Become Kingdom Makers, Not Kingdom Waiters

Last week I attended my school and seminary's "Talking Points" seminar as I do most every year since it began. This year's topic would be on the Kingdom of God, and as I went I knew full well it would play to the conservative evangelic side of the discussion which I grew up in and know very well down to the chapter and verse and eschatological charts used from a multitude of viewpoints: dispensational, Reformed, or even amillennial.

Mostly I attended in hopes of seeing some digression or nod of the head towards some form of a more progressive gospel over the spiritually infused words of heavenly hope accompanied by the lethurgy of social inaction refusing to address the greater needs of society. Why the disinterest in serving the world and only God? Because in the parochial line of thinking (at least within my fellowships) Jesus is coming and that should be enough to content oneself with until some cloudy day when He does actually come in the air to take away His church from this wicked world.

And although there might have been a nod towards a more earthly kingdom the day's opening speaker held to the school's current stricter position of wishing "for another day to fly away unto" and until that day "to rest in the secure knowledge" that a future heaven and earth would be a guarenteed wonderful place to be when this old world goes away by fire and destruction. And though I knew this kind of heavenly-minded sermon was coming my reaction was still one of heart-felt dismay for my old haunts of decades ago.

What I was hoping to hear was a more contemporary tone advocating for a more progressive Christian view of "Kingdom Now" as versus "Kingdom Later" kind of emphasis. But what I got was the sanitized side of a "New Heavens and New Earth" which is the safe, pedantic version of a conservative Bible gained from an evangelic-Calvinistic view of the future filled with hope and deliverance from God's coming judgment upon the world. But the more progressively-minded "Kingdom Now" view is the gutteral, ghandi-type version of God's Kingdom done from the bottom up of theology within an Arminian structure of Christ's gospel (sic, "human freedom" vs. "divine control" debates as errantly perceived of divine sovereignty evangelical Calvinists).

Now I am not discounting the grand and glorious view of my brethren's picture of God's Kingdom to come but for now, in this life, the only view which is deeply pertinent to the us (and consequently the living church of the living God) is the stereo picture of God's Kingdom lived now, here on this earth and in this life. Accompanied by a deeply burdened, if not hotly passionate picture, of God's church hard at work serving humanity based upon Christ's example and gospel love/witness as versus the heart-attitude of waiting for God's wrath and judgment to come to burn the earth to a cinder and all the unfortunate's living upon it.

In essence, the heavenly-minded "Kingdom Later" gospel leads out with preaching salvation to sinners (and basically a conservative party line of politics) with no hope of effect upon its listeners in this day and age. Which is a "Jonah-kind-of-gospel" where God's prophet Jonah grudgingly does God's will with a vigor of bitter resolve and then sits back on an overlooking hill waiting for God's wrath to fall upon his avowed enemies, the people of Nineveh. When this doesn't happen dear ol' Jonah is sorely displeased with God and bitterly asks why the nation's worst enemy (Assyria) isn't readily plunged upon by God in the same vigor that he had preached God's wrathful message? In effect, God says, "Their time has not yet come and My mercy burns with the same vigor for their souls as does your heart for their destruction." In consequence, Jonah, who had suffered great personal indignities at the hand of God Himself, now struggled with God's message of presumptive grace and sat back in a miserably depressed funk amazed by God's reaction of grace and mercy to those who would repent of their cruelty and injustices.

No less is today's hard-bitten church preaching God's word with a vigor of condemnation and then sitting back to await God's great wrath across the lands of sin and ruin. But true to form, in a mystery of atypical convention, what God does is not what the church expects, but what it doesn't want to see. God's love and compassion falls upon the cities of man to redeem the lost, show mercy upon the ruined, and grant deliverance to destitute lives committed to anything but God Himself.

It is the story of God's "Kingdom Now" coming unto this old earth rather than His future promised "Kingdom to Come" later. And it is bourne of a gospel which leads out with actually bringing both societal and personal salvation to the impoverished, the worker state, and to those held in societal chains of bondage. It is a disruptive kind of gospel which provokes imagination, heart, and soul.

As example, the plight of San Francisco was shared in several documentaries through HBO in September of 2015 (see accompanying article below). It showed a community's hardships through the lens of Alexandra Pelosi as it is being repeated again-and-again throughout the major metropolises of this world. And into this urban blight comes a response from the progressive church to a heartfelt and known social need unwanted in the vision of more structured views of the evangelical church believing desolation for desolation's sake is the response God has shown to those peoples who have rejected Him and refuse obedience to His holy name.

But it is a naive, and uninformed view which shows just the opposite through the documentary's piercing lenses. A view requiring action both within the government as well as from its citizenry. And especially from the churches of America declaring for the rights of the damned, the poor, the disenfranchised, the debt-ridden student, and distraught worker excessively burdened with no way out. It is a social occurrence that is all too frequent and must be framed both within our political discourses as well as within our walled-up, hard-hearted churches unwilling to allow a sympathetic tone or generosity to allieviate the ungenerous side of America's capitalism.

Most importantly, it must also be a response of compassion from both the church and society in general fraught within a banking system and corporate structure driven by share value and prowess. It is a "Kingdom Now" effort which makes most of us suburbanites feel uncomfortable having been delievered from this urban menance in our own lives by luck, chance, circumstance, or plain hard work and right decision making. But it must be something which gets us beyond our sense of normalcy, complacency, and hard-heartedness as it now stands within our surburban churces having escaped this great misery of the cities it has left behind.

And, it must proceed apace with a restorative ecology in mind and not simply a heavenly "new ecology" that someday may come (sic, the "new" earth part of "new heavens and new earth). To see an earth in need of reclamation as much as its peoples need to live in lands offering good soil, clean water, and nurturing space. Its not the kind of "Kingdom Later" theology which would spiritualized inactivity and cultural status quo with a do-nothing attitude because "its all going to burn up anyway."

The Jesus we see in the NT is a Jesus who serves and works for humanity as versus one preaching in a Pharisaical temple of God's "bounded' goodness and "controlling" wisdom. But a Savior of man who preaches a gospel declaring His temple as the city streets, the amphitheaters of the rocky hillsides, the seashores, and debauched dinning spaces of Jerusalem. It was to be a gospel formed by words accompanied by action (James 2.14ff), and action accompanied by words. It was a full circle kind of divine service to a humanity forgotten, disregarded, judged, and condemned by the religious regimes of Jerusalem aligned with Rome with a political lust for Rome's power. The bottom line is to be difference makers and not difference breakers in Christ's name.

For myself, yes, there will be a New Heavens and New Earth. Whether fiction or fantasy I don't know, its what's declared in the Bible. But I also know that God's Kingdom must also be now and not simply later within our theologies. To see a Christian Church always at work in this world both by gospel message as well as with rolled up shirt sleeves and dirty hands administring the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ as servants to His holy name and glorious majesty. It is a gospel that works for the rights of others to be freed from the bondage of sin and its earthly hardships borne by the sin of society working against God's will towards obedience, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. A bondage that is unrelenting unless it be broken by burdened souls and communities dedicated to the rights of others through any form of redemption they may bring to help and unshackle the loss and the destitute in the gospel of Christ. A gospel that works instead of waits. Serves instead of condemns. Sacrifices instead of grasp all the more tightly to its own deliverances. It is a gospel of a Kingdom both later and now and evermore. Thus our admonition to be kingdom makers and not a kingdom waiters. Serve. Love. Dedicate heart and soul to a divine humanity lost within this wicked world and found once again. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater

October 12, 2015
revised October 15, 2015

*For more discussion on the American economy and how the church may change it, go to this link here discussing "The Soul of the Next Economy" by Brian McLaren and company: "The vision of the Soul of the Next Economy dialogues is to help us move from an extractive, exploitative economy to a regenerative economy that prizes the flourishing of people as well as the planet." Cost is $20.

http://mclareninoakland.eventzilla.net/web/event?eventid=2139080014

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Courtesy HBO

Alexandra Pelosi

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

09.28.153:33 PM ET

San Francisco’s Alarming Tech Bro Boom: What Is the Price of Change?

Director Alexandra Pelosi, whose doc San Francisco 2.0 premieres September 28 on HBO, writes about how her city is emblematic of a changing America, and the new segregation.

By now you must have heard the rumblings coming from the West Coast about “the battle for the heart and soul of The City.” Not a week goes by without a headline about the growing pains brought on by the tech Gold Rush in San Francisco. For my ninth HBO documentary, San Francisco 2.0, which premieres Monday, September 28, at 9 p.m. on HBO, I chose to point the camera at my beloved hometown, where the influx of tech money and the sharing economy are disrupting the natural order of things.

Inside San Francisco, it’s impossible to talk about progress without stepping in a messy local streetfight. As the natives try to encourage the techies to see The City as their community, not their playground, a backlash against gentrification has erupted. But the rest of the country can look at the vanishing middle class of San Francisco to see our fate—the new segregation between rich and poor that is emerging in San Francisco 2.0 is the challenge of the new American economic reality.

“I’m worried about a city that is becoming uniformly wealthy and out of reach,” former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains. “San Francisco is London, it is Vancouver, it is Manhattan, it is places that are increasingly desirable to live in, that are becoming gated communities.” Have middle-class Americans lost access to their cities? Who gets to live in The City? Will middle-class people still feel like they belong? Or will our cities be for only those who can buy their way in? This is not simply an economic question, it’s also a spiritual one: What is the price of change? And what will the growing divide between rich and poor do to the fabric of America?

As we struggle to come up with fair answers to these questions, we must embrace the fact that you can’t fight change. You can’t refuel a city by standing still. San Francisco is not a boutique, it’s a center of commerce with the highest median tech wage in the country. No one can deny the benefits the tech boom has brought to San Francisco—all the new money is clearly good for the city’s tax base. “Every mayor in America would die to have these problems,” my uncle, Tommy D’Alesandro, says. He, like his father, served as mayor of Baltimore during much more divided times in American history. We must be grateful to the tech companies for bringing jobs and tax revenues and cleaning up their neighborhoods. New jobs have trickled down.

San Francisco 2.0 by HBO

For each new tech bro hired, there are new job openings for baristas, manicurists and personal trainers. This is the new feudalism of San Francisco 2.0, the landed gentry need more people to service them. So we need more bartenders, and they can't afford to live in the City…but what about the schoolteachers? Or the fireman and police who protect our families? Don’t we need to make room for them?

For some, the only way to hold on to the city with its skyrocketing home sales and rent prices is to join the sharing economy. Renting out their apartment on Airbnb or driving for Uber. But as Reich asks, “What happens to the widening inequality? What happens to job security? Everybody who becomes more of a contingent worker, more of a precarious worker—whether you’re an Uber driver or you are an Airbnb proprietor—your source of income is that less certain. A freelance economy can be a very cruel economy. It can be a form of social Darwinism.” This is the dark side to progress. For capitalism and democracy to actually work, we need new rules to make the playing field fair for everyone.

Courtesy of HBO

At a time when it is in vogue to hate our politicians, we need our elected leaders now more than ever to write the new laws that will guide us into the new frontier. As we try to figure out how to manage all this change, we need to make sure we don’t destroy the character of our communities. As more cities become a Tale of Two Cities, in which the class warfare between the haves and have-nots rages, and income inequality becomes a national epidemic, we need to find solutions that will keep our country together.

We are all looking West for solutions to these epic challenges of how to learn to share, manage change, and evolve as a community. And if any city can solve these problems, I’m hoping that my progressive hometown will lead the way into the new world economy—without leaving its heart and soul behind.

Foundations for a Radical Theology, Part 7 - Epistemology: Language, Lacan, and Postmodern Theology

"For many, life, as in language, must be marked by certainty. For myself,

I am learning to grow beyond the more fundamental needs of epistemology

that would limit my existential sense of being."

- R.E. Slater

An Epistemology of Inexpressiveness, Uncertainty, and Doubt

Inherent in language is its incompleteness. For all that language would promise in describing something or someone completely (for instance the idea of God) it too often falls short of its goal. For the postmodernist this is known as a "lack" as used by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan of language's structural impossibility to fully describe anything except partially or vaguely.

The fact that we cannot say everything about anything means that we experience "a lack" simply by existing as a "speaking being" who is trying to re-describe our incomplete expressions (or impressions). Hence, we cannot "say it all" and therefore must admit to our "lack" of infinite expression. This is the incompleteness of language as both a gift and a problem that is spoken between verbal (symbolic) beings searching for structure, definitiveness, completeness between one another.

And yet, circumnavigating the missing piece of language's incompleteness is the epistemological phenomena of "desire." Desire is birthed by language's "lack." It is a "generative" reaction to filling in the void of our human experience unable to describe what we sense and wish to place in the stricter categories of (divine or human) structural knowledge. More simply, our feelings or consciousness of lack is what generates our desire. And desire may then become a positive reaction to an unfillable (or inexpressible) void of communication by whatever medium it is expressed. It is in this "white space" of our human experience which marks us as finite beings propelling us forward towards the need for fundamental expression between one another using concrete verbal structures while at the same time unconsciously admitting to a deeper void within our souls crying out for an expression that cannot be expressed. A "mystical" expression as some would say.

Someone once said "The fantasy modernism (or, "linguistic fundamentalism") subscribes to is that there is a picture for us to see, or a totalizing puzzle for us to complete rather than realizing that we are always engaged in a uniquely creative or, re-generative process, of completing the puzzle to our existential "lack." And hence, we react to this deep need by furnishing our own incomplete experience to an inexpressible existential void we wish to describe.

As a consequence, postmodern theology restructures the theory of knowledge from its fatal (or finalizing) sense of certainty to the re-generative spaces of uncertainty, doubt, and mystery built upon existential experience and desire. Conversely, knowledge absent desire becomes fatal (or finalizing) for any society, creed, or religion no longer willing to explore the mysteries of its existence, being, or beliefs beyond its fundamental appraisals of it. And thus, when coming then to definitive religious or theological statements written in the pen of artificial completeness (sic, era-specific creeds and confessions, doctrinal liturgies, ecclesiastical dogmas) it discourages removal of those staid (non-being) equations of expression by refusing to make room for the divine/human narrative of incompleteness beheld by later generations. As such, postmodern post-structuralism seeks to re-circumscribe our structurally-imposed experiences of life. Experiences which would confidently assert language's delimiters thus leading to its many deaths in the lands of linguistic secularity (or sterility) forming the status quo bonds of modernism.

For postmodern theology this then becomes a kind of existential agnosticism or atheism over against the religious certitudes and fundamental verities we have grown up with limiting the vision of our lives and theologies bound behind the socially acceptable structures of mundane society. For others, the beginning of this existential/hermeneutical (interpretive) void is the beginning of a life teeming with phenomenological expression using uncertainty and doubt (or a kind of religious/interpretive agnosticism or atheism) as the driving motivators beyond the fundamental certainties we carry within our breasts. This kind of postmodern theology is more formally known as a "pyro-theology" which gives assent or permission to burning down the past in order to rebuild another kind of post-structural foundation. Consequently, a generative postmodern theology demands another kind of "hermeneutic" or "interpretive structural vision," into the realms of language and experiences of life. It demands of language to be less taxing, less specific, and more open to the possibilities of discovery - or movement - from the Spirit of God, and the spirit of human nature, cast beyond the boundaries of "what is known" to those realms of "unknowingness." Spiritual qualities which are deeply felt, sung, or dreamed within the human breast bursting with life and deliriously committed to seeking, searching, and communicating this spiritual life with other similarly thriving human beings.

R.E. Slater

September 26, 2015
edited September 28, 2015

Definitions - from Wikipedia

Post-structuralism

Post-Structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and critical theorists who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s.[1][2][3] A major theme of post-structuralism is instability in the human sciences, due to the complexity of humans themselves and the impossibility of fully escaping structures in order that we might study them.

Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism. Structuralism is an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century. It argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure—modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a "third order" that mediates between the two.[4] Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures.[5] Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, and Julia Kristeva, although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.[6]

The movement is closely related to postmodernism. As with structuralism, antihumanism is often a central tenet. Existential phenomenology is a significant influence; Colin Davis has argued that post-structuralists might just as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists".[7] Some commentators have criticized post-structuralism for being radically relativistic ornihilistic. Others have objected to its extremity and linguistic complexity: philosopher John Searle writes "deconstructive prose tends to be systematically evasive."[8] Others see it as a threat to traditional values or professional scholarly standards.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism.[1][2] Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations ofculture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.

The term postmodernism has been applied to a host of movements, mainly in art, music, and literature, that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques.[3]

Phenomenology

Phenomenology from Greek phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. It then spread to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work.[1] Phenomenology should not be considered as a unitary movement; rather, different authors share a common family resemblance but also with many significant differences. Accordingly, “A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results, and this may disorient anyone wishing to define the meaning of phenomenology”.[2]

Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. This ontology (study of reality) can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one another.

Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticized and developed not only by himself but also by students, such as Edith Stein, by hermeneutic philosophers, such as Martin Heidegger, by existentialists, such as Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and by other philosophers, such as Max Scheler, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Lévinas, and sociologists Alfred Schütz and Eric Voegelin.

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Jacques Lacan

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (/ləˈkɑːn/;[1] French: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981), known simply as Jacques Lacan, was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud".[2] Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially those associated with poststructuralism. His ideas had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, linguistics, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.[3]

Desire [Excerpt]

Lacan's concept of desire is related to Hegel's Begierde, a term that implies a continuous force, and therefore somehow differs from Freud's concept of Wunsch.[55] Lacan's desire refers always to unconscious desire because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the analysand to recognize his/her desire and by doing so to uncover the truth about his/her desire. However this is possible only if desire is articulated in speech:[56] "It is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term."[57] And again in The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: "...what is important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring desire into existence. The subject should come to recognize and to name his/his desire. But it isn't a question of recognizing something that could be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world."[58] The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire, whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover or surplus.[59]

Lacan distinguishes desire from need and from demand. Need is a biological instinct where the subject depends on the Other to satisfy its own needs: in order to get the Other's help "need" must be articulated in "demand." But the presence of the Other not only ensures the satisfaction of the "need", it also represents the Other's love. Consequently, "demand" acquires a double function: on the one hand, it articulates "need", and on the other, acts as a "demand for love." Even after the "need" articulated in demand is satisfied, the "demand for love" remains unsatisfied since the Other cannot provide the unconditional love that the subject seeks.

"Desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the

difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second."[60]

Desire is the a surplus, a leftover, produced by the articulation of need in demand:

"desire begins to take shape in the margin in which

demand becomes separated from need."[60]

Unlike need, which can be satisfied, desire can never be satisfied: it is constant in its pressure and eternal. The attainment of desire does not consist in being fulfilled but in its reproduction as such. As Slavoj Žižek puts it,

"desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction,

but to reproduce itself as desire."[61]

Lacan also distinguishes between desire and the drives: desire is one and drives are many. The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire.[62] Lacan's concept of "objet petit a" is the object of desire, although this object is not that towards which desire tends, but rather the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack (manque).

In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Lacan argues that "man's desire is the desire of the Other." This entails the following:

1. Desire is the desire of the Other's desire, meaning that desire is the object of another's desire and that desire is also desire for recognition. Here Lacan follows Alexandre Kojève who follows Hegel: for Kojève the subject must risk his own life if he wants to achieve the desired prestige."[63] This desire to be the object of another's desire is best exemplified in the Oedipus complex, when the subject desires to be the phallus of the mother.
2. In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious".[64] Lacan contends that the subject desires from the point of view of another whereby the object of someone's desire is an object desired by another one: what makes the object desirable is that it is precisely desired by someone else. Again Lacan follows Kojève who follows Hegel. This aspect of desire is present in hysteria for the hysteric is someone who converts another's desire into his/her own (see Sigmund Freud's "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" in SE VII, where Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K). What matters then in the analysis of a hysteric is not to find out the object of her desire but to discover the subject with whom she identifies.
3. Désir de l'Autre, which is translated as "desire for the Other" (though could be also "desire of the Other"). The fundamental desire is the incestuous desire for the mother, the primordial Other.[65]
4. Desire is "the desire for something else" since it is impossible to desire what one already has, The object of desire is continually deferred, which is why desire is a metonymy.[66]
5. Desire appears in the field of the Other, that is in the unconscious.

Last but not least for Lacan the first person who occupies the place of the Other is the mother and at first the child is at her mercy. Only when the father articulates desire with the law by castrating the mother, the subject is liberated from the mother's desire.[67]

Human Evolution. How Does it Fit with the Recent Discovery of the genus, "Homo Naledi?"

Growing up as a conservative evangelical Christian I had been taught to consider the story of human evolution as spurious to the Word of God. Over the decades I have reconsidered all the arguments for special creation and against evolutionary creation and now deem my earlier education misdirected. That I may now rightly hold to progressive creationism (as opposed to immediate creationism) and consider it "divinely supernatural and special."

That the Creator God of the universe had supernaturally decreed creation's possibility using the operands of randomness and chaos and be ruled by the teleological principle of life as "always tilting towards biologic struggle and survival" regardless of the (toxic) eco-environments this struggle might occur within. As example, oxygen was a deadly toxin to evolutionary life at one time. As such, at all times the equation of "life" will be tilted towards the principles of creative "freedom" within a weak entropic system (which posits ultimate chaos) against a strong entropic system (which posits ultimate determinism) thus allowing for an evolutionary progression whereby the Sovereign Creator may have fellowship of a kind with His creation.

This then is the scientific teleology of evolution by the decree of its Creator God as proceeding from His very being and essence of love. A chaotic system always tilted towards life of some form. To the Christian, this teleology might take its ultimate form in a chaotic cosmic/natural system driving towards biotic enrichment, thriving biotas, and creative imagining. This may also be known as the Christian hope, which is a kind of theological eschatalogy coupled with Jesus' rule (I prefer the idea of divine participation) of love and goodwill with mankind and creation itself. Thus, evoloution's teleology can unfold toward the Christian hope of loving fellowship between, within, without, and everywhere about, all things (what the process theologian might know as panentheism's complex of driving relationships).

Once realizing this, I have lately, in recent years, worked towards describing how this progressive evolutionary creation may exist both on a doctrinal level as well as on a scientific one without going beyond the bounds of modern science (excepting, of course, that I write of it from a theologic and not an agnostic, or a/theistic, viewpoint).

And so, in today's posting, I wish to further explore the idea of human evolution through its taxonomical graphs and charts of recent discoveries of the 2.8 million year old homo naledi (star) species. A remarkable discovery found in an ancient graveyard deep underground by a nimble anthropological team of spelunking women who made this phenomenal discovery happen.

Question 1. Why is the chimpanzee closer to the homo genus than the gorilla? And where do orangutans fit in to this zoological chart?

The homo genus has been characterised exclusively as a genus of "bipedal apes" commonly known as "homo erectus" from which the word "humans" derive but differing from the chimpanzee (pan group) which half walks using both legs and all four limbs to travel. The larger family of apes from which humans have descended, such as the gorilla, or orangutan, primarily use all four limbs to travel while occassionally utilizing bi-pedal motion much less of the time than the chimpanzee genus.

Though all come from the superfamily of hominoidea - as can be seen from the taxonomical charts pictured above - as the species continued to evolve it became separated by zoological classifications from tree dwelling apes (gibbons), to partially tree-dwelling apes (orangutans), to ground/tree dwelling apes (gorillas), to ground/tree dwelling semi-bipedal apes (bonobos, chimpanzees), to exclusively ground dwelling bipedal apes (man).

The chart consequently shows how the chimpanzee genus is further removed from the gorilla genus and is more closely linked to the human genus. This is also supported by evolutionary genetic studies. As a result, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo (pygmy or dwarf chimp) of the genus Pan are the closest living evolutionary relatives to humans, sharing a common ancestry with humans from about four to seven million years ago."

At the perspective of a time-scale, this elapsed period of time also evidences the divergence of humans from chimpanzees. More specifically, the final separation of the Homo genus from the Pan genus is approxiamately 2.8 million years old thus showing us of the importance of the recent "Homo Naledi" cave discovery in August of 2015 in South Africa's Star Cave system.

What does this mean theologically?

In evolutionary terms it is pretty plain how human creation evolved from anthropological studies of the ape. And in theological terms, the passages in Genesis provide an ancient (Hebrew) tribal explanation to creation in non-evolutionary terms as this anthropology was unknown then. However, many well-meaning, Christians have attempted to show a 1:1 correlation between Genesis 1 with either progressive or immediate "theistic evolution" which would be an interpretive error both from a cultural standpoint as well as from a scientific one. At this time ancient man, such as the Semetic and Hebraic tribes, had no knowledge of either science or evolution. Moreover, the implication by theologians of insinuating human guidance by divine authorship supra-intending over a culture's era-specific ignorance is also a conjectural error to the surmise of textual formation.

The take away? Rather than getting hung up on a literal reading or correlation of the Genesis creation stories we may be confident that creation derives from a Creator who crafted an unusually complex method of creation by using all the ingredients of evolution to obtain the current results we are biologically familiar with. And that its testimony in Genesis is simply a literary account by the ancients using mythological description to describe this very same event in their own lay terms and knowledge of their day.

What does this mean? That God is neither denied nor mocked. That He is still Creator-Redeemer and shown to be intimately involved with His creation from whatever direction it came. Similarly, the bible is brought back down to reality, it is no longer made a mystical nor irrelevant collection of ancient manuscripts, and that we might rightly "divide / interpret" it more attuned or appropriately to its times and cultures. Which also means that this same Creator-Redeemer God then is active in our societies and cosmos today as much as He was beforetimes. We have lost nothing except our mistaken impulses to defend or mock our Creator. He needs no defense because He is. And any mockery but shows our deep shallowness to the everyday realities about us.

Too, we must now come to understand that evolution is always occurring - both in our present day as well as in the future beyond us. That it is a process which never stops. That underneath life itself is the continuing titanic struggle of biologic life to always exist despite the (toxic) eco-environments now present or occurring in the future.

This is the marvel of God's creation and the cosmic/biologic equation He has set in place so that at any present moment we, as homo sapiens (human beings), might have fellowship with our Creator-Redeemer, or any derivations of ourselves in ages future. But as humans, we cannot assume we are in exclusive communication with our Creator alone. Even the Psalmists and Prophets have written of the mountains and valleys, seas and skies, trees and fields, and all the living things on earth, as having a "form of communication" with its Creator. That it "delights" in His fellowship, "dances," "sings for joy," and "claps its hands" in response to His Almighty voice. Nay, we are not alone in our praise and dependence upon our Creator God who loves His creation and draws us toward Him into divine fellowship with one-and-all.

And though I do not encourage any form of "supernatural mystical communication" with the trees and mountains, birds and bees, still we find in the poetry and essays of human journals the deep realization that all things are connected and in communication with itself and its Creator God. What I might describe as a form of (process) panpsychism; but again, without getting all crazy and mystical about this observation. As we walk creation's fields and meadows, swim its streams and dive below its waters, we sense God's almighty hand of authorship in its templed majesties and shrouded veils of glory. The godfathers of ecology, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold, each in their own way reveled in this divine communion connecting humanity's existence even to the original American Indians who sensed the same in their animistic Spirit stories of creational connectedness and sacred fellowship.

Conclusion

To read Genesis then is to read it NOT in an evolutionary context but as (i) an ancient composition set within a paleo-creational understanding of a Creator-God named for His creational activity and perceived by the ancient's supernaturally curious wonder of life's many complex spheres of divine / human / creational interactions; (ii) that into creation's holy charters came creational indeterminacy and sentient freewill struggling between goodness and evil, order and disorder, each redefining the other in terms of fellowship and holiness; (iii) an immediate communion and fellowship with the Creator God and what it may mean for creation and mankind; (iv) that within this communion of struggle, of obedience, and willfulness, both creation and humanity came to be pitted against its God, each other, and themselves; (v) which is then described in terms of "life and death, light and darkness" within the hallowed altars of holy communion; (vi) that with death came the promise of God to be not only "Creator" but "Redeemer" - not only to mankind but to His holy creation as well; and finally, (vii) this holy redemption would come by grace and mercy, forgiveness and resurrection. This then is the fuller story of Genesis when read apart from its more popular classical or literal understanding rejecting evolution. It was what the ancients saw then of God's promise and what we need to see now in our dilemma between science, anthropology, and faith.

To this marvel of God's complex creation we may only bow our heads and utter, "Thank you O blessed Redeemer for your promise of life in the midst of death. Praise you for your wisdom and goodness and grace. For the majesty of your name and the councils of your justice when all things will be made new, and good, and holy, once more. Amen."

R.E. Slater

September 13, 2015
edited September 26, 2015; March 17, 2020

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Hominini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini

Not to be confused with Hominoidea, Hominidae, Homininae, or Hominina.

The Hominini is a tribe of the subfamily Homininae; it comprises three subtribes: Hominina, with its one genus Homo; Australopithecina, comprising several extinct genera (see taxobox); and Panina, with its one genus Pan, the chimpanzees (see the evolutionary tree below).[3][4] Members of the human clade, that is, the Hominini, including Homo and those species of theaustralopithecines that arose after the split from the chimpanzees, are called hominins; cf. Hominidae; terms "hominids" and hominins).

The subtribe Hominina is the "human" branch; that is, it contains the genus Homo exclusively. Researchers proposed the taxon Hominini on the basis that the least similar species of atrichotomy should be separated from the other two. The common chimpanzee and the bonobo of the genus Pan are the closest living evolutionary relatives to humans, sharing a common ancestor with humans about four to seven million years ago.[5] Research by Mary-Claire King in 1973 found 99% identical DNA between human beings and chimpanzees;[6] later research modified that finding to about 94% commonality, with some of the difference occurring in noncoding DNA.[7]

Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that lived 7 million years ago, very close to the time of the chimpanzee–human divergence. It is unclear whether or not it may be classed as hominin—that is, whether it rose after the split from the chimpanzees, or not.

A source of confusion in determining the exact age of the Pan–Homo split is evidence of a complex speciation process rather than a clean split between the two lineages. Different chromosomes appear to have split at different times, possibly over as much as a 4-million-year period, indicating a long and drawn out speciation process with large-scale hybridization events between the two emerging lineages as late as 6.3 to 5.4 million years ago according to Patterson et al. (2006).[8] The assumption of late hybridization was in particular based on the similarity of the X chromosome in humans and chimpanzees, suggesting a divergence as late as some 4 million years ago. This conclusion was rejected as unwarranted by Wakeley (2008), who suggested alternative explanations, including selection pressure on the X chromosome in the populations ancestral to the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor (CHLCA).[9]

All the extinct genera listed in the taxobox are ancestral to, or offshoots of, Homo. Few fossil specimens on the Pan side of the split have been found—the first discovery of a fossil chimpanzee was published in 2005;[10] it was from Kenya's East African Rift Valley and dated to between 545 thousand years, radiometric, (kyr) and 284 kyr (via argon–argon dating). However, both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to both Pan and Homo.

In the proposal of Mann and Weiss (1996),[11] the tribe Hominini includes Pan as well as Homo, but within separate subtribes. Homo and (by inference) all bipedal apes are referred to the subtribe Hominina, while Pan is assigned to the subtribe Panina. Wood (2010) discusses the different views of this taxonomy.[12]

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Lee R. Berger, a professor of human evolution studies at the University of

the Witwatersrand  in Johannesburg, unveiled a previously unidentified species

of the early human lineage — Homo naledi. By REUTERS on Publish Date

Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/science/south-africa-fossils-new-species-human-ancestor-homo-naledi.html?_r=0

by John Noble Wildord

September 10, 2015

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africadiscovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star Cave: lots and lots of old bones.

The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage — Homo naledi.

The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.

In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that the more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.

“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.

The finding, like so many others in science, was the result of pure luck followed by considerable effort.

Two local cavers, Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker, found the narrow entrance to the chamber, measuring no more than seven and a half inches wide. They were skinny enough to squeeze through, and in the light of their headlamps they saw the bones all around them. When they showed the fossil pictures to Pedro Boshoff, a caver who is also a geologist, he alerted Dr. Berger, who organized an investigation.

"Just getting into the chamber and bringing out samples proved to be a huge challenge.

The narrow opening was the only way in." - Lee Burger

Paul Dirks, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia, who was lead author of the journal paper describing the chamber, said the investigators first had a steep climb up a stone block called the Dragon’s Back and then a drop down to the entrance passage — all of this in the total absence of natural light.

For the two extended investigations of the chamber in 2013 and 2014, Dr. Berger rounded up the international team of scientists and then recruited six excavating scientists through notices on social media. One special requirement: They had to be slender enough to crawl through that crack in the wall.

One of the six, who were all women and were called “underground astronauts,” was Marina Elliott of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She said the collection and removal of the fossils involved “some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.”

Photo by the New York Times

Besides introducing a new member of the prehuman family, the discovery suggests that some early hominins intentionally deposited bodies of their dead in a remote and largely inaccessible cave chamber, a behavior previously considered limited to modern humans. Some of the scientists referred to the practice as a ritualized treatment of their dead, but by “ritual” they said they meant a deliberate and repeated practice, not necessarily a kind of religious rite.

Pieces of a skeleton of Homo naledi, a newly discovered human species.

CreditJohn Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison, via European Pressphoto Agency

“It’s very, very fascinating,” said Ian Tattersall, an authority on human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.

“No question there’s at least one new species here,” he added, “but there may be debate over the Homo designation, though the species is quite different from anything else we have seen.”

A colleague of Dr. Tattersall’s at the museum, Eric Delson, who is a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, was also impressed, saying, “Berger does it again!”

Dr. Delson was referring to Dr. Berger’s previous headline discovery, published in 2010, also involving cave deposits near Johannesburg. He found many fewer fossils that time, but enough to conclude that he was looking at a new species, which he named Australopithecus sediba. Geologists said the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago, when australopithecines and early species of Homo were contemporaries.

Lee R. Berger, leader of a research team, in the Rising Star Cave near Johannesburg,

where over 1,550 fossil elements were found. CreditNaashon Zalk for The New York Times

* * * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * * *

An expert all-women team of anthropologists dared the suffocating passages
of the South African Star Cave system. Kudos!

A Mighty Girl

https://www.facebook.com/amightygirl/photos/a.360833590619627.72897.316489315054055/901760099860304/?type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

September 11, 2015

The discovery of a new hominin species is making headlines around the world this week but what many people don't realize is that the excavation team that uncovered this historic find was made up of six daring women scientists! The fossils were found at the bottom of a cave system in South Africa; one of the scientists, Marina Elliott, said that their collection and removal involved "some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.” Thanks to the dedication of these six women, people everywhere will have the opportunity to gain new insight into the development of our species.

Palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger learned about the fossils in Rising Star Cave in October 2013 -- as well as their location, at the bottom of a 36 foot long shaft that gets as narrow as 7 inches across. He put up an ad on Facebook seeking scientists with a background in archaeology or paleontology, but with a catch: “the person must be skinny and preferably small. They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience, climbing experience would be a bonus.” He remembers thinking that “maybe there were three or four people in the world who would fit that criteria”, but within days he had 60 qualified applicants from around the world. He narrowed those down to six: Marina Elliott from Canada, Elen Feuerriegel from Australia, and K. Lindsay Eaves, Alia Gurtov, Hannah Morris, and Becca Peixotto from the United States.

Elliott, who was finishing a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University when she saw the ad, was first on the scene. “I was predisposed to extreme environments,” she says. “Telling me that I’d have to do climbing, that it would be underground, and that it would be strange and potentially dangerous… it appealed.” Even still, she vividly recalls her first sight of the chute: “It’s a long crack, punctuated by shark-teeth protrusions. I remember looking down and thinking: I’m not sure I made the right decision." Given the difficulty and potential danger of the climb, Berger nicknamed the team “underground astronauts.”

During the 21-day excavation of the Rising Star cave, the team had to work carefully: “There was so much material and it was friable and delicate,” Elliott says. “And every day, we realized that we were pulling out another 40 or 60 fragments of this thing that was going to be incredible.” She and her five caving teammates excavated a nearly unheard of collection of hominin fossils: 1,550 fragments from at least 15 skeletons, representing a mix of male and female individuals. In the words of Ed Yong of The Atlantic, “To find one complete skeleton of a new hominin would be hitting the paleoanthropological jackpot. To find 15, and perhaps more, is like nuking the jackpot from orbit.”

Debate about Homo naledi’s age and importance in human prehistory, as well as the intriguing possibility that the bones are in the cave as a form of burial ritual, will be ongoing for years, but no one doubts that it represents an extraordinary find. Elliott has remained on the ground in South Africa where she is now directing the field operation and leading expeditions into other caves, eager to discover what else is out there. As she says, “We’re just scratching the surface."

You can read more about the all-female team of “underground astronauts” and this historic find on The Atlantic at http://theatln.tc/1Fzdsxh

To learn about more trailblazing women of science from around the world, we highly recommend the new book "Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science -- And The World," for teen and adult readers, ages 13 and up, at http://www.amightygirl.com/headstrong-52-women

To introduce children to one of the world’s first paleontologists, Mary Anning, we recommend "Mary Anning and The Sea Dragon" for ages 5 to 8 (http://www.amightygirl.com/mary-anning-and-the-sea-dragon), “Stone Girl, Bone Girl” for ages 4 to 8 (http://www.amightygirl.com/stone-girl) and “The Fossil Girl” for ages 5 to 9 (http://www.amightygirl.com/the-fossil-girl)

For a wonderful book about six remarkable women whose curiosity about nature fueled a passion to steadfastly overcome obstacles to careers in traditionally men-only occupations, we recommend "Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists" for ages 10 and up at http://www.amightygirl.com/girls-who-looked-under-rocks

If your kids would like to try an excavation of their own, check out the Crystal Mining Kit for ages 5 to 10 (http://www.amightygirl.com/crystal-mining-kit), the Treasures of the Earth Excavation Set for ages 5 to 9 (http://www.amightygirl.com/treasures-of-the-earth), and Smithsonian’s Diggin’ Up Dinos: T-Rex Kit for ages 7 to 12 (http://www.amightygirl.com/diggin-up-dinos-t-rex).

For more of our favorite science toys for igniting your children's curiosity about the natural world, visit our "Science Toys" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/toys/toys-games/science-math

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