books

Why the Church of N. America will always be (mostly) like it is

May 9, 2012 by Bo Sanders 27 Comments

The church of N. America will always be (mostly) like it is today. When those who think as individuals read a text that is communal, there is always going to be an issue.

I know that there is a real danger in painting in broad stokes and speaking in generalities. I normally steer clear of such dangers but once in a while you find something that allows you to wade out onto the normally thin ice with a certain measure of confidence.

I recently finished a term paper on Alisdair MacIntrye’s opus After Virtue which is his attempt to reclaim the Aristotelian notion of character formation within community (to oversimplify a bit). In preparation for writing the paper I went back over some classics like John Rawls and Michael Sandel (the communitarian) and others.

It just so happens that I have also been reading a lot of post-colonial critique during this year and I have a growing suspicion that I wanted to throw out there:

We have individuals (products of the enlightenment) reading a text that was written in a communal framework (a product of a communal society). That provides a fundamental discrepancy that will never be resolved. It will always provide a disjointed experience and thought process that lacks continuity.

Let’s not pretend that we can think another way. We are heirs of the enlightenment – this is our operating system. We can download a new program like ‘christianity’ but it is operating within the individualist code. Talking with my friends who are from non-European descent (Native American, Pacific Islands or certain Asian communities) it is clear that there is no simple conversion that an individual can undergo and simply start thinking in communal terms. We are cultural creatures and this is our culture.

It shows up when we read the Bible. It shows up when we talk of government (democracy) economy (consumerism), status, value, worth, choice, success, identity, rights, laws,leadership and … well nearly every other aspect of Western society.

The famous example of Philippians 2:12 admonishing us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” is but a drop in the pond. It’s not just that the English language doesn’t have a plural ‘you’ (unless one counts the ya’all of the Southern US) but it is bigger than that. It is that we think in individual ‘you’s and there is no way around it.

This will always be an issue. So even when somebody talks about character formation, spiritual community, or some ideal of communitarian discipleship (be it Hauerwas, the Radical Orthodox, or any other innovative group) in the end, the church of N.America will always look mostly like it does now. The reason is that this individualism we think in is not all that compatible with the communal thrust of our very scriptures – and that is unreconcilable at some level. It can not be resolved because we can no more stop thinking as individuals than that Bible can stop encouraging community.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Canada, church, Europe, European, God, Hauerwas, individualism, jesus, MacIntyre, radical orthodoxy, religion, society, spirituality, United States, Western

Hit Me (baby) One More Time: on turning the other cheek

April 24, 2012 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

I’m going to see Slavo Zizek this evening. He is at the LA Library and we got tickets! In preparation I have been listing to all of my archives of his talks – including the last time he was at the LA Library. His conversation partner that night was Jack Miles (author of God: a biography) and the topic that night was violence.

As I listened again I was struck with how timely the dialogue was in light of our conversation about Jesus and (s)words last week – as Tripp and I prepare to go into the podcast studio this week to record a TNT about that, as well as leaving the church.

In his book ‘Violence’ Zizek addresses the idea of emancipatory or redemptive violence embedded in Christianity – a topic that we have discussed at length. But at one point Miles has to correct the philosopher. It concerned that issue of ‘turning the other cheek’. What Miles has to flesh out is that a master would have hit a slave – not by striking him on the right cheek – as he would an equal – but the left with a back hand. The command then is that if someone strikes you in this way (on the left cheek) show to them the right as well and in this way provoke them to a greater of level of violence than they had originally intended – accomplishing two things:

exposing their violence
positioning your dignity in the face of that violence

I have also been reading Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence. He clarifies it this way:

There are three general responses to evil: 1) passivity 2) violent opposition 3) the third way of militant non-violence articulated by Jesus. … Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.

Wink outlines that third way later in the book with a series of bullet points:

Seize the moral initiative
Find the creative alternative to violence
Assert your own human dignity as a person
Meet force with ridicule or humor
Break the cycle of humiliation
Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position
Expose the injustice of the system
Take control of the power dynamic
Shame the oppressor into repentance
Stand your ground
Force the Powers to make decisions for which that are not prepared
Recognize your own power
Be willing to suffer rather than to retaliate
Cause the oppressor to see you in a new light
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective
Be willing to undergo the penalty for breaking unjust laws
Die to fear of the old order and its rules

This type of thinking is as revolutionary as the day it was spoken in that famous sermon by Jesus. The binaries and dualisms that we operate in are just failing us at every turn. The overly simple either-or options are a trap.

Here is the simple reality: loving your neighbor is a big enough challenge that it has kept many thinkers for many traditions busy trying to figure out who (exactly) is one’s neighbor. and what does love look like. We follow a teacher (in this ‘way’) who goes past that debate and says “Love your enemies”. Let’s be honest – that doesn’t make any sense! If I love them … they would not long be to me an enemy

I end with a Wink: Love of enemies is, in the broadest sense, behaving out of one’s own deepest self-interest; “that you may be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:45).

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, dignity, God, Jack Miles, jesus, Matthew 5, pacifist, Sermon of the Mount, violence, Walter Wink, zizek

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 2

April 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Resurrecting space for belief

Easter is a big deal. Passages like Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 15:13-15 (NIV) tell us:

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

As I a pastor I looked forward to Easter so much. I knew, however, that we would have visitors, family members, and friends who would come to our services out of relational obligation or for social interest in the event. I knew that some of these would not believe in the literalness of the resurrection of Jesus’ body.

I always had to think through how I was going to talk about this in a way that was both faithful in proclamation for us as a community of faith, while also attempting to be invitational and sensitive to potential objections or barriers from our guests.I have no interest in apologizing for what we believe as a faith community. But neither do I want to dogmatically push an ancient worldview that may, to the listener, be suspicious at best and incompatible at worst.

In light of the conversation that we have been having with Philip Clayton [around his new book] and my articulation between the miraculous and the ‘super’natural- the resurrection takes on an interesting twist.

Here is the thing: as in so many aspects of our modern life, we exist in a world dominated by dualism and presentation designed for polarity. The resurrection is no different. The two options seems to be:

A) it happened literally just like the Gospel accounts portray
B) the laws of physics can not be broken by even God and so the Gospel accounts are literary creations designed to portray theological themes.

I get both of those perspectives. I myself have no problem with the bodily resurrection as a miraculous event that carries deep theological implications (like prolepsis, ontological priority of the future, etc.)

But … in the same way that Jesus’ walking on water is not the POINT of that story. The point was to hear the word of Christ “be not afraid” . It was not simply to understand the physics of how Jesus might have walked on the water or to add it to a checklist of things you must believe even if you don’t understand them.

This is where Clayton’s idea is so powerful.

In Acts 9, Paul experienced Jesus post-ascension and he was also powerfully changed. It was that same guy (now named Paul) who penned the words that I quoted earlier (1 Cor. 15) . But Paul did not encounter the biological body of Christ. He experienced something we can call the ‘real presence’ of Christ.

Various options are open to those who accept this hypothesis, which we might call the personal but nonphysical theory of Jesus’ post-mortem presents. There can be no talk of proof here, but there may be ways of showing that, at least in principle, a real albeit nonphysical presence of a person after death is compatible with the presumption against miracles to which the problem of evil let us in chapter 3.

One of these approaches involves postulating that the early disciples must have experienced a certain kind of event that no longer occurs today. Advocates of this view seek to do justice to the indications in the New Testament texts that, even if Jesus remains somehow present, the nature of his presence changed radically after the finite series of events that occurred soon after his death. They reason that something must have been different in the days or weeks after Jesus’s death, even if what occurred did not involve the resuscitation (even in some significantly transform condition) of the physical body. - Predicament of Belief p. 97

My question is ‘why could that not have been what the disciples experienced?’ I know full well that the more progressive members of the Homebrewed community will say ‘Duh – we have held this for a long time.’ Please understand A) I was certainly not raised to think this way and did not know it was even an option B) most of the people I know and talk to panic when something like this is proposed.

I want to be clear: I am not trying to get everyone to believe this option. I am simply trying to highlight an alternative to the modern either-or argument that is stuck in an endless round-and-round stand off.

My only point is that those who buy into this third (real presence) option count as “believing in the resurrection”. Those who subscribe to a literal-physical option often claim that only their option (#1) counts as legitimate. Those who hold to option #2 roll their eyes and look down their nose (not easy to do at the same time) at those who have not accounted for the literary devices employed in the Gospel accounts.

I’m interested in the ‘Big Tent’ here. To get there we must first concede that the point of the text is not about physics or biology. Even if we hold to that element of the story, we have to remember that understanding or believing in the physics is not the point. To experience the risen Christ and be changed by that presence is the point.

So I wanted to ask

What have you found helpful to include in the conversation that I am leaving out?
What seem to be the sources of folks’ major hesitations that I have not accounted for?

I could really use some help thinking this through. Since I left behind my Josh McDowell evidence that demands a verdict and my Lee Strobel case for the resurrection, I am working diligently to both think and present a broader approach without going all the way to Marcus Borg-land.

[part 1 can be found here]

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Easter, God, gospel, jesus, john cobb, NT Wright, Pentecost, Philip Clayton, resurrection

Jesus and His (S)words

April 12, 2012 by Bo Sanders 38 Comments

Jesus tells his disciples to sell their bags and buy swords. Why? And why then does he reprimand Peter for using a blade at the moment when it seemed to be most appropriate? Was Jesus being inconsistent? Did he change his mind in the moment? Was it a test? Did he set Peter up to fail? Why did he say that ‘those who live by the sword, will die by the sword?’ and then tell his disciple to buy them?

I am asked about Jesus’ relationship to swords as much as anything I get asked about. Good hearted people are quite baffled by the whole subject.

Jesus did after all say that he came to bring a sword.
As the word of God, he is said to be sharper than any two-edged sword.
He is pictured with a sword coming from his mouth when he ‘returns’.
and there is this matter of him telling his followers to buy swords

As a former apologist, I have gotten pretty good at helping the baffled work through these passages. I even has a presentation I do called jesuSword that incorporates Jesus, his words, and these passages about swords.

In order to facilitate a lively give and take, we will take this in 3 quick addresses over the next 24 hours.

Part 1: Jesus says that he came to bring a sword.

Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— 37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

Is it possible that Jesus was being ironic and that his sword is actually an un-sword. I say this because Jesus’ sword does the exact opposite thing that normal swords do. His sword divides family. Traditional swords are used their swords to defend their kin and kind.

Jesus was using a play on words.

Jesus was using hyperbole. In his day swords were actually for defending one’s family – for guarding me and mine. In this sense, Jesus’ “sword” is an un-sword… or an anti-sword. It does the opposite of what human swords are used for. Jesus’ sword is not for defending family but for dividing family. Jesus did not come with a human sword but the opposite!!

John Caputo puts it this way:

The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever 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.”

If Jesus was being ironic or using hyperbole, it would make so much more sense than the way this passage gets used to justify violence and militarism.

I would love to hear your thoughts – I just have one request: please don’t use the word ‘Pacifist’ when speaking of Jesus. That set of commitments belongs to a distinct school of thought that did not exist in Jesus day so it is anachronistic to use in that way. He was certainly into non-violence and radical peace-making but Pacifism is a unique configuration of convictions.

_______________

Part 2:

There are lots of swords in the New Testament. The Word of God is compared to a double-edged sword and Jesus comes back wielding a sword. Maybe the Bible is more than ‘O.K.’ with swords and sword imagery?

Let me throw out two things:

In the context of the Roman Empire and its occupation of Jewish lands in the 1st century, swords would have been a common item that drawing imagery out of would have been appropriate.

A well-known pastor in Seattle, Washington is famously quoted as saying “Jesus is a cage fighter with a tattoo on his thigh and a sword in his hand, determined to make someone bleed”. He said this in reference to the fact that he “could not worship somebody that he could beat up.”

Some people dismiss statements like this and chalk it up to testosterone fueled, overly inflated, pumped up hyper-masculinity. I worry that there is something much deeper and much more sinister involved. I think that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God and the interpretation of Christian scripture.

What is noteworthy in Revelation 19, is that the sword is not in Jesus’ hand but it comes out of Jesus’ mouth. That seems important in the poetic/prophetic nature of Revelation. This sword is not your average sword. It is not in Jesus’ hand and that makes you wonder if the way in which this sword “strike down” the nations is not in bloody violence but in a kind of destruction that would happen as a result of a sword that proceeds from the mouth of God? Let’s ask ourselves “is there something that comes from the mouth of God that radically impacts or consumes peoples and nations?” Is there something sharp that comes from the mouth of God … something sharper than any two edged sword?

Oh, here we go: Hebrews 4

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So far so good! ‘It’ judges the thoughts and heart… but here comes the twist:

13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from His sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hold the phones! … the Word of God (it) is a person? Yes. Guess who?

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

Jesus is the Word of God? (I’m being funny but you may want to check out John 1 for clarification).

In conclusion: the use of sword imagery in both Revelation and in the book of Hebrews needs to be taken with a poetic grain of salt. Yes, the Bible uses sword imagery. The thing is that if Jesus’ (S)word, from part 1, is a non-sword or an un-sword and in Revelation is comes from Jesus’ mouth and in Hebrews it is a person … then none of these passages, thus far, can be utilized to justify what so many Christian (s)words are used for.

I’ve obviously been having fun here, but the bottom line is that just because the Bible uses swords as analogies – it isn’t a wholesale validation of swords nor a justification for using them as the world does.

________

Part 3: Jesus tells his disciple to buy a sword?

We come to that famous passage in Luke 22 where Jesus tells his disciples to buy a sword.

35 Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

36 He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37 It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

38 The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

Here are two readings you may want to consider:

Earlier this week I engaged a political reading of Moses and the waters of Meribah from Numbers 20. My question was “why, if Moses was going to ultimately speak to the rock, did the Lord even mention the staff?” The answer was that it was a symbol of power to be carried – yes – but ultimately resisted in favor of a better present option that might be overshadowed by the most obvious option.

It takes strength to turn the other cheek. If you don’t have the ability to retaliate … it is just being a doormat or victim? That is how I have always thought about it.

In that perspective, I have read Jesus’ odd command with Peter in mind. I see that fateful night where Jesus tells him to ‘put away your sword’ and later tells the authorities ‘if my kingdom was of this world my followers would fight.’ The implication is that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world and so his followers don’t fight.

The sword for the disciple, then, is what the staff was for Moses in Numbers 20: a powerful option to be resisted in favor of a preferable option that is less obvious because it is less forceful.

I used to reconcile ‘buying swords’ as a sort of object lesson or training excersise for the disciples. One lesson (trust and supply) is over – next lesson: You can’t resist temptation is one of the options is not even available.

Then, in 2007, I discovered that Biblical Scholars have a different way of handling the passage. Here is Ben Witherington:

Lk. 22.36-38. What is the meaning of this little story, taking into account the larger context of Jesus’ teaching? Vs. 37 is the key where Jesus quotes Is. 53.12—“he was numbered with the transgressors”. Jesus is saying to the disciples—you must fulfill your role as transgressors of what I have taught you!!! They must play the part of those who do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples become transgressors by seeking out weapons and then seeking to use them. This much is perfectly clear from the context for the disciples then go on to say “look Lord here is two swords”. They already have such weapons and Jesus responds in disgust to the fact that they are already transgressing his principles of non-violence by responding “that’s enough” (of this nonsense).

So either Jesus was saying that two swords was enough for the revolution (not likely) or Witherington has this right.

Conclusion: We have looked at these four famous passages now and it seems clear that although Jesus talked about swords and the writers of scripture utilized sword analogies, none of these passages is a validation of the type of violence these verses are used to justify.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, God, guns, Hebrews 4, jesus, John Caputo, Matthew 10:34, Military, non-violence, pacifist, peace-making, Revelation 19, swords, violence, Weakness, word, words

A Most Interesting Reading of Moses at Meribah (Numbers 20)

April 11, 2012 by Bo Sanders 7 Comments

Recently I stumbled on what might be the most interesting reading of Moses at Mirebah I have seen. It comes from the book Emergency Politics by Bonnie Honig (also on Kindle). In it, she is engaging the theology of Franz Rosenzweig – a contemporary and rival to the German (later Nazi) Carl Schmitt who famously said “” Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

In Numbers chpt 20, Miriam passes away. She had been a prophetess for the people and had challenged Moses’ authority on occasion. Immediately after her passing (this will become important) the people realize that there is no water and press Moses and Aaron for solutions. Moses and Aaron step away from the people to seek God and receive instruction to “take the staff and speak to the rock – it will pour out water before their eyes”.

Moses, as you may remember, doesn’t follow instructions to the ‘T’. He ad libs a little bit. He does indeed gather the people but then he veers from the plan. He chastises the people and then strikes the rock. Two things happen:

water does indeed come out
God is displeased with Moses and will not let him enter the land that is promised.

I have preached this passage many times and have read lots of treatments. I am intrigued by this passage and have always been unsettled by one detail in the story, which I have never been able to resolve:

why does the Lord tell Moses to take the staff if he is just going to speak to the rock? Why even mention the staff?

Here is where Honig and Rosenzweig bring a unique reading. The staff represent something magical like sorcery – or the miraculous for the early 20th century. This is a political theology and what is at stake in the suspension of law in emergency conditions. Can a sovereign power suspend law in the same way that God suspends the laws of physics in order to preform miracles? Leaders, being empowered by God, the thinking goes, could suspend ‘normal’ activity if they determined an exceptional circumstance.

In Honig and Rosenzweig’s hermeneutic the dispersed empowerment of the people (multitude) is the location for God’s will and is intended to be home to the will/voice of the Lord. But, as we know, this responsibility had been too overwhelming and was resisted by the people in selecting Moses as a king type who would speak to God for/instead of them (Exodus 20:19). This was an abdication by the people of what the Lord had desired for them as a people – to be prophets all.

This resistance is reinforced when the voice of the people rises in the absence of water, and Moses (along with his brother Aaron) turn away from the ‘stiff necked people’ and receive instruction to speak to the rock. Moses then, probably importing the top-down authoritarianism of his Egyptian upbringing, disobeys the command to speak and instead, chastises the people and strikes the rock with his staff in an act of magical sorcery. God, though it produces water, reprimands this act, and Moses is disallowed from entering the promised-land with the people.

This event is placed within the historical context, earlier in the passage, where Miriam passed away and immediately the people realized that they had no water and held a council against Moses and Aaron. Miriam’s name alludes to water and she was the sister who placed Moses in the Nile’s water when he was an infant. She had been the only one to challenge Moses’ authoritarian ways and she provided, as a prophetess, a check to Moses’ power. Without her, this reading states, Moses proved he will give the people … “not authentic prophecy, but sorcery.” In not recognizing the predictive prophecy of the people (and Miriam), Moses loses his leadership of the people.

Honig utilizes Rosenzweig’s two types of prayer – one that spontaneously arises in a situational moment, and another that is used by the community and creates an openness or receptivity – to analyze the judicial deliberation surrounding the Bush v. Gore presidential ruling. By imagining that the people could have risen up in expectation of a serious effort to count valuable democratic votes instead of waiting for a Schmittian top-down rule from the authorities. The sovereign power might have been within the people prepared for and receptive to the sign instead of what came from above it – a rupture from beyond them. This expectation is foreshadowed within the Mosaic tradition that one day all of the people would be prophets (like Miriam).

Honig asks if this metaphorical reading (which it expressly is) is a good model for democratic politics and a comparison of the “state of legal exception to the divine rule of god”. The people, she says, when bound together can give to themselves the powers of state and can again decide to suspend them when, as a multitude, they are oriented and receptive (having been prepared) to the consequences of such action and what they point toward as a sign.

This, in the end, is the problem with magical thinking! We abdicate our power as the people – to be receptive to and bring forward the voice and will of God – in favor of looking to magically empowered leaders to suspend the rules that govern due to exceptional (or emergency) circumstances and hand down solution (metaphorically) through sorcery.

It makes sense then why the Lord even mentions the staff if Moses is ultimately to speak to the rock. It is a metaphor (symbol) of concentrated power that is present but to be resisted in lue of the prophetic possibility of speaking. In that speaking, which is to be located in the people (multitude) prepared by prayer, that a sign is revealed that points to a greater reality. We never hear that voice if a receptive people continually abdicate that potential to exceptional leaders who are expected to provide magical results.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, politics, speaking, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Bonnie Honig, book, books, Carl Schmitt, church, democracy, democratic, emergency, empower, Franz Rosenzweig, God, jesus, law, magic, magical, multitude, political, politics, power, prophecy, sorcery, the people

There’s Wonder Working Symbolic Power in the Blood?

April 6, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 10 Comments

Human history, evolutionary history, Church history and the story of Jesus is packed full of violence. Christians have acted violently on behalf of God and for many Jesus took on the violence of God for us. The violence of the cross can and should make us a bit skweemish – yet the Gospels are focused on the cross and Paul can’t stop talking about it. If you grew up in a Baptist church like me you know a whole bunch of cross and blood songs (like Old Rugged Cross…my rendition) and the blood of Jesus had a piety all its own. Sometime in college, after sitting through the The Passion of the Christ, I got rid of all the blood talk, blood singing, and just tried to avoid all the Good Friday bloody violence. Then Andrew Song Park, James Cone, and Paul Tillich re-enchanted the blood of Jesus theologically. Now there is a wonder working symbolic and prophetic power in the blood I don’t want to give up….some days.

Step One with James Cone

The finality of Jesus lies in the totality of his existence in complete freedom as the Oppressed One who reveals through his death and resurrection that God is present in all dimensions of human liberation…As long as Oppressors can be sure that the gospel does not threaten their social, economic, and political security, they can enslave others in the name of Jesus Christ (A Black Theology of Liberation, 117-118)

Why is it that I desired to cover up the blood of Jesus, to deny it theological power? Mostly it had to do with the image of a blood requiring Father who fulfilled the requirement through Jesus. I have no interest in articulating a theology where there is a dichotomy of character and intention between the Fatherly Mother and her eternal Son. God was either as good as Jesus said God was or I could just as well join Jesus and Job’s protest. IF Jesus was in fact the image of the invisible God, if the Son who was sent shared and communicated the heart of God, then it was theologically problematic to let a bad atonement theory introduce an ethical dichotomy between the two. I believed that (and still do) so I got rid of the blood. But what if the blood needs to stay for another reason, one that coheres with the ministry and message of Jesus as well as God’s desire for more just creation?

It was James Cone who impressed that quest upon me. During lent of 2009 I decided to take up reading only African American theologians and by the time I was done I began to see that in running away from the blood of Jesus I was running away from a symbolically powerful place for the Black church and, more importantly for a white-straight-middle class-dude like me, the ever-present reminder of God’s cross-bearing, blood spilling confrontation with with cross-building powers of this world. In silencing the blood of Jesus I was not just avoiding a problematic atonement theory but God’s demand for justice that streamed from the body of my Lord.

Step Two with Paul Tillich

The sign bears no necessary relation to that to which it points, the symbol participates in the reality for which it stands. The sign can be changed arbitrarily according to the demands of expediency, but the symbol grows and dies according to the correlation between that which is symbolized and the persons who receive the symbol. Therefore, the religious symbol, the symbol which points to the divine, can be a true symbol only if it participates in the power of the divine to which it points…A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. (Systematic Theology I:239-240)

Trying to figure out exactly how I could theologically reclaim the blood of Jesus wasn’t easy. Paul Tillich’s differentiation between signs and symbols became an extremely helpful tool. For Tillich religion expresses itself in symbols, they are contextual and finite. A symbol lives where it serves to breakthrough the conditioned reality of the religious community and confront its inherited assumption about the world. A symbol is a living symbol as long as it continues to participate in the Unconditioned and rupturous reality which gave it life.

For me the blood of Jesus became a sign, it didn’t participate in my own experience of God but pointed to a rather depressing image of a God I couldn’t worship, and so I let it go. After engaging Cone, the blood of Jesus began to speak to me again – it confronted many of my own practices, my assumptions about the world, my unexamined privilege, and the coercive system that preserved them. Cone had pricked my imagination and what use to be a sign pointing to a depraved atonement theory became a symbol for the power-threatening gospel of the crucified one.

Step Three with Andrew Sung Park (do yourself a favor and check out our discussion of this HERE on the podcast @44:40)

For the oppressed, Jesus’ blood as a symbol participates in the agony of their suffering under the unjust persecution, exploitation, oppression, and violence…his blood signifies the intermingling of God’s woundedness, sorrow, grief, and God’s never-ending hope for the downtrodden. Jesus’ blood represents God’s pierced heart for the sinned-against.

To the oppressors, Jesus’ blood symbolizes the protest, confrontation, and challenge of the oppressed and of God. It participates in the outcries of the victims. Like Abel’s blood, Jesus’ blood cries out from the ground until its voice is heard. It has the extraordinary strength to open up the cruelty of injustice, violence, vice, and evil – to unlock oppressors’ hearts of stone. (Triune Atonement: Christ’s Healing for Sinners, Victims, and the Whole Creation, 35-36)

It was Andrew Sung Park who helped me piece everything together, it was his work on atonement that took this retrieved and revived symbol and made it sing. Park was able to expand the symbolic power of the blood to all creation, adding an ecological flare, but he was also rather brilliant at pointing out the conflicted nature of ourselves.

We are all both oppressed and oppressors. Not in the same way or even symmetrically but it was Park who insisted that the blood of Jesus is for all creation’s wounds – including mine – and a protest to all of our wounding – including those I participate in structurally and those I inflict upon others. The blood of Jesus insists on God’s Holy Justice, God’s participation and sharing in the wounds of all, God’s protest with and on behalf of the wounded, God’s promise but not yet accomplished healing, God’s insistence on a fleshly and material Gospel, and God’s decision to take the side of the wounded – the wounded in all of us. The blood of Jesus is a symbol of the God who is for us, beside us, and working through us to bring healing.

Today is Good Friday & thanks to this little theological journey of mine I will sit down tonight after everyone is asleep, smoke a delicious cigar and listen to Gavin Bryars & Tom Waits ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed me Yet.’ Check out the story of the recording here.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, latest, thinking

Proposing an Alternative to the Predicament

April 5, 2012 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

Part 1 of Peter Bannister’s review is here.

Sketching an alternative proposal

What options then may be open to readers who share Clayton’s and Knapp’s concern for a dynamic Christology, but who want to retain a more traditional theological framework?

Here I can of course only offer the briefest of sketches, but you might call my tentative proposal ‘semi-adoptionist’, for want of a better term, drawing on Philip Clayton’s former Doktorvater Wolfhart Pannenberg. What if we retain the pre-incarnate Logos – it is absolutely the Second Person of the Trinity who takes flesh -, but radicalize the kenosis of Philippians 2 by taking seriously the free acceptance by the Logos of subjection to physical and mental developmental processes (from conception to Cross) including all they entails in the light of our limited but real scientific knowledge of human physicality. Jesus as divine Son is united to the Father ontologically throughout his earthly life, but is not necessarily consciously aware of it; the Logos rather ‘starts again from zero’ in accepting the limitations imposed by inherited human DNA, neurological structure, cognitive development, development and obedience to his earthly parents (Luke 2:51-52), having to learn a human religious tradition in its particularity, and the unavoidable reality of spending around one-third of his life snoring (yes, Jesus slept as well as wept!).

In this scenario Jesus is not ‘adopted’ at Baptism or Resurrection in the sense of crossing a threshold between a ‘non-divine’ and a divine nature, but certainly attains to a new intensification of his Sonship in a ‘functional’ sense. He is anointed with the Spirit at Baptism, raised through the Spirit at Easter and exalted as Kyrios at his Ascension by virtue of having defeated the Powers in his self-emptying death on the Cross. Appropriating The Predicament’s language of emergence theory, these are real events in Jesus’s life where a new ‘emergent level’ is reached. In this scheme there is therefore authentic becoming without the radical discontinuity suggested by all-out adoptionism. At the same time this ‘becoming’ is not restricted to the humanity of Jesus; as long as we regard Christ as one person and not two and remember that his indwelling by the Spirit, his earthly life is simultaneously the experience of a human being and the life of humanity experienced by God.

To use Irenaeus’s framework of seeing Jesus’s life as a recapitulation of what it is to be a human being, I would like to suggest that the mission of his earthly existence is in some way to become in time, through a life of self-giving love and perfect obedience to the Father, the Son that he is from all eternity.

As to how it is possible to keep the notion of the eternal Son while admitting real development in Jesus’s life, I would suggest that the idea of ‘Sonship’ has two aspects which, while obviously related, are conceptually separable. This was already explored by Pannenberg in Jesus, God and Man when trying make sense of Paul’s affirmation on the one hand of Christ’s pre-existence found in expressions such as ‘God sent his Son’ (Galatians 4:4) and formulations such as Romans 1:3, where Jesus is ‘designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead’, which has sometimes been interpreted in adoptionist fashion. Pannenberg’s position is that while adoptionist language is undoubtedly Biblical, ‘the idea of Jesus’ adoption by God says too little’ and that – quoting Paul Althaus – ‘Jesus was what he is before he knew about it’.

One aspect of the Divine Sonship is filiation, i.e. the Son as the ‘only-begotten’ of John 1:18, a status which obviously cannot be ‘renounced’ kenotically. If we are using the title ‘Son’ in this way, it seems wholly reasonable to assert that Jesus was God’s ‘Son’ even in Mary’s womb. However, once the word ‘Sonship’ is used in its second sense, invested with real content in terms of the outworking of Jesus’s character rather than merely denoting filiation, things look different; if what we talking about is Jesus’s path of self-emptying love, this inevitably requires the trajectory of a life lived. It simply can’t happen by magic.

Being a composer, let me conclude with a musical analogy. Imagine the Son’s eternal Divine nature ‘vertically’ in terms of harmony, as a chord you could strike on a piano or a guitar. Now take those same notes into the world of ‘melody’ where things happen in time, i.e. horizontally, and play them in succession from the bottom up. But don’t dampen the strings of the guitar, and leave the piano pedal down. What happens is that you arrive at the same chord. In our temporally-structured world of earthly existence, it is such a ‘melodic’ unfolding which is the only means of the ‘composing-out’ of Jesus’s Sonship (Auskomponierung in the German technical jargon of which music theorists are just as fond as systematic theologians). Something really happens. But the notes are the same as those of the chord, and the listener’s experience is enriched by the melody. Not only enriched, but hopefully inspired for her own melodic journey through life.

The project represented by The Predicament of Belief is surely an excellent and important one; Steven Knapp and Philip Clayton deserve our congratulations and gratitude for the considerable service that they have rendered both to the academy and the Church in undertaking it. But I think that I am not misinterpreting the intentions of the authors themselves in saying that their book is best taken as a starting-point and not as a final destination.

To be continued.

Doubly trained in music and systematic/philosophical theology, Peter Bannister is Associate Artistic Director and Composer-in-Association of SOLI DEO GLORIA Inc., a Chicago-based organization devoted to furthering sacred music in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He also co-directs the American Church in Paris’s participation in the John Templeton Foundation’s ‘Scientists in Congregations Ministry Initiative’, and is the author of the Music and Theology blog ‘Da stand das Meer’.

Filed Under: books, church history, emergent, engaging, latest, philosophy, thinking Tagged With: belief, Bible, book, books, church, creation, Elizabeth Johnson, Emergent Village, evolution, faith, God, Hans Kung, jesus, NT Wright, Philip Clayton, philosophy, resurrection, Roger Olson, science, Steve Knapp, theology, Ultimate Reality

Evangelicals sing to You

April 3, 2012 by Bo Sanders 14 Comments

by Bo Sanders

Three interesting conversations have recently merged in my little corner of the interwebs:

The Republican presidential primaries have brought to the limelight some very complex subjects like race, economics, and religion that are handled with stereotypical banter, generally at increased volume.

Santorum is an uber-Catholic, Romney is Mormon, Newt wants the Evangelical vote and all of this is contrasted to Obama’s social-justice-Jeremiah-Wright past. The religion aspect of this election year is going to be fascinating.

The release of Tony Jones’ e-book on Atonement [ you can find Bill Walker’s excellent review here and our TNT conversation with Tony here] has again called into question supposed evangelical orthodoxy centered around Penal Substitutionally Atonement.

I point out that in our national militarism mentality and our cultural myth of redemptive violence, that PSA is playing a role in our religious silo that is spilling over in unhelpful and even harmful ways.

When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God is a new book from T. M. Luhrmann is a sociological study by a trained anthropologist of two charismatic congregations (one in Chicago & the other in California).

The author calls them evangelical – in contrast to pentecostals who speak in tongues – even though I am not sure that the Vineyard (which both of her congregations are) are wholly representative off all the different camps that come under that tent.

Last week I posted that I was ‘worried about worship’ and one of my concerns dealt with the epistemology behind the band-centered worship expereince. I said

“ Is this situation inflamed by an epistemology employed by evangelical and charismatic churches? I don’t know how else to say it but …. if you think that you are singing to God (vs. about God) and the God is actually listening to you and evaluating what is going on, then are you more critical of both the sour-notes and distracting ‘self’ behavior or overly elaborate performances?”

As I read the review of Luhrmann’s new book in the New Yorker magazine (“Seeing is Believing” by Joan Acocella) I was amazed at the obvious parallels to what I had attempted to address. Unfortunaly, the New Yorker requires that you subscribe to the magazine in order to read the article… so I can’t just link there for you. If, however you get the chance to pick up the magazine or copy it at the library, it is well worth your time.

Without the article to link to I will just offer a couple of related thoughts:

The three step plan to Hearing the Voice of God (the Father) is exactly – 100% – my experience of being raised evangelical. So many people that I talk to who were/are charismatic or evangelical have this exact same experience [she also mentions there lack of social service, lack of political involvement, and lack of theology]. The thing I still find shocking is that so many of those outside those groups do not know that is what it is like inside, and how often those inside don’t know that this is not everyone else’s experience of the christian faith.

David Bebbington in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Routledge, 1989) did a masterful job of find some common theme that ran through evangelical history. This was a tough job (not always obvious) and has resulted in much debate about if these can even be called one grouping in any coherent sense. I am leaning more and more toward saying that Evangelicalism is not an official membership but is rather a dynamic relation between experience and expression. These two things are facilitated by an epistemology that is more central than any doctrinal or theological markers. Over the last 400 years what has been defining is not the political involvement (it has changed) or what was believed (it has adapted) but the experiential component (enthusiasm) that manifests is a distinct expression.

I have been out of the worship-band culture (Hillsong, Matt Redman, etc) for 2 years. I recently preached at a church with a worship band. What stood out to me so forcibly was the word “You”. I didn’t know why at first but as the service progressed I was struck by how many (all) the songs were addressed to ‘You’. You are holy, you are famous, I need you, etc. It stands in stark contrast to songs sung to God or about God like: a mighty fortress is our God, Oh God our help is ages past, and even Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

I often get to hear Mainliners talk about the alien experience of stumbling upon a christian music station on the radio. I also get to hear visitors to our pipe-organ-hymns-only church wonder about the lack of intimacy and excitement. I think it has less to do with the music style and more to do with the epistemology of singing songs to a ‘You’ and all the assumptions that would accompany that subtle change.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this – agree or disagree

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: atonement, Bebbington, Bible, book, books, church, evangelicals, God, Luhrmann, magazine, New Yorker, Penal, praise, prayer, radio, When God talks back, Worship

Bart Ehrman on Jesus’ Existence, Apocalypticism & Holy Week

April 3, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 10 Comments

Bart Ehrman is back on the podcast talking about his newest book Did Jesus Exist? Don’t worry the answer is YES! In the conversation Ehrman responds to the popular nonsense of the ‘mythicists’ who attempt to argue Jesus didn’t exist. Like Dan Brown’s conspiracy theory, the mythicists may get some followers online but they don’t have much of an intellectual case and this top notch atheist leaning New Testament scholar is here to set them straight. Of course that was just part of the conversation. We also discuss the apocalypticism of Jesus, Holy Week, fundamentalism, plays the ‘name game’ with NT Scholars and then answer Jay Bakker’s question.

It was a real pleasure to talk with Ehrman and we hope you enjoy it and share the Brew!

One Click to the Homebrewed Hotline!

Join Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Bernice Powell Jackson, Myself, & others as we explore the connection of ecology, incarnation and the interconnectedness of all. April 19-20 in St. Petersburg, Florida for the A Sustainable Faith Conference. Join me the day before for a cigar, brew, convo. on Hell, & a discount for the event. Sunday I will be preaching at the Missio Dei.

I reviewed the book HERE as part of this blog-book tour. The other stops are….

Tuesday, March 20th: Shuck and Jive

Monday, March 26th: Broken Teepee

Tuesday, March 27th: Homebrewed Christianity

Wednesday, March 28th: Jeff Keuss

Thursday, March 29th: Life is Short. Read Fast.

Tuesday, April 3rd: Crazy Liberals … and Conservatives

Wednesday, April 4th: The Liberal Spirit

Thursday, April 5th: Greg Laden’s Blog

Friday, April 6th: Butterflies and Wheels

Tuesday, April 10th: Fallen From Grace

Wednesday, April 11th: The Gods Are Bored

TBD: The X Blog

TBD: Richard Carrier Blogs

TBD: Exploring Our Matrix

Standard Podcast [ 51:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, features, podcast

The Best Pages & Tunes of March!

April 1, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 2 Comments

Here’s the Best of March…according to Tripp that is.

eBooks

This March was the month of the eBook! Over the course of the month I have plowed through some awesome eBooks so if you kindle you need to download at least one of these for your brain. Personally I am thrilled about the advent of eBook theology. It is sure to create a market that gets better theology to a wider audience. Bo and I discuss this with Tony Jones in the newest TNT podcast. Now for some eBooks!

Brian McLaren‘s return to fiction in The Word of the Lord to Democrats ($2.99) is flat out AWESOME. Imagine God getting a new prophet to speak a word to the Democratic party in our present political situation…oh yeah…and God wants the Democrats to stop being wusses and be an actually Left party. That’s what happens. I laughed out loud, said AMEN, & remembered how much I like McLaren’s fictional conversations.

James McGrath gives an outstanding introduction to historical criticism and the Gospel in The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? ($2.99) Not only is the book easy to read given the density of the scholarship being presented, McGrath also demonstrates a genuine liberal Christian stance towards critical scholarship and faith. A perfect way to get your foot in New Testament scholarship.

Tony Jones discusses the cross in A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin ($2.99) and Julie Clawson gets cinematic in The Hunger Games and the Gospel: Bread, Circuses, and the Kingdom of God ($4.99). For more on either book just check out our interviews with the authors on the TNT podcast.

Books with Pages

For something PRACTICAL and USEFUL check out Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. These two brothers examine the traits of ideas that stick, those that have impactful staying power. The book is perfect for those who have a stack of learning, a powerful idea, or a real big dream but wonder how best to communicate it for your audience then this book is a must read. It is based on a bunch of social scientific research and full of great examples and stories. So if you are a teacher, preacher, or communicator of any kind this book is worth checking out.

For something PHILOSOPHICAL that is a nerd’s personal LIBRARY NECESSITY click over to Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy. It is the newest history of philosophy and after a couple interactions with it I have put it on the same shelf as W.T.Jones and Frederick Copleston…which is a big deal compliment. Kenny is not only a world famous philosopher but he is also a Knight…a real one via the Queen. I bought the four volumes put in this single volume as they came out. I love them. They give a summary of the period of history where the big figures and movements are discussed. Then the second half covers the major topics and their development. Get it and nerd out.

For something BIBLICAL and PHILOSOPHICAL get on to Keith Ward‘s newest book The Philosopher and the Gospels: Jesus Through the Lens of Philosophy. I love Keith Ward. In this super sweet book Keith gets all philosophical on the Gospels. If you are interested in what Open Theism would sound like if you got to open theism via idealist philosophy and conversations with science then this is it.

Tunes!

Best album of the year thus far…Ben Kweller’s Go Fly A Kite. This is a real deal Rock & Roll record. Amazing melodies, great arrangements, and Ben’s perfect pop sensibilities shine throughout. The album covers a bunch of emotions, tells some awesome stories, and keeps you humming all day long.

Most anticipated album in my world…Counting Crows’ Underwater Sunshine (or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation). This is the Counting Crows’ first indie release and on April 10th you can expect me to go old school and purchase the physical CD and listen to it repeatedly while smoking a fine cigar. The most exciting thing about this album is the Crows are finally recording all the cover songs uber-fans like me have enjoyed live and never had on our iPods. When the Crows cover a song they don’t just play it, they retell it and often they own it. And if the album wasn’t enough on April 17th Alecia and I will be seeing them LIVE here in LA. It shall be amazing!

Filed Under: books, latest, living