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

Friday, December 5, 2014

The Role of Experience in Theology, Parts 1 & 2


Thoughts about the Role of Experience
in Theology: Part One


by Roger Olson
[with some observations by re slater]
November 28, 2014

"Theology without experience is empty;
Experience without theology is blind."

                                       - A paraphrase to Kant's insight


I have long thought that experience does and should play a role in Christian theology, but I have also long known that’s controversial, especially among conservative Christian theologians, and that it’s difficult to define. That is, it’s difficult to pin down exactly what role experience plays and how much of a role it should play in theological reflection and especially doctrinal formulation.

I think pure objectivity is a myth; no such thing exists in human experience or thought. Inter-subjectivity is the most we can hope for. That is, there is no “view from nowhere”; perspective always intrudes in interpretation and reflection. However, I do not believe we are locked into our perspectives such that they cannot be informed by dialogue with people of other perspectives.

One reason pure objectivity is a myth is the inevitable role played by experience in interpretation and reflection. It’s always easier to see that role in other people’s interpretations and reflections than in one’s own. But I simply scoff at anyone who claims pure objectivity outside the analytical realm (i.e., matters of definition where there is an authoritative source). Even there, however, I suspect some perspective intrudes (i.e., in the defining of words and concepts by writers of dictionaries and encyclopedias).

As a historical theologian I have very little difficulty pointing out how experience has always and everywhere played some role in theological reflection—both critique and construction. For example, I would have great trouble taking seriously anyone who claimed that Martin Luther formulated his soteriology of justification by grace through faith alone in a purely objective, “ivory tower,” manner. Almost all Luther scholars point to his “tower experience” and other experiences (such as his trip to Rome) as playing a contributing role in his later formulations such as “simul justus et peccator.” In other words, Luther did not suddenly discover one day through pure, objective reflection on Scripture…. That does nothing to detract from the truth of what he discovered (as many fear such an admission will inevitably do). It still must be tested by Scripture (according to classical Protestant theology). But that it originated partly out of his experiences is incontrovertible. What role did his experiences play in it? Well, if nothing else, they focused his attention on the meaning of Scripture in a new way and set him on a journey to discover the true meaning of Scripture. [sic, as opposed to the idea of the Roman Catholic Church as sole mediator of God's Word. That is, Luther's catholic experience influenced his theological orientation. - re slater]

I believe (as a historical theologian) this can be shown about all theological “breakthroughs.” This is no new idea. Baptist theologian James McClendon wrote Theology as Biography in 1974 and there demonstrated it through case studies.

This idea, however, creates great fear in many conservative, confessional theologians—especially conservative evangelicals (using “evangelical” in a broad way). To them it suggests subjectivism in theology. They have come to depend on the myth of objectivity—after conversion if not before—such that they imagine there are purely objective tools for carrying out theology’s critical and constructive tasks. There must be, they assume, or else we are left with theological anarchy and no way of sorting out and through the competing truth claims made by self-identified Christians. Lacking a physical magisterium such as the Catholic hierarchy and pope at its head evangelicalism needs, so they claim, objective principles and methods of determining theological truth and separating it from error.

The historical-theological guru, as it were, of this approach to theology, at least for many American conservative evangelicals, is Charles Hodge, the nineteenth century exemplar of Reformed Protestant Orthodoxy. The question is whether his allegedly purely objective approach to theology worked even for him or whether his own experience played a role in his theological reflections. I think that has been demonstrated by his biographers. Even Hodge did not have a “view from nowhere” or think God’s thoughts after him. And I would even go so far as to claim that his attempt to exclude all experience from theological reflection (after regeneration) led to his Systematic Theology (if not his other writings) being exceptionally dry and spiritually infertile.

Let me define (again, from my own perspective but hopefully not a private one) “experience” as I mean it here—in reflecting on its role in theology. There are several types of experience that I believe must be taken into consideration.


  • First, there is common, universal human experience.
  • Second, there is cultural experience.
  • Third, there is community experience.
  • Fourth, there is personal, individual experience.

Common, universal human experience includes, at least from a religious perspective (!), the “sensus divinitatis” or what Friedrich Schleiermacher called “God-consciousness.” (I do not think it necessarily includes all that Schleiermacher thought it includes such as “the feeling of utter dependence.” Here I am not accepting any particular interpretation of this common, universal human “religious experience” as necessarily valid.) Rudolf Otto called it “numinous experience.” Paul Tillich called it “ultimate concern.” C. S. Lewis described it as “the law of nature” and a sense of obligation. Whatever exactly it contains, many scholars have identified it as a universal human experience if only a sense of something as sacred.

Cultural experience is the mythos of a particular culture, the guiding implicit beliefs about reality that govern (not necessarily determine) how people of a particular culture view and interpret reality (nature, history, social relations, ethics, etc.). I’m American so I’ll use the American mythos to illustrate this. Most Americans, admitting many exceptions, operate in life with the myth of American exceptionalism (however precisely interpreted). This is how they interpret world news, for example: “If only the rest of the world were American the world would be so much better.” This is also how they interpret wealth and poverty: “If only everyone pulled themselves up by their bootstraps everyone would be prosperous.” I could go on. These ideas, rooted in a distinctly (not necessarily uniquely) American mythos, rooted in American experience, permeate much American culture and influence how Americans view things.

Community experience, in the way I mean it here, is “smaller scale” than cultural experience (as I described it above). By “communal experience” I mean the traditions, “habits of the heart,” “ways of living” that tend to govern a particular group within a culture. Usually one has to be part of a group for some length of time or grow up in it to “get it”—with “it” meaning communal experience. I would call this communal experience a group’s ethos. Again, since I grew up Pentecostal, I’ll “pick on” Pentecostalism as a movement to illustrate this “community experience.” Most Pentecostals (at least when I was born into the movement and growing up in it in the 1950s through the 1970s) view their movement and themselves as “the” “Spirit-filled” branch of Christianity and revel in testimonies of supernatural experiences of the Spirit. Criticism, even disdain, from outsiders was interpreted as confirmation of our being special because “true Christianity” was and always will be a “remnant” called out from the “world” (with “world” standing in for “fallen humanity” with all its evil allures and sinful experiences). Pentecostals believed that God still talks to people even though Scripture is uniquely inspired and authoritative for discernment. “God told me…” was extremely common among Pentecostals and less so among other Christians. It was rarely followed by some new doctrine, but was usually the introduction to a testimony about personal guidance from God or occasionally a “word of wisdom” or “word of knowledge” about how the community (in this case church) or other individual should decide and act. Occasionally, however, it introduced a new perspective on truth. In any case, classical Pentecostals normally (even normatively at their best) submitted such public claims to discernment by the elders, the men and women especially recognized as spiritually mature and attuned. Their discernment involved biblical examination, consideration of tradition, and prayer. The worldview and theology of any person who grew up in classical Pentecostalism or converted into it and remained for a period of time is influenced by this communal experience of “full gospel Christianity.”

The meaning of personal, individual experience is self-evident. Or at least more so than the first three types of experience. Here is inward experience not determined by social experience and not as general as common, universal human experience. It is most evident when an individual breaks out of the molds of common, universal human experience, cultural experience, and communal experience and has a flash of insight, an “Aha!” moment, that cannot be explained (at least to his or her satisfaction) by cultural conditioning or common humanity. Some psychologists and sociologists will simply deny the reality of such experiences and attempt to explain all of them as simply the breaking through to consciousness of unconscious impulses contributed by social conditioning of some kind. I do not believe, however, that such explanations can exhaustively explain the great personal, individual experiences, expressed in unique insights and actions that go against the stream. The source of such personal, individual experiences will always be debated and I believe that debate will always be influenced by cultural, community and other personal, individual experiences.

My argument here, and in the post (or posts) to follow is that theology has always been influenced by human experiences of all four types and should not attempt to exclude them from all theological criticism and construction. The operative and key term here, for me, is “all.”

What is the main alternative to my argument? Going back to what I said earlier, it is the myth of pure objectivity—that there exists some method of determining theological truth, doctrine, that is free from all experience. In its most extreme form this alternative believes it is possible, even if no one has yet achieved it, to “do Christian theology” without being a Christian at all. In other words, assuming the (i) Bible, (iia) Christian tradition (“the Great Tradition”) and  (iii) reason (logic) to be the guiding norms of Christian theology, a person needs no commitment to any religious faith, no personal spirituality, to engage in sound Christian theological critique and construction. In this view, for example, the Bible may be viewed simply as a “not yet systematized system of doctrines” and doctrinal truth simply “mined” from it and put in good, logical order. No faith or spirituality needed; only a working mind needed. (iib) Some other (mostly conservative) theologians will want to add that Christian tradition (e.g., the consensus of the church fathers) is required for sound Christian theological critique and construction. But in both [all] cases, the working assumption is that experience—especially cultural, communal and personal, individual, can be set aside, overcome, such that the result is a purely objective account of “Christian truth.”

Admittedly, few Christian theologians put it quite that way—in such stark terms. However, that reluctance is, I believe, evidence of the truth of what I am going to claim—that experience is inevitable and even helpful in Christian theology.

Now, immediately, I recognize that some who disagree with me will point out that if what I say is true there exists an element of subjectivity, and therefore relativity, in my own claims (because they, like all, are influenced by experience). I admit that. But I think the difference between us is that they are more worried about that than I am. I have no interest in imposing my belief about this (or most things) on others. My only interest is in explaining and perhaps persuading others to see things my way. I worry that their (some conservative evangelicals’ committed to pure objectivity in truth discovery) interest is in enforcing their interpretations, including their methodology, on others by excluding those who disagree from “the club.”

That is, they want to make their dream of pure objectivity in theology, “doctrine settled once and for all and not at all open to revisioning because objectively grounded and proven,” totalizing on all within their sphere of influence (which usually means the “evangelical movement” or “evangelical academy”). An example are those conservative theologians who equate “good theology” with foundationalist epistemology and eschew, even condemn, non-foundationalist or postfoundationalist approaches to theology as “subevangelical” (at best).


* * * * * * * * * * *

Addendum

As an aside, what Roger discusses here in these articles is what we here at Relevancy22 have been describing as the existential experience of the observer upon his/her interpretation of God's will. Because this has been a major theme within this website I have generally laid it out under the rubric of postmodernism, but also philosophically under existentialism, along with general observations made between the evangelic v. emergent church sections of this blog.

Statedly, no church theology or doctrine has been done in a vacuum. Not Jewish theology and not the early church's theology. Not Paul nor the prophets (we'll exclude questions to Jesus' theology whom I will simply state contained His message within the contemporary views of His day and culture).

As such, we would be foolish to think that today's Reformed or Catholic or Lutheran doctrines do not also experience their own dogmatic mythos within the philosophical imports pervading regional philosophies and doctrines.

Nor should we think that re-writing theology into mathematically precise statements is in anyways avoiding some sense of subjectivity. Why? Because this practice is based upon Western logicism and modernistic Enlightenment along with that dogmatic statement's regional preferences pertaining to God and Bible, Gospel and Son, Church and Sinner. Just as nothing is static in God's universe so nothing is fully contained within the human word, thought, or idea, as even humanity itself must change with its times and eras.

The fiction then is to pretend that our form of Christianity and Church is the right form when, in essence, it is the popularly accepted form to our pretended view of Christianity and the Church. To say this is not so is to be self-deluded.

What is the answer then?

(1) To know thyself, as Shakespeare would say, and understand the times and eras of the culture which you wish to speak the Gospel into (and not what you presume it to be);

(2) Be willing to unlearn what you think you know and re-learn again across all spectras of Christianity;

(3) To teach your congregations to be less adamant of their doctrinal pronunciations and more humble in the Spirit's reception into the tabernacles of the heart; and finally,

(4) To emphasize God's love over God's austerity, sovereignty, holiness, and judgment.

In summary, without God's love these "systematic theologic" descriptors to "God's attributes" have no meaning to us except to accuse and condemn us both as a sinner and as a converted Christian.

Such that without grace - truth becomes a harsh task master which at all times must drive one towards self-righteousness, legalism, or antinomian living.

But with grace - all those precious systematic doctrines we deem so high and forthright fall acceptably, if not forthrightly, into place.

As the apostle Paul would say, lead out in love, charity, grace, mercy and forgiveness. This is the way of God and the path of righteousness.


R.E. Slater
December 4, 20141


* * * * * * * * * * *


Thoughts about the Role of Experience
in Theology: Part Two

With Special Reference to Friedrich Schleiermacher
and Stanley J. Grenz


by Roger Olson
November 30, 2014

Paraphrasing Kant, theology without experience is empty; experience without theology is blind. Empty of what? What would theology without experience (if that were even possible) be emptied of? Transforming power and relevance. That spiritual experience without theology is blind is less controversial—especially among conservative theologians. I have defended that thesis here before.

The background to this two-part series is the claim, made by some conservative theologians, that Stanley Grenz’s theology is “Schleiermachian” or at least on that trajectory because Stan integrated experience into theology as a source and norm. He did not follow the generally accepted (by conservative evangelicals) methodology of objectivism—bracketing out experience as much as possible and simply “mining” Scripture for its doctrinal content (then organizing that content and expressing it in a contemporary way). Grenz readily acknowledged experience as playing a positive, constructive role in theology. However, he did not grant experience, whether universal human (“God-consciousness”), cultural, communal or personal-individual the status of norming norm for theology. Schleiermacher did.

In my opinion, no theology is truly “Schleiermachian” unless it is done “from below”—with human experience as the primary source and norm for theological critique and construction. Not every theology that permits experience a role in theology is Schleiermachian or deserves comparison with Schleiermacher.

Here is my explanation of the proper role of experience in theology; it was also Stan Grenz’s as I know that through reading his books and talking with him numerous times about theological method. I am confident he would distinguish his theological method from that of Schleiermacher (or any other theologian who conducted his or her theology “from below”) in a similar, if not identical, way.

In a nutshell -

Experience can helpfully inform theological critique and construction
even though it should not be theology’s controlling source or norm.

I believe in the so-called “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” that regards theology as a conversation among (i) Scripture, (ii) tradition, (iii) reason, and (iv) experience. I once held a public debate with a United Methodist theologian about whether the Quadrilateral is an equilateral. He argued it is; I argued it is not. It was not from Wesley, and to make it so is to guarantee stalemates in theological controversies. Among the four sources and norms one must have priority over the others and that must be Scripture because it is God’s Word written.

However, even in that case, we must always acknowledge that our interpretations of Scripture are informed by experience; experience is inescapable and does not have to be viewed negatively. As I mentioned earlier, even Calvin argued that an unregenerate person, devoid of the inner illumination of the Holy Spirit, is not capable of interpreting Scripture rightly. [I would rather say here, 'salvifically,' rather than "rightly." It avoids a lot of confusion in this way. Why? Because non-Christian scholarship has too often given to the church important insights into its faith even though it may not understand the redemptive meaning of those insights in a salvation sense.  - re slater]

The point of saying that the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is not an equilateral is simply to say that a Christian theologian ought never to pit tradition, reason or experience against Scripture so as to say Scripture is wrong.

So why not just have Scripture and toss out tradition, reason and experience?

First of all, that’s impossible. Interpretation of Scripture always is informed by some tradition, reason, and experience, even where those are denied as having any positive role to play in theological critique and construction.

Second, however, there is no good reason to exclude them even if that were possible. What we need, instead, is careful understanding of the positive roles they can play.

As mentioned above, I say that tradition, reason and experience can play positive roles in theology by informing it—especially in matters where Scripture is not as clear as we need it to be and where Scripture does not speak to a subject about which we need answers and where Scripture’s message needs to be made intelligible and relevant to a contemporary audience.

Tradition informs theology without controlling it. In every theological controversy, for example, tradition (understood as the consensus of the church fathers and reformers) gets a vote but not a veto. Scripture trumps tradition. Reason informs theology by helping it avoid sheer nonsense—logical contradiction—which is unintelligibility. Here “reason” does not mean any particular philosophy but “mere logic”—universal rules of thought and persuasion.

Now comes “experience.” What role should experience play in theology? Even many theologians who admit the subordinate regulative roles tradition and reason can play eschew experience in theology. They equate experience with subjectivism and therefore relativism. As Luther is supposed to have said “Experience is a wax nose any knave can twist to suit his own countenance.” There is truth in the concern; we ought to handle experience with care in theology and not permit private experiences to gain norming status in theology insofar as theology makes universal truth claims (which it should). [the word "universal" I think can be misleading and damaging to the church. It then plays the role of God in people's lives rather than as servant. I would rather cross it out and simply say "truth claims" without suffusing the phrase with my own private interpretation of what "universal" may mean. - re slater]

But not all experience is private. Experience ceases to be private when it is shared by a group of people and when it is subjected to critical examination and declared valid beyond the individual.

Those who wish to exclude experience entirely from theology seem to subordinate the Holy Spirit who inspired Scripture and convinced even them that it is God’s Word written (through the inner testimony of the Spirit) to the Bible. In Christian theology the Bible is the book of the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Spirit chained to [our interpretations of] the book. [my add - res]

That by no means implies that the Spirit reveals “new truths” essential for salvation (reconciliation, regeneration, justification, sanctification); that is so unlikely as to be dismissed out of hand by Christians. All claims to “new truth” to be believed by all Christians ought always to be submitted to Scripture and rejected if it is not at least implicit in Scripture.

It does mean, however, that the Holy Spirit very well may (and I would say has and does) guide Christians to new meanings and applications of Scripture never before seen. Experience informs theology through guidance; the Holy Spirit who inspired Scripture can (and has and does) guide God’s people to new interpretations and applications of truths hidden in Scripture. And by “hidden” I do not mean esoterically hidden—as in secretly encoded such that only certain spiritual “adepts” can discern it.

Good theology, in other words, takes into account “what the Spirit is saying
to the churches now.” And it takes into account what the Spirit is doing in
culture. These are not the same as “subjectivism;” they are simply principles
for keeping theology from falling into ideology—rigid, closed, totalizing systems
 of doctrine that are inflexible and impervious to change. - Roger Olson

Taking into account what the Spirit is saying to the churches now and what the Spirit is doing in culture does not have to mean cutting loose theology from Scriptural moorings or falling into a kind of endless “anything goes” mentality. But refusing to take into account what the Spirit is saying to the churches now and what the Spirit is doing in culture does make theology dead, empty of power, irrelevant, and ethically unfruitful.

John Stott once used the image of theology as a kite—tethered to the ground (Scripture) but lifted by the wind (Spirit). If it is released from its grounding tether, it flies off and becomes useless. But it is also useless if it is not allowed to fly.

N. T. Wright has used the analogy of an unfinished play and its performance anyway to describe Christians’ discipleship in every contemporary time and place. We (the church) have the first three acts of the play: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Great Tradition of Christian belief. Our job as contemporary Christian disciples is to “faithfully improvise” the fourth act of the unfinished play. What I am arguing is that our task as contemporary theologians, even evangelical theologians, is not only be steeped in the, totally familiar with, committed to the first three acts but also to listen to the voice of the Spirit as we faithfully improvise theological truth for today.

Faithfully improvising the fourth act of the play requires not only knowledge of the first three acts but also experience of the same Spirit who inspired Scripture and was at work in guiding the post-apostolic churches. But faithfully improvising the fourth act also requires listening to that same Spirit as the Spirit directs the fourth act. Any claim that the Spirit is directing us, the actors, to go off in directions not already pointed to by the Spirit in Scripture and tradition must be ruled “unfaithful improvisation.” But merely repeating the first three acts and pretending they are the fourth act must be also be ruled “unfaithful non-improvisation.”

The devil, they say, is in the details. I will add that the devil is in the illustrations! People who tend to agree with me up to this point may very well disagree with my examples. However, here is how I see this account of the role of experience having played out in theology in the past and present.

I would argue that the Holocaust and our experiences of it (whether as victims or observers) have made post-Holocaust theologies extremely sensitive to revising traditional ideas of God as immutable and impassible. And I think that is all to the good. Much traditional Christian theism has found support in Scripture but been more influenced by philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) than by Scripture itself. Since the Holocaust even many conservative theologians, committed to the authority of Scripture, are rediscovering the “passionate God” of the biblical narrative and arguing that God is not invulnerable or immune to suffering. Bonhoeffer’s “Only the suffering God can help” has become a valuable motto in post-Holocaust theology. I believe the Spirit used the Holocaust to direct the churches and theologians to dimensions of truth about God traditionally lost or ignored due to the overwhelming influenced of Greek philosophy in Christian theology.

I would argue that the experiences of the horrors of slavery by people like William Wilberforce in England and Harriet Tubman in America was used by the Spirit of God to direct the churches to reconsider belief that the Bible supports slavery and to recognize that all people, regardless of ethnicity, bear the image of God.

These are just two examples; I could give many more examples of cases where the Holy Spirit guided and directed Christians to review and revise traditional interpretations of the Bible and traditional beliefs.

What I am arguing is not that experience is a norming norm of theology; anyone who thinks that clearly does not understand me. I am arguing however, the experiences of the Spirit play a guiding and directing role in faithfully improvising the fourth act of the play of God at work among his people. The Spirit is the same Spirit who inspired Scripture and who struggled with often unfaithful people of God throughout the Christian centuries to maintain the church in truth. The Spirit directing the fourth act of the unfinished play, our communal discipleship including theology, will not contradict himself/herself. Any actor in the fourth act who steps away from and acts against Scripture will have to be declared “out of bounds” and possibly ejected from the play. But actors who say, humbly and with good reasoning, “I believe the Spirit is guiding us to pay attention to such-and-such and adjust our improvisation to be even more faithful to the gospel” ought to be given a prayerful hearing.

Now, I can say with confidence that this account of the role of experience in theology is faithful to what my friend Stan Grenz meant. I can say that with confidence because I not only read his books but engaged in numerous, lengthy, personal conversations with him about theological methodology. When he heard that some critics were equating his theological method with that of Schleiermacher he was shocked and appalled. So was I (am still). Never did he elevate universal human religious experience or even common Christian experience to the status of norming norm for Christian theology; he always and consistently said that status belongs solely to Scripture. (Some will no doubt quibble because he sometimes said “the Spirit speaking through Scripture” and “the biblical message,” but contexts make clear he meant the Bible but not every individual passage in the Bible taken out of context or interpreted through the lens of some past theologian such as Charles Hodge.)


Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Hallelujah Christmas Version by Cloverton






Hallelujah Christmas Version by Cloverton



Official website linkhttp://www.clovertonmusic.com/






Who Is Cloverton?

From our very first breath we are taught to conform and fall in line with the specific ways and patterns of the world. We're taught how to behave, interact, and even which paths to take. But for Manhattan based band, Cloverton, parting from these patterns has been a trademark of their story from the start.

Without the help of a record label or outside investors, the band, consisting of Lance Stafford (piano/vocals), his twin brother, Layne Stafford (bass), Kirby LeMoine (drums) and Josh Svorinic (guitars), propelled onto the Christian music scene in 2011 as the first ever ROCK THE CAMP contest winners hosted by TobyMac and Camp Electric. Soon after receiving this prestigious honor, Cloverton scored the #1 most downloaded song in the history of KLOVE radio for their first single "Take Me into the Beautiful," which also climbed the CHR charts to #12 and #17 on the overall Christian Billboard top 25.

After a season of racking up countless numbers of miles traveling all over the world playing shows, festivals, and even cruises, Cloverton ventured back into the studio with producer Joshua D. Niles (Nashville, Tennessee) to record their highly anticipated first full-length album Patterns. Little did they know, this would be the band’s most daring testament of faith to date.














Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Meet American Theologian Stanley J. Grenz: A New Kind of Successor to Charles Hodge


Stanley J. Grenz Amazon Link

Wikipedia Biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Grenz

Stanley James Grenz (born January 7, 1950 in Alpena, Michigan; died on March 12, 2005 in St. Paul's Hospital (Vancouver)) was an American Christian theologian and ethicist in the Baptist tradition

Early years

Grenz graduated from the University of Colorado in 1973. He then earned a M.Div. from Denver Seminary in 1976. Grenz earned his Doctor of Theology degree at University of Munich in Germany under the supervision of theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. He was ordained to pastoral ministry on June 13, 1976. He later worked within the local church context as youth director and assistant pastor (Northwest Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado, 1971-1976), pastor (Rowandale Baptist Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba 1979-1981), and interim pastor on several occasions. He served on many Baptist boards and agencies and also as a consulting editor of Christianity Today.

Educator

While in the pastorate (1979-1981), Grenz taught courses both at the University of Winnipeg and at Winnipeg Theological Seminary (now Providence Seminary). He served as Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at the North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota from 1981-1990.

For twelve years (1990-2002), Grenz held the position of Pioneer McDonald Professor of Baptist Heritage, Theology and Ethics at Carey Theological College and at Regent College in Vancouver. After a one-year sojourn as Distinguished Professor of Theology at Baylor University and George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas (2002-2003), he returned to Carey in August 2003 to resume his duties as Pioneer McDonald Professor of Theology.

From 1996 to 1999 he carried an appointment as Professor of Theology and Ethics (Affiliate) at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.

In fall 2004, he assumed an appointment as Professor of Theological Studies at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, Washington.

Grenz' primary contributions were made discussing how evangelical Christianity ought to relate to the world. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from sexuality to history to basic apologetics, and was one of North America's leading evangelical voices in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Personal

Married to Edna Grenz, a church musician, Grenz was the father of two children, Joel Grenz and Corina Kuban, and was grandfather to one grandchild, Anika Grace Kuban. Included in two editions of Who's Who in Religion, as well as in the 2002 edition of Who's Who in U.S. Writers, Editors and Poets, Grenz died in his sleep March 12, 2005 from a brain aneurysm in Vancouver.





Remembering and Honoring
Evangelical Theologian Stanley J. Grenz

(and Responding to Conservative Evangelical Criticisms of His Theology)



by Roger Olson
November 26, 2014

I have returned from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature where about ten thousand religion scholars convened in sunny San Diego, California. I was invited to read a paper in one session of the Evangelical Theology Group, a program unit of the AAR, about the theology of Stanley Grenz. Stan was my close friend and co-author. He wrote over twenty-five books and was considered one of the most influential evangelical theologians during the latter years of his life. He died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 2005 at the age of 55. Recently Cascade Books, a division of Wipf & Stock publishers, published a volume of essays in Stan’s honor entitled Revisioning, Renewing, Rediscovering The Triune Center: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. Grenz edited by Derek J. Tidball, Brian S. Harris, and Jason S. Sexton. I wrote the book’s Foreword. The AAR session was organized around the book and most, if not all, of the speakers were authors of chapters. The book constitutes what’s called a “festschrift” in Stan’s honor. These are usually published while the person being honored is still alive, but not in this case.

Below I include my paper about Stan’s theology focusing especially on the label “postconservative evangelical.” About one hundred people attended the session which was a great honor to Stan considering that former president Jimmy Carter was speaking in a room only steps away during the session. I knew Stan well enough to know that he would have been torn between going to hear Carter and attending this session in his honor. He was a very humble person who did not think his theology was worthy of this much attention and would be embarrassed by it. And he admired Carter very much. Each of us panelists was given ten minutes to talk. Among the panelists were LeRon Shults, Derek Tidball, John Francke and Velli-Matti Kärkkäinen.

A few of the papers presented included comments about why Stan’s theology was controversial (and why Stan himself was controversial)especially among conservative evangelicals. The consensus was that he was perceived as pushing the envelope of evangelical theology, especially with respect to engaging positively and constructively with methods, approaches and points of view conservative evangelical theologians consider “out of bounds” for evangelicals. Also, he integrated spiritual experience and culture into his theological method in a way that shocked many conservative evangelicals who seem to think that evangelical theology works only with scripture and tradition.

During the discussion time following the panel presentations one audience member raised the question, often asked before, of possible parallels between Stan’s theology and that of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the “father of liberal theology.” My response was off-the-cuff and incomplete. Afterwards I wished I had said something different and more. I will include the response I should have given to the question (which seemed to me to imply an accusation) after my reproduced panel presentation below.


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Stanley J. Grenz:
Paradigm of Postconservative Evangelical Theology

by Roger E. Olson

Stan didn’t like most of the labels people put on him and the only theological labels he embraced gladly were “Christian,” “Baptist,” “evangelical” and, late in life, “pietist.” And yet when I coined (or thought I coined) the label “postconservative evangelical” in a Christian Century article I had Stan mainly in mind. That label has probably caused more trouble than it’s worth, but I still struggle to find a better qualifier for Stan’s and my approaches to being evangelical.

Like I, Stan would not give up on the label “evangelical.” He grew up evangelical, attended an evangelical Baptist seminary and always envisioned himself as an authentic evangelical. He stayed in the Evangelical Theological Society when others of us stayed or dropped out. To his dying day, so far as I know, based on what he wrote and told me in many lengthy conversations, Stan regarded himself as an evangelical among evangelicals. He did not think he was on any trajectory away from evangelical faith and theology.

However, and nevertheless, there were elements in Stan’s theology that caused others, perhaps more conservative than he or I, to question his evangelical credentials. It was to distinguish him and me from them that I used the label “postconservative”—not to say we weren’t and I’m not conservative vis-à-vis liberals but to say they, Stan’s conservative critics, had captured the center of American evangelical theology and that, in true Reformation fashion, he placed Scripture, or as he preferred to say “the witness of the Spirit in Scripture,” “the biblical message,” over and above “the received evangelical tradition” as defined by the neo-fundamentalists who managed to capture the fort, so to speak.

Anyone who has really read Stan with a hermeneutic of charity knows that he believed strongly in the inspiration and authority of Scripture. And in conversion, the cross as God’s atoning work through Christ, and Christian activism in evangelism and social transformation. In other words, in all four of David Bebbington’s four hallmarks of evangelicalism.

Still, and nevertheless, he courageously stepped out onto territory forbidden by the neo-fundamentalists and dared to speak in new ways about old doctrines.

Let me be specific:

Stan’s postmodernism was genuine but not extreme. He did not agree with the deconstructionists or anti-realists. His postmodernism was simply an acknowledgement of the necessity of humility in the face of the absolute—God. He was very afraid of idolatry and especially among those who would make a fetish out of the Bible and dogma. His postmodernism should probably be called, more accurately, critical realism. He was no cultural relativist even though he recognized the fallibility of all human systems of thought including those most treasured by evangelicals. He would say a hearty amen to Alfred Lord Tennyson who wrote:

“Our little 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.”

Stan’s postconservatism, as I call it, appeared in his belief that spirituality, not dogma, is the true, enduring essence of evangelical Christianity. This is probably where he and his neo-fundamentalist critics first radically parted ways. But he went out of his way to say that doctrine is necessary and not dispensable or endlessly flexible.

Amazon link
Some people misunderstood Stan’s mission among the so-called “emerging” or “emergent” church types. His conservative critics saw it as proof that he was on a liberal trajectory away from his evangelical roots. Stan told me he was going among them to try to hold them, the emerging/emergent types, from slipping totally away from evangelicalism and to convince them that doctrine is important, to keep them from repeating the errors of liberal theology.

Some of his postconservative evangelical friends, including yours truly, could not understand his continuing membership in the Evangelical Theological Society. When I told him to “Come out from among them and be separate” he explained to me that they needed him—especially the younger members who knew in their hearts there was a better way to be evangelical but didn’t know how. He wanted to model it for them.

Stan was a true mediating theologian among evangelicals. I’ll end with two examples. First, with conservatives and neo-fundamentalists he opposed open theism, even if irenically. He had no sympathy with it. He told me he wanted to be “Augustinian.” Yet he would not have voted to expel open theists from the ETS.

Second, his Christology, which went largely unnoticed even by his harshest critics, perhaps because they couldn’t understand it, was anything but orthodox. I won’t say it was heretical, but it was, in my opinion, heterodox (in the textbook sense of that word). In Theology for the Community of God Stan rejected “incarnational Christology” in favor of a Christology based on Pannenberg’s eschatological ontology and his own eschatological realism. For him, as for Pannenberg, “as this man Jesus is God.” He denied any logos asarkosLogos outside of Jesus. In place of preexistence he posited retroactive ontological enforcement of Jesus as divine because of his resurrection and his unity with God because of his self-differentiation from the Father. He did not embrace or promote the Chalcedonian hypostatic union model of Christology. Stan’s Christology sought a via media or alternative to classical “orthodox” Christology and liberal, “functional” Christologies.

Stan and I often argued about theology—sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. When he and I roomed together at these meetings he would keep me up until 2:00 AM telling me what books I should write and correcting my theological opinions—like an older brother! One argument we often had was about life after death. Stan insisted that there is no bodiless human existence which he termed dualism. I argued for a bodiless, conscious “intermediate state” between death and the bodily resurrection. He thought that was a Greek idea, not biblical. His untimely death served no good purpose, but sometime after I suddenly realized I had finally won an argument with Stan. Now he knew I was right about that one. [lol]

(End of my panel presentation)


* * * * * * * * * *



Now to my “better response” to the question and implied accusation of parallels between Stan’s theology and that of Schleiermacher ...

What is meant by “Schleiermachian” is unclear. Schleiermacher wrote a lot and so did Stan Grenz. The question is difficult to answer unless something specific is pointed to as the alleged commonality. To be sure, both Schleiermacher and Grenz were pietists; both emphasized the importance of Christian experience, spirituality, even in theological construction.

But unlike Schleiermacher, Stan did not “do theology” “from below,” making human and Christian experience the controlling norm of Christian theology. For him, in a way I do not find in Schleiermacher, “the Spirit speaking in Scripture,” the “biblical message,” was the primary source and norm of Christian theology.

Also, unlike Schleiermacher, Stan did not draw on “universal God-consciousness” (whether Gefühl or other) as a source or norm for theology. When he talked about experience as playing a role in Christian theology he meant the Holy Spirit at work among God’s people in what he called “convert-ive piety.” But he never even hinted that even this experience could trump Scripture. Stan’s theology was most definitely a “theology from above” even though he believed nobody can claim to have a God’s-eye view and denied any finally finished, complete, infallible system of theology.

There are many other differences between Schleiermacher and Grenz’s theologies. But I suspect most suspicions of similarities have to do with theological methodology. Conservative evangelicals looking at Stan’s theological method assumed that a “true evangelical theology” is drawn solely from Scripture—as Charles Hodge claimed in his Systematic Theology in the 1870s. Critics have noted, however, how Hodge was influenced by a philosophy called Common Sense Realism. (See my chapter on Hodge’s theology in The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction [InterVarsity Press].) In other words, his theology, in spite of his claims, was not drawn directly out of Scripture; it was not simply an organizing of Scripture’s truths. Nor is any contemporary theology influenced by Scripture alone; Scripture is always interpreted and theology constructed in the light of tradition, reason and experience. Conservative evangelicals are so afraid of relativism in theology that they have enshrined Hodge’s theological method (and, I would dare say, his Systematic Theology) as the only permissible one. They have done (without saying so) with Hodge what Pope Pius X did with Thomas Aquinas’s theology for Catholic theologians.

Nor do I believe Stan Grenz’s theology was unduly influenced by Schleiermacher - and I do not believe his theology bore any striking, constitutive resemblances with Schleiermacher’s theology. The resemblance is all in the minds and fear-driven imaginations of conservative theologians.

The only resemblance I see is that Grenz, like Schleiermacher, was concerned to free Christian theology from the shackles of a hide-bound tradition that was out-of-date and irrelevant to contemporaries. But Schleiermacher’s “contemporaries” were the “cultured despisers of religion” (Enlightenment-influenced Romantics) while Stan’s were (and are) God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians who were (and are) dissatisfied with the rigid, static, rationalist theologies of the neo-fundamentalists.


Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The Gift of Reading the Bible Dynamically





is there payoff for the church in reading the Bible critically?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/11/is-there-payoff-for-the-church-in-reading-the-bible-critically/
Theologian Peter Enns
At this year’s annual “help me I’m wearing tweed in San Diego” conference (a.k.a. Society of Biblical Literature) I was part of a panel discussion on “Reading the Bible in the 21st Century: Exploring New Models for Reconciling the Academy and the Church.” On the panel with me were N. T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Lauren Winner. John Dominic Crossan was scheduled to be there but his flight was delayed.
At any rate, we were each given 10 minutes to address the topic and here is what I said.
* * * * * * * * *
About 10 years ago a friend of mine, who teaches systematic theology at an evangelical seminary, told me of a faculty meeting held to discuss my recently published book Inspiration and Incarnation.
During the faculty discussion, a biblical scholar pointed out, “You know, there’s really nothing new here”—which, of course is not only true, but largely the point of the book: well known and widely accepted things like the presence of myth, contradictions, and numerous historical problems in the Old Testament, not to mention the New Testament’s midrashic use of the Old, have not been handled well within evangelicalism.
My friend chimed in, “Wait a minute. There’s nothing new here? I never heard of this stuff—and I graduated from this school and had you as a teacher.” The Bible professor replied, “Our job is to protect you from this information.”
Or consider the following: it’s been known within the evangelical community to encourage promising seminary students to pursue doctoral work at major research universities, but for apologetic purposes: infiltrate their ranks, learn their ways, expose their weaknesses. Or, related, they are told to “plunder the Egyptians”—a phrase actually used. To appropriate whatever in critical scholarship can aid the cause and either ignore or fight against the rest.
And so you have three postures by this faith community toward the threat posed by the academic study of the Bible: gatekeeper, spy, or plunderer. What lies beneath these postures is a deep distrust of the academy.
But the academy isn’t just a problem for evangelicals or other conservatives. On the other end of the spectrum we have the mainline church and theological interpretation—which is a movement to recover scripture for the church (the mainline church) in the wake of the historical critical revolution, which has not always been friendly to life and faith.
This is no rejection of the academy, though. What’s done is done. We’ve passed through what Walter Wink calls the “acid bath of criticism,” which has done the necessary job of stripping us of our naïve biblicism. But now, what’s left? What do we do with the Bible? How does it function in the church? What does it say about God? What should we believe? So, whereas evangelicalism distrust the academy, the mainline has felt a bit burned by it.
What binds both groups together is the problem of the academic study of scripture for the church—though there is also an important difference between them that goes beyond simply their different attitudes toward biblical criticism. Let me explain.
Evangelicalism’s suspicion of the academy appears to be justified by the mainline church’s embrace of historical criticism at first only to wind up advocating for theological interpretation as a corrective to it. “See, I told you so. Biblical criticism is a dead end. Look at the mainline churches and their shrinking numbers. They’re on life-support. Let’s learn from their mistake, not repeat it.”
I can see the point, but not so fast. Evangelicalism can’t simply adopt as its own the mainline response to historical criticism. The mainline embraced historical-critical insights; it’s had its acid bath and is working toward, as Gadamer and others put it, a second naiveté that acknowledges the critical revolution. In other words, the mainline church is postcritical, and there is no going back to the way things were before.
Evangelicalism, by contrast, hasn’t gone through the acid bath of criticism, nor does it seek the second naiveté. They are certainly willing to acknowledge that critical scholarship has shed some light on scripture, but the overall critical “posture” as it were is largely a mistake that one should be suspicious of, guard against, infiltrate, or plunder. In a sense, the evangelical reading of scripture is more at home in the precritical world, lamenting the slow erosion of biblical authority and inerrancy at the hands of biblical criticism.
If I had to pick, I’d rather be postcritical and wounded than precritical and defensive, but this is not to say that the mainline project of theological interpretation holds the key to binding together church and the academy—at least I don’t see it yet.
For example, I remember 25 years ago reading Brevard Childs’s excellent commentary on Exodus, but feeling frustrated. He acknowledges throughout the undeniable insights of historical critical methods, and even explains the text’s incongruities on the basis of source critical analysis. But when it comes to the theological appropriation of Exodus, all his learned critical analyses is left behind—because source criticism won’t get you to theological reflection. In fact, it gets in the way.
A lot has happened since Childs, and I respect the larger project championed by Walter Brueggemann, for example, but my experience of theological interpretation in general is that the relevance of biblical criticism for the church’s life and faith can be hard to discern. It’s not always clear to me how the academy is brought constructively and intentionally into the theological life of the church.
In fact, at times I see little more than a bare acknowledgment of the “importance” or “necessity” of biblical criticism, but when it comes to theology, it’s sometimes hard to see the importance or necessity. Biblical criticism seems to be more of a negative boundary marker to distinguish the mainline from the religious right—“We’re not fundamentalists; we embrace criticism”—but where’s the payoff?
As I see it, the academy and the church have at best an uneasy relationship when it comes to the Bible, whether for evangelicals or mainliners. In my opinion, true reconciliation of academy and church must strive for a more intentionally theological synthesis of the academic study of scripture and how that contributes theologically to faith and life, to seeing—perhaps in fresh ways– how God speaks to us in and through scripture today.
As I tell the story in The Bible Tells Me SoI’ve been captured by this synthetic idea since my first few weeks of graduate school—and some of how I put the pieces together has made its way into the book, albeit on a popular churchy level (which is exactly where it needs to be). For me, one payoff of this synthesis is a Bible that is remarkably dynamic and therefore personally meaningful.
For example, when I understand Deuteronomy as a layered work that grew out of the late monarchic to postexilic periods, I get happy. I see canonized a deliberate, conscious, recontextualizion, actualizion, indeed rewriting of earlier ancient traditions for the benefit of present communities of faith.
The same holds for Chronicles—a realignment and reshaping of Israel’s story for a late postexilic audience. Or taking a big step back, we have the Old Testament as a whole, which has woven into it the exaltation of the tribe of Judah, a theme that reflects the present-day questions and answers of the postexilic Judahite writers that produced it. Scripture houses a theological dynamic that is intentionally innovative, adaptive, and contemporizing.
Scripture’s inner dynamic provides a model for our own theological appropriation of scripture. As Michael Fishbane reminds us, within scripture the authoritative text of the past is not simply received by the faithful but is necessarily adapted and built upon. And this is a noble quality of the Old Testament that continues in Second Temple Judaism and, for Christians, the New Testament, where Israel’s story is profoundly recontextualized, reshaped, and re-understood in light of present circumstances.
And what the Christian Bible does is continued as soon as the church got out of the gate in the 2nd century and beyond: reshaping the ancient Semitic story in Greek and Latin categories, giving us creeds; and then through the entire history of the church, where everywhere we look people are asking the very same question asked by the Deuteronomist, the Chronicler, and Paul:how does that back there speak to us here? 
And answering that question is a transaction between past and present that always involves some creative adaptation.
I don’t see this dynamic as a problem. It’s a gift. What more could the church want from its scripture? Don’t make a move without it, but when you move—you may need to move, not just remain where things have been. This is what I mean throughout The Bible Tells Me So when I say that the Bible is not an owner’s manual or an instruction guide.
It is a model of our own inevitable theological process, because the question is never simply what did God do then, but what is God surprisingly, 
ForTheBibleTellsMeSo
unexpectedly, counterintuitively, in complete freedom, doing now?

Historical criticism doesn’t get a free pass—and I’m thinking here for example of Brueggemann’s critique. But it has nevertheless helped us understand something of this dynamic.

If I can put this in Christian terms, scripture bears witness to the acts of God and most supremely to the act of God in Christ. But scripture bears witness in culturally and contextually meaningful waysThis is where historical criticism comes into the picture—not as an enemy to be guarded against or plundered, and not as an awkward relative you don’t know what to do with, but as a companion, a means of understanding and embracing the complex actualizing dynamic of the Bible as a whole.

This is what I am aiming for in The Bible Tells Me So, albeit at a popular level, because that is where this discussion needs to be—with those who feel they have to chose between accepting academic insights or maintaining faith. I don’t believe that is a choice that has to be made, and miss out on a lot when we feel we need to.


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Sunday, November 23, 2014

Church and Kingdom as Inaugurated Eschatology in Process of Finality


Amazon Link

Book Description

According to Scot McKnight, "kingdom" is the biblical term most misused by Christians today. It has taken on meanings that are completely at odds with what the Bible says. "Kingdom" has become a buzzword for both social justice and redemption so that it has lost its connection with Israel and with the church as a local church.

McKnight defines the biblical concept of kingdom, offering a thorough corrective and vision for the contemporary church. The most important articulation of kingdom was that of Jesus, who contended that the kingdom was in some sense present and in some sense in the future. The apostles talked less about the kingdom and more about the church. McKnight explains that kingdom mission is local church mission and that the present-day fetish with influencing society, culture, and politics distracts us from the mission of God: to build the local church. He also shows how kingdom theology helps to reshape the contemporary missional conversation.


* * * * * * * * * *


The Biggest Mistake in Kingdom Talk
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/11/21/the-biggest-mistake-in-kingdom-talk/

by Scot McKnight
Nov 21, 2014

The most common mistake I hear when people are talking about kingdom is comparison talk. It goes like this or this or this or this:

  • “So you think kingdom and church are the same (but not identical), then you need to come to my church because that will show you the difference.”
  • “Kingdom is the ideal, church is the reality.”
  • “Kingdom is justice, but church is injustice.”
  • “The church is but an approximation of the kingdom, a manifestation of the kingdom, but it is not the kingdom because the kingdom will be a utopian, perfect, just, reconciled, loving society.”
  • “The church is now but the kingdom is not yet.”

Each of these fails on a fundamental element of how the NT talks about kingdom. So, I want to provide a crash-course in just a few paragraphs in what is often called “inaugurated eschatology.” (I am using Kingdom Conspiracy in what follows.)

Present, Future, Both Present and Future

Instead of providing an RSS feed-length listing of Bible verses, I will give two statements of Jesus for kingdom as present and kingdom as future.

The kingdom as present:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15)

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:20-21).

The kingdom as future:

Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25).

While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once (Luke 19:11).

No matter how you cut your bread – lengthwise or crosswise or just nip off the crusts – these texts indicate with clarity that the kingdom of God, that long awaited promise, was already present and still in the future. It is reasonable then to argue that for Jesus the kingdom was both present and future. It was, to use the terms of the arch inaugurated kingdom scholar, George Eldon Ladd, “present without consummation.”

The Church as Inaugurated Reality

Back to our point about the big mistake: What do we compare the church to? The present inaugurated kingdom or the future complete and glorious kingdom. Read on because the church too is an inaugurated reality.

Church as Now and Not Yet

There is one fundamental observation that changes the whole perception of what church is and once we do we will be able to compare church and kingdom more accurately. The church is an eschatological reality as well. The futurity of the church is often ignored. We now need two columns on the board: on the left write “Church Now” and on the right write “Church Not Yet.”

The Church Now

For the Church Now we think of Paul’s constant struggles with his churches, and who can ignore Corinth and the back and forth letters and travels all over morality and theology and division and … well, the church at Corinth was a mess. The same messiness is found in all other churches.

The Church Now is the church gathered in broken leadership, broken fellowship, broken holiness, broken love, broken justice, and broken peace. Every page of each of Paul’s and Peter’s and John’s letters and the Book of Hebrews and Jude leads to the same observation: the Church Now falls short of the Church Not Yet.

(Dan Kimball, what say you?)

At this point we need to make an observation: because so much of “church” thinking focuses on the Church Now without examining the Church Not Yet, any comparison of church with kingdom, which tends (as I have said already) to focus on the Church Now over against the Kingdom Not Yet, tends to conclude that they cannot be the same.

Yet, if we compare Kingdom Now and Church Now we arrive at the same place, and as we are about to see, if we compare Kingdom Not Yet with Church Not Yet, we will discover once again a full overlap.

The Church Not Yet

For the Church Not Yet I think not only of the promises that the church will inherit the kingdom (Matthew 16:17-19; 1 Thessalonians 2:12; Romans 8:17; Ephesians 1:18; Philippians 3:20) but even more of Ephesians 5:25b-27, where you can see the Church Not Yet in full glory:

… just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (see also Colossians 1:22).

Notice the terms Paul uses of the Church Not Yet: radiant, without stain, without wrinkle, without any blemish, holy and blameless. These terms do not describe the Church Now except in part; they instead describe what the church will be.

When?

When the kingdom’s fullness arrives or, to use now completely appropriate terms, when the church’s fullness arrives. I think, too, of Revelation 21-22, but especially of the long, beautiful passage about the church as the bride of the Lamb descending in full glory into the New Jerusalem in the New Heavens and the New Earth, proving once and for all that the church, like the kingdom, is an eschatological reality with a Now and a glorious Not Yet [aspect to it]. I quote Revelation 21:9—22:5:

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. - Rev 21-22

Kingdom describes the people governed by King Jesus. All we see of that kingdom now is an inauguration creating a tension between Kingdom Now and Kingdom Not Yet.

But church describes the very same realities: the People of God (Israel Expanded to be sure), is an eschatological reality, a People of God that has a Now and a Not Yet.

C.K. Barrett, a leading New Testament scholar of the former generation, called the church an “eschatological monster, a prodigy.” And he defines the church as “the people of the interim.”[ii] He’s right: the church is now and not yet, partially redeemed on its way to full redemption. So, what is said of the kingdom in the New Testament is said of the church in the same New Testament. To quote Bonhoeffer:[iii]

… the church according to Paul’s understanding presents no
essential difference from Jesus’ ideas [about the kingdom].
- Bonhoeffer

If we want to make comparison, we need to compare Kingdom Now and Church Now or Kingdom Not Yet and Church Not Yet. To compare, as so many do, Church Now with Kingdom Not Yet is not fair to the church (or the kingdom).

The mistaken notion that only the kingdom is the final form of God’s redemptive community drives the current inability to see the important overlap of kingdom and church today. If kingdom is the future perfection and the church the modern mess, then kingdom and church are not comparable.

The mistake is to compare the incomparable:

  • To compare present church to future kingdom is to compare the incomparable. (Kingdom wins.)
  • To compare the present kingdom with the future church is to compare the incomparable. (Church wins.)
  • To compare present church with present kingdom is to compare the comparable. (The same.)
  • To compare future church with future kingdom is to compare the comparable. (The same.)

So let’s return to that opening and I’ll rework the whole by comparing present kingdom with the future perfect church:

  • “So you think kingdom and church are the same (but not identical), then you need to come to my inaugurated kingdom group because that will show you the difference.”
  • “Church is the ideal, kingdom is the reality.”
  • “Church is justice, but kingdom is injustice.”
  • “The kingdom is but an approximation of the church, a manifestation of the church, but it is not the church because the church will be a utopian, perfect, just, reconciled, loving society.”
  • “The kingdom is now but the church is not yet.”

Let’s get our analogies straighter.

Let’s not diss the church in the name of the kingdom. The church is the Body of Christ and Jesus is the king of the kingdom. You can’t have one without the other.

Thank you. God bless.

- Scot


References

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a seminar paper for his theology professor at Berlin (R. Seeberg), all but identified church and kingdom but found two (mistaken) distinctions: the church is present while the kingdom is both past Israel, the present church and the future completion. I see the church as Israel expanded and I see the church as future as well. See “Church and Eschatology (or Church and the Kingdom of God),” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Young Bonhoeffer, 1918-1927, ed. Hans Pfeifer et al, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 9 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 310–324, here referring to p. 314. On p. 315 he says the church and the kingdom in the here and now are “temporally identical entities.” But see his more expanded sense of kingdom of God when it includes the state’s mandate for order in Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932-1933, 292–295.

[ii] C.K. Barrett, Church, Ministry, and Sacraments in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985), 13, 25.

[iii] Bonhoeffer, The Young Bonhoeffer, 1918-1927, 316.