john cobb

7 Reasons to Subvert the Norm in April

February 19, 2013 by Tripp Fuller 14 Comments

I can’t wait for THE most epic nerdy event of the year – Subverting the Norm! This April 5 & 6 an amazing collection of thinkers and practitioners will be gathering at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri for a conversation every Homebrewed Christianity Deacon dreams about. The speaker line up is packed full of Podcast favorites, at least 7 Deacons are presenting papers, Bo and I will both be there & one of the 3 JC’s will be in the house… Jack Caputo! Plus in just two days you will know the answer to the conference’s centering question, Can Postmodern Theology Live in the Churches?

Since the early bird registration (89) ends February 28th I thought I would give you 7 reasons to go ahead and get your ticket NOW!

Caputo
I will be attempting to save Peter Rollins soul. The rumor I heard is that Pete, Barry, & Kester are going to attempt the same to me on behalf of Radical Theology.
I will facilitate a round-table conversation where we finally figure out exactly what the “Death of God” means & how it impacts the church today.
Barry Taylor (& other peeps at the conference) will be joining us for a live Theology of Rock podcast titled “God in Spandex, Midgets dancing around Stonehenge, and our foil wrapped cucumber cocks.”
You can stay an extra day and hear me introduce Process Theology & preach at National Ave. Christian Church (DOC).
Subverting the Norm & Phillips Theological Seminary sponsored the podcast so you get it for free. Share some love and come to the conference!

Most importantly…since this is the 7th reason... the Mad Farmer & Brewer extraordinaire Deacon Charlie Sheldon will be sending kegs of the John Cobb #FANiac Double IPA & the Jack Caputo Deacon-structor French Ale to the event. During the live Podcast on Friday night all the HBC Deacons will be able to decide with their taste buds which ‘JC’ they want to tap as they take their PoMo theology into the church. Personally I think they should both go to church.

The Elder of Graphical Sweetness Jesse Turri designed these most awesome labels for my favorite Home Brew recipes.

Filed Under: emergent, latest, philosophy Tagged With: John Caputo, john cobb

Is David Fitch right about the Church’s task?

December 29, 2012 by Bo Sanders 33 Comments

This morning David Fitch tweeted this:

“The biggest task of today’s church is to undermine in its members the blase unexamined acceptance of secular assumptions for everyday life.”

I have been thinking about it all day. I’m not sure he is right on this one.

Now just to let you know where I am coming from:

David Fitch is the author of “The End of Evangelicalism?”
Tripp got to interview Fitch as last year’s Inhabit Conference
John Cobb talked about secularity and secularism at the Emergent Conversation 2012
I have been reading Madan Sarup on Identity, Culture and the Post-Modern World
As well as reading and listening to anthropologist Saba Mahmood and her address of embodied spirituality (Islam for her) in Politics of Piety and on the Canadian show “Ideas”

When you put that all together, I am just not convinced of Fitch’s assertion. Here is why:

I am increasingly suspicious that secularism is both a consequence and a side effect of Christendom. It is the West’s Frankenstein if you will. We made it. Then it took on a life of its own – a life we don’t like very much and which damages our efforts and injures our cause. I think we have to start there.

I agree with Fitch that there is a ‘unexamined acceptance” and would go even further and say that it results in an assumption that what we see is the way it is. That our current mechanisms of organization are final forms and that the ‘as-is’ structures come with a large measure of ‘giveness’. Tripp often applies this capitalism, nation-states and democracy. I would tack on both denominations for the church and militarism for US America.

I am just not so sure that our main task is to undermine. Maybe that is where my hangup comes. I am leery of this approach because it seems like we are defaulting the ground rules in the initial move and framing the task in a conceding first move.

I might be naive here but I am just not sure that the church needs to
A) give that much ground initially
B) frame her task in the negative.
I know it’s just so much one can do with a tweet but … there is something there that gives me caution.

So what is my constructive proposal? I’m working on it.

I would want to frame it more like Stuart Murray does in the book Post-Christendom and acknowledge that initial concession was early on with Constantinian Christianity. Then Christendom. Then Modernity. With those three concessions we admit that the as-is nature of existing frameworks for both church and culture are thoroughly compromised and corrupted.

BECAUSE of that. We abandon the recuperation, rehabilitation, reclamation , and renovation projects (and mentality) all together! (all 4 faces of it).

It’s over man. Let it go.

THEN we start new and in the positive. The 21st century provides fresh possibilities and opportunities IF ONLY we will let go the idea of getting back to something or getting something back. I know we never start from scratch – we never get back to square one. But …

I don’t want to be the undermining parasite ON the big organism. That is too small a task. I want to partner with God in the healing of world (Tikkun Olum in Hebrew). I want to participate in the development cosmic good – until then at least the common good.

Help me think this through!

PostScript: now that I started down this “re” line I can’t stop coming up with words I want to flesh out further!
Restore: no
Re-imagine: yes
Represent: yes
Re-member: sure
Resurrect: ummmm not really
Reflect: probably

Filed Under: church history, emergent, engaging, latest, post-something, thinking Tagged With: book, books, Capitalism, Christendom, church, Constantine, Culture, david fitch, democracy, God, jesus, john cobb, Madan Surap, modernity, postmodern, Saba Mahmood, secular, secularism, secularity, Sprit, Stuart Murray

Who Is God? or the Gods John Cobb doesn’t believe in

July 15, 2012 by Bo Sanders 13 Comments

I have been burning through my Summer reading list and I seem to have stumbled onto a rich vein of form! The odd thing is that they are all books with ‘God’ in the title. There are 5 (out of about 20) but they seem to have all ended up in the middle of stack. Here are the 5 I am chewing on right now:

- The PostModern God edited by Graham Ward

- God & Religion in the PostModern World by David Ray Griffin

- God : a guide for the perplexed by Keith Ward

- The Named God and the Question of Being by Stanley J. Grenz

- God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero

What is so fascinating to me in all of this is how widely dispersed use of the word ‘God’ can be. You can mean a whole bunch of different things when you say ‘God’ and only a fool would assume to know what another means when they invoke that title/name. [I touched on this a while ago in 'I'm not sure most Christians know that']

It made me think back to a section in John Cobb’s introductory book when he clearly outlined what he didn’t mean when he said ‘God’. What follows is a verbatim reproduction of that section. What I would love to hear is what you don’t mean when you say ‘God’. This will be a fun little experiment in clarification done negativa,.

1. God as Cosmic Moralist. At its worst this notion takes the form of the image of God as divine lawgiver and judge, who has proclaimed an arbitrary set of moral rules, who keeps records of offenses, and who will punish offenders. In its more enlightened versions, the suggestion is retained that God’s most fundamental concern is the development of moral attitudes. This makes primary for God what is secondary for humane people, and limits the scope of intrinsic importance to human beings as the only beings capable of moral attitudes. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

2. God as the Unchanging and Passionless Absolute. This concept derives from the Greeks, who maintained that “perfection” entailed complete “immutability,” or lack of change. The notion of “impassibility” stressed that deity must be completely unaffected by any other reality and must lack all passion or emotional response. The notion that deity is the “Absolute” has meant that God is not really related to the world. The world is really related to God, in that the relation to God is constitutive of the world— an adequate description of the world requires reference to its dependence on God—but even the fact that there is a world is not constitutive of the reality of God. God is wholly independent of the world: the God-world relation is purely external to God. These three terms—unchangeable, passionless, and absolute—finally say the same thing, that the world contributes nothing to God, and that God’s influence upon the world is in no way conditioned by divine responsiveness to unforeseen, self-determining activities of us worldly beings. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

3. God as Controlling Power. This notion suggests that God determines every detail of the world. When a loved one dies prema turely, the question “Why?” is often asked instinctively, meaning “Why did God choose to take this life at this time?” Also, when humanly destructive natural events such as hurricanes occur, legal jargon speaks of “acts of God.” On the positive side, a woman may thank God for the rescue of her husband from a collapsed coal mine, while the husbands of a dozen other women are lost. But what kind of a God would this be who spares one while allowing the others to perish? Process theology denies the existence of this God.

4. God as Sanctioner of the Status Quo. This connotation characterizes a strong tendency in all religions. It is supported by the three previous notions. The notion of God as Cosmic Moralist has suggested that God is primarily interested in order. The notion of God as Unchangeable Absolute has suggested God’s establishment of an unchangeable order for the world. And the notion of God as Controlling Power has suggested that the present order exists be cause God wills its existence. In that case, to be obedient to God is to preserve the status quo. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

5. God as Male. The liberation movement among women has made us painfully aware how deeply our images of deity have been sexually one-sided. Not only have we regarded all three “persons” of the Trinity as male, but the tradition has reinforced these images with theological doctrines such as those noted above. God is totally active, controlling, and independent, and wholly lacking in receptiveness and responsiveness. Indeed, God seems to be the archetype of the dominant, inflexible, unemotional, completely independent (read “strong”) male. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

Please let me know what you DON’T mean when you say ‘God’… and make sure to frame it in the negative !

-Bo Sanders

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, philosophy, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, God, Grenz, history, jesus, john cobb, natural disasters, pluralism, Prothero, Ward

Concern about the Collapse of the Mainline Liberal

July 12, 2012 by Bo Sanders 24 Comments

There is a fascinating conversation these days about what exactly is going to happen to the the ‘Old’line (what used to be the Mainline) denominations and why exactly it has happened. Both John Cobb (a while ago) and Diana Butler Bass (more recently) have had amazingly insightful takes about it on our podcast.

I find myself in an interesting position as one employed at a healthy and growing Mainline church that is about to begin an emergent expression this Fall with the addition of a second gathering. It has been said by numerous folks that I bring an evangelical zeal to being progressive. But when I read stuff about the bigger picture I feel like I showed up at the prom around 11.

Today I want have a little conversation with David Ray Griffin. His article ‘Postmodern Theology for the Church’ begins with possibly the best opening paragraph I have read. I will post it, break the sentences up and attempt to dialogue. I won’t get beyond the first paragraph in round 1. My comments will be in italics

___

Many believe that the modern liberal church is dying. Whether or not this is true, it is obvious that modern liberal churches have been in decline in both numbers and influence for some time.

It’s funny to judge life and health by numbers and influence. Maybe it is not the worst thing in the world to lose a little weight! Maybe downsizing and streamlining are not all that bad for the 21st century. I mean, this is not post-WWII America anymore. These mammoth cathedrals and lumbering bureaucratic structures are from a bygone era.

This fact has recently received terminological recognition in the change from “mainline” to “oldline” to refer to these churches. Various analyses have been offered to explain this decline.

I’m always nervous when reductive thinking tries to explain a complicated situation with a primary label. I mean, if its true – and obvious – that is one thing. My tendency is to look to a web of interpretation (anchored at many points) or to use a chemistry analogy about a concoction or mix.

Conservative theologians offer a theological analysis, saying that the liberal churches are in decline because their theology is vacuous. I believe that this analysis is essentially correct.

This is the point that John Cobb makes in that interview. They basically figured out that no matter what degree or shade someone’s belief had, we all basically did the same things. The system was set up to serve here, give to this, and show up there. The technical fine tuning of belief didn’t make that big of a difference so … it must not really matter that much.

Religion is based upon the perennial human desire to be in harmony with the supreme power of the universe, but modern liberal theology has had trouble speaking of the world as God’s creation and of God as providentially active in the world in any significant sense.

This is why I am so inventive and try to be so creative to articulate a faith that has God not just in world but inter-acting with the world. I have put great creativity into conceptions of emergent creation (instead of ex nihilo or evolutionary explanations only), dealing with demons, making sense of miracles and explaining evil (among other things).

It has generally redefined God—indeed, if it speaks of God at all—so that God is not portrayed as the supreme power of the universe, if it attributes any power at all to what it calls God.

While we do certainly contend that omni-potent is not the Biblical picture of God (but a Ceasar-esque one imported from Greek philosophy and Roman politics) we can not abandon a God who acts all together if we are to have an Christ at all. I have no interest is being generically religious (a God-ian) or spiritual (a Spirit-ist). I want Jesus. If not, I would just walk away – to be honest. I have better things to do (like Sociology). Maybe that is exactly what people have done… walked away from it.

Religion is based upon hope for salvation, but modern liberal theology has not provided a realistic basis for hope, either for individuals or the world as a whole. Vital religion usually involves not only hope for the future but also present religious experience that is salvific in itself, and yet modern liberal theology has little if any room for such experience.

Two interesting things here: A) I am all for hope. Once the social gospel collapse (or the government took over many of its functions) I get why folks were less likely to really sacrifice and pour themselves out for the cause. The post-millenial expectation that was predominate 100 years ago was a bust. It was too optimistic about human progress and social change … and not strong enough on anthropology (human nature).
B) Religious experience is a doozy of a topic. It was eye opening for me to move from an environment where we raised our hands, closed our eyes and sang as loud as we could (over even danced) in delight at experiencing God’s presence in corporate musical worship. I love the idea of liturgy, ceremony, and ritual. But you have to admit that epistemology and the expectation are night and day. People want to argue with my on this point but I’m telling you that evangelical-charismatic worship is more individualist and more faithful to Schleiermacher’s liberal expectation than anything I have found in the Mainline.

The Christian Church when it has been on the move has had a clear sense of its mission as God’s agent to bring from the power of the demonic, but modern liberal has been able to articulate no such sense of mission.

There may be no better point in the whole article than this. I think that greater than the massive sanctuaries, the dogged loyalty to old forms in worship, and anything else you can point to … this may be the most important element of the demise.

A religious movement thrives when it offers a message that seems both true and important, but modern liberal theology has not been able convincingly to portray its message as either true or important.

My goodness this one stings. It actually hurts so much (even as newcomer) that I pour many hours and invest tons of energy into addressing this one.

Conservative theologians say that modern liberal theology provides little more than a religious gloss on an essentially nonreligious worldview; that criticism, I am saying, is largely correct.

Totally unacceptable! We have good news to offer the words – and it is not that everything makes sense. Making sense is good (most of the time) but it is certainly not enough. Our commission is not just to help folks be the nicest, best, most generous versions of themselves. We can’t afford to do group therapy and call it church. Nor can we simply define ourselves and not fundamentalist or not conservative. Negativa will not suffice. What is needed is a solid articulation and dynamic organization of community and a tradition that houses a robust theology and aggressive engagement of the world that it finds itself in.

Those are some of my thoughts. I would love to hear some of yours! -Bo Sanders

Filed Under: engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: book, books, church, collapse, concern, decline, demise, Diana Butler Bass, evangelical, God, gospel, Griffen, jesus, john cobb, Mainline, misional, Mission, religion, religious, Spirit

This is the best that God can do?

June 25, 2012 by Bo Sanders 97 Comments

It is fascinating what happens to conversations when you take away one word. Words are like little suitcases – people put understandings or concepts in them and then carry them around as self contained units. Its so easy! They come with these convenient little handles and you can you pack so much meaning in and mean so much when you just use one little word.

This can be especially dangerous in theological conversations. That one word can take paragraphs and pages to unpack. Sometimes it can be a very liberating experience to take a word off the table. Just say ‘if you can’t use that word, how would you talk about this?’ It is an amazing excercise.

A few weeks ago I had fun asking the question “what if you can’t use the word ‘demon’ – how would you talk about these same things?” I am suspicious that we who read the Gospels and New Testament don’t mean the same thing when we say ‘demon’ or ‘devil’ as those in 1st century region of the Mediterranean did.

So it was with great interest that I had an amazing conversation this past weekend with a group of very intelligent, but non-theological folks. We were talking about God and the subject of evil came up. What was fascinating is that I did not place restrictions on the conversation, it happened organically – they just don’t use the usual words! Never once did I hear

Theodicy
Omnipotent
Kenosis

I started thinking “what if we had this conversation without those three words?” They are great words, and that is part of the problem! People assume that they know what is packed into the words and so they throw them around with ease (they come with convenient handles after all).

Here was my opening statement that sparked the debate:

God is doing all that God can do right now in the world. What you are looking at is the best that God can do. God is not holding back. God is doing God’s best to make the world a better place that more conforms to the divine will.

You can understand why that set off sparks. The questions, comments, and concerns started flowing. Is God more powerful than God lets on? Has God restricted Godself? Has God willingly emptied Godself of some of God’s power? Can God pick up that power anytime God will and God is just choosing not to?

There are specifically 3 groups that have shaped my thinking on this:

The Kenotic Crowd – Multmaniacs mostly, but more generally people who think that God is who we have always said God to be but that some ‘emptying’ (see Philippians 2) or self-limitation has happened. God is ‘all powerful’ or ‘all mighty’ but has just chosen to act this way (free-will, etc.)
The Process Perspective – Between Marjorie Suchocki, John Cobb, Catherine Keller, and Philip Clayton they have this thing covered. I thank God for Process as a conversation partner.
The Caputo Contingent - with his book ‘The Weakness of God’ John Caputo shook some of us to our core and rocked our ‘foundation’. What if God’s strength was shown in weakness?

I have become very comfortable with the possibility that world as it exists is the best that God can do. I’m not saying that I believe that – just that I am open to that possibility.

What if God is doing all that God can do in the world right now?

What if God isn’t all-powerful but only very powerful?

Or that God’s power is a different kind of power?

What if God isn’t pretending or self-limiting?

What if God is giving all that God has to the moment?

So we don’t have to ask ‘why isn’t God stopping the genocide in Africa’. God can’t. It’s just not how it works. God is doing what God can but we are not cooperating.

Now, some will say “No, God could do more but has chosen to limit God’s self” or “God has emptied some of God’s power and given it to us as co-creators and free agents – we are misusing our power. It’s not on God.”

I just want to throw out the question “What if this is the best that God can do?” I am comfortable with that.

Looking forward to your thoughts! All I ask is that you try not to use ‘theodicy’, ‘kenosis’, or ‘omnipotent’ without unpacking them.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, caputo, Catherine Keller, church, evil, God, history, jesus, john cobb, kenosis, Moltmann, omnipotent, Process, suffering, theodicy, Weakness of God, world

Evil Is as Evil Does

June 7, 2012 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

Earlier this week I wrote about Dealing with Demons - a progressive take, and in it I mentioned that the Devil was a personification of when evil is too big and too bad for us to comprehend as a human result … we outsource to an ancient, cosmic bad guy. Many were able to track with the demon thing but some hit a snag with the Devil thing.

Then what is evil? Where does it come from? Is it real? Is it ontological?

Let me entertain the 3 suggestions that were brought up by responders to the blog: Augustine, Process and Relational Reality.

Augustine had a theory called “privatio boni”. Back in my apologist-evangelist days I would explain it like this: Evil isn’t something, it is the absence of something. Like darkness is not a thing, it is simply the absence of a thing. Wherever you do not have the presence of light, you automatically have darkness – so where God’s will is not obeyed, you automatically have sin and evil.

Of course, the problem with this is that it predicated by God being “all powerful” or omnipotent. Augustine explains:

For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

An alternative to that comes from Process thought – which does not see God’s power as coercive (able to unilaterally act however God wills) but persuasive, engaging the possibilities of each moment, complete the contingencies of the past, to bring forward the possibility of a preferable future. John Cobb explains in Process Perspectives II that there are many factors that create the multi-layered web of evil. Human sin is just one element. He also names

Chance and Purpose
Survival instinct
Communal Identity – and fear when it is threatened
Deep held but mistaken beliefs
Institutions
Obedience of authority

among others, as potential ingredients in the creation of evil.

I want to make it clear that the systemic evil of degrading the Earth in our current situation is not primarily the result of individual sins of unnecessary wastefulness by those who know they are falling short of the ideal. The systemic evil results from our industrial-economic system. This system came into being out of a great mixture of motives. Some of them were narrowly selfish, and some of the decisions people made in the process were no doubt sinful. But not all. Some people rightly saw that the development of this system brought prosperity to nations and eventually to most of their people…

Since I believe that to some extent we all miss the mark or fail to fully actualize the initial aim, I do not exclude sin as a causal element in the establishment of this system. My point is only that to explain the rise to dominance of this system primarily in terms of sin is extremely misleading. The evil results from a mixture of good intentions, ignorance, and sin. It is also profoundly brought about by the power of the past in each moment of human experience. (p. 135)

A third option for thinking about this is a Relational Approach. I first encountered this through reading Native American approaches to theology with my mentor Randy Woodley (who’s new book Shalom and the Community of Creation just came out).

If you go back to the story of Eden and can resist the temptation to retroject a Greek understanding of ‘original sin’ and substance into the story, you will see that it is primarily about relationship. What happens in Eden is a fracturing and a resulting alienation in 3 directions:

humans from God
humans from each other
and humans from the earth that sustains them.

As Genesis continues, the fractures stretch out and the impact of the alienation is greater and greater. Soon brother kills brother, generations are fractured … then tribes, peoples and societies.

I love this approach! Once you get away from the substance/material approach the whole Gospel reads differently! God’s relational covenant with Israel and the resulting Law, Christ’s relationship to the God and ushering in a new covenant which radically altered (and began to repaired) our relationship to God – to each other – and to the earth which sustains us (where do you think bread and wine come from?)

The gift of Holy Spirit re-connects us in an inter-related family of God. The perichoretic reality of the Trinity is about the relatedness of the Godhead and not primarily about matters of substance and matter (ousia). Evil in this picture, is that which results from brokeness and fracturing, which leads to alienation, and is then complixified through exponential increase of family systems, tribalism, social structures, societal realities and institutional frameworks … it becomes so big and so bad that it is nearly unimaginable to our mind. At this point we are tempted to outsource the badness to an ‘entity’ which is the personification of evil.

So those are three really good ways of beginning to address the problem of evil. They all have strengths and weakness – but in the end, they are better than saying ‘the Devil made me do it’.

I will end by quoting Cobb again:

The ways in which even what is good in human nature and society can and does become destructive are so numerous and so effective that the mystery is how good sometimes triumphs over it. This is where I see the need to emphasize God’s directing and empowering call to novel forms of goodness.

John B. Cobb Jr.. The Process Perspective II (p. 137). Kindle Edition which sells for $7.63

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Augustine, Bible, book, books, church, death, demons, Devil, eden, evil, God, history, Holocaust, Holy Spirit, jesus, john cobb, Native American, Process, Randy Woodley, reality, science, sin, society, St. Augustine

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 2

April 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 9 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

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 1

April 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 4 Comments

He is risen! … now what?

Several of my mainline friends get to preach this coming weekend – as do I. The conversations have been great as we compared notes. The first question is usually “are you using the lectionary text?” (which I am not) and then the question of post-Easter themes as we round the corner toward Pentecost come up.

I was looking for something on my old blog and stumbled upon two posts from an Easter past. I thought it would be fun to edit them and put them up again.

The central question is “what do we do with this?” – also known as the so what question. People want to know because there are 3 key passages in the New Testament that say Jesus’ resurrection has consequences for what we as believers can expect after our death.

Here are the 4 layers of thought that seem to come out of the Resurrection conversation.

Layer 1: The disciples experienced Jesus after his death and that indicated two major things A) death is not the end and B) the Roman empire was not the final authority.

I like this interpretation. If this were all that there was, it would be enough for me. I often hear that this is nothing more than a ‘ghost story’ and offers no hope. I don’t see it that way, and have written about it often.

Let me just add that North Americans are good at focusing on the first implication – that death is not the end – but often struggle with the second implication because, as I have learned, we assume that the as is structure of modern existence is the final ordering. Both the Nation State and Capitalism are given realities and so the best that can be hoped for is for the system to be tweaked in order to bring about a slightly kinder, gentler, more fair, and just version of the structures as it currently is configured [as Jeremy and Tripp outline in their TNT episode breakout session entitled "Occupy Theology"]

Christian implications of the resurrection should enable us to imagine a re-ordering of this world’s governors and empower us to dream of and participate in our ordering of life to display a different operating system and demonstrate a pronounce protest to the powers the be.

Layer 2: At the end of our life, we are taken into (or absorbed back into) the life of God. This position holds that life after death is total and absolute communion with God and acknowledges that all the ‘streets of gold’ and ‘pearly gates’ stuff is a result prophetic language and poetic imagining- not a material (physical) rendering.

I like the language of this view. It also helps that I think the book of Revelation is a political critique of the Roman empire and has nothing to do with the end of the world and is therefor not instructive in the least about life after death. So I don’t have to worry about the personification stuff. It frees me to enjoy the thought of release and embrace: release from this life and embrace by the divine other.

The way we read the book of Revelation now is killing our political imagination. The lesson of Revelation is not what will happen in our lifetime or in history – but to model for us how to speak to our time like the author spoke to his time! We are faithful to the book of Revelation not when we take it literally (as if one even could) but when we critique our Imperial structures and imagine a different way of ordering the world in order to bring about different and better outcomes.

Critics of this view say that it is too spiritualized and not specific enough and doesn’t give dignity to the existence of the individual. I hear what they are saying, but it opens us up the to anthropomorphic critique again.

Layer 3: Jesus was resurrected with a trans-physical body. So we can expect a glorified – bodily – spiritual/physical existence in kind.

This is the classic reading of the text. Jesus both interacted with the physical (making breakfast on the shore and letting Thomas touch his wounds) while also not being limited to the physical (walking through walls, etc.)

I am, of course, comfortable with this view as it is what I was raised with and ordained into. The only downside is that it desperately needs to humbly engage the gaps that emerge in Biblical scholarship instead of arrogantly raising it’s voice to anyone who dares question any aspect of the accounts that were written so much later and which vary from each other. We have to be honest about the literary aspect of the Gospel accounts.

Layer 4: Some really thoughtful modern theologians have put forward some new theories or vocabularies with which to have this conversation. Notable are N.T. Wright, John Cobb, and the new book by Philip Clayton.

I was listening to an interview with John Polkinghorn and he said something that caught my attention.

“What is the real me? It is certainly more than the matter of my body, because that it changing all the time. The atoms are always changing – but in some sense it is the pattern of how the atoms are formed. That,I think, is what the soul is (agreeing with Thomas Aquinas).
It is an immensely rich pattern that doesn’t end at my skin. It involves my memories, my character, my personality. I think it involves all the relationships I take on. It is complex and we struggle to even say something about it. But I do not think that God will allow that pattern to be lost and I think that God will recreate that pattern after resurrection.
Faith and Science are in conversation about what could be the continuity between this world and world that has yet to come.”

I love this language. It gets away from the historical argument of only literal vs. merely spiritual and points to the possibilities of a preferable future – but does so without being dogmatic, wooden interpretation or concrete physics. It leaves the door open for faith and invites us into a conversation. In my mind, that is better than rote ~~regurgitation~~ repetition of old formulations. It encourages us to think biblically and explore theologically the possibilities of a new reality.

We just can’t afford for Christ’s resurrection to be a promise of escape from this present world and a subsequent passivity toward the as is structures of our existence.

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

Ready for the Road Trip? process prep

January 28, 2012 by Bo Sanders 3 Comments

in just a few shorts days folks will start to wander on down to the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, to the Claremont School of Theology for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation.

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]

Process Poetics with Catherine Keller

John Cobb on Christology (an early HBC interview)

Monica A. Coleman on Process and Pluralism

Bruce Epperly on Process 101

TNT: Conversation Preparation all about the conference.

Robert Mesle introduces Whitehead’s thoughts

If you are looking for some reading on the flight here is Epperly’s Guide for the Perplexed on KINDLE!! available for instant download for 9.99.

Filed Under: conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: book, books, Bruce Epperly, Catherine Keller, Claremont, CST, Doug Pagitt, Emergent conversation, john cobb, Monica Coleman, Philip Clayton, Process conference

TNT: Eschatology – Resurrection call and response

January 24, 2012 by Bo Sanders 14 Comments

What do N.T. Wright, Marcus Borg and John Cobb have in common? This podcast!

In this hour, Tripp and Bo take 4 calls from hotline and respond to questions about eschatology and the resurrection.

You can call in with any questions or comments at 678-590-2739 (brew) and let us know what you want us to talk about.

Two books that we reference today are Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian. We also alude to the John Cobb prayer podcast. Thanks to Jason, Angela, Garret, and Keaton for calling in!

Graphic Option TWO

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Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, podcast, thinking, TNT Tagged With: 2012, book, books, End of the world, eschatology, john cobb, Marcus Borg, NT Wright, resurrection, revelation, The End, theology

Claremont School of Theology