Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Allowing One's Theology to Change and Grow, Adapt and Adjust

 
 
 
One of the first theology books I came across in my college years was by A.W. Tozer who spoke warmly of God and all that God was in the Bible. It was not an easy read as I remember it mostly because Dr. Tozer packed a lot of ideas into a single sentence and paragraph (now-a-days we call these "dense reads"). And to get through a couple pages, let alone a chapter of five or six pages, seemed nearly impossible to me each night during devotions as I tried to work out his exquisite theological expressions of our Almighty God. And yet, as I learned to adapt to Tozer's style of writing, and to think like he was thinking, I became deeply inspired by God's passionate devotion to His creation, His praise-worthiness, and incredible love for us. It drew me nearer to God and nearer to His Word. I discovered a deep awareness - an overwhelming majesty - about God previously unthought and inexperienced before this time in my life.

Consequently, I would like to share this devotional booklet online as a very well-written example of Classical Theism (CT) so that at a later date, when we investigate Process Thought (PT) - which is the polar opposite to CT - we would have a more solid basis to compare each theological system to the another. Overall, it is my wish to synthesize each system towards a third alternative. One that I've been calling Relational Theism (RT), with the hope that in the journey we may discover that somewhere someone has already completed this eclectic effort. To some degree I've already uncovered a few theologians who have moved towards this positional theology affectively but am still not sufficiently acquainted in their backgrounds to fully determine how completely their teaching might be in-line with what I have in mind. Nor am I convinced that this middling RT position might be satisfactory to myself as I learn more about it... perhaps I may wish to shade it more-or-less towards one direction or another* (based upon my background it may lean more towards CT than PT I'm afraid).

However, whatever develops, it must assist in the holistic foundation of Emergent Christianity. To the degree that it does this, then to that degree I will find it more palatable. For I'm afraid that I cannot take the more pious position of saying, "I have no position but that of God's," because that can never be true of any informed theologian or biblical teacher. Every theologian develops their theology within a given frame of reference which later becomes colored-in by critique and historical movement. And if a theologian lives long enough, they might experience a movement that may directly challenge any prior theological commitments, thus forcing a reconstruction either to, or from, their current position. You see this even in the reading of the Old Testament as the various books transition from era-to-era within Israel's constructed history of herself. And not only within the books themselves, but within their very passages, from passage to passage. And so, theological reflection and critique, movement and assessment, does - and well - change, even today as it did in biblical times. Why? Because God is that big, that awesome, that our finite perception of God must also evolve even as we evolve ourselves (this is the idea lying behind "Open Theology").

By way of personal example, when first starting out in the faith of Jesus I entered into a moderately conservative, Fundamental, Christian movement (the General Association of Regular Baptists, otherwise known as the GARB) that understood God and His Word within certain cultural, and theological, traditions -  mostly warm, pious, reverent, etc. Later, I transitioned for various reasons (mostly marriage and teaching opportunities) towards a conservative, Evangelical, Christianity that was less judgmental than my former church traditions, and more progressive in the ways of the world (my wife could work and pursue her career and not be seen as disobedient to God). In subsequent years I have transitioned again into yet another theological position which I would describe as an Emergent form of Christianity. A form that was even more progressively minded than my past, previous, church traditions. (This latter move occurred when my current church naively begat a more youthful, radical form of itself, not understanding how drastically different it would become... much like our own families as our kids take possession of themselves and radically re-express their lives on their terms and vision.) Apparently, with age and temperament, an informed student of the Word (and, for that fact, a trained theologian) may purposely change their viewpoint - sometimes radically, or moderately, or perhaps not at all. (Sometimes these are academic but more often they result from a life experience, or from societal revelation, a death, birth, marriage, injury, or burden.) But in order for transition to occur one must also have a historical awareness to any fundamental shifts occurring within the Church and society itself. For without an outside "criticizing" (or dissenting) disruptive force, a theologian will have no advantage in judging the pertinence, completeness, or sufficiency of his enculturated church tradition's academic reach, validity, or even social relevancy. Or, in lay terms, whether he or she should change-or-not from prior positional commitments.

Moreover, whenever I hear of change occurring in a theologian's (or pastor's) academic position, I lately have taken the additional step of being more generously compassionate to that mindful theologian "caught between the traces" of a particular philosophical or theological debate or movement. In an earlier life (or version of myself) I would not have been so generous, nor so graciously permitting, for my traditions had taught me to be wary, critical, and unduly judgmental. Not necessarily good traits in broadening one's perspective of God, or of learning of His mysterious ways. Although in a positive sense, it did seek to lean on orthodox Christian tradition (but in a way that was selective within its perceived notions of orthodoxy), and to stay true to one's historical roots. While at the same time not realizing that orthodoxy must-and-will change even as the philosophical movements within society change (as Charles Jencks' diagram below shows, societies usually are dealing with more than one type of change within themselves). And as we change, so too will God's Word and commands change in measured response to societal perspectives and historical human transition and development:
 
Click to Enlarge
 
"The Century is Over" - Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture with its attractor basins,
by Charles Jencks, Architectural Review, July 2000, p. 77 - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/10/charles-jencks-look-at-modernism.html
 
What does this mean? That a Greek-based, Hellenistic (as versus Semitic) orthodoxy, grasped by the early-to-late Church Fathers through to the Medieval periods, can give rise to an anti-Catholic, pro-Lutheran understanding in the Reformation Age. That then transitions again under the Reformed and Enlightenment movement of the 16-17th Centuries into a variety of Modernistic expressions of orthodoxy today. Pick any biblical theme, or any subject matter, and perform a historic study of that theme and subject matter, and you will quickly understand how people's perspective of God's Word changes from era-to-era, culture-to-culture, respective to the deep changes occurring in their own lives. This is not new news. Only new news to those traditionalists who assume man stays the same - and his God with him. And if we change, then we err, because it is assumed that God cannot change... that He stays impassively the same from generation to generation. Which would be to confuse His divine attributes with His economic relationship with the world. And even then, to naively assume we have said all we can say after 2000 years of church studies and confessions about this Redeemer-Creator God we think we know. Statedly believing that God must always remain the same as defined by our "classically-reinforced" descriptions of Himself (whatever those may be dependent upon the era-and-culture you may find yourself in).

Consequently, whether at one time the church may have spoken effectively to one generation or not, it now may be speaking even less effectively if it does not first adapt and synthesize its "biblical" message. But more-often-than-not, churches lean on their traditions to interpret their view of the world - and God's pre-supposed response to it - not realizing that those views can be unnecessarily restrictive to the urgent needs of their generation languishing for lack of a relevant gospel message. Instead, we give to society our selective version of the gospel that makes us feel comfortable with ourselves, rather than tempering our traditions and dogmas so that God may speak both to us - even as He does to this lost world we live in. Change must be embraced, not refused and condemned. And with change will come changes to traditions and dogmas - which in the church's case, it fears most, making of it a religious institution rather than a living faith fellowship.

And yet, in reality, change is the hardest thing to do - especially for a pastor or an academic scholar - dependent upon funding for life and ministry. If they change, then they may lose their ministry. Especially if that change is perceived as too radical. (I recently listened to a faithful Christian friend declare with religious zeal-and-fervor her perceived rightness of a Christian professor's tenured dismissal from a local Christian college for his heresy to God's Word.... A heresy I might add that we support here at Relevancy22. The heresy? Evolution and Science.... I am constantly amazed how benighted we can become by our own dictates and whimsies all in the name of God). So that, because of one's training and background; the brevity of academic life or ministry; the stubbornness of one's pride, or previous commitments, or accomplishments; or the awkwardness of public scrutiny ill-favoring any type of fundamental change; or even because of one's resume, status, or location, each of these social warrants may inhibit the necessary growth-and-change required to make a transformation forward towards theological relevancy - and away from the irrelevancy of one's favored interpretations of God's Word.

For some reason, as humans we don't like change. And when we do change it can disrupt us, sometimes greatly. But if the pace of societal shift has become so aggressively pronounced, then our former position may have to change as aggressively as well lest it die altogether in the streams of yesteryear's fast-fading eve of well-intentioned thoughts. Thus ideas and observations by classicists like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; or philosopher's like Nietzsche, Kant, and Kierkegaard; or even theologians like Augustine, Calvin, Barth, or N.T. Wright; will ebb-and-flow from century-to-century, era-to-era. Sometimes arriving as a heavy-handed disruptive event. And sometimes with hardly any disruption at all. Admittedly, nothing stays static. Not even theology. Though we piously quote to ourselves "God's Word never changes," while all-the-while suggesting by this fickled statement our firm resistance to change. And although we may think this to be true, we neglect to comprehend that it is we ourselves who are the one who must ultimately change. For if we do not, we become legalistic, or religious, and die to the living Word of God as it moderates our understanding with God's own understanding of His revealing Word. Moreover, our language and communications with one another must grow and adapt if God's Word is to live. And even our collective perspective as a church in its living witness within this world's ever-turbulent events and ideas must also evolve and accommodate lest that church dies as an irrelevant (if not irreverent) institution rather than as a living body of Jesus followers . For if we do not learn to re-learn, than we are judged to have failed, to be naive,  judgmental, unloving, or in grievous personal disrepute with the Word itself as it reaches out to save all men - and not just some according to our own religious rules and dogmas.

In summary, please enjoy these classical readings by A.W. Tozer, and through them become more accommodative to the necessary adaptation to ideas about God towards a more updated form of Christianity known as Emergent (or Postmodern) Christianity. A transitionary form that will carry with it its own disciplines of theology, doctrine, and dogma (as much as I hate to admit it). Why? Because we are symbolic beings whose ideas must become visualized and enacted. And as much as I would like to encourage abstract theology it is without practicality to the masses dependent upon regionally translated form and shape. By which we get doctrine and dogma. But, the key to all of this is to be always willing to allow God to reshape our doctrines and dogmas as His Word must demand in order to speak afresh to the masses of the world around us. Should it not, than all of our creeds and confessions will become meaningless rather than timeless. And timeless because we each live within a generation or two of growth where our effectiveness slowly must change with the changes of humanity. Nothing can last for long, as evidenced by the names of the movements I have mentioned above (not even Reformed, Evangelical, Christianity). But that does not mean that we don't appreciate the importance of the Church set in place by God to minister to that time-and-era. But to keep in remembrance that all things change. And it is mostly ourselves, and our societies, that gives to us our finite incompleteness before the Holy One of Israel become our Redeemer Savior.

Consequently, it's important to know your theological history. To know how theology has changed and adapted through the eras of the Church. And to discern what is to be kept and not kept. Not simply by degrees but perhaps by envisioning whole new ages - which is what I suspect is now happening within the Church today as it transitions from denominational Christianity to an Emerging form of Christianity that may be denominational. Or regional. Or even pluralistic and multi-cultural (I think all of the above). Historically, fundamental theologic change seems to occur every 500-1000 years: the Reformation would be one such event; the Middle Ages another such event. But as this world grows older and closer in our communities with one another, we should not be surprised if this were to occur again today as we transition from the 20th to the 21st century - caught in the swift-and-deep currents of public policy, trade, and societal uplift and transformation. These are the fundamental shifts that we are witnessing and caught up within. Shifts that come-and-go with amazing rapidity (cf. Jencks' philosophical map again for the breadth of change these past 100 years as brought!) but can be fundamentally described and understood through an evolving apprehension for their broader movement.

And yet, it is vitally important that the Church knows how to speak God's word afresh to the world around us. However set in its ways. However unpersuaded, or doubtful, of its timely forward movement. Or however uncertain and threatening it may feel. Still, as leaders and shepherds of the Church, as good and faithful guides to Jesus' flock, as patient disciplers and mentors to the future generations of leadership, the Church must be willing to bend and change while ever remaining faithful to God's message of love and grace unto salvation and good works. We are not bound by law. Nor bound by tradition. Nor by men's ideas. But we are bound to be pleasing to God's open heart of love and mercy to all men so that peace, justice, and goodwill be present everywhere. Let this temperance then be our ready guide and ever faithful companion. And until that day let us pursue a growing, discerning theology that would not hinder God's revelation to man. Amen.

R.E. Slater
October 21, 2012
revised, August 6, 2013

*Postscript: Relational Theology expressed within an Open Theology
has become very satisfying as you will discover as I write about each
in the months and years ahead. - res, 8.6.2013

 

The Knowledge Of The Holy
by
A.W. Tozer



CONTENTS

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PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 Why We Must Think Rightly About God

CHAPTER 2 God Incomprehensible

CHAPTER 3 A Divine Attribute: Something True About God

CHAPTER 4 The Holy Trinity

CHAPTER 5 The Self-existence Of God

CHAPTER 6 The self-sufficiency Of God

CHAPTER 7 The Eternity Of God

CHAPTER 8 God’s Infinitude

CHAPTER 9 The Immutability Of God

CHAPTER 10 The Divine Omniscience

CHAPTER 11 The Wisdom Of God

CHAPTER 12 The Omnipotence Of God

CHAPTER 13 The Divine Transcendence

CHAPTER 14 God’s Omnipresence

CHAPTER 15 The Faithfulness Of God

CHAPTER 16 The Goodness Of God

CHAPTER 17 The Justice Of God

CHAPTER 18 The Mercy Of God

CHAPTER 19 The Grace Of God

CHAPTER 20 The Love Of God

CHAPTER 21 The Holiness Of God

CHAPTER 22 The Sovereignty Of God

CHAPTER 23 The Open Secret


Chris Tomlin - Holy Is The Lord (Audio)
christomlinmusic  |  Jan 13, 2022  |  4:12




Quotes by A.W. Tozer
 


"If there's anything necessary to your eternal happiness but God, you're not the kind of Christian that you ought to be. For only God is the true rest." A.W. Tozer, Attributes of God, (c) 1997, pg. 30"
 
Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self- existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under disapprobation" A. W. Tozer, "Knowledge of the Holy", pg. 93
 
Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. " God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me. (Worship: The Missing Jewel, 24).
 
Looking at what John wrote, I wonder how so many present – day Christians can consider an hour of worship Sunday morning as adequate adoration of the holy God who created them and then redeemed them back to Himself…
 
God is please with His people when His praise is continually and joyfully on their lips. The heavenly scene John describes is the unceasing cry of the adoring living creatures, "Holy, holy, holy!" They rest not, day or night. My fear is that too many of God’s professing people down here are resting far too often between their efforts at praise. (Jesus is victor! 67, 68).
There is a point in true worship where the mind may cease to understand and goes over to a kind of delightful astonishment---probably to what Carlyle described as "transcendent wonder," a degree of wonder without limit and beyond expression!….
 
It is always true that an encounter with God brings wonderment and awe! (Renewed Day by Day, Volume 1, Feb. 8).
 
It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing; and the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. He may be church member who keeps the rules and obeys the discipline, and who tithes and goes to conference, but he’ll never be a worshiper unless he is deeply humbling. (Worship: The Missing Jewel, 4,5).
 
I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven. (Whatever Happened to Worship? 13)
 
In my opinion, the great single need of the moment is that light-hearted superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple. The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the Shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to our own devices and forced to make up the lack of spontaneous worship by bringing in countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church people. (Keys To The Deeper Life, 87 & 88).
In the majority of our meetings there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought, no recognition of the unity of the body, little sense of the divine Presence, no moment of stillness, no solemnity, no wonder, no holy fear. (God tells the Man who Cares 4,5).
I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men…
 
With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. (The Knowledge of the Holy, viii, viii).
 
Now we were made to worship, but the Scriptures tell us something else again. They tell us that man fell and kept not estate; that he forfeited the original glory of God and failed to fulfill the creative purpose, so that he is not worshipping now in the way that God meant him to worship. All else fulfills its design; flowers are still fragrant and lilies are still beautiful and the bees still search for nectar amongst the flowers; the birds still sing with their thousand voice choir on a summer’s day and the sun and the moon and the stars all move on their rounds doing the will of God.
 
And from what we can learn from the Scriptures we believe tat the seraphim and cherubim and powers and dominions are still fulfilling their design – worshipping God who created them and breathed into them the breath of life. Man alone sulks in his cave. Man alone, with all of his brilliant intelligence, with all of his amazing, indescribable and wonderful equipment, still sulks in his cave. He is either silent, or if he opens his mouth at all, it is to boast and threaten and curse; or it’s nervous, ill-considered laughter, or it’s humor become big business, or it’s songs without joy. (Worship: The Missing Jewel, 6,7).
 
"The Chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."…
 
Yes, worship of the loving God is man’s whole reason for existence. That is why we are born and that is why we are born again from above. That is why were created and recreated. That is why there was a genesis at the beginning re-genesis, called re-generation. (Whatever Happened to Worship? 56, 57).
 
The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ. (Worship The Missing Jewel 7,8).
 
But a man who has passed the veil and looked eve briefly upon the holy face of Isaiah’s God can never be irreverent again. There will be a reverence in his spirit and instead of boasting, he will cover his feet modestly. (The Tozer Pulpit, Volume 1 Book 1 57,58).
 
But thinking is not enough. Men are made to worship also, to bow down and adore in the presence of the mystery inexpressible. Man’s mind is not the top pea, of his nature. Higher than his mind is his spirit, that something within him which can engage the supernatural, which under the breath of the Spirit can come alive and enter into conscious communion with heaven, can receive the divine nature and hear and feel and see the eneffable wonder that is God….
 
The wise of the world who have not learned tow worship are but demi-men, unformed and rudimentary. Their further development awaits the life – giving touch of Christ to wake them to spiritual birth and life eternal. (The Set of the Sail, 59).
 
Ultimately Abrahma discovered that only God matters….
 
Abraham was completely satisfied with God’s friendship. He becomes to us a faithful example in his willingness to put God first. With Abraham, only God mattered…
 
In Abraham’s encounter with God he learned why he was here upon earth. He was to Glorify God in all things and to continually worship… (Men who met God, 29, 30).
 
There is a necessity for true worship among us. If God is who He says He is and if we are the believing people of God we claim to be, we must worship Him….
 
Oh, how I wish I could adequately set forth the glory of the One who is worthy to be the object of our worship! I do believe that if our new converts – the babes in Christ—could be made to see His thousand attributes and even partially comprehend His being, they would become faint with a yearning desire to worship and honor and acknowledge Him, now and forever. (Whaterver Happened to Worship? 118).
 
God wants worshippers before workers; indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship. It is inconceivable that a sovereign and holy God should be so hard up for workers that He would press into service anyone who had been empowered regardless of his moral qualifications. The very stones would praise Him if the need arose and a thousand legions of angels would leap to do His will.

Gifts and power for service the Spirit surely desires to impart; but holiness and spiritual worship com first. (That Incredible Christian, 37). 
 
 
Continue to -
 
 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Creation Story of Genesis "From the Dust" Series @ Biologos

A Conversation About Genesis (RJS)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/10/11/a-conversation-about-genesis-rjs/
 
by RJS
October 11, 2012
Comments
 

We’ve been looking at the question of beginnings from the perspective of the early church fathers using Peter Bouteneff’s book. The post Tuesday concentrated on Basil – and his Hexaemeron. But it is also useful to listen to what contemporary Christian thinkers and biblical scholars have to say about Genesis.
 
This twelve minute clip comes from the new BioLogos DVD From the Dust directed by Ryan Pettey. An abbreviated version of this clip is contained within the film, the entire clip is included in the bonus footage on the DVD. The film is intended as a conversation starter – and is aimed at a Christian audience addressing the questions that many Christians wrestle with when it comes to science and the Christian faith. In this clip a number of different scholars, biblical scholars, scientists, and theologians comment on Genesis. It is a pretty good line up: Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne, John Walton, Karen Strand Winslow, Chris Tilling, Nancey Murphy, Peter Enns, Ard Louis, and N. T. Wright.
 
Science and Genesis
N.T. Wright, John Polkinghorne, Allister McGrath
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5bKa92eLkQM
 
 
Biologos "From the Dust" Series
http://biologos.org/resources/from-the-dust
 
 
A couple of highlights. John Walton points out the importance of culture in translation (6:18-6:35):
We’re well aware that people have to translate the language for us. We forget that people have to translate the culture for us. And therefore if we want to get the best benefit from the communication we need to try to enter their world, hear it as the audience would have heard it, as the author would have meant it, and to read it in those terms.
N. T. Wright at 8:17-9:05 reflects on the intent of Genesis 1 – he agrees with Walton, but also takes it in a his own direction.
Telling a story about somebody who constructs something in six days … it’s a temple story, it’s about God making a place for himself to dwell and this is heaven and earth and what you do with that is the last thing is you put an image of the God into this temple and suddenly Genesis 1 instead of it being “were there six days?” or “were there five?” or “were there seven?” or “were they 24 hours?”, it’s actually about when the good creator God made the world he made heaven and earth as the space in which he himself was going to dwell. And putting humans into that construct as a way of both reflecting his own love into the world and drawing out the praise and glory from the world back to himself. And that’s the literal meaning of Genesis.
And again at 10:32-11:05:
This world was made to be God’s abode, God’s home, God’s dwelling. He shared it with us and he now wants to rescue it and redeem it. So that we have to read Genesis for all it’s worth and to say either it’s history or myth is a way of saying I’m not going to study this text for all it’s worth. I’m just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask. And I think that is a form of actually being unfaithful to the text itself.

The whole clip is great – but if you only have time for a small bit the stretch from 8 or 9 minutes to 11 minutes shouldn’t be missed.
 
Basil looked at the text of Genesis 1 in the terms of his day. He didn’t read it with a consciousness of 21st century science, although he did have a sense of the futility of reading it in terms of 4th century science. He and Wright are on the same page in at least one respect, and probably more. The point of Genesis 1 is not science. It is not about concordance with science of the 4th century or the 21st century. It is about God, the glory of the creator and his creation.
 
What do you think of Wrights symphony analogy?
 
Do we tend to read the notes without experiencing the music when we read Genesis, or much of the rest of scripture for that matter?
 
From the Dust is available for purchase from Highway Media or from Amazon, ($20 DVD, $25 Blu-Ray).
 
A study guide for From the Dust has been prepared by David Vosburg, associate professor of chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. The guide was developed especially for use with college students, but can be used with a much broader group.
 
If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.
 
 
 

N.T. Wright: "Love Is the Name of the Game"

 
 
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/10/16/love-is-the-name-of-the-game-rjs/

by RJS
October 16, 2012
Comments
 
As I was preparing last week’s post A Conversation About Genesis, I came across the YouTube video of this extended reflection by Tom Wright put out by World Vision as part of a Faith Effect campaign in Australia. This is an excellent clip – well worth the 11 to 12 minutes or so it takes to watch it. In fact, it is well worth the 20 to 30 it takes to listen more than once and mull over some of the ideas.
 
The reflections here draw on the ideas in Wright’s book How God Became King as well of many of his earlier books. (I’d say his latest book, but it is already seven months old – so I am sure there are several since.)
 
NT Wright - extended interview for The Faith Effect
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iTAO74i0eW0
 
 
A few quotes to whet the appetite:
The vision which we find coming into full focus through Jesus actually goes right back to the beginning. It’s there in Genesis. When Jesus talks about what God is doing right now he is constantly invoking the sense of the ancient human vocation. God calls human beings to be his image bearers. (1:40-1:58)
This is how the Kingdom of God comes to earth. Wright goes on to reflect on the way Jesus approached the world and the people around him. The way of Jesus was …
…showing that God is running the world by healing, by bringing hope, by transforming, by bringing justice, by challenging the people who were doing the oppression and the wickedness and then by his own death taking the problems and the pains of all that into himself so that then these people who follow him can be the world transformers. (3:58-4:14)
 
The spread of Christianity …
The way Christianity spread over the first three centuries when the Romans were doing their best to stamp it out, was not simply by people going into the market place and saying Jesus is Lord you must believe in him, they did that too, but by people seeing that here was a community of people who lived in a totally different way. The Christians were known for going and helping people who were not their kith and kin, who were not part of their ethnic group or part of their business interests. If somebody was sick, if somebody was poor, the Christians would go and look after them. They’d say “why do you do that you’ve got nothing to gain by it” and they’d say “well, its because we follow Jesus and this is the way that Jesus does stuff”. So that it is what you do that generates the question to which the answer is Jesus is becoming king through his death and resurrection etcetra. (5:40-6:32)
As we are living as Christians we need to remake our categories and realize that heaven and earth really did come together in the incarnation, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We are not pinning our flag on God’s map – God did it. Grace transforms us so that we can be transformers. Wright uses this to go on and suggest that we should all be thinking about what God is calling us to do in the whole body of Christ.
 
But it all comes down to Love.
One day, in God’s new heaven and earth reality, Love is the language that we’ll be speaking, and we get to learn it and practice it in advance. It is like learning the songs that they will sing in God’s new world. We learn them and sing them here because we are supposed to people through whom a taste of the new world comes into the present. And again, if you think that that is just private and not something that goes out into the wider world you’ve missed the whole point. The whole point of love is that it is generous and outgoing. And so for Paul and for the other early Christian writers love is not just as it were one virtue among others. Love is almost the name of what it means to be a Christian. (11:24-11:36)
I don’t think Wright goes far enough in that last statement. He leaves some “wiggle-room.” But love is the name of what it means to be a Christian. No qualifier, no "almost." Wright doesn’t use this example – but I will: Living as though God is king means living in and reflecting out love. Love is the name of the game. Love God, love others. This theme runs through the gospels, it runs through Paul and the other New Testament writers. This theme gives a whole new perspective on the entire Old Testament. This isn’t the soft and wimpy approach, diminishing the gospel, it is the whole game. As God loves us so are we to love others.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)
 
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
 
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
And on, and on, and on (see something of a compilation in this post).
 
Wright’s reflection on the spread of Christianity is particularly important here. Scot put up a graphic on Saturday afternoon that illustrated a Decline in Religion. Some may doubt the reality of this trend – but it is self-evident in my world. Religious faith is viewed by most as unnecessary at best, irrational and dangerous at worst. We will not make a difference by having a better Sunday morning service, by serving better coffee, by having a more extroverted and energetic staff, by avoiding the hard questions, by keeping things shallow and palatable. Nor will we make a difference by focusing on precision in theological expression or the glory and sovereignty of God. We will make a difference by being the people of God such that his love is evident in us and through us. We must first care for the family of the people of God in our local church (why would any one join a family that rejects or marginalizes its own?) and we must also care for others locally and globally, not as an evangelistic gimmick to reel people in and keep churches stocked, but out of genuine love as a reflection of the very love of God. It is what we do and how we reflect God’s love in the world that will generate the questions to which the answer is Jesus is Lord. I am not a pessimist, I think that the Church will thrive through the power of the Spirit, but Christendom is behind us, and if it forces us to focus on the essence of being the people of God, that may be a good thing.
 
Is Love the name of the game?
 
If not, why not? Is the “almost” a justified qualifier?
 
 
If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

 

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

A Review of the Historic v. Canonical v. Creedal Jesus of the Church

McKnight has listed 5 criteria as necessary guidance on the historical vs. canonical vs. creedal Jesus debates.This is especially relevant to the Church's hermeneutical emphasis upon Jesus in today's current revelatory studies.
 
Basically, what is meant by the phrase, "the Historical Jesus of the Gospels," is that historians are attempting to discover the real Jesus behind the Gospels. That He has been technically lost "historically" and must be found apart from the early first century Church's description of Him. To which redactory endeavor I submit can, and cannot, be done having already become seamlessly integrated with the Gospels of the Bible by the Church through its canonization of the Gospels of Jesus. Meaning that, what we see in the Gospels is mostly the canonical Jesus of the Church. To find the historical Jesus is largely an endeavor in futility. It's like trying to write a history of ourselves apart from the legacy of ourselves developed around us. We see this in the many biographies of Winston Churchill or Theodore Roosevelt as biographers attempt to encapsulate "the man behind the myth." Each biographer's viewpoint is an interpretive viewpoint of the person they have met or studied - in this case Churchill or Roosevelt. Likewise we find this same "dilemma" in the many interpretive viewpoints of Jesus contained in the Gospels by (1) the Gospel writers themselves (Matthew, Mark/Peter, Luke/Paul, John). As well as (2) the many vignettes of Jesus given to those writers from their interpreted "sources" of eyewitness within the many Gospel stories collected and compiled by each author for their Gospel recount.
 
Right from the start we understand the difficulty of trying to unveil and discover "the man behind the myth," or, in this case, the historical Jesus of the Gospels. Now nearly everyone of us will have an interpretive view of our friends just as everyone who came into contact with Jesus will have thoughts of the same. To attempt to reduce who a person is from a collection of sources might describe a generalized account of that person (to some degree true, and to another degree untrue, based upon authorial repute or eyewitness veracity) but mostly this attempt becomes lost in the annuals of time as the decades and centuries roll by. What we are left with is the canonized story of Jesus found in the Gospels as upheld by the Church's historic councils directed to the purpose of preserving biographically true stories of Jesus (mostly found in the Gospels of the New Testament; as well as in the other books of the NT in another sense) as versus less biographically true stories of Jesus (known as the Gnostic Gospels of the NT). This then is what is meant by the canonical Jesus of the authorised NT (as authorised by the early church in the century or two afterwards), or the canonical Jesus of the Gospels, as versus the historical Jesus of the Bible. It's nearly an impossible task to find the historical Jesus, so that what can be said of Jesus can only be sanguine, mostly generalized statements, about Jesus. Things like, "Jesus was a good child," or "Jesus knew labor as a carpenter," or "Jesus grew up in a family," and was "an (biologically) adopted child in a sense" because of his unique birth to Mary, or "Jesus knew hunger and pain because of His humanity." However, it was Jesus as the incarnate Person of the Trinity, as God come to live and minister amongst men, as the Spirit-filled man, as the perfect revelation of God in both Godhead and humanity, that we glean from the biblical accounts, memoirs, and essays of the New Testament. This is the theology of Jesus from which we get from the canonized NT books of the Bible, and especially from the Gospels themselves. And this then is what we mean by the canonized Jesus. It doesn't mean that Jesus is any less historical, just that His personage bore an interpretive meaning behind (and within) it that superseded mere commentary on His lifestyle.
 
So what do we mean by the creedal Jesus then? Simply this... as the Church grasped Jesus' mission and gospel it developed an ensuing theology of Jesus (mostly redemptive in orientation). As example, for some bodies of believers they didn't understand Jesus' intermix of divinity and humanity - a common problem going back to the misunderstanding of one's theology about sin and materiality (is sin corporeal, is it spiritual, is it some combination of both, and if so, to what extent?). Which then required studies in harmatology (sin), theology proper (God), anthropology (man), pneumatology (the Holy Spirit), and so forth. Each area impacting the other area (much as I am attempting here in this blog by interweaving various doctrinal positions into a holistic version of Emergent Christianity). As a result various doctrinal ideas were propagated by the church - some believed Jesus less than divine. Others that Jesus was fully divine. Some that Jesus was sinless while others thought Jesus bore sin either spiritually or because of His corporeal body.
 
Consequently, how a church fellowship understood other parts of theology, philosophy, biblical doctrine and human endeavor was how they understood the Jesus they read about in the Bible. This is known as a believer's "frame of reference." In today's terms this means that we can be products of our environment formed by experiences in our church, by our religious background, even from our geographical era and family values, creating a very personalized frame of reference. A frame of reference that makes us, us - but a frame that is not easily circumvented beyond our own opinions upon subjects. As an example, generally, for older adults growing up in the mid- to late- 1900s they will have a modern, and not a postmodern, mindset. But within those large philosophical sets are additional "-isms" and "-ologies" that have influenced one's dispositional make-up as can be seen below by this societal map:
 
 (click on map to enlarge)
 
"The Century is Over" - Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture with its attractor basins,
by Charles Jencks, Architectural Review, July 2000, p. 77 - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/10/charles-jencks-look-at-modernism.html


Hence, one may have a Catholic orientation, a Baptist, agnostic or atheistic orientation, so that what a person's frame of reference is will be that person's depiction of Jesus to him or her. This is the same with a local or regional fellowship of believers. Their environment of societal variables determines what Jesus may have meant to them (as witnessed to by Rob Bell's Love Wins book - it was reviled by some parts of the country, and hailed in other parts of the country). So that today, many American denominations will behold Jesus differently from one another, having come from differing philosophical backgrounds. While in another sense many denominations and churches may be described as a common "societal class of congregants" bearing similar values, belief structures, and dogmas with one another as evidenced by whether one is a Protestant, a Catholic, Roman Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, liberal, progressive, moderate, evangelical, or even emergent Christian. Which is then reflective of that church's doctrinal positions of the Bible, theology and even of Jesus Himself. This then is what is meant by the creedal Jesus (as opposed to the historic Jesus and canonical Jesus).
 
So that, to a further extent, various branches of the Church went beyond basic interpretations of Jesus (for example, Jesus' redemptive ministry of salvation) to submit additional doctrinal interpretations about Jesus. For example, the controversies over the "hypostatic union of Christ" laid out a dozen or so positions about a fellowship's view of Jesus' humanity and/or divinity, about sin and materiality, about God, and so forth (see the historical charts at the end of this discussion). Many of these positions either didn't say enough about Jesus, or said too little. As a result, the Church accumulated continuing confessions about Jesus by adapting its reading of the New Testament to the times-and-circumstances of its societies, such that as regarding Christ's divine/human nature we see the Church's doctrine developing and maturing relative to this theology. A theology being played out in the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian, and Athanasian Creeds. Developing over time and place in response to its various (and vigorous) debates about Jesus' meaning for the Church's theological positions of the Bible.
 
Which is why a good biblical theology should also pay attention to (i) the historical creedal and confessional revisions of the church, as well as (ii) to study the historical eras the church worked and lived within - if not the very history of the church itself. It all adds up to a more complete study, and understanding, of the Scriptures, and specifically, of one's view of Jesus. Not that the past necessarily drives current discussions of theology, but seeks to inform theological discussion as it is pertinent or relevant to ideas and directions being discussed. As example, the postmodern direction of the early 21st Century is driving a resultant discussion of all things God, and the Bible, and is known under many names because of the many drivers contributing to the evolving discussion of Jesus. Myself, I prefer the edginess (and sometimes the impertinence) of Emergent Theology which seeks to maintain an orthodox relationship to the past while also pushing the envelopes of the theological future within a postmodern, post-Christendom setting.
 
Let me take a short commercial break here for several paragraphs ...
 
As such, Emergent Theology is still emerging (pun intended). And should not be defined by any one Emergent speaker or figurehead. Thus, I find hope in contributing to its evolving presence taking the best of my evangelical orthodox past and interrelating it to the best theological observations being made today. Which is why several new sidebar sections have opened up within Relevancy22 (sic, "An Open Faith and Open Theology," and "An Emerging Theology") as I take these past many months of emergent exploration and begin to interweave them towards larger conclusions.
 
Competing with Emergent theology is a neo-Reformed, neo-Calvinistic theology bearing the (safe) name Radical Orthodoxy. Each are dealing with postmodernism, but each are coming at it from differing directions and target audiences. Emergent Theology seems to be more free of church dogma and thus quicker to respond more relevantly towards a post-Christendom witness and mission. Its target audiences seem to be from all ranks of the church, plus the non-churched and unchurched masses of society who may have been abandoned, or set aside, by the church for one reason or another. As example, how many times do we read of Christian evolutionary professors removed from their posts by a Christian college? Do you ever wonder where these professors go? I would imagine they find work in another city and worship in another church. But these types of people are the would-be inhabitants filling the ranks-and-files of Emergent Christianity. Whether they use the name emergent or not. Because Emergent Christianity is a movement, not an organization. An attitude, not a doctrine.
 
Whereas Radical Orthodoxy is attempting to bring the fracturing churches of the evangelical movement along with itself while discovering similar ideological barriers to cross. Though past councils and creeds are helpful, the issues of postmodern society have changed requiring the postmodern church to respond with a theology that is relevant, contemporary, and meaningful. As such, to each-and-every theology that preaches Jesus we wish God's greatest blessings and Spirit-based inspiration regardless of name or structure. In the end, the bible must be made meaningful to today's generations. Not changed. Meaningful. And changed within our religious preferences and dogmas to become meaningful. Which is what Relevancy22 is attempting to do along with many other visionary prophets, preachers, theologians, writers, poets, organizations, and Christian media outlets.
 
Now back to our discussion...
 
This then is what is meant by the creedal Jesus of the Church to which the historical-Jesus redactors have attempted to strip away so that we may see (the enigma) of their own "real Jesus." Even as historical church theologians have attempted to strip away the canonical Jesus for their own church denomination's position on creedal propositions and statements.... Its hard not to think of these various redactory efforts not unlike Ezekial's "wheels within wheels within wheels," where one area leads to another area, leads to another area, which makes having a well-versed teacher, professor, set of books, or reference tools, important to one's discovery of the Christian faith. According to 1 John 1 we all have are own self-inflicted delusions to which we must attend. And pray to the Spirit of God that those delusions not harm redemption's resurrection of Jesus held within us.
 
Thus, I find I must reiterate McKnight's synthesized positions about the historic vs. canonized vs. creedal Jesus. Each point is found to be important. And each point is helpful to the task at hand. By way of summary he says that:
 
(1) historical Jesus studies are possible but the better effort is to be given to the canonical / creedal positional development of Jesus;
 
(2) each of the four Gospel stories of Jesus are four authorial viewpoints of the one historical personage of Jesus;
 
(3) historical revisionism of Jesus is of no use to the Church because it already has a canonical view of Jesus that supercedes all non-canonical (historic) views of Jesus;
 
(4) Jewish studies of Jesus will lead to important revisions of the Church's canonical and creedal views of Jesus.
 
This last sentiment is known as the "New Perspective of Paul" reinvigorating present Pauline studies using first-century Jewish theology while paying attention to the ancient Hebraic customs of the time. The idea is to recover the Church's doctrines backwards towards a more Jewish/OT flair and appreciation for its earlier Jewish times and settings. This does not mean that we are to become Jewish Christians and re-proselytize the Church. But that we are Messianic Christians who should try to better understand the deep Jewish culture of the New Testament through a re-orientation of our westernized theology backwards towards with an emphasis upon Jesus (aka Sanders, Dunn, Wright). But not towards any specific Jewish observance of calendar dates, dress, religious institutions, and the like, as evidenced by the well-meaning, and sincere, observations of Olive Tree Christians and the variant proselytized Gentile forms within Jewish Christianity.... This latter is yet another example of interpretive creedal difference just as we have discussed above between churches, denominations, and faith fellowships. Where Jesus is lifted up we are all one ecumenical body of Christ.
 
However, this latter effort also is a response to the Protestant Reformation itself, to its Westernized and Easternized elements of Christianity, and to Catholicism itself, resulting from each's interpretive imprint upon the early church's canonical and creedal views of Jesus that have become distinctly less appreciative of the Gospel's Near-Eastern, Semitic/Jewish cultural roots. If one is to properly read the Gospels and the New Testament, then one must pay attention not only to the Aramaic/Hebrew language but to its surrounding Hebrew culture latent in the Gospel and New Testament settings. If not, then we do an injustice upon the biblical texts by forcing our own Western, Eastern, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Evangelic doctrinal interpretations upon the text while missing the prevalent teachings of the NT writers about Jesus. Giving to us an unbalanced Gentile view of Scripture as versus a more-informed Jewish understanding of Scripture.
 
(5) And lastly, the Gospels are already interpretations of Jesus, who was thus canonized by the Gospel writer's simple act of reporting their observations of Jesus, and of the meaning of His ministry and resurrection for us. Thus giving rise to a variety of creedal versions about Jesus which have arisen through the Church's continual reassessment of the Jesus of Scripture, and of Scripture itself. In historic response, there then arose from the Church various acclaimed "creeds and confessions" for the guidance of fellowship and community life. (A small list of these can be found here on this blog under the section "Notable Creeds and Confessions of the Church. Whereas the charts below are just one instance of a creedal history pertaining to one theological development within the church. Hence, there are many more denominational/orthodox distinctives should one begin to consult the general historical development of the Church since its first century origins out of Jerusalem and Judea.)
 
At the last, the canonical Jesus and the creedal Jesus is the Church's Jesus. The historical Jesus endeavor is not realistic for if it could be done it would simply discover the Jesus we know from the Bible. No more and no less. Thus, this historic redactory effort is not theologically informative. For its intent is to strip away Jesus' divine personage thinking to find simply a fleshly man dressed in religious garments bearing a passionate, universal message. To find Jesus no longer God Incarnate. Nor as man's Redeemer-Savior. But become like a Buddha, a Mohammad, or even a Joseph Smith, the Mormon, each of whom were significant figures to their religions. But of no importance to the revelatory salvation of God incarnated in Christ Jesus as portrayed to us by the first century Church's canonized record laid out in the New Testament. I think they got it right. And I trust we will too. I hope this helps.
 
R.E. Slater
October 15, 2012
rev. January 25, 2013
 

 


A simplified chart of historical developments of major groups within Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity#Creeds



 
 

Historical Jesus Contrarian

 
Point 2: My contention is further that this reconstruction occurs over against the church’s Jesus, which is found in the Gospels (four presentations, not four “gospels” — not four “Jesuses” either, but four gospels presenting the Story of the one Jesus in four ways) and then developed even more in the Creed. The point of departure for historical Jesus studies is that the church either got Jesus wrong or said too much. The historical Jesus will be the real Jesus over against the church’s more theologized Jesus.
 
If you don’t accept these two premises, we have no discussion. If you do, we’ve got one. Again: it’s about reconstruction over against what the church thinks. Historical Jesus studies are decidedly contrarian to orthodoxy and the church and even the Gospels, if I may say so, and that is why they subject the church’s Jesus to criticism.
 
Point 3: And my contention is that historical Jesus studies, because it is all about reconstructing Jesus over against what the church has always believed, are of no use to the church. Why? Because the church knows what it believes about Jesus: The Gospels are the first source and then the Creed will be the second source for what the Church believes. [I want to avoid the Creed vs. Canon debate for this post because I'm intent on explaining what it means to do "historical Jesus studies."]
 
My contention is not that it is impossible to do historical Jesus studies — in other words, I do think historical methods, when folks stick to the methods, can discover what the method permits for discovery. (That’s the historical Jesus as reconstructed on the basis of methods, and my Jesus and His Death is that kind of historical Jesus book.) Some have said it is impossible to do historical Jesus studies because we don’t have any brute facts to interpret in another way. I disagree; I do think the methods are useful for historical purposes.
 
Point 4: My contention, further, is that “examining the Jesus of the Gospels [canonical Jesus] in his Jewish context” is not the same as “historical Jesus studies.” Canonical Jesus study sets an interpreted Jesus [canonical Jesus] in his Jewish context while historical Jesus study gets behind the canonical Jesus to the (less interpreted) real Jesus and sets that reconstructed figure in his historical context. I’m all for historical study of the canonical Jesus.
 
Point 5: And my contention is that the Gospels are already interpretations of Jesus, that is, the Gospel writers were “historians” in some sense and strung together facts about Jesus into a narrative that was designed to “gospel” Jesus to its readers. That is the church’s Jesus, the canonical Jesus, and that is the Jesus the church believes in. The creedal Jesus develops the canonical Jesus, and even if many think the creedal Jesus said too much, that does not change that the creedal Jesus is also the church’s Jesus.
 
If the church opts for the historical Jesus, it must choose to disregard the canonical Jesus for a reconstruction of Jesus on the basis of historical methods.
 
 
 

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A Believer's Statement of Faith: What a “Confessing Evangelical Believes" and What a "Confessing Emergent Believes"


Why I am a “confessing emergent”
(an addendum to Dr. Roger Olson's statement of faith)

R.E. Slater
October 15, 2012


I wish to submit Dr. Olson's article written about his personal statement of faith (found further below) to show how a good Evangelical statement of faith should read and be about. Most importantly, my attention was drawn by what he did not say, nor included, in his statement of faith. Rather he left that door open as a personal preference to any Christian's faith convictions that would shade a follower of Jesus towards one doctrinal direction or another (as example, like myself, Dr. Olson doesn't teach the inerrancy of the bible, but does teach the infallibility of the bible where-and-when it speaks to salvation).  In fact, anyone that reads Dr. Olson's postings will soon discover that his brand of Evangelicalism is a bit more progressive in form than the typical Evangelical position. And by that I mean that he stands a little more temperate on divisive issues; a little broader in areas demanding exclusivity; a little more moderate in terms of politics and lifestyle; much less inclined to make judgement upon people (unless it involves rash and hasty Evangelics parading their lists of do's and don'ts about publicly); and overall harkens back to that earlier age of nascent Evangelicalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s that was less nailed down than it has become today. And by updating his faith has shown how to "progress" that faith to a more contemporary form of Evangelicalism that is relevant to today's societies, issues, and concerns.
 
In fact, Dr. Olson's understanding of progressive-conservative Evangelicalism is very much similar to my moderate-conservative Emergent Christian statement of faith as I currently understand it. The latter of which is an outgrowth from the former for some of us; for others it is not. Moreover, it is a newer expression of progressive Evangelical doctrine that is less interested in being included in Evangelical discussions where they are exclusionary; less worried that it speaks "the right way" about God and the Bible; less concerned whether it is accepted by the older regimes of God's Evangelical gatekeepers. That would speak up to the abuses and sins of Evangelical rhetoric and thought forms as much as it would to the ills and injustices of the world; that lives its faith by deeds and actions, and not by empty words and expressions; that rejects definition by logistical biblical statements melded down into systematic doctrinal statements and creedal confessions (not that these aforementioned statements aren't helpful so much as they are not binding in the denominational sense); more willing to see the mystery and majesty of God in our daily lives; more interested in discovering God's presence in humanity, society and the cosmos; less fixed to societal and religious forms; and more willing to allow the Gospel of Jesus to matriculate into its many multi-cultural forms of pluralism, pluralistic ideologies, religions, and faith in general.
 
And for my part, I wish to speak of an Emergent Christianity that is less careless with its doctrinal positions; less mystical and ignorant of its Christian heritage; more certain of its biblical direction; more grounded in the Word of God and not in presumptive ideas about the Word of God; more fixed in an expanding tradition of progressive, open hermeneutic that is incarnational and inspirational; that emphasizes narrative theology over syllogistic semantics; that prefers good biblical theology over good propositional statements; that pursues the story of faith over the mathematical precisions of exacerbating dogmas; that yearns for the grander horizons of possibility and invasive providence in a wider world lost in sin, death, toil, and turmoil. An emerging faith that can live and breathe again in the celestrial airs of the Spirit of God when embracing the Bible in dynamically re-invigorating ways freed from the cultural (or sub-cultural) boundaries of dead and dying faiths becoming more and more irrelevant to this and future generations; and lastly, in a faith that passes away like a thief in the night as God reveals the Gospel of Jesus given to humanity to know and understand, to believe and enact.
 
Yes, a good, clear statement of faith that is non-divisive and overall helpful to sorting out what Christianity is, is always something that can be helpful and directional in a person's life. But both I and Dr. Olson will be the first to say that our walk with God only begins there. It doesn't end there. And it is to that far horizon of what it could be, and become, that we each encourage those saints and sinners amongst us to know God's love for all men. Not just some men. And to know God's clear intentions to become an integral part of our life however much we might disbelieve His loving presence to never be part of our lives. For it is the Christian tenet of the Bible that God has given man hope through the resurrection of His Son Jesus, and through the ministry and empowerment of the Spirit, and by the guidance of His Word, and fellowship of His church. We are not without witnesses. They are bountifully present everywhere in our lives though we see them not. And like the Apostle Paul, when those darkened scales fall off our eyes we will see those witnesses in all their many forms, brightnesses, and variegated colours resplendent around us. Unwavering. Steady and clear. To this we give praise and thanksgiving to our loving Savior, Creator-God. This then is our further statement of a progressive, escalating, emerging faith. Amen.
 
R.E. Slater
October 15, 2012
 
 
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Why (and how) I am a “confessing evangelical”
(a response to Al Mohler, et al.)

by Dr. Roger Olson
October 7, 2012
 
In [the book,] The Spectrum of Evangelicalism (to which I contributed a chapter and responded to other authors’ chapters), Al Mohler touted what he calls “confessing evangelicalism.” I suspect he thinks I’m not one. In fact, he more or less wrote (in his response to my chapter and the book’s conclusion) that I’m not an evangelical at all. He said it in a nice way, though. :)
 
I want to go on record that I AM (!) a “confessing evangelical.”
 
Many people think that, in order to be a “confessing evangelical,” you have to sign someone else’s written creed or statement of faith. That’s nonsense. All you have to do is “confess” evangelical beliefs.
 
People ask me what I think about written statements of faith. Well, I’ve written one! (I’m not going to cite it here, but some years ago I was asked by the dean of a seminary to write one for his seminary and I did. He published it as that seminary’s semi-official statement of faith without revision. But I wrote it with the agreement that he would never require anyone to sign it.) But here’s what I think about statements of faith:
 
Churches and other Christian organizations should not rely on written statements of faith but should ask potential employees and community members to offer their own faith statements (by which I mean doctrinal statements). In other words, rather than putting a written statement in front of them and asking them to sign it or swear allegiance to it, they should ask them to produce their own statements of belief about God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. And then they should examine them and determine whether the person belongs among them. I hope that would be done generously.
 
Whenever I look at a statement of faith someone else wrote, I find a word or phrase or sentence or paragraph I’m not sure about. I might or might not believe it. Often it’s a matter of terminology. There’s no “one size fits all” detailed statement of faith. And too often such statements of faith (that pretend to be one size fits all) are poorly written, sloppy, vague and include paragraphs someone insisted on sometime in the past that are tangential to the gospel (at best).
 
Now, I do think it’s fine for a Christian organization (church, college, seminary, mission agency, etc.) to have a written statement of faith as a CONSENSUS STATEMENT only. “This is what our community generally believes to be true.” But I’m opposed to requiring individuals to sign them. In place of that, I suggest individuals wishing to join (be hired, become members, whatever) be given the opportunity to write out their own doctrines. Then there should be a trusted group (deacons, elders, pastoral staff, committee, whatever) who looks at it and decides if the person’s beliefs are sufficiently consistent with the organization’s ethos.
 
So, I always have my statement of faith ready for that purpose and for anyone who wants to see it. It’s not at all private; it’s my faith declaration to the world. “This is what I believe” as an evangelical Christian. Of course, I believe much more, but these are the beliefs that matter. If someone wants me to write down something else and sign it, I probably don’t want to belong to that community. This is sufficient.
 
So here is what I confess as a Confessing Evangelical. I challenge anyone to say I’m not a Confessing Evangelical in light of this. As I said, “confessing” doesn’t necessarily mean signing someone else’s creed or confessional statement. It can also mean (and in my case does mean) confessing evangelical Christian beliefs in my own words.
 
A Statement of the Faith of Roger E. Olson
No written statement of faith can express everything that a person or group believes. This is my brief confession of Christian beliefs. It contains what I consider the essentials of my own Christian faith (in terms of cognitive content). Of course, I believe much more, but this suffices to express my basic beliefs as a Christian.
 
Part One: Christian Beliefs
 
*The first paragraph of each article expresses what I believe all Christians ought to believe as Christians.
 
*The second paragraph of each article expresses my own beliefs that are not dogmas of Christian orthodoxy.
 
Jesus Christ
 
I believe that Jesus Christ is God, Savior and Lord of all creation; he is the perfect revelation of God as well as God incarnate, the only perfect mediator between God and humanity, “truly human and truly divine.” I affirm that he was born of a virgin, died an atoning death for the sins of the world, was raised from death to a new form of bodily life by God, and ascended into heaven. He will return in glory, establish his kingdom and inaugurate a new heaven and new earth.
 
Jesus Christ experienced human life without sin but including growth in knowledge and relationship with God. He was the eternal Logos, Son of God, self-emptied of glory and power, relying entirely on the Holy Spirit for knowledge of God and self and for power to accomplish miracles.
 
God
 
I believe in the one God, Yahweh, creator of all ex nihilo, who eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit: three divine persons sharing one eternal divine life and being. God is the creator of all whose rule knows no end. This one triune God is eternally self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent as well as perfectly good, loving, just, holy, righteous, wise, faithful and merciful.
 
God graciously and freely enters into such intimacy of relation with creation that he is affected by it; God experiences genuine feelings of sorrow and joy in response to creatures’ decisions and actions. All that is to say that God is more like a person than a principle or power.
 
Humanity
 
I believe that human persons are created in God’s image and likeness but that all persons (except Jesus Christ) come into the world under the curse of sin and need reconciliation with God when they attain the age of accountability and sin willfully.
 
Humans (except Jesus Christ) are totally depraved due to inborn sin (original, inherited sin); they are unable to initiate a right relationship with God apart from God’s prevenient grace that restores free will and ability to respond to the gospel call.
 
Redemption
 
I believe the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ provide the only redemption from sin and that Christ died for all people; reconciliation and new life connected to God are possible only through his death and resurrection.
 
Reconciliation of God to the world was accomplished once and for all by the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for all people. Individual redemption as restoration to right relationship with God depends only on a person’s repentance and faith which are free and uncoerced responses to the gospel made possible by God’s prevenient grace.
 
Salvation by Grace
 
I believe that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith and that people cannot save themselves by works of righteousness but that works of righteousness are products of the Holy Spirit who indwells believers by faith.
 
A right, saving relationship with God is entirely God’s gift as is inward transformation in righteousness, but these depend on faith which is passive reception of God’s gift and not a meritorious work.
 
Conversion
 
I believe that authentic Christian life begins with conversion to Christ which involves repentance and faith in him; conversion to Christ results in justification (forgiveness) and regeneration (new birth). These are gifts that cannot be earned or inherited.
 
Conversion to Christ is individual and conscious and cannot happen to an infant or by means of any outward sign or symbol (sacrament). Children of believers before conversion are not Christians but pre-Christians. Their inclusion in the people of God is by means of covenant between God and families.
 
Sanctification and Glorification
 
I believe that converted persons receive the indwelling Holy Spirit who unites believers with Christ and who imparts inward holiness for obedience to God, love of God and other people, and power for service to God, his church and the world. The culmination of this process is glorification in which believers, at the resurrection, are made partakers of the divine nature (“deification”).
 
Sanctification is a gradual process of cooperation between the believer and the indwelling Holy Spirit. The ability is entirely God’s, but the accomplishment depends on the believer’s willing reception of the Spirit’s work in his or her life. “Infilling of the Holy Spirit” is a work of the Spirit subsequent to conversion and crucial for empowerment for service to God and his kingdom.
 
Scripture and Creeds
 
I believe that the sixty-six books of Holy Scripture are supernaturally inspired by God’s Spirit and are the sole supreme authority under God for Christian believing and living.
 
Jesus Christ is the criterion of interpretation of Scripture. (“Scripture is the cradle that holds the Christ child.”) Creeds and confessional statements are not instruments of doctrinal accountability but expressions of common faith under the authority of Christ and Scripture. They have at most a relative authority for individual Christians and congregations.
 
The Church
 
I believe that the church was instituted by Jesus Christ to be the people of God and is made up of all true believers regardless of race, gender, age or station in life. Its necessary marks are unity in the Spirit, universality (diversity), apostolicity of teaching, and holiness (separation from evil), proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and celebration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
 
The church visible is the local congregation of believers. I regard evangelism and missions for the salvation of the lost and social transformation of the world to approximate the future kingdom of God to be essential works of the church as well as individual callings.
 
The Lord’s Return and Kingdom
 
I believe in the future, visible return of Jesus Christ and the bodily resurrection to glory of all believers who welcome his return. I believe in the consummation of God’s kingdom over all beginning with judgment. Heaven and hell are the eternal destinies of the righteous and unrighteous.

After Christ’s return he will rule and reign on earth for a thousand years (Revelation 20) after which will come the new heaven and new earth, a resurrection of all creation (Romans 8).
 
Social Justice
 
I believe God calls his people to anticipate the coming kingdom of God through acts of charity and social justice. We are called to help the poor and powerless to live truly human lives and to be prophetic witnesses for Christ’s lordship over every area of creation. We cannot be comfortable with what will not exist in God’s future kingdom on earth. Individual churches must determine for themselves, under the leadership of God’s Spirit, what involvement for social justice means for them.

Christian social justice includes striving by all means compatible with Christian love to eradicate oppression and war.
 
Part Two: Baptist Distinctives
 
I believe in the autonomy of the local congregation, rule of the congregation’s affairs by its regenerate members under God, separation of church and state and voluntary cooperation between congregations for evangelism and education.
 
I believe in freedom of conscience from government domination or control and in the liberty and competency of every Christian believer to interpret Scripture and go directly to God in prayer.
 
I believe individuals ought to function as believers within accountability to the body of Christ which means respect for the Great Tradition of Christian doctrine and for the faith of the local congregation.
 
I believe there is no absolute line of demarcation between mature believers and clergy; every adult believer is to function within the body of Christ as a minister. The role of ordained clergy is primarily that of prophecy and teaching although every Christian may prophecy and teach. Some (clergy) are especially trained for these roles and recognized as especially gifted for them by the congregation.
 
I believe in two ordinances instituted by Christ to be observed by his people until he returns: water baptism of believers and the Lord’s Supper. These are public acts of commitment to Jesus Christ and his church.