God-Words – Salvaged Faith

what we are saved from matters – or – what if Rob Bell has a point?

Posted on February 28, 20114 Comments

I’m just a small voice, but I have a two cents to add to the pot on this whole “Rob Bell Universalism” controversy.

Before his book is even out, folks are making all kinds of assumptions about what it says. And there are probably enough indicators in the youtube preview of “Love Wins” that you can say a whole lot.

But I want to back the question up a little bit.

What I think Bell is pointing out is that soteriology matters. What we believe we are saved from is important. Who is saving us means something. What that process of redemption entails determines a whole lot about how we treat other people and how we live our lives.

Soteriology matters.

If God has already condemned all of us to a place called Hell because of the actions of a man and a women in a garden thousands of years ago… and then God saves us from that condemnation… we might think and act and worship a certain way.

If, however, our actions then and our continued actions now are themselves “hell-making”… if we are creating the conditions of hell each and every time we hurt one another through our action and inaction and if we dishonor our relationship with our Lord by turning towards the darkness rather than the light… then salvation looks different. Then, maybe Christ saves us from ourselves… and then the Spirit empowers and sanctifies us to live the way God intended.

There are subtle differences in those two concepts (and they are only two among many!), but the differences are important.

Historically we have at least three major ways of understanding what Christ does for us: Christus Victor, Substitutionary Atonement, and the Moral Example theories of Abelard. All three have a basis in scripture. All three say something very different about what is wrong with humanity, about what hell looks like, and about how salvation is imparted into our personal and corporate lives.

Last summer, my congregation and I explored these various understandings of atonement and found all three of them interwoven in the book of Hebrews. Christ is the priest who lays down his life as the final and perfect sacrifice. Christ is the prophet who calls us to a different way of life. Christ is the king who triumphs over the lesser kings of this world and conquers for us.

It gets complicated… but it matters. Where we end up on these questions of salvation change how we interact with our brothers and sisters in this world. It changes our relationship with the one who does the saving.

And, I might also add, our inability to fully understand and agree about salvation ultimately says more about us than it does about God.

As I read the “good book” from beginning to end… as I look at the scope and span of the scriptures… no matter how we fail and get it wrong, no matter how strong the forces for darkness are in this world – in the end, love does win.

That is the firm hope that I stand on.

If God doesn’t win… if love and life and light don’t have the final say, then all is for naught.

I have many good friends who are reformed theologians of the Calvinist flavor. And I understand their predilection towards preserving the sovereignty of God Almighty.

But what I want to know is why can’t that preservation of God’s sovereignty also leave space for the hope that God’s power is so great that it can transform and redeem everything?

Jurgen Moltmann once said in regards to claims he might be a universalist:

I’m not a Universalist because there are some people I don’t want to see again – but God created them and would certainly like to see them again. Universalism is not only to speak about all human beings, but to speak about the universe, the stars and the moon and the sun and the whole cosmos.

If I were to summarize Moltmann’s statement it would go: I’m not a Universalist, but God might be.

Moltmann reminds us that at the end of the day, this is God’s story… not ours. Who are we to tell God who can be saved and who cannot? Who are we to limit the story of salvation to humans or a sharp distinction between a place called heaven and a place called hell?

When I read Revelation and Isaiah and whole host of other scriptures… I find a story in which not only people, but the whole creation groans for salvation. I am invited into a story of recreation, of redemption, a story where a new heaven and a new earth are realized and where God dwells among us. And the way I read the story… love does win.

How we get there matters… but what really matters that the one who made us wants to redeem us… and has the power to do so.

my very own cohort… #reverb10

Posted on January 11, 2011Leave a comment

Still catching up on the 31 reverb10 prompts from the month of December. Little by little, I will get through them all!!!
So tomorrow, we start with our first monthly gathering of 2011. We are looking at Carol Howard Merritt’s “Reframing Hope.” (I wrote some about it yesterday) I can’t wait to continue the conversations and to meet some of the new folks who will be joining us for the first time! Plus, Fusion has this Maccu Piccu Mocha that is absolutely to-die-for. Totally yummy. (just saying.)

December 7 – Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

In the last year, a new group of conversation partners have begun meeting in Eastern Iowa. In some ways, it started with connections made at the JoPa Theological Conversation with Jurgen Moltmann back in 2009. A few of us realized – hey, there are Iowa folks here! And we committed to gather more locally and chat.

I also recieved an email from a guy who wanted to start talking about emergent theology/church themes near the beginning of that year. We live nearby and a coffee shop conversation began.

Since those initial plans, the Eastern Iowa Emergent Cohort was rebirthed. I’m not sure who started it, or who was involved, but the conversation had gone silent for a while. But we have some new faces, some new energy and last year planned three face-to-face conversations.

It has been so strange for me to enter these emergent conversations, because I am what Carol Howard Merritt calls a “loyal radical.” I am firmly planted in the tradition and I wouldn’t leave it for the world, but there are facets of the emergent movement that so speak to me. The deep sense of community, the diffusion of authority, the importance of communal discernment, the focus on a rule or way of life, the place for questions, etc. There aren’t a lot of places to talk about that either in the hierarchical church (although I am making those connections) or in the local congregation I serve. And to be honest, I have not come into the community through traditional venues like blogs and books either. I kind of just discovered it on my own and then sought words to explain what I was thinking/feeling.

You see, I first was introduced to the entire idea of emergent theology and postmodernism back in Nashville, Tennessee. I can still remember walking down the sidewalk with Kay Hereford Voorhees and learning all about postmodern theology on a sunny afternoon. I was working at a large, very traditional, uptown church that had this little quirky group of folks who were exploring other ways of being faithful. We began an emergent worship service before we even quite realized what we were doing. We had an intimate and holy community of faithful folks who weekly walked with one another. I miss that group of folks VERY MUCH!!!

As I prepared to move back to Iowa, I knew what a gap would be left in my life, and so this blog was an attempt to fill that gap. But I also longed for the types of conversations having through cohorts meeting at the Flying Saucer in Nashville, or the Emerging UMC (version 1) event we had. Iowa seemed like a barren landscape, void of partners. Boy was I wrong.

This new community is a breath of fresh air. It is a chance to ask questions and wrestle with folks who think the way I do… and find themselves in congregations like mine. Some of us maintain contact on twitter or facebook, but these three gatherings have turned into a desire to have a more frequent relational contact.

Who is God?

Posted on January 9, 2011Leave a comment

I realized today how theologically illiterate my congregation is.

That may seem like a slam, or a critique, but it is a simple reality.

And it is a reality that is not their fault.

As we began our discussion of Max Ludado’s Outlive Your Life we focused for a bit on a very simple question: If someone who didn’t know much about the Bible and was not a Christian asked you to describe what God is like, what would be your answer?

The room went silent.

They all stared at me… or their navels… for a few seconds.

And then someone confessed it was a really hard question.

As a religion student, as a seminary student, as someone who has prepared intensely for ordination examinations… it was an easy question to answer for me. I had taken some time to think about it. I’ve wrestled with what I want to say. And depending on who I am talking to, I can talk about what God is like in a variety of ways. I talk about incarnation… about God taking flesh. I talk about love. I talk about grace and mercy. I talk about a God who blesses us with a way, a path, a rule of community to follow.

I don’t have to sit and think for thirty minutes about what I might say. It’s right there.

But it is because I have taken the time, already, to think about the answer.

That room full of people had not.

Throughout their religious life, they had learned to read the bible. They have found comfort in the words of scripture and strength for tribulations. Devotional texts inspire them for daily living. Sermons have given them morsels to chew on. Some of them may have memorized catechisms… although many probably don’t remember them. They have been given some very excellent tools for theological reflection… but they have not been taught how to use them FOR theological reflection.

There was a critical step missing.

In the realm of reading we might call it comprehension or application. You move past the ability to read the words on the page and learn how to apply them, how to expand upon them, how to use them in different contexts.

My congregation has learned to read and study and listen… but they have not yet learned a theological language.

I’m not talking about big and fancy words. As our book points out – Peter and John spoke very effectively about their faith while at the same time coming across as “unschooled, ordinary men.” (Acts 4:13) We don’t have to have an storehouse of knowledge… we just need to know how to apply and consolidate and process all it is that we have been learning.

Theology at its root is simply words about God. How do I teach my congregation to speak in words about God? How can I teach them to answer a simple question like, “who is God?”

I don’t want to give them “answers.” I think that our movement away from memorized catechisms and wrote learning can empower us to think for ourselves, to develop the skills necessary to learn even more complex things.

But how do you begin to teach critical theological thinking? How do you begin to encourage congregation members to draw conclusions, to speak out loud words from their hearts about God?

My first step is to simply have this conversation. To point out that this is tough work, but that as Christians, we are called to be able to articulate what we believe. We need to do the work.

My second step is to stop providing answers all the time. I was asked point blank how I would answer by someone in the course of our discussion. At that point, I realized any answer by myself would limit their ability to begin down this path of wrestling.

But I also turn to you, blogging world. What has helped your congregations to develop this kind of language? Do we simply have to wait for the Holy Spirit to show up when we open our mouths? Can it be taught? Where do you begin?

Postmodern Church and the Farmlands of Iowa… Part 1

Posted on September 8, 20102 Comments

In our final year at Vanderbilt Divinity School, we work on the crowning glory of our graduate work: our seminar paper. As I sat down three years ago to write this work, I was very interested in how I might take all that I had learned and take it back home to Iowa. I knew I was heading into a rural congregation and I wanted to prepare myself.

During that time at Vandy, my eyes were opened to postmodern culture and theology – particularly manifested in the emerging church movement. I am convinced that this “movement” is not a fad within the church, but a group of individuals and communities who are thoughtfully re-examining their theologies and practices in order to be more faithful to the gospel in their particular place and time. I have begun to be a part of their discussions in small group meetings, conferences, on blogs and through email and every chance that I get to explore what this might mean for the institutional church, especially my United Methodist tradition, invigorates me! I resonate with the ways in which tradition is invited to become organically connected with the present reality of our lives. I find new energy and hope in the emphasis on ritual, community and shared experience. Above all, I have discovered a new framework by which to describe the most meaningful religious experiences of my life.

At the same time, I felt a deep calling to be in ministry in Iowa… which perpetuated a small identity crisis as I tried to figure out how this integration might be possible. Postmodernism was rarely discussed in the churches I grew up in and was often seen more as a threat than a blessing. I am not like the pastors who nurtured my own faith and the “model leaders” who are uplifted and revered by the church culture. I am aware of a deeper, more authentic and communal style of leadership within me and postmodern theology has helped me to claim my own voice and calling as authentic. But the question in the back of my mind was whether the church in Iowa would see it the same way? This seminar conversation began as I asked myself what God wanted me to bring from my own experience that would be beneficial to the church there?

The reality is that the church itself (mainline, United Methodist, Protestant, small churches, you name it) is in danger of becoming irrelevant. More and more young people are seeking their faith outside of the institutional church – not in a rejection of Christianity, but in an attempt to preserve their own best faithfulness. I have in fact been one of those people, and yet cannot escape a call to remain within my tradition.

Which is possibly why this quote by Karl Barth stood out to me:

To the distinctiveness of its calling and commission, and therefore to the form of its existence as the people of God in [the] world…, there does not correspond in the first instance or intrinsically any absolutely distinctive social form [of the church].

If the church is not authentically living out its calling and commission through its present form, then perhaps in light of postmodernism it does need to be reformed.

At the time, I was interested in how I could take my education, my experiences, and the resources I gained in an urban and academic setting and apply it to rural ministry. I have always understood that it is my duty as a pastoral theologian to help the church hold in tension its tradition and its present reality… while at the same time being faithful to the gospel. So now, three years later, I want to return to the paper to see what has changed, what I have learned, and where I still want to wrestle. This conversation is my attempt to point to the intersection of postmodern church and rural United Methodist life I discovered, but now, with three years of ministry under my belt, I want to not only imagine what this faithful living might look like, but share what I have learned on the ground.

In the next few weeks, I’ll share some of the various contexts that are at play, some basic background on postmodernism, and what its like to be a congregation in a small town in Iowa. Then we’ll look at the role of theology and practice on the ground. I hope you’ll join me – and if you have any questions or want to share your own insights – join in!

Doctrine of God… or something.

Posted on January 9, 20102 Comments

When I submitted my candidacy papers, I had just finished Constructive Theology. I was in a totally heady space, although I also had a lot of practical application involved.

In my first round of papers, here is how I talked about God:

We have come to know and trust in God primarily through scripture – which holds the accounts of faithful witnesses to God’s work in history. There we learn that the God we worship is not a passive entity, but jealous, powerful, and always seeking relationship with creation. While some theologians begin with the via positiva or via negativa to describe God, Wesleyan theology begins with the scriptures and from that place, redefines the “natural characteristics” of God. We come to know God’s nature through the covenant made with the Hebrew people and the new covenant of Jesus Christ, as well as the continuing witness of the Holy Spirit. Above all, these actions tell us that God works in ways that invite human response and gives us the power to respond in faith. This is particularly true in regards to God’s power – which Randy Maddox argues must “not be defined or defended in any way that undercuts human responsibility.” God seeks to work in co-operative ways; ways that build, rather than destroy, relationship…

In his own time, Wesley was familiar with not only the Western notions of the divine, but also explored Eastern conceptions as well, which Maddox claims influenced his theology in subtle, though profound ways. Though he never directly claimed the Eastern Orthodox understanding of perichoresis as a description of the Trinity, it is not disconsonant with other of his claims, and in fact helps us to comprehend the relational nature of God. If our sources and the ways in which God is revealed are diverse (the economic Trinity) and yet always in need of one another, it would make sense to assume that God’s internal relations (the immanent Trinity) are likewise diverse and in need of a constant dance.

I still remember one of my Board of Ministry team members saying: I was a little worried about you after I read the answers to your first question… but then you got more practical.

Note to that team member: I actually did teach perichoresis… in a children’s sermon, nonetheless… we got up and danced in a circle and it was fabulous.

The ordination papers as I understand them are meant to be more practical and experiential. So here is my answer to the question:

How has the practice of ministry affected your experience and understanding of God?

I have always firmly believed that God is relational and so it will come as no surprise that I have found and experienced God in the midst of the congregation. The lives of my parishioners carry on the story of God that was begun with the Hebrew people and we weave together our experience of God with the scriptures that have been passed on to us for future generations.

That understanding of God, however, has been most directly challenged and stretched in the practice of ministry through encountering over and over again the via positiva. So many in my congregation experience God as omnipotent, omni-present and omniscient and therefore see every minute detail of their lives as having been directly set into motion by the God of the universe. On the one hand, it gives me pause as I think about how various pieces of my own life have fallen into place by the grace of God. On the other hand, as a Wesleyan theologian, I also want to fight against determinism. I still hold firmly an understanding of God derived from scriptures – that God works in ways that invite human response and gives us the power to respond in faith, a god that allows it to rain on the just and unjust alike. I recoil when I hear a congregation member talk about how God caused something to happen in their life in order to bring them to faith. While it may be the result of such a time of tragedy that brought about their faith, I refuse to believe God causes pain and suffering in one person in order to reach another.

As I work with congregational members as their pastor and teacher, being able to talk about our Triune God, is immensely powerful. I can share with them my firm belief that in all situations, the Father of us all has always desired a relationship with each one of us. I can talk with them about the sacrificial love of Christ Jesus who died so that we might live… who died to bring us faith so that others do not have to die or suffer for that reason. I can talk about the Holy Comforter walking with each and every single one of us through the valley of the shadow of death. Our encounter with God in the scriptures is so much richer and deeper than any attribute we might postulate about our creator and redeemer and sanctifier.

Photo by: William Vermeulen

Moltmann Conversation – Eschatology/Science

Posted on September 11, 2009Leave a comment

• Billboard in MN, said “Unless you confess God cannot bless”, more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I got. It seems like a reformed idea, but I’m not sure it fits. It seems to me that God is by nature a non-contingent being. God isn’t sitting around waiting for me to do something, I don’t give God the power to forgive me. Once we do _____, then Jesus will return. Almost like God is handcuffed waiting for us to do certain things… If ___, then God _____. But this seems to be against the nature of God: I agree! You cannot make as a human being conditions to God. This is what it means to make God an object, and idol. God will bless whom God will bless, whether you confess or not. And with the relationship of God’s blessing and your professing – the initiative is God’s, He will bless and then you will be led to confess. God is God and not a bargain partner for you in your religion. This is completely heathen! The original idea of other religions in the world is ____ we give sacrifices and then God will bless us – but this is not Xian at all. It is a denial of the freedom of God. I am opposing completely this bargaining with destiny or with God. If I do this, God must do that – this is pure commitalism.

• So let me ask you about Jesus. If God as subject has complete freedom and God’s activity is not contingent upon our activity. Yet Jesus teaching about prayer is almost unequivocally – be persistent and God will give you what you want. (widow & judge, keep asking for bread): These are not the only sayings of Jesus about prayer. Whenever you pray, God knows already what you need, otherwise it would be nonsense to pray. The hearing of God preceeds your prayer.

• What does that mean about God’s relationship to time as we have experienced it? Can I pray for something in the past? What do you want to pray for? There is a long tradition of prayer for the dead. Medieval tradition of praying for the dead. Luther – pray 3 or 4 times for the dead and then hand it over to God b/c they are already included in the prayer to the lord. Calvin, don’t do that. I think I am praying for the dead, because the dead are not dead. They died, but we cannot say they are dead now. For Luther, they are sleeping until the day of resurrection. For Calvin, they are watching over us. Tradition from Asia – the dead are not in a modern sense dead and gone…. They are present and if you believe Romans 14 that Christ is the Lord of the living and the dead then we have a community with the dead in Christ and a community of hope because we were raised from death together. And therefore we must overcome this modern understanding of death as annihilation. We should learn from the ancestor veneration in Africa and Asia again. This would help and then you may pray for your grandmother.

• This idea of zimzum, which you borrow from kaabalism Judaism – I understand it as prior to creation, God was everything and in order to create something other, God withdrew Godself enough to make space for a relation, an object, creation with which God could have a relationship. Two questions: 1) what relationship does God’s self-relationship relate to panenthism 2) is part of God’s self-limitation that God voluntarily bound Godself to time? I am not the first one who took up this idea from kabalistic thinking – in Xian tradition for 300 yrs. Before God created, God decided to become the creator. 1st act of creation was not on the outside, on the inside. Out of his unlimited possibilities he took this one – to become a creator. He contracted himself from all the other possibilities to this one – to be the creator of the world. 2nd he created the world in time and space. So before he created heaven and earth there must be a womb/room place to which heaven and earth could be place – this is the place of creation and this is due to a contraction of God that another reality – the limited and finite reality of heaven and earth can be and can co-exist with God. The coexistence of a finite world with an infinite being presupposes a contraction so that they can both be there. This is the reason why there is freedom of the creatures… that there is creativity of the earth to the creatures in Genesis 1:26/24 – this is important. We can… whoever of you that has children, knows that at the beginning you must do everything for a child so that it can grow – but then 10-12 you must take away your sovereignty so that your child can grow and have freedom and responsibility and this is very creative to retreat into yourself to let another being be. This is the other side of creation. Normally we understand creation as act – but to take oneself back to oneself to let another being develop and flourish is very creative

• Very much in keeping with the activity of God in Jesus and the hymn of Christ in Phillipians: If you put it in Trinitarian terms it’s completely understandable b/c the F/S/HS are kenotic beings, giving self to the others and receiving the others into the selves, so you already have in perichoresis the self-limitation, so not only outside to the creation, but the true essence of the being of the son of God in relation to the father and the holy spirit. The kenosis is not only God’s acting to the outside in Christ, but already inside the Trinity – the persons self-giving to each other in the eternal Trinitarian love.

• So, do you think if God has a being by nature that is timeless, is part of God’s self-limitation that God has bound himself to time as part of his own self-limitation, that God is experiencing time with us? Yes – otherwise he could not be the Living God! The Living God has living, limited relationships to Israel, to the fathers, to Christ, to the church, etc. they are lively by limited relationships, otherwise you have a dead God. But if you have a living God then he must be able to have life giving relationships to other living beings. To put it more abstractly.

• Some of us who follow your theology are accused of being too Hegalian – that God is simply the unfolding of History… it is very easy to accuse a german theologian to be Hegalian, but Hegel did not develop an understanding of the Trinity – he had an understanding of world history as an autobiography of God, but this is not a good theology. He developed this dialectical understanding of world history as a history of God out of a self-consciouslness of the divine subject. But this had nothing to do with the God in Jesus. Hegelian closed system – nothing new can happen under the sun, no eschatology. Is this panentheistic? This terrible term was brought into the debate by a Hegelian – it means everything is in God, but this is only one side of the biblical understanding of the presence of God, the other part is that God is in everything! Understanding of OT, Shechinah – God dwells on high and in the souls and is dwelling in Israel – the cloud/fire – the indwelling of God. Behind the covenant with Israel is the intention: I will dwell among the Israelites. In the NT, you have a mutual indwelling especially in John & letters of John – the perichoresis, the mutual indwelling. I in you, you in me., remain in love – remains in God and God in him…. Much more than panentheism! …. The orthodox theology has a sacramental understanding of nature b/c God is already in everything which has life. This is alsot the understanding of the presence of God/HS that God is in everything in John Calvin (Institutes Book 1). For Calvin, the glory of God is already reflecting itself in all things. The burning fires of God are surrounding ourselves form all sides, but we don’t have eyes to see it! Had a strong understanding of creation in the HS. In Trinitarian terms, quite understandable. Theistic terms – you may end up in pantheism – then the question arises was God in the tsunami, with the terrorists. So I would put it all in Trinitarian terms and avoid an abstract philosophical theism.

• Also embrace an Easter theosis – God became man so that man can become God (Athanasius): Martin Luther had a wonderful idea…. God became human being so that we could, proud and unhappy gods become truly human in community with Jesus. God became human to liberate us from our god complex. Hubris is playing God with God – making conditions to the sovereignty of God.

• Original sin – Augustine thought was impt – condition genetically passed on that left God no choice but to have this transaction. On Original sin, Judaism doesn’t have a doctrine of original sin: I think these ideas of Augustine are leading to a Xian type of Gnosticism. That procreating is already bad and that sex is… original sin is like aids which we deliver from one generation from another and you had better stop this and become a monk or priest to stop this procreating of original sin – this is Gnosticism. This is not following the OT understanding of life and the joy of life. We have received life and we should give life to another generation and those who cannot are poor. Original sin has nothing to do with sex and procreation – the idea is more collective guilt. This was the understanding of Luther in the articles – one fundamental sin, capital sin and this is general. So everyone is guilty of everything which happens in the world because everything is related to everything – same as Dostoevsky – collective destiny because we share into everything and everything shares with us and we need liberation of this collective guilt of humankind. This has nothing to do with Adam or Eve – in the NT, still debate of whether sin came through Adam or Eve! This is all speculation I think. We can follow the church understanding that guilt came into the world through Cain and Adam through brother murder and since that time there is one against the other and there is war and murder in the world – this is more realistic I think.

• Many of us grew up in a church that had this forensic transaction that God’s anger could only be appeased by this sacrifice of the Son – we’ve talked about “identification” atonement but there area also scriptures that talk about the sacrificial nature of the crucifixion: Other religions, I give so that you may give. If you don’t sacrifice enough or in the right way, the Gods became angry and you experienced disease/earthquake – so whenever these things happen you look around for whether there was one who didn’t sacrifice/offer enough! Happen to Jonah. This is all not Biblical. The scapegoat is giving by GOD! He is not asking this from the people of Israel, but giving this to Israel so that the sins can be put there and then the goat carries the sins away to the desert. God is reconciling himself with the world – he doesn’t need a sacrifice. He is himself giving his own son to reconcile the world to himself. 2 Cor 5 – the initiative is God’s initiative. They used the old temple language, but something completely different is meant – it is the love of God by which he reconciles the whole cosmos to himself.

• If that’s the reformed part of your theology coming out so strongly – it makes God always the protagonist – God is always the initiator of the action between humans and Godself. How is that… in the Trinity image of perichoresis… there is so much in that relationship that it overflows and sweeps all of creation into that. How is God in that way the protagonist, in allowing that love to overflow – in creating so much love: Love takes God outside of himself – he wants to communicate the joy of his love. He creates creatures which can resonate this beauty and love of God. So he is not in need of the creation – the creation is a result of his overflowing joy and love.

• Speaking of love… known as eschatological theologian – seems to me both liberals and conservatives have a negative view of the end. Liberals: church is shrinking, society more banal; Conservative: when Jesus comes back there is going to be a shitstorm. It was good news when Jesus came the first time, it will be good the second time – but this is not the overwhelming understanding today: If there is a new creation, new heaven, new earth – new song this is not the end but the beginning! The new creation will be the eternal creation so we must look forward not to the end but the beginning – the beginning is not behind us, its before us – the best is still to come. This is a certain kind of dispensationalist which is not a Christian idea – the old Jewish idea that God created the world in seven days, so the world history will follow seven dispensations. With every dispensation, the world grows older and older and our time is running out. It’s coming shorter and shorter to the end. You can think about this without mentioning Christ. Christ had just one part in it between disp. 5 & 6 or 6& 7 what is lacking is the New Beginning which we experience in the resurrection! There is already a new beginning inside of world history in anticipation of the general resurrection and the new creation…. The new has already begun, the future of God is not far away or very short, but has already begun with the coming of Christ/resurrection of Christ. Read the prophets – don’t remember the things of old – behold, I create a new thing! Old and new are the categories of God’s work in world history, not dispensations.

• My synthesis of Moltmann and Gotteman? Is that there is this horizon that is approaching us – and as I grow, my interpretive horizon is growing and at some point, these horizons meet and this is the eschaton when them meet? They met already! Because the eschatological horizon has already opened up with Christ and the Spirit of the resurrection so you can speak of this horizon, otherwise you would develop your own person horizons into the unknown. If you still have resurrection hope, you develop your personal relations in the horizon of your life inside the horizon of the resurrection – Morning has come!

• Do you think there will be a moment in time that is the paraousia? That humans will experience a moment in time of Jesus return? Yes. Well, we have this time of linear concept of time, future/present/past – this is the time of our clock. In linear time, Jesus will not come – otherwise Jesus will come at 10:15 tomorrow on a train from Chicago… this is impossible to think. We also have kairos time – good opportunity. Our life experiences are not according to clock time, but kairos – a good time. This kairos is an anticipation of the eschatological moment wit hthe trumpets and the dead will stand up/rise up. So you can put it in terms of fulfilled time. In a fulfilled time, for fulfilled life, you don’t care about the clock anymore. You live so to speak in an eternal moment. Therefore whenever you come into an intensity of living, the clock goes away. Clock time is not very good understanding of time. I had a friend who visited and interviewed an Indian swami and said I must go and the Indian said you have the clock and we have time.

• Truly reformed person doesn’t think we cooperate with God in anything – yet you write, of us being co-creators with God and cooperating with God in creation, particularly in your ecological theology: Paul spoke about his work as a co-creator with God. I don’t think putting all the responsibility on God is a good Christian understanding of God’s presence in the world. It’s not that God has no hands apart from our hands, but that God enables us, gives us chances, and energy to work in accordance with his will. To resonante with his tune and to take responsibility to which includes response! If God would be all-in-all already, the reformed pastor would be right, but he is not all-in all, it is our responsibility. I think he was speaking to come of age and not little children to go and do anything. I think Calvin would disagree with this reformed pastor.

• Daniel Harrell – Nature’s Witness – my question/interest goes back to testimony of science that it brings to our understanding – creation bears the handprint of God. Trinity in creation esp that creation that science portrays for us is rife with decay, death, disease – all of this preceding the advent of the new creation. Who is the Trinitarian God in creation giving this nature? I think the fundamental question of natural sciences is do you understand what you know. Our knowledge is duplicating, we know everything it’s in the computers, but do we understand what we need. We need a hermeneutics of nature along with scientists. Interpret science of nature explained by scientists. Scientists explain, but we need understanding. EG: a doctor measures your blood pressure/temp/data from your body to tell if you feel not well. He takes the data as symptoms of a disease. He interprets the symptoms of a disease you have – then therapy can begin. Similar w/ natural science. They take the data, we must understand as symptoms of whatever we suspect and interpret these to understand what we know. And to understand the data we get from climate research and economic research as we put them together to see them as symptoms of the coming natural catastrophe and then we can react and put therapy in as requires to prevent the danger that is coming with a hermeneutics of nature.

• I would agree with that… original question – when you see what science reveals regarding nature, what is the Trinitarian interp. Of nature that comes to bear: we put whatever we know of nature in the transcendent dimension. The evolution of live – we see that they all belong to the same family. The transcendent dimension there is no progression of value – the primitive forms are just as important as the advanced lives! Bring us to Darwin understanding of evolution. Second – we can see the working of the HS as the immanence of transcendence in every complicated being forming their self-transcendence. Or biologists say more complex life forms are open systems, transcending themselves. This is an expression of the immanence of the transcendent spirit – there can be no self-organization in the natural world with out transcendence!

• So then part of the struggle for some Xians who try to see Darwinian evolution through a theological grid is the problem of decay/death/deformity – how is that an manifestation of the spirit? Is it a fallout of the spirit? You must differentiate between the HS herself and the energies of the HS – lots of different gifts of the HS – every Xian is filled with energies, therefore they form a community of different gifts and different energies. It is similar in the world There are different energies/gifts/ one spirit. The annihilating energies are not from the spirit. In each criminal act, or negative act of destruction, there is energy which must be redeemed! This is in another book of Dostoevsky that even the sinners redeem the sin – that is transformed the criminal negative activity into a positive life giving, affirming energy.

• Would you then say that the necessary organic death that happens in context of evolutionary epoch – is that redemption? Which would make that death a bad thing, or is that necessary death which leads to life a positive of the spirit? Lets start from the final end = if death is no more, there will be a creation without organic death. Not only death of the sinner, but no more death So new creation, new biology, so how is that different from now? The indwelling of God – we have only an anticipatory glimpse of the creation, that is not yet here in this experimental way of creation that this is.

• So kairos time in this new experience, it is something that has to be something that is so radical that we can’t really have an experience in our current life that would approximate it. There has to be this dramatic transformation if we are talking about brand new creation. If we are talking about physical/experienced reality. Maybe no different from whoever is in Christ is a new creation – what is new in you/ over and against… is there a radical discontinuity in the new creation ? You cannot talk about discontinuity without continuity – not an either/or question. But we have so many anticipatory changes from the old to the new that we cannot understand this quite easily. For Paul this was a change of name. new identity with Christ living in him. This is to some extent true for every Xian, whether we are conscious of it or not.

• So to the scientist/biologist for which such discontinuity would defy everything they know about created reality – how would you speak to them regarding that unfathomability? In biological terms, you either have an evolution of causes and everything is in development because everything isn’t already enveloped in the beginning – so nothing new can happen – everything is already included in the original. New term – emergence… something new can develop, the whole is more than the sum of the parts… always something new is happening and we try to integrate it in what is already… without the new, nothing would emerge. We cannot understand the coming new as a coming old from the past. To analyze the parts of something does not lead to an understanding of the whole. “Genome” – looking at a genome you can’t tell who someone is, because from the past of his genes, you cannot extrapolate who that person is!

• Given that this earth as we experience it will certainly end, if physics is correct. What does our hope anticipate for us on the other side of that. I strongly believe in the teliosis concept of the church fathers/orthodox theologians – God will be all in all! in every science, the end is not the annihilation of the world, but the deification of the world . Lutheran: annihilation and only God/angels/saved survive somewhere in heave; Reformed: not annihilation, but transformation of the world, into new creation; Orthodox: deification of the world, indwelling of God in everything – very close to reformed tradition of transformation.

• Part of this dialogue is for the theologian that is open to the contributions of science – there are ways theology adjusts to that, but you don’t see science adjusting to the hermeneutic that theology can bring, so I find a struggle there: The struggle between religion and science is better than ____ science. We came out with a book, the end of the world and the ends of God.

Moltmann Conversation – Breakout Workshop on the future that is coming towards us

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

Finding the Future Session:

• Recognizing wisdom in the gathered congregation – tool for genereative listening

• Cataphatic = likes images, sensual concepts; apaphatic = way of negation

• Website – blog Sabbath journey (typepad) http://web.mac.com/terrychapman/A_SABBATH_JOURNEY/BEGIN_HERE_files/Moltmann%20Breakout%20Group%208-26.pdf

• Icarus – Matisse… Sabbath is a way to a safe place in the heart of creation (6 stars/birds) – when we stop to rest, God is there for us. Life is not endless productivity! We don’t have to opt into Pharoah’s plan of endless productivity.

• Gospel of Evacuation (the chasm, the bridge) – future was always important to him in his history

o Moltmann – this gospel draws love away from this life to the hereafter, spreading despair in this life, we only live here half-heartedly – sell off these treasures cheap to heaven – in theory it’s a refusal to live, a religious atheism
o Subjects eschatology to chronos – flattens the big picture – the dance of God in 4 steps (1) creation, 1a) the crisis, 2) covenant, 2a) conversation. 3) incarnation, 3a) gospel/cross 4) resurrection 4a) easter, the beginning

• Cardiography – scientific monitoring of the heart – measure the heartbeat of what is wanting to be born

• The telos, the future that wants to happen is also moving towards us… so he’s not a cartographer, not a map-maker .. this measures the heart, more of noticing our posture as we face the future

• Metaphorical tool to carry over God’s unfolding future into our lives so that we can build a praxis for our congregations

o God as wholly other – the canvas of all that is – the zinsum, the self-restriction = separate and different, but encompassing all (he can still hold all of the omni’s – because within God there is self-withdrawl… kenosis!!?!!) (chora – empty space in the middle of the perichoretic dance) God created us and set us in the place that he had

o In the eschatological moment, God fully dwells back into that space and is all in all – primordial time and space of creation will end when creation becomes the eternal temple for God’s Shekinah. (Moltmann)

o Center of the circles – mandorla (almond) – overlapping of realities – al lot of Christian art is framed in this image, the almond… (heaven and earth, good and evil,)

o Add temporal dimensions – chronos (temporal time) – aeon (eternity – fullness), mandorla = kairos! – the moment that is pregnant with opportunity, the aha!, that of eternity that we experience now – the time and place of transformation!

o Does time happen in creation, or creation in time? Moltmann – time happens in creation – time is created.

o Biblical God is in time and beyond time (chronos, and aeon)
• Sabbath = a broad place, kairotic Sabbath place – two pillars of sabbath: covenant and creation, from both the chronos and aeon
• See slide 11 for covenant – incarnation (shekinah – assumption… God’s revelation in history) on the chronos side, and creation – resurrection on the aeon side (god as all in all)
• Generative idea of the Sabbath – in stopping, there is a memory of covenant that is renewed
• Early Christians practiced both Sabbath and lord’s day for 200 years – because both were important!

o Trinity same way (but I might disagree here, we need 3 circles)

o Praxis rooted in presence: present – absolute future – mandorla = epiphany of the ordinary = transformational osmosis – moment where the spirit seeps into our lives, from a region of higher concentration to that of lower concentration through a semi-permeable membrane – human soul into all of creation

o EVERYTHING CHANGES in Epiphany

o Within our chronological sphere – field of freedom, field of awareness conscious/intention. NOT Autonomy. Free when we confess the sacred bounds – bounded by love and justice and our covenant relationship. We don’t like bounded freedom, we would rather be unbounded Conscious/Intentional vs. Unconscious/Conventional

o John 3:16: the Aramaic and the Hebrew word for love is rechemet – womb (sounds a lot like zimzum) God created a place in God’s self for love, for creation – move into this space in order to be reborn (the part of freedom that is in the mandorla) so that we are transformed!

o Inconsumation (Rholheizer?) – the place of beginning of longing and restlessness – it is in the torment of the insufficiencies of everything attainable in this life that we come to realize that all symphonies remain unfinished. – we can never satisfy that longing in this life, we need a mourning of that loss (Jephthah’s daughter) – the only hope is God, but it’s an infinite horizon… don’t try to fill it with things, feeling of desolation

o Inconsumation and Kenosis, through transformation we experience discernment – innovation, breakthrough, co-creation – 8th day of the new creation

o When we are far away from the kairotic moment, time seems driven and chaotic, – when we get to the intersection, time seems to stop… crises can move us into these kairotic moments – instant community can form, sometimes we stumble onto kairotic moments but we look for intentionality – how we can move into these places

o We normally operate without going deep into this transformative kairotic moment – we talk-judge-pray-act-talk-….. and we bump up against that sacred/future, but never enter it. we restructure, reengineer, rearrange and are stuck

o Theory U (slide 23) – Shirmer
• On the edge = downloading, operating only from the assumptions from the past, living conventionally and unconsciously
• Open mind
• Open heart
• Open will
• Allow inner knowledge to emerge and act in an instant

o Learn by reflecting on past (downloading)

o OR learn from the future as it emerges (presencing)

o Applying theory U to the mandorla = downloading on the blindspot – moving through open mind (go to the limits), heart (step out of self), will (letting go) to the center. New information, relationships, letting go of it all – trust into the place of transformation…

o out of this place of transformation comes discernment. – new choices based on a new perspective = practice becomes the 8th day – co-creation… so our discernment gives us the power to innovate/participate…

o but this is a journey, so we always need to begin this cycle again

o RESISTANCES
• To the open mind = voice of judgment, we need to suspend these voices
• To the open heart = voice of cynicism, the emotions of disconnection that keep us from going forward, requires commitment to love
• To the open will = voice of fear, fear of letting go of familiar, fear of surrendering into some unknown, requires commitment to courage, letting go of the things that we think are our “selves” to open ourself up to the Self.
• Many obstacles to discernment (crystallizing for Shirmer)
• Need for a holding space – world café, open space, spiritual direction

o Agricultural metaphor for this process in Psalm 126 “those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.” Farmer has to take the grain that could be used for bread now, has to sow for the future, memory of the “harvest” enables the letting go of the “seed”

o Language of our experiences – we tell our stories, “what was that like? – metaphor, to the ineffable – the wordless/place of transformation/sit in silence/cry/joy, to the mystery….
• As people in our congregations tell their stories, tease out the metaphor, help them to stay with that for a while – if they are open to God’s presence, they will move to a place of kairos

o Movement – Brueggemann (slide 44) – OT paradigm Psalm 30 or 73… life, death, resurrection

o Eastern tradition of deification, the impossible/possible, God all in all as the spheres merge

o Kairotic moment of possibility that comes in crisis is very narrow – but through intentional movement of transformation and deliberately letting go creates a wider space for transformation.

Moltmann Conversation – Session 4 Justice

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

• War and Peace = 3 options 1) chance swords into Christian swords and become a dragon killer – the evil kingdom is oppressed, the axis of evil eliminated, etc. HCE option and atomic bombs into Christian atomic bombs; 2) leave the swords to the unbelievers – this is an option outside of the perfection of Christ, but the wars are going on and on and on; 3) change swords into plowshares and change war industry into an ecological industrial complex and this is is not to become a peaceable man but a peacemaking man – this would be my option to try to change swords into plowshares. Take swords out of the hands of the violent and make them into peace, because mankind will not survive with swords. For this we need a double strategy – communities which anticipate this peaceable kingdom and on the other hand communities who work for peacemaking in the world. We need peace-makers!

• The anticipation piece, with the piece of resistance- if we embrace hope we live in the peace of resistance. Interested in examples of where are the concrete practices/rhythms/values that we can live as we anticipate. Within the global social movement, resistance only takes us so far before people look for alternatives – where does the church create “landing places” for the future? These movements are not always Christian churches! But many Christians take part in these movements. Some of them are very effective – ie: the green party in Europe, they were an extraparliamentary opposition groups – they formed a party and were bringing the ecological questions to the public. After 20 years, we already see how they pressed these topics/questions of ecology into the other parties – so now they all talk about the environment; same with social justice in Germany – even in free market neo-liberal thought. Showing an alternative life was effective! Many people in Europe don’t join political parties anymore, because that is limited to a nation, while groups are global (like Doctors without Borders).

• Basic communities – different kind of home church – but they tend to embrace practices different from the system – how do they touch you? To live a community life in the slums – to show people how mutual help will bring them out of the misery. The contrary of poverty is is community – b/c in community we are rich in ideas, energies, we can help ourselves. Only the individualization, commercialism that makes people powerless. In community we are strong! Social justice should remind us of the first Christian congregation – Acts 4 – there was not a needy person among them, they had everything in common. This is a promise… but also a commandment in our churches. The church is alive when in the congregation there are communities – smaller groups live together. A lot of churches in Germany are only ½ filled – because you can’t enjoy the service, there is nothing to enjoy – there was a church in Tubingen that is overfilled every Sunday because they consist of smaller communities who meet in houses and work for issues on behalf of the poor, feeding the poor, etc, and then in the service, these groups say what they have done and each speak where they need help and a person who they engaged, etc. (WOW!) This is an old knowledge that a community exists of communities (Wesley class meetings?)

• American public theology has lost a lot of space – the church is relegated to the margins, personal spirituality. Public debate about justice is left to politicians/social services. We wonder in our congregations where is the place of the church? We try to take back some of this public conversation but it’s difficult because the public conversation about justice and goodness is not based on God but is secular. What kinds of vision do you have for the church in relation to that conversation (political theology)? 2 tasks for the church: diakonia – serve the poor and the sick and the homeless and the jobless; prophetic task to say to the powerful and the public “Look! To those who are in the shadows” and without the prophetic voice, the diakonic service would just be reparation and without the diakonic the prophetic would be shallow and empty. Words & deeds. Every person has this experience – if you visit a sick member in the hospital and they say, how nice is it that you are coming b/c my family has forgotten me, you will turn around and go to the family and ask why do you leave your family alone in that hospital?! Same is true for the church at large! We need the silent work and the prophetic voices. You cannot make this – prophets are called and sometimes against their will.

• When I read your work and the work you are asking us to engage into – living the prmise right now… are we becoming co-creators of the kingdom or is this something that we are just to expect to come and to happen? We prepare the way for the righteousness of God to come in our possibilities and our potentialities ,which are certainly limited. Otherwise the kingdom would be the kingdom of man and not of God, so we should have in minds the difference, even if we can and must anticipate the justice of the kingdom. 20th century was called the Christian century – but divided by the colonial powers of the west, and the abyss of WWI, the end of this belief in progress. Now this belief in progress is returning in this idea of globalization – finance/goods/products – this is approaching already with an impact on the environment so we have a globalization without the globe! We need a globalization of social justice, peace-making relationships

• Abu Ghirab – thought of Moltmann’s story and how he said the main thing that helped you follow Jesus was that you experienced so much grace at the hands of your captors – you went back to the camp where you were a prisoner… interested in tension between those two stories. Talk about grace and tragedy: I share with you the anxiety about what your own country can do to other people – it is terrible. We never expected this to happen from the hands of Americans. We had other experiences with Americans after the war in Germany when they started the Marshall plan and the care packages coming, so it’s more convincing to love your enemy than to hate and kill the enemy! So what happened in this prison and Iraq was outrageous and I cannot understand an administration that allows this to happen. But let me stop b/c I don’t want to interfere with your internal affairs – 20 years after the close of the camp I was in, we surviving inmates came together in the same place where nature had taken over the camps and we had worship outside under the oak trees and invited the camp commander to the meeting and he said he had never heard about prisoners who voluntarily came back to the place where they were imprisoned and praised God for what they had experienced! But that is what happened to them and it was a great and gracious gift of the Brit. Govt. and the YMCA to give the former enemies a new chance for life and we will never forget that . After WWI different story, but after WW2 we experienced only help to stand up, to get away from the ruins, to rebuild Germany – reinvented their country with the help of the English, Amerians and the French. This is a much wiser policy when you are against enemies.

• The sweeping up of you into the Hitler Youth and there are young people in other countries who are likewise getting swept up into these movements – any perspective on that? The resistance movements against the Hitler regime were strong in other places because the Germans were an occupation force – to form a resistance in your own people makes you an alien in your own people. To resist apartheid as a black man, was to resist on behalf of your people, but the whites who resisted became isolated in their own people and alienated from own families. This is much more difficult and painful – but one should not… in Germany after WW1 – patriotism was so strong that only a few could go into resistance against your own father – after a time of being alienated in this way – there is no fathership in dictatorship and tyranny! I said to myself when I returned home I will never serve in a german army again – but if I have the chance to kill the german dictator I will do it. I was committed to peace and killing the tyrant. I told this to Mennonites and they said “oh, that’s okay”