Index to Calvinism v. Wesleyanism
Quotes & Sayings
We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
-----
Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Friday, October 4, 2013
Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Sovereignty v. Freedom"
The Big One in Calvin vs. Wesley
by Scot McKnight
Oct 4, 2013
Though Don Thorsen does not say so, his study of “Humanity: More Freedom than Predestination” contains some ideas that may be the big difference between Calvin and Wesley (Calvin vs Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice). Maybe we can reduce it to this: Calvin thinks Wesley trivializes the sovereignty of God while Arminians think Calvin trivializes freedom. Let’s explore this topic through Don Thorsen’s chapter.
What do you think is the biggest difference between Calvin and Wesley?
Both Calvin and Wesley believe all humans are made in God’s image, and are fallen in Adam. There is then depravity on both sides — and it seems to me both see the fall as extensive more than intensive, that is, affecting the whole of each human more than total corruption. Notably, Calvin posits divine providence and intention behind the fall without diminishing human responsibility. God determined it; humans are responsible; Christians are to accept this. As early as 1551 in Geneva some thought Calvin implicated God as the author of evil, but Calvin banned his opponents from the city.
Wesley, notably again, believed God voluntarily chose to limit his sovereignty by granting humans (what he called) “free grace” or what we might call human freedom or free will. “Wesley thought that Calvin could not avoid making God ultimately responsible for evil” (33). I agree that Calvin’s logic of holding two together and contending that we are not to ask or know how they relate is not compelling. If God determined it — meticulous providence or meticulous sovereignty — and humans could not resist it, then it is not free or compatible. Calvin puts it this way: “God wills that humans want to act the way they are foreordained to act” (34).
Wesley did not think humans could do anything to earn redemption; everything good done is by the grace of God. In essence, Wesley follows a large bloc of the Christian tradition in arguing for a measured human freedom by grace in the power of the Spirit.
Hence, Calvin’s (at least later in his career) double predestination is detested by Wesley. Calvin diminishes the freedom of God’s sovereignty and God’s love and goodness… etc. So for him [Wesley] election is connected to divine foreknowledge, but what humans choose to do in that foreknowledge is prompted by God’s prevenient gift of grace. That grace, then, is the grace of human freedom to choose. God’s predestination is more connected to God’s general will*. He asked, “How can the Judge of all the earth consign them [the damned] to everlasting fire, for what was in effect his own act and deed?” (38). That is the difference.
Wesley preferred the expression of “free grace” over “free will.” It was God’s grace to give humans freedom.
Thorsen finishes with a discussion of monergism vs. synergism: [respectively,} "one divine will determining all" vs. "a divine human cooperative," though these are not terms from either Calvin or Wesley [but from later systematic theologians - res].
* * * * * *
*Addendum
Perhaps this might help... Wesleyanism (or Arminianism) does invokes God's foreknowledge as an ontological reality, otherwise the process of redemption would not have been planned even as creation was being planned. This would make of God a blundering builder and architect having to implement Plan B of Redemption after discovering sin to have ruined His Plan A of original creation. So, in terms of ontological reality, God did both plan for, purposed, and foreknew, His involvement in creational redemption.
But what was not decreed by God is His exacted foreknowledge upon His indeterminate creation and free-willed mankind. Even as sin reduces man's freedom, so by divine fiat of redemption would God purposely enhance man's freedom leaving to both creation and humanity an open future. A future as much open to sin and destruction as it is to holiness and redemption. Though God foreknows His plans for redemption He leaves it open to ourselves to submit to His plans. But not without the provision of His Spirit who woos all towards God's will - and not just some (elect) as Calvinism would teach. To the Arminian, the "elect of God" are those men and women who obey God's call of redemption - not by God's foreknowledge, but by their own Spirit-driven calling founded upon God's (prevenient) grace.
Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Thinking and Living: Sovereignty v. Grace"
Calvinist in Thinking, Wesleyan in Living
by Scot McKnight
Sep 27, 2013
Don Thorsen, observing over his years many of his Reformed friends, has concluded this: “Although they claimed to be Calvinist, they lived more like Wesley.” Which leads Don to say this: “Although John Calvin profoundly influenced the development of Christianity, John Wesley did a better job than Calvin of conceptualizing and promoting Christian beliefs, values, and practices as described in the Bible and as lived by Protestant Christians.”
This is just the opening to Don Thorsen, Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing the Belief in Line with Practice, and no one less than Roger Olson has said this book may have a “versus” in the title but it is clearly an irenic book [("tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory" - Webster's dictionary)].
I agree. So join me in this discussion, and I hope this series will inspire Calvinists to read some Wesley and Wesleyans to read some Calvin.
Thorsen’s intent is not to criticize so much as to compare and evaluate. Wesley agreed with Calvin on most topics, most notably on justification. So, as Don says it, don’t expect a fight or to fight. His big idea is that Wesley provides a better understanding of Christianity and the Christian life in practice than Calvin does in theory. Wesley’s theology is a lived theology while Calvin’s, so he’s arguing, was not so much so.
Put differently, the Christian life is not so easily susceptible to a system, which was Calvin’s soup du jour or at least his daily bread. (SMcK: I give an example. I’ve been hearing for a few years on the part of those advocating gospel-drenched and grace-shaped living that we should not preach the Sermon on the Mount or the commands of the Bible or the imperatives of the letters. That’s a theology not susceptible to being shaped by the way of Jesus, or how the apostles themselves understood how to teach the Christian life.)
Thorsen then proposes a Wesleyan acrostic to counter the Calvinist acrostic TULIP:
T- Total Depravity
U - Unconditional Election
L - Limited Atonement
I - Irresistible Grace
P - Perseverance of the Saints
Wesleyanism is ACURA:
A - All are sinful
C - Conditional election
U - Unlimited atonement
R - Resistible grace
A - Assurance of salvation.
OtherWesleyans like the anacronym DAISY:
D - Depravity of all
A - Atonement for
all
I - Inclusion of all
S -
Salvation as gift to all
Y - You, or anyone, may accept
or reject
*cf., DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism, by R.E. Slater
On God: Thorsen’s main idea is that Wesley talked more about God’s love and not as much about sovereignty, while Calvin was more sovereignty and less on the love of God.
Calvin’s emphases are majesty, sovereignty, power, providence … Calvin himself: “To sum up, since God’s will is said to be the cause of all things, I have made his providence the determinative principle for all human plans and works… ” (3). Reason cannot comprehend God’s ways and so humility is central.
Wesley, too, believed in God’s sovereignty. But his approach was not so much through power but through holiness and God’s relationship with humans, a relationship noted by love. And that shaped his view of sovereignty so that the human will is not excluded. As such, God voluntarily restricted his divine power.
Thorsen also discusses semi-Pelagianism and semi-Augustinianism, [which is] found in Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican thinking. That is, God’s sovereignty is not diminished by empowering humans with freedom.
But the big one was that Wesley focused more on God’s love and he grew impatient with his Calvinist critics for not emphasizing God’s love enough. The message of the Bible is more about God’s love than God’s power. Yes, Calvin talks about it but not as much as Wesley. The emphasis is Thorsen’s point.
It is a distinctive difference between Calvin and Wesley, even [as it is] today between Wesleyans and Calvinists. Wesley even called Calvin’s double predestination idea, because of the view of God implicit in it, a “doctrine of blasphemy” (13). It makes God “more cruel, more false, and unjust than the devil” (13).
He quotes Schaff, a Reformed theologian, saying Calvin’s system is Augustinian and is a “theology of Divine sovereignty rather than Divine love” (15).
continue to Index of Articles -
Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "How do We Interpret the Bible?"
The Bible: What Kind of Book?
by Scot McKnight
with additions by R.E. Slater
Oct 2, 2013
What we think of Scripture can be mapped on a spectrum from God to humanity, from a divine product to a human product, from God-inspired truth to human perception of God’s ways in this world. That spectrum, though, gets complicated: Do we read it in conjunction with other elements — tradition, reason, experience — or are we to suspend those three elements to get back to the Text Itself?
John Calvin and John Wesley differed on Scripture, not on its inspiration (a divinely-produced Book) or its authority (it stands over all humans and their endeavors), but on how that Bible is to be read and interpreted says Don Thorsen in his exceptional book Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice. And Don raises another issue that complicates our spectrum: What you think about the Bible can be measured by how often you read it. You may say it is inspired, etc, but if you read it once a week you are saying you don’t need it that often. If you need it daily you may be confessing all you need to confess.
So, Calvin on the Bible: It is inspired by the Spirit and its authority is confirmed by the witness of the same Spirit, and here Calvin is pressing his view against the standard Catholic appropriation of traditions. For Calvin Scripture is not confirmed or authorized by the church. The church emerges from Scripture not Scripture from the church. Human reason is sufficient for understanding Scripture. Calvin was proficient as an interpreter. His focus was the natural sense of the text. He opposed fanatical and idiosyncratic interpretations. Scripture is sufficient, and the Spirit does not lead us beyond the Bible.
Calvin was a sola scriptura guy (20-21). He was a pupil of Scripture and wanted theology and truth all to be formed by the Bible. He was not literalistic or wooden [(more probably verse-by-verse set within historical context and only then verified by the Church Fathers - res]); he was “remarkably sophisticated” (21). His approach was, however, not the Bible alone — he was in touch with history and with the great tradition of the church; he didn’t want to create something new but reestablish the old. He oversaw the rise of Reformed Confessions.
Wesley differs a bit, but he affirms with Calvin the inspiration, authority and truthfulness of Scripture. Like Calvin he was a lover of the Bible. He said he was a “Man of one book.” The Spirit was the guide but Scripture the rule. Again, he was not simplistically a man of one book (as many like to claim for themselves, masking laziness and ignorance) but was alert to history and theological discussions. He belonged to the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England.
So here is a difference: the Anglicans dipped far more often than Calvin in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the church. Scripture was primary but tradition was important. Anglicans discerned truth through the primacy of Scripture along with reason and tradition. So Wesley was in the via media tradition of the Anglicans. For him “sola Scriptura” and church tradition were not at odds. He valued the great tradition but the Reformation over the Catholic tradition, and English Reformation over Continental. And from historic authorities and reason. So we have the classic form of Wesley’s quadrilateral (a term he did not use): Scripture, tradition, experience and reason.
Reason was the art of good sense. His sense of “experience” is the “religion of the heart” or “experimental religion.” (I do wonder how substantively this differs from Calvin’s "testimony of the Spirit.") Regardless, this emphasis on experience marks revivalism today — current evangelicalism — as having a deep root in Wesleyan thinking. This is about experiencing God, and salvation in faith and hope, but especially also love. His perception of experimental religion then was broader and more expansive than Calvin’s more confirmation of the truth of Scripture view [(plus Apostolic Fathers - res)].
So Thorsen sees a difference in that Calvin’s view is more sola or solitary while for Wesley Scripture is primary [(but with the additional resources of Church theologic history, experience, and reason, to provide stability over personal interpretation and errant solitary views - res)].
Lastly, Calvin’s view of Scripture led to knowing the truth while Wesley’s tended more toward a living faith.
continue to Index of Articles -
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Super Soul Sunday with Rob Bell & Oprah Winfrey (Nov 3, 2013)
Rob Bell Speaks With Oprah Winfrey on 'Super Soul Sunday'
Christian Author, Pastor Wins Gets Winfrey's Recommendation
for 'What We Talk About When We Talk
Controversial Christian author and former megachurch pastor Rob Bell sits down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview in an upcoming episode of her spirituality-theme program "Super Soul Sunday." Bell's latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, has been listed as the first recommended title in "Oprah's Super Soulful Book of the Month" club.
According to a publicist for OWN's "Super Soul Sunday" program, Winfrey's interview with Bell will air Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. ET/PT with the title "Oprah & Rob Bell: What We Talk About When We Talk About God."
"The Emmy Award-winning series 'Super Soul Sunday' delivers a thought-provoking, eye-opening and inspiring block of programming designed to help viewers awaken to their best selves and discover a deeper connection to the world around them," reads a press release from Winfrey's network.
In its announcement on the new season lineup, OWN noted that Bell would be among "Super Soul Sunday" guests that include Anne Lamott, Jack Kornfield, Steven Pressfield and others.
Winfrey has written on Oprah.com about her time talking with Bell, whose books she said opened her heart and mind.
"When Rob Bell — pastor, best-selling author, provocative thinker — recently joined me on the show, we talked for two and a half hours, and I could have kept going," wrote Winfrey. "The ideas Rob sets forth in his books Love Wins and What We Talk About When We Talk About God opened my heart and my mind. People like him are the reason I set out to build OWN in the first place: to be able to gather a global community of like-minded seekers."
The post titled, "What Oprah Knows for Sure About Spirituality," was accompanied by a picturesque photo of Bell and Winfrey deep in discussion with the media mogul grasping a copy of What We Talk About When We Talk About God.
(Photo: www.oprah.com)
Bell states in What We Talk About When We Talk About God (Harper Collins) that he wrote the book because "there's a growing sense that when it comes to God, we're at the end of one era and the start of another, an entire mode of understanding and talking about God is dying as something new is being birthed."
In explaining the main point of What We Talk About When We Talk About God, Bell says in a book trailer, "God is not behind us dragging us backwards into some primitive, regressive state. God has always been ahead of us pulling us forward, into greater and greater peace, integration, wholeness and love."
In her praise of the book, Winfrey said Bell was "shaking up the way we think about God and religion."
She added, "When I first started reading it, I was highlighting my favorite passages, but then I realized — what's the point? I've marked every page! It just wowed me. In the book, Bell explains that God is and always has been with us, for us, and ahead of us — and then explores how we can really absorb this knowledge into our everyday lives to become more connected to spirit."
Glenn Kreider, professor of Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, concluded in his review of What We Talk About When We Talk About God in May: "Fans of Bell will likely resonate with this book. His critics will likely suspect that there is a great deal he is not saying and will be more skeptical." Suggesting that fans and critics should read the book jointly and discuss what they find to be its strengths and weaknesses, Kreider added, "The book is helpful for people on the fringes of Christianity, but even church and ministry leaders might find their view of God enlarged."
On the other hand, Dr. Michael Kruger, president and professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, wrote that he found Bell's book to be "really just spiritualism with a Christian veneer" and not about the "God of Christianity." Kruger concluded in his May review of What We Talk About When We Talk About God, "It's a book that would fit quite well on Oprah's list of favorite books."
Other Christian figures featured on Oprah Winfrey's OWN programs include "limbless evangelist" Nick Vujicic, Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, Lakewood Church Pastor Joel Osteen, and The Potter's House's Bishop T.D. Jakes.
Peter Enns, "Rob Bell, Oprah, and N. T. Wright. Yeah, you heard me"
by Peter Enns
September 25, 2013
Just yesterday on The Revangelical Blog, Brandan Robertson posted on Rob Bell teaming up with Oprah. Apparently, she sees Bell as a spiritual mentor of sorts along with a number of others that strike a nerve with her.
Predictably, the internet equivalent of a switchboard is lighting up like the bombing of Dunkirk–and if I had more energy right now, I’d think of a better mixed similie.
I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why Bell attracts so much “energy” from fellow Christians when we each have so much of a mess in our own backyards to haul away daily.
Disagreement? Sure. But the feeding frenzy anytime he crosses and uncrosses his legs leaves me scratching my head. The trigger, no doubt–at least on the surface–is worry that he is “dangerous” and might “influence” unsuspecting people, but I can think of many greater, more insidious, dangers (like materialism in the American church) that hardly garner a glance.
Perhaps its the conservative Christian reflex to think that we should not in any way be in “league” with people with whom we differ (Bell’s theology surely differs strongly from Oprah’s).
Or perhaps at work at some level is jealousy that Bell’s often mocked
tendency
to
write
one
word
paragraphs
attracts more readers over a long weekend than it takes many other, even accomplished, Christian writers years to come close to.
Whatever. Maybe some don’t know what to do unless they’re fightin’ for Jesus.
Anyway, to my point. I don’t have a problem at all with what Bell is doing here, and it has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with him on how expresses his faith. N.T. Wright can help me explain why.
In chapter 2 of Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, Wright tells the story of a “hidden spring.”It goes on for a few pages, but here’s the gist. The western world has been ruled by a dictator who paved over the springs of water with thick concrete, thus forcing the people to drink from his complex system of pipes. That worked for a while until people started pining for the distant memory of bubbling springs and fresh water.
Then, in time, without warning, the springs burst through the concrete in a sudden explosion.
Wright’s dictator is materialist philosophy, and the water “is what we call today ‘spirituality,’ the hidden spring that bubbles up within human hearts and human societies.” (p. 18)
Wright continues,
The official guardians of the old water system (many of whom work in the media and in politics, and some of whom, naturally enough, work in churches) are of course horrified to see the volcano of “spirituality” that has erupted in recent years. All this “New Age” myticism, the Tarot cards, crystals, horoscopes, and so on; all this fundamentalism, with militant Christians, militant Sikhs, militant muslims, and many others bombing each otherwith God in their side. Surely, say the guardians of the official water system, all this is terribly unhealthy? Surely it will lead us back to superstition, to the old chaotic, polluted, and irrational water supply? They have a point. But they must face a question in response: Does the fault not lie with those who wanted to pave over the springs with concrete in the first place (pp. 19-20)
“The hidden spring” of spirituality is the second feature of human life which, I suggest, functions as an echo of a voice; as a signpost pointing away from the bleak landscape of modern secularism and toward the possibility that we humans are made for more than this. (p. 20; the “first feature” is the topic of chapter 1, the cry for justice)
I think what Bell is doing is helping unstop the springs, and I’m glad he’s doing it. Those who lose sleep over the damage he’s causing may, even in the name of Christ, be more in league with the dictator than they may realize. As many have noted: American fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism have more in common with modernity than many may be able, or willing, to see.
But why Bell? Why not someone with “better theology” (some might ask) for such a time as this? Because the tools of evangelical theological fine-tuning are not suited for excavating concrete. Plus, Bell is a truly gifted communicator who doesn’t use in-house lingo. He knows how to market his ideas, i.e., to get people to listen.
Test and discern, yes. But with some humility, being ever willing to turn that searching gaze inward.
Don’t assume God is not in this because you disagree.
Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 4: Recap - "Imago Reductio or Imago Dei?"
by Jonnie Russell
October 2, 2013
Recap:
Philip began this week describing fascinating recent work in primate studies that shows just how capable other primates are at learning and using language, sometimes even intentionally creating new names with learned languages. What should these studies do for us? Fundamentally, they should cause us to think deeply and query the qualitative uniqueness of humanity. In other words, many Christians presume that human beings are not simply quantitatively more complex or evolved than their species–able to do more–but rather created with a fundamental quality (or set of qualities) that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom. These experiments seem to point away from any large [quantitative or] qualitative divide, and more towards the difference being a matter of more complexity. It is a capacity, a complexity, in humans that is perhaps just quantitatively unique—a plentitude of symbolic (linguistic) capacity. As Philip notes, we seem to simply have more of the faculty of choice and linguistic power that other animals don’t have and therefore a greater responsibility. I will say more on this in the react section, but do you see how intimately the nature and role of the ethical is connected differently in this more quantitative way of thinking over and against some more qualitative ways of distinguishing humans from animals?
In related studies, cognitive science has begun to show just how integrated brain development is with individual action and social group dynamics. Developmental stages in the human being point to an intimate relationship between environmental forces (social, nutritional, etc.) and the developmental capacity of the brain. How humans react in certain social context can be shown to be more complex and quantitatively more developed examples of things in other areas of the animal kingdom. Our actions are their actions writ large, or writ more complex.
The cognitive science of religion story is taking these explorations in cognitive development, explorations of how our cognitive faculties develop evolutionarily given environmental input etc., and applying it to the study of religion. For example, Hyperactive agency detective disorder (HAD) shows how it was evolutionarily beneficial for humans to be very sensitive (over-sensitive) to applying agency to our experiences of the world (recall Tripp’s tiger in the bushes example: fear, survival, protection). In this context, the human inclination to examine the world around [ourselves by] seeing God [everywhere, and in everyplace] should not be surprising in social environments where this is inculcated [in the earliest ages of human development. Asking whether an event such as] wild weather [was either] climatological or God communicating, judging, warning? These are human H.A.D. questions. Perhaps, religion then is a collective [human] agency of over-detection and development of our [environment] causing [our species] evolutionarily benefit via extreme sensing and sensitivity agencies - even where and when it [wasn't necessary]?
It is important here to make a distinction between this kind of cognitive science of religion study and reductive conclusions that may or may not necessarily be drawn. As I believe the Bennet article for this week mentions, this kind of study connects more closely with sociological and anthropological understandings of the dynamics the religious, but does not necessarily mean there is not reality to the world it describes and its experiences support. This further move is what might be called a neuro-religious reduction, something Daniel Dennett is committed to and evidenced in his debate with Philip that was mentioned [when denying the necessity of religion in man's evolutionary development]. This further claim is not about the scaffolding that makes religious reactions sense evolutionarily (cognitive science), but a further claim that there is no truth to the religious language in or causal reality in it or the divine it claims to point to.
It is important here to make a distinction between this kind of cognitive science of religion study and reductive conclusions that may or may not necessarily be drawn. As I believe the Bennet article for this week mentions, this kind of study connects more closely with sociological and anthropological understandings of the dynamics the religious, but does not necessarily mean there is not reality to the world it describes and its experiences support. This further move is what might be called a neuro-religious reduction, something Daniel Dennett is committed to and evidenced in his debate with Philip that was mentioned [when denying the necessity of religion in man's evolutionary development]. This further claim is not about the scaffolding that makes religious reactions sense evolutionarily (cognitive science), but a further claim that there is no truth to the religious language in or causal reality in it or the divine it claims to point to.
React:
It’s here that a now familiar tension in the class arises. We seem to be at a stalemate where nothing more can be said beyond brute disagreement as to whether there’s anything more real [or substantial] going on in religion. The reductionist wants to wager the claim beyond the science that experience of the religious is illusory and [therefore, there is] no metaphysical reality [while] the spiritual or religiously-inclined believer disagrees [to these conclusions]. Is this story then, of man's "neuro-religiosity reasoning," to reject a divine reality connecting with the evolutionarily explained structures in our heads and social networks (imago reductio), or [further] reason to praise the divine [evolutionary structures and inclinations within the very] nature of our imaging (that divine imago dei) within our complex neural capacities?! What wildly different readings of the evidence right? What can adjudicate such a divide? Do we only have experience? (These are questions I’d love reactions to).
Tripp, following Cobb’s evolutionary story, is a profound YES! to the imago dei reading of the [human] story. Using John Cobb’s process theology Tripp then went on to frame the quantitative difference in our capacities as a vocational imago: a vocation based on our being subjects (beings with subjective conscious experience) related to God as subject. The "image of God" [metaphor is about man's] creativity, language and stories—it is an invitation to live in right relationships [with one another, and to] our ecosystems (recall week 3). [The] communally expressed "depth of living" (Cobb’s imago) based on our being able to, having the qualitative complexity to relate and right others relationships.
Philip made an interesting comment in response to Tripp’s "Cobbified anthropology" that it seems to be a integrated, this-worldly, vocational understanding that certain traditional theists can equally subscribe to right? Without the subjectivity in everything and other (at first blush) quirky elements of full-fledged process thought? Id like to hear a but more from Tripp, more Cobb, as to what that system will give us that we can’t get from something like Philip’s use of a more classical model with Pannenberg?
Philip made an interesting comment in response to Tripp’s "Cobbified anthropology" that it seems to be a integrated, this-worldly, vocational understanding that certain traditional theists can equally subscribe to right? Without the subjectivity in everything and other (at first blush) quirky elements of full-fledged process thought? Id like to hear a but more from Tripp, more Cobb, as to what that system will give us that we can’t get from something like Philip’s use of a more classical model with Pannenberg?
N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Paul the Pharisee
Paul the Pharisee
by Scot McKnight
with commentary by R.E. Slater
with commentary by R.E. Slater
Oct 3, 2013
The apostle Paul emerged into a faith in Jesus as the Messiah out of the Pharisaic way of life. What was that like? This is one of the highlight questions Tom Wright asks in his new Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and to answer that question he prepares us with a lengthy and winding discussion of the “Story” at work in Judaism, and the particular slant that Story was told by the Pharisees. Here is awesome summary, leading to this big question for us:
If this is Paul’s “background” and “past,” what do we now see in his letters we did not see before? or, what does this tell us about his theory of “justification by faith”? (More on that below, too.)
This begins with major worldview questions for the [faithful] Pharisee:
Who are we? We are a group of [religious] Jews who found ourselves dissatisfied with the way our country is being run. And with our life as a people, at home and abroad. We are therefore devoting ourselves to the study and practice of Torah, as a kind of elite corps, intending to advance the time when Israel will finally be redeemed, when our God will reveal his faithfulness to our nation.
Where are we? Mostly, it seems, in the holy land, which is where we might prefer to be; but some of us live and work in the Diaspora [(the scattered 12 tribes throughout the ancient world, primarily from Eqypt to Asia Minor)]. We are, however, mostly living under the rule of the Roman empire (some, perhaps, far out in the east, have other pagan overlords [(such as the gods of Persia)]), and we have struck a deal that we will pray for the emperor, not to him as everyone else is forced to do. 396
What’s wrong? There are not nearly enough of us who take Torah with proper seriousness, and even among those who do there are schools [of thought] developing which the tough-minded among us regard as dangerously compromised. What counts, after all, is absolute purity. We do not imagine that we never sin, or never incur impurity, but we deal with it at once according to the methods and means of atonement and purification given by God as prescribed in the law. That is what it means to be ‘perfect in the law’. But we cannot compromise or collude with the wickedness we see in the nations all around us, and that goes especially for the rulers of the nations. Ever since the days in Egypt, and then again from the time in Babylon (where some of us still are) to the present, we have known what pagan rulers are like, and what it’s like to live under them. We will not be content until we no longer have to live as, in effect, slaves under these pagans, paying them [horrendous] taxes [from our meager wages]. Behind the problem of Israel’s large-scale failure to obey Torah properly is the much bigger problem [of our grievance with God]: "When will our God reveal his faithfulness to the covenant, by judging the pagans, liberating us from their wicked grasp, and setting up his ultimate kingdom? That’s what’s wrong: it hasn’t happened yet!"
What’s the solution? To the smaller-scale problem: a campaign to persuade more Jews to take upon themselves the yoke of Torah. To the larger-scale problem: to pray (prayer is especially important; the Shema alone is the very foundation of our existence) and to wait in purity, to keep the feasts and the fasts, to study scripture . . . and perhaps, so some of us think, to join up with those who are eager for armed resistance and revolution. We have as our great models of ‘zeal for Torah’ the heroes of old, Phinehas and Elijah especially. They were not afraid to use the sword in the service of God. Nor were our more recent heroes, the Maccabaean freedom-fighters. We venerate, too, the martyrs who died cruel deaths rather than defile themselves with pagan food and practices. We are waiting for a new exodus, and perhaps a new Moses to lead it. Some of us want to hurry that process along.
What time is it? Well, there is a lot of discussion about that, because nobody is completely sure how to calculate the Great Jubilee of Daniel 9. But it has to be soon. The ‘present age’ will give way to the ‘age to come’;397 the present time is the time of continuing exile and slavery, despite various false dawns; some of us did make it back to our own land, but whether we did or didn’t we are still in the long, dark period [for didn't] Daniel 9 predicted the ‘exile’ of Deuteronomy 28? The coming age, however, will be the time of freedom, and some of us have begun to think that maybe that coming age is being secretly inaugurated as we develop and pass on the oral law and do our best to keep it. Maybe that’s the way God’s faithfulness is being revealed. Meanwhile, we are frustrated that the great biblical laws about jubilee have usually been honoured in the breach rather than [in] the observance. We who keep the sabbath very carefully week-by-week are hoping and praying for the great Sabbath, the time when our God will have completed the work of rescuing Israel, and we can enjoy ‘[a Sabbath's] rest’ like Joshua’s people did once the land was settled. It is time for a ‘messianic time’ - for a new kind of time - for the same thing to happen to our time and history as happens in space and matter when we go to the Temple: an intersection of our world with God’s world, of our time with God’s time. That’s what happens every week, every sabbath. We want all those times of rest to come rushing together as the [one] true Jubilee, the real freedom-moment, not just because we want a new exodus but because we want to share God’s ultimate rest, the joy of work complete. (177-179)
Here is how the Pharisees, according to NT Wright, saw their problem:
We have thus approached, from the theological angle, the topic we discovered at the heart of our study of the narrative world of second-Temple Jews. If Israel is chosen to be the people through whom the Creator will put the world to rights, what happens when Israel itself needs to be put to rights? The answer given by the Pharisees was reasonably clear: Israel needs to learn how to keep Torah, and how to keep it properly this time. If Israel wants the covenant God to be faithful to his promises and bring the restoration they longed for, Israel has to be faithful to this God, to Torah, to the covenant. Plenty of evidence in scripture itself indicated that something like this was the right answer. Since Paul the apostle basically agrees with this answer, though providing a radical and shocking fresh analysis of what ‘keeping Torah properly’ and ‘being faithful to God’ now looks like, we may confidently conclude that this was what Saul of Tarsus, the zealous Pharisee, had believed as well. (183)
Now what about justification by faith in this worldview?
The point can be summarized thus. First, God will soon bring the whole world into judgment, at which point some people will be ‘reckoned in the right’, as Abraham and Phinehas were. Second, there are particular things, even in the present time, which will function as signs of that coming verdict. Third, those particular things are naturally enough the things that mark out loyal Israelites from disloyal ones; in other words (remember Mattathias!) strong, zealous adherence to Torah and covenant. Fourth, as a result, those who perform these things in the present time can thus be assured that the verdict to be issued in the future, when the age to come is finally launched, can already be known, can be anticipated, in the present. This, I believe, is what a first-century Pharisee would have meant by ‘justification by the works of the law’. (184)
So here’s Paul’s basic worldview coming into view on justification:
We may therefore suppose (supposition is all we have, in the absence of direct evidence, but this is where all the lines of evidence converge) that a first-century Pharisee like Saul of Tarsus would have seen the picture like this:
a. In the ‘age to come’, the creator God will judge the wicked (pagans, and renegade Jews), and will vindicate (= declare ‘righteous’) his people (i.e. will declare that they are part of his ‘all Israel’).
b. The present marks of this vindicated/justified people will be the things which show their loyalty to their God and their zeal for his covenant.
c. These things are, more precisely, the true keeping of Torah: (a) keeping the ‘works’ which mark out Jews from their pagan neighbours, and (b) keeping the ‘works’ which mark out good, observant Jews from non-observant [Jews] – in [more] extreme cases, [from] the skeptics, and the wicked, though there might be other more fine-tuned categories as well.426
d. You can therefore tell in the present who will be ‘vindicated’ in the future, because they are those who keep ‘the works of Torah’ in this way in the present time. 187
Paul as a converted Pharisee to a Christ-follower:
That is why, if we are to understand Paul the apostle, we must see him within this rich, many-sided world. To move through the different concentric circles: the Pharisaic worldview was about the whole business of being human; of being a Jewish human; of living in a Jewish community; of living in a threatened Jewish community; of living with wisdom, integrity and hope in a threatened Jewish community; of living with zeal for Torah, the covenant and above all Israel’s faithful God within a threatened Jewish community (196).
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Addendum
Thus there is a Pharisaical emphasis on 1) divine judgment, 2) believer faithfulness, 3) strict adherence to Scriptural obedience/duty/honor, and 4) a future that vindicates God's faithful. Which becomes easily translated into today's evangelical beliefs with its own corresponding emphasis upon Jesus, in place of Torah. From which have come Christian doctrines emphasizing: 1) God's judgment over His divine grace, 2) God's austerity over His divine forgiveness, 3) blind obedience to the Scriptures without consideration for their tone and import, and an 4) emphasis upon future judgment: such as apostasy, tribulation, and apocalypse; and future reward: heaven v. hell.
When each "faith" is tallied up we then find a faith that is works-oriented, ungracious, unduly harsh, and ill-forgiving - as compared to Jesus' works of grace and compassion, which are largely met in Spirit-faith and Spirit-empowerment. A faith that emphasizes God's grace over His Torah Law (sic, Jesus' many debates with the Pharisees). That presents a compassionate covenant of inclusion over those of exclusion and hate (NT examples abound of Jesus curing the lame, the sick, helping the poor, defending the whore, and ministering the despised). Of a more hopeful future than one dipped in fear, dread and blood (where God's great salvation will be proclaimed by all His Church). And of a future that is here, now, as present in Christ's atonement and His Holy Spirit's ministry to this world of humanity - and not to a select few of God's supposed "chosen" (the mustard seed, the lost coins, new wineskins - each telling of a Kingdom that will grow disproportionately to our unbelieving thoughts and incredulity supposing it to be stingy, miserly, or ungenerous). One that envisions this present world as a heaven on earth which can become more fully a place of God's divine rule and habitation when recreated in Jesus' resurrected fullness (the idea of an upside-down Kingdom in holy tension with man's stubborn sin, and judgment to man's evil and wickedness). Which does not discount the future coming of Christ, but envisions Christ's presence now through His Church on this earth in works of compassion and justice, and ecological care and restoration.
R.E. Slater
October 10, 2013
October 10, 2013
Continue to Index -
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Index - New Perspective of Paul
Index to the New Perspective of Paul
Readings in N.T. Wright
* * * * * * * * * *
N.T. Wright Pauline Series
RNS Report: "N.T. Wright extends debate with John Piper by releasing Apostle Paul tome"
N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Re-Envisaging Israel's Election in Jesus
N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - The People of God: Israel, Church, Kingdom
N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - The People of God: Israel, Church, Kingdom
* * * * * * * * * *
Previous NPP Articles
Charts and Diagrams
The Penal-Substitutionary Theory:
Man has sinned
Jesus died for man's sin
Faith in Jesus removes our sin
The believer is justified and forgiven
and made righteous with Jesus' substitutionary
sacrifice on Calvary's Cross
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