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

Monday, October 28, 2013

The Idealisms of Pacifism: Its Force of Argument as a Singular Ethic for All of Life's Dilemmas

 
 
 
Continued from earlier posts -
 
 


By way of a conclusion to this series of discussions, I find in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical dilemma regarding his resistance, and possible active subversiveness to German atrocities during World War II, a natural, inherent repulsion to the evil he saw everywhere about. Bonhoeffer, along with several friends and relatives, elected to work for the German military agency Abwehr, second in power and rank to the German SS. As a conscientious objector to the war he had hoped to avoid killing opposing combatants on fields of battle. He would soon discover, however, the intricate complicities of his choice to be no less a terrible burden than the one he had chosen to avoid. Here, in Dietrich's life story we have a recent Christian example of a German Lutheran pastor wishing to minister to his disciples and congregants, and prevented from doing so by an oppressive, dictatorial government at war with itself as much as it was at war with the world. The information Dietrich soon discovered would overwhelm his gentle soul for the misery it led to and the lives it would take.

As Germany pressed on in its campaigns of terror and destruction Bonhoeffer steadily found himself working for an evil oppressor that required his ethical response - one more than simply accepting his role within it, without some kind of reciprocal participation against it. His conflict lied with Jesus' commands in the Sermon on the Mount which he took very seriously (basically, to do no harm, to help and assist where needed, to love and forgive seventy times seven). His further conflict was whether the Kingdom of God could practically become a reality within sinful mankind, to which Christian (Niebuhr) realism had said, "No." The best one can do is to attempt to live Jesus' commands and wait for His return. At which point you begin to ask yourself just what can be my response while on this good earth gone bad?

Consequently, pacifist groups look to Bonhoeffer as a Christian martyr who stood by his principles to love and do no harm to others, respecting their rights and warrants, whereas other pacifist and non-pacifist groups alike broke Bonhoeffer's idealism down into a scale of moral considerations requiring varying responses of non-violence, non-aggression, passive resistance, dove-like street campaigns and marches, sit-ins, etc, just short of active violence. Moving further away from pacifism's ideals would next come militant groups with their own observations of whether one should do nothing in the face of oppression as people are harmed. Advising the right to defend oneself and homeland. How, and where, this could be done. And presenting historical accounts of societal extinctions when no practical resistance or defense was initiated on behalf of oneself, one's families, clans, tribes, and faith.

Hence, the question, "What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer do?" Did he do nothing? Or did he so well hide his own thoughts on this subject that even his closest confidants could discern no visible move away from his preferred position of pacifism. Regardless, Bonhoeffer was implicated as a double agent in a plot of conspiracy against the Fuhrer and was hanged as an alleged assassin. His biographer stated that Dietrich did eventually choose to actively resist without actually participating in a plot of assassination of Adolf Hitler while contemporary arguments are stating that though Dietrich was conflicted, he did not move from his earlier beliefs of living out the Sermon on the Mount, and showed no inclination to join in a plot to kill the Fuhrer.

My own further question is to ask whether Jesus' Kingdom ethics necessarily entail pacifism or not. To which I think the further answer is dictated by the circumstances one finds himself or herself in, along with one's personal abilities and temperament, societal connections, and the kind of needs requiring action. Within any given situation there is a right way and a wrong way to approach a problem. Hollywood has made an industry of these ethical dilemmas and I do not expect that there can be any one given answer(s) to the depth of any circumstance requiring our response. Like King David we may become bloody in the battle and forbidden the desire of our heart to build a temple for our God. Like King Solomon we might have peace all about us so that a temple might be built. Even as in the prophets examples they wished to tear a profane temple down, to be then rebuilt by hands under Ezra and Nehemiah. Ultimately, with Jesus' incarnation that temple was both striped of its authority and rebuilt as a spiritual temple through the cross of Calvary. Every era, every people, every societal response requires something different in its time. Ethics. Its what one does or doesn't do even as they can do or wish not to do. That's the long and short of it.

Thus, we see agencies such as International Justice MinistriesSave the Whale organizations, Stop Hunger movements, and an endless variety of domestic and international anti-civil war liberation agencies attempting to protect the poor and innocent from the harms and wickedness of gangs, tyrants, and governmental oppression. Even at home, here in America, the Christian church is actively debating to what extent it should become involved in civil governance and the care of its citizenry in health, housing, clothing, feeding, education, and industry. It is the eternal question and one not so easily answered by simply looking at the response of one man, or a group of men, perilously attempting to contribute practical ways to stop Nazism from its evil deeds and horrendous abuses.
 
And so, whether or not we can answer Bonhoeffer's state of mind, or in what form he conducted his brand of pacifism throughout Hitler's homeland genocides, the better question to ask may be how we might re-enact Jesus' commands of Kingdom ethics now as especially presented in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Practically, it seems to start with the little things in life between one another so that once a Kingdom attitude is in place at the ground level between neighbor and friend, ally and enemy, it might grow-and-enlarge like the proverbial mustard seed to encompass world ethics, civil governance, and political denouement in proportionate response to our ability to enact its formidable severity and auspicious hope.
 
Theoretically, it is hoped that love, grace, good judgment, and wisdom prevail in the face of wickedness and evil. Pragmatically I doubt it will ever be as simple as we pray and hope. The capacity of the human nature for sin and pride is rooted deep and strong. Our simplest relationships with one another seem a jumble of turmoil and brokenness. Even so, according to God's commands through His Son Jesus, who is our Savior and resurrected Lord, we must try with the ability and gifts that we are given.
 
To that end, church theologians are practically discussing what they think they know about a humble German citizen/pastor (Bonhoeffer) caught on the horns of a dilemma in the face of overwhelming hate and evil. Mark Nation (professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia) began the discussion by saying Dietrich Bonhoeffer refused any involvement in his group's plot of assignation of Adolf Hitler according to his Lutheran beliefs in living out Jesus' Kingdom commands. Roger Olson (professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University) challenges this thought, using Bonhoeffer's closest remaining confident, and biographer, Bethge, as to his testimony that Dietrich pitched his pacifism to the winds upon seeing Hitler's bloody atrocities being committed everywhere about his beloved homeland. Now, today, comes a measured response by Scot McKnight, NT professor of Theology at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois, in restatement of the Mennonite view that there may be a bit of truth between both ideas, but a truth that we can never know so cautious one needed to live within those perilous times. As such, McKnight concludes that Dietrich Bonhoeffer remained a committed pacifist regardless of the pointed testimony of his confident and biographer Bethge, who in fact says Dietrich had changed his mind and did reluctantly enter into a conspiracy pact to kill Hitler.

To us non-Mennonites who hold a large sympathy to this Christian way of thinking about the idea of pacifism, we must reason (a) Dietrich's fatalist response should he not have given in to his desire to stop a deadly German regime even against (b) his purported meager participation in an underground group of political subversives who were eventually found hidden within the German military intelligence group Abwehr. Whether Dietrich dithered in a kind of moral impasse; or attempted some kind of personal resistance; or whether he was appropriately guilty by association by identifying with an underground group of patriots actively plotting Hitler's removal is to ask something we may never be able to answer. It is a question of futility lost to a life martyred for his Christian faith striving to serve his faithful church of disciples of his beloved homeland gone to wreck and ruin.

And so, we must ask, was Dietrich "Guilty of doing nothing?" Hopefully not. And if he was, "Does it matter?" Not in the slightest because despite all the back-and-forth that will result between these forthcoming discussions, it still is laid upon the Church today, and upon us specifically, to determine what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. We might use helpful sources of information (though Dietrich's biography in this regard seems murky at best) to help assimilate an appropriate respect and response to God's Kingdom ethic. But at the last, where evil and wickedness is present it seems incumbent upon the Church to make an appropriate response rather than to look away, or run from its demand under the cloth of Christ, that it might provide defense to the defenseless, help to the helpless, and protection of life in general to any evil present.
 
What place justice in the face of crime and violence? And, what place judgment to abused children, the weak, or the victim for crimes they receive at the hands of wicked men? For me, my support will lie in producing more honest policemen, compassionate social workers, counselors, teachers, and responsibly elected, and ethical, officials, through the use of every social tool at hand to produce a governance of people that may be free to pursue life, liberty, and justice for all. Discipline, enforcement, and judgment will be necessary, but the better course is to attempt to get ahead of the generations of youth before they are lost.

Naïve? Maybe. Necessary? Aye, verily. If one doesn't reach out to every succeeding generation in every way possible by whatever means possible than we have given up and given in to injustice's heavy mantle. The Kingdom of God may be an ideal but it can also become a reality when we submit to the Holy Spirit with all the resources He has given to us within ourselves, our community, and nation. May God give us the humble wisdom and ability to thus obey and create God's Kingdom here amongst men by His Spirit's help. Where tolerance and freedom is respected, irenic debate necessary, and appropriate force used in measured response to all injustice.
 
R.E. Slater
October 28, 2013
edited, November 1, 2013


* * * * * * * * * * *


Pacifism: A Place to Begin

Our antithesis on the lex talionis is a watershed when it comes to how to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Luther has his followers and contended famously that the problem here is the failure to “to distinguish properly between the secular and the spiritual, between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world.”[1] Some of the saddest lines I have ever read by a Christian, let alone one of Luther’s status, are these:[2] 
[In speaking of “holy martyrs”…] When they were called to arms even by infidel emperors and lords, they went to war. In all good conscience they slashed and killed, in this respect there was no difference between Christians and heathen. Yet they did not sin against this text. For they were not doing this as Christians, for their own persons, but as obedient members and subjects, under obligation to a secular person and authority. But in areas where you are free and without any obligation to such a secular authority, you have a different rule, since you are a different person. 
Utter nonsense. Another Lutheran responds: “But this distinction between a private person and bearer of an office as normative for my behavior is foreign to Jesus…. ‘Private’ and ‘official’ spheres are all completely subject to Jesus’ command. The word of Jesus claimed them undividedly.” Is it realistic? Of course Jesus knows the reality of sin and “Jesus calls evil evil and that is just why he speaks to his disciples in this way.”[3] This command, as Bonhoeffer routinely observes, is anchored in the cross that Jesus himself bore. Which is why Bonhoeffer can also say “only those who there, in the cross of Jesus, find faith in the victory over evil can obey his command.”[4] One of the main thrusts of the ethic of Jesus is the radicalization of an ethic so that we live consistently, from the so-called “private” to the “public” spheres. There is for Jesus no distinction between a secular life and spiritual life: we are always to follow him. His ethic is an Ethic from Beyond. But others, in words not so wrong-headed as Luther’s, have continued Luther’s personal vs. public or spiritual vs. secular distinction when it comes to ethics.[5] 
Thus, Peter Craigie, himself a Mennonite: “Contrast the different spirit in the … teaching of Jesus, though the context there has do with personal behavior and attitudes and not with the courts of law.”[6] Oddly, the lex talionis antithesis is a public (not private) framework and that is what Jesus is stopping. Although he is exploring rather than expressing his view dogmatically, Dale Allison approaches this Lutheran view when he says Jesus is “speaking about interpersonal relations and declaring that it is illegitimate for this followers to apply the lex talionis to their private problems.”[7] And I would add “And to their public problems as well.” Along the same line Charles Quarles can somehow manage to convince himself of this: “No evidence suggests that Jesus intended to contradict the lex talionis of the Mosaic law.”[8] Let the word be as rugged as it really is; its ruggedness carries its rhetorical power to call his disciples into the kingdom where retaliation will end. 
The question that confronts any serious reading of the Sermon on the Mount is this: Would Jesus have seen a difference between a kingdom ethic for his followers in their so-called private life but a different ethic in public? I doubt it. Why? Because Jesus’ Messianic Ethic, an Ethic for his community of followers, is an Ethic from Above and Beyond. The question every reader of the Sermon must ask is this: Does that world begin now, or does it begin now in private but not in public, or does it begin now for his followers in both private and to the degree possible in the public realm as well?
 

[1] Luther, Sermon, 105.
[2] Luther, Sermon, 110.
[3] D. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 134-135.
[4] D. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 136.
[5] Calvin’s form of the two realms thinking (Christ vs. Caesar) is not as severe as Luther’s; see Calvin, Sermon, 1.193-195; Hagner, 1.131-132; Turner, 174.
[6] P. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 270 n. 21.
[7] Allison, Sermon, 93.
[8] C. Quarles, Sermon, 146.


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abwehr

The Continuing Debate to Bonhoeffer's German Resistance and Its Implications for Jesus' "Kingdom Ethics"

Bonhoeffer: Was he really involved in the attempt to kill Hitler?

[1] For the “German Christian” (technical expression) movement, see S. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[2] E. Bethge, Biography, 457.
[3]Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. I. Tödt; trans. R. Krauss; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), and Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. C. Gremmels; trans. I. Best; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010).
[4] For more continuity in the relationship of Discipleship to the later Ethics, see G. Stassen, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 175-195. Because of the complexity of the relationship of the middle period to the later period and various versions of sections in Ethics, I have avoided discussion of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics.  Yet it is important to observe that Bonhoeffer did not move from youthful, Platonic idealism in Discipleship to mature realism in the conspiracy years. Instead, it was a (tragic) shift from kingdom realities to this-wordliness realities.
[5] For a full study, the one indispensable biography is the mammoth work of E. Bethge, Biography, e.g., 628, 675-678, 720-721. For Bonhoeffer’s exploratory statement on the relation of church and state, D. Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940-1945 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. J. Glenthøj; trans. L.E. Dahill; Minneapolis Fortress, 2006), 502-528.
[6]Letters and Papers from Prison, 486.
[7]Letters and Papers from Prison, 52.
 
* * * * * *

Because I am not a Bonhoeffer specialist, nor have I read his entire works in chronological order ever in my life, I thought it would be wise to check out what I had written with a Bonhoeffer expert. I chose Mark Thiessen Nation, professor at Eastern Mennonite University, and a leading Bonhoeffer (and Yoder) scholar. We had some exchanges, included in which was his telling me that he was at work with two others on a book about Bonhoeffer that would seek to show that Bonhoeffer was not in fact involved in any plot to assassinate Hitler. In other words, that he was not involved in the conspiracy to eliminate the Führer.
 
I was a bit stunned by his comments, not the least of which reasons was that I didn’t know how else to read the man’s life. But out of respect for Mark’s work, I chose to eliminate the above section and to modify the commentary wherever I had assumed this scheme of reading Bonhoeffer in three stages. The most important element of this scheme was that Bonhoeffer changed his mind from being a pacifist to being a (Niebuhrian) realist. I reasoned, however, that if Nation was going to prove that theory wrong, it would be wise for me to await publication of his book before I both came to a more complete understanding and published anything about it.
 
Mark Thiessen Nation, along with Anthony G. Siegrist and Daniel P. Umbel, have now published their work: Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2013). They ask if Bonhoeffer was involved in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. They conclude he was not. In part two of this review I will sketch their views and respond to their proposal.
 
 

* * * * * * * * * * * 
 
 
Bonhoeffer and the Conspiracy
 

Sunday, October 27, 2013

The Propaganda Wars of Postmodern Neo-Conservatism re Liberal Thought and Theology

With all the propaganda wars going on within evangelicalism these days "liberal theology" is getting a "bad rap" from conservative Christians hearing only the negative, and not the positive, about Christian liberalism. When in fact, it is neo-conservatism that is now becoming the ugly twin brother smearing itself in patriotic zealotry and nationalism, irrational arguments, and anti-intellectualism.
 
To accuse a fellow Christian brother or sister with caustic, unjust words, and untrue, misleading labels is to behave like the father of lies, that old serpent of the garden, who used half-truths and deceptive accusations to dissuade God's Word from root and growth. This was especially observed by Jesus when issuing His most time-honored commands to not injure one's neighbor with lies and deceit from hearts darkly filled with hatred and murder abiding within. Which is exactly what is being done now when ignorant shouts of "liberalism" are being thrown upon non-conservative groups and organizations without really understanding what "good liberalism" is, why it formed, and what it stood for in the first place (historically, it was as a strong reaction to the Enlightenment and its progenitor of secular Modernism to come which today's one-sided conservative Christian groups refuse to appreciate).
 
Mostly, liberalism stands against any irrational, unkind, and thoughtless teachings, or policies, that may serve an individual's position or dogma rather than the community at large. Casting pejoratives upon competing policies rather than trying to understand the failures in one's present beliefs and policies. Seeking hedonistic power and money in place of selfless service and personal sacrifice. As such, a good rule of thumb is to listen to the negatives of an organization (or individual) so that by it's own accusations "ye shall know them by their words and works."
 
Truly, any theology that does not preach a Jesus-centered, incarnational Gospel, and authoritative Bible (rightly understood), is worthy of disregard, whether it comes from the left or from the right, making neo-conservative evangelicalism no less guilty. Which has lately become a religious political movement guilty of blind legalism and purposely using the deep, sacramental images of Christianity (prayer, worship, church, faith) to support ungodly political agendas steeped in pride and prejudice. Any Christian dogma that seeks agenda over Jesus, and neglecting His passion for people's welfare, is guilty of apostacism and God's rightful judgment - regardless of the name of the organization or its supposed Christian supporters, be it church-based or political.
 
And to all spectrums of Christianity caught in the middle between the hedgerows of a Jesus-less faith let us each be careful to listen to God's Word aright seeking the Spirit of God and the Christ who is glorified in its direction and proclamation. Seeking a spiritual humility evidencing better listening and discerning skills than what we see at present within the ranks of Christian Evangelicalism (as well as within the ranks of American government itself).
 
For a Christian brotherhood to fight amongst itself is one of the greatest tools of Satan seeking division and strife. Let the Church of God seek peace and unity over any disingenuous claims of right and wrong. This is the Spirit of Christ even as it can be the spirit of man's redemption borne of God's love and forgiveness, grace and mercy.
 
R.E. Slater
October 27, 2013
 
* * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
What Is “Liberal Theology?”
 
by Roger Olson
October 8, 2013
 
During my career as a Christian theologian I have several times been accused of being either liberal or on the way to being liberal. The accusers clearly meant liberal as in “liberal theology”–not liberal politically (which I am). John Piper told me to my face that he perceived me as “on a liberal trajectory.” (I immediately pictured myself being shot out of a cannon like the stuntmen in the old circuses!) Most recently Gerald McDermott has claimed that I, and my fellow “meliorists” (I prefer “postconservative evangelicals”), are retracing the path that led to Protestant liberal theology. Like many others, McDermott seems to think “liberal theology” is a good label for any deviation from orthodoxy. That’s what I challenge here. [Meliorist - "the doctrine that the world tends to become better or, may be made better, by human effort." A spurious accusation used by some Calvinist groups to accuse Spirit-led Arminian Christians of humanism over sovereignty. - R.E. Slater]
 
I have made the study of liberal theology (including Catholic modernism) a career-long study. I have read numerous books by liberal Protestant theologians past and present, and engaged in liberal-evangelical dialogues. My forthcoming book The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (IVP) will explain and give case studies of liberal and modernist theologies.
 
My reliable guides in the study of liberal theology have been and are: Gary Dorrien (author of a three volume study of liberal theology), Claude Welch (author of numerous books on modern theology), Peter Hodgson, Donald Miller, Harvey Cox, William R. Hutchison, Delwin Brown, Bernard Reardon and many other theologians, historians and sociologists.
 
All of them make the same point–that “liberal theology” is not just any deviation from orthodoxy but an elevation of modern reason and discovery, the “modern mind,” to a source and norm for theology. [Thus, to accuse post-conservative evangelicals or postmodern emergent Christians as liberal is preposterous. By definition, such groups place themselves under God's Word and not over it. In other words, one may be liberal in their theology without being liberal as a theology. The former seeks a departure from conservative readings of the bible while the latter places human reason over (and not subjected to) the authority of the bible. - R.E. Slater]
 
Here are some influential definitions of “liberal theology” by leading scholars of that type of theology:
 
“Liberal theology is defined by its openness to the verdicts of modern intellectual inquiry, especially the natural and social sciences; its commitment to the authority of individual reason and experience…and its commitment to make Christianity credible and socially relevant to modern people.” (Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: ImaginingProgressive Religion 1805-1900, p. xxiii.)
 
“Liberal Christians have characteristically sought to understand their faith with reference to their experience within contemporary culture. … Liberal Christians view accommodation to culture as necessary and positive… They seek understand God and their moral responsibility in terms of the best available scientific knowledge and social analysis.” (Donald E. Miller, The Case for Liberal Christianity, p. 33)
 
Claude Welch (Yale University) defined liberal theology as “Maximal acknowledgement of the claims of modern thought” in theology. (Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, I, 1799-1870, p. 142)
 
In Crossfire, his dialogue with Clark Pinnock, Delwin Brown several times emphasized that liberal theology grants normative status to “the best of modern thought” in such a way as to trump Scripture itself when there is a conflict. [That is, to trump man's errant interpretation of that Scripture when it is found to be out-of-bounds with God's love and intent - R.E. Slater]
 
To regard any deviation from, or attempt, to reform orthodox Christian tradition as “liberal” theologically is patent misuse of that category and label. In order for a theological proposal to be “liberal” it MUST be offered on the ground that modern thought requires it even though what is requiring it is not a universally recognized material fact (such as the earth moves around the sun). In other words, liberal theology makes modern thought in general a norming norm for theology–alongside if not above Scripture. [sic, whether liberal, or conservative, any theology that supplants Scripture is itself anathema. - R.E. Slater]
 
If we do not stick to this historical-theological definition of liberal theology (along with prototypes such as Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack, et al.) we end up filling the category so full it becomes empty. [if effect, words only mean something if we use them as intended, rightfully and properly. - R.E. Slater]
 
 
 

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Stories of Lament: "In the Shadow of Grief"


 
 
 
In the Shadow of Mount Hood:
Meeting God in the mystery of grief
 

 
Amazon Link
Midnight, it is said, is the portal between this world and the next and is somehow in league with chaos, death, and mystery. It is the moment of dark visitations. So it was for me in December 2006. My sleep was interrupted by a phone call, and I was instantly shocked into full consciousness: My younger brother was trapped in a snow cave on Mount Hood, and an unyielding blizzard prevented rescue.
 
The mountain proved to be Kelly's final adventure. Losing my brother on Mount Hood has been a painful reminder of my own spiritual fragility. None of us is immune to the heartaches and sorrows that inhabit this misbegotten world. Though I am a preacher, a professor of historical theology, and the provost of a theological seminary, I have found it agonizingly difficult to come to terms with my brother's death. It is one thing to talk about death in the abstract. It is entirely another to cope with the death of someone you love very, very much. The truth of the matter is that losing a loved one hurts down to the deepest parts of your soul.
 
I was the first to learn the news days later. Hearing those words announcing his death was like a blow to the solar plexus knocking the breath out of me, but telling the rest of my family was more dreadful. I had known heartache before, but this transcended every previous emotion I had ever experienced. My vision blurred. My feet were heavy and seemed to resist carrying me to the next room, where my family anxiously awaited the latest news of the rescue mission on Mount Hood. Kelly's wife, Karen, the children, our mother, three brothers and a sister—they took the news hard. I have never heard weeping like I heard that night in the village at the foot of the mountain. The Bible sometimes refers to "wailing" as an especially forlorn kind of weeping. That is what I heard that night—wailing. I hope I never hear that sound again.
 
Death is ugly, and we cannot—indeed, should not—try to make it palatable or explain it away with pious platitudes. Death is a cruel, brutal, and fearsome trespasser into this world. It is an intruder and a thief. It has severed an irreplaceable relationship with my brother. We shared the same story, and he knew me in a way no other person did. Kelly would no longer return my calls. Never again would I hear him cheerfully mock me as "Frankie Baby." Sometimes I see him in a dream, and I reach out to grasp him—but he is not there.
 
We are created for life, not death. Kelly had a shameless zest for living life to the fullest. When death strikes suddenly from the shadows, or claws at us until the last breath, those left behind experience numbness and disorientation. Somehow we know in our hearts that it is not supposed to be this way.


AN HONEST QUESTION POSED FROM A BROKEN HEART
 
One question haunts me: Where was God when Kelly was freezing to death on Mount Hood? For me, it is not whether I should ask such a question, but how I ask it. One can ask the question in a fit of rage, shaking one's fist at God. Many of us, if we are candid, have done that. But once the primal anger settles to a low boil, we can—and, I would submit, should—ask the question.
 
I am not suggesting that mere mortals can stand in judgment of God or call him to account. God does not report to me. But an honest question posed from a broken heart is to my mind a good and righteous thing.
 
To ask this hard question is an act of faith. It presupposes a genuine relationship in which the creature actually engages the Creator. If God is my Father, can't I humbly ask why he did not come to Kelly's rescue? For me, to not ask this question would be a failure to take God seriously.
 
So, where was God? I don't know. I may never know. Perhaps the biggest challenge for my faith is to come to terms with what Martin Luther called the hiddenness of God—Deus absconditus. Contemporary Christians are often uncomfortable admitting that God sometimes hides from us. But King David was unafraid to ask, "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" (Ps. 10:1).
 
As far as I know, God never answered David. Even more bewildering—God was not only silent, he also commemorated his silence for posterity. By including the Psalms in the Holy Book, God made his hiddenness a part of Israel's worship and preserved it for all humanity to ponder. It boggles my mind to imagine throngs of Israelites singing the chorus, "Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?"—year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. This must have been a gut-wrenching experience, and I suspect it was often sung with tears.
 
I am still trying to make sense of Kelly's death. I don't know why God did not rescue Kelly from the cold grip of the mountain. What I do know is that my relationship with God has entered another dimension—one more mystifying and more honest.


THE DIVINE GRAVITATIONAL PULL
 
Grief is a relentless predator. Those who have lost loved ones tell me that one never completely escapes it. Strangely, a part of me does not want the grief to stop, because the grief itself is a connection to Kelly. Yet another part of me is so weary from carrying the burden of a broken heart.

In the midst of our family tragedy, I made a peculiar discovery. One would think that grief and disappointment with God would lead to bitterness against him. In my nightmare, I not only prayed intensely in private but also publicly declared my faith and confidence in God on CNN—but Kelly froze to death anyway.
 
There is disappointment, sadness, and confusion, but oddly, there is no retreat from God. Instead, I find myself drawn to God. To be sure, he is more enigmatic than I thought, but I still can't shake loose from him. There seems to be a kind of gravitational pull toward God.
 
I am not the first to notice this gravitational pull amid the angst of divine silence. In Psalm 13, David calls out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (v. 1). A few verses later, the same distressed David is declaring, "But I trust in your unfailing love" (v. 5). Even as he pleads with God to come to his rescue, David finds himself inexorably drawn to him.
 
It seems paradoxical that David would trust a God who hides himself when David needs him most. But as I have meditated on David's Psalms, I sense he had a different kind of relationship with God—one not many Christians understand. It is more mysterious than I had been led to believe. It is a relationship where simplistic spiritual formulas and religious clichés have no place. David's relationship with God combines brutal honesty with what Luther called a grasping faith. It is a relationship where disappointment is juxtaposed with hope.
 
One of the profoundly difficult lessons is that amid all the spiritual consternation in the shadow of Mount Hood, God has manifested himself in my grief. Somehow he is found in the disappointment, the confusion, and the raw emotions. This does not exactly make sense to me, and I'm quite sure I don't like it. But I have felt the divine gravity pull me back toward God, even while I am dumbstruck by his hiddenness. My conception of faith has become Abrahamic—which is to say, I must trust God even though I do not understand him.
 
Many Christians read the Nicene Creed with its marvelous stanza, "On the third day he rose again." They know the story of Christ's dead body being placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on Friday and pulsing with new life on Sunday. In violation of natural laws, Jesus was again breathing and walking among his astonished disciples. One doubtful disciple even felt compelled to put his finger into Jesus' wound to convince himself that the crucified Jesus was indeed alive. It was hard to believe, but there before them all stood Jesus.
 
What does the empty tomb of Jesus have to do with the snowy tomb of Kelly James? Everything. Kelly confessed, as I do - and as Christians have for nearly 1,700 years, that "we look for the resurrection of the dead." Nicene Christians were not immune to the despondency of despair and grief. Over the centuries, and amid enough tears to fill an ocean, many of us have had to bury our loved ones. But we bury them with a promise: "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. … For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:20, 22).
 
This magnificent promise does not indemnify us against the grief of losing a beloved brother or even against disappointment with God. It does, however, take my faith to depths I never fathomed, where hope begins to poke through the heartache. Like a sunbeam piercing through a cloudy sky, faith portends that better weather is on the way.
 
- Frank A. James III is provost of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.


THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
 
In December 2006, Kelly James and his climbing partners, Brian Hall and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke, died on Mount Hood in northern Oregon. Their expedition was intended to prepare them for their lifelong dream of climbing Mount Everest. The climb began on December 8, but they encountered a rogue blizzard of enormous intensity and duration. They burrowed into a snow cave to wait out the storm. But the storm was unrelenting. Apparently Kelly had been injured, so the hard decision was made that Brian and Nikko should go for help. Sensing the gravity of their situation, Kelly must have released Brian from their long-standing pact never to leave one another. Alone in the snow cave, Kelly made desperate calls on his cell phone. On Sunday, December 10, against all odds, one call mysteriously connected, and he was able to speak to his wife and two of his sons for six minutes. It was the last time they would hear Kelly's voice.
 
From the outset, the story captivated the national new media, and the three families asked if I would serve as the public spokesperson. A massive search was launched, and finally, on December 17, we were notified that a body had been discovered. The fateful call came that evening, informing us that the recovered body had a signet ring with the initials JKJ—Jeffrey Kelly James. The search for Brian and Nikko continued, but their bodies were never found. I preached at my brother's funeral on December 27, 2006. - Frank James
 
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * 
 

Church History, Volume Two:
From Pre-Reformation to the Present Day
 
The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural,
Intellectual, and Political Context
 
 Amazon Link here
 
Frank James wrote a 800+ page volume with John D. Woodbridge on the history of the church from the pre-reformation to the present day entitled Church History, Volume Two: From Pre-Reformation to the Present Day: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context. As a side note, James' section on contemporary American evangelicalism and the rise of biblical inerrancy in the 19th century is worth the price of admission. - Peter Enns
 
 
 
 
 

N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Paul, the Law, and Jesus

NT Wright, Paul, the Law, and Jesus
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/24/ntwright-paul-the-law-and-jesus/
The point is that God’s plan, through Israel, for the rescue of the human race (and thus for the rescue and restoration of the whole creation) meant that Israel had to become the place where ‘sin’, the personified power opposed to God’s plan and purpose, would be ‘increased’, would ‘appear as sin’, would ‘become exceedingly sinful’. And Torah was playing its God-given role within that strange purpose” (510).
On Romans 7:14-23
Nothing whatever is gained, exegetically or theologically, by supposing that the ‘law’ in the last few lines of that passage is a ‘principle’ or ‘system’. The whole passage has been about the law, the Mosaic law, the Torah; and the frustration the passage expresses is neither (a) the psychological torment of the young Jew, discovering law and lust at the same time, nor (b) the puzzle of the existentialist, trying to seize life by the performance of the categorical imperative only to discover that this produces inauthenticity, nor yet (c) the frustration of the Christian, wanting to serve God wholeheartedly yet finding that sin continues to clog the wheels (510).
FIFTH - Leading to yet another point about the Torah: Jesus, the representative Israelite, does the Torah and dies, and the Spirit is sent so the Torah is now done by the people of God. Wright expresses this in his usually fast paced and side-glancing manner:
There, through the Messiah’s death and resurrection, and by implication (7.6) the work of the Spirit (which will be spelled out more fully in chapter 8), a people has been constituted ‘in the Messiah’, a people who have themselves died ‘in him’, thereby leaving behind solidarity with Adam, and solidarity with the Torah-under-Adam, where Israel according to the flesh, continues to languish (6.14). It is this people, this "in-Messiah" people, this led-by-the-spirit people, this died-to-sin-and-living-to-God people (6.11) that now, with great but comprehensible paradox, simultaneously find themselves (a) ‘not under Torah’ (6.14) and also (b) ‘fulfilling the decrees of Torah’ (2.26). This new-covenant people is ‘not under Torah’ in the sense that it is not ‘Israel according to the flesh’, living in the place where Torah goes on pronouncing the necessary and proper sentence of condemnation. But it ‘fulfills the decrees of Torah’, and indeed ‘keeps God’s commandments’, insofar as it is the "Deuteronomy-30 people" in whom what had been impossible under Torah, because of Israel’s fleshly identification with Adam, is now accomplished by the spirit (513).
Or, as he now sums it all up:
Once we grasp how the plots and sub-plots of the story work, then, we can be quite clear that for Paul, Torah is the divine gift which defines and shapes God’s people. God’s people follow their strange vocation through the long years of preparation, through the period (particularly) of failure, curse and exile, and finally to the unexpected (and indeed ‘apocalyptic’) events which Paul sees both as the fulfilment of all the earlier promises [of God], and the new creation which has arrived as a fresh divine gift. Torah accompanies them all the way - like a faithful servant doing what is required in each new eventuality, taking on the different roles demanded by, and at the different stages of, Israel’s journey, to finally attain a [radically] new kind of ‘fulfilment’ in the heart-circumcision promised by Deuteronomy and supplied by the Spirit. At one moment in the narrative the moon is waning; at another it is full; at another, it helps to bury the dead. This narrative framework frees Torah from the burden of always playing the villain in a Lutheran would-be reading of Paul, or the hero in a Reformed one. It offers, instead, a chance for Torah to be what Paul insists it always was: God’s law, holy and just and good, but given a task which, like the task of the Messiah himself, would involve terrible paradox before attaining astonishing resolution. The Torah shines with borrowed light, and the horned dilemmas it has presented to exegetes are only resolved when the complete cycle of waxing and waning has played itself out (516).
Paul and Jesus

Now what about Jesus, where does he fit in the story/stories?
At the same time, it is important to stress that ‘the story of Jesus in Paul’, were we to tell it, would always appear as the denouement of some other story or set of stories. Paul does not introduce, or appear to think of, Jesus as a character facing a task or problem, finding it difficult or impossible, needing to seek fresh help or to ward off difficulties, and finally succeeding in the task or surmounting the problem. As with Torah, only in quite a different mode, everything Paul says about Jesus belongs within one or more of the other stories, of the story of the creator and the cosmos, of the story of God and humankind, and/or the story of God and Israel. Because these three layers of plot interlock in the way I have described, what Paul says about Jesus, and what he could have said were he to have laid out his worldview-narrative end-to-end for us to contemplate, makes the sense it does as the crucial factor within those other narratives. Thus there really is, in one sense, a Pauline ‘story of Jesus’, but it is always the story of how Jesus enables the other stories to proceed to their appointed resolution (517).
There are, then, three interlocking stories, diagrammed on p. 521:
Here is the point of all these pretty little diagrams, and I hope this exposition functions redemptively in their direction too, after the scepticism even of some of their former users. When we understand the triple narrative which forms the basis of Paul’s worldview, we can see the way in which, bewildering though it often seems to us, Jesus the Messiah functions for him in relation to all three stories simultaneously. As Israel’s Messiah, he has accomplished Israel’s rescue from its own plight, passing judgment on the evil that has infiltrated even his own people. As Israel-in-person, which is one of the things a Messiah is (see below), he has completed Israel’s own vocation, to bring rescue and restoration to the human race, passing judgment on human wickedness in order to establish true humanness instead. And as the truly human one (Psalm 8; blended with Psalm 110; as in 1 Corinthians 15) [Jesus] has re-established God’s rule over the cosmos, defeating the enemies that had threatened to destroy the work of the creator in order to bring about new creation. Jesus does not have an independent ‘story’ all on his own. He plays the leading role within all the others. He is Adam; he is Israel; he is the Messiah. Only when we understand all this does Paul’s worldview, particularly its implicit complex narrative, make sense (521).
Summing It All Up

There are then three interlocking stories:
1. Creation was supposed to be looked after by Adam, but he sinned and so lost ‘the glory of God’ (3.23). He is replaced not just by the Messiah but by [the church] - ‘those who receive the abundance of grace, and of the gift of covenant membership, of “being in the right”’: they will ‘reign in life through the one man Jesus the Messiah’ (5.17). By this means, creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption (8.18–26). That is the big story, the overarching plot. This is how creation itself is to be renewed. This is the ‘cosmic’ story. 
2. Humans in their sin, which prevents them from attaining their true vocation, are rescued through ‘the obedience of the one man’. Here, ‘obedience’ has taken the place of ‘faithfulness’, in 3.22 and elsewhere, as a summary of the Messiah’s completion of the work marked out for Israel.189 This is (perhaps unhappily named) the ‘anthropological’ story, which is not to be played off against the ‘cosmic’, which it is designed to serve. It is because humans are rescued from their sin that they are able once more to play their part in God’s worldwide purposes. 
3. The specific problem of Israel, highlighted and exacerbated by the arrival of the Torah (5.20), has been met, and more than met, by the grace which has abounded in the Messiah. [Jesus] has done on Israel’s behalf what Israel could not do, and also has done for Israel itself what Israel needed to be done. His Israel-work rescues Adam’s people; his Adam-work rescues creation itself. This is the ‘covenantal’ vision, which again must not be played off against either the ‘anthropological’ or the ‘cosmic’ stories. It is because the Messiah has fulfilled Israel’s calling that humans are rescued from idolatry, sin and death (531).

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