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

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

On Knowing in the Bible: Is God Dead? Badiou's Reflective Thought for Theology, Part 3




The last several days have found me listening to the French Philosopher Alain Badiou describing his life and ideas in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Kendall College of Art and Design at the behest of GCAS (see HuffPost's article: Something Radical: The Global Center of Advanced Studies). To say this event was surreal would have been an understatement. However, this kindly and gracious man and his wife have spent the past week discussing his philosophy of "Being and Event" by examining his early youth experiences of French colonialism in his homeland Morocco; the Nazi occupation of North Africa and France; his later involvement in the Algerian resistance to French colonialism after WW2; and the philosophical trajectories he has taken on the topic of "Subject and Difference." Especially as this topic related to the political doctrinaires of Fascism, Communism, Maoism, and tyranny, around the understanding of self within society. It has been a thorough undertaking and one that GCAS had arranged masterfully in order to make a complete documentary of Alain's life story.

My own backstory is that of a lay theologian with some university coursework and background in philosophy but nothing formally in a specific degree program unlike most of the attendees whom I have met holding at least one, if not more, Ph.D's to their pedigrees. And so, coming into a setting such as this immediately put me at a disadvantage to the depth of linguistic concepts and ideological structures being knowledgeably discussed amongst participants representing a small cadre of international philosophers, scholars, ethicists, educationalists, sociologists, and the arts, ranging from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Adelaide, Australia, the schools of Switzerland, to the lands of Belarus. Each had come to hear from the man they had read, or studied under, and were in some way associated with, through GCAS' graduate or post-graduate programs as it extended its global outreach beyond the brick-and-mortar walls of academia to help lower the burden of education's expenses while bringing teaching directly to the learner.

Our schedule was as follows:

Mon (10 AM-12:30 PM EST): Badiou in the 1960-70s
Tues (10 AM-12:30 PM EST): Badiou in the 1980-90s
Weds (10 AM-12:30 PM EST): Badiou & the Global
Thurs (10 AM-12:30 PM EST): Badiou in the 2000s
Thurs (2-4:00 PM EST): C. Winter on Africa & Contradiction
Fri (10 AM-12:30 PM EST): Badiou in the 2010s

These included two-hour luncheons with one another and roundtable discussions in the evening from 6-9 pm with Alain and the co-directors of GCAS. It was a thorough undertaking by GCAS who hosted an excellent week of study, sharing, and participation by scholar and student alike.

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So then, when coming to Badiou's thought and philosophy as a Christian theologian how does one approach the concepts he has constructed so meticulously over a lifetime of historical observation and reflection? One of Alain's descriptions of philosophy is that of a close kinship with theatre whose form imitates life even as "all explanation" is not unlike theatre itself" (sic, clast v. iconoclast). Each has the same goal - that of creating new conditions for thinking about life; or, in providing a different way in which to find a new freedom - some concrete, some aesthetic. And it is our choice as participants in its product as to whether we will be the actors on stage ourselves or to view its play from the seats of the theatre as its dramas unfold. Plato's solution (re: his illustration of "The Cave") was to be on the stage, even as Badiou himself had written many plays in an earlier life in attempt to disclose his perceptions of his times as both playwright and patron.

For myself, I ultimately wish to contemporize and expand the language I use for my postmodern Christian faith but when entering into philosophy's earthly appointments immediately come into conflict with its sublime premises: that all is reason and rationality. As such, I find my Christian faith's theistic basis of knowing self through divine revelation of God's Word in direct opposition to philosophy's premises and assertions. In philosophical  terms, special revelation then becomes merely religious ideology, and must be abandoned in all its forms and structures if we are to proceed on a more proper philosophical basis of deriving our sense of being through the very human means of reason and rationality. Thus is the conflict between human wisdom and the divine of special revelation.

But admittedly, no religion - not even the Christian faith - is without immersion within society's philosophical perspectives. And it would be audacious to pretend that it is lived so separately from this world we live within. Hence, the study of philosophy is to know both thyself, our fellow man, and hopefully, our God, in a fuller, deeper sense. As such, theology must be acquainted with philosophy which itself is a close observer of history, society, movements, and events. Where one looks for meaning in God, the other looks for meaning in event, place, and time. Each carry similar purposes even as each casts a wary eye on the other. For myself, this is not a problem and should be welcomed within the tensions of the disciplines in hopes that in the critique of both disciplines will come an enlightenment to the degree that each might admit the other into the audience of its theatrical stage, if not upon the very stage itself. Each struggling with its own idea of reality and being as versus the real reality that lives and breathes off the stage of performance and show.

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Now to the topic at hand, that of knowing and being. Badiou presents to us the problem of our postmodern times, namely that "God is Dead" and summarizes it thusly:

"Our times are undoubtedly those of the disappearance of the gods without return. But this disappearance stems from three distinct processes, for there have been three capital gods, namely, of religion, metaphysics, and the poets. Regarding the God of religions, its death must simply be declared.... Regarding the God of metaphysics, thought must accomplish its course in the infinite.... As for the God of poetry, the poem must cleanse language from within by slicing off the agency of loss and return. That is because we have lost nothing and nothing returns.... Committed to the triple destitution of the gods, we, inhabitants of the Earth’s infinite sojourn, can assert that everything is here, always here, and that thought’s reserve lies in the thoroughly informed and firmly declared egalitarian platitude of what befalls upon us here. Here is the place where truths come to be. Here we are infinite. Here nothing is promised to us, only to be faithful to what befalls upon us." (Badiou: Briefings on Existence, pp 30-31)

So then, if "God is Dead," according to Badiou, then how can a Christian faith continue to exist in the face of this statement? More so, how can philosophers such as Badiou be read and used in extending the Christian faith forwards towards an epistemologic declaration of certainty rather than one of an existential despair? (re: a recent sermon's topic which I heard this past Sunday when visiting a more conservative church fellowship declaring its own ground of being and certainty of biblical knowledge).

Notes David Congdon in his research on Badiou ("See What Is Coming to Pass and Not Only What Is: 
Alain Badiou and the Possibility of a Nonmetaphysical Theology"):

"The question for Christian theology is whether Badiou is merely an antagonist, or whether he can serve as an ally in the task of contemporary theological reflection. And if the latter, under what conditions? (3)"

He then observes towards the end of his research the problem of approaching a subject with a prejudicial set of a priories, or pre-formed assumptions, about a subject - which in this case is my basic theism in opposition to Badiou's non-theistic approach:

"Theological appropriations and translations of philosophical accounts of being and existence are always hazardous endeavors. They continually run the risk of violently conforming each philosophy to fit a presupposed theological paradigm. On some level, this danger is never entirely avoidable, hence the need to critically re-translate and re-appropriate each concept anew, or dispense with them altogether in order to start again on a different footing.

"The goal of this [research] paper has been to demonstrate that Alain Badiou’s mature philosophy is especially congenial to the task of formative Christian theology in the present situation. Badiou provides theology with the terms and ideas to articulate an emancipatory, pluralistic, and nonmetaphysical account of Christian fidelity to Jesus the Christ. The gospel kerygma mobilizes a multiplicity of new communities for the sake of a messianic theo-political witness in the world. Responsible talk of God (i.e., theology without metaphysics) is thus a consequence of this concrete fidelity and always speaks to the ongoing work of subjectivation within a particular situation." (41)

Reading within the pages of David's research will come a beautiful recital of the kerygmatic event of God's being in the world through Christ Jesus' incarnation and resurrection encapsulated within the body of mankind, and more specifically, His church:

"A Badiouan account of nonmetaphysical theology thus understands God to be an unanticipatable event that dialectically unites in Godself both object (site, inexistent, point) and subject (trace, body), without being directly identified with either. God takes place as a local disruption whose singularity embraces ever new situations and new subjective forms. God’s being, we might say, is ontologically located in a transontological event which is transpositionally repeated in the infinite multiplicity of contingent historical worlds. In other words, the above account of the kerygma is here understood as an account of God’s very being - a being that is, in fact, wholly beyond being, beyond the antimony of finite and infinite. God cannot be inscribed within the limits of ontology. The truth of God cannot be described as something that is, but only as something that does. Theology is not a doctrine of being but a doctrine of doing, that is, of God’s own kinetic-kenotic praxis in the economy of grace. God is not a nature or a substance or an idea, but an action, a migration, a proclamation. God happens in the kerygmatic event of Jesus Christ as an apocalyptic interruption of a situation, calls forth a new faithful subject to carry out the consequences of this messianic truth, and repeatedly translates this truth into new contexts. In other words, God translates Godself in the transhistorical movement of this christic-pneumatic event. The subjectivating power of the kerygma is God’s own self-mobilization and self-repetition. A non-metaphysical theology of God-as-event will therefore be apocalyptic, existential, hermeneutical, and missionary." (40)

To see how David arrives at this conclusion I would recommend a close reading of his work and especially the ideas expressed using Badiouian thought behind the deep meaning of Jesus' incarnation into this world, His incarnate death, and incarnated resurrection, for the sins of this world. Especially as encapsulated in the continued paschal-Pentecost event for continued divine affirmation and personal human experience which is revolutionizing the very world that the Redeeming God has created. Though a Christian soteriology of sin is not held by Badiou, in all other aspects of Badiou's work "the death of God" can be capably utilized by theology to verify the necessity of the incarnated resurrection of Jesus as the redeeming Son of God in whose atonement we lie as both subject and event. It defines our being, our knowing, our doing, our hope. And it is in this way that the Christian's sense of being and knowing is reaffirmed, extended, and deepened into the very fabric of life itself, and into the living God Himself, who bespeaks life and death and resurrection:

"In truth, there is no “self-creating” or “self-incorporating” freedom of the individual. There is only the individual who receives his/her freedom as part of his/her newly created identity that occurs in the hearing of God’s word in the kerygma. Therein lies the persistent point of opposition between philosophy and theology: not ontology, but soteriology. Christian faith can travel a long way with Badiou in his exploration of being, event, and subjectivity, but like Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the purgatory of philosophy’s materialist commitments must give way to the paradise of theology’s kerygmatic affirmation that it is God’s gracious action in Christ which alone makes possible one’s incorporation into the new faithful subject." (42)

In summary,

"Despite this crucial caveat, Christian theology joins Badiou in opposing metaphysics and pursuing an emancipatory politics. Theology can learn from Badiou how to speak of a God who is not necessary, who is beyond all necessity.

At the same time, theology learns how to speak of God from within the multiplicity of worlds. Perhaps most importantly, Badiou provides theological discourse with a way of surpassing the traditional bifurcation between subject and object. The object of faith is an unanticipatable divine event in the contingent historical occurrence of Jesus Christ, but this occurrence cannot be articulated or interpreted apart from the subjective consequences that are bound up within the event itself. Not only are these consequences irreducibly theo-political in nature, but they operate locally as contextual manifestations of fidelity within a particular world.

Christian faith proclaims with Badiou the mobilizing word: “See what is coming to pass and not only what is.” If metaphysics concerns “what is,” then “what is coming to pass” refers to the impossible possibility of a nonmetaphysical event that puts an end to the old regime of being and appearing and inaugurates something decisive and new. It is in this ongoing pursuit of something new in the situation that theology will find Badiou to be a provocative and fruitful dialogue partner." (43)

At the last, theology itself finds its ultimate description not in the sense of "being through knowing" (or knowledge) but in the sense of doing, enacting, and presence, in this world as exampled by the very God Himself in His incarnational atonement. Much like the actor who comes off the stage of the theatre to enter into the reality of life's streams with purpose, with resolve, with conviction, so too the church today must come off its own pulpits to live amongst the peoples of the land. Yes, preach Christ. Yes, preach good doctrine and less dogma. But get off the stage of preaching and into the messy lives of people requiring justice, love, kindness, and mercy. To use hands and feet, tongues and voices, to deliver the good news of the gospel in concrete form and fashion. This is the ultimate definition of a good theology. It is a theology of doing. And from doing, becoming. This is because God is, and will be, in the kergymatic re-enactment of the Paschal-Pneumatic (Christ & Holy Spirit) enlivenment of the Christian faith where the church becomes as both paschal-event and spirit-embodiment of Christ and Spirit to the lives of those requiring a "cup of cold water" or a "good word of gospel cheer".

"God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my
witness how constantly I remember you...." - the Apostle Paul (Romans 1.9)

R.E. Slater
July 16, 2014







Tuesday, July 15, 2014

How to Read the Bible like the young Psalmist (Psalm 119)


I Love the Bible: B
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/07/15/i-love-the-bible-b/

by Scot McKnight
Jul 15, 2014

“How can those who are young keep their way pure?,” asks the psalmist in the opening line of the Beth lines of Psalm 119 (v. 9a). Some think the entire psalm is the journal reflections of an ancient Israelite as life progresses. What impresses me is other verses in this great psalm that give context to the concern of this young man to get started when young.

Notice the following verses (culled from Derek Kidner):

1. Some are skeptical: 119:126: “your law is being broken.”
2. Some seek the psalmist’s life: 119:95: “The wicked are waiting to destroy me.”
3. Some smear the psalmist’s name: 119:69: “Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies.”

Notice that this causes the psalmist pain: he is sensitive about the words being said (“Take away the disgrace I dread” — v. 39); he feels humiliated (“Though I am lowly and despised” — v. 141); and, he is exhausted by it all (“My soul is weary with sorrow” — v. 28).

Sometimes he lashes out against them — “Indignation grips me because of the wicked” — v. 53; and sometimes he loathes them — “I look on the faithless with loathing” (158).

So, the young man asks, how does one make it when the whole institution seems to be against the person committed to God? “By living according to your word” (119:9b). Not just by reading it; not just by listening to it; but by “living” it. The word “live” here comes from shamar — “to keep or observe.”

Start when you are young, the psalmist is saying, and what he means is start observing and keeping the Word.

In spite of what everyone else thinks. The genuinely counter-cultural person is observant.

“With all my heart,” the psalmist says in 119:10, “I have turned to You; do not let me stray from Your commandments. In my heart I treasure your promise.”

Commitment to God, a life absorbed in Torah, begins in the heart. And when the commitment begins in the heart (13x in Ps 119), Torah produces wisdom rather than just knowledge. Such commitment, because it opens one entirely to the presence of God, purifies in-and-with love.

Here are some observations:

1. Heart commitment implies inside-out, total revolution.

2. Heart commitment implies “faith seeking understanding.”

3. Heart commitment implies trust in God rather than self.

4. Heart commitment implies vulnerability to God — an admission of what the self is really like.

5. Heart commitment implies treasure in God and turning from sin.

6. Heart commitment implies finding instead of wandering.

x. Others suggestions? (Try to stick to Ps 119:9-16.)

Psalm 119:12-13 expresses the psalmists commitment — to learn the law and to rehearse the rules., thus:

Praise be to you, O LORD; teach me your decrees. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.

Here the young psalmist blesses God (baruk) and petitions God to be the teacher; then the psalmist states that he will “rehearse/recount” all the laws (mishpat).

What I hear is this: the heart set on God learns the Torah — by reading it regularly, listening to it longingly, and loving it with life. Do you regularly read the Bible so that you listen to it? Or is it just something to analyze, study, break apart?

The Torah students begin sessions with this prayer: “Blessed are you, O YHWH; teach me your laws.

The pleasure the psalmist speaks of in Psalm 119:14-15 is not simply the mental exhilaration of study and discovery — the sort of thing many experience when they chance upon something previously unseen in the Bible, which I think is grossly overrated for Bible study.

No, the pleasure of the psalmist is otherwise. We sell ourselves short if we equate the “statutes” and “precepts” and “decrees” of these verses with the words on the page of the Bible. The psalmist finds these words to be communication from God; discovering these words as establishing relationship with God; and therefore the words as interpersonal [between God and the young psalmist]. In knowing them as communion with God the psalmist exhilarates.

Notice the words of pleasure:

I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.”

The psalmist rejoices (shis) and delights (sha’ashu’im) — as one does in great riches. Exhilaration.

This exhilaration transcends knowing as cognition: It is the absorption in Torah and being absorbed by Torah, it is delight in knowing and being known, it is delight in both knowing and doing. I like how it begins in v. 14: “in” the way (derek) of your statutes — not just knowing but the knowing-doing in relationship with God; in the way of communing in in knowing-observing.

A meditation on the experience of the psalmist in Psalm 119; esp vv. 1-16. I take the key idea of this psalm to be absorption. I see this in three directions:

First, the psalmist is absorbed in the Torah as communication from God so that the psalmist is absorbed in God. Over and over the focus is on “Your” word, statutes, precepts, laws, regulations, and teachings. The psalmist delights in God, in hearing from God, and in knowing that God communicates through the Torah to God’s people.

Second, the psalmist is absorbed by the Torah. Not only is the Torah the object in which the psalmist delights; the Torah is the subject that overwhelms the psalmist so that one is caught up in-and-by the wordy presence of God. Not only is the psalmist studying to learn, but the psalmist is being studied by the Torah so that it becomes the “other” that addresses the psalmist.

And, third, the psalmist is absorbed toward others. This wordy presence of God in Torah, the authority of God that comes to the psalmist in the Torah, directs the psalmist’s life toward others. That means, the psalmist speaks about others, to others, and for others. The psalmist summons others to the Torah, to listen and learn.

Why? Because the Torah, this wordy presence of God, is not just words on a paper and not just propositions to be analyzed, but the missio Dei — it is the atoning presence of God among us. As we hear and listen and receive and observe and do and share and summon, we are caught up into the missio Dei [of God] in this world.

[The Word of God is His] missio Dei, so if we are absorbed in it and by it, we will be caught into its fundamental missional direction of speaking to us so that we might hear God and speak to God and speak to others on behalf of God.



Huffington Post - The Science-Religion Crisis at Christian Colleges





The Science-Religion Crisis at Christian Colleges
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-james-clark/science-religion-christian-colleges_b_5565641.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Posted: 07/14/2014 12:28 pm EDT Updated: 07/14/2014 12:59 pm EDT

Kelly James Clark is Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is author or editor of more than 20 books, including Religion and the Sciences of Origins, The Story of Ethics and Abraham’s Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict, which was recently published by Yale University Press. You can learn more at kellyjamesclark.com

additional commentary by R.E. Slater

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Shortly after the 2004 publication of his book, Random Designer, biologist Richard Colling was prohibited from teaching introductory biology courses at Olivet Nazarene College in Illinois and his book was banned from the campus. Peter Enns, who earned his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, claimed that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines as "an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins in the form of stories"; in 2008, the board of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia forced Enns, a tenured faculty member, to resign after fourteen years. In 2010, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando fired biblical scholar Bruce Waltke for stating that evolution is true. In 2011, Calvin College fired theologian John Schneider and silenced biblical scholar Dan Harlow for challenging the traditional Christian understanding of a literal Adam and Eve....

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Adam and Eve are the third rail for contemporary evangelical scholars--touch it and you will die (homosexuality is another third rail).

Science has peeled away successive layers of the Adam and Eve narrative for over two centuries. According to the traditional account, Adam and Eve, the morally pure first couple, lived in a paradise where, though they didn't work, their every need was met. In Eden there was no suffering and death (not just for humans but for every living creature). Adam's fall, then, issued forth in natural evils such as earthquakes, pestilence, and famine (and the suffering and death that lie in their wake) and moral evils such as human slavery, war, and other forms of violence (and the suffering and death that lie in their wake). Prior to the fall, the world was one of suffering-free and death-free bliss.

The disciplined study of geology in the nineteenth century presented an entirely different picture: a history that preceeded by millions of years than was suggested by a literal reading of Genesis; a history of natural evils on a scale vaster than [anyone could have] imagined. For example, previously unknown species such as the Megalosaurus and Iguanodon had not only suffered and died; they had gone extinct.

Modern geology says that natural evil, then, did not enter the world through the fall of Adam; it's built into the world's very structure. Therefore Adam and Eve did not live in an Edenic paradise with little struggle for existence. They would have entered into a world of suffering and death, one in which they would have to eke out their own existence.

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What about Adam and Eve themselves? Even if an Edenic paradise is no longer tenable, what about a primordial perfect couple from whom all human beings have descended?

Contemporary molecular biology suggests that all living human beings are descended from about 10,000 [to 15,000] early humans, not a single couple. And paleontology, anthropology and archaeology have converged on the view that the first humans were anything but morally pure; their lives were characteristically selfish and even viciously so, in ways that included war, murder, and rape.

Science tells us that there was no Edenic paradise, no first couple, and no sinless parents of humanity.

And while most scientists and some theologians and philosophers teaching at Protestant Christian colleges know this, very few are willing to speak out. The message of the dismissals is clear -- speak out and get fired. When dissenting Christian voices are squelched or fired, faculty clam up.

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Christian colleges and seminaries desperately fear change. According to Peter Enns, "The theological tradition embraced at Westminster Theological Seminary, stemming from deliberations in England during the seventeenth century, is nevertheless perceived by its adherents to enjoy an unassailable permanence and in need of no serious adjustments, let alone critical reflection, despite many known advances in biblical studies or science since that time."

How can Christian intellectuals be getting fired, just when Christians need leadership on this and other science-related matters? With such a paucity of intellectual assistance, Christians feel forced to choose between the science of human origins, on the one hand, and an antiquated theology of human origins on the other.

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A recent Gallup poll indicates that in the U.S. the percentage of those who believe that humans evolved through a God-guided process has declined from 38 percent to 31 percent for the period from 1982 to 2014.

And while massive amounts of money have been spent on science education and in court battles, the number of people who believe that humans were created in their present form 10,000 years ago has stayed roughly the same over this period (an embarrassing 42 percent of the U.S. population).

The single, most relevant variable indicative of young-earth creationism is church attendance. Fully 69 percent of young-earth creationists are regular church attenders. Sadly, low education is likewise highly correlated with young-earth creationism.

The only clear winner of the past thirty years is atheism. The number of people who believe that God had nothing to do with the creation of humans has doubled in just over 30 years (from 9 percent to 19 percent). Apparently, those people, too, think that one is forced to choose between science and antiquated theology....

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*ADDENDUM

Note - the phrase "God has nothing to do with the creation of humans" is poorly constructed in referring to the opinion of non-Christians and to those Christians who view creation from an evolutionary biological standpoint.

What I would like to add, from mine own perspective, is that God is the Creator of this earth through the divine process of evolution. That He guided its process throughout its formation. That He decreed the evolutionary process of chaos and randomness by giving to it a process of efficiency to whatever may come within its chaotic and random disorder cosmologically, geologically, and biologically.

And to this idea of efficiency God also gave biologic life the "will to survive" in anyway that it could. This, to me, would be evolution's divine teleology (sic, refer to several past articles on this topic).

It also is the way in which God chose to act sovereignly without invoking the concept of meticulous sovereignty whereby He must control every jot and tittle of His creative act. Meaning that, God is deeply involved, deeply present, and deeply interested, in the creation, maintenance, and sustenance of the universe, our world, and humanity in particular.

But to creation He gave it "a kind of free will" better described as "indeterminant." That is, creation's "freedom of will" (an anthropomorphic description) is its interderminate character of chaos and random disorder (its better scientific description).

Hence, this would then better describe the Arminianian view of creation's character (sic, free will: mankind; indeterminancy: creation) than that of Calvinism's idea of a necessary meticulous sovereignty of divine involvement when thinking of the bad things that comes to humanity within this kind of creative structure.

And yes, God created a creation that can hold bad things for us humans such as fire and windstorm, virus and illness. Even death. But not sin: a human trait involving moral conscience in relationship to free will. Again, please refer to the sidebar for this topic as well.

But we would more properly attribute these "bad things" to creation's process and not to the divine Himself. Meaning that a child's sickness cannot be directly attributed to God but more to the kind of process that God has created. A death by tornado or windstorm comes not by God's hand so much as by the kind of evolutionary process that we survive within - I wish to phrase it in this way in order to underscore the additional idea that evolution has not stopped, but is a continuing process that we live within, that we survive within, even now.

- R.E. Slater
July, 15, 2014

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Along with their firings, Protestant Christian college and seminary presidents have taken the side of antiquated theology over science (contributing even further to Christian colleges' climate of fear). For example, in 2010, at a conference chock full of Christian leaders, Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (the flagship seminary of the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.), resoundingly declared that the Bible unequivocally teaches six x twenty-four-hour days of creation and a young universe (on the order of tens of thousands of years, not billions). He claims:

"I would suggest to you that in our effort to be most faithful to the scriptures and most accountable to the grand narrative of the gospel an understanding of creation in terms of 24-hour calendar days and a young earth entails far fewer complications, far fewer theological problems, and actually is the most straightforward and uncomplicated reading of the text as we come to understand God telling us how the universe came to be and what it means and why it matters."

In his wooden and historically uninformed interpretation of Genesis, Mohler, armed with no training whatsoever in the relevant sciences or ancient Mesopotamian history, rejected cosmology, geology, and biology. At the end of his sermon, Mohler boldly asserted:

"I want to suggest to you that when it comes to the confrontation between evolutionary theory and the Christian gospel we have a head-on collision. In the confrontation between secular science and the scripture we have a head-on collision."

By squelching faithful scientific and theological exploration, Mohler-and-company are teaching Christian students that Christians are forced to choose between well-established knowledge and God. And they are teaching teachers and pastors who are teaching children and lay people that they must choose likewise.

But forcing a choice between science and God may not have the result Christian colleges and their shortsighted leaders desire. Forced to choose between physics, cosmology, paleontology, anthropology, geology, genetics, and biology, on the one hand, and their antiquated interpretation of Christianity on the other, increasingly many will choose science.



Monday, July 14, 2014

Diagramming "The Young, Restless, and Reformed"


On Naming the Calvinists, or whatever…
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2014/07/rethinking-hell-evangelical_14.html

Scot McKnight
Jul 14, 2014

Timothy Paul Jones has a very useful, informed article on his blog on naming the new Calvinism, and his graph of the elements at work is worth considering:

"How then should we refer to the recent resurgence of interest in Reformed soteriology?

"Before providing a tentative answer to this question, it may be worth pointing out that no one within this growing movement appears to be clamoring for a newer or narrower name. What I’ve witnessed among the so-called “young, restless, Reformed” is widespread contentment with historical designations and denominations. The discontent with existing epithets seems to spring from those that are critical of the Reformed resurgence, not from those within the movement.

"That said, it seems to me that the most accurate descriptor would be “Dortianism” or, if some prefix must be affixed to denote the distinct contours of the current movement, “neo-Dortianism” (see chart below for this taxonomy).

"Unfortunately, I don’t expect “Dortianism” to blossom into anyone’s preferred terminology anytime soon.* The events at [the Synod of] Dort are too obscure and the term itself sounds too distasteful to end up emblazoned on anyone’s book cover. (Do you really think that the "Young, Restless, Dortian" would have attracted anywhere near the number of readers that the Young, Restless, Reformed did?)

And so, of the options that are intelligible, beyond a handful of theologians and church historians, “neo-Reformed”—though not without its difficulties—probably remains the least problematic nomenclature in an ever-multiplying pool of possibilities.

And perhaps part of what the less-than-ideal “neo-” prefix could connote is the spread of Reformed soteriology not only within but also beyond the historic Presbyterian and Reformed churches."


Naming the New Calvinism, by Timothy Paul Jones




Rethinking Hell: Evangelical Conditionalism (Annihilationism), Part 3


John W. Wenham

God’s Goodness and Endless Punishment
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/07/14/gods-goodness-and-endless-punishment/

by Scot McKnight
Jul 14, 2014

Way back in the 1930s John W. Wenham, eventual author of one of the most influential Greek grammar texts and of a book called The Goodness of God (also called The Enigma of Evil), was a student of an eccentric English academic named Basil F.C. Atkinson, who it was known believed in conditional immortality (annihilationism). Wenham took the case on as a personal project and over the years became a firm advocate for the position. His evangelical credentials and personal piety are impeccable, which seem to matter to many in this discussion, but it is his biblical exegesis that matters even more. His case is sketched in Rethinking Hell (pp. 74-94).

Wenham makes clear that most critics of conditional immortality fail to address the fundamental issues raised by conditionalists. At times, sad to say, they badly misrepresent conditionalists and he points especially at none other than J.I. Packer, though he has his eye on W.G.T. Shedd, Paul Helm, and John Gerstner. Helm, he contends, spends his time critiquing points conditionalists don’t believe. On Gerstner he says this:

"Gerstner pitches into Hughes, Stott, and Fudge for their revolt against hell. It [Gerstner's study] is a wonderful example of circular argument. He assumes that the Bible teaches what he believes about hell and then proceeds to show that they believe otherwise. He just does not seriously address their arguments. Not sharing his beliefs about hell is equated with a rejection of hell itself, which it is absurd to attribute to such as Stott, Hughes, and Fudge." (78-79)

Packer, he says, shows no signs of having read any of Fudge’s most important study and provides “instead answers to arguments they do not use” (79). These are strong words by a very kind man. Packer calls conditionalists’ studies “avalanche-dodging” (79). Wenham proceeds then to a patient examination of the NT texts about eternal life and death and punishment (264 such references). His conclusion:

"It is a terrible catalogue, giving most solemn warning, but in all but one of the 264 references there is not a word about unending torment and very many of them in their natural sense clearly refer to destruction." (82) [The avalanche shrinks, in his view, to one passage. The disinterested observer must wonder how to one person something can be an avalanche but to another one verse in a book full of metaphor and symbol.]

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Wenham knocks down, in typical fashion, the fascination and assumption and baseless argument that the Bible teaches the immortality of the soul. The word “eternal” can mean either qualitatively eternal (pertaining to the Age to Come) or temporally eternal (everlasting). Context determines what one sees.

He knows Revelation 14:11 is the most difficult text of all, though I would contend that — in spite of their symbolic language — Revelation 19:3 or Revelation 20:10 must be given the same consideration. Wenham admits that “on the face of it, having no rest day or not with smoke of torment going up forever and ever, sounds like everlasting torment” (86). But he says this, too: “I am nonetheless chary about basing fundamental doctrine upon its symbolism” (86).

[I agree with Wenham that the debate narrows, ultimately, to the three texts in Revelation. What I find missing in so many of these arguments is a proof of the letter "C" in ECT -- eternal conscious torment. One must prove consciousness for it to be ECT. In other words, it is more than proving "eternal" or "everlasting." The word "eternal" can mean eternal consequences as well as eternal consciousness, the former fitting quite easily into the conditionalist scheme of thinking.]

Packer is flat-out wrong on the turn to this view only in the 20th Century; Wenham shows how deep the discussion was about this in the 19th Century among evangelicals in England and the USA. One after another he goes after Packer’s logic: that this view misses out on the awesome dignity that we have been made to exist forever, that it diminishes the punishment of the wicked, that it misses out on the glory of divine justice (he finds the God of this one “sadistic”) and Wenham thinks endless punishment is neither “loving or just” (90)… that conditionalists (a la Packer) back into their view in horror of the punishment instead of Scripture is a false accusation for many, including Wenham who came to the view honestly on the basis of exegesis (and so did/do many others).

“From the days of Tertullian [ECT] has frequently been the emphasis of fanatics. It is a doctrine that makes the Inquisition look reasonable. It all seems a flight from reality and common sense.” (92)



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Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 9 - Michael L. Ruffin


Michael L. Ruffin

“aha” moments: biblical scholars (and pastors) tell their stories (8): Michael Ruffin
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/07/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-and-pastors-tell-their-stories-8-michael-ruffin/

by Peter Enns
July 14, 2014

Michael L. Ruffin (MDiv and PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is pastor of First Baptist Church of Fitzgerald, Georgia and former professor in the School of Religion at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of Prayer 365, Living on the Edge: Preaching Advent in Year C, and Living Between The Advents.

This is the first post in this series by someone whose career has been primarily as a pastor (hence the slight title change).

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I was raised in the small town of Barnesville, Georgia, where I was born in 1958. My parents were high school-educated textile mill workers who loved the Lord, who loved their only child, and who loved their church. As a result, my presence at the church was perpetual.

The church was the Midway Baptist Church, a nominally Southern Baptist Church with Independent (fundamentalist, pre-millennial, and all that) Baptist leanings that was located several miles from town on City Pond Road (although throughout my childhood I thought it was on County Maintained Road since the only sign on it said “County Maintained”).

In ninety-five percent of the families at Midway, at least one - and often both - adults worked in a mill; I can remember just a small handful of people who had any education beyond high school.

Our pastor, the now late and much missed but then beloved Rev. Herman J. “Bill” Coleman, was an energetically evangelistic preacher and caring pastor who had no college or seminary training; I don’t think he finished high school.

Preacher Bill, as everyone called him, would have been shocked and dismayed had he ever been exposed to any sort of critical approach to the Bible. Once I saw an ad in one of my comic books for a book containing “Lost Books of the Bible”; I asked Preacher Bill what he thought about that and he said, “That’s the imagination of some man’s mind!” I imagine that’s what he would have said had someone tried to describe the Documentary Hypothesis to him.

When I was fourteen I announced to my church family that I had been called to preach; a couple of years later I found myself in Macon at Mercer University, then the flagship university of Georgia Baptists (but now free of denominational entanglement).

During my first semester in the fall of 1975 I enrolled in “Introduction to the Old Testament” which was taught by Dr. Howard P. Giddens, then a sixty-something year old professor who some ten years earlier had come back to his alma mater to teach after many years of service as a pastor. The textbooks for the course were the Oxford Annotated Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and James King West’s Introduction to the Old Testament.

Within the first couple of weeks we had covered many significant introductory matters, including the Documentary Hypothesis. My head was set to spinning.

On a trip home I decided to broach with my father (who was our Baptist church's deacon, and long-time men’s Sunday School class teacher) the subject of the liberalism to which I was being subjected. I figured (and probably hoped) that he would tell me to go pack my bags, come back home, and enroll in some safe state school.

The conversation went like this:

Me: “Do you know what Dr. Giddens and my textbook say about the Pentateuch?”

Dad: “About the what?”

Me: “The Pentateuch. The Torah. The first five books of the Old Testament.”

Dad: “Oh. No, what do they say?”

Me: “That Moses didn’t write everything in those books.”

Dad: “Really?”

Me: “Yes, really.”

Dad: “Huh. Well, I always wondered how Moses managed to write about his own death.”

And that is how it took a college professor with a Th.D., an introductory Hebrew Bible textbook, and my high school-educated textile mill-working father to open my eyes to all the biblical wonders to which they are still being opened …



Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Common Questions and Misunderstandings about Classical Arminianism, Part 5




Arminianism FAQ 5 (Everything You Always Wanted to Know…)

by Roger Olson
July 14, 2014

This is the final installment of this series. I realize that I will not have answered every conceivable questions about Arminianism. “FAQ” means “frequently asked questions,” but not even every frequently asked question about Arminianism can be answered in one series such as this. Readers should realize that these are my answers, not necessarily the answers every Arminian would give. However, I have been researching, speaking and writing about Arminianism for well over twenty years now. I beg my fellow Arminians’ indulgence. If you disagree with something I say about Arminianism here, please don’t over react and go on a rant. Just state your own opinion and give your reasons for it. I am sure there will never come a day, short of the eschaton, when all Arminians cross every “t” and dot every “i” of Arminian theology exactly alike.

FAQ: Where is “prevenient grace” taught in Scripture?

Answer (A): Of course there are individual passages that point to it, but the term itself is not there. It is a theological concept constructed (like “Trinity”) to express a theme found throughout Scripture and to explain what would otherwise remain seemingly contradictory.

John 12:32 is perhaps the clearest Scriptural expression of prevenient grace which is the resistible grace that convicts, calls, illumines and enables sinners so that they are able to repent and believe in Christ and be saved. There Jesus says that if he be lifted up he will draw all people to himself. The Greek translated “all” is pantas and clearly refers to all inclusively, not to “some” (e.g., “the elect”). The Greek word translated “draw” is much debated. Calvinists usually argue that it should best be translated “compel.” However, if that were its meaning here, the result would seem to be universalism.

However, belief in prevenient grace does not depend on proof texts. The concept is everywhere taught implicitly in Scripture. It is the only explanation for the following clearly Scriptural chain of ideas:

1) No one seeks after God (total depravity),
2) The initiative in salvation is God’s,
3) All the ability to exercise a good will toward God is from God,
4) salvation is God’s gift, not human accomplishment, and
5) people are able to resist God’s offer of salvation.

All of that is summed up in the phrase “prevenient grace.”

Arminians disagree among ourselves about the details such as who is affected by prevenient grace and under what specific conditions. All agree that the cross of Jesus Christ mysteriously accomplished something with regard to prevenient grace, but there is some disagreement about the necessity of evangelism (communication of the gospel) for the fullness of prevenient grace to have its impact upon sinners.

FAQ: Doesn’t classical Arminianism really say the same thing as Calvinism when it comes to the sovereignty of God?After all, if God foreknew everything that would happen and created this world anyway, wasn’t he foreordaining everything simply by virtue of creating?

A: This is a very good question but one based on a misunderstanding of divine foreknowledge.

Classical Arminianism does not imagine that God “previewed” all possible worlds and then chose to create this one. God chose to create a world and include in it creatures created in his own image and likeness with free will to either love and obey him or not.

God’s knowledge of what happens in this world “corresponds” (is the best word) to what happens; it does not cause it or even render it certain.

Admittedly we cannot fully explain God’s foreknowledge without slipping into determinism. But the mysteries of free will (power of contrary choice) and divine non-determining foreknowledge are mysteries much more easily accepted than any form of [Calvinistic] divine determinism which, given the shape of this world, would inevitably cast shadows on God’s character.

FAQ: Can an Arminian explain the few crucial ideas that distinguish Arminianism from Calvinism for non-scholars?

A: Yes. There are three of them.

First, God is absolutely, unconditionally good in a way that we can understand as good. (In other words, God’s goodness does not violate our basic divinely-given intuitions about goodness.)

Second, God’s consequent will is not God’s antecedent will except that God antecedently (pertaining to the Fall) decides to permit human rebellion and its consequences. All specific sins and evils are permitted by God according to his consequent will and are not designed or ordained or rendered certain according to God’s antecedent will.

Third, salvation of individuals is not determined by God but is provided for (atonement and prevenient grace) and accomplished by God (regeneration and justification by grace through faith).



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