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

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Are We Witnessing the Death of Christianity in America?






"Are we witnessing the death of Christianity in America?" Has it become its own "evil empire?"

My answer to this question would be both "yes" and "no." That the Jedi warriors of its faith must now arise to contend for the faith of Christ first given His church through His disciples and Apostles of the New Testament.

In its dark empire form, the cruciform faith of Jesus followers will not be tolerated. The first kind of faith leads out with self-righteous Christian biblicism while the second kind of faith seeks Jesus-identification through sacrificial servanthood and crucifixion.

From a historic viewpoint, Christianity's dark empire form will win out politically even as it dies to itself spiritually. This has been true throughout the Christian ages of Western civilization even as the people of God refusing the "mark of the beast" may expect push back in various forms of "biblical" denunciations who wish to strive for humanity's solidarity and not its division.

The Jesus way is unity.

The way of sin is disunity and division.

If you chose to misunderstand and misrepresent your neighbour than you have chosen the way of darkness and death.

God's way is one of salvation, restraint, tolerance, uncertainty, and doubt of one's beliefs in life.

To imagine any other future is to legislate individual freedoms and liberties for an imagined freedom under the political banners of fear and protectionism that is bondage and death.


R.E. Slater
December 8, 2015

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To Serve and Not To Enforce

A day or two ago I published an article on The Call of Jesus and the Spirit to the Church to Repent and Reform in which I expanded my thoughts through the Tale of Two Scriptures, the Tale of Two Churches, of Christian Messaging, and a Gospel that is both Old and New. If you have not read this article than I would suggest you do.

Basically it speaks to the NONES and the DONES of the Christian faith and why they have a serious conflict with Christian beliefs and its resultant practices. That orthodoxy without orthopraxy is dead. That faith without works is a lie. That the true church of Jesus Christ not only follows but serves. And radically so.

This has been explained in numerous ways over the years using emerging/emergent Christianity as an example, or by describing a postmodern post-Christian faith as a lead-out for Millennial generations blossoming globally around the world. But in whatever way it has been described it has been highly critical of the conservative American church in its dogmatic doctrines, religious folklores, and un-Jesus-like self-serving practices of  judgment and condemnation to all other beliefs unlike itself.

We are basically witnessing a religious war come to the shores of America
where it once tolerated various expressions of faith but now wishes to
reverse its Constitutional commitments. - r.e. slater, 12.7.15

American Christianity is being split in two. One part of it wishes to follow a hard line conservative view of Christian biblicism (sic, actions based upon a literal reading of the bible including its violence and exclusion from its lands of "God's enemies") while the other side wishes to follow the Jesus-way of the bible freed from the political rancor and rhetoric of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, fear, and protectionism.

Recent examples of these Americanized Christian policies would be the gross discrimination, oppression, and genocide of native American Indian cultures, religious and black slavery (which includes white slavery in early colonial America known as indentured service to pay off debts), and "defensive-industrial" war upon non-Christian religious groups being waged against the Muslim cultures of the Middle East.

The Odd Partnership of Church and State

Another way to view this split in Christianity is its view of "the separation of church and state." The first kind of Christianity wishes to integrate both into a religious church/state in order to enforce its interpretation of the bible (a kind of religious fascism or police state, if you will). The other kind of view is that of our earliest Constitutional forebearers who foresaw the wisdom in keeping each institution of church and state separate-and-apart from one another so as to allow maximal constitutional freedoms to individual rights. Rights that would grant freedom of worship and religious expression of community according to one's prerogatives rather than according to its enforcement by law.

This latter form of religious liberties would also describe Christianity's more progressive face seeking to align itself with early America's Constitutional liberties built upon the "liberal" freedoms of life, liberty, and justice. To deny these liberalities would be to move away from it along a path of exclusionary freedoms, rights, and justice.

Though today's religious/conservative right would disagree with this view, history bears them out as being the least tolerant form of faith, or kind of government (as referent, recall religious European inquisitions of dominant groups presaging their religious views over less powerful religious and secular minorities).

This was why Christian minorities fled overseas from more powerful Catholic or Protestant forms of Continental government. They fled seeking freedom of religion and expression of their non-standardized forms of Christian faith.

Ironically, those "non-standardized expressions" have today become their own standardized mores demanding public allegiance. And thus, we have come full circle from politically oppressed to political oppressor in America.

Biblicism is a False Choice

The bottom line is that today's more popular forms of biblicism have confused a Jesus faith with an admixture of enforced societal outcome. Hence, do you surreptitiously chose "the bible" over "Jesus" or "Jesus' over "the bible"?  A false choice if ever there was one! But for these groups, to chose "the bible" is to remain convinced of the rightness of your Christian views of the bible. But for progressive Christians, to chose "Jesus" is to be less sure of your dogmas but more sure of your commitment to love, serve, and reach out to all people and not to just some people whom you prefer over others. In other words, a liberal Christianity is concerned with the just rule of government and not its unjust rule or application.

Therefore, to be a progressive Christian is to take the best of Christian legacies and to expand them outwardly to include and accept formerly banished people groups such as minorities of color or poverty, women, the gay community, world religions, and disbelievers such as atheists and agnostics. A politically conservative Christian faith pushes back against this enlarging effort by demanding a specific doctrinal viewpoint as a prerequisite to God's love. That is, to be fully loved by God you have to be or do something in order for God's love to come to you. However, a Jesus-based faith will embrace all people without exception in a renewal of solidarity to humanity without losing the center of its faith and author, Jesus. More plainly, God fully loves you know now as you are, without  the need for you to do anything more to receive His love and forgiveness. This kind of a Christian faith is more robust, more confidant in God, and more willing to admit uncertainty or doubt about its dogmas. It leads out with:
  • God's love vs. God's judgment
  • God's presence with us vs. His distance from us
  • God's earthly rule vs. His heavenly rule
  • God's mercy vs. His pitiless indifference
  • God's compassion vs. His holy ire
This does not discount the need for repentance from sin and confession of Jesus as God's way of salvation into fellowship not only with Himself, but with ourselves, and each other, and even this broken planet with live upon. But it also enlarges the idea of God as more bountiful, more good, more present in our lives. Lives which need a Spirit-revolution of breakage and re-make from the sins and oppressions and injustices we have brought upon ourselves and to others around us. Jesus' kingdom then is a kingdom of love, service, peace and understanding.

A Jesus Kingdom of Love, Service, Peace and Understanding

A radical Christianity will move a progressive Christianity even further left
to a completely level field spiritually, epistemologically, existentially, and even
hermeneutically where all religious and societal barriers are physically removed
in the cruciform presence of God's person, will, experience, and mission.
                                                                       - r.e. slater, 12.7.15

Jesus' kingdom is a picture then of a divine kingdom that is trans-national, trans-geographical, trans-cultural. It embraces all people and not some people. It unites all genders, all races, all ethnicities by removing all societal barriers to this encumbrance. It honors the God who made humanity and granted humanity to be in His holy likeness and image. A Triune fellowship (or partnership) wishing to expand its fellowship to all mankind. A mankind mangled by sin, and without empowerment, without the binding engine of Jesus' Cross to make the supreme sacrifice of solidarity between God and man.

Thus my concern, along with many others who are expressing this same concern, that American Christianity must die to itself in order to find God's resurrected power of fellowship with one another. In summary, religious police states are never good for minorities and the politically oppressed. Its expression of power always yields to the more powerful over the rights of the least powerful. Motivators such as fear and protectionism are replete with historical examples. This is not the way of Jesus. It is the way of sinful man, whether he be a Christian man or pagan.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
December 7, 2015

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Jerry Farwell Jr, President of Liberty University | Image screenshot courtesy CNN via YouTube


ARE WE FINALLY WITNESSING THE DEATH OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA?
http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6530/are-we-finally-witnessing-the-death-of-christianity-in-america?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

by Zack Hunt
December 7th, 2015

Several months ago a Pew Research study sparked what almost seem like shouts of glee from those who were eager to declare the impending death of Christianity in America.

According to the report, Millennials are leaving the Church in droves and, the theory went, if the next generation isn’t there to fill the pews, the future of the Church in America is bleak.

Which makes sense.

Not surprisingly, many Church leaders were quick to denounce such ominous conclusions as nothing but Chicken Little nonsense or at worst, they argued, the report more or less revealed an important separating of the wheat (real Christians) from the chaff (nominal Christians).

The future of the Church, we were told, is safe and secure.

To a certain extent I did and still do agree with those who cautioned that the death of the Church is not quite as near as the Pew Study might lead us to believe. Although I think some of the deflection amounted to No True Scotsman arguments, declining numbers don’t necessarily equate to death. Though, they should certainly cause the Church to pause and ask some serious questions about itself and its future.

After the initial shock wore off, I couldn’t help but think back on that debate when I heard about Jerry Falwell Jr.’s words to the students of Liberty University at the close of a recent chapel service. After revealing he was carrying a gun in his back pocket, Falwell declared, “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.”

Falwell then encouraged his students to get their own concealed carry permit (via a free school-sponsored course) so that together they could “teach [those Muslims] a lesson if they ever show up here.”

His words were met with rapturous support by the student body.

As I sat in stunned silence, my inner Star Wars nerd couldn’t help but channel the words of Padmé Amidala:

So this is how Christianity dies…with thunderous applause.

For a while now, declining Church attendance, the rise of the nones, and an increasingly secular society have all seemed like the biggest threats to the future of Christianity in America.

But that is not where the existential danger comes from.

The future of Christianity in this country isn’t threatened by shifting demographics.

The Christian faith in America is on life support because far too many of us have simply stopped living like Jesus.

Christianity is facing an existential crisis in America not because our pews aren’t quite as packed as they used to be, but because — through an embrace of violence, hatred towards Muslims, callous rejection of refugees, demonization of the LGBT community, and a whole host of starkly anti-Christian actions — we’ve allowed the gospel of Jesus to be supplanted with sanctified and extreme right wing politics.

It’s no secret that American Christianity has been hijacked by the political right since at least the days of the Moral Majority. But in recent months and years we’ve witnessed a full-frontal assault on the particular and peculiar values that define the Christian life.

For example,

  • The way of Jesus is a way of peace and a sometimes unfathomable commitment to nonviolence, but American preachers can now carry an instrument of death into a space dedicated to the proclamation of life and be met with boisterous applause.
  • The way of Jesus is one of radical inclusion where new paths are blazed to welcome in those shunned by dogma and religious authority, but the identity of Christianity in America has become all but synonymous with the list of those who aren’t truly welcomed within our doors.

There are manifold explanations for how we got here, but at its root, authentic Christianity is being eradicated in America because the way of Jesus has been replaced by a list of ideas which, once agreed to, apparently "liberate us" from actually living like Jesus.

We say we believe in the Bible and God and that Jesus rose from the dead, but once we claim our certificate of orthodoxy we seem to think we’ve been freed from the obligations of grace, from the cost of discipleship, from the way of Jesus that is defined not simply by the ideas in our head but the actions of our lives.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. — James 2:14-26

The way of Jesus is not simply a sales pitch meant to convince us to agree to a list of doctrines in order to avoid hell.

It’s a call to a particular and peculiar way of life.

We can believe all the “right” things, but orthodoxy does not emancipate us from orthopraxy. Rather, it demands we live out the radical, revolutionary, and world changing faith we’ve embraced.

Sadly, we live in a strange place and time where it seems that publicly assenting to the right dogma is some sort of sanctified Get Out Of Living Like Jesus Card™. This is why Jerry Falwell Jr. can carry a gun into sacred space and call for the death of his enemies even though Jesus unequivocally declared “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

Despite the glaring incongruity, Falwell’s students can applaud and his admirers defend his pseudo-righteous call to “self-defense” because because he’s already confessed his assent to the core list of right ideas. Anything he says or does beyond that is of marginal consequence — even if it directly contracts the life and teaching of Jesus.

This is the sad, cheap state of Christianity in America.

It’s Christianity without discipleship, Christianity without the cross, Christianity without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

It no longer matters if we actually live like Jesus, so long as we agree that Christian dogma is true.

Thankfully, Christianity will almost certainly never completely die off in America (and is no doubt thriving in unexpected and isolated pockets of our country), but Christianity as a particular and peculiar way of life directly reflective of Jesus of Nazareth sure seems to be on life support.

And unless more Christians are willing to speak out and denounce the demonic theology being proclaimed in the name of Jesus, we might as well go ahead and pull the plug.

Because regardless of shifting demographics, without authentic discipleship, the future of Christianity in America looks hopeless.


* * * * * * * * * *


"Weaving Peace," by Michele Miller-Hansen: "Thoughts about nature and humanity and the
delicate balance of our world"
- https://www.artprize.org/michele-millerhan…/2014/weave-peace.


"Authentic Christianity is the loving, peaceful, just, and generous way of life embodied in Jesus.
It is characterized more by self-giving than self-defense, by pre-emptive peacemaking rather 
than pre-emptive violence." - Deborah Arca

An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell Jr.,
Students, and Faculty of Liberty University

December 9, 2015

Dear Mr. Falwell,

In the tradition of your father, you made some reckless and inflammatory statements to your students the other day.

Just as I appreciate it when peace-loving Muslims, Hindus and others repudiate hostile and reckless statements made by prominent members of their religions, I feel impelled by conscience to repudiate your words as not being representative of authentic Christianity as I, and thousands like me, understand it.

For us, authentic Christianity is the loving, peaceful, just and generous way of life embodied in Jesus. It is characterized more by self-giving than self-defense, by pre-emptive peacemaking rather than pre-emptive violence.

Your message faithfully represents a longstanding (and ugly) stream of American culture and politics. This tradition goes back to those who argued against the equal human rights and dignity of the Native Peoples and African-American slaves, often abusing the Bible to justify white supremacy under its various guises.

It was also manifest in the Protestant prejudice against Catholic immigrants, in centuries of morally repugnant anti-Semitism, and in the unethical treatment of the Japanese during World War II. During the McCarthy era, it launched witch hunts using “red” and “Communist” as its epithets.

In this ugly American tradition, your father used antipathy towards gay people to rally his base, and now, you are doing the same with Muslims. You are being deeply faithful to a tradition that is deeply unfaithful to the life and teaching of Jesus… not to mention the broader American ideal that upholds the dignity and equality of all people, whatever their religion.

My friend Shane Claiborne speaks for many of us when he says, “It’s hard to imagine Jesus enrolling for the concealed weapons class at Liberty University. And it is even harder imagining Jesus approving of the words of Mr. Falwell as he openly threatens Muslims.”

I don’t doubt that your conscious intentions were simply to protect your students from a terrorist attack. But it’s the unintended consequences of your words that concern me most. I doubt many, if any, violent Islamist Fundamentalist extremists woke up one day and decided to become hateful, cowardly, immoral murderers. Instead, they were led down that path by degrees, and those who radicalized them convinced them that they were becoming purer, more faithful, and more orthodox believers in the process.

Your reckless words can easily render your students vulnerable to more extremist influences (perhaps including some who are running for president), and the result could be catastrophic. You could spiritually form a generation of people who think of themselves as “Champions for Christ” but who actually become a mirror image of the violent religious warriors you fear and reject, different in degree, perhaps, but not in kind.

According to a Washington Post story, you later said that when you referred to “those Muslims,” you were referring not to Muslims in general but to Islamic terrorists. OK. But I hope you realize that your audience in that convocation applauded, not your intent as later explained, but your actual unqualified words. And you approved of their approval. That is scary. That is ugly. That is wrong.

How would you feel if you saw the president, faculty, and students in a radicalized Muslim university somewhere applauding and laughing about killing Christians and “teaching them a lesson?” Do you see how you are helping your students become the mirror image of such a scene? And do you see, apart from any issue of moral conscience, the way that those reckless words could be used by ISIS and other such groups to stir up their apocalyptic us-versus-them fervor? The Bible we both revere has a lot to say about the danger of unwise words… how much more important in an age of Youtube.

Can you imagine how much more beautiful it would have been if you told the students that you were going to offer free classes in nonviolent conflict transformation — the kind that is taught not far from you at another Christian university that has a very different understanding of Christian character and discipleship?

Perhaps you owe it to your students to invite some Muslims to campus to explain to you, your faculty, and your students the damage done by your words. Maybe it would be a good time to invite some Christians who are risking their lives as peacemakers to come to your campus as well.

I hope your words will inspire millions of us to respond, not with the applause and laughter displayed by your students and faculty, but with unequivocal repudiation — and a commitment to embody a different kind of Christianity than the one you purveyed in your recent comments.

Just as there are many ways to be Muslim, some more and some less peaceful, there are many ways to be Christian. May more of us seek and find those more peaceful ways.

In a positive response to your negative words, I hope that this week, millions of Christians and other Americans will speak in neighborly kindness to their Muslim neighbors (along with their Sikh and Hindu neighbors, who at Oak Creek and elsewhere have suffered so much harm from Islamophobic violence). I hope they will repudiate the flippancy of your comments about taking human life, and instead, I hope they will speak of solidarity, mutual respect, and hospitality across religious lines.

And I pray that someday, students and faculty at Liberty University will look back on your comments, and their applause and laughter, with deep regret and a deep commitment to live more in the way of Jesus.


International Peace Day in NYC | September 21, 2015



Apocalyptic Theology, the Gnostic Community, and the Spirit of God





"The sad fact is, we as human beings, are sinful and given to sinful wrath and not solidarity
with one another. The solidarity of God rests with the solidarity of humanity where Jesus
is the great binder to all divisions, enmities, and hatreds. Without Jesus as Christianity's
center - or any religion's center - there can be no peace. No goodwill. No fellowship."
                                                     - r.e. slater, 12.8.15


Friend and theologian Scot McKnight has been observing the misapplication of "apocalyptically-informed hermeneutics (bible interpretation based upon a gnostic spirit of divine illumination) against the narratival and historical approach of NT Wright's "new perspective of Pauline theology" which projects God's self revelation through His people into the New Testament.

For Wright, to understand the Apostle Paul aright is to better understand Jewish theology as versus a Christianity that has developed its church doctrines (Reformed, Lutheran Catholic) apart from this perspective. Hence, Wright proposes a Jewish approach to Paul's teachings as versus a Protestant or Catholic approach to Paul. One is more natural while the other is more contrived.

Now comes yet another perspective of Paul (and of Jesus) more related to the gnostic communities of Jesus and Paul's day found between the intertestamental period of the Old and New Testaments and within the pagan/Christian communities which arise after Jesus' death and resurrection. These communities rely on a kind of "Spirit knowledge" obtained from God than on the historical narratives of either Testament of the bible. As such, their knowledge is privileged, or secret, to themselves alone without opportunity to be questioned or known except through themselves. To Christian theologians these communities of "specialized revelatory knowledge" are deemed "gnostic communities" of marginally Christian believers adding to, or subtracting from, the revelation of God more broadly (or publicly) given to His people through the Old and New Testaments.

Moreover, gnostic theology is guilty of personal motives - or subjective trajectories - of a community's more basic "wants and needs" than it is of God's "specialized secret knowledge" and missional outreach of salvation. To be a gnostic believer then is to be a believer who is more-or-less a Christian (or, more-or-less pagan, and therefore less Christian) in their theologic and missional views of Jesus. The hallmark of a non-gnostic Christian is a Jesus-led community of believers who ceaselessly examine, question, or even doubt themselves and their theologies, so that Jesus is more clearly seen rather than one's own subjective beliefs and dispositions.

Thus, church doctrine and tradition matters to a Jesus-community of believers who rely on examining the Scriptures to inform their faith as well as examining past theologians from previous historic eras set within their own philosophical paradigms and constructs. As such, this "objective" method of study must always be under examination so that a theologian (or church fellowship) uses all methods of self-assessment (including its own contemporary era) which may be helpful in ridding the church of any pagan doctrines or dogmas which are misleading to the gospel of Christ.

For some church denominations and fellowships, this study has been regulated to only acceptable church traditions (or religious folklores) which carry forward their own unique brand of Christian belief (whether Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, or some admixture of these beliefs). This would also include the unconscious  (or subconscious) interpretation of Scripture based upon past philosophic eras a church fellowship may have developed them within. Eras such as New Testament Hellenism in Paul's day, or later Medieval Scholasticism before the Renaissance, or pre-Reformational Enlightenment, or last century's Secular Modernism, or even today's millennial Postmodern, Post-Christian examinations of Scriptures and theology.

"If you must have blind faith, center it in the Crucified
and be faithful to who He is, and what He says.
But question everything else."
- Jeff Robinson (friend of Michael Hardin), 12.6.15

More simplistically, a gnostic theology would discount all previous church histories, doctrines, or theologies in favor of its "more-enlightened" view of inscripturated knowledge. A knowledge which is more secret, more subjective to its needs, more forced by its community to be believed, than what is commonly perceived amongst other Christian communities. But rather than being simply a "movement of theological perspectives" within a church community - however pagan or spiritual - these gnostic communities will claim a divine guidance that replaces all previous divine revelations in favor of their own special brand of beliefs.

Consequently, Christians who purport a kind of "secret knowledge" of God's revelatory plan today are more dependent upon their own informed sense of God's movement than they are upon God's historical portrayal of Himself through Scripture and especially through the Christ event of the New Testament or even of church history. They perceive themselves as a "cut above" other Christian communities and so, their belief structure is selectively more special than any other acclaimed doctrinnaire as well.

Hence, a gnostic apocalyptic theology is a different kind of apocalyptic theology than the standard Christian one. It pretends to inform that group of believers of God's intentions and motives according to its more selective knowledge given to it from the Spirit of God. Though one would wonder if it was from God's spirit or from their own spirit of sinful man. Nonetheless, from this basis a gnostic community would then re-interpret the Scriptures to selectively bear out its own aims and objectives becoming a "revelation" to themselves as kept from God's broader revelation in Christ to the world. A revelation which was more truly apocalyptic in its nature than these secret communes of believers would have us believe.


"Verily then, it becomes the old game of 'misdirect and subtle evasion.'
If you don't like something you're hearing, than chose to ignore it by
making your approach  more approved by God."
                                                     - r.e. slater, 12.8.15

So then, back to McKnight's observations. There is gnostic kind of perspective being applied to the Gospels and Pauline theology purporting itself as an interpretive tool, or hermeneutic, for Scriptural reading and study. The error here is not in reading of the Christ event as an apolcalyptic event to subsume all other apocalyptic trajectories/theologies of the bible unto itself. But to take that event and claim a special "gnostic insight of reading the bible" which would inform one of God's movement amongst men today. Basically, its the idea of who is more informed to read the bible - the studied student or theologian of the bible or, the Spirit-led mystic, who claims to see more broadly then his brothers and sisters.

Though there is an element of truth here related to the necessary leading of the Holy Spirit into the illumination of Scripture, it really is a misapplication of this truth using a more charismatic spirit of division and illumination. As an example, the church today is beset by religious conservative politics - should it exclude gays, women, minorities, and unbelievers from God's commands to embrace, love, welcome, and reach out to all? If so, how can this be done if past theological dogmas are being shown as artificially constructed in today's more-enlightened postmodern approach to Scripture? Perhaps by using the "apocalyptic method of interpretation" these sinful discriminations might be upheld and purported as righteous rather than self-righteous?

Verily then, it becomes the old game of "misdirect and subtle evasion." If you don't like something you're hearing, than chose to ignore it by making your approach more approved by God. Create a new way of interpreting the Scriptures more to your liking and thus, ignoring the very Spirit of God who you are claiming is leading you in your spirit of division and alienation. How many times has the church done this through history? Many! It doesn't take a gnostic community of believers to do this, even the people of God will do this when it favors their prejudices and bigotries.

The sad fact is, we as human beings, are sinful and given to sinful wrath and not solidarity with one another. The solidarity of God rests with the solidarity of humanity where Jesus is the great binder to all divisions, enmities, and hatreds. Without Jesus as Christianity's center - or any religion's center - there can be no peace. No goodwill. No fellowship. Only darkness, bitterness, and cold.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
December 8, 2015

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Search Results for: apocalyptic theology

NT Wright vs. Apocalyptic Theology: How Adams Goes Wrong about Wright

The showdown in Pauline scholarship today is between the new perspective, in particular as articulated in the narratival theology of NT Wright, and apocalyptic theology as articulated by J. Louis Martyn and those who follow him (e.g., M. de Boer, B. Gaventa, D. Campbell). Samuel Adams, in his new book The Reality of God and Historical [Read More...]

The Apocalyptic Challenge to NT Wright: Method

This blog has given plenty of attention to the works of NT Wright, in part because his books are valued by our readers and in part because his books are accessible for the blog and in part because he’s in “my camp” (the new perspective on Paul). But with that comes challenges to NT Wright [Read More...]

N.T. Wright Responds to the Apocalyptic Paul School

The major debate about the apostle Paul shifted in the 21st Century from a debate between the “old” and the “new” perspective of Paul to the new perspective vs. the apocalyptic Paul. In saying that, the tussle ends up being between NT Wright (a version of the NPP) and Lou Martyn and his followers (e.g., [Read More...]

The Apocalyptic Paul — His Biography

Douglas Campbell has become a major player in the world of Pauline studies with his last two books in this sense: he has not only proven his competence in exegesis, theology and history but has proposed a re-centering of Pauline theology around the theme of apocalyptic. (Some have said Barth’s had his share of influence, [Read More...]

Challenging NT Wright: Knowing God

NT Wright is committed to “critical realism” and Samuel Adams — and his book The Reality of God and Historical Method is endorsed by Douglas Campbell, Douglas Harink, Bev Gaventa and Alan J. Torrance — thinks critical realism is insufficient to the task of theology. History, it is being argued, can only go so far. [Read More...]

Is the “Old” Better? NT Wright Responds

It may simplify but this formula may explain a major difference between at least the most widely-read version of the “new” perspective and the standard “old” perspective: Old Perspective scholars are soteriologians while the NT Wright version of the New Perspective makes him an eschatologian. I am re-reading NT Wright’s Paul and His Recent Interpreters and the chapter [Read More...]

The New Perspective(s) on Paul Begin with EP Sanders

In the mid to late 90s I began to hear traditional, mostly the Reformed with hints of Lutheranism Christian leaders begin to accuse the “new perspective” of weaknesses and in the criticism I was hearing descriptions of what “new perspective on Pau” (NPP) theologians believed — as if the NPP had a systematic theology worked [Read More...]

NT Wright, Paul and His Interpreters, the Cover

The cover of N.T. Wright’s new Paul and His Recent Interpreters, in the English edition (sadly not the USA edition), goes to the heart of the book. Some might not notice that the cover of the book is Rembrandt’s self portrait as the apostle Paul. (Image credit) Rembrandt painting himself as the apostle Paul, think of [Read More...]

Sunday, December 6, 2015

What or Whom Do We Choose? The Bible or Jesus?




For a Post-Christian Church What, or Who, Does It Choose? The Bible or Jesus or Both?

The Tale of Two Scriptures

I am submitting three articles for review below. One from a progressive Christian who has grown tired of conservative evangelical Christianity's harsh language and unloving posturing to the masses. It is deeply disgusted by the lack of gospel-sensibilities heard and seen by the Christian church at large. Many from this group may be described as progressive Christians who daily listen to the cluttered airwaves reflecting principles of an unwanted form of Christianity. A form that is deeply critical, sharp, cantankerous, and basically an abandonment from any form of loving "biblical" messaging of the Christian faith not reflective of a "Christ-like" response. We'll call this the "Jesus loving crowd" who would freely jettison the bible of any of its un-Jesus-like responses. As such, they would prefer to lead out with God's grace, mercy, forgiveness, unity, and unconditional acceptance to all mankind, including their enemies. Moreover, one suspects that many in this group will easily identify with a form of Arminianism (free will) that places the onus of missions squarely upon the shoulders of the church rather than waiting around for God to come out of His heavens to do something. It is a  muscular, or vigorous, vision of the Kingdom of God come amongst men and women into a post-millennial world of postmodernism.

The Tale of Two Churches

The second article submitted speaks to the larger audience of moderate/conservative Christians who tolerate (neo-) fundamentalists claims of Scripture but fear to confront it even while cringing at the rancor it is causing. The fear comes from being seen as a "liberal" Christian should they speak out against it, though some do, while somehow managing to control their message to reflect that they haven't left the mainstream of evangelical ranks. We'll call this "the bible-loving crowd" who put their Christian dogmas (or religious views of the bible) ahead of Jesus' commands to love and to serve both neighbor and enemy. This group prefers to lead out with divine control and ordained judgment to come; certainty of sin and moral lapse; various iterations of divine vengeance or inscripturated violence; and cling to various forms of biblical literalism built upon commonly accepted traditional grammatical-historic interpretations (sic, "hermeneutics") of the bible. Many in this group would identify with a form of Calvinism (sic, replacing "free will" with "divine determination").

The Tale of Christian Messaging

The final article submitted bookends the first article by declaring that "biblical" or traditional Christianity must declare a choice for divine spiritual power and authority. An authority that portrays itself in weakness while allowing for mankind generally (irregardless of the distinction between church and non-church) to respond to God's message of peace, love, and unity. A power which comes crucified upon a Cross of sin and shame declared authoritative by God the Father to rule over all sinful men's hearts when resurrected upon its death to self and empowerment to love. This Jesus was sanctified as the God-man come to serve and to rule as God's renewed power over sin's dark reign. Who is the very God who dies to the creation He has created in order to powerfully release it into fellowship back to Himself in new and wondrous ways. And it is this principle here that is declared by this last article asking to choose the Servant-King Jesus over any extant biblical dogmas.

A Tale Both Old and New

Of course, my one reaction is (as it always has been) how does one "renew" the pages of Scripture in order to presage the best of God's heart and sovereign plan from the dark narratives of Israel's violence committed towards the ancient nations and neighbors it lived amongst. In past writings and articles we have here jettisoned any need for an inerrant bible in favor of a more intelligent approach for an errant bible built upon a sophisticated stream of biblical interpretation and theology. A theology that ultimately is open and not closed based upon a bible that is open and not closed to today's academic discoveries and perturbations. So that in some sense, the Christian church must learn how to re-interpret the bible so that its Author is more clearly seen throughout its pages without relenting of the bible altogether in favor of some moralised version of the scriptures (or even the gospel of Jesus). For myself, as for many other, an errant bible is the only way to proceed in these dark times of literal biblical interpretation. And though errant, its message is one that is authoritative and Spirit-endowed. Thus the paradox, the mystery, the riddle that is the Scriptures themselves. But nonetheless, Christianity is deeply disserved when Christ's message is neglected against more preferential interpretations of theologies that are unChristlike. Remove the author from His Work and you'll get a man-centered gospel built upon vengeance and judgment. Keep Christ in His Work and you'll draw the rancor of the "religiously-Christian" rank-and-file unskilled in biblical interpretation and ready to acreed serpents and vipers into the pulpits of the church. Let us be wise and chose love, chose Jesus, even choosing death to our dark ways, for the uplifting of the Cross of Jesus which draws all vipers to itself to die so that the camp of the Living God's children may be cleansed and live.

R.E. Slater
December 6, 2015
edited December 7, 2015




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"So what does a DONE and a NONE look like?
They wish to look and act and be like Jesus...."
                      - r.e. slater, 12.2.15

My Emancipation From American Christianity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-pavlovitz/my-emancipation-from-american-christianity_b_8718400.html

by John Pavlovitz, Pastor and Writer
Posted: 12/04/2015 9:33 am EST Updated: 12/04/2015 9:59 am EST

I used to think that it was just me, that it was my problem, my deficiency, my moral defect.

It had to be.

All those times when I felt like an outsider in this American Jesus thing; the ever-more frequent moments when my throat constricted and my heart raced and my stomach turned.

Maybe it came in the middle of a crowded worship service or during a small group conversation. Maybe while watching the news or when scanning a blog post, or while resting in a silent, solitary moment of prayer. Maybe it was all of these times and more, when something rose up from the deepest places within me and shouted, "I can't do this anymore! I can't be part of this!"

These moments once overwhelmed me with panic and filled me with guilt, but lately I am stepping mercifully clear of such things.

What I've come to realize is that it certainly is me, but not in the way I used to believe.

I am not losing my mind.

I'm not losing my faith.

I'm not failing or falling or backsliding.

I have simply outgrown American Christianity.

  • I've outgrown the furrowed-browed warnings of a sky that is perpetually falling.
  • I've outgrown the snarling brimstone preaching that brokers in damnation.
  • I've outgrown the vile war rhetoric that continually demands an encroaching enemy.
  • I've outgrown the expectation that my faith is the sole property of a political party.
  • I've outgrown violent bigotry and xenophobia disguised as Biblical obedience.
  • I've outgrown God wrapped in a flag and soaked in rabid nationalism.
  • I've outgrown the incessant attacks on the Gay, Muslim and Atheist communities.
  • I've outgrown theology as a hammer always looking for a nail.
  • I've outgrown the cramped, creaky, rusting box that God never belonged in anyway.
  • Most of all though, I've outgrown something that simply no longer feels like love, something I no longer see much of Jesus in.

If religion it is to be worth holding on to, it should be the place were the marginalized feel the most visible, where the hurting receive the most tender care, where the outsiders find the safest refuge.

It should be the place where diversity is fiercely pursued and equality loudly championed; where all of humanity finds a permanent home and where justice runs the show.
"I am a Christian and an American, but I refuse to settle for this American Christianity any longer or be defined by it."

That is not what this thing is. This is FoxNews and red cup protests and persecution complexes. It's opulent, big box megachurches and coddled, untouchable celebrity pastors. It's pop culture boycotts and manufactured outrage. It's just wars and justified shootings. It's all manner of bullying and intolerance in the name of Jesus.

Feeling estrangement from these things is a good thing.

For the past two decades I've lived within the tension of trying to be in the thing and not be altered by the thing, but that tension has become too great. Ultimately it's a spiritual compatibility issue.

It's getting harder and harder to love all people and still fit into what has become American Christianity, so rather than becoming less loving and staying -- I'm leaving.

I'm breaking free from religion for the sake of my soul.

I'm not sure practically what that looks like, but I can feel myself consciously and forcefully pulling away; creating distance between me and a system that can no longer accommodate the scale of my God and the scope of my aspirations.

Jesus said that the Spirit moves where it pleases, and with it go those in its glorious grip. In my heart and in the hearts of so many like me, that Spirit is boldly declaring its emancipation from the small, heavily guarded space that wants to contain it, and taking us out into the wide, breathtaking expanses of unfettered faith.

Every day people tell me that this great releasing is happening within them too; that they are finding freedom beyond the building and the box, and rediscovering a God right sized.

I am a Christian and an American, but I refuse to settle for this American Christianity any longer or be defined by it.

I know that there is something much greater beyond it worth heading toward; something that looks more like God and feels more like love.

Maybe you see it in the distance too. Maybe we can go there together.

Fear is in the rear view, freedom in the windshield.

This post originally appeared on JohnPavlovitz.com.


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A Call for American Evangelical Leaders to Confront Evangelicalism’s Lunatic Fringe
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/12/a-call-for-american-evangelical-leaders-to-confront-evangelicalisms-lunatic-fringe/

Roger Olson
December 3, 2015

Every religious movement that grows sufficiently large has a lunatic fringe; extremists attach themselves to religious (and other) movements to gain respectability and a “voice”—to influence the movement and others through it. Then, inevitably, critics of the movement accuse it of fostering lunatics and identify the latter with the center of the movement itself.

This is self-evident to anyone who studies religious (and other) movements. It’s relatively easy to notice and identify the lunatics, the extremists, attempting to attach themselves to movements—especially insofar as those movements gain a certain momentum socially and culturally.

A “movement” is different from an “organization.” An organization has a center and boundaries; a movement has a center without boundaries. American evangelicalism is a distinct movement with a relatively identifiable center. I have argued here and elsewhere that it is fracturing; the center is not holding. Still, it remains real in perception (especially to the pseudo-journalists of the mass media and its critics) which gives it a kind of reality.

Gradually, over the past thirty to forty years, “the public mind” has come to identify American evangelicalism with the movement’s extremists, its lunatic fringe, who have pushed themselves forward as self-appointed spokespersons for “evangelicals” in general. Television talk show hosts, popular (uninformed) journalists, critics of Christianity with platforms (blogging, writing, speaking) have tended to identify American evangelicalism with one particular wing of the movement—what I call neo-fundamentalists (because their real religious ethos is more akin to the fundamentalist movement that arose in the first half of the 20th century than to the postfundamentalist evangelical movement that coalesced around Billy Graham in the second half of the century). Many of these neo-fundamentalists, who call themselves “conservative evangelicals,” have adopted a triumphalist political agenda of using the power of politics to enforce their vision of Christianity on a pluralistic public.

Among these neo-fundamentalist evangelicals are some out-and-out lunatics. I don’t use that word in a technical sense—if it has one. I use it in the popular sense, the one most people think of now, of extremists who would be dangerous if their beliefs were to gain traction, momentum, real influence in the social realm—including especially politics. I do not mean they are literally insane in any DSM-5 sense. They may be religiously and politically delusional, but they are not literally mentally ill (so their extremism cannot be dismissed that way).

Even most American Christians, especially relatively educated and enlightened ones, those whose main “compass” is driven by Jesus and the New Testament and who are reasonable people even if others strongly disagree with their beliefs, reject the ideologically-driven proposals of these “evangelical lunatics” on the movement’s extremist fringe.

In my considered and hopefully informed opinion, for whatever it’s worth, I identify two main groups gaining real traction and influence by manipulating their claim to be “evangelical Christians”—even if that claim amounts primarily to allowing the media to so label them and then build on that bestowed identity.

The first I have written about here several times and include its ideology and spiritual-theological program in my book Counterfeit Christianity (Abingdon, 2015): the so-called “Word Faith” “Prosperity Gospel” of “Health and Wealth” that turns Christianity into a get-rich through prayer scheme.


The second I have not written about as much; it is variously called “Christian Reconstructionism” and “Dominion Theology.” (Yes, I realize these are not exactly the same thing, but for my purposes here their similarities are strong enough to lump them together.)

Some, perhaps most, Christian Reconstructionists and promoters of Dominion Theology teach it is the duty of Christians, inspired and led by God, to “take back America for God” in a legal sense of enforcing even Old Testament commandments and especially traditional Christian ethical norms (as they interpret them) on America through political (broadly defined) power. Some go so far as to believe and preach that the Kingdom of God itself could appear on American soil if enough Christians rallied to their cause. Some go so far as to advocate executions of homosexuals—based on a very selective reading of the Old Testament. (They rarely if ever advocate the execution of everyone God allegedly commanded the Hebrew people to execute!)

Rarely do advocates of this theology name themselves by these labels (viz., “Christian Reconstructionists” or “believers in Dominion Theology”). Sometimes they wrongly call themselves “Theonomists”—a less objectionable term that can mean many other things. (Liberal theologian Paul Tillich, for example, promoted “cultural theonomy” without ever hinting at establishment of a theocracy.)

There are many degrees of Christian Reconstructionism and Dominion Theology. These ideologies and political visions can be detected, though, in the subtleties of some preachers’ (and others’) visions for the future of America. “Take back America for God” is an imperative I always suspect of being inspired by some kind of Christian Reconstructionism or Dominion Theology—even where the people making it are not directly influenced by the ideology’s books, blogs and sermons.


This lunatic fringe of American evangelical Christianity is often popularly identified, especially by Christianity’s critics, as a natural extension of evangelicalism itself. And, unfortunately, many evangelical Christians I know (some of them are relatives!), express strong sympathies with it—even if they do not identify themselves with any of its many organizational expressions. Many of the latter tend to think that being an “American evangelical” would naturally lead a person to their theocratic vision for future America.

Most unfortunately, in my opinion, some American evangelical pastors, even some who stand in the pulpits of denominations associated with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), are worming their way into the political process by holding innocent-sounding “rallies” and “banquets” and other kinds of events to whom they invite candidates for public office. I suspect most of the candidates who attend these events know little to nothing about the Reconstructionist/Dominionist theologies of these pastors. They are just glad to get a forum for promoting their candidacies. However, should one such candidate gain political power through the organizers’ help they will be called upon to move the American legal system in their direction.

What should be done about these evangelical extremists? First, evangelical “movers and shakers” need to publically distance themselves from them, even reject them as what Luther called “false brethren.” They are not “us.” They are hangers on of evangelicalism whose motives and goals are different from authentic evangelical Christianity. Second, if they belong to a denomination, their denominational leaders need to use whatever means are available to expel them. Third, when one of them holds an event (such as a recent one in the city where I was born in the Upper Midwest and where some of the first presidential caucuses will be held in the nominating process), evangelical pastors in that areas need to come together publicly to denounce their ideology. (I hesitate to call it a “theology” as it seems more driven by power motives than by true interest in God.) Fourth, evangelical Christian opinion-shapers need to use their platforms to proclaim to America and to the world that “they are not us.”


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"Try this for a game changer, because this is where the church is at in a post-Christian world
questioning why Jesus' words and life example is being "thrown under the bus" for good old
fashion OT vengeance and hate by Christian groups. When the bible is lifted up over Jesus
we have a problem. Say what? Yup, its a problem for church groups trying to figure out who
they will follow... their dogmatic party lines or the Way of grace and truth. Get this latter
straightened out and you get the Spirit of God's movement among men and women figured
out. Refuse it and we get another 2000 years of acrimony, division, and eschatologic woe."
                                                                                        - r.e. slater, 12.2.15


Jesus is Ultimate
http://www.jrdkirk.com/2015/12/02/jesus-is-ultimate/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk
December 2, 2015

Bible As Final Authority?

“Christians don’t believe in the Bible. Christians believe in Jesus.”

I still remember when Ralph Wood dropped that bomb on a room of starry eyed freshmen and sophomores at Wake Forest University. I remember the vigorous conversations that ensued. How uncomfortable it made me.

I think that the story of my life for the past fifteen years has been discovering how deeply right he was. But before that, I resisted.

When I was preparing to go to seminary I tried to engage my grandparents on my choice of schools. So I sent some info on the conservative Reformed seminary I had chosen to those former Baptist missionaries. Grandfather picked out the opening line about scripture as the final authority and wrote in the margins for my perusal: “What about Christ?”

I thought he was naïve. How can you know about Jesus except through scripture, after all?

I think that the story of my life for the past fifteen years has been discovering how deeply right he was.

Jesus is Ultimate, Scripture Isn’t

Actually, there is a paradox here. The paradox is that the scriptures themselves paint a picture of Jesus who is more ultimate than those texts that attest to him, a Jesus who is more ultimate and the work and words of God that preceded him. That means that when we make scripture ultimate we should hear in its own voice the demand that it be given second place, that it retreat to the penultimate position, leaving Jesus (rather than scripture itself) as the final word.

You can find this claim across the New Testament.

There’s this moment in Matthew’s Gospel when the primacy seems like it is going to be left in the hands of scripture itself: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law and the prophets, I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” But then follows a beautiful engagement with the Law that shows us that “fulfillment” places Jesus, the one who fulfills, above the Law itself.

When he engages the people by saying, “You have heard it said… but I say to you…” we learn that scripture is not ultimate. Neither the Torah itself nor its interpreters have the final word. Jesus claims that for himself.

In John’s Gospel a running theme is that all would-be divine spokespersons derive their value from the faithfulness with which they witness to Jesus. This includes scripture.

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life. But it is these that testify about me.” Scripture isn’t ultimate. Jesus is.

In Romans Paul insists that saving righteousness comes apart from the Law and the prophets–but that they testify to it. He later says that Christ is the end or goal of the Law. Law is not ultimate, final. Christ is. And, Law and prophets are only rightly read when read as a witness to this coming Christ.

In the famous passage about scripture as God-breathed in 2 Timothy 3, we often skip the Christological purpose: “From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.”

And then there’s Hebrews. From front to back the point is that there were the former days and diverse manners of speaking, but in the last, the ultimate, days God has spoken through a son. A son who is greater.

From Sign to Substance

Jesus is the thing. Scripture is the sign that points toward the thing. Scripture provides a series of portraits so that we will know the real thing when we see it.

The difference between scripture and Christ is the difference between the menu and the food. The one describes the reality of the life-giving substance, the other is that life-giving substance.

Or, if you prefer the analogy of Colossians, scripture is like a shadow cast by Christ’s body. It shows us that there is someone there, but it is not the person himself.

One thing that I have become increasingly aware of is that this ultimacy of Christ, and its role in setting scripture back to a penultimate position, changes everything. And our awareness of it has the capacity to change how we view just about everything.

It shapes our understanding of God, of the world as it is, of the world as it will be, and of how we are to act here and now in order to embody the image of the God in which we have been (re)fashioned.

And, of course, it changes how we read the Bible.

Looks like that’s where we need to head over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for discussion about how Jesus changes everything. After all, isn’t that what Advent is all about?