Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, June 15, 2015

Rob Bell - Everything is Spiritual 2015 Tour, Podcasts, & Films



Over the years I have been writing here at Relevancy22 how we might reach out to both believers and non-believers alike who have been turned off by the church. Recently, Jeff Cook's new book on the non-churched "nones" and the formerly church-involved "dones" was published describing what it means to be "none" or "done" in the world of church refugees. In a word, we have a spiritual responsibility to both the "nones" and the "dones" to think how we, as the church, might reach out in missional witness or pastoral care to a turned off, skeptical crowd composed of both disbelieving skeptics and jaded Christian believers.

And this is what Rob Bell does best as he lifts up Jesus to the masses and not to the "somes" who espouse church dogmas over God's outreaching love having nothing to learn from discussions like these except to feel irritated and upset as if someone had raided the kitchen refrigerator and left nothing to eat. (Don't believe it? Just listen to contemporary media reports, the preachers on the airwaves speaking up against Rob's tour, or even postings on Facebook.)

Unfortunately we get too caught up about perceptions and labels when we should be concentrating on minding the open message of Jesus to the "nones and dones" of his generation against the "somes" of the temple refusing not only Jesus' destestable message but even Jesus Himself eventuating in His unjust judgment by the councils of man and incongruous death by crucifixion as God's unblemished Lamb.

And yet, unfortunately, this categorical description of the church's "gate keepers," however sincerely believed and followed by its congregants, is how many outside of today's churches perceive Christian assemblies - not as welcoming and embracing fellowships but as an insiders club requiring qualifying mindsets and approving actions.

However there are movements afoot working to break down this public perception by learning to discern and place good biblical doctrine outside of bad church dogmatics. "What's the difference," you ask? Dogma always leads out with legalistic judgment coupled with personal bias whereas doctrine leads out with loving judgment against personal bias. There is a difference. One is a closed system, the other open. One has a closed bible, the other has an open one. One sees self, the other sees Jesus.

So then, when we talk of everything being spiritual... it is. Not some things are spiritual. Nor those things I select because of my religious preferences. Or because of my religious feelings or beliefs. But all things are spiritual. Everything. To know that we are a part of a larger fellowship. A fellowship that spans the entire cosmos of the universe as well as our own very human assemblies here on this earth.

We are not alone. We are together as a brotherhood. And that brotherhood starts with those next to us who need to see God through Jesus and not through our closed-minded church beliefs however desperately we wish to cling to them as unnecessary anchors to the gospel of Christ.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
June 15, 2015


For more information go to Rob's website -



Everything is Spiritual Tour 2015 [1.27 min]



Everything is Spiritual [78 min]



With new discoveries right and left, more and more people are asking bigger and bigger questions about just what kind of world we’re living in and what that means for our hearts, our souls, and our spirits.

On the Everything Is Spiritual tour, Rob Bell does what he does best, making surprising connections between the universe you’re living in and the life you’re living, showing us how science and spirituality are long lost dance partners.

Wherever you’re coming from and whatever you’re wrestling with, let the Everything Is Spiritual tour experience inspire, provoke, challenge, and give you hope as we together explore and enjoy this beautiful, mysterious, and endlessly fascinating world we call home.


Everything is Spiritual 2015 Tour Schedule

6/24 Los Angeles, CA – The Regent TICKETS
6/25 Los Angeles, CA – The Regent TICKETS
7/6 San Diego, CA – Observatory North Park TICKETS
7/7 Phoenix, AZ – Orpheum Theatre TICKETS
7/9 Tulsa, OK – Brady Theatre TICKETS
7/10 Austin, TX – Paramount Theatre TICKETS
7/11 Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre TICKETS
7/12 Houston, TX – Cullen Performance Hall TICKETS
7/14 New Orleans, LA – Civic Theatre TICKETS
7/15 Nashville, TN – Rocketown TICKETS
7/16 Atlanta, GA – The Tabernacle TICKETS
7/17 Miami Beach, FL – Fillmore at Miami Beach TICKETS
7/18 Jacksonville, FL – Terry Theatre at Times-Union TICKETS
7/20 Durham, NC – Carolina Theatre TICKETS
7/21 Richmond, VA – The National TICKETS
7/22 Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore Silver Spring TICKETS
7/24 New York, NY – Town Hall TICKETS
7/25 Boston, MA – House of Blues TICKETS
7/27 Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory TICKETS
7/28 Cleveland, OH – Masonic Auditorium TICKETS
7/29 Grand Rapids, MI – Intersection TICKETS
7/30 Milwaukee, WI – Pabst Theatre TICKETS
7/31 Indianapolis, IN – Egyptian Room at Old National Centre TICKETS
8/1 St. Louis, MO – Pageant TICKETS
8/2 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall TICKETS
8/4 Denver, CO – Paramount Theatre TICKETS
8/5 Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex TICKETS
8/6 Boise, ID – The Egyptian Theatre TICKETS
8/7 Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory – Spokane TICKETS
8/9 Reno, NV – Knitting Factory – Reno TICKETS
8/10 San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom TICKETS




The RobCast

The RobCast is a weekly podcast hosted by Rob Bell.


Subscribe to the RobCast through iTunes.
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The RobCast RSS feed: http://robbell.podbean.com/feed/

Past Episodes





Films by Rob Bell

Short Films

Tour Films



The Christian Challenge to Philosophy






I recently came across several titles referencing Christian Philosophy or the Christian Challenge to Philosophy and would like to provide links for readers to explore these necessary areas of their 21st century faith.

As example (and I say this as much to myself as a point of note as to those reading this article), I think of the "Higher Criticism" disciplines of the Bible as falling into a number of research areas: from literary criticism (genre) to historical (fact versus fancy), from redactionary criticism (authorial/editorial/legacy description) to textual (manuscript transmission). 

And then, external to all of these critical endeavors comes the additional disciplines of anthropologic (cultural/societal), psychoanalytic (perception/awareness/identity), archaeologic (time, place, and event), philosophic (existential critique of either historical, mythological, or contemporary writers/readers), and theologic (theism and church history), to mention a few.

For example, is it fair to describe the gospel of John simply as an historical book or as a theological book. That is, how does the apostle John's singular descriptions of Jesus differ dramatically from the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke? And because they do, does it disqualify his gospel from being qualified as historical? And if so, by the inference of "higher critical research" become perhaps an intentionally colloquial description of Jesus as John knew him, or as the early church knew Him?

In higher critical terms, this discipline might describe the difference between the gospels as one of bearing differences between the "historical Jesus" (as seemingly evidenced in the synoptics) as versus "the Christ of Faith" (as found in John's gospel via either John himself or through an early Christian liturgy, teaching, and confessions. But this latter could be said of the synoptics as well). And then, of course, you begin the subjective vs. objective" process of questioning the biography of Jesus as presented by John as perhaps created by an authorial largesse pandering to the early Christian religion of its day, if not by the early Christian fellowship during this time of transcript creation.

I

And so, there seems to be at least these several factors to consider why the gospel of John was written and to whom:

Firstly, sound, biblical theology is never separated from history - though many times history can be separated from theology through dissemination of denominational, sectarian, and cultic teachings. To say that John's gospel is without historical significance is to deny to any author of the bible their personal critiques of the "God event" they are witnessing or testifying to. That is, biographies should be considered every bit as historical as historical tracts might be labelled as novellas.

Secondly, Jesus is either an historical figure or not. And if not, then He has been lost to the church through its many varying claims of who or what Jesus is so that He becomes the "Christ of that believing group" though not necessary the Christ of the Bible. But this is where theology steps in to reclaim who or what Jesus meant then, as now, so that the church may continue in its traditions of homage and missional witness to God's redemptive event through Jesus both as an historical personage as much as what this God-event meant to us (the theology behind the historical event).

Thirdly, criticism has this built in lens of "negativity" within it. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it seems when it is connected to biblical studies its negativities almost always invalidates the reality of the God event - such as illustrated here in the testimony of John to his Lord. In doing so the discipline of higher criticism considers the Jesus of John's gospel as disqualified from the Jesus of the synoptic gospels. However, this artificial negativity (or attitude of disbelief) is not necessarily as helpful as it can be when lost within contemporary science's attitude of skepticism and disbelief. Hence, at least for myself, (higher) criticism has its place, but it must also be remembered in just what place criticism is to be used, why, where, when, and how.

II

Conversely, just as it is absurd to divorce theology from history and then make reckless claims of who Jesus was or was not, so too is it absurd to not think "higher criticism" cannot be helpful. What is required is a bit of common sense and the ability to step away from one's self, background, and personal judgments to be able to read Scripture in a sense that is different from the traditional vernaculars or popular sentiments of the day.

To help with this, one method is to utilize different academic disciplines as external tools of objective judgment in critiquing a text, teaching, or belief. But, like the disciple John, given all that we know we still must make way for a personal, subjective decision to whom and what Jesus was then for John himself and his early fellowship as well as for ourselves today set within our own fellowships. For John, Jesus was "very God eternal come to Redeem men." He had no dithering on this subject and felt compelled to describe the Saviour of man through personal insight and in relation to the theological teachings of his day.

Many times we must question ourselves and our motives as much as that of any other academic disciplines we intentionally enter into which promise truth and grace. Many times simple awareness of ourself and our objectives for undertaking a particular line of study can be as helpful in determining what we wish to accomplish as unhelpful in belying the truths we set out to discover. The disciple John may have been skeptical at first when meeting Jesus but after his conversion to his Lord he then spent a lifetime of service learning to disseminating what Jesus meant to his world around him as Christ's apostle as well as to the fellowships which moved towards his graceful teachings of Jesus.

Even so is this true for the church today. To learn to healthily critique itself and its doctrines so that it might better reflect the Christ of its faith to more truly correlate with the historical Jesus of time and event not only to early Christianity but to God's heart of intent towards mankind immemorial. For the church to critique itself can be as much helpful as it can be destructive, and yet, the trick is to pray for God's discernment through His Spirit in allowing any criticism of the Christian faith to build stronger communities of the Lord to the outreaching of God's will and word in Christ. For those uncaring to these "higher critical" endeavors "of spirituality" we may regard them as scholars but perhaps not as shepherds to God's children.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
June 15, 2015
edited June 17, 2015


Related Links:

The Christian Challenge to Philosophy, by W.H.V. Reade, S.P.C.K., 1951

Philosophy and Christian Theology, by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002 (with substantive revision through 2012)

Analytic Philosophy & Christian Theism, by Klaas Kraay, April 2015

Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity, Essays in Tribute to George Christopher Stead, E.J. Brill, 1993

Christian Philosophy, by Wikipedia







Christian Philosopher, Alvin Plantiga


Friday, May 29, 2015

Thomas Oord - Ways to Think about Providence

As an introduction to today's topic let me ask the following questions: Is God omni-controlling? Or, put another way, is God omni-determining? If so, then do we have free will or are our lives predestined? If they are not predestined then what does free will mean in relation to God's ruling sovereignty? Is God sovereign? Can He be? If not, than in what way is God sovereign?

Or, put another way, is our future open or closed? If our future is determined and free will is a fiction then it is closed. But if our future is open and we do have free will then what does this mean in relation to God's rule of sovereignty?

These questions and many more all fall under the general category of "God's Creative Providence" which is explored in today's article by a fellow friend and theologian who continues to think about what it means for God to be a God of love.

R.E. Slater
May 29, 2015




Ways to Think about Providence
http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/ways-to-think-about-providence

by Thomas Jay Oord
May 25th, 2015

Christians have many ways to think about how God acts in creation (providence). Each way has implications for making sense of life in light of God’s love, power, and other attributes. But some ways are better than others.

In my forthcoming book, The Uncontrolling Love of God, I identify seven models of providence. Among them is the model I call “essential kenosis,” which I find most satisfactory overall.

One chapter of my book explores the powerful proposals on providence from John Sanders, The God Who Risks. Although I find much in Sanders’s proposal that I appreciate, I also offer some criticisms and counterproposals.


The Kenotic Love of God

Essential Kenosis Table of God's Sovereignty vs. God's Love
(A Scale of Religious Systems and Doctrines: Calvinism-Wesleyanism-Deism/Mysticism)

Three Ways

When offering his open and relational model of providence, Sanders seems to think Christians choose among three options when thinking about how God creates and acts providentially.

1 - The first option is a form of process theology. Sanders is wary of process theologies that say, as he puts it, God is “pervasively conditioned by creatures.” He wants to avoid saying God, by necessity or by nature, depends on the world. Sanders believes God can unilaterally act on the world, and he doubts process theologians can affirm this (p. 162).

Let’s call the first option, “The world conditions God.”

2 - The second option Sanders wants to avoid is a form of Calvinism. He is wary of Calvinist theologies that say, as he puts it, “the divine nature necessarily must create a world in which God is omni-determining.” This view says God’s ongoing providential control is “a manifestation of the divine nature” (p. 231). Creatures are not really free, and randomness and chance are illusions.

Let’s call this second option, “God constantly controls the world.”

3 - The [third] option Sanders prefers says God sovereignly gives freedom but allows evil. Sovereign activity lays the framework of the creation project. “The divine nature is free to create a project that involves loving relations with creatures,” says Sanders (p. 231). But God could have created a world without free creatures. And God could (and perhaps occasionally does) control creatures or situations to bring about some outcome.

Let’s call Sanders’s third option, “God sovereignly, not of necessity, decided to create a world with free creatures.”

Questioning God’s Love and Power

In general, open and relational theology says a relational God of love collaborates with creatures. God’s love takes risks in relationship, as Sanders puts it. Because love does not control others, the risk model of providence does not offer the guarantees divine determinism does.

God’s relationship with creatures, says Sanders, “is not one of control and domination but rather one of love and vulnerability” (p. 71). God “does not force [creatures] to comply” (p. 174). In sum, Sanders believes “love does not force its own way on the beloved” (193).

I agree with the statements in the above paragraph. Most open and relational theologians would also agree.

But these statements invite important questions. After all,

  • if God’s preeminent attribute is love and love invites cooperation without forcing its own way, it makes little sense to say sovereign freedom allows God to create in an unloving way.
  • It makes little sense, for instance, to say God voluntarily decided against exercising meticulous providence.
  • If love comes first and love does not force others to comply, it makes little sense to say, as Sanders does, that “God is free to sovereignly decide not to determine everything.” If love comes first, God cannot exercise meticulous providence or determine everything.

Hence,

  • Why should we think a loving God who “does not force the beloved” is truly free “to tightly control every event that happens?”
  • Why should we think a loving God is free to control others entirely, even if God never exercised that freedom?

If love doesn’t force the beloved and God is love, God can’t force the beloved.

A Fourth Way

I prefer a fourth option. We might call my view, “God’s loving nature requires God to create a world with creatures God cannot control.”

My option is part of the essential kenosis model I describe in my forthcoming book. At the heart is the idea that love logically precedes power in God’s nature. To put it differently, God’s love always preconditions God’s creating and providential activity.

In my view, it was out of love that God decided to create a world. And because love is God’s primary attribute, it is necessary that God creates.

Because God’s essential nature is self-giving, others-empowering love, God cannot control creatures. God cannot, to use Sanders’s language, “sovereignly decide not to determine everything.” God cannot “force the beloved.” God cannot “tightly control every event that happens.”

This limitation on God’s part does not come from something imposed upon God from the outside. Like Arminius and Wesley, I say God’s limitations come from God’s love. And in God, love comes first.

Conclusion

There is obviously more that must be said. And I offer further explanation in The Uncontrolling Love of God. I hope you look for it this fall.


Author Phyllis Tickle faces death just as she enjoyed life: ‘The dying is my next career’


Phyllis Tickle is a Southern-born and -bred mother of seven and a doyenne of religion writers.
She is now 81, and a widow living on a small farm in Lucy, Tenn., just outside of Memphis.
On the land where her cows once roamed, stray dogs she has adopted and some family
surround her. She is being treated for Stage IV cancer.
Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Author Phyllis Tickle faces death just as she enjoyed life: ‘The dying is my next career’
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/05/22/author-phyllis-tickle-faces-death-just-enjoyed-life-dying-next-career/

by David Gibson
May 22, 2015


LUCY, Tenn. (RNS) Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle.

And now, at 81, she’s working on her final chapter: her own.

On Jan. 2, the very day her husband, Sam, succumbed to a long and debilitating illness, Tickle found herself flat on her back with a high fever, “as sick as I’ve ever been” and racked by “the cough from hell.”

The fever eventually subsided, but the cough wouldn’t let go. When she finally visited the doctor last month, the diagnosis was quick, and grim: Stage IV lung cancer that had already spread to her spine. The doctors told her she has four months to live, maybe six.

“And then they added: ‘But you’re very healthy so it may take longer.’ Which I just loved!” she says with her characteristic sharp laugh.

Indeed, that’s the kind of irony that delights Tickle, even in sober moments like this, and it embodies the sort of dry humor and frank approach that leaven even her most poignant, personal reflections. It’s also central to the distinctive style, delivered in a rich Southern register, that has won her innumerable fans and friends who will be hard-hit by the news of her illness.

Phyllis Tickle and one of the stray dogs she has adopted on her farm in Lucy, Tenn.
| Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Tickle has been writing almost since she can remember, with poetry the focus of her earliest efforts. At 21 she married Sam Tickle, a medical student and childhood friend from Johnson City, Tenn. He went on to become a doctor; she took a variety of teaching jobs and launched the first of what would become a series of publishing ventures.

But Tickle really began to achieve prominence when she was recruited by Publishers Weekly in the early 1990s to start its religion division. Then her first “big” book, “Re-Discovering the Sacred: Spirituality in America,” came out in 1995, followed two years later by “God-Talk in America.”

In poems and essays, homilies and memoirs, countless public talks that explored sociology and history and the next big thing, Tickle has diligently mapped the pathways of the heart and the demographics of the soul while becoming one of the nation’s leading public intellectuals on all things religious.
‘Am I grateful for this? Not exactly. But I’m not unhappy about it.’

Even after she wound down her career on the lecture circuit last year — at 80 she decided she’d rather not spend up to 40 weeks a year on the road and away from her ailing husband and their beloved farm north of Memphis — Tickle was still in good form. Her puckish humor and youthful vigor always pulled her beyond the travails of the day and kept her focused on future writing projects and a couple gigs as a visiting professor.

She’s best-known for a range of essays and books on faith and life, most notably and successfully her series on “The Divine Hours,” about the power of daily fixed-hour prayer. (Raised a Presbyterian, Tickle was drawn to the Episcopal Church and its liturgy and has called herself “the world’s worst, most devout evangelical Episcopalian.”)

In 2008, her landmark work, “The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why,” probed how a new and vibrant Christianity is recovering elements of the past and carrying them into a whole new future. That’s a theme she continued to develop in a 2013 book, “The Age of the Spirit: How the Ghost of an Ancient Controversy Is Shaping the Church.” She has yet more to say on that, cancer permitting.

Phyllis Tickle. | Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Taken together, Tickle’s works combine the sprawling scope of historian Karen Armstrong with the fine-grained command of sociologist Robert Bellah and the rural sensibilities of poet Wendell Berry. Throw in a dash of Thomas Merton’s sense and spirituality for good measure.

“Tickle has earned her place as one of the modern spiritual masters of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” her friend and occasional collaborator Jon Sweeney writes in the introduction to an upcoming selection of Tickle’s writings in Orbis’ Modern Spiritual Masters Series.

What’s just as impressive is that she did all this and raised six children — a seventh, a son, died just two weeks after he was born — mostly on a 20-acre working farm, where the family moved in 1977. It was a big change for the kids after living for years in the upscale Central Gardens neighborhood in Memphis.

“They hated it,” Tickle says in her Tennessee drawl. But they love the country life now, and the Farm in Lucy, as she calls it, has always been a backdrop, or even a character, in much of her work.

In spite of this impressive literary lineage, however, it is the cancer that is shaping the last chapter of Tickle’s life.

And yet, she displays a remarkable equanimity in the face of this final, and most merciless, deadline.

“At 81 you figure you’re going to die of something, and sooner rather than later,” she says, sitting at her kitchen table for her first interview about her diagnosis. “I could almost embrace this, that, OK, now I know what it’s probably going to be, and probably how much time there is. So you can clean up some of the mess you’ve made and tie up some of the loose ends.”

“I am no more afraid of dying than I am of, I don’t know, drinking this coffee,” she continues, pointing to her mug. (It’s actually filled with Postum since she’s had to give up caffeine. She remains, thankful, though, that she can still drink a nightly whiskey. “Jack Daniels, of course!” she says, shocked at the suggestion that a Tennessee native would drink anything else.)

During a morning-long conversation, Tickle is regularly interrupted by a nagging, sometimes racking, cough that alternates with her signature laugh. “This is part of it,” she says matter-of-factly.

Her once boundless energy starts to fail by midday. She started radiation treatment on Thursday (May 21), mainly in an effort to forestall the possible collapse of her spine, which would leave her helpless and in intractable pain. “That sounds a little formidable to me,” she says. “I was never much for suffering.”

She goes on, her words carefully chosen. “Am I grateful for this? Not exactly. But I’m not unhappy about it. And that’s very difficult for people to understand.”

Phyllis Tickle walks the farm where her cows once roamed.| Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Phyllis Tickle walks the farm where her cows once roamed. Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

This image is available for web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.
‘It’s a gift’

How then, did Tickle reach such a state of grace so quickly and, seemingly, easily? Is it the wisdom of age? Years of religious practice? Or the relentless attempt, as Sweeney has written of her, “to come to terms with the essentially and elusively spiritual in the world about her”?

Tickle’s answer is as surprising as the revelation of her diagnosis: She had a near-death experience at 21, she says, thanks to an experimental drug she was given to try to prevent a miscarriage.

In the middle of the night, she stopped breathing; her husband, a medical student at the time, was able to revive her long enough to get her to the hospital.

“Mine was a classic near-death. So, not much to say,” she begins. “I was dead.

“I was like a gargoyle up in the corner of the hospital room,” she continues. “And I remember to this day looking down and watching Sam beat on me again and screaming for the nurses, and the nurses coming with the machines and the whole nine yards. And then the ceiling opened and I just went out the corner and into a tunnel, which was grass all the way around. Ceiling, sides, the whole thing.

Phyllis Tickle’s glasses rest on a large piece of paper where her creative scribbles lie
until they find their way onto real pages.
| Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Phyllis Tickle’s glasses rest on a large piece of paper where her creative scribbles lie until they find their way onto real pages. Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

This image is available for web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

“And I went to the end of the tunnel to this incredible — people call it ‘the light.’ I guess that’s as good a name as any. But an incredible peace, a reality, unity, whatever. The voice, which was fortunately speaking in English” — she laughs again — “said, ‘Do you want to come?’ And I heard myself saying, ‘No, I want to go back and have his baby,’ meaning Sam.”

She recalls that she turned around and went back down through the hole in the ceiling and into her body.

It’s a startling story coming from Tickle, and one her husband admonished her never to speak about, much as she wanted to. For him, a medical professional, it was simply a result of hypoxia, or lack of oxygen. “That’s not religion,” he would say.

Years later, he himself had a few uncanny spiritual experiences that softened his opposition, and in recent years she began to speak a bit about her episode, most recently and expansively to a television crew that’s making a documentary on end-of-life experiences.

“You’re never afraid of death after that,” Tickle says of her long-ago taste of mortality. “I’m sorry. You could work at it but you’d just never be afraid of it. … You don’t invite that kind of thing. It’s a gift. It’s not like you can prepare for it or anything. It’s part of the working material you’re given.”
‘Christianity isn’t going to die!’

Yet it isn’t material she has ever used — though that could change.

Tickle had been mulling a book on aging before her diagnosis, and she hopes to finish it, knowing that it will probably be informed by her new perspective. “I hope it won’t be another model, ‘this-is-how-we-die’ thing,” she says. “If it veers over to that I’ll be the first to burn the manuscript. Or pull the plug.”

She is also assembling a collection of her poems, though she is not as high on them as others are: “I would have been a poet had I had the skill or the gift. What I have is a very little skill and a very moderate gift.”

Phyllis Tickle in her bedroom, where she sleeps in a bed made by her
great-grandfather and surrounded by other family furniture and her books.
Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

Phyllis Tickle in her bedroom, where she sleeps in a bed made by her great-grandfather and surrounded by other family furniture and her books. Religion News Service photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

This image is available for web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

She’s also chewing over another “big picture” book on what she sees as a “rapprochement between Western Judaism and ‘emergence’ Christianity,” and just musing on the idea starts her on a riff on the transformation of religion after the Reformation, which she then seamlessly links to the blockbuster Pew Forum survey earlier this month that showed Christianity quickly losing ground in the U.S. as the number of unaffiliated “nones” spikes sharply.

It’s all grist for Tickle’s mill.

“Christianity isn’t going to die!” she exclaims, almost offended at the suggestion. “It just birthed out a new tributary to the river.”

“Christianity is reconfiguring,” she says. “It’s almost going through another adolescence. And it’s going to come out a better, more mature adult. There’s no question about that.”

For Tickle, the most interesting cohort in the survey is not the usual “spiritual but not religious,” but the “neither spiritual nor religious” who get “lost in the shuffle” but are in fact the key to the future of faith.

“There is an honesty in their conversation and self-understanding that, it seems to me, makes them much more open to conversation and analysis and perhaps, ultimately, to persuasion than is true for other groups,” she writes in a follow-up email. “I may be wrong, but I am, as I say, fascinated.”

Yet, that will have to be another book for another author.
‘If that makes me a mystic, so be it’

As she reflects on her life, Tickle says she has always seen herself as a listener, something she admits may surprise those who know her literary output and her gift of gab.

It’s an inner voice, she says, that has always told her what to do, what was coming next in a life filled with so much variety. And it’s a voice she has always obeyed.

“It’s the truth. Just like I’m told to do this,” she says, referring to her terminal illness. “Which is why it doesn’t bother me. The dying is my next career.

“You can call it whatever you want to. Spooky? I hate the word ‘mystical.’ It has such a cachet now. Like an exquisite and high-priced perfume. But if that makes me a mystic, so be it.”



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For further reference ~






Thursday, May 28, 2015

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 6 - Theology, Philosophy, & Science



Even as we explore postmodern science and philosophy here at Relevancy22 we must be reminded that science and philosophy has its place within theology even as theology must learn to converse with the same. That is to say, science and philosophy are useful as external critiques to the Christian lexicon of understanding biblical truth. That without this societal context theology is imperiled by its own version of revelation creating an incubus that would isolate its traditions and dogmas from introspection.

However, this does not mean that theology becomes subservient to science and philosophy but that it learns to relate as equals in unparalleled relationship with postmodern science and philosophy to that of an orthodox system inhabiting special revelation as its basis of truth. And yet, this theistic foundation is not a protection from the fallibility of imperfect human interpretation. That the Christian reading of the Bible cannot be immune to what the world discovers and continues to discover about ourselves and God's creation. But that Christian theology must utilize outside commentaries, ideas, and discoveries to continually improve its reading of the Bible so that its continually reflects the Redeeming God who is at all times at work within humanity and His creation.

To be aware that our own cocoons of "wisdom and thought" may mislead when designed to protect its faithful. And to know that "looking without to look within" is at all times more helpful than sealing the doors, throwing up ecclesiastical boundaries, and forestaying the "wolf outside" our communal structures. These actions are not helpful but harmful to the church's study of God's Word. Did not Jesus come to teach and disturb His people? And if the church does not do the same is it not doing a disservice to its peoples?

Even as theology is about God so science and philosophy are about how we perceive ourselves with one another and are connected to our world. These latter do not necessarily deny God so much as to rigorously study the world of objects that can be tested and verified through experiments and studies. Even as the Platonist believes he knows all by knowing the One, so the Aristotelian pupil believes nothing can be known without first studying the particular in order to create a more holistic philosophy. Each system is in antagonism to the another but only if the philosopher allows them to be. And yet, in another light, each system can be a help to the other with wisdom and discernment.

So too with Christianity. We come as theists to any human discipline. But this does not mean that we may throw out those academics that dispute our beliefs. It would be to our peril and poorer understanding of God's universe and even ourselves within His greater plan. A Radical Christianity would willingly converse with the world while at all times inspecting itself within the light of that conversation. In some points there will be agreement. In others not at all. And in many a correlation can be found that may be enlightening to a Christian culture at an impasse with its understanding of God's Word.

So we have found in the science of evolution that has shown quite plainly that the popular Christian reading of the Genesis 1-11 is in serious conflict with what we know both scientifically and from historical-source criticism. Hence, somewhere within this reading we must adapt our biblical interpretations (or hermeneutics) to allow for these truths without losing sight of the theology behind the ancient symbolic or historical mythological texts of Genesis 1-11. As example, God is our Creator, sin is a present reality that has somehow entered the world (this author claims through the sublime act of God granting freedom to His creation), and redemption must now ensue.

We also better understand postmodernism's rejection of modernity's secularism that has been embraced by the (evangelical / denominational) 19th-20th century church. That it's formalistic or syllogistic reduction of theology into its separate systematic theologies does not better explain God to us except from a Greek (Hellenistic) and Medieval / Enlightened mindset. That those theologies must now learn how to absorb the newer philosophies out there lest the Christian church no longer  be progressive in its witness but regressive, sectarian, if not possibly cultic (as can be readily seen in the various pockets of the church's culture).

For example, the church does no longer crusade against other nations even as medieval churches once did. But what about our nation's one-time policies of colonialism affected by the church, or now, in its national policies in a post-colonial world? Or, as another example, should the church associate Jesus' love and openness with militaristic images of sword and shield as some Americans would think of their church's patriotism? It would be in err to think of the Gospel of Jesus as a "truth-and-justice" weapon to the world.

As such, God is not in need of being defended. But He is in need of our willingness to see new truths where we believed none existed. To grow beyond our "enslavement" ages of the church, and its "discriminatory" phases now being bashed about as "Christian" when it is neither Jesus-ordained nor rightful on the human plane of civil equalities and rights. In all instances God has not changed in His love to mankind but His fallible church does harm to the gospel of Jesus when bantering cultural prerogatives about in the name of Christ.

If this is not the Christianity we wish we must admit that it is not the Christianity of the God of the Bible whom we so highly elevate and value. In truth, it is we ourselves who must change along with the charters of our fearful churches confusing pride for penance. Sin is still sin but its form is in how we relate to one another, what we do towards one another, and what we deny to one another. Sin is not dismissed. Nor is it absent from the church itself. The Kingdom of God demands another ethic. A heavenly one. And not a human morality that would make us feel comfortable, assured, or at peace with ourselves while refusing the rights of other human beings these same affects and conditions.

The Kingdom of God is not of man but of God. It is of a God who rules and not us. And of His choice to rule through Jesus by the tools and tradecraft of love and peace. And if it were to be one of condemnation than let it be directed to His own people. And especially to those templed priests and theologians then, as now, who deny God by their words, and doctrines, and dogmas, and harden beliefs. For these so-called "believers" who claim they know God hell awaits. But for the penitent man and woman heaven's bounties are opened wide and deep both in this life by witness and life blood to the gospel of Jesus. So be it with the church in this world this day. Let us rethink what we think we know. Let us relearn what we must. And at all times let us serve others the gospel of love and peace by our hands and feet and tongues.

Peace,

[Below are two articles and how they each are dealing with the subjects of Christian theology in juxtaposition with philosophy and science. I deem each as useful as you will soon see.]

R.E. Slater
May 28, 2015









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Resisting De-Personalizing the Biblical God
into the Philosophical Category of "Being Itself"


Is God “A Being” Or “Being Itself?”

by Roger Olson
May 16, 2015

Introduction

I grew up thinking of God, the God of the Bible, the “Christian God,” as “a being”–at the top of a great chain of beings but with a clear gulf fixed between him and everything else down the chain. The gulf was crossable only from God’s side and had to do with the fact that only God is eternal and uncreated. Everything else in the chain was below God and created by God. The gulf was widened by the fall of angels and humans.

This picture of God and everything seemed self-evident in Scripture. I never thought to question it until I got well into my theological studies when I encountered Origen, Augustine, Dionysius (the Pseudo-Areopagite), Anselm, Thomas Aquinas and (skipping far ahead) Paul Tillich. Then I learned that, as a thinking Christian wishing to avoid idolatry, I was supposed to think of God not as “a being” but as Being Itself–not as one, even the supreme and self-existent one, among many but as the Power of Being, the One OF the many.  [RES - (sic, NOT "One of many" = polytheism NOR demiurges of God, that is, greater or lesser instances of God re Christian gnostic belief as versus the Trinity of God, one Being in three essences or Persons as established the Councils of Calcedon).]

If God is really God, so the argument goes, and not like us, limited, finite, conditioned, he must be Absolute. Anything less than “the Absolute,” the Unconditioned, cannot really be God. If the God of the Bible is a being and not Being Itself, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the One behind the many, then, so the argument goes, then he does not really deserve to be thought of as God because, to borrow Anselm’s term, the mind can think of a great being than him.

Well, that’s obviously a whirlwind explanation that doesn’t come close to doing justice to the argument for God as Being Itself.

I have often felt pressured to rise above my “simple Biblicism” and primitive picture of God as a personal being, even if the greatest of all beings, transcendently surpassing in greatness and glory all creatures, and confess God as Being Itself–not the Supreme Being at the top of a great chain of being but something entirely different–perhaps more like the infrastructure of a city that makes it “work.” (All analogies become problematic, of course, when attempting to depict Being Itself.) I have even been told that my childhood picture of God borders on idolatry.

The assumption underlying much of that thinking (of God as Being Itself) was expressed by Alfred North Whitehead who said that while Buddhism is a metaphysic in search of a religion, Christianity is a religion in search of a metaphysic. That is, the underlying assumption is that the biblical narrative does not give us an adequate, or any, metaphysical world picture, account of reality-itself, but expresses especially transcendent reality in myths, symbols and images which must be interpreted through the lens of some ontology borrowed from outside the Bible. One obvious candidate in early church history was Middle or Neo-Platonism (see also Neo-Platonism, and Neo-Platonism and Christianity). Another, especially in the Middle Ages, was Aristotelianism. (cf. also Aristotle's teachings) Whitehead’s, of course, was his own organic philosophy of process (or, process thought).

What do all those attempts to bring Athens to Jerusalem have in common?

All assume that the biblical portrait of God cannot be taken seriously; it must be supplement if not replaced by a philosophical picture of God which is then interpreted as “what the Bible really means.” Practically speaking, then, all biblical references to God as personal are relegated to the realm of anthropomorphisms–figures of speech that depict God in human terms whereas God is not really much like humans at all.

Over the years I’ve kept an eye open for (non-fundamentalist) theologians who pushed back speaking of God as Being Itself (as opposed to a personal being among others even if the “others” are created). I encountered especially, of course, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, but even they seemed to me inconsistent at times–wanting to affirm God’s “holy otherness” in ways that seemed to make God float off into inaccessible transcendence. I know that was not their intentions, but I came to believe they, like most serious, academic, “world class” theologians, were still infected with the idea that God’s transcendence must mean he is somehow absolute, unconditioned, etc. Brunner, in my opinion, came closest to taking the biblical portrayal of God seriously, resisting ontological ideas of God as Being Itself. Brunner sometimes spoke of God in brutally personal terms–pushing back against the whole Christian theological tradition of negative (apophatic) theology (e.g., attempts to explain what God is not as versus what God is.)

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[r.e. slater (RES) - This line of thought is sometimes associated with mysticism and the desire of the personal to transcend to the spiritual beyond ordinary perception - Wikipedia. It has also been used somewhat helpfully in postmodern attempts to deconstruct religion of its anthropomorphic-centeredness. In sum, "While negative theology is used in Christianity as a means of dispelling misconceptions about God, and of approaching Him beyond the limits of human reasoning, most commonly Christian doctrine is taken to involve positive claims: "that God exists and has certain positive attributes, even if those attributes are only partially comprehensible to us." )]

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Every once in a while throughout my theological career (and even as a student of theology) I have run across a theologian that really appealed to me but is not widely known, read or discussed. Recently I’ve been reading articles published in the 1950s in theological journals by an American Protestant theologian named Edmond La B. Cherbonnier (b. 1918). Cherbonnier, who taught at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, pushed back very hard against ontological ideas of God as Being Itself and insisted that there is a “biblical metaphysic” in which God is “a being,” neither unconditioned nor absolute (as in “The Absolute,” the Being Greater Than Which None Can Be Conceived drawing on Greek philosophical ideas of “greatness” as metaphysical perfection).

Cherbonnier attempted to work out what he called “the biblical metaphysic” as a “third way”–alternative to Platonism and Aristotelianism (and certainly also alternative to Whitehead’s ontology). According to Cherbonnier, this biblical metaphysic differs from others than have been imposed on Scripture, or through which Scripture has been interpreted, because it is embedded in, implied by, Scripture itself. According to him, the biblical narrative contains an implied metaphysic and all attempts to interpret Scripture through the “lens” of extra-biblical, philosophical metaphysics or ontologies end up failing to do justice to the biblical revelation of God and reality.

For those interested, I recommend these two articles by Cherbonnier (whose death year I cannot find so I’m hoping he’s still alive so I can correspond with him): “Biblical Metaphysic and Christian Philosophy” (Theology Today 9:3 [October, 1952]: 360-375) and “Is There A Biblical Metaphysic?” (Theology Today 15:4 [January, 1959]: 454-469).

One reason I resist thinking of God as Being Itself as opposed to a personal being is that it tends to undermine prayer except as meditation. It lends itself easily to the idea that “Prayer doesn’t change things; it [only can] change me.” That is, it undermines petitionary prayer which Schleiermacher, understandably [noted] because of his philosophical influences, called “immature prayer.” If God is Being Itself, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, then it would seem prayer cannot affect God. In fact, it would seem God cannot be affected by anything outside himself. My early Christian faith, which I have not entirely discarded (!), focused much on a “personal relationship with God.” God is someone, a being, who is other than I, and we stand vis-a-vis one another in what Buber and Brunner called an “I-Thou relationship.” Regarding God as Being Itself tends to lead away from relating to God as “Thou” with whom one can have a real, personal relationship.

Cherbonnier was on the right track, I believe; we need to retrieve from the biblical narrative its own metaphysic and not borrow ontology from elsewhere and interpret Scripture through that as a lens overlaying it. This would be an exercise in “the Bible absorbing the world” (Hans Frei) and therefore might be called a “narrative metaphysic”–an oxymoron to many philosophical theologians.

Postliberal Protestant theology has been mostly resistant to metaphysics, but if Cherbonnier is right, that could be because most Protestant theologians tend to think of “metaphysics” as synonymous with extra-biblical, rational ontologies that function as natural theologies. But if Cherbonnier is right, there is a biblical metaphysic that is embedded in biblical revelation itself. That is, the Bible itself strongly implies a reality picture that is deeper than doctrines but equally, if not more, important - it is an alternative to philosophical ontologies that usually conflict with God as person or as omnipotent power (as in process thought).

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[RES - thus, some of my conflict with process thought even as other parts of it are embraced as capturing important salient images of God and the Bible. So too with Radical Theology's usage of postmodern philosophy to uncover what today's evangelical Christianity blatantly discards, discourages, or outright misses beginning with its (Reformed) hermeneutical interpretations which are self-fulfilling and circular in argument (the latest being its 1980's emphasis upon "the inerrancy of Scripture" disallowing for external criticism). These radical disciplines are meant to recover modernal Christianity back to its orthodox charters and teachings and not to dismiss Christianity out of hand by irrelevancy to humanity. By using epistemological frameworks outside of the evangelical frameworks we've become unquestioningly comfortable with it is possible to "negate" popular (but unbiblical) folklores and arguments by re-instating God's presence through Jesus within a postmodern framework making relevant revelation's truth and handiwork to the souls of men. It should also be noted here that throughout the body of Relevancy22 there as been a strong resistance to "disembodying God" as "mere Presence" and always a strong identity of God as a Redemptive Being in relationship to His creation.]

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I have never been able to become comfortable with calling God “Being Itself” or thinking of God as “absolute” or “unconditioned.” These ideas of God seem to me unbiblical. In this case, as Pascal famously said, “The God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” But there is a philosophy of God revealed through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul. It’s just not what most people think of as “philosophy.” To hint at it: It does reveal reality as a “great chain of beings” (plural) with God at its top as creator and governor of all below him with a fixed gulf between him and the rest marked by the difference between being uncreated, self-existent, and being created and dependent (to say nothing of fallen).


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This is Why We Need Christians Engaged in Science!
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/05/28/why-we-need-christians-engaged-in-science-rjs/

by RJS
May 28, 2015

Ed Stetzer had an interesting post on his blog last week -  3 reasons for Christians to Engage in Science. This post is a reprint of an essay he wrote for a small booklet recently released by the National Association of Evangelicals: When God and Science Meet and available for free download. The booklet includes essays by John Ortberg, Mark Noll, Christopher Wright and more.

Stetzer’s three reasons (read his essay on his blog or in the booklet for his elaboration of these points, bold added):

First, creation speaks to a creator. Because we know there is a creator, we should be the ones most concerned about his creation.…

In Romans 1; Paul points out that attributes of God are made clear in creation. We can know his eternal power and divine nature, because they have been clearly seen since the creation of the world.
If Scripture says creation, and therefore the sciences that explore it, point to God, why would we run away from that? We, above all others, should love, study, explore, examine and care for the creation that provides evidence of God and his character.

Second, dismissing science undermines our witness. But many evangelicals are backing away from science. In a society driven by scientific achievement, it is unwise and counterproductive to our mission for Christians to embrace an anti-science label.

Third, science can better society. … The fact is, as we find better ways to farm, powerful new medicines to heal and more effective ways to power our society, the poor benefit, societies are transformed for the better and the world looks and is more of what God intended it to be.

Christians are to champion the good of their city and society as a whole. Leveraging scientific study and achievement for the betterment of people is an entirely Christian thing to do.

All three of these are great reasons for Christians to engage in science. The pursuit of science brings a sense of wonder, beauty, and awe to many scientists, religious or not. For a Christian in the sciences there is an added wonder and beauty. When we, as scientists, study the “natural” phenomena of the universe, whether in physics, chemistry, paleontology, geology, biology or some other science, we are studying the nature of God’s creation. This can make the pursuit of scientific understanding a form of worship as Dorothy Chappell, Dean of Natural and Social Sciences at Wheaton College, says in her essay:

Scientists can discover, study and contemplate the complexities of the created order while apprehending God’s glory, which remains resplendent throughout the creation; in other words, they can worship and interact with God as they do their own professional work. This represents a profound discipline: doing good science and practicing vibrant faith. A natural outcome that results when scientists explore the mysteries of creation from a biblical worldview is a greater capacity for wonder, awe and humility. These, after all, are the traits of effective scientists and devout Christians. (p. 36, When God and Science Meet)

Stetzer’s third reason is also highlighted in a number of the essays in When God and Science Meet. The pursuit of science is transforming the world for the better. This isn’t to embrace the myth of human moral progress where human effort will produce a perfect society or bring the Kingdom of God. It is simply to state a fact – vaccinations, sanitation, clean water, efficient transportation, medicines, instrumentation for imaging and diagnosis, all of these and many more developments, have made life for many longer, healthier, and safer. “Leveraging scientific study and achievement for the betterment of people is an entirely Christian thing to do.”

Finally his second reason, which is undervalued or misinterpreted by many:  Dismissing science, or worse yet distorting and misrepresenting science, undermines our witness as Christians in profound ways.  The church needs Christians engaged in science to hold fellow Christians to a high standard and to provide the needed expertise and review. John Ortberg notes in his essay:

I have seen too many young people in too many churches exposed to bad science in the misguided idea that someone was defending the Bible; then they go off to college and find out they were misinformed and they think they have to choose between the Bible and truth. (p. 28)

Bad science does no one any good.  Not Christians adults or youth, and certainly not non-Christians who find bad science a reason to dismiss any need to dig deeper and understand Christian faith. We need to pursue the truth.

Christian faith and the study of science are not mutually exclusive pursuits. Taking the Bible seriously does not mean holding to positions clearly contradicted by modern science. The Bible is not a science book.  Taking the Bible seriously does call us to stand against the metaphysical conclusions that some draw from science, just as it calls us to stand against the “wisdom of the world” driven by the pursuit of money, sex, and power.

The pursuit of scientific understanding has unearthed a wealth of new information. Information that our predecessors had no knowledge of and did not need to wrestle with … the vastness of the universe, the age of the earth, evolution. The church today does need to wrestle with this data.  In order to do this we need people who are conversant in science, who will take the time to explain the data and explore the relationship between the new insights from science and Christian theology. One of the reasons we need Christians to engage in science is to lead the church faithfully into the future.

Lucas Cranach Man and Woman and this leads to Adam. If that seems like a sharp left turn, changing the subject, it shouldn’t. Every discussion of science and Christian faith these days seems to return to the question of Adam, human evolution, and common descent. This is an overstatement, but not by much. Many of my posts over the last several years have turned around the discussion of Adam. In general I’ve focused on the biblical and theological issues because, quite frankly, I am convinced by the evidence of common descent. As a result I am deeply interested in the ramifications this has on our understanding of life from a Christian perspective.

Many readers, however, remain unconvinced that a unique couple is disproved by the scientific data. We need Christian scientists with the expertise and patience to explain the scientific data and consensus on a level accessible to non-scientists and to point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of the data and interpretation. I haven’t the patience (or the ready expertise in genetics) to offer a coherent and accessible explanation on common descent and human genetics. Fortunately Dennis Venema, professor of biology at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, has the patience, expertise and ability. Dennis is in the middle of a long series of excellent posts at Biologos exploring Adam, Eve, and human population genetics.

The last few installments of Adam, Eve, and human population genetics have looked at the arguments Dr. Vern Poythress advanced in his recent short book Did Adam Exist?. Dr. Poythress’s scientific argument leaves much to be desired. He misinterprets the scientific papers he uses to defend his position that common descent is unsupported by the genetic data and that science cannot rule out a bottleneck consisting of one unique human couple as progenitor of the entire human race.  Dennis does an nice job of pointing out the problems with Dr. Poythress’s scientific argument.  Bad scientific arguments are far too common and do devastating damage to the faith of far too many. (See John Ortberg’s quote again.)

We need Christians like Dennis, engaged in science and with a heart for the church.