The “Inverse Theology” that is referenced is from Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno.

Also referenced is the popular blog from last month “Undercover Boss” by Stephen Keating 

Two things: #1 If you want to read an amazing response to Piper (via Rachel Held Evans) then check out HBC Deacon Austin Roberts’ response here:

#2 It might be far more profitable to avoid the whole Twitter/Facebook/Internet argument and read these women:

Elizabeth Johnson on She Who Is 

Sally McFague on Metaphorical Language about God 

Rosemary Radford Ruether on Sexism and God-Talk 

Ellen Leonard on Women and Christ

Monica A. Coleman on Making a Way Out of No Way

Naomi Goldenberg on the Changing of the Gods and the End of Traditional Religions 

Rita Nashima Brock on The Feminist Redemption of God (Christianity) 

Letty M. Russell on Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church

Jacquelyn Grant on Black Women’s Experience as a Source for Doing Theology 

In my opinion, that would be a fantastic spend of your time.    - Bo

You can watch the whole video on his page or Download the MP3 HERE for your iPod.

Here’s Chris’ summary of what we talk about….

Synopsis:
No more playing golf with Pharaoh, says Tripp Fuller – who’s convinced that if progressives would care less about being politically correct and more about the radical discipleship Jesus taught, then the North American Church would look much, much different. Here are my notes from the interview:

Filling the Gap
Tripp believes there’s a big gap for progressives to fill in American Christianity, where people are looking for a more moderate, inclusive, and less confrontational way of being in Christian community. He says if progressives can get over their laryngitis, the harvest is ready.

Therapeutic vs. Prophetic
We all want to be taken care of – and that makes taking care of others very tough. Tripp reminds us that Jesus didn’t come into the world to make us happy, but to do the prophetic work of reconciling the world to God.

Understanding Today’s Young Adults
Saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in school debt, economically forced to live far from home, today’s young people are more about time and talent than treasure. The church of the future will likely see less paid clergy and more lay ownership/involvement to make things work.

You can follow along and ask questions on Twitter at #EVTC where the main sessions will also be streamed live.

Some of you will be looking to download some last minute audiological goodness for your journey.
Here are some suggestions:

Philip Clayton was interviewed on Doug Pagitt’s radio show. Link is here [all of these are also available on I-tunes]

In the article Olson is trying to fight off criticisms from the ultra-reformed, or rabbid-Calvinist wing of the Evangelical camp. Folks like MacArthur, Piper, Driscoll, and Mohler – besides being continuously contentious – are always throwing around words like heresy and orthodoxy at folks like Olson, Rob Bell, and Brian McLaren (all former pod guests).

 Here is the thing: there is no Evangelical Orthodoxy

I love reading books like Revisioning Evangelical Theology by Stanley Grenz, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton, History of Evangelical Theology by Roger Olson.  I was part of the the Lussane gathering of young leaders in Malaysia. I was very vocal last summer that Evangelical is not only a political term but has deep theological implications and is inherently and historically theological (I used Bebbington’s 4 indicators) .

 But there are two things I think need to be clear:

I got a book called the Evangelical Catechism. It is a compilation of consensus beliefs from 200 leaders, pastors, and thinkers that were surveyed. I like the book – but that is not the same as a catechism! We have no Pope, no ability to call a council, no catechism … so we need to knock it off with the “Orthodox” insistence and throwing around the word  “heresy”. LOOK: there actually is an ‘Orthodox’ church and they think that  the likes of Driscoll, MacArthur, and Piper (as well as the rest of us) has lost their way!  *

1) There is no evangelical catechism and there is no evangelical orthodoxy!  I proposed earlier this week that a dynamic conversation is the best we can hope for (I am partial to the Wesleyan quadrilateral). Can we have consensus? Ok. Can we have conversation? Absolutely. Is there a governing body to enforce your brand of ‘orthodoxy’? NO – so knock it off. Get some new words in your vocab. Think of some other ways to say what you want to say and stop pretending like you believe only what the early church believed. It fantasy at best and delusion at worst.

2) You can’t kick me out of the family. We all have siblings that think we are off and even wrong. Some brothers don’t talk to each other for years … but they are still family. That is not what determines if you are a part of a family! It is not how it works. So snuggle up sister! We are in this together, like it or not, we have the same parent, we were birthed through the same water, and we have the same blood. We don’t have to agree on everything – but stop trying to kick me out of the ‘fam’ bro! We are in this for eternity.

Now I know someone will come along and say “I told you its a meaningless term” … but I want to say

Hey Mr. Jones – if you don’t want to be evangelical that is fine. But some of us call this family and it means a lot to us. If you are done with the term, fine. But to us it has deep meaning we still use it as a family name. If you don’t count yourself as a member anymore – that is your call. But stop telling us who are inside the conversation that Evangelical doesn’t mean anything. It does to us. 

We may not have a catechism or an actual orthodoxy, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t a  living branch on the family tree.

I also shared some thoughts about Christian unity and conformity on a TNT episode. 

* I appreciate the real Orthodox and have learned much from them.

In the Driscoll interview (he was going after the host because his wife is a pastor) he said something that is hugely troubling about its implications for the value of certain types of people. Driscoll was asking about how many young single men have come to Christ in the past year. Not how many people, but how many of them were men. Still not satisfied, he asked about what kind of men they were – were they strong men?

Do you see the sequence? (some might call it a pecking order)

He asked not about numbers of people who came to Christ, not about Church health or the British context (ie. implications of having a Church of England)

• How many were men … specifically young single men.
• Not men in general, but a specific type of man (strong)

Some may want to simply dismiss this as an eccentric fascination of an isolated mentality. I beg to differ.  I see this as a ongoing, if below the surface, mentality that is pervasive in the North American Protestant-Evangelical-Charismatic camp (also known as ‘my people’).

I have written recently that we may worship success more than any God – and I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about the fallout of the 20th centuries rejection of the Social Gospel or the inherent downside of anti-intellectualism that is still widely pervasive – what I am saying is that Driscoll’s views and Tebow’s fans are not an anomaly. They are the logical end expression of an underlying belief about who God is and how God works.

The Driscol-Tebow controversies are merely the public manifestation of an underlying theology surfacing in examples that bring to the public’s attention to what is always bubbling just below the surface – or behind the closed doors of the sanctuary.

The Gospel as it is configured in some quarters is surprising to those who are outside this stream. Does Jesus love everyone? Technically, yes. Is there a type of person that Jesus loves more … or a part of that person (soul, gender, etc.) that Jesus is more interested in?

If this concept is completely foreign to you – I may need to come at this a different way:

I had a chance to talk to a faithful saint who suffers from a chronic degenerative disease. She found a piece that I wrote about why we need to move away from old understandings about curses. She had undergone more than a decade of people ‘discerning in prayer’ that someone had placed a curse on her when she was younger and then attempting through intercession and deliverance to break the enemy’s power over her.

She was intrigued by my insistence that God was not picking and choosing who to intervene for and which situations to interfere in. She had heard last week’s interview with John Cobb where he said that we believe that God is doing in every situation all that God is able to do that in situation.

This is a radical assertion and a sharp departure from the common belief about how God can and does work in the world.

I told her about an old interview that Tripp did with Bruce Epperly where Tripp paraphrased him by saying “God does not hold out or run out”.   Think about the implications of those two statements:

In every situation God is doing everything that God is able to do

God does not hold out or run out

I love this view of God. Some people get really upset because God is not as powerful as the Zeus-Caesar (theos) character they have been told lives up in the heavens watching us all and intervening/interfering according to ‘His’ will. But we are actually saying that God is powerful – its just that God’s power is a different kind of power from the unilateral and coercive power that has classically been ascribed to the Divine Being.

In this past week’s TNT I said that I thought something really positive came out of the pushback we got from our cross-efforts with Rachel Held Evans and Kurt Willems. It became clear that Process-Relational thought really is saying something quite different than classical theologies based on Imperial assumptions and Greek metaphysics.

This is not a simple tweak of the existing system (like Open theology). This is not a program that you just download and install into your already in place operating system. It is not a patch that employ to get rid of the bugs and kinks in the classical program. Relational thought is a different operating system (to use the fun Mac v. Microsoft Windows analogy).

I am excited about the upcoming Theological Conversation Jan 31-Feb 2  between the Emergent Village and Process-Relational thought. I am not under the impression that P-R is for everyone or that many folks will ‘convert’. But I am hopeful that we can engage, in a significant way, the ongoing and persistent glitches that  (while they may rarely come to full blown Driscoll-Tebow levels) are perpetually just below the surface.

I like reading Linbeck.* I used to say that I love Lindbeck but I ran into two snags:

•  I had no idea what people did with Lindbeck. I did not realize that it often led to retreat into a neo-Catholic expression.
• I did not (and still do not) fully understand that there is some inherent wrinkle in his idea that language creates our religious experience that implies a one-way limitation of language – not allowing our experience to change language and that somehow limits God. Like I said, it is a philosophical wrinkle that is a bit technical for me.

Having said all that … 

What I am a big fan of is his critique of language. He has a riveting analysis of the way that religious language functions in our communities and personal experiences.  I was prone to like Lindbeck because of my deep appreciation for Nancey Murphy’s book “Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism”. I was primed for what Linbeck brings to the table.

To become religious–no less than to become culturally or linguistically competent–is to interiorize a set of skills by practice and training. One learns how to feel, act, and think in conformity with the religious tradition that is, in its inner structure, far richer and more subtle than can be explicitly articulated. The primary knowledge is not about the religion, nor is that the religion teaches such and such, but rather how to be religious in such and such ways. p. 35

Then I found out that saying you appreciate the post-Liberal approach is like saying you cheer for the New York Yankees in Boston. I get the concern with the descendants of Lindbeck’s work … but I am still suspicious that he is right about how language works in our faith communities.

Fast Forward: I was reading some stuff to get ready for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation and I stumbled onto a section of Whitehead’s thoughts on religious language.** I got to a section called “Doctrine and History”. After dealing with the fact that language does not have a one-to-one correlation and that all language thus requires interpretation, the author explains:

“The language of a tradition and the central doctrines that reflect and support that language are the prime turbulence of the particular mode of existence characterizing that tradition. Furthermore, as human existence is shaped in specialized ways during the course of history, experiences occur that are not possible to persons shaped by other traditions.”

I resonate with the idea that a person is shaped by the language one is groomed and conditioned by – and that would both empower and naturally shape the experiences that one has and the interpretation of those experiences … even (or especially) the religious experiences.

It just makes sense that because religious in a communal endeavor – one is always a part of a community that has a tradition and set of practices/beliefs – that it determines, at some level, both the types of experiences one has , can have and how one translates or interprets those experiences.

 This is a vital assertion for the 21st century! We no longer live in the monopoly of Christendom or the frameworks of the Colonial Era where one tradition imported and imposed foreign expectations and alien interpretations on another.

With works like “The invention of world religions” by Masuzawa  and “God is not One” by Prothero (among many others) we are entering a time in world history (and thus church history) where we need to come to terms with two things that both Lindbeck and Whitehead are pointing out:

• Language is both inherited and powerful in shaping our experiences and subsequent interpretations of those experiences.
• Language used in doctrines like ‘the Church’ and ‘Eucharist’ actually facilitate the ability to have certain experiences that are simply not available to those outside the community or language game. Practices like Yoga or Ramadan would be the same for those in different traditions. That is why North American Christians who do yoga are not having the same experience as those in India.

We live in an era where the realities of inter-religious education, cross-denominational communication and trans-national citizenship are going to challenge all of our inherited traditions and conceptual frameworks.

If we are unwilling to do so and insist on simply repeating the same rote answers week after week under the misguided impression that we are being faithful to the tradition … we are in danger of an irrelevance that leads not only to extinction but ultimately failure to accomplish our great commission.

* George Lindbeck wrote “The Nature of Doctrine” and along with Hans Frei (author of “Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative”) is credited with starting the Yale School of thought. One of the most famous proponents of which is Stanley Hauerwas famous for his books like  “Peaceable Kingdom” , “Resident Aliens” as well as other things.

** Alfred North Whitehead was a 20th century philosopher who is credited for helping to come up with what became Process-Relational thought.

• podcast with Dr. John Cobb
• Calvin blog with Rachel Held Evans
• Granny blog with Kurt Willems
• Paul Capetz on Calvin 
• Tony Jones blog on Prayer

It is a wild and woolly 30 minutes as they prepare for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation. You have two week to sign up and get yourself to Southern California.

p.s. it was 76 and sunny here yesterday*

* previous results do not guarantee future success  

I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.

Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!

Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God –  some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.

The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible. 

 I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.

Last week Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that comes out today, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.

There are three things about Job that need to be clear:

• It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).
• That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.
• Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.

So the BIble doesn’t teach this view of God and the history of the world does not reflect this view. God does not reward those who are faithful and put down those who are evil. The evil prosper and the righteous suffer as much as everyone under that evil. 

We have to stop with this superstitious system of rewards and benefits that treats God like God as some sort of cosmic Gum-ball Machine.  It is extremely hurtful and insulting.  The part that baffles me is how prominent the view is among evangelicals … who make bold claims about being based on the Bible and ‘being Biblical’.

This view of the interfering God who doles out blessing to ‘His’ favorites is a relic of the past that we must outgrow.

This antiquated, superstitious view needs to die on the Cross so that the God revealed in Christ can be resurrected for our time. 

In the past week people over at Tony Jones, Rachel Held Evans, and Kurt Willems have been asking prayer and the relationship between Process theology and Openness theology.  Well John Cobb is here for you!

Of course y’all sent in questions about other stuff too…Occupy Wall Street, Postmodernism, Economy, Ecology, and other theological goodies.  I (Tripp) did this interview in Cobb’s library so listening to it will be like my first time because in real time I was a very distracted FANIAC!

For other resources check out:

Our TNT podcast about why people should come to the Emergent Conversation.

Marjorie Suchocki’s entry level PDF is super helpful.

The schedule for the conference looks amazing!

Bruce Epperly’s podcast continues to generate conversation.

His book Process for the Perplexed is fantastic.

• We are not under the impression that everyone is on board with the Process thought 
• We love to hear from other perspectives at they illuminate, challenge and respond to this ongoing exchange.

I was reading something that other day that really excited me. It was a comparison of the existential approach of someone like Rudolf Butlmann and the “powerful and illuminating analysis of post-christian existence” with the approach of someone like A.N. Whitehead in his book “Religion in the Making”.
It was particularly this sentence which caught my attention:

Bultmann’s belief that through Jesus’ death and resurrection a change was effected in the human situation at the most fundamental level can be examined as a historic hypothesis without introducing any ad hoc notions of a unique act of God.*

Fairly straight forward stuff, but it piqued my interest enough to go back and make sure that I understood the whole section leading up to it. What is interesting is that just before the above quote is this little nugget:

In such a context (exploring distinctive Western structures) the role of such historical figures such as Buddha, Socrates, and Jesus can been seen a bringing new structures of existence into being.

“Whoa! Hold it right there! I like it when you say wonderful things about how great Jesus is … by why do you have to include those other people?” I can hear my conservative and evangelical friends saying.
This is not the only time I have seen something like this and had the same reaction. (God is not One by Stephen Prothero springs to mind). It can almost be framed in this simply rubric

• God is Great!
• Jesus is super.
• don’t elevate anyone else or Jesus won’t seem unique

I remember giving that original Homebrewed interview with John Cobb (ep. 38) to some friends and how uncomfortable they were (across the board) that Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and Siddhartha Gautama may have been as open to the will of God as Jesus was.
According to Cobb, what makes Jesus unique is not simply that he was so open to the call of God but what God had called him to. In my circles you have to tack Bible verses on to the end of every major point, so I referenced Romans 5 that what God did in Christ satisfied something in God and changed humanity’s relationship to God. Was that enough? That God did something unique in Jesus … or does there also have to be an absence of affirming what may have done in others?

The other night I was talking to a college student from a different continent. She asked me why there was so much confusion in religion and if it “was the work of the evil one?”. I tried to explain how religions grew up in relative isolation during a much simpler time and they were simply not equipped to handle the complex world we now find ourselves in nor are they meant (or even attempting to) answer each other’s questions. They are just not set up for it.

Religions developed in a simpler time and are not set up for a) this level of complexity or b) this much overlap. There is going to continue to be a need for work to be done within each religion and between the religions (or traditions/communities). What will be the Christian contribution?

We all agree that if there is God that God would by necessity be great! Even those who don’t think that the God of Abraham is Allah and Jesus’ Abba will agree with that. Almost everyone agrees that Jesus was extraordinary. Even those who are not so sure about the accuracy of the historical record will acknowledge his impact. But was Jesus unique? Can we affirm something great in other figures without diminishing him?

Unfortunately those who have inherited an unquestioned view developed in Christendom’s monopoly will just quote John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 as if that settles the matter. A pre-existent Christ came down in Jesus and that is all you need to know.
This is why I am so intrigued to have Process theology as conversation partner. I am excited to hear what John Cobb has to say on Thursday morning at the Emergent Theological Conversation when we talk about Pluralism. I have been reading a lot of Cobb and when talks about the way that God was present in Jesus … it makes more sense than anything else I have ever heard on the subject. I would be interest in your thoughts. How does your tradition handle this? What will the future hold in this arena? Is the Christian tradition capable of this give-and-take of the 21st century?

*p. 86 of Cobb’s book

Omnipotence:  A Compliment Jesus Wants You to Take Back

I (Tripp) have one important rule to guide my theological thinking: God has to at least be as loving as Jesus.
It seems rather obvious for a Christian, given our confession that Jesus was indeed the ‘image of the invisible God,’ but throughout church history, God, Jesus’ Abba, has been given a very theologically destructive compliment– namely that God is Omnipotent , All Powerful.

While this philosophical compliment is absent in Scripture, yet present throughout much theology, it was John Calvin that made God’s power the ultimate theological principle.  I used to be a Calvinist. I read Calvin’s Institutes in high school, used Charles Spurgeon sermons for devotions, and quoted Jonathan Edwards to my crazy Arminian friends in college.  Then I realized the God I had come to know in Christ was way too awesome for my Calvinist theology.  The theology was not simply off, but set against God’s nature, name, and essence being love.

This isn’t to say Calvinists aren’t Christians (or that I wasn’t when I was there theologically). I am simply saying that omnipotence is a theological compliment Jesus wants you to take back for four reason:

1. An omnipotent deity is responsible for the evil in the world.  When God can do whatever God wants to do, whenever God wants to do it, everything that happens is either the direct will of God or permitted by God.  Of course Calvin, in his obsession with making God uber-powerful, rejects the idea of God’s permissive will and keeps God as the prime actor in all actions.  That means God has willed genocide, murder, rape, cancer, abuse, and the torture of children.  When God is omnipotent, one can read history as the will of God, and history is way too full of evil, suffering, and violence to imagine it as revelatory of God’s will.  If God ever willed the violent death of an innocent child, then that God is not Jesus’ Abba or worthy of a Christian’s worship.

2. An omnipotent deity is not capable of genuine relationships or love.  Loving relationships require openness, vulnerability, risk, and genuine duration.  We  intuit this. For example, when two lovers consummate their marriage in a passionate act of sweet love-making, it is their freedom vulnerability, and willingness to risk that make their intercourse an act of love and not rape.  If one side of the relationship  is determined, it just isn’t a relationship.  I remember in my Calvinist past thinking that God elected me to love God, but being coerced  sounds much more like a relationship to a gangster than God. There’s a big difference between a puppet and a person, an object and a subject.  The God of Jesus created, sustains, and redeems people, children of God.

3. An omnipotent deity runs eternity like a tyrannical dictator.  “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Paul said that, and I think it makes perfect sense.  Of course, if Calvin is correct and God is actually the one in charge, then it becomes a bit odd…or flat our disgusting…to simultaneously think God elects people to suffer for all eternity for their sins.  That’s worse than me spanking my son for eating a cookie I made and gave to him.  This image of God is morally bankrupt and need not be defended.  Instead we could imagine God to be a Woman who seeks out each lost coin until it is found, or a faithful and patient Father waiting to throw a party for the return of his son.  These images sound like a God as loving as Jesus.

4.  An omnipotent deity builds crosses.  The cross and resurrection are the center piece of the faith.  The cross of Jesus was not simply a convenient way for Jesus to die so that God could raise him from the dead, but a symbol of Rome’s power.  Rome and only Rome built crosses and put people on them.  Jesus died with the power of empire inscribed on his cross-dead body.  It is that body that God raised from the dead, and it is the future of the Cross-dead Christ that we as Christians share. Yet for some reason, we so easily speak about God’s power as if God was being revealed in the building of crosses and not in their bearing. God’s self-revelation in Jesus was a rejection of the coercive, determining, and controlling power that the empires of this world love so much for the power of love.  Infinite divine love, the freedom it gives, the risks it takes and the possibilities it continuously creates offer an alternative ultimate theological principle for Christian theology and one I think coheres with the story of Jesus.

Process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once stated that, “When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers…. The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly…. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.”  

This observation rings true to me, but Caesar’s lawyers do not have to have the last word and Christian theology does not need to protect an idolatrous image of God anymore.

Process is a theology that has grown over the last 100 years from the philosophy of Mr. Whitehead. It is a global community (big in China and Europe) that engages both theory and practice with contemporary scholarship. For those who take it theologically, it is a way to address the Bible that is fully faithful to Jesus‘ vision, while integrating modern Biblical scholarship at every level.

The easiest access point for most is to say that because God IS love, then God’s very nature is loving, and so God’s use of power is not coercive – it is persuasive (almost seductive).

 So God is not omnipotent.

Secondly, God is omniscient in that God knows all there is to know – but the future is undetermined.

Thirdly, God is omnipresent in an even more radical way than traditionally thought.

Lastly, God is neither immutable nor impassable – those are concerns of early Greek thought and not from the Christian scripture.
So quit saying God is omnipotent.  Jesus was just too loving for that to stick.

To learn more about Process Theology, check out  Marjorie Suchocki’s short PDF intro (free), and Bruce Epperly’s book, Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed. 

___

Thank you all for the amazing conversation today – and even the push-back! This is the major development of our era over the previous centuries … the people of god in theological dialogue I want to make three general responses to some clear trends that have been displayed here:

1) Open Theology: folks are right (like Kurt Willems) to say that there is a significant distinction between Open and Process thought. Open is only/primarily concerned with the nature of the future. They hold that God reserves the right to do whatever God wants … its just that in love God has chosen to limit God’s self. It’s like God is just being nice but “He” doesn’t have to if “He” doesn’t want to.

Process make a clear philosophical assertion that God is not just self-limiting. God’s essence IS love and that is the determining criteria of interpretation.

Thomas Jay Oord does a great job at addressing Philippians 2: this beautiful poem that illustrates a wonderful truth and draws a dramatic picture of how we should BE in the world – like Christ.

2) Classic theology, Calvinism and Theodicy: I really like that folks have objections. They should. My only concerns are with the “we are making God in our image” and “ this is too philosophical” objections.

I want to clarify – Process doesn’t start with the problem of evil, it was just an access point for this format of conversation. If people look at their theology’s approach to scripture, its philosophical underpinnings, and its accounting for evil… If one holds to an approach of the past, sees it flaws, and says “I can live with that problem” – that is one thing. BUT if someone doesn’t see the in-congruence (and thus ‘there is no problem’) then THAT in itself is creating a 2nd problem.

I think that you would really enjoy looking into “Process Theology – an introduction” by Cobb and Griffin… especially pages 108-110 which deal with the Trinity.

Two things that I want to address are A) the baby and the bathwater B) making God in our own image.

I get what folks are saying. Here are a couple of things to consider:

A)  No one wants to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater … per se

• That analogy actually illustrates an interesting patriarchy/hierarchy. IT comes from and era when Dad bathed first, Mom and then the kids … to the point that by the time one got to the baby … the bathwater was SO filthy that It was actually possible to lose the baby in the dirty water and throw it out.
• We have indoor plumbing now. We take care of our babies. That proverb, that mentality, and that concern may need to be revised for the contemporary situation.

Theology is no different.

A) Making God is our own image: no one wants a God that is just a big version of themselves projected onto the screen of the heavens. This kind of anthropomorphic imagining has happened so often in history that there is a huge rubbish heap of Gods (Thor, Zeus, Rah, etc.) that folks have no time for anymore.

While we are not interested in making a god in our own image, we are in danger of making our concept of god just that irrelevant if we continue to use only frameworks from the 2nd – 16th century.

Process makes an important distinction between Primordial and Consequential nature of God (called the Di-Polar nature of God). This is an essential  element to engaging the huge concept and historic understanding that we are dealing with.

I would be interested in your response to this! – Bo

Rachel Held Evans put up Tripp’s blog about how God is not omnipotent

Our TNT podcast about why people should come to the Emergent Conversation this month is getting great feedback.

People are finding Marjorie Suchocki’s entry level PDF super helpful.

The schedule for the conference came together and looks amazing!

Bruce Epperly’s podcast with me continues to generate conversation.

I was reviewing his book Process for the Perplexed and found this quote that continues to rock me:

The world emerges from the dynamic interplay of flux and permanence, in which the eternal and unchanging finds its relevance through its relationship to the temporal and changing world, and the temporal and changing finds completion in its role as contributing to the ongoing universe, embraced by God’s everlasting and ever-expanding experience of the universe… God is not the exception to the dynamic nature of the universe, but rather the dynamic God-world relationship is the primary example of creaturely experience in its many expressions.

I am so excited that so many are open to having this dialogue about a faith that really a) works and b) makes sense.

 For those of you who don’t know her, Julie Clawson is the author of Everyday Justice, a pastor, blogger, Emergent leader and former podcast guest. She is one of the conversation partners at the upcoming Emergent Village Theological Conversation at the end of January. (www.ProcessTheology.org). Her blog is in my top 10. 

Background: I love going to the movies. As a student, I usually only go the theatre on Summer break (blockbuster action films + air-conditioning = awesome) and on Winter break (tired brain + Christmas money = fantastic).

Last week I saw two movies and was quite intrigued by a pattern that I noticed during the trailers: women being tough guys. The three trailers were for Underword: Awakening with Kate Beckinsdale, Haywire with Gina Carano (both action films) and The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher.

I have read enough feminist literature to know that there is a principle (which Thatcher made famous) that “In a man’s world …” a women often has to out ‘man’ the guys in order to break into the boys club and be taken seriously.

In a system where we have been socially conditioned to see certain behaviors and attributes as ‘leadership’ or ‘strength’ – or in the church as ‘anointing’ – then women must over-do it in order to overcome the intrinsic biases and gain credibility in a system geared to evaluate by masculine expectations. (people point to Joyce Meyer as a Christian example)

This is a real problem.

THEN I was reading your blog this week and you bring up the Lego Ads making their way around Facebook and tie it into both modesty and obesity. As a youth pastor I have read everything from Reviving Ophelia to Queen Bees and Wannabes ,that explains why girls treat each other the way that they do, and I recognize that there are deep underlying issues. Let’s be honest, these deep issues will not be solved by quoting some Bible verses or ‘going back to the way things were in the Bible’.

So here are my questions: 

1. What do we do with the karate-chopping drop-kicking gun-shooting heroines of violence on the silver screen these days? On one hand, it is nice to women getting these big-deal leading roles in major films… on the other hand, are they real portrayals of women-ness or is it the bad kind of mimicry -  like ‘Girls Gone Wild’ as a picture of sexual liberation or power.

Graphic Option TWO

I have been researching some famous takes on ‘the end’ (or ‘final things’) in preparation for an upcoming Theology Nerd Throwdown (TNT) about the resurrection and eschatology.

One of the reasons that I wanted to go back a re-visit this topic wasn’t just because we got several calls into the phone-in hotline (678-590-2739) – and not just because it is 2012 – but because my own eschatology has changed so radically in the past 10 years. So, I should probably put all my cards on the table before I interact with these legends. Two confessions:

• I do not believe that the book of Revelation is about the end of the world. I see it primarily as a political commentary on the first centuries (CE) utilizing an apocalyptic genre and therefore of little profit for purposes of this doctrine or for future-casting. Our hope come not from the book of Revelation but from the truth of Christ’s resurrection. 
• I was raised pre-millennial partial-dispensationalist, with amillenial charismatic leanings and an eye toward post-millennial expectations. My dad was a church historian and preacher so I know those camps’ strengths and weaknesses pretty well. I would obviously no longer frame the conversation the way that whole argument is constructed.

I find that in each of the following authors there something deeply attractive and then something a little troubling – some more troubling than others. Here then is my sampling of perspectives. I would welcome any feedback or new suggestions.

Irenaeus: this 2nd century writer was perhaps the first great postbiblical theologian  and he believed in a physical resurrection (Against Heresies, book 5, chapters 32-33, 36). You can see in his writings where we get most of our historical literal reading. He even believed that the new flesh would be identical to the old in which the saints would inherent the ‘new heavens and the new earth’.
The hesitation comes when he gets to this part where he is working with Matthew 26:27-29 where Christ promises not to drink of the fruit of the vine until the new kingdom. He is putting a lot of stock in the literalness of both the presence of grape vines as proof of  the physical nature of new creation and the assuredness of the resurrection because of the disciple’s presence for the drink.  There is a hermeneutic in place that I am just not sure anyone wants to assimilate in the 21st century.

Origen: this 3rd century writer has a spiritual take that stands in sharp contrast to the literalness of the Irenaeus. His doctrine is known as apokatastasis ton panton – the restitution of all things (On First Principles, book 3, chapter 6). I was prepared to like Origen – as I am a big fan of his on several other subjects.
I was not prepared however for his big leap! He puts so much stock in the idea of God being ‘all in all’ that he even goes as far as to say that there will be no more contrast between good and evil and this will be true for each individual person as well. He was definitely working with a model of ‘Mind-Body-Spirit’ that is ancient and I was not sure I wanted to go back to.

Augustine: this 5th century writer is perhaps the most famous writer on this subject (City of God, book 22, chapter 30). He helps us dream of perfect peace and promises rewards where “virtue will be the best and greatest of al possible prizes”. His is truly the stuff of bliss and delight.
I have several hesitation with Augustine, not least of which is the whole best of all imaginable worlds suspicion of human creation and limitation … but it is how he get there that is notable.

“There is a clear indication of this final sabbath if we take the seven ages of world history as being “days” and calculate in accordance with the data furnished by the Scriptures. The first age or day is that from Adam to the flood…”

We obviously live in the seventh day (of indeterminate length) before the 8th day of Sabbath rest. I’m assuming that I don’t need to elaborate why this antiquated mental construct and hermeneutic employed is problematic for the contemporary thinker.

Schleiermacher: This 19th century writer actually has a really healthy and vibrant reading (The Christian Faith) … but it is framed in a unique bracket. He begins by saying  (essentially) that the doctrine related to the consummation of the church is going to be different than other doctrines (like Christology) because so much of it is speculation and can not come from human experience. He makes a strong case for seeing prophetic pictures through the rules of art and an insistence on tracing everything back to the utterances of Christ. He points our the inherent limitations of conceiving of a future life by analogy with the present one. He is right about that! Too often talk of heaven is nothing more than a projection of the best of here. The glitch with this guy is that the minute you bring up his name in conjunction with experience you have a whole can of worms you have to deal with. 

 Bultmann: This 20th century writer stressed that our is essentially an eschatological religion that is not simply ethics or morality. He says “According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the eschatological event, the action of God by which God has set an end to the old world.” (History and Eschatology)
I like what Bultmann had to say. I mean REALLY liked it! But let’s be honest: unless you are going to get down with his whole existential-demythologized program … you are not going to be quoting a lot of Bultmann. He just comes with too much baggage. It seems to me that he is an all-or-nothing kind of resource.

Tillich: This 20th century giant runs his interpretation of the kingdom of God through his philosophy of history (The Protestant Era) making an important distinction between Kairos (fullness of time) from Chronos (measured time). I won’t review it here except to say that it is blazing awesome stuff and if you are prone to liking Tillich, then definitely check this out. He even explains how democracy, socialism, and anarchy are leftovers of religious utopia concepts. Tillich, however, is not for everyone – his heady and philosophically elaborate ideas are not entry level stuff. 

Pannenberg: I have never read anyone like Pannenberg. This 20th century writer accounts for the existentialist concepts of his peers while transcending their concerns and focusing on a real history and real future of the kingdom of God, not just internal personal experiences. I read a selection from The Idea of God and Human Freedom because I had just recently reread Theology and the Kingdom of God. Tripp is a big fan of Wolfhart P. so I will not take too much time here as I am sure that we talk about this plenty in the TNT.  I will just pass along this quote:

“In my opinion this is to misunderstand the meaning of the eschatological prophecies of the future. They are of course concerned with the real future, but in a different sense from predictions on the basis of natural laws, forecasts of political developments or the intuitive foreknowledge of contingent future events. The eschatological prophecies of the future formulate the conditions of the final realization of man’s humanity as a consequence of the establishment of the righteousness of God, which is essential to man’s being as such.”

You can see that it is thick reading with nuanced distinctions… but I love his insistence on a real historical expression while accounting for the abstract-conceptual concerns of the existentialists.

I am excited to talk with Tripp about Marjorie Suchocki’s process idea of being taken back into God and our experience being remembered in God and being free to experience the fullest of God’s presence for eternity – as well as N.T. Wright’s concept of  “the world being put to rights” that is so popular right now, as well a little Jurgen Multmann to make our good friend Tony Jones happy.

If you haven’t signed up for the conference yet, it is not too late! You have a month get your tickets and get to Southern California where it will be 86 degrees and sunny today.  Go to http://www.processtheology.org/

Here are the top 11 blogs of Homebrewed Christianity in 2011  :

1. Theology Nerd Book Survey 

2. That’s “Too Gay” – Brian Ammons’ Banned Chapter from Baptimergent

3. Your First Steps into Biblical Universalism…

4. 31 Reasons I Left Evangelicalism and Became a Progressive But Not a Liberal by Michael Camp

5. God Takes Sides….or When Karl Barth Was Right

6. Defining the Secular: Charles Taylor (pt. 3) by Deacon Hall

7. Rob Bell Wins 

8. The classic ‘Footprints in the Sand’ poem revisited

9. Are you a Bellian or Piperian?

10. a big difference between Christianity and Islam 

11. Goosing Emergents into the Mainline

Thank you all for your amazing participation and feedback – that was a wonderful year of conversation and theological brewing!

Let us know if you had a favorite that didn’t make the list.

From Chad, Tripp, and Bo – thanks for a great year, Brew On!  and don’t forget to share the brew.

As we get ready for 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation – which will feature conversation partners like Epperly – I wanted to highlight 3 recent connecting points with his work.

Doug Pagitt Radio Show (hour 2)  - also available on I-tunes

Blog about the Incarnation over at Patheos

A quote from his book “Process Theology: a guide for the perplexed”

The world emerges from the dynamic interplay of flux and permanence, in which the eternal and unchanging finds its relevance through its relationship to the temporal and changing world, and the temporal and changing finds completion in its role as contributing to the ongoing universe, embraced by God’s everlasting and ever-expanding experience of the universe… God is not the exception to the dynamic nature of the universe but rather the dynamic God-world relationship is the primary example of creaturely experience in its many expressions. – p 21

I find Dr. Epperly’s thinking and writing to be so accessible and helpful for really wading into a thoughtful engagement.

Two other points of interest: 

You can get Doug Pagitt’s books – like Church in the Inventive Age – on Kindle instantly if you need a book for the plane flight home this holiday season.

My mentor Randy Woodley was on Doug’s show for Thanksgiving to talk about Native American theological and historical perspectives. It was a fantastic 46  minute interview

a thought from the blog listed above:

…God is present in every moment of experience as the source of possibilities and the energy to embody these possibilities in everyday life. Accordingly, we are all, in varying degrees, incarnations of divine wisdom and creativity. The greater openness toward God’s presence in our lives, the more God can be present, guiding, energizing, and inspiring our lives.  Jesus’ uniqueness is not to be found in an absolute discontinuity between God’s presence in his life and God’s presence in our lives, but in the nature and intensity of God’s presence in Jesus’ life.

Most important of all Christian put together a killer collection of thinkers, writers, and ministers to answer a some dangerous and banned questions about Jesus…the kind of questions in which the asking and the answering can be costly.  Each author had just a few paragraphs to answer the question and they did so right next to others so the reader can compare, contrast, yell, and go ‘hmm.’  Not only was Christian wise enough to ask Tripp about Jesus’ sexual fantasias but he also brought some ‘A’ game to the podcast.  Hope you enjoy the conversation!

Don’t forget to sign-up for the Emergent Village Theological Conversation coming up in sunny SoCal Jan 31-Feb 2.  Remember to put ‘Deacon Wine Tour’ in the referral box if you want to join the fun.  If you already signed up and want to come just email me.

Register for the conference at ProcessTheology.org - find the reading list [here] – order Process for the Perplexed by Bruce Epperly and get ready to engage philosophers, theologians, practitioners and church leaders in an amazing set of conversations!

If you want to listen to more podcast about Process, here are 3:

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Process with Bruce Epperly

Intro to Process Thought with Robert Mesle

An Emerging, Progressive, and Relational Vision of Faith with Bruce Epperly

I understand people’s reaction to his abrasive, condescending, and bombastic style. His attacks on religion were vicious behind his stunning wit and comprehensive recall of material.

Those who were big critics of his rightly pointed out that he was in some sense just a reverse fundamentalist. He had conceded that the God of Jerry Falwell, the suicide bombers, and Israeli occupation was the God up for debate and he simply didn’t believe in that God.

Here is the thing: I don’t believe in that god either! Hitchens helped me by rabidly critiquing that false god of Empire and cutting open the giant bloated carcass of Christendom with razor-sharp clarity. 

This morning Julie Clawson tweeted

“To everyone posting “Hitchens no longer exists – God”, 1- I doubt that’s actually your theology. 2- It’s not witty or cute, just jerky”

and she is right.  How could any believer think that he no longer exists? That is just a stupid thing to say! Of course Hitchens still exists – he just doesn’t have a body anymore. What are we physicalists now?  Its that kind of unthinking that he was pointing out.

The real question is where does he exist now?  The fundamentalist he hated so much would say that he went straight to hell. That of course is ridiculous and completely not Biblical. In that framework there is a holding area (like Abraham’s Bosom) and then the Great White Throne Judgement.

The ‘all we are is dust in the wind‘ crowd thinks that this is the end of the story and the he lives on in legacy and memories.

The Love Wins crowd thinks that he is with God and they are having a little talk about ultimate reality and some other fun stuff. I like the imagery of reconciling souls.

That will all take care of itself but one thing I am sure of is that Hitchens helped me think through some crazy crap I had inherited and some messed up ways of thinking that had been passed down to me. He unintentionally challenged me to streamline my faith by stripping away gobs of baggage that has gotten attached to the simple Galilean vision.

For that, I am thankful for Hitchens. I obvious don’t believe what he believed. But his critique of the established order with its crumbling foundation and rotting rafters was something that propelled me to re-think my approach to some pretty central issues.

Tim Tebow is a phenomenon is the media these days. His Denver Broncos football team is on a 6 game winning streak and he is 7-1 as their starting Quaterback. Despite his apparent limitations (skills) he has orchestrated a series of amazing comebacks during the winning streak.  That is a big deal! Any fan would love to have their team on this kind of a roller coaster – come from behind – frenzy.

That, however, is not what makes this news.

This past week the Broncos beat my beloved Chicago Bears in overtime after a miraculous set of circumstances turned the game around in the 4th quarter. The Tebow’s teammate picks up the story there: 

“Tebow came to me and said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ because God has spoken to him,” Woodyard told The Denver Post this week.

It was Woodyard who then stripped Bears running back Marion Barber to hand the football — and the game — back to Denver.

For Tebow, just another day at the office.

“I believe in a big God and special things can happen,” he said, after he erased a 10-0 deficit against Chicago in the final 2:08 of regulation. “It’s not necessarily prophesying, but sometimes you can feel God has a big plan.”

Woodyard, for one, has no lingering doubts: “For all the Tebow haters: You better start believing.”

I want to be clear this before I say anything else: I am not hating Tebow. In fact, I like him. I like how he uses his summers to serve needy people in other countries. I like that he works so hard. I like that he is unorthodox in his throwing motion and scrabbling technique. I like that he is so sincere and transparent about his faith.

Some people get upset that he is always cramming his faith in their face. That is not what concerns me. It is his brand of faith that concerns me.

I have been very forthright that A) this is the camp of evangelical-charismatic zeal that I was raised in and emerged from B) that the epistemology behind ‘hearing from God’ … and the interventionist assumptions behind a ‘super’ natural worldview are antiquated relics of a pre-modern understanding and are untenable in the 21st century. If you want a more nuanced explanation, listen to “Pentecost for Progressives” [here] - starting in  minute 55 OR read the summary [here].  

This is the season of Advent and we do tell the story of God speaking to Mary. That is not what I am contesting. 

I try to never-ever play this next card… but the cards that I have been dealt has forced my hand:

Are you under the impression that God cares who wins a football game and intervenes to bring it about but doesn’t care enough about the thousands of children who are starving to do something about it?

Are you telling me that god knows but doesn’t care, or that God cares but doesn’t know, or that god could do something but won’t or that god would do something but can’t?

Look, I am not an either-or guy. I hate binaries, dualisms, and us vs. them mentalities. But when someone says that this is how God is… sometimes it forces you to say that I believe this God to be a false creation of human imagination – nothing more than an athropomophic projection.  

______

Three things for clarification:

1. I could be wrong. He keeps winning and people say ‘If Joel Osteen wasn’t doing something right, he wouldn’t have 37,000 people who go to his church.”  In America, success = correct.
2. The Calvinists could be right. God chooses whom ‘He’ wants to. I don’t want to be one of those people who say “If God is not the way I believe they-she-he  is, the I am not going to worship them-her-him.” I will worship God no matter what way God turns out to be… but I happen to really like the Jesus of the 4 canonical gospels… just sayin’.
3. Tim Tebow himself has hinted in the past that he does not believe in an interventionist god. Bob Costas alluded to this to in his amazing speech.  It’s not Tebow that concern me – its Tebow’s fans.

They wander through theological frameworks, eschatological expectations and process potential for a greater engagement.

Translation: Tripp sings and then they talk about the meaning of the song … along with the week’s news through a theological lens.

Marc Ellis is widely regarded as a prophetic voice and an original thinker. He is a Professor of History at Baylor University and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. He has authored many books including:

• Encountering the Jewish Future
• Judiasm does not equal Israel: the Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic  
• Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology
• Practicing Exile 

He is also under a cloud of controversy right now! Please go to this website:  https://www.change.org/petitions/ken-starr-president-of-baylor-university-stop-persecution-against-prof-marc-ellis and sign the petition to protect his job and his right to speak freely! 

In the Clayton Crockett podcast (Radical Theology), many names come to the surface. Who do you think had the greatest impact of the 20th Century theologians that were named (or another who was not)

you can pick 2 if you must .  Feel free to  leave a comment and let me know of any oversights!

Clayton Crockett is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. His work focuses on postmodern theology, Continental philosophy of religion, psychoanalytic theory and theoretical issues concerning religion and politics.

In the 1960s, the strict opposition between the religious and the secular began to break down, blurring the distinction between political philosophy and political theology. This collapse contributed to the decline of modern liberalism, which supported a neutral, value-free space for capitalism. It also deeply unsettled political, religious, and philosophical realms, forced to confront the conceptual stakes of a return to religion. (from the book description)

In this conversation with Tripp Fuller, politics, history and religion are evaluated from thoroughly theological lens. His book  Radical Political Theology : Religion and Politics after Liberalism is available from Amazon in hardcover and Kindle editions.

Don’t forget to sign up for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation in Claremont, CA January 31-February 2.