philosophy

TNT: Quaker Cast with Callid Keefe-Perry

April 13, 2013 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Welcome the newest Theology Nerd to the Homebrewed Team! Callid Keefe-Perry is a long-time friend of the podcast and a self-identified Hyper-Theist.

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He is famous for his The Image of Fish blog and one of the ring-leaders of the Theopoetics working group at AAR.

Bo and Callid take a tour of Quaker history, the theological Anabaptist landscape, what the deal is with “Communal Discernment,” and whether or not Rob Bell is doing something bad by not having it.
They also wax poetic about why Practical Theology is the discipline that both he and Bo find a home in with the Academy.

You can hear Callid’s earlier appearance on the podcast from last year’s Wild Goose East Festival.

More stuff from Callid about Friends is over at the Jewels of Quakerism Project.

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Filed Under: latest, TNT Tagged With: anabaptist, Bible, book, books, Callid Keefe Perry, church, God, history, HyperTheist, jesus, philosophy, poetics, quaker, theology, theopoetics

The New Materialism with Jeffrey Robbins

February 19, 2013 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Brace yourself! Jeffrey Robbins is all about the New Materialism and he is going to knock your socks off!

Tripp gets to chat with the co-author of the book “Religion, Politics and the Earth“ (along with pod favorite Clayton Crockett) that is making its way around the inter-webs in preparation for the Subverting the Norm Conference – April 5 & 6 in Springfield, Missouri.

We will be linking here to all of the posts from the New Materialism blog-tour.

This episode is sponsored by the Subverting the Norm Conference 2 in Springfield Missouri April 5th and 6th. Thanks to both Drury University and Phillips Theological Seminary for sponsoring the conference and making it the most affordable two-day event of the year.

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Filed Under: features, philosophy, podcast, post-something Tagged With: book, books, caputo, Clayton Crocket. new materialism, death of God, Jeffery Robbins, modernity, philosophy, radical, religion, subverting the norm, theology

What Is Integral Philosophy?

February 9, 2013 by Bo Sanders 16 Comments

By Steve McIntosh

Integral philosophy has been receiving a good deal of attention within the progressive Christian community recently. And because I’m both a “progressive follower of Jesus” and an integral philosopher, Tripp Fuller asked me to write a brief blog post on the subject to accompany the podcast discussion between he and I that will appear on the Home Brewed Christianity website. So what follows is a simplified description of the emerging integral perspective as I understand it.

Integral philosophy is a spiritual philosophy of evolution that emphasizes the evolution of consciousness and culture as a central factor in the process of evolution overall. Integral philosophy itself has evolved over the last century through the work of Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ken Wilber, and others. This philosophy also draws on the discoveries of developmental psychology and other social sciences, and it has been influenced by related forms of social philosophy, such as the widely respected work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Although these founders of integral philosophy differ on many points, they have all recognized that a greater understanding of consciousness is the key to a more complete conception of reality.

While the concept of consciousness is easier to illustrate than define, a common sense definition of human consciousness includes a person’s thoughts, feelings, intentions, values, memories, and sense of self. Consciousness can be understood as the inside of human experience, what it is like to be and know ourselves; and this sentient personality, this original identity, is also the unique subjective presence through which others know us.

What makes integral philosophy compelling and important is its demonstration of the connection between the personal development of each person’s values and character, and the larger development of human history overall. Through its insights into the evolution of consciousness and culture, integral philosophy offers realistic and pragmatic solutions to the growing global problems that are increasingly threatening human civilization. That is, from the perspective of this philosophy, every problem in the world can be understood, at least partially, as a problem of consciousness. So it follows that the solutions to seemingly intractable problems, such as environmental degradation and climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, hunger and overpopulation, unregulated globalization and gross inequality, can all be effectively ameliorated by raising or changing the consciousness that is continuing to create (or failing to prevent) these problems.

Human consciousness can evolve in a wide variety of ways. It can be raised or evolved by increasing empathy and compassion, by cultivating knowledge, understanding and forgiveness, and by building political will and the determination to achieve social and environmental justice. Consciousness can also be raised by enlarging people’s estimates of their own self-interest, by expanding their notions of what constitutes “the good life,” and by persuading them to appreciate new forms of beauty and truth. The developed world’s relatively recent acceptance of women as the social equals of men provides a good example of how the human condition can be improved through the evolution of consciousness.

According to integral philosophy, however, the evolution of consciousness is largely dependent on the evolution of human culture. When humans evolve their culture through new agreements or new forms of organization, this results in a corresponding growth in human consciousness. Through the “network effect” of cultural transmission, when one person has a conceptual breakthrough or new realization, this advance can be shared with others. And as new discoveries or new skills are adopted within a larger cultural context, such advances become refined and reinforced. Consciousness and culture—the individual and the group—thus co-evolve together.

This understanding of the co-evolution of consciousness and culture leads to another central tenet of integral philosophy, which recognizes the sequential emergence of values-based stages of human cultural development. That is, integral philosophy’s view of cultural evolution sees history as unfolding according to a clearly identifiable developmental logic or cross-cultural pattern that influences the growth of human society. This developmental logic need not be construed as a “deterministic law of history,” or as implying a strictly unidirectional course of cultural development, but it does reveal a recurring theme in humanity’s narrative story. The unfolding of this theme or pattern results in a dialectical structure of conflict and resolution, which is created by the interaction of specific worldview stages or levels of historical development.

Integral philosophy’s insights into the evolution of consciousness and culture may be of particular interest to progressive Christians because of the light this new perspective sheds on the unique historical challenges now faced by Christianity. Tripp and I begin to unpack the relevance of integral thinking for progressive Christianity in the podcast that will accompany this blog (in the next 2 weeks), and I hope we will be able to continue our discussion in the time ahead.

STEVE MCINTOSH J.D. is a leader in the integral philosophy movement and author of the new book, Evolution’s Purpose, as well as the acclaimed 2007 book, Integral Consciousness. He is also a co-founder of the new think tank: The Institute for Cultural Evolution. In addition to the think tank and his work in philosophy, McIntosh has had a variety of other successful careers, including founding the consumer products company Now & Zen, practicing law with one of America’s largest firms, working as an executive with Celestial Seasonings Tea Company, and Olympic-class bicycle racing. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Southern California Business School, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two sons. For more on his work, visit: www.stevemcintosh.com

Filed Under: latest, philosophy Tagged With: dynamics, Integral, Ken WIlber, philosophy, spiral, Steve McIntosh

Our Theology Starts 100 Years Ago: an experiment

February 7, 2013 by Bo Sanders 31 Comments

I want to throw something out and see if it has legs. I will be playing a character today – feel free to play along!

My great-grandmother was born into a world that no longer exists in many ways.

I’m preparing a presentation for the Subverting the Norm Conference. I have been reviewing a book called Modern Christian Thought and I am haunted by the reality that there is something significant about the late 19th and early 20th.

The world changed 100 years ago. The changes weren’t just technological and societal. The changes were in areas that deeply impact the realms of belief and the way that we live out faith in community.

As a constructive theologian who is getting ready to present to a group of radical theologians, I keep circling around this idea:

The way that we think about theology and engage our faith has been fundamentally altered in the last 100 years.

I am tempted to say that we would be far better off if we just started theology at the turn of the 20th century. In some ways, the way that we all approach the christian faith begins about 100 years ago.

Radio was becoming a technology for mass communication. Somewhere between 1909 and 1920 the medium emerged. 1920 sees the first public stations.

TV didn’t exist yet.

Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920.

100 years ago – World War 1 had not started.

The Great Depression is almost 2 decades away. That is important because it wrecked 2 things that ruled up until that point in the American psyche: 1) the myth of perpetual growth & prosperity 2) the illusion of independence and not be inter-connected with other nations.

The 1906 Pentecostal Revival at Azusa Street was on the move.

100 years the large of majority of American churches were preaching ‘post-millennial’ theology: that we would usher in the kingdom of God through societal improvement. 100 years later almost no one believes that.

In 1914 Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic and was arrested. A decade later she would do it again with success since venereal disease had become a reality for soldiers in WWI. By the 1930s legal victories would make contraception normative.

1903 the Wright brother famously took flight. 1909 air travel began to go commercial.

100 years ago the psychology of Sigmund Freud was starting to be popularized.

Movies were still a few years away.

Vatican II, Nuclear War, and the Internet were not even shadows to be hinted at – and those three have perhaps impacted the greatest number of humans as anything else on the list.

One Downside:

In fact, there is only reason that I am hesitant to say that we would be far better off to just start theology at the turn of the 20th century. The reason for my hesitation is that matters of racism and the colonial legacy might be lost.

I would argue, however, that these concerns are accounted for in my 100 Year proposal because the implications of African slavery, First Nations genocide, and other historic legacies are so deeply embedded in the current structures that they show up continuously. *

Huge Upside:

It seems to me that those who are most into things from the 13th century (Aquinas) or 16th century (Calvin) or even the 19th (revivalism and holiness) are most prone to the ‘silo mentality’ that has then focused on ‘in house’ matters to the apparent neglect of the culture around them. I know that it is dangerous (and ill-advised) to paint with such a broad stroke but …

There is something self-satisfying when we get fascinated with a historical expression that tends to pull one into a more … I don’t know how to say it … internal place?

It’s not a lot different than when people get really into quilting, or tying flies, or video games. That becomes their big things, takes much of their thought energy and time. But in the end … it is just another thing. Like collecting Precious Moments figurines – it’s not harmful – it’s just not worthy to be the thing. Like a kid so enthralled with playing in the sandbox being totally oblivious to world around.

It doesn’t pass the ‘so what’ test.

Conclusion:

Because the gospel is about incarnation, we are supposed to be the body of christ fully embodied in our time and place. That is how I read it. So much has changed over the past 100 years that to not put all our energy into the world in which we live is the equivalent of – at best fantasizing/day dreaming … and at worst to live in denial and prefer the fantasy.

I am growing suspicious that it is that stark.
The consequences are that dire.
The realities of our century are that severe.

It is why I’m growing suspicious that Radical Political Theology may be far more faithful an endeavor than attempts to recover a romanticized notion of something lost.

I don’t want to talk about Aristotle and neo-Platonism one more time. I don’t care about the Greek polis. It doesn’t matter how pre-moderns conceived of substance and essence. I don’t care how the Reformers argued about communion and baptism. It’s time to move on.

* There is no greater danger in them being lost anymore than they are now, nor is there much progress being made by our current approach which is white-washed simply by ‘look, I didn’t own any slaves and I didn’t steal any land – that has nothing to do with me.’ So I’m not sure how much the 17th 18th and 19th century are really helping us in matters of justice.

Filed Under: church history, emergent, engaging, latest, philosophy, post-something, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, God, incarnation, jesus, modern, philosophy, political, postmodern, radical, Subvert the Norm, theology, thought

5 Biggest Changes for Pastors in the Last 50 Years

November 26, 2012 by Bo Sanders 33 Comments

I’m preparing to facilitate a conversation with some colleagues in the new year about ministry and honoring tradition. I want to begin – and thus frame – the conversation with the changing culture that we are products of, interact with and attempt to minister to.

It is a different way to approach the topic of tradition, admittedly, but my thought is that we start where we are and then trace threads into the past to uncover their significance. I almost always find it unhelpful to start in the past – say at the Protest Reformation – and then slowly work our way up. It is simply too limiting (in scope) and cumbersome (in process) for the contemporary expectations of ministry.

I have been reading a little Gordon Kaufman. He has me thinking about the ‘nuclear age’ and how deeply that shift, from the end of WWII, has impacted us sociologically, psychologically, and spiritually. I take this as my launching off point.

So here are my Big 5 – in no particular order. I wanted to throw them out here and see what others who are older, or wiser, or more insightful might add to the list or modify.

Pervasive Pop Psychology - My dad tells a story about interviewing retired pastors 30 years ago. He asked them when things seemed to change. All of them, without exception, pointed to the window from 1968-1970. They talked about Woodstock, Vietnam, and Nixon among other things.

Many of them also talked about people’s awareness and pop psychology. I will always remember the story of a son who came home from college to visit his folks on the farm. He tried to talk to his dad about his feelings, motivations, childhood memories, his subconscious, etc. His dad responded, ‘Son, what the hell are going on about?’ He just had no frame of reference for it. Similar stories were repeated, in differing configurations, over and over by the ministers.

Pop psychology has permeated every facet of society. From Oprah on daytime TV to Self-Help books – it impacts what people expect from a pastor and what they want from things like premarital counseling.
In my first 10 years of ministry, I often said that I would have more prepared for the actual way I spent my week if I had gotten a degree in psychology rather than in Bible.

Biblical Scholarship - speaking of the Bible, I am shocked as to how much different those conversations go than they did 20 years ago when I was trained in Apologetics/Evangelism. Between the Jesus Seminar, the Da Vinci Code and Bart Ehrman popularizing the stuff many pastors knew from seminary but were not allowed to say in the pulpit, it is a very different playing field.

It is an odd split: people often know little of the Bible – because they know so much stuff about the Bible. We can’t assume even a Sunday School understanding or a surface devotional reading. But at the same time, the culture wide awareness of critical Biblical scholarship is shocking. That was not true 50 years ago.

The Internet - The Internet changes everything. From the way people spend time to the way that they shop for a church. Facebook has changed how people connect to each other. Google has changed the way people access information. It is impossible to overstate how big of an impact the Internet has had on Western society. If you are still doing church the way you did 50 years ago – and think that it will have the same effect – you are fooling yourself. You may have the same seed, but the soil itself has changed. It will not grow the same crop or produce the same fruit.

Two little examples: When kids who grew up in your church come home from college and sit in on Sunday school (for example). They will assume that they get to share their opinion. They don’t sit quietly and honor the elders by talking last. They will raise their hands and talk first. Is it that they are over empowered? No. It is that they assume that they get to help shape the discussion and their opinion is valid. They don’t sit quietly and try to get up to speed or catch up on what they have missed.

This is the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. A church website is 1.0 – the staff puts out the information that it wants people to see. You read it like a newspaper. It is not interactive. Facebook is 2.0 – it creates the environment but does not generate the content. Young people live in 2.0

Doug Paggitt talks of ‘the pastor as Google’. I love this. People don’t go to Google for Google. It is not a destination. It helps people get to their destination. If it does this well, people trust Google and go it often. Pastor used to be like encyclopedias. They were a resource, a destination for information. Now, the pastor’s office is not a destination, the art of pastoring is help people find theirs. If we do that well, they trust us and come back the next time they need direction.

Pastor as encyclopedia is a repository of information. Pastor as Google is a resource that knows how to find the information.

24 Hour News & Christian Media - Cable news and Christian radio probably have a bigger impact on the people who fill the pews that any pastor can be expected to have in a 30 minute sermon once a week. There is no other way to say it, the narrative that is being put out on media outlets like Fox News (Clash of Civilizations) or Christian Radio (the 6 Line Narrative) is so pervasive and so monolithic that it can feel as if your parishioners are being pastored far more by their TV and car radio that you will ever be able to.

This is also part of why our country and culture have become so:

polarized
adversarial

I am horrified by this trend more than all the others combined. I think that it hurts the heart of God and I know that it hurts our Christian witness.

Fractured Globalism and PostModernity - People have great troubles conceptualizing and articulating how fractured, dislocated, overwhelmed and powerless they feel in the global marketplace. Things are not simple now. Things have never been more complex and overwhelming. Look at the food on your table? Do you know where it comes from? Think about your Thanksgiving dinner last week and imagine how many miles and from how many countries those ingredients were trucked to end up on your table. You might be shocked.

Think about your car. Was it all made and assembled at the same plant? Or even in the same country. The automotive industry was fairly straight forward 50 years ago. Now it is an example of inter-national, multi-corporation conglomerates. We have been de-centered, and people feel it. The way we conceptualize ourselves, our connection to family, the way we picture the world working, the universe and thus God. The best book I have read on the subject is “Identity, Culture, and the Postmodern World” by Madan Sarup.

The PostModern Turn - speaking of PostModern, this may be the biggest of the 5 changes. It is funny to me that some christians still want to debate if the category is real just because it can not be succinctly or universally defined (how very modern!) Look, call it what you want: late-modernity, hyper-modernity, high-modernity, or some other thing – what can not be denied is that something big and deep has shifted. Blame it on the philosophers (Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, etc) if you want. Make up a new name for it if you must. But please stop pretending that what we are looking at is nothing radical or unexpected. Even the ostrich thinks that it is time to pull your head out of the sand!

One interesting reaction, and this applies to denominations, is the counter-modern responses that want to go back to an imagined past and reclaim a romantic pre-shift relationship between the Christian religion and

society
the economy
science
other religions

You can see this in counter-modern responses like Radical Orthodoxy (retreating to the hills of Thomism), Post-Liberal thought, Hyper-Calvinism and the Tea-Party in politics. Even if you pastor with an established denomination (and many don’t) you have to contend with these fractious groups that will impact your congregation.

Those are my 5 Big changes for Pastors over the past 50 years. I would love your thoughts! What would you take out and what would you add?

Filed Under: books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: 70s, answers, author, Bible, book, books, change, church, clash of civilizations, Culture, generation, Global, globalization, God, Google, history, impact, internet, jesus, Media, ministry, Narrative, news, Nixon, office, Pastor, philosophy, postmodern, radio, retired, society, technology, theology, transform, TV, vietnam, woodstock

TNT: HyperTheist Throwdown with Callid Keefe-Perry

October 11, 2012 by Bo Sanders 12 Comments

This epic showcase of Theology Nerd fireworks was recorded at Wild Goose East 2012. Bo was unavailable for the trip so Callid Keefe-Perry stepped up for the show… and what a show it was!

Tripp and Callid introduce the Goose to HyperTheism! For anyone willing to overlook some sketchy audio quality at parts – this is going to be a gold mine of goodness!

The songs at the beginning and the end of the show are spliced in from Wild Goose West with the band Ironic Indifference. Both shows were recorded live and in open areas so there is a lot of background noise … but if you are up for it – you will NOT be sorry.

You can link up with Callid at The Image of Fish and on his film site Made as Makers

Make sure to get your tickets for Mutiny! Its time for some philosophical Swashbuckling!!!

It is nearing time for a live podcast of EPIC proportions! Kester Brewin, Peter Rollins, & Barry Taylor in a fleshly 3D in Los Angeles. You will get 3 hours of nerdy excitement. There will be live rock music, a Theology of Rock podcast, fresh craft beer, & the main event – MUTNIY!

Thursday Night – October 25th – 7pm – Monkish Brewing Company

TNT: HyperTheist Throwdown [ 59:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: latest, TNT Tagged With: atheism, Bible, book, books, Callid Keefe Perry, church, God, HyperTheist, jesus, philosophy, rock show, Theism, WIld Goose

The Problem: with Peter Rollins

August 1, 2012 by Bo Sanders 18 Comments

I love Peter Rollins. I have even stuck up for him on several occasions (I like both Peter Rollins).

In fact, there is no author I am more prone to give my nieces and nephews than Peter Rollins. I am a fan and a promoter.

That is why I’m always to intrigued by those who feel the need to criticize, critique and call into question the motives and message of the young Irish poet-philosopher. Here is what I have begun to say:

Its not that there is a problem WITH Peter Rollins. However, there IS a problem and we need to address it with what Peter Rollins provides.

Let me attempt to clear up a couple of critiques that I hear about Pete Rollins – they seem to center on the fact that he is one step ahead of most folks … and that makes it seem like he is up to something.

He’s just trying to sell books: He is an author. He is trying to sell books. But do you think that this little slice of the christian publishing industry that he would appeal to is lucrative? There is far more money to be made outside the faith for a guy this smart and likable. He is a friend of the church and he helps people’s faith. Keep in mind that he speaks at churches! If he wanted to use his considerable smarts to simply sell books – this would not what he wrote about.

He’s importing Post-Modern stuff into the church: in the book ‘The Postmodern God’, Graham Ward was explaining his inclusion of a certain author by outlining the sensibilities that overlapped in four areas:

an inescapable recognition of the linguistic role in formation of thought and experience
overturning of traditional hierarchies
shattering of meta-narratives
concern with otherness

These four things seem to me to be vital areas for people of faith and the church to engage in for the 21st century. Pete is not pulling the wool over people’s eyes with this post-modern stuff: he is asking them to consider that they may have pulled the wool over their eyes in some way. That is not being tricky – that is being the best kind of mischievous.

People just like his Accent/Stories/Language: Yes he has a beautiful Irish lilt. Yes he tells amazing stories. Yes he is very engaging. But if you think that this is a personality-package-presentation thing, I am afraid that you are missing the radical nature of his content. Certainly the presentation doesn’t hurt anything – as a delivery system. The drug, however, is potent and I don’t want to confuse the content because of the form.

Here what Rollins bring to the table (as I said yesterday):

Part of what I love about Rollins’ project is that he helps expose the invisible or unstated second sentence so that we, as communities of faith, are not assuming something that should not be assumed – and then allowing us to state it appropriately so that everyone is on the same page and it is not invisible or hidden.

Admittedly, the danger is that it might take some of the magic out of it. I acknowledge that. The tradeoff, however, is that we can be honest about what is really going on and move forward A) together and B) with integrity. I think that the tradeoff is worth the risk even if we do lose some of the magic.

Now, having said all of that – I DO think that there is a problem with Peter Rollins, but it has nothing to do with any of those things.

My problem with Peter Rollins has to do with the medium and message. I think that he is all too right all too much of the time when he critiques TV preachers, evangelists and celebrities. I had an epiphany the other night as a I was standing there watching him watching him talk.
We were in the building where I work, which is getting ready to launch a new gathering this Fall (called the loft). Part of the Bass-Rollins event was to help our folks catch the vision and see the need for such an endeavor. The whole things is being conceived of a conversation: the way the room is designed, the staffing, the facilitation, etc.
So when I was listening to Pete the other night make some astoundingly insightful points about televangelist and revival preachers I realized the importance of the medium and the message. Here was one guy, standing up front, we were all facing him and listening to him – and he was a little bit smarter/further ahead than we were. It’s still the problem of the one person at the front of the room with all the ideas/answers.
Now, that is not Pete’s fault. He is utilizing the medium to get out the message. But it did convict me that the architecture, furniture, and facilitation need to be different so that the medium matches the message if what I am concerned about is community and authenticity.

In the end, I am grateful for Rollins. I appreciate what he brings to the table. I admire his project and think that we need it even more than we know – which is kind of his point.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: a/theist, accent, atheism, book, books, church, expose, faith, God, Irish, peter rollins, philosophy, postmodern, problem, talk

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

Considering Clayton’s Conundrum

April 5, 2012 by Bo Sanders 11 Comments

Guest post by Peter Bannister

The Predicament of Belief by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp is a first-rate book – both highly thought-provoking and courageous. Philip Clayton has consistently shown himself to be one of the Church’s most creative thinkers and is perhaps unequalled in offering imaginative tools for re-invigorating our approach to Christian faith ‘after Google’. For catalyzing and hosting constructive debate with a combination of intellectual vigour and graciousness there simply seems to be no-one better on the horizon of the contemporary theological landscape. So I’m a fan.

The first philosophical chapters of The Predicament of Belief, making a powerful case for the rationality of believing in a personal, benevolent Ultimate Reality, are ones with which I find myself agreeing without reservation. I start getting nervous when the authors’ ‘Christian minimalist’ position is taken as more than a pragmatic expression of what can be adduced without stepping beyond rational justifiability. When minimalism becomes a preferred option in the search not merely for human consensus but for truth about Ultimate Reality, my theological nerve-endings start jangling.

Adoptionism – the only solution ?

Here I would particularly like to focus on Christology. I’m torn between admiration for the authors’ brave attempt at a minimal ‘core Christian proposal’ that can function as a rallying-point for the contemporary Church and ambivalence towards their constructive suggestion. Is it a) the only viable truth-claim available in the present climate or b) a simple working hypothesis whose interest lies in its usefulness for stemming the decline in American mainline Protestantism, an attractive proposition to those alienated by traditional dogma? While I agree that sensitivity to those suspicious of doctrine in general is highly desirable, I find The Predicament overly pessimistic about rationally justifying anything approaching an orthodox theological viewpoint: their assumption that such a position cannot stand in the 21st century seems a little hasty. Especially as my experience is that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ constituency which minimalism hopes to attract is just as resistant to the ‘left-brain’ logical argumentation represented by The Predicament as to an insistence on literal adherence to ancient creeds.

In the book, adoptionism is presented as an option ‘that does not include the claim that the same person who became the man Jesus already existed in divine form before Jesus was born’. Instead, ‘after Jesus’s death, God somehow took this individual’s subjectivity into the divine subjectivity, commingling them in such a way that they came to dwell within each other and even to become identical to each other.’ This supposedly offers a way out of the ‘dichotomy that either Jesus continues as the identical person within the godhead or Jesus is a merely human model for others to emulate.’ This ‘may be attractive to those contemporary Christians who can’t quite believe (even if they have no way of definitively denying) the complicated assertions of classical Trinitarian thought, but who nevertheless find themselves believing in Jesus’ continuing personal presence’.

Towards the end of his concise Emergent Village presentation of the book (around the 30 minute mark on the HBC podcast), PC puts his theological hands up and admits that his preference goes to ‘adoptionist’ Christology because the alternative of an eternal preexistent Logos is not persuasive now that static Greek metaphysics have landed in the trash can of history. Not unless you believe in a ‘three bears with three chairs’ Trinity (don’t worry, you’ll understand if you listen to the audio…).

The pre-existent Logos: an obsolete accessory ? [Read more...]

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, living, science, thinking Tagged With: belief, 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

What is Theology?

February 27, 2012 by Bo Sanders 15 Comments

I got a call the other day from a college student who asked me “how would you define theology?”

I said that it can be thought of as Four things:

God Talk: the most basic thing it to look at the etymology (theo- logy).

Faith Seeking Understanding: Anselm’s famous dictum is still many’s favorite.

Unquestionable Answers: in contrast with Philosophy’s unanswerable questions. I got this funny line from one of the best little books I have ever read – John Caputo’s Philosophy and Theology

2nd order activity carried out by disciples within hermeneutical communities. The primary activity is the faith lived out in particular locations and within cultural contexts – theology is the secondary discipline reflecting upon the primary expression.

Now within theology it is important to acknowledge that there are distinct schools of Systematic, Historical, Philosophical and Biblical – these are recognized as the “Big 4” – and there is also my discipline of Practical Theology.

I am big fan of Grenz and Olson’s book Who Needs Theology? and the way that they conceptualize it.

I feel good about my 4 fold answer, but I thought it would be fun to throw it to the deacons and see it what you thought.
I also created a poll to see what was the common consensus would be. [poll id="5"]

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, random, thinking Tagged With: Anslem, Bible, Biblical, book, books, discipline, faith, Grenz, Historic, John Caputo, Philosophical, philosophy, poll, Roger Olson, Seek, Systematic, theology, Understanding

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