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]

a quick follow up to the post earlier this week

 I wanted to thank everyone who gave feedback on the Four Locations of Theology in the 21st century post from earlier this week. I appreciate the comments here, on facebook, and the emails.  It has given me a lot to think about and I wanted to clarify three themes that have emerged.

Three clarifications:

• Reason seems to be the suspicious quadrant. Every time I bring up quadrilateral, more than half of the conversation will be centered on reason. This week was no exception. Reason draws the most concern – which is funny to me because tradition is the one that I find most suspect.

Here is the thing I would want to clarify: the other 3 themes of Scripture, Tradition and Experience all have reason woven into them. Those who wrote the scriptures, those who established the tradition and even our won experience are all saturated with reason. It is inescapable. The scriptures did not fall from the sky! They passed through the author’s minds and were processed with reason. Same with tradition. The creeds were not divined in some sort of supernatural ceremony. The were constructed and reasoned. Our experiences are interpreted utilizing our filters, frameworks and lenses.

 It seems important then to clarify that those three are not independent of reason but are dynamically intertwined with it. It would be useless to take out reason (as some have suggested) because it interlinked and inescapable. 

•  It may be that the quad needs something else. Some suggested replacing one of the 4 elements with an alternative. My favorite idea came from my friend Raphael who said

 “I suggest we add a fifth source for the practice of theology in the 21st century: Imagination!”

Admittedly, it would no longer be a quad! but I think that the tradeoff is that you would get adventure and zest incorporated and not just a static, conserving, or historical product.

•  There are no guarantees. Even if we could all agree to utilize the quad for the theological endeavor, there is no guarantee that we would all come up with some thing or come out with the same conclusions. This seems to be a major concern – that we can not ensure the outcome of such an endeavor.

I am surprised at the conserving nature of such mentalities! People are ok to ‘go on the journey’ as long as we predictably end up basically where we started.

Think all you want. Explore new thoughts and incorporate science … just don’t stray too far from the foundations of antiquity!  Integrate new realities and account for ongoing historical developments … just make sure that you end up with the same thing we started with.

I have not overstated this hesitancy and resistance. But the reality is that there are no guarantees. You may start out an Evangelical and end up being an Emergent type working in a Mainline church with Process theology as your main conversation partner!  (for instance)

 In summary: 

1. You can’t get rid of reason, it is already present in the other three. Scripture, Tradition and Experience are inextricably laced with it.
2. The quad may need a little something extra. The 21st century may require some zest, adventure and imagination
3. There are no guarantees. While we want to honor the historical expression and provide continuity with the trajectory … it might look a little different and think a little different than it did in the 3rd or 17th century.

Thanks for all your feedback, thoughts, and concerns. I appreciate the conversation.

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.

Tony Jones gave a little pushback to Daniel Kirk (a recent guest on Homebrewed) about homosexuality and the Apostle Paul. Both Paul and homosexuality are hot topics right now so the discussion was vibrant.

Kirk is clear about those infamous Old Testament ‘clobber’ passages but is a little more allusive when it comes to the New Testament. He pulls what appears to be equivalent to an ‘argument from silence’ saying that Jesus would have commented on it if he wasn’t OK with the dominant view of his day. Tony makes this argument:

Apply that logic to any number of other moral or ethical issues, and I’ll bet that Kirk and his fellow evangelical biblical scholars don’t agree. For instance, Jesus was silent about:

• Slavery
• Abortion
• The death penalty
• Corporal punishment
• Racism
• Rape

I could go on. Does that mean that we should argue that Jesus was implicitly endorsing each of these? Of course not.

The same line of reasoning has been showing up over and over again in blogs written by women about issues of church leadership, image-beauty, and marriage.

 It is tough to argue about what the Bible doesn’t say. 

I actually try to pull this off in the latest TNT (Eschatology and Resurrection) when it comes to reading the Old Testament. I use the story of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19) and point out that there is a noticeable lack of commentary in so many places in the Bible. In that Genesis 19 narrative it never says “and what they did was wrong” or “and they should not have done that”.   It just tells the story.

I compare this to the Canaanite conquest when the Israelites come out of slavery, violence, and oppression – into a new land – and then become violent and oppressive to the inhabitants. It reads to me like a cautionary tale about groups who escape violent oppression and come into a new area will always think that A) God is on their side (which is different than saying ‘God is with them‘  B) God has prepared the land especially  for them C) that God wants them to kill the current residents

 I got this idea of the cautionary tale from a book called Native and Christian - specifically two essays entitled The Old Testament of Native America by Steve Charleston and Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians by Robert Allen Warrior.

These three topics: homosexuality, women’s roles in church & home, and religious violence are not just arguments from history … they are on our doorstep knocking angrily everyday of the 21st century. They also share something else in common: the make arguments from silence about what is not in the Bible.

Here is where it gets even stickier. I was reading an old article by Roger Olson (also a former podcast guest) from Christianity Today 10 years ago. He was illustrating how American Christianity came to be and specifically the influence that the 1800’s had on our contemporary situation.

I also stumbled into Tad Delay’s blog about American Populism in early American religion, dealing with The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch. Tad explains :

The language of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” a sinners prayer for salvation, and a strong emphasis on unschooled individuals reading the Bible without need for rigorous theology came out of this period. Those with any training or expertise were openly spoken of as the enemy. The most flamboyant and charismatic circuit preacher garnered fame- which was certainly a goal of many- but to be charismatic, you had to convince the hearers that the message was simple. So, the message became very simple.

And this is where I get really nervous. A plain & simple reading of the Bible is one thing – a surface understanding I am always encountering and navigating. That is one thing. But arguments about what God didn’t say and what is not in the Bible are complex and nuanced. Our popular simplistic impulse leaves us in a pickle – one that I am not sure we  commonly have the tools to get out of and one that leaves us with an increasingly irrelevant message that our young people simply walk away from.

If everything needs to be understandable to anyone … we might be in trouble when it comes to reading the Bible in 21st century.

During the American Academy of Religion a herd of theology nerds gathered in the home of Mark Scandrette – Jesus Dojo extraordinaire – for some live Homebrewed Christianity podcast fun.  Daniel Kirk (New Testament Prof at Fuller Theological Seminary) and Philip Clayton (Philosophical Theologian and Dean of Claremont School of Theology) were our featured contributors but the crowd Deacons who gathered made the entire experience a blast. On top of the podcast we all enjoyed the wonderful food provided by the Scandrette family, the huge bottle of Bullet Bourbon from Rebekah, 3 amazing homebrews from Kirk, and some great questions at the end. 

We hope you enjoy the live brew.  If you dig it you should make plans to join us February 12 at Claremont for John Caputo going 3-D or holla about hosting a show in your own home\bar\church.

If you are wise….and of course you are…you should get Kirk’s new book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? and Phil’s freshest The Predicament of Belief. 

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.

• 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  

Overall, the relation is friendly, supportive, and overlapping. Of course, there are differences and disagreements. I think the difference is primarily that of the context and constituency of the two theologies. The disagreements reflect those differences.

Openness theology is the outgrowth of the experience and reflection of thoughtful and sensitive members of the conservative evangelical community. They have seen that some of the doctrines that this community has inherited are not consonant with either Christian experience or the Bible, and they have undertaken to modify them. They do not see this modification as in any way contrary to evangelical faith, and it is important to them that that the changes they are making are in no way a compromise with secular culture.

Process theology has attracted some people who had reacted strongly against conservative forms of Christianity. They are often people who have wondered, both for intellectual and existential reasons, whether they could believe in God at all. Some have reacted against the way the Bible has been imposed as an arbitray, external authority. Some trust philosophical reflection more than the theological tradition, and some are more interested in coherence with contemporary science than with orthodox theology.

What is remarkable is how close these two movements have come in the content of their affirmations! Both reject the impassive, nonrelational God of traditional philosophical theology. Both reject the idea that everything that happens is a direct expression of God’s will. Both strongly affirm human freedom and responsibility. Both emphasize the goodness and graciousness of God, putting love central among God’s attributes.

Openness theologians argue for these views scripturally, and process theologians do so philosophically. But this difference is far from total. Openness theologians are interested in the reasonableness of their beliefs, and Christian process theologians are interested in their faithfulness to the basic message of scripture. Since the lines are not sharply drawn, there are those who feel comfortable in both communities.

One doctrine on which a fairly clear line of disagreement can be drawn is on divine power. Although the two groups largely agree on how that power actually operates in the world, it is important to those rooted in the evangelical community to affirm that God’s giving us freedom and responsibility is a voluntary divine decision. God’s power is such that God could control everything, but God chooses to limit the exercise of that power so as to make room for creaturely freedom.

Process theologians reject this solution on three grounds. One is the problem of evil. If God could have stopped the Holocaust and failed to do so in order to honor the freedom of the Nazis, we find God’s judgment highly questionable. The second is the nature of divine power. We believe that divine power is not coercive power but empowering, liberating, and persuasive power. The exercise of divine power enhances the power of the creatures. It does not remove it. The third is the nature of being as such. To be, in our view, is to have power. God could not have created powerless creatures because the idea of powerless creatures does not make sense. To create is to share power with creatures.

This is not the place to pursue the debate. Nor should this disagreement block friendly cooperation and mutual respect between the two groups. Indeed, there is no reason that Christians should not identify in a general way, at least, with both.

We who are Christian process theologians and do care greatly about the relation of our affirmations to the Christian scriptures are particularly gratified by the development of openness theology. Whereas we have recognized that in our reading of the texts we could be accused of bias and even eisegesis, the very similar reading of the texts by openness theologians is reassuring. We can claim scriptural support for many of our views with greater confidence.

There is a recent book that grew out of conferences we have held in Claremont with openness theologians. It is called “Searching for an Adequate God.” Clark Pinnock did most of the work on putting these essays together and deserves 95% of the credit. To my embarrassment, by insisting on putting my name first among the editors, he has given the impression that I made a major contribution. But it is a fine book, and I am proud to be associated with it.

* Check Out Cobb Answer More Questions HERE Monthly….Submit Your Own

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

 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.

For those who don’t read atheist political philosophy…Paul is back, popular, and getting all sorts of attention.  In our conversation we play out a number of these Pauline insights and then tackle a bunch of questions being asked in the church today.  If you are interested in the philosophical discussion there is no better place to begin than St. Paul Among the Philosophers which is introduced and edited by Jack Caputo.  It includes chapters by Zizek and Badiou (philosophers) and then responses form Christian scholars from across the disciplines.

Stuff We Discuss…Paul, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Pete’s new book, Hakim Bey’s temporary autonomous zones, Kester Brewin, Occupy Wall Street condoms and T-Shirts, the Crisis of Capitalism, Red Letter Christianity, the End of History, Identity Politics, Missional Progressive Christianity, why we aren’t ‘making disciples’ in church, and if the church should still gather after the Death of the Big Other God.

Since this was recorded live in a room with a Keg of Dale Brothers Beer there are the occasional bumps from me pumping the keg. I put some soft jams underneath to help cut down the noise from the note taking audience.

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.

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

One of my good friends taught an undergrad course on feminism in religion several years ago and assigned a book of John Cobb‘s.  The class read it, loved it, and began a conversation about whether or not men could be feminists.  They decided that they could and that John Cobb surely must be a feminist.  And so they sent him one of the “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts, which he happily received and reportedly still has to this day.  I tell this story not only to demonstrate that John Cobb is a feminist and cares deeply about feminist issues, but also as a way of pointing out that the process theology that Cobb has been so instrumental in developing and that has become his academic trademark is itself strongly supportive of and compatible with feminist thought.

At Claremont I and several of my friends have become the “ambassadors” of process theology among our classmates, often defending it above theological accounts we find much less compelling and sometimes downright unhealthy.  And so I want to take this space to present briefly the reasons for which I find process theology deeply compatible with feminist thought.  My aim is not necessarily to win any process “converts” (though that would be lovely), but merely to elucidate why I see process theology as a healthy, promising, and extremely compelling form of theology.

1.  Process theology views God’s power as collaborative, not coercive. 

Discarding the dominant view of power as power over some other subject, process thought adopts instead an understanding of power as power with another subject.  God does not coerce the world, but rather attempts at persuading the world through God’s patient and loving call.  Humans then have the freedom in each moment of their lives to respond to God’s call or not.  The reason process thinking is able to present this altered understanding of divine power is because it see’s God’s power as necessarily limited (not self-limited, but inherently limited).  While lots of people don’t like this and see it is a weakened form of God, process theology holds the idea of God’s collaborative power as far more worthy of worship than a God who acts unilaterally in the world through coercive force.  I see this reconceptualization of God’s power as compatible with feminist thought because it breaks down deleterious power relations that promote the power of the one over the many, offering instead the opportunity to be collaborators in the on-going creation of the world.  God’s collaborative power promotes justice, equality, and the value of human life.

2.  Process theology values difference and understands God as valuing difference. 

Integral to process thought is the idea that difference and diversity in the world create contrasts that lead to higher valuations of the world and increased production of a creative and diverse future.  These contrasts can be positive and not solely negative contrasts, so that difference is not judged negatively but as something to be valued and as something that contributes to the promotion of goodness in the world.  This difference that is valued includes gender difference, sexual difference, racial and ethnic difference, cultural difference, etc.  While God seeks to bring this divergent world together in order to work collaboratively toward a better future, process theology does not see this as a unification that glosses over or erases difference.  Rather, it is difference itself that creates the contrasts that move the world forward in creativity and diversity.

3.  Process theology is inherently relational.

Process thought conceives life as comprised of moments (or events) that are related to other concurrent moments, as well as to all moments of the past.  In this way, process theology holds interconnectedness or relationality to be one of its vital principles.  When we think about this on a more abstract level than that of individual moments, this means that each human life and indeed each “thing” in the world are in some way interconnected (and God’s self is deeply relational).  Aside from aligning itself with feminist thought just on the grounds of relationality, I think the implications of process theology’s interconnectedness further touch on deeply feminist issues.  One of the most important implications of the world’s inter-relatedness comes in the form of eco-justice or environmental ethics.  If we are all in relation with one another and in relation with the environment in ways we cannot even consciously acknowledge, then it behooves us to care for the earth in ways we currently are not.  The ethical mandates of such relationality then encourage us to care (preferentially) for those women in developing countries who are most affected by global warming and ecological crises.  To deny this care is to deny the ways in which our lives impinge upon one another and to deny that action toward which God calls us through God’s own relation to the world.

These are (briefly) the three most significant ways in which I see process theology as compatible with feminist thought and as deeply promising as a means of theological reflection.  If you want to read up on process theology, I highly recommend Marjorie Suchocki’s God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, as well as John Cobb’sA Christian Natural Theology.  Also, look for a future book on feminism and process theology to come out soon, edited by Monica Coleman, Nancy Howell, and Helene Russell.

__________

If you want to hear more  about integrating these ideas SIGN UP FOR THE CONFERENCE at the end of January and be a part of the conversation!!!! 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827205295/?tag=homebrechrist-20

leanings.  This comes out of a really sweet commentary on Romans he wrote with David Lull which is well worth checking out.  Now enjoy discovering how Whiteheadian Paul was.

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about how my philosophical theology has influenced my interpretation of Romans. In my opinion, everyone is influenced in all their thinking by what they understand to be real. But since relatively few, these days, even relatively few philosophers, discuss metaphysics, or recognize this level of reflection, the influence is largely unconscious and therefore uncriticized. I owe to Whitehead and Hartshorne the fact that I think a good deal about this question. I need very briefly to explain the difference between the way I understand reality and the way that most people today, especially as heirs of the Enlightenment, assume it to be.

Most people think that their access to a world other than their own experience is through their sense organs. They focus especially on what they see and what they feel through touch. For practical purposes this gives them a world of solid objects that are colored. If they have studied some epistemology, they may agree that in fact what is given is only a phenomenal world. In either case, whether sensa or material objects, the entities making up the world are mutually external. It is widely assumed that no two things can occupy the same space at the same time.

These assumptions underlie the political and economic thought of the Enlightenment as well as its natural science. They have made any real concept of “community” difficult. They have made a coherent interpretation of quantum physics impossible.

I have been persuaded that another understanding of reality is better. This begins with an analysis of a moment of human experience itself. This is an event, rather than a sense datum or an empirical object. Instead of trying to understand this event as a product of objects in motion, this approach proposes the hypothesis that the world as a whole is composed of events and that in their most basic structure they resemble human experiences.

The analysis of the basic structure of a moment of human experience is in terms of its relationships to other events. Most of the content of one moment of experience comes from the influence, the flowing in, of past experiences. Much of the remainder comes from new stimuli derived from the body, especially through the brain. These mediate the influence of events outside the body, especially through the sense organs. There may also be some influences from outside the body, especially other human experiences, whose effects in experience are more direct and immediate. And in the theistic vision of Whitehead, there are also novel possibilities for the self-constitution of the new experience that express the inflowing of God into the occasion of experience.

The references to the body and its sense organs can be generalized only to other vertebrate animals. But the general point, that the presently occurring event is constituted by the inflowing of other events can be generalized much further. Hence, in this view, the real things that make up the world are not mutually external individual objects; instead, they are events constituted by the new unification of other events. In Whitehead’s terms, events are not “simply located.” Each event includes other events. A human experience is largely constituted by its relations to others. It is social through and through. The same is true of a quantum of energy.

What does this have to do with the interpretation of Paul? Quite a lot, I think. Of course, I am not claiming that Paul held to just the same view of reality to which David and I hold. But I do believe that when Paul has been read through the eyes of the dominant understanding, much of the richness of his thought has been obscured. I believe that when one is open to believing that entities interpenetrate one another, much that he says can be affirmed more seriously, and, indeed, more straightforwardly.

Speaking of those in the communities of believers, Paul said that we are members one of another, that together we constitute one body, and that this is the body of Christ. As long as we think of ourselves as bounded individuals, fundamentally external to one another, connected through contracts or common interests, this language can not be taken very seriously. On the other hand, if we understand that we are fundamentally constituted by our relations with one another and with a past that includes the Christ event, the language makes much more sense.

I have been embarrassed throughout my career by my extreme limitation with respect to languages, and especially the biblical languages. Prior to this opportunity to work closely with a New Testament scholar in the interpretation of a text, I have been quite hesitant to make pronouncements about the meaning of scripture. However, given my biases, in my Christology, I did dare to pick up on Schweitzer’s idea that Paul thought of a spiritual field of force emanating from the Christ event. I dropped the word “spiritual,” since in my understanding such a field of force emanates from every event and is at once both physical and spiritual. It consists in all those events that in some measure internalize the one in question. Every historical event affects all the events in its future. Given this metaphysical view, it is easy to assert that some events, such as the Christ event, have had a far greater field of force than most others, that the church serves continuously to renew, re-form, and channel this field of force, that the decision to orient oneself in terms of that field of force rather than others increases its efficacy in one’s life, and that much of Paul’s language about our relation to Christ makes sense when we think in these terms.

The Whiteheadian metaphysics also makes sense of Paul’s language about our relation to God. The idea of God’s Spirit indwelling us and of God’s love being poured into our hearts has been puzzling to those who accept the dominant worldview. For a Whiteheadian, it is quite straightforward. God is literally in us in the strong sense of participating in constituting what we are moment by moment. The effectiveness of that presence depends greatly on our decisions and many other factors.

Most important for our interpretation of Romans is the relation between ourselves and the Christ event. If that event is fundamentally external to us, then its saving effect must be that, in some way, it changed God’s attitude toward us. Theologians have held various views about how Jesus’ death satisfied God’s requirement of righteousness from human beings so that God declared believers to be just. For nearly a thousand years many Christians have supposed that some such doctrine is the heart of the gospel and that it expresses Paul’s message.

If we approach Romans with the view that all things participate in other things, we can find there a quite different understanding of how Jesus brought into being a new relationship between humanity and God. The crucial relationship of others to Jesus is one of participation. This is strongly suggested in Romans 6. The NRSV tells us that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus and that this is a baptism into his death. We have been buried with him by baptism so that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection life his. In 8:17 Paul tells us that we are joint heirs with Christ—if we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Despite all this language, at least in Protestant circles, the focus has been on pistis. This was certainly important to Paul, but we believe that it should be understood in a way that ties it much more closely to the rhetoric I have summarized of union with Christ Jesus. We propose that Paul taught that just as we participate in Jesus’ suffering, death, burial and resurrection, so also we participate in his pistis. But the dominant translations are based on different assumptions and do not allow this idea to come to expression.

The role of a philosophical theology is not to dictate translations. It does, of course, bias one toward one translation or another. Theological bias influenced by philosophy has prevented translators from writing about the pistis of Jesus. Only very recently have they acknowledged that a number of texts can be read better as speaking of this. We think that the pistis of Jesus was as important to Paul as the suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, these expressed or resulted from his pistis.

Further, pistis has almost always been translated as “faith” even though in some instances, such as references to the pistis of God, translators have recognized that they must translate it as “faithfulness.” We recognize that both translations are valid, but we believe that “faithfulness” is the more inclusive term and that Paul often had this more inclusive meaning in mind. We chose to reverse the balance, using “faithfulness” wherever it fits and “faith” only where it is clear that Paul focused on the narrower meaning. In particular, we believe that Paul was impressed by the faithfulness of Jesus, for example, in going to the cross for the sake of sinners, and that speaking of the faith of Jesus does not capture the fullness of Paul’s meaning.

Clearly, Paul was also interested in the pistis of those to whom he wrote. We understand this also to be more richly understood when it is translated as faithfulness in most places. How is this faithfulness related to that of Jesus? We think this relation is much like the relation of baptism to the death and burial of Jesus. For Paul the relation is one of uniting with Jesus. Our faithfulness participates in Jesus’ faithfulness or opens us to being formed by Jesus’ faithfulness. God then sees us in light of the faithfulness in which we participate rather than in terms of our continuing limitations and failures. We cannot participate in Jesus’ faithfulness without participating in Jesus’ suffering and death. Paul believes that through thus uniting with Jesus we are united with him also as children or heirs of God and are assured that we will share in his resurrection or

glorification.

To show that this is a plausible interpretation of Paul’s theology led us to a concentrated focus on Romans 3:21-30. For the detailed exegesis of this passage I have been wholly dependent on David Lull. But I am persuaded that his retranslation of this passage is more accurate to the Greek and makes far more sense than what we find in the NRSV. It also fits much better with the theology we find elsewhere in Romans.

We have, of course, relied heavily on other New Testament scholars, scholars who are unlikely to be influenced by the metaphysics that is important to David and me. This is important. Philosophical theologians must be especially careful to avoid any crude eisegesis, and the concurrence of scholars without their prejudices as to the meaning of texts is especially important.

One final word. I believe that the point of view of interpreters deeply affects what they see and describe. I have accented the role of our point of view in my comments. I also believe that it is crucial that what we see and describe from that point of view can be seen also by those who are not particularly interested in the point of view. I hope that even those who are committed to more conventional metaphysical ideas will agree that Paul may have thought in a way more like what we describe. Of course, I would be even happier if some decided that this point of view is fruitful and adopted it, at least provisionally.

* John Cobb’s Spiritual Bankruptcy: A Prophetic Call to Action & The Process Perspective II 

* Philip Clayton’s The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy and Faith

* Monica A. Coleman’s Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology

* Bruce Epperly’s Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed

We will be posting guest blogs around the internet as well as responding to questions here.

If you want to get ready for that – or are looking for a little Turkey-Week reading, here are two places to start:

“What_Is_Process_Theology” is a classic little starter by Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

“GodBeyondOrthodoxy-r3” : Process Theology for the 21st Century by Philip Clayton

until then, you can post your questions or thoughts here. Thanks for helping us get ready for this. The comments and conversations  have been wonderful. 

There is, however, in the Galilean origin of Christianity yet another suggestion which does not fit very well with any of the three main strands of thought. It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved;  -Whitehead

 

Here are my two big points:

 What Pentecostals have to say to Progressives

Jesus laid hands on people, the Disciples laid hands on people and the letters of the New Testament tell us to lay our hands on people. If you have bought into a brand of Christianity that does not have you laying your hands of people and praying in expectation that something would happen – you may want to revisit the reasons why.

If your faith is primarily intellectual, abstract, and conceptual … it may not be the religion that the writers of the New Testament called us to. The early church was a hands on movement and prayed with expectation.

What Progressives have to say to Pentecostals

Being delivered from personal demons is great and praying over whole cities to break or bind the ‘strong man’ that holds people in bondage is fine. There is a vital missing element that needs to be added. Its not just about the personal (mini) and the heavenly (meta) – that leaves a gap that must be filled. In the middle is the address of systems, structures and institutions (what Walter Wink calls ‘The Powers the Be“).

If you faith is primarily personal-congregational and supernatural-heavenly, then you might want to revisit some understandings of Scripture and the address of systemic sins (like injustice).  Otherwise you are in danger of being so heavenly minded that you actually reinforce and empower that very structures that you say you are praying against.

The 21st Century

I think that it is important to have these two camps in conversation. Since the Azusa Street renewal of 1906 started, charismatic Christianity has swept the globe and become the largest branch of Christianity in the world. [see Philip Jenkins ‘The Next Christendom’ or 'New Faces']   But in the century that has passed we have come though the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the internet age. Things have changed pretty radically. We think of the world differently and the remnants of the 3-tiered universe (pre-modern) are a real barrier to some. This is why I am favor of rethinking some of the vocabulary, conceptions, and constructed imaginations that go unquestioned (or assumed) by many.

The two best conversations I have these days are:

1. The future of the church is not to be found in Europe’s past. What is happening in the Global South (Asia, Africa, South and Central America) are the voices we need to engage with, learn from, and partner with.
2. I believe in the miraculous but I do not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is a construct that come with too much baggage.  God’s work is all around us and is the most natural thing in the world.

I would love to your thoughts on all of this. Plan on being at the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation where there will be a breakout session on Pentecost and Process. 

Here are some highlights of what you can expect:

• Process Theology emphasizes an open-ended and relational view of faith. The 5 sessions will integrate a format that is thoroughly relational and open-ended.

It is important that the information being presented match the organization of the conference. We want the content to match the container.

• Process Theology introduces new concepts and vocabulary. Each of the 5 sessions will begin with a ‘keynote’ presentation from a scholar, who will then be in dialogue with two other practitioners and thinkers.  The conversation will then be expanded to the gathered participants – with each session utilizing an appropriate format for the themes of that session.

Use of technology like the Twitter-Tumbler and an empowered moderator will facilitate real-time interactions with the presenter during the session.

• The structure of the five session are organized in a chiastic format. Monica A. Coleman will lead us in session 1 and 5. John B. Cobb will host session 2 and 4. Philip Clayton has agreed to provide the ‘hinge’ session 3.

Session 1 is Introduction with Monica Coleman
Session 2 is Expansion with John Cobb (Christian Belief and Pluralism)
Session 3 is Dissection and Doubt with Philip Clayton
Session 4 is Application with John Cobb (Economics and Ecology)
Session 5 is Construction for Ministry with Monica Coleman

• Julie Clawson, veteran of Emergent Conversations, pointed out that most conferences don’t build in a time to question, disagree, and push-back. Great ideas are presented and insightful questions are asked … but the real wrestling is done either individually or after hours.

We still want personal wrestling and after-hours conversation, but we have also purposefully built in a session for wrestling out loud. Session 3 will let us debrief with Philip Clayton who navigates the worlds of Emergent and Process, Church and Academy in a masterful way.

• Each session will be followed up with related break-out tracks. One will focus on ministry specific issues. Jeanyne Slettom, director of the Center for Process & Faith and co-Pastor of a process-centered congregation will be helping us with this. Another track will be theological-conceptual. The third will be a wild-card showcase.

Five times we will come together for the main sessions to hear a presentation, listen to a dialogue, participate in a conversation, and then disperse for break-out sessions.  These four expanding levels of engagement will allow for both learning and expression in each of the five chapters.

Here is a potential picture of Session 5: Monica Coleman will present ideas and stories about her ministerial experiences and context specific opportunities and challenges for ministry with a Process framework. Then Danielle Shroyer and Bruce Epperly will join her to tell a bit about their context and their engagement of Process in ministry.  Next, we will break down into smaller circles to compare notes in order come into the Question & Response time. This main-session conversation will propel us into the the breakout sessions. One breakout will have two pastors talking about preaching Process. One will be about comparing theological vocab & concepts between different schools of thought. Another will address sexuality in the church & community.

For John Cobb’s session 4 on Ecology and Economy, a conversation partner like Julie Clawson (author of Everyday Justice) and another thinker would be followed by  breakout sessions that correlate.

This is going to be a wonderful time – come to the registration page and sign-up now. Put it on you Christmas List! you might surprised who wants you to be there.

We are so excited to be a part of putting this on.

Register here and tell a friend to sign up!

Christmas is just 40 some days away… publish your Wish List this week. 

1) Registration for the 2012 Emergent Village Conversation  = $99

2) Plane tickets to Southern California = points donated by relatives

3) Engaging in new ideas presented by inspiring thinkers = priceless.

click here for an overview of the 5 sessions that are planned

If for some reason you don’t listen to Doug’s radio show you should.  If you are a smart phone user check out Stitcher (the world’s greatest App) and stream both Homebrewed & Doug!

Give us a Holla on the HBC Hotline! 678-590-BREW!

I grew up with Josh McDowell being the most reasonable (pun intended) voice of faith. I even went to the Billy Graham School of Evangelism and focused on apologetics. I bought Ravi Zacharias books on tape (and later CDs) and used my best stuff when I spoke to college groups or at outreaches. I loved it and it went pretty well most of the time.

At one point the questions changed and then the answers didn’t seem to work as well. Around this same time I read Brian McLaren and Len Sweet and, like a billiard ball struck by the cue ball, I was radically redirected into a different trajectory. Actually, truth be told, I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t figure it out until I was cautioned about using N.T. Wright as my go-to scholar. One day it just hit me: if McLaren and Wright are the far edge before you are ‘out of bounds’ then I might be playing the wrong game… or least have been taught the wrong rules.

I went to a progressive Evangelical seminary* (by that I mean that it acknowledged post-modernity and interacted with biblical scholarship) and then moved again to a radically liberal Doctoral program and started working at a Mainline church.  I love the doctrinal freedom and the intellectual integrity, even as I do miss a couple of things as well.

Perhaps the greatest adjustment I have had to make is not just the absence of apologetics (which is noticeable) but the presence of apologizing for our Christian heritage/perspective. It gives me whiplash every time I realize that we have moved from apologetics to apologizing for Christianity. 

Now, I have strong anabaptist leaning and I am as suspicious of Christian-ism as anyone. But I think that we are in real danger here.

A very popular blog from a renowned scholar came out this week that asked if Progressive Christianity is the last best hope for the future of the church. I’m not convinced that it is, in fact I’m nervous about the future of this branch of the family tree. Do I think that the nature of the universe and science are with us? Absolutely. Do I worry about the organizational and motivational challenges that seem to work against us? Definitely.

Forgive me if you think that I am being harsh. I am simply trying to say that if we who are not conservative-fundamentalist go into the world feeling bad about what we represent and embarrassed about the tradition that we have inherited, it doesn’t provide much to build on.

As a contextual theologian I am a huge proponent of articulating our particular – constructed – embedded – conditioned located-ness. But if we are going to walk around with our tails between our legs people will mistake our epistemic humility for being spineless and impotent. 

I’m proud to be a thoughtful Christian. I think that we bring something great to the world. I have no interest in apologizing for speaking from a Christian perspective, but neither do I have any desire to concede the microphone or public spotlight to less-thoughtful [since no one is thought-less] Christian voices (ie. Pat Robertson) just because they are loud and proud.

p.s. I have been contending for the inherent theological value of the terms Evangelical, Liberal, Progressive, and Emergent.
p.p.s McLaren has a great story about not being spineless  in Inter-religious dialogue during my interview with him.

*George Fox Evangelical Seminary 

In the intro we  have fun dreaming of Johnny Depp playing Pete Rollins in The Insurrection movie  with Christopher Walken as John Caputo. (Bo has unofficially trademarked this idea -so don’t get any fancy plans)

Come to SOULARIZE Oct 18-20 & Chill w/ us, Deacons, and a herd of awesome peoples!

Also worth noting for those of you who are into Holy Smokes, Tripp was smoking a Rocky Patel 1992 during the interview.

In the podcast Tripp recommends Paul Fiddes’ The Creative Suffering of God & Participating in God.

I love when he says things like:

The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living with out why, living for the day, like the lilies the field–figures of weak forces–as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns whenever the least and most undesirable our favor all the best and most powerful or put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails when ever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.”  - The Weakness of God p. 15

All of this has been on my mind lately because of two upcoming events:

•  At Soularize (October 18-20 in San Diago) I will get to meet and share the stage with John Caputo at our Homebrewed Christianity live 3-D event.
• I have been editing both the Merold Westphal interview where Tripp asks about Wesphal’s good friend & sparring partner John Caputo as well as the Kevin Corcoran (Church in the Present Tense) interview for the following week. Both are not the biggest fans of what Caputo brings to the table.

In part two of the Westphal interview, Westphal asserts that he finds Caputo’s brand of ‘theology’ a bit like “thin soup”.  His thinking  (starts in minute 21 and goes to minute 28) is that if the promise of the future is just the logical possibility that the future will be better than the present, that is just wishing. What we need, he says, is a more active speech-act performing God.

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t understand why Caputo continues to call himself a Catholic and then takes it even further to ask why he even calls himself religious! What?

Is this where we are at in Christian theology these days? I hear this line of thinking all the time (albeit not often from someone as renowned as Westphal).

 I think that the future is a tough thing to be too dogmatic about. I get Panneberg’s proleptic possibility in his eschatology of hope. But that is hope … which, in my mind, is like one degree removed from wishing. So the acceptable options are a) certianty or b) hope, but anything less confident than that is unacceptable?

I know that Westphal’s thinking is based on much bigger issues than just the future, but it is an odd one to focus on in my opinion.

Let me be clear so that we don’t get off topic. I love reading John Caputo. I don’t just mean on philosophy or about other thinkers. I mean when he talks about Christianity – as a Christian.

I find him both intellectually inspiring and spiritual nourishing. So when somebody calls what he brings to the table ‘thin soup’, I am a bit perplexed.

Normally, I am not one to get defensive – so is it enough to simply say that I disagree with the honorable guest of Episode 114 on this one?