “but what about hell?”, please check out the series I did last year on just that topic.

 

"BTW, have you “Liked” The Upside Down World on Facebook yet? You should. And if you like something you read here, please pass it on – those of you who are regular readers know I don’t just need a babysitter – I need an editor as well. Just look at the egregious use of dashes going on in that last “sentence”!

 

- Rebecca

 

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 4

Is Evangelicalism Ending? 4

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/01/04/is-evangelicalism-ending-4/

 

by Scot McKnight

Jan 4, 2013

Comment

 

I begin with this claim: the church, the local church as well as the church universal, is a politic. Instead of supporting a political party, which confuses the church into serving two masters, the church strives to be a politic. These are my words, not David Fitch’s, but I think they get to the heart of David’s section on how the church is to recover the core of our politics for mission. The problem is the Christian Nation vision, but the solution is to abandon that and to become a politic under the Lordship of Jesus, a politic of the kingdom of God. Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions) examines four theologians.

 

The questions we need to face are these:

How is your church shaping the politic of the church as part of God’s mission in this world? How is your church a “politic”? The gospel is performed as well as proclaimed. How does it perform the mission of God? Has your church been co-opted by political partisanship?

They are Henri du Lubac, William Cavanaugh, Nathan Kerr and John Howard Yoder. Here’s how he ties them together:

 

Lubac’s focus is on the Body of Christ in his physical body, in the Eucharist and in the church, but the eucharist has become a place for spectating instead of embodying that Body. Cavanaugh, another Catholic theologian, contends the eucharist births a political presence and engages society for redemption and renewal. It is thus a subversive presence.

 

Nathan Kerr, however, subverts both of these ideas (and Fitch’s) by contending the church is the church when it is dispersed into mission. Missiology precedes ecclesiology. The church becomes a non-site place!

This leads to John Howard Yoder … who advocates the church as those who live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ — when the church embodies the “gifts.” It lives today what the world is to become. The church does this in binding and loosing, breaking bread, baptism, the gifts, and the rule of conversation. And the church does this as the body that extends the incarnation, by living the kingdom, and by having a porous boundary.

 

Now Fitch digs: “Evangelicals have put forth the church as Christ’s voluntarist army dispersing individuals into the world to do the work of Christ and his mission.” He says it is “the social body of His Lordship (His Reign) incarnating Christ in the world for God’s mission” (166).

 

The Sunday gathering is in order to be shaped together into his body for the world in eucharist, preaching the Word and re-entry into the world. Sunday gatherings are not to be distinguished from daily living.

 

David Fitch observes that the new forms of evangelicalism are a witness to some form of discontent. He includes the emerging church, the missional church, neo-monasticism and the organic house-church movement. These, Fitch contends, are the “contours of the post-evangelical landscape” (179).

The questions we need to face are these: What forms of evangelicalism do you think will be most vibrant in the next twenty years or so? Is evangelicalism itself changing, or are these splinter groups with only a few years to survive? Do you think the NeoReformed/NeoPuritan movement is another witness to discontent?

David Fitch focuses on three groups in this time of discontent who are providing plausible, yet inadequate, visions for the “birthing of a renewed Christian political presence for our time” (179). He takes up his three themes again (Inerrant Bible, Salvation, Christian Nation) and sketches how seminal young post-evangelicals are proposing ideas: Peter Rollins, Brian McLaren, and Alan Hirsch with Michael Frost. (By the way, Fitch thinks James Davison Hunter’s proposal of “faithful presence” is a form of NeoAnabaptism, and I completely agree.)

 

With each of these young theologians, Fitch sees both promise and problems:

Peter Rollins: while Rollins clearly points us to the capturing of God in Bible and while he pushes us into apophatic theology to remind us that the infinite God cannot be contained by human words, and while he wants us to focus not so much on believing the right things but believing in the right way, Fitch says Rollins is in danger of de-incarnationalizing the Word of God. The Christian is called both to affirm the centrality of Scripture as the place where God has spoken and to land in particular ways in particular settings. For Rollins Scripture can become another Master-Signifier without content. He also thinks his liturgies run the same risk.

[Addendum. Realizing this, Relevancy22 both follows Peter Rollins for his postmodern insights, while continuing to provide here non-apophatic theological content that is both postmodern and emergent, as can readily be seen.

Furthermore, it is realized that Peter is continuing to shape his theology as a newer theolog to the practice of interpreting Scriputres, especially as it is being shaped by today's postmodern culture wherein the bible speaks specifically to the matter of faith's deep interaction to God Himself. Through our doubts, fears, disappointments, and disbelief. As such, his philosophical background continues to adapt to the incarnating material of the bible telling of God, His people, and mission. And whenever Peter is pressed to reconstruct his vision of Jesus and the church one can sense through the past influences of Rob Bell and others that he will continue to develop and expand in his theology in non-apophatic ways. - R.E. Slater]

 

Brian McLaren points out the problem of a too otherworldly salvation and of a decisionism that does not lead to transformation. [He] also points to the need to focus on God’s mission in kingdom theology and to do all of this in the now. But [Fitch] thinks McLaren is in danger of de-eschatologizing the kingdom by separating it too much for a robust christology and ecclesiology [using] a future eschatology [here-and-now] parameters. He thinks Brian is too close to seeing Jesus too much as a guide and exemplar away from the ruling Lord and Christ. Kingdom too easily can become another nebulous Master-Signifier where advocacy for justice loses its trinitarian and eschatological bearings.

[Addendum. Having followed Brian McLaren I would suggest to Fitch some other model that may work. For Brian it is this rather than nothing at all - esp. as addressing the social issues of inequality and injustice. How many churches even dare this much!? - R.E.Slater].

 

And he sees much of value in Hirsch and Frost in their pushing against the consumerist and attractional church, and their advocacy for organic missional work, and for a dispersed church but they run the risk of de-ecclesiologizing the church’s relationship to society. (Too much missional claims do this.) The practices of the church are too separated from the mission of the church. Which practices? eucharist, baptism, preaching, fellowship, gifts, etc.. Their claim that the proper order is christology, mission and then ecclesiology runs the risk of a Christ too separated from the church and its practices, and can suggest too individualistic of a soteriology and mission.

 

Thanks David. Good job. Much to think on here.

 

 

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

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 1

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 2

 

Passing the Jesus Torch from Evangelicalism to Emergent Christianity, Part 3

 

 

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

 

 

Addendum -

 

"What does it then mean to be

a Postmodern Christian?"

by R.E. Slater

December 27, 2012

 

 

I would like to add to the above article that it is the stated intent at Relevancy22 that each of the 3 or 4 areas addressed above be both separately, and together, revisioned as we have been doing here these past 18 months at this website in reframing the church's evangelic past with today's postmodern rise of emergent Christianity. This has hopefully been done through a multi-disciplinary approach to both modernism's, and evangelicalism's, strengths and weaknesses, as presented to us through the church in its many Christian forms these past 500 years. And by admitting to a more recent postmodernistic presence of the gospel of Jesus previously unadmitted within evangelicalism's many arguments and self-sustaining subcultural perspectives, often found to be exclusionary, divisive, and unloving.

Moreover, it is with hope - and not despair - that a new kind of emergent theology is arising to replace its more popular predecessor, evangelical theology, by both deconstructing the church's more recent Christian past, and reconstructing a postmodern version of itself that is more relevant and applicable for today's postmodern audiences.

That modernistic Christianity (whether evangelical, denominational, or some other "body politic") is failing to connect to today's postmodern generations requiring a newer presence of the Christian faith that would better accounts for:

• the significance of Jesus' incarnational presence in time and history, especially in terms of an historical-religious circumspection requiring an all-pervasive perspective of God's redemption for ourselves, humanity, and the world/cosmos we live in (theism vs. agnosticism / atheism).
 
• the expansive mystery of God, His cosmos, and humanity itself (a "gentle" mysticism decoupled from its twin-brother of "mystical gnosticism" which generally devolves into various forms of Christian secrecy and cultic exclusivism).
 
• better contemporary scientific assimilation with that of a postmodern biblical literary analysis and interpretive hermeneutics which would dispel, and justifiably remove, non-scientific, literal church dogmas from their current ascendancy of Christianized folklores held onto by religious innuendo and theological ignorance.
 
• a fuller congruence between Christian faith and works, love and devotion, words and acts, in all that is said or done as followers of Jesus.
 
• the uplift of love and relationship over intellectualized rationality (narrative theology vs. systematic theology, creeds and confessions).
 
• an organic faith imparted into social involvement and interactive community service projects demonstrating the love and ministry of Jesus.
 
• the admittance to failure in past church practices and programs subjugating select people groups to prejudicial bigotries, social dehumanization, and judicial inequalities (minorities, slaves, women, homosexuality, etc).
 
• a renewed emphasis upon the value of our environment over that of humanity's environmental ignorance, destruction, and consumerist influences.
 
• the reinvigoration of the human touch and presence to a faceless, technological generation, offering in its place the selfless sharing and giving of one's kinetic energy to community members in interactive activities of joint worship, service projects, social comportment and innovations. From recreational opportunities to ecological projects and urban gardens. From housing renovations to community innovations in the arts and well-being. The opportunities to re-invigorate community are endless.
 
• the willing assimilation of one's personal background and beliefs into a pluralistic and multi-ethnic society where each member recognizes, and values, the contributions and presence of differently enabled community members.
 
• a recognition that decentralizes self-importance and engrossed personal perspectives by offsetting mono-cultural social barriers supporting biased ideologies and prejudicial beliefs over that of differently enjoined pluralistic perspectives of lesser-valued social segments within society. Whether expressed in terms of majority v. minority religious, political, or social parameters.
 
• etc.... Which means, that we add to the list above as we become better enabled to recognize the needs of today's postmodern generations; that we learn to recreate a Christian faith without personal-social barriers, resentments, distrusts, jealousy, envy, or pride. But which encourages a faith that uplifts Jesus in all that it says and does. In everything that it says or does. As is the will of God.

 

And although this list might be continued in a number of ways, in its preliminary forms it is enough to suggest key ingredients to the emergent Christian faith that wishes to address today's generational postmodern angst and needs. It is not a new perspective but one that is new to many evangelical Christians belatedly realizing the dramatic depth of change that has occurred between themselves and their faith.

 

To know and understand that God is not dead, but is amazingly relevant in this dizzying postmodern era of deconstruction and reconstruction. That the Christian faith is as relevant now as its was in previous historical eras, as each era subtended to the next, in a generalized eschalation of salvific import (or salvific contract) between God and man. Where both the divine and the human continue to grow in community, and in relationship with each the other - God with man, man with God, and man with man. This is nothing to be feared but to be wondered at and praised in the magnificence of God's glory and wisdom.

 

That the Christian hope is one realizing God's reclamation of all things God. That no one person is beyond God's reach and claim. That either in life or death shall all things be renewed both in this life as in the next; whether within the boundaries of heaven, or within that of hell itself - for even hell itself is a purifier (sic, the annihilation of sin and death). That God will be victorious over a free willed creation unsubdued to His restitution and renewal by one avenue or another. That He will not be defeated. Neither by wicked man, nor principality and power, nor by sin and death. That God will be All-in-All, even as He is the Great I Am.

 

That this victory will be by God's divine love (but not to the exclusion of His divine judgment as some would suppose claiming a form of undifferentiated universalism). That in all things God does love with a love that is patient, understanding, overpowering, and negating man's baser baser instincts and nature. For God did thus create with purpose and power. And in that purpose He reclaims with love. A love we do not understand. But a love which allows within us the habitation of disbelief, faithlessness, distrust, and moral failure. That looks beyond ourselves and sees Jesus in our stead as our atoning sacrifice and enabling power by His Spirit of redemption.

 

And it is to this Jesus, as the divine Incarnate God, who does evidence God's incarnational presence to man both historically (2000 years ago), and even now - within our postmodern generations - that gives to the Christian faith its historical bedrock and existential reality. That Jesus, by personal atonement and practical example, shared God's divine heart, love, and vision for redeeming humanity towards all things God.

 

Ultimately, this is the unfolding story of a postmodern emergent theology. It is one of hope and inspiration founded upon the personage and presence of the Incarnate God founded upon His sacrificial life-and-death unto the restitution of all things, both in this world, as in the next. Which refuses an opposing atheology that there is no God, knowing this position is untenable in a world expressly made, sustained, and governed by God. A world that is highly valued by God. And which is highly desired by God to be inhabited by His personal presence, fellowship, and rule.

 

For it is God's love that has ever made this reality so - despite man's natural recourse to reject God while disdaining His divine will. That by Jesus' atoning death and abiding presence through the Spirit, that man's natural recourse towards sinful arrogance, legalism, and pride, may be opposed and ironically subverted towards an iconic restitution of divine recreation by the Lord God Himself. In an holy act of continuing love and redemptive purpose based not only upon who God is, but what He will be to His creation. This is the redemptive story and the divine mission of the God of the Bible.

 

R.E. Slater

December 27, 2012

January 3, 2013